Chapter One
Windy City, 2218
I’d had six years to prepare for today, the day when I’d become the most famous woman in the country, but still I shook with nerves.
“You’re a pretty one, aren’t you?” The older woman swiped some more shadow over my eyes. She’d introduced herself as Sophie. I was in a large government-run media studio getting ready for my first public appearance. I’d only been broadcast once before. That was the day I’d been introduced as a future Breeder for Windy City. Everyone knew my name, like everyone knew all potential Breeders’ names.
We were celebrities.
Last time the world had seen me, I’d been an awkward fourteen-year-old. Now they’d get to see me in the coveted Breeder role.
“Not really,” I muttered, hunching over more on the dented, battered wooden stool so she could reach me. No matter how much calcium they pumped into women, most females past the age of fifty were shrunken. Sophie had to be nearing eighty, she was that little. I worried her bones would crack if I made any sudden movements.
“Oh, you’re pretty, all right. The candidates will do anything to get to you. They’ll want a taste of your pretty, sexy body.” Her words carried the knowledge of someone who’d painted the faces of dozens of Breeders.
I smiled at hearing her say I was sexy. It was an odd word. According to research I’d done,sexyused to be a compliment of the highest order and thrown around in ordinary conversation. Women tried to dress sexy, showing lots of skin. Crazy. “They spent enough to make me pretty,” I said.
Sophie chuckled. “What’d they do to you? Boobs?”
I nodded. After graduation six months ago, I’d been moved from the only home I’d ever known to Windy City to be made ready to take on my official Breeder role. The process had involved some surgery, and a lot of lectures about sex and my position as the future of the country. That’s when I had learned, sex was much more than an act of procreation.
“Nose?”
“No.” My finger brushed the skin of my straight nose. “They made my boobs bigger and put extensions in my hair.” I curled a finger around a lock of the perfectly waved, silky mass hanging from scalp to nipples. They’d debated a long time about whether to color it blond or not, but in the end, agreed my natural light brown was better for my skin tone. These days no one was naturally blond. Plenty of women dyed their hair as soon as they graduated from school, but almost none of us had light hair. With the absence of traditional procreation, blond hair was a recessive trait that was close to extinction.
I was glad they’d allowed me to keep my hair color. It was odd enough looking in the mirror and seeing my reflection with the large chest and perfectly polished skin, usually covered in a glow of makeup.
“You’re lucky,” Sophie said. “Too many times, they go overboard. They make the Breeder look fake.”
“Isn’t that the point? We’re the Unattainable Woman.” My hand briefly touched the talisman in my pocket. It was a final note from Ethan that I carried on me always. I hoped to someday see the boy who held my heart.
Though he wasn’t a boy anymore. He was older than I was, and I was twenty.
“No, you’re the dream woman. The one every man fantasizes about.” Her gnarled fingers stopped brushing color onto my face, and she stepped back to survey her palette.
“Well, since I’m one of the few women in the world who can procreate, I’d think they don’t carewhatI look like. We get to havesex!”
“Ain’t that the truth.” Sophie and I shared a secret smile. For all my bold words, the momentousness of the situation was starting to hit me. In about one hour from now, I was going to be pushed onto a stage with a camera focused on me. I’d be introduced as this year’s Breeder from Windy City. Everyone would be watching. I knew this because I’d watched every year since I was fourteen. Every citizen over the age of sixteen did. I’d been granted permission to watch earlier since I was a future Breeder.
In our teen years, my friends and I lounged around our school rec room screen and waited to see the current year Breeder. The fifteen major US cities went in alphabetical order, so we were toward the end, but it only made the anticipation grow. Who would she be, and would she be prettier than the other Breeders? Would she make the men in the audience desire her?
Now that it was my turn, I realized I’d never asked an all-important question. I’d been so focused on whether the men would desire the Breeder, I’d never stopped to think whethershewould desire the men. And now thatshewasme. The girls back at my school would be watching. Would they remember me as Jane, the girl who’d raided the kitchen with them at midnight? Or would I no longer be the girl they remembered, and instead be as strange and remote as the Breeders we’d watched year after year?
I forced myself to stop thinking about home. I didn’t live there anymore. The sad truth was that once I’d been designated a Breeder, everything had changed anyway. Losing Ethan had been only the first thing. Once I’d been declared a Breeder, I couldn’t walk down a school hallway without stares and whispers. It was worse once my body started changing and turning into a woman’s body.
I’d heard the Breeders in Manhattan and Los Angeles were taken from their schools and moved to a facility for future Breeders. Part of me wished that had happened to me. Maybe it would’ve been easier. Nothing had been the same since I’d had my first period.
My fingers curled tightly around the arms of my chair while I tried to calm my anticipation about the next few hours. After six years of being in wait mode, it was finally here. Today, the day I’d lose my virginity. And the whole world would be watching.
Sophie circled the chair and examined her work. She nodded and futzed a final time with a curl placement on my forehead. “Beautiful,” she declared. “Wardrobe is next.”
I stood on shaky legs and followed the direction of Sophie’s wrinkled finger. When I got to the large room, I saw I was not alone. Three of the walls were covered in racks of clothing. Clothing that didn’t faintly resemble anything Schoolers or Workers wore these days.
A rainbow of colors in materials that weren’t practical for actually doing anything other than being admired. The clothes caught my attention so completely it took another minute to notice the room wasn’t empty. Two other women faced each other in the center of the room arguing and gesturing at an outfit slung over a spindly chair next to them.
One of the women was fat and beautiful. White-blond hair hung nearly to her waist and her skin seemed to sparkle with every movement of her hand. I couldn’t stop staring at her hair. I’d never seen such a color before. Both women abruptly stopped their heated conversation and turned to face me.
“The newbie,” the blonde woman said. Her low voice floated my way, wrapping me in a coil of fascination. As she turned, I realized she wasn’t fat. She was pregnant. Now I couldn’t take my eyes off her belly.