The robed man who accepts papers from inmates is sitting behind a set of vertical metal bars; possibly the high-strung prisoners around here, in the process of turning over their papers and receiving tokens, flip out often enough that it's worth the trouble to shield the bureaucrats from physical violence.

Opalyn feels a little loopy. She imagines if, somehow, she'd completed the normal testing process and come out with her true rating. Would it be like a slot machine at a casino hitting a jackpot? Piles and piles of tokens spilling out the window and piling into heaps in the hallway?

She keeps a straight face and presents her papers.

The person there accepts her papers, skims them, raises his eyebrows.

A shock of hostile magic pokes Opalyn, one that she can see coming for a fractional second but can't defend against on any conscious level; when it zaps her it feels like a whole-body electrical shock, lasting some fraction of a second before her unconscious body-magic rallies in response and crushes every thread of the offending magic out of existence.

Presumably they're scanning her to see if she's actually drained? Very strange that this would be done here as a matter of course, rather than out on the charging platforms by the lightline monitors. Or maybe it's defense in depth?

Opalyn hopes that her crushing response was normal and expected. Her collar is in full-dampening mode right now, or so she believes, and she hopes that's enough to keep her from doing anything she shouldn't be able to do at the moment.

"What was that?" she asks. It is, after all, her first time here. Showing some surprise should be expected.

"Checking if you're as exhausted as your monitor wrote you down for being."  Her response sure looks it so far as he can see.

And then Opalyn starts having her chastity belt (which also apparently serves as her local debit card) charged with tokens.  It's obvious to anyone who looks at Opalyn's ragged dress that it's her first time through this process, and she gets brief explanations with at least somewhat more on tap if she asks.

There are some kinds of tokens you can freely trade around, but only because it's more dramatic if there's some components of a market economy.  Ultimately, an economy is not what they are here to have.

Opalyn's supposed output at baseline Duchess-of-her-level gets her 150 tokens of the sort you can trade around freely, plus a further 300 tokens for having supposedly put her best emotional effort into charging at above that baseline.  Those are the kinds of tokens that you can use for library rentals, clothing privileges, or locking your door.

Duchesses also get distributions of non-transferable tokens that they can only personally use on Countesses and Counts.  The idea being that Opalyn now gets to start her own feudal faction in the facility, as this is the sort of thing that tends to create drama.  For example, Opalyn gets 2 chastity unlock tokens that she can use on herself or trade, and 20 chastity unlock tokens she can only personally use on Countesses and Counts (though she doesn't have to stick around after enabling the unlock).

Good. Apparently squashing the scanning magic was not a problem!

"Where can I buy some paper and a pen, and where can I buy clothing?"

The way the sexual tokens work rather implies that she's going to need at least one Count-level minion if she wants to interact sexually with the large supply of Barons. She does not, at this moment, want to interact sexually with anyone except maybe herself.

"Oh, and where can I buy a vibrator?"

"Pen and paper are no good, mutually legible records of the past are poisonous to drama.  For clothing you'll want somebody to point you to one of the Facility clothing stores.  Don't think 'vibrator' translated but we've got shop equipment you can use in-place."

The lack of pen and paper is a Serious Problem and will be near the top of Opalyn's list once she's better rested; how is she supposed to catalog all of her research without being able to write down her questions and what she's learned so far?

But... 'vibrator' didn't translate? How is this possible? What kind of lewd dramatic prison even is this?

"Shop equipment? As in... machine shop? I don't think I understand. I mean an object people use for sexual gratification."

"Oh, you mean tinglers!  Sure, we've got whole Facility stores full of those too, or you can just pin somebody down and use tokens to activate the nerve tingler built into their own chastity belt.  We didn't want any inmate to be without that capacity at any time so long as they had the tokens for it."

Whew. For a minute there Opalyn worried that her first technological contribution to this world was going to be the concept of the vibrator, and while that would be a noble contribution indeed, she was kind of hoping to fix their economy to vastly reduce hunger or maybe help them avoid poisoning their children into being stupid or something like that. She may be overthinking it; she can plausibly do all this and more, once she's had some sleep.

Opalyn does still wonder if she'll end up using both of her self-tokens in one go if she unlocks her belt and then tingles herself, but there is a long line of other inmates behind her waiting to be processed. She feels a bit bad keeping all these exhausted people waiting while she asks masturbation questions that she can surely figure out on her own relatively soon.

"All right, thank you. I think I'm all set for now."

Except presumably they will now strip her of her torn dress and send her forth in pasties and panties, or something?

Well, if she wasn't willing to spend anything on clothing rights, then she'd be sent out in some quick standard-issue barely-clothed-girl-walking-the-halls wear, yes.

Continuing to wear that torn dress of hers would be quite expensive, does she want to?

She's not at all attached to this torn dress; it was Orphan's, and it's in very bad shape. But she does like the idea of having a choice about what she wears.

Is this going to meaningfully trade off against her library budget?

Depends on how often she thinks she can handle this level of lightline charging; and how many books she wants to have out at one time; and whether she wants to lock her door, either at all, or in a way that'll stand up to Dukes and not just Baron-level spending; and how many minions or harem members she's planning to have and how cruel she plans on being to them.

A lot of girls who don't feel like they really need clothing rights or locked doors will often carry a book around with them, to create plausible deniability about whether they're sluts or just incredibly intelligent people who can't help spending all their Farm credits on library borrows.  Or at least, that's how it probably started centuries earlier, but by this point there's just a recognized local Scantily Clad Girl Carrying A Book gendertrope, which even a Duchess could adopt despite that not having any plausible deniability in terms of the original underlying logic and a Duchess's budget.

Opalyn's priorities, as far as spending economy-credits, are:

1. books
2. more books
3. locking her door, so she can read her books
4. looking a certain way

She decides to put off buying clothing rights for now. She's going to go through a lot of books at first, and doesn't want to be limited in her research.

Also, she wonders if clothing rights are a one-time purchase or if it's an ongoing expense, like a weekly subscription or something.

Weekly subscription!  You can buy fancy clothes in prison stores for relatively cheap, and have them forever and wear them inside your own room or a lover's room whenever you want.  It's wearing things in public that cost a four-day subscription fee.

Her current dress is expensive because it's very full-coverage and opaque, despite the holes.  There's several budgetary steps down from there she could take before she went full Scantily Clad.

The bureaucrat notes that Opalyn doesn't presently have a book to take with her; and that Duchesses who aren't trying to maintain plausible deniability about being huge sluts would want to buy rights to some piece of clothing that didn't decrease their vulnerability--like thigh-high black stockings--to signal that they were leaving themselves vulnerable on purpose, not because they were low-status people who couldn't afford better.

So wait. Are these the choices?

1. Wear clothing that covers you. Signals: high status, unknown but probable sluttiness.
2. Wear clothing that doesn't cover you, like stockings. Signals: medium status, slutty but plausibly deniable about it.
3. Go scantily clad but carry a book. Signals: medium status, toss-up among intellectual, slutty, or both.
4. Go scantily clad with no book. Signals: Slutty.

There does not seem to be a way to signal "not slutty" and of course not, why would there be, this prison is lewd. Everyone is slutty.

Opalyn doesn't care about signaling status or intellectualism.

This entire game seems irrelevant to her?

Or do some of these options lead to more people bothering her?

No, more like:

1.  Wear clothing that covers you.  Signals:  You can afford nice things and are probably a Duchess.  (Only a Grand Duchess could easily afford Opalyn's current dress, though.)
2.  Go scantily clad but carry a book.  Signals:  You're probably slutty trying to signal you're intellectual, but you might actually be intellectual.  (Like having gone to Harvard; you could be a rich alumnus's kid, or you could be one of the smart kids.)
3.  Go scantily clad and deliberately wear extra clothing that doesn't protect you.  Signals:  You are absolutely being a slut on purpose.
4.  Go scantily clad with no book.  Signals:  You may be actually powerless to defend yourself and a victim.  Anyone could probably try your door at night, and get in, and you might actually not like it.  Or, of course, that's what you prefer people to think.

People might feel disappointed and offended if they try their credits to get through your door at night, and their credits just vanish without successfully unlocking your door.  Of course, maybe you totally want people coming after you for revenge?  There's nothing wrong with that!

So it seems like Opalyn just needs to sprint to the library then?

This is not an ideal time to be this tired. But, like, how badly can this go?

Opalyn pictures how badly it could actually go and decides she's too tired for that today.

DAMMIT. All right, she'll spring for clothing rights. Not for her full opaque dress. What does it cost to wear something like this, if it's backless?

Oh, that's pretty standard Duchess-wear for a Duchess who's willing to spend a significant part of their Farm credit on signaling that she's a Duchess!  Though Opalyn couldn't just swap it out tomorrow for something more translucent but with a lower hemline, say, she'd actually have to revisit her particular clothing rights in another four days.

Shoot. She doesn't want to pay that much, she needs book money! How about this?

Somebody might mistake her for a Countess, and if told she was a Duchess might not believe her or would wonder what she's doing with all those credits instead of spending it all on keeping up appearances like a sane person.

No, no, see, it's not about what rank she appears to have. It's about whether she can walk to the library without anyone trying to drag her by her hair back to their room and rape her, only to discover that their unlock tokens don't even work on her belt. All she wants is to be able to go and get a book without being accosted a whole bunch. What does she need to wear to make it safely to the library?

Oh, anything on the upper end of Baron slash low end of Countess would protect her from most random encounters, in the sense that people would only do it if carefully weighing their moves.

The bureaucrat does not of course say that; that'd cross the line into averting drama.

Instead he'll just note that if you want to be safe you should maybe try not being in prison.

All right, obviously she can't actually rely on this person to help her figure this out. Books remain a high priority and if people attack her this four-day period they are going to be quite remorseful about it later, and that will create drama, and so be it, apparently.

Opalyn will only spend enough to be allowed to wear this, then. It shows cleavage! It shows belly! She would be willing to swap out the panties for a thong if that's what it takes to have most of her credits remaining for books!

Those extra panels on the side of the panties, mean you're wearing clothing some pieces of which don't even do anything, which clearly signals that you're a slut and trying to signal that on purpose?  A Countess-level slut, in this case?  The bureaucrat is pretty sure he already explained that part, though.  And if he didn't explain it successfully, well, trying to make sure you communicated something successfully really crosses the line of what a low-level bureaucrat can get away with around here.  And sure, swapping for a thong will save a couple of credits on the privilege-cost.

He sends Opalyn on her way, slightly wishing she was just a Baron-level inmate.  She's cute, and this conversation turned him on some.  He'd have considered using one of his prison-employee privilege tokens on her if she were cheaper.

Then the next imprisoned submissive noble girl shows up at his window, quivering in distress about how poorly the monitor judged her to have performed, and how many tokens he'll give her given her past record; and he forgets all about the previous woman.