“Boys speak in rhythm, and girls in code” –Anberlin, “Foreign Language”

Nobody remembers the day the girls learned to code. It came softly, perhaps over a few days, until it dawned on humanity that it had happened. By July 14, 2258, now known as C-Day, every girl over the age of 10 knew how to code. Our problems were solved.

It used to be that every girl was a coding friendship bracelet on her seventh birthday, but in 2230 Xena G. Thomas created a program that downloads the information directly to any girl’s brain. From there, it was only a matter of time. The boys still had to learn the old-fashioned way, since the program was only ever tested on women and there just wasn’t a big enough market to expand it. No one seemed to mind.

Once the girls learned to code not a single woman was left unempowered. There are apps for that. Drones were reprogrammed to pull catcallers from the streets and replace them with robotic versions of Tim Gunn enthusiastically encouraging women to “make it work!” Apps tracked periods, and eventually eliminated them.

If a man makes a girl feel unwelcome in STEM his phone locks and alerts the PC Police. He is taken to PC jail to await his PC trial in which the PC judge would smash her gavel and say “kyriarchy” three times, sentencing him to life imprisonment.

All computers are voice-activated and responded only to uptalk.

Every girl owns her own company. Every girl is a company. Boys are employees. Boys have to say “just” and periodically apologize to be taken seriously in the boardroom. Every girl/company is something necessary and important to the betterment of society. Every product is now made by a woman. In 2270 Madelyn Schappert created an app that makes smartphones work as solar panels. In 2298 a team of girls disrupted farming and now there is no scarcity of food or clean water. In 2304 a coder known only as Aaliyah X found a way to lower the earth’s temperature through Tinder.

Every video game now features at least four female/non-binary heroes who display equal amounts of strength and believable vulnerability.

Years ago the girls hacked every major bank and now we live in a socialist utopia. There is no wage gap because there are no wages. The men who used to code had never thought of this. The primary sources have been lost, but we’re pretty sure they only coded boner pills. We know now that girls are the true coders. Girls are code. They do code. They fucking love science.

Boys make art sometimes.

[Illustrations by Matt Lubchansky]