The Future is Female
By Jessek12501.
“Today,” the voice continued, flat, mechanical, and uncaring of circumstance. “Today, you are evaluated for Service and Reproduction. Participation is a duty. Duty is love.”
Max rolled the pillow off his head, lying on his back with his eyes clenched shut. He let out a groan that sounded like he felt. His shoulders ached. His muscles burned a bit inside his arms. The ceaseless exercise and training regimens of the prelicensure screenings had worn him down.
“This is all part of the process,” he’d remembered his drill officer saying in a way that was meant for all ears to hear and not just his. “These are the first steps toward the rest of your lives.”
“Please dress and proceed to the mess hall for breakfast,” the voice from above continued. “Then proceed to the foyer for transport to the evaluation center. Today you are evaluated for Service and Reproduction…”
The voice repeated the message, with the same computer-like tone and demeanor, meant to direct and demand obedience. It was like a computer’s impression of what a woman’s voice would sound like.
Max leaned his feet over the side of his bed, shifting his weight until his feet were on the floor. He stretched, yawned, and pressed his feet down hard until he was standing. He took a few steps across the carpeted floor of the small room until he stood in front of the floor-length mirror. He looked himself over, still disheveled and unsightly from sleep. He ran his hands down the length of his torso, proud of its flat, firm shape and the contours of the muscles beneath. He wasn’t “buff”. He didn’t have the muscles a bodybuilder might. Instead, his body was lean and lengthy. The kind of body that said he’d spent a lot of time swimming.
He was shorter than the other men in his class. Something that didn’t quite align with the “norm,” but his looks were better than most. His face was handsome, bordering on pretty. Masculine, yet feminine and gentle at the same time. He was undoubtedly a male, but too pretty to be a man.
His face was round in the cheeks, and dimpled when he smiled. His nose was well-formed and sculpted in the way only mutagenics could. Every inch of his body was carefully crafted from a cellular level before he was born. Each trait, each attribute finely tuned and manufactured before its existence. The double helix of his DNA, and most all men like him, had been carefully tinkered with to achieve a desired result. To maximize desirability and the delivery of pleasure. Every facet of his anatomy had been crafted with those metrics in mind, save for one.
Max reached his hand into his underwear, pressing his palm down on the thumb-like nub he found there. He rolled it in the palm of his hand, anxiety gripping his heart as he did so. He lowered his underwear a bit, getting a look at the thing in the mirror. It looked like the last knuckle of an index finger—a tiny, insignificant bud against the backdrop of his god-tier body.
He stood sideways, pushing out his hips and trying to feign additional length as if he could will his dick to be more. To reach farther. To be bigger. The anxiety returned when that, predictably, didn’t happen. He’d never understood why he had what he had between his legs. He was ashamed of it. It killed him just to look at it.
His anxiety was interrupted by another chime and the service alarm repeating. He raised his underwear back up, feeling the tight fabric press against the tip of his minuscule, toddler-esque cock, and opened his dresser to retrieve some clothes. The shirt and pants he’d fished out were muted and without personality. Plain clothes, muted colors of black and grey. He’d dressed quickly, sitting on his bed and rolling his socks over his feet, before walking to the door and putting his shoes on.
The mess hall was a brightly lit room with several white tables and chairs in the center. The floors were illuminated from below, adding to the place’s overall aesthetic. A line of other men wrapped around the far wall as he walked in, leading to the dispensary of food at the front.
Once he’d gotten his tray and waited in line, he took his food to a table of familiar faces and sat down. The men there hungrily gulped their food down, bite by bite, between conversations.
“Hey Max,” a voice said. Max plunged his fork into the meat at the center of his tray, pulled out a piece, and stuffed it into his mouth.
Sitting across from him was another good-looking man in the same muted clothing he had on. The man had dark hair, brushed over to the side, and shaved at the base. He had a chiseled jaw line and firm shoulders.
“Hey, David,” Max said between chews.
“Ready for today?” David asked. Max shrugged, stuffing another forkful into his mouth.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Max said.
“I heard Kevin Pescadero,” David paused, his face narrowing to make sure they were on the same page. “Do you remember him? The guy from last month? Ran track at St. Margaret’s?”
“I remember,” Max said, nodding in confirmation.
“I heard he got Prime Licensure and, by the end of the week, already had three confirmed Prime tier matches,” David exclaimed, chewing up the last of the noodles on his plate.
Prime licensure. That was as good as it could get. A Prime license ensured prime compatibility. The women he’d get matched with, pretty much any woman in society, were as good as anyone could hope for. He’d seen photos at his orientation. These days, women aren’t ugly. The word had lost all context. Genetic engineering, by and large, has done away with unattractive qualities. These days, the word “ugly” is like trying to describe how a car might swim. It just didn’t make sense. But there was a hierarchy, and the prime tier meant nobility. Prime tier meant wealth. Prime tier meant heaven.
“Yeah,” Max said, taking a drink from the white protein milk bottle on his tray and trying desperately to hide his anxious insecurity. “We should all be so lucky.”
After breakfast, Max and David walked out to the foyer, following the instructions of the disembodied female voice on the intercom above. In the foyer, lines of men stood, facing the doors as transport mechs lined up outside. One at a time, each line moved forward, boarding one of the mechs before it closed its doors and fired small, chemical lift-off rockets. Each mech ascended to the minimum safe distance before firing larger rockets at the rear and shooting off toward the city’s traffic above.
Max entered the mech assigned to his group, sat down in the leather seat next to David, and felt a rush as the propulsion system activated. The thrust pushed him back in his seat, the soft leathery gel beneath him forming to his body before the craft settled into a cruising speed and let go. It was a short flight that took them not too high above the city streets. Down below, Max watched the women in the street, a man or two dutifully following not far behind. Those women, and every woman he’d ever seen, always looked like they’d been sorted and matched years ago. He was in awe of them whenever he was in their company. They were confident, efficient, always brutally gorgeous, and they moved through the world as if it belonged to them, because it did. This was their system. It was their world. He just lived in it.
He was raised in this world and, from an early age, was imbued with its infallibility. The system functions so society can function. The world before, hundreds of years ago, was dead. He believed in the system. He believed in the ethics. He believed in the “51/49” resolution. He was taught these things for his entire life. He adhered to the strict Size Matters societal construct, and that scared him to death.
Before he’d had a chance to reconcile and compartmentalize his anxiety, the transport mech had landed, opening its doors and spilling the men inside onto a long, flat flight deck. As Max followed the line of men to a door at the far end, he looked out across the vast cityscape, seeing several adjacent landing pads and lines of men doing the same.
Once inside, Max was confronted by a brightness that strained his eyes. He pinched them half shut while he waited for his corneas to adapt. Each man in front of him was guided in line toward a machine with a place holder at the chin level, which adjusted to each man’s height, and a retinal scanner dead ahead.
“For identification,” the same disembodied voice said, coming from above as if it’d followed them. “Please place your chin in the place holder and prepare for a retinal scan before proceeding inside for licensure evaluation.”
Stepping up to the machine, Max could hear the mechanical interior whirr and spin as it lowered itself to meet his chin. He slid his chin into the slot designated for it and waited a brief moment. He saw a green flash, accompanied by a chime and identification. A small screen next to the scanning lens displayed a photo of him, along with his name, height, weight, and other details. He removed his chin from the stirrup, stepped to his side, and walked into the evaluation waiting room.
The waiting room was brightly lit, just like the entrance. Bright LED lighting illuminated the room in the corners, seemingly built into the walls and through the cracks in the floor that separated one floor panel from the other. Along the right side of the wall were glass plates, behind which several people who looked like nurses fumbled with paperwork and typed at computer terminals. Max couldn’t help but notice that each one was unbearably beautiful—blondes, brunettes, redheads. One of the women seemed to have her head shaved down to stubble, which did nothing to detract from her stunning features.
“Did you hear about Jimmy Conway?”
“What?” Max’s head spun back, still in a daze from everything that was happening, and realizing David was asking him a question. “Who?”
“Jimmy,” David replied. “Jimmy Conway? 3rd Floor?”
“Oh,” Max replied, putting a face to the name. “What about him?”
“I heard he got Prime Licensure as well,” David continued, ever the churner of the rumor mill. An obvious nervous tic. “I heard he got multiple prime matches, including a girl on Luna.”
“Luna?” Max replied, surprised. “As in The Moon…”
“Yep,” David replied, looking back toward the door to the examination rooms. “But he was really big, I heard.”
The words cut Max inside. Was that really all it came down to? Dick size? He’d heard it his entire life. TV, commercials, the posters in school, they all emphasized the “Bigger Is Better” ethic. He’d seen the advertisements and posters all his life, and they all pointed in the same direction. Colorful, playful text along the lines of “SIZE IS A PARAMETER. NOT A VALUE JUDGEMENT” accompanied by a gleefully smiling cartoon uterus holding her fallopian tubes nine inches apart and a stylized sperm in a lab coat.
“Gieger, David,” came a voice from overhead. This voice was decidedly more human than the AI voice that had followed them from the dormitories. David stood up, looked back at Max, and smiled. He gave Max a nervous thumbs-up, turned, and headed for the examination door, disappearing behind it.
Max shifted in his seat again, the space between his legs tingling with anxiety and frustration. This was really happening. He’d known to expect it. From a very early age, boys were being prepped for this moment. The reproductive licensure evaluation was legendary throughout his youth. Boys all over the world prepped for it. Spent their entire lives trying to live up to that moment, and it was finally here.
He caught his reflection in the glass of the nurses’ station. He combed the face staring back, analyzing every little detail. He had a decent jawline. His shoulders were strong and proportional to his body. They filled his shirt well enough. His arms weren’t scrawny, but not so bulky that they looked gross. He was toned. Firm. He was enough. If the world were fair, he would be enough in every way that mattered. Except one. THE one..
“Harris, Maxwell,” the voice boomed overhead.
Max stood up and headed for the evaluation door. A nurse met him there, opening the door and beckoning him inside. The hallway smelled faintly of citrus and antiseptic. The nurse weighed him, tagged his wrist with an LED monitor, and led him to an evaluation room. She opened the door, letting him inside gently without ever looking up from her data slate.
“Your evaluation technician will be with you shortly,” the girl said, before closing the door.
Max looked around the room. It was bare bones, very unlike a proper hospital. It had the necessary equipment, but this place wasn’t about saving lives. He wasn’t a doctor, but from the look of things, if someone came in with a hang nail, he doubted they’d be able to treat it.
A moment later, the door opened. Walking in was an older woman in her early fifties, with dark hair and a slight silver streak through her bangs. She was just entering middle age, but Max still struggled to tell. Her forehead was still taught and her skin still had that soft, youthful glow.
“Maxwell Harris,” she said, closing the door behind her and setting her data slate on a place holder on the counter. “I’m Doctor Chen.”
“Hello, Doctor,” Max said sheepishly.
“So,” she said, in a way that felt like she said this same thing a hundred times a day. “Today, we’re going to be evaluating you for your Reproductive License and admittance into the selective breeding pool. Daunting, I know. How are you feeling?”
“Ahem,” Max muttered, trying to sound confident. “I feel pretty good today.”
“Good,” she replied, sitting down and looking him over. “That’s good. If you would, please step up to the monitor behind you and place your hand on the pad.”
Max turned around, seeing before him a large machine that somehow had escaped his notice before. Just above his eye level was a large screen with a white hand-shaped pad beneath it. Dr. Chen walked past him to the side of the machine, reaching behind it and lowering it down a bit to meet his eyes. Max placed his hand on the pad as the tests began. There were multiple-choice simulations on conflict resolution. An AI assistant asks him to describe and attribute feelings to hypothetical situations. Questions and scenarios involving power dynamics and role reversals. The simulations placing men in positions of power made him queasy and uncomfortable.
“Subject displays natural propensity toward submission,” Dr. Chen said into her slate, flicking her finger at the holographic projections to move panels and file the data to the appropriate place. “Societal metrics are normal. Social aptitude is above average with a strong adherence to societal norms and parameters.”
Dr. Chen placed her data slate back on his platform, then stood and walked toward him. She reached over and powered down the machine.
“Final physical metrics,” she said, pressing a button on the wall that lowered a small partition. “Physical evaluation. Standard protocol. Disrobe and stand behind the screen. Arms elevated at your sides. Place your clothes on the chair beside the wall.”
Max did as she commanded, walking behind the screen, lifting his shirt over his head, giving it a quick fold, and placing it on the chair. He unbuttoned his pants, lowering them to the floor and placing them on the chair. Before long, he was naked, still hidden from Dr. Chen’s view behind the partition.
“We’re commencing with the scan,” Dr. Chen said. “Arms out.”
A mechanical whir could be heard as the partition lit up, covering his body in a soft, warm glow before fading. A screen in the wall next to him lit up, populating various bits of information. It showed his identification. Height, weight. Bone density information. Blood type.
“The screen next to you,” Dr. Chen said. “It’s showing you what I’m seeing on my screen. That way, there’s no confusion about the assessment. Stand by for the results.”
The screen continued computing, dumping various bits of data and information as it processed them.
GENITAL METRICS: ACQUIRING
STRUCTURAL HEALTH: NORMAL
FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY: BASELINE
LINEAR DIMENSION:….
The number populated, blinking into existence. 1.2 inches. For a brief second, Max thought the units must be wrong. Maybe a decimal point in the wrong place? A moment later, a bar chart populated, a red sliver down in the gutter of the bell-shaped curve.
BELOW 1ST PERCENTILE
CATEGORY: MICROPENIS
REPRODUCTIVE PRIORITY INDEX: INELIGIBLE (SIZE THRESHOLD)
“Measurement complete,” Dr. Chen said. “Thank you, Max. You may dress.”
Dr. Chen stood up, picking up her tablet and, without so much as looking up, opened the door and vanished behind it as it closed. A moment later, as Max was buttoning his pants, the girl who’d brought him to this room appeared.
“You’re done,” she said, still not looking up from her slate. “Debrief room three, down the hall. Counselor Imani will explain your placement.”
Max walked back out into the hallway, following the direction the girl had pointed toward, and made his way down to the door marked Debrief Room Three. He knocked gently before hearing a voice beckon him in from behind it.
Debrief Room Three tried very hard to be kind. Plants, sounds of water trickling, chairs that snuggled up to your spine with a soft gel that made you feel hugged. At the desk sat another older woman, strikingly beautiful. A plate at the edge of the desk, facing him, read Dr. Jennifer Imani.
“Don’t be intimidated,” Dr. Imani said, welcoming him inside. “I’m a doctor, but not the same kind as Dr. Chen. I think you’ll find that I’m a little more… people-friendly.”
She sat back down, welcoming Max to do the same. She pressed a few keys on the desk terminal in front of her and pulled up a holographic display that shot out from the center of her desk, hanging there for both of them to see. She reached across her desk to grab a file folder, the image disappearing and reappearing under her arm in a blue smear as her arm passed through it. She opened the folder and laid it out in front of her.
“You did well today, Max,” she said.
“Mostly,” Max replied, trying not to slouch or display his discomfort any more than he already was.
“Mostly,” she agreed, adjusting the holographic display so he could see his results. Colored bands illuminated the screen. Colored bands for cognition, emotion, strength, and societal adaptability. All illuminated in green with a smaller section near the bottom, framed in red.
“I’ll be direct,” she said. “Your vitals are all pretty good—cognition, social skills, all in the green. However, your genital metrics fall below… well below… the established reproductive threshold. This means that you are not eligible for a standard, or prime, reproductive license.”
The words landed like something physical. Like someone had tossed a medicine ball in his lap, he’d known it was coming. He’d always known, but it still went down like a jagged pill.
“This isn’t a punishment,” Dr. Imani continued. “You’ve studied the history. Once women directed reproductive policy, we stopped pretending size wasn’t a factor. We followed the data. Larger males, that is, males with large penises, correlate very strongly with female sexual wellbeing and greatly influence conception efficiency and fertility outcomes. As such, we prioritize them for licensing. We look at it as strong ethical stewardship.”
He stared at the projection. At his little red bar, so small, yet so large. The microscopic elephant in the room. He could see his entire life, spread out and crammed into that tiny red bar. All of his hopes and dreams, snuggly packed in that small, red rejection.
So,” he said, looking through the projection at Dr. Imani and trying desperately to appeal to her humanity. “So, that’s it? No license? No… no family?”
“Not as a licensed reproductive partner, no,” she said. Her voice gentle but unapologetic. “But you have exceptionally strong Service metrics. High empathy. High compliance. Your cooperative instincts and compatibility scores are off the chart. These traits, along with your genital metrics, are rare, Max. The Service Corps was designed for men like you.”
The Service Corps. He’d heard of it. His civics lessons in high school called it “the backbone of the matriarchy.” It placed men where they were needed the most, from orbital docks, manufacturing platforms, and even noble estates. The subtext among boys, not just from his school but from everywhere, had been hazier. Jokes and half whispers for the ones who “didn’t measure up.”
“The Corps will give you structure. Training and, eventually, placement,” she continued in her most ‘consolation prize’ like tone. “You won’t be drifting. You’ll be serving directly in ways that matter. Men without licenses have always been vulnerable to resentment. Jealousy. It brings up baser, more animalistic emotions. Toxic feelings. The kinds of things we as a society have been trying to breed out. The Corps protects you from that. It will give you purpose.”
Men without licenses. That was him now. It was him forever.
“Why me?” he asked, wanting… no, needing… to hear it out loud. “Why the Corps and not some… other… path?”
“It’s because of your penis size,” Dr. Imani replied, with the same tone, the same calm she might employ to describe someone’s blood pressure. “Your penis is way, way, way too small, Max. Too small to benefit the gene pool. And, less importantly, but important all the same, your profile suggests you will adapt well to structured service. It’s a clean alignment.”
A clean alignment. He’d almost laughed. Instead, he nodded, because that’s what good citizens did. Duty is love.
“So, what happens next?” he asked, trying not to let his disappointment show.
“You’ll report to the Service Corps Orientation center,” Imani replied. “Today, if you’re able, or first thing tomorrow. They’ll explain your options, run some additional placement tests, and, most importantly, help you understand what this role means. You’re not being discarded, Max. You’re being placed where you belong.”
*****
The Orientation Center sat across the plaza, under a different emblem: a hand reaching up, the globe, stretched out and oval, in its palm. The boys filing in wore the same stunned, hollow look Max felt on his own face. Some boys looked like they wanted to bolt. None did.
They were guided into a small auditorium. Lights dimmed. A woman in a black uniform stepped onto the stage, silver Service Corps insignia catching the glow. Her uniform was so tight and wrapped so snuggly around her chest that the contents underneath looked as though they would split the seam and spill out if she moved too abruptly. Max had to stifle the part of his brain that had hoped it might.
“I’m Director Selene Varga,” she said. Her voice filled the room without effort. A twinge of Latin accentuated the words she spoke. “You are here because the world needs you exactly as you are. You are who you are, and here, you’re going to learn what that means. You are also here because the world needs you, but does not need your genes.”
A few boys flinched. She let them. She was used to watching boys squirm—one of the upsides of the job.
“You’ve all seen the data,” she continued. “Women lead better than men. Under our stewardship since the unification of our people, we have seen less war, fewer diseases, greater access to higher education, and greater prosperity. We achieved that by accepting reality rather than by catering to gender expectations. The same is true of sex and reproduction.”
Behind her, graphs appeared. Distributions of penis size, female satisfaction curves, and conception rates. All of it is an echo chamber of itself.
“For generations, men were lied to about their cock size. Told it was everything to sell products, then told it meant nothing to spare feelings. When women took control, we asked a simple question: what does the evidence say?”
She pointed to a highlighted band on the graph. High satisfaction, high conception Increased pleasure reports. All are correlating with the part of the graph measuring penis size. The higher the line rose, the closer it correlated with the reports.
“It says that larger males, men with big dicks, serve us better in bed and in the gene pool. So we license them. We pair them with daughters and Matriarchs whose bodies and futures depend on optimized partners. In the past two hundred years since unification, we have raised the mean cock length from five inches to six and a half. We prioritize big dicks for licensure. Big dicks provide increased and sustained pleasure to women. Big dicks are optimal for conception and positive fertility results. Denying your licensure because of your small cock isn’t a punishment. It’s justice. It’s nature.”
The words hung there. Justice. Nature. Like a cement obelisk, blocking the path to the dreams Max had carried with him his entire life.
“And when a man falls outside those parameters,” Selene went on. “When a man falls outside those parameters, we don’t throw him away. We do something revolutionary. We tell him the truth, and then we give him a place.”
New images replaced the graphs: men overseeing cargo drones, maintaining climate domes, standing at respectful attention behind richly dressed women.
“The Service Corps is that place,” she said. “If you are here, your size disqualifies you from reproductive licensing. That is the sole reason many of you were diverted. Not your minds, not your hearts. Just your bodies in one very specific regard. We will never pretend that it isn’t true. We will never pretend you were cheated. But we will also never pretend you are useless.”
Her gaze swept the room, sharp and appraising, quietly assessing each new member of the Service Corps. Her eyes landed on Max, hovered there for some time, as if she knew. As if she’d seen his chart. As if she was quietly saying to him, “You have the smallest dick in this room.”
“Some of you will maintain infrastructure, both on and off-world. Some of you will manage logistics for civic institutions. And some of you”, she smiled, looking back at Max, a hint of fiendish satisfaction beneath it. “Some of you are what we call presentation-grade. Pretty boys. Pleasant to look at. Quick to soothe. Naturally deferential. You will serve directly in female-led households, supporting Matriarchs whose time is too valuable to waste on their own comfort.”
A faint stir, a mix of shame and something else Max didn’t want to name, bubbled inside his chest. It reached out, grabbing his heart and pulling it down into the pit of his stomach. A second hand seized his penis and testicles, making him acutely aware of their existence and the effect they would play in his future.
“You will not be their equals,” Selene said plainly. “Licensed males are companions and sires. You are instruments. Polished, cared for, and used. Suppose that word troubles you, good. Let it burn away the last illusions you carried in here. Men like you help keep this world gentle. You do it by knowing your place in it.”
Max let his eyes slip closed for a moment, listening to the murmur of the other boys, the steady rhythm of Selene’s voice, and its Latin flare. Her stern, no-bullshit tone set the stage for the rest of his life.
Instrument. Ineligible. Service.
It hurt. But beneath the hurt, there was a quiet, dangerous relief. The decision was made. The system had looked at him, at the one part of him he could never change, and said: You go here. This, your small, underdeveloped cock, is the reason.
The rest of the orientation blurred through images of forms, dorm assignments, talk of uniforms, and training tracks. At the very end, as they filed out, a console by the door pinged his wristband and flashed a brief line of text—a classification system designed to orient his training modules moving forward.
PRELIMINARY PLACEMENT: DOMESTIC SERVICE
PATRICIAN HOUSE CANDIDATE CLASS: PRESENTATION-GRADE
Below that, in smaller print, a name he’d heard before in civics feeds and ceremony broadcasts, attached always to a composed, severe woman with eyes like polished stone.
ASSIGNMENT PROSPECT: HOUSE MARCELL, UNDER MATRIARCH AURELIA MARCELL
Max stared at the words until someone behind him coughed, and he stepped aside.
He’d wanted a license and a quiet, ordinary life. He wanted to date. He wanted to be with a woman. He wanted to fuck. Have a family. Now, he wouldn’t. Not on his terms anyway and definitely not legally.
He was going to a House. To a woman who believed, with all the moral certainty of the age, that men like him were born to serve.
Training began the next morning.
They woke to alarms in the Service Corps dorms that were a shade harsher than the civic tones Max was used to. The beds were comfortable, the lighting gentle, but there was an undercurrent of drill in everything. In the timing of the showers. In the methodical schedule they kept—the way they made their beds. Even in the way the corridor lights pulsed them toward the mess hall.
When the mess was over, and training began, the men with orange bands went through one door, the infrastructure track. The men with blue went through another for off-world support. Max’s band gleamed white at his wrist. Presentation-grade. Domestic Service.
The white-banded group was smaller. Five of them, at most. They were led into a training suite that looked like a cross between a classroom and a rehearsal space, with mirrored walls, a cushioned floor, and a row of chairs for observers.
Director Selene was there, along with another woman in a lighter uniform. Selene introduced her as Instructor Dahl. Dahl eyed them like a sculptor cleaning a block of marble.
“Presentation Cohort Three-Seven,” Selene said. “This is your refinement cycle. You’ve been selected for potential placement in patrician households. That is an honor. It is also a responsibility. Matriarchs expect perfection from everything that bears their seal and ours. Their infrastructure, their kitchens, their men. All of it has to carry the impeccable reputation of The Service Corps.”
Instructor Dahl stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with eager anticipation. Her voice carried a stern, determined tone.
“Before we polish the outside,” she said, “we must correct the inside.”
The first module was etiquette.
They learned how to stand: feet slightly apart, shoulders relaxed, hands either clasped at the lower back or in front, depending on context. They learned how to bow. A shallow inclination for minor ladies, a deeper one for Matriarchs. They learned to move silently across different surfaces, to carry trays, and to pour drinks without spilling.
“Your presence should lower the noise of the room,” Dahl said, walking a slow circle around them as they practiced. “Visual, auditory, emotional noise. A Matriarch’s life is cluttered with demands. You are there to subtract friction.”
They practiced addresses and proprietary titles.
“Matriarch,” “My Lady,” “Doctor,” “Madam Prime”
Titles mattered. Standing positions mattered. Eyes mattered.
“When your lady approaches you, where do your eyes go?” Dahl asked, stopping in front of Max.
“To the floor, Instructor,” he replied, snapping to attention.
“Wrong,” Dahl said, a slight grimace on her lips. “To her face, when directly spoken to. To her hands when awaiting instruction. Never to her chest, her hips, or between her legs unless explicitly ordered. You are not animals. You are instruments.”
The word again. He swallowed, corrected his gaze.
The second module was ethics, though it didn’t sound like any ethics class he’d taken before. This didn’t explain the “51/49” resolution and how it applies to everyday life. This wasn’t curbing latent male instinct toward objectification.
They sat at desks while Instructor Dahl lectured. She pulled cases and graphs onto the screen in front of the class, highlighting scenarios in which men overstepped, hesitated, and imagined their feelings weighed as much as their Matriarch’s directives.
“In the old world,” Dahl explained. “Men were told to ‘stand up for themselves.’ To ‘assert boundaries’ in all directions. The result was a chaos of competing wills, with women and children bearing the brunt of that masculine confusion. Service ethics are different.”
She tapped the board. A simple equation appeared.
WOMAN’S GOOD > MAN’S COMFORT
“In your role, your Matriarch’s well-being is the primary moral axis. Your comfort, your pride, even your shame, are secondary considerations. That doesn’t mean you allow abuse. The Corps protects you from physical harm and from orders that violate core law. But hurt feelings?” She shook her head. “Hurt feelings are not an ethical event.”
Some of the boys shifted in their seats. Dahl saw it and smiled thinly.
“This is where small dicked, and micro-dicked men excel,” she said. “You have already experienced the recalibration of your value. You know, at a visceral level, that your worth does not reside in your genitals. That makes you uniquely fit to decenter yourselves.”
Max felt his ears heat up. The sensation ran down the back of his neck and into his shoulders, making them tight. Micro-dicked men. The term landed with a blend of sting and reluctant recognition.
Dahl continued, clicking through to the next slide:
MICRO-CLASS SERVANTS — LONGITUDINAL ADAPTATION CURVE.
The chart climbed smoothly.
“Over the past fifty years, we’ve tracked adaptation in different Service profiles,” she said. “Prime-sized men, in the nine inches and above category, diverted to Corps for psychological reasons, struggle more. They cling to old fantasies. Micro-class males, by contrast, accept placement more quickly and show higher long-term satisfaction. You might think of your size as a deficiency. We see it as a natural substrate for submission.”
She said it clinically, as if she were talking about bone density—submission as a substrate, like a genetic trait.
“You are not slaves,” Dahl went on. “Slavery is coercion without care. The Corps cares for you. Your Matriarchs will care for you, in their way. But do not mistake care for equality. You are servants. You are more free than any slave ever was, and you are bound by more love than any free man before female governance.”
The room was quiet. The word servant felt heavier now, dense with the things she’d carefully distinguished it from and the things she hadn’t.
Days blurred into each other. Posture drills, speech correction modules, and simulations in which a holographic Matriarch gave them conflicting instructions, and they had to prioritize correctly. Evening sessions were for “internal harmonization” and guided meditations that repeated Service Corps mantras under soft music.
“Your cock is exactly the size it was meant to be. Your body is not a failure; it is a tool for service. Women lead; you support. This is right. This is safe.”
.
Max found that if he let the words wash over him without fighting, they hurt less. A part of him bristled anyway, but that part grew tired. The routines were easier to follow than his own questions.
Once a week, they had a “micro group,” a session just for the men whose files carried the small red bar. Out of the boys in his class, there were only three of them.
A counselor named Laila led those. She was younger than Dahl, gorgeous in the way only a young twenty-year-old can be, and soft around the edges. She sat in a circle with them, no podium, hands loosely folded.
“You all know why you’re in this cohort,” she said the first time. No euphemisms. “Say it.”
There was a shuffling. Someone at Max’s left cleared his throat.
“Size,” the boy mumbled.
“What about it?” Laila prompted.
“Our uh,” Max interjected, feeling Laila’s gaze piercing through him. He couldn’t describe it at the time, but saying it out loud to Dahl was one thing. It was clinical. Professional. Disconnected. Saying it to Laila, his peer, actually hurt. “Our penises… they’re… too small… um… For licensing.”
“Yes,” Laila said, nodding in agreement. “For the role of licensed reproductive partner, your size is insufficient. That’s a fact, not an insult. You three are here because, out of the group of Presentation Grade candidates, you have the smallest cocks. You all have micropenis. But you, Max, I’m proud to say, have the smallest cock in this group. Congratulations.”
She smirked at him. A quiet, defeating smile that cut to the core of Max’s heart. She’d seen his file. She’d seen the photos. She knew the truth.
“Micro-class men are not broken men,” she continued. “You’re a category with a purpose. The world needs men who are not constantly pulled toward breeding as their primary identity. It needs men who can be wholly absorbed in service.”
She let that sit, then looked at Max.
.
“How does that feel to hear?” she asked.
He hesitated, then decided there was no point in lying.
“Like you’re… I don’t know… making fun of us? Like you’re deliberately trying to hurt my feelings.”
A couple of the others snorted softly. Laila smiled.
“Honest. Good. You don’t have to like the facts,” she said. “But we’ve learned something over time: micro men who try to live as if they’re standard-licensed end up miserable. Always banging against a role that doesn’t fit. Men who accept that this is their lane, who lean into obedience, into care, into being seen as harmless, report much higher contentment.”
Harmless. The word pricked.
“So you’re saying we’re safer this way,” another boy said.
“I’m saying you suffer less resistance this way,” Laila corrected. “A river carves itself a channel. If you try to make it run uphill, everything floods.”
It wasn’t that they signed anything dramatic. There were no oaths of submission spoken in blood. Just countless small choices: to repeat the mantras when prompted, to correct “if I had a license” to “in my Service role,” to let their bodies remember the right way to stand behind a woman without crowding her or fading too far.
By the time the training cycle ended, Max could feel the habits settling into his muscles. Eyes to face, then hands. Voice soft. Movements economical. Instincts oriented toward watchfulness: Is she comfortable? Is she thirsty? Is that line of tension in her shoulders something I can fix?
The polishing came last.
They were taken one by one to a grooming suite, where a cluster of stylists — mostly women, one older man with a Corps insignia — circled them, murmuring.
Max’s hair was trimmed, shaped, and toned to flatter his bone structure. Skin treatments smoothed out blemishes. His uniform was tailored: dark, simple, perfectly fitted, with the white-band emblem at the collar.
“You want to be a pleasant background,” one stylist told Max as she adjusted his cuffs. “Memorable if she looks directly at you. Invisible when she doesn’t.”
He saw himself in the full-length mirror. Everything was clean lines. Everything intentional. The boy he was before, the one with dreams of sex, of pairing, of having a family with a beautiful woman, had been replaced with someone more precise, more defined, and, in a strange way, less his own.
“I’ve heard rumors,” the older male stylist said, checking the fall of Max’s shirt. “Aurelia Marcell is particular. She’s a purist about the socio-sexual hierarchy. You won’t have to guess what she wants. She’ll tell you. Or you’ll learn quickly when you get it wrong.”
“Is that…good?” Max asked.
“For a servant?” The man’s eyes crinkled. “It’s the best you can ask for. Clear rules. Clear roles. She believes men like us belong exactly where she puts us. Belief is a kind of care.”
The transport to the Marcell estate left at dawn.
The shuttle bay was quiet, the sky just beginning to lighten. Five white-band men boarded with Max, each called to different Houses. Their destination tags glowed faintly above their seats: H. VARELA, H. KHOURI, H. MARCELL.
*****
The transport mech rushed through the wooded street. The sunshine, striking through the trees in sharp, direct beams, highlighted the mech’s exterior, adding contour and shadow to every corner and bend of its frame. Next to the window, illuminated by sunshine, before returning to shadow and back again, was the Service Corps insignia. A hand reaching up from below with the Earth in its palm. Not the spherical Earth, though. It was the oval depiction. As if the globe had been unraveled and stretched out, end to end, pulled tight with the Pacific Ocean on both the left and right sides of it.
Inside the mech, Max closed his eyes as the sunshine hit his corneas, adjusting to the shock, then opened them when the trees outside blocked the sun from piercing through the window. In his lap sat his Service Corps-issued duffel bag, filled with his meager but necessary belongings. A handful of plain white t-shirts. Three pairs of bland, monotone slacks, tailored to his exact height and waist size, as well as two pairs of plain, functional shoes.
He thought back to his orientation, trying to remember the exact quote by Director Selene, but settling for something he figured was close enough.
“Service isn’t a glamorous existence, in most cases,” she’d said. “But it is an existence.”
The mech rounded a corner as Max watched the forest outside slowly drift backward until it was perfectly manicured grass as far as he could see. He leaned to the opposite side, feeling the soft leather of the seat stretch beneath his weight, and looked up the aisle, trying to see out of the windshield, only remembering when it was too late that the mech drove itself. There was no windshield. He slumped back in his seat, shifting his body closer to the window to give himself the best angle to see what was coming.
Straining his neck against the glass, he could see what looked like a stone wall approaching the mech. It was angled so it would definitely intersect with the road. As they approached, he could feel the mech shift as it slowed down, the brakes and axles creaking and groaning to accommodate the change in velocity.
As the mech ground to a stop, Max, still looking out the window, saw a booth with a smartly dressed woman inside. She was wearing a military, but not quite military, style dressing uniform. The blouse was black, long-sleeved, and tight, with dark maroon trim around the neck and wrists. At the collar, just below the chin, there was a sigil. He strained his eyes to focus, trying to make it out. These Patrician families all had their own sigils, each with its own meaning. This one was in the form of an abstract gene helix wreathed in laurel.
Like most women these days, the gatekeeper was gorgeous, yet professional. Her hair, clearly long but pulled tight to her head, gave her an air of authority, accentuated by the dutiful way she carried herself. The gatekeeper reached out toward the mech, fingering at something on its exterior that Max couldn’t see, before shrinking back inside her booth. A screen gently illuminated her face as her hands went down toward its base. She appeared to be typing something, glancing at her hands to orient them to the keyboard, before looking up at the screen again to confirm what she was typing. When she’d finished, Max watched as she reached over to her right, pulling what looked like the old-style telephone his great-grandmother had had in her living room to her ear and speaking inaudibly into it. Before long, she placed the device back where she’d found it, and the mech began moving again, yet more slowly than before.
As the mech whirred up the road, the sight of perfectly manicured grass returned, adorned with various well-kept flower gardens, trellises, and walkways. Each one was lined with arrangements of different flora he’d never seen. He wondered whether his ignorance of flowers made them seem alien to him, or whether they came from off-world and were simply transplanted here. Max watched as the estate spread out below, like something from a history feed: broad terraces, pale stone, and expertly crafted statues depicting Amazon-like female figures in lordly, regal poses.
The mech began to slow again, and Max could feel his weight shift to the right, indicating it was turning. He leaned his body over to the right side, ducking down into his seat to look out the opposite side window. Coming into view was the stone shape of what looked like a house, but it appeared much larger than any house he’d ever seen.
The mech groaned and creaked again as the brakes engaged, bringing the automated vehicle to a stop. Above him, a mechanical, but decidedly female voice came from everywhere, and nowhere.
“Arrival protocol,” the disembodied voice said. “Disembark. Stand at the presentation mark. Eyes down until addressed. Speak only when spoken to.”
The mechanical whir of the mech grew louder as the doors at the front began to open. Max could hear the same loading ramp he’d ascended to get inside begin to reach out, trying to make contact with the pavement. Max drew a slow breath and felt his heartbeat in his chest. The sound was loud, like a drum that only he could hear, and carried with it a sense of uncertainty that felt a lot like dread. He could feel the drilled-in posture settle over him like a familiar coat. This is what he was trained for. It was all happening. It was all happening now.
Presentation grade. Micro-class. Instrument. Not a partner.
“Candidate Harris,” the disembodied voice called out again. “Please rise and descend the ramp.”
Max got a firm grip on the handle of his Corps-issued duffel bag and stood up, shuffling sideways out of the leather seat and into the aisle. Each step forward was like a footstep away from a dream. Each step felt like he was letting go of something he’d wanted so badly. As if he was leaving behind an existence that could have been, for something he’d had no choice but to accept.
Standing in the doorway, Max looked out to see a small reception party waiting for him. At the center was a beautiful brunette woman in similar livery as the woman he’d seen at the gate. She was tall, but not overly so, and her hair was pulled up tight in a professional-looking bun, penetrated by two intersecting sticks. She was wearing a pair of smart-looking glasses that rested gently on her perfectly formed button nose. Her expression was professional, with what looked like eager anticipation just below the surface.
Flanking her were two men. Both were shorter than her and very good-looking in their own right. Their hair was perfectly manicured, slick, brushed back, and to the side. The bottom of the opposite side was shaved down, around the base of the skull, to a dark peppery stubble. Their jackets and slacks were dull and monotone, like what he had in his bag, albeit colored to match the woman they stood beside. They stared unflinchingly ahead, seemingly unaware that Max was even there.
Walking down the ramp, the air of the estate smelled faintly of citrus and sun-warmed stone. It was quiet, aside from the engine of the mech. The trickling of water from a nearby fountain could be heard, and it gave Max an unexpected sense of calm, albeit subtle and fleeting.
The woman in the center stepped forward as Max bowed, holding the duffel bag to his side. He’d been trained for this and knew the proper etiquette. Still, it felt unusual doing it for the first time. Standing back up straight, Max took in the view of the woman before him. She wore the house colors. Bright white and maroon, cut in the flowing lines of modern neo-Roman fashion. She wore a draped tunic, pinned at one shoulder with the house sigil, leggings, and flat, precise sandals.
“Candidate Harris,” she said, looking down at the slate in her hands. Her voice was light and playful but had the flat efficiency of someone whose days were long, and men were plentiful. “Welcome to House Marcell. Home to Lady Aurelia Marcell and her daughters, Ladies Jacquelyn and Irina Marcell. I am Senior Administrator Cassia. I oversee the day-to-day functions of the estate and manage Lady Marcell’s interests here. You will answer to me on all logistical matters about Lady Marcell and her family. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Administrator,” Max said, keeping his eyes on hers, careful not to look lower.
Cassia thumbed through his file, which hovered in holographic overlay above her slate. Metrics, tags, notes from the Corps, he could see it reflected in the eyes of her glasses.
“Presentation grade,” she murmured, looking up at him briefly before making a confirming smirk and looking back down at her slate. “Strong civics, scores, high compliance, micro-class designation…”
Her eyebrows lifted by a millimeter. She flicked her fingers across the holographic projection, spreading them apart as the image in her glasses’ reflection expanded in her view.
“Ah,” she said, smirking. “I see.”
She tapped at the slate again, pulling up different tools and applications. Swiping her finger from one side to another, she combined the tools with the photo, extending a measurement line across the image in front of her. The tablet chimed, acknowledging a consensus and confirming the classification in the Corps notes, along with added data and information.
“You are, by quantifiable margin, the smallest man we’ve ever accepted here,” she said calmly, as if they were discussing the weather.
Heat crept up Max’s neck and into his cheeks. He could feel his throat begin to swell and his eyes begin to purse in the corners. He swallowed hard, trying to force the lump back down into his stomach. Lower, he could feel the space between his legs start to tingle, as if it had been awoken at the mention of it. He could feel the front of his slacks pressing against the tip of the meager digit between his legs. A digit that didn’t hang so much as it poked.
“Y…yes, Administrator,” Max replied, in a way that implied that he’d forced the words out from his throat, rather than willingly handing them over. Cassia’s mouth quirked, not quite a smile, not quite disdain.
“Relax, Candidate,” she replied. “House Marcell values accuracy. When the Corps says ‘micro’, we expect micro. It appears they’ve outdone themselves with you.”
Her tone and demeanor made the word “outdone” sound like a quality control note.
She snapped the slate closed, turned abruptly, and began walking back toward the front door. The two men at her sides did the same and kept pace, careful not to fall one unauthorized inch behind her. Max hesitated briefly, not expecting such an abrupt movement, grabbed his bag firmly, and jogged briefly to catch up and follow.
“Medical confirmation and assessment are required before domestic assignment,” Cassia said without looking back. “Vitals. Genetic confirmation. A… visual… evaluation. All standard.”
Walking through the front doors of the house, the interior was all marble curves and columns. The hard marble floors shone and reflected sunlight from the windows so effectively that they lit up the whole house without a shred of artificial light. Marble columns rose from the floor, reaching toward the vaulted ceilings in a carefully, meticulously crafted design. Light fell from the tall windows, gilding the pale stone with a warm sheen. Everywhere, the Marcell sigil repeated. It was etched into archways, inlaid into floors, embroidered on the tunics of the staff darting in and out of doorways and corridors.
Cassia led Max through a large hall, the ceilings just as high as they were in the foyer, and up to a large wooden door. As they approached, the men accompanying them both turned inward, bowed to Cassia, a pleasantry she barely seemed to notice, and departed. Cassia turned around at the foot of the door, back toward Max, before placing her hand on the door’s handle.
“Inside is the clinic wing where you’ll undergo your evaluation,” she said in an instructor-like tone. “Follow the physician’s instructions to the letter.”
“Yes, Administrator,” Max replied.
Cassia opened the door to the medical wing, where the white of the house was sharper, and the air stung a bit cooler against Max’s skin. In the corner, a med-tech mech moved vials containing a clear liquid from the inside of a complicated-looking machine into a nearby refrigerator unit. There was a sink, as well as shelving containing binders, books, and various other hospital sundries.
In the center of the room was an examination table. Fixed to it were various tools and medical equipment. One arm extended outward, up and over the table. At the end, there were two fixed tracks, and in the center, a rectangular box with a downward-facing lens.
Max was taking in the room when he was interrupted by another voice, one he hadn’t heard yet.
“Candidate Harris,” the voice said, pulling Max’s attention away from the intimidating-looking medical devices. “I’m Doctor Silvi.”
Max looked up at her, stunned again by her appearance. She was an absolute knockout, different, but equal to Cassia. Her hair was done up in a tight bun, much like Cassia’s, but blonde instead of brown. She, too, wore glasses, but they gave her a more professorial appearance than the more administrative, office-like appearance of his guide’s. She wore a white lab coat, open, revealing a professional-looking button-up blouse beneath. The blouse was buttoned up just enough to give Max a slight view of her cleavage. Something he was careful to notice once, but not again.
“Standard intake,” Doctor Silvi said. “Strip to undergarments and stand on the marker over there. This is to verify your Service Corps metrics and run House-specific screenings in accordance with Lady Marcell’s requirements.”
Max placed his duffel bag down and out of the way, then lifted his shirt over his head, briefly placing it on top of his bag. He unbuttoned his pants and lowered them to the floor before stepping out of them. Reaching down, he gave the pants a quick fold before setting them down on top of his shirt. He stood upright, the cold air of the room creeping up his smooth, hairless legs and up through the bottom of his underwear. It nipped at the smooth balls beneath, making them firm up and contract a bit.
Cassia stayed, standing a few steps behind Dr. Silvi. Her arms folded over the data slate she held at her chest. As the doctor sat down, she gently stretched surgical gloves over her hands while wheeling the chair back to a medical terminal. Cassia held out the slate, opening it to project the holographic data, and flicked her finger toward the terminal, sending the slate’s contents to the doctor’s screen.
“Presentation grade,” the doctor murmured to herself, before glancing back at Max and giving herself a confirming nod. “Strong vital scores. Genetic matrix looks strong except for…”
The doctor took a beat, raising her glasses to sit more flush with her eyes and leaning into the screen. She pulled her head back, removing her glasses and turning back to Cassia.
“Are these numbers accurate?” Dr. Silvi asked, a look of disbelief on her face.
“According to the corps notes,” Cassia replied—a light smirk formed in the corners of her lips.
“The genetic matrix wouldn’t indicate an anomaly like this,” the doctor said. “By all measurable metrics, he looks like a perfectly acceptable specimen for licensure. All except this.”
Doctor Silvi took her face away from the screen, wheeling her chair back over to Max. Reaching out, she pressed her hands into his stomach, feeling for something underneath the skin. She ran her hands along his rib cage, pressed her palms into his hips, then looked up, pressing the first two fingers of each hand into his throat and up under his jaw line.
The doctor wheeled her chair back, moving a previously unseen machine down from a mechanical arm attached to the ceiling and placing it at Max’s eye level.
“Stay still,” the doctor said. “The scan only takes a moment.”
She wheeled back to her screen, pressing a few keys, and brought the machine to life. It whirred and hummed as Doctor Silvi controlled it from across the room. A soft net of light passed over Max’s body as readouts and data bloomed on Doctor Silvi’s terminal.
“Cardio-respiratory looks stable,” she narrated. “Musculoskeletal shows above-average tone. No chronic conditions. No contraindicated implants. Genital metrics…”
There was a pause. Silvi’s lips pressed together, a mixture of shock and precision. She combed over the data again, and then again, careful to make sure what she was seeing was exact.
“Genital metrics match Service Corps report,” she said, leaning back in her chair a bit and removing her glasses. “Micro-class confirmed. The candidate is below the one-percentile threshold. Pre-pubertal, comparatively. No enhancement procedures.”
“Good,” Cassia said from behind her. “Lady Marcell prefers natural parameters.”
“It’s almost medically impossible,” the doctor said, wheeling her chair around to face Cassia. A smile formed on her face, like someone who’d found a ring they’d lost.
“Lady Marcell has had a standing order with the Service Corps for years,” Cassia said. “He’s what we’ve been waiting for.”
Dictor Silvi spun her chair again, rolling it with her heels back toward Max, bringing it and herself to a stop in front of him.
“Last but not least,” the doctor said. “Visual inspection. Hands out at your sides.”
Max lifted his arms out, taking a deep breath. He could feel something like anxiety in his heart. It was a feeling he was trying to suppress. It was a feeling the Service Corps had trained him to suppress. This was humiliating in the same way that a lamp would be humiliated when you remove its shade. This was medical. It was functional. This was lifting the hood of the car to get a look at the engine. It was mechanical, not personal.
Doctor Silvi took hold of Max’s corps-issued underwear and gently pulled them down, letting go when they went slack over his hips and dropping them to the floor where they pooled at his ankles. Doctor Silvi slid her glasses up to the top of her nose and leaned in closely, medically, to evaluate the area of abnormalities outside the obvious one.
“Fascinating,” she said, mostly to herself. “Genitals show astute signs of under-development. Penile length is approximately one inch in the flaccid state. Corps notes indicate a 2.5-inch SPL. Well below the threshold. No pronounced hang at all. Barely visible shaft. Girth is meager, giving the glans an almost pre-pubertal appearance. Testicles are tight to the body and smooth, but not by design. All observations are in agreement with Service Corps notes.”
“Exactly as described,” Cassia replied, her eyes fixed on the space between Max’s legs. “Lady Marcell will be most thrilled.”
Doctor Silvi took a gloved hand, reached down, and grasped Max’s cock between her fingers and thumb. It was a pinching motion, but even between her dainty doctor’s fingers, there was still room to spare. Max whinced, trying to keep his composure and not give in to the intensity of the sensation.
Doctor Silvi moved the toddler-esque glans back and forth. Up and down. Trying to feel the weight of it, but finding that there wasn’t any. Nothing noticeable anyway. She lifted it again, getting a look at his testicles, before letting go of the glans, and watching it hold its position, tight and firm to his body, like pulling a door stop and then releasing it.
“The testicles are perfectly round and tight to his body as well,” Dr. Silvi remarked. “Unseen in men his age. This is more indicative of someone in a much, much lower age bracket. I’ve never seen such small, underdeveloped testicles on a grown man before. And he’s completely hairless, did you notice that, Cassia?”
“I did,” Cassia replied. “Exactly how our Lady wants him.”
“Did they shave you? The Service Corps, did they shave you?” Dr. Silvi asked, looking up at Max, commanding his attention with her eyes. An instruction in the etiquette classes he was careful to remember.
“No, Doctor,” he replied respectfully. “This is just how my body is.”
“Fascinating,” she said, taking a beat and looking him over a final time.
“You may dress,” Doctor Silvi said to Max, wheeling her chair back to her terminal, removing her rubber gloves, and depositing them in a nearby receptacle.
Max reached down, gathered his underwear, and pulled them up over his waist. He did the same with his pants and shirt. As he dressed, Doctor Silvi stood up from her chair and walked over to Cassia. She reached out, taking her data slate and running her fingers through the holographic data she saw there.
“I’ve updated your notes,” she said, looking up at Cassia between sentences. “This will show the medical evaluation data, as performed by me, side by side with the Corps notes, as well as my signature. Lady Marcell should be satisfied with that.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” Cassia said, taking the slate back and folding her arms over it—a smile adorned her face from ear to ear.
“Any questions, candidate?” The doctor asked, turning back to Max.
“No, Doctor,” Max replied, mustering as respectful a tone as possible.
“Then we’re done here,” she replied, tapping at her terminal and powering down the equipment. “The uniform and presentation station is outside. Administrator Cassia will take it from here.”
In the small chamber beyond the clinic’s doors was a mirrored wall and a series of articulated arms. Cassia moved him to the round pad in the middle, and his weight seemed to activate the machine, which then adjusted his uniform. It gently smoothed creases, pressed his pleats, and fixed his collar, attaching to it the sigil of House Marcell. Cassia watched the process, checking for flaws like a quartermaster inspecting a shipment.
“You present well,” she said, admiring her handywork. “The Corps is very good at what they do. Lady Aurelia appreciates efficiency.”
“Thank you, Administrator,” Justin replied, a sense of meekness and timidity in his voice.
“Do not thank me yet,” Cassia said, her eyes flickering to his file again as the machine whirred to a stop. “Lady Aurelia is a… a devout…. Adherent to the socio-sexual hierarchy. Her partner is a Prime Licensed male of very high standing with excellent genital metrics. She keeps him as a companion and sire, not an equal. Her servants, a position you’ll be holding if she approves of you, rank several degrees below that.”
“Y…yes, Administrator,’ Max said, keeping his posture steady.
“Our lady believes,” Cassia began, abruptly walking the length of the hall with Max in tow. “Our lady believes it is morally correct, our society. Since its inception, since it took root over two hundred years ago, her family has been at the forefront of the movement. They were there at the beginning. They were there during the glorious unification of our world. She believes in it. She believes in the hierarchical structure of our world. Her faith in that order is absolute. You will find no cracks to exploit here. It will make your life and time here easier, and you will find Lady Marcell more… agreeable… if you don’t lose sight of what you are.”
“And what am I?” Max asked, the words escaping his lips before he could govern them back in.
Cassia stopped, turned, and studied him for a moment, allowing the unconsciousness and a foretaste of the question to pass by, before shrugging one shoulder.
“You are a micro-class domestic servant in a patrician household,” she said. “You are, as I said, quantifiably the smallest domestic servant currently, or ever to be, in Lady Marcell’s service. You are polished property, if you like the old terminology. Not a slave… Lady Marcell can’t sell you without the Corps consent. You won’t starve here or go without shelter. But when Lady Aurelia wishes you used, you will be used. When she wishes you ignored, you will blend into the furniture. Accept that, and you’ll find yourself quite content here. Resist it, and you’ll grind yourself to powder against her certainty.”
She gestured toward the corridor and the large wooden double doors beyond.
“Come,” Cassia said. “She will see you now.”
The End
