Marriage

By 2050 marriage was a one- or two-year contract with the Human Resources department of a hanyo corporation. After 2050, human resource generation came directly under corporate control. Since there were no more men or sperm banks outside the corporate enclaves, people could not conceive unless sanctioned by their employers. It was widely felt by the hanyos that it was undesirable to let chicks have babies, apart from the special case of celebrity wives. In most cases, the surgical enhancements and modifications that chicks had to undergo according to the terms of their contracts precluded pregnancy. Slags, however, were unmodified. RanDees also were exlcuded from marriage, but all other categories could sign up for it.

The corporate networks in the slag territories hardsold marriage to the slags as a temporary respite from the drudgery of their lives. The sign up for it, they had to pay a year's salary in service dollars in advance, and be certified medically clean. Victims of chicken-hunting were also debarred from marriage.

Wedding and honeymoon

The 'bride' was 'married' in a lavish (and entirely fake) ceremony to a 'husband' appointed by Human Resources who accompanied her on a three-month 'honeymoon' at some glamourous destination. This husband was fitted with a loophead so he could not impregnate his 'bride'; he was usually a low ranking Orbison whose job was to romance the slag and hormonally prepare her for implantation. This was the slag's first experience of sex with a man, and it was a very big selling point. On returning from the honoymoon the slag wouldl spend three weeks in a corporate flat with her 'husband' pretending domestic bliss, while the fetus was implanted and tested to see if it had taken. If it had, she was transferred to hospital for the duration of her pregnancy.

Pregnancy

The pregnant mother-to-be would spend the nine months of her pregnancy immersed in a MAKER ORB, a large gel-filled tank. She would have a breathing helmet over her head, and she would be allowed to surface three times a day in order to be fed. The food was gourmet standard by the norms of the time, and it too was one of the attractions of marriage.

Birth

Since the fetus had been prefabricated and implanted, the hanyo doctors knew what sex the child would be, but the women did not find out till after the birth, which was always done by C-Section. If the child was a girl, the mother would wake up next to her baby and would be allowed to return to the slag territory and spend one year with her child in the Baby Barracks, after which she would be forced to go back to work and never see her child again. If the child was a boy, the mother woke up alone in the milking room where she would spend the next year lactating for her baby, whom she would never see. If shew as the mother of a boy, she would get back the money she had paid and also receive a complimentary box of chocolates from her ;husband' who liekwise would never cross her path again. about seven out of every hundred women had sons.