1955 - New York, New York

The cargo ship's great airhorn boomed as the boat reeled up to the dockyards, and Sgt. Alicia Tanner knew for the first time in 14 years that she was home.

She was only eighteen when the Japanese first bombed Pearl Harbor, their great Onna bugeisha planes delivering precise bombs that sunk the Arizona, the Tennessee, the Honolulu. Tanner was only 18 at the time, but she still remembered shepherding dozens of frightened men into a military hospital. Some of the men held each other, weeping, while others had strange thousand-yard stares, and that was when she knew, war is on.

She volunteered the next day.

That took her to the Pacific theater for a long while. General Grace Whitner, "old blood 'n' tits," oversaw the campaign into the Marshall Islands, past Midway, into the heart of Japan. Japan fought back, though, and when the periods of a thousand crewwomen on the U.S.S. Seattle synced up in what military historians now called the red days, it lead to one of the greatest military disasters in U.S. history. Japan fought back, eventually going as far as landing on Hawaii and Alaska.

That was when Tanner was transferred to the African theater. The Lady Nazis had won hard-fought victories against General Patton--that's Lisa Patton--under the leadership of the fearsome Nazi general known only to the allies as Stone Cold Fox. Luckily, the Stone Cold Fox was a vain and petty woman, prone to gossiping via the military wires. Tanner was part of the team that decoded some of the foul rumors about Lisa Patton's work habits and discovered a key ridge that would deliver them the Suez Canal.

The rest was a blur. Stalingrad, Leningrad, Paris, Marseilles--all long, protracted sieges. Just when it appeared that one side was about to give way and fall back, one of the opposing generals would decide that she hadn't said the last word yet, and on the battles would rage. Sgt. Tanner saw her best friend Terri lose her face to a flamethrower at the hands of a Lady Nazi, and it was the worst Goddamn awful thing she'd ever seen. War is hell, she wrote in her diary that night. And the Lady Nazis are the devils.

And then it went on another ten years.

After all that time, after the fall of Eva Braun and her boyfriend, an uneasy detente had been reached between Britain, America, and the pissy Soviets.

That's all in Europe, though, Tanner thought. My husband Joe is here, now, waiting for me.

After the crowds swept in on each other, and Alicia found Joe, where they exchanged a deep and passionate kiss that made her feel 18 again, they made their way up to New Rochelle via a new kind of train.

"It's called 'high-speed rail,'" Joe said, matter-of-fact. "You'll find there's been a lot of changes at home since you ladies went off to beat the Hun."

To her surprise, they wound up in New Rochelle--through Manhattan, through Harlem, through the Bronx--in a matter of minutes. Joe took her hand and led her off the train, where Alicia saw paradise on earth.

"What do you think?" Joe said.

"I'm--I don't know," Alicia stuttered. "Where are we? This is our old neighborhood?"

"Oh, of course," Joe said. "The new technology. Here. We have maps on portable computers now." He shoved a small, black, rectangular object in her face, and she saw it--all of the old roads she knew growing up.

"No," she said. "I mean--all of this. What is that?" A distant bird appeared on the horizon--only it wasn't a bird, it was a car without wings.

"That? That's a flying car."

"A flying car? You might've sent some to us! For the war effort."

"The women were in charge of the factories. We men have been left to our own devices. That car's been around since 1947. And that's nothing. That little rectangle you hold in your hand? It connects to an invisible network of computers and can access any information you could possibly want in the whole world."

"What? How is this possible?"

"Well, gee. I don't know. I guess we men got pretty bored when all the women left, and we all just sorta--started working together, I guess. We've been real busy, you know. Our economy's growing at a rate of 15% per year, we've lowered taxes down to next to nothing, and crime has all but disappeared."

"But, how?"

"Let me see. I guess one reason is that some men were so desperate for female companionship they inventing things. Like these things they call sexbots. I tell you, they're out of this world."

"Joe!" someone called, a man holding a checkboard. "Nice sexbot!"

"Oh, Nate, this isn't another sexbot. This is my wife, back from the war."

"That's...a real woman?" Something in the man's tone was strange. He had gone from articulate to...something else entirely, a mix of dumbfounded and angry.

Alicia gave him a stern look. "I oughta know if I'm real or not. I lost lots of girlfriends protecting your freedom, sir."

The man dropped the clipboard. "Real woman!" he grunted. "Real woman!"

In an instant, there was a crowd around the both of them, many of them shouting things like "real woman!" and "real hair!" Men grabbed at her waist, rubbed her face--even Joe, strong as he was, couldn't fight them all off.

Then, one of the men managed to tear Alicia's shirt open.

The crowd went quiet.

Even Joe turned to look, wide-eyed, at a sight of bountiful cleavage he hadn't seen in decades. He licked his lips. "Real...woman!" he said.

The crowd took up the chant. "Real woman! Real woman!"

A shot rang in the air. Alicia held a gun over her head, and her expression dared them all to step forward.

"All right," she said. "That's enough. I know you men have done real good with the country since the women left, but that's all about to change. You're going to show us how to use all of this technology, and you're going to give up sexbots. From now on, you'll only be sleeping with your wives. Is that understood?"

Joe looked abashed. "Understood." The crowd murmured their agreement and dispersed.

Alicia sidled up next to him. "You gave me quite a scare. Now, show me how to use that little rectangle device to show us the way home."

But Joe was still transfixed on her cleavage. He licked his lips again, and let out in a whine, "I...don't remember how."