Kulturkampf Pantocratoria

[Pantocratoria]

Majohitep-Croissade Université
New Jerusalem, Pantocratoria

The last day before Spring Break had traditionally been the most politically active day of the academic year on campus at Majohitep-Croissade Université, for the simple reason that it was the student union's election day. It was not uncommon for there to be debates, concerts, demonstrations, or even fights between the university's various political clubs and their endorsed candidates for the student union's various offices. The usual divisions of ideology common in the rest of Pantocratoria were compounded by additional complicating factors in New Jerusalem - beyond radicals of the left and right (there are no moderate student politicians), New Jerusalem's university and technical college campuses also dealt with vexing issues of language (French and Greek) and race (indigenous and non-indigenous), which meant that some student politicos would invariably head to the beach for Spring Break with black eyes, and many more with bruised egos.

"Fight fascism and vote for the Campus Young Socialist candidates!" a girl with an army-style crew cut and no make-up said unreasonably loudly to an unfortunate international student from somewhere in Transmontana who was just trying to get to his class in the Physical Sciences block beyond the wall of red-shirted Campus Young Socialist club members.

"Uhh..." he emitted non-committally as he accepted the photocopied on red paper "HOW TO FIGHT FASCISM IN YOUR STUDENT UNION" how-to-vote card which helpfully identified the Campus Young Socialist candidates for the student union's various offices.

"Fight lesbian cows and vote Action!" snapped an admittedly much prettier (although no less angry looking) girl who wore a tastefully modest amount of make-up. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a single rather severe pony tail, and a silver crucifix hung from a chain around her neck, the cross itself dangling over a black campaign T-shirt which modestly concealed her chest and which was probably a size too big to conceal the shape of her body beneath.

"Wh..." the international student murmured as a how-to-vote card entitled "TAKE ACTION FOR A CHRISTIAN STUDENT UNION" which indicated a very different set of candidates than the red card did.

Any attempts to query either young lady about her political faction's policies for the student union were soon rendered impossible by another red-shirted young woman with a megaphone standing on a park table in the middle of the lawn in front of the Physical Sciences block. She was addressing a crowd of mostly female humanities students who would ordinarily not be anywhere near the Physical Sciences block but for the MCU Feminist Club's rally. As both the girl with the buzz-cut and the angry blonde turned to look at the speaker, the international student saw his chance and raced for the door to the Physical Sciences building and the relative safety of his waiting midterm.

"Three hundred and twelve." the young woman with the megaphone started. She was tall and olive-skinned, with dark curly hair cut a few inches off her shoulders, and even though she was only in her early twenties she exuded the self-confidence of a natural leader twice her age. She was not traditionally pretty, but she was possessed of an effortless charisma which drew and kept attention. "Three hundred and twelve." she repeated. "That's the number of women, mostly school girls, assaulted by Action-Nationale stormtroopers across Pantocratoria in the last twelve months. Beaten, held down, and shaved bald, to intimidate them and shame them. It started just across the straits on the mainland at Adrienople, with schoolgirl 'sexters', but spread across the whole country. Action-Nationale says they are punishing crimes that the courts will not punish. So-called crimes like promiscuity, wearing the wrong clothes, dyeing their hair, acting like men... not knowing their place."

At each of the "crimes" the crowd of women gathered on the law grew progressively louder in their disapproval. The black-shirted Action-Nationale students bristled. Some looked like they were bracing for things to get ugly. Some, like the lesbian cow-fighting blonde, seemed intimidated by the superior numbers of red shirts and rally attendees combined, and started to slowly shrink back behind their bigger, angrier looking comrades.

"Maybe the courts aren't punishing those crimes because they're not crimes?" the woman with the megaphone shrugged. "Whatever. I tell you what is a crime, in everybody's book: assault! And yet precious few of those three hundred and twelve young women have seen their attackers face court. Which crimes won't the courts punish again?"

"Shame!" and "Boo!" and even a "Fuck the police!" were heard from crowd on the lawn.

"Come over here and punish me then!" a huge, black-shirted half-Indian man shouted from the Action-Nationale line. He played on the university's rugby team, and was probably the size of two ordinary humans who had each eaten two slightly smaller than ordinary humans put together.

"Thierry del Moray and his gang of corporate crooks and crypto-fascists won't give us justice! Thierry del Moray and the United Christian Front won't give those three hundred and twelve victims justice!" the megaphone-touting young woman raged, ignoring the man's interjection. "We are here to demand justice! We demand justice for the three hundred and twelve! We demand justice for all Pantocratorian women!"

The young woman with the megaphone motioned to a red-shirted comrade, a shorter girl who carried electric clippers in her hand. The slogan in white lettering on her red T-shirt read "FREE CHARLOTTE / JAIL HUMBERT".

"Being shaved bald is a shame. It's not a shame on the three hundred and twelve victims, though, no, but on the craven, women-hating cowards who attacked them in gangs, held them down, shaved their hair and then ran off like the cowards they are!" the young woman with the megaphone declared. She knelt down on the table next to her friend, and then held the megaphone up again. "And that's why I'm shaving my head, because there is no shame in it for me, only for the cowards who have held down and done this to three hundred and twelve women this year. SOLIDARITY FOR THE THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE!"

The megaphone picked up just a second of extremely loud and irritating buzzing noise as the electric clippers were turned on before the speaker turned it off and set it aside. Her friend with the clippers made quick work of her dark curls, which fell about her shoulders and onto the table and grass below. The crowd of women on the lawn applauded. The black-shirted rugby player shouted "Do you shave anywhere else?" at the speaker but was barely audible over the crowd. As the noise died down, another red-shirted young lady circulated about the crowd with a sign-up sheet for the MCU Feminist Club, which many attendees signed.

"If you're not a member of the campus Feminist Club, sign up here. You don't need to shave your hair, you just have to care about women. If you write your name and email address..." the young woman with the clipboard and the sign-up sheet called about the crowd as she passed through it.

"I'll join!" bubbled another blonde, this one in a fashionable sleeveless top instead of a black tent and crucifix, with her hair loose and hanging free instead of tied back behind her. She looked like a party girl, not like a stereotypical feminist, but the young woman with the clipboard suppressed her initial surprise - after all, Action-Nationale's victims didn't look like stereotypical feminists either.

"Cool, sign up here..." the young woman handed over the pen and the form and was handed it back a few moments later.

"My first feminist rally, I'm totally going to post this on Friendface!" the pretty blonde declared with a toothy smile and then set about taking a selfie on her PeacockPhone.

The woman with the clipboard grinned and chuckled to herself as she turned around, to find herself face-to-face with an even more unusual looking student to find at a feminist rally at Majohitep-Croissade University.

[The Resurgent Dream]

Lady Celeste Diogenes de Montmanuel, who still insisted rather fiercely that her proper name was Callisto, smiled warmly at the young woman with the clipboard. She probably did stand out from some of the other students. She had a rich, brown complexion and Epheronian features. She wore her hair short in dark rings and tended to wear fashionable but understated clothing. Today, she wore an ankle-length black designer skirt, a white blouse, a wide belt with a silver buckle, and matching high-heeled leather boots. Her face wasn't exactly known around campus and she didn't want it to be. She had conflicted enough feelings about her adoptive father, the Duc de Montmanuel, without having to answer questions about him from strangers. Still, she didn't exactly blend in.

'I'd like to sign up,' she asked in almost perfect Pantocratorian French, still betraying the tiniest hint of her once pronounced Marlund accent. Her younger brothers had lost it completely. She was still smiling as she took the clipboard. She signed her name as Callisto de Montmanuel and her email as cmontmanuel@mcu.edu. 'I can't wait to attend my first meeting!'

As the young woman moved on to others in the crowd, Callisto secured her anthropology texts under her arm and started towards her next class. She passed through the competing, angry political groups. She kept her distance from the men and women in black shirts. She wasn't exactly comfortable with the Young Socialists or their ideology, even if she had voted for the Pantocratorian Socialist Alliance in the last election and knew many, probably most, of the young women she'd agreed to work with were likely Young Socialists. She almost wasn't allowed to be comfortable with them. Still, the young men and women in black shirts, whose ideology and methodology were fundamentally fascist whatever they chose to call it, were eerily familiar to anyone from Marlund. She shot the angry young half-Indian rugby-player a withering but guarded look as she left. She almost wished her boyfriend were there. She really should call him her suitor, which was why she didn't. She supposed she'd have to call him later that night. He likely wouldn't be happy with the commitment she'd made.

[Pantocratoria]

Chez Marco Restaurant
New Jerusalem

Callisto's boyfriend/suitor was Antoine George Constantine Prodomes de Xerna, the eldest son of the second son of the Count of Xerna in Adrienople. Several years Callisto's senior, Antoine was studying for his Master of Arts in Oriental Studies at Majohitep-Croissade Université, and stayed off-campus in an apartment in the trendy South Gardens district on the edge of New Jerusalem city's central business district. Chez Marco was a suitably upmarket trendy restaurant in South Gardens, on Rue de Chevaliers, the preferred nightspot of the city's young people with disposable incomes. It went without saying that Callisto was the only dark-skinned person in the restaurant, but she and Antoine were probably not the only diners from noble families at Chez Marco that evening. There was, quite often, a sort of hushed buzz of excitement in many restaurants when the well-groomed nobleman in his mid-twenties entered with his Epheronian Ambaran girlfriend, not loud or direct enough to be deliberately rude, but certainly noticeable. However, at Chez Marco that evening, there had been no such buzz, a sure sign that the clientele were a better quality of person - at the very least, they were well-practiced at being discreet with their stolen glances and whispered gossip.

Chez Marco was known for its seafood, which had to be something truly special in order to be renowned in the island-Exarchate of New Jerusalem. Antoine had ordered himself a dish of grilled fresh calamari and prawns with a wonderful accompanying white wine, which was not the most expensive wine on the wine list but it was certainly the best, and was eating at a polite pace with Callisto, and the couple talked about their respective days and the classes they had. Callisto had talked about her classes first, and Antoine was just finishing up telling her about his classes as he finished his glass of wine.

"...and it didn't fit him at all. He was quite a sight, I must say." Antoine afforded himself a chuckle as he recalled a professor's wardrobe malfunction. "It always amazes me how stupid intelligent people can be. Professor Beronas is an Atlantic Scholar and has written half-a-dozen books and more journal articles than I ever hope to read, but he can't pick a jacket that fits him to save his own life. And he carried on like that, blissfully unaware, through the whole lecture. Bless. Anyway, cherie, how was the rest of your day? Other than just your classes, I mean?"

[Pantocratoria]

Imperial Monitor
Anti-family propaganda banned
Coalition splits on law in Parliament banning the promotion of homosexuality and promiscuity to young people

The expected last sitting of the Imperial Parliament before the election began with a division on the floor of the house dividing the opposition Socialist/Constantinople Party Coalition, with the Socialist Alliance voting against the Government's new laws to ban the distribution of what it calls "anti-family propaganda" to young people.

Expanding on the Government's regulations banning from the public schools curriculum so-called "identity politics" issues around gender, marriage, and sexuality, introduced by Education Minister Marie-Claire Parthene de Verzy MP last year, the new act, the Anti-Family Propaganda Ban Act, prohibits the distribution of material (in print or electronic format) which promotes sexual promiscuity, homosexuality or homosexual acts, "non-traditional gender identity", and the "concept of sexual orientation" to children, defined in the act as persons seventeen years old and younger.

The distribution of such material to adults will continue to be legal, with Deputy Chancellor Sir Isaac Comnenus MP explaining that the Imperial Government regards such material to be "protected free speech" when distributed amongst adults, "however distasteful".

In a split which Government MPs will no doubt hope will prove to be electorally damaging on the eve of an election campaign, the socially conservative Constantinople Party split from its senior Coalition partners, the Pantocratorian Socialist Alliance, and sided with the United Christian Front to support the bill.

Opposition Leader Isabelle Folquet MP accused the Government of attempting to "manufacture a soapbox they can stand on" and inventing a problem which does not really exist.

"We support freedom of speech, and we support the right of Pantocratorian teens to their own sexuality and sexual identity." declared Mme Folquet, who has recently faced questions from the press about her own relationship status amidst allegations that she has a (married) boyfriend.

"Our parties have always differed on such issues." Constantinople Party leader Spiro Bolkus MP said when asked about the Coalition split. "The Constantinople Party stands in strong support of Pantocratorian family values."

M. Bolkus denied that the vote had exposed a rift in the Coalition which might prove dangerous before the election, and assured voters that "The Coalition is ready to form a cohesive government for all Pantocratorians."

[The Resurgent Dream]

Chez Marco Restaurant
New Jerusalem

Callisto laughed lightly at the end of Antoine's story. "My day was rather interesting," Callisto said with a slightly coy smile. "Student elections are coming up and there was the usual chaos on campus. I passed right between competing rallies for the Young Socialists, Action-Nationale, and the Feminist Club. There was one particularly unpleasant young man with the fascists. He seemed to think he could win arguments by threatening to beat anyone else up, even girls! I don't think he realised he was proving everyone else right about his sort."

She took another bite of her shrimp and then glanced briefly about. "Anyway, I decided I'd attend a meeting of the feminists. I really don't like some of the things that have been going on recently."

[Pantocratoria]

Chez Marco Restaurant
New Jerusalem

"Really?" Antoine arched an eyebrow. He glanced back down at the calamari on his plate, and started to cut it as he continued. "I hope you're not going to stop shaving your armpits or anything."

[The Resurgent Dream]

Chez Marco Restaurant
New Jerusalem

"No," Callisto said rather sharply. She left it at that, turning her attention back to her food.

[Pantocratoria]

Chez Marco Restaurant

"All right, I was just joking. What things do you mean when you said going on recently?" asked Antoine. "Do you mean on campus with the Action-Nationale group? One of the graduate students in my department put in a complaint with the Student Ombudsman after she was insulted by some students in a class she was tutoring about the way she was dressed. She mentioned it at yesterday's seminar. She said one of the students was wearing one of those black shirts with the red 'ACTION' written on it."

[The Resurgent Dream]

Chez Marco Restaurant

"I'm sorry," Callisto said, reaching out to briefly rest her hand atop his. "Action-Nationale really reminds me...I mean....It's upsetting..." she says a bit hurriedly, looking down for a moment. She took a deep breath and then continued in a more casual tone, "And I mean on campus, yes, but also out in the world. I don't like that little girls are getting attacked in shopping malls and our government does seem to regard it as a very big deal. It's viewed as a travesty or an embarrassment everywhere else in the Western Atlantic. Even our closest allies are starting to talk about asylum seekers from this country."

[Pantocratoria]

Chez Marco Restaurant
"We might have gone too far too quickly under the Coalition. Just like there had been a pent up enthusiasm for liberalised dress and music and even bi-lingualism, maybe we're now seeing pent up frustration from the other side finding its outlet in Action-Nationale." Antoine speculated. "I think the Moray Government encouraged quite a bit of that frustration when they were in opposition, but that since the election they've equivocated, and haven't delivered what the conservative fringe wanted them too for fear of upsetting moderates. Of course, they've also upset liberals and a lot of moderates besides with what they have done to pander to the conservatives. If the economy wasn't humming along so well for them I'm sure they'd be in a lot of trouble at this election."

[Pantocratoria]

New Jerusalem Standard
School Counsellor fired for advice to transgendered student

A school counsellor was first suspended then terminated by a public school in the Exarchate apparently as a result of disciplinary action taken against her for advice she gave in her capacity as a school counsellor to a student at the school who is undergoing treatment for gender reassignment.

The student, who cannot be named, is known to the school and the Department as having been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder from a young age, and is currently in what is known as "transition" between genders from male to female, having commenced hormonal therapy in a foreign country.

Mme Julienne Zarkas was, until three weeks ago, employed as a school counsellor at Pakontas Public School in Piotos, just over an hour north of the city of New Jerusalem, at which time her employment was terminated by the Department of Education upon the advice of the school principal, Monsieur Philippe Marlaw (Monsieur Marlaw declined to by interviewed by the Standard).

Mme Zarkas told the Standard that she had been terminated by the school after providing advice to the student in question about "normal teenage social issues" in the previous academic year, and that the principal and the department both cited the Determination of the Minister for Education of 22 October 2013 made under Section LXVI(b) of the Public School Act 2005 in their written advice to Mme Zarkas, which obliges disciplinary action against school employees who provide information to students which "subvert the school's curriculum" on matters of "traditional gender identity and marriage".

The information provided by Mme Zarkas to the student, in her capacity of school counselling, was, according to Mme Zarkas, "normal advice" as would be given to "any adolescent girl feeling anxious or insecure about dating boys" in the lead up to the annual school dance, and emphasised that she always, in compliance with the Ministerial Determination, encouraged students to abstain from premarital sexual contact especially around such school social events.

"All of the school counsellors I know have been very careful to comply with these directives [from the Minister for Education] irrespective of their personal and even professional opinions." Mme Zarkas told the Standard. "It was never a problem [before] for me to give the same advice to other girls. I was fired not because of what I said but for who I said it to."

Although the school principal declined to comment, a spokesperson from the Department of Education told the Standard that Mme Zarkas was terminated for undermining the school's curriculum in advice she had given to the student, specifically in such a way as to encourage "anti-social behaviour... which threatens to erode the family... and is incompatible with the cultural and religious heritage of our society".

[Pantocratoria]

Patokantas Room
Majohitep-Croissade Université
New Jerusalem, Pantocratoria

The Patokantas Room was a meeting room in the Student Centre, in which the MCU Feminist Club hosted its first meeting after the Spring Break. There was much to discuss. The student union elections had been close fought, with the Campus Young Socialists securing the largest share of the vote, but over the holiday Action, the next largest team on the Student Union Council, had secured a coalition of the United Christian Front’s youth wing, Christian Youth, and the Indian-Roman Friendship Party, to guarantee that the Executive would be under the control of the right wing, and that the all important General Secretary position in particular was held by an Action member. Many of the women in the MCU Feminist Club were also involved in the Campus Young Socialists and so all the gory details of a Spring Break consumed by political wheelings and dealings were recounted in countless conversations about the room as Callisto de Montmanuel arrived.

As she did in most classrooms, Callisto stood out. She was the only black student in the room, although there were a few “Indians” and international students at least to break up the cultural homogenity. There were definitely a few other “different” students as well, though - women with short, masculine haircuts, women dressed like men, and so on, all the more noticeable because of the stronger tendency towards gender differentiation in even casual dress in Pantocratoria than in many other Western Atlantic nations. In fact, although everyone in the room was female, the students who were dressed in the most typically “feminine” clothes were probably the ones who stood out the most. There were faces Callisto recognised from the rally on election day too - most especially the tall, olive-skinned young lady who had led the rally with her megaphone and who had shaved off her dark curls in solidarity for the three hundred and twelve victims of Action-Nationale “shearing assaults”. Over the Spring Break her hair had grown out a little bit - she now sported what looked like a military buzz cut. The blonde selfie-taker who had signed up and posted on FriendFace about it on the day of the rally was there too - still looking out of place with her long, wavy blonde hair, “girlie-girl” accessories and improbably high-heeled boots. Callisto recognised a glimmer of recognition in the blonde’s eyes as she passed by, and she could occasionally hear whispers along the lines of “Is she…” and see lips forming the distinctive shapes of the word “Montmanuel”.

The olive-skinned rally leader excused herself from a discussion about the student union political deals/who was sleeping with who (the two were always related in student politics, even in Pantocratoria), and took a few steps towards Callisto. She extended her hand and smiled warmly. Although not conventionally pretty, especially with her army-style buzz cut, there was an undeniable magnetic allure about her.

“Hello. I’m Euphemie Vesnien. How’s it going?” she began.

[Pantocratoria]

Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls
Kathartyrio, Exarchate of New Jerusalem

Their knees ached. The two girls knelt on wooden kneelers at opposite sides of the nave of the school chapel, in the same position they had been since the end of the last study period after dinner an hour before, wearing their school uniform pyjamas and night gowns, clutching their school uniform rosary beads, silently mouthing prayers mechanically. For the whole week it had been the same - prayers in the chapel in the free period before breakfast, detention in their morning and lunchtime recess during the school day, prayers in the afternoon free period before the first study period, and prayers at night right before bed in the last free period of the day. At Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls, the finest girls boarding school in the Exarchate and one of the best in the whole country, detention meant detention. Marie-Claire Amelie Christine Trichas d'Ancyre-sur-Mer, a fifteen year-old girl from the very oldest of the old nobility, a senatorial family for centuries before the settlement of Pantocratoria, attended Saint Thérèse d'Ávila under the alias Marie-Claire Romain, for it was common for noble girls to attend schools where they would mix with their social inferiors under pseudonyms. When she dared, she stole glances across the chapel at the other girl, her fellow forced-penitent, Élisabeth Lustiger, before fixing her eyes back forward towards the Sacrament or the Immolated Christ or the Blessed Virgin or just aimlessly in front of her before the nun supervising their detention noticed. In her turn, Élisabeth did the same, but almost never did the stolen glances coincide such that the girls actually locked eyes with each other.

The last few months had been revelatory for both girls, but especially for Marie-Claire as she had never had an inkling until recently that she was not the only girl who felt the things she had been feeling. Both girls were attracted to other girls, and it had come as a great relief to Marie-Claire to know that she was not the only girl who felt that way - indeed, she had often laid awake at night, her head spinning, wondering if there was something profoundly wrong with her. She had talked around with Élisabeth so many times, never daring to actually put voice to exactly what she wanted to say, until one day after study hall, Élisabeth slipped a note into her book - a folded up print-out of a website for teenagers who felt attracted to others of their own gender. Marie-Claire had known about homosexuality, of course, but it had never occured to her and it had certainly never been explained to her that women could be homosexuals as well as men. Marie-Claire could still remember how Élisabeth had laughed when Marie-Claire had told her that she thought that only men could be gay - it had been a good-natured laugh, but it had still made Marie-Claire blush. Those early, awkward conversations about their feelings in general terms had slowly given away to long, whispered conversations in their room in the dormitory which grew in intimacy until each admitted that they felt attracted not just to other girls in general, but to the other specifically. It had all seemed so wonderful and perfectly innocent, right until Sister Pauline had walked in on them during a dorm check while the girls were kissing.

Now, by the standards of the rest of the world, the kiss had been perfectly chaste. Their lips were closed and their tongues tucked away safely. Nor had it been long - in fact, it was truly terrible luck that Sister Pauline appeared in the room just in time to witness such a brief peck on the lips. But even that little peck, when combined with how Marie-Claire's arms were wrapped around Élisabeth's shoulders, and Élisabeth's arms around Marie-Claire's waist, was incriminating enough for Sister Pauline. The relationship between the two girls had never been any more physical than it had been at that very moment, and indeed both were fairly ignorant about how it could have progressed further physically anyway, lacking as they did any direction from more experienced ladies of similar inclination. The girls had been interrogated together and apart for hours that night before they were sent to bed in separate rooms usually used as temporary bedrooms in the dorm for girls with potentially infectious illnesses. The interrogations were awful - exhausting, upsetting and humiliating. Marie-Claire cringed even now remembering blubbering to Sister Pauline about how she was attracted to other girls, and had been for as long as she could remember feeling attracted towards anybody. Sister hadn't said anything, she had just crossed herself. It was the first time that Marie-Claire realised that she was supposed to feel ashamed for how she felt.

At that very moment, however, all she could feel were her throbbing knees and the hard wood of the kneeler through the thin fabric of her nightdown and pyjamas. When she was finally allowed to stand up and walk back in silence to her "Medical Confinement" bedroom, she would become aware of how sore her arms were from staying in the same position for so long, how sore her neck and back were from the way she arched them to look towards the Sacrament while she alternately prayed and pretended to pray, and so on. So too would these physical discomforts fade as she lay in bed hoping for sleep, for she was young and fit and kneeling in an uncomfortable position for hours on end is not unbearable for the young and fit, but she would then be tormented by fear and the growing sense of shame it was clear that the nuns and lay teachers alike seemed to think she should feel for how she felt. Of what was Marie-Claire afraid? She was afraid Élisabeth would hate her for all the trouble they were both in, afraid that she might be expelled, but most of all, she was afraid of tomorrow. For tomorrow, her mother would arrive to meet with the Headmistress.

[Pantocratoria]

Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls
Kathartyrio, Exarchate of New Jerusalem
The next morning, a black airport limousine which had driven from New Jerusalem Airport to Kathartyrio brought Countess Louise Marie Isabelle Trichas-Persephone d'Ancyre-sur-Mer, aka Madame Louise Romain, to Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls for her meeting with the Headmistress. The Countess had flown from New Rome that morning to come to the school - she spent most of her year with the court, not at Ancyre-sur-Mer, which was closer to the Exarchate although still on the mainland. That morning the Emperor had departed New Rome for Subeita along with the princesses of Brasland and a handful of others, so the Countess had delayed meeting with the Headmistress until the Emperor's departure, at which time many courtiers like herself availed themselves of the opportunity to go home for a time, so nobody asked her why she was leaving. She didn't know exactly what the disciplinary matter was which she had been asked to come to the school to address, but she knew that no matter what it was, she didn't want her rivals or especially her friends at court to catch wind of it.

The Headmistress, Sister Clemence, met with "Madame Romain" promptly, coming out of her office to meet her in the waiting room. Of course, she knew the truth of the alias - there were several girls at the school from noble families who attended under aliases, and some from lower-ranked or less traditional families which hadn't felt any need to conceal the truth identity of their daughters. Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls was one of Pantocratoria's leading girls schools, so it attracted a certain number of noble girls along with much larger numbers of common girls from wealthy families, and a handful of scholarships were available for girls from poorer families who were of high academic calibre, talented musicians, and even athletes. Sister Clemence had to work with the parents of the noble girls attending under aliases to help ensure that the other noble girls wouldn't recognise the ones attending under aliases for the whole bizarre alias system to function, and so it was necessary that she enjoyed their confidence. After courtesies had been exchanged, the Headmistress led the Countess into her office proper.

Inside the office, in one of two chairs in front of the imposing desk of the Headmistress, sat Marie-Claire Trichas d'Ancyre-sur-Mer, or Marie-Claire Romain as she was enrolled. The Countess looked over her daughter, whom she hadn't seen since the summer holiday. Marie-Claire sat with perfect posture, something on which the Countess placed a great deal of stock, but she was anything but calm. Her short-sleeved school uniform revealed goosebumps on her arms, and there was even a slight tremble as Sister Clemence and Madame d'Ancyre-sur-Mer entered. She turned towards the door with wide, frightened eyes, and stood to greet the two women on this Earth who scared her the most - her mother and, a distant second, her school headmistress.

"Mother, Sister." the girl greeted them in a slightly higher-than-usual pitched voice.

Sister Clemence indicated the empty seat next to Marie-Claire, and the Countess moved over to it, while the Headmistress assumed her customary position behind her large wooden desk. As the Countess moved closer to her daughter, Marie-Claire started to breathe nervously.

"How's Father?" she asked her mother, but if she was trying to break the ice, she was unsuccessful.

"Please, madame, Marie-Claire, sit down." the Headmistress said. Both sat down and then Sister Clemence sat down herself. "Madame, I appreciate your taking the time to come to speak with me." At last. "I hope your flight was not unpleasant."

"It was not." the Countess replied.

"Good. This matter is quite sensitive, and I didn't feel comfortable discussing it with you over the phone." Sister Clemence continued.

"I appreciate your discretion, always, Sister." the Countess nodded. To her, almost any disciplinary matter pertaining to Marie-Claire was too sensitive to be discussed over the phone, in any event. She half expected to hear the the girl had been caught carving her initials into a desk or a chapel pew, or that she had talked back to a teacher, or perhaps something as serious as her true family name being revealed. "Whatever Marie-Claire has done, I assure you that she will be punished."

Marie-Claire nervously rubbed her knees, still sore after a week of kneeling at prayer in the school chapel, through the long skirt of her school uniform, and tried not to look at her mother or at the Headmistress. Mother is going to freak...

"Well, madame, Marie-Claire has already had day and night detention for a week." Sister Clemence said.

"It sounds serious." the Countess frowned, and looked across to her daughter. "What have you done, girl?"

"I... uh..." Marie-Claire stammered and looked to Sister, hoping the Headmistress would say it. Maybe Mother would take it better.

"Madame, Marie-Claire and another girl were caught behaving lewdly in their dormitory room." Sister began.

"What?!?" the Countess growled in shock. Her eyes darted between Sister and Marie-Claire, who looked on at the various colours her mother's face was turning one after the other in horror.

"Whilst clearly this behaviour cannot be tolerated," Sister continued. "The truth is that adolescents, with all the different changes in their bodies at this time of life, often have isolated incidents of inappropriate sexual behaviour. The school has punished the girls, Marie-Claire and the other girl, that is, more than sufficiently given the nature of the... lewd behaviour in question. So long as there are no repeated incidents, I am not unduly concerned. However, madame, I feel I must inform you that when discovered and questioned by the dorm mistress, Sister Pauline, Marie-Claire said that she was attracted to girls. Now, as I said, puberty is a confusing and difficult period for young people, but..."

"This is obscene!" the Countess interjected. She grabbed Marie-Claire by the wrist and squeezed it surprisingly painfully. "Punished sufficiently? When I was a girl this sort of thing would be whipped out of a girl quick smart. What in the name of God were you thinking?"

"Ah... Mother, I..." Marie-Claire winced.

"Madame?" Sister interjected. As a Headmistress she was unaccustomed to being interrupted in her own office, Countess or not. "Let's try to be calm about this. We don't whip or cane girls at Saint Thérèse's anymore."

"Of course. Pardon me, Sister." the Countess said between gritted teeth and let go of her daughter's wrist, who retrieved her arm into her lap for her part.

"As I was saying, puberty is difficult for adolescents, and so a single incident of homosexual conduct does not concern me unduly," Sister said. "But obviously a pattern of behaviour cannot be allowed to form, for the good of everyone involved. I will see to it that Marie-Claire and the other girl are separated from each other as much as is practicable. I do not wish to presume to tell you, madame, how you and your husband could best deal with this at home during the holidays, whether there are changes you might make about the home or what have you. I will say that in my years as a teacher I have witnessed this behaviour many times before, and that it rarely seems to carry forward into adulthood. I might add that I do see it more in girls from your social class, madame. Perhaps being kept apart from boys so much as most daughters of the nobility are leads some girls to turn the strange feelings their growing bodies are producing towards other girls, who are after all more immediately accessible. Anyway, this sort of behaviour as a teen does not necessarily become habitual as an adult, but whatever we can do to minimize it helps to avoid forming harmful lifetime patterns."

"Yes, thank you for your concern, Sister." the Countess replied formally, although she had begun to resent the Sister's concern and her opinions and especially her anecdotal observation about gender segregation in the nobility. "I am glad that you will keep Marie-Claire and the other girl apart. Who is this other girl, anyway?"

"I'm sorry, madame, but the law prohibits me from telling you that." Sister Clemence answered matter-of-factly.

"Quite." the Countess replied. "Well, I thank you for bringing this to my attention and assure you that it will not happen again. Will it, Marie-Claire?" The last part was said as a command more than a question.

"No, Mother." Marie-Claire said, starting to feel like the worse was behind her. "I'm sorry Sister."

"God keep you, child." Sister Clemence said, actually smiling as she was a strong believer in forgiving pupils their transgressions after meting out strict punishments.

"Sister, may I have a moment with my daughter, in private, before she goes back to class?" the Countess asked.

"Of course madame." Sister Clemence replied. "And I appreciate that privacy is important. Please, use my office - I will go about my rounds of the classrooms."

"Thank you, most kind, Sister." the Countess replied.

Sister Clemence stood up, and accordingly so did the Countess and Marie-Claire.

"A pleasure as always, madame, although I do wish it were under happier circumstances." Sister Clemence said warmly. "I will be keeping your family and our Marie-Claire most particularly in my prayers."

"God bless you, Sister Clemence." the Countess said with forced warmth.

The nun departed the room and took all the warmth with her. When the Countess turned to face her daughter, her countenance was truly terrifying. Marie-Claire had already started to cower before her mother even raised the hand with which she then struck her across the face.

"My daughter!" the Countess shrieked at a whisper so the sound of her rage and fury wouldn't travel out to the receptionist in the waiting room. "You disgraceful, self-indulgent... slut!"

"Mother!" Marie-Claire protested, and was hit again, on the other cheek, for her trouble.

"Sit!" her mother hissed at her. Marie-Claire obeyed. "Who is the other girl?"

"I..." Marie-Claire began, wishing she had the strength to withhold Élisabeth's name from her mother. "I won't..."

"Don't be absurd! Of course you'll tell me!" her mother interrupted, grabbing Marie-Claire's wrists again and leaning down over her.

"My bunkmate." Marie-Claire said, surrendering instantly. "Élisabeth."

"Élisabeth who?" the Countess demanded, squeezing her daughter's wrists again more as a reflection of her own anger than out of thinking it would assist her interrogation.

"Élisabeth Lustiger, Mother." Marie-Claire said.

"Lustiger?" the Countess frowned. "Never heard the name. Is it an alias? Is this unnatural trollop at least one of us?"

"Mother! I kissed her too, don't blame her!" Marie-Claire protested.

"Answer the question!" snapped Madame d'Ancyre-sur-Mer.

"What?" Marie-Claire asked. The emotional rollercoaster of the humiliation of the conversation with Sister Clemence and now her raw terror before her mother's fury was too much for her, and she started to cry.

"Is this Élisabeth girl noble? Is Lustiger just an alias?" the Countess asked.

"No, Mother." Marie-Claire answered. Maybe Mother was worried about gossip reaching the court? "No, nobody will know, don't worry, her father's a banker."

"A banker?" the Countess groaned, aghast. "A daughter of an ancient senatorial race and of the oldest chivalry of this land, and a banker's girl?!? Is she Jewish?"

"What?" Marie-Claire sputtered. Mother wasn't even making sense now. "It's a Catholic school, Mother, she's not Jewish."

"Or they converted..." the Countess worried to herself, her mind inventing yet a new layer of horrors all by itself. At last she let go of Marie-Claire's wrists, which were dark red where she had held them. Little fingerprint-shaped brusies began to appear. "You cannot tell anyone of this, Marie-Claire. Nobody!"

"But Mother, I think..." Marie-Claire ventured. "I think... I think I might always be... like this, Maman. I..."

"Don't be absurd!" the Countess insisted.

"No, I've read this article which says..." Marie-Claire insisted.

"Who gave you this paganistic propaganda?" the Countess demanded.

"What?" Marie-Claire asked.

"Your mind has been poisoned, child!" her mother told her gravely, at last feeling slightly maternal. She sat down next to Marie-Claire again and put an arm around her shoulders. It felt alien and unnatural to them both. "It is perfectly clear that men and women were made for each other. Whoever gave you this nonsense, this filth, which said you might always be like this, why, it's pornography, nothing more. And like what, exactly? A lesbian? A pervert? No, not you, child, although you have erred and erred grossly. No, you have done something stupid and disgusting, but so long as you never do it again, all will be well."

"But Mother..." Marie-Claire began.

"But Mother nothing." the Countess shook her head. "I shall talk about this with your father. We will decide what is to be done. Perhaps we are to blame. Perhaps we have been too liberal with you. Perhaps we shouldn't go on that Winter holiday to the Caldan Union with its strange ideas about how men and women ought behave..."

"Mother," Marie-Claire blanched, wondering what her father would think about it all. "Please, I only kissed Élisabeth, we didn't do... anything else."

"How do you even know that there is anything else, Marie-Claire?" her mother demanded. "You're just a child!"

"I'm fifteen!" Marie-Claire replied.

"So you're old enough to know better, is that what you mean?" the Countess turned it back around.

"Mother, just, please... I couldn't bear it if Father thought me... dirty or disgusting." Marie-Claire pleaded.

"We are your parents, child." the Countess sighed. "It is our duty to love you even when the things you have done are dirty and disgusting. And in our family we always do our duty."

[Pantocratoria]

Saint Methodios Island
The Outer Islands
Pantocratorian Archipelago

To the south east of the Pantocratorian mainland stretched the smallest and most numerous islands of the Pantocratorian Archipelago, the Outer Islands. The Outer Islands were also called the Patriarch Islands, since each was named after a different Patriarch of Constantinople in the ancient empire before the settlement of Pantocratoria. The Outer Islands enjoyed beautiful weather for much of the year, although they were hit hard by tropical storms in the season to even this out. Of these, Saint Methodios (named for the Patriarch who had restored the Holy Icons) was the warmest. Unfortunately, the Outer Islands were rocky affairs, which reached out of the Atlantic with sheer cliffs and rocky beaches, and very little sand. Consequently, despite their climate, none of them were popular tourist destinations, and were sparsely settled. In centuries past most had housed monasteries but the difficulties of the climate in storm season, the extreme isolation, and the general decline in the number of monastic vocations had all combined to see most of the monasteries close. What was once the chapter house of Saint Methodios Monastery was now the town hall and library for a small town of under two thousand people - Kyriakh - the only significant settlement on the island.

Over an hour's drive from Kyriakh, with little more than a few farms along the way, was a youth camp. Less than a year old, it had almost sprung up out of the ground overnight, quickly assembled out of pre-fabricated demountable buildings. It was called Camp Spercheios, and it was an Action-Nationale youth camp, one of several which had appeared around Pantocratoria in recent years. Over Spring Break it had hosted Action-Nationale student political groups from every university in the north of the Pantocratorian mainland and the Exarchate of New Jerusalem for a holiday of celebrations, fitness and ideology. Camp Spercheios was divided into two halves, which spanned across a valley. The larger side was the male camp, separated by several hundred metres and two fences from the smaller female camp. It was here that MCU's Action executive and members had celebrated after negotiating their coalition for the student government. After the Spring break, however, the celebrations finished and regular operations began.

Agent Georges Raytheon, operating under the alias Georges Myrene, had not taken long to determine what those regular operations were. Agent Raytheon was 25, but looked about 22 to those close enough to both ages to still be able to differentiate between them. He was extremely fit, with short dark hair close cropped to his skull, hazel eyes, average height, and was an Agent of the Imperial Domestic Intelligence Service on an infiltration/close surveillance assignment of Action-Nationale's youth organisations. It was a stark contrast to his first infiltration assignment, the Rainbow Socialist Collective, the LGBT organisation within the Pantocratorian Socialist Alliance's youth wing, which was more representative of the usual sort of political group with which IDIS concerned itself. What Agent Raytheon had already seen at Camp Spercheios, however, was enough to convince him that his Service's priorities were completely backwards.

Camp Spercheios represented itself as a camp for youth recreation and fitness under the auspices of the growing Action-Nationale organisation, where Pantocratorian youth could retreat from a society "corrupted by foreign influences" to "grow physically, emotionally and spiritually" in the presence of other, like-minded young people, who sought a "restoration of the Nation" and the "suppression of anti-social tendencies". It primarily catered to university campus clubs associated with Action-Nationale (like Majohitep-Croissade Université's new student union group "Action" - they all had similar names), although there were also youth groups not specifically aligned to Action-Nationale, like the Police and Citizens Youth Association, which had started to make bookings for its local chapters at Camp Spercheios and its siblings appearing across Pantocratoria apparently just in search of outdoors recreational facilities. Naturally Action-Nationale looked on such business as a chance not only to supplement whatever income streams had funded the camps in the first place, but also to extend its ideology into the membership of unaligned or broadly conservative but by no means radical groups like the PCYA. On the surface then, Camp Spercheios and its siblings appeared just to be camps were the youth of Pantocratoria's cities could enjoy the great outdoors, albeit with somewhat strangely worded political overtones. What Raytheon had observed was far more sinister.

At Camp Spercheios men and women took "self-defence" classes (of course, not together, and the men took a great deal more than the women). Raytheon was no stranger to self-defence classes - but what actually happened in these classes was more akin to the military basic training he had attended when he first joined the Service (albeit without firearms). In addition to traditional unarmed combat self-defence classes taken by both genders, men did extensive martial arts drills, knife fighting and throwing, and weapon training with improvised clubs. The fitness aspects were intense, emphasising endurance and aggression. Granted, there was not so much focus on building discipline as there had been in Raytheon's basic training, but it was clear that young men were being trained for combat at Camp Spercheios, and not just in their own defence. In fact, in lectures given in the main assembly hall building, the concept of self-defence was expanded to defence of others and defence of the nation against external threats and foreign enemy infiltrators alike. Underneath the Crucifix and official portrait of the Emperor which one tended to see in any public meeting room or classroom throughout the country, portraits of Princess Irene and, most shockingly of all, Bridgette Iesus watched over the young recruits in the main assembly hall.

Raytheon's reports back to his Senior had detailed an intense physical regime combined with a political indoctrination into violent "resistance" against "foreign" and "anti-social" elements. Action-Nationale counted among such anti-Pantocratorian elements all "metahumans", feminists, homosexuals, non-Christians but especially Muslims, gypsies, liberals, socialists, communists, and so on. Underneath Pantocratorian flags rendered with black in place of white, and red in place of gold, hundreds of young people at a time were being trained as fascist thugs and street fighters. For want of discipline and firearms, he could not yet call what was being prepared the beginnings of an army, but perhaps it was the beginning of the beginnings.

Raytheon's reports also noted that he was not fully trusted by leaders at Camp Spercheios or in the student club he had been assigned to infiltrate - Louis Action, the Action-Nationale youth group at Louis University in New Rome. Three weeks before the club had left for Saint Methodios, it had perpetrated what it termed "vigilante" attacks against three "anti-social" teenagers, two girls (one of whom a pardoned former inmate of the Prison School for Girls at Feurvel) accused of promiscuity on social media and a boy who had caused uproar in the local newspapers when he tried to get around his school's rules against same-sex couples attending school dances by coming to the semi-formal dressed as a girl. Raytheon had managed to avoid the attack on the boy and on one of the girls, but was in a group of other Louis Action members when they encountered the last girl unexpectedly. Instead of gleefully holding the teen down while her hair was shorn, Raytheon had tried to convince his group to leave her be. They attacked her without him and he still resented that he hadn't completely blown his cover and stopped them instead of skulking away, and he hadn't been entirely trusted since. Ostensible jokes that he was just a "fair weather fascist" were more than just jokes. He reproached himself for both failing to defend the girl and for compromising his effectiveness as an infiltrator at the same time.

So it was that Raytheon found himself wandering the grounds instead of being locked into a meeting between various chapter executives which might have revealed whether any specific plans for the more-than-a-mob-not-quite-an-army being trained at Spercheois. He came across a man in his forties whom he had not seen before, who was looking over at the female dormitory and jotting down some notes with a pen and notepad. Raytheon approached him and greeted him, introducing himself as Georges Myrene. The older man called himself Manuel Tulies.

"So, what are you looking at?" Raytheon asked in a jocular, non-threatening tone.

"Who am I looking at, you mean, right?" Tulies chuckled in reply. "When I was your age, I'd have been looking at the girls, of course. Probably the same reason you wandered this far from the men's side too, eh? But unhappily no, friend. I'm looking at the building."

"It's a real architectural triumph, isn't it?" Raytheon joked sarcastically. Like almost every other building at camp, it was a cheaply made pine, plaster and chipboard box.

"Utilitarian." Tulies smiled.

"You were taking notes about how functional it is?" Raytheon inquired.

"Yes, actually." Tulies replied, chuckling again. "See, we've decided that during off-seasons we're going to use the female dorm as the base for a special therapy program."

"Therapy, for who?" Raytheon asked, as if it was no big deal, although he was suddenly secretly very interested.

"Teenagers." Tulies answered. "It's time Action-Nationale shows it has a heart. We care so much about this country, after all, because we care so much about children. And of course, children make mistakes. Well, right here on Saint Methodios we will have a camp, one of the first like it in Pantocratoria, where troubled teens can be sent by their parents for an intesive therapy program to correct the causes of their acting out. A holistic program, including not just conventional therapy but physical exercise in the great outdoors. Fresh air for the body and mind, prayer for the heart and soul."

"Oh." was all Raytheon could think of replying.

Could Action-Nationale actually be about to provide the community with a valuable service? It was hard to believe.

[Allanea]

33 miles away from Saint Methodios Island
FKS Curious

The ship’s enormous white body rested in the waters, its engine powering down. Its superstructure was a mesh of antennaa, dishes, and freshly-painted white globes the size of a small house, providing protective casing for several RADAR sets in differenth bandwidth. Near its stern, a small, white motor boat was hovering, with divers in dark-blue suits preparing to plunge into the water. On the stern itself, several men in light-blue shorts and shirts assembled a pair of grey, kite-like drones to be launched.

“The divers are real marine biologists, then?” - asked Timofey Gates, as he looked across the railing. He did not bother with wearing a shirt, and was dressed merely in light-blue shorts and heavy Navy boots. On his muscled body one could see several blue tattoos - an anchor on the left side of his chest, near the heart, and the words ‘WON’T FORGET MOTHER DEAR’ on his stomach, as well as a dagger tattooed on his right biceps.

The woman next to him was, in comparison, well-dressed - certainly she was wearing a shirt and a pair of sunglasses, and the ranks of a Commodore on her shoulders. - “Yes of course, from the Kurzweil Biological Institute. It’s part of the Navy’s mission to cooperate with civilian science efforts, and it assists our strategic goals for the fiscal year.”

In other words, cover.

In every open source, the FKS Curious was referred to as ‘carrying out a research mission in the South seas’, and research results were even uploaded regularly on various academic sites - this was because actual research was in fact carried out by some of the staff.

In fact, even some of the footage from the two tiny drones that had just slipped off the deck and made it towards the island would be used in actual research - a botanicist in Concord University would happily pore over detailed photography of the trees and greenery of Saint Methodios island. But in truth, that wasn’t the purpose of the Curious in these seas at all.

“Won’t the drones get spotted?” - the woman said.

“I don’t see how. They’re far too tiny to come up on air defense RADAR, unless their RADAR can track a bird in flight ot some shit.”

“Well they’re a bit too fast to be a bird.”

“But too slow for a plane. And painted in radar-absorbent paint. Literally the worst thing they can happen is tht they’ll be taken for hobbyist aircraft. And even this is unlikely. And they’re too small to be spotted by the naked eye at the altitude they’re at.”

“Unless some gasbag just happens to be looking upwards with a set of huge binoculars.”

“Are you serious?”

“Stranger things have happened.” - shrugged the woman.

Within the belly of the immense ship, onboard electronics hummed quietly, recording and tracking cellphone communications, radio transmission, and so forth. A phone might be insufficiently sensitive to receive a call this far from a tower, but the ELINT sets aboard the ship were naturally better - if larger and more expensive - than a cellphone or even a cellphone tower.

Naturally the Allaneans did not hope that someone would just happen to be talking about a military secret in the day or two that the ship would spend in these waters. On the other hand, one always had to be checking in on these things, and far importantly, as the ship would take up various positions near the island, a map could be formed of the various cellphone towers on it. This would be information Allanea would be happy to have.

“Poor bastards.” - said the Captain, crossing his arms on his chest as he watched three crewmembers hoist a heavy, elongated, light-green object onto crane. Within a few seconds, the crane began to move, its engine buzzing as it lowered the device into the waters.

“Is that the new UUV?” - the XO asked, shifting her sunglasses briefly on her nose to take a peek at the device.

“That be it, yes. We want to take a look at the sea floor, see if there’s any cables.”

“Cables?”

“Fuck me if I know. OAS asked to check for cables so I’m checking for cables.”

“...I guess that makes sense, then. Probably want to see how the islanders communicate to the mainland.”

“OAS is thorough.” - the Captain said, admiringly. - “They take their time preparing for a thing, and then WWWwwwwhooo, and off she goes.”

“I like the new name.” - the woman replied. - “It fits them more, doesn’t it? The Office for Armed Shenanigans.”

“Yes.” - the captain smiled broadly. - “That it does.”

[Pantocratoria]

Château d'Ancyre-sur-Mer
Ancyre, West Pantocratoria

Autumn in the north west of Pantocratoria felt cold long before it looked cold. Ancyre was a coastal town, swept by the winds from the north of the Atlantic Ocean. Cold winds howled through the streets of the town, and the townsfolk closed the heavy wooden shutters over their windows against the wind. It was long past midnight, and there was no sign of life in the small town - hardly a single window was lit. The black Peacock Motors Multispace moved through the dead-silent streets, towards the early sixteenth century grey stone walls of Château d'Ancyre-sur-Mer. There was movement at last - the gates began to open as the car approached.

Inside the ancestral home of the Trichas family, Marie-Claire d'Ancyre-sur-Mer slept in her bed. It was her first night at home back from Saint Thérèse d'Ávila College for Girls for the school break. Life in the dormitory, classrooms and playgrounds of the school had been increasingly unpleasant since the discovery of her tryst with Élisabeth as rumours and gossip spread about why the two formerly inseparable girls were now forbidden from each other's company, and why they had been punished with total detention for a week. Marie-Claire hadn't told anybody after her mother's meeting with the Headmistress, so she supposed that perhaps Élisabeth had let the truth be known to somebody, who had violated her trust and spread word around. Secrets were never kept in an all-girls boarding school after all. Perhaps it was paranoia, perhaps just her misery at being kept apart from Élisabeth, but Marie-Claire felt increasingly isolated from her other friends and fellow students at school. It was actually a relief to go home, although she was desperately nervous about how her parents would react to her. Mother was never particularly warm, but she had said nothing about it. It was as if she had never been summoned to the Headmistress' office to discuss how her daughter was caught with another girl, and that she was going through a lesbian "phase". Marie-Claire was particularly nervous, though, about how her father would react. She loved her father and thought the world of him, and couldn't bear the idea that she would be tarnished in his eyes. She had been so happy and relieved when he embraced her and kissed her as warmly as ever when she had come home, that she had almost cried. He too had said nothing about "the incident". When Marie-Claire had lay down in her huge, four-poster bed, in which more than six generations of Trichas girls had slept, and pulled the bed spread stitched with her father's coat of arms up over shoulders, she knew nothing but relief and contentment. She was so happy that for once she hadn't even thought of Élisabeth before falling asleep.

When Marie-Claire d'Ancyre-sur-Mer woke up, it was with a black-gloved hand over her mouth. Her bedroom was still dark, and all the lights were off. The moonlight through the gap between the curtains caught the glossy surface of her Mademoiselle de la Musique poster and mirror, and it was in the reflection of that mirror that she glimpsed the two large black forms of the intruders in her bedroom. She tried to scream but naturally the hand over her mouth put an end to that. She looked up to see the owner of the black-gloved hand, a large, thick-necked man with a military-style haircut and a comic-book jaw, and attempted to scream again. The other figure opened her wardrobe, where her found a pre-packed sports bag waiting for him, along with an outfit hanging up on the inside of the door.

"In a moment I'll take my hand off your mouth and turn the light on." began the man in the bed next to Marie-Claire. "Screaming won't do you any good. See, we are here at the request of your parents, to take you to a place where you'll learn respect for yourself and for authority. When I turn on the light, I will show you the guardianship agreement. You have been legally assigned to our custody. So, I will remove my hand now. And when I tell you that if you scream, you'll be punished, I do so as your legal guardian. So be warned."

The hand was let off Marie-Clarie's mouth. She didn't scream straight away, instead she took a few deep breaths in. Then she tried to throw off the bed spread and run for the door, shrieking as she did so, only she didn't make it anywhere near the door - the man who had been holding her mouth shut a moment ago caught her by the wrist as she was still just half-way out of the bed. For a large man, he moved quickly. In a heartbeat she was on her feet next to her bed, spun around, bent over the side of the bed, her face shoved down into her own mattress, and the wrist by which she had been grabbed was pinned to her upper back and the arm attached to that wrist twisted up with it quite painfully. The shriek turned into a yelp of pain, muffled this time by her bedding rather than the stranger's glove.

"I warned you that you'd be punished." the man told her, and wrenched her arm up tighter for a few agonising seconds before releasing it.

The man kept one arm on her back, and turned on her bedside light with the other hand. The figure by the wardrobe drew closer, and tossed the sports bag onto the foot of the bed, before producing a folded, stapled document from a jacket pocket, which Marie-Claire could feel being placed on the mattress just beside her head, as the edge of the paper brushed against her hair. The man holding her then grabbed a fistful of that hair and pulled her painfully up off the mattress so that she could read the document. Marie-Claire could make out the words "GUARDIANSHIP AGREEMENT" at the top and the signature of both of her parents on the bottom of the page. Her father's signature was like a needle through the heart.

"No!" Marie-Claire said urgently, although it was unclear whether she was answering a question or denying her reality.

"So get up, and no more screaming." the man who had just pulled her up by her hair told her abruptly as he let her go.

"I'm not going anywhere with you!" Marie-Claire insisted as she pushed herself up off her mattress and straightened her nightie out, her eyes never leaving the document on her bed which proved that her parents had signed her over to these strangers.

"Good, you're not screaming." the man smiled.

"Your parents have packed a bag for you." the other man told her, indicating the sports bag. "And there are clothes for you hanging up on your wardrobe door. Get changed."

"I'm not going anywhere." Marie-Claire repeated. She folded her bare arms in front of her, not exactly the vision of steely resolve she hoped to portray in her pyjamas.

"I'll stand near the door and he'll stand near the window so you don't get any stupid ideas about running, but we'll turn away while you change." the man at the foot of the bed said, before walking off towards the door as if she said nothing.

"Listen to me, I'm not going anywhere with you!" Marie-Claire yelled.

"No, you listen to us, young lady." the man who had been holding her down a few moments ago growled at her. "You will go over to your wardrobe and put on the clothes which have been picked out for you. You will do exactly what we tell you to do exactly when we tell you to do it. You will come with us. Or we will make you."

Marie-Claire breathed deeply and rapidly. There were two big, strange men dressed in black in her bedroom with legal papers signed by her parents making them her guardians. They had told her they were taking her away to learn respect. One of them had already twisted her arm and yanked her by her hair. There was no doubt that they could physically make her do more or less whatever they wanted. It was terrifying. Despite this, she was filled with an overwhelming need to resist and defy what already seemed to her to be a monstrous injustice. How could her parents have really allowed, no, actively asked for this to happen to her? How could even be legal for them to do so?

"No." Marie-Claire said.

She didn't yell, she wanted to sound calm but her voice trembled. It was intended as defiance but it came out as resignation. It was treated as defiance anyway. The man with the black gloves shoved her down onto her bed and was on top of her in a moment, stradling her with his knees and pinning her down as he calmly retrieved a roll of black electrical tape from his belt. Marie-Claire made a variety of growling and grunting noises as she tried to wriggle free from him, which were cut off abruptly when the tape was used to seal her mouth shut. The effect was palpable. After a few more seconds she stopped struggling. The man got off her and let her up.

"Go and get changed or I will dress you like the little child you are behaving as." the man told her, indicating her wardrobe.

Marie-Claire slowly got to her feet. She reached a hand up to the tape over her mouth and then hesitated and looked at the man, who shook his head. She wondered why she had hesitated, but then decided that she didn't want this man dressing her like a human doll, and made her way towards her wardrobe. She looked back to see that she wasn't being directly watched before slipping out of her nightie and into the waiting clothes as quickly as she could. Although both men were at least observing the pretense that they were not looking at her, she knew she was being glimpsed at enough that there was no hope she could run off for the door or window (which they had covered) or hide somewhere in the room without alerting both men. The knowledge made her change clothes even faster. A white, long-sleeved skivvy top had been selected for her, along with a long black skirt which ended half-way down her shin, and, because it was a cold night in Autumn, a warm pair of black stockings and a black cardigan. Whoever had picked out her clothes (and Marie-Claire was convinced it would have been one of the Château's staff) had also left a pair of black leather flats for her to wear with them. In a few moments she was dressed, but her hair was still a mess. Marie-Claire ran her hands through it and looked at it in the mirror out of habit. The sight of her taped mouth stopped her efforts to fix her hair.

"Good. Let's go." said the man nearest the door. He retrieved the sports bag and the legal papers from the bed, then went to open the door.

"One thing first." said the bigger man. He put one hand on Marie-Claire's shoulder, and turned her around so that her back was facing to him. "Put her hands behind your back. Grab your elbows."

Marie-Claire complied, not knowing what else to do. The big man used black plastic cable ties to join each of her wrists to the opposite arm's elbow, binding her hands behind her back. Marie-Claire hoped one of the château's servants would see her on the way out. She couldn't imagine her family's lovely old butler Parsoins letting two strange men drag her out of the house, tape over her mouth and arms bound behind her back, papers signed by the Count and Countess or no papers. As she was marched out of her bedroom and into the hall outside, she found herself leaning this way and that, arching her neck in the hopes of spying someone who would come to help her. She couldn't believe that her parents weren't even coming to see her off! Where was she going? How long was she going for? Was she coming back? Her need to resist, fuelled by adrenaline, now faded away leaving her only with fear. Her eyes welled with tears. How could this be happening to her? How could it be legal to have strange people kidnap your own daughter and drag them off in the middle of the night? She tried to scream "Papa!" but of course it came out just as a muffled noise, which provoked the big man behind her to pull her head back by the hair and threateningly "Sssh!" her.

Nobody came out. Kindly old Parsoins was asleep in his room downstairs, and if the Count and Countess of Ancyre-sur-Mer were awake, they were certainly not coming down from their rooms upstairs. Marie-Claire was dragged through the halls of old suits of armour, oil paintings of long dead ancestors, and photographs of the last few generations of her ancient family, down into the kitchens and then out through the service entrance of the family home, into the waiting black Multispace.

Two hours later she was on-board a domestic flight to Saint Tarasios island, one of the Outer Islands, from which she would be transported by boat to Saint Methodios and the Camp Spercheios "Action for Troubled Teens" program. The papers bearing the signatures of her parents were produced at the airports and at the docks, and seemed to dismiss any concerns anybody had about the fact that she was clearly being transported by these men against her will. She had never felt more powerless or invisible.

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

Marie-Claire Trichas d'Ancyre-sur-Mer arrived at the Girls Camp section of Camp Spercheios as Marie-Claire Romain once again. Clearly the men who had, at the request of her parents the Count and Countess, abducted her from her bed in Château d'Ancyre-sur-Mer in the middle of the night and dragged her across the Pantocratorian Archipelago in planes and boats to Saint Methodios knew who she was, but she was signed into the "Guest Book" of the Girls Camp by these same men as Marie-Claire Romain. Although she was used to the pseudonym by now, indeed, it seemed to her that most of her life she had been known by this false name, she had never resented it until that moment when she saw it written into that book. She had been sent away by her parents to boarding school under that name and now she had been kidnapped and sent away to a place where she was told she would "learn respect" under that name, by arrangement of those same parents, who nevertheless denied her their name in the process.

The Girls Camp was a group of three wooden demountable buildings, one (the dormitory) much larger than the others, separated off from the rest of Camp Spercheios by modest fences and several hundred metres of rocky scrubland. Marie-Claire's first port of call had been the office building, where she had been signed in more or less in silence by her abductors, who then left without so much as the word goodbye to her. There were several women, aged from their late twenties to late forties, who wore what resembled physical education teacher uniforms at Marie-Claire's school. The oldest of these and the one who seemed to be in charge was a tall, thin, hard-looking woman with severe brown-grey hair pulled back tightly, who had introduced herself as the Deputy Head Counsellor, Madame Tersonier. She neither smiled nor wasted words, but instructed Marie-Claire to pick up the sports bag her abductors had brought with her, and to follow her outside.

When contrasted to the cold Autumn winds of Ancyre, the tropical heat of Saint Methodios was like a warm hug. The weather gave Marie-Claire hope that whatever this place was and however long she was there for, it wouldn't be too bad. Despite the combination of rage and anguish she felt at that moment, which was directed 10% at her kidnappers, 10% at her father, and 80% at her mother, she forced herself to smile. She found it so easy she reflected that she must have inherited the ability from her mother's side of the family, before her smile turned into an involuntary scowl. A few seconds later, her expression was under her control again.

"Isn't it lovely weather here, madame?" Marie-Claire asked in her sweetest voice.

There was no reply.

"You wouldn't know it was Autumn." Marie-Claire added hopefully.

Madame Tersonier remained silent as she opened the dormitory door. Inside the dormitory were twenty beds, ten lined up on each pine-panelled wall, and a few girls around the same age as Marie-Claire already there, recently arrived from their appearance. Madame Tersonier pointed Marie-Claire towards a nearby bed which was distinguished from its neighbours by an upside-down pink triangle painted on a sign hanging from the bed head. Marie-Claire noticed a few other beds, positioned away from each other, with similar signs.

"Unpack your things, and be outside in twenty minutes." Tersonier told her, and then spun around to leave.

"Madame!" Marie-Claire called out. She wasn't sure entirely why she did it - perhaps she just felt the need to be acknowledged. Tersonier stopped and turned around and looked at her expectantly. "Umm... I... uhhh... thank you, madame."

It was unclear what Marie-Claire was thanking Tersonier for, but the dour woman didn't trouble herself with a "You're welcome" anyway. She left the dormitory, leaving Marie-Claire at her bed to unpack her bag. Suppressing a howl of frustration, she unzipped the sports bag and started to unpack neat bundles of cotton socks into the drawers next to her bed. Next she found a new pair of brand-name running shoes, and was in the process of deciding where to put them when one of the other girls already in the room sauntered up next to her. Marie-Claire turnd to look at her, and found herself looking up.

"Nice bag." the other girl said. She was a Pantocratorian Indian, probably a year older than Marie-Claire but a foot higher, with broad shoulders, black hair and red skin. Her broad face was hard-looking, and Marie-Claire noticed some scars on her muscular forearms.

"Thank you." Marie-Claire replied. She was a little intimidated but hid it as best she could. "My name's Marie-Claire."

"Dora." the giantess replied. "I like those shoes."

"Take them." Marie-Claire said almost by instinct, offering the bigger girl the shoes although they clearly wouldn't fit her. She suddenly felt ridiculous. Spontaneous gift giving of an admired possession was a type of social homage paid by lower ranking nobles to their social superiors. Marie-Claire wondered what her mother would think of a daughter of the Trichas line offering social submission to the rough-looking Indian girl.

"What, for my dolly to wear?" Dora sneered. A few moments later she seemed to regret the tone of her reply, and tried to make nice. "Thanks anyway, but I think they're too small for me. Keep 'em. And welcome to wherever the fuck we are, Marie-Claire."

"Thanks." Marie-Claire smiled weakly, and put away the shoes quickly. "At least it's warm here."

"Warm in Hell too." Dora shrugged and looked out the window absently for a moment before looking back down. "What's with the triangle?"

"Uhh... I... I don't know." Marie-Claire answered. It wasn't entirely a lie but it wasn't entirely true. It was more that she hoped she was wrong about it. Finally having someone to talk to who wasn't involved in her abduction and admission into this place, Marie-Claire's feelings started to rush to the surface and she started to fight back tears. "Mother of God, why are we here?"

***

Twenty minutes later, Marie-Claire, Dora, and eighteen other girls between thirteen and sixteen were lined up in front of the dormitory. Madame Tersonier and the other female counsellors Marie-Claire had seen in the office were accompanied by a group of strong and fit looking young men around the age of twenty, with their arms crossed in front of them, apparently standing guard. Some of the girls in the group were impressed with their watchers, Marie-Claire could tell, but she had no interest in the handsome if angry-looking young thugs and truth be told felt only irritation that some girls who had gone through an almost identical ordeal to her over the past twenty-four hours could set aside the hurt, rage and fear she felt to the extent that they were able to giggle and make eyes at the camp guards.

Loud-speakers attached to the buildings crackled to life on the hour, and the counsellors and guards drew to attention as "Pantocratoria, I love thee!" (not the national anthem, but something similar to it) began to play. As tinny voices echoes through the low quality speakers, Marie-Claire looked up and down the line of "campers" who appeared to have joined her. Other than Dora there was another Indian girl, with a lighter complexion, a heart-shaped face and a perfect figure. Indians were not the only ethnic minority group represented, with a black-skinned Epheronian-Ambaran girl also amongst them. The rest of the group were "regular" Pantocratorian girls of all sizes and shapes - to look at them there was no outwards sign of which ones were so-called "Franks" (i.e. French first language speakers) or "Romans" (i.e. Greek first language speakers). Some girls were particularly fair-skinned but this was not generally a realiable indicator of being a "Frank" (a term which would be used irrespective of Western European descent). Marie-Claire looked up and noticed for the first time that the camp's flag pole flew a strange looking Pantocratorian flag - instead of being gold on white, the Cross of the Pantocratorian Crusade was rendered in red on a background of black. If Marie-Claire had paid a great deal attention to much else over the past year other than her studies and the issue of her undeniable attraction towards women, then the appearance of a red and black flag combined with the name of the program at their camp "Action for Troubled Teens" might have set off some alarm bells for her, but for now, she remained blissfully ignorant.

After "Pantocratoria, I love thee!" finished, a man in his late forties appeared from inside the little wooden office. He wore a counsellor's uniform and sported a close-cropped military style haircut. Not that Marie-Claire had an eye trained enough to recognise it, but he also carried himself with a sort of military parade ground efficiency. Despite middle age, he was in obviously good shape - better in fact than some of the twenty year old men from the main camp serving as guards. He carried a clipboard underneath his right arm, and approached the group, and then walked up and down the line of girls like he was inspecting soldiers. If he liked what he saw, he showed no sign of it. He passed by Marie-Claire twice and on both occasions his gaze seemed hard and disapproving. Finally, he stopped in front of the group of campers, and addressed them.

"Welcome to Camp Spercheios and the Action for Troubled Teens program." said the senior counsellor, although his tone of voice and the expressed etched into his face did not seem to indicate that his audience were in fact welcome. "I can see from the look on your faces that some of you are not happy to be here. Well, you should be grateful. Your parents sent you here because despite your behaviour they love you. Your parents love you and they want to help you. But it is precisely their love which means they can't help you themselves. No, girls, they need me to help you. And why? Because I do not love you. I am not a shoulder to cry on. I am not a sympathetic ear. I am not going to tuck you in, kiss you on the forehead and tell you that everything is going to be alright! Make no mistake, girls, if your behaviour does not change everything is not going to be alright. You came here out of love, but you will not be treated lovingly while you are here, not the lovingly that you are used to anyway, not the soft and indulgent love which has spoiled you and most of your generation, but tough love."

The absurd injustice of the situation hit Marie-Claire again, and by the looks on the faces of some the other girls, she could tell she was not alone. How was it exactly that her parents had the right to have her kidnapped and sent to a distant island to be lectured about tough love? No doubt tough love was every bit as unpleasant as its name sounded. Marie-Claire folded her arms in front of her and scowled, not so much as at the tough looking man lecturing them with a clipboard under his arm, or at any of the other counsellor, but just at her general situation.

"This is bullshit!" declared the big Indian girl, Dora, giving voice to what Marie-Claire and many of the other girls felt. "The rest of you have fun, because I am leaving."

"You're not going anywhere." the man with the clipboard said non-chalantly.

"Fuck you, Sergeant-Major wanna be." Dora sneered. "It's a free country and you can't make me."

With that, Dora turned back to the dormitory to collect her things. Two young men moved in front of the door and barred her entry. The man with the clipboard ignored the developing scene and decided to continue his monologue.

"My name is Grégoire Perontones. I spent twenty years in the Imperial Army Legions, so I know all about tough love. I also know about the outdoors, and the power of fresh air and exercise. If you do as you're told, and fully participate in the program, you'll leave here fitter, stronger, and happier. If you fight me, you'll lose." the man with the clipboard continued.

Seeing that the young men guarding the dorm weren't going to let her in, Dora decided she would just walk out the front gate. Somehow, something in the back of her head told her that she wouldn't be allowed to leave, but she needed to try anyway. The other girls watched on with baited breath, increasingly distracted from Perontones and his speech. Dora walked purposefully back by them, past Perontones, and towards the gates in the distance. This time the camper-guards from the main part of Camp Spercheios couldn't just stand in the way - there was too much open space - so they had to grab Dora to stop her.

"Let go of me." Dora growled.

Dora wasn't intimidated by them - she was nearly the same size as the man who had grabbed her and was used to standing up for herself. She pulled her arms out of the man's grip, and then he tried to grab her again, around the torso this time. She shoved him backwards, catching him off-balance and nearly knocking him over. The next nearest guard quickened his pace, and leapt at her. She caught him with an elbow to the face, and then made a start, trying to run to the gate. The first man jumped on her, tackling her like they were in a rugby match, and in a few moments the two men together overpowered her and dragged her to her feet. Perontones had turned around and was watching the confrontation with a growing look of impatience and irritation on his face. He looked across to Madame Tersonier, and nodded. She went off to the second largest of the three buildings in the girls camp, taking one of the men from the main part of the camp with her. As Dora was dragged back to the line by the two men, it was clear that the one she had elbowed in the face had a busted lip. She swore and struggled all the way.

"Violence is unacceptable." Perontones told the girls. To Marie-Claire it seemed that he was talking more to the rest of the group than to Dora herself. Perontones looked down to his clipboard and flicked through the pages. "Ah. Eudora Makoline. It says here that you're violent and defiant, and that you're in a gang. Your parents are worried you're going to be kicked out of school because you keep getting into fights. You're headstrong and foul-mouthed..."

"This is bullshit!" Dora repeated, even angrier now that she was being physically restrained. "We're not criminals! You can't keep us here!"

"You're on the way to being a criminal, Eudora." Perontones shrugged.

Tersonier and the young man returned from the third building with a pommel horse carried between them and a thick cane, about a metre long. As they saw the cane in particular, a lot of the girls tensed up in dreadful anticipation. Marie-Claire watched on uncomprehendingly. Her school, one of the most prestigious girls schools in Pantocratoria, may have been strict, but it had stopped caning students years ago. She'd never seen a cane and certainly never seen a child be hit with one. It already seemed absurdist that they were standing here in this military-style boot camp, so perhaps her mind could be forgiven for not assimilating the fresh data.

"You can't be serious." Dora declared, but she knew already that the opposite was true. "I was just trying to leave! You can't fucking keep us here like prisoners!"

"You're not prisoners, you're children. We are your legal guardians, entrusted by your parents with your care." Perontones said indifferently as the horse was placed in front of the increasingly horrified girls. "Some of you other girls sent here for violent behaviour should watch particularly closely."

Perontones motioned for the men holding Dora to bring her forward. She was frog marched over to the pommel horse and then turned around to face the other girls.

"You want me to ask for forgiveness? Fuck you! We don't have to stay here, this is bullshit!" Dora yelled over her shoulder at Perontones as the men holding her pulled her over the horse.

There were straps on the corners of the horse, straps which were now fastened to Dora's arms just under the elbows, holding her in a bent forward position, leaning over the horse, looking at the other girls. Marie-Claire made eye contact with her and only now truly understood that they were going to hit Dora with the cane. The understanding came to her not through the behaviour of the adults strapping her to the horse - for it still made no sense to her that adults would beat a child (even a big, tough, angry-looking child like Dora) with a stick - but through the look of desperation in Dora's eyes which belied the furious defiance written on her face. The young men now pulled Dora's legs apart - not grotesquely so but more than enough to expose her to the full violence of the ordeal to follow. Her legs were strapped in place as well, and the young men took up places on either side of the horse as Tersonier pulled Dora's skirt up and then made a few practice swings in the air with the cane.

"I'm not begging you fucking psychos!" Dora yelled. She had been in plenty of fights, and been hurt plenty of times. She braced herself and determined not to give them the satisfaction of hearing her cry or plead.

"Violence will be met with violence." Perontones told the assembled girls. "A girl who raises a hand to a counsellor, an assistant, or another girl will be punished like this. Take note. Proceed, if you please, Madame Tersonier."

Marie-Claire watched in stupefied horror as Madame Tersonier lean but strong arms swung the cane into the restrained Dora. Since Dora was facing Marie-Claire and the other girls, they couldn't see exactly where the cane had landed, but it was clearly somewhere on her upper thighs or buttocks. Dora gritted her teeth but didn't flinch. Another blow followed, and another, and Dora breathed heavily but otherwise betrayed none of the pain she was surely feeling. More blows followed, in quick succession, and the strain began to make itself obvious on Dora's face as she struggled to retain her composure. Marie-Claire had no idea how many strokes had fallen or how much time had passed when Dora's composure started to crack - it had seemed like an eternity. Marie-Claire and a few other girls started to look away as grunts of pain escaped Dora's lips, turning to moans and then yelps as the blows kept coming. Dora's face contorted as she struggled to retain control, and refused to let herself cry.

"Don't you dare look away!" Perontones barked at Marie-Claire and the other girls who were averting their eyes. He pointed at the black girl in the group in particular. "You watch it, girl!"

Marie-Claire's heart sank as the looks of pained defiance finally faded from Dora's face and were replaced with agonised contortions. As a particularly vicious blow fell right on the flesh between her thighs and buttocks, Dora finally cracked and cried out loudly in pain. From there it was if an emotional wall had been broken down by the blow. Tears welled in her eyes and the next blow saw her cry out again, and the next one sob, and then Tersonier, sensing she was finally getting somewhere, put all of her energy into a flurry of six hard blows in lightning quick succession, which saw Dora's sobs of pain turn into full-blown sobbing, her eyes on the dirt in front of her, crying both in pain and from the shame of letting the bastards see her cry.

"Thank you, Madame Tersonier, that's all for now." Perontones said, ending the caning.

Perontones took a few steps towards the other nineteen girls, leaving the broken, sobbing form of Dora the big tough Indian ganger tied to the pommel horse behind him. He flicked through the pages on his clipboard as the nineteen girls looked between him and Dora. Marie-Claire had the dreadful sense of how much worse things could still get for her after being kidnapped from her own bed the night before, and felt sickened at the thought of how severely resistance to the injustice of their situation would be punished.

"Brunhilde Michreon." Perontones read from the next sheet on his clipboard, and looked at the one black girl in the group. "Step forward."

Unlike Dora, Brunhilde Michreon was normal-sized for a fourteen year-old girl. She was dark-skinned, and normally had a tough expression on her face, but unlike Dora, Marie-Claire had a sense that the toughness was skin deep only. Brunhilde wasn't big, didn't look particularly strong, and besides which, at that very moment she didn't look tough, she looked frightened. She looked up at Perontones but only briefly, focussing more on the sobbing Dora.

"You're from Marlund, aren't you girl?" Perontones asked her. His tone was neutral, as if Dora wasn't still behind him sobbing from a vicious caning given at this direction. "Half-caste, right? Mother was a slave, father was a Marlunder?"

"Yes, sir." Brunhilde answered him uncertainly.

"Mother died, and after the war you were adopted by a nice Pantocratorian couple, isn't that so?" Perontones asked.

"Yes, sir." Brunhilde answered. Until what she had just witnessed she had been cursing her adopted parents for sending her to this place - now she would do anything to be allowed to go back home to them.

"I was in Marlund." Perontones remembered. The memory seemed to give him pause for a few moments. "You would have been pretty young when the war happened. Do you remember much from your days as a slave, girl?"

"A little bit, sir. Yes." Brunhilde answered, breathing nervously.

"Tell me, Brunhilde, what would have happened back on the plantation to a girl about your age who was..." Perontones began, and looked down on his clipboard to read the next part. "Violent, defiant, dishonest and promiscuous. That's quite a disappointment you turned out to be to the kind-hearted people who took you in, huh? Do you remember how they used to punish coloured slaves back on the plantation?"

Brunhilde felt sick to her stomach as she remembered the whippings. She had been too young to be victim to any of them, but old enough to watch with horror girls whipped near to death for fighting back. Blood and screams built Marlund's mighty plantations.

"Yes, sir, I remember." Brunhilde nodded. Tears welled in her eyes.

"I never saw one." Perontones shook his head. "But I remember seeing the scars on the people we freed as we came through the plantations. Mostly their masters had fled before the army, of course. But the slaves they left behind told the story well enough. So tell me, Brunhilde, how would the punishment a coloured girl like you would receive for being violent, defiant and dishonest back on the plantation be, compared to what just happened to that Indian?"

He gestured Dora contemptuously with his tumb. Brunhilde breathed heavily, filled with sudden fear and anxiety. She didn't answer, but in her mind's eye she visualised being whipped for resisting a guard, whipped like the way she could remember the older girls being whipped back when she was a slave in Marlund.

"Well, girl, was it worse? Or lighter?" Perontones pressed.

"Worse, sir, it was worse." Brunhilde answered between heavy breaths.

"Are you going to give me cause to punish you like that, Brunhilde?" Perontones demanded.

"No, sir, please, I promise." Brunhilde spromised urgently.

"No violence." Perontones reiterated. "No defiance. No lying. And that goes for the rest of you too. OK girl, get back in line."

"Thank you, sir." Brunhilde squeaked and stepped back in line.

Perontones called them up one after the other, albeit without such horrific memories to dredge up. He went through the reasons for each girl's referral to the "Action for Troubled Teens" program from his clipboard, sometimes reading them out and sometimes asking the girls to tell him why they thought they were there. A few girls through the interviews, Madame Tersonier and two guards untied Dora and led her away to the dormitory to recover from the caning Tersonier had administered. Each girl's story was different, but distilled to a few lines about behaviour problems - promiscuity was the most common, but the others included violence, drugs, petty theft, even eating disorders. In time Perontones got to Marie-Claire.

"Marie-Claire Romain." he called out. "Come forward."

"Sir." Marie-Claire complied, stepping forward.

"You're here for... unnatural behaviour." Perontones read. "Impressively vague. Why don't you tell us why you're here?"

"Yes, sir." Marie-Claire began. She didn't want to tell the story but could clearly see that she had no other choice, so she had resolved to tell it as dispassionately as she could. "I was caught kissing another girl in boarding school, sir."

"And why did you do a thing like that, Marie-Claire?" Perontones asked in a condescending tone.

"I'm a lesbian, sir." Marie-Claire answered, again as neutrally as possible. She heard some whispering from the other girls and felt their eyes on her, but she pretended it didn't bother her.

"Oh sweetheart!" Perontones said in the tone of a parent whose child has self-inflicted a fairly ridiculous boo-boo. "Lesbian is a label other people put on you. It's a foreign word. It isn't who you are, not really. Don't worry, we can fix you." He gave her an inappropriately familiar pat on the shoulder and then motioned for her to step back. He then addressed the rest of the group in a loud voice. "Of course I don't expect this to be a problem, but for the safety of the rest of you, all the beds in the dormitory belonging to girls who share Marie-Claire's proclivities and lack of self-control have been labelled clearly with pink triangles. All girls except the ones assigned to those beds are to strictly keep away from those beds. Now, let me see... Kara Toles, step forward."

Marie-Claire still felt the eyes of some of the other campers on her as she stepped back and the pretty, lighter-skinned Indian girl stepped forward.

"So, Kara, why are you here?" Perontones asked her.

"Uhh..." the girl began. "Well, I... well I've... been with... a lot of boys, sir."

"Of course you have." Perontones nodded as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Says here you're half-caste, half-Indian, half-Roman. The call of that devil's blood is hard to resist, isn't it?"

"Uhhh..." Kara blanched. She was used to dealing with prejudice about being half-Indian, but she was rarely asked to confirm it. "I just like boys, sir."

The questioning went on, with girl after girl questioned. Marie-Claire was heartened to find that there were three other girls whose "rap sheets" (for want of a better expression) indicated that they too had been caught in compromising positions with other girls. What remained to be seen was how Perontones intended to "fix" them...

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

Marie-Claire had been told by her mother than the Emperor's daughters were watched as they went to sleep every night. She could remember clearly telling her mother that it would be creepy and scary to be watched as one fell asleep. That first night at Camp Spercheios she felt entirely vindicated in her opinion. Madame Tersonier and the other female counsellors stalked up and down the dormitory floor. None of the campers was allowed to talk to her fellow inmates, nor even to get out of bed except to go to the bathroom. Marie-Claire was not free from observation in the bathroom either. The counsellor led her across the dormitory floor to the bathroom, and then stood there in front of her with her arms folded and an irritated expression on her face, while she waited for Marie-Claire to use the toilet. Marie-Claire found that when it came to it, she couldn't actually go, not with the counsellor watching her, and despite some whispered pleading to that effect she was not left alone, and so went back to bed still with a full bladder shortly after. She had gotten more sleep on the night of her abduction.

After a mostly sleepless night Marie-Claire and the other girls were woken at the crack of dawn, before the sun had actually lit up the sky. The counsellors shouted and clapped at them until they got out of their beds, and then had them make their sheets. Marie-Claire finished quickly and was allowed to go to the bathroom again, once more under close supervision, but this time the physical need to urinate was so great that it didn't matter. She re-emerged from the bathroom as the last stragglers were finishing making their beds. Then they were told to grab their toiletries, footwear and a change of clothes, and were marched out of the dormitory across to the next largest building in the girls camp. Once inside they were led into a long communal shower room, with linoleum across the floors and half-way up the walls, and waterproof paint on the ceiling and upper walls, with ten showerheads mounted on each wall, with accompanying taps beneath them, and simple steel drains on the floor. The floor subtly sloped down towards the walls to stop water pooling in the middle. There were no barriers between stalls. On the far wall, far back from the showers, were open shelves where the girls could put their dry clothes, and where they would find towels.

"But, everyone will see us!" one of the girls, a 'Frank', protested to Madame Tersonier. The girl's Christian name was Stephanie, Marie-Claire recalled, but she couldn't remember the surname.

"This isn't a luxury resort." Tersonier said unsympathetically with a shrug of her shoulders.

Stephanie looked at Marie-Claire and then at one of the other girls who had a pink triangle over her bed, Celene. Marie-Claire was confused at first, but realisation dawned on her just before the words were actually vocalised.

"But madame, the lesbians will look at us!" Stephanie whined, lowering her voice because she didn't particularly want to be overheard by the aforementioned lesbians, but it was of course impossible to avoid.

"If you were more modest before you came here, perhaps you needn't have come here. Now get undressed and start showering." Tersonier clucked back at Stephanie.

What followed was a horribly awkward and humiliating experience, especially for Marie-Claire, Celene and the other two girls who liked girls. Marie-Claire stared at her feet almost the whole time, making a point to avoid looking at anybody around her, although she couldn't help herself stealing a glance at the dozens of dark purple lines across Dora's buttocks and upper thighs. She shuddered and swore she would not give these awful people cause to cane her like that. Everyone rushed to finish their showers and wrap themselves in towels as quickly as possible, under the watchful eyes of Tersonier and the other female counsellors. Marie-Claire kept her eyes fixed on her own feet as she changed into her clothes - a knee length sports skirt, a plain cotton T-shirt, white socks and her brand new running shoes. They had been told to dress for exercise, after all. The girls were then permitted to brush their hair for two minutes, and to tie it back into a single pony tail, and they were ready for the day. The experience of showering and dressing together like that had caused a collective hush, as if no member of the group was willing to talk because of the shame.

As they emerged from the building, the sun had appeared in the sky, but it was still very early. Perontones was there waiting for them with three young men from the other side of Camp Spercheios, with a whistle hanging from around his neck.

"Exercise is a vital part of the Action for Troubled Teens program." Perontones began in lieu of a good morning. "We are going to start the day with a jog. Nothing too fast, you should all be able to keep up the pace. See that you do."

Then he picked up the whistle, put it to his lips, and blew. Then he started jogging off towards the gate. After hesitating for a few seconds, the girls started after him, being encouraged by directions and the occasional jeer by the guards and two of the younger female counsellors, who all jogged along with them. Their route took them out of the gate, through the high, barbed-wire topped fences of the female camp, and onto a walking track through the scrubland towards the male side of Camp Spercheios. In addition to being relatively warm even in the early morning, Saint Methodios Island also had charming birds which chirped merrily at the campers as they jogged across the valley. Marie-Claire envied them, and briefly had a fantasy of tying a note around the leg of one of the birds like a carrier pigeon of old.

After about one kilometre, the girls came across the still largely asleep male camp. They jogged right into the back of the largest building, and emerged into a kitchen. The jog had not been particularly fast or far, but a few of the girls were overweight and a few more were also unused to exercise, so the sound of heavy breathing as they caught their breath filled the kitchen. Perontones gave them a minute to catch their breath then addressed them all at once.

"You will notice that you are in a kitchen." Perontones stated redundantly. "You will shortly prepare and serve breakfast for the male campers. There are hairnets and aprons underneath this bench. You will all put them on. The counsellors will assign each of you tasks. You will do them without complaining."

Marie-Claire was told to boil eggs. She began to explain to the counsellor that she didn't know how to boil eggs, but the counsellor told her she was making excuses. Without any guidance, she managed to fill a pot with water and get it on a flame, but she put eggs into it long before the water was boiling. Consequently her first batch of eggs was effective warm but raw. When her water finally started boiling she realised she had made a mistake, and tried to put the eggs she had just removed back into the water, but broke several on the way, and splashed herself with boiling water as she plopped the eggs into the pot. It wasn't a big splash - just a little on her left hand, but it left a little burn and she squealed about it.

"Are you a total imbecile?" the counsellor hissed at her, indicating the broken eggs.

"I told you, madame, please, I don't know how to boil eggs!" Marie-Claire answered.

"How old are you?" the counsellor demanded.

"Fifteen, madame." Marie-Claire answered. She knew it was vaguely ridiculous in the counsellor's eyes that she didn't know how to boil eggs but it was honestly never a skill she had thought to need.

"Can you even tie your own shoes?" the counsellor asked in disgust. Marie-Claire didn't realise that she was expected to answer the question. "Well, can you, idiot?"

"Yes, madame, I can tie my own shoes." Marie-Claire answered angrily.

"You are deliberately sabotaging your own egg-making just to be manipulative." the counsellor declared.

"No, madame, I'm not!" Marie-Claire insisted.

"You'll soon learn you can't get out of work around here." the counsellor declared. "Fine. Emilie! Come over here and take over the eggs. You get over to the toaster and start toasting and buttering bread. You can do that, can't you?"

"Yes, madame." Marie-Claire answered through gritted teeth.

The two girls swapped jobs. Emilie was another one of the girls who had a pink triangle over her bed. She was taller than Marie-Claire, and overweight, but Marie-Claire judged that she was about the same age. She had fair skin and blonde hair, short by Pantocratorian standards, cut to about shoulder height. Marie-Claire tried to say something to Emilie but the counsellor's glare silenced her. Marie-Claire remembered the bruises she saw on Dora's legs that morning and decided that working in silence was the best thing she could do at that very moment.

Half an hour later, and young men from about the age of 19 through to about 23 were filing into the dining hall. Marie-Claire, Kara, and Stephanie were selected by Perontones to serve the men as they came forward in their line with their trays.

"Don't forget to smile, girls." Perontones told them, looking at Marie-Claire in particular, whom he judged to be looking particularly sullen.

He then went back into the kitchen, leaving the three pretty girls behind the counter. The men came forward with their trays, and the girls got to work.

"We're supposed to smile?" Marie-Claire said between "customers" to Kara. "I can't believe that guy."

"Hi!" Kara beamed at the next man in the queue. "What can I get for you this morning?"

Marie-Claire rolled her eyes at Kara's compliance. She could take being told to make eggs or butter toast, but acting like she was happy about it was a bridge too far for Marie-Claire's pride. Kara, on the other hand, seemed to go out of her way to be as bubbly and confectionary as possible to the hungry campers. Kara stood between Marie-Claire and Stephanie, so any attempt at a conversation with Stephanie was also futile.

After the breakfast service was over, the girls in the kitchen cleaned up in there, while the girls who had worked on the counter went about bussing trays into the kitchen to be cleaned up, and cleaning up spills or other mess from the tables and floor. Marie-Claire was picking up one such tray from the far end of the hall, when she finally looked up at the wall above the serving counter. There was, of course, the portrait of the Emperor, the Crucifix, and the icon of the Blessed Virgin, but there was also a picture of a strange woman in a military-style uniform, next to the portrait of the Emperor. It wasn't a Pantocratorian uniform, but Marie-Claire had nevertheless the distinct feeling she had seen this woman on TV before. Then it dawned on her in a stunning realisation which would have come to a slightly older person immediately.

The woman in the portrait was Bridgette Iesus. Where the fuck had her parents sent her?

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

The girls didn't have their own breakfast until they had jogged back to the female camp. After breakfast, the girls were assembled again in front of their dormitory. Perontones, once again with clipboard in hand, walked up and down the line of assembled campers. He smiled when he saw that Dora couldn't meet his gaze. Brunhilde couldn't either, although she had never had a finger laid on her, which seemed to please Perontones as well. Marie-Claire was filled with loathing for the man. She made sure that she met his gaze when he walked by her place in line. He didn't seem to take any special note of her silent defiance. After this silent inspection, Perontones then addressed one of the female camp counsellors who had accompanied them to the male camp that morning.

"Madame Vasta, did you note any bad behaviour this morning?" Perontones asked, passing his eyes over the girls again.

"Yes, Monsieur Perontones." the counsellor answered. She too looked at the girls. Marie-Claire felt her gaze linger on her, but then settle on another girl. "Kara."

"Step forward, Kara." Perontones said in a calm tone of command.

Kara Toles, the very pretty half-Indian girl with the perfect figure who had served breakfast alongside Marie-Claire, stepped forward. Her heart shaped face betrayed shock and fear, and she looked at Vasta the camp counsellor.

"Madame!" Kara protested. "I didn't..."

"Silence!" Perontones barked. "You only need speak when spoken to."

Kara closed her mouth and pouted at the injustice of it all. Memories of the other Indian girl, Dora, being caned yesterday rushed to mind.

"Go on, Madame Vasta." Perontones said politely to his colleague.

"Kara was shamelessly flirting with the boys, the young men, I should rather say, over breakfast." Vasta declared, flashing Kara a cold, disapproving glare.

"But sir! You told us to smile!" Kara protested.

"Be quiet!" Perontones barked at her again. "Nobody was talking to you."

Kara closed her mouth again and stomped her foot. She looked at the other girls as if entreating them to intervene on her behalf. Everyone was silent. Marie-Claire scowled and then, to her surprise, heard her own voice.

"She's right, sir. You told us to smile for them." Marie-Claire said.

"This has nothing to do with you, and unless you'd like it to have something to do with you, you had best keep that insolent mouth closed." Perontones warned her, gesturing in her direction with his clipboard.

"She was obeying you, sir!" Marie-Claire insisted.

"You step forward too then, Marie-Claire." Perontones answered in a smug, superior tone.

His eyes narrowed as he watched Marie-Claire take two steps forward. Marie-Claire already knew that she shouldn't have opened her mouth, and that it wouldn't help Kara anyway. She could feel her heart racing and adrenaline surge through her body. She was scared about what was going to happen to her, but knew she couldn't bring herself to apologise or otherwise beg off. Next to her, Kara glanced backwards at Dora and trembled.

"Kara, you like boys looking at you, don't you?" Perontones asked her. It was a question designed to make its subject feel shame.

"I'm sorry, sir, I'm really sorry." Kara offered weakly.

"Don't cry now, hush." Perontones said, in a mock tone of comfort. "Nobody's going to cane you. Only violence is met with violence around here."

"Really?" Kara exclaimed hopefully, amazed at the apparent reprieve.

"Now, answer the question." Perontones said. "You like people looking at you, don't you?"

"Umm..." Kara mumbled. The question was leading somewhere dark, she knew it. She shrugged. "Yes, sir. A bit. I do."

"Well we're going to teach you that making a display of yourself isn't fun." Perontones told her. "Other than half-caste hussies, do you know what else men look at it? Women too, for that matter?"

"N... no, sir?" Kara replied.

"Statues." Perontones smiled. "You're going to play at being a statue today while the rest of the girls play sports."

"Uhh... OK, sir." Kara answered, uncertain what playing at being a statue meant.

"Now, Marie-Claire... what was your name again?" Perontones directed himself to Marie-Claire.

"Romain, sir." Marie-Claire answered. He knows. she thought to herself. The men who abducted her in the middle of the night certainly knew who she really was, and she imagined that at least the senior people here at the camp must have known as well despite the name which had been written on the admission forms.

"Right." Perontones nodded, tongue-in-cheek. "Well, what are we going to do with you, Marie-Claire Romain? Interfering in things which don't concern you. What do you think, Madame Vasta?"

"She's lazy and defiant." Vasta declared. "At breakfast she pretended she wasn't able to boil eggs, and even ruined a few and affected to give herself a little burn on her hand to try manipulate me into reducing her duties. I think she needs to learn the importance of hard work, Monsieur Perontones."

"Insightful, madame." Perontones nodded. "I have a project in mind which would do nicely. You can stay here and work, Marie-Claire, while the other girls go play. I don't want you leering too much at the pretty little statue though, hmm?"

Like Kara, Marie-Claire also felt relieved that there was to be no caning. She knew she wouldn't be able to stand up to it even a fraction as well as Dora had. She fancied she could do whatever work they gave her just fine. Perontones smiled at both of them, and at the rest of the girls, and then looked to one of the young men from the main camp who served as assistant counsellors/guards.

"Manuel, can you fetch me a wooden block and a shovel from Building 2?" Perontones asked. As the guard went off to obey, he turned to Marie-Claire. "Let's start with you first. See down by the side here? I want you to dig us a hole."

"A hole?" Marie-Claire repeated.

"That's right. About two feet by four feet, two feet deep. The boys'll see you get the size right." Perontones said.

"I can dig a hole, sir." Marie-Claire nodded. She had never dug a hole before, but she had used a garden spade to change pots on pot plants. It didn't seem difficult.

"Good." Perontones smiled insincerely.

The guard returned with the shovel and a wooden block - what looked to be a spare stilt from when the demountable buildings of the camp were first installed. Perontones took the shovel and handed it to Marie-Claire, and she accepted it rather smugly. Dig a hole. Whatever. Perontones pointed at the ground, and the guard dropped the wooden block on it. Perontones manipulated it with his foot, so that it stood on its short edge, just under a foot high.

"Come here, Kara." Perontones said. Kara complied. "It will probably be easier if you take off those running shoes."

Kara looked at the block and at her shoes, guessed what she was supposed to do, and so took off her shoes and socks. She put the socks inside her shoes and set them aside.

"Shall I stand on the block?" Kara asked Perontones.

"Yes, up you go." Perontones nodded.

Kara stepped up on the block gingerly. She was only a slight thing, so although the block was only about five inches wide, square at both ends, she could stand up on it, although she needed to hold Perontones' hand briefly to stabilise herself. Standing up on the block she was only a little taller than Perontones. She shifted about - the shape of the block meant that she could only really stand on the balls of her feet otherwise she'd hurt her arches on the hard wooden edges.

"Good, now you're a statue." Perontones smiled, and turned to the rest of the girls. "OK, the rest of us are going to jog down to the ovals for sports and exercise. I hope you two learn from your punishments."

With that, he picked up his whistle, blew it, and then led the rest of the girls off at a jog, accompanied by two female camp counsellors and four of the young men who served as guards/assistant counsellors. Madame Vasta and a handful of guards remained with Kara up on her block and Marie-Claire standing by with her shovel. They all stood there (or, in Kara's case, balanced there) in relative silence for a minute while Perontones and the others disappeared from view. Then Vasta turned to the guards.

"If the Indian girl falls off the block, whip her with your belt until she gets back onto it." the spectacled woman told the young men. She looked up to Kara who suddenly looked frightened again. "You will stay up there, playing statue, until the other campers come back from the sports fields. You won't come down for any reason, not even by accident, understand?"

"Y...yes, madame." Kara answered, already starting to wonder how long the rest of the group would be.

"Now, Marie-Claire, follow me." Vasta said, leading Marie-Claire over slightly to the side of the dormitory. "You will dig your hole here. A rectangle, about two feet deep. Between these corners..." Vasta used the point of her shoe to mark corners roughly according to Perontones' specifications. "Go."

Marie-Claire started digging and Kara kept on balancing. Well, truthfully, Kara balanced competently enough, but Marie-Claire more scratched around in the dirt with the shovel. She knew she was supposed to use her foot to drive it down, but was getting the angle wrong, and generally making a mess of things. The audience watched her ineffectually flail at the earth with the shovel for a few minutes before Vasta marched back over to her.

"Cut the bullshit, Marie-Claire!" Vasta snapped at her. "First you can't boil an egg, now you can't dig a God damned hole?"

"I'm trying!" Marie-Claire insisted, her frustration making her protest come out as a whine more than an objection to being talked to like that.

"So you want me to believe you are too stupid to use a shovel?" Vasta demanded.

"No, I..." Marie-Claire mumbled, still trying to shovel without any meaningful force.

"Put your back into it!" Vasta scolded.

Finally, Marie-Claire pushed on the shovel enough to actually shift a reasonable amount of dirt. As she scooped it away out of the rectangle, she realised that digging a hole of the size specified was going to take a while.

***

The sun had reached its zenith in the sky over Saint Methodios. Marie-Claire had been digging in the heat of tropical Autumn for several hours - what had seemed wonderfully pleasant warmth when she had first arrived now felt to her like an oven. The fair skin of her arms, calves and cheeks burned in the sun and sweat matted her hair and made her clothes sticky. There was still a lot of hole left to dig. She had long ago started to wonder at the purpose of digging the hole and had come to the conclusion that it was pointless busy work given to her as a punishment only. She would probably be told to fill it again immediately. The thought made her angry, which helped give her the energy to keep shovelling. She was starting to get hungry, but mostly she was thirsty, so thirsty. She paused for a minute to look over at Kara, wobbling on her block in the noon heat.

Poor Kara. She too was drenched in sweat, her beautiful long black hair a matted, sun-baked mess. Her blouse stuck to her perfect form, and had been dirtied from her several falls to the loose, dry earth below. Her pretty face was contorted in agony and her arms throbbed from being held up and out for long to help herself keep balance, and her eyes were red from crying. She wobbled continuously because she had to keep moving her body, especially her legs, because of the pain from maintaining the unnatural position up on the stilt. Her skin had turned a little redder in the sun too, although due to her natural complexion, she probably wouldn't burn like Marie-Claire. There was an angry red welt across the backs of her calves from the last time she had fallen off and been whipped by a camper's brown leather belt.

"Please, I can't stay up here!" Kara cried out, her voice dry and breaking.

"Statues don't talk." scoffed one of the guards, who took a drink from a bottle of water.

Marie-Claire desperately wanted some of that water, and she knew Kara did too. Kara's calves had been cramping on and off for the past hour from a combination of dehydration and standing on the balls of her feet for so long. She needed a drink. Marie-Claire finally swallowed her pride and turned to Madame Vasta, who was sitting in a chair in the shade, reading something on a tablet computer and swipping a bottle of water.

"Madame! We need water!" Marie-Claire said insistently. "Please! Kara especially, madame."

"You can have water when your hole is finished." Vasta answered without looking up.

There was a yell, and Kara fell off her stilt again, waving her arms desperately on her way down, trying to regain her balance. She hit the ground hard, but struggled up to her feet again as quickly as she could, because one of the guards was next to her in a moment, belt in hand.

"Please don't hit me!" Kara begged. "I'm getting back up!"

The guard struck her across her back with the belt regardless as she bent over to stand the block back up again after it had tumbled over when she had fallen. She cried out but scampered up back on top of the block again. After a few woobly moments she regained her balance, and started to breathe heavily in relief. Everytime she fell over and climbed back up, she generally had a couple of minutes before the cramping got so bad again that she had to start moving again, inevitably leading to wobbling and teetering and then finally, falling. This time, she chose to use these brief, bearable moments to pray. She wasn't very religious but begging the people around her for mercy had thus far been ineffective.

"Theotoke Parthene..." she began, praying at a mumble in her native Greek for mercy from the Mother of God.

***

The other campers had arrived back after about another hour. They all looked tired and sweaty from a morning of exercise and sport down at the sport fields, but fatigue gave way to horror as they saw Kara "playing statue" on their return. The pretty, bubbly fourteen year-old was erased, replaced with a truly piteous creature crying tearless sobs, at that moment squatting rather immodestly on top of the stilt, one purple foot on top of another, her midnight hair soaked through, her skirt and blouse filthy from all the times she had fallen into the dirt. Her arms, held out on either side for balance, shook from fatigue and cramps, and if the campers looked closely they would see that they, like Kara's calves, showed belt marks. Kara forced herself up into more of a standing position as she at last became aware of the return she had longed for because it brought with it the promised end of her torment.

Behind Kara, Marie-Claire continued to dig her hole, also dirty and sweaty, not to mention thirsty, but the suffering of the young girl was so much more immediate that nobody paid Marie-Claire much mind. Perontones ignored Marie-Claire too and walked over to Kara. A warm, admiring smile stretched across the ex-military man's face.

"How do you like playing statue, Kara?" Perontones asked sweetly, like Kara was a little child playing in the sandpit and he was a father pretending to be curious about the sandcastle she had built. It was a condescending tone at the best of times, but Kara didn't even notice it.

"Please let me come down, sir!" Kara squeaked. She would have blubbered but she was too dehydrated to blubber, and her voice cracked and strained even at a whisper.

Perontones put his hands around Kara's waist - he could nearly completely close them around her little waist - and lifted her down from the wooden block effortlessly to the ground. She let her arms down and when he removed his hands she fell down to her knees. Perontones patted her on the head.

"Do you want everybody to look at you now, Kara?" he asked her, loud enough for the whole group to hear.

Kara shook her head, and vocalised the only thing she wanted right now. "Water, please."

"Madame Vasta," Perontones called out. "Please take Kara inside, get her some water and get her showered off. She can rest for the afternoon."

"Yes, Monsieur Perontones." Vasta replied, and then dragged a willing but feeble Kara back towards Building 2, where the girls had showered that morning.

"The rest of you go to the lunch room, where Madame Tersonier will be waiting for you." Perontones told the other girls. As they obeyed, whispering to each other about poor Kara, he strode over to Marie-Claire.

"I had really hoped this hole would be finished by now." he clucked.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you." Marie-Claire said. The sarcasm in her voice was ambiguous, but it was there.

"That's bullshit, Marie-Claire, you're not sorry at all." Perontones told her. "Stop being manipulative."

"It's just busy work!" Marie-Claire whispered angrily at him. Talking normally hurt her parched throat. "What would you do if the hole was finished? Ask me to fill it."

"Yes, actually, Marie-Claire." Perontones smiled at her. "But not the way you think."

Perontones turned around and walked off towards his office in Building 3. Marie-Claire's desperate need for water got the better of her and she called out after him, straining her voice as she did so.

"Please sir, can I have some water?" Marie-Claire asked, hating that she had to beg for water. "I'm so thirsty. Please, just a little?"

"Of course, Marie-Claire." Perontones replied in mock kindness. He popped the top off his water bottle and walked back towards her. "Tell me again, what was your surname?"

"My surname?" Marie-Claire echoed. "Romain, sir."

"Ah yes, Romain." Perontones shrugged his shoulders. He stood right next to her now, his bottle of water tantalisingly close. He took a long sip from the bottle, then popped the top closed again. "You can have all the water you want when you're done. Come on, won't be too much longer now."

Perontones abruptly turned and walked away to his office. Marie-Claire leaned on her shovel and watched him go, her eyes burning in silent anger, and her dry throat burning in dehydration.

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

After finishing digging her hole, Marie-Claire had finally been allowed water, and had showered again and dressed once more in clean clothes, this time comparatively alone (that is, with no other campers, just a counsellor to watch her). By the time of the evening post-dinner group therapy session, she nearly felt human again, although her head still ached as an echo of her earlier dehydration, and she could feel the sun burn on her skin. Kara too rejoined the group for the group therapy session, although she sore all over, still feeling the after effects of the dozens of cramps she had suffered “playing statues”.

The group therapy session, chaired by Tersonier, was built around discussion about why each camper believed her parents had sent her to Camp Spercheios and what she wanted to change about herself to be “a better daughter” to her parents, and a “good citizen” of Pantocratorian society. The displays of brutality directed against Dora, Kara, and to a lesser extent Marie-Claire, helped to encourage the campers to want to please Tersonier with their answers, and so there were no outright refusals to participate. Likewise, the close intimacy in which the campers had been sleeping, showering, changing, working, and playing (barring the girls who had been punished) helped to break down inhibitions about what they were prepared to say in front of each other to some extent. Social barriers still existed between them (they were Pantocratorian after all) but they had been significantly eroded.

In their answers some girls, like Stephanie or Dora, seemed particularly resentful towards their parents, not just for sending them to Camp Spercheios, but in general. Others, like Brunhilde, seemed genuinely mournful that they had given their parents so much trouble that their parents had felt like they had to send them away. A small part of Marie-Claire, her social conditioning, wanted to feel like Brunhilde, a former slave from Marlund who had been adopted by an older Pantocratorian couple when she was six years old, who seemed to have only just realised how lucky and loved she was, and who now cursed herself for all the teenage misbehaviour which had overwhelmed the coping capacities of her adopted parents (now in their sixties). If it was her fault, after all, it was something she could fix, wasn’t it? But mostly Marie-Claire felt anger, and hurt, and these feelings drowned out any Brunhilde-like remorse she might have had for upsetting her parents.

“Marie-Claire, your turn. What have you done which forced your parents to send you here?” Tersonier asked. “And how can you change to be the faithful and loving daughter they deserve, and the citizen your fatherland and society need you to be?”

Every girl was asked more or less the same question, or at least, the question was driver from the same formula. Accept fault for being sent to Spercheios, and confess it. Accept that you are bad and broken and need to be fixed because being broken makes you unsuitable to your parents and to your country. Promise to change so that you are no longer a burden to those who love you. Although her head still throbbed from being made to work in the tropical sun without any water for most of the day, Marie-Claire couldn’t do what they wanted her to do.

“I didn’t force my parents to send me here!” Marie-Claire replied, folding her arms in front of her. She could hear gasps and feel the tension mount around her - she was the first girl to respond to this question with outright defiance. “I’m already a faithful and loving daughter, and I don’t even know what that last part of your question means, madame.”

“You said yesterday that you kissed another girl at school.” Tersonier frowned as she reminded Marie-Claire.

“The school already punished me for that!” Marie-Claire replied. “I didn’t need to be sent here too. I already learned my lesson.”

“Why did you kiss another girl?” Tersonier asked.

“I already said yesterday, I’m a lesbian.” Marie-Claire answered.

“That’s a cop out.” Tersonier rolled her eyes. “First, there’s no such thing as a lesbian. If you feel attracted to other girls it’s probably just a hormonal imbalance, a funny reaction to puberty. It’s not uncommon, and people go on to live totally normal lives as adults. And second, even given you are temporarily attracted to other girls, that doesn’t mean you have to kiss them. I don’t throw myself at every man I find attractive, nor do most women.” she flashed some reproachful glances at Kara and Stephanie in particular. “Attraction or no, you are responsible for your own actions. Take some responsibility. The lesbian excuse card does not wash it with me.”

“But madame, lots of adults are homosexual, it’s not just an adolescent phase!” objected Emilie, another one of the “pink triangle over the bed” crew.

“Lots of adults are immoral in other ways too. They steal. They cheat. They murder.” Tersonier replied to Emilie. “It doesn’t mean you should copy them. Now wait your turn, Emilie, this is Marie-Claire’s turn.”

“Fine, I kissed Élisabeth, and it was my choice. I’m responsible. So what?” Marie-Claire snapped. “My parents had me kidnapped from my own bed in the middle of the night and brought here, do you think that is a proportional response? How did I force them to do that exactly?”

“I think your attitude right now shows exactly why your parents were forced to take that action, Marie-Claire.” Tersonier answered haughtily.

Marie-Claire crossed her legs now too, and looked away rather than reply. To herself, she thought about how cold and cruel her mother could often be to her. Sending her here had been a punishment, she knew. Her mother had wanted to punish her. But this was beyond awful, beyond any punishment her transgression had merited. And most of all, how could her father have agreed to this? It must have been her mother’s idea, but why had Papa signed the paper and allowed those men to steal her away in the middle of the night? All of a sudden she realised that there were tears in her eyes, and then she became aware that everyone else was watching her, and worse, that everyone else knew she was on the verge of tears too.

“What are you thinking, Marie-Claire?” Tersonier asked. Her tone was significantly gentler - just gentle enough for Marie-Claire to bite.

“They’re supposed to love me, why did they send me here?” Marie-Claire said, only just holding back the tears.

“Because we can help you, child.” Tersonier answered with the steady confidence of somebody who had attended several seminars on child therapy before deciding that she knew everything there was to know about it.

“I don’t know...” Marie-Claire lamented. Camp Spercheios’ help felt an awful lot like punishment.

“There are things we can do to help you so that you won’t suffer from unnatural attraction to girls anymore.” Tersonier said in what she thought was a reassuring tone. “We can help you be normal. Wouldn’t you like that? To be normal?”

“Uhh... I..." Marie-Claire stammered uncertainly.

“Wouldn’t your parents like you to be normal, Marie-Claire?” Tersonier asked, twisting the knife.

“Yes, they would.” Marie-Claire nodded, and some much resisted tears finally rolled down her cheeks.

“Of course they would. Because they love you.” Tersonier smiled. “Everybody wants their daughter to be normal. Wouldn’t you like to be normal, Marie-Claire?”

“Yes, madame.” Marie-Claire answered.

Marie-Claire realised as she watched Tersonier’s face that she had conceded, and that Tersonier had won. As the seconds went on and the conversation moved onto the next girl, Marie-Claire came to regret that she had allowed Tersonier to manipulate her into giving the answers she had wanted. Later that night, when everyone was tucked into bed under Tersonier’s supervision, Marie-Claire’s thoughts returned to the conversation and to her parents.

Is that why you signed her papers, Papa? she imagined asking her father. Because you want me to be normal?

[Pantocratoria]

The Imperial Monitor
Action-Nationale to run in General Election

Controversial populist movement, Action-Nationale, has announced today on its official website that it will be endorsing candidates to run in over one hundred and fifty seats in the upcoming general election.

In a move likely to most severely impact the conservative United Christian Front by splitting its vote, Action-Nationale has registered a political party, the Party for National Action, which has nominated candidates for 153 seats out of the Imperial Parliament's existing 540 seats.

The seats in which the Party for National Action is running are mostly held by United Christian Front MPs believed to belong to the "moderate" or "Christian Democratic" factions of the governing party, including HIH Prince Constantine, the Minister for Public Safety.

The Imperial Chancellor, Sir Thierry del Moray, declared that the Government "was not worried" about the Party for National Action and stated that he "remained totally confident" that the Pantocratorian people would re-elect his government on the back of its economic performance.

The Leader of the Opposition, Hon. Isabelle Folquet of the Pantocratorian Socialist Alliance, announced that her party would direct voters to preference the Party for National Action last in its how-to-vote cards, and called upon the Imperial Chancellor to do the same.

"I call on Sir Thierry and the United Christian Front to repudiate Action-Nationale extremism and violence and to join the Opposition in putting Action-Nationale last."

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

The next morning started much the same as the last. A brief and all too public shower, a jog over to the male camp, cooking and serving breakfast for the male campers (and, Marie-Claire observed more closely this time, some suspicious and very serious looking foreigners), a jog back, having their own breakfast, and then a group sport activity. Marie-Claire had no great fondness for medicine balls, but the various medicine ball-based games they played were a great deal more pleasant than the way Kara and she had spent the same part of the day yesterday. In this setting, Perontones seemed to be little more than a particularly obnoxious Phys Ed teacher, as opposed to the cruel master of torments in the demented place Marie-Claire's parents had sent her to so that she could be "fixed".

As she and the other girls were bussing their trays after lunch, Marie-Claire was pondering just how exactly she was supposed to be fixed by playing with medicine balls, when Madame Vasta entered the cafeteria.

"Emilie, Phoebe, Marie-Claire, Celene, after you're finished cleaning up, meet me in the hall. Quick smart." Vasta told them.

The girls looked about, and Marie-Claire felt eyes settling on her and the other three girls named, and she heard the word "lesbians" being whispered. They were the four girls of the twenty whose beds had the pink triangles over them, the four girls who liked other girls. Emilie was a chubby, golden-haired Frank, sixteen, and the oldest of the four. Phoebe and Celene had more Roman features, although only Phoebe spoke Greek at home. They were younger than Marie-Claire. Celene was especially pretty, although Marie-Claire didn't think her dark, curly locks were particularly flattering. Other than their sexual orientation and nationality, they had little in common with each other, Marie-Claire had found. Although all went to church schools, only Marie-Claire was a boarder. And although, in theory, any of them could have been attending Spercheios under an alias, as Marie-Claire herself was, instinctively Marie-Claire knew that they were all commoners. Although her mother insisted that there were no meaningful class distinctions amongst commoners, Marie-Claire knew that economic station translated to social status all around the world, even in Pantocratoria, even if it counted for little next to blood in the parallel world of the nobility. In Marie-Claire's assessment, Emilie was from what called the "upper middle-class", whereas the other two girls in the unfortunate group of four were just "regular" middle-class. There was one other thing they had in common, Marie-Claire reflected as the girls assembled in the hallway with Madame Vasta and one of the guards from the male camp - they all had parents who thought they needed "fixing".

"This way, girls." Vasta told them, leading them down the hall of building 2 and into another room, while the rest of the girls went out to the assembly ground and Perontones' next activity.

The next room was smaller, and clearly set up for a particular purpose. There were four chairs, with ominous looking leather strap restraints on their arms, in front of which there was a long bench, then a flat screen television. On the opposite wall from the door there was a dark mirrored-wall, with another door in it. Marie-Claire realised, as they were led in, that the far wall wasn't a mirror at all - but rather, it was one-way glass. As she walked close by it, she could catch the faint outlines of a room beyond.

"Sit down."

"Madame, why are there straps on the chairs?" Marie-Claire asked. She knew very well that the straps were to restrain them, but she didn't want to be restrained.

"They're to stop you from interfering with the instruments." Vasta answered enigmatically. "Now sit down, or we'll make you sit down."

The young man with her folded his well-muscled arms and smiled, as if inviting the girls to give him an excuse to manhandle them. He gave Marie-Claire a smug look of warning, before passing his eyes over the others. His eyes settled on Celene, the smallest and marginally the youngest of the girls in the room, and flexed his pectoral muscles beneath his tight black T-shirt. The word "Action" was written in red across his chest. Although the girls outnumbered Vasta and this young man, he was very physically intimidating. Marie-Claire, still sore from yesterday's sunburn, decided to comply.

"Instruments, madame?" Emilie asked as she too, uncertainly, sat in a chair. "Is this some sort of medical test?"

"Yes, actually. A medical test, and your first special therapy session." Vasta explained. She looked at Marie-Claire again. "You wanted us to make you normal, remember?"

Marie-Claire didn't answer. Vasta pulled the leather restraints over her wrists tightly, murmuring for her to relax as she did so. Vasta also buckled in Emilie, next to her, while the guard buckled in Phoebe and Celene. He leaned over each one of them as he did so, his chest uncomfortably close to their faces as he buckled them in. Marie-Claire caught him placing his hand on top of Celene's left hand as he restrained her right wrist, and giving it a brief squeeze, before moving on. Celene was already unsettled.

"It's just a test, don't worry." Emilie said reassuringly, although she didn't entirely believe it.

"There's not going to be a needle, is there, madame?" Phoebe asked in her lightly Greek-accented French.

"No, Phoebe." Vasta answered. "No needles"

After all the girls were secured into their chairs, the adults disappeared through the door leading to the one-way glass. They re-emerged under a minute later, each of them holding a small leather suitcase in each hand. The cases were laid out one after the other on the bench in front of the girls, and then opened, to reveal some sort of medical-looking instrument, with knobs, and long wires attached to little electrodes, like a sort of electrocardiograph they had seen on countless medical television shows without knowing what it was or what it was called. Vasta then proceeded to attach sensors to the tips of each of their left index fingers, and larger sensors to the fronts and backs of each of their hands, and between their ring and middle fingers, again on both hands.

"We'll be monitoring your pulse and your response to stimuli from the room next door. If there is any problem, I'll come in immediately." Vasta told them. "You're very safe, and nothing can go wrong. Just relax and watch the screen."

Vasta and the man headed into the small room behind the one-way glass, and the girls looked forward at the large flatscreen television with varying degrees of trepidation. Suddenly, romantic orchestral music played as a scene from the golden age of cinema came to life on the screen. A beautiful princess in a bejewelled ballgown, like some sort of foreign version of New Rome court dress, was breathing heavily and trembling slightly in the grasp of a handsome, square-jawed prince. There was some dialogue which, out of context, didn't make a great deal of sense to Marie-Claire, who didn't watch many movies.

"Oh, this is from Amalie... No, Amalia." Emilie exclaimed.

Marie-Claire's mind raced. When she had been very small, Marie-Claire's mother would read to her and to her brothers and sister. They would gather by the fireplace, while she read to them from her armchair, huddled in front of the flames on the thick, woolen carpet, beneath the stern portraits of long dead ancestors. Of course, their mother didn't bother filling their heads with fairy tales and nonsense - she read to them from books of geneaology and history. And so, quite involuntarily, Marie-Claire recalled at once the story of a Knootian princess, the Lady Protector Amalia, who married the Crown Prince of Iesus Christi, and was executed by a mob of enraged peasants for her trouble, ending at last the reign of the House of Chamaven after three troubled centuries. And as Marie-Claire remembered all of this, on the screen, Princess Amalia was swept into the arms of Prince Andrew, and the two kissed passionately. Phoebe shifted uncomfortably in her chair, and all the girls wondered exactly why they were being shown this scene.

The costume drama from the golden age of cinema faded away, and was replaced by a scene from a far more modern film. There were two women, one with short, close-shaved hair. It was clearly a foreign film, shot in another language, and dubbed over in French.

"I don't know this one." Emilie said, puzzled.

All at once, the women on the screen embraced each other and kissed. Simultaneously, the electrodes on their hands began to shock each girl. They all cried out, shrieked, or squealed alternately, not so much in pain as in surprise. The shocks were not severe, but they were certainly unpleasant. They persisted until the women on the screen stopped kissing and the scene faded out.

"Oh shit, what is this?" shrieked Phoebe.

"Madame! Madame!" Marie-Claire called out.

"Is this for real?" Emilie exclaimed.

Another male/female romantic scene began to play on the television. Emilie recognised the film again but figured nobody was interested in the origin of the clip. As it played on, the girls braced themselves for the next scene. Marie-Claire, who was closest to the one-way glass wall, turned to it.

"Madame Vasta!" Marie-Claire shouted at the glass, urgently. "Something's wrong!"

Of course, she knew that they hadn't been shocked by accident, but by "Something's wrong!" she meant that this just wasn't right. Behind the glass, the young man in the "ACTION" T-shirt chuckled.

"Something's wrong!" he repeated in a mocking, mewling voice. The girls couldn't hear them talk on the otherside of the one-way glass. "Does this really work?"

"After a fashion." Vasta answered. She patted a therapy manual on the desk in front of her. "Electrodes on the genitals are more effective, but even then, in the few weeks we've got them, I doubt it would make enough of a difference."

On the otherside of the glass, the male/female romantic scene was replaced by another female/female one, no doubt a foreign scene. The girls all tensed up and braced to be shocked again. In truth, the fear of the shocks were worse than the shock themselves. The current produced by the small instruments in the cases on the bench in front of them was not severe. Marie-Claire looked back to the screen, saw the girls about to kiss and turned back to the mirror-like wall.

"Madaaaaame!" she shouted, with the shock kicking in half-way through the word quite changing her voice for a moment.

The shocks stopped again, and another hetereosexual kissing scene began to play. Celene started to cry, and Phoebe was trying to shake the electrodes off her hands, but the leather restraints proved effective. Emilie was breathing heavily to calm herself down.

"It's not so bad." Emilie told the others, especially the younger girls to her right. "It's not much worse than a nine volt battery really. Calm down."

"Madame!" Marie-Claire repeated insistently.

She was rewarded by Vasta opening the door and sticking her head out from behind the one-way glass.

"Marie-Claire! Turn back and watch the screen, or I shall turn up the intensity." Vasta told her.

"Madame, please, this isn't, I mean, you shouldn't..." Marie-Claire tried to explain, but was rushing her words too much and couldn't really quite make a point.

Vasta stepped over towards the bench and reached her fingers towards the knob. She looked at Marie-Claire again. Finally, Marie-Claire fell silent and looked forward at the screen. It was the indignity of being shocked like a lab-rat rather than just the pain which bothered her, and being cowed by Vasta threatening to turn up the knob just exacerbated that indignity. As the scenes continued to alternate and the girls continud to be shocked, Vasta talked with the guard behind the glass.

"So if shocking them, you know, down there, is more effective, why are you shocking their hands?" the guard asked. He watched through the glass, and Vasta could tell he actually enjoyed watching their reactions whenever the shocks resumed.

"We'd need specific parental permission, and I think it would probably cross a bridge too far for most parents." Vasta replied with a shrug of her shoulders. "Besides, it's just an aversion therapy, Manuel. It won't really fix them, not really."

"What do you mean?" Manuel asked.

"Well, as an aversion therapy, it help to stop them acting up, as it were." Vasta continued. "They'll come to associate the feelings they have towards other girls with pain, distress, or disgust. We could give them medicine to make them nausceous too, as an alternative, but it would have the same result."

Manuel smiled as he watched the younger girls cry and all four of them squirm as another wave of shocks went through their hands. He was glad that they weren't using nausea medication.

"So how do you fix them, properly?" he asked, after the scene the girls were watching transitioned back to a "safe" hetereosexual encounter.

"They have to start being actively attracted towards men, before they're really fixed." Vasta explained. She tapped her therapy manual again. "I've read about some techniques which have been used elsewhere. Highly illegal, unfortunately, even with a parental waiver."

"I imagine that if they got proper girls back instead of lesbians, the parents wouldn't complain." Manuel sniggered.

"Maybe not." Vasta said, thoughtfully. After a long pause and several rounds of shocks, she added. "I'm not equipped. For what might cure them."

"Could ask for a bigger budget for the next round of campers." Manuel shrugged.

"It's not a budget issue." Vasta answered. "You have all the equipment needed." She picked up the therapy manual and handed it to Manuel. "Chapter 22."

"Uhh... thanks." Manuel answered, and took the book.

"I can't take this much longer..." Marie-Claire complained to Emilie back in the room. Phoebe and Celene were sobbing beyond control, and Marie-Claire didn't feel far behind them.

"It's not that bad. They're just shocks." Emilie told her. "They can't hurt you."

"I know..." Marie-Claire answered. She shook herself in her chair. "But I can't keep sitting here while they shock me! It's ridiculooww!"

Marie-Claire blinked back tears as another shock lit up her hands. Emilie gritted her teeth and did her best to remain composed while the two younger girls made wild noises. As the shock faded out, Marie-Claire started to push her feet against the floor, trying to push her chair over. She lifted the front legs off the ground a little when the TV turned off, and the door next to her opened. Vasta and the male guard emerged from the room, a big book underneath the young man's arm.

"That's all for the day." Vasta said cheerfully. "We'll have our next therapy session tomorrow afternoon."

"Madame!" Marie-Claire protested, as Phoebe blubbered at the thought of a repeat session. Celene was so relieved that today's session was over that she wasn't even thinking of tomorrow.

"You're very tedious, Marie-Claire." Vasta told the girl.

"This is wrong! This is illegal!" Marie-Claire insisted. "You can't do this to us again! You can't!"

"Or what, Marie-Claire?" Vasta asked her dismissively. "You'll stomp your feet at me?"

"Or my father will..." Marie-Claire began. "He'll... he'll sue you! He'll have you on charges!"

Vasta openly laughed at her. The young man, Manuel, chuckled to himself as he started to unbuckle the younger girls. He patted Celene's head and ran his hand through her hair as if to soothe her while he let her go.

"Don't laugh!" Marie-Claire yelled at Vasta, at last giving away to tears.

"Oh, you stupid girl." Vasta clucked in delight. "Your father signed the papers, remember Marie-Claire? Sweetheart, you father asked us to do this to you."

"No, no he didn't know!" Marie-Claire insisted.

"Of course he knew." Vasta answered. "Your parents were told all about the therapy techniques used in the Action for Troubled Teens Program, and they signed off on all of them."

"It's not true, he didn't read all of it." Marie-Claire said aloud, as Vasta pulled the electrodes off her right hand and unbuckled her restraints.

"He knew, Marie-Claire." Vasta told her simply.

Marie-Claire pulled her right hand up and began to swing it. Memories of Dora being caned flashed before her eyes, and she stopped herself from slapping Vasta at the last minute. Vasta pulled back a little by reflex, and then her face turned dark with fury.

"It is a good thing you stopped yourself at the last minute, girl." Vasta spat. "Nevertheless, I will report this to Monsieur Perontones."

"I... I didn't..." Marie-Claire said, afraid she'd be caned anyway.

"No, you didn't." Vasta agreed. "But you were going to. We're keeping our eyes on you. Defiance is a most unbecoming trait in a young lady, Marie-Claire."

[Pantocratoria]

Camp Spercheios
Saint Methodios Island, Pantocratoria

Marie-Claire had decided that group therapy was a cruel and unusual form of punishment which ought to be illegal. Perontones and Tersonier jointly chaired that evening's group therapy session, and it started out despicably. Brunhilde Michreon, the black girl who had been born as a slave on a plantation in Marlund, been liberated by the Caldan and Pantocratorian invasion of the country, and then adopted by Pantocratorian parents, was made to give up her chair for another girl by Perontones when it was realised that, for some reason, there were only twenty one chairs in the common room - two for the adults, and nineteen for the twenty campers. When Brunhilde had asked where she was supposed to sit, Perontones told her.

"The floor." he had said.

"Sir, can I go and get a spare chair from the next room?" the teenager had asked.

"No, girl, you can't." Perontones said.

"Why can't she?" Marie-Claire had been unable to stop herself from asking.

"It's none of your business, Marie-Claire, and I'm tired of you interfering in things which do not concern you." Perontones had cautioned her before explaining with a question directed back at Brunhilde. "Did they have chairs for coloured girls like you back on the plantation, girl?"

The campers had drawn breaths in sharply, and Brunhilde's eyes had gone wide.

"No... no sir." Brunhilde had eventually stammered.

"Chairs are one of the things you've enjoyed in your life as a Pantocratorian, then." Perontones concluded. "You're not entitled to chairs or anything about that life. That life, like your citizenship, was given to you when Monsieur and Madame Michreon took it into their kindly Christian hearts to adopt you. Chairs are one of the many things your adopted parents have given you, girl. You have repaid their love and kindness with disobedience, violence, and defiance. You don't want to be a good daughter? Fine. If you're not a Pantocratorian couple's daughter you're not a Pantocratorian then. You're just a God-damned savage. Now sit on the floor, savage, and think about what you owe the good Christian people who adopted you."

Savage was the Pantocratorian pejorative for black people, and the word rang through the common room, like a bell which could not be unrung. Whether it was the word, or Perontones' accompanying stare, Marie-Claire couldn't say, but Brunhilde had, in silence and shame, sat down on the floor where instructed. After a few seconds, she buried her face into knees so that the rest of them couldn't see it.

"That isn't right, what you said, sir." Marie-Claire had said. She hadn't wanted to, but she could see that nobody else was going to say it, and she couldn't stand it not being said.

"Keep talking when you've not been talked to and see what happens, Marie-Claire." Perontones warned her again.

The overwhelming theme Tersonier and Perontones kept hammering on throughout the "therapy" was the need for the girls to take responsibility. They had to take responsibility for being there - this had been the first group therapy session's theme too. They had to take responsibility for their own bad behaviour. And now, it seemed, they had to take responsibility for bad things which had happened to them.

"And when did you first become sexually active, Kara?" Tersonier had asked a few minutes into discussions with the girls who had been sent to the camp for promiscuity.

"Madame, do I have to say, in front of everyone?" the girl had replied. Kara's exotic light red skin blanched.

"There are no secrets here." Tersonier answered.

"But..." Kara protested. "It's embarrassing, madame, please!"

"Funny, you weren't ashamed when you flirted with the men serving breakfast the other day!" Perontones scolded. "Or, I'll warrant, with your behaviour beforehand."

"Twelve." Kara lied.

"Twelve?" Tersonier answered, apparently detecting dishonesty. "Look into my eyes and tell me the first time you had sex, Kara."

"Tw..." Kara began, blinking and giving away numerous other 'tells'. She caught herself, knowing she had been caught. "Ten, madame. I was ten."

"Why did you say twelve?" Tersonier asked.

"None of us are going to judge you." Stephanie piped in, with a smile which she hoped was reassuring. Tersonier seemed to approve of the gesture, but Perontones frowned.

"Twelve was... I was about twelve when I... started to like boys." Kara answered, not really explaining, looking down at her feet rather than make eye contact with anybody.

"Why did you start having sex at ten, then, Kara?" Tersonier pressed.

"I didn't... I didn't want to." Kara answered.

"Then why did you?" Tersonier asked.

"I didn't... I didn't have a choice." Kara cried.

"Why not?" Tersonier asked, her tone not changing despite the fact the girl was now crying.

"Madame..." Kara begged off.

"Someone made you, Kara?" Perontones piped in.

Kara nodded her head, and wiped tears from her eyes.

"That's terrible!" cooed Stephanie, who reached an arm out for Kara's shoulder.

The group was quiet as Kara calmed herself down, and dried her tears. Finally, at length, Tersonier spoke again.

"Why do you think that happened to you, Kara?" the senior camp counsellor had asked.

"Why?" Kara was confused. "He... my uncle... he moved in with us, and he... came into my room at night."

"Had you made him think you were interested in him like that, Kara?" Tersonier asked dispassionately.

"What?" Kara asked, aghast. The tears began again.

"What did you do to lead him on?" Tersonier continued.

"Madame!" Marie-Claire protested. "She was raped! My God! It's not her fault!"

"That's it!" Perontones snapped.

Perontones got out of his chair and strode across to Marie-Claire. He grabbed her firmly by the wrist and dragged her out of the common room into the hall outside, and then pulled her into a utility closet. The middle-aged combat veteran pushed her against the wall and pinned her there, his hands planted to the wall just above each of her shoulders, leaning in over her. Marie-Claire was truly physically afraid.

"Your continual interruption in things which do not concern you will cease immediately." he barked at her. "Madame Vasta told me that you were repeatedly defiant today in your afternoon therapy. The whole time you have been here you have been sticking your little nose in where it doesn't belong. You think you're defending these girls but you're not, Marie-Claire. You're hurting them. We're here to help them and I won't have you getting in their way."

"Yes sir!" Marie-Claire squeaked. In the face of such physical intimidation she could say little else.

"I will talk to you again at the end of the evening but until then we will hear no more from you." Perontones told her.

He then looked behind him, and grabbed a roll of electrical tape. A few seconds later, a three inch long stretch of tape sealed Marie-Claire's mouth shut. Perontones put the roll back on the shelf and grabbed Marie-Claire's chin. He forced her to look into his eyes. Although she was scared Marie-Claire didn't dare look away or close her eyes.

"Defiance will be punished." Perontones told her. "If nothing else, I will break you before you get out of here, Marie-Claire, and at least then you'll be an obedient little girl even if you're still a fucking pervert. The stronger your resistance, the harder the breaking will be - on you."

With that she had been dragged and shoved back into the common room, and pushed towards her seat. She felt everyone's eyes on her, with the tape over her mouth. With nothing else to do, she sat down in her chair, a human advertisement to her fellow campers for not talking back or standing up for each other. Perontones stalked back to his chair and shot a cold stare at each of the other campers one after the other.

***

After the group therapy session was over, Perontones took Marie-Claire aside, as promised. All the girls were in their pyjamas and most went directly to their beds, but Marie-Claire was taken outside of the dormitory altogether. She felt the grass and dirt beneath her bare feet as Perontones pulled her by the wrist, holding a flashlight in his other hand. She was scared - why was he leading her into the darkness? After a few seconds, he stopped, and aimed the flashlight down at some day-old concrete roughly edging around a hole, with a metal grill hatch on top of it.

"Recognise this?" Perontones asked.

Since she couldn't answer with words, Marie-Claire shook her head.

"This is the hole you dug the other day, the last time I punished you for defiance." Perontones explained to her. "Unless the defiance stops immediately, you're going to sleep in it tonight. That grill opens up and should give a little thing like you enough room to get down in there and squirm into something approximating a sleeping position. It won't be very comfortable, of course, sleeping in the dirt."

Marie-Claire's eyes went wide and she started shaking her head. She told herself to swallow her pride and comply, to stop resisting, to stop talking up and talking back. She didn't want to sleep in a hole in the ground.

"Oh yes, you will be sleeping in the hole, unless..." Perontones shrugged his shoulders. "Unless you prove to me that you'll start being the obedient little girl you're supposed to be. I'm going to give you one chance to prove to me that the defiant Marie-Claire is gone."

He grabbed the tape which covered her mouth and quickly pulled it off. Marie-Claire had always heard that a band-aid hurts less in the long-run if you pull it off quickly, but had nevertheless always pulled them off slowly hoping in vain to avoid any pain at all. Perontones didn't give her any choice - the tape was off as quickly as it had gone on. Marie-Claire let loose a yell of surprised pain, and her whole mouth and surrounding flesh stung and smarted awfully. Perontones gave her a few seconds to calm herself down.

"What's your last name, Marie-Claire?" Perontones asked her.

"My last name?" Marie-Claire repeated.

Perontones nodded. Marie-Claire wasn't sure why she refused him. She had worked out the other day that he knew she wasn't really Marie-Claire Romain, although she wasn't sure that he knew who she really was. Maybe he simply recognised her as noble and thus the name Romain didn't fit. That answer flattered her and her mother's view of the world, that there should be such a stark difference between noble and commoner that even in a place like Camp Spercheios Marie-Claire was somehow set above her fellow victims. Perhaps it was that self-flattering thought that made her answer the way she did. Perhaps she felt the name Trichas was too good to give so vile a creature as Perontones. Or perhaps it was merely the years of giving the name Romain at school so as to protect her family's precious honour, to insulate them from her failures and mistakes. It seemed loathsome to link Camp Spercheios to that noble senatorial race whose line stretched back over a thousand years. It seemed even more loathsome to link a girl broken by a place like Camp Spercheios to that line of senators, crusaders, counts, and generals. Maybe deep down she felt unworthy of the name herself.

"Romain, sir." Marie-Claire answered. She felt both dread and pride in defying him. "My name is Marie-Claire Romain."

Perontones smiled back at her, then suddenly grabbed a fistful of her hair, tight behind the back of her neck. He leaned over to open the hatch, then pulled Marie-Claire into the opening. He then, thankfully, let go of her hair and pointed down.

"Lie down." he ordered her.

Marie-Claire glared back up at him, tears welling in her eyes as an involuntary reaction to the pain of being pulled down by her hair. Nevertheless, she squatted down in the dirt, and then swung her legs down into the concealed part of the hole, stretching them as much as she could although the hole was significantly shorter than she. She then lay down by rolling on her side, using her arm as a pillow. Perontones closed the hatch on her, and then produced a key from around his neck, which he used to lock the hatch in place.

"Good night, Mademoiselle Romain." Perontones hissed at her, and then left.

The only light was indirect - one of the handful of lights on the edge of the dormitory, which only just caught the edge of the grill. Although the edges of the hole had been concreted to secure a cover and the hatch, the bottom of it was still just bare dirt, broken grass roots and little stones. Next to the bare earth the mattress on Marie-Claire's bed in the dormitory nearby was luxury. The worst part though was that the hole was deliberately (for she had dug it according to Perontones' specifications) not long enough for a girl her age to sleep in. Her knees were just below her sternum, her legs tucked up high. Although she was young, fit and flexible, the position still became desperately uncomfortable after only a short while. Sleep would, this night at least, prove impossible. She stared at the stars through the metal grill, every emotion washing over her in waves. Anger, desperation, sadness, rage, and self-pity.

"Papa... please..." she found herself whimpering to herself quietly hours later. "Please, don't leave me in this hole, Papa!"

[The Resurgent Dream]

The rise of Action-Nationale made little impression on Caldan public opinion. What attention they did receive was almost entirely negative. In fact, those ideologically closest to the Pantocratorian group were at the greatest pains to denounce them. Thus it was that Alexandre Bussy, the Caldan Union’s most prominent Catholic integralist and the leader of a minor political party called the Catholic Association, gave a rather lengthy interview with vain media personality Elizabeth Murray where he explained how fundamentally he differed from AN. Thus it was Rory Churchill, the Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, who thundered angrily that the Government should respond to Pantocratoria’s alleged abandonment of “Atlantic values.” Meanwhile, the Welton Government, the Labour Party, and most of the centre-left continued to push for “rebuilding the Atlantic,” a series of social and cultural policies designed to increase Western Atlantic integration with a focus on greater cultural, social, and even personal ties. As for the far left, outside a few of the more disciplined Marxist-Leninist parties, they had long been infatuated with Pantocratoria’s more divisive political climate, painting the United Christian Front as fascists and theocrats all even as they lionised the Pantocratorian Socialist Alliance (in truth, little different from most democratic left and centre-left parties) as true champions of socialism, distinct from the vacillating politicians of Labour. The far right was divided with a few openly supporting Action-Nationale and others calling for them to be crushed entirely.

There were some exceptions to this, of course. Lise Kelley, a fairly mainstream women’s right activist, posted an internet video of herself defecating on the AN banner, a video which swiftly went viral. Gay rights activist Pierre David made a video of himself burning the banner. There were vigils and newspaper articles and inflammatory posts on social media and even small protests outside the Pantocratorian embassy.

Culturally, however, the biggest news was that Lise Charest, a young, Caldan pop star, was planning a tour of Pantocratoria, along with Pantocratorian sensation Mlle de la Musique.

Patokantas Room
Majohitep-Croissade Université
New Jerusalem, Pantocratoria

Callisto made her way slowly through the crowd, trying not to call too much attention to herself. It was hardly the first or last place she’d been in Pantocratoria where she felt out of place. She had certainly grown since she was a scared adolescent adopted by a man she blamed for her parents’ death in what she saw as an empty gesture. There had been rough and stormy teenaged years which had especially hurt because they set her even further apart from the other girls at the Imperial Court of Christ Pantocrator. Callisto had been especially insistent about her name, which the Duke had originally thought should be given as Celeste in French.

Most of that was behind her now and the tall woman moved with a casual confidence. Her hair was worn in tight, dark curls which spilled down over her shoulders and her eyes were level, not lowering demurely as so many of her peers did reflexively. She was dressed fashionably in a pair of black calf-high boots with six centimetre heels, a black skirt with a hem just slightly above the boot, and a short-sleeved white blouse. She took Euphemie’s hand with a warm smile. “I’m well, thank you. It’s lovely to meet you, Euphemie. I’m Callisto.”