As far as waiting rooms went, this one was more like every other one than almost any other one. Sterile gray carpeting that I imagined would be like steel wool on my bare skin. A water stain on a ceiling tile. Three out of four walls were some color between eggshell beige and depression gray; the fourth was behind me and I hadn't bothered to turn around to look. I'd sat thirty minutes ago - thirty fucking minutes they had me waiting - and only resorted to counting the colors in my vicinity ten minutes in. Which had lasted all of two more minutes, because I felt uncertain I'd even summon the motivation to stand up when my name was called, let alone crane my neck to see if the wall behind me was just as boring as the ones in front and to my peripheral. For all I cared, I could die right now to some random vessel twitch in my brain and I'd be better off than going back to where I was yesterday.
Jesus. Maybe I am depressed.
But I knew it wasn't depression, at least not acutely, but rather humiliation, and outrage, and despair, and the smallest spice of satisfaction. It was regret and anger. It was me calling myself a fucking idiot every thirty minutes since yesterday afternoon, and because the last time I did so was right when I sat down...
Emery, you FUCKING idiot.
Did I need to slap him? The "get your fucking hands off me, you creep" has been bad enough. Surely my boss would have called me into his office even if it had just been the cussing and the shouting. But if I hadn't slapped the creep as well, would I be sitting here right now? Four years with the company, fastest a woman has ever reached this level of the org chart, and youngest person of any sex. I knew of a few past employees who'd done it faster, but they were men, and older. Moving into that office last month had been a feminist achievement.
It hadn't stopped the harassment, though. Not that I'd expected it to. The harassment was less overt, sure. Well - not as frequently overt. But I'd survived four years in this company and twenty-two of them before, so I knew the game. I had ambition and talent and enough self-confidence in both of those qualities to put myself out there despite the comments, the touches, the constant disparagements both under- and overhanded. Every time I'd been the only one asked to take notes in a meeting, or had my contributions to a project minimized, or told to my chest during performance reviews that I wasn't friendly enough - I knew I could handle it, because I knew I was at least as good as the mediocre men around me. At least, and in almost every case, far more than.
That had to count for something, right?
When I got that promotion and moved into that office and finally sat behind that big, imposing desk - that's when it felt like I was getting somewhere. That was the vindication I'd sought all these years.
So why'd I risk it all just because the CFO's nepotistic creep of a nephew grabbed my ass, leaned in close enough I could smell the lunchtime booze on his breath, and told me he might have to make some dress code changes around here if the girls with seats like mine were allowed to wear skirts that long?
I mean, okay. Maybe it's not that surprising I did what I did. And it sure felt good, for a few seconds.
But now here I was, in the offices of a company called Average Availability, whose only service so far as I could tell was some kind of treatment or assessment of the same name. There were no details about what it entailed that I could dig up, and the company itself seemed to have sprung into existence like a ghost barely half a year ago. I had no idea what I was actually doing here, except that it was at my boss's behest, at his boss's behest, all the way up the behest chain to the CFO after the creep who caught my slap with his face complained to his uncle.
It was either this, or try my luck with a wrongful termination suit against the company's army of lawyers. While I wasn't unconvinced I could win in court on the merits of my case alone, money would have been a different issue, not to mention the hit to my reputation in a field I still, maybe stupidly, wanted to excel within.
Average Availability - ha. I wanted to be anything but average. I wanted to be an icon, a powerhouse, a role model to girls who, like me, at the age of six told people they wanted to be a CEO when they grew up. I still wanted to be a CEO, dammit.
"Miss Wilson?" The receptionist was coiffed blonde and eerily perky. I jumped at her voice, having not even heard her heels clack in. "The technician is ready for you."
===
He certainly looked like a technician. Or maybe a janitor. Gray pants and a gray button up with a sewn patch over the breast that read 'Average Availability'. I sat on a papered cushioned table like a doctor's office, but this seemed more like a storage room.
The technician was dismissive of my questions in the exact infuriating way that had plagued me with male colleagues throughout my entire working life. He handed me a pair of big, earmuff headphones and said they were going to run some tone tests to establish a baseline, then the treatment would begin. I begrudgingly fit them over my ears...
... and then I woke up.
"Huh? What happened?" I asked with cotton in my mouth, blinking and dizzy.
The technician turned from where he'd been standing over some printouts, and smiled down at me. He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me from getting up.
"Don't worry, it's completely normal to feel some disorientation. The Average Availability treatment was a success," he said. His smile widened enough to crinkle his eyes, like what he'd just said should have been a comfort.
I pushed his hand off me and sat up anyway, immediately regretting it. Lightheaded, I said, "What treatment? No one's answered a single question about this place. What did you do to me?"
He chuckled, and I ground my teeth. "Try not to exert yourself, sweetheart. Just a little hypnosis, that's all." He paused. "Well, there's not really a general term for what the procedure entails. But 'hypnosis' is the closest thing that fits."
I grappled with that for a moment. He smiled inanely at me, not offering any further explanation. "Okay... What kind of 'hypnosis', for lack of a better word? What the hell did you actually do to me?"
The technician nodded like I was a slow child. "You really shouldn't stress about it, sweetheart. That could worsen the side effects. Migraines, nausea, dissociation. It's better to just relax for the 12 hours immediately following the treatment. I'll send a brochure home with you that will explain it all."
"Tell me what the fuck you did to me or I'm coming back with a class action. I can't be the only one you... you drugged, or something, I don't know. But I do know I sure as fuck didn't agree to ANY kind of procedure, so my lawyer is going to have a field day!" It was a bluff. I didn't have a lawyer.
The technician seemed to find my threat amusing. "Alright. Alright, calm down, sweetheart."
God, how I hated the word 'sweetheart'.
He continued, "Without going into technical detail... The Average Availability treatment is an outpatient procedure that's designed to make the recipient more... amenable."
I wondered if he could see a vein popping in my head. I wondered if it was the aneurysm I'd fantasized about back in the waiting room.
"Simply put, your brain's neuroplastic pathways have been analyzed and digitized by our proprietary software, which algorithmically architects a suggestive framework to fit your unique psychic patterns. We use subaural and binaural wavelengths in syncopation to induce catalepsy and fractalization, so as to apply the framework in piecemeal and not overwhelm the mind. The framework itself was preprogrammed in such a way to compel positive neuronal feedback synchronous with external male social behaviors in a fashion directed toward empathic female social expectation."
He stopped, probably because he knew I'd need a second to process that. "What... the hell does that mean?"
"It means that when a man gives you attention, sweetheart, you're going to have incentive to be a bit nicer to him than you have in the past."
I sputtered a little. What the hell does he know about my past? And there's that goddamn word 'sweetheart' again. But he kept going.
"When a man has a gendered interaction with you, that is, one predicated on him being male and you being female, the framework will listen for your reaction. You can accept the interaction, and go about your day. Or you can reject the interaction. Decline his proposition, insult him back when he calls you a bitch, slap him when he grabs your ass." That last one made my jaw tighten. I scheduled this appointment myself; he shouldn't have any idea what happened at my workplace.
Slowly, I formed my question. "What... the hell does that mean?" A pretty lame question, and repetitive. But a valid reflection of my thoughts. "A, what was it, a suggestion framework that listens to my reactions to... fucking harassment? That isn't... That's not a thing! That's just shitty science fiction." My voice was getting raspier because my throat was getting tighter, and breaths weren't coming as easily.
The technician nodded. "It sounds incredible, right? But show a medieval peasant a working television, and they'd call it, well, not science fiction. Probably witchcraft. But you get my point." He cleared his throat as I blinked at him. "Anyway. Two reactions. Accepting the interaction is fine. It's rejecting where things get more interesting.
"If you reject a gendered interaction from a man - harassment, as you say - your mind will automatically generate a new rule for you to follow. This rule becomes embedded in your subconscious, ironclad."
My face was an incredulous mask, somewhere between a hysterical grin and a repulsed scowl.
"The rule will be something that makes you more agreeable. Friendlier, you could say. More accepting of the kind of attention that, when you rejected it, caused the rule to form in the first place." The technician smirked at me; he actually fucking smirked. "Or just something to punish you for being a bitch to a man."
I scoffed, a scratchy noise, and my head swam even harder in the aftermath of the treatment. "You're... You're going to make me follow rules?"
"No," he said. "You're going to make yourself follow rules. That's the ingenious part. Average Availability compels your brain to create it, but the rule itself is all you. It'll be your fault when you, well... when whatever happens, happens."
This time I laughed, humorlessly. "My fault? So, what - I'll just have to follow these... these rules forever? Or until the treatment wears off?"
He laughed too. "The treatment can be reversed, but it won't wear off on its own. And no, the rules won't necessarily last forever. You can be proactive about it. Rejecting men's attention gets you new rules, but actively encouraging it will let you delete existing ones."
This is fucked. This is so fucked. "Encourage... ?" I echoed, feeling overwhelmed by all the information.
"Yes. By your volition, escalate a situation or interaction so that a man gives you more attention above and beyond what he was already going to give. Rules notwithstanding. If there's a rule compelling you to, I don't know, lift your shirt whenever a man pays your tits a nice compliment-"
"What the fuck?" I blurted out.
"-then it doesn't count as an encouragement if he gropes you. While it's probably above and beyond what he would have done otherwise, it was the rule that made it happen. In such a situation, you'd have to, say, draw attention to your fuckbags by wearing something slutty, or shaking them around. If that gets his attention and he feels you up, that would probably count as an encouragement."
I felt weak. "... Probably?"
He shrugged. "The treatment is in large part guided by the patient's own mind. If your subconscious thinks you're encouraging his attention, above and beyond what he would have done, without the rules forcing it - then it'll count."
Now I felt dizzy, again. My voice drifted far away. "Right. Then it'll count."
"Count for two, actually." He smiled, and patted my knee. "It's configurable, but you got the default package, which embeds a one-in-three ratio. Rejections earn you one rule creation, encouragements earn two rule deletions, which means if you encourage on average one in three interactions, you can tread water." His smile widened. "Average Availability. Get it, sweetheart?"
That word pulled me back like a vortex sucking me into the ocean. In a voice that was tremulous but mustered of all the venom I could, I spat, "Stop calling me fucking 'sweetheart'!"
His teeth bared in a widening grin, but I barely noticed. Instead, it felt like a static netting had descended over my brain. The netting tightened until I worried it would dice my gray matter into little cubes; until I imagined it juicing my noodle and spilling the lukewarm fluid down my back.
The static sharpened, and etched words onto the wrinkled surface.
I must effusively compliment any man who talks to me.
My lips moved, and I felt the words form like underwater vibrations. "By the way, you're very handsome! God, your eyes are just so intense. A girl could get lost in them."
It was... true, in a way. He did have interesting eyes, a striking green-flecked brown. Was I lost in them? Did I find him handsome? Neither yes nor no; I hadn't given it a single thought since meeting him, as distracted by more pressing concerns as I was.
But I said it, and he barked out a laugh, knowing exactly what had just happened. "Excellent, always good to run a quick field test after the treatment. Enjoy the rest of your life, sweetheart."
===
I left, clutching a brochure. He'd explained a few more things to me. After several legal difficulties in the past, they started including a clause in the suggestive framework that prevented patients from talking about the treatment. I wouldn't be able to ask for help, explain away my behavior, or act in any way other than with full responsibility for my own actions.
He also said there were built in time limits. Any given man could only trigger a rule creation once a day; the same was true for rule deletions. They were separate counts, so one man could trigger one rule creation and one set of rule deletions in one day. It wasn't a rolling target; the timer would always reset at midnight. Similarly, any given type of interaction could only count as an encouragement once for the whole week, resetting at midnight on Sunday. So I couldn't just go to a club, tear my shirt off, and let as many guys get as many handfuls as they wanted (that was his example, not mine). Only the first one would trigger the rule deletions, the rest would just be for fun. That was his word, not mine.
When I made it past the smiling receptionist and staggered out onto the sidewalk, I saw that it was dark. It had been early afternoon when I arrived, but the lost time seemed trivial in comparison to what else I had lost in there.
And in comparison to what I'd have to face at work moving forward. Not just work: bars, public transport, just walking down the fucking street. How many times a day did I reject a man, out of sheer survival necessity? And with this single rule alone - how many men did I have to speak to at work, on an hourly basis? How was I going to manage a team when I was kissing their asses (the word 'effusive' burned like a brand) every time I spoke to a male colleague?
I shivered. How badly would any more rules fuck up my life?
---
Thanks for reading! Fun concept, right? I shamelessly borrowed it from an author who goes by the handle All These Roadworks. He has two series exploring this idea, one called Average Availability and the other Compelled Courtesy. But the scenario itself is my original creation; aside from the high concept and a few stylistic flourishes, this is all my writing.
As for the story I want to build here, let's chat about it first. Expectations, hopes, tweaks, etc. I'm open to tinkering with the premise, the character, whatever. I'm not expecting an equivalent amount of words, either in your OOC messages nor when we actually get into it. I know I certainly won't be churning out almost 3000 words a pop. But please do try to open with something more than a "hi, I liked your prompt".
Please, no AI. I didn't use a drop of it in this, and I won't use it if we play together. I must insist on the same from my partners.
As far as waiting rooms went, this one was more like every other one than almost any other one. Sterile gray carpeting that I imagined would be like steel wool on my bare skin. A water stain on a ceiling tile. Three out of four walls were some color between eggshell beige and depression gray; the fourth was behind me and I hadn't bothered to turn around to look. I'd sat thirty minutes ago - thirty fucking minutes they had me waiting - and only resorted to counting the colors in my vicinity ten minutes in. Which had lasted all of two more minutes, because I felt uncertain I'd even summon the motivation to stand up when my name was called, let alone crane my neck to see if the wall behind me was just as boring as the ones in front and to my peripheral. For all I cared, I could die right now to some random vessel twitch in my brain and I'd be better off than going back to where I was yesterday. Jesus. Maybe I am depressed. But I knew it wasn't depression, at least not acutely, but rather humiliation, and outrage, and despair, and the smallest spice of satisfaction. It was regret and anger. It was me calling myself a fucking idiot every thirty minutes since yesterday afternoon, and because the last time I did so was right when I sat down... Emery, you FUCKING idiot. Did I need to slap him? The "get your fucking hands off me, you creep" has been bad enough. Surely my boss would have called me into his office even if it had just been the cussing and the shouting. But if I hadn't slapped the creep as well, would I be sitting here right now? Four years with the company, fastest a woman has ever reached this level of the org chart, and youngest person of any sex. I knew of a few past employees who'd done it faster, but they were men, and older. Moving into that office last month had been a feminist achievement. It hadn't stopped the harassment, though. Not that I'd expected it to. The harassment was less overt, sure. Well - not as frequently overt. But I'd survived four years in this company and twenty-two of them before, so I knew the game. I had ambition and talent and enough self-confidence in both of those qualities to put myself out there despite the comments, the touches, the constant disparagements both under- and overhanded. Every time I'd been the only one asked to take notes in a meeting, or had my contributions to a project minimized, or told to my chest during performance reviews that I wasn't friendly enough - I knew I could handle it, because I knew I was at least as good as the mediocre men around me. At least, and in almost every case, far more than. That had to count for something, right? When I got that promotion and moved into that office and finally sat behind that big, imposing desk - that's when it felt like I was getting somewhere. That was the vindication I'd sought all these years. So why'd I risk it all just because the CFO's nepotistic creep of a nephew grabbed my ass, leaned in close enough I could smell the lunchtime booze on his breath, and told me he might have to make some dress code changes around here if the girls with seats like mine were allowed to wear skirts that long? I mean, okay. Maybe it's not that surprising I did what I did. And it sure felt good, for a few seconds. But now here I was, in the offices of a company called Average Availability, whose only service so far as I could tell was some kind of treatment or assessment of the same name. There were no details about what it entailed that I could dig up, and the company itself seemed to have sprung into existence like a ghost barely half a year ago. I had no idea what I was actually doing here, except that it was at my boss's behest, at his boss's behest, all the way up the behest chain to the CFO after the creep who caught my slap with his face complained to his uncle. It was either this, or try my luck with a wrongful termination suit against the company's army of lawyers. While I wasn't unconvinced I could win in court on the merits of my case alone, money would have been a different issue, not to mention the hit to my reputation in a field I still, maybe stupidly, wanted to excel within. Average Availability - ha. I wanted to be anything but average. I wanted to be an icon, a powerhouse, a role model to girls who, like me, at the age of six told people they wanted to be a CEO when they grew up. I still wanted to be a CEO, dammit. "Miss Wilson?" The receptionist was coiffed blonde and eerily perky. I jumped at her voice, having not even heard her heels clack in. "The technician is ready for you." === He certainly looked like a technician. Or maybe a janitor. Gray pants and a gray button up with a sewn patch over the breast that read 'Average Availability'. I sat on a papered cushioned table like a doctor's office, but this seemed more like a storage room. The technician was dismissive of my questions in the exact infuriating way that had plagued me with male colleagues throughout my entire working life. He handed me a pair of big, earmuff headphones and said they were going to run some tone tests to establish a baseline, then the treatment would begin. I begrudgingly fit them over my ears... ... and then I woke up. "Huh? What happened?" I asked with cotton in my mouth, blinking and dizzy. The technician turned from where he'd been standing over some printouts, and smiled down at me. He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me from getting up. "Don't worry, it's completely normal to feel some disorientation. The Average Availability treatment was a success," he said. His smile widened enough to crinkle his eyes, like what he'd just said should have been a comfort. I pushed his hand off me and sat up anyway, immediately regretting it. Lightheaded, I said, "What treatment? No one's answered a single question about this place. What did you do to me?" He chuckled, and I ground my teeth. "Try not to exert yourself, sweetheart. Just a little hypnosis, that's all." He paused. "Well, there's not really a general term for what the procedure entails. But 'hypnosis' is the closest thing that fits." I grappled with that for a moment. He smiled inanely at me, not offering any further explanation. "Okay... What kind of 'hypnosis', for lack of a better word? What the hell did you actually do to me?" The technician nodded like I was a slow child. "You really shouldn't stress about it, sweetheart. That could worsen the side effects. Migraines, nausea, dissociation. It's better to just relax for the 12 hours immediately following the treatment. I'll send a brochure home with you that will explain it all." "Tell me what the fuck you did to me or I'm coming back with a class action. I can't be the only one you... you drugged, or something, I don't know. But I do know I sure as fuck didn't agree to ANY kind of procedure, so my lawyer is going to have a field day!" It was a bluff. I didn't have a lawyer. The technician seemed to find my threat amusing. "Alright. Alright, calm down, sweetheart." God, how I hated the word 'sweetheart'. He continued, "Without going into technical detail... The Average Availability treatment is an outpatient procedure that's designed to make the recipient more... amenable." I wondered if he could see a vein popping in my head. I wondered if it was the aneurysm I'd fantasized about back in the waiting room. "Simply put, your brain's neuroplastic pathways have been analyzed and digitized by our proprietary software, which algorithmically architects a suggestive framework to fit your unique psychic patterns. We use subaural and binaural wavelengths in syncopation to induce catalepsy and fractalization, so as to apply the framework in piecemeal and not overwhelm the mind. The framework itself was preprogrammed in such a way to compel positive neuronal feedback synchronous with external male social behaviors in a fashion directed toward empathic female social expectation." He stopped, probably because he knew I'd need a second to process that. "What... the hell does that mean?" "It means that when a man gives you attention, sweetheart, you're going to have incentive to be a bit nicer to him than you have in the past." I sputtered a little. What the hell does he know about my past? And there's that goddamn word 'sweetheart' again. But he kept going. "When a man has a gendered interaction with you, that is, one predicated on him being male and you being female, the framework will listen for your reaction. You can accept the interaction, and go about your day. Or you can reject the interaction. Decline his proposition, insult him back when he calls you a bitch, slap him when he grabs your ass." That last one made my jaw tighten. I scheduled this appointment myself; he shouldn't have any idea what happened at my workplace. Slowly, I formed my question. "What... the hell does that mean?" A pretty lame question, and repetitive. But a valid reflection of my thoughts. "A, what was it, a suggestion framework that listens to my reactions to... fucking harassment? That isn't... That's not a thing! That's just shitty science fiction." My voice was getting raspier because my throat was getting tighter, and breaths weren't coming as easily. The technician nodded. "It sounds incredible, right? But show a medieval peasant a working television, and they'd call it, well, not science fiction. Probably witchcraft. But you get my point." He cleared his throat as I blinked at him. "Anyway. Two reactions. Accepting the interaction is fine. It's rejecting where things get more interesting. "If you reject a gendered interaction from a man - harassment, as you say - your mind will automatically generate a new rule for you to follow. This rule becomes embedded in your subconscious, ironclad." My face was an incredulous mask, somewhere between a hysterical grin and a repulsed scowl. "The rule will be something that makes you more agreeable. Friendlier, you could say. More accepting of the kind of attention that, when you rejected it, caused the rule to form in the first place." The technician smirked at me; he actually fucking smirked. "Or just something to punish you for being a bitch to a man." I scoffed, a scratchy noise, and my head swam even harder in the aftermath of the treatment. "You're... You're going to make me follow rules?" "No," he said. "You're going to make yourself follow rules. That's the ingenious part. Average Availability compels your brain to create it, but the rule itself is all you. It'll be your fault when you, well... when whatever happens, happens." This time I laughed, humorlessly. "My fault? So, what - I'll just have to follow these... these rules forever? Or until the treatment wears off?" He laughed too. "The treatment can be reversed, but it won't wear off on its own. And no, the rules won't necessarily last forever. You can be proactive about it. Rejecting men's attention gets you new rules, but actively encouraging it will let you delete existing ones." This is fucked. This is so fucked. "Encourage... ?" I echoed, feeling overwhelmed by all the information. "Yes. By your volition, escalate a situation or interaction so that a man gives you more attention above and beyond what he was already going to give. Rules notwithstanding. If there's a rule compelling you to, I don't know, lift your shirt whenever a man pays your tits a nice compliment-" "What the fuck?" I blurted out. "-then it doesn't count as an encouragement if he gropes you. While it's probably above and beyond what he would have done otherwise, it was the rule that made it happen. In such a situation, you'd have to, say, draw attention to your fuckbags by wearing something slutty, or shaking them around. If that gets his attention and he feels you up, that would probably count as an encouragement." I felt weak. "... Probably?" He shrugged. "The treatment is in large part guided by the patient's own mind. If your subconscious thinks you're encouraging his attention, above and beyond what he would have done, without the rules forcing it - then it'll count." Now I felt dizzy, again. My voice drifted far away. "Right. Then it'll count." "Count for two, actually." He smiled, and patted my knee. "It's configurable, but you got the default package, which embeds a one-in-three ratio. Rejections earn you one rule creation, encouragements earn two rule deletions, which means if you encourage on average one in three interactions, you can tread water." His smile widened. "Average Availability. Get it, sweetheart?" That word pulled me back like a vortex sucking me into the ocean. In a voice that was tremulous but mustered of all the venom I could, I spat, "Stop calling me fucking 'sweetheart'!" His teeth bared in a widening grin, but I barely noticed. Instead, it felt like a static netting had descended over my brain. The netting tightened until I worried it would dice my gray matter into little cubes; until I imagined it juicing my noodle and spilling the lukewarm fluid down my back. The static sharpened, and etched words onto the wrinkled surface. I must effusively compliment any man who talks to me. My lips moved, and I felt the words form like underwater vibrations. "By the way, you're very handsome! God, your eyes are just so intense. A girl could get lost in them." It was... true, in a way. He did have interesting eyes, a striking green-flecked brown. Was I lost in them? Did I find him handsome? Neither yes nor no; I hadn't given it a single thought since meeting him, as distracted by more pressing concerns as I was. But I said it, and he barked out a laugh, knowing exactly what had just happened. "Excellent, always good to run a quick field test after the treatment. Enjoy the rest of your life, sweetheart." === I left, clutching a brochure. He'd explained a few more things to me. After several legal difficulties in the past, they started including a clause in the suggestive framework that prevented patients from talking about the treatment. I wouldn't be able to ask for help, explain away my behavior, or act in any way other than with full responsibility for my own actions. He also said there were built in time limits. Any given man could only trigger a rule creation once a day; the same was true for rule deletions. They were separate counts, so one man could trigger one rule creation and one set of rule deletions in one day. It wasn't a rolling target; the timer would always reset at midnight. Similarly, any given type of interaction could only count as an encouragement once for the whole week, resetting at midnight on Sunday. So I couldn't just go to a club, tear my shirt off, and let as many guys get as many handfuls as they wanted (that was his example, not mine). Only the first one would trigger the rule deletions, the rest would just be for fun. That was his word, not mine. When I made it past the smiling receptionist and staggered out onto the sidewalk, I saw that it was dark. It had been early afternoon when I arrived, but the lost time seemed trivial in comparison to what else I had lost in there. And in comparison to what I'd have to face at work moving forward. Not just work: bars, public transport, just walking down the fucking street. How many times a day did I reject a man, out of sheer survival necessity? And with this single rule alone - how many men did I have to speak to at work, on an hourly basis? How was I going to manage a team when I was kissing their asses (the word 'effusive' burned like a brand) every time I spoke to a male colleague? I shivered. How badly would any more rules fuck up my life? --- Thanks for reading! Fun concept, right? I shamelessly borrowed it from an author who goes by the handle All These Roadworks. He has two series exploring this idea, one called Average Availability and the other Compelled Courtesy. But the scenario itself is my original creation; aside from the high concept and a few stylistic flourishes, this is all my writing. As for the story I want to build here, let's chat about it first. Expectations, hopes, tweaks, etc. I'm open to tinkering with the premise, the character, whatever. I'm not expecting an equivalent amount of words, either in your OOC messages nor when we actually get into it. I know I certainly won't be churning out almost 3000 words a pop. But please do try to open with something more than a "hi, I liked your prompt". Please, no AI. I didn't use a drop of it in this, and I won't use it if we play together. I must insist on the same from my partners.
