I'm the sort of person the Voluntary Servitude Act of 2154 was designed to help. I built up an insurmountable debt with college loans and some bad investments. The financial panic of two years ago meant that those who were holding my debt called in my loans. I was gainfully employed but at nowhere near the level I needed to be. Before long my wages were being attached. Even giving up my apartment and moving in with a group of girlfriends was not enough to keep my head above water.
The transit strike was the last straw. With no easy way to get to work, I soon ran out of vacation time and built up a string of unexcused absences. The transit strike cost me my job and I was soon out of options. The Voluntary Servitude Office offered a way out. In exchange for a term of service my debt would be expunged and, at the end of my service, I would be given a nice, interest free loan to get back on my feet and reintegrate into civilian life.
For guys, Voluntary Servitude usually meant manual labor or factory work. For women like me it usually resulted in uncompensated prostitution. I could just as easily end up in a factory or store but terms of service were shorter for sex workers and your loan at the end of your enlistment was larger. Gay and bisexual men could spend their time of service as the male equivalent.
There were supposed safeguards in this modern slavery. I could work only a fixed number of hours I could not be mistreated and would have to be fed well and have access to first class medical services if needed. The amendment necessary to pass the law had been highly controversial. Only in the old states of the Confederacy did the amendment pass easily. Big business heavily favored it and enough palms were greased and (rumor had it) enough elections were fixed to bring about their desire.
It was hard to argue with the results. Factories manned by slave labor caused the economy to boom. Crimes like human sex trafficking virtually disappeared. Voluntary Service Police and federal marshals made sure that there were no abuses and an entire shadow economy dedicated to providing the accouterments to slavery sprang up. Some human rights organizations continued to campaign for the elimination of slavery but they were rapidly losing ground in the face of unparalleled industrial growth.
There was a "buy American" element to the new slavery movement,. Industries that had fled the United States generations ago returned to American shores. American slaves tended to be educated and trainable, a highly desirable combination for the industrialists. Nowadays everything from i-pads to safety pins are manufactured in the United States, more often then not stamped proudly with a small American flag.
While not enthusiastic about the prospect of being a slave for five or six years, it did give me the prospect of three square meals a day and comfortable housing, two things I was severely lacking. I talked it over with my friends and a free councilor at my local VS Office. I soon realized that with no prospects and my job dismissal attached to my resume like a scarlet letter, conventional employment was an iffy thing indeed. I signed the forms and was given a date to report to my local induction center. I had a two week window to void the agreement but those two weeks turned out to be the worst I had ever had. The house I was living in had a fire. Everyone was rescued but I lost nearly all of my possessions. The rest of the two weeks seemed like and endless string of one misfortune after another.I actually began to look forward to slavery.
The night before my enlistment my friends took my out for a night on the town. We watched male strippers and then hit another bar to get laid. My friends pointed out that I would not be permitted to say no to sex for at least five years. I should take advantage of my last night to have sex on my terms.
I found a really cute guy but we got so drunk he could not perform. Despite all my drunken entreaties he remained flaccid but extremely apologetic. I wanted to be penetrated that last night of freedom but all I got was some drunken and eminently forgettable cunnilingus. I was disappointed and hung over when my friends dropped me of at the induction center. My physical queasiness exactly matched my melancholy mood.
I looked at the other women waiting in line. The variety was surprising, there were middle aged widows who had fallen on hard times. There were a few younger than me who had buried themselves in credit card debt and were now trading their service to erase it. They seemed to be every body type as well. "Slavery was the great equalizer" was not just a slogan of the VSO but a fact that helped sell the program in the first place. The only limits on who could be enslaved were age based. No one over 55 and no one under 21.
In the first room our fingerprints were taken and our irises scanned. We each had a number assigned to us and that quickly we lost our names. Temporarily the number was written on the back of our left hand. We were expected to remember the twelve digit number quickly and respond to it as it was now our "name".
In the next room we were each issued a small metal cylinder with a locking door. Every article we had on us we put into the cylinder. The lock sealed with our thumbprint and a laser which quickly scanned our eyes. We would be able to reclaim our possessions when out term of service was over. I felt sorry for the middle aged widow next to me. Her eyes were full of tears as she slid off her wedding ring and engagement ring. Apparently they had never left her finger since her wedding day..
All of us had been naked before women before but this was very different. We were about to be appraised like sides of meat and then sent to our respective training camps. The older women would be trained for commercial or factory work and would receive seven year terms of service. Young attractive women like myself would be sent to sex camps and would get five year terms of service.
We had all been given thorough physicals and measured every way imaginable when we had enlisted. We were given brief examinations to make sure there had been no changes in our health and weight or other measurements All of that data vanished into computer logs.
Our next stop was the shower room where we would be bathed, shaved, and our hair bobbed. I felt intense agitation as several inches of my long blonde hair tumbled into the collection bins on the floor. I would miss those locks but they interfered with the collar I would be required to wear at all times so hair length on slaves was strictly regimented. I was glad that I was not a man however, They emerged from the shower room as bald as billiard balls.
The female attendants wore bathing suits and rank insignia, each one was responsible for three inductees. She shepherded myself, the older but pretty widow, and a plump woman in her late twenties to a group of shower heads along one wall. We were issued nasty smelling anti fungal and disinfecting soap and ordered to wash ourselves head to toe. Our attendant barked at us and made sure that we washed or vaginas and assholes thoroughly.
The next room was actually kind of fun. Giant fans under the floor dried us all in record time. From here we matched single file to what the attendant called the shearing station. Above a hopper two women waited. One ran a shaving razor over our pussies underarms and entire bodies and the other measured and cut our hair simultaneously. Apparently the hair was later used in some industrial process. I felt very strange with a bald pussy. I know it was a fashion amongst some ancient cultures and was in vogue around the turn of the twenty first century, but I had been very proud of my bush ever since I started sprouting it at age twelve. It looked and felt alien.
I had to admit my knees were weak as I left this room. Immediately after our shearing two attendants affixed our collars. My retinas were scanned once more and then I had to stand very still as a laser etched my number into my collar. If you moved and blurred the numbers you were threatened with punishment. The smell of burning metal is now seared in my consciousness like a host of other memories both pleasant and unpleasant.
Were were assembled as a group once more. What an odd lot we must have seemed. Fifty depilated women, tugging at their unaccustomed collars. The widow was next to me looking at her collar in a mirror, I could not help but thinking she had exchanged one ring for another.
A male VSO officer in a very sharp uniform entered the room and ordered us to stand at attention. He eyed each of us in turn. I thought him not a bad looking middle aged man. Some of us were red with embarrassment in his presence.