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Chapter Nineteen
January 23 rd , 2021
The bachelor party began like most of them typically did – with Congressional hearings.
They were at Rook Manor, although the plan was to be out of the house within a few hours, once everyone had arrived. Until they had, they were doing something none of them had really planned on – they were watching C-SPAN.
“Mr. Rook, do you have experience seeing what an imprinted woman looks like when she’s gone too long in between appointments?” Senator Giancola (R, KS) asked him on the television.
“I do,” Andy watched himself say in response on the television, recorded yesterday. “Through no fault of my own. I’d like to stress that I am doing everything in my power to make sure none of the women I’m partnered with are unhappy.”
“We have heard indirectly from your partners about how satisfied they are with your performance and have entered it into the record, Mr. Rook,” another Senator, Senator May Collins (D, CO). “This is not a condemnation of your personal behavior. But you have a great deal of experience in dealing with those who’ve had complications resulting from the serum, which is one of the many reasons you’re here for these hearings. We’re not accusing you of anything. But could you perhaps describe for us the state of mind a woman who has gone too long between encounters with her partner?”
Andy remembered how weirdly hostile it had all felt at the time when this had been recorded, twenty-four hours earlier, but in watching it back now, he could see that maybe he was just jumpy by the whole gravitas of the whole thing.
“Unfocused would be generous,” Andy saw himself say. “Imprinted women who have gone nine or ten days without a tryst with their partner will be unable to think clearly and will be so focused on getting that encounter that basically anything else will become secondary to that goal, and that includes the physical well-being of herself and or anyone else around her.”
“How often would you recommend an imprinted woman have a tryst with her partner, Mr. Rook?” a third Senator, Senator Evelyn Yang (D, NY), asked him.
“I’m not a medical professional, so I’m not the person who should be answering this, Senator.”
“I’m asking strictly from your own personal experience.”
“Once a week to be safe, although sometimes needs can push that out for a few days, if there are other women in the Team there to look out for her.”
“What’s the longest anyone in your Team has gone in between trysts, Mr. Rook?” Giancola asked him.
“Thirteen days.”
“Was that healthy?”
“The partner in question wanted to determine the extent to which she could hold out if needed. She could’ve tapped out at any time, and I was on hand to make sure she was okay, ready to give her what she needed whenever she felt she had to yield.”
“Would you expect the average woman to be able to hold out that long, Mr. Rook?”
“I would stress again that I am not a medical practitioner, but that long? No. The need would turn into pain much sooner than that for most women, particularly younger women, but again, that’s purely based on personal experience and not professional medical opinions.”
“Would it surprise you, Mr. Rook,” Senator Yang picked up, “to know that we have spoken to medical professionals about this, and they are very much in agreement with your opinion?”
“Considering I’m close friends with one of the people who is working on the serum, Senator, no it would not.”
“Do you have any experience with what happens when a woman goes beyond the two-week period, Mr. Rook?”
“Personal experience? No Senator, I do not.”
“According to all the professional medical minds we have approached about this, they have all described matters the same way – the serum that is keeping these women alive goes into overdrive and begins to consume their bodies for fuel, and within a day or two, they suffer irreparable organ failure and die an extremely gruesome death,” Senator Yang said. “Are you aware of that?”
“I am, Senator,” the television version of him said. “As part of the Civilian Oversight Group assigned to keep tabs on the Quaranteam serum and its development, I have read all the literature, research and data I can get my hands on.”
“And yet, you are still of the mind that this proposed piece of legislature,” she said, lifting up a black three ring binder with two-hundred and eighty-five pages of paper in it, “the Men’s Protection Act, is too aggressive in the efforts that it takes to keep women from being left at the whim of a man’s foolish decision to put himself into harm’s way?”
The televised version of Andy sighed. “Yes, Senator, I am. I’ve read the entire bill, and there are several things in it that are quite concerning to me.”
“Such as?”
“Caloric intake restrictions? Shall we start there?” Andy said. “I fully agree that men need to take care of themselves, in order bursa merkez escort to be able to remain alive to provide for their partners for as long as possible, but you know as well as I do, Senator, that if a man dies of a heart attack, there are solutions to get any women assigned to that man reassigned, even if they are gruesome and unpleasant.”
“Should we be forced to do that, Mr. Rook?”
Andy chuckled throatily. “Have you ever just not been in the mood, Senator?”
“Excuse me?”
Andy grinned a little bit, both on the television yesterday and today sitting in his living room. “I love all my partners, and I’m happy to be paired with all of them, but I have to tell you, there are some days where I just do not want to have sex. This won’t be a surprise to any of my partners – I’m sure they’ve been able to tell on one day or another where I’m just going through the motions and doing what’s expected of me. Because my partners have needs, and I am willing to set aside my personal mood at that moment to make sure those needs are being met. But I’m asking you right now, Senator, if you try and tell me that on a particularly miserable day, if I happen to have a second bacon double cheeseburger for lunch, that I’m going to be arrested and my partners are going to have to come to a prison to get their trysts, how much more harm do you think you’re doing than good?”
“Don’t you agree that your health is important, Mr. Rook, and that diet is a part of that?” Senator Giancola asked. It hadn’t been obvious at the time, but now, a day later, he could see she was teeing him up for a perfect answer, and that she had been doing so intentionally.
“I do, Senator, but let me ask you this – did you ask any of those doctors who’ve you consulted with about how long a woman can go in between trysts about what kinds of other changes the Quaranteam serum has done to men’s bodies? Because this legislature demonstrates that you absolutely have not. I know that, because my caloric intake now compared to what it was before I was introduced to the Quaranteam serum by my first pairing partner are in no way comparable.”
“How many partners do you have, Mr. Rook?”
“Keep in mind, Senator, I am by no means indicative of what the average male looks like in terms of pairing.”
“We’ll keep that in mind, Mr. Rook. Now please answer the question.”
“Twenty-two.”
“And how much would you say it’s affected your caloric intake?”
“I consulted with both my cook and my personal trainer before I settled on this number.” Andy winced at that now, realizing it kind of made him look like an entitled asshole, but there was nothing he could do about it a day later.
“We understand that Mr. Rook. If the average person should consume around 2000 calories a day, how much would you say you are consuming daily?”
The version of him on the television glanced down at his notes and then looked up to answer the question. “Somewhere between 8000-9000.”
“And if you were to be restricted to 2000 calories a day?”
“According to my trainer, you would be sentencing me to death,” Andy said confidently. “And this is in the research with which you’ve all been provided. A man’s appetite, physically, is tangential to the number of partners he has. For every five or so partners a man has, his needed caloric intake adds another 2000 calories needed per day. A man with five partners would need to eat 4000 calories a day, just to keep up with them. And yet, you have a very strict 2000 calorie a day mandated limit here in this legislation, which tells me either you aren’t reading the data very well, or you think you know better about this serum than the data, neither of which, I must confess, makes me at all comfortable with the bill in question.”
“So you’re saying we should strip that provision from the Act?” Senator Giancola asked him.
“Unless your plans are to arrest every man in America on day one, yes. And if those are your plans, then obviously, I object to that also.”
“What else in here in untenable, Mr. Rook?” Senator Yang asked.
“How about the unlawful detention clause?” Andy said.
“I don’t believe we have anything like that in this bill, Mr. Rook,” Senator Collins said to him in a way that sounded more condescending than he imagined she intended it to.
“Sure you do,” Andy said. “It’s called the Restricted International Travel Guidelines.”
“They’re simply guidelines, Mr. Rook,” Senator Collins said.
“Anything that can be punished for violating it by jail time isn’t a guideline, Senator; it’s a damn law, so please, don’t try and argue the definition of words with a goddamn writer,” he growled.
“You don’t think we need better protection for our men travelling abroad, Mr. Rook?” Senator Yang asked him.
“I think required itineraries that have to be filed a month in advance would be considered unlawful detainment, bursa escort bayan and in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.”
“If you are traveling abroad, Mr. Rook, you represent a danger to your partners in that a foreign nation might attempt to capture you as an asset for their own use,” Senator Collins said.
“Then you need to close the borders to those countries and not let any Americans in. But between that and the PITS system you’re suggesting in this document, you do realize you are making many of the men in this country less safe instead of more, I hope.”
“How do you figure that, Mr. Rook?” Senator Yang asked.
“The head of my personal security spent time working for the CIA, and she said that if we were filing itineraries any time we traveled abroad, all it would take is one bad actor to gain access to that itinerary and they could pick us off with relative ease, even set up ambushes in advance for us. The PITS system is even worse. A foreign agency would just need to gain access to how that system operated, and they could track every individual male in the country. I know you want to protect men, Senator, but lo-jacking us like we’re all under house arrest isn’t the answer.”
“Some versions of this bill have suggested that every man in America be under house arrest, Mr. Rook,” a new voice, Senator Ruth Hadaway (R, IA), said. “I’m still not entirely sure why we’ve moved away from those.”
“Because, Senator, it also violates the Fourth Amendment,” Andy said. “Most men are carrying cellphones anyway, so I’m not entirely certain what actual benefit you need beyond that. If you wanted to establish a precedent where the government could use a man’s cellphone to gather his location at any moment, I would be entirely comfortable with that.”
“The military is of the mind that we aren’t doing enough to protect men in this country, and that they should now be considered a resource of the state,” Senator Yang said.
“I’m almost certain you either didn’t consult with the majority of military’s commanding officers before drafting this bill, Senator, or you disregarded their advice, and in either case, I think that was a drastic error,” Andy said with a soft laugh. “In fact, the head of my personal security said that if this law passes as written, we’d personally be breaking several parts of it within the first twenty-four hours, at her insistence, in order to keep me safer.”
“So what you’re saying, Mr. Rook,” Senator Giancola said, “is that the entire bill is a total waste of time and we should just scrap it.”
It was much easier to recognize her teeing him up in retrospect.
“No Senator, that isn’t what I’m suggesting at all. Some parts of this, I can completely understand and agree with, although I suspect some of those parts you’ll have problems getting other men to agree with.”
“Well, what parts of the bill do you not have objections to, Mr. Rook? Let’s start there.”
“Sure. There’re plenty of parts I have no objections to. Banning smoking. Fine, no problems there, although I imagine smokers may be angry. Maybe establishing maximum daily alcohol consumption would be okay, although I’m sure much of America will be up in arms about that. I don’t drink that much, but at least you’re not banning alcohol from men outright. Mandatory doctor visits every month don’t seem too unreasonable. A little overbearing for my liking, but I get it, and I can understand the overabundance of caution. Maybe once every three months? Just to not overwhelm our already overworked medical staff.”
“Just those?”
“Not at all. I’m personally okay with all law enforcement and military personnel in active combat duty being restricted to women only, but I suspect you’ll get some severe pushback from the Armed Forces about that, and I have no real horse in that race. And you’d still have to have men as part of frontline teams, just to take care of their female partners.”
“We’re going to hear from several commanding officers over the next week or two of testimony before we make adjustments and bring some version of this bill to a vote.”
“During those revisions, then, Senators, I ask that you keep your mind towards making this a workable bill and not to repeat the mistakes of something like Prohibition,” Andy said. “Make this a bill that protects men, not one that smothers them.”
“This committee would like to thank the gentleman from California for taking his time to offer his wisdom and insight into the current draft of the Male Protection Act, and hopes he know that we will take his criticism under careful advisement.”
“Senators,” the version of him on television said as he stood up, a young man of about college age moving in, clearly the next in line to be speaking at the hearings. He remembered how odd he found it that the seven-person committee didn’t have a single one of the nine remaining male senators on it, but also didn’t bursa ucuz escort know how appropriate it would’ve been to point that out during his testimony.
“We will take a ten-minute recess and then will bring William Monteiro from Georgia to express his opinions regarding the current draft of the Men’s Protection Act that is currently under consideration and public scrutiny.”
They’d gathered at Andy’s house in the early evening, and because of the amount of different people coming from different places, they’d agreed to wait until they were all there before they headed into San Francisco for the night.
Each man had one woman from his security detail with him, but as per the terms of the party, they had to not be anyone’s fiancée. That meant Phil, who was one of the people they were still waiting on, would arrive with Violet on guard and not Linda. Andy was the only exception, and both Lexi and Melody would be providing the group with additional security tonight, with Lexi tasked with Andy’s personal security and Melody overwatch for the whole group.
“Oh hey,” Xander said as he poked Andy. “You met the UGA Bulldog, Billy. I was just reading about that guy’s story in the New York Times. Seemed like a super down-to-earth kid.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “He’d been through a rough patch, since basically they’d just been forgotten about on campus, and had been doing everything to keep themselves from catching DuoHalo or Covid. They’d done an amazing job, and Phil said they were looking into the guidelines the kid had developed to pass on to areas that still hadn’t gotten access to the vaccine yet, as a ‘best practices’ document that everyone could use.”
“He agree with you about everything in the MPA that’s fucked up?” Eric asked him.
“Like, 80% of what I objected to, he objected to,” Andy said.
“What did he object to that you didn’t?”
Andy grinned. “Well, I didn’t have a problem with men not being allowed to carry or own guns, but Billy went pretty hardcore Second Amendment fundamentalist on that when it came up during the hearing. Real ‘pry it from my cold dead hands.’ He was also, as expected, heavily against the booze restrictions. And he told me he didn’t even know about the changes to appetite a man has as the number of his partners goes up, so I think we’ve still got a long way to go in terms of education on what the Quaranteam serum can and can’t do. Hopefully they’ll take all my notes seriously.”
“Anything you objected to that he didn’t?” Eric said, turning off the television.
“Weirdly enough, he didn’t give a shit about international travel, and said he thought it was fine if we as a nation wanted to restrict men from traveling outside of the United States borders. Ever. ‘Safer at home’ were his exact words.”
Xander winced, shaking his head. “Not good.”
“I’m expecting that one to get stripped out, personally,” Andy said. “There’s just too much existing law that they’d have to overturn to enforce that kind of overreach. It would essentially be making every man prisoner in his own country, and that’s probably enough to get public sentiment against it. In fact, if I had to put money on how this bill’s going to turn out, I bet they strip out everything that both Billy and I criticized, and maybe do some adjustments to active combatant positions in law enforcement and military, and then just try and run the bill up with the rest of it as is.”
“As someone who’s trying to quit smoking,” Nathaniel Watkins said as he entered the room, his head of security, Octavia, just a few steps behind him, “fuck you for making it sound like I’m going to get fined if I don’t but thank you for making sure I’ve got incentive to just finally getting it done.” He laughed a little bit as Andy stood up and shook his hand.
“Thanks for coming, Nathaniel.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Andrew,” Nathaniel said. “It’s a chance to get out of the house and hang out with a bunch of men, something I haven’t really had since the poker game was shut down and Covington was arrested.”
“You won’t hear me apologizing for that.”
“Nor should you, dear boy. Nor should you. Who are we still waiting on?”
“Just Phil at this point,” Andy said. He’d kept his bachelor party group relatively small – himself, Xander, Eric, Nathaniel, Ari and Phil (just Greater Phil, as Lesser Phil seemed to be having trouble with getting permission to leave Valhalla Shores over in Pacifica) – so that they could be agile and not traced to any one location easily.
“Of course,” Nathaniel said with a soft laugh. “The one organizing the event is always the last to show up.”
“Do you even know what he’s got planned, Andy?” Xander asked him.
“You meant what you two have got planned?” Andy smirked. “I know the two of you worked together on it, but that’s pretty much all I know.”
“I helped also!” Nathaniel said.
“That’s true,” Xander said. “We all chipped in a bit, but Nathaniel had all the money to make a couple of things happen.”
“It wasn’t really all that much,” Nathaniel said, sheepishly. “And what’s money if it’s not being used to make life better? And Phil was the one with most of the ideas, although I did add one of my own to the mix.”