The Choice Era. Part 1. Nata Kay

up a phone and switched to verbal negotiations, after which he immediately returned to the keyboard to document everything. Undocumented negotiations were not regarded as negotiations.

      A few hours later it was time for lunch, which included a traditional march to a local cafeteria, a set meal with its subsequent eating and a few minutes for a smoke break. Harry couldn’t smoke at home, so he allowed himself to smoke more at work. It was a double satisfaction from cigarettes especially after the long lack of access to them.

      And then correspondence, negotiations, plans drafting and their implementation again. Coffee and work went hand in hand without any harm to the process. And another day was getting away outside the window.

      It seemed that one day was like another one, just as the another one was like the next. However, despite all the illusory similarity, days can’t be the same. The world is constantly changing, technologies are running ahead, people’s lives are turning like pages one by one. People are gaining new experience and memories. By all accounts people can only decide whether they are ready to notice changes and seize moments, or they are happier when they just go with the flow without looking around.

      A STEP

      Any day is supposed to end up, and this working day came to its end. Harry’s colleagues managed to complete their work on time. Their business was going well as usual, so the office friends said goodbye and went home. Some of them had forgotten about the books, the others were smiling and joking while leaving.

      Bob didn’t stay long either. He cracked a few caustic remarks about Harry and the books that Harry would anyway open, and after that he went straight away from his working life to his personal life.

      Harry had no doubt that Bob went on a date. Harry and, perhaps, Bob himself lost count of such dates. A year ago Bob broke up with a woman with whom he had a relationship for several years. After this he found himself in a colorful world of flirt. As a rule, Bob’s dates didn’t lead to anything serious. When Bob was talking about them, he usually shrugged his shoulders and stated that there had been no sparkle.

      Harry himself still got job to do, so he just couldn’t go home.

      He always felt uncomfortable when he stayed late at the office, even if he realized that it was really necessary. As soon as the clock showed the time to go home, something had clicked in Harry’s mind, as in many other minds, the mode switched and Harry felt a burning desire to leave the office immediately.

      Nevertheless, a project of a business proposal, which promised to bring the company a large profit in case of success, should have been completed today. Harry texted Mona with apologies for being late for dinner. Thirty seconds after Mona answered it was okay and wished to finish things painlessly as soon as possible.

      The project didn’t want to form into a coherent whole. Harry’s thoughts were running in all directions like the ripples on a pond after a rock falling. Harry couldn’t think of what to do with it, what to focus on. All his previous experience was telling him to find two or three main ideas and cultivate a concept within them, but now this trick didn’t work for some reason.

      Staring at the screen didn’t help too, as well as walking around the room. Harry managed to go downstairs for coffee and drink it sitting on the desk. Then he went to a smoking room, looked out of the window, checked the messages, reread all of his progress, but still there were no ideas. Harry joked to himself that maybe today they decided to visit someone else’s mind.

      Breathe in and out, in and out. Harry closed his eyes, concentrated and tried to get all the thoughts out of his mind. Unfortunately, he knew that it wasn’t easy to reach such ringing emptiness. Thoughts were still coming out of one subconscious corner and then from another. Harry didn’t understand where they came from, why they were hiding so meanly and then suddenly pop out of a shelter at the worst possible time.

      It would seem that mankind, having mastered the removal of any kind of pollution, should had already dealt with the removal of any kind of thoughts, but alas… If any research in this area existed, it progressed obscenely slow.

      Harry glanced at the desk.

      The books were where Bob had left them in the morning. Books. Still and silent, totally out of fashion and a little bit funny. Everything, even the soft, but still present smell, made anyone think about long time ago.

      Harry knew that these sheets of paper dotted with letters and stapled or glued in the middle were attaching attention of millions or even billions of people for centuries. It meant there was something in them, something that made eyes at least pause, as if something was saying «Open me». And then another force worked, and that force didn’t allow a reader even to think about a possibility of putting the book aside.

      Some of the covers looked so decrepit that they seemed to crumble at first touch. Bob must have been very careful as he was carrying them to the office.

      Harry slowly put his hand to the stack, hesitated a little, but finally he made up his mind. He touched the upper book with his fingertips. Its surface was radically different from usual smooth plastic or varnished wood. The cover was rough, soft and rigid at the same time. Nothing in the modern world was the same to the touch.

      Harry winced, removed his hand from the book and gazed into the title. Bob probably had chosen this book for a reason. The title was strange and, in Harry’s opinion, completely ridiculous. «It’s a girl».

      Harry heard this phrase in old films which sometimes were shown on TV for people to get acquainted with history. Such words were said during the ultrasound or childbirth of a little feminine human. In the latter case after these words a crying child was brought to a mother who had just gone through terrible torments. Harry was always afraid of episodes like this, even of those that the filmmakers condescendingly softened.

      In the modern world doctors in maternity hospitals didn’t say anything like that. Children were born almost painlessly for mothers and these children had no sex characteristics. Their bodies were something in between a boy and a girl. And this fact suited absolutely everyone, including government, society, doctors, parents and eventually children themselves.

      This couldn’t but suit children because they had an opportunity to freely decide who they wanted to be in future – a boy or a girl. However, not at a young age. At the state level it was prohibited to decide it until ten years. Majority made their choice by the age of twelve, the others hesitated and decided a little bit later. Everyone had to officially declare who they wanted to be at sixteen.

      As soon as one decided and confirmed the decision legally, he or she was scheduled for an elective surgery.

      No one was afraid of such operations. All manipulations with the body had been worked out to the last detail. Something went wrong only in one ten-thousandth of a percent.

      After a surgical intervention, which implied the male or female body formation with all its functions and capabilities, a patient was receiving a monthly treatment and society was replenished with one new formed unit.

      Of course, it took some time for a body to adapt and acquire a more masculine or feminine appearance, but after this one was feeling different and as a rule he or she was very happy about it. By the age of seventeen anyone had a gender.

      Harry and Mona’s child was to follow this standard and not difficult path, and Harry had never thought that someone would tell him one day «It’s a girl».

      Harry frowned and turned away from the book. He didn’t fully understand why he noticed and even touched it. As if the book could help him in some way…

      Help him? This thought suddenly run through Harry’s mind.

      Such outdated experience as reading a book had no more importance or influence on people. Society invented other methods and tools instead. Books were subjective and individual. Books described events and actions of people who by the way could be completely inadequate. What could be given by a book demonstrating