“Give me a really patriarchal one.”
“Are you certain, Airlock? These outfits seem…not designed with comfort in mind.”
“I just want to know,” I said, “what Eden was trying to run from. Could what me made women wear really be that bad?”
“Very well,” the room said, and a thick fog materialized out of nowhere. It grew thicker in a cloud around me, until I couldn’t see a thing. I waved my arms and tried to move out of it, and when I poked my head to the left, I saw that I had left the cloud entirely, but my body was still inside.
“Come back in and hold still,” the room said.
“It won’t hurt, right?”
“Maybe a little. It looks tight to me.”
“I didn’t mean the outfit. I meant the, uh, magic fog thing that you are doing to dress me.”
“Of course that won’t hurt you,” it said.
I stood up straight, again in the fog, and waited. The fog grew thicker and started forming around me, soon it had left my face entirely, so I could look down and see what it was doing. It was thick enough now that I couldn’t see through it at all, and as it thickened around my body, I started to actually feel it. It was getting denser. The ship was somehow inserting more and more matter into the space, and the matter was changing too, because what started off as a vague pressure now felt like a rougher texture on my skin, sharp and awkward in places, especially around my waist.
It squeezed me, and I instinctively inhaled, worried it would be my last chance. The fog—now a mass of fabric, slowly sprouting colors and textures—was tightening the most around my waist. It squeezed and crushed my ribcage, and if I weren’t so afraid of exhaling and letting it squeeze me even more, I’d probably have told the ship to forget the whole thing and just give me some Eden clothes.
It stopped getting tighter though, and instead of getting tighter, it expanded out in other places, forming a big, poofy dress around my legs. It had taken a long time to get started, but now that it had gotten going, it was working faster and faster. In the last few moments, clothes were forming around me faster than I could even tell what was happening.
The fog was gone now, and I wasn’t naked anymore. I was fully dressed in the most ridiculous outfit I’d ever seen. The room threw up a floating window in front of me that acted like a mirror so I could get a good look at my outfit.
The squeezing and confining feeling on my waist was still there, because I was apparently wearing something that squeezed the shit out of me, with the “advantage” of making my waist look much narrower than it really was, which also made my boobs, hips, and ass look way bigger than they really were. It helped that the dress I was wearing was low-cut, and the bra the fog had put onto me was extremely…supportive. The end effect was that it looked like my boobs were defying gravity, and you could see a ton of my cleavage.
I flicked my eyes up to my head, and I burst out laughing when I saw the thing on my head.
“Is everything okay, Airlock?” the room asked me.
I pointed to my head in the mirror. I had this thing on my head—I guess it qualified as a hat?--but it was covered in flowers and ribbons. The ribbons were a pale green, which matched the main color of the dress, but the flowers were pale pink, and it wasn’t just flowers on my head. There was a big feather sticking up too. Why did I have flowers and feathers in my hat? Why wouldanyonedress like this? Were human men’s tastes really so strange and specific that they forced women to dress like this? Did a woman with a big feather sticking out of her head make human men get hard?
“What is the feather for?” I asked, adjusting my boobs in the very tight bra.
“It’s not clear according to the Lexikon entry,” the room said.
“So I’m wearing a floral arrangement on my head, and what the hell is this thing that is suffocating me?”
“It’s called a corset,” the room said, “it was highly fashionable at various points throughout human history. It accentuates the feminine features of the human female’s body.”
“It’s extremely uncomfortable.”
“Shall I remove it?”
I shook my head. I wanted to see how long I could endure this. The mindblowing sex with Thuliak had my head still spinning, and I was worried that I wasn’t thinking clearly enough. I’d spent my whole life learning that the ideals of Eden were worth it—that men had been so opressive to women that the sex simply was not worth it. The moment Thuliak laid his hands on me, I had been ready to throw that all out in an instant. I’d wear this ridiculous outfit all day to try to put myself in an Earth woman’s shoes, one who had to do and dress like the men in charge told her to do. Thuliak had already locked me in a room, so I was getting a decent dose of patriarchal control.
“I’ll keep it all on,” I said, “what am I supposed to do all day in here?”
“Would you like to have breakfast with the other women?”
“I’m not allowed to leave.”
“I will bring them to you,” the room said.
I smiled and nodded. I laughed thinking about Emissary and Weapons seeing my outfit.
“So they’re allowed to leave, but I’m not?” I said, putting my hands on my very accentuated hips.