Pet by Law ( petdom with a wholesome twist?)

We'd all been shocked when we heard the news. On the evening of Thursday, the 5th of November 2065, the government legally reclassified all blonds, male or female, to human pets. I was sitting on the couch in front of the TV with my girlfriend Lea and her best friend Mackenzie, our housemate at the time. The news hit Mackenzie hardest, understandably since she's a natural blonde.

She'd been holding it together for the past month, but when the Council Speaker announced on national television that the decision had been made she broke down. You see, our country had been fighting a rising unemployment rate as automation made more and more jobs redundant. Many solutions had been attempted, one crazier than the other as our aging leaders succumbed to dementia. Most of the population was sick of it, especially since all the automation paired with the strong welfare system meant nobody was actually going hungry, but since the police and military had been automated and responded only to the High Council there wasn't much anyone could do about it.

After starting a pointless war had failed to lower the number of unemployed people (predictably, since it involved no human soldiers and the factories where they produce munitions, tanks, and so on are all operated by machines), the Council had started considering more direct action. If they couldn't reduce the number of people by sending them off to die on the other side of the planet, they'd simply narrow the definition of 'people' until the numbers matched. They consulted various statistics to determine which demographic to exclude, and had spent the last month deliberating between blonds and two other groups: men with green eyes, and women whose index fingers are longer than their ring fingers.

So we'd had some time to prepare for the possibility. We'd promised Mackenzie again and again that we'd protect her no matter what, and she put on a brave face, but when things went from 'scary possibility' to 'dire reality' the tears wouldn't stop flowing. We turned off the TV and just sat with her, doing our best to comfort her and handing her a fresh tissue whenever she needed one. Eventually, drained from all the crying, she nodded off with her head on my shoulder. Lea got up to fetch some blankets so we wouldn't have to carry Mackenzie to bed. If she woke up again it'd take hours to get her to fall asleep a second time, and we needed to get up early tomorrow to register her as our pet. If we didn't, the system would assign her to a different owner and dispatch a law enforcement robot to take her away.

After draping the blankets over us, my girlfriend kissed me goodnight and went to bed herself.

Author's Note: I'm trying something different here. It's inspired by a branch of Alternatum by Crushedforlife and Control Freak I wish had been continued. In mechanics it's more like TRAP combined with Her vacation as a pet, with the key difference that the victim is treated with compassion by the people around her. Nobody thinks she's an animal or that she deserves this, but they're **** to treat her as a pet because of bizarre laws enforced by robots. As such, she'll be put in various uncomfortable positions but she will not be abused. Despite the grim setting I'm NOT writing a dark story here, though other writers are free to do so. If you want to write in this branch here are some guidelines:

* The world is approaching post-scarcity. Basic needs like food, housing, public transport, are taken care of by machines so nobody is starving or homeless. But human intervention is still required for some things, and people with jobs live more comfortably than the unemployed.

* The general population doesn't have much choice about obeying even the most ridiculous laws because they're strictly enforced by robots who won't be reasoned or negotiated with. But these aren't sophisticated AIs that think for themselves, they're quite rigid in enforcing the letter of the law. So crafty people can trick them with technicalities or grey areas, and exploit whatever loopholes they find. At least until the laws are adjusted.

* Whoever's in charge (a bunch of demented old councillors in my case) has picked one or more demographics to strip of their personhood. Members of this demographic are legally considered animals and property, and will be treated as such by robots and automated systems important enough to have received the new definition of "person" (self-driving cars only take commands from people, but vending machines probably don't care). Other humans still see them as people, but their behavior varies. Nice people will stand up for these victims as much as they can within the limits enforced by the machines, while sadists would take advantage of their lack of rights (though law enforcement robots are still programmed to prevent "animal cruelty").

Also, I'm going to switch perspective a bunch between chapters. Assuming I keep writing past the three I already have.