It happened the night of Tia Swift’s eighteenth birthday party. And there was nothing beforehand to suggest that this night would be anything but the celebration that Tia was expecting. The hours leading up to the party were quiet, calm, and prosaic, though filled with the expectation of the excitement that would follow them. Tia had no way of knowing exactly what kind of excitement awaited her. All that was on her mind at the beginning was what might be on the minds of any number of girls just turning eighteen and looking forward to welcoming in the first year of her young adulthood. All she was thinking about was choosing the perfect thing to wear.
She stood in front of the full-length virtual mirror in her bedroom, wearing just a T-shirt and workout shorts such as she would wear in the gym. Shiny black hair falling just to her shoulders framed a pretty face adorned with a broad smile. Her body was lean and tight, not stick-thin but pleasingly curved in all the right ways and all the right places, a testament to hours spent not just in the gym but on the dance floor. Inspecting herself, she found everything was ready except the wardrobe.
“Shuffle through party outfits,” Tia commanded the computer in the mirror. At her bidding, the imaging system in the glass put her in a series of simulated outfits, some low-cut, some high-cut, some skin-tight, some looser and more flowing, some luxurious, some fancy but less formal, in a range of colors. Tia saw herself as everything from elegant to scandalous to Bohemian and everything in between. Finally, she settled on one ensemble, all in deep blues and blacks. It had a low-cut top with puffed sleeves, underlaid with a camisole (because her father would be present), and Capri-type slacks with shoes whose heels were just the right height for dancing. “Accessorize,” Tia said, and the computer dutifully added to this ensemble a series of rings, bracelets, necklaces, and even a tiara, until she settled on a simple black choker with a single sapphire on it. Satisfied with her wardrobe plans for her special night, Tia ordered, “That’s it. Print it and hang it in the closet.” The computer hummed and the selected outfit, now stored in memory, disappeared from the mirror, and the specifications went to the material printer.
With that done, Tia turned away from the mirror and stepped into the center of her bedroom floor to begin a series of bends and stretches to limber up for the evening. She wanted both to look and to be in fine form for the night. Launching into her routine of bending forward and down and from side to side, and stretching and lunging while sitting and standing, Tia wished that all choices in a young girl’s life were as relatively easy as deciding what to wear to her eighteenth birthday party. Tia and her father had been on this planet for two years, having come here with colonists and settlers from across human-inhabited space, and she still did not have a steady boyfriend. It was not as if she had no options. There were plenty of boys in the colony on planet Sigma Cygni, and like any girl, Tia had been on her share of dates. The boys with whom she had gone out were handsome enough and fit enough. Some of them were varsity athletes. And some of them came from very fine Colonial families, even some who could trace their ancestry all the way back to Earth. She had enjoyed being with them. She had let them kiss her. She had let some of them do a little bit more than kiss her, and she had done a little bit more than kiss some of them, though she had yet to allow any boy to do everything. To be sure Tia had thought about letting some of them do everything because they were of the type from whom a girl would certainly want it. But it had not come to that point—yet.
Being the daughter of the Chief Administrator of the colony, Tia could well have had her pick of any of them. And yet she had chosen none of them. It wasn’t that she was a parochial pre-Spacer type who thought the human body was a thing to be ashamed of and pleasurable, non-reproductive sex was an act of filth. Happily, such people were all but extinct now. It was only that space was vast and full of options, and Tia wanted to be sure of availing herself of the best options from all choices available. Sometimes she wondered if she denied herself unnecessarily. After all, some of her girlfriends were certainly helping themselves to some of the boys in the colony, including some of those with whom Tia had stopped just short of everything. But no…Tia didn’t mind being a virgin and taking her time. There was no more shame in virginity than there was in indulgence. When it felt exactly right, she would let it happen. Until then, she would just have a good time.
Tonight, Tia meant to have a good time.