Free The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda, Takami Nieda

hormonal cycles. There’s no way to understand the other completely. That’s fine, I suppose. You might say that such issues are what make humanity so fascinating and profound. But now as we’ve left the tiny confines of the solar system and are attempting to embark on a journey into the dark expanse, we can’t afford to quibble over such trifling matters. Which is why we should dispense with the problems that can be resolved by reinventing the body. A society where we are equals, where only individual differences exist. That was the ideal scientists proposed, and it was largely because of these two goals that the creation of the Rounds was approved. And so strictly speaking, the term Round isn’t the name of a new race but a word to describe a certain condition.”
    “How was that name derived?”
    “It stands for roundtrip gender —a being constantly moving between masculinity and femininity. It was a word coined here on Jupiter-I.”
    “While we may be able to overcome gender differences, as long as individual differences continue to exist, I doubt we can eliminate interpersonal conflicts altogether,” Shirosaki said.
    “We certainly don’t believe we can resolve all conflicts by ridding society of sexual distinctions alone,” Kline responded. “But at the very least, eliminating physiological differences will free us from the because he’s a man or because she’s a woman mode of thinking. Are you familiar with the myth of the hermaphrodite from Plato’s Symposium ?”
    “I’m afraid I’m not.”
    “According to Aristophanes, humans were once hermaphrodites with four arms and four legs. Wary of humanity’s hubris and might, the gods tore the humans in two. This was the origin of men and women, each sex searching and desiring the other half ever since. I can’t say that I believe in the myth, but the story has resonance, wouldn’t you say?”
    “And were the progressives satisfied by the creation of the Rounds?”
    “Hardly. They mounted quite a protest. In a way, maybe the progressives had a better understanding of the implications of these experiments. The emergence of a society where one person has two sexes becomes commonplace. They realized that alone could jolt our values from their foundation. Perhaps the progressives intuited that changing just one aspect of our social universe could change our universe entirely.”
    “So how do they contain such a threat?”
    “None of the data from the experiments can leave the Jovian system,” Kline said. “The Rounds can only be created on the Jovian system. Rounds cannot travel to Earth or Mars. In short, they’re absolutely forbidden to enter our society. Those were the terms of the agreement. Not a problem since the people who’d volunteered to be subjects had abandoned their homes on Earth and Mars. Thus, the special district was established. The first generation, called the pre-generation, acquired their bigender surgically. Though pre-gens weren’t absolute hermaphrodites and thus couldn’t procreate, a bigender society was born in the special district. Every one of its residents is both male and female. And every one of them is psychologically male and female. Their feelings develop not for the opposite sex but for the individual. During the experiments, they also began bearing children through artificial insemination. The fertilized eggs were injected with a synthetic gene called double-I instead of the sex chromosomes Monaurals possess. Those children were born as absolute hermaphrodites from the start. They represent the first generation of Rounds. Since then, a second and third generation have been born through traditional procreation methods.”
    “What became of the pre-generation?”
    “They work and live among the station staff outside the special district. The pre-generation and first generation have completely different ways of thinking. As different as their physiology is, they might as well be different species. All the