THE DAY, LIKE ALL DAYS, BEGAN STRATEGICALLY. HE ROSE AT first light and drank his coffee at the computer, sorting through a new batch of photos. In Boston the snow was still flying. Anthony had sent three dozen photos of women in winter coats.
The coats depressed him. It had been shortsighted to launch the Hall of Shame in winter. The women’s bodies, if they had bodies, were impossible to discern. Victor thought of women in Arab countries, swathed head to toe in fabric. Say what you want about Muslims; they were realistic about human nature in a way regular people weren’t. Male urges—Victor knew this from long experience—were not to be trifled with. If you didn’t want your wife or daughter to become stroke material for some horny male stranger, measures had to be taken. An extreme but highly effective precaution was to swaddle her in cloth.
Say what you want about Muslims, they knew how to manage their women.
He respected the Muslim discipline. And yet, if Muslims ran the world, there would be nothing to look at. Single men like Victor would die alone, of unrequited horniness, without ever seeing another ass or breast or thigh.
He respected the discipline, no question. But he wouldn’t want to live in such a world.
A knock at the door. “I’m going to Costco,” said Randy. “Where’s my list?” He was dressed for town, in what Victor thought of as his Daniel Boone outfit: a fringed buckskin jacket that had cost him six hundred dollars—for a cheapskate like Randy, a stupefying sum. He was still a runt—five-three on tiptoe—but over the years had made peace with his stature. On his whoring trips to Pittsburgh he’d dressed flamboyantly, in a long trench coat and leather ranchero hat. He was a crackerjack mechanic, a competent electrician, a better carpenter than Victor, skills acquired through a lifetime of overcompensating. Randy was so good at so many things that it was easy to forget he was short.
“On the fridge,” said Victor.
His computer pinged loudly.
Randy leered. “Is that one of your lady friends?” Impressed by the number of hours Victor spent at the computer, Randy was convinced he had a wild sex life, with dozens of virtual floozies on the hook. That a computer had other uses besides the viewing of pornography was a rumor he didn’t quite believe.
Victor ignored the question. “I’m going to the show later. Leave your license on the kitchen table.”
“Roger that. Put some ice on your face, will you?” said Randy. “It’s swole up like a basketball.”
Victor returned his attention to the screen. One girl had real potential—long curly hair, soulful brown eyes—but the effect was ruined by the puffy down jacket she wore, a ridiculous garment for women. For Victor, a pretty face wasn’t enough. He needed at the least the suggestion of a body.
He reviewed the photos in reverse order, trying to imagine these same women in sundresses, in bikinis, in virginal white underwear, and found it impossible to do.
He should have waited until summer.
For women anyway, the puffy jacket should be outlawed.
All things considered, the Boston photos were a disappointment. Half were completely useless. Despite clear instructions, Anthony had sent a motley collection of Blacks and Orientals and Spanish, females in every conceivable shade of yellow, beige, and brown.
Anthony was not the brightest bulb.
Anthony, poor bastard, had missed the point entirely. There was no reason whatsoever to shame these women. Privately, Victor had no problem at all with them having abortions, though he knew better than to say so. His lieutenants, all Christians, were delicate flowers—fragile creatures raised on fairy tales, the addictive fantasy of prayer.
Victor was not, himself, a Christian. His only god was nature, the blind force that ran the universe. Nature was reliably impartial, indifferent to outcomes. It had no special loyalty to Black or White, it did not take a rooting interest. With nature, prayer was useless. There was no appeals process. The White race would simply have to fend for itself.
The crisis was a concrete matter, a mathematical problem with a clear solution. Disaster could be averted, if immediate action were taken. If the White female rose to the challenge, and did her part.
To date, he’d seen no evidence of this happening. The blithe unconcern of White females was infuriating. Victor encountered them every day on the internet, chatting and LOL-ing and posting selfies, squandering their precious reproductive years on nonsense.
For decades, now, the White female had defied nature, fighting her destiny with every weapon possible: swallowing pills, injecting herself with hormones, shoving tiny pieces of copper up inside her to keep a baby from implanting. (Implanting! That was the word used. Victor had read about it on the internet.)
The depravity was breathtaking. The depravity, truly, was hard to fathom.
And there were other consequences. Just think of the urine! All over the world, untold millions of females were jacked up on estrogen. Each time one took a piss, a dose was released into the water supply. By now, every drop of water on earth had cycled through some female’s bladder, a thought that haunted Victor each time he turned on the tap. How much estrogen had he himself ingested in his lifetime? All over America, testicles were shriveling. Teenage boys were growing tits. Maleness itself was under attack.
The White female was drunk with power. She was holding an entire race hostage. In the interests of humanity, an intervention was necessary. It was a matter of survival. The female body was a natural resource, like coal or iron. It belonged to the entire world.
An instant message appeared on his screen.
LostObjects1977: how do you like the pix??
Victor tapped out a reply, two-fingered. He had never learned to type properly.
Excelsior11: Too many black girls
Anthony fired back immediately. His instant messages were entirely too instant. They came at lightning speed.
LostObjects1977: did you watch the vid?? that one was white
Oh, for Pete’s sake, Victor thought. Like the rest of his generation, Anthony was overly impressed by technology, so dazzled by the bells and whistles that the mission itself went out the window.
Excelsior11: Video?
LostObjects1977: sent it to you yesterday
Victor scrolled halfheartedly through his inbox.
Excelsior11: I don’t see it. Are you sure you sent it?
LostObjects1977: resending now
It occurred to Victor—not for the first time—that he had a personnel problem. He needed a better quality of lieutenant.