BY DESALEGN DAGNEW
(ddagne40@gmail.com)
A beautiful woman received a great applause on the stage. “A big chance remains for members of the fair sex,” her call for icebreaker congregant echoed in the room. The silence heaved as midnight. Annunciations were uttered a lot by the honey tongue of the conversant woman on the podium.
“We have to take the chances forthwith, observe, the men are gathered outside” another woman from the congregation made a remark. “One billion dollar is too much money, we have to be serious,” another woman continued.
“I think professor Shewareged is eligible to the chances,” said one backbencher woman. Many applauded. The recommended woman yawned and sighed loudly, and then stoops down to hide her content. For short they call her Shewa, she is a specialized professor when it comes to utterances on the feminist council which she joined as a member. Her research paper on Progesterone has brought her fame on the global stage.
Women sat behind her were arguing until the meeting begins last year‘s abstract that every man has to gestate. A council was founded to nurse back to normalcy the girls who got broken by mostly third world wars across the world. She abhors the idea of gestation raised as a top issue because men have a stomach for beer not for the embryo. Some wanted revenge and argumentation to pay in kind the felonies men committed on women in the annals of human history.
The moderator invited the organization’s general secretary to open the meeting with a keynote speech. The discourse continued, but a-billion-dollar ideas were crossing her mind. “How on earth could a company pay this huge money for one research findings?” was baffling her she got amazed, winging her curly hair behind her ear. A groundbreaking job was waiting her in Africa.
She dug in her hand book for her cellphone, Google hasty (Human Enrichment Center of Africa) HECA. Lots of links brought to her a lot of information; she left the meeting at tea break. Attaching letter the feminist council sends the professor to the HECA.
Transports were fully covered by the center. Few days later she landed at the horn Africa. For more than a day she traveled by a car. She witnessed many cities that were demolished by war. She travelled imagining dead souls whose bodies buried under every debris of building that departed.
She passed the Night in a rural lodge. Early in the morning she began the journey to HECA, after an hour-long foot travel, the GPS directed her to pass the mountain. Noon approached, her legs were shivering, her armpits got filled with sweat, the scorching sun mercilessly bombarded her head, and on social media she was informing everything to her team members. She was thinking of returning back, but her friends were prodding her to keep up going.
She sat in the shade of trees for a while, and snapped a little on her luggage. She woke up moaning when a foxes pulled her shoes. It ran away frightened by her rasp shouting, no one seen in the Deseret. Warm air slapped her cheek in the meantime. “Battery low!” warning beeped continuously. She cried for the first time in forlorn when she realized she forgot her power bank at the lodge.
The GPS indicated that only seven hundred meters remained to the gate. She ran dragging her luggage before her mobile switched off. She was expecting a big compound, but from horizon to horizon nothing was in view. Only a field of small trees held her view. Shewa realized as she slipped into a slippery slope of her life. Her GPS pointed to her that she had reached at the places. Three warning beeped continuously.
She hastily inserted the codes to GPS. Succeed complemented her effort. She waited but nothing happened. She sat by the luggage hopelessly. She sighed. Again she cried for the second time. While she was composing email about the company’s gambling the mobile switched off. Vexed she tossed it away.
The fact that world number one professor duped this way made her quiver revolted. A moment later the ground shivered beneath her. She imagined an earthquake erupted and run for her life nervously. Concentric circles appeared on the earth, a reverberating sound that conjures up in mind a lightening shook the area.
The circled earth bent from behind. A, computerized speech ordered her to feed the code on the box. She never expected the company was underground. She felt a little gee. But the feminist council’s backing will be curing her even form dying, she felt and thoughts like this in the middle of the places. She went two steps down in dread, and pressed the code again similar to GPS codes. Another gate was opened for her and as a lid from above the earth enveloped her head. She screamed out nervously.
The cry for help did not go far. From afar she saw a small room with a pale light. Beneath the steps a gigantic gate was in sight. There was no hope of exit upwards, but a trial of downward vortex. She made it. She went past in dread another two gates Shewa opened the last fifth gate. It bumped on an elevetor. It took her down faster. Roars permeated the air for long minutes, and no one heard her shouts or came to her rescue.
Finally, she got relieved when HECA aisles appeared here and there. More than a hundred meter length she was going down below the ground. A bald-headed man rushed toward her. She sighed a little. Minutes ago, her soul was undergoing an excruciating pain. Time board on the wall read out 876000 hr: 32 minute and 42 seconds. She ignored it or undiscerning as it is hundred years.
He introduced her to a whole team, fifty identical bald men and fifty identical curly haired women were gathered sitting side by side. They were absolute equals in size as if made by cookie cutter –two meter long. Their height created feeling of astonishment when one stranger found among them. Her whole luggage got burnt down. She put on a cloth like them a blue trouser topped by a white t-shirt. She was amazed by what technologies she witnessed.
Slowly weeks gone by. There were only fifty male and fifty women in the company. They were designed to be a carbon copy of one another 100 years ago. They cut a posture of 25 boys. Their scheme was creating an immortal human all over the world underground; a lot of cities all over the world had been demolished by missiles for the last decades.
This makes people to inhabit the underground world. To live internally without any natural disaster beneath the ground was their initial mission. But the center can’t allow the woman to breed. That is why Shewa was needed at the center.
Only Zia, a leader, bore the annulus stamp on his forehead. The mark set him different from the others. The women were with a curly hair. They cut a beautiful Afro American face; they didn’t have names, but codes. Thorax badge began by CHE000… they called one aother by the final digit.
She tried lots of times per a day to enable the women utters to hold an embryo. But nothing happened; a couple of months went by, Man and women proved equal there practically, equal speech, equal dressing. The absence of no drunker no fighter man was amazing. Gender equality was assured in practices she winded up the issue.
Shewa kept chatting everyday with her friends all about it. Six months flew by without result. Finally Shewa asked Zia to cover her return transport fee .He laughed long for a while and left his offices. She forthwith emailed Zia’s disobedience to the council to do something on the case.
A month gone in such manner, the feminists never replied after she noticed the cases, she heard lately only Zia can make a communication to the outside world. Her whole secrete message with her friends were already with Zia. This forced her to throw a surgical blade on Zia. She was skilled in marshal art sport years ago to defend her and also council members, but Zia paused the blade on the air by magic. It dawned on her she never ever could defeat them whatever age whatever knowledge she acquired here.
“Do you know the gate via which you entered in?” A bald man asked her at the aisle when she was crying there. Her heart was beating ten times faster than the normal; she sats down leaning on the wall. The bald tall man left her lonely. A curly hair soothes down shewa.
“There are no codes to open it from the inside. I think acclimatizing it is the life better than trying to go out from here,” said the tall curly hair winking at her.
There was no wife and there was no husband here She knew after many times the 7pm alarm meant a time of a record moment of happiness. She strongly condemned and argued council women to fight their rights but they didn’t accept her. They looked their world is the sole peaceful and eternal hiding place from any ballistic missiles. So why did they need to go out from there? Shewa thought herself silly. Any mega tone missile could never get the enrichment center even if attacked continuously.
She zipped her mouth for about a month. When she kenned there is no exit she zoomed in on how avenging them. Revenge became an overarching feeling of her thought. She told Zia as she began going out. She agreed to begin the research again a month’s time went by again, and she fabricated a virus that can kill a woman only in six months.
She could make the virus a lethal one potent enough to brush aside men from the map but she badly wanted to see firsthand the men’s horror stamped face. So she killed the whole woman, referred the fair sex and found the sources of pleasure to their male counter parts. Men should keep women, delicate creatures, as the apple of their eyes she thought .She imagined the whole men’s dying will begin soon up on learning her punitive measure against them.
Zia and other bald heads neither responded angrily nor came to kill her by her devilish action. This made her to contemplate extra revenge. She recalled the absence of safe exit from the world she found herself in. The alarm went off. The time of physical intimacy drew close. She smiled as she revenged the whole men in the center.
The whole girls’ body was placed at morgue. Zia was there with them for the last hours. Shewa got gratified by her revenge and opened the door to see what the hell the crazy men are going to do in the absence of the delicate creatures at 7pm!
Her eyebrows arched, her jow-dropped suddenly!
To her horror she saw fifty bald men with Zia leaders lining at the threshold of her door to the last aisles. Every man was naked. The reason was clear!
Oh my God? What crazy beings! How to ward off mole station.
She yawns loudly! … But she realized lately that the place was one that no one could ever save the victim of her making.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 8 APRIL 2023
