The Constitution says innocent until proven guilty. However, in the court of public opinion people are condemned daily, without due process… and for many that means ruined careers and lives. The stigma of such condemnation sticks like hot tar on the bottoms of your shoes. Your innocent outcome in court is rendered meaningless.

This is a story of what might become reality someday as a result of allowing the court of public opinion ruin lives.

I hope the battery holds, at least till I get to work. Without this record anything can happen. With a single word, a single accusation, my life can be ruined. I charged the thing all night. That battery though… it doesn’t quite hold the charge it did when it was new. I’ll get a new one… soon as I get paid… I’ll just have to skip the credit card payment and let them charge me more interest this month…

It wasn’t too many years ago that one could get by without being recorded. Then, the number of people being accused on the mere say so of someone went out of sight. A man isn’t safe in public any more. Any woman could claim assault, or rape, and without a trial a man’s life is ruined. The lucky ones are married… as long as they are always with their wives they could vouch for his innocence and it would end there. A man’s word means nothing today, but a woman’s word cancels out another woman’s word. A single man, unless he keeps himself constantly monitored, and a clear record is rendered, is like a moving target. He dare not find himself in close quarters with a strange woman… not without a clear recording.

Some of these treacherous women have become aware of the video monitoring. They have occasionally been found with devices to disrupt the video recorders. Unfortunately, like the video recorders, these devices are so discrete that unless they are pointed out you don’t see them. If she plans carefully, enters the man’s area and activates the unit… then disposes of it afterwards, before approaching the police… she can still thwart the recordings. The devices have been made illegal, but the law is rarely enforced, and only when the devices are inadvertently found is anything done. As a result the cases have seen a steady increase. Incarceration of men has increased. Whereas it was one in five imprisoned, now it is three in five and climbing.

These days, the separate transportation systems, one for men, one for women, do more to protect the men from the women, rather than the reverse, as when it began under the auspices of feminism. When it began women had the option of traveling with the men. Then men complained, as a result of the continued false accusations. Women then, were relegated to travel with women only. The law even separated a man and his wife, where travel was concerned.

Elevators? Same gender separation.

Transgenders? Well, finally they were relegated to the sanitariums. How the sanitariums dealt with the gender problem… I do not know, I am happy not to know.

Marriage is nearly finished, despite the advantages of having a woman around to counter another woman. I mean, how can you develop a relationship when you are trying to avoid the other sex? The feminists seem to have won… though I must say humanity is the loser.

Finally the bus pulls up at the office building. As the men depart small bug-like mechanisms flit around them, recording their every moment. The insect-like machines follow them like obedient puppies as they enter their respective places of employment. Since there is only one elevator, men have been restricted from using it, and so each man begins to climb the stairwells. Ever watchful, the miniature drones follow their masters.

As the man, Fred we shall call him, enters the office he quickly plugs the drone into the charger on his desk, one calculated to allow the drone face him to keep recording every moment while charging. It must record. Even a visit to the restroom is a dangerous trip in an office containing the opposite sex. All of them know how to move up the ladder. All they have to do is knock a few men off it. Just this past Tuesday saw Jerald take a fall from the ladder. He’s now serving time. Up the ladder she went. An easy and work free way to advance. Qualified? What does that matter in today’s world. Just try to stop her.

The boss? Well, he’s one of the few remaining men in charge of a large corporation. Drones fly around him like he is a piece of rotting meat. Nothing is missed. If one craps out, the rest take up the work. The neutralizing devices? Well, it was expensive, but he has a neutralizer neutralizer. Nothing stops the recording… nothing…

Such is life… if you can call it life. You can talk to people of your own gender, but even with recording drones it is a risk to speak to the other gender. Our language is not precise enough and can be misinterpreted. You might say something in a totally innocent fashion and have it tragically twisted into a verbal sexual assault. The drones? They can only record it. In such cases they become the star witness… against you.

Suicide rates, once four times more often for men than women, now fifty times more often for men. People walking on the sidewalks of New York look up when they walk. Cars are no longer parked on the streets, as too many have been damaged by hurtling bodies… many do not own them any way, with the taxes levied on them these days. Fred thinks about it often. Owning a singular drone, on its last battery legs, he has thought of it often. It costs nearly a weeks wages just to outfit one drone with a battery. Disposal costs, exacerbated by environmentalists concerns, have made a battery nearly obsolete for any other use than drones. Only men need them. Since a man cannot make any accusations that will stick in a court of law unless they are recorded.

Fred jumps.