But can't offer answers

“The algorithm doesn’t really make mistakes, Jess…” Daniel said, in the most consoling voice he could. “It knows everything about you from the moment you were born. It’s been shaping the young man you’ve grown up into, every step of the way…” The thirty-something year old matron looked kindly across at the slight-bodied teenager slumping morosely on his desk, twiddling with a pen in clear, conflicted turmoil. He had been looking after the twenty or so teens in block H for the last five years of their lives, supporting them in any way he could. Everyone liked Daniel. You couldn’t help it. He was exactly the sort of gentle, wise-beyond-his-years man that fit perfectly into this role. Which was rather the point to be made. The algorithm didn’t make mistakes. It put everyone where they ought to be.

Jesse knew this. He knew how it all worked, however much he might have dozed off in classes to be poked awake again by Betsy. It just… didn’t seem to fit inside his head right now. That some infinitely complex machine somewhere had scanned from top to bottom of his soul and decided… Here's a young man who needs to suck old rich guy’s cocks for the rest of his life. It didn’t seem fair.

“Look… you’ve always known you were a little different from the other boys, haven’t you?” Daniel offered, looking down at the light, soft slant of his charge’s collarbones and the smooth, hairless skin on his arms. “The algorithm’s been controlling the hormones in your food and suggesting you exercise patterns all along… that never seemed to bother you at all.”

Jesse grunted… It was true. The fact that he was short and dexterously thin and had never needed to bother learning to shave or anything had just seemed… right at the time. Sure, it was sometimes a little intimidating to be overshadowed by Betsy, or George, or any of the other more conventionally masculine young men he grew up around. But that didn’t mean he’d ever really thought of himself as a ‘Sissy’. He could fight with the best of them… the few times he’d needed to. Admittedly, usually by the well-placed application of a knee to the crotch. Would he even really be considered ‘pretty’ by anyone? What was with that ‘1st Class’ definition that had been hung above his head… Almost no-one from the public Homes ever got graded so highly… There had to be some mistake.

“Have you ever… actually found yourself in a… situation like that?” Daniel asked, treading the ground carefully. Jesse’s eyes flicked to him in immediate confusion and suspicion.

“Most people do, you know… Over that month from when you all come of age to when you graduate. That’s kind of why it exists. The algorithm chooses your roommates and guides your body’s progression and… things just tend to happen naturally. But, of course… Betsy has always been a bit… overprotective over you. I wonder if you were supposed to bump into George or Whitney somewhere and…”

The man trailed off. “But then… why would it have put you in with her in the first place…” He had the eighteen year old’s full attention now, in the slipping twilight of his office. Those glinting eyes really were unavoidably exquisite, when you were caught in them. It was baffling how the young man had never realised it.