Buying a slave

t was my first time going to a slave sale. Some of my older friends had been as spectators before the law changed a few years ago, but I wasn’t old enough then. And when the law changed 8 years ago because there were so many people going to sales who had no intention of buying and only wanted to ogle the slaves, I thought I would never be able to afford a slave, so the thought of going to a sale sort of left my mind.

Not of, course, that I don’t see slaves everyday. I see the council slaves in their brown jumpsuits clearing litter, emptying bins and doing all those menial tasks that the slaves do. And I do know a few people who have their own slaves – my great-uncle Joe has two, but we don’t see him that often as he lives such a long way away. And you do see slaves all over the place, people send them to do errands, or have them with them when they go shopping to carry the bags.

It’s a bit of a cliché, of course, but I won some money, which gave me enough to think about getting a slave of my own. Well, when I say I won some money, what I should say is that some Premium Bonds that my aunt Patsy bought for me when I was christened and which have won precisely nothing in twenty-four years, finally came up trumps. I won the top monthly prize, £3 million! When I told Aunt Patsy she said that three million when she was younger was proper money, not like now, but it was more than I had ever expected to have. Even with the prices of property round here, I knew I would be able to get myself a decent place to live, a nice new car and a decent holiday. It was Great-Uncle Joe who asked me whether I was intending on getting a slave – I’d really not thought about it before. I’d sort of always wondered whether I approved of slavery. I mean, it was reintroduced before I was born, so I have grown up with slaves around my whole life. And it is not like slavery in the US all those years ago – you can’t be ‘born’ a slave and slaves do have some rights.

And also, anyone sentenced to slavery has committed a crime, so it’s payback. But on the other hand, I do have some sympathy with the anti-slavery campaigners, especially about lads my age or even younger being sentenced to slavery for life for what might have just been a silly mistake. My straight best mate, Lewis, feels really strongly about this, especially after the government brought in the ‘It’s Over’ rule five years ago. I know that if you’re silly enough to get convicted of six offences within five years you deserve to learn a lesson, but to be sold into slavery until you are 75 (which is more or less what slavery for live means, almost all slaves get freed and sent to ‘homes’ when they reach 75) does seem quite harsh. They say it is supposed to be a deterrent, but Lewis reckons that the number of lads still getting caught out like that shows that it isn’t really working. Mind you, even Lewis thought it was hilarious when the younger son of Lord Symington got done and got himself sold off, even if everyone knew he was being made and example of, and most of the upper classes would have managed to get him out of it. I think his Lordship was quite glad to see the back of him, to be honest! Lewis also gets exercised about its only being men who can be sentenced to slavery. He says that if women are really equal then they should be treated the same, but I reckon it is just because he’d love to have a female slave if he ever had the money.

Anyway, sorry for getting sidetracked. It’s more or less a year ago now that I won the Premium Bond prize. After taking my family on a really nice holiday and then going on a slightly more raucous one with six of my mates, I bought a decent flat. It’s on the top floor of a small block, three bedrooms, but it has an amazing open plan living/dining/kitchen which opens onto a huge balcony which is not overlooked. It’s great, I love it. Three mil wasn’t enough to let me stop work, but at least I don’t have a huge mortgage (or huge rent, more likely), and I had money left. It was keeping the flat clean which made me think about what Great-Uncle Joe had said about getting a slave. Even sharing the work with Victor, my gay best friend and flat mate (we’ve shared a flat since we went to uni and I never even thought of living on my own even when I came into money), it was still a pain and we seemed to spend most of every Saturday hoovering and cleaning. Yes, just because we’re both 24, it doesn’t mean we want to live in squalor!

I talked to Vic about it, and he was all for it. He reckoned a slave would be a great addition to the household. Because the apartment is relatively newly built, and because it was aimed at a ‘posher’ market, it actually has a slave ‘cell’ in it. We’d been using it as a dumping room for crap, but we could easily clear it out and make it suitable for a slave. It doesn’t have a window, of course, and we were a bit shocked when we looked round to see the hooks in the ceiling for people who want to string up their slaves. It has a small wardrobe/cupboard for the slave’s uniforms and shelves higher up on the wall for storage. The estate agent even said that you could store two slaves in it if necessary, that it met the legal space requirements for two. Vic and I were shocked, it is really small and I wouldn’t have thought there was that much room for one, let alone two, in there.

There are quite a few slaves in the building. We don’t see much of them, but there is a gay couple on the floor below us who we’ve got quite friendly with, and they have a slave. We’ve been for drinks and the old meal with them and their slave, Link, always serves the meal and clears away and looks after everyone when we’re there. Geoff and Stu, the couple, are in their 30s. Geoff is a teacher and Stu is a solicitor. Link is probably much the same age as them, early 30s I would guess. Like most people, Geoff and Stu don’t both to clothe Link when he’s working in the flat, so he just has a leather collar that they fitted when they bought him, and the regulation steel bands welded around his wrists and ankles which all slaves wear. Like all slaves I have seen, his dick is locked away in one of those devices that you see advertised in the posher Sunday papers. Link has a see-through plastic cage, unlike Great-Uncle Joe’s boys, who both have steel cages to match their slave bands.

Link is a lifer. I don’t know what he did to get sentenced – generally, either owners don’t know themselves or, if they do, they don’t tell others. We know there can’t have been any serious violence in his record, because violent offenders are generally put into government service in one way or another, either working for a council or in one of the big government services like road building. That way, they can be supervised at all times and kept shackled. Private slaves are usually repeat ‘petty’ offenders, or silly fools who drive drunk and crash, or get caught selling drugs and the like. To be a lifer, Link must have either fallen foul of the ‘It’s Over’ rule, or got done for something fairly serious but not violent. The news has been saying recently that the majority of new slaves now are lifers, for the first time since the law changed. The minimum term of slavery is five years, and almost all of these will be put into menial council roles. As you’ll know, it was only a few years ago that the rules were streamlined, so that there’s only four possible sentences for slavery – five years, ten, twenty or life. I guess it makes it easier for everyone. And, of course, only men between 20 and 49 can be sentenced to slavery. There was a big fuss here last year when a lad who had been 18 when he crashed his dad’s car into a shop window waited so long to get to court that by the time his case came up he was sentenced a week after his 20th birthday and got life as a slave. Just over a week earlier, and the worst he could have got was a year in a youth training camp. The dad’s MP made a huge fuss and, I believe, he got pardoned before he’d been sold. He was lucky, though, I know a lad who went to school with Lewis and me who got life about a month after he turned 20, and he didn’t get a pardon.

God, sidetracked again, sorry! Where was I? Oh yes. Vic and I decided that a slave would be a good idea, so I went online and registered for the next sale. As I said when I started this tale, they don’t let just anyone go to sales anymore. You have to lodge the minimum sale price in a holding account with the sales office before you get a pass for you and one other to attend. The admissions rules are stricter than getting into the opening night of Hamilton – photo and biometric ID for both of you, along with a notarised letter of introduction and your passes. We’re lucky, we live near enough to London to be able to go to the main London sale. You have to go to your local sale site, of course, and I’d hate to live somewhere like Cornwall, where the nearest is in Swansea. I think there used to be more, smaller, centres, but there are just five – London, Swansea, Birmingham, Sheffield and Newcastle. There used to be a sixth, in Carlisle, but Free Scotland complained about having a sale site that close to the border, so it was closed. At least with only five sites, there are sales every week. I know that some of the papers, and certainly those from Free Scotland, go on and on about the huge numbers of young men being sentenced to slavery, but Dad works for the Audit Bureau and the official figures do show that actually fewer men in the age range for slavery get sent into slavery now than used to get sent to prison. Of course, many more get a life sentence but, as Dad says, many of those would have been in and out of prison for most of their lives anyway. What the figures do show clearly (and even the most anti-slavery campaigners have to admit to this) is that the reoffending rates for men sentenced to a five year term are way, way lower than for men sent to prison for the same things in the old days. Almost no-one who gets five years offends again. I think it is mainly because they know what slavery is like and know that if they get done again it will be an automatic life sentence. But also because, although they are slaves for that five years, they also get either education or training, so they are much more employable afterwards. And, of course, employers are legally not allowed to discriminate against anyone manumitted.

We registered with the London site. You can go to as many sales within a year as you like as long as you have the minimum amount in the holding account before each one. Even though there is a decent amount of choice at each sale, some people are really looking for specific things in a slave and so they will wait until something suitable comes up. You can lodge your needs with the Department of Slavery website as well, and they will alert you when suitable slaves become available at your local site as well. For businesses which have particular needs, I believe they are able to go to any site, but as a private buyer, I was restricted to the London one.

I don’t really know why the DoS doesn’t do more online. After all, nearly everything in life is done online nowadays. But they don’t have more than a list of slaves for each sale, their ages and sentences. I suppose, like the minimum payment rule, it’s to cut down on voyeurism and time wasters, and ensure that only those really prepared to buy will go to a sale.

Vic and I decided just to go along to the first sale we were eligible for, and to see what was on offer. We had no real idea what to expect. Both Great-Uncle Joe and Geoff and Stu had bought their slaves before the rules changed, so their experiences were very different. Then it was much more like a traditional auction, with an auctioneer and each slave brought up on stage and sold off under the hammer. Because we had no expectations, we said we would just go and see what happened this first time.

Before we could even go to a sale, though, we had to do the slave owners’ course and take the test. It’s not like the old American South, slaves do still have so we rights and these differ depending on whether they are lifers or not. It’s basically like the theory test you take before your driving test. You mug up on the manual and then do an online exam. It’s ‘proctored’ by camera to make sure you’re not looking at the manual when you answer and your computer is locked off by the test software to make sure you don’t Google anything (actually, you couldn’t Google anyway. Because they are based in the US where slavery is still illegal, they are not allowed to show anything related to slavery in their results. You’d have to search on the government search engine, which is just rubbish). Vic and I had to do it simultaneously in different rooms and both pass on the same attempt.

The rules are quite strict. They are more complicated for non-lifers, at least, there are more restrictions. For instance, you can have a lifer tattooed as you like and have piercings fitted, whereas you cannot have tattoos on a non-lifer and only certain piercings are allowed. You can discipline or punish a lifer slave in more or less any way you see fit as long as you don’t break any bones or deliberately draw blood. With a non-lifer, there are ‘proscribed’ discipline methods. Basically, you can’t whip them, or birch them, or use the heaviest canes. You are also limited in posting pictures online of a non-lifer slave. If they show the slave’s face, then they have to be posted using one of the timed systems, which ensures that any occurrence of the picture that is not on the device you save it to will be automatically deleted on the slave’s manumission date. There are rules which relate to all slaves, of course. They have to be given the legal minimum calorific intake and may not be deliberately taken over or under the legal BMI limits for slaves. With all slaves, you have to have regular full panel STI tests if you want to use them sexually. You’re allowed to make your slave drink your piss but not ‘other waste’ as the book puts it (!). You can’t sell a slave privately, it has to be done through an official slave site. You can’t ‘rent or pimp’ out a slave for sexual services to others. You can make a slave work outside the home to bring you income, but 20% of any earnings have to go into a government account which will then revert to the slave on manumission. There’s quite a lot to remember, thank goodness the test is multiple choice! We tested each other for several nights and then did the test one Saturday morning. Thankfully, we both passed, although Vic took great delight in crowing that he had got over 90% and I only got between 85% and 90%! The pass mark is 80%, so you really have to do well.

Once we’d done the ‘theory test’, we could finally go to a slave sale. You have to commit a whole day to a sale, another way to ensure that only the serious bother. You are given an arrival time between 8.30 and 10, ours was 9.15. We parked in the car park and headed down to the sale site. It is a big warehouse on an industrial estate in the old East End. The slave training centre is next door. After sentencing, all the slaves spend at least four weeks in the training centre before being sent to a sale. I was quite relieved – I failed to manage to properly train my puppy when I was a kid, the idea of having to train a slave who had just been sentenced was way beyond me! Three women in DoS uniforms were checking ID and passes. What I assumed to be a husband and wife just in front of us got turned away because they were half an hour early, and told to come back at their allotted time. The women were friendly, though, chatting pleasantly as they checked everything and, finally, swiping us into the sale site.

It was like walking into the first class lounge at an airport – something I’d not done until we went away after my win. Lots of comfy sofas and chairs, desks where people could setup their laptops and work, TVs showing various channels with the volume down and the subtitles on, and light jazz playing under the hum of quiet chat. We were greeted by a DoS officer who again checked our passes and swapped them for lanyards with a card like a hotel key card, but with our names and pictures on one side. We were told we had to wear them visibly at all times on site. There were quite a few other buyers milling about the large welcoming area, and there were slaves offering drinks and snacks. All the slaves were naked, with the regulation slave bands, heavy polished steel collars and matching steel chastity cages. When one bent down to pick up something that one of the prospective payers had dropped, you could see that they all also had steel butt plugs inserted, as the base of it became obviously as its buttocks parted slightly. On one wall there were two booths where slaves were serving as bootblacks for anyone whose shoes needed a polish. The DoS officer had told us that the sale would begin at 10:30 and to make ourselves comfortable.

Vic and I went and sat down on a sofa by a small table, with a TV showing the news beside it. An older man was already sitting there eating a croissant and drinking orange juice, reading a newspaper. He said hello pleasantly as we sat down, but went straight back to his paper. A handsome, blond slave came over to ask whether we wanted drinks or snacks. I had not expected such luxurious surroundings and service – from outside, the sale site looked just like any other warehouse on the industrial estate. Vic and I both asked the slave for a latte and a croissant. When he’d gone, the guy at our table looked over his newspaper,

“There’s no need to be polite to them, you know. They’re just slaves. You don’t want to get too friendly if you’re buying one. Remember, you are expected by law to punish and discipline your slave when you buy him.”

I suppose we had thought of the slave like we would a server or waiter in a normal bar. Although some places used slaves as waiters, and the first class lounge at Heathrow was, like this, staffed almost exclusively by slaves, it wasn’t very common and we’d not thought about it.

“See, lads,” said the older guy, who introduced himself as Adam, “there’s one that has had proper discipline recently.”

We looked at the slave serving at the next table. He was a tall dark haired slave, although his hair had been cut short and he had no hair on his body. As he turned round, we saw the bright red stripes across his buttocks that showed that he had recently been caned.

“The slaves serving here are some of the best,” Adam said, “But they always thrash a few before a sale. Partly to remind them not to get above themselves, and partly to remind the buyers that punishment is part of the deal.”

It turned out that Adam, although he owned two slaves himself, worked for a big farming company, and was here to look for slaves to work on the land. He said that he went to a sale about once a month to get slaves for the company.

“And I have to travel around, because of the residency rules, so I get to go to all the sites from time to time.”

We’d learnt about the residency rules. One of the reasons for restricting buyers to their local sale site is to ensure that slaves are not sold near to where they lived before they were enslaved. If you live in London when you are sentenced, then you will be sent to one of the other sites for training and sale. If you want to move home once you own a slave, you have to notify the DoS and, if you’re moving back into the slave’s old home area, you need to get permission from the Department before you move. Sometimes you might have to sell your slave if you are planning on moving somewhere too close to its original base, although that depends on how long it has been in slavery and the rules are more relaxed for lifers.

Adam explained to us that the slaves who were serving in the sale site were doing so as part of their training in the training centre next door. All of those being considered for personal services sales were put to work in the sale site.

“You see, lads, although any slave can be sold to anyone for any purpose, there are some who simply are not suitable for personal services. Some are too truculent, too wilful despite the trainers’ best efforts, others are so obviously better suited to kinds of manual labour firms like mine need, it would be a waste not to expect them to be bought by people like me. Some will be too thick to be anything but grunt slaves, no matter how much training they get.”

The blond slave brought our coffees and croissants and Adam told him very abruptly to bring him a black coffee. All the slaves walked around quickly with their hands clasped behind their backs when not carrying things for the buyers. When Adam’s coffee arrived, he didn’t even look up when the slave put it down in front of him and the slave bowed its head and scuttled off.

The clock on the TV news showed 10:20, so I thought I ought to take a leak before the sale proper started. I got up and walked across the room, following the signs to the toilets. A big, burly guy was coming out as I went in, and he held the door for me. There were more slaves in the toilets. On one wall was a row of urinals as might be expected. But here there were three ‘ordinary’ porcelain urinals but beside them were three slaves, spaced like the urinals, shackled to the wall and in a kneeling position and each with its mouth wide open more or less at crotch level. A little old man was standing in front of one of these slaves, which had had to kneel lower in order to be at the right height for the old man to empty his bladder into the slave’s open mouth. He was not overly fussed about making sure that it all went in, and some of his piss went onto the slave’s face and chest. At either end of the row of sinks stood two more slaves, one was holding a towel and the other was using his towel to dry the hands of a man who had just washed them.

As I walked in, I heard a voice from a cubicle call,

“Slave!”

And another slave that had been kneeling beside the door got up and opened the cubicle door – I assumed that the man was having it wipe his backside.

I walked over to the urinals, and chose the slave next but one to the old man. He looked over at me as I unzipped, smiled and said good morning. In doing so, his aim failed him completely, and his piss went all over the slave urinal he was using. This was the last of his bladderful, though, and he shook himself off, unzipped and went and washed his hands. The unoccupied hand towel slave left its post and knelt down in front of the wet slave urinal and licked up any piss which had landed on the floor, before going back to dry the old man’s hands.

I looked down at the slave urinal as I took out my cock. It was an older slave, probably early 40s. It was not in as good shape as the ones serving drinks, so I guessed it was earlier in its training. It took a few moments to get my flow going – I’m not normally piss-shy, but I’d never used a slave urinal before. Eventually, I got going and the slave swallowed my stream well. Other guys came in whilst I was there, most used the slave urinals. When I had finished, I shook my cock off, the drops of piss going over the slave’s face, and ‘adjusted my clothing’. I’d got a little hard, which had not helped with pissing! I washed my hands and used the towel slave just like one would use a hand dryer in a ‘regular’ bathroom.

When I got back, Adam asked if it was my first time using a slave bathroom. When I told him it was, he said that he wished that more public bathrooms used slave urinals and hand dryers, but he supposed it was only the really expensive clubs and the training centres that could justify it.

We drank our drinks and finished our snacks, watching the slaves as they served the people waiting to go into the sale. The lounge got pretty busy, I knew that there was a limit on how many people could attend any one sale, but it looked like it was a pretty high number. A few people had brought their slaves with them. Adam introduced us to a friend of his called Joe, who had his slave, Coe, with him. Joe was older than Adam, probably in his late 50s. Coe was a very young slave, probably only about 21 or 22. He was at least 6’4” tall, very lean and lithe. He had no hair on his body at all, not even eyebrows, which made him look rather odd. Joe told us that he was a lifer, and he had all his body hair lasered off over a few months. Only lifers can be lasered, of course, if you want to get the hair off a non-lifer slave you have to shave or wax it. Unusually, Coe was not in a chastity cage. Instead, his cock and balls had a steel band around the base matching his slave bands and a matching steel collar welded around his neck. Where his pubes would have been, Joe had had ‘SLAVE’ tattooed in thick black lettering. When we saw Coe from behind, he had ‘Property of Joseph H. Benson’ tattooed above his buttocks. Coe’s backside was flaming bright red and Joe told us that he paddled the slave every morning until he displayed bright red buttocks. The slave was also pierced – large steel rings in both nipples and a thick steel Prince Albert in his penis. I tried not to be shocked, but this was the first time I had seen a slave marked and ringed in this way. While Joe, Adam, Vic and I chatted, Coe knelt beside his owner, arms crossed behind his head and eyes cast down. He was clearly a very well trained and disciplined slave. I would have loved to have spoken to him and asked him how it felt to be reduced so low so young, but it would have been completely inappropriate in the situation and without Joe’s permission.

I did ask Joe about the sale. He said that he wanted a second slave to serve alongside Coe. He ran a laundry business and business was overwhelming Coe. Joe said that he was looking for a slave to be a contrast to Coe, maybe shorter and stockier, or a black or Asian slave, or a very muscular slave.

At just after 10.30, a DoS officer came through a door at the far end and told us to come through to the sales centre. As he did, two slaves opened double doors behind him. Adam and Joe said there was no point rushing, so we stayed put whilst people streamed through the doors. The slaves in the lounge were scurrying around as people left, clearing cups, glasses and plates and cleaning the tables. Eventually, most of the room had cleared and we got up and followed them. Coe got to his feet, folded his arms behind his back again, and walked just behind us as we went through to the sales centre. We went into what looked a bit like a cross between a lecture theatre and a small cinema. There were small groups of seats in rows with gaps between them. These were clearly so that those potential buyers who had brought slaves with them could have the slave kneel beside them instead of using a chair. One of the things we had learned when preparing for the test was that, whilst it was not recommended ever to allow a slave to use ‘normal’ furniture in private, it was prohibited in public spaces. Slaves had to stand or kneel to ensure that they didn’t get ideas above their stations. We found a free space which had room for the four of us, with Coe kneeling beside Joe.

Although Coe was marked and ringed, he at least wasn’t shackled or on a leash. Now we were able to see everyone at the sale clearly, I counted five other slaves. Three were like Coe, kneeling beside their owner’s seat, hands neatly folded behind their backs. This was clearly a ‘taught’ posture from their training. Of the other two, however, one was kneeling tall, rather than having his buttocks resting on his feet. He also had his hands clasped behind his head, with his arms rigidly parallel with his shoulders. He wore a thick, leather collar, to the front of which was attached a leash like a dog lead, and his owner had this wrapped around her wrist in her lap. The other slave was wearing shackles – steel chains matching his slave bands were attached to the bands, linking his wrists and his ankles. He also had what looked like a heavy steel weight wrapped around his scrotum, stretching it below his penis. Well, I say penis, he was locked into the smallest steel chastity cage I have ever seen, completely emasculating him. His balls hung very low because of the weight – looking like a more ‘intimate’ version of those metal bands you sometimes see African women wearing to stretch their necks. He was the oldest slave in the room, probably in his 50s. It was hard to tell whether he had been a slave for a long time, or whether he had been enslaved in later life. His owner was quite an old woman, so I wondered whether she had bought him not long after the slave laws were brought in 30 years ago and owned him ever since.

The DoS officer came to the front and reminded those of us who had not already done so, to download the DoS app to our phones and sign in. He was able to see on his device when everyone had done so, at which point he left the dais and the lights went down a bit in the room, and a video started on the screen. It talked us through, in a rather dated way, what the procedure for the sale was. Basically, once we went through to the inspection area, we would have until 1pm to view the slaves up for sale that day. At 1, we would be served lunch, and at 2pm the sale itself would start. Once the film finished, the slaves would be made available for inspection. For an hour, it would be a ‘tour’ of the slave stations, with groups leaving one after the other to be taken round all the slaves. As we toured, we would be asked to register interest in any slaves we took a fancy to on the app which, once we went into the inspection area, would show a list of all the slaves for sale that day, their ages and sentences. The film said that you could express an interest in only four slaves, unless you were a registered bulk recruiter like Adam, in which case you could choose as many slaves as you liked.

After the formal tour, we would then have an hour to inspect more closely the slaves that we had expressed an interest in. The app would give us 10-15 minute slots (depending on the popularity of the slave) for the slaves we were interested in. During this time we would be able to get up close and personal with the slaves, checking their bodies, teeth and, if you wished, sexual organs. During the tour, all the slaves would be presented in chastity cages, but these would be removed for the more detailed inspections. Slaves could be brought to erection if required, although it was not permitted to allow them to ejaculate. There would also be some discipline implements available if you wished to see how a slave reacted to a thrashing, as well as dildoes for those who wished to investigate the slave’s sexual ability. It was permitted to test a slave’s throat as well, either for fellatio or as a slave urinal. This, though, would be done in a curtained off alcove, rather than on the inspection floor. This, of course, was more for the privacy of the potential owner, and not the slave. Not everyone, including me, would feel comfortable getting a blow job in public, even from a slave!

Once the film was finished, the lights came back up, and the DoS officer told us to check our apps for our tour groups. It looked like we were to go round in the groups in which we had been sitting, with the exception of one or two who had been sitting on their own, who had been put together with others. The four of us who had more or less chummed up were joined by a man in his 50s, who introduced himself to us as Leo. Leo was an accountant, and was looking for a non-lifer slave to train in his business and, hopefully, pass it on to when he retired and the slave was manumitted. Dad had told me about this happening – people who had a successful business but no relatives to pass it on to, or none interested. They bought intelligent non-lifer slaves of a suitable age, trained them up, and then timed their retirement with the slave’s manumission date. Dad had drawn up quite a few contracts of transfer, which would ensure an income for the retiree, with full ownership reverting to the ex-slave on the retiree’s death. A bit like those businessmen in Japan who adopt grown men so as to have an heir. Dad had said that the only problem with the arrangement really was the legal requirement for slaves to be disciplined – sometimes people went too easy on the slaves they bought and they got above themselves and had to be removed. I’d asked Dad, naively, about what if the slave wasn’t very good at the job.

“Well, they’d be sold, of course! No-one would bother keeping a slave that wasn’t capable of doing what was necessary, and there are always buyers. Even older or out of shape slaves will be snapped up by public bodies or recruiters,” he’d said.

Sorry, distracted again. Our app said that we were in group three, and the DoS officer started calling groups up to the front. Each group had a DoS officer as their ‘guide’, and was taken in turn through a door opposite the one we had come through into the screening room. When we were called, a young woman in DoS uniform greeted us and led us through the door. We walked into a large room, around which, a bit like the stalls at a conference, were numerous small stands. At each stand, there was a slave, along with a DoS overseer. We knew from the app that there were 18 slaves for sale, so there were 18 stands. As the group in front of us moved away from the first stand, our guide, Julia, led us forward.