Valentina (one direction au)

Valentina - Chapter 1 - An Education

The doorbell rang, and I put a smile on. It wasn't as cheesy or obnoxious, but it was big. After waiting for exactly 3 seconds (I counted), I opened the door.

"Good morning, ma'am. Welcome to the Coletti Residence," I started, enunciating each word slowly and carefully, just as I'd practiced. 

No hands in pockets. No eyes flicking about. Slightly tilted head. Sweet but not unnerving smile. Check, check, check.

"Mr. Coletti." She barked at me. I bowed, but not too deeply, keeping my legs straight and my head down slightly.

"Yes, ma'am. One moment, please. Please come in." I said quickly and in a business-like fashion, matching her urgent tone but not pressuring the situation. The moment she stepped over the threshold, a small beep sounded and she smiled.

"Well done, Valentia, well done!" She congratulated me. I let out the breath I had been unknowingly holding, a sigh so deep I started feeling very light-headed.

"That's all?" I asked, flattening out my apron with my gloved hands, attempting to hide the stress sweat slowly starting to bead up on my forehead

"That's all." She affirmed my suspicions that the final exam was made out to be some huge deal when really it was 30 terrifying seconds. I heard a squeal to my left and Cranberry came running over, jumping into my arms and almost flattening me on the ground.

"We did it!!" She almost shrieked, excited as ever. I'd known Cranberry for what seemed like an eternity, yet it was only the three years needed to pass hospitality school.

After World War Three, women were frightened, upset and afraid. A law had passed Congress just prior to the conflict, a law banning women from fighting on the front lines.  No one really knows how it got pushed in the first place, and how it made it past the president without him blinking an eye, but it sparked more controversy than had ever been seen in the country at the time.  As a result, after the war, women attempted to prove that they could do everything by staging the Three-years war. These conflicts shaped a new, modern age for women, where they were in charge of all 3 branches of government and established a matriarchal society as breadwinners, educators and students, CEOs and employees.  Tactics like mass cryogenic freezing of males for new sperm were employed so they would be lab-grown or thawed and awake years later to see the 100% woman-run world.

This plan didn't exactly turn out the way it was supposed to; there was constant quarreling over mating and civil disobedience, not to mention the worse issue of the woman against woman conflict. In any case, all men were incubated and awakened 60 years early and awoke furiously. They quickly overthrew the fragile female government and from there began cruelly dominating the female population, reawakening the patriarchal cult of domesticity from the 18th and 19th centuries. Any upper-class senator will tell you that "men had every right to take up arms, their constitutional right, against the useless female government" after being frozen for a few years, but other civilians will disagree.

Every girl born in the New Era was required by law to be in the Female Professional Workforce (FPW) by age 16. They are allowed to attend culinary school, hospitality school or communications school. If you pass, you pursue the careers of a waitress and eventually chef, housekeeper or maid, and secretary or accountant. All of these professions are paid and revered, you've truly succeeded if you are an employed woman. If you fail out of school, in order to take your monetary burden out of your family, you are made into a servant, who does dirtier work than a housekeeper or maid and is not paid. In this case, after 2-4 years, you may return to school and try again.

However, if your family owes a high ranking official or senator money, or you are kidnapped, you may be forced into slavery. There are...more unsavory things female slaves are forced to do, not to mention they never have to be released. Servants must be released after two years minimum or ten years maximum.