Chapter 10: CL51, and VR on the Database

Popular Channel’s Commissioner of Light Entertainment, Chendar Orbill, is in conversation with Olimand Dosiman, a lead figure in the CL51 Club backbench committee, a body which represents non-ministerial parliamentary members of the Liberal Conservatives. Their discussion is hosted by veteran Popular Channel late-night presenter Mellarick Eaflock, on his late night show, Musings, which airs on Sunday nights at 11:30. The set is simple - three comfy black seats around a central glass table which has alcoholic drinks - whisky and gin, plus a small bucket of ice and a soda fountain. There’s an ash tray on the table, since one of them, the politician, is smoking. Each of the three sits in a small pool of light. The atmosphere is relaxed and informal.

Mellarick Eaflock, a portly, suited presenter with a pouting upper lip says, in over-rounded vowels, “Gentlemen, welcome. Since Popular’s so-called big bang moment, getting on for more than a month ago now, rumours have been growing of some kind of early information-sharing between the newly-elected LC government and Popular, letting this channel know what changes the new government might be planning in the coming year. Chendar Orbill, as Popular’s Commissioner of Light Entertainment, you must have been aware of any such co-ordination.”

Chendar Orbill says, “Good evening, Mellarick, and thanks for the welcome. I know the rumour mill likes to grind out its sweetbreads, but you have to ask yourself, in this case, if the recent developments on Popular needed any co-ordination with the Government at all? It was clear that change was in the offing - LC’s landslide win at the polls was a clue like a hammer coming down on a thumb.”

Eaflock’s face is shown reacting to that.

“At Popular,” Orbill continues, “we knew straight from the off that some radical shake-up had to happen. In broadcasting as much as in civil life. But the question was, who would drive it forward? I was one of those arguing for Popular. Back then we had a reputation for following, not leading. I suggested - as did one or two others - that we might pitch ourselves as the engine room to drive these changes - by taking a radical risk with our output.”

The presenter Eaflock turns his head and says, “There’s radical, then there’s radical. The tone of criticism from some more highbrow voices is that Popular has not so much... radicalised its output, as nose-dived for the gutter.”

Orbill shrugs. “Popular is called Popular for good reason, Mr Eaflock. We really believe we’re giving our viewers exactly what they voted for. I won’t deny, we consciously chose to up the channel’s smut-o-meter reading, as I heard one critic call it today. But, to our eyes, the fight around that question was right at the core of the election fight. To use the parlance, it was the Can’t-Do-Thats versus the Have-What-You-Wants. And the latter faction won.”

Eaflock asks, “But why, might I ask, these particular obsessions - of punishing, belittling, such large-breasted women and - well - bottoms, crotches and - a tad more controversially - schoolgirls?”

Orbill answers, “We have gone for the jugular, some might say, of one of this country’s most embedded obsessions. Men’s fantasies of being the dominant sex.”

Eaflocks, from his big black chair, asks, “And did you choose those specific obsessions to promote?”

Orbill answers, “Not me specifically, Mellarick. In fact, we decided loosen the reins on the creatives. We offered our producers, our stars, a lot more freedom. Since you start with tits and bums, let me start with Billy Hall. We said to that crew - if we allowed you to make the exact shows you wanted, just what might you produce?”

“And the answer is what we have see?” Eaflock asks.

“There were some discussions - I am Popular’s Commissioner of Light Entertainment - Hall himself, his producers, myself and a couple of back room boys - they’d say, ‘We’d like to do this.’ We’d say, ‘Fine, go ahead.’ They’d come back with, ‘Well if we can do that, then how about this?’ That was the general tone of the thing. The one thing we decided on - our lawyers insisted, and everyone agreed without hesitation, was, ‘No actual permanent bodily harm.’ As well as itemised, explicit contracts for the girls.”

“No specific direction?” Eaflock muses. “No more harnessing the horses?”

“Very little,” says Orbill. “You might say - other than those caveats mentioned - that out policy was a thorough removal of constraints. Some might say, that LC election promise writ large. Deregulation with a capital X.”

Dosiman, the backbench leading light, reaches to fill his glass with more gin. He says, “Deregulation, deregulation and again, deregulation. We campaigned full-on to roll back all that Not-Allowed Nanny State nonsense! DR, the Can’t-Do-Thats, seemed so overly fond of all their specifics. Specific swear words banned on TV. All religious references forced through a filter. No tits, no bums before ten PM at night? And even then no shot allowed to run for longer than - what was it? Two seconds?”

“Forty three frames,” says Chendar Orbill. “We literally had to count the frames out in our edit suites. Then cut, or speed up action, if a nipple was on screen for just one frame too many. And why forty three frames? Such an arbitrary figure, we never found out why. But it led to people thinking nipples, breasts and bums must be seen for only a second and a bit. But never two seconds, at any one time. Which, inevitably, was how long each stayed up on screen for, as a rule.

Dosiman, the back bencher, adds, “Of course, Sardo binned that claptrap - the whole lot - within a month of LC gaining office. He simply put all those fiddly, specific in-flagrante laws in the shredder. Rather a simple calculation, really. This group of laws are no longer laws! And the changes sailed through both houses in a week! Now, that’s effective government, right? Before bloody DR got in, of course, nobody had ever thought to even try to codify that sort of - fiddly, prudish, so-specific detail. All gentlemen’s agreements, that was the rule.”

Mellarick Eaflock leans back in his big seat and says, “Those gentlemens’ agreements - you could argue, they’re the baby that’s been chucked out with the bath water?”

The backbencher Dosiman shakes his head. “It was DR who scrunched those agreements up wholesale and chucked them at the bin.”

“Olimand is right,” says Orbill. “Those tomes of new rules from the DR can’t-do-that sausage machine kept landing on creatives’ desks with deadening thuds. There was just so bloody much of it! We had to have assistants - non-creative script and action supervisors - on actual sets saying, ‘That line should be cut - blasphemy. That actress is showing a bit too much leg.’ Directors would be pulling their hair out. They were told things like, ‘You can say that, but not if it’s broadcast between 5AM and 10PM.’ Creativity with lead boots on.”

Mellerick Eaflock tips back his head and pouts his upper lip. “So those rules get binned. The lead boots of creativity come off. That’s your ... rationale for letting directors now point their lenses - well, not just at tits and bums, but at actresses’ actual crotches now? Surely, that limit should be ... well, crotches still wearing knickers, perhaps? No fear of that, no! One recent Billy Hall episode contained -” Eaflock seems to leer at his notes in a way that doubles up the flesh of his face - “‘a flagrant double gape,’ it says here. Not terminology one recalls ever having heard in one’s life, till just two weeks in the past. Olimand Dosiman, as a leading figure in the influential ConLibFiftyOne Club - influential in the sense that it represents the wishes of LC’s extensive cohort of backbenchers - takes their wishes to its leadership - how have these shocks to the broadcasting system gone down with your members?”

“There have been a number of vocal nay-sayers,” Dosiman confides. “Some members have felt, too much, too fast - enough is enough! We’ve had arguments, some pretty bruising ones too. But when push comes to shove - when comments and proposals get put to the vote - the numbers become clearer. The nay-sayers are in the minority, Mellarick. No, the overwhelming feeling has been really rather positive. That’s been more the reaction. Stick that up DR’s collective jacksie, that’s what the bulk of our members seem to think.” He clears his throat, then takes a swig of gin. “Part of the shock was the place the change was coming from. We’d expected FIRST! to lead the charge. No-one had thought that the channel which broke from the pack first would be Popular. Innovation has always come from FIRST! But the weeks have worn on, and the general mood, I have to say, is excitement. Triumph, even.”

“Triumph,” says Eaflock, sounding pleasantly scandalised. “Triumph at what?”

Dosiman smiles a wonky-toothed smile. “At the looks on all those prudish DR faces! The phrase, ‘face like a well-slapped arse,’ has been doing the rounds of the Reps for a month! And that’s shepherded our LC nay-sayers to the fold. The affront on the faces of the Can’t-Do-Thats! The more they’ve cried, ‘foul!’ the more our members have goaded them on, and every other day makes those faces just look redder! Every time Billy Hall or Popular breaks a new taboo, they turn more apoplectic - and every other day it seems, our members just jeer louder!”

Chendar Orbill’s smile grows happier as he listens.

Eaflock asks him, “Has the speed of the thing not caused any kind of backlash, Chendar? For the channel, I mean?”

“We were certainly taking a strategic risk,” the Commissioner of Light Entertainment says. “Yes, it could have backfired spectacularly. Of course it could! Just because the reaction seems positive today does not mean we’d knew that’s how it would go. The night that first episode of Billy Hall aired, there were more than a few squeaky bums clutching tight. My own heart was racing on the night that went out. Forget the deluge of complaints. I was half expecting a nasty call from someone with connections to - well, who knew what? For all we know, we’re still on a tightrope.”

Dosiman says, “We didn’t see it coming in the ranks, I don’t think. Our thoughts were that change would creep in slowly, if at all. But it hasn’t - it’s suddenly exploded on us all at once! Did we all scurry back intop our bunkers, though? Bury our heads in the proverbial sand? Good lord, no! Simply put, the general feeling now is of a growing delight! It’s a pie in the face to their tedious can’t-do-thatters out there! You said we can’t do this, or that - well look at this! Ha! There’s nothing we can’t do now!” He thinks for a moment, then continues with, “You asked about co-ordination, Mellarick. It is striking, I suppose, that this schoolgirl strand on Ice Cream Days seemed to anticipate - not follow - the publication of Sardo’s Education White Paper - at least its provisions for binning DR’s plans to castrate all the teachers. Decent control in the classroom - well that’s one of the planks which helps our society maintain its steady keel, eh? Popular may be opportunists - right? But you can’t help but wonder if there may have been some kind of back-and-forth before all this. There’s certainly an appearance of co-ordination now, between the themes in Sardo’s bill’s and the rash of female-punishment tropes on Ice Cream Days, Billy Hall, all of that.”

Orbil jumps in with, “We were - we are - consciously trying to hit the voters where they live. And of course, the timings do appear to sync up. Blatant opportunism on our part, might you think? Perhaps I should admit it - perhaps we should own it. So what if some government initiative may have privately been shared with this channel or that? Popular has never been the darling of LC’s apparatchik class. I’d say you can guarantee that we’ll not have been the only ones forewarned and forearmed. Yet, we’ve clearly been first to take action on that info. Our board has made some very bold choices, indeed.”

Orbill tops up his own glass of whisky and drops in a couple of ice chunks, with a clink.

“But I will now confirm, as Commissioning Director, that at no point were we asked to feature any theme or mode of action. No back-and-forth co-ordination between us and LC. Tthat could have dragged the whole idea to a standstill. Rule by committee? No offence meant, Olimand. But it just didn’t happen. We knew what we knew, as did all the other channels, but we made our own choices. We took the main decisions a full year ago now. You called our proposals a big bang, Mellarick. Well we started its planning within hours of LC winning their landslide. This, was our thinking, is actually what the voters were intending. For all last year, we prepared for - we called it - a shock-and-awe campaign. There was resistance, nay-saying within Popular of course. We had arguments, believe me! But the proof’s in the pudding. Our audience figures must be screaming from the rafters. Blown our audience share right out of the water! FIRST!’s dominant position, for the very first time since Popular’s launch - some twenty years ago now - has been given a quite extraordinary spanking. I know, such an obvious metaphor. But it does fit the facts! Suddenly, Popular seems to own the air waves. And you won’t find many people arguing with that!”

“Olimand Dosiman,” says Eaflock with a head roll, “there are those who might argue that an avalanche of smut will produce a further backlash, and lead in due course to a solid DR bounce-back.”

“I fail to see how,” says the wonky-toothed, light-bodied Dosiman, who scrunches forward in his comfy black seat. “What we’re seeing is the backlash to DR’s namby-pamby, let’s-always-be-kind-to-the-bloody-females hogwash. Well, women don’t yet vote, thank God - at least, not that many. There are only five women in the Reps, for God’s sake, and two of those are solidly on LC’s side! Both, by the way - and they’ll tell you this themselves - being solidly in favour of the new status quo! But the Popular revolution just preceding the arrival of the Schoolgirl Punishment Database - it does look suspicious, we can all admit that. But it’s acting - not as back-lash, but as forward-lash, I’d say. By pushing us into new territory! That’s a whole new class of freedoms a resurgent DR would first have to quash before even getting close to where they tried to get before.”

“I agree,” says Chendar Orbill. “Men up and down the length of Dogaland very nearly had their traditional rights removed - rights to view female nudity, for instance - accrued over generations of their parents. Those rights have been snatched back from the brink - and reinforced.”

Dosiman says, “Once new freedoms get established, they become that much much harder to backpedal against. Fortunately, DR’s changes never got really bedded in. We managed to rein them back in that landslide!”

Orbill says, “I admit, we at Popular are going for ratings. But we’re consciously establishing precedents, too. We’re taking the rejection of DR’s suppression of voter rights in its logical direction - opposite -, just as far and as fast, as we can go!”

“Male voter rights,” says Eaflock from his deep black chair. “If ninety eight percent of voters are male, it is logical that their expected rights should be those most associated only with men.”

The backbencher Dosiman says, “Got no argument there with you, Chendar, none at all! That’s partly why we in the CL51 Club are cheering Popular all the way! The channel may be low-brow to its core - some say, ploughing a new low for gutter-level content - but it’s doing so, it seems to us too, at the very specific instruction of the voters!”

“Some are saying,” says the portly Eaflock, with another odd pout, “that the publication of the upcoming bill on punishment in schools - the explosion of images of women being punished - are meant to specifically subjugate females directly to the will of men! By teaching girls that men have the right to strip and punish them - rub their noses in it on prime time TV - you’re acclimatising girls, from the earliest point, to an inferior role in society.”

“From the earliest point post-puberty,” says Dosiman. “We in the CL51 club do accept the logic of the cut-off limit for any female younger than fourteen.”

Orbill says, “And Popular won’t try to push that one back either. But for sure - though it’s wrapped up in entertainment tropes - we’re playing with the concepts of the schoolgirl political borderland - of girls being taught to behave, to submit - just as men might wish them to behave - as well as what to expect if they don’t.”

“You’re showing them their place, then, are you?” Eaflock asks.

“If you like, yes,” says Orbil. “It’s right there, here and now - in the heart of political discourse as we sit here.”

Olimand Dosiman says, “By all means, why not? Conditioning girls from puberty to be good little wives, to obey a man’s rule? What’s not to like?”

Eaflock mutters, “You’re actually saying that? Here, on TV?”

Dosiman flashes his wonky teeth and flares his eyebrows impishly. “Why shouldn’t we? We’re men, we’re the voters! Girls pliant and pliable to the male sexual gaze? DR’s shocking waste of public funds may prove to have some useful purpose after all! Bring on the SPD in all its gory glory!”

Chendar Orbill adds to this, “Perhaps Popular’s current campaign is preparing the public for the kind of ideas that Olimand refers to.”

Mellarick Eaflock observes, “You mean, softening up the public for the shock of seeing real schoolgirls punished? That sounds like one hell of a conspiracy to me!”

Molcum Corkle waits, before looking at the other two records of Taudren’s crush from Yarra’s school. He waits for a point when the rest of the household are off at school the following Monday - he happens to be working from home that day - and Lazabel is out at an exercise class.

The file is marked 0002 JT by OO. Classroom Spanking, other girls present, 6 minutes 4 views. He watches this on the big family TV, and this time, he can clearly hear the sound. The time stamp is marked as the following day to the corridor spanking. Molcum wonders if this may break, at the least, a past local government rule, brought in when DR held a Kennigwort District Council majority. He’s aware there had been a rule that spankings of single students could occur no more than once within a single week. Molcum already knows this is what she had been given in her record 0001 in the so-called casual spanking, corridor on the previous day. Molcum remembers reading something about it in the local newspaper, The Kennigwort Chronicle.

In the slightly shaky chest camera record, the teacher seems to have just called the roll of girls present in class, when he says, “Mumble Mumble, to the front.” As her name is replaced with garbled sounds, a caption below reads name disguised to protect identity.

The girl gets up straight away, not seeming surprised that she’s being called, but still looking nervous, perhaps embarrassed.

The teacher says, “Miss (soundtrack muted), you were yesterday found placing a phone in your locker. Any phones in the possession of girls are to be left with reception’s entry guard Mr (soundtrack muted) when you enter the school. (Soundtrack muted), this is a second phone offence. Skirt off!”

The girl’s hands start, a touch clumsily, to unbuckle her belt. It’s only now, with her face turned to camera, that Molcum fully gets why Taudren wants so badly to see this girl up close. She’s a real cutie, with smooth coltish legs, long, jet black hair and a pretty, unselfconscious, fully mobile face.

When she’s managed to get her blue school skirt off, the teacher says, “Hands on head, (soundtrack muted).” He then takes her knickers and pulls them swiftly to her knees, which seems to shock her. He makes her kneel on a two foot wide padded bench-with-glass-laminate-table combined piece of furniture, which he pulls out from the front left side of the classroom and parks on his raised stage in the middle of a painted mark, which seems to fit the size and shape of the bench. She is blinking down at this bench like she’s never seen it before, staring straight at a camera which Molcum can see down below its transparent top. Her elbows rest on an upper flat table section which forms part of the bench-table combo. The teacher pulls her knickers further down, then off her feet, and puts them in his own desk drawer, saying, “You’ll get these back at the end of the day, (soundtrack muted).”

This information seems to startle the girl. But Molcum is starting to find the shaky picture annoying. It has been taken from the teacher’s chest-mounted camera. Molcum can just make other girls out, who are sitting at their desks with a variety of different expressions on their faces. A couple look horrified, others keep their faces as neutral as they can, while one or two more are watching the girl’s punishment like whatever is happening is fascinating.

The teacher, OO, pulls one of the girl’s knees away from the other with a quick-jerk movement, then he steps away briefly. Then he steps to her left side. He begins to pepper the pretty girl’s buttocks with hand spanks from his right hand, which make her flinch and look over first one shoulder, then the other, depending which cheek the smacks land on. This goes on for at least a minute.

Molcum now notices a few small icons in the bottom right corner of the punishment record. He realises they indicate alternative camera angles. The one he’s been viewing is highlighted and marked CC - for Chest Camera, he suspects. He taps on the one to its right, marked TC, and the shot changes to a general view of the front of the room, looking down from the ceiling, behind the teacher’s desk. The girl is just beyond it in a clear space between the desk and the first row of students. She’s kneeling over the clear-topped table it in its pre-marked square, which is right in the middle of the frame. All the girls in the class - Molcum pauses the feed, counting thirty six desks in all, with just one or two empty - are visible in shot. The girl, who he knows is called Imenna Scutta but is here codenamed JT, is sideways-on the the rest of the class. TC must mean top cam, he thinks.

Molcum’s eyes flick around his touch-pad for a moment. On the far right is a pair of icons in squares with + and -. He taps + once, and the view zooms slightly in, on both his tablet and his main TV. He holds his finger on the icon and it zooms in till it stops with the girl close to filling screen. There’s a small area of empty space around her in shot now, and a bit more clear behind her feet, so part of the teacher is still in frame.

Molcum zooms back out to see the man’s face. He has a pinch-mouthed expression and looks roughly in his early forties. There’s salt and pepper hair to the sides of his head. He has a roman, hook-shaped, thin-profiled nose jutting from a narrow, sunken-cheeked face with a sallow complexion. His eyes look beady.

Molcum clicks the next camera icon, marked DC. It’s the angle from inside the table, looking up at the girl’s face, chest, elbows and the front of her hips. Desk camera, he realises. The view is ultra wide, to catch as much of her as possible. Her face is surprisingly small in shot - a function of the wide angled camera - until a particularly meaty slap has her duck down towards it. Every slap is clearly written in her expressions - anticipation, flinching, reacting half a second later as the pain of the slap hits her brain, then her facial muscles, eyes and mouth.

He clicks the remaining camera icon, marked FC. Now he’s looking up from the floor, between her feet at the back. Floor camera, then. When a hard slap on the inside of one upper thigh makes her jerk her feet together, the camera in the floor is covered. But the teacher’s own foot parts her legs again. Molcum switches back to top camera view, and sees a circular piece of glass embedded in the floor between the girl’s feet. He thinks about the markings on JT and OO’s record 0002 - four views. So that doesn’t mean four people have watched this, but four cameras have recorded it at once - Chest, Top, Desk, Floor. That’s why there are marks on the classroom floor for the glass-topped kneeler to be pulled onto - it frames up the record for the three fixed cameras. Molcum flips the view to the desk cam again. He tries zooming in - that works as well. Then, finger hesitating, he changes his view back to the floor-embedded camera. The girl’s hips are dead in the middle of the frame. He zooms right in. And there, dead centre, is Imenna Scutta’s naked hips and crotch.

Molcum’s jaw drops. She’s a schoolgirl. A genuine schoolgirl, in a genuine school. He can still see her white socks, her blazer and white button-up shirt. This is real, he thinks. This happened in Yarra’s school just last week!

The teacher, OO, now picks up a two foot-long ruler. He presses and saws it against the girl’s sticky-out bum cheeks, then begins to pepper her backside with short, sharp slaps, which brings up faint red, oblong marks on her skin.

How old is the girl? Molcum tries to work it out. She’s in the 9+ class. Ages 15-16. It’s still early in the year though. Is she one of the older girls in the class? The old DR rules, he’s sure, forbade girls under 16 from being caned. But she’s not being caned, she’s being slapped with a ruler! Forbidden by old DR rules - he thinks he’s heard that on one program or other. Any implement except hand, and maybe a few strokes of the cane for girls over 16. Has Joinard’s new Education Law been passed yet? No - they just said on that programme last night - it’s a Government White Paper. Still going through changes, discussions, refinements.

The girl jerks and as the ruler strikes her again, which prompts her to tighten her genital area. Molcum quickly clicks the pause button on his control. There’s a half transparent icon of a wheel on his touch pad. He tries rolling it backwards - and the record runs backwards - slightly glitchily - to the moment just before the ruler strike. He zooms in again as far as he can, and rolls forward again with the slow-motion wheel. It seems that the file has been recorded at a good high frame rate. He’s able to see a slow, detailed, rock-and-rollable playback pretty close-in to Imenna Scutta’s hips. He’s shocked by the systems resolution, by its user flexibility. It’s so much better than the shaky record of Imenna Scutta’s corridor spanking.

OO spanks her with his hand some more next, apparently not counting the number of slaps - which by Molcum’s rough count feels upwards of twenty. The teacher then crouches and spanks the backs of the girl’s legs with a cluster of sharp, quick, painful-looking hand spanks.

Then he makes her stand, with her feet on the padded bench, legs apart, her hands on the glass-topped table. He’s impressed when the floor-mounted camera rotates its angle to accommodate her higher hip position. He clicks on the desk-mounted low-angle camera and watches as it also adjusts its angle. There’s a hesitation to it - it over-shoots, then comes back, then goes a short way back up - then actually zooms in. It’s being adjusted remotely, he realises. Someone was watching, someone with control of the cameras, who could change their settings remotely. Molcum starts to get a handle on why LC keep banging on about this whole system’s extraordinary expense. This single classroom has three embedded cameras, plus a fourth attached to the teacher’s chest. Yarra’s school has five years and ten classes. Plus, all these new cameras will need wiring up. And if Scutta’s class 9+ is being actively monitored, that implies at least one technician has to have been on duty in a control room, watching and adjusting a live recording.

There are senior girls schools country-wide, Molcum thinks. And they’re all being wired up at the voters’ expense. At least, all those that reported using corporal punishment.

The male voters. Molcum just stares and Imenna Sutta’s pretty face reacts, again and again, to the teacher’s ministrations. He pauses the record - rolls it back - changes camera - watches ruler strokes land on her bum cheeks in slow motion. Eye-wateringly expensive white elephant, he thinks. Incredibly intrusive on this girl’s person, on her private anonymity. She’s an ordinary schoolgirl. In an ordinary class in an ordinary school. And he’s staring at her naked crotch - as a ruler hits it, distorts it out of shape and makes her pussy lips twist and part. Then he changes the view to her pretty, mobile face. Fuck, he thinks. Fuck-fuck-fuckety-fuck. Whatever the expense, whatever the moral implications of the thing, the solid, pressing boner inside Molcum’s trousers is not saying anything like white elephant.