In the modern workplace, masculinity is a grave disadvantage. Few jobs still require the physical strength, competitiveness and courage promoted by testosterone. The modern office rewards submissive teamwork, bland reliability, and careful politeness to superiors, inferiors and customers alike. And a man who even glances speculatively at any of his increasing number of female co-workers risks a charge of sexual harassment or creating a hostile environment. The new business world is fit only for wimps.

So Daedalus is studying the essence of wimpishness. He notes that testosterone can be leaked continuously into the bloodstream from a small skin patch. Remove the patch, and the hormone level declines rapidly. DREADCO biochemists are now inventing an exactly inverse skin patch. One version leaks a testosterone antagonist into the blood; another acts as a trap, sequestering and removing the hormone from the blood passing beneath it. The idea is to reduce the testosterone in a man's blood, if not quite to zero, at any rate to an absolute biological minimum.

The final ‘Wimpatch’ will effortlessly solve the work-related emotional stresses of so many men. Slapping on a Wimpatch in the morning, the sexiest and most combative man will shrink into the limp, acquiescent role demanded by the modern office or service industry. Peeling it off after work, he will snap back into the bold instinctive style needed for sport, carousing or sexual enterprise.

But the Wimpatch offers its users a still more valuable gain. Male drive and sexuality decline sadly with age, far faster than the slow reduction of blood testosterone levels. Daedalus reckons the testosterone sensors in body and brain become fatigued by decades of steady high concentration, and gradually lose their sensitivity. But a shrewd Wimpatch wearer will fatigue them far less. He will wear his patch regularly at work, and at many other times when he does not actually need to be masculine and sexy. His sensors, used to very low testosterone levels, will not get blunted. So he will retain his male drive and enterprise well into old age. Indeed, when he finally gives up work, and throws his Wimpatch away for the last time, his retirement career will encompass far more sexually vigorous and rewarding pursuits than the usual pathetic pastimes of bowls, golf, gardening and endless TV.

The Further Inventions of Daedalus is published by Oxford University Press.