Midway: Chapter 27

  It was a big day on the New Horizon.  Often times, anything which broke up the monotony of the normal routine was cherished, but days like today were genuinely special.  Today was the day that Alissa and Nusrah were getting married and appropriately enough, it was taken as cause for celebration.   Tycho, Dhika, Johannes, Maharet, Kirana, Seth, Zarif, and Setia were all sitting around a rectangular table in the arboretum.  The tables had been brought in from the dining hall for the occasion.  Some preferred to have their ceremony in the dining hall itself, but oftentimes a couple would choose to move things into the more open space of the arboretum.  There had even been a few couples who had opted to hold their ceremony in the zero gravity bubble just after it had been built, just to keep things fresh and to be somewhat original.

  Besides being a cause for celebration, it was one of those rare occasions when most of the crew had the day off to participate, and the relatively fresh air was a welcome accompaniment to the brightly shining artificial sun, high in the artificial sky.  They were indulging in the rare treat of the wine made from the limited vineyard on the ship, and given the occasion, they had naturally enough moved on to a discussion the history of marriage itself.

  “The institution of marriage itself has changed quite a bit over the last millennium,” Maharet pointed out.  Her tertiary training had been in history, and her quaternary training had been in sociology and politics.  She was the closest thing they had to an expert on the subject.

  “Its original purpose,” she continued, “was just a transfer of the property of a woman from her father to a husband.”  At that, Tycho burst out laughing and in response, Dhika herself cracked up and laughed as well.  They quickly composed themselves in response to the dirty looks from everyone.  “I thought you two had grown out of that…” Maharet expressed, dismayed.  

  It had become clear that they were both wearing PANE contact lenses and had been sending text messages to each other in secret.  With the text discreetly displayed right overtop of their pupil in a heads up display, and the ability to dictate and transmit text messages by thought via the Brainchip, such communications were otherwise completely undetectable.  Using the EARs (Enhanced Auditory Rebroadcaster), which were tiny audio capturing and emitting devices implanted into the auditory canals around the same time as the Brainchip, they could essentially carry out spoken conversations telepathically by having the received texts audibly read out by the EARs.   Even sitting at a table with this many other people it was undetectable, unless of course you spontaneously start laughing completely out of context.  Dhika had obviously said something funny, but the rest of the table was left out of it.

  Trying to ignore her brother, Kirana asked: “it wasn’t really all that bad for them though was it?” she asked, now leaning down to her right side to fuss over Setia.  The girl was protesting her boredom by messing with the complicated hairdo her mother had made up for the special occasion, and Kirana briefly fought with her daughter over leaving it alone.  When she was finished with Setia she noticed that Zarif had now put his PANE glasses on and was starting to move his body around to whatever game he was playing on it.  He didn’t have a Brainchip or EAR yet, but the PANE glasses could monitor the movements of his head for some gaming applications.  She scolded him to put it away and then scolded Tycho along with him.   “See what you teach him?” she asked him.

  Looking somewhat lost in thought, Maharet turned her glass of wine around in the circle of condensation it was leaving on the table.  “Truth be told, for most of human history women had no legal status whatsoever… it was only a few hundred years ago that they were legally recognized as ‘persons’ at all.”  

  “That can’t have been a universal reality for women could it?” Seth asked.  “I mean, poor people wouldn’t have had much to trade with to begin with… and some cultures and parents I’m sure would have wanted their daughters to have some say in who they marry.  They may have been property, but… they weren’t usually treated like slaves were they?”

  “Well you’re right, it would depend.  I’m not an anthropologist, I’m only really familiar with the history of developed states.  I’m sure every culture and society had a unique view of marriage.  I can tell you though, that in the history of Western civilization, yes most people were usually poor and with less at stake economically, a good matching overall would be of more concern.  Yes, in some cases love could be the impetus for a marriage, but at least as often marriages were arranged in childhood.  I won’t even deny that generally speaking marriages often worked out well for the woman even if she didn’t have any rights, but that didn’t change the legal reality that she was the property of her father, until she was sold to another man as a baby making machine; a reproductive commodity.  On top of that she was also expected to raise the children and cook and maid while the husband was out farming or fighting, or whatever else it was that men did to support the whole enterprise.”

  “Sounds like there was some reciprocity there,” Tycho suggested.

  “Oh, of course there was… ” Maharet replied, squinting a bit at a glare coming off of one of the glasses on the table while she looked at Tycho.   “The wife was indeed economically supported by him, as were her children.  But, she had no legal status and thus no legal recourse if he beat her, or beat their children, or squandered what small wealth they did have on intoxicants and prostitutes.  Yes sometimes, maybe even often times, things might have worked out well for the woman.  But the point is, it at least as often didn’t, and she had no power whatsoever to determine what situation she found herself in.”  She was speaking loosely and with the ever slightest slur, but one which had to  be listened for to hear at this point.

  “Fair enough,” Tycho conceded as he took another drink.

  “But then comes the dogma…” Johannes added, to whom Maharet held out her open hand, inviting him to continue with his train of thought.  He shifted in his seat and ordered his thoughts before continuing. “The institutional purpose of the organized monotheist religions quickly came to be to keep people placated with a very meagre lot in life.  They used to call it the ‘great chain of being’ with their god at the very top, their king below that, then the nobility and aristocracy, and then at the very bottom the serfs and peasants just above the animals, and within every class, women below the men.”

  “And god help you if you disrespect the woman of a higher status man…” Maharet added, ironically invoking the name of ‘god.’  “You’d be messing with a higher status male’s property after all…”

  “It became clear over the millennia,” Johannes continued without acknowledging her statement, “that women were as capable as men, and so a newer dogma was needed to keep them in their place.  They institutionalized subjugation into their creation myths with the idea that their god created man in his image, and only later created woman as an afterthought, as an accessory and convenience for the man.  The same mythic narrative has it that a woman is responsible for being expelled from the Garden of Eden, somehow simultaneously with her weak will in resisting temptation, as well as her power to tempt her man…”   Johannes shook his head in disappointment with his ancestors.

  “Then they started pretending they were doing it for the women, to spare them the ‘hardships and burdens’ which men endure,” Maharet added, accentuating her contempt for the idea with air quotes, “and gave them the token and ultimately meaningless graces of what came to be known as ‘chivalry.’
It basically amounted to saying okay, we’re not going to consider you a person, but we’ll pretend that you’re somehow superior while we subjugate you.  We’ll pretend that we’ll put you and the children in the lifeboats first on a sinking ship, that we’ll open doors for you and such, and pretend that you’re the ‘fairer’ sex while we enslave you.”

  “How did it change?” Dhika asked.  “Obviously it didn’t stay like that forever.”

  “Well,” her mother answered, “in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, women nominally earned legal personhood.  With that came the right to earn and keep their own money, the right to divorce and the right to vote…  Sadly, these were mostly just rights on paper and they had yet to earn the respect and acceptance of the men in their society who still held all the real power.  But as a number of factors came together in the middle to late twentieth century such as the waning of the toxic influence of monotheistic religion over society, their mass labour mobilization during the Great Wars, genuine reproductive autonomy though the legal right to not be raped by their husbands… the invention of hormonal birth control and the right to have abortions… effective equality was eventually achieved.  

  “It still took exceptional women to prove themselves and their sex though,” Maharet continued.  “It was a remarkable time in the western world… all historically marginalized groups called forth their brightest to put their best foot forward and earn society’s respect.  Society finally learned that the dividing line between excellence and mediocrity, between the worthwhile people and the dregs, is not one that can be drawn around any race or gender or sexual preference or anything else, rather that that boundary cuts cleanly through all of those groups.  They finally learned that one can find the exceptional and the awful, in any group of human beings.”

  “Here today on the ship, what matters to us about marriage… HEY!  Pay attention to this you two it’s important!”   She was talking to Zarif and Setia who weren’t paying attention but were now viscerally alerted to the old woman.   Tycho and Dhika even suspected that she might have meant them as well.  “What matters about marriage today, here on the ship, is the social commitment it represents to the ship, to your family, and to your new spouse.  The ceremony today is about two people coming together in front of their entire extended family to make a commitment to each other.  While we all support and nurture each other on this ship, today Alissa and Nusrah are making a commitment to each other to support and nurture each other’s well-being.  It usually also serves as a statement about a couple’s intent and readiness to have children…”  

  “Usually,” remarked Kirana, “but not today.”

  “Yes,” Johannes quickly countered, “and we must respect that, Kirana.”  It was almost a command.

  Today Alissa and Nusrah were getting married, and they were the first couple to go through the ceremony after having publicly stated beforehand that they did not wish to have children afterwards.  Some hoped or expected that they would eventually change their mind; some simply resented them for their selfishness.  Some celebrated their independence and their willingness to oppose common practice.  Some just wished them well; some just hoped that it wasn’t going to become a trend.

  “Who’s name are they taking again?” Tycho asked.  Historically the woman automatically took the man’s last name but that hadn’t been the practice for some time.  There was once a time when marrying couples experimented with hyphenating their last names, but it didn’t take many hyphenated named children marrying other hyphenated named children to result in four name last names (or worse), which quickly became unmanageable.  After that it quickly became custom for the couple to simply decide upon one of their names between themselves.  It became another buffer against ill-conceived marriages; the idea being that if they couldn’t even settle on a last name between them, then they probably shouldn’t be getting married at all.

  “Nusrah’s name,” his father Johannes answered, “Samat.  Nusrah and Alissa Samat.”

  A ten piece band, playing publicly for the first time without Uzodimma leading them began to play the traditional wedding march as Alissa and Nusrah emerged from one of the obscured paths through the arboretum into the open area.   They approached the archway where Anaru had been waiting for them to perform the ceremony as ship’s captain.   Some traditions died harder than others.