Career Day

by unknown

John was going to be a fire fighter. Or a hockey player. He hadn't decided yet. Anyway, it was career day at his junior high school. Business people, professionals, machinists, and public sector employees had been invited to speak to small groups of students all day long. But first, you had to take the aptitude test, called the Sharp-Culligan Interest Inventory.

John was confident his test was going to show his innate ability to achieve, either in athletics, or in hazardous situations. He wrote the test in only 40 minutes, asked to be excused, and went across the street to the park. He liked to kick the crap out of the pot heads who smoked grass in the park pavilion, during breaks in the school day.

The rest of the day went well. Several fire fighters and a police lieutenant gave rousing speeches that John heard. He was also very impressed by the construction workers and the thought of working in high-rise steel construction. Sure, there were risks, but "hey, what is life if there are no risks?" he said to himself.

The next week, John's family received an unusual letter from the Principal of the school. John and his parents were to come in for a special parent-student-principal career conference. His parents were very surprised. They questioned John, but he was just as baffled as his parents.

John's parents came to school on a Thursday afternoon, after everyone had gone home. They were told that their son should wait in the main office while the Principal and his parents talked in private. John waited restlessly in the outside office.

"I'm afraid your boy wrote a most unusual career-aptitude test," said the Principal.

"As you know, our modern society uses these tests to determine career path. Well, John has selected for himself a most unusual career path".

His parents gave each other blank looks.

"John has the ideal psychological make-up to be a wet-nurse," said the Principal. "Or, a greeting card-shop owner. Or, a preschool teacher," said the Principal. "Do you understand what I am saying??? The test indicates that John would make a great stay-at-home wife..."

"Now just a damned minute!" said john's father. "There must be a big mistake. John has his heart set upon being a fire fighter or a hockey player. You must have made a bad mistake!!!"

The Principal was not amused. "Look, the interest inventory has been statistically optimized on several hundred thousand children. It predicts with 99.9% confidence the optimal career path at a very early age. Our low crime rates and economic prosperity depend upon the principle that every individual must pursue an optimal career path. In fact, national law requires it. I'm afraid that, John has selected this career path for himself, and scientific research shows that we know what's best for John."

He continued, "You could have John re-take the test, but it likely won't change. It would be far better to accept John's fate, and to help him, so that he can achieve lifelong happiness as a productive member of society."

Well his parents talked, and the Principal talked, and after a while they agreed to have John re-take the test. John was told his test was lost, and that the conference had been called because John was accused of skipping the exam. He seemed to accept this white lie.

Two weeks later, the test results came back exactly the same.

This time, John's parents went to see the principal in secret. His mom was crying. His dad was distraught. There were laws in the country, saying that people had a god-given right, no, an obligation, to follow the best career path. The principal was sympathetic. He put them in touch with the career transition center, which would advise the parents on how to steer John into his new career.

John was told just what he wanted to hear. He was given a test result sheet that stated his optimal career would be in professional sports, or in construction, civil defense, or as an airplane test pilot.

A month latter and it was June, and school was out for summer. John spent the first few days in total relaxation. He would play football, or basketball, or just kick the crap out of his enemies, down on his old grade school grounds.

Every day began in the same way, his mom would wake him at 8:00 am. She would fix him breakfast. Secretly, she slipped powerful drugs into his orange juice each morning. This would delay the onset of puberty for him.

Meanwhile, his father and the career center scheduled an operation at the hospital for June 15th. One the 14th, John's mom was nervous. On this morning, the contents of his juice would be different. On this morning, the juice contained a timed-release powder. She stared at him as he drank it. It made her wince. She knew the juice would hurt him, but the doctor had assured her it would only cause some temporary pain. Anyway, there was no other way to get John ready for the rest of his life.

Late that day, John came down with bad stomach cramps. He was rushed to the hospital, and given an X-ray. Little did he know, his parents had planned this well in advance. His surgeon-to-be was working the emergency room. The radiologist knew about John's fate. When the x-rays came back, there was no debate. John had appendicitis. He had to have an operation right away.

You can guess what happened to john during the operation. They didn't even touch his appendix. The just removed his testicles, and placed a drug-delivery system in his abdomen.

After the surgery was over, they gave him an I.V. of L-gynomuta, a new type of drug called a receptor oxidant. In the bloodstream, this drug attacks all the male hormone receptors in the body. Intravenous treatment for a day would not have much of an affect. But after a week of intravenous delivery, treatment was complete: the drug destroyed all the androgen receptors in John's body. Even if he wanted to, he could never be male again. His body could only respond to female hormones. He had been turned into an androgen insensitive male.

Of course, after the operation, John might find a way to have the drug delivery system removed. Then, he would be neutered, with a slight predisposition towards femininity, because he had lost his androgen receptors.

But there was one catch, that wasn't known to John, his doctor, or even to his parents. It was the company that supplied the drug-delivery system. This company happened to be the fastest growing medical enterprise on the Federal Stock Exchange. You see, they had found a perfect way to get repeat customers. All their drug delivery systems contained an array of genetically engineered hormones. To the carbon atoms of each hormone molecule, they attached narco-addictive molecules. This meant that their patients would not only get a soothing feeling from the hormones, but they would also quickly become highly addicted to the hormones. So addicted that, they would die if forced to undergo withdrawal. That way, once a customer, always a customer. Now, John would always be a customer.

After the operation, John was very sick. For two days he was very groggy, almost paralyzed, and sleepy, from the anesthetic. After the anesthesia wore off, the new hormones kicked in, and he was nauseous for nearly 6 days. He was barely able to move during this time. The ceiling was swimming, and John didn't know what had happened to him.

The doctor took John's parents aside and told them what to expect. John had just barely entered puberty. His bones were still growing, and his voice hadn't changed yet. They had brought him in for surgery just in time. His voice would never crack; his hips would swell enormously, his breasts would develop normally, and he would stop growing at a height of only 5.5" or 5.7". In two or three years it would be impossible to distinguish him from any other young teenage girl on the street. One more surgery could be performed to allow him to have sex. By the time they scheduled the surgery, John would be begging for it. The hormones would have reprogrammed his brain and made him complacnet and accepting of his fate, and he would already be dating, like it or not, the doctor said.

There was hell to pay when John regained full consciousness. He flailed around a lot in bed when he found out what had happened; the details were pretty sad.

His parents told him he had no choice. Social services had arranged to reissue the birth certificate at the hospital where John was born. John's parents had thought of a new name, and had applied for a social security card using the name they had chosen. The whole new identity would belong to a girl named Susan.

Susan came home from the hospital to an empty house, a house being packed up, with boxes everywhere, for they were going to move to another state at the end of the summer. She went upstairs to her room, and slowly approached the dresser. She was wearing blue jeans and a skin-tight unisex knit top, clothes given to her at the hospital. Her hand trembled as she pulled open the dresser drawer. It was true. All the old underwear was gone. Sitting there, in the top drawer, were ten new pairs of high-waisted cotton panties, and seven training bras.

Her mom's voice wafted up the stairs. "Susan, I want you to come with me. We are going grocery shopping. And, I won't let you go out without putting on some of your new underwear. There are going to be a lot of new rules that you will have to follow from now on. You won't get to stay out late any more. You will have to dress appropriately for school. You are going to have to wear a bra whenever you go out in public. You may not need it now, but in a year or too, you'll fill one up, and by that time, you'll be glad you started today."

One hundred miles away, in a different state, at the Sharp-Culligan Testing Center, a programmer was inspecting the test-grading software he had written. "Why was that variable an integer?", he thought. He couldn't remember why. "Could someone score so high in this area, that the variable would wrap around and become negative?"

He didn't think so. It probably had never happend. But he changed the variable to a long integer, just in case.

THE END

Career Day copyright 1996 by unknown.