Part 1
I want to begin this account of my experience in the Panzher Station CIGI (we pronounce it “siggy”) by saying for the record that I’m not like most of the other girls who get sent there. I didn’t drift around from failed training program to failed apprenticeship through my late teens and early twenties, whether from a lack of direction, emotional instability, criminal behavior, or any of the other qualities that saw my classmates at the CIGI fail to hack it. I’m not a dropout or a basket case. As far as I know, anyway, which in fact isn’t saying much.
My earliest memory is waking up to see a tram full of distant passengers on the magnetic line overhead, gliding along the central axis of the cylinder city, unable to move from the medical bed I’d been cuffed to by one ankle and one arm. When a nurse in a blue-and-white uniform checked in on me, she explained that I’d been found in an unmarked cryo-pod floating in orbit among the rings of Jupiter. I have no idea how I got there. The pod was brought to Panzher Station and I was admitted to the hospital due to a defect in the cryo system that made for a risky revival and was likely responsible for my memory loss, as well as the brain fog I sometimes experience.
The hospital staff checked my biometrics against the records of every station and settlement in the Solar Pact. Before I even woke up, they’d confirmed that I was never registered as a citizen in any of them. I was cuffed to the bed for a day and a half before neural imaging confirmed my claim of memory loss, that even if I had intended to be some kind of infiltrator before being put in stasis, it was no longer the case.
I received my citizenship, but since I was already at least twenty-four, with absolutely no schooling or other credentials, my alien status still posed a problem. On a space station, there’s no room for dead weight, no oxygen for those who don’t contribute to society, so anyone who hasn’t completed a trade program or apprenticeship of any kind (or surgically equipped for a specific career, but I was hesitant to radically reshape my body, which I was already fond of) by the age of twenty-six is assigned a function by the Labor Commission. Furthermore, I was already in quite a bit of debt, since I was expected to pay for both my hospital stay and the cargo space on the skiff that brought me here from Jovian orbit.
I was four days into my new life before I saw my own reflection, in the washroom at the offices where I was getting processed as a citizen. I gazed in fascination at my long, lean form and knobby joints, my soft, unblemished skin, my mane of light blonde hair, my round, full breasts. I was wearing a black cache-sexe for modesty’s sake - I had no other clothing to my name. Above its bulge, a line of thin dark hair crept up my belly. My face was especially fascinating to me - my angular features were familiar, but something about the sight was strange in a way I never could place.
Since I was considered too old for any of the station’s voluntary education programs, I had to undergo evaluation by the Labor Commission. After an exhaustive and humiliating series of interviews and testing, they assigned me the “sexual labor track” - essentially, I would either be pimped out by the state in a city brothel, or take on a contract for a long-haul voyage. But since I was legally indistinct from the dropouts and petty criminals that typically ended up in my position, I would have to attend the Panzher Station CIGI for eighteen months before I could begin my career and start paying off my debt.
So you can see that I was simply a victim of circumstance. But in the end, that didn’t matter in the least. On the sixteenth day of my new life, I stepped off the tram at the east end of the city and descended from the transit station to join the other detritus of society. Or at least that segment of detritus consisting of girls who’d been assigned to the sexual labor, erotic performance, and personal service career tracks.
The CIGI was a towering complex of gray and white plastic supported against the artificial gravity by a lightweight metal frame. No windows, just a sterile warren of classrooms and dorms. The street outside was lined with unkempt, graffiti-tagged warehouses and apartment blocks. I stepped carefully around the drifts of litter, not wanting to cut up my bare feet, and into a small courtyard. I tried the front door and, finding it unlocked, entered.
In the dim vestibule, an ancient-looking terminal was mounted facing the door. It flickered to life as I approached it. “Welcome to the Panzher Station Correctional Institute for Girl Indentures. Please present your identification.” I held up my brand-new ident card to its camera and then took a seat at the AI’s prompting.
Two other girls were seated in the short row of plastic chairs. They were new students too, here for the institute’s monthly intake: Sophia Esch, dark-skinned with well-muscled legs and full breasts, and Yasmin Kholl, lanky and with a mop of red hair. Yasmin wore a cheap-looking shift and was fidgeting nervously. Sophia, on the other hand, met my eyes with a glare. She wore a finely-woven black cloak over shorts and a bra that looked like exercise wear. We didn’t exchange so much as a greeting as I took a seat between them, but I kept catching condescending looks from Sophia.
I’d been told to arrive between hour-10.5 and hour-11. Just two minutes before hour-11, one more girl sauntered in. She scanned her ident card at the terminal and elected to lean against one wall rather than picking one of the three empty chairs. She was short, barely sixteen decimeters to my nineteen, but she carried herself with an imposing and careless energy that I envied on sight. Her skin was a soft brown, her black hair cropped short, and she had metal piercings through her ears and her sneering lips. She wore a dark tunic and heavy boots. Her name was Marcille Treiphong-Sun, and she would be my only friend for the next year and a half.
At precisely hour-12 a door slid open to admit a pair of custodians, the staff responsible for both the maintenance of the facilities as well as their security. They were a pair of sturdy women in black coveralls, Sathya and Pam on door duty as usual.
“Come on in, girls,” Pam said, curt. I stood up, and the four of us incomers filed by her into the long, narrow room beyond, much of the walls lined with small lockers. We stood in a line by the door as it slid shut, each of us wary of what was to come.
Sathya was peering at a handheld terminal. “Okay, which of you is Jane Doe? Please place your thumb here.” I obliged, touching the handheld. “Your student ID number is 4480. Find the locker with your number, key it open with your thumb, and put everything you’re wearing” - she gave me a wry glance - “inside, lock it in, stand by the other door.” I nodded and made to step away but she stopped me. “You say ‘yes, ma’am.’”
“Yes, ma’am.” The lockers were in numerical order so I was quick to find mine. I peeled off my cache-sexe and stuck it inside, shielding my genitals with one hand as I took my place at the other end of the room.
Yasmin Kholl was next, and shrugged out of her ragged shift, stuffing it into her locker. Sophia Esch said “yes, ma’am” in a tone absolutely dripping with sarcasm, but the custodians didn’t react. As she opened her locker, Sathya waved the handheld at the last of us. “Marcille Treiphong-Sun, you’re up.” Marcille only folded her arms and looked bored.
“Place your thumb on the tablet or you’ll be marked as a no-show,” Pam spoke up. Rolling her eyes, Marcille submitted to give her print. Sathya continued, annoyed. “Your student ID number is 4524. Get moving and put your clothes in your locker.”
“Okay,” Marcille said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Pam said.
“Right.”
“Have it your way,” said Sathya, tapping the handheld. “That’s one day’s weekend detention. Get your clothes off or we’ll do it for you, and you’ll have a full-weekend detention.” Marcille shrugged and clomped over to her locker. As she stripped off her heavy boots and her tunic, I couldn’t help but stare. Her breasts were small, firm, with nipples shading to pink; her belly was soft and her thighs, though a trifle heavy, were still muscular. She had a small ring piercing her navel and there was a rippling pattern of light-colored scars across her thighs. She caught my eye and, coloring, I forced myself to turn away.
“Okay. Jane and Yasmin,” Pam instructed as Marcille joined the back of the line, “hands against the wall, legs spread.” Gripped with trepidation, I obeyed, managing not to bite Sathya when she reached around my head and stuck her fingers in my mouth.
“You’ll have to undergo a cavity search for contraband whenever you enter the institute,” Sathya said as she moved on to probe my rear end. I managed not to cry out as she added, “And you’ll be severely punished if we find anything, so don’t even try it.” When Yasmin and I were cleared, the custodians moved on to Sophia and Marcille.
Then we were led into the next room, where the custodians took an electric clipper to our heads. Marcille’s hair, too short to do anything with, was left alone for now, but the rest of us received the regulation two-centimeter buzz cut. They shampooed our remaining hair too, checking for parasites. They did the same with our pubic hair, Pam dispassionately scrubbing my mound with a gloved hand.
With this rude reception complete, the custodians brought us to a room where we would wait for a prefect to show us around the school, handing each of us a newly-printed uniform before they left. On one end of the room were a couple showers, which we used to rinse out the shampoo. On the other side of the room, four more girls were sitting on benches, already in their uniforms.
In a society without a nudity taboo, it takes a deliberate effort to put together an outfit that’s genuinely humiliating. The CIGI uniform is a successful example, and even among the faculty there’s no pretense it’s unintentional. First, I picked up the high-waisted panties. The inner layer was bright red and bikini-cut, of a very thin, stretchy, and soft fabric. At the waist they connected to the outer layer, which was white, thick, and stiff. It clung tight in a belt, the upper hem just below the belly button and sitting just above my pubic mound and the swell of my buttocks. There was also a “Y” of white cloth attached to the lower hem, at the tailbone and each side of the pubic mound - very like a cache-sexe, but without the center panel that would in fact cache the sexe. When I pulled them on, the inner layer covered my entire crotch and ass, but it was thin and tight, and the outer layer pulled them even tighter, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination.
Next, a button-up shirt, white with short sleeves. It was fitted, not skin-tight, offering no support and thin enough that the contours of my breasts and nipples were clearly visible. Only as long as my rib cage, it left a strip of skin exposed above the edge of the panties. There were letters embroidered in red on the left breast: “CIGI” and “SL” to mark me as a sexual labor student.
Then the navy-blue socks, knee-high, sheer like pantyhose, and the white shoes. They were low-cut with a rounded toe, a chunky four-centimeter heel, and a thin strap fastened with a plastic, side-release buckle.
It was easiest to put on the dress last, because it was tight and made it difficult to bend over. It was made of a thick, rough navy-blue fabric. Its straps went over my shoulders, but the top hem sat just below my breasts, supporting them at the base through the fabric of the shirt when I did up the three buttons. It was tight at the ribs and belly, only flaring out slightly at the hips, and was barely long enough to cover my panties - sitting down, bending over, or even just spreading my feet more than half a meter apart would expose them. The final piece was a strip of red cloth, but none of us knew what to do with it. When the prefect arrived she showed us how to tie it in a bow at our collars.
We had waited about half an hour - fifty minutes - when the custodians brought in another group of four. The prefect, Azoone Ri, arrived just as they were dressing. She was a tall, willowy girl with an air of perfectionism about her. Prefects were a group of students in their final six months at the CIGI, selected by the faculty to enforce discipline, carry out punishments, and generally help execute the functions of the institution in exchange for being granted certain privileges. Azoone greeted us curtly, likely annoyed with the imposition on her time on this last day of the weekend. She led us to a lift and pressed the button for floor five, out of six. With thirteen of us together, we had to squeeze in, but the lift was big enough it was doable.
“I’m going to walk you through your weekday schedule. Floors five and six are the dormitory floors,” Azoone explained as the lift rattled upward. “Just find the door with your number on it. Wake-up is at hour-6, and classes start at hour-8, by which time you’re expected to have eaten, showered, and dressed. The line for the showers is longest just after wake-up, so some people eat first, but don’t leave it too late. You get punishment if you arrive at class late, or without having showered, or if your uniform is in disarray or incomplete. You two” - she glanced at me and Sophia as our group stepped off the lift - “are clearly not used to heels, but you get punishment if you’re not wearing them anywhere except your own dorm floor, between hour-20 and hour-8.”
The lift opened in a hallway only a couple paces from the institute’s cafeteria, a wide room with enough benches and tables for two hundred forty occupants. Despite its size, the ceiling was no higher than it was in the hallway, just about two and a half meters - typical for a station building, but it still felt claustrophobic. At the center of the wall just opposite from us was the row of glass-fronted cabinets where each of us would retrieve a plastic-wrapped meal tray three times a day. It was a weekend, so many students were out in the city or at their family homes, but there were still a few girls alone or in groups at the edges of the room. They were all in uniform; even from the middle of the room I could see the red under a couple of their dresses.
Right next to the cafeteria was the floor’s restroom. Most public facilities made some effort to the privacy of their toilets, but it wasn’t the case here - the two rows of metal toilets had no stalls around them and the wall separating the restroom from the hallway was only waist-high, with a doorless entrance on either end next to the sinks. I briefly made eye contact with one girl as she pissed. The back of another girl’s head, as she squatted on the toilet, was within arm’s reach as Azoone led us away from the cafeteria and toward the entrances to the dorm rooms.
“You saw how slow the lift was,” our guide continued, “and that’s on a weekend, mid-day, so if you’re in a hurry it’s better to take the stairs.” She opened the door to the nearest dorm. The small display next to it read #1000 - #1299, and it opened onto a long room. Against the far wall was a smaller restroom area, only distinct from the rest of the room by a slight depression in the plastic floor, with a large drain at the center. Two shower heads and two metallic toilets protruded from the wall. A table at the center of the room was partitioned by low dividers into six spaces, each with a chair. The two longer walls were each inset with twelve bunks, upper and lower. The bunks were each lined with a pad of cushioning, a thin blanket, and a pillow. There was a stack of narrow shelves between each of the bunks, holding students’ personal effects and articles of the uniform.
Four girls were already inside when we entered with Azoone. Two sat at the desk, occupied with handheld terminals, and there were two more sitting facing each other, legs entangled, in one of the bunks.
Azoone cleared her throat, disapproving. “Girls, I know it’s a weekend, so I’m going to give you fifteen seconds to get your uniforms on.” One of the girls at the desk was already in full uniform, and the other only had to buckle her shoes on, but the two in the bunk had neither dress nor shoes. They leaped to the floor and hurried to pull on the tight dress as they slipped their shoes on. The shorter girl managed it in time but the taller one, with frizzy black hair, tripped on her shoe and lost valuable seconds.
Azoone sighed, glancing at us. “You can sit if you want, fresh fish,” she said, “this will take a minute.” She approached the frizzy-haired girl, who had just done up the last button of her dress when Azoone placed a hand on her shoulder. “I think one stroke for each second you went over is fair, don’t you, Nel?”
Nel made a face, but kept her voice carefully neutral. “Entirely fair, miss.”
“Hands on the desk, then, legs spread. Count off nine strokes.” As Nel moved to obey, Azoone drew a narrow paddle of heavy plastic out of one of the pockets of her dress. The “orange paddle” was the most common tool used for discipline at the CIGI, not very large but punched through with a lattice of diamond-shaped holes to reduce air resistance. Nel took a position with her feet out wider than her shoulders, bent at the waist. Her dress, as short and tight as any of ours, had already ridden up enough that I could see the contours of her shapely ass through the red fabric of her panties. They would provide no cushioning at all against a paddle. She pulled her dress higher, over her waist, to expose her whole ass and braced against the desk with her hands.
Azoone appraised Nel’s posture and, approving, lined up her shot. A wind up, and then a strike to Nel’s ass, right above the crease of the thighs. Nel jumped slightly and gasped, but called, “One!” Another wind-up, another stroke, this time to Nel’s bare upper thighs. “Two!”
I noticed Sonia giving me an odd look. I turned away from Nel’s bouncing flesh, but the sound of the seven strokes that followed still had me flushing.
When Nel whimpered “Nine!” Azoone stepped back with an obnoxious little flourish of the paddle. “All right,” she said. “I hope you’ll all remember the rules regarding your uniform in the future. Fresh fish,” she turned to our group and gestured at the door, “we’re off, come on out.”
Our next destination was a classroom on the second floor. “That probably seemed harsh to you fish,” Azoone told us as we waited for the lift, “but trust me, she was just glad not to get detention. Takes up a whole weekend-day and it’s typically a good deal less pleasant than a quick spanking.
“Anyway, on weekdays you have three types of blocks on your schedule. Your first block will always start at hour-8, and as I said you’re expected to be clean, properly dressed, and in your assigned seat when it begins. Expect a detention if you’re late by even a few seconds. If you’ve got a gym block first, you can skip the shower until afterward, but you do have to get dressed just to go downstairs and change into your gym uniform.”
The classroom was a little smaller than the dorm room had been, with seating for twenty students. A large terminal display, currently powered off, was inset into the wall behind the instructor’s heavy desk. Seating was placed in pairs on either side of a central aisle. The chairs were squared-off and hard, with little concession to ergonomics; each had a tiny desk built into the right side with an incorporated keyboard.
“The majority of your schedule will be filled with class blocks. A few remedial academics, probably, but they’ll mostly depend on your career track. You get a new schedule every three months, with a week at the end of each quarter for final exams. Bring your personal terminal with you for all classes.”
From the classroom, Azoone took us to a locker room on the ground floor - not the same one we’d entered the facility through. This one was equipped with a bathroom, much like the ones offset from the halls throughout the building but with a compact line of twenty-odd showers.
“Second type of block, gym block. On the shelf next to your assigned bunk upstairs you’ll find a gym uniform. You bring it with you for gym, leave your school uniform in one of the lockers here.
“Through the big doors over here is the courtyard.” We passed through and into a wide “outdoor” space. Two sides were bounded by the towering gray walls of the institute building, while opposite the doors we’d emerged from was a lower building in much the same style. “That’s the gymnasium and the pool,” Azoone said. To our left a high chain-link fence blocked access to the city street beyond.
Our guide pointed to a grid of white dots painted onto the ground by the doors. “At the start of class you have to line up according to your student number. Be in uniform, standing in place, facing forward at the time your block starts, or else you’re late.”
We walked next to a workshop that took up at least a third of the institute’s ground floor. It wasn’t busy, but there were a couple groups of a dozen girls at opposite ends of the space. Each was overseen by an older person not wearing a uniform. Long tables with benches took up much of the space, with the remainder filled by shelves and bins full of tools and materials.
“Most of us at the CIGI can’t pay tuition,” Azoone told us, “so we also have work blocks several hours a week, earning our keep. Some get assigned to janitorial duty doing the grunt work for the custodians, or helping in the kitchens. Others attend the workshop here, contracted out for simple product assembly, data entry, that sort of thing. Nothing you need much training for.”
Azoone walked around with us a little more after that, showing us the layout of the building and a few additional facilities. On the second floor there was a laundry room where we could trade in our dirty uniforms for identical, clean ones, a few administration offices, and an infirmary we could visit in the event of any health problems. The third and fourth floors were all classrooms; the fifth and six mostly dorms. Our last stop was an auditorium, split between the ground and second floors, that could seat all three hundred-odd students at once in its banks of bleachers.
“There’s an assembly held here the last weekday of each month,” Azoone explained. “Each faculty member picks a student to make an example of. They torment and humiliate her in front of the whole rest of the institute. I’m sure I don’t need to explain that you want to avoid pissing off any of your teachers too much.
“Anyway, I think that’s about it. You may as well go find your dorm rooms - if your student number is less than 5200, you’re on the fifth floor. Otherwise you’re on six. Hope you don’t have any questions, because I’m going to get some extra sleep before the first day of class tomorrow. You’ll find your personal terminal, extra uniforms and stuff on the shelves next to your bunk. Check your terminal for your schedule, find where you go for your first block, and don’t be late.” With a tired nod, Azoone stalked off toward the elevator. Her impatience with having to deal with us was obvious enough that no one followed too close behind her.
I took a seat in the bleachers, wanting to think for a moment. I thought I was alone until I turned toward the door, where Sophia was leaning against the wall, watching me. I assumed, like me, she was only letting our situation sink in. Wishing to be alone, I stood and made to walk out past her. She got in my way.
“What do you want?” I asked, annoyed.
She stared at me. “I was just thinking.”
“Yeah, me too, but I kind of wanted to be alone.”
“Are you from Panzher Station, Jane?”
“What?”
“I was just wondering.”
“I’m not. May I leave?”
She made no effort to stop me when I slipped between her and the doorframe, but followed me down the corridor. “So where are you from then?”
I shrugged. “Why are you asking?”
She walked behind me and didn’t answer. When I entered a stairwell, she did too, but she didn’t climb up after me. She stood at the bottom and gazed at me while I struggled upward in my new shoes.
My dorm room was on the fifth floor. The label by the door read #4300 - #4599, but it wasn’t until I stepped inside and saw her lying in her bunk in nothing but her shirt and panties that I realized Marcille would be in the same dorm as me. I’d wanted to be alone, but I found myself unable to keep my eyes off her as I found my assigned bunk across from hers. The balls it took to sit around half-naked so soon after seeing another girl punished for it - I couldn’t help being impressed. She was in the Erotic Performance track; I wondered if we would have any classes together.
So that was how the first day of my brutal and degrading stint at the CIGI went. I basically hid under the covers until dinner, my head spinning. After a meal of fish and greens in the cafeteria, I returned to my room. Most of my new roommates were there now. I made a cursory introduction and fell into an uneasy sleep before the lights even dimmed for the night.