Daughters of the Glitch- Rick Incorvia - The RV Book Fair 2025

In 2060, the world no longer resembled the one that had first fought COVID-19. The early vaccines had erased the virus, but they had also carried something no one saw coming. What began as a statistical “glitch” in post-pandemic health data became a pattern: women were changing.

It started subtly—a little extra height, a bit more muscle, quicker reaction times. By 2045 the average woman was stronger, faster, and more physically dominant than the average man. Investigators traced the shift to a previously unknown genetic sequence in certain batches of the COVID vaccines, a sequence that, for reasons no one could explain, affected only women.

For years, governments and scientists called it an accident. Decades later, leaked documents told a different story. The sequence had been designed and embedded on purpose by Dr. Evelyn Sloane, a brilliant geneticist in the pandemic response teams. Praised in her time as a quiet hero, she had in fact rewritten half the human race. Whether she had sought justice, power, or a world where women could never again be overpowered, no one could agree. But everyone had to live with what she’d done.

By 2060, the consequences were everywhere.

The Utopian Rise

Women now led almost everything. Nations, corporations, research institutes, and militaries all leaned female at the top. It was more than brute strength; each generation of daughters inherited and amplified the changes.

The world reshaped itself around them. Architecture, vehicles, and public spaces were built to suit taller, stronger frames. Sports once marketed as tests of male power now revolved around female performance. The Olympic stage belonged to women who shattered records men could no longer approach.

Many called it a golden age. Under widely celebrated “empathetic leadership,” major wars faded into history. Violent crime dropped. Education shifted from zero-sum competition toward cooperation and sustainability. In talk shows and schoolbooks, people spoke of a humane matriarchy that had finally tamed humanity’s worst impulses.

The Gender Divide

Beneath the praise, a new hierarchy hardened. Men, once assumed to be the default strong sex, were now visibly smaller, slower, and physically outmatched. They filled roles that mattered but rarely conferred power—caregivers, assistants, support staff in schools, clinics, and homes. Some embraced the shift; others swallowed their resentment in silence.

Men’s advocacy movements rose and fractured. One faction demanded protections and representation. Another retreated into online worlds, where avatars could be as tall and invincible as they remembered themselves being. Relationships grew complicated. Many women loved their male partners’ minds and hearts but felt a widening gap when their bodies could easily overpower them. Men who could not meet the new physical standards were pitied rather than desired, and pity carried its own kind of cruelty.

In response, small enclaves formed in remote towns and off-grid settlements. There, men tried to rebuild old ideals of masculinity—manual labor, combat training, rites of passage. To the outside world these communities looked like nostalgia camps at best and breeding grounds for extremism at worst. Either way, they sharpened the dividing line.

Dr. Sloane’s Legacy

Since the revelation of Sloane’s role, her name had become scripture and curse. To many women she was a liberator, the architect of a world where they no longer had to cross parking lots with keys between their fingers or measure their lives against male tempers. Her face appeared on murals, in school lessons, on medals for public service.

To many men, and not a few women, she was closer to a supervillain—a scientist who had unilaterally decided the future of humanity, rewriting evolution without consent. Ethics debates circled the same questions. Did she have the right to act for generations unborn? Was a safer world worth a coerced redesign of the species?

The answers no longer mattered to the biology. The altered sequence had threaded itself into the human genome, passed from mother to daughter with perfect reliability. There was no way to extract it without destroying the host. Sloane had effectively created a second branch of humanity, one that stood taller and hit harder.

The Future of Men

Faced with that reality, men adapted in uneven ways. Many leaned into domains where physical strength meant little: teaching, medicine, counseling, design, the arts. In these worlds, their empathy and problem-solving earned real respect. Some households thrived under new arrangements, with male partners handling care work while their wives commanded boardrooms, laboratories, or platoons.

Still, a current of longing ran through parts of the male population—a memory of dominance they had never personally owned but had inherited like a story. Out of that longing grew an underground project. In hidden labs and encrypted message chains, scientists of both sexes worked on a counter-sequence that could restore male strength, or at least narrow the gap. They spoke the language of “balance” and “correction,” but others heard only the first whispers of an arms race between chromosomes.

As the decades ticked forward, the world balanced on that quiet question. Would humanity learn to live inside its new design, or tear itself apart trying to rewrite it again?

For the moment, women led with a mix of force and compassion, steering a civilization that had improved in many ways. Yet in protests, secret meetings, and homes where partners no longer quite trusted each other, the tension between the sexes kept building—evidence that even this engineered utopia might be just another fragile chapter in a long, unfinished story.

Rick Incorvia is an American author known for storytelling that spans action, adventure, mystery, historical fiction, crime, fantasy, and romance. Growing up as one of nine children in a lively household, he developed a vivid imagination early on. His father once joked, “You sure can tell a whopper of a story—we should have named you MaveRick,” a hint of the writer he would become.

Rick’s books are praised for engaging plots and memorable characters. His works include The Traveler, The Wrong Side of the Glass, Bobby’s Cabin, and When I'm Gone, Everything I Ever Wanted, all noted for prompting readers to reflect on life, death, love, and the human experience.

Beyond writing, Rick is an inspiring speaker who encourages new authors to bring their ideas to life. He has spoken at events such as the National Library in Amman, Jordan, and the Imagine Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. His books, translated into Arabic, are taught internationally.

Find out more at https://www.authorrickincorvia.com.

Article published in The Relatable Voice Magazine - December 2025 as part of The RV Book Fair 2025. Downolad the full magazine at https://www.relatable-media.com/the-relatable-voice-magazine