A Tolerant Introduction

Peter awoke as abruptly as always - the adrenaline injection never failed to jolt his system. He and his fellow State Siblings had never awoken naturally, for there was much work to be done; and of course alarm clocks were forbidden, since that would Discriminate against the deaf.

He rolled over and hit the button indicating that he had awakened. The adrenaline needle retracted and his second injection began. He sighed as the melanin needle entered his body - the State had declared that the only way to combat racism was to guarantee everyone was the same color. In the interest of fairness, it was decided that a vague brown color would be best. Peter had occasionally wondered what he would look like naturally, but quickly suppressed such heresy, as those were the thoughts of Hitler.

That injection ended and the last began. The estrogen needle entered just above his navel - the State had realized that traditional sex development was misogynistic, so each gender received the opposite sex hormone. Breeding was controlled by Family Planners, which would call donors in for gamete extraction to be set to Children Inc. The only type of sexual contact that was allowed was homosexual, as this was the expression of love between Equals. Of course, this was mandatory, since if one had no desire to participate that was proof of Homophobia....and who would want to be like that?

At last, the injection was complete. The needle retracted and his food delivery panel opened out from his cell wall: he took his vegan paste breakfast and quickly slurped it down. Consuming animals under any circumstances had long been outlawed, as it was specieist and therefore not Tolerant. He then dressed himself in the official Progress Police uniform: bright pink skirt, piercing red lipstick, and pleather handbag. When he had finished, he looked at the timer above his cell door: he had finished 40 seconds early. He took a moment to style his hair before the cell door opened. Peter then quickly into step with his other State Siblings as they went to the work assignment station to view their Tasks for the day...