Chapter 1: Welcome to Paraphilia
I’ve been into braces since I was 11, when I learned that they stopped being used at all during the second half of the 21st century for being unnecessarily invasive. Nobody’s had to wear them for a long time now, and I’m sure everyone’s very glad about not having to undergo such an archaic treatment anymore, but I haven’t forgotten about it. Just the thought of forcing my teeth to endure those devious metal contraptions is very attractive to me. I’m 22 years old, and I've now officially spent over half of my life researching and revelling in the idea of braces, those fascinating machines that have populated my fantasies for so long. Well, as of today, those shall be fantasies no longer.
As the ship lands and its doors open, the warm sunlight falls upon my face, some of it reflecting off the kilometres-high buildings that scrape the sky of this world. Spaceships whiz across the morning sky above the city, bathed in golden sunshine all. Closer to me, a huge sign reading ‘Welcome to Paraphilia’ stands proud above the flowery promenade ahead. The other immigrants laugh and cheer, sharing wonder and excitement with their peers as they all parade towards the palatial spaceport that lies beyond. Carrying what little I cared to bring with me from my birthworld, I take the first steps towards the welcoming arms of my new home.
Paraphilia (both the world and its capital city of the same name, where I now arrive) was born out of the dream of a handful of visionaries. The planet was terraformed and developed half a century ago by the Pleaseful Collective, a group of entrepreneurial hedonists from across the cosmos, to serve as a refuge for the Empire’s fetishists, a place where we could live our unorthodox lives free from any judgement or discrimination. With a population having recently reached 100 billion, their project has been a rousing success. A utopia, one might call it; fully automated, its inhabitants are not expected to work to survive. Death, ageing, poverty and disease are merely faint nightmares, unwanted memories from a difficult past. This is a land of dreams and joy.
The spaceport is a bustling, diverse place. The main foyer’s gigantic floor and domed ceiling are both decorated with spectacular frescoes, which stand in contrast with its many holographic signs and service droids. The ground below as well as the countless mezzanines and walkways up above are all brimming with the inhabitants of this fine planet. From vampires to angels, furries to inflationists, exhibitionists to latex wearers, and even giants to tentacled monsters, the development of shapeshifting and materialisation technologies has allowed people of all kinds to live in the forms they are the most comfortable in. I'd never actually used a transformation chamber before since they're heavily regulated everywhere else, but here everyone gets to look the way they feel.
Now, one person’s beauty might be another’s body horror, and people are more attracted to what they find beautiful, so a degree of voluntary segregation was introduced through the creation of quarters dedicated to specific fetishes. People are not obligated to live in their own quarter, of course, but doing so gives them a community of like-minded people to interact with in their daily lives, so most find it beneficial. In the smaller cities of this world you’ll find well-demarcated quarters for the largest fetishes, and some towns are sometimes only dedicated to a single one, but here in the capital every fetish, no matter how small, has its own quarter. Still, movement between quarters is very common, be it to visit friends, partake in another fetish one might also have, simple curiosity, or any other reason. The spaceport is one of the only places where you’ll see every group represented and in close proximity to one another. Truly a cosmopolitan place, this.
I head first to the immigration office, where anti-gravity lifts move people to one of the dozens of floors that reach up into the sky, or what feels like it. I ride mine to what must be the 60th floor or so, where I’m met by a smiling android that asks for my information after a brief and irrelevant introduction. This process would’ve been infinitely faster on any other planet in the Empire by using our neural implants to communicate telepathically directly with the central computer system, but the Collective isn’t very fond of those. Too impersonal, they’ve decreed. With the interview finished, the android imprints my new ID onto the nanites in my bloodstream, which is used to identify me as an individual as well as to allow me to automate some tasks like unlocking my front door. Speaking of which, the android then beams the address to my flat onto my retinal display. I ride the lift back down and walk back out to the foyer, but there I get a bit lost. I know I’m supposed to take the hyperloop out of the spaceport, but the place is so immense I have a hard time finding anything. In hindsight I could’ve asked the android to send me a detailed map of the spaceport as well, but sometimes being lost is also an adventure.
I pace about for a bit before spotting a lad about my age hugging a girl wearing J-hooks, who then leaves for the spaceships. They both wave to each other as she disappears into the crowd. As soon as the lad turns around, I approach him.
“Hello there,” I say. “I’m Leon, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Um, can you help me out? I need to get to the Orthodontophilia quarter but can’t find the loop station.”
“Hey! Yeah, of course, I live there too. We can go together, if you don’t mind!” His tone and smile are sincere, not something particularly common in big cities where I’m from.
“That’d be great, thanks.”
“Alrighty then. Lucas, by the way!”
Lucas wears simple, traditional braces, with red ligatures and an inordinate amount of elastics. I counted at least 8 by watching him speak, with one of them connecting his bottom left canine to his top right one. We make our acquaintances on the way to the hyperloop, where Lucas tells me the lass he was hugging earlier was his sister, who left to visit family a few systems away. Apparently they immigrated together for their shared love of braces, and still live together in Paraphilia.
As we board the loop, Lucas says he’s from an industrial planet a couple dozen lightyears from here. He gets all excited when I reply that I’m from Jupiter, saying he’d never been to the Home System in his life. I spend the 5 minute trip on the loop telling him what Earth is like, with all its history and nature. He didn’t know Earth had been turned into a galactic heritage site, and that nobody lives there permanently anymore, which only piques his interest even further. We continue chatting whilst walking down the street, until we reach the address the droid gave to me. It’s an enormous tower, probably around a thousand storeys tall. It couldn’t have taken us longer than 15 minutes to travel from the spaceport foyer to my new place.
The flat is very spacious, I’ve got to give it that, especially considering the fact that I’m its sole inhabitant. Space is at a premium back home since there’s no solid ground and we have to build literally everything from scratch, so I end up having a bit of culture shock, if you can call it that. The walls and the decorative reliefs on them are a luxurious bronze colour, as are the window and door frames, and stripes of ambient light run across the walls, creating a refined yet cosy environment. Entering my bedroom, my attention is immediately drawn to my very own transformation chamber sitting between the bed and a wall-to-wall window; this is the moment I’ve been waiting for my whole life.
“Okay,” Lucas says. “You know how orthodontics work in this world, right?”
Distracted by the chamber, I absentmindedly turn to him. “Pardon me?”
“There’s a guidebook on your bed. I’m sure you can figure out how the chamber works, but there is one very important rule you need to know. It’s on the very first page, but I’ll save you the time.”
“Go on.”
“Yeah, so, we have this thing called ‘official permanence’ in Paraphilia. A bunch of people early on who used the chamber were saying that they’d found their ideal shape or whatever, and wanted to be like that forever no matter what. There was a big debacle about it because the government says it’s unethical to allow people to be transformed permanently, but eventually the Senate gave in and allowed chambers in Paraphilia and a few other planets to do permanent transforms, with written consent by the user and periods of deliberation and all that. So now you have to get a document saying you agree to be transformed permanently and be in the transformed form for at least a month before they let you do it for good. And this also applies to braces and other external additions, somehow. They overwrite your DNA or something and you can never get it off at any chamber anywhere in the Empire. It actually becomes a part of your body and your nanites rebuild it if you get it off manually. The only way to get rid of it is to upload your mind into a robot, and your transformed body dies forever. It’s scary stuff. My point is, only get something permanent if you’re 100% sure you want it. I’ve met a few people who regret it and let me tell you, it’s not pretty. They’re all miserable and stuff.”
“I see… well, that does sound a bit scary.”
“Yeah, it really is. Just be careful, ok?”
“Don’t worry, I don’t think I want anything permanent anyway. Maybe just the braces, but that’s it. I’ll give it a try first, though.”
“Nice. So go ahead, I wanna see what you’re gonna get!”
I turn around to face the chamber. A few courage-building moments later, I step in and the door closes behind me. A cute girly voice greets me and a screen appears, where they have the options of shapeshifting or materialisation. I pick the second one, and a list of possible transformations appear, with the orthodontic category at the top. I select it, and a menu with a bunch of subcategories follows, featuring every orthodontic appliance ever conceived in all of human history. I feel a bit overwhelmed, and, not wanting to leave Lucas waiting too long, I just go for brackets to start with. I select fullbands, with hooks on every bracket, wire ligatures, and headgear tubes, and the chamber gets to work. I begin floating off the ground, and everything above my neck gets telekinetically immobilised. My cheeks expand and my lips get stretched out as a soft whir emanates from the top of the chamber. I feel all my teeth get separated by a couple of millimetres, and they slowly get tighter as the metal materialises around them. After no more than 30 seconds, it’s over, and I regain my movement.
A portion of the chamber wall in front of me becomes a mirror, and the cute voice says some nicety I don’t really pay attention to, as I’m too busy admiring how amazing it all looks. Good thing my nanites keep my teeth clean at all times, braces look like a pain to clean by hand. I step out and Lucas immediately asks to see what I got. I show him and he seems more excited about it than I am, making sure I know how ‘awesome’ I look.
“Well, I guess that makes you officially a member of our community!”
“I guess so,” I laugh. Brackets sure feel funny on the lips when you first get them on.
“How about we celebrate with a party? My friends and I are going to a club tonight, and I'd love for you to meet them!”
“That sounds great! Shall we meet there, then?”
“Sure thing. I’ve sent you the address. Is 10pm good for you?”
“Yep. I’ll see you then.”
“Awesome! I have to go to work now, see you tonight.”
“Work?”
“Yeah, I’m a volunteer. You should come down to volunteer as well some day! Anyway, gotta go. See ya!”
And just like that, he’s off, and I’m left alone in silence. There’s a lot of time until I have to leave, so I decide to do some online shopping for decor. That and enjoy my new braces, of course. I wonder what it’s like eating with them on. There’s a jar full of elastics on the bedside table, so I could play with those too. I could also take a stroll around the block and get to know the area better. There is, quite literally, a world of possibilities out there, and that fills my heart with joy. I'm finally home.
