Big Brother
Written & edited by Amnoartist
Chapter 2: Plucked
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Kaela was nervous, and she had every right to be. It wasn’t easy spending years of her constantly observed life working out to get so big; to get His attention when the yearly Pluckingcame. She’d heard stories about it as a child - that bad things come to those who hadn’t reached a certain size or level of definition by then; that those who failed were, simply put, never seen again. Even after three consecutive years of inspection, unease always took hold of Kaela. It was impossible to avoid the inspections, with observation drones stalking the women during the day and cameras watching at night. Those who dared not attend met a fate worse than the unfortunate plucked.
It didn’t help that it was next to impossible for anyone to prepare for the inspections. Each year, a set number of districts was picked at random to take part. Each district was numbered - one through one hundred - and the girls were allocated to a district. The district they belonged to was easily identified by a number tattooed on their left calf. Kaela belonged to District Twenty.
Kaela stood in the front row of equally despondent women, clad in bikinis and whispering words of encouragement and hope to one another. They all varied in age, but that mattered not during the Plucking. It was forever a gamble - Big Brother would have a palate for a particular size and degree of definition, one year, and something completely different the next, forever catching the women off-guard. Kaela considered herself lucky enough not to have been plucked - yet - but it never got any easier. The previous Plucking just might’ve been Kaela’s last, if it weren’t for the girl before her - Jaena, her friend.
Don’t worry, you packed on probably double as much mass as last year, so things should be okay. Kaela rubbed the back of her neck anxiously. Who the hell was she gonna kid? For all she knew, His tastes might’ve changed and had her plucked for being too small or big. The girl to her immediate right was definitely juicing, given the weird patterns of pronounced vascularity across her arms and thighs, not to mention the right side of her face, biceps big as tires. As fiercely confident as she looked. It was women like her that forever got rewarded. Every inch mattered. Not as much as her though.
The flash of red came with the bone-chilling alarm blaring into the women’s ears. Much like the Plucking, it never got any easier to listen to. They got used to it, but that didn’t mean much in the face of things. For some unsuspecting girls, it was the sight and sound of doom.
The familiar buzz of an observation drone swarm descending from a hatch in the ceiling hung above Kaela, doubling the girl’s nerves to the point of crippling her. She wanted to look, to see if one of the dreaded machines was looking at her particularly as a contender for the unfortunate culled, but that would double her chances of being removed from the equation. Instead, she opted to stare blindly at the wall ahead, hoping the mechanical contraption would eventually lose interest and move onto another girl, as selfish as that sounded. But it stayed, hovered above like an unyielding dark cloud.
You!” The drone’s voice was monotonous, offered no sense of emotion, and yet, within it a steely sense of command swelled. The single red lens it had for an imposing eye zoomed in on Kaela’s left arm, taking note of every inch, discernible vein and hint of definition. “Left arm - flex.”
Kaela was hesitant, willing to rebel against the stalking drone’s bidding, stood frozen to the spot with clenched fists. She felt the other girls looking at her, but didn’t care what they thought or had to say. Kaela was reaching the end of her tether with His desires, all the stories finally getting to her—
The drone moved closer, lens flashing violently, extending a sharp, claw-like apparatus from its metallic frame, sparkling in the synthetic light. Kaela stared at the claw for the briefest of moments, taken aback by the sheer crudeness of its existence - it could peel and cut away at flesh like it was nothing, which, to Him, the girls pretty much were - nothing, but tools or sacks of bulging, rippling entertainment.
“Flex!”
Kaela complied, filled with equal parts dread and begrudge, left arm raised into a flex so the drone could scan it. She heard the familiar droning hum as a sheet of red light pulsed from behind. This - this - was the moment of truth, where her fate would be decided: would she be lucky enough to see the next day, or be Plucked, never to be seen again? From the corner of her eye, she saw a girl from one of the rows behind being plucked by a drone and carried off into the darkness. The screams from the unfortunate woman filled the hall and echoed in such a way that they seemed to pierce Kaela’s heart; her chest bounded in fright, sweat dripped from her brow.
“Measurement: fifteen inches. Results satisfactory.” Kaela couldn’t bear to maintain her relief, chuckling softly at the drone’s emotionless announcement. The same thing though, couldn’t be said for the girl to her immediate left, who was plucked and carried off into the darkness like the one before her. Kaela often wondered where the Plucked went, but it was perhaps a bad idea to dwell on that particular curiosity. The drone’s frame opened up with a hiss, revealing a filled syringe hidden behind a fading cloud of vapour. “Recommendation: an injection to help boost growth rate.”
Kaela took the syringe with wordless hesitance, hiding it from the jealous, hormone-addled girl to her right. She was next in line for scanning, pulling both arms up into a flex, biceps big as 4x4 tires ballooning upwards so an equally imposing shadow formed and engulfed Kaela and those adjacent to the smug addict. Accompanying those that already existed, a fresh pairing of veins birthed to the surface of her skin, coiling around the large woman’s arms and thighs like snakes around branches, pulsing and throbbing.
The drone adjusted its lens to get a better view, angling further to the right. The scanning sheet of red came in a delay as if the boasting woman took the drone by surprise.
“Measurement: twenty-eight inches. Results commendable.”
The drone simply veered away to the next woman without giving the hormone girl any form of recommendation. Kaela was surprised by this, but honestly shouldn’t have been. She leaned back to sneakily look at the girl’s left calf. So she came from District Thirty, otherwise better known as the Hormone District. It made so much more sense now. Every inch mattered, but Kaela thought there was some level of bias to all this.
The drones gathered together in front of the remaining girls. By estimation, around eighty had been Plucked, leaving less than half of the original gathering. Kaela was quick to realise this year’s Plucking proved more merciless than usual as if it was more a genuine culling than probing. She’d heard rumours of a woman rebelling against Big Brother. Perhaps this was his not-so-subtle way of quelling numbers to diminish the possibility of a true rebellion against him.
Kaela could tell which drone was the leader of the pack - it was always the largest of the bunch. It hovered for a moment in silence, but Kaela could tell it was mounting up into a sort of speech.
“Inspection complete. Forty percent increase in Plucked. Districts Twenty to Twenty-Three must improve. District Thirty leads again.” The leading drone’s voice was cruder than the others, more menacing and shrill, and bore into Kaela’s ears. She rolled her eyes though, not surprised by District Thirty’s stance in the Plucking. It was definitely biased. “Girls from District Twenty are to compete in a posing contest viewed across the Dome.”
Kaela’s heart sank. She didn’t expect to hear that. She thought the Plucking was all she would have to suffer through, but the posing contests were on a different level. Big Brother would be watching. Well, his eye would be anyway. That, plus he would personally be calling out the poses catered to his tastes or mood.
Failure to comply will result in plucking.”
Kaela winced, clutching the syringe.
