Shinji waited in his room, at first frustrated, and then increasingly worried.

Amraani was already gone for an hour and the deadline to register for one of the marriage time slots was fast approaching. A crazy, a terrible idea crossed his mind.

Amraani doesn’t want to go through with the program. He has gone to opt out of it. He saw how much I love him and he is disgusted, or afraid, or worse still, both annoyed and disappointed with me that I looked at him this way for years.

He sat tense like a caged lion.

Do I go looking for him? What if I miss him? Biocalling!

The world-be he-wife dialed Amraani’s permanent number. It rang dead.

“Clock, what time it is?”

“5pm and thirty-two minutes” was the reply of the flying monitor, which accompanied Shinji in most places within the Constitutional building.

Not much time left. Should I report him missing? The support team would need to be mobilized, but at least I would have a chance to fight for our love. Tonight, we make a decision on whether we’re right for each other as part of the Eternal Glory Program or not. We tell each other life together is possible and possibly fulfilling in every way. And he’s not here.

Did he leave me behind once more?

The thought called forth memories Shinji hoped were buried for good. Feelings he fought hard to avoid as he lived in Boreau. Feelings of pain, neglect, rejection, and abandonment. From his parents. From the same Amraani McAuliffe.

Back then, he never asked me to leave Boreau with him. If he loved or wanted me, he wouldn’t have waited until the day before his departure to tell of his plan. He didn’t give me a chance to stick with him on my own. From this, I should have considered myself warned.

This is the second time! My only love abandoned me twice.

In his pain, Shinji hit a chair and it fell on its side. He sat in the next, his head in his sore hand, ignoring the monitor’s counting down its warning. He sat like this prostrated and sad for a short while. Then, he suddenly jumped to his feet.

“No! This time around, he won’t have it his way. I’m not letting him go. Clock, what time it is?”

“5pm and forty-two minutes” the roving device answered.

He rushed to the door, dialing the support team leader on his biophone. He threw the door open, rushing through it. And hit a strong wall forbidding him exit. He looked up to see an astonished Amraani, both arms raised to protect his hand.

“Whoa! My love, what happened??”

Amraani pushed him back inside gently. Hearing the monitor warning Shinji and seeing the fallen chair, Amraani went from being surprised to being worried in no time flat.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

Shinji replied with his eyes and Amraani got the message loud and clear.

“I’m sorry, Shinji. I was at it too long. I didn’t pay attention to time and I had to rush here.” The countdown kept going on.

Amraani held out his hand to Shinji, “Sit with me, will you?! I have something to show you.”

The message in Shinji’s lagoon-blue eyes didn’t change much, but he took the man’s hand and let himself be led to the sofa. Amraani then knelt and opened the object he had in his other hand. A rock of admirable size shone bright, lagoon-blue, surrounded by silver-gray pieces of gold. The ring was beautifully crafted.

He started talking.

 “I’m sorry I made you wait five years and then some more days. I wanted you close to me, back then and right now. I feel incredibly lucky they gave me this shot at impossible bliss with you. Will you have me? For as long as we live?”

Followed Shinji’s shocked silence. The monitor turned off its countdown, but no one heard it. Falling tears crossed Shinji’s attractive, androgynous face.

I thought wrong of him. Oh! I was so wrong about him. I owe the man excuses.

None of these thoughts were spoken out. He only had the power to reply with a voice struggling to stay steady.

“I will.”

Amraani breathed with relief. “You scared me, Darling.”

He touched the tears away from Shinji’s face and kissed him tenderly. Shinji drew himself closer into Amraani’s embrace, into Amraani’s kiss, and very shortly, they were expressing lust rather than affection for each other. It took a moment to Shinji to remember why he was so beside himself with anger and fear. He broke the tantalizing kiss and sat back into the couch, dragging Amraani up into it with him.

Amraani knew the precise instant Shinji gave his all to him. Shinji’s intense look sought his. Looking deep into his soul. Willing him to pay attention. Wishing to be received entirely, permanently.

“Amraani Zander McAuliffe, I have been beside myself with yearning, fondness, and love for you for the past five years. I don’t know how I got this chance to be with you for the rest of my life. Nonetheless, I’m ready to do anything to keep it. I don’t care what I will have to do to keep you in my life. I am a man like you, a gadshma. I am Shinji-Patrick Onodera and Fiji Mary Ise and I love you. Will you spend your life with me?”

Shinji had his mind made up for five years already. It was impossible in the current close-minded society for two men to openly love each other and live together.

Mocks! Women weren’t even allowed to access influential positions.

To the point where the leaders of Jarusha would rather orchestrate a huge money-and-resources-consuming lie than appoint a few competent women at these positions. However, those cunning bastards, just now, handed him the keys to his happiness. With their blessing, he could lead a married life with his only love. He wasn’t stupid enough to let the opportunity pass by him.

It all hanged on Amraani not backing out at the last minute. Despite the ring and the promises he just made, Shinji-Patrick needed to hear him to agree with his own voice.

Just now, the man didn’t say a thing about love, but I’m willing to risk it.

So right now, in his entire life, Shinji couldn’t name anything scarier than waiting for the reply of the man he asked back in marriage.

The one he utterly, dangerously loved more than anything in the world.

               The next morning, the day started early and was jam-packed, at least on schedule. Being the last to register yesterday, the Masson couple ended up scheduled to marry the earliest.

That meant for Shinji waking up early from their lovemaking to adorn himself, pulling a stop at every cliché for female bride prep. They still managed to make it on time. The minister and witnesses were waiting inside the projection room.

A tech team made sure the settings of the backgrounds and sounds effects matched the back stories of the Masson couple. Pulling images, videos, and air recordings of Shinji and Amraani's real friends, relatives, and acquaintances, the team managed to create entire broods of colleagues, neighbors, mentors, relatives, friends more or less recommendable. The air records were a form of video-recording that captured not the light of the scene filmed, but the magnetic field of the scene with a thumb-sized captor that gathered both the measurements of the magnetic field of the different components of the scene and the air composition, right down to the various isotopes of every atom.

It was as detailed as light video, but was easier to carry out and carry around when the filming was done. The tech team included the new ceremony audience and backgrounds in the effects that animated the stage where Shinji and Amraani were getting married. They also told them to familiarize themselves with the names and faces they saw since they would later be included into their Glorian's fabricated life paths.

They all did a quick rehearsal and took a break, allowing the tech team to do final checks. Left to his own devices by a sleepy Amraani who went to get a strong coffee – yes, drinking coffee had survived the passage of time-, Shinji’s stress spiked. So high he felt the need to go to the ladies and get his optic make-up in order.

“Will that ever get old? Mocks! I worry about makeup now.”

Whether it was less damaged than Shinji thought or he got faster at applying it, he was quickly done repairing the mascara sweat lines on the optic screen proof, fast out of the room, and hastily searching for Amraani. He walked past a door down the corridor, toward the marriage room and heard Amraani’s voice.

Oh, Anata! He thought, his smile burgeoning.

He was already poised to open the door with flair and good humor when the next words coming from inside the room stopped him dead on his tracks.

“No Dr McAuliffe, your betrothed doesn’t know he can become pregnant.”

Shinji stood still. Years of being neglected by his parents and nannies taught him one thing 'Fend for yourself and successful fending lies with information.'

“This part of the tutorial was to activate only if the uterine additive became functional, and the bearer took part of the Q/A session pertaining to it. However, your mate never heard the information about pregnancy and delivery, since he was busy dealing with the minor heart attack I provoked for you. I sealed a part of his informational aid in the same move.”

“So even if a councilman, another he-female, or a high-ranking staff member talks about it with Shinji around, the tutorial will only activate a data stream on adoption, right?! He can’t learn about his own pregnancy without my direct intervention, isn’t it?!”

“Yes, he will only receive Glorians’ data about pregnancy upon directly hearing it from you or remain ignorant of it. Till then, he probably will think the children born from Glorians like you guys are adopted infants. I kept my part of the deal. The doctor also didn’t say a thing about his current state. I convinced him that for your couple’s harmony, it is better if Dr Onodera discovers by himself that he might be with child and seeks confirmation. That shut the physician up.”

Upon hearing those words, Shinji felt a headache blindside him. Once more Brain Tutor was unlocking data in his shell-shocked mind, and he learnt. Everything including what Amraani was hiding from him. Among other things, the cerebral tutor informed Shinji that making love while thinking of carrying a baby from the partner was the trigger for the uterine additive to implement the pregnancy protocol.

Inside the conversation continued uninterrupted.

“Good. Then, our little understanding should go on as agreed. I am also a man of my words and I paid the second installment to your USSID right before coming up for the ceremony. I will make the last payment when we are done with the preparations and out of this building.”

The counselor nervously asked. “Wait! When will you tell him?”

Amraani laughed.

“Why should I tell him? I am planning to fuck my he-wife, get him pregnant, and use the kid as additional warranty to tie him up to me. I thought it would be hard work to seduce him, but I got lucky, he was already crazy about me."

Amraani's tone turned to one of connivance.

"I didn’t have to do a thing to get him in my bed. He jumped right into it! All by himself! But, don’t worry! It’s all fine. I will take good care of him. After all, I have great plans for him. The geezers said us Glorians’ intellectual abilities are invaluable, remember?!”

Shinji heard steps coming closer to the door. For a few seconds, his body didn’t obey the let’s-duck-and-hide order. He just stood where he was, shaking, tears making a serious mess of his bridal makeup, and hearing Amraani’s voice growing closer.

Then, he broke out of it and, as silently as a floating feather, he got out of the way. From the other side of the hallway, he saw Amraani leaving the room, followed a few seconds later by their counselor/ interviewer. He shed some more inaudible tears.

Oh, the traitors!

Having shown allergies to a compound during the feminization process, Shinji had missed the part of the explanation pertaining to the artificial uterus and Amraani, his future husband, knowing this –no, after provoking this- made it a point of not telling him about the pregnancy thing before they had sex. The feeling of being cheated rose another notch.

Amraani knew I could get pregnant, but he made sure I wouldn’t hear about it. He even got me poisoned to ensure it. Although, I could have died from the resulting heart attack. Just so he could use me! In what fashion?! And now, I would be having his baby?!

What the mocks! Who would like to be pregnant from such a monster?

The mad outburst didn’t last long. As his angry tears ran down his beautiful face, he felt an awful pain in his pelvic region.

And Brain Tutor provided some more data. The uterine additive was extremely sensitive. Any thought of abortion of an ongoing pregnancy triggered the elimination of the fetus. It mattered not, if the thought was seriously considered, or just mentally formulated as a joke. The moment the bio-engine detected the neuronal pattern ordering the destruction of a fetus, it was done.

Even if the he-female didn’t know about the pregnancy, the abortion still activated. The earlier in the pregnancy the would-be he-mother had that thought, the easier it was for the artificial uterus to dismiss the pregnancy without danger for him.

What?! I am already pregnant!

“NO! NOO! Not my baby!” Shinji scrambled to think about something else.

The brain tutor kept informing him. It was too late.

“Pregnancy interruption successful. Uterine additive reset will take a week. Sexual activities are encouraged in the meantime.”

Shinji was stunned. For a short while, he hurt in silence.

When the next round of tears finally hit, he cried freely, his pained voice carrying deep into the room where he was hiding. Desperate. Utterly bitter and desolate. Broken-hearted to be betrayed once again, once too many in his short life.

A minute later, Shinji bit back his tears and swore revenge. He had a child and he lost her. His first child. Dead because Amraani lied to him.

But he wouldn’t mourn the baby and the life thus gone. He wouldn’t mourn his happiness and his dream shot down right before it became true. And by none other than Amraani himself. He had taken a chance at the impossible hapiness offered by this shady government council and Amraani had destroyed it all with his arrogance and his cruelty.

No, he wouldn’t mourn his love-at-first-sight of 7 years that had just shriveled up and died. No, Shinji wouldn’t nurse a broken heart. He would punish the man and he would take revenge for his baby.

He went back in the ladies’ room. As he remade the bridal makeup from scratch, he thought long, hard about his plan.

Repayment for this charade will hurt Amraani like hell. There will be hell to pay for my daughter.