The Sex War

Welcome to the future, where women have been infected with a virus that turns them into witches and men have formed a militarized cult to exterminate them-the Witch Doctors. You can survive here, if you're lucky; but only if you swear to one of the dominant practices-Puritanism or witchcraft-and are willing to check your humanity at the door in the process. Because in the future, being a man means donning black and white and carrying a fire-breathing musket-the better to incinerate witches by-while being a woman means to live as the undead or a white-eyed practitioner of the black arts. Either way, humanity is doomed. That is, unless a single man or woman can resist-and in so doing, find the courage to cooperate, even love, again. Will it be Satyena, the beautiful young witch prone to kindness and compassion? Patrobus, the salty platoon sergeant with a secret past? How about Aluka, the intersex witch-doctor caught between worlds? Dive into these tales of the Sex War to find out-tales told in the dystopian tradition of Fahrenheit 451 and Logan's Run-stories at once brutal and beatific, halting and surreal. Do it today, before the future they portend becomes shocking reality ... We are close enough now that the driver has activated the loudspeakers: Ohhh, myyy love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch ... It is time; there's a riot of clicks and ca-chinks as everyone primes their muskets, pressurizes their masks. I double check my grip reservoir (crucial in the event one gets separated from their tank): it is full. And time ... goes by ... so slowly ... I notice a few disconnect their arm hoses-Malachi, Ishmael, Artemas-against regulation but a favorite hack, for it allows the musket to be switched from hand to hand or spun like a wheel from its ring lever. The problem is that witches have been known to use telekinesis to snatch the weapons away-that and the fact that the grip has limited capacity and reseating it can take precious seconds. And then we are there, we are at the former hospital-the wagon lurching to a stop, the rear doors banging open-and everyone is unbuckling, piling out. "Let's go, let's go, let's go!" shouts Jeremiah, even as the first charges are thrown and detonate against the doors-blasting them to smithereens, rocking the grounds like an earthquake. "Aluka, Malachi, Lazarus-levels 3 through 4, go! Ishmael, Silas, Artemas, come with me." Ohhh, myyy love, my darling ... We enter the foyer-fanning out like black specters, winding up staircases, pouring into hallways, as the first of the witches are lit up like little suns and a collective gasp echoes throughout the building. Seconds later the screaming begins, the shrieks, the mournful wailing, like mothers over dead children. I focus on locating the lab-knowing Malachi will clear the floor; knowing he will leave nothing standing. The truth is I don't know if I can still do it: kill witches, murder women. The truth is something has awakened that I cannot put back to sleep- something ghostly, elusive, something I cannot parse or ration away. I push it from my mind, ducking into a side corridor, an inner voice seeming to tell me what to do, where to go, as if a kind of third ear has opened, a third eye-a window into the world of the witches. The blue door at the end of the hall, the voice seems to say, the voices, rather. Do you remember? We put it in ourselves-the witches of Scarth Coven-put it in to withstand the blast of their muskets. But you know the code; it is embedded in the hive. Just use your intuition, and let thy hand by thy guide. And then I am there and am punching in the code-66-67-66-understanding not at all what has happened; as the lock mechanism buzzes and the bolt retracts. As the door swings open and the lab, so long and white and evenly-lit (precisely as it appeared in the spy photos), so incongruous with everything we thought we knew about the witches, appears ...