Britney Spears woke up one day with a slight dampness between her legs. She rubbed her eyes, slipped on a pink dressing gown and yawned petitely. Then she entered the en-suite and duly began her routine. Once her neck was sufficiently oiled she took off her knickers and fed them into a small hatch. Behind the hatch was a chute which carried the garment to an incineration chamber many miles below. Opening a mirror-fronted secret compartment, she took a new pair from a neatly-folded preheated stash, and slipped them on. Then she looked at herself for 23 minutes.

As Britney left the bathroom she became aware of the muffled music seeping through the walls. She knew the song only too well: it was her latest single. She remembered who she was: she was Britney.

Britney sprung petitely across the pink fluffy carpet; the pink fluff springing up between her petite painted toes. She swung open the bedroom door and was greeted by a business woman in a power suit. Then the music hit her, louder than ever. Yep, it was her latest single. She was Britney. And she had arisen.

The house was in commotion. Her team of assistants were frantic. “Is everything ok?” they yelped sycophantically as they rushed toward her. “Did you get enough sleep?” they yelped ingratiatingly as they crowded around her. “Can you turn it down a little?” asked Britney. “What, the music?” asked Britney’s assistants incredulously. “Yes the music”, said Britney. “But, it’s your latest single...” protested the assistants. “Can’t you just turn it down a bit?” pleaded Britney. Her chief assistant, Elsa, nodded and sent a text message to the central control room. Suddenly the music lulled. Over the next hour it grew gradually louder, by increments of inaudible smallness, until it returned to the original volume.

As Elsa assigned various inane activities to her subordinates, a nervous, well-mannered girl approached. This was Jenna, the fan-club administrator. She was on her way back from the ‘Storage Shrine’ - a vast underground warehouse in which all of Britney’s fan-mail was kept. It needed to be big because the daily rate of incoming mail was estimated to be approximately somewhere roughly in the region of something like 67,768,431. With this in mind the walls of the Storage Shrine were cleverly designed to move slowly outwards, thus perpetually creating the required extra space. Of course, it would have been easier to pack all the mail into crates and sink them in the North Sea - but Britney refused to do this. She had once felt a genuine pang of gratitude towards her fans, and thus felt compelled to keep every letter they sent.

Some time ago, one of Britney’s economic advisers published a controversial internal report, which calculated that a mere 0.00002% of all the fan-mail contained in the Storage Shrine had ever been opened. After several months of debate this led to a redrafting of a sub-clause in Britney’s contract, and she agreed to open one letter a day. It was Jenna’s job to fetch that letter (with the aid of a huge mechanical grabber controlled by a random binary operating sequence) and give it to Britney.

The letter Jenna held was pink. A dark shade of pink with a yellow ribbon. There were also some Pritt-Stick stains where glitter had once been lovingly adhered. The postmark read: Oct 1998. Jenna slid open the letter and examined the contents. This was her job. It was also her job to screen any of the contents considered “...detrimental to the continuance of Britney’s morning procedural affairs”.

Inside, Jenna found a hand-written letter printed on pink paper. Britney waited patiently, her smile full of humble expectation. Jenna scanned the letter, her pursed lips full of mild disgust. Britney waited. Jenna put the letter back in the torn envelope, and produced another. Jenna always made sure she had a back-up as this had happened countless times before. When she opened the second envelope, she found a pack of Polaroid photographs. Britney continued to smile, with her head tilted slightly to one side. Jenna leaved through the pictures, with her lips turned slightly inwards. Then she stuffed the photos back in the envelope. Luckily Jenna always carried a secondary back-up: this one was red and had dubious blotches on both sides. Jenna moved promptly onto her tertiary back-up, which contained a cassette tape. She slipped it into a cuff-mounted walkman, pressed play, and grimaced.

Britney, meanwhile, was having a conversation with the power-suited business woman about cats. It swiftly moved on, however, to the current sales-retardation issue in the northerly market zones. The power-suited business woman was called Zelta (though her real name was Margaret), and she was Britney’s Marketing Project Implementation Officer. Zelta had for some time been developing an ‘efficient interpersonal strategy’ to get Britney to talk about things she didn’t want to talk about - such as dogs and the current sales-retardation issue in the northerly market zones. This strategy involved starting a conversation about cats (or alternatively about dolphins, robins, see-saws, doll’s houses or jammy-dodgers), and then subtly changing the subject. It worked every time.

“So, Britney, do we have your permission to reconfigure the promo-stratagemisation policy in the relevant spheres?”

“Yes, I like the little ones with white furry paws, they’re so cute.”

Dialogue such as this was continually beamed through Zelta’s nasal-mounted dictaphone to an old woman called Gerta in the central control room, where it was edited on Cubase and sent on to the implementation department situated elsewhere in the building.

As Elsa gave the last of her orders to the last of her minions she noticed Zelta talking to Britney and moved to interrupt. The two older women had a long history of petty, maternal rivalry, prompted no doubt, by a combination of barely-repressed lesbianistic motherhood insecurities, and slightly overlapping job-descriptions. Zelta had got what she wanted for the time being, so she backed off, leaving Elsa to escort Britney to the ‘Britney Parlour’. This was a lavish room on the third floor - decorated with pink draperies and pink mirrors. Britney sat down on a large faux-Georgian reclining dentistry chair and fell asleep. It was customary for Britney to have a morning nap in the Britney Parlour, as it gave ‘Team Beauty’ the opportunity to carry out their work unhindered. With the all the grace and efficacy of a pit-stop crew, the assorted beauticians briskly began their maintenance duties. (To speed the beautification process, Elsa had devised a hierarchical reward system whereby each member of the team was required to plot the progression of their personal performance-times on a 3D computer model of a grid). In just under 4.3 hours, Britney had had her hair cut and restyled, a skin-graft placed over a minor flesh-crease, and her nails removed, cleaned and replanted. She was transformed. Now she really was Britney.

Except she was naked. Upon waking she was whisked into an adjoining and similarly decorated room - resembling a huge wardrobe/fancy-dress shop. The walls were covered with clothes, the floor covered with footwear, and the ceiling covered with hats attached to bits of string. This was the part of the day Britney enjoyed most. Dressing up time!

The only legal claim Britney retained since her contract had been rewritten, was the right to select her own clothes. This had troubled Zelta greatly. Mainly for financial reasons, but partly also for dark, subconscious child - bearing - and - then - dressing - them - in - the - manner - of - my - choosing - like - a - doll - but - one - that’s - alive - and - belongs - to - me reasons. She had tried and failed to fob Britney off with the ‘right to choose whatever cat you want’, and eventually capitulated. Elsa, however, treated this as a minor victory against Zelta, despite the fact she shared the same dark subconscious impulses. Elsa nevertheless prided herself on her acceptance of Britney’s token morsel of freedom.

Britney, needless to say, was oblivious to the politics surrounding her and was concerned only with what outfit she was to going to wear. At first she felt an inclination to go for her shiny silver all-in-one jumpsuit, but thought better of it. She decided instead to opt for the shiny red all-in-one jumpsuit, but found it did not quite fit her. She reported this news to Elsa and moments later, in some distant part of the building, a hapless dietician was dismissed, their identity wholly expunged from history, forever.

Next Britney tried on a fetching and knowingly-bedraggled suit-and-hat combo, but felt it didn’t reflect her mood adequately. She then considered the old school-uniform favourite, but again changed her mind. 5.3 hours later, Britney finally emerged: wearing the school uniform. As usual, she paraded herself along the ‘Britney Balcony’. As usual, every employee in the building (apart from Gerta) was gathered outside in the atrium beneath the balcony. They were all there to behold the day’s Britney. They cheered and clapped. Britney did a twirl and giggled. Now she definitely was actually Britney.

The ‘routine’ was complete. Britney was now ready for action. First, however, she was required to attend the daily summit of department heads to hear the day’s agenda. Britney, in short pleated skirt and loosened tie, sat wearily through the summit, listening to her latest single. After 2.5 hours it transpired there was nothing scheduled, so they decided to let Britney have the day off. Hearing this she jumped up and skipped petitely out of the room, towards the front door. Elsa and the other personal-assistants followed in a fluster.

Outside the front door was the world. Britney didn’t know much about the world, but she knew enough to know that it knew a lot about her. She wasn’t surprised to find a squirming crowd crushed against the gates. Nor was she surprised to see a unit of metropolitan riot-police batoning a stampede of over-eager fans. She was surprised to see an Asian man waving a placard and chucking eggs at her.

Britney, in knee-high stockings and ponytails, stood dumbfounded before the protestor. Did this mean someone didn’t like her? Even if this was possible, why weren’t the police batoning him too? Britney read the man’s raised placard, it simply said:

BRITNEY: You Raped My Daughter!

Before she could even remember how to read, an egg hit the wall next to her, splattering her thighs with its sloppy dairy yolk. Another hit her in the chest, soaking her blouse with its gelatinous slime. Elsa ordered the other assistants to construct a human shield, but it was too late. A particularly rotten, semi-impregnated egg struck Britney squarely in the face, sploshing its viscous white interior juices over her mouth and chin. She fell backwards, into the arms of Elsa (who quivered at the physical contact), and passed out.

When she awoke she was back in the large faux-Georgian reclining dentistry chair, but her clothes were gone and the egg had been all cleaned up. She got dressed again - this time opting for a more understated black velvet ball gown - and everyone cheered and clapped again. Then Elsa informed her it was time for bed. So Britney went to bed. However, in all the tumult Elsa had forgotten to administer Britney’s bedtime sedatives. That was the night the dreams returned.