Welcome to the fictional story of Pat James! Follow along below, and stay until the end to review your options...
Pat James grew up in a small town in Louisiana and was handed his first computer when he was eleven years old. He was born in November at a time when the world was in shambles; a radical conservative by the name of Bart Johnson had just been elected President of the United States...
An erasure of of all political parties dominated the country, deadly riots spread far and wide, and execrable laws were set in place in an attempt to revert America entirely. For years after the horrific 2035 elections, all technology had been restricted and removed by law, religion was forced amongst households and schools, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community became illegal, homosexuality was forbidden, and gender ambiguity or swapping was prohibited. Education and governmental systems alike forced cisgendered heterosexuality with no exceptions.Democracy melted away entirely...
However, in 2049, a newfound company by the name of Pear came out with the first personal computer, only with minimal features. A critical factor in this new infrastructure involved the incorporation of entirely untrackable MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). These virtual spaces were historically launched as seemingly free spaces where users could experiment with their genders and identities, but later came back to haunt users who experimented with altering their gender. In the early 2000s, information regarding the users of MUDs was released through their IP addresses. The government later incarcerated any users who altered their identities online.
Pat struggled in school. Ever since he was young, he did not feel like he belonged in his own body. He struggled to find passions; he did not get along with other boys but was constantly forced to be around them. His male classmates consistently flirted with girls and talked about their heterosexual crushes, but he never felt that way toward anyone. He had an older sister named Jessie, who was two years older and his best friend, and he grew up alongside her, understanding that he got along with her better than anyone else in the world.
They would hang out every single day after school in their playroom, which was in the attic of their home, building forts and playing hide and seek.
One day, when Pat was ten, Jessie snuck some of her mother's makeup into the forts they would build and painted Pat's face with makeup through the privacy and secrecy of the surrounding blankets and pillows that hid them behind opaque shadows. Pat let out a sigh of relief left as he finally felt more comfortable at peace with himself. Dressing up with his sister made him feel whole and like he belonged to something other than the environments he was forced to coexist with heterosexual males within. His sister kept his secret safe from their parents, as no one was allowed to know she did such a thing.
These days after school became a norm for years, no matter how old they got; Pat and Jessie would skip home together, hand in hand, building fort after fort and playing dress up in the privacy of their play attic where their imagination was allowed to wander.
On Pat's eleventh birthday, he opened a new Pear laptop that he was given for school purposes. His face beamed with excitement as the blue tissue paper splattered and ruffled around him. Jessie had already recieved one for Christmas, and he knew she could teach him how to use it.
After his baseball-themed birthday party ended, and the male guests wearing sports jerseys left their home, Pat darted upstairs to the attic with Jessie, and they logged onto the new laptop. Once they began filling out security questions, they logged onto the untrackable MUD, which consisted of various chat rooms for people to formulate virtual friendships and relationships.
Originally promoted for heterosexual online relationships because users could never be tracked due to the untraceable IP address linked within the Pear laptops, these MUDs allowed users to choose their character and create their physical makeup, shape, and identity of their character through an initial username additional text description to go along with it. The goal of these MUDs was to find a friendship, friend group, or romantic relationship by passing quizzes about someone else in a chat room.
Once their chat room reached a certain level of points, the MUD unlocked a feature that allowed users to go on virtual dates with their partner of newfound friend/friends, therefore allowing and promoting/encouraging relationships of any kind to exist in a world of anonymity, when the outside world of America remained under tight laws with no freedom in personal identity.
