Free Rule 34 by Charles Stross

local bears that you learned about gay culture at second hand. Learned their jokes, learned their slang, learned “friends of Dorothy” as archaic code for the love that dared not speak its name (once upon a time).
    You never realized that the Feminists Society was the bed-hopping club of your dreams; or that if you’d hung out in the Student’s Union on campus, you could have had your pick from the conveyor-belt sushi buffet of dungaree-wearing baby dykes in LGBT Soc.
    (At least, until they learned you were studying to be a cop.)
    Mary was the turning point. Portsmouth, Pompey: a naval town, going back hundreds of years—and where you get warships, you get sailors. Some of whom—you can imagine Kylie in Lower Sixth hissing it in disbelief—were lesbians . Who did not hang out around the university campus but were certainly willing to take a gawky post-teen with aspirations towards a uniformed service under their wings and teach her stuff about herself that would be a source of nostalgia many years later. Mary was blonde and friendly and brisk, and for a while you’d been her girl in port: which was good while it lasted (Twelve months? Eighteen?) and left you on a tide of tears, clutching a much better understanding of who you were going to be when you grew up.
    All of which is fifteen years and more in your past, but goes some way towards explaining how you got a bona grip on Polari before anybody told you that you were the wrong kind of feminist ; why you sigh whenever you see a navy ship in the waters of the Firth; and how come you think it’s hilarious that your on-again off-again will-she-orwon’t-she nuisance lover is called Dorothy Straight.

ANWAR: Office Worker
     
    You smell hot oil and cardamom as you walk through the front door: “Hi, Bibi, I’m home!”
    She’s in the kitchen. “Yes, dear,” she calls distractedly. “Have you seen Naseem? I sent him round to Uncle Lal’s for a bunch of methi, and he’s not come back. I think he’s playing with his English friends again”—in Bibi’s world English is a wild-card ethnicity: It could equally mean Scottish or Lithuanian—“and he’s forgotten, the little scamp . . .”
    “No, haven’t seen him.” You suppress the urge to grump at her ( What am I, his nursemaid? ) as you close the front door and hang your jacket up. The boy will be fine; you can locate him on GPS just as soon as you take the sock off your phone . . . “I’ve been looking for an office. I think I’ve found one.”
    “Oh, good! Hey, come and be a dear and help peel these onions? You know they make me . . .” cry , you mentally autocomplete, suppressing a snort and heading into the kitchen. It’s one of Bibi’s stranger foibles: Despite the day job, she insists on cooking, but she can’t, absolutely can’t , peel and chop onions. (You said “no” and watched her try, just the once, years ago: The memory of what it did to her eyes is still enough to make you wince. Now she’s got a German gadget to chop them up, but getting the outer skin off first is a man’s job . . . where is that boy?)
    You join Bibi in the kitchen, where she’s frying up spices, and take a knife to the offending onions. (It’s probably her contact lenses. Why can’t she just wear spectacles while she’s cooking?) “Your auntie Sameena called round earlier, you know? She was wanting to know all about this mystery job of yours, but I told her it was none of her business until you are good and ready to tell everyone. Trade secrets. That hushed her up, I can tell you. She watches too many trashy spy soaps from Karachi; she thinks you’re still secretly a black-hat hacker . . .”
    You wordlessly pass her the bowl of onions. She stuffs them into the German gadget, closes the lid, and stares at you significantly as she puts some serious arm action into the handle. It’s a sign that she expects you to read her mind—she’s a firm believer in male telepathy, and you’ve never quite had the