The State - Ch. 01

In the State, Bodily Curiosity was the first recorded Sin.

Children learned this before they learned to write. Their schoolbooks described the physical self as an unreliable as a guide to good virtue. The body did not belong to the individual. It was a tool to be used in the public interest, to serve the State. Self-exploration was considered to be a form of extreme selfishness & debasement, that could lead to the Mortal Sin of Self-touch.

These beliefs spawned an array of rules, adhered to with the fervor of those who feared the wrath of the State.

Children were permitted only to share rooms with other children of the same gender.

Minors under 18 weren't permitted to sleep in a room with a closed door. To prevent monitoring compliance becoming an undue burden, building standards had long required all bedrooms to have easily removable doors.

Mirrors were deemed equipment of the State. They were not available for use in private homes, though often used in the wash area of public toilets.

Devices of minors were subject to strict content controls. All forms of communication between - and directly to or from - minors were subject to automatic AI review for problematic or subversive content.

A teenager who asked too many questions about, or even peripherally related to, Forbidden Feelings were referred to a Guide, to ensure they remained on the correct path. Once boys showed signs of coming of age, they joined the milking programme, to ensure the suppression of any unnatural desire for self-touch bubbling to the surface.

Girls, on the other hand, were considered to come of age in their 18th year, and looked forward to their 18th birthday with excitement and anticipation.

On the day of her eighteenth birthday, every girl received a Teacher: a specially selected man, usually in their twenties, though teachers in their 30s and even 40s were not unheard of. Of course the State provided the Basic package, but families were free to top up from their own funds if they wished. Elder Teachers were considered particularly skilled & commanded a premium. Only the wealthiest could afford to hire someone who already had 10 or 15 years Teaching experience in the field behind them.

The Teacher's role was to guide girls coming of age through the Ceremony of Readiness. This ritual was described by the Body - the administrative wing of the State - as the final stage of moral education. Though Teachers were often hired privately by families that could save up enough to cover the cost of continuing their teachings after the ceremony itself; a girl turned 18 only once. As a result, a single Teacher - especially a good one - could usher many many girls into Readiness over their career.

Teaching was a highly respected profession, and competition between young men to be chosen was fierce.

To stand a chance of selection in the final year, a Trainee Teacher needed to have excelled across the range of programmes, including the development of specific skill sets, physical fitness, psychological training & testing and supervised apprenticeships.

This culminated in a selection process so severe that only a handful qualified each year. Young men who had paid for the pleasure of completing the rigorous 4 year qualification, but missed the cut off for selection, still had several career paths open to them. While not as lauded as Teaching, there was still good money to be made other careers in service of the State, that the Body claimed were equally rewarding.

Mara was fizzing with excitement coming up to her 18th birthday. Her parents told her they had been saving for this event; and that she could look at the Mid-range packages. She suppressed a little pang of jealousy for girls who got to select from the Top tier, and shook herself. After all, many of her friends would only be allowed to choose from the Basic.

She was so excited when her patterns brought home the Catalogue. That was months ago, and she'd spent every evening after school since poring over the Teacher profiles. Each Teacher had a full page with multiple photos & a bio. Teachers curated their own photos, and in her own head she has quickly divided the profiles into different themes.

There were the Cross ones. These Teachers had serious, impassive, or even stern expressions in the photos they had chosen. Some had their arms crossed, or were practically glaring into the camera. Their activity photos showed them intensely absorbed in their work, usually something masculine & physical, like chopping trees or... Well she wasn't sure what some of them were doing, but it looked mechanical and involved grease. There was no doubt that they were attractive, with their rippling muscles, but they also looked a bit intimidating. She gave a little shudder.

There were the Clean-Cut ones. Neat, muscular, close cropped hair, skin practically shining. Friendly, smiling. The activities depicted were wholesome and unobjectionable - one was shown harvesting shiny red apples in golden light with people she assumed were his family. Another was depicted walking his golden retriever on the beach. Less intimidating, certainly, but they also didn't especially attract her. They just seemed a bit - she couldn't put her finger on it exactly - like they were free of personality. She caught herself, and her internal monologue chided her for even thinking that. These were the best of the best. She mentally corrected her own thoughts, just as she had been taught in school.

Then there were the... the Kinks. These involved... whips, chains, leather, latex. Their profiles were the only ones whose photos sometimes had actual women in them too. The photographs were always tasteful, taken or cropped in a way to ensure anonymity. But nonetheless, seeing lips around a ball gag, or ropes tightly knotted & indenting skin, made her feel a little lightheaded. The images elicited a swirly uncomfortable feeling deep in her lower abdomen. After sitting entranced by one particular profile, she suddenly realised, much to her shock & horror, that these were the Forbidden Feelings she had been so warned against at school. After that she skipped past any profile that fell into this category, trying to avert her eyes completely.

Fortunately the majority of the profiles didn't fit into any of these self-described categories, and this was where she spent most of her time. In particular, there was one boy - man, she corrected herself, though really he didn't look all that much older than her, she thought - that she kept opening the page on.

He was tall and lean, light musculature visible in his casual black t-shirt. Some of the photos in the other profiles looked almost staged in their perfection. This guy looked like he had rolled out of bed just before the headshot - messy dark hair flopped carelessly to one side and falling over his forehead, under which a strong nose set off a slightly angular face with a cheeky grin. Marcus.

His activity photos looked equally unpolished. One of him with a bunch of other guys in their 20s - other Trainee Teachers by the looks of them. They were in hiking gear, arms casually slung across shoulders, clearly at the top of some mountain, looking happy & proud. It just looked like a photo anyone would have with their friends, not one taken specifically for a Catalogue profile.

There was an shot that looked like it was taken from pavement level - feet on a skateboard, with creamy bokeh.

Another one of his back as he was running wildly into the sea. You could just see the arm & leg of another man to the side of the shot, she suspected they were racing to the water. It was slightly blurry - she guessed it was taken on a camera that didn't have good motion capture, or maybe the person holding the camera was laughing too hard to keep it fully still.