The conference room was on the thirty-fourth floor, two levels up. It was larger than my apartment. An oval table of dark polished wood dominated the center, surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. One wall was entirely glass, offering a view of the city skyline that seemed designed to remind everyone in the room of exactly how high up they were, and what that height meant.
Six people were already seated at the table when Penelope and I arrived: four men in dark suits and two women, one of whom was setting up a presentation on the wall-mounted screen. Penelope took a seat near the head of the table and gestured to the chair beside her. I sat, opened my laptop, and tried to make myself small.
The presentation title appeared on the screen in clean Selecta branding:
New Modesty Training Intimates: Q3 Performance Review & Product Roadmap
I typed the title into my notes and told myself the meeting was just about underwear. Companies must have meetings about underwear all the time. There were huge lingerie brands that probably had meetings about underwear every day. This was normal.
It took five minutes before I realized that, at least for me and my conventional upbringing, this meeting was not normal.
The first speaker, a man named David Hargrove from the product division, began with a slide showing market penetration data for what he called the ‘Training Intimates line.’ It took me a little while to understand whattraining intimatesactually meant. David’s brief, flat explanation at first didn’t seem to make any sense.
“As you know, the classic training underwear is designed to provide a structured intimate environment for young women in the New Modesty program.” Heads around the table nodded. This clearly represented very old news for everyone but me.
“As such,” David continued, “it combines the modesty standards required by the girls’ foster families and suitors with a confining fit that encourages them to confront and process their emerging physical needs rather than suppressing them.”
I stopped taking notes. My fingers hovered over the keys. I made myself start again.
The next slide showed the garments. High-waisted, full-coverage panties in white cotton, jarringly old-fashioned in their appearance. I blinked as I looked more closely at the slide, because it showed an interior construction that was anything but simple. Diagrams illustrated reinforced seams, a snug gusset designed to press firmly against the wearer.
“Plus,” David continued, “as you may remember, our last innovation in the previous refresh, our awareness panels. The slightly textured fabric here and here, positioned as you can see to create constant, low-level friction against the clitoris and the perineum.”
I had to bite my lip as my forehead creased. My tummy flipped end over end, as far as I could tell, every time I looked at the screen.
“The philosophy behind the line,” David continued, clicking to the next slide, “is that a girl who is kept aware of her body’s responses throughout the day is better positioned to communicate those responses to her suitor or husband, which strengthens the dynamic. Repression is the enemy of a healthy authority-based relationship. These garments help her stay in touch with what she’s feeling, even when—especiallywhen—she’s been taught to ignore it.”
I wroteawareness panels—friction—anti-repression philosophyand then stared at the words, trying to pretend they didn’t mean what they said.
“It’s a good product,” David went on, “but as you know we’re losing market share.”
The woman who had been setting up the presentation when we came in—Dr. Maren Holt, according to the slide she now brought up—picked up the thread smoothly.
“As you’ll see,” she said, “we think we’ve found an answer. We’ve been developing the next generation.”
The new slide read: Perineal Integration System: Sensor-Linked Clitoral Stimulation Module
My face went hot. I could feel the heat radiating from my cheeks, and I kept my eyes fixed on my laptop screen, typing as if the act of transcription could somehow create a clinical distance between me and what was being said.
Dr. Holt spoke with the enthusiasm of an engineer who loved her work. The new design, she explained, incorporated a micro-sensor array that mapped to the wearer’s anatomy with sub-millimeter accuracy, paired with a vibration module so small it was virtually undetectable from the outside. The system connected via encrypted Bluetooth to the suitor’s or husband’s phone, giving him ‘pinpoint control over clitoral stimulation, with adjustable intensity, pattern, and duration.’
“The key innovation,” Dr. Holt said, advancing to a diagram that I did not want to look at but could not stop looking at, “is the autonomous mode. We know that suitors and husbands are busy. They have careers, responsibilities. They can’t always be actively managing their girl’s experience. So the system can be set to run on an algorithm—monitoring her arousal levels in real time through the perineal sensor and delivering stimulation according to parameters the man sets in advance. He decides how aroused she’s allowed to get. He decides whether she’s kept at a simmer or brought to the edge. He decides if and when she comes. And he can do all of this while he’s in a meeting at work, or on a golf course, or asleep.”
The room nodded. The vice president made a note on his tablet.
“Let me show you what this looks like in practice,” Dr. Holt said, and dimmed the lights.
CHAPTER 2
Anne
The video that appeared on the screen was shot in soft, natural light. I saw a bedroom, tastefully decorated, with white curtains moving in a breeze that might have been real or might have been staged. A young woman sat on the edge of the bed. She looked about my age, or maybe a year or two older, with dark hair pulled into a messy bun and a face that was pretty in the way that didn’t require effort. She wore a simple white camisole and, below it, the training panties. I recognized them from the product slides: high-waisted, white cotton, with that deceptively plain exterior that concealed the ‘special features’ David had described.
The girl’s forehead creased. Her lower lip was caught between her teeth. The camera moved down to show, to my dismay, that she had begun to press her thighs together in a way that seemed involuntary, a slow rhythmic squeeze. The cut to a close-up of her face indicated that she didn’t seem to be fully aware of what was happening, down there. She held her phone in her hands.
“What you’re seeing here,” Dr. Holt narrated calmly, “is footage shot for the New Modesty Blue stream we’re planning to launch with the refresh of the NM training intimates line. The sensor-linked system in Karen’s panties is in autonomous mode. Karen’s fiancé—Marcus, I think his name is—set the parameters that morning before he left for work. She’s been kept at a low simmer for approximately three hours. The algorithm has been reading her arousal levels and maintaining them just below the threshold he’s designated. Karen can’t come. She can’t quite settle down, either. She’s in what we call theawareness window.”
The girl on the screen shifted on the bed. Her thumbs moved over her phone, typing something. The camera angle shifted—a split screen now—and I saw the message appear on what I assumed was Marcus’s phone.
