PLEST the one

The winds began blowing causing the trench coat covered man to fold himself tighter and huddle against the wall to protect himself from them and the hard falling rain. Plest sat in his living room looking out at this scene and laughed at the man's antics to protect himself. He chuckled then looked back down at his drink. He hated brandy, that disgustingly red drink his father had collected but at times like this it seemed to hit the spot. 1

The world was a different place than when his father was his age. There were few women now and the most a man could hope for was a two year marriage contract with one. Hopefully, she would get pregnant and then you would get five years if she carried to term. You only had, five years before you lost your wife, as she left with your child to the Minstal. The Minstars raised the children after this and the next time you saw them was when, if they were a boy, you were declared infertile. He was close reaching that. He was one of the lucky ones he had had his five years and so won another twelve and was two years away from that, so he lived for the small mercies. 2

It was like how he got his name which, ironically in this age, meant long lived, though at thirty-one he was four years short of death and in his dotage as far as society was concerned. It was all due to the depletion of the natural resources. Nobody had realised that that threw off the balance of nature and whatever Mother-nature contributed to making Men Men and Women Women was inextricably changed. It is true that with genetics you could alter this but since the Cranor these resulted in monsters or infertile women. Oh and his name was a hold over from before the twenty-second century meaning someone who refused to give up. He got it when at birth the declared him a lost cause and he lived and became the best at transforming dirt to containers. The common way of referring him was that he really was a plest, so he was aptly named indeed.3

Plest looked up again from his reverie and saw that the man finally decided to run through the rain. The strong breeze pushed him back forcing him to stumble and walk like one of the clowns in the variety show that was the most popular past time of this era. Finally the man was gone and Plest got up turned off the light and went upstairs to bed. It was after all that time for lights out and he had another hard day of work tomorrow at the plant. He shook his head and lay down on his bed thinking of how it would end and how it would feel when his life ended.4