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Foreword
I found this story while looking through soc.sexuality.spanking posts. I originally wrote and posted it on June 4, 20101So it’s old enough to drive here in Los Angeles! for the SSC Summer 2010, where it was entered in the genre category. The genre was science fiction.
I’ve removed the old Usenet line breaks and corrected a few obvious typographical errors, but otherwise the story appears here as it was posted in 2010.
Copyright 2010 to <mija (at) the treehouse (dot) net>. Please respect this copyright. Don’t distribute or archive this story in any way except for personal use without explicit permission. No, it’s not in the public domain. Ask first, okay? Thanks.
The Adjustment F/f
by Mija
Her dog chased the tennis ball across the garden, turned, and pelted back to her. Alice watched, marveling at Dobbie’s focus.
She threw the ball harder, farther. Time slowed as she threw and Dobbie fetched, the blue sky and green grass of June wrapping them in a perfect day—
—shattered by the shout of “Alice Michelle, you get in here right now.”
o0o
“Hey, Mom.”
The house looked dark after the bright sunshine. Alice blinked. Darker, yes, but cleaner too.
“Don’t you ‘Hey, Mom’ me, young lady. I told you not to leave this house until you cleaned your room.”
Did she really? Alice didn’t remember. Wait, when did Mom wear dresses or aprons?
While Alice mused, noticing the much tidier house and her unusually tidy mother, her mother landed a ringing slap on the seat of her shorts.
“Pay attention! I’m very cross with you, Alice Michelle. Your room’s a disaster. Go in there right now and wait for me. You’re in big trouble.”
o0o
Alice slammed the bedroom door. Her mother had hit her. Well, whacked her, anyway.
Double-take. The bedroom…
Yes, it was messy, with her papers and drawings everywhere. But the room was furnished in a completely different style. No mismatched IKEA and garage-sale finds coupled with her mother’s art. Instead, there was a matching dresser, desk, and bed set. Pillows and a matching bedspread. No duvet, no double bed… and… no computer!
This was not her room.
That realization struck as her mother, her taller mother, opened the door. She held an old-fashioned wooden hairbrush.
“Slamming doors, Miss? Why aren’t you in the corner with your shorts down?”
Alice looked up and screamed as this woman, who was clearly not her mother, pulled her across her lap and pinned her arms behind her back.
“Crazy bitch! Get away from me!”
She kicked helplessly as the brush briskly smacked Alice’s too-thinly-clad bottom.
Fifteen minutes later, a sobbing, red-bottomed Alice let herself be led to a stool waiting in the corner.
“You stay there until you calm down. Then get to work on this room. I want it spotless, do you hear me? Then you stay here and think about your behavior. I wouldn’t want to be you when your father hears what you called me.”
Wide-eyed, still crying, Alice nodded, unable to speak.
o0o
The Clerk’s eyes narrowed.
“Report, Agent D.”
“Unhappy, but she cleaned her room and waited for her father. Cried on me afterward.”
“Adjustments are never happy. Hers isn’t the worst.”
“Why the change?”
“They determined 2020 wasn’t working. Much as Alice needs creative space, she needs to develop self-discipline and wasn’t. Or something. 1950s suburbia was the adjustment.”
“She’s unhappy.”
“‘Happy’ doesn’t matter. Alice has to grow up ‘creative and disciplined.’ That’s what They require. You’re required to watch and report… unless you want a new assignment.”
“No, sir.”
Dobbie shrugged. He had no idea why They needed Alice to grow up creative and disciplined, but the Clerk was right. His job was to watch and report.
A dog’s life.
Word Count: 509
This story is inspired by—and very loosely based on—the much more brilliant story “The Adjustment Team” by Philip K. Dick (1954). Like the original, this story’s intended genre is science fiction.
- 1So it’s old enough to drive here in Los Angeles!