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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 identity and a new life.

To Boldly be Basemented like many men have been before!

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“Okay, girls, we need to talk second disclosure.”

   Maria stood at the front of the security room, her hands clasped behind her back, and her back ramrod straight. After having watched more science fiction television than she would like to admit in the course of two months, Steph found herself comparing the way that she stood to Captain Janeway. She still didn’t know why she’d bothered watching Voyager. Bea had already turned down every Star Trek show that she’d tried to push as a reward for Alan, seemingly only turning down Voyager due to the presence of Tom Paris.

   It was even weirder that Bea knew who Paris was, and Steph suspected that she had done some research of her own, even if it was just googling some stuff to rebuke her arguments. Well, it was that, or Auntie Bea used to be or was into Star Trek, and Steph wasn’t sure what to think about that wonderful thought. It didn’t mesh well with what she thought she knew about the woman who ran Dorley.

   The rest of the sponsors sat in a rough semicircle in front of her, on folding chairs that Pippa and Nessa had found in a room upstairs and requisitioned for the meeting. It was less comfortable than using the other seating in the space, but it was also easier to set up in a configuration more conducive to holding meetings. Steph reminder herself to approach either Maria or Auntie Bea about having some sort of conferencing room installed in a future expansion of the basement facilities. It would make these sort of things so much easier, and currently the only space that would meet the requirements for that was the place the boys were currently eating their breakfast under the supervision of two of the more trusted third years.

   “I don’t think we’re ready,” remarked Pippa. “I’m sure that Ewan is at least at the point where he’d avoid having a violent reaction, and Ted would follow Nessa into the gates of hell if she asked him to. Alan, from what Steph has been saying, has at least adjusted well, and we know he doesn’t have anything like transphobia going on. But Danny and Arthur? They’ve been near catatonic the last few weeks. If we’re going to do this, I feel we should be isolating them for both their safety, the safety of the other intakes, and our own safety.”

   “Monica?” asked Maria. “How do you feel about Danny?”

Monica looked troubled, but she paused before saying her piece. “Danny has been isolating himself, but I think its because he doesn’t feel like he belongs with either Arthur or the other boys. Arthur made it clear during their last conversation that he thinks Danny and the others are a bunch of fools who haven’t realised that they’re here to die, and wanted nothing more to do with Danny. And Danny is scared to be around the other boys because he feels they only see him as the bigot who beat up a bunch of vulnerable people. He’s changed more than he’d like to admit. The guy who came in here broken up about hurting some people, but still not willing to let go of his various prejudices…I think he disappeared a long time ago. Danny doesn’t seem to think that though, at least as far as he’s told me. I’ve been getting through to him, at the very least.”

   “So at the very least we can trust that Danny won’t have a bad reaction,” Indira said, nodding. “I don’t think I need to vouch for Katsuro. She’s a known factor in all of this, even if we’re asking her to continue to play along for a while, at least until she’s ready to come out to her friends. At that point, if they respond well, we’ll be beyond the danger zone. At least, in theory. Things may go south, so I have warned her not to tell them about how she’s been pushing them the last two months until she’s sure they’re at the stage at which they’ll respond without rejecting her. She’s agreed.”

   “Lot smarter than the last feral trans girl we had,” remarked Pippa, grinning at Steph. In response, Steph punched her gently in the shoulder before grinning. Maria cleared her throat, and both sponsors looked back at her apologetically.

   “Sorry, Maria,” Steph said, refocusing on the discussion. “Pippa was pretty on the money about Alan. He’s definitely got his head screwed on straight, other than when it comes to his specific qualms. Honestly, I’m surprised how well he’s been going with dealing with his issues. This intake have all been pretty surprising in how well they’ve adjusted.”

   “Times are changing, I guess,” remarked Indira. “Who knows? We might need to start doing intakes once every two years, assuming the state of the world doesn’t get worse. Things are a lot less…toxic…overall than they were back in 2004. Still could be a lot, lot better, though. We’ve still got many decades before we’re not needed anymore.”

   “Girls, please, try to focus,” Maria pleaded. “Look, I know this year has been one of the less painful ones, but we haven’t gotten to the difficult bit yet. Now, if we’re done with-”

   “We still haven’t heard from you, Maria,” said Pippa, interrupting. “And before we decide what we’re going to do, we need to know if Arthur is going to be a problem. You’ve been really cagey about him, and I honestly think we need to know if we’re going to have to give him a third strike. If that’s going to be an issue? We should tell him while he’s inside a cell. For the sake of all involved, including him.”

   Maria was silent for a while. Steph noticed that, for the first time since she’d started working closely with the woman, she looked haggard. However, she quickly recomposed herself, and cleared her throat.

   “Arthur…I won’t lie. He’s violent. He’s a bigot. And even I’m not sure we made the right decision to select him. It was tenuous to think that his anger was related to his childhood trauma, to the foster parents who used to use him as little more than a punching bag when they needed to blow off steam. But I think that was an incorrect assumption.”

   “So…we wash him out?” asked Pippa, perplexed. “I mean, I’m not going to argue, not when he’s acted the way he has, but is that really necessary?”

   “It isn’t, and that’s not what I’m saying,” replied Maria. “I think his bigotry, violence, and anger issues aren’t separate things. I think he’s a violent bigot because he’s burning up inside from anger. He seems to hate himself, or at least that’s what I think.”

   “But…that doesn’t make any sense,” Monica said, confused. “How could that be the root cause of his issues? We all read that manifesto he posted to 8chan on the day he went and burned down that bar. The act was premeditated, not a way to relieve some of his internalised anger and dissatisfaction with himself.”

   “The manifesto was a pretty clear sign that he did plan that attack, yes,” Maria said, calmly and without missing a beat. “But I don’t think this is the sort of anger that surges up like an explosion. I think with Arthur, his is more like a slow-burning fuse that results in an explosion of outwardly-directed violence at others he sees as being happier with themselves than him. In every case, when he’s acted hostile towards the other boys, it’s been because he’s been confronted with them having managed to get along with each other, or when they’ve been able to be more comfortable with confinement with him. It’s a stretch, I know, but I don’t feel we’ve been able to properly observe his responses down here. It’s too regimented, and I think a lot of his violence and trauma responses are exacerbated when he’s not trapped in a cage. Essentially, after we responded to each and every attempt by him to bleed off that pathological hatred of his own life and existence by denying him the ability to vent his anger and stress, he’s reached the stage where I think he’s essentially become deadened to his own anger. He’s essentially so worked up that he’s managed to numb himself to his anger. In fact, I think he might have just simply snapped, the way he’s been almost robotically going through the motions of existing. He’s broken down, simply because we haven’t been allowing him to bleed out his repressed anger and hatred.”

   The room was silent for a while. Steph ran through Maria’s theory in her head. It sounded…weird. But she could see the logic there, if only in part. It was almost like Maria was clinging to this theory as a last hope to fix the boy, and avoid having to wash him out. But Maria had been here since the start. She knew the lay of the land, and she had experience dealing with people like Arthur. Steph didn’t know if she really thought Maria’s theory held any water, but she trusted Maria to do her best. She only hoped that Maria had the right idea.

   “Maria…” Steph said, concerned. “If you’re sure we can tell Arthur outside of a controlled argument, I don’t think anyone will argue. You’ve been doing this since the Dorley of today came into being. You know better than anyone here, with the possible exception of Bea, how best to handle this sort of thing. But are you sure we shouldn’t be disclosing what we’re going to do to him and the others in an environment we can’t fully control? If he’s truly the way you say, there’s a good chance that he might go either way. He could bend the way we want, lean towards acceptance. Or it could reignite that anger, spark off that fuse, and we could be left cleaning up a messy situation.”

   “I…I’m going to roll the hard six here, Steph,” said Maria. “Let’s trust that he’ll do the right thing. I have faith he’ll change, even if he reacts poorly now. It’s all I can do, with a boy as uniquely broken as Arthur. Anyway, if we’re done with our final pre-disclosure update, we should begin the proceedings. The boys should be finishing up with their breakfast. Let’s set up the pins, and see how they fall when we knock them down.”

---

Stardate -294.4375 – Programme Day Seventy One

   “Boys, finish your breakfast, and come out here,” Steph said, standing in the door to the dining room, and addressing the entire intake. Me, Katsuro, Ewan, and Ted had been discussing the absence of our sponsors from the usual routine this morning, and it seemed that they had finally shown up after an unusually late arrival. Maybe they all slept in, or maybe there was something that came up. Whatever the case, Steph seemed to be unusually stoic, something I didn’t really attribute to her nowadays. She’d been increasingly warm towards me over the two months where me and my friends had managed to mostly settle in, and this was an unusual return to the professional detachment of our first few weeks. Something was up.

   I was mostly done with my fruit salad, so I decided to leave it be- the only fruit left in the bowl was grapefruit anyway, and I despised grapefruit- and walk outside. Oh joy, they had the monitor and the seats set up again. I guess they’d found some new teaching material. Maybe this time we might learn some interesting stuff. Then again, it’s not like the stuff from before hadn’t been interesting. It was just presented to us as if we were being confronted with some sort of horrifying reality about how women deserved equal rights.

   Personally, I didn’t see that as being an issue, so long as the rights weren’t related to sci-fi fandom involvement, and even then, I was beginning to see where Steph was coming from on the “you have a shit attitude” approach. If Christine could like sci-fi, and be one of the most hardcore and dedicated Trekkies I’d ever met, why couldn’t some random girl off the street?

…I mean, so long as she actually was interested and not doing it for an ulterior purpose. Wait, no, hang on, Christine was doing it for an ulterior purpose. Steph asked her to help me. But, I mean, it’s not like she went and learned about it for the sole purpose of aiding in this godforsaken rehab programme. She had made it clear she had been a fan for many, many years, even commenting on how she had grown up watching Enterprise, which I refused to agree was one of the low points in the franchise. It was great! The theme wasn’t nearly as bad as Christine insisted it was, and Porthos was adorable.

   Oh, cool, the others had decided to shuffle out. Eh, who cares I was first through the door, today was off to a great start. I did have to say, the dour, slightly anxious, and more than a little concerningly serious expressions on the faces of the sponsors? That was beginning to chip into my mood a little. I then realised that it was entirely possible that this was related to what I had talked about with Steph last night, and my good mood began to drain away like a plug had been pulled. I suddenly began to feel a mild sense of dread, not helped when Maria slid the retention loop off the holster of her taser, and focused on Arthur as Monica stepped forwards to address us. She flicked on the screen, which displayed a PowerPoint as usual. This one was a plain white cover page with the word “Disclosure” written on it.

   Oh boy. This was going to be one of those days, wasn’t it? I covertly checked to see how everyone was responding. Ewan seemed to be unamused at the interruption to the routine, although he seemed to be interested in whatever this was. Ted was holding Nessa’s hand, his twin sister standing beside him reassuringly. Steph had also moved close to me, as had all the sponsors bar Maria and Monica. The first time we’d had a presentation like this- one where we were told something about what was in store for us, and I was pretty certain this was another one of those- our sponsors had kept their distance, as if we might bite them. It spoke numbers that everyone except Danny and Arthur had their prison guard slash mentor slash kidnapper buddy nearby to provide emotional support or whatever they were there to do. For all I knew, this was the bit where they stuck a needle in our necks and marched us off to the brainwashing facility where they’d turn us into obedient meat puppets.

   …Christ, it had been a while since I’d heard that from Ted, and now it was crawling out of a dark corner of my brain where it had clearly been lying dormant for a month and a half. What a time for nostalgia, huh?

   My disjointed thoughts were interrupted- thankfully- by Monica beginning her presentation. “It’s been a rough time, the last seven or eight weeks, but all of you seem to have settled in and made a degree of progress towards where we need you to be. It’s been an unusual intake this year, and while some of you have made less progress than we’d have otherwise liked, all of you have reached the stage where we feel comfortable disclosing what exactly is in store for you when we get to the six month mark of the programme. And, it’s time we told you what we’ve been doing to your bodies.”

   “Wait, hang on,” Ewan said, looking at me. “Alan was right? It’s not just some weird weight gain thing?”

   Monica nodded. “While I will get to that in due time, yes, the changes all of you have been experiencing to various degrees with the distribution of your body fats have been our doing, not the result of a dietary change. The change in the sort of food was part of it, but it was not the primary cause of the change.”

   “Monica, what the fuck have you been doing to us?” said Danny, saying the first words I’d heard out of him for at least two and a half weeks, if not the whole of the last month. “All of us have been losing muscle like crazy, and I’ve been getting what I would describe as man-tits where my pecs used to be. And there’s something you have to address before that?”

   “Danny, please, let me get through this,” Monica said, speaking gently to her charge. Compared to her initial lack of warmth when dealing with the despicable fucker, there was more than a little bit of affection in her voice as she addressed him now. “There’s a script I’m already having to deviate from thanks to the circumstances we’ve been faced with this year. I promise, you may not like my answers, but I will have them for you, OK?”

   “…alright, Monica,” agreed Danny, albeit reluctantly. “I’ll listen.”

“Alright. Now, you’ve been operating under the assumption that we take in men, fix them, and then release them back into the world after curing their toxic masculinity. This is…partly true.”

    “Define, ‘partly’,” asked Katsuro, his answer sounding vaguely rehearsed. I felt my recent suspicions over his possible collusion with Indira flaring up again. Was it possible it was more than just him being blackmailed into helping them out by keeping us all calm? Could he even be a plant placed among us as a way of guiding us towards wherever these girls wanted to be? Again, I pushed the paranoia back down with my increasingly frequent mantra of “Stop it; I’m beginning to sound just like Ted.”

   “You’re not going to be men anymore when we release you. You’ll be released as women, and you’ll be with us for another two years before you’re allowed your full freedom of movement back.”

   Oh fuck. It was as bad as I suspected.

…wait…

…they were going to do WHAT??????

---

   I realised after about five minutes that the room had been silent for the entire time. Then, pandemonium erupted. All of the others, bar Ted- who was crying, Nessa hugging him close and trying to calm him down, seemingly having a breakdown in response to the news- were all talking at once. Danny was yelling about this being a bad fucking joke, and demanding to know what was really going on. Ewan was asking how the fuck they were going to achieve this without their consent. Arthur was screaming incoherent garbage that I could barely make out due to the sheer panic in his voice. I just sat there, not sure what to do or where to go. I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack. They were going to turn me into a girl against my will? After all the shit they’d spouted about autonomy and respecting others for being who they are? About being better men? I was dimly aware that Katsuro was trying to get the others to calm down, and that Steph had put her hand on my shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. Somehow, that was helping, despite her being part of a monumentally fucked up programme that was trying to force us all to be something we were not.

   Eventually, the clamour was suddenly cut off as Maria pulled out, of all things, an air horn, and activated it. The loud bleat of the horn shut down the clamour as if it had been a gunshot. Arthur looked angry in a way I hadn’t seen since our second week. Danny also looked angry, but more than that he looked betrayed. Pretty much the only people who weren’t looking jagged off- and I only included myself in this category because I obviously couldn’t see if my face was reflecting the sheer anger I felt at the hypocrisy going on right now- were myself, Katsuro (who had an almost eerily neutral expression on), and Ted (who was too busy sobbing into his sister’s shoulder to really tell if he was angry or not). Finally, Maria stepped forwards, and let Monica go and help with Danny. Arthur glared daggers at Maria, his rage almost palpable.

   “Yes, we lied to you,” the older east-Asian woman said, her expression surprisingly genuine in its sympathy. “Yes, we’re going to forcibly change your gender, both physically and mentally. We’ve already been moving you in that direction, even if you weren’t consciously aware. Typically we try to make our first year intakes think that they are the first people to go through this process, and that we’re trying something new. This usually ensures that they let their guard down in the hopes that they can fake it until they get clear of this place. But we are unfortunate enough to have a unique situation where one of our former intakes is the sponsor of a person who had an extremely close relationship with her before she went through our programme. We also have unfortunately had a surprisingly perceptive group of intakes this year, and we have also had severe staffing issues this year in particular due to a number of our sponsors having retired and gone to find less stressful employment.”

   She took a deep breath before continuing. “But you should know by now that there is no way out of here. You either change, or you wash out. And in case it needs reminding, washing out is not something you want to be subject to. It is far worse a fate than death. Now, here’s what’s going to happen. I am going to step back, and Monica will explain what exactly we are going to do once we’re ready to move to the next step. She will explain what we’ve been doing to your bodies. And then we will hear what you have to say. You’ve reacted in a surprisingly tame manner considering what we’ve had to deal with in the past. Do not nullify that assessment by getting violent and ending up drooling on the floor. Monica, you have the floor.”

---

   Stardate -294.4826 – Programme Day Seventy Four

   I listened as Monica explained that in another three months, they’d perform orchiectomies on all of us, removing our testicles, and cutting off the production of testosterone. She explained the true purpose of the goserelin- to inhibit testosterone production- so that the vitamin shots- actually estrogen- could work unimpaired to change our bodies by simulating the effects of a female puberty. She also explained that they would also be performing facial surgery at the very end of our first year, if we hadn’t washed out by that point. She explained that while some years had no washouts, there was always a significant chance of at least one washout, but reassured us that so long as we continued to act in accordance with our sponsors instructions, and continued to make progress towards becoming the women we were apparently going to become, that we had little to worry about.

   Ted continued to cry through the whole ordeal. Danny had curled himself into a ball, and was rocking back and forth on his chair, shivering. Arthur continued to stare at the wall, as if trying to tunnel a hole through it and escape. Ewan looked shell shocked. Katsuro seemed surprisingly chill, but I was unsure whether to attribute this to him being one of the most stable and unflappable motherfuckers I’d ever known, or to my increasingly less crazy conspiracy theory that he was a plant placed in our ranks by the sponsors he seemed to be ever more in agreement with.

   Eventually, Ewan stood up, and faced Pippa. “I’d like to go to my room. I don’t know what to think about all of this, but I need to get some time to process whatever the fuck this day has turned into. Please don’t try and talk with me about this, I just need to get the fuck away from everyone before I completely break down and make a fool of myself.”

   She nodded, smiling at him encouragingly. I guess that was what she considered an ideal response. He left, without saying another word. I looked after him, wondering what was going through my friend’s head right now. Ted was the next to leave, whispering something to Tessa before she escorted him out of the room and towards his room. Danny got up, and stalked out of the room without a word. Arthur followed shortly after, glaring at everyone in the room, including me and Katsuro. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to attract his ire, but it was surprisingly reassuring to see him express any sort of emotion, even if it was sheer rage. He’d been beginning to worry me- something I never thought I could say about Arthur- with his lack of any sort of response the last two months. I did wonder if this meant our group would have to consider sticking closer than ever now that the old Arthur seemed to be back.

   Soon, it was just me and Katsuro left. Steph tapped me on the shoulder, and looked at me, concerned.

   “Alan, are you okay?”

I swallowed, and slowly stood up. I walked towards the door, stopped, and pivoted to face Katsuro and all of the sponsors. I shook my head.

   “No. I’m not okay. More than anything, I’m pissed off,” I said, gritting my teeth. Steph tried to say something, but I cut her off before she could even start talking. “You have been, for the last two and a half months, going on and on about how we men should be respecting the bodily autonomy and the rights of women. You have done this irrespective of whether or not we personally ascribe to misogynist beliefs, which I never did before even stepping into this place. I had a problem with a specific sort of women, not with women in general. Even if I’m now willing to admit I was a fucking dickhead and was absolutely wrong- and do not give me that shocked look, Steph- I was not, by any means, the same sort of fucking asshole you seem to think I am. Or was. I don’t fucking know anymore.”

   I took a deep breath. “What I do know is that it is absolutely fucked to force me and everyone you’ve kidnapped to change the very nature of who they are to be something we are not. I don’t fucking know if everyone here is actually male- for all I know, Arthur could be trans for what little I know about what goes on in his head- but I know enough about myself to know that my gender identity is as solid as fucking concrete. And yet you want to take away my own right to exist as myself in some fucked-up way of fixing behaviours that I don’t even think are really valid to apply to me? And you want to do this regardless of whether I consent to have my body mutilated or my psyche shattered. I don’t know what happens down the line. I don’t know if I’ll somehow have a fucking personal revelation and realise that there was a little girl inside me the entire time. But right now? At this moment? I am far from being okay with what you plan to do to me. And I’m not sure I’ll be okay for some time yet.”

   With that, I turned, and left, walking to my room to find some sort of solace, if that even still existed in my world, shattered as it was now.

---

   I slammed the door of my room shut behind me, and collapsed on the floor, my back against the door. Either today was yet another dream like all of the vivid fucking nightmares I’d been having, or it was real, and I was in such a fucked-up situation that I probably would prefer hell to whatever the fuck Dorley seemed to think was acceptable.

   After some time, I got up, and walked to my computer. Now, more than ever, I needed the safety blanket that was sci-fi to help me sort out the raging typhoon of emotional turmoil seething within my skull. Eventually, though, after passively watching through six episodes of some cyberpunk anime from the 2000s with a purple-haired cyborg lady fighting terrorists in a futuristic dystopian Japan- I turned off my computer, and climbed into bed, not even bothering to change into my pyjamas. I lay there, tired of this day, and tired of this bullshit basement. I didn’t care what happened next, or what the girls planned to do to me. I just needed to sleep. Mercifully, and without needing much prompting, I soon fell into a dreamless slumber. I was going to have to apologise for my rant later, I fucking knew it. But until then, I needed to clear my head and calm my racing mind before I completely lost the plot. I was so fucked. And I had nowhere to escape, not even in the world of science fiction.

   At least this was the last footwear to fall, right?

…

   …right?

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