16th birthdays were not celebrated like the rest. Instead every boy and girl dreads the day, their first visit to the OSO – the Organisation of Submissive Ownership.

The human race was split into two parts, one of which were the ‘ordinary’ people (called hums – short for humans), who spent their days much as you would expect. They went to work, they had relationships, and they were free to do pretty much as they pleased within the law. Exactly how humans have lived for as long as there has been humans.

Then there were the subs (short for submissive’s). It could be argued that they had the same lifestyle as the hums. They worked, they had sexual contact, and they had a law to follow. But for subs, it was very different circumstances. These people were treated worse than animals – at least animals had people campaigning for fair treatment. Subs however were deemed unworthy of basic human rights, and the number of people who don’t agree with this treatment could be counted on one hand. Subs were not considered human, they were slaves. They didn’t get a choice in what jobs they did or who they had sex with. As far as hums were concerned, subs were emotionless shells there to do their dirty work. They didn’t deserve luxuries like rest when they were tired, they didn’t deserve ample food to fight starvation, and most importantly they didn’t deserve free choice. They were slaves.

This might lead any normal person to the assumption that the subs deserved this treatment, that each one was some kind of criminal. Or perhaps they had a different genetic makeup to that of hums, something in their DNA that separated the two halves of the human race. This was not the case.

On a child’s 16th birthday, they had an appointment at an OSO office. They could be required to travel incredible distances to attend their appointment, as once it was booked at the age of 3 in their closest OSO office, it could not be changed. There was of course the option of simply not attending the appointment, but in doing so that person had to go on the run. People who failed to attend their appointments were instantly labelled as a sub. No one wanted to be a sub.

The appointment would be used to judge someone’s personality, the only deciding factor between being a sub or a hum. It was decided on a points based system. If someone collected over 50 points at their meeting they wouldn’t be going home, instead they would put into holding until the end of the month before being delivered to the sub house with every other 16 year old labelled within said month. If the OSO didn’t take subs into holding instantly, there wouldn’t be anyone to take to the sub house – most people preferring death to life as a sub. If someone was to score between 40 and 50 points, they would have to return in 6 months’ time to be retested, where on their second attempt scoring above 40 would send them to the sub house. The only way to ensure safety was to score below 40 on the first or second attempt. A score below this would mean being labelled as a hum, and freedom to continue their life as though nothing had happened.

Although this sounds very scary, in reality most people knew how to guarantee a low score, so holdings and retesting were rare. Around 0.1% of people scored above 40 points, and very few of those were labelled a sub – around 10 out of the 10 million tested every month!

Unfortunately for Blaine Devon Anderson, he had a knack for being one in a million.