The Declaration

sessions – at least half of the training sessions each day were single sex, focusing exclusively on the skills and expertise each would be expected to bring to their future employer; and thirdly by the ways in which they approached their confinement, the methods they employed to make their lives seem more bearable, their prospects less bleak.
    The girls, with only one or two exceptions, got through each day by competing with one another over who was going to be most valuable, who could prove their genuine worth to Mother Nature. And whilst, on the surface, there appeared to be some camaraderie between the girls; whilst they would sometimes, in stolen moments, confide in each other and whisper forbidden thoughts about the Outside, about what it must be like to be born Legal, to have life stretched out ahead of you like a beautiful, soft carpet full of pleasure and expectations, in reality there was little friendship. Pity, sympathy and empathy were qualities that the female Surpluses could not afford the luxury of feeling; pity or sympathy extended to another could only highlight their own failings, their own destiny. And so, instead, the girls lived side by side, never letting their guard down fully, nearly always suppressing their instincts and questions, and constantly watching each other for the smallest transgression, even in stolen moments of leisure and recreation. In the hour or so before bedtime when, on the rare occasion that all chores had been completed satisfactorily for the day and the girls in Anna’s dorm had some free time, they would always play the same game. It was called Legal-Surplus, and would see one of the girls anointed ‘Legal’ for the duration of the game, and one other as her Surplus. The ‘Legal’ girl could ask her Surplus to do anything, from cleaning the floor with her tongue to eating faeces. The more creative and inventive the Legal could be in finding ways to humiliate and abuse her Surplus, the more the other girls would applaud and laugh until Lights Out were announced and the game’s Surplus would be allowed to escape her tormentor.
    The boys, on the other hand, did not let their minds stray too far into the future, did not allow their thoughts to rest too long on the short life of servitude that lay before them. Instead, they coped with their frustration and restlessness by engaging in more physical activity. The rules of engagement in their game were similar to those employed in the female Surpluses’ game – one against one, with the other Surpluses acting as the audience, but in the boys’ version, the victim and bully were not chosen according to strict rotation; rather, the same boy or boys would be picked on and attacked by the same bullies, the others watching, vicariously feeling the pleasure of each kick, imagining the powerful feeling that would come from mastering another completely. The game would continue until the watching Surpluses could no longer control themselves and would throw themselves into the fray, kicking and punching the victim or anyone they considered to be weaker than them. Doing this allowed them, for a short time at least, to feel invincible, to feel as though they were no longer Surplus; the blood pumping around their body made everything outside the dormitory meaningless – their past, their present, their future.
    Mrs Pincent and the Instructors knew of both these games and intervened rarely. In fact, Anna had seen Mrs Pincent smile and say that in these games the Surpluses were doing her job for her; the girls were learning to submit themselves fully to their Legal masters, whilst the boys were sorting out the weak from the strong, and taking their aggression out on each other, containing it so that no Legal ever need feel the brunt of it. Surplus boys were often employed in groups of two or three, with a weaker boy attached to two stronger ones, enabling this dynamic to continue until the boys were men and they were no longer gripped with the need to fight, to dominate. Hormone trials had been conducted years before to try and quell the Surplus boys’ appetite and need for aggression, but they were found to diminish their strength and brute force, so were soon abandoned.
    Anna no longer engaged in the games in her dormitory. She was, after all, a Prefect now and was too old for such things. But the truth was that being a Prefect was not the reason for her looking the other way when one or other Surplus girl was forced to