Posted by jamie on May 05, 2002 at 22:19:21:
The Diary of Liena Jane Gibbons
As told and Edited by Richard, 6thSept 4963
I rediscovered Liena's diary disc shortly before I left the Bureau of Female Population Control after almost one hundred years working there as a supervisor in various ranks within the Department of In House Processing.
I remembered her the moment I spotted it in my desk as I so sadly cleared it away for the last time By then the female population was more in sync and it was no longer politically possible to keep the culling program going to the great disappointment of many to whom a generation of our loveliest girls had given such exquisite pleasure and the sorrow of Federation treasuries for the girls, in giving their young lives, had indeed brought great wealth to the State.
Liena was right to think that I thought a great deal of her for she was indeed both sweet and brave, both wonderful traits carried with her right to the end. She was also very lovely and I still cannot say how she survived without being selected by a client to enjoy for so long.
Survival for the girls did not always follow from what one might value of them in a technically aesthetic sense for I had seen the most classically beautiful girls be amongst the last of their group to be culled and indeed had even seen some truly beautiful girls go through to release.
This was, of course, vital lest the most desirable amongst them were to lose all heart upon being initially drafted and thus depreciate the value of them all. That a girl depended on hope if she were to maintain her appearance and vitality and therefore value went without saying and just one depressed girl around the School was deleterious to the morale of them all.
Liena was, despite the occasional gloom in her diary, cheerful and helpful to others and was thus very popular with her sisters and was sadly missed when finally called upon to die.
Survival, then, depended on luck and that luck depended in turn on the wants of a particular run of customers. Most girls were chosen, not for their faces so much, which were universally lovely anyway, but for what their potential purchaser envisioned his girl would look like as he or, occasionally, she, applied the means of killing her.
When one saw a client selecting a girl with lovely long legs it was odds on he had it in mind to watch her hang. A fragile delicate neck would never do for supporting a girl as she did so, but would suite a person who liked to manually strangle his girl, the feel and sight that delicate, svelte column in his adoring hands brings as he kills her and, I might add, without getting hand cramp doing it.
Few, very few, girls had it all.
Liena, while not quite the exception for no girl could be, was certainly lovely in every sense of the word and, if I recall correctly, was rated "AA+" by her drafting panel, a high value girl indeed. She had her ballet toned legs, her incredibly lovely and, above all, expressive eyes and a slim, lithe elegance, an ideal girl no matter what one's fancy.
She was almost fragile in her prettiness rather than classically beautiful, soft brown hair and very fair, almost pure white skin, so fine it looked almost translucent, making those blue green eyes the focal point of her delicate, exquisite young face.
I did not know, as I have observed already, why she survived for so long, but it made it so much harder for her when she was chosen given the sensitive, sweet nature she was born with.
And it made my role in supervising her processing a sad but, I have to confess, much more moving and poignantly enjoyable experience.
I have noted in these journals before how much more meaning and satisfaction there is in the processing, or officiating in the processing by a client, of a girl one likes for herself.
As I said, I still wonder why it was that all but three short of the quota from her intake were processed before she was called to serve the State and offer her life for the common good.
A very fortunate customer indeed was he who had the great privilege of having this exceptional girl give him her greatest gift.
How he was for her, I will let her diary tell.
Liena was, like many other girls rather unlucky that her client wanted to enjoy her during the mid morning processing session. A girl selected for this session has longer to dwell on her coming death than, say, those chosen to be killed in the breakfast session or that of the late afternoon or evening.
A girl who has to die early in the morning can be awakened by her Matron and kept busy with her preparation right up to the time she must go to her client while girls scheduled for later in the day need not be told that they have been chosen until such a time as it is necessary to get them prepared for their client.
But Liena, whilst still awakened early, for the staff were always pressed for time having to prepare so many girls for the day's culling schedule, had to wait until ten in the morning having completed her sleep period three hours earlier so, as we shall see, her stress and worry was somewhat prolonged.
Here, then, is her diary up to her last conscious moment and a print out of the Diary's recording of her actual death.
It is written in the simple, unfussed way of the charming person she was.
The reader of it will note that the Selected Thoughts Mk 3™model diary was designed specifically with the needs in mind of a girl destined to undergo culling and was programmed to switch to the present tense from the moment of her wakening on the morning upon which she was to be processed. This allowed it to record her suffering, feelings and thoughts as she was actually dying.
"My Diary
27th June 4892
Mother wouldn't buy me a Thought Diary at first, but I finally talked her into it. She said I was worrying myself too much about being selected for the draft one day and putting things into a diary would only make it worse for me.
But I want people to know what a girl unlucky to be born extra pretty has to go through so I got Mom to buy a "Selected Thoughts Mk3" (Girl's)™ model which only takes those thoughts it knows are about you being a selectable quality girl. It also has the power to record relevant thoughts right up to the moment the girl dies if she is selected. I so hope it never has to do that with me.
But I really just know I am going to be drafted and chosen and killed by some one - I am sure it will be a man.
I have been sure of this for a whole month now, a week before my fourteenth birthday when our school had a visit from the Education Department in London City. His job is to visit year eight girl's schools and hold a special class for those girls he thinks are starting to show that they may be pretty enough later to be selected for the draft. He said the law was called the 'Control of the Female Population Act' or something like that.
He chose thirty four of us. I wanted to have the diary after he looked at me for a long time and shook his head with a funny sad look on his face and I knew what he was thinking. While he was telling us a bit about what the prettiest of us could expect, he kept looking at me a lot. I know I am going to be killed one day.
Why do so many girls have to be borne than are boys? It just isn't fair.
That is the reason he gave for them killing lots of us when we turn eighteen, lots of the prettiest ones anyway. That's not fair either.
He gave all of us an electro-pad note to take home. It says something about a favourable preliminary assessment being made of us and that we must not be taken out of the Council Zone of England without permission from the Bureau and that we must report every year for reassessment and evaluation or something.
28th Jan 4893
It happens often still, the cruel way the way other kids tease us more pretty girls about the way we look. They say awful things about how we will get ours when someone kills us one day.
27th June 4984
I had to attend my second review today, my fifteenth birthday.
Two ladies from the assessment office of the Bureau made me parade before them in a pretty dress they provided. Worse still they made us undress so they could examine us for imperfections, they said. It was awfully embarrassing although not as much as the first time. When I complained about it then, I was told by my class teacher that selected girls are required to be naked during their culling so I had better get used to it.
Everyone now talks as if I am certain to be picked when I am eighteen and I am getting so frightened already.
I then had to let a woman examine me all over. I was told she was a Doctor and her job is to monitor the health of candidate girls as only the very healthy of us can be chosen in the draft later on. I never hoped to be a sickly girl, but I do now. I am not though; she said I was quite a good example of the type most sought by selection schools as I could be expected to provide value to a client if a slow method of processing me such as strangulation was used.
Please God don't let me be strangled if I get drafted- it would be a terrible way to be killed.
8th. August 4984
Mom and dad had a fight over me tonight.
Dad says I need to go to a deportment or modelling school. He says I am all gangly and awkward. Mom yelled at him. I heard them through the wall of my bedroom it was that loud. Mom said he must want to get me killed suggesting that. She said everyone says how lovely I am already and he wants to make certain I am drafted and killed in the cull.
Dad said life must go on - something about not allowing the needs of the State to dictate what we do. He said I should be allowed to develop to my full potential and if that meant I was chosen then that is the way it has to be.
In the end they said I will go to ballet classes.
2nd January 4985
It's "official". I have a boy friend at last.
Classified girls rarely get to have a regular boy friend. The boys say it drives them mad to see the prettiest girls going to waste, but it hurts them too much when they lose them to the draft.
18th May 4985
I was selected to play the first cygnet in Swan Lake today. The instructor at ballet said I was progressing very well. She said she chose me because of the lovely way I carried myself now, how graceful the way my neck looked when I held my head up properly.
I hope this does not get me drafted as Mom fears.
The ballet is to be staged the day before my birthday which will be nice for Mom and Dad.
27th June 4985
My annual inspection was held this afternoon. I have been reclassified to "A Plus" meaning that I will be inspected every three months by the Bureau Assessors to see that I am not doing anything from now on to mar my face of anything like that. They told me I will be publicly executed if I do. Apparently some girls try to avoid the draft be trying to disfigure themselves once the time for possible call up gets near.
6th December 4985
My boy friend, Robert, is getting really worried now. He knows I will be eligible to be drafted to serve the State in six months. His fussing keeps reminding me of it and I am getting frightened. I cry some nights now.