Andrew stared at the envelope as if it were a venomous snake. Curiosity kept drawing him back, to examine it. Desperately he hunted for some sign it was a prank, or a mistake. Actually receiving mail was such a rarity nowadays, it felt kind of surreal.
Tilting his head, to it caught the sunlight from different angles, Andrew watched the hologram logo. It seemed to rise above the surface of the envelope. It's colours shifting from a soft pale blue, to a pastel pink. Even the logo felt like it was mocking him.
He had a party planned in two days time, he intended on facing that as a man. Celebrating with his friends.
- - - - -
The anomaly had seemingly come out of nowhere. Just a slight spike in male births one year. When Andrew was born himself, it was only a tiny difference. On the verge of being dismissed as a statistical blip. With 52% male births, and 48% female. Now he was 21. He stopped himself, the precision felt childish. Like declaring his age as twelve and a half years old. But ... technically, he wasn't 21 yet.
He didn't want to become female. With the rate now far beyond statistical variance. It was 75% male, and 25% female. The world scared his parents, but as Andrew grew up this was normal. His classes were slightly male heavy, and their was a degree of prestige, of competition in having a girlfriend.
At college, one friend: Jack Williams had married his girlfriend. That had felt reckless and wild to Andrew, sure he knew Jack was exempted from the Gender Lottery, but that hadn't felt terribly real. Now he felt an icy sickness in the pit of his stomach.
A chirp came from his phone, and hoping for a distraction he pulled it out. The top of the messages was a confirmation. An e-mail, from the Federal Gender Administration. His hands trembled, he dropped his phone to the carpet. His last hope that his friends were pranking him as a birthday joke evaporated.
"No!" He told himself. "No... maybe... it is because of my birthday!" Hope surged. "Maybe it's a message letting me know I'm out of the draw now. That I'm free from that risk. That my country needs me, as a man, to breed our way back to a healthier ratio."
But, even as he thought that Andrew knew it was a faint hope, a last desperate drowning man snatching at twigs.
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