My crime? Looking a guy in the face.

I gritted my teeth and wriggled helplessly to keep the crowd happy. Completely immobile and spread-eagled, at the centre of the great amphitheatre of the 22nd-century temple of Aphrodite and Ares. Four hundred little open-fronted cubicles gave the all-male audience some degree of privacy and me absolutely none.

A collective gasp reached me at the same time I was pierced by something cold, thick and slippery. The movements within me were being echoed to every guy there and they were loving it. Humane, they said. Best chance in times of near-zero fertility, they said. I fought harder as the frenzy around me and in me grew. Good crowd for a new girl, they said.

Damn this body! I felt it start to respond and I could do nothing about it. Insistent vibration pushed me into a climax I never wanted and I screamed my anguish as the seed of 400 desperate men splashed into me.

I’d be back every two days until I conceived, they said.