At three forty-five Anita went to the Director’s meeting and found her place next to the assembled executives on the elevated dais. She sat demurely in her chair on the rear of the platform as Dee made her entrance and mounted the step of the podium standing before their seats to begin her speech, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I have momentous news, the formula has proved to be a success! Not only did the subjects regressed as we projected, but preliminary results indicate that neoplasms of all types are destroyed during the process of rejuvenation. Our Chief of Research, Fran, believes that the results are promising that the rejuvenation formula could be the magic bullet against cancer. Moreover, formula seems to have bactericidal, fungicidal , rickettsiacidal tubercularcidal and viruscidal properties. For those of you who are familiar with the formula’s side effects, this explains why diarrhea accompanies the early phase of rejuvenation. Fortunately, the diarrhea seems to be a temporary effect. The E. coli flora in the gut are usually able to reestablish themselves after a few weeks. However, in the case of other organisms, the process of destroying and rebuilding healthy tissue is accompanied by a rejuvenation of the immune system. The researchers suspect that the formula might prove to be a panacea for the ills of man. In short, diseases such as AIDS could be treated by a short term regression to eliminate the vast majority of the infectious agents and to rebuild the immune system to take care of the balance of the infectious organisms. Given the pandemics that are raging in the third world countries, this could be the formula’s most valuable use. The formula also has one side effect that has not been discussed outside of our laboratories; it reduces human fertility in both men and women. Although eggs can be harvested from women who have not received the formula, lab tests reveal that mammals given the formula have their fertility reduced by as much as eighty percent. The spermatozoa of men undergo a similar but not quite as drastic a population reduction. There is a further complication in the case of male fertility: once treated the spermatozoa become far more intolerant of local heat than they were before the treatment. I’m sure everyone here has heard of cases of men who have been temporarily rendered sterile by wearing over-tight pants. With our treatment, a man risks TOTAL sterilization if he chooses to dress in confining garments. A solution proposed by one of our researchers of Scots heritage, is to have the men so treated wear “regimental style” cotton kilts, i.e., kilts without confining underwear worn beneath. Once again, our marketing department is hard at work on a solution. It is probably known to less than five people in this room that the colors and styles used by industry in a particular year are pre-decided by a secret conclave of less than twenty people the year before. The Federal government is aware of this but has chosen to maintain a position of benign ignorance of the doings of this conclave. In the view of the Federal government, such decisions reduce waste and chaos in the marketplace while not “operating in constraint of trade”. Essentially, the government views the conclave as a “facilitator” of the market place and chooses a laissez-faire position with respect to the conclave’s existence. This is our opening; Ladies and Gentlemen, we plan to offer treatments to each member of the conclave gratis if they will support a single change to men’s styles over the coming decade. In short, we will use them to influence the market to ‘accept’ the masculinity of kilts and sarongs as male attire.
Given the radical change in temperatures in the once temperate regions of the world, this should be readily accepted. Also, since the change in weather patterns has reduced the yield of cotton, linen, wool and silk crops substantially, the availability of natural fibers is at an all time low. Neither wool nor artificial fibers are an acceptable substitute at this time, although our materials chemists have hopes of developing a ‘cool’ man-made fiber. Actually, it’s a moot point. No matter what fiber is chosen, the male garment must be made less confining and subject to heat buildup. The only practical solution is to convince men to wear dresses. Kilts, sarongs and dresses distribute heat evenly and allow more circulation of air. It’s a matter of thermal engineering. I sure a few of the directors in the audience who have advertising experience are already thinking of possible ad campaigns to influence the public’s attitude. Certainly, the image of a Scots warrior clad in a kilt with the tartan of his clan running up a hill pell-mell to attack an enemy position comes to mind. Alternatively, the image of a catamaran loaded with a full crew of heavily muscled Samoan’s in short sarongs rowing through the Pacific surf to meet their voluptuous island lovelies on the beach is also a pleasing thought to the male mind. The historical aspects of the problem are also being explored. Virtually every culture has had a period in which men an women both wore some sort of kilt or sarong for rather obvious technological reasons; it doesn’t take much technology to produce yard goods as opposed to finished, fitted garments. While we do not expect any real resistance to the change in Asia, Africa or the Pacific Islands, we are projecting heavy market resistance in areas that are primarily of European stock, Scotland excepted. However, we project that our three-pronged marketing plan will be successful over the long haul. This is one of the reasons we will begin our sales in Third World countries. A youthful, dynamic leader who chooses to dress in his country’s traditional garb rather than mirror Western fashions will be respected rather than ridiculed. To further our objectives in the West, we plan to quietly support the multitude of Scottish societies that have sprung up all over America. Similar plans are being made to support Aztec heritage groups in an attempt to enlist the huge Hispanic community in the U.S. Since the majority of Anglo-Americans have Scots-Irish heritage, we feel confidant that they can be convinced that kilts are manly wear.
Once a man or woman is regressed, their probability of producing children is reduced drastically. After treatment with the formula, a normal woman will live a life of approximately three hundred years at the age selected, while a man’s genetic inheritance will only allow him to live a one hundred and eighty years. Once the time for a particular individual has elapsed, the process of DNA/RNA replication breaks down catastrophically. In addition, the ability of the body’s antioxidants to remove free radicals from the system is severely curtailed. The super-longevity pseudo-telomerease that we’ve created in our laboratories will begin to self-destruct and attack the telomeres on the chromosomes. At this point, metabolic toxins build up rapidly leading to renal failure. Within two weeks the absolute inability to form new proteins and the accelerating percentage of free radicals cause the affected individual to die. A normal woman would be able to have a child a year from ages thirteen to thirty-five, or approximately twenty two years of fecundity to produce a maximum of twenty two children. With the formula, the woman would be able to have from two to three children during her child bearing years of one hundred ten years. The population ratio of men to women will alter drastically in the next two hundred years. Our statisticians have forcasted that the percentage of men will drop to one half of the present level in that period. After that, there will be a gradual tapering of a population percentage over the following hundred years until less than one-eighth of the world’s population will be male. After another one hundred years, we predict that less than one-thirty-second of the world’s population will be male. The lack of male bodies to inculcate into the cult of soldiery will force the governments of countries to adopt peaceful solutions to their problems with their neighbors.
While this may seem to be a harsh tradeoff, the company’s statisticians have calculated that the culling of the world’s excess human population will have a salutary effect on the world’s ecology. As the world’s population declines to approximately one-third of its present level, the amount of real goods and land will remain constant. Our economists predict that this will cause a world-wide reduction in the price of goods and increase the price for labor on a global basis. The effects of the wage readjustments will be offset by the transfer of goods and capital to the survivors. Money will become cheap for a time as will land and investments. It is this capital that our company plans to tap. If ten percent of the available capital of the Third world falls into the company’s coffers, we will become the most wealthy company in the world. Understand that this is not a naked grab for money. We are only trying to protect ourselves with the sole means that is legally available to a private corporation. We must survive! The very world’s survival depends on our continued existence. The wealth the formula will create for the company will provide protection against hostile takeovers or inimical government action. If a government is foolish enough to try to nationalize our product, we will simply refuse to do business in that country. Public opinion will bring the government in question down in weeks. We have nothing to fear from politicians. We expect to sell millions of units of the formula before its properties become fully known. Once the anti-agathic and antibiotic properties of the formula become well known in the First World, the uncontrollable epidemics in First World countries will force the legislative bodies to revise their drug testing programs to allow their populations the same protection that the Third world countries have purchased from us.
Unfortunately, our staff sociologist expects a full scale assault on our formula from the radical fundamentalist groups and the Catholic Church. However, she projects that the attrition of their ranks due to disease and social pressure will mute their antagonism in a short time. Ladies and gentlemen, we are on the threshold of a new world. Our formula will change human history. Cultures that place a premium on fecundity will die, rational cultures will survive and be able to mature as experience is able to accumulate within their populations. Politicians will begin taking the long view of statesmen as they are forced to witness the disastrous effects of their short term policies. With the immediate reduction of great land armies through epidemic attrition of the military forces in question, large scale warfare will decline and largely disappear. Over the next hundred years, men will become too precious to lose on the battlefield. Criminality will decline as the short term reduction of family progeny in First World countries causes the value of children to rise and the tolerance of criminal element to fall. Prisons will disappear as a means of punishing career criminals when governments realize the savings that can be achieved by regressing dangerous criminals into infancy rather than support them for the balance of their lives. Our experiments have proved that a human who is regressed through puberty not only loses his sex drive, but immediately begins to assume the emotional and cognitive abilities of the age to which he is regressed. We are NOT creating evil dwarfs with this process, Ladies and Gentlemen, these will be ‘real” infants who need to be cared for and nurtured like any other infant.
We have already begun preparations to market this idea to penal authorities. Our sales department will insure that state governments will discover that the market for selling fostering contracts to willing parents to care for the infantized criminals is tremendous. In a short time they will realize that criminals can be neutralized and cared for without the expenditure of public funds or taxes. Understand that we plan to take a fifty percent reduction in the per prisoner price of treatment in the public interest to solidify our political position. Bilking governments of taxes is NOT our goal! We are projecting a cost of ten thousand dollars per treatment for government treatment programs. Given an average cost of fifty thousand dollars per year per inmate for prisoner, our price will be a bargain. Actually, most states should be able to show a profit from the transformation. We project that the average couple will tire of caring for an infant who doesn’t mature after approximately five years. Once the adoptive family relinquishes the unwanted “infant” into state custody, the state will be free to sell another fostering contract on the ‘criminal’ infant again. If the government regresses a male criminal with a life sentence at age twenty two, the resulting infant will have a salable lifetime of approximately one hundred and eighty years. We project that the average prisoner’s contract will be sold thirty-six times. If the penal authority charges one thousand dollars for a five year contract, then the value of the prisoner’s full market value as a leasable “state asset” will be three hundred and sixty percent of the state’s initial investment in his treatment.
We expect that our support among the liberal elements of the populous will solidify as it becomes known that with the use of our formula, the death penalty need not be invoked to eliminate dangerous individuals from the population. Instead, killers will become helpless infants who are incapable of further crimes. This development will also increase our support among childless couples. Remember, no one except criminals will be forced to participate in our treatment and we have no intention of making the formula’s decline in an individual’s fertility secret from anyone. Our staff sociologist is projecting that the change in attitudes will cause governments to increase the penalties for crimes now punished by ten to twenty years of imprisonment. Once the savings in our treatment become evident to the general public, she projects that there will be a world wide impetus to penal conservatism. Terms in excess of seven to ten years are likely to changed into permanent regression into infancy. In short, ladies and gentlemen, the world’s maximum security prisons will become temporary nurseries for the distribution of state “owned” infants. Terrorism will decline as longer lives become the norm and individuals become richer. Also, since the leaders of the sponsoring countries have more to lose, funding for terrorism will dry up. The romance of fighting the system will die. It’s impossible to be viewed as a frightening specter of the ‘people’s vengeance’ when the payment for your crimes against hum anity is to spend the rest of your life cooing and crawling at your enemies feet with a load in your dydee! The world will become more life-oriented and livable. Because of the reduced fecundity of women, their lives will become more valuable. Societies will become so short of workers that the option to put women in purdah will not be able to be exercised. Women will be the equals of men in the first time in history. The stupidity of politicians will become a liability rather than an asset. The world will change beyond their comprehension. We will be free at last!” The thunderous applause of the gathered executives rained kudos on Dee, Fran and Anita as the stood up to take their bows for their achievement. The Day of Change had arrived. Howard greeted it by pooping in his diaper in his sleep and peeing until his disposable was completely soaked. He had long since gotten used to sleeping in wet and dirty diapers, he never knew he had done it. While plans were made for the restructuring of the world, Howard continued sleeping serenely. His world had already changed. Within two weeks Anita was forced to change her mind about wearing pants. Dee explained to Anita that her new position as vice-president in charge of research would put her in the public eye at press releases. Her rank demanded that she change her appearance to look more like a member of upper management instead of one of the girls from the secretarial pool. Anita acquiesced to the requirements of her job and found a women’s shop that catered to female executives. She took the afternoon off, leaving Howard under the supervision of the Daycare workers while she went to buy an expensive new wardrobe that befitted her new position. By then the disguised workers only came in every few days to test his mental deterioration. Howard didn’t miss the intellectual stimulation of their games together. He spent most of his time amusing himself in a playpen with teething rings and pacifiers or sleeping in his crib in the Daycare. The smart silk pant suits Anita purchased at the boutique were especially chosen for their slimming effects in front of television cameras. As an added bonus, she discovered when she wore her new outfits to work that the mannish cut of her silk jackets and pants lent her an air of authority and power among her fellow executives that dresses simply couldn’t confer. At home, she discovered that the rigors of motherhood made dresses and aprons impractical for everyday wear. It was so much more comfortable and convenient to wear jeans when she was taking care of the baby. Howard was long past caring about who wore the pants in the family. His pants had only been symbolic of his masculine rights and familial authority. Baby Bri-Bri’s mind was no longer capable of appreciating verbal abstractions like male identity and prerogatives. As a baby he instinctively knew and accepted who ruled over the narrow confines of his much-shrunken universe; his mommy.
