Designated for Pleasure

The needle went in behind my left ear, and the world turned white.

Not blinding white. Not the white of the Ceremony lights or the clinical glow of the Oráculo's projection chamber. This was the white of absence, of every color and sound and thought being pulled out through a pinhole in the back of my skull and replaced with nothing. I couldn't hear the hum of the insertion device. I couldn't feel the cold metal table beneath my shoulder blades. I couldn't remember my own name for what felt like a very long time but was probably three seconds.

Then it all came flooding back, and the first thing I registered was pain. A hot, drilling ache that radiated from the implant site down through my jaw and into my molars. The second thing was the smell. Antiseptic and something else, something organic and faintly sweet, like overripe fruit left in a hot room.

"Breathe through it," a voice said. Female. Calm. Bored, even. "The first one's always the worst."

I opened my eyes. The ceiling was a smooth expanse of pale gray, unbroken except for the surgical lamp hovering above me like a mechanical sun. I turned my head, and the ache sharpened into a spike of nausea. A woman in a white coat stood at a counter, her back to me, entering something on a datapad. She had short gray hair and the posture of someone who'd done this ten thousand times.

"Where," I started, and my voice cracked. My throat felt scraped raw.

"Academy Lysara. Processing wing. You arrived four hours ago." She didn't turn around. "Your intake assessment is complete. The implant is a standard neural interface, calibrated to your biometrics. It will regulate your arousal response, track your physiological data, and interface with the Academy's training systems. You'll feel it settle in about an hour. Until then, try not to move your head too fast."

I pushed myself up on my elbows. The room was small and windowless, tiled in the same pale gray as the ceiling. My clothes were gone. I was wearing a thin white gown that tied at the side, the kind you'd wear for a medical procedure. My wrists had faint red marks where the restraints had been.

Restraints.

I remembered now. The transport. The two men in gray uniforms who'd come to the house at dawn. My mother's face, composed and proud, as she'd handed me my travel case. My father's hand on my shoulder, firm, the way he'd always gripped me before a competition. *You'll make us proud, Kael. You always do.*

The Ceremony had been three days ago. I still had the taste of it in my mouth, the metallic tang of the ceremonial wine, the roar of the crowd as the Oráculo's voice had filled the amphitheater. I'd stood in line with the other graduates, my heart hammering against my ribs, watching as one by one my classmates stepped forward to receive their Designations. Architect. Healer. Engineer. Administrator. Each pronouncement met with applause, with tears, with the quiet satisfaction of a future confirmed.

Then my name. Kael Voss, son of Architect Voss, son of Architect Voss before him. The Oráculo's voice had been smooth and sexless, neither male nor female, the voice of something that had never been born and would never die.

*Kael Voss. Designation: Sexoservidor de Élite. Specialization: male clientele. Assignment: Academy Lysara, training cohort seven.*

The applause had been thunderous. My mother had wept. My father had embraced me, his chest swelling with what I now understood was genuine pride. And I had stood there, smiling, because that's what you did when the Oráculo spoke. You smiled. You accepted. You didn't question.

But I'd felt something crack inside me, a hairline fracture that ran from my sternum to my spine. Sexoservidor. I'd spent eighteen years preparing for greatness, for a Designation that would place me among the architects of society, the ones who shaped policy and built the future. Instead, the Oráculo had looked at me and seen a body. A tool for pleasure. A vessel for the emotional regulation of men who mattered more than I did.

"You're crying," the woman said.

I touched my face. My fingers came away wet.

"It's the implant," she said. "Emotional lability is a common side effect for the first few days. It'll pass." She finally turned, and her eyes were the flat gray of someone who'd stopped seeing patients as people a long time ago. "You're in cohort seven. Orientation is at 0800 tomorrow. Your quarters are in the east wing, dormitory four. Your schedule and materials will be delivered to your datapad. Any questions?"

I had a thousand. I asked none of them.

"No," I said.

She nodded and gestured toward a door I hadn't noticed, set into the far wall. "Get dressed. Someone will escort you."

---

The east wing of Academy Lysara was beautiful in the way a prison might be beautiful if you gave the architect an unlimited budget and told them to make captivity look like luxury. The corridors were wide and softly lit, the walls a warm cream color that probably had a scientific name like *calming beige* or *serenity taupe*. The floors were polished stone that reflected the lights above in long, wavering streaks. There were plants. Real ones, not projections, their leaves glossy and green, their soil dark and rich. The air smelled like jasmine and something clean, something chemical, the ghost of disinfectant beneath the perfume.

My escort was a young man in a gray uniform, maybe a few years older than me. He walked half a step ahead, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes fixed straight ahead. He didn't speak. When I tried to ask him a question, he just shook his head, a small, tight motion, and kept walking.

Dormitory four was at the end of a long hall, behind a door that required a palm scan. The room inside was smaller than I'd expected. Two beds, two desks, two narrow closets. A window that looked out onto a courtyard where other recruits were walking in pairs and small groups, their heads bent together in conversation. The walls were the same cream color, the floor the same polished stone. It felt like a hotel room designed by someone who'd been told that comfort was a form of weakness.

My roommate was already there.

He was sitting on the bed closest to the window, his back against the wall, his knees drawn up. He was small, smaller than me, with dark hair that fell across his forehead and eyes that were almost black. He looked up when I came in, and for a moment neither of us spoke.

"You're Voss," he said finally. His voice was quiet, but not shy. Measured. Like he was weighing every word before he let it out.

"Yeah." I dropped my travel case on the empty bed. "And you're?"

"Darian. Darian Reyes." He didn't offer his hand. "You're the one from the Ceremony. The Architect's son."

The way he said it wasn't accusatory. It was just a fact, laid out like a card on a table. I wondered what my face was doing, because he tilted his head slightly, studying me.

"I heard about your Designation," he said. "Everyone did. It was in the feeds."

Of course it was. The son of an Architect, destined for Sexoservidor. The scandal of it. The delicious irony. I could imagine the commentary, the carefully neutral analysis, the speculation about what it meant for the Oráculo's algorithms. I could imagine my father's colleagues, their sympathy so perfectly calibrated it was indistinguishable from satisfaction.

"I don't want to talk about it," I said.

"Okay." Darian looked away, out the window. "I'm from the agricultural district. Third generation. My parents are farmers. They cried when I got my Designation, but not the way your parents probably did."

I sat down on my bed. The implant was still throbbing, a dull pulse that kept time with my heartbeat. "How do you know how my parents cried?"

"Because I saw the broadcast." He said it without malice. "Your mother looked like she'd just won the lottery. Your father looked like he'd just been promoted. And you looked like someone had punched you in the stomach."

I didn't have a response to that. He was right. I'd seen the footage afterward, in the privacy of my room, and I'd barely recognized myself. The smile I'd worn had been perfect, calibrated, the smile of a son who understood his duty. But my eyes had been dead.

"Why are you here?" I asked. "I mean, why did the Oráculo choose you?"

Darian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I'm good at reading people. I always have been. My parents used to say I could tell when a storm was coming before the sky changed. The Oráculo must have seen that." He paused. "Or maybe it saw something else. Something I haven't figured out yet."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, none of us know why we're here. Not really. The Oráculo doesn't explain. It just assigns." He turned to look at me again, and there was something in his eyes, something sharp and watchful. "But I think we're going to find out."

---

The orientation was held in a lecture hall that could have seated three hundred people. There were forty of us.

We sat in the first few rows, clustered together like animals seeking warmth, and I looked at the faces around me. Young men, all of us, ranging from maybe seventeen to twenty. Different heights, different builds, different colors. Some of us looked scared. Some looked defiant. A few looked genuinely excited, and I couldn't tell if that was real or a performance.

I recognized a few faces from the feeds. The son of a Healer from the eastern provinces, his family's disgrace still fresh. A boy who'd been a champion athlete, his body a machine of muscle and grace. A quiet one with glasses who kept his eyes fixed on his datapad, scrolling through something I couldn't see. And there, two rows ahead of me, a face I knew from somewhere, though I couldn't place it. Dark skin, close-cropped hair, a jaw that looked like it had been carved from stone. He sat perfectly still, his hands folded in his lap, his gaze fixed on the stage.

The woman who entered was tall and lean, her hair pulled back so tightly it looked painful. She wore a black uniform with silver trim, the insignia of the Academy on her collar. She walked to the center of the stage and stood there, her hands behind her back, her eyes sweeping over us.

"I am Instructor Vela," she said. Her voice was clear and cold, the voice of someone who'd spent years learning to project authority. "I am the director of training for cohort seven. Over the next twelve months, you will be shaped into Sexoservidores de Élite. You will learn to control your bodies, your emotions, and your minds. You will learn techniques that will allow you to serve the highest-ranking members of our society. You will learn to be invisible when necessary and indispensable when required."

She paused, letting the words settle.

"Some of you are here because the Oráculo saw potential in you. Others are here because the Oráculo saw something else. It doesn't matter. By the time you graduate, you will all be the same. You will be tools. Perfect, precise, and utterly reliable."

I felt the hair on my arms rise. *Tools.* The word echoed in my skull, a bell that wouldn't stop ringing.

"You will be assigned a specialization based on your biometrics and psychological profile," Vela continued. "Some of you will serve women. Some will serve men. Some will serve both. The Oráculo has already determined your path. Your job is to walk it without deviation."

She gestured, and a holographic display flickered to life behind her. A diagram of the human body, rendered in glowing blue lines, with labels pointing to various regions. Nervous system. Endocrine system. Muscular structure. I recognized the anatomy from my biology classes, but the context was different now. The labels were different. *Erogenous zones. Arousal pathways. Orgasm triggers.*

"Your training will be divided into four phases," Vela said. "Phase one: physical conditioning and bodily control. Phase two: psychological conditioning and emotional regulation. Phase three: technical instruction and practical application. Phase four: supervised field experience. You will be evaluated continuously. Failure to meet standards will result in reconditioning. Repeated failure will result in termination of your Designation and reassignment to manual labor."

A murmur ran through the room. Reassignment. I'd heard rumors about what that meant. The Oráculo didn't waste resources. If you couldn't serve your purpose, you were given a new one. Something menial. Something anonymous. A life of digging ditches or cleaning sewers, your potential erased, your name forgotten.

"Any questions?" Vela asked.

No one spoke.

"Good. You'll receive your individual schedules tonight. Training begins at 0600 tomorrow. Dismissed."

---

The first week was designed to break us.

We woke before dawn and ran laps around the training yard until our lungs burned and our legs shook. We did push-ups and pull-ups and squats until our muscles gave out, then we did them again. We learned to hold our breath for three minutes, to control our heart rate through meditation, to endure pain without flinching. We were weighed and measured and scanned, our bodies mapped and cataloged, every inch of us analyzed and recorded.

The implant behind my ear hummed constantly, a low vibration that I was starting to think of as a second heartbeat. It tracked everything. My pulse, my respiration, my temperature, my hormone levels. It fed the data to the Academy's systems, where it was analyzed and compared against benchmarks I couldn't see. Sometimes it would pulse, a sharp jolt that I learned to interpret as a correction. Stand up straighter. Breathe slower. Relax your jaw. The implant was teaching me to be what the Oráculo wanted, one micro-adjustment at a time.

I hated it. I hated the way it made my body feel like a machine that didn't belong to me. I hated the way it knew when I was anxious or angry or afraid, and I hated the way it responded by flooding me with something calm and blank and empty. But I learned to live with it. I learned to accept its corrections without flinching. I learned to be grateful, or at least to perform gratitude, because that's what the instructors expected.

Darian was better at it than I was.

He moved through the training with a quiet efficiency that I envied. He never complained. He never faltered. When the instructors pushed him, he pushed back with a calm determination that seemed to confuse them. He was small, but he was strong, and he was fast, and he had a way of anticipating what they were going to ask before they asked it. I watched him and wondered what the Oráculo had seen in him, what quality had marked him for this life.

At night, in our room, we talked.

Not about the training. Not about the future. We talked about our lives before, the things we'd left behind. He told me about the farm, the way the wheat smelled when it was ready to harvest, the way his mother sang while she worked. I told him about the city, the towers of glass and light, the way my father's office had looked out over the entire district. We traded stories like currency, each one a small piece of the selves we'd been.

"You don't talk about your family much," he said one night, a week into our training. He was lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling. I was at my desk, pretending to study the materials on my datapad.

"There's not much to say."

"That's not true." He turned his head to look at me. "You talk about your father like he's a stranger. Like you're describing someone you read about in a book."

I set the datapad down. "My father is an Architect. He built the western aqueduct system. He designed the new parliamentary complex. He's one of the most important men in the city."

"That's what he does. That's not who he is."

I didn't answer. I didn't know how to explain that I'd spent eighteen years trying to be what my father wanted, and I'd failed. That the Designation had been a verdict, not just on my future, but on my worth. That I'd looked at my father's face during the Ceremony and seen something I'd never seen before: relief. Relief that I hadn't been assigned something worse. Relief that the family name would survive, even if I didn't.

"He's proud of me," I said finally. "He said so."

"Did you believe him?"

I thought about the way my father had embraced me, the firm grip of his hand on my shoulder. I thought about the way he'd looked at me, his eyes bright with something that might have been tears. I thought about the way he'd said *you'll make us proud* and the way I'd nodded, because what else could I do?

"I don't know," I said.

Darian was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "My parents didn't want me to go. They tried to appeal the Designation. They filed a petition with the Oráculo's office, claiming I was needed on the farm. It was rejected, of course. The Oráculo doesn't make mistakes."

"What happened to them?"

"They were fined. A significant portion of their annual yield. And they were flagged for re-education." He paused. "I haven't heard from them since I got here. I don't know if they're okay."

The implant pulsed, a gentle correction. *Calm down. Regulate.* I realized my hands were clenched into fists. I forced them open.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It's not your fault." He turned back to the ceiling. "None of this is anyone's fault. That's the worst part. There's no one to blame. The Oráculo is just a system. A machine. It doesn't hate us. It doesn't love us. It just... assigns."

"And we're supposed to accept that."

"We're supposed to survive." His voice was soft. "That's all any of us can do."

---

Phase two began in the third week.

We were separated into groups based on our specializations. I was placed in a cohort of twelve, all of us designated for male clientele. We were taken to a different wing of the Academy, one I hadn't seen before, where the rooms were smaller and warmer and the lights were dimmer. The instructors here were different too. Softer. More patient. They spoke in gentle voices and smiled often, and I found their kindness more unsettling than Vela's coldness.

"Our goal in this phase," said Instructor Mira, a woman with silver hair and a face that had been beautiful once, "is to help you understand your own bodies. You cannot give pleasure if you don't know how to receive it. You cannot control your arousal if you've never experienced it fully. So we're going to start with the basics."

The basics, it turned out, involved a lot of touching.

We were taught to explore our own bodies with a clinical detachment that was supposed to make us comfortable with intimacy. We learned the anatomy of arousal, the physiology of orgasm, the intricate dance of nerves and hormones that produced pleasure. We practiced on ourselves first, then on each other, always under supervision, always with strict protocols.

It was strange, touching another man's body for the first time. I'd never thought about it before, not really. I'd had girlfriends in school, brief relationships that had ended when the Oráculo's assessments had shown the incompatibility. I'd never considered that my Designation might involve men. But the Oráculo had seen something in me, some quality that made me suitable for this particular work, and I was beginning to understand what it was.

I was good at it.

Not the touching, though I learned that quickly enough. The reading. The anticipation. The ability to sense what someone needed before they knew it themselves. I could feel the tension in a man's shoulders and know whether he wanted to be held or pushed away. I could hear the catch in his breath and know whether it meant pleasure or pain. It was like a language I'd always known but never spoken, and now that I was speaking it, I couldn't stop.

Darian was in a different group. His specialization was for both men and women, a rare designation that made him valuable and, I suspected, lonely. We saw each other at meals and in our room at night, but our days were separate, our training diverging into paths that would never quite meet.

"You're different," he said one night, three weeks into phase two. He was sitting on his bed, watching me as I undressed for sleep. "Something's changed."

"What do you mean?"

"You move differently. You hold yourself differently." He tilted his head, studying me with that sharp, watchful gaze. "You're starting to like it."

I wanted to deny it. I wanted to say that I hated every moment of the training, that I was only doing what I had to do to survive. But that would have been a lie, and Darian would have seen through it.

"I don't know if I like it," I said. "But I'm not fighting it anymore."

"Is that a good thing?"

I thought about the implant, humming behind my ear, adjusting my responses, smoothing my rough edges. I thought about the way my body had started to feel less like mine and more like a tool, precise and responsive and empty. I thought about the way I'd stopped dreaming about my old life, my old self, the person I'd been before the Ceremony.

"I don't know," I said. "But it's the only thing I can do."

---

The first practical demonstration happened at the end of the fourth week.

We were taken to a room that looked like a hotel suite, all soft lighting and expensive furniture. There was a bed in the center, wide and low, covered with white sheets. There were candles on the nightstand, their flames flickering in the dimness. There was a man waiting for us.

He was older, maybe forty, with gray at his temples and a body that had been kept fit through discipline and wealth. He wore a robe of dark silk, loosely tied, and he sat in a chair by the window, watching us as we filed in. His eyes moved over us with the calm assessment of someone who was used to being served.

"This is Client 47," Instructor Mira said. "He has volunteered to assist with your training. You will treat him with respect and courtesy. You will do exactly what he asks. You will not speak unless spoken to."

She gestured to the first recruit, a boy named Tomas with sandy hair and a nervous smile. "You'll go first."

What happened next is difficult to describe. Not because it was traumatic, though it was. Not because it was pleasurable, though it was that too. It was both and neither, a collision of sensations that I couldn't separate into their component parts. I watched Tomas kneel before the client, watched him perform the acts he'd been taught, watched the client's face shift from boredom to interest to satisfaction. I watched the other recruits watching, their faces carefully blank, their bodies rigid with tension. I felt the implant pulsing, adjusting, calibrating my response to what I was seeing.

When it was my turn, I walked to the client without hesitation. I knelt before him, my hands on my thighs, my eyes lowered. I waited for his command.

"Look at me," he said.

I looked up. His eyes were pale blue, the color of winter sky. There was no kindness in them, no cruelty either. Just expectation.

"You're the Architect's son," he said. "I read about you in the feeds."

"Yes, sir."

"Your father designed my office building. It's a beautiful structure. Very efficient." He reached out and touched my face, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw. "I wonder if you're as efficient as his buildings."

I didn't answer. I didn't know how.

"Stand up," he said. "Take off your clothes."

I did. The room was cool, and my skin prickled with goosebumps. The implant hummed, regulating my heart rate, keeping my breathing steady. I stood before him naked, my hands at my sides, waiting.

He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, "You're beautiful. Did you know that?"

"No, sir."

"You should. Beauty is a tool, just like anything else. You'll learn to use it." He gestured to the bed. "Lie down."

I lay down on the white sheets, my body stretched out like an offering. The client rose from his chair and walked to the bed, his robe falling open as he moved. He was erect, his cock thick and flushed, and I felt something twist in my stomach, something that might have been fear or anticipation or both.

He climbed onto the bed and positioned himself above me. His body was heavy, his skin warm, his breath sour with wine. He looked down at me, and for a moment, I saw something in his eyes that surprised me. Loneliness. A deep, aching loneliness that he'd probably never admitted to anyone.

"Touch me," he said.

I reached up and put my hands on his chest. His skin was smooth, his muscles firm beneath it. I traced the lines of his body, learning him the way I'd been taught, reading his responses in the way his breath caught and his hips shifted. He lowered himself onto me, his weight pressing me into the mattress, and I felt his cock against my thigh, hot and insistent.

"Open your mouth," he said.

I did. He kissed me, deeply, his tongue pushing past my lips. I kissed him back, matching his rhythm, giving him what he wanted. The implant hummed, adjusting, and I felt my body responding, my own arousal stirring despite myself. This was what I'd been made for. This was what the Oráculo had seen in me. The ability to want what I was told to want, to feel what I was told to feel, to become whatever the moment required.

He fucked me slowly at first, his movements measured and deliberate. Then faster, harder, his breath coming in grunts, his hands gripping my hips. I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him deeper, and I heard myself moan, a sound that seemed to come from somewhere outside my body. The implant pulsed, and I felt my orgasm building, a wave that I couldn't control, that I didn't want to control. I came with his name on my lips, a name I didn't know, a name I'd never learn.

When it was over, he rolled off me and lay on his back, breathing hard. I stayed where I was, my body slick with sweat and semen, my mind blank and quiet. The implant hummed, a soft, satisfied vibration. *Good,* it seemed to say. *That's what you're for.*

Instructor Mira appeared at the side of the bed. "Well done, Kael. You may return to your seat."

I stood up, my legs shaky, my body aching. I walked back to the other recruits and sat down, my eyes fixed on the floor. I could feel them looking at me, could feel their judgment and their envy and their fear. I didn't care. I was somewhere else, somewhere far away, a place where nothing mattered except the next command, the next touch, the next moment of empty, perfect service.

---

Darian was waiting for me when I got back to our room.

He was sitting on his bed, his datapad in his hands, but he set it down when I came in. His eyes moved over me, taking in my disheveled hair, my rumpled uniform, the dark bruise forming on my neck where the client had sucked too hard.

"How was it?" he asked.

I didn't answer. I walked to my bed and sat down, my hands trembling. The implant was still humming, still regulating, but it couldn't reach everything. There was something underneath the calm, something raw and wounded that the implant couldn't touch.

"Kael." Darian's voice was soft. He got up and crossed the room, sitting down beside me on the bed. "Talk to me."

"I don't know what to say." My voice sounded strange to my own ears, flat and distant. "It happened. It's over. That's all."

"That's not all." He reached out and took my hand, his fingers warm and gentle. "You're shaking."

I looked down at our joined hands. His skin was darker than mine, his fingers shorter, his grip firm. I thought about the client's hands on my body, the way he'd touched me like I was something he'd bought. I thought about the way I'd responded, the way my body had betrayed me, the way I'd come with a stranger's name on my lips.

"I liked it," I said. The words came out before I could stop them. "I hated it, and I liked it, and I don't know what that means."

Darian was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "It means you're human. It means your body is doing what bodies do. It doesn't mean anything about who you are."

"But it does." I pulled my hand away, suddenly angry. "It means I'm exactly what the Oráculo said I was. A tool. A body. Something to be used."

"No." His voice was firm. "It means you're surviving. There's a difference."

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that there was still something of me left, something that the Oráculo hadn't touched, something that the training hadn't broken. But I couldn't feel it. I couldn't feel anything except the hum of the implant and the ache in my body and the cold, empty space where my future used to be.

"I don't know how to do this," I said. "I don't know how to be what they want me to be."

"You don't have to know." Darian reached out and touched my face, his fingers gentle on my cheek. "You just have to keep going. One day at a time. One moment at a time."

"And what happens when I can't keep going?"

He didn't answer. He didn't have to. We both knew what happened to those who failed. We'd seen it in the faces of the recruits who'd been sent for reconditioning, the ones who'd come back hollow and empty, their eyes like windows into nothing.

I lay down on my bed and closed my eyes. The implant hummed, a lullaby that I couldn't escape. And somewhere in the darkness behind my eyelids, I saw the client's face, his pale blue eyes, his lonely smile. I saw my father's face, proud and relieved. I saw my own face, the one I'd worn during the Ceremony, the smile that had been perfect and empty and dead.

I didn't know who I was anymore. I didn't know what I was becoming. But I knew one thing, with a certainty that burned in my chest like a coal: I wasn't going to let them win. Not without a fight. Not without holding onto something, anything, that was still mine.

The implant pulsed, a warning. *Calm down. Regulate. Obey.*

I took a breath and let it go. And in the darkness, I made a promise to myself, a promise that the Oráculo would never hear.

I would survive this. And one day, I would find a way to be more than what they'd made me.