I am Alicia and twenty-eight now. I started life as a pretty typical little girl probably a five on the zero to ten girliness scale. I was briefly into pink and girly things as a child, but started moving down hill on the scale at age eight or nine. By the age of eleven and secondary school I moved firmly into the tomboy region, despite already having a huge bosom.

I did ok at school, and even had a couple of boyfriends. I held out on losing my virginity till I was seventeen. It was ok I suppose, but I didn’t particularly rate sex and preferred it with myself, and a copy of Vogue. I fantasised about looking like those slender models. The trouble with boys was they only saw me, to put it crudely, as a transport system for my boobs which at age seventeen were bigger than my bottom and still growing.

I’m only five foot two with a small frame and if breasts were measured on the Richter scale my bosom would be a planetary crust cracker. Naturally I considered breast reduction, but I knew enough about the situation to realise that with whatever it was my two X chromosomes were telling my body the chances were my breasts would reassert themselves within a few years and all I would have to shew for the pain and stress would be a reduced bank balance and a load of scars along with a less easy to manage bosom that may well be larger than the one I started with. All the women in my family were the same, so I accepted it and started working out how to cope.

I considered the only way forward was to invest in bra’s up to the task of supporting a pair of hot air balloon sized breasts. Forget the internet, it’s just too much trouble returning items and trying to get back the considerable sums expended. Buying a bra, note a bra not bras because if I can find one I’ve done well, is a major shopping trip to a major city which is always exhausting. The trying on and subsequent rejection of virtually all the dozens of bras with inadequately sized cups is frustrating and makes me bad tempered. By shear chance, I finally found a custom lingerie manufacturer in Harrogate of all places, and that’s where I get all my underwear from now. They have my exact measurements and made sure I knew how to check they were still accurate, and if not that I knew how to measure myself in order to update their database which feeds the data to their computerised cutting out machines. Then they are assembled by hand. I receive their latest catalogue four times a year and ring them up to discuss colours and trim and the like when placing an order. It’s not cheap, but it’s a lot cheaper than surgery and their products ensure my bosom doesn’t damage my back. Their products, unlike a lot I’ve seen advertised for ‘larger ladies’, are pretty as opposed to looking like they were made in the nineteen fifties out of that awful pink stuff that was supposed to match your skin. If you’ve got skin that colour you’re ill.

I’ve just ordered a pretty looking lingerie set that is new to the catalogue. Like all their bras the band is made of a virtually inextensible material that grips the chest firmly but not tightly thus transferring the weight of the breasts to the chest rather than the shoulders which would be a guarantee of back damage. The fabric breathes and is comfortable to wear for extended periods of time. There are three rows of six hooks and eyes that are PTFE coated non allergic stainless steel that are really easy to fasten and unfasten due to their shape which guides the hooks into the eyes. The shoulder straps are of a similar material to the band and about an inch wide with an inch and a half wide fleecy fabric under them that contacts the skin. The adjustment fastenings on the straps are amazing and never slip which is vital to avoid embarrassment for a big girl. I don’t know what the cups are made from, but there is a huge range of styles available, everything from tee shirt bras to quarter cup styles and their range of maternity and nursing styles out sells anyone else’s.

I had a brief lesbian relationship at university where I studied genetics, but she dumped me for a sylph like little girl with a thirty-two A chest. I was hurt, but it taught me sex wasn’t a right off, that I was interested in women rather than men and I wanted a wife not a husband. I was ill in my final year with shingles and the university offered me a two-two on the spot or the option to repeat the year. I’d been on for a two-one, but I took the two-two and the university’s reference explaining the situation because I’d had a good job offer and couldn’t see the sense in using another year to obtain a better degree that was unlikely to get me a better job than the one I’d been offered, and to boot would cost me a year’s salary and incur more debt.

I accepted the job working for ‘Genetic Services GmbH’, a company specialising in DNA analysis based in Dortmund Germany. They are as good as it gets, and a lot of their work is to do with establishing paternity for the courts and analysing forensic evidence for various European police forces. I’d been there a couple of months when I met Nicki who is Swiss. If anything her girls were even bigger than mine, and she was grateful when I pointed her in the direction of ‘Custom Lingerie’ of Harrogate. We soon became friends and I realised I was attracted to her in a way I had never been to any one before.

I had a difficult time trying to work out what she felt about me because she was difficult to read. She’s incredibly intelligent and worked on the analytical side of the business developing new techniques and correlating new findings which involved turning the genetic evidence I found into facts about the individuals involved. It was cutting edge stuff.

Genetic Services is a privately owned family company whose employees are shareholders too. I’d been working there about a year and a half when the senior management told us all that the government was becoming hostile to the prestige and influence the company’s work had with the courts. The German government was upset with us because some of our results did not provide them with the court verdicts they had wanted. The management explained they had started a sister company in Minsk the capital of the Baltic Affiliated Nations, which was the newly formed country that had been Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Kaliningrad Oblast. The government was trying to attract hi-tech STEM businesses to relocate there and offering attractive incentives to do so.

The creation of the BAN originated in the Brexit referendum of June 2016, though the cracks in the EU monolith had been there for years by then. When the UK finally left the EU it triggered what was to end up as the breakdown of the EU into smaller political alliances. The resentful Franco Germanic alliance became belligerent and aggressive in their trading stance to their ex-partners and the BAN formed to counter that. The Russian government conceded Kaliningrad Oblast to the BAN in return for guaranteed access to the Baltic and shipbuilding and docking facilities at Kaliningrad. There was also a trading agreement the exact details of which were never made public. It would appear that the Russians are negotiating similar arrangements with the Finnish government concerning Kyrelia and the Kola peninsula, which is causing the Swedish government distress for they regard that territory as historically theirs. All this is making the rest of Europe very nervous, for they can’t fathom why Russia is becoming so ‘reasonable’ and what such a sea change in their attitude portends. I suspect that trade agreements with new nations and rights of access are a cheap and easy way for Russia to focus its military attention on the Chinese.

It was the company’s intention to transfer all their activities to Minsk and the BAN had agreed to subsidise the move and assist with housing and anything else to facilitate matters for the company and the workforce. There were twenty-six of us and we were told any who went with the company would be financially rewarded and reminded that if the company didn’t go the German government would probably take us over and our working conditions would likely deteriorate to the point where we would quit. GS was a good employer and the offer was sufficiently attractive to us all to make the move. The alternative was not worth considering.

The company took the opportunity to move all our state of the art equipment and upgrade our data handling computers. It was planned to make the move over the Easter holiday. Our equipment was trucked on eight eighteen wheelers overnight more or less due east into the Czech Republic, that being the nearest border. The equipment was mixed up in with all the office furniture including the coffee machines and even its paperwork had not identified the equipment as ours. It appeared to be a job lot of second hand office stuff going to a company in Poland. It did go to Poland and then over the border into the BAN. The trucks had been stopped by a sleepy and bored detachment of German border guards. They had the first truck opened, saw the coffee machines and asked what was in the boxes. “Coffee, you want a box?” asked the driver. “It’s what the bosses drink. Good stuff. No one will miss a box or two. There are three kinds. Take one of each” It had been raining and the guards accepted the coffee gratefully and told the driver to get back in his truck and out of the rain. They counted the trucks and waved them all through before hurrying out of the rain themselves. The staff flew to Minsk, no two in the same line of work on the same plane. We’d all been booked into a hotel in Minsk for a week that had a conference centre for what was billed as a ‘team building exercise’ lest the government stepped in to delay any of us going.

Nicki and I were out for a drink a month before the move when out of the blue she asked, “Would you like to live with me in Minsk?”

“What as flatmates?” I asked.

“No, as my life partner,” she replied.

“I don’t know. I like you, a lot, and could come to love you, but I’ve been hurt by both men and women alike before and you give little of yourself away, so I’m not sure I know enough about you to answer you.”

“You’ve had relationships with both men and women before?”

“Yes, and all failed for various reasons. I am essentially a lesbian, but I would like children, and I don’t want a relationship with a woman who would become jealous of me sleeping with a man to get pregnant, and I have no intention of getting pregnant any other way than the obvious one that only involves the biological father.”

Nicki smiled and said, “I have been reluctant to tell you more, for reasons that are obvious. I am a pre-op trans-sexual woman. I always intended to have the surgery one day in order to form a permanent relationship as a man’s wife. However, I have been more and more attracted to you since we met. If you think we could go the distance I would be willing to put off the surgery for a while. Then you wouldn’t need to find a man, and there would be nothing for either of us to be jealous of.” Cutting a long story short, after a lot of discussion, I slept with Nicki that night, and it was the best night of my life. We moved to Minsk and set up house together.

The BAN started as a new nation and deliberately became a magnet for those despised elsewhere merely for who and what they are. It was the government’s deliberate intent to attract citizens who would be glad to contribute to a new and prosperous society. Companies like GS and their employees were especially welcome.

All can think, write and say what they will here, but doing something about it is a whole different story. For those who chose to take the path of bigotry there was only one result: loss of citizenship accompanied by fines and or prison. Interestingly we have virtually no Muslim nor Jewish citizens, despite an initial significant number of prosecutions for active discrimination against them. Most of our Muslim and Jewish populations left. They said they did not wish to live where others could say what they wished about them with impunity, though I was told they expected to be allowed to do so about others. No Muslims nor Jews seek citizenship with us which is a shame. We do have large and steadily growing Sikh and Hindu populations along with various others too from all over the world. For those persecuted for their religion, sexuality or identity the BAN is a haven of safety. We have a huge number of the LGBT+ in our population and even more ex-refugees.

Priority is given to skilled and educated immigrants and their families which means we have a high standard of living. The points system for immigrants changes a little from time to time according to our needs as a nation. Right now just about any one in the building trades or nursing is fast tracked, especially electricians and midwives.

From a purely selfish point of view a plentiful supply of immigrants from all over the world means an exciting choice of restaurante food in not just Minsk but even in places one would barely call a town. A electrician who works on the high voltage supply system I met a few months ago came from Madagascar with his wife and four children. Once his children were in appropriate schools his wife opened a café that sold not just coffee but traditional food from her homeland. He told me they were planning on opening a restaurante.

High incomes means the government has the taxation income to assist refugees. However being born here does not give citizenship and refugees have six months to find employment or they are deported. The BAN is no passport to living off the backs of others, but the Office of Employment has always said what is clear to us all, there is more work available than workers. There is no excuse for a family not to have a bread winner or for a single person to be out of work. The minimum salary here is sufficient for a family to live off a single income though most couples choose to do part time work and share the parenting. The BAN culture is a mix of what was here before but parenting is seen as important and it is frowned upon if only one parent is involved. What I find interesting is that recent immigrants who have become citizens all agree with the deportation of those who seek to avoid work.

BAN identity documents bear no gender markers and our marriage licences, Nicki and I have one each, merely have our names and photographs on them, our passports likewise. The company is doing well, and if we have to put extra time in to meet commitments we can use the company crèche or have one of the care staff babysit Nicolai for us. The German government took the parent company over two months after we moved to discover they had done it all for nothing, but our services cost them a lot more thereafter.

Our son, Nicolai, is a year and a half old now and I am pregnant with our daughter who is to be named Alicianna. Our underwear is still coming from Harrogate and now that we are both breastfeeding our bras are even larger. I used to get very tired after Nicolai, who was named after Nicki, was born and when he was crying and I was asleep from exhaustion Nicki in desperation put him to her breast. It comforted him, but within the week much to our surprise she was lactating. Nicki said right from the beginning it was a wonderful experience.

Despite her enjoyment in nursing Nicolai, I asked Nicki recently how she felt about things as she had planned to have her surgery by this time and I was becoming a little concerned that would be upsetting her.

She kissed me and said, “If it ain’t broke, it don’t need fixing.” She placed her hand on my bump to feel our daughter moving and after kissing me again said, “Whatever works, works, my beautiful pregnant wife. Any chance of you molesting your wife before we eat?”