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Dorley…The Final Frontier…

These are the Voyages of Alan Malloy.

His continuing mission?

To expunge his toxic ways.

To seek out a new life and a new identity.

To Boldly be Basemented Where Many Men Have Been Before!

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Stardate -293.0417 – Programme Day Seventy Two

   I woke up from my dreamless sleep, the lights still dimmed, and the only sounds I could hear being my own breathing, and the air conditioning humming away. I switched on the computer in my room, and checked the system clock. One AM, on November 13^th, 2024. In six days, I would have been down here in this basement for three months. I would have been a quarter of the way through what we had been told was the total duration of our stay here. I would have walked away, a free man in just another nine months.

   But that wasn’t the case, was it? The fact was that we weren’t even a quarter of the way done with our time at Dorley. We were going to be here for another two years on top of that nine months and six days. And we wouldn’t be walking away as men. We would be walking away as women, once this place was done with us.

   I wanted to scream. To hear my shout echo off the walls of the concrete box that I had just been beginning to see as my home. I wanted to smash down the door, and every door between me and freedom. I wanted to feel the morning sun on my face when it rose, and feel the fresh air of the world outside, with all of the smells and noise and life. But I knew by now there was no escape. And there were only two ways out of this basement: Conform, or wash out.

   I knew that there was no way washing out was something that I would ever want. I didn’t know what it entailed- Steph had made it clear that it didn’t involve killing us, but that was about the only thing she had specified. I could make some good guesses though. They could lock us up in an insane asylum, where any of our claims about Dorley and the secret dungeon below it could be explained as the delusions of a madman. They could keep us in a medically induced coma, and fabricate a fake identity. There were dozens of plausible outcomes to washing out that didn’t involve dying or being able to spread the word about this place, and none of them were fates I wished to experience.

   I knew that the sponsors were right. Even if our intake was the first to know that we were not, well, the first…there was no fighting the inevitable. Dorley had a process that they had been doing for an unspecified- but probably lengthy- span of time. Years of toxic men being disappeared from the world, never to be seen again, and the appearance of brand new women, probably with all of the appropriate records and paperwork spontaneously conjured into existence by whoever Dorley used to make things seem legit to the government bureaucrats and pencil pushers. I was going to be a girl, whether I liked it or not.

   The issue was that I didn’t like it. I  had thought about whether I was trans before, after Amina came out to me, all those years ago. The shock of the only genuine friend I had ever known turning out to be trans had made me seriously question my own identity. I hadn’t thought about her in years, and my reminiscing soon had me stuck back in the past, long before I ever came to Almsworth, and when I first established a relationship with someone I’d call my friend…

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   Amina and I had met when I was sixteen, although we weren’t friends to start with. I had made a habit of going to the public library near our family home in Brighton to study in the afternoons after school. The neighbours had been doing a massive renovation, and I couldn’t handle the noise. So, I had found a quiet area towards the back of the library where I could revise my notes in peace. One day, after a day of bullying, needling, and utter misery at school, I had gone straight from my high school to the library, and found a middle eastern boy sitting in the seat across from where I usually sat.

   He was writing something in a notebook, and didn’t even notice me showing up. I decided to just start studying, and avoid engaging with him at all. I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t care, so long as he didn’t make the space that I usually occupied an unfriendly environment for me. As I sat down, he did look up and see me, but quickly went back to writing whatever it was he was scribbling down with his pen.

   The next day, he was there again, and again, we didn’t talk. And the day after that. He soon seemed to become as much of a fixture of the library as the tattered carpet and mouldering wooden bookcases. He never spoke, but the notepad was occasionally replaced with a novel or a laptop. One day, he simply listened to music. He was never in school uniform, and he was always sitting there when I showed up. After weeks of silence between us, I was surprised when he cleared his throat and tapped my shoulder.

   “Hi!” he said, grinning at me. “I’m Ari. Ari Al Rashid. Sorry to bother you, but you’ve been coming in here every day for the last few weeks, and I thought it was about time I introduced myself to the quiet kid with the good studying habits.”

   “Uh…hi, Ari. I’m Alan. Alan Malloy,” I responded, turning quickly back to my notes. I was trying to solve a complex set of trigonometry problems, and maths- at that point in time- was not my forte. “Sorry, but I need to get this maths homework done.”

   “Oh? You’re doing trig?” smiled the other boy. “You need any help? I’ve been getting some really good scores on some of the standardised tests online.”

   I frowned, and looked up. “Why would you help me?”

He looked confused. “Because you seem to be struggling? You’ve been on that page of the textbook for, like, the last hour and a half. Also because you seem nice, and I don’t have anyone I can talk to besides my parents.”

   “What, no friends at school?” I asked, curious. “Surely you have some of those.”

“I’ve been homeschooled for the last six years of my education,” replied Ari, looking unhappy. “My parents removed me from school due to cultural objections to the school I was going to. And when I was at school, I used to get harassed for being middle eastern. Kept calling me “Ali Al-Qaeda”, even though me and my family have been British citizens for generations.”

   “Oh god, that’s…that’s awful,” I said, shocked. “They really did that?”

“Yeah. My parents let me study here. I have three young siblings, and it gets quite loud at home. So I spent all day here studying. My mother gives me assignments, and I work through them in the library.”

   “I get it,” I said, waving my hand around. “It’s quiet, peaceful, and nobody really comes in here that much if they’re the noisy sort. Say, Ari, if you could help me with this trig stuff, I would be grateful…”

   And that was how our friendship started. Ari and I would meet up there every day, and either chat or work on our respective studies. I learned that he was a year younger than me, but was bright enough that he had been moved up a year at school. With his help, I went from being bottom of my class in maths and science to being the top performer in both subjects in my grade. Then, one day, he didn’t show up. The next time I saw him was three weeks later, and then I learned who my friend truly was. That notebook? She had been documenting her thoughts about who she was. Whether she was a girl, or just thought that was what she wanted from life. And her father had found it, and she had been kicked out of her house. She told me about her being trans, about how she had wanted to tell me how she felt for weeks, and about how she was trying to find somewhere to stay. She’d been sleeping rough, wherever she could find somewhere safe and relatively warm and dry, and she wanted to know if my parents would be OK with her crashing at my place till she could get in contact with a support service of some kind.

   My parents would have never accepted her in their house. They had a fixed perception of the world, seeing everything as being a certain way for a certain reason. They had previously expressed opinions on minority groups that I had my own, different, and more progressive opinions on. And I knew that if Amina, as she had chosen to call herself, showed up on their doorstep, they would spit in her face and never let me go to the library again. I tried, hesitantly, and with a lack of courage, to tell Amina that I couldn’t help her, that my parents wouldn’t treat her right, and that I wished I could do something to help her. She told me to shut up, said she never wanted to see me again, and walked away. I had lost the only true friend I had ever made because I failed her when she needed me most.

   I never saw her again, and I never went back to that library. Two years later, I finished high school with the highest score in two of my A-Levels of my graduating class, and left for The Royal College of Saint Almsworths. And the rest was history.

---

   Amina had told me how she came to realise she was trans, and I had done my own inner musings after that day. I had determined I was comfortable in my own gender, and that I didn’t wish I was female. The only thing I wished was that I could live in a future as bright and care-free as that of Star Trek, where people like Amina were not only accepted but allowed to live as their best selves. And I wished that I could tell my friend sorry, and find out where she had gone after she left my life.

   After some time, the lights came on, and I realised that the time had ticked over to 06:00. A few minutes later, Steph knocked on my door, and urged me to come and eat some breakfast, saying that I needed to eat something after missing both lunch and dinner the previous day. I thought about refusing, but my grumbling stomach and general desire not to die of starvation got me out of my chair, and going to rejoin the world, as small as it was right now.

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Stardate -293.25 – Programme Day Seventy Two

   “Hey, guys, since we’re all here this morning, I’d…uh…like to reveal something?”

I looked up from my cereal and stared at Katsuro, who was standing up and looking around at everyone, a bizarre smile on his face. Breakfast had been a stonily silent affair this morning, mainly because Nessa was sitting with us, next to Ted, and it seemed that nobody seemed to want to talk around the people who seemed to want to turn us into girls against our will. Katsuro walked over to the front of the table, and smiled broadly.

   “Hi,” said Katsuro. “I’d like to tell you all that, well, I’m trans. And I’ve known since before I even got here. It’s good to finally be able to say something.”

   There was silence for a good thirty seconds, and then two things happened. First, Arthur got up, dropped his cutlery, and walked calmly out of the room without even looking at Katsuro. At about the same time, Danny gave the response that I think everyone in the room was thinking right now.

   “What.”

“I’m, uh, trans,” Katsuro said, nervously looking at Danny. I pushed my chair back and got ready to try and stop the older boy if he tried to attack my friend. I didn’t know if he’d do something like that after such a long time without so much as a slur, but I was ready to put myself between Danny and Katsuro. He was not going to hurt her, or any of my friends.

   “Katsuro…this is…uh…unexpected,” Ewan said, looking concerned as Danny, seated next to him, stared in shock at Katsuro. Or, uh, whatever her name was. I didn’t know if she’d even picked a new one yet. “Well, uh, I’m happy for you. This isn’t just because of that fucked-up pow-wow from yesterday? You’ve been trans since before you got here?”

   “Yes,” she replied, smiling at Ewan, who smiled back. “It’s, uh, kinda awkward. The incident that got me here? That was-”

   “You filthy piece of deviant scum! I’ll teach you what you are! I’ll fucking show you!”

I whipped around to look at Danny, who was staring in abject hatred at Katsuro, his fists clenched. Before anyone could react to the sudden outburst, Nessa not even having time to pull her taser, Danny was out of his chair, and charging past me towards the front of the table where Katsuro stood. I tried to snag him and throw him off balance as he thundered past, but despite grabbing him, all that I accomplished was being pulled over along with my chair and landing on the floor hard. Danny didn’t even stumble for all I did. I watched in horror as he lunged forwards towards Katsuro who…stepped aside and let him slam into the wall. He staggered back, and she whipped her leg around and kicked him in the back, sending him back into the wall. He hit his head on the wall, and fell to the floor, clutching his forehead. Then Nessa tasered him, and he was out.

   “Fucking idiot,” said Katsuro, turning back to the group. “I told him when he showed up that I knew jujitsu. He should have known not to fuck with me like that. Anyway, where was I?”

   I picked myself up, and picked my chair back up, sitting back down. I waved off Ewan’s attempts to help, and looked towards Katsuro. “I guess a good start would be what you were trying to say about how you got here. I’ve been wondering about that for a while. You didn’t strike me as the sort to beat on their girlfriend, but then again, Ewan didn’t strike me as an internet age peeping tom when I first met him.”

   “Hey! You said you’d stop with that!”

I grinned. “Love you too, Professor. But seriously, Katsuro- if you’re OK with me using that name- I assume there’s a story to how you got here beyond what details we know?”

   She sighed, and leant back against the window at the front of the room. “Well, first off, I haven’t picked a new name yet, so for the time being, Katsuro works fine. I can’t really keep using it- in English, it loosely translates to “Victorious Son”, and is very definitely male coded- but it’ll do until I can figure out something that works. As for how I ended up here…that’s a long story.”

   “We have time,” Ted said, smiling faintly. “Don’t worry, I think we’re all in agreement that you’re entitled to live however you want. You’re my friend, all of you are.”

   “Thanks, Ted,” said Katsuro, before she began telling us her story. “I guess I should start with some context. My family are all Japanese, but my parents were the first children of their respective families to be born in the west. My mother’s parents moved here from America after World War II, since there was significant anti-Japan sentiment still lingering even after the atom bombings. My father’s family came to England much later, sometime in the sixties. I grew up in a bilingual household, with a heavy influence from the culture of my grandparents.”

   She paused, collecting her thoughts, before continuing. Monica and another girl came in at this point to carry away Danny, who was lying prone on the floor, twitching. Katsuro seemed to gain some extra confidence with Danny now out of the room and on the way to the cells, and her voice became steadier. I realised she had slipped into a higher pitch, and her voice sounded…well…feminine now.

   “Japan has a difficult history with LGBT-related issues, although there’s no real cultural or religious objections like in many other places in the world. My grandparents were always vocal about how the push for same-sex marriage rights and the recognition of trans identity was something that was overtly bad. My parents disagreed, and I was caught between the teachings of my grandparents, and the teachings of my parents. It wasn’t until I left our family vineyard to come and attend college here that I realised that my grandparents were wrong, and that I might be trans.”

   She swallowed, looking sad. “I spent the entire first year of my education here in the closet. I met my girlfriend, Tara, during this time, and she was truly, truly beautiful. She was a political science major, but she almost never wanted to talk about politics. I didn’t know that she had some very rotten opinions hidden under that beauty. Not until the incident that landed me here.”

   She fiddled with the end of her ponytail, clearly upset. Then she continued. “I decided one night that I’d come out to her, to test the waters, so to speak. I thought that even if she didn’t believe me, she would at least accept me, because of our mutual love for each other. We were discussing moving our relationship to the next stage at that point, and possibly getting engaged. When I told her, she was silent. And then I learned she was a follower of Katherine Frost. The former lecturer at Almsworth known for being an extremely vocal TERF. And then she tried to bash my skull in with a vase of flowers.”

   “Jesus Christ,” Ewan whispered in shock. “I…we didn’t know, Katsuro. I’m so sorry. So…I assume you defended yourself?”

   She nodded, tears beading in her eyes. “I reacted without thinking who I was defending myself against. I got my black belt when I was sixteen, and I was shocked enough that I just responded as I’d been trained. I hit her, she fell back, and her head hit my metal bedframe hard. She went limp, and started bleeding. The students in the dorm next door burst into the room to see what all the noise was about, and saw me standing over her limp body with no visible injuries and her head bleeding profusely. They called the ambulance. And then they called the cops.”

   She began to cry, unable to continue with her story. I got out of my chair, and sat her down in it, gently guiding her across the room to the chair. Ewan moved over to sit where Danny had been, and I sat down beside Katsuro, and tried to comfort her as best as I could. This whole situation was not something I was particularly comfortable with, but she was my friend, and she was upset. There really wasn’t anything else I could do without letting down another one of my few friends in the whole world. Nessa passed over a packet of Kleenex, and Katsuro blew her nose into it, wiping her tears from her eyes with the back of her arm. She looked up, and smiled sadly.

   “Thank you, Alan. I…I think the rest is pretty clear. I was guilty, my father paid my bail and basically disowned me, and I tried to commit suicide in my dorm room. Indira picked me up from outside the hospital, claiming to be a lawyer employed by my father. Said she was here to bring me to him. Next thing I know, she sticks a needle in my neck, and I wake up in the cell. I guess Dorley thought that, while I didn’t have a history of anything toxic, that my attempted suicide after a quite public domestic abuse case that made the college paper was enough to bring me in. That, and I was quite a spikey egg.”

   “Sorry, egg?” asked Ewan. To my surprise, it was Ted who answered.

“Uh, egg is a term in the trans community that refers to a trans person who hasn’t come out publicly. I don’t quite know what a spikey egg is, but I assume it means an egg who lashes out at those around them when they’re still suffering from dysphoria.”

   “Ted?” asked Katsuro, curious. “How did you know that?”

He looked confused. “Nessa told me? What, I’m not allowed to ask my sister about her own difficulties transitioning?”

   “Hang on,” I said, looking at Nessa. “I apologise if this is a sensitive topic, Nessa, but I think we were all under the assumption that you transitioned against your will? You were a graduate of the programme, right?”

   “I…I’d prefer not to talk about it, Alan, if that’s alright,” she said. “I wasn’t openly trans like Katsuro, but I did eventually come to some…uh…conclusions about my identity while I was here. I can’t say much more. I’m not comfortable speaking about it, and Ted probably shouldn’t have said what he said to begin with.”

   “Ness…I’m sorry,” said Ted, looking down at the table. “Christ…I should have thought about what I was saying before sharing it. I’m a fucking idiot.”

   “Well,” I said, reaching over and patting his head. “At least you’re a fucking idiot who respects others. Now, unless anyone has any objections, I’d like to finish my breakfast without any further martial arts demonstrations. Katsuro, whatever happens, you’re my friend.”

   She smiled, and turned back to her own food. Ewan began talking about some television show he’d been watching, Ted joining in on the discussion, and I leaned back and smiled. I may be stuck in a feminising torture basement, but at least I had friends here. Fuck, did I actually have something to thank Dorley for?

   …well fuck. I did. That was a hell of a revelation.

…eh, well, still leaving a bad review on Yelp. 1.5/10, not enough Star Trek.

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Stardate -293.6042 – Programme Day Seventy Two

   Later that afternoon, Christine contacted me again, and this time she pre-empted her arrival by asking if I wanted to talk. Surprisingly, I was eager to talk to her again.

Alan: Hey, Tina!

Christine: Wow…uh…hi? Please never call me that again?

Alan: Ah. Sorry. Just glad to talk to you again. You’ve been ghosting me since our last talk back in October. How have you been?

Christine: Good, although I should probably be asking you that. Steph said you got told the full story yesterday. I know what that’s like, trust me.

Alan: Guess that means you’re also a Dorley graduate, then?

Christine: Yes. I graduated the same year Steph’s intake finished their first year. I was actually sorta kinda responsible for her being put in the basement, although that’s a long story, and that year was not a particularly…uh…easy one for Dorley. Let’s just say some old wounds got reopened on all fronts, and some pretty bad drama went down.

Alan: I will refrain from asking. Yeah, we got told the whole deal. The fact we’re stuck here for three years, the fact that we’re going to be leaving- if we don’t wash out- as the fairer sex, and that they’re going to cut off our balls in four months and they’ve been pumping us full of female hormones for two and a half months.

Christine: Trust me, it gets easier. I don’t regret being put in that basement. It let me stop being him and start being someone better. I did some very shitty things before Dorley picked me up. I’m grateful for what they did, as fucked up as that sounds. I know it’s difficult for you right now, trust me, I’ve been in your shoes. But one day, you look back, and you see that they didn’t hurt you. They healed you.

Alan: I understand what you’re saying. But right now? I can’t bring myself to see the good in this bullshit. I know who I am. I’ve already interrogated my gender identity, and it’s solid. But I also know that washing out is a worse fate than living as a woman after all of this is done. So, while I don’t want this, it is the lesser of two evils. I can’t say I’m at the stage where I can see myself being a woman. But at the very least, I know that I stand a better chance of survival if I go through this without raising hell like Danny or Arthur have.

Christine: I won’t lie, that’s surprisingly mature of you, considering who you were when I first met you. If I’m being honest? You’ve changed more than you’d like to admit to yourself. The guy who stood in front of me and told me to my face that I couldn’t be a fan of a television show because I had tits would not say what you just said, at least from my perspective. You’ll get there, sooner or later. And I’ll be glad to know whoever you become when you’re done.

Alan: Maybe. God, today has been a wild fucking ride. Do you want to watch some Star Trek?

Christine: Eh, I have time. We were up to, what, The Best of Both Worlds?

Alan: Yup. Best two-parter in the show.

Christine: On that we can agree. Before we start…Alan, would you say that I’m your friend? I’m honestly amazed I’m asking that- we did not start out on the best terms- but over the last two months I’ve talked with you a lot. Seriously, my girlfriend thinks I’m crazy for continuing to talk to you after what you said in our first encounter. But I really do think you’re a good person, beneath your prickliness. And I’d honestly be happy to call you a friend. But I need to know what your feeling is on that. Could you call me a friend? Knowing what you know, and after saying that you can accept I’m a “real nerd”?

Alan: I…yeah. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, yeah. I have few enough friends, and you’ve been kind enough to talk to me and watch a show I don’t have access to with me. I’d like to see if we can be friends. And I think I need to start by apologising. I fucked up. You didn’t deserve to get the shit you got from me back at the society. I was an idiot who thought I was somehow defending my fandom from people who were less worthy, when I was actually attacking people who had just as much right to be in the same fandoms as me. I was an asshole. Please forgive me.

Christine: You’re damn right you were an asshole. But you’re not that person anymore. I forgive you, Alan, and I’m happy to call you my friend. Now, let’s get started. Let me just bring up the episode…

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Stardate -293.7708 – Programme Day Seventy Two

   Later that evening, after I ended my chat with Christine, Ewan knocked on my door, wanting to talk. I let him in, and he sat down on my bed, looking exhausted.

   “Christ, this has been a long day,” he said, running a hand through his brown hair, which was beginning to come down to his shoulders after nearly three months without a haircut. “Katsuro always felt different, but she never seemed like she was trans.”

   I shrugged. “I’ve mentioned I had a trans friend. I knew her before she came out to me, and Amina never showed any signs that she was trans. We didn’t part on the best of terms, but it wasn’t because I didn’t accept her. I just couldn’t help her when she needed me most.”

   Ewan flopped backwards. “Still, I was just talking with her over a game of chess- and I’d like to point out that she’s crazy good at chess, and I’m not exactly a novice player- and she was going on about how she knew she didn’t feel happy in her own body since she was a teenager. That she knew it wasn’t just some sort of phase, and that she wouldn’t be happy as a guy. And I have to wonder if Dorley actually did know before they picked her up.”

   I nodded slowly. It would make sense that Katsuro had been pulled in due to Dorley uncovering something that indicated she was trans. I didn’t doubt, after seeing how bad she felt about her fight with her ex, that she had done what she said she did. I didn’t doubt that. But I was almost sure that she was working with the sponsors, and had possibly been doing so since the start. I decided to follow in Ted’s example and see if I was alone in my suspicions, or if I was genuinely being paranoid about this whole situation.

   “Ewan…do you think that Katsuro was put here as a sort of insider? That the sponsors knew she was trans, and used this to convince her to help them pacify us? If she did so, I don’t have any hard feelings- she’s our friend, even if she’s been manipulating us the entire time- but I do think we should be worried about whether she’s being blackmailed into helping them.”

   Ewan shook his head. “I agree that she’s definitely been colluding with the sponsors. I’ve seen how she acts, and there’s definitely something going on there. But I think it’s likely that she was only told after you showed up. I was here before her, and so was Katsuro. She definitely had a change in behaviour only a short time after you showed up, within the first week of the programme I’d say.”

   “Still,” I said, frowning. “I think we should be worried for her, irrespective of when they started working with her. I know you, me, and Ted won’t hurt her. But Danny and Arthur might decide that she’s a threat if they realise the same thing, and while she can clearly look after herself, it doesn’t hurt to have some backup from us if they make a problem.”

   Ewan grinned, and nodded. “Yeah. I get what you’re saying. Anyway, I’m sure she’s doing this for the best of reasons. Besides, at this point? I do not give a shit whether I leave this place as a guy or a girl. I just want to move past the shit I used to pull. I’ve been giving that a lot of thought, and yeah, it was wrong to perve on a bunch of girls. It was wrong to abuse my cybersecurity training, and it was toxic as hell. If Dorley can fix that, then I’m willing to go with the flow, you know what I mean?”

   I swallowed. “Uh…I’ll have to get back to you on that. Still, it’s good that you’re working through your own issues. I really need to start getting ready for bed. Think I need to have an early night. See you tomorrow, Ewan. And thanks for the talk.”

   I let him leave, and then I sat down on my bed. Katsuro, Ewan, Ted…they all seemed to be dealing with this whole thing better than me. Was I falling behind? Was I going to wash out alongside Danny and Arthur? Or were they doing better than me, and I was just an arrogant fool who was even worse off than they were?

   Was I really going to be able to accept the changes that were barrelling towards me with every day? Could I really be happy as a girl?

   …was I even still a guy at my core?

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