"Why don't you drive our car Daddy? You were happy to drive that truck," asked Mikaela, from the front passenger seat of the Hyundai Ioniq 5.

"I don't like this car. It's too quiet. I like cars that go vroom, vroom," chuckled Ivan from the back seat, as Annette pursed her lips and gripped the steering wheel tighter.

"Why don't you get one then?" asked Mikaela.

"Because I don't like such cars," said Annette, shooting a glare at Ivan.

"Why?" asked Mikaela.

"Too noisy," snapped Annette, pulling into the parking lot of Boston Public School.

"All right, I'll see you both later. Be good, Mikaela," said Ivan, stepping out of the car, and calling an Uber.

"Bye Daddy," said Mikaela, skipping off to her first-grade classroom.

Annette waited until Mikaela was out of sight, before turning to Ivan.

"What's gotten into you?" she asked him, her eyes narrowing.

"What? She asked a question, I answered it," said Ivan, defensively.

"I'm warning you Ivan, don't you dare undermine my authority in front of Mikaela again! Do you understand me?" growled Annette.

"All right, all right-," said Ivan, before Annette gave him a vicious slap across the face.

"Never, ever take that tone with me! I'm done being tolerant!" hissed Annette, turning on her heel and storming off towards the school.

Ivan rubbed his cheek, as he watched Annette disappear into the school.

He clenched his fists, before getting into the Uber that had just pulled up.

"Annette has been getting worse and worse. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take," he thought, reflecting on the changes in his wife ever since that fateful day, six years ago.

It had all started shortly after Aaron had turned 14, and had refused to drop out of St. Ignatius Academy like Annette had wanted.

In the wake of that, Annette had decided to have another child, only this time, she had signed up for an expensive IVF procedure that featured advanced sperm selection, to ensure that the baby would be a girl.

Ivan had reluctantly agreed, hoping that it would heal the growing rift between Aaron and Annette.

Unfortunately, things didn't work out. Aaron was expelled from St. Ignatius Academy for developing a violent and sexually explicit video game, and Annette had disowned him.

Ivan chose to stay with Annette for Mikaela's sake, but he deeply regretted not being there for Aaron.

Shortly after Mikaela's birth, Annette had shaved off her thick long black hair, and had started dressing in a more androgynous manner.

Her soft and feminine sweaters, jeans and sneakers had been replaced by baggier and more unisex versions that hid her curves.

She had also started insisting that Ivan dress more casually, and had banned him from wearing anything that was more formal than an MIT hoodie and jeans.

Then there were the other lifestyle changes: New house, new car, new vegan diet.

Her hair had grown back, but it was now cut in a short pixie style, and while she had shed her post-pregnancy weight, her other changes had stripped away whatever little attraction that Ivan had for her.

"Sir? We're here," said the Uber driver, breaking Ivan's reverie.

"Thanks," said Ivan, as he got out of the car, and opened the garage.

Inside, he quickly changed into his tailored suit, and got into his BMW M5.

"I think I might need to lawyer up. I can't let Mikaela grow up in this environment," he thought, as he drove to MIT.

----

"Who the hell is that?"

"Holy shit! It's Kristen Ford!"

"What the hell? What is she wearing?"

"Is she giving a presentation or something?"

"Ugh! Those heels are so loud!"

Whispers and comments followed Kristen as she walked down the hallway.

Her black leather pumps with 8 cm titanium-alloy stiletto heels clicked smartly against the smooth floors of MIT's Computer Science block.

The navy-blue blazer, and pencil-skirt, along with the pale pink satin blouse, and jet-black compression pantyhose, all felt soft and comfortable against her skin, and the surge of confidence that gave her, was more than enough to block out the whispers and comments directed at her.

She entered the lecture hall, found her customary place, and pulled out her laptop. Anticipation coursing through her as she waited for Ivan to arrive.

"I wonder if Professor Zakhrov will notice," she thought, blushing happily at the prospect.

"Everyone settle down. Class is about to begin," said Ivan, striding into the lecture hall, wearing a sleek black suit, and a black silk tie.

"I've reviewed the assignments you've submitted, and frankly, I'm disappointed," he said, setting up the projector.

"Let's look at a few that I found particularly egregious," he said, pulling up a presentation on the screen.

"Exhibit A: Congratulations, you've proven that you just learned Kubernetes and skipped the section on how to autoscale. Works fine for a city that never floods, but what happens if you do get one? Simulation fail," he said, pulling up another slide.

"Exhibit B: This one is straight out of a vibe-coding session. Sorry, but your town's water supply is now contaminated with sewage because you're not actually deleting the elements, just filling up the queue and memory. Simulation fail," he said, as students squirmed uncomfortably.

"Well it's not all doom and gloom. This one is actually pretty good," he said, pulling up another slide.

Kristen's heart skipped a beat as she recognized her own submission.

"You've got a python Directed Acyclic Graph here with one reservoir task that sends a dictionary of contaminant percentages to a downstream task that then processes it. That in turn generates a set of water pressure values that are sent to the consumer tasks that simulate water usage. Simple, but effective. You get water flowing in one direction, and the consumer tasks can be easily scaled up and down to simulate consumption. Won't work for a full-blown city planning tender, but good enough for say a small county or farm town," he said, as Kristen let out a sigh of relief.

"Now, lets move on to the topic for today, binary trees," he said, switching to the lecture slides.

"Binary trees are a type of data structure that is used to represent hierarchical relationships. Each node in a binary tree has at most two children, which are referred to as the left and right child. The topmost node is called the root, and nodes with no children are called leaves," he explained.

"Binary trees are used in a variety of applications, including searching and sorting algorithms, expression parsing, and data compression. They are also used in computer graphics and game development for spatial partitioning and collision detection," he added.

Kristen listened intently, taking notes as Ivan explained the concepts of binary trees, their properties, and their applications.

"Now let's look at an implementation example. And don't worry, I'm using Python," he said, pulling up a code editor.

"Here, we have a simple implementation of a binary tree in Python. We define a Node class that has a value, a left child, and a right child. We also define a BinaryTree class that has a root node and methods for inserting and traversing the tree," he explained, live-coding the implementation.

Kristen watched mesmerized as Ivan's code example ran, showing how to insert nodes into the binary tree and traverse it in different orders.

"All right, for your assignment, you are to build a 'choose your own adventure' game. I'm sure you'll have some fun with this one," he said, as the class ended.

"A moment please, Ms. Ford," he said, as Kristen packed up her things.

"Yes, Professor Zakhrov?" she asked, nervously.

"Your submission was one of the better ones, so well done," he said, smiling at her.

"Thank you, Professor," she said, blushing.

"And I see that you've decided to upgrade your presentation, so very good on that front too," he said, giving her a wink.

"Umm, thank you, Professor," she said, her cheeks flushing red.

"All right, I'll see you in the next class," he said, as she hurried out of the lecture hall.

----

"He noticed! He noticed! He even complimented me!" thought Kristen, shuddering with excitement as she walked to her next class.

"Professor Zakhrov is so handsome. I wonder if he's single?" she mused, as she daydreamed about him.

"Snap out of it Kristen! Focus on your studies!" she admonished herself, as she entered her next class.

----

"I'm Dr. Tatiana Petrov, here to see Dr. Khan," said Tatiana to the Sirius Software security checkpoint guard.

The guard spoke briefly into his radio, before waving her through.

Tatiana drove her Dodge Charger into the Sirius Software compound, and parked it outside the medical services building.

She walked into the building, and was greeted by Kavitha.

"Dr. Petrov, what brings you here?" asked Kavitha.

"Medical investigation. There has been a sharp rise in psychotic episodes among female service and hospitality workers, all tied to whatever Sirius Software is putting into their uniforms," said Tatiana.

"I see, please, come in," said Kavitha, leading Tatiana into her office.

"Thank you. It's good to see a friendly face," said Tatiana, sitting down opposite Kavitha.

"Likewise. So, tell me more about these cases," said Kavitha.

"Symptoms range from sexual fetish development to full-blown PTSD-like panic attacks. All the affected individuals have one thing in common: they all wore the new uniforms provided by Sirius Software's apparel brand, The Feminine Professional," said Tatiana.

"That sounds bad, let me get Margaret on the horn," said Kavitha, picking up her phone.

"Margaret, it's Kavitha. We have a problem. There has been a sharp rise in psychotic episodes among female service and hospitality workers, all tied to the new uniforms from The Feminine Professional. I've got my therapist Dr. Petrov here, can we set up a meeting?" asked Kavitha.

"Sure, both of you come over to the main retail store. We'll sort this out," said Margaret.

"All right, see you soon," said Kavitha, hanging up the phone.

"Well, Dr. Petrov, shall we go?" asked Kavitha.

"Yes, let's," said Tatiana, as they left the medical services building.

----

"So, this is what's been happening," said Tatiana, twirling in a sleek burgundy skirt-suit Margaret had given her.

"I'm kind of lost," admitted Kavitha.

"Pencil skirts, blazers, heels and pantyhose. These items are not commonly associated with comfort. So when you hand a woman engineered clothing like this, it creates a cognitive dissonance. Add feminist ideologies, pop-culture and enclothed cognition to the mix, and you have a recipe for psychotic breakdowns," explained Tatiana.

Kavitha let out a low whistle, as she grasped the situation.

"So it's basically like my own reaction to the Sirius Software security uniform, but on a larger scale," she said.

"Exactly. This is both fascinating and terrifying. We're looking at a social and cultural engineering effect on a mass scale," said Tatiana.

"Well, it's not like I can just close shop," said Margaret.

"No, but I think this needs to be studied further. Could the two of you get me an audience with Aaron Zakhrov? I want to speak to him directly," said Tatiana.

"Sure, I'll set it up," said Margaret.