The Manrider Program

ADULTS-ONLY SITE. If it is not legal for you to read disturbingly graphic stories about male-on-male sex and torture, or if you do not wish to see such material, please stop reading.

Disclaimer: the following story is a purely fictional account. Any relationship to any real person living or dead is coincidental. The technology that features prominently in the story, in particular, is entirely fictional and I hope it remains that way. The narrative contains non-consensual male-on-male sexual activity, restraint, and mental and physical torturre. There is a death in the story, but it’s not part of a torture scene. The story is intended for mature readers who wish to view such material, and for whom it is legal to do so. The author in no way condones or promotes nonconsensual acts in real life.

The author is grateful to slavebladeboi, a reader and friend who was a part of this story’s creation from start to finish, for the valuable help and insight he provided.

Copyright © 2024 by POW. For spam prevention, an animal name has been added to the author’s e-mail address. Remove the animal name to get the actual address: POWauthor zebra at yahoo dot com. This story may be freely copied and distributed so long as it is copied in its entirety, unchanged, including the author credit information and disclaimer. Other POW stories are available at https://powauthor.wordpress.com. The author welcomes feedback.

The Manrider Program

1 – January
2 – February
3 – March
4 – April
5 – May
6 – June
7 – July
8 – September And Beyond
9 – Epilogue – Many Septembers Later

1 – January

Seth

Are You Looking To Be Erased?

That was the title of the thread that kept drawing Seth’s attention again and again. Those six words… so tantalizing because wow, yeah, what a hot fantasy! The idea of giving up control to a top was appealing in any form, but this took it to the highest possible extreme: giving up control to such a degree as to fuckin’ cease to exist, how sexy was that? Mind wiped clean, body running on autopilot for the Master to use as He saw fit.

The body of the post laid the details out in words that Seth had read over and over again. Paragraphs and paragraphs of how it would be for the lucky guy who accepted ErasureTop’s offer and was accepted into his service. “… take complete charge of your life … no longer responsible for making any decisions … surrender yourself entirely to Me.” And then phrases like: “your body will be reshaped as needed to fit My expectations … maintain a high level of physical conditioning … no willpower of your own required, I will supply the necessary motivation”. And then there was the talk about how the slave would be used sexually: “… provide service to Me … others as I see fit … no choice, no say in how, when, where, or by whom you are used”.

Seth’s pumping hand usually picked up the pace at that part and this time was no exception. As had happened half a dozen times before, he felt the climax building and soon enough the sticky fluid was gushing out all over his belly.

Afterward the idea always appealed much less. In fact, it was downright terrifying to contemplate. Full-time, 24/7 slavery? Sexy stuff, but could he ever actually commit himself to such a thing? Really, how could it even work? All the talk of hypno tracks and spirals and such on the mind control forums was, in Seth’s opinion, just that: talk. Not something that could happen for real. There was no way to actually erase someone’s mind. And without that, this ErasureTop who had posted this amazingly hot fantasy could not possibly keep constant control over a slave. No top could. Even if Seth were locked in the tiniest, least forgiving prison cell, his mind would still be free to roam wherever he wanted it to. No captor could gain control of anyone else that fully.

Still, it was hot to fantasize about.

Cannon

Cannon raised the weight bar back up to the hooks and set it in place, pecs and arms burning from the bench presses he had just performed. He sat up and let out a whoosh of breath, enjoying the sensation of the blood singing in his ears and the pleasant post-workout ache in his muscles.

As he did, out of his peripheral vision he detected a pair of eyes lingering too long in his direction. He snapped his own gaze toward the starer and barked out “the fuck you lookin’ at?” Not so long ago, the word “faggot” would have been the natural thing to tack on to the end of that sentence. Nowadays that word could get a man banned from a place like this, and Cannon happened to like this gym. The message was conveyed all the same; the starer hastily turned his attention back to the treadmill he was jogging on.

“That’s what I thought,” Cannon mumbled under his breath. The faggots weren’t usually much of a problem here. There were a few, but they knew their place, and they mostly knew better than to try to take out their perversions on real men. They just needed to be reminded every now and then who the real men were.

After a quick shower and in a fresh set of clothes, Cannon headed out into the golden San Diego sunshine. Another glorious day and damn, what a glorious life to be living! Things had not been pretty in the field of commercial real estate during the pandemic years, but that was fifteen years ago when Cannon had been in high school. Now the market had settled itself down and adapted to the changes in office work arrangements. There was once again money to be made and Cannon was eagerly taking in his slice of the pie, enough to afford a penthouse condo in the East Village neighborhood.

He got on his motorcycle and headed west toward downtown, mind racing ahead of the bike to the deal he would be working out this afternoon.

Seth

The next time Seth went browsing through the mind control forums, jerking off was pretty far from the top of his mind. Not one but two blows had struck him earlier in the day. His boss at the Chevy dealer had informed him that the job of scheduling service appointments would now be handled from a central location and thus Seth’s services were no longer required, effective immediately though he would receive two weeks of severance pay. And while he was still reeling from the delivery of that news, one of his three housemates had messaged the others to say he was moving out at the end of the month.

So: loss of income until he could find another job, probably a crappy, dangerous one at the Hormel plant, which he really didn’t want to do. On top of that, increased rent expense until they could find someone to fill the empty room. It was… not a great day. Seth had hoped that surfing the mind control forums would provide some distraction, but he was feeling too unhorny for it to do any good.

And then he came across that “Are You Looking To Be Erased?” post. Even though he knew the words pretty much by heart already, this time he read them with a brain not fogged by a haze of horny hormones. And the more he read, the more the idea seemed worth at least looking at. Even though the odds of it being for real were still slim.

Because why not? Seth was indeed looking to be erased. What about his life was worth preserving? No job and no skills to get anything other than entry-level retail work. A falling-down dump of a place to live in. No family he cared to be in touch with, a handful of friends who might miss him for a while then get over it, and pretty much zero opportunities for the sort of sexual encounters he was interested in. It was entirely possible that he was the only gay man in Fremont, Nebraska (though he never, ever admitted out loud to being one). There was no reason at all to stay. The only reason he hadn’t left already is that there was nothing to go toward, he would only be going away and there was no guarantee that things elsewhere would be any different than they were here.

He checked the date on the posting… a month old, no, more like six weeks. Several replies underneath, all horned up just the way Seth was every time he’d read it before. Had any of those commenters applied to be ErasureTop’s slave already? Was there more than one open position if they had? Or had he already missed his chance without even realizing?

It took only a few moments to find ErasureTop’s profile and start a private message. Finishing that message, though, took much longer. Seth wrote and rewrote and revised again until at last he couldn’t stand to look at it any more and clicked send. It would have to be good enough.

Sir, this slave is looking to be erased. i have read Your post dozens of times and know that total control is what i need. But i am nervous. Please, Sir, i want so much to commit to Your service but i am afraid that i might get exactly what You promise to provide.

Truly, the idea of surrendering control was powerfully alluring. But he couldn’t help thinking “what if?” thoughts. What if the experience was too much for him? What if he wanted a way out? Or what if he wasn’t what the Master wanted and found himself discarded, tossed aside?

There was no reply that evening, but the next morning a message was waiting for him on the forum site.

The erasure process is reversible, if that helps you decide, the reply said. If you are serious, send one of your fingernail clippings to this address. A post office box in San Diego, California. Also, provide Me with an address to send you a return package. Either a street address or a PO box will do. Further instructions will be included in that package.

Well. If San Diego was where ErasureTop was located, that was just fine. He glanced out the window at the January snow blowing past. Yeah, Seth would be happy serving a master anywhere, but it sure wouldn’t suck to do it there.

But… a fingernail clipping? What was this, some sort of voodoo doll thing? It was both a disappointment and a relief to realize that, as he had known all along, this couldn’t possibly be real. He would receive some custom hypno files, something like that, nothing more, “magically” keyed to his DNA or some such bullshit. At least ErasureTop hadn’t asked him for money, not that he had any to spare. Oh, maybe the money request would come later, that could be it. Whatever the game was, Seth couldn’t see himself heading to California any time soon. Dammit.

But then again…

If the gimmick was going to be hypno files, why bother sending a physical package?

Well, why not? For the cost of a stamp, he could play the game a while longer. It was something to do.

Winston

Winston opened the envelope, taking care to not let anything fall out. His hands shook slightly as he did, though the tremors were not as bad as they would be later in the day. For whatever reason, the shaking was at its worst in the afternoon, peaking around 4:00 and then gradually easing off. Winston had tried to adjust his sleep schedule so that he would be in bed during the worst of it, but the shaking cycle had followed his circadian rhythm no matter how he offset it, so he went back to sleeping nights. The hours right after getting out of bed were best; that’s why he had waited until today to open the letter, even though it had arrived yesterday.

He tipped the envelope and a tiny pale crescent slid out, tinkling onto a plate on the table. A needle already rested on the plate with a bottle of alcohol and some gauze sitting nearby. Fourth try. Let’s see if this goes any better than the others. The first to respond to Winston’s ad had not gone past the talk-dirty-to-me stage. Whoever the guy was, all he wanted of total control was the fantasy of it, so Winston stopped responding to his messages.

The second had sent a fingernail as requested and Winston had sent the corresponding return package in reply, but then things took a surprising turn. The wannabe sub had claimed to have opened the package and followed the instructions, but Winston would have known via other means if that were the case. He called the sub out on the lie, assuming that he had not, in fact, followed the instructions. Instead, the guilty prick had denied it at first but eventually confessed to using someone else’s fingernail, after which Winston blocked him. Waste of time.

Number three had received his own package but then: radio silence. Not a word. Tracking information said that it had been received, but Winston’s followup messages went unanswered. He wrote that one off too.

Now this fourth one from “Seth” in Nebraska. Maybe this one would work out. He had promised himself that his first conquest would be a voluntary one. His darker side had other thoughts, of converting a man by force as he had been trained to do. Of course, that was only intended to happen to my country’s enemies, he thought bitterly. Now that he was a free agent, that restriction no longer applied. And maybe if his time grew short he would have no choice but to go the non-consensual route. Still, for this first attempt he wanted to at least try to do it the “right” way and only erase a man who wanted to be erased. He would even ease the victim into the process rather than shutting him down and seizing control right from the start.

The message Seth had sent was promising. Where the first three had talked big about wanting to become small, Seth’s words revealed uncertainty. Winston hoped that this was a good omen, that this round would be likelier to result in success. And the process was indeed reversible, so that hadn’t been a lie. All he had neglected to mention was that the decision of whether to reverse or not would be Winston’s to make. Not Seth’s.

Winston picked up the needle with a bit of difficulty. Fine motor control was not his strong suit these days and his control over his fingers was worsening bit by bit. The decline was slow, but according to the medics at the base, it was irreversible. They had wanted him to check in to a facility there to let them care for him as his body suffered its inevitable decline, but hell no to that. Winston had other plans.

He wiped the needle with alcohol, then the side of his finger. An hour or so earlier he had issued the necessary mental command and so his blood was now teeming with the infectious variant of the nano-sized bastards that were responsible for the slow destruction of his muscles, ready to glom onto whatever sample of DNA they found, key themselves to it, and make themselves ready to take their next victim. Hopefully this one would be one of the lucky two-thirds, unlike Winston. And if not, well, there were other fish in the sea.

He pierced the side of his finger and a dark red droplet welled out. Setting the needle down and picking the fingernail up, Winston scooped up the blood onto the clipping, then dropped it into a vial and closed the lid. He covered the wound on his finger with a bit of gauze and sat back to watch.

It had occurred to him back in his training days that blood and semen were fundamentally very similar. Both could carry the infection; both could deliver the agents to where they needed to go. He almost raised the topic in one of his classroom sessions, asking if it might perhaps be acceptable to the brass if he were to fuck his victim into submission rather than going this roundabout “obtain a cell sample, culture it externally, then deliver the agent” route. Why not do it all at once? But he kept the thought to himself.

Now that he was acting on his own, yeah, sure, maybe that alternative delivery mechanism might be the better way to go. Once he had his first drone trained up and ready for use.

Winston watched through the clear plastic as the tiny machines did their work. Over the next half hour, they converted the fingernail as well as the neutral feedstock matter in the vial into copies of themselves, keyed to this specific target’s DNA and harmless to anyone else. By the time they finished, all that could be seen inside was a fine, dark grey powder.

He packed the vial into its cardboard shipping envelope and geared himself up for a trip to the post office while he still had the energy to make the journey.

Seth

The package was small, barely large enough to hold the shipping label. Holding it in his hand, he found all thoughts of this being a joke or an elaborate fantasy gone, vanished. He closed the door to his room and cut through the packing tape. Inside was a small plastic bottle and a note. He looked at the bottle first. It contained a small quantity of some sort of sand, dark grey rather than tan in color. He tipped it around and decided from the way it moved that, no, it was finer than sand, it was more like a powder.

Heart starting to beat a bit harder, he unfolded the note.

Seth:

As I said in earlier messages, this is not a game. This is for real. If you are serious about what you claim to be looking for, I can provide it: absolute, total control over your entire life. I will control not only where you go and what you do, but also what you see. What you hear. What you feel. Every aspect of your life, down to the smallest, will be Mine to command.

If this appeals, then your next step is simple. Open the vial and ingest the contents. It does not matter how. You can stir the powder into a glass of water, or sprinkle it over food, or pour it directly onto your tongue. You can even lay it out in lines on the table and snort it into your nose.

If you do this, expect to develop mild flu-like symptoms over the next two days: fever, muscle aches, tiredness. These symptoms will peak about 18-24 hours after ingesting the powder and then ease after that. Plan to stay home and rest as if you had a cold. To speed your recovery, drink plenty of liquid during this time, and eat as much as your appetite can handle. Ingest all of the powder. Using less than the full dose will prolong the period of discomfort.

I will get in touch with you on the third day. Some time after that, I will arrange for you to travel to Me, where you will begin your new life.

Only you can decide if you are ready to take the next step, but know this: if you do decide to move forward, it will be the last decision you will ever have to make. After this, I will make all the decisions for you. You will not have to trouble yourself ever again with the responsibilities, obligations, and difficulties of navigating this chaotic world. I will provide for all your needs. And in exchange, you will serve Me.

Not everyone can handle such a life, but for those few who are called to it, there is no better way to live.

Are you truly, seriously, earnestly looking to be erased?

I can fulfill your dream.

ErasureTop

Oh man, if Seth had been reading these words on his screen, his dick would be throbbingly hard and ready to explode! But somehow, having them on paper made it feel real and once again, he found himself wondering if this was maybe just a bit too real. More real than he could handle.

That powder… it could be anything. A drug, a disease, who could say? The fact that it would make him sick? That was scary stuff. Although it said only mild flu-like symptoms, so maybe that wasn’t so scary. But then the whole “last decision you’ll ever make” thing… that was! Was such a life what he really wanted? It was a hot, hot idea, thinking about handing total control over to a stranger who would use him and abuse him. But… full-time? Possibly forever?

And yet… that was exactly what he craved. To hand control to someone else. And yielding control meant accepting whatever his Master decided to do to him. He had always imagined that would be things like handcuffs, floggings, constrictive bondage, that sort of thing. But total control meant exactly that: total control. No say over his own life, just acceptance of what was to be. Eat what he is given, go where he is commanded, do as he is told. Don’t think, just obey.

In that sense, maybe this first assignment was a test? The Master knew nothing about Seth and was probably wondering: was Seth the sort of sub who would accept his Master’s will without question? Or was he the type of sub who liked to “top from the bottom,” irritating his Master with whiny, pestering demands? Whether Seth chose to take the powder, and how he did it, would answer those questions.

Seth, likewise, knew next to nothing about the Master. Was he a man that Seth could trust? There was no way to find out. He could ask, but he would learn nothing more from another exchange of messages than he already knew.

Seth resolved to not take any action today, but to instead think about it, sleep on it, and decide in the morning. ErasureTop was right about one thing for sure: making decisions was hard work! It was tempting to think of not having to worry about deciding anything ever again.

He wrote to ErasureTop to say that the package had arrived and that he was going to take some time to wrap things up, then take the powder tomorrow. The Master saw right through his carefully-worded evasions and replied with this:

I understand that you are reluctant. Take as long as a week to decide. After that the powder will lose its potency. I will know if you accept My offer. If you don’t, I wish you well. Either way, do not contact Me by this means again. If things are to proceed, I will reach out to you.

That was the most confusing of all. How would the Master know from so far away whether Seth ate the powder? He rolled the idea around in his head for the rest of the day right up until he was in bed trying to fall asleep and could not imagine any possible answer.

Winston

Another trip to another doctor, this time a civilian one. He had told the medics on base that now that he was no longer active duty, he wanted to transition to some place closer to where he lived and not have to make the trip to the base for care. They tried to talk him out of it, of course, given the highly-classified nature of the reason for his condition, but they couldn’t stop him. As far as they were concerned, the reason for the condition had been flushed down the drainpipes as so much inert grey dust, and so the most they could do was threaten Winston with horrific penalties if he breathed a word about the program he had been involved in. As if anyone would believe him if he did. But he had long ago signed documents and sworn up and down that he knew how to keep a secret. They had him sign more, and then they relented.

Winston did indeed know how to keep a secret. For example, he was keeping a secret right at that very moment – the secret of what had actually happened at his previous visit to the clinic at Camp Pendleton.

– – – – – – – – –

“It’s an auto-immune response,” Dr. Andrews had said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that your immune system sees the nano-machines as pathogens. This is normal, but in your case your T-cell response is overgeneralized. Because the nanos line themselves up along nerve fibers, your T-cells have been attacking them there. We see this in every participant in the program. There’s attrition in the net, but the nanos reproduce to make up for the ones that are lost.

“However, nerve fibers are largely adjacent to muscle fibers. It’s what allows you to control your muscles. In three of your cohort, and now in you as well, the T-cells have incorrectly identified a protein found in muscle cells as part of the threat. Your immune system is attacking your muscles, slowly breaking them down. That’s why you’re developing weakness and tremors. We won’t know for sure until the bloodwork results come back, but your symptoms are consistent with the others.”

Dr. Andrews paused there. Winston waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, had a good idea why.

“If this were curable, you would have immediately continued with ‘and here’s what we’re going to do to fix that’. But you didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” The doctor didn’t try to put a positive spin on it or offer any platitudes about knowing what Winston was going through, and Winston respected that. They both understood that all missions involved risk. This time, Winston’s number had come up.

“So what’s the plan, then? Is it treatable, at least? What does my future look like?”

“Well, first thing we’re going to do is shut down your net and flush the bots out. Leaving them in will only make the condition progress faster. But you’re right, there is no cure. Your immune system will continue to attack the protein in your muscles. We’ll put you on immunosuppressants, which should slow the progress considerably, but over time you will steadily lose strength and control. Eventually, you will go into respiratory failure. That could be five, ten, twenty years from now, there’s no way to know for sure.”

Winston blinked at that. He was 32 years old now… so: dead at 37, possibly? Slowly, gaspingly, with mind intact in a paralyzed body, not in a quick, bright blaze of glory the way a Marine ought to go.

They spoke more, but it was all details, nothing that would change the outcome. At last Dr. Andrews stood up. “I’ll go initiate the shutdown of the net. I know it’s no consolation, but you are the last Marine who will have to deal with this. The decision was made after the last such diagnosis that if there was one more, the program would be discontinued. Twelve participants with master nets; three, now four cases of auto-immune hyper-response. One among the drone cadre as well. The cost is too high. We’ll be shutting down your net today, but the rest of the participants won’t be far behind.”

He left, closing the door behind him, leaving Winston to ponder the implications.

“Super-soldier” program indeed. Despite dozens of high-grossing comic-book-inspired movies about such heroes, it had been explained to Winston and the rest of his cadre that the problem with super-soldiers was an economic one. Super-soldiers – or in this case, super-Marines – were expensive to create and train, but on a battlefield they were just as easily lost as any other combatant. A land mine, a stray bullet, an incoming rocket… there were any number of ways for a super-soldier to be taken out despite his extraordinary abilities. It was easier, cheaper, and more reliable to throw many regular soldiers at a problem than to create a single high-performance model.

Hence the program: spend the money to create and train the elite team, but don’t send them into danger. Instead, have them operate drones that would take all the risks.

And now, in a dose of irony worthy of an O. Henry story, the risk to the elite team came from the program itself. No wonder they were discontinuing it.

Winston was no fool; none of the program participants were or they wouldn’t be there. He wondered if any of the others had thought of the plan that came to him as he was sitting there in the exam room waiting for the kill signal to be sent that would shut down the net that he had spent so much time training with. It hadn’t happened yet – the right combination of eye movements still brought up the overlay menu in his vision. But it would happen soon, of that he had no doubt. On receipt of the signal, the nano-machines would all quietly disable themselves, shutting themselves down and becoming inert specks of junk to be swept up by Winston’s body’s housekeeping system.

And then where would he be? Left to rot in a corpse that hadn’t gotten around to dying yet. No thanks.

He rose up from the exam chair and slid over to the workstation where the doctor had been sitting. Next to the screen were three vials of blood. Winston’s blood, drawn from his arm by a no-nonsense nurse and waiting to be sent to the lab. He grabbed one of the vials, noted the serial number on it, and looked up that serial number on his chart. There. He changed the status to “damaged / contaminated”, then pocketed the vial and restored the screen to the state it had been in before he started messing with it.

Back in the exam chair, he felt the kill signal when it came. Nothing overt, just a sudden absence of… something. Like white noise or gravity or his heartbeat. Something that had been with him for almost a year was now no longer there. He tried to bring the overlay menu up and of course couldn’t. His net had been disabled. Over the next few days, his body would wash the inert bots out through his kidneys.

But alas, the shutdown of the net wouldn’t stop his immune system from destroying his muscles. As long as that was happening anyway, he might as well build himself a new net using the still-functioning bots in that blood sample. Those hadn’t been shut down by the kill signal because they were disconnected from the net when the signal came. They were mere individual bots with no way to receive the signal. But they were capable of reproducing, and in the right environment – a body composed of cells with Winston’s specific DNA – they could grow into a new net. One that would allow him to continue remote-operating drones. Why should he rely on someone else to care for his failing body when he could do it himself?

When he got home, he took the vial from his pocket, popped the lid, and poured the contents into his mouth. He held the fluid there as long as he could stand to give the nanobots a chance to be absorbed through his tongue and gums without having to face the acid in his stomach. He only had one shot at this, after all, and there were far fewer bots in this vial than in a normal payload, which was designed to cope with attrition from gastric juices. Two minutes was as long as he could take, at which point he swallowed and chased it with water to remove the memory of the taste.

– – – – – – – – –

And so here he was at FirstHealth West, seeing a doctor who had been informed by the charts that had been forwarded from Pendleton that Winston had an auto-immune disease and would need regular doses of three different immunosuppressants. Winston was given to understand that this one appointment needed to be in person, but all future ones could be done remotely. Given the nature of his condition, you see. And that suited Winston just fine.

Cannon

The conference room was a work of art. Mahogany table, expensive wall hangings, tasteful lighting, and an absolutely magnificent view toward the harbor. Sunlight glinted off the placid waters as a backdrop for the meeting now taking place.

These days, very few deals needed to be done in person, but Cannon knew the value of the personal touch when dealing with the wealthy, and he also knew the impact of a setting such as this one. The room said, without speaking, “this firm is successful. Look at that sculpture, look at that painting, look at that table. So expensive, but so understated. Not flamboyantly flaunted. Most of all, look at that view. It takes money and power to bring such things together.” That was exactly the message his clients liked to hear.

Today the client was Gerard Jurgens, whose company owned the Hexfield Tower on Columbia Street and was looking to sell. Deals for large mixed-use properties in prime locations were always complicated to work, and this was no exception. A consortium of three buyers with varying stakes in the proposed purchase; nine long-term leaseholders who wanted to stay put through the change of ownership; and a total of seven banks and financiers to juggle.

It was a lot to wrangle, but this was what Cannon thrived on. Today’s meeting was purportedly to review the terms of the leaseholders of the office and retail space to ensure a smooth transition for them, but the real purpose was face time with Gerard. The lawyers and accountants would pore over leases and spreadsheets and weigh in with their thoughts, but Cannon would be cozying up with Gerard – not in a gay way, of course – to assure him that Cannon was looking out for him and his company’s interests, that Cannon’s very top priority was to see that Gerard and his fellow stakeholders got the highest price possible for the property. Like the room, he would convey the message without saying those specific words.

And then tomorrow he would be meeting with two of the three buyers here in this same conference room to assure them that Cannon’s very top priority was to see that they paid the lowest price possible for the property.

Ah, it was a hell of a job! And as the sun washed the Pacific with its golden rays, Cannon basked in his own glow of being a hell of a player at it.

Seth

The powder was waiting for him when he awoke, still no surer of what to do than when he had gone to bed. A night of fitful sleep, never able to get comfortable or fully doze off, had left him in a cranky mood. The day did not improve from there.

One of his housemates had – again – eaten all of Seth’s cereal, which meant a walk to the Walmart if he wanted to eat. He dug up some stale crackers and ate those instead, deciding to save the walk for later when there was a chance that the sun would provide a little bit of warmth on this frigid day. There was one vote in favor of San Diego, at least.

Another was this: Seth had just enough to cover his share of the next rent payment… but only if he didn’t spend it on anything else. Like, for instance, cereal. Well, screw that, a guy had to eat. And so, when the sun had risen high enough cast its weak rays into the street, Seth set out.

The Walmart was not far from the Chevy dealer he had just been laid off from. In fact, he had to pass it to get there. Previously, that had made grocery shopping easy since he could pick up supplies after work and then catch a ride home with one of the guys. Not today. Today it was a slow walk through icy streets. Crossing 23rd Street was particularly dicey: four lanes of fast-moving cars driven by people with Places To Go and Things To Do who may or may not glance up from their phones long enough to notice Seth’s existence.

And then walking past the Chevy place he could almost hear the scornful laughter from his still-employed former colleagues. He knew it was most likely his imagination – why would any of them waste time looking out from the warm showroom at the miserable dude stumbling down the street outside? Still, he couldn’t decide which would be worse: their derision or their pity. Then he decided that being ignored by them was probably worst of all. As far as they were concerned, he was gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

At Walmart, he was torn between buying just what he needed for the next day or stocking up with more, knowing that if he only bought a little bit, he would have more money left but would need to repeat the walk again in a day or two. His mood growing steadily fouler, he decided to buy extra. If he did go through with this plan, he would need food, according to what ErasureTop had said. Fine then, he would get food, as much as he could reasonably carry home. And if he left town, there would be no need for rent money, right?

The walk home was harder with the awkward bags to carry and when he got there he left nothing in the kitchen but instead brought it all upstairs to his room. No one else was home at the moment, but there was no way he was going to lose any more food to whoever had been taking it. Seth pulled the vial out from his underwear drawer where he had stashed it and realized that without ever deciding, he had, in fact, decided. There was nothing for him here, nothing but struggle and failure. His departure from this life to begin another would leave no trace, not even a Seth-shaped hole. In a sense, he had already been erased. No reason to delay the real thing.

He popped the top off the vial, tipped his head back, and poured the contents straight onto his tongue. Unsurprisingly, it tasted metallic, sort of like the way a battery tasted back when he was a kid stupidly exchanging dares with friends to lick the terminals of a 9-volt. The texture was grainy and sandlike. He washed it down with some water and swirled it around to get all the powder out of the crevices of his mouth, then had some cereal straight from the box.

After that: nothing. Seth wasn’t sure what he had expected to happen, but “nothing” wasn’t it. Shouldn’t there be something more? Anything? But no, just the lingering aftertaste of metal.

He tried very hard, and almost succeeded, to not think about what he would do if this turned out to be yet another disappointment.

Winston

There had been no way to know if his attempt at self-reinfection had succeeded. Some number of live nano-machines had gotten into his system and would start to reproduce. Meanwhile, his immune system would attempt to disable them and flush them out along with the millions of dead bots. It would be a race to see which would win out. There would be no flu-like symptoms because for him this infection was a known threat, not something new. Either the bots would reproduce fast enough to re-establish a net parallel to his nervous system, or they would be killed off and nothing would happen. Winston wouldn’t know until the net came online, if it did.

And of course, the first thing the net would do would be to reach out to base to attempt to establish a link to command. Which would be exactly wrong for Winston’s plan. To head off that possibility, he temporarily converted his apartment into an isolation room, a Faraday cage electronically shielded from the outside world. On his way home from Camp Pendleton, he stopped at a Vons, went to the food storage aisle, and bought every roll of aluminum foil they had. Then he bought out a second store’s supply, and then a third, picking up two weeks’ worth of frozen meals as well.

He spent the rest of the day and some of the next sealing up his apartment by lining it with sheets of foil. Walls, floor, ceiling, windows, door, everything. By the time he had finished, he had used every bit of foil he had purchased, double-coating the bedroom where he would be spending most of his time. He figured two weeks would be enough. Either the net would form in that time or it would never form and his plan would wither on the vine. He recognized that he was likely to go a bit stir-crazy camping in two rooms for that long, particularly with no internet or cell service and so he downloaded movies and books and video games for offline use, and added a deck of cards to the stash from the last Vons stop.

By the time he finished, his apartment looked as if it belonged to the nuttiest of tin-hat-wearing alien-abduction-believing conspiracy theorists, but it worked: his phone reported no signal from anywhere in the place. And so he settled in to wait.

Six days was all it took, not even half of what he had been planning for. At 0615 hours on the morning of the sixth day while Winston was sound asleep, the net came up and began searching for home base, which it promptly found, or rather, it found the substitute that Winston had set up. During the long months of training, it had been inevitable that Winston’s cadre had been in contact with the IT team managing the software end. Thoughts were exchanged, pranks were pulled, the usual games of inter-Marine one-upmanship were played. End result: Winston and at least a few of the other guys knew how to create decoy base servers using a PC and a wifi hub. His net found the decoy and accepted it as the real thing without hesitation.

An hour and a half later, Winston awoke to see the gentle pale “ready” icon hovering in his vision. A huge smile crept over his face and his fist emerged from the sheets to pump victoriously in the air. Minutes later his fingers were tapping at the PC’s keyboard. He took the net through its initial setup routine, assigning it a new randomly-generated 256-bit kill signal in case the need ever arose (which he stored on a slip of paper, not on a device), then instructed the net to go into stealth mode. That meant the net would consider itself to be in hostile territory and no longer attempt to connect with base. Winston told it to only accept connections from this trusted wifi hub – his decoy – and otherwise operate independently.

Later he would teach the net how to piggyback encrypted signals over the civilian 7G networks, remaining out of sight of the snoops at Pendleton, who probably weren’t even looking for him anyway. For the moment, he could remove the fucking tinfoil walls that had been slowly driving him insane and leave the building for a change. Getting out would do him a world of good and serve another purpose as well: his new net needed to learn from scratch how his body moved.

The disease was still in its early stages; his gait was steady but his stamina was not what it once was, so he contented himself with a walk rather than a run north to Balboa Park, where he ambled around enjoying the feel of the sunshine on his skin, the power of the muscles in his legs, the smell of the dried leaves and needles crunching beneath his feet. Soon enough, such an experience would not be possible for him.

Not in this body, at least.

Seth

The first feeling of illness came on that evening: a slight headache that steadily grew worse as night came on, chills not helped by the cold draft slipping in through the poorly-insulated window, a general achiness all over his body. Exactly as ErasureTop had said to expect. Seth followed the other instructions as best he could, eating from his supply of Walmart purchases and keeping a steady flow of water moving into his mouth. As a result, he had to make bathroom trips every hour or so, which led to a second consecutive night of troubled sleep.

It never got too bad, though, just as ErasureTop had said. Just a mild case of the flu. A good excuse to sit in his room and play video games, not that he needed the excuse. As the next morning progressed, Seth started feeling better and by noon was tired of being cooped up in his room. He emerged and wandered around the house, but the falling sleet made the idea of venturing outside too unpleasant. Instead he roamed about the house on edge, waiting for whatever was going to happen, to happen. Three days, the note had said, or rather “on the third day” which meant today was either the first or second day depending on how you counted. Either way, too soon. Maybe tomorrow. Or the day after.

Waiting sucks. Especially when you’re not sure what you’re waiting for.

No message came from ErasureTop that day or the next, though Seth checked the site often, wanting to send a message to the Master but not daring to since he had been given clear instructions. He played more games instead, numbing his racing brain by arranging colored blocks into patterns on the screen until they evanesced away in a shower of merry sparkles. He enjoyed these kinds of games but was never particularly good at them. Often a match that he thought should disappear stubbornly refused to do so. But the activity passed the time.

Then, seventy-two hours and thirty-one minutes after he swallowed the powder, sitting in from of his gaming console, he got his answer in the form of an unusual sound in his ear. At first he thought it was something from the game, but that didn’t really fit; the sound didn’t seem to be coming from there. Next he thought perhaps a mosquito had somehow gotten in the room but: in January? He paused the game and listened and the noise came again, lower in pitch this time and still very faint. A short while later it repeated, a little bit louder, and this time it almost sounded like words. Seth sat absolutely still and listened.

The next time the sound came it was louder yet and very obviously words, clear and crisp. “Seth, if you can hear me, cough three times.”

The voice was appeared to be coming from someone standing directly behind his right ear. He leaned away to his left and turned his head only to see that no one was there. Of course there was no one there – he hadn’t been that caught up in the game. The voice repeated the instruction and at last Seth caught on to what was happening. This was the other means of communication that ErasureTop had meant!

He took in a breath and let out three brief coughs. The voice by his ear replied right away. “Good. You can hear and understand me. If you can speak freely, say so. If not, cough twice more.”

Interesting. The Master could put words into his ear, but could not see him… no, of course he couldn’t see Seth, that should be obvious, but then… how were the words reaching him?

“I… Sir, I can speak freely, Sir. I’m alone, there’s no one else here.” It felt strange talking to an empty room, but then again, the room wasn’t really empty if the Master could hear him, was it?

“Very good.” The voice was deep and rich, the auditory equivalent of a tumbler of dark red-brown brandy, and Seth’s mind couldn’t help imagining what the man behind such a voice must look like. “How’s the volume? Loud enough to hear but not be uncomfortable?”

“Uh… yes, Sir. The volume is fine.”

“Good. To answer what will almost certainly be your first question, the powder you swallowed contained technology that will eventually let me take charge of your life as I told you I would. It’s called a drone net and right now it is still in its earliest stages of coming into being. The details of how it works need not concern you. What concerns you is this. For now, I can generate sounds in your ear that only you can hear, and I can hear whatever sounds you hear, so in order to communicate with me, you need to speak out loud. With time, I will be able to see through your eyes, feel through your fingers, taste through your tongue. Eventually I will be able to issue commands to your body so that I can move you as I wish. The whole process will take about six weeks. Are you following me so far?”

“I… I think so, Sir.”

“Do you have any questions?”

Did he! “How… how is this possible? Sir?” he said to the air.

“As I said, the details of how it works are not your concern. All you need to know is that the drone net is robust and sturdy. You will not damage it through carelessness or otherwise, so continue to eat, sleep, exercise, and bathe as you normally would until I instruct you otherwise. Communication takes place through cell and wifi networks so if you are ever in a no-signal area, you may lose contact with me. If that happens, contact will be restored whenever a network becomes available.”

Oh… that meant that if he ever changed his mind about this… and let’s face it, this was some seriously spooky shit going on right now… he could make it stop by… no! Don’t think like that! What if the Master could read his thoughts and the very first thought Seth had was how to get away from Him?!?

“Thank you, Sir,” he said, hoping he sounded adequately obedient.

“Next, three demonstrations. The drone net, while still young, is already capable of certain functionality that you will need to become accustomed to. Be assured: none of the demonstrations that are about to take place will harm you. The first is called ‘blackout’. You will find that you cannot see and cannot hear, but the rest of your body is yours to control. In a few moments, I am going to put you in blackout for a duration of one minute. After that, your eyes and ears will resume working as they always have. During blackout you are free to move around and make noise as you wish to test the effect, but I suggest you sit or lie down so you don’t fall over while in blackout. Any questions before I begin?”

Turn off Seth’s eyes and ears? That was possible?

“Um… I don’t think so, Sir.”

“All right, then. Are you are sitting or lying down?”

“Sitting, Sir.”

“Okay. Blackout in three… two… one…”

Seth’s world went away. There was no light, no sound, not even the buzz of white noise from the movement of blood through his ears. He reached up to touch his face, half expecting it to not even be there but his fingers found it right where it always was. He felt his eyelids flick shut as his fingertip brushed the lashes, but it made no difference to the complete blackness he was seeing. Eyes open, eyes shut, the view didn’t change. Moving to his ears, he touched the outsides and felt his fingers against the folded surfaces, but heard not a thing from the contact. Testing his voice, he found the same was true. He could feel his throat vibrating as he uttered an atonal “ah” sound, but no sound reached him. It was extremely disorienting and he was glad to have been seated during this experience; the Master was right, he would very likely have fallen over.

“… and done. How did you hold up?”

Seth blinked at the sudden return of light and sound, the perfectly ordinary view of his room where this impossible experience was taking place. “Uh… I… that was fuckin’ weird… oh, sorry, Sir! I guess okay?”

“It’s disorienting at first, but with repetition it will become familiar.”

Repetition? Fuck!!!

“Blackout is essential because there are times when I will be using your body in places or around people that do not concern you, and the most effective way to ensure you don’t trouble your mind with unnecessary sights and sounds is to prevent you from seeing and hearing them. Most often I will only need to turn off your eyes, while leaving your ears available to hear my instructions. But sometimes full blackout will be necessary.”

Oh man, oh man… this was no joke, this man could turn off Seth’s fucking eyes whenever he wanted and Seth couldn’t do a thing to stop him!

“Now, the second demonstration is called ‘ride-along’. In ride-along mode, you will be able to see and hear – all your senses will work as normal – but you will be unable to move. Once the net is fully developed, I will be moving for you, but that is not yet possible. In today’s demonstration, none of your voluntary muscles will obey you. They will go limp, and so you need to be lying down. Ask questions if you have any, or go lie down and tell me when you are in position.”

Seth was sure he should be asking more but this was starting to get overwhelming and his mind wasn’t keeping up, so he got out of the chair and went to lie down on his bed. He took a few deep breaths to steady his nerves and then said “ready, Sir.”

“Okay. This demonstration will last for only half a minute because during this time, you will not be able to breathe. Later, I will be able to breathe for you but that is not yet possible. Your heart will continue to beat, but your lungs will not work, so we will keep the demonstration short. When you are ready, tell me, and as I count down, push a deep breath out, then take one in.”

Okay, if blackout was disturbing, this was scary. Seth could feel his heart beating faster in his chest and tried to will himself to be calm. “Sir? Could we… would it be possible to go for ten seconds rather than thirty for this first time?”

“No. Just relax; you’ll be fine. Now, deep breath out… and in… and three… two…”

Seth found he had to swallow, which delayed his outgoing breath, which made him gasp and try to gulp in as much air as he could as the numbers flew by all too quickly.

“one… now.”

The air in his chest began seeping out of his slack mouth and nose as his chest sank, no longer held open by the muscles of his ribs and diaphragm. He tried to expel the air so he could breathe fresh in, but exactly as the Master had said, his body refused to respond. Panic really set in then and he flailed around… or tried to because his muscles did not even twitch. He was paralyzed! Even his eyelids refused to close and his eyes stared blankly at the top of the far wall where they happened to be pointed at the time the lockout began. He strained and fought to break the spell but there was nothing he could do. His body refused to obey his commands no matter how he tried to force it to.

Then at last he was unfrozen and his body spasmed on the bed. He drew in a great, shuddering breath and sat up. “And done. A bit tougher than the last one, I would guess.”

Seth fought to control his shaking voice, terrified that at any moment the paralysis would return. “Sir, I… I… I don’t know if I can–”

“You can.” The voice contained only the barest hint of irritation but Seth felt the rebuke as if he had been struck. “You are physically fine just as I said you would be. You had plenty of air and if you had relaxed and accepted it as I told you to, you would have found it much easier. Now, the third demonstration combines the first two and goes a step further. This one is called ‘shutdown’ and it involves the complete disconnection of all of your nerves, both incoming and outgoing. You will not only see and hear nothing, you will feel nothing and as with lockdown, your muscles will not obey your commands. I think you’ll find this easier than the last. With this one, you will feel as if you are floating. Now remain lying down, take a few minutes to calm yourself.”

Remain lying… oh, right, the Master couldn’t see him. Seth lay back down on the bed, trying to calm his racing heart but not entirely succeeding. Any thought of resistance or running away was futile: the Master would shut Seth down wherever he was, whatever he was doing. Far better to be lying safely in bed as instructed then running full-out for the door when it hit.

“Relax… calm thoughts… now… deep breath out… and deep breath in… hold it… three… two… one…”

The world went away again. Just as the Master had said, Seth felt as if he was floating. There was no up, no down, no sensation at all. He was in a starless void, drifting through empty space. But unlike before when he could feel the air slowly leaking out of his lungs and it drove him insane trying to get his body working again, this time there was no reason to worry. It was as if he had stepped outside himself for a moment. His body would be there waiting for him when he returned. For the time being, he was content to just float. He drifted, contemplating the inky emptiness and marveling at the absence of any sound, indeed any sensation at all.

Then, abruptly, he was back. There was no gasping for breath this time. His body simply resumed breathing naturally as if he had never been away from it.

“Easier that time?” the Master asked in his ear.

“Sir. Yes, Sir.”

“Good. There will be more training to come, but this was a good start. You did well, boy, but you need to work on believing what I tell you. Your panic was unnecessary. I told you what to expect. This will go easier on you if you believe what I tell you and accept it. Clear?”

“Yes, Sir. Clear, Sir.”

“Good. Now, how old are you?”

“Twenty-two, Sir.”

“How soon can you be ready to come to San Diego?”

Seth was a bit surprised at this question. “Um… I hadn’t thought about it, Sir. I don’t… well… there’s nothing really keeping me here, so…”

“A job to give notice at?”

“No, Sir. No job.”

“A lease to get out of?” The questions were coming faster than Seth could comfortably process, and his replies sounded slow and stalled compared to ErasureTop’s rapid words.

“No, Sir. It’s month to month and I pay one of the other tenants, who pays the landlord.”

“Car or other property to sell?”

Right. As if. “No, Sir.”

“Can you get to Omaha? There is no Greyhound service to Fremont; that’s their nearest location.”

“Yes, Sir. I have a friend who lives there. He can give me a ride.”

“A friend. Someone who will miss you? Is there anyone else? Family, boyfriend?”

Again: as if. “No, Sir. This isn’t a close friend, just someone I went to school with. And there’s no one else I’m close to.” Certainly not his family, who he never needed to see or hear from again.

“Well, well. This is going to go very smoothly, then. Tell me, boy, are you ready to start your new life?”

“Well, Sir, this is not at all what I expected… I have no idea how you’re talking to me or how you made me feel the things you did… but… I have nothing here. I am nothing here. I might as well be nothing… no. I would be honored if I could be nothing with a purpose. To be nothing in service to you, Sir.” Seth had never, ever said such words out loud, and would probably be too nervous to say them to ErasureTop in person, but somehow saying them to a disembodied presence felt okay. More than okay, it felt right. It was downright liberating to admit it out loud.

“Good boy,” the voice said. “I like what I’ve heard so far. We’ll see how things progress. For now, I accept you into my service. Plan to leave for Omaha in twelve days, on January 29. The bus leaves at 9:15 PM, so be at the bus station by 8:30. We’ll discuss more travel details later. I will talk with you again this time tomorrow. Until then, Seth.”

“Goodbye, Sir. And thank you!”

There was no reply.

Winston

Not bad. Not bad at all for a first session. The very first thing a net – whether master or drone – did as it formed was to seek out and line up along its host’s nerve cells, forming a parallel nervous system adjacent to the biological one. The second thing a drone net did was passively look for wireless signals, stealthily, quietly, acting like any other cell phone until it received a ping from the master net that had spawned it, then communicating only with that net until instructed otherwise. Safely out of sight of the prying eyes at Pendleton, if there was anyone left watching for signals from Mobile Human Tele-operational Command, Intelligence, and Control (a name that no one at all used; the much shorter but informal term “Manrider Program” was universally preferred).

At this stage of its development, Seth’s net wasn’t a very useful one. Pretty much all it was capable of so far were the tricks Winston had demonstrated, which were simple on-off switches. The bots could either allow the host’s nerve signals to pass unimpeded, or else stop them before they reached his brain. Or before they left his brain, depending on which direction the signals were going.

Simple though the mechanism was, the effect was substantial, as Seth had learned. But for real control, the net needed to do more than be a light switch. It needed to learn what the nerve signals meant. What signal meant “heat is detected”? What signal meant “contract the triceps”? What signal – or, more accurately, what combination of signals because real life involved myriad nerve cells all firing in unison – meant “jump up and pluck the blue ball from the ten different-colored balls hanging overhead and land gracefully on your feet”? That sort of complex interaction involved billions of trillions of combinations.

One of the Manrider Program trainers had explained why: exponentiation. Each nerve cell was a simple thing. It was either firing or it wasn’t at any given moment. A binary switch, on or off. Seth’s net had matured enough that it could identify the nerves associated with vision, hearing, and muscle control and set them to off – easy. Far more complicated was the fact that in a functioning body, those nerves were all either on or off in varying combinations. If there were such a thing as a body with only ten nerve cells, that meant 2¹⁰ possible combinations: more than a thousand. And the numbers climbed faster with every additional nerve cell. A body with a hundred nerve cells would have 2¹⁰⁰ combinations, a number with more than thirty digits. The actual number of nerves in a human body was far, far larger than that, but huge as that number was, it was an insignificant fraction compared to the exponentially larger number of combinations of those cells. All of which only described the body’s state at one moment in time; a moment later, the nerves were all on or off in a completely different configuration.

Not all the combinations made sense, and in fact a living body only made use of a tiny subset of the possible combinations. The rest were effectively static. Noise. The net’s next job was to learn what combinations Seth’s unique body used and what those combinations meant on a larger scale. As it learned those, it could coordinate with Winston’s own net, mapping concepts like “touch my own nose” or “walk without falling over” from one net to the other.

The process was not fast. It took around six to eight weeks for a master / drone pair to reach the point where the master could operate the drone with a reasonable degree of accuracy. That contributed to the demise of the program as well: in the world of espionage, it made sense to lay deep, long-range plans, but on the battlefield, six weeks was an eternity. Six to eight weeks to spin up a new drone was far too slow to make a difference. Just one more factor bringing the program to a halt.

Winston was particularly looking forward to when vision transfer came online, which would happen in rough form in about three weeks and steadily improve from there. Sound was easy – the bots in Seth’s eardrum could accurately report the vibrations they were receiving, and also generate vibrations themselves. This allowed Winston to speak to Seth and hear Seth’s spoken replies. But vision… ah, that would be a dramatic step up when he could see through his drone’s eyes. Fully-functional sight would come at the end of the process, six to eight weeks away. And then right around the same time, the real prize: Winston would be able to command Seth’s body as if it were his own! That would make the long weeks of waiting worthwhile!

Of course, between now and then there would be a lot of work. Mapping one nerve net to another involved a lot of trial and error, feedback and repetition. Learning to walk a drone was not too different from learning to walk after a stroke. Another reason why the program failed to be a cost-effective one – the process could not be rushed and could not be transferred. Each master-drone combination had to go through the same learning curve.

But man, the reward for the effort he was about to put in would be worth every drop of sweat it required.

Seth

By nightfall, Seth was half-convinced he had dreamed the whole thing. His body didn’t feel any different and the few times that he called out to the Master, there was no reply. After the fourth attempt, he realized what an idiot he was being: the Master would contact him when He wanted to, not on Seth’s whim. Seth’s role was to wait. A stored object that would be removed from the shelf when the Master had need of it.

Oh god, this was actually real, it was actually happening. Somehow, this man, this Master, had the power to reach into Seth’s head, to put words in his ear and switch him on and off like a light bulb. And there was more to come? It was terrifying and yet very, very appealing. No more agony of having to do things, just submit, accept, and obey.

He looked up bus routes from Omaha to San Diego. It looked like he would be heading west to Denver, then turning southward to Las Vegas and beyond. The thought of leaving this stifling town forever was absolutely thrilling, and yet also terrifying. The furthest he had ever been from Fremont was his grandparents’ farm in Iowa; January 29 seemed at once both too far away and much too close. He slept, woke, slept again, seeing no need to get out of the warm blankets until almost noon. He ate, peed, and fidgeted with nervous energy awaiting the next contact.

It came in early afternoon, exactly when the Master had said he would “call”. As before, the voice appeared in his ear sounding as if the speaker was right next to him, but of course there was only air.

“Hello, Seth. If you can you speak freely, say so. Cough twice if not.”

“Hello, Sir. I can speak.”

“Good. I have instructions for you. Before we get to that, let’s repeat yesterday’s exercises. Blackout first. Tell me when you’re sitting or lying so you don’t fall over.”

Wow, getting straight into it! Seth lay down on his bed, figuring the next one would require that. “Two minutes this time.” As before, Seth’s eyes and ears stopped working. Knowing more what to expect, he experimented a bit more, moving his hands around, sitting up, even daring to stand up. His balance was completely off; apparently the blackout shut down not only sound but also his inner ear’s sense of up and down, so he held onto the edge of the bed while upright and only stayed that way for a few seconds before easing himself back down. The blackness and silence was absolute in a way that no quiet night could ever be.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it ended. Light and noise came flooding back. They repeated the ride-along and shutdown sequences, still only thirty seconds each because the Master couldn’t control Seth’s breathing yet. Ride-along was still kind of alarming to experience, but it went much better this second time now that he knew what to expect. And the shutdown was once again like floating away into space.

“Now, I have exercises for you to do. Go find the wikipedia article for Aesop’s fable ‘The North Wind And The Sun’.” It took only a few moments. “Scroll to the bottom and read the text aloud. The English version, not the phonetic transcription.”

Seth did so, carefully pronouncing the words. “The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along…”

“Again,” the Master commanded when he had finished. Seth dutifully read through it a second time.

“Good. I want you to recite that out loud ten times each day. I don’t need you to memorize it, I just need you to say it out loud. Five times in the morning, five times at night. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Now, some physical exercises. Nothing strenuous.” The Master then took Seth through a variety of poses, stretching up to the ceiling, bending down to the floor, twisting his hips and torso and neck as far left as they could go, then as far to the right. Jumping jacks, pushups, squats. There were more unusual requests too, that he start with his arm stretched horizontally out to the side, then bend his elbow to bring his finger in and touch his nose. Stick his tongue out as far as it would go. Lift his knee up to touch his chin.

“For now, the specifics don’t matter much. The point is: several times each day until you catch that bus, I want you to take your body through a wide range of motions. At least four times. Five or six would be better, and vary it up. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good. Any questions for me?”

This time Seth had had time to prepare. “Yes, Sir. Sir, what will I be doing for you when I get there? What will a typical day be like?”

“Your typical day will be spent in service to me. I will provide you with a place to live. I will help you get a job that will serve two purposes: bringing in some income to cover the expense of feeding and housing you, and keeping your body in the condition I expect of it. You will spend time in shutdown mode whenever I want to use your body for my own purposes. Occasionally, when it amuses me to do so, I may allow you to watch and listen in ride-along mode, but these occasions will probably be rare. You will spend time in bondage and providing me with sexual service. The eventual goal, as we discussed, is your complete erasure, where you give yourself over to me completely, but you are not ready for that yet and it will take time to get there. You will find that the more you serve me, the more you will want to serve me, and it will feel natural to give up more and more of yourself. In time. In the early stages, you will have time off, whole days to yourself for R&R. Over time, the freedom will be less and less, because you will find that you don’t want it.”

There was a brief pause. Seth wondered if he should say something, but before he could, the voice continued.

“Now, travel arrangements. I am ordering your bus ticket today. What is your email address and phone number?” Seth recited both out loud. “Good. I’ll place the order using that contact information. Be ready to check your email.”

Seth brought up his email app and sat, waiting. Several minutes went by and he thought ErasureTop might have left for good, but no, it was just taking some time to place the order for the tickets. Soon enough the voice sounded in his ear once more. “All right, order placed. Let me know when you get the confirmation message.”

“It’s already here, Sir.”

“Good. I’m sending one more thing for you to review. It is a summary of the possible modes that your net can operate in. You don’t have to study or memorize this, it’s just for your information. Now, what are your instructions?”

“Be at the bus station by 8:30 on the 29th, Sir.”

“Ah, yes, correct. But I meant your instructions for your vocal and physical exercises.”

“Oh, sorry, Sir. Recite the fable five times in the morning and five times at night. Stretch and exercise at least four times a day. Is that right, Sir?”

“It is, boy. Go do it. We’ll talk again in a few days.”

Winston

What sort of person voluntarily agreed to erasure? Winston would never, ever understand that sort of mindset. And yet there were obviously plenty of guys out there who wanted to do just that, though it made absolutely no sense to him. This Seth guy was clearly not 100% sold on the idea, and yet he was not protesting or trying to back out.

Well. Winston needed a body. One way or another he was going to get one. Might as well be one whose current owner was okay with being evicted. And if later he wanted to change his mind, deciding that he wasn’t fully okay with the idea? There were ways to be persuasive.

Now it was just a matter of waiting. The passage Seth was reading was one that used all the sounds of the English language. Right now Seth was reading it in a formal, stilted way, but with repetition he would loosen up and his normal, more relaxed way of speaking would come forth. The bots in his larynx and throat and tongue and lips would learn how he formed the shapes that made the sounds. Winston had long ago trained his own net on the same passage. In about a week, right around the time of Seth’s arrival in San Diego, Winston would start trying to mesh the two. The result would be garbled at first, but in a few days the nets should learn how to sync up and then Winston would be able to speak his own words out of Seth’s mouth.

The exercises worked the same way: Seth’s net would learn his body’s motions and responses and Winston could then map his own to them. Over the coming weeks Seth’s body would start to feel more and more natural as the command/feedback loops established themselves. Tell arm to move; arm moves not far enough; adjust; repeat; arm moves too far; adjust; repeat; until at last Winston would be able to operate Seth’s muscles as skillfully as his own.

Until then, he would put Seth through the three practice drills of blackout, ride-along, and shutdown each day until the kid lost his fear of them and no longer reacted with panic at the loss of control of his own body. That would be essential for Winston to be able to step in and take charge.

Seth

January 29, 8:45 PM, the Greyhound bus station in Omaha, just south of the downtown area. Seth could hardly believe he was actually here. Actually doing this. Actually leaving.

All he had with him was a backpack loaded up with food, a water bottle, and clothes. Toothbrush and paste, some soap, a stick of deodorant. His phone. Per ErasureTop’s instructions, he didn’t need anything else.

The bus had arrived earlier and the passengers on it had climbed out to go stretch their legs or get something to eat. Some might be staying in Omaha, though why anyone would want to do that mystified Seth. Most got back on around 9:00 and Seth followed, phone in hand to show the driver his ticket. Then they were off and westward bound.

Seth pulled up the message the Master had sent describing the various modes. The Master had said he didn’t need to memorize it, but the list wasn’t long and it seemed prudent to try. It was a chart describing the two main types of nerves and their operation. Sensory nerves delivered perceptions from the body to the brain, and motor nerves carried instructions from the brain to the body. Inbound and outbound. The chart showed the various combinations that were available when two people were sharing the same set of nerves, and named each one and described how it was used.

Mode Name	Sensory Accessible To	Motor Controlled By	Description
Standby	Drone	Drone	The master is neither perceiving nor controlling the drone.
Shutdown	Master	Master	The master is fully in charge. The drone has neither perception nor control.
Surveillance	Both master and drone	Drone	The drone is in control of the body. The master perceives everything the drone does.
Ride-along	Both master and drone	Master	The master is in control of the body. The drone perceives everything the master does.

“Blackout” was just a limited version of shutdown where only the eyes and ears were affected. There were other combinations, but they made no sense. Like, if either the master or the drone was in charge of moving but not seeing, that was a recipe for disaster. If both drone and master had motor control, that would cause a mess too.

“Surveillance mode” was the only one the Master hadn’t mentioned yet, but it made total sense. The Master could spy on him, seeing and hearing and feeling everything Seth did, and Seth would never know it. That was definitely something to keep in mind as he set out on his new life.

Somewhere on I-80, the Master spoke into his ear again. “You’re on your way, I see.”

Seth didn’t have a neighbor beside him, but the seat behind was occupied and he wasn’t sure how he was going to speak to ErasureTop without looking like a lunatic. But he couldn’t just ignore his Master! Maybe if he talked softly, his voice would still carry to his–

He must have taken too long. “Hey, Seth, you asleep? Wake up, boy.”

Ah! The code from his first few sessions! He coughed twice.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. Look, if you need an excuse to talk, take your phone out and hold it up to your ear. Damn, boy. Guess you really do need me to take charge of things for you.”

Seth felt his face flush with embarrassment. How obvious. He pulled his phone out and held it up to the side of his head. “I’m sorry, Sir.”

“GPS says you’re coming up on Kearney, Nebraska, heading west at eighty miles an hour. Good boy. I’m mostly going to ignore you for this trip. As entertaining as it would be to make you do humiliating things in public, the point of this mission is to deliver you to the destination. Entertainment has to take a back seat to that. Most important: you’ve got transfers to make, one in Denver, one in Las Vegas, and one in LA. You think you can manage to handle those?”

“Yes, Sir. You can count on me, Sir.” What else was he going to say? “No, do it for me?” ErasureTop had already made – and paid for – the trip arrangements. If Seth couldn’t even manage to get himself from one bus to another, then he would be a worthless slave indeed.

“Good. Still, I’m going to check in at the relevant times. You arrive in Denver at oh-six-thirty and the next bus leaves at 11:45. That’s five hours of down time, plenty of time to get food, walk around, stretch your legs. The other two transfers have tighter timelines, only 45 to 50 minutes. Should be fine, but stay ready. Do your eating and pissing, then get to the bus early and wait in the vicinity until you can board. Understood?”

“Understood, Sir.”

“One more thing. I want you to be able to contact me if an emergency arises. This is only for emergencies. Do not contact me because you’ve grown bored with the scenery and feel like chatting. This is for emergencies like ‘someone stole my phone and now I have no ticket for the next bus’.”

“I understand, Sir. I won’t abuse it.”

“To signal me, move your eyes up as high as they will go. Try it now. No, not like that. Don’t move your head, move just your eyes. Roll them upward. Yes. That’s it. While looking up, tap your teeth together three times. Right, yeah, like that. Try it again. Good. If you do that, I will be notified. I may not be able to respond right away, but I will get to you, so don’t keep fucking signaling over and over. Once is enough. Understood?”

“Yes, Sir. For emergencies only.”

“Right. Now a tip: you may want to use this trip to practice dealing with boredom. In my service you’re going to be spending a lot of time waiting. You probably want to learn how to do that patiently, without requiring distraction to keep your brain occupied. This trip is a great opportunity to practice. Just a suggestion.”

“I understand, Sir.”

“Good boy. Now get some sleep. I’ll check in when you’re in Denver.”

Seth put the phone away. He had been playing mindless little games on it up until now, keeping it charged from the handy port in the armrest. But no – the Master wanted him to practice handling boredom, so that is what he would do.

He was asleep within ten minutes.

Winston

The nets were starting to mesh together. Winston didn’t try to send at all, not yet, but he was spending a lot of time practicing receiving. Some of the sensations made no sense; Seth’s net frequently sent signals that Winston’s net didn’t know how to interpret yet. If it was a total no-go, his net ignored it and logged an error, and that was fine. Weirder were the ones where the mapping was close but not quite right, and for these Winston felt some strange sensations indeed. Tickles on the inside of his eyelids, or heavy pressure on his knee, or some weird hybrid sensation of fragrant pink hunger brushing against the back of his hand.

The mapping would improve over time. For now he could get a sense of what his new drone was doing, even if it was only reproduced with perhaps 60% fidelity. Right now the boy was leaning up against the window with something soft, probably his coat, between his head and the glass. Winston could feel the pressure of the seat against his butt even though Winton himself was standing. The sounds of the bus came through clearly, though there was nothing to hear but road noise. No vision yet, that was still a long way off.

Bit by bit. Soon enough his new home would be ready for him.

Seth

Denver was a busy place. Since there was time, Seth made sure to get outside the bus station and go take a look at the mountains in the distance. Up until now, he had only seen mountains in pictures, but there they were sprawling across the western horizon. Soon enough he’d be driving right through them. Hard to imagine being bored with that kind of view to look at!

Finding and boarding the next bus was easy, thankfully, though ErasureTop was there to make sure he did it right. That was reassuring, to know that his Master was looking out for him. Then they were off and climbing.

The view out the window was indeed fascinating. For a few hours. Eventually it paled, as all things do, and he was tempted to pull his phone out for entertainment. He resisted the urge, napped, shifted uncomfortably on the seat, quietly recited his lines – by now he had the Aesop fable memorized – and did what movement exercises he could without disrupting the trip. ErasureTop hadn’t explicitly told him to stop doing his assigned work, but it seemed he was aware that a bus was no place to be lunging around.

It was dark by the time they got to Utah so there was nothing to see outside except stars wheeling overhead. He dozed off and woke, dozed and woke, dozed once more and this time when he woke it was to a dazzling array of garish lights: Las Vegas. He checked his phone – 2 AM, but the city was buzzing as if it was broad daylight. It practically was broad daylight in places. Then they were through the downtown area and night returned, though they passed through smaller glowing islands, satellites of the main glare.

The bus station was in an industrial-looking, no-nonsense part of town away from the gleaming casinos. That was fine – Seth only had 45 minutes to make his transfer, no time to go sight-seeing or gambling. There were slot machines flashing right there in the bus station, though, but Seth was not about to waste his dwindling supply of cash in them, not when he was more than halfway to his goal.

Another bus ride, only six hours this time, though it seemed like half of that was spent driving through the endless sprawl of Los Angeles. Then he was changing buses one last time in the miraculous summer warmth of a January morning in southern California. He almost threw his winter parka into the nearest trash can but decided to keep it. Not because he ever planned to need it again, but because it made a great pillow. ErasureTop once again monitored his transfer and then he was on the last leg of his trip to San Diego, stiff and sore and tired of being cramped up in a seat on a bus, but bouncing with nervous energy at the thought that he was almost there.

Cannon

A minor milestone today, a success worth celebrating. The closure of the deal was still a long way off, scheduled for four months out but these things always ran over, so probably more like six. Still, today he had gotten the last of the commitment of intent documents signed, so all the major players were on board with the plan. Now it was a matter of making sure that nothing fucked up the thousand little parts all working their way through the various legal and financial machines. He had people to see to that stuff, but there were always problems that required Cannon’s personal attention. Always.

Still, those problems were for tomorrow. Tonight was for celebrating, and Esprit was just the girl to celebrate with. She always appreciated the finer things that a man of Cannon’s means could provide, and she always reciprocated enthusiastically. So tonight would be dinner at that trendy new Turkish-Moroccan place in the Gaslamp, then a stroll to Cyela’s for a nightcap soaked in smoky jazz, then back to Cannon’s place. And best of all, Esprit was the kind who would be discreetly gone in the morning. No need for awkward attempts at breakfast conversation.

He straightened his collar, checked his hair and teeth in the mirror (both immaculate, of course), and headed out to wait for her at the restaurant.

Damn, if his life was any more perfect he’d be God!

Seth

“Looks like your bus is about to arrive,” the voice in his ear said. Seth had been too busy watching the scenery go by to pay attention to the approaching end of the trip. Frickin’ palm trees, man! That more than anything told him that he had left his old life behind.

Seth pulled his phone out and held it up to the side of his head. “Looks that way, Sir.”

“You have a bit of a walk ahead of you. Hope you’re ready to stretch your legs after all that time on the bus. Ten blocks east, then ten blocks north. I’ll guide you.”

Seth emerged from the bus, stunned at the sensation of the bright sunshine on his face. Sixty-five degrees! In January! He slung his backpack over one shoulder and carried his totally-useless coat in his other hand. No more need for the phone charade; he tucked it away. The Master directed him across a crowded eight-lane intersection and after that it was just a matter of following the sidewalk. Several short blocks east to a spot where a sign engraved in the pavement at the center of an intersection read “Gaslamp Quarter”, then left after the next block onto Sixth Street. He shifted the backpack from one shoulder to the other each time it started to feel heavy.

The neighborhood was like none Seth had ever been in, full of shops and bars and restaurants he could never possibly afford. As he continued north, the buildings grew slightly shorter but no less rich-looking.

“Cross the freeway, then after the next intersection take the footpath into the park.”

At first Seth thought “crossing the freeway” would mean dodging between barreling tractor-trailers, but it turned out the street he was on passed over the multi-channel river of cars and trucks below. He glanced down at the flowing traffic but didn’t pause lest he make his Master angry at the delay. The footpath was easy enough to find and he followed it for perhaps ten minutes.

“Right here,” said the voice. “See the bench to your front left? Sit there.” Seth complied. “Now it’s lights-out time. I’ll leave your hearing and other senses on but I’m turning your eyes off, so don’t panic.”

“I understand, Sir.” The view of leaves and ground and sky abruptly vanished, replaced with inky blackness. He could still feel the warmth of the winter sunshine on his skin, but could not see a single speck of it. Seth sat and waited, a bit winded from the long walk and grateful for the chance to rest. He found his attention focused on the sounds around him: passing walkers, one with (probably?) a dog; wind rustling through leaves; the steady rush of traffic from the nearby freeway.

Some minutes later he became aware of a presence on the bench beside him. A subtle shift of pressure as a body sat down, a minuscule change in the way sound moved through the air. Seth waited, nerves jangling.

“Hello, Seth. You made it.” The voice was clearly the same as the familiar one that had sounded in his ear this past week, but nevertheless different. Like talking with someone by phone and then later in person. Seth felt tension that he hadn’t even known he was holding in rush out of him all at once. He had arrived!

“Hello, Sir. Yes, Sir.”

“Stand up.” Seth complied, sticking close to the bench so he could know where it was.

“Two steps forward.” Oops. Now he was standing in open space with no reference points.

“Turn around, face me.” Seth did his best to guess where the voice was coming from. There was a pause; the Master was reviewing his acquisition?

“Keep turning. Full circle, slowly.” Seth rotated in place, trying to guess when a full circle was complete.

“That’s it, stop there. Take your shirt off.”

What? “Sir?”

“Your shirt. Take it off.”

“Sir, there are people… they’ll see…”

“So what? Let them… ohhh, I get it. You’re in California now, boy. Gay men are everywhere. Common as weeds. No one cares. Now take off your shirt.”

Seth lifted his T-shirt up over his head and was uncertain what to do with it.

“Toss it here.” He did.

“Hands up behind your head. Lace your fingers together and hold that position.”

His heart starting to beat faster, Seth obeyed. He felt / heard the Master stand up and walk around him, continuing his inspection.

“How old did you say you were?” the Master asked when he had returned to the side Seth was facing. “Seventeen?”

“Twenty-two, Sir.”

“So this is as tall as you’re likely to get. How tall is that?”

“Five foot ten, Sir.” The Master’s voice was coming from somewhere higher up; presumably he was taller, then? Was he disappointed with what he saw?

“Hmm.” There was another pause, then: “Stand up straight. Straight, I said. Spine straight, shoulders back, chest out, chin up, come on, boy! Push your elbows back!”

Seth struggled to comply with each of the rapid-fire orders, but they kept coming. “Spread your feet a bit wider, shoulder-width apart. Suck in that gut. Your head keeps tilting down, I want you looking straight ahead. Eyes open, I know you can’t see with them but keep them open and aimed forward. Back straight, I told you! There. Hold that position.”

Seth strained to not move a single muscle, holding exactly the position he had been instructed to. His breath came in short spurts, a rapid gasp out then a quick refilling of his lungs. The Master kept him there for a minute, perhaps two.

“Bring your hands down to your sides. Goddammit, keep your chin up! Show some fucking pride.”

Seth held that pose for even longer. It was surprisingly strenuous to simply stand still and he had to keep focusing on every body part to make sure it stayed where it should. When the Master’s voice finally came again, it was softer, no longer barking orders.

“When your body belonged to you, you could treat it however you wanted. But your body no longer belongs to you. It belongs to me. I expect you to treat my property with respect. You will not disrespect me by letting my property slouch. You will not disrespect me by letting my property be as flabby and out of shape as it is. How much do you weigh? One eighty, one eighty-five?”

Gulp. “One ninety, Sir.”

“Get down and show me how many pushups you can do.”

Oh, this was going downhill fast. If the Master wanted a guy with a gym body, why pick Seth? He was the wrong choice for sure. He got down on the ground and started to do pushups.

“Back straight, don’t bend your knees. All the way down and all the way back up. Seven… eight… nine…”

Seth couldn’t get all the way up on the tenth rep and instead collapsed to the ground.

“Not even ten. Wow. Stand up, boy.” Seth stood, trying to remember all the details of how to stand properly. He kept waiting for the inevitable corrections to come, but they didn’t. When the Master spoke again, he realized he was not facing the right direction and had no idea whether adjusting his orientation would be seen as respectful of the Master’s property or disrespectful for moving when not instructed to. Then the Master spoke again and suddenly he had other things to think about.

“So. Short, fat, and weak.”

Seth’s heart sank; the words struck him like blows. “Fortunately, two of the three are fixable. We’re going to get your weight down to around 160 and we’re going to bulk up your muscles. Also, we’re going to change your diet. I assume you’ve been fueling my property with crap for the last twenty years. That’s going to change starting right now; the physique will take a bit longer but it’ll get there. For now, I like what I see well enough to continue.”

Oh thank god. Seth was suddenly keenly aware that this first meeting was effectively a job interview. And that he had probably come very close to failing. And that he had no fallback, no plan B. It was either serve ErasureTop or… or… he couldn’t even imagine an alternative. He couldn’t afford a ticket back home, not that there was a reason to go, and he couldn’t afford to live here on his own, and… well. For now, at least, he didn’t have to worry about that. “Thank you, Sir!”

“You’re welcome, boy. Come sit down on the bench; turn a little to your right, then it’s two full steps forward.” Seth shuffled, not trusting himself to stride while blind. “That’s it. I’ve left a sandwich for you. Lean protein, whole grains, vegetables, unsaturated fats. Eat it now or save it for later if you’re not hungry. You can put your shirt on. In about ten minutes I’ll turn your eyes back on, then guide you to where you’ll be staying.”

To where he’d be staying… wouldn’t that be with ErasureTop? He could ask, but… no, better to just obey. “Thank you, Sir,” Seth repeated. “For everything.” He felt the Master stand up and heard his footsteps receding. Soon the sounds of the breeze and the cars swallowed everything else. He put his shirt back on, determining front from back by feel, then opened up the sandwich and took a bite. Strong flavors, unfamiliar flavors. It was hard to tell exactly what he was eating by smell and taste alone, but it sure didn’t seem like something Seth would have chosen for himself from a menu.

Well, that didn’t matter. If this was what the Master wanted him to eat, he would learn to like it. He tucked it away for later and waited for his eyes to turn on.

Winston

Well, not the greatest of bodies, but he’d honestly expected worse. Men with Marine-toned physiques generally did not answer ads saying they wanted to be erased. Seth was pudgy, and he was shorter than Winston would have liked, and that shaggy mop of hair had to go, but all in all, he would do. The height was unfortunate but not a show-stopper. As for the pudginess, that could be remedied. A point in Seth’s favor: only 22 years old. He’d last a good long time, probably longer than Winston himself would. Assuming he didn’t come down with the same disease Winston had, of course.

He felt slightly guilty about not having informed Seth of that risk. There really was no way to rationalize that away, either. No way to justify not saying “oh, by the way, before you suck down that grey powder, you should know that there’s a 30% chance you’ll come down with a fatal and incurable muscle-wasting disease. Just FYI.” From Winston’s perspective, it was a risk worth taking. If Seth proved to be an unsuitable host, he’d simply find another. Seth would probably have a different opinion if he knew.

Best thing to do, then, was hope he never had to know, that Seth was one of the lucky majority so the issue would never come up. Winston would be on the lookout for symptoms, which would start to show between six to twelve months after installation. If that happened, he’d give the kid a painless exit and move on.

“Kid” indeed. Ten years younger than Winston but light years away in terms of… well, everything. Experience. Confidence. Attitude. Probably dozens of skills that Winston had mastered that the kid didn’t even know existed. Winston was practically doing Seth a favor by kicking him out of his life and taking over.

That was the other thing he felt slightly guilty about: the way he was lifting pages straight out of “How To Be An Abusive Boyfriend” and using them on Seth. There was no such book, of course, because genuine abusers knew this stuff instinctively and didn’t need to be taught. But Winston and all his fellow Marines had had to take a course during their training on how to recognize the signs of abusive relationships along with instructions on how to get out of one. But of course, a how-to-recognize guide is effectively also a how-to guide, and Winston was now using those techniques to ensure Seth’s dependency and compliance. Isolate the victim from friends and family, check. Convince the victim he can’t do anything right on his own, check. Ensure that the victim is financially dependent, check. Dish out occasional nuggets of praise and approval so the victim develops a craving for them, check. It was almost embarrassing how easy it was; Seth was ripe for such manipulation.

But it was necessary. Winston would not be able to monitor his drone 24/7. The plan was to have Seth live the boring parts of his life while Winston took over for the good times. That meant making sure his drone would willingly follow his instructions even when Winston wasn’t watching.

Winston paused at a bus stop and stood, pretending to look at his phone as Seth walked toward him following the route Winston had given him. The kid seemed like he was trying not to slouch but old habits are hard to break. He even walked in an awkward lumpy way, as if his own legs didn’t fit him quite right. He approached and then passed by, not paying any attention to Winston, who of course to him was just one more face in the crowd. Winston let him get halfway down the block, then followed.

He continued giving directions via the net interface and watched from a distance as Seth found the right building and went inside. This East Village neighborhood was a study in contrasts: extreme wealth rubbing elbows with folk of much more humble means. The building Seth had entered was one of the humbler ones, nestled right up against the freeway, which kept the rents lower than they would otherwise be for a place this close to downtown.

By a not-at-all-amazing coincidence, Winston just happened to live in that same building. He had gotten a nice payout at the time of his discharge as well as a steady pension income to sustain him during his inevitable decline. He’d invested the payout and used the income from that to fund a second apartment right next door to his own on the eighth floor. His drone would never know it, but he would be living ten feet away from Winston.

Ah, the kid was at the door. Winston subvocalized to the net, which would relay his words to Seth’s ear but filter out the sounds of the city around him. “I’ve programmed the lock to new-tenant mode. Put your thumb on the pad. Roll it gently from side to side, up and down, until it beeps and the light turns green.”

He waited for Seth to reply. It was tricky listening to both the sounds from his own ears as well as the sounds from Seth’s at the same time, but he’d had plenty of practice doing it. Soon the kid’s voice came through, sounding as if it was coming from Winston’s own lips. “Okay, Sir, it beeped.”

“That means it now recognizes you. You’ll unlock the door with your thumb going forward. Go inside and have a look around.”

The apartment wasn’t much. A small bedroom; a slightly larger living-and-kitchen space with a small dining table and chair and a sofa; a tiny bathroom with a stand-up shower stall. His drone wouldn’t need luxuries, just a place to be stored. Hence the main item of furniture in the bedroom: a narrow mattress on the floor… inside a steel-barred cage. He waited for Seth to discover that feature.

“Sir… is all this just for me?” What did he mean “all this”? What sort of cramped hole had he been living in before? Winston thought fast.

“For now, yes, you are the only candidate for erasure. I may expand to more in time but for today, this is your place.” Another nudge to remind him that he was expendable, far from unique. That should encourage him to keep striving to please. Only then did it dawn on Winston what the kid had actually been asking: why wasn’t he staying in Winston’s home? Well, he definitely did not need to know that information.

“Oh. Sir, this is… this is perfect. Thank you.”

Dammit! It would be nice to have visuals online so he would know what the kid was referring to, but that was still weeks away. Had he found the cage? Or was he talking about the place as a whole? Whichever he meant, it was time for a nugget of tenderness.

“You’re welcome, boy. This is where you’ll stay when you’re not working and when I’m not using you. Now, you’ve just had a long trip. Take the rest of today and all of tomorrow to relax. Explore the city. I recommend you get out to the beach. It’s too cold to swim but you can still walk on the sand. Tomorrow I’ll tell you how to take the bus to get there. The day after that we’ll get you started on your duties.”

“Thank you, Sir.” The heartfelt sentiment in his voice was almost too much to take.

Much as Winston would have preferred to start right away, the waiting served several purposes. One was to give the nascent connection between his net and Seth’s time to develop further; the mapping was improving day by day. Another was to let Winston spy on his drone using the net’s growing capabilities to get a better sense of who the kid was and what his strengths and weaknesses were. But the main reason was to give the kid a chance to have some fun, pleasant experiences to remember later, when his life was neither fun nor pleasant any more.

And now Winston needed to get up and into his own apartment. These afternoon hours were the worst and the fatigue was pretty bad; he could barely stay on his feet. Kind of sad that in his weakened state, he still hadn’t had trouble keeping up with the pace that his new body had set. Well, there was time to whip that one into shape even as his own continued to deteriorate.

2 – February

Seth

“Wake up, sunshine,” said the voice in Seth’s ear. “It’s eight o’clock. I let you sleep in since you’re not on duty yet but it’d be a shame to miss the whole day, especially if you want to visit the beach. They’re calling for clouds to roll in this afternoon, might even get some rain, so come on, up you go.”

Seth looked out through the bars of the cage. Light was coming in through the window shade, which was a fairly thin material. The room was mostly empty. Aside from the cage with its cot-sized mattress inside, there were two dressers. A door led to a small closet. One dresser and the closet contained the few items of clothing Seth had brought with him as well as a variety of items that were already there: shirts, shorts, jeans, socks, even underwear, all in a range of sizes. The Master had told him to wear whatever fit and ignore the rest. The other dresser contained a variety of bondage gear, mostly ropes but some chains and leather restraints as well. Seth was looking forward to having those be put to use!

Even with so little furniture, there was not much floor space; the room was small. Still… it was about the size of his childhood bedroom AND there was a whole other larger room as well, so he certainly had no complaints.

“Good morning, Sir.” He swung the door open – it was not locked – and crawled out. The cage was about 24 inches high, but three of those inches were taken up by the mattress. It seemed like it ought to feel cramped but Seth had found the arrangement comforting, even cozy. Like a little den or nest. The door was at the head end so getting in and out was awkward but not difficult. He headed for the bathroom to empty out, then pulled clean clothes on from the collection in the dresser.

Things went downhill a bit from there when the Master instructed him to find eggs for his breakfast in the refrigerator and cook them, whereupon Seth was forced to confess that he didn’t know how to cook, asking for cereal instead. He feared what the Master’s reaction would be to this further revelation of his inadequacy – yesterday his body was deficient, today his skills – but the Master’s response was surprisingly calm, informing him that he would soon learn, and for now to microwave some frozen cooked sausages and make toast.

After that, things looked very much up as he was instructed how to find, buy a ticket for, and board the 901 bus to get to the beach. There was money – actual cash money – in a drawer in the main room, over two hundred dollars! He was to use that for the trip, but return home to eat there. “Beach prices for food are outrageous,” the Master had said. “Better to make your own. And remember how to trigger the emergency signal if you run into trouble.”

“Yes, Sir. I remember.”

The bus ride was way better than the Greyhound trip because it took Seth across a causeway with the boat-speckled water of the bay on either side. Even the walk from where the bus dropped him off to the beach was great, taking him along tidy streets of low-rise homes with bloom-filled yards hemmed in by neat stone walls. But then… the beach itself! Amazing! There must have been a mile of gleaming white sand between the street and the ocean, where the waves were rolling in with languid, gentle curls. He kicked off his shoes and curled his toes in the sand, giggling like a little kid as he walked toward the sea, glancing left, right, up, down, everywhere, trying to take in all the sights and sounds and smells all at once. Gulls overhead and wetsuited surfers and the whoosh of the wind and the scent of salt in the air…

He reached a point where the sand was wet from the surf that had been and gone; it felt cooler under his feet. Further toward the water, and then one of the slow, gentle waves met him and YOW! Cold! The water looked so inviting from afar, but was much chillier than it seemed it ought to be! Still, after the first shock his feet adapted, and while he wasn’t willing to go in any deeper than his knees, he would now forever be able to say he had seen and touched the ocean.

Finally he retreated up the sand a ways, beyond the water’s reach, and began walking westward along the beach, no particular goal in mind, just thrilled to simply exist in this wonderful, marvelous place.

Three hours later, he had found where the beach ended in a long breakwater that stretched off to the left, and watched ships and smaller boats move in and out of the channel beyond, then had returned to his starting point to catch the bus for home. As he waited for it, the Master reached out to him. “Did you enjoy your morning, Seth?”

“Oh. Yes, Sir. Very much, Sir. Thank you so much!”

“Good. I’ve arranged for a delivery for when you get back, some Asian-style chicken and vegetables. We’ll work on your cooking lessons starting tomorrow. For now, continue enjoying your vacation because things won’t always be like this!”

“Yes, Sir.” Seth beamed the whole way back. Fifteen minutes later, the food arrived, and it was excellent, like nothing he had ever tasted before. There was a lot, so he tucked about two-thirds of it away for future meals, then spent the afternoon walking around the city.

As ErasureTop had said, clouds blew in and the temperature dropped about ten degrees when they did. It was still far more pleasant than Fremont and the hooded sweatshirt from the closet was enough to keep him warm. He boggled like the fresh-faced visitor he was at the shops, the gigantic buildings downtown, the people he passed. He reached the waterfront area, but this was a working wharf, not a sandy playground, which was still fascinating but not as marvelous as the beach. There was a dog park where he watched the pets and people play for a while, a dock where he walked out to the end and reveled in the breeze whipping in off the water, an elevated pedestrian bridge over a busy street where he could look down and watch the cars speed by.

He carefully kept track of how to get back home, for that was already how he was thinking of it. Fortunately, the city was laid out in a grid, so navigating was straightforward. By the time clouds cleared out and the sun was sinking in the west, he had made his way back to the apartment, where he had more of the delightful chicken dish from lunch. After that, he went and lay down in his cage. Not for the night, just a quick nap. It had been a tiring day!

Winston

One day of happy memories, all recorded and available for playback. It didn’t matter that the synch between Winston’s net and Seth’s was still incomplete; Seth’s net was formed enough to be able to capture with 100% fidelity every signal that traveled along his nervous system, in both directions. Those signals could be replayed on Seth’s net just fine right now, though if Winston wanted to experience them himself he’d have to wait until their two nets were fully synched and the translation protocols could convert Seth’s perception of “cold wave splashes over warm feet” to Winston’s equivalent. The net itself didn’t have the capacity to store such huge quantities of data, but Winston’s laptop did. Seth had spent his entire day in an area saturated with cell signals, so every impulse from every nerve had been transmitted back to home base.

Result: on-demand re-creations of previously-experienced scenes. Not just sight, but sound, smell, touch, temperature, everything. Not quite virtual reality because there was no way to interact with the recording. But it could be played back with such complete accuracy that it was literally indistinguishable from the original experience. Like living the moment over again.

Biological signals had a lot of redundancy to them. A good compression algorithm was able to cut the storage size down to about one tenth of the original data stream. He was able to trim out another half of what remained by discarding the motor nerve signals. No point in storing those because he wasn’t planning on sending Seth off on a memorized journey; that would be potentially disastrous. If Seth’s recorded nerve net came to an intersection that had had a walk signal today but opposing traffic during playback, he’d walk unstoppably out into the stream of cars. There were uses for recorded motor nerve signals, but these particular memories were intended to be played back while his outgoing nerves were disabled; preserving the sensory nerve signals was all that was required. Seth could relive his trip to the beach from the safety of his cage, or wherever else he was while Winston was driving him.

Some of the IT guys back at base were absolute wizards with this stuff and could hack net signals real-time. They would do things like insert a mosquito buzzing right next to one of the guys’ ears, or give him a massive case of itchy balls. Never when the brass was around to see it, of course. Hilarious stuff as long as you weren’t the target. Winston wasn’t nearly that good, but he could read a timestamp and split the incoming and outgoing channels well enough.

Tomorrow: one more happy memory to record. And one that might or might not be considered happy.

Seth

He wound up sleeping through the night after all. He wasn’t used to so much walking! As a result, he was up early while it was still dark outside. He lay there quietly in his cage, listening to the muffled sound of the cars and trucks on the freeway outside the window. It was a reassuring, calming noise, almost like the waves at the beach.

He got up to pee then waited for ErasureTop to contact him. He considered trying to experiment with cooking eggs, but decided against it for two reasons. One, he would probably screw it up and waste the food, which the Master probably would not appreciate. And two, initiative was not something Seth was expected to demonstrate. He wanted to please his Master, sure, but he sensed that the best way to do that was to follow instructions. If there were no instructions to follow, best to just wait. The voice in his ear eventually came as he knew it would.

“Good morning, Seth. Nice to see you up and about earlier today.”

“Good morning, Sir. How may I serve you today!”

“Heh. Smartass slave, but I like it. Today I have a ritual in mind. I would like you to formally offer yourself into my service. Are you ready for that?”

“Sir, yes, Sir! Absolutely, Sir!”

“Very good. I’ll be over in about twenty minutes. I’ll bring breakfast. You will need to start learning to cook, but the ritual first.”

Seth buzzed around the apartment, hyped up on nervous energy. Twenty minutes crawled by and then heard “lights-out time. I’m coming in.” Seth’s vision went out. Would he ever be allowed to see his Master’s face?

The door opened and he heard footsteps and smelled eggs. “Eat,” the Master said, this time in person. It wasn’t easy without sight, but Seth sat at the small table and dutifully ate what was provided – eggs, sausage, toast, fruit. The meal he was supposed to have been able to make for himself yesterday. He would learn! The Master said nothing while he ate.

When he had finished, Seth looked expectantly in what he hoped was the Master’s direction. Nothing happened for a few moments, then “dishes, boy.”

Oh, of course! He couldn’t cook, but he could clean… and he suddenly remembered that yesterday’s dishes were sitting by the sink. Not even in the sink but next to it: two forks, two glasses, only one plate because he had eaten lunch straight from the takeout container. And then just… hadn’t washed them because… because… well, it wasn’t something he ever thought to do unless all the dishes were dirty and he needed new ones to eat from only that way of thinking was almost certainly not going to work here; the Master obviously expected him to clean up after himself immediately, he should have realized that. What other obvious things should he have thought of that simply hadn’t occurred to him… oh shit, was he expected to make the bed? Because he hadn’t. Fuck! And his posture, he had totally forgotten to be keeping his spine straight and there was another mistake…

Cheeks burning, he groped his way to the sink and started the water running. Washing dishes while blind was even harder than eating while blind but he managed it, somehow finding the soap under the sink and a pot to put warm water in and a dishcloth draped over the spout. It felt like it took hours with the Master’s critical eye making note of every single one of his many fumbling mistakes along the way. But he stuck to it. He made sure everything he had used was as clean as he could get it and set them all to dry in the nearby rack.

“Sorry, Sir. That won’t happen again.”

“Don’t disappoint me, boy. Now. Before we get to the ritual, your hair is too long and shaggy for my taste. Any drone of mine needs to look sharper than that. Come here and kneel down.” Seth moved forward to almost where the voice sounded like it was coming from and got down on his knees, blind eyes cast down to the floor but spine held as straight and erect as he could make it.

He felt hands exploring his scalp. He noted that the Master had not asked Seth’s permission, or even his opinion, about the proposed change and wondered if he should feel annoyed by that, because he didn’t. His body was the Master’s to reshape. Still. It was going to be strange not having the protective coating over his head. He would feel naked without it. Exposed. Which was probably just fine from the Master’s point of view. An asset, not a liability.

He heard a click and then the buzz of an electric razor. Then came a gentle brushing sensation beginning by his right ear and proceeding all over. The Master pushed his head this way and that, inclining it left, right, forward, covering every spot with the razor. Light tickles of falling hair shivered down Seth’s arms. It took only a few minutes, then the Master was rubbing his head with a towel. Seth heard the sound of sweeping, footsteps receding, the rumble of the drawer in the kitchen where the trash bag was stored opening and closing.

“That looks much better,” said the voice from once more over his head. “Now, the ritual I mentioned. The purpose of this ritual is to give you an opportunity to formally request to enter into my service. The ritual will have three parts: pain, pleasure, and sacrifice. For the first portion, pain, I would like to hurt you. Nothing you can’t handle, though I will push you fairly hard. The pleasure, well, that is self-explanatory. And then the third part, sacrifice. I would like you to offer to give up something you value. Freely, of your own choice.”

Between his screwup with the housekeeping and these sober-sounding words, suddenly the freewheeling vacation atmosphere of yesterday was very far from Seth’s mind. His mind racing, he tried to find the right words. “I… would be honored, Sir. I hope I… I hope I can live up to your expectations, Sir. I don’t know if…”

“Oh, you can. Is pain not one of your interests, Seth? Answer honestly. Not everyone who enjoys bondage enjoys pain.”

“It’s not, Sir.”

“But you do enjoy bondage, is that correct?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Excellent. Then this will be a good way for you to demonstrate your willingness to do things you don’t like in order to please me. Because it will please me very much to cause you pain. Again, nothing you can’t handle, nothing that would damage you. I need your body intact. Knowing you don’t like it will show me that you are willing to put your own interests on the back shelf and prioritize mine. So, Seth. Are you willing to let me hurt you?”

His pulse was thrumming in his ears. Did he dare ask what sort of pain the Master had in mind? He almost did, but then realized it didn’t matter. No matter what the answer was, it wouldn’t change his decision. He would hate this, but that was exactly what ErasureTop wanted from him.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Ask for it.”

Seth stared with his blind eyes. Somehow it was easier to say it without having to look into anyone’s face. Nevertheless, his voice came out softer than he intended. “Sir, please hurt me.”

“Offer me your suffering.”

“Sir, please… please accept my pain for your enjoyment.” Louder this time. Show the Master he meant what he was saying.

“With pleasure, boy,” the Master said.

Winston

Winston looked down at the nervous, quivering body before him. “Take off your clothes, then lie down on your belly.”

Seth stood up and stripped and even remembered to fold the clothes as neatly as he could manage and set them on the small table he had just eaten at. Good boy, learning from previous corrections and applying those lessons to other aspects of life. Then he obediently lay on the floor and waited.

Winston knelt down and used several loops of rope to tie Seth’s wrists together behind his back, palms in, looping the rope between his hands to prevent any squirming loose. Then he tied Seth’s ankles together in a similar way. Next, up went the feet, attached to the hands with more rope. A simple, basic hogtie.

He brought out a hood next, not to muffle Seth’s senses – there were easier and more effective ways to manage that – but to provide attachment points. The hood fit snugly with only small metal-rimmed holes at nose and mouth, and Winston laced it down tightly. Next came straps across the biceps, pulling Seth’s arms even closer together behind his back. A rope at his elbows to hold those in place too, lining Seth’s forearms up so they were almost parallel with his spine. Another rope at the knees to hold them together, another around his bent legs compressing thighs to ankles to further limit any movement. Even a small rope between Seth’s two big toes to stop his feet from separating. One more around the centers of the feet too for good measure.

Then a rope from the D-ring on top of the hood to the massive knot that connected his hands to his feet. This forced Seth’s head up off the floor.

“How’s that feeling, boy?”

“Tight, Sir,” came the muffled response.

More ropes, this time around Seth’s whole body: chest and upper arms, waist and wrists, every bit of restraint cooperating to hold Seth’s body in a tight, unyielding embrace, with limbs trapped in awkward, uncomfortable positions and not a thing he could do about it.

One last rope, this connecting hood’s D-ring to a hook in the ceiling overhead, then back down to the knot at wrists and ankles. Nothing too taut, just enough that any squirming Seth did, not that much was possible, could never result in him flipping over onto his side.

“There you go, boy. There’s your pain. You wait there until you can’t stand it any more, and when you’ve reached your limit, you tell me.” With that, he sat down, not even breathing heavily but needing to rest all the same. That was a quirk of his illness – his heart and circulation were fine, it was his muscles that were falling apart. His tiredness didn’t come with pounding heart and gasping breaths, but instead quivering weakness and the inability to push his body the way he used to be able to. Sitting safely on the chair, he opened up his senses and overlaid the messages from Seth’s nerves onto his own. The integration was far from complete, but the gist came through.

Mmmmmmm… pain, yes, but the good kind, the kind Winston liked. The pain of muscles forced into unusual alignments and compelled to stay there. He felt Seth twitching, trying to straighten his legs, to shift his arms, to roll to one side. He couldn’t move more than a few fingers and toes.

Fifteen, twenty minutes passed as Seth groaned and moaned on the floor. Winston idly stroked his dick, enjoying the fact that this boy, this man, was suffering solely because Winston wanted him to. What a heady drug! Better than any other, better than sex. Total domination, that’s what this was. The way he had instructed Seth to decide when it ended? A delicious extra touch of sadism. Seth would be hating the experience but would want to last as long as possible so as to not disappoint Winston, a beautiful clash of conflicting impulses guaranteed to mess with the boy’s head while the ropes were messing with his body.

Twenty-two minutes in, he cracked. “Sir, I can’t take any more. Please let me out?”

Winston got up and knelt down next to Seth. “I will, boy…” He put his hands on the ceiling rope.

“… in five more minutes.” With that, he pulled another inch or so of slack out of the rope, forcing Seth’s head and feet that much higher off the ground. Seth gasped at the suddenly increased strain. It was the last sound he would hear for a while – Winston used the net link to shut off Seth’s ears so that, blind and deaf, he would have nothing to distract him from the agony of his screaming muscles. Winston dipped in once more to sample the sensation directly and sure enough, those nerves were singing at a fever pitch. It felt good, at least to Winston, like the kind of ache he’d felt after a long hike with a heavy pack of gear, the pain of muscles pushed hard. Poor soft Seth couldn’t appreciate the sweet agony of that sort of thing, but Winston powered through it and let it wash over him, accompanied by the now-louder moans that only Winston could hear. Ohh… there was no short cut to this kind of agony, no way to rush the experience. This could only be caused by muscles held stressed over time; there was no substitute.

All right, five minutes, he’d said, and here it had been almost six while he’d been lost in the secondhand sensations. He switched Seth’s hearing back on. “Good boy. You did well.” He loosened both head ropes and allowed Seth’s head to sink to the floor. The kid was almost crying with relief but still trying to be stoic. One at a time, ropes and straps came off. When the connecting rope between ankles and wrists came loose, Winston gently and slowly lowered Seth’s legs to the ground, then untied his wrists and lowered his arms to his sides just as gently. He crooned as he did so. “Well done, Seth. Good job. Thank you for your suffering. I appreciate you offering that to me.” Over and over. Now that the pain was over, reward the victim with approval for what he’d been through, and he’d be all the more willing to endure it again.

Seth

He slowly tried to pull his hands up to rest his head on them instead of the bare floor. They didn’t want to move, it was as if his joints had rusted in position and needed oil to work them loose. Still, sore as they were, it was nothing compared to what he’d felt five minutes earlier. He’d never imagined such anguish! And nothing he did made the slightest bit of difference.

“Take some time to rest,” ErasureTop said. “We’ll continue when you’re ready. You made it through the hard part; it’s all easier from here.” Seth pulled himself up into a sitting position and found a wall to lean against. “Thank you, Sir.”

They spoke for a while about the experience. He noticed that the Master’s voice had a faint tremor in it, a very slight waver as if he was the one exhausted from his ordeal rather than Seth. But then, to his surprise, he learned that the Master sort of had endured it: he had been “eavesdropping” on what Seth had been feeling. “You felt all of what I felt?”

“Not perfectly. But close enough. A good pain, a sweet pain.”

This boggled Seth’s mind. The Master found that level of torment to be… pleasant? Enjoyable? He asked more questions, trying to understand, but there really was no common ground. Still, all in all he was proud of himself: he’d done it! He had offered his suffering to the Master and made it through! That was the sort of achievement that a nothing like him could be genuinely proud of.

“Sir, I’m ready to continue whenever you are.”

“Very good boy. Back up on your knees, then. Part two: pleasure. And right after that, part three: sacrifice. For the pleasure part, I want you to masturbate. And for the sacrifice, I want you to offer to give up something you value.”

“Sir, I have nothing. I don’t know what I could offer you.”

“Oh, I think it’ll come to you if you think about it.” Seth felt a foot nudge him in the groin. The contact startled him and he flinched away. The foot pursued him and he got control of himself, pushing his pelvis forward into the foot. The pressure was almost hard enough to be uncomfortable, but he made himself accept it.

“My… my balls, Sir? May I offer you my balls?”

“Close. Up just a little.”

“My dick, Sir? You want my dick?”

“I already have it. Remember, your entire body is my property. What I want you to offer me is the use of your dick. Turn it over to me and forgo using it for yourself.”

Seth didn’t understand, and the Master must have seen that.

“Here is what I want. I want you to masturbate knowing that it is for the very last time. Ever. Make it a good one because it is the last orgasm you will ever experience. Take your time doing it. At least twenty minutes, longer if you want. Bring yourself right up to the edge as many times as you can stand. Draw out the pleasure as long as possible. Then, finally, allow yourself to orgasm. Shoot that last-ever load. And when you have finished, offer me your dick, knowing that you will never get to use it for that purpose again. Are you willing to take this next step, Seth?”

“Sir… do you mean to… to… remove it?” Seth couldn’t stop his voice from trembling. Pain was one thing. Mutilation was… no, please no.

“You mean cut it off? Of course not. It would be no use to me then. Think, Seth. I am planning to use your body as if it were my own. Would I want to damage myself?”

“No, Sir.”

“Of course I wouldn’t. What else would I have in mind? How else might I prevent you from using your dick?”

Oh! Of course! “You would turn it off, Sir. Just like you can turn off my eyes and ears and everything else.”

“Correct. After this, your dick will be for my pleasure alone. Now, I ask again: are you willing to take this next step?”

Holy fuck. Last ever orgasm? But really, Seth didn’t have to think about it at all. He wanted to serve his Master; his Master wanted him to become an empty vessel; he would empty his cock and then give it away. “Yes, Sir. I am willing, Sir.”

“Very good. Get comfortable, boy. Jerk yourself off. Nice and slow. A long, leisurely session. Right up to the edge a couple of times, then take yourself over. And then, when the aftershocks have died away, offer me your dick. Explain to me how you no longer need it and that you wish to give it to me as a token of your obedience. Ask me to accept it as I accepted your suffering earlier, and recognize this as the first step in your total erasure. Understood, boy?”

“Yes, Sir.”

It was a long, leisurely session, just as Seth had been ordered to perform. He couldn’t use his eyes to watch porn, but he could imagine what his Master looked like based on that deep, sexy voice. Standing above him, looking down at him like a god eyes a worm, because that’s what Seth was becoming, a worm, less than a worm, a speck, a mote of dust, an invisible non-being. Seth needed to be dominated like this, to be erased, to become an insignificant nothing…

Oops, almost too close! He eased off, giving his hand a rest, then resumed stroking again, slower this time. He had heard about edging before but had never had the patience to try it. This time he did, bringing himself as close to the cliff as he could get without risking going over. He never got too terribly close; going over too soon would be disastrous, because after this, there would be no chance for a do-over. Last. Ever. Orgasm, holy fuck, that thought almost made it happen and he had to stop and let go again. But soon enough his fingers were wrapped around his shaft and he was squeezing and stroking as fervently as ever.

There was no way to judge twenty minutes and the Master wasn’t speaking so Seth was on his own to decide when the time had been long enough. He wondered if the Master was feeling what he felt, if he was eavesdropping on Seth’s sensations the way he was before. He let his mind drift to past erotic situations. Ricky from the locker room in high school, whose shoulders were about the sexiest thing teenage-Seth had ever seen. His first fumbling experiments with self-bondage, the belts and shoestrings that he had used to tie his feet and hands together as he jerked. The amazing world of leather and fetish porn that had opened up once he discovered the internet. And now, against all odds, this incredibly sexy Master (or so his imagination insisted he must be) gazing down and watching Seth pleasure himself in a sacrificial way, offering this vital part of himself freely, without hesitation, forever…

No way to stop it now. The pulses came and kept coming. Seth sprayed sperm all over the floor, shooting and shooting again until at last only dribbles came out and the waves of pleasure receded. He waited until the last tremor had passed, then climbed back up to his knees. “Master?”

“Yes, boy.”

Seth aimed his blind eyes upward at the direction the voice had come from. “Master, please accept this offering. Please take my dick as your own. Please use it for whatever purpose you need, whatever that may be. I no longer need it or want it. It is yours if you will have it.”

Seth felt fingers take hold of his cheeks and chin. They held him for a long few seconds, quivering ever so slightly. Was the Master feeling as emotional at this moment as Seth himself was? He felt their connection grow even deeper, and then the Master said, “I accept.”

There was no obvious moment of separation. When his eyes or ears went out, it was immediately obvious. With his dick, not so much. Seth knelt there, waiting, until the Master let go and said “go ahead, boy. Touch it,” and Seth did, reflexively looking down with his blind eyes.

It was like touching nothing, like touching a wad of clay. He squeezed it; he could feel the sensation through his fingers but not his cock. His dick was totally numb, not even a part of him anymore though it remained attached where it had always been. Exactly as promised. He looked up again. “Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re welcome, boy. I left you your balls because you’ll need to feel if those ever get squashed between your thighs and the seat beneath them. But your dick… that is mine now. You are mine. And you are one step closer to being erased.”

“Yes, Sir. Thank you, Sir.”

Winston

It takes all kinds to make a world. Winston had known in a vague, somewhere-out-there kind of way that people such as Seth existed. And of course, you can find absolutely anything at all on the internet. But somehow, having him here offering his own body to Winston for total domination and, yes, erasure made it immediate and real in a way that had been only hypothetical before. This crazy plan of his would work, and in its execution he would not be taking anything from his victim that the victim was not willing to freely give. Amazing.

Of course, Winston had his darker side as well, and this technology would let him indulge his baser fantasies with drones who were less enthusiastic about the prospect than Seth. That could come later. For the moment, he was pleased that the current occupant of the body he planned to spend increasing amounts of time in had invited him in willingly. It eased the guilt just a touch, and even more seeing just how willing Seth was.

The kid’s emotions were all over his face. As far as Seth was concerned, Winston was a god, or near enough as makes no difference.

“Sir? Will I ever get to see you, Sir?”

Hell, no. That was not in the plan. “You haven’t earned that right yet, boy. Perhaps someday.” Right on cue, a wash of embarrassment, disappointment, and determination to do better scrolled sequentially across Seth’s naked features. Toss the kid another bone. “I’ll allow you something else for now. Stay still, right where you are.”

Winston unbuttoned his pants and carefully removed them, then walked up to where Seth was kneeling. “Do not move,” he said when his dick was inches away from Seth’s lips. “Inhale. Gently, deeply. Smell that? That’s my scent, the scent of the man who owns you. Breathe it in deep, boy.” He held himself still while Seth seemingly tried to memorize him with his nose, then pulled away.

“Reach down. Touch your dick, boy.”

Seth was surprised at what his fingers encountered. “It’s hard, Sir,” he said with wonder in his voice.

“That’s right. Give it a few strokes for me. Let me feel how much your dick likes the scent of mine. Mmmmmm… yeah, that’s it.” This wouldn’t be going anywhere; the low sensory fidelity would not be enough for Winston to get off himself by the act of Seth stroking his dick while Winston felt the sensations. Give it another week and that should be possible. Make the kid do all the work while Winston felt all the pleasure, until Winston’s load from his own untouched dick sprayed all over the kid’s face. Another day for sure.

“All right, enough. Drop it.” Seth’s obedience was immediate. “Seth, I accept your offerings. Your pain, your pleasure, and your sacrifice. I accept you into my service. And I look forward to owning you and erasing you completely in the course of time.”

The kid’s eyes actually got glisteny at these words. “Thank you, Sir!” he exclaimed, then fell forward and groped around until he found Winston’s feet, which he then rubbed his face all over.

Pathetic. And yet… endearing.

Seth

The rest of that day was filled with a lot of blank time. The Master resumed Seth’s training, only now instead of spending half a minute at a go in lockout or shutdown, Seth spent increasingly longer spans. This made him nervous at first – “Master, what if I run out of air?” – but the Master assured Seth that a big part of these practice sessions was so the Master could learn to recognize the way Seth’s body signaled that it needed air. He started getting into a medical-sounding explanation of how it worked, but after some complicated words like “medulla oblongata” and “chemoreceptors” he must have seen that Seth wasn’t following and cut the explanation short. “This training will help my body learn to feel the way yours does when it needs air. And I’ll be practicing how to move your ribs and abs the way you do when you breathe.” That was clear enough for Seth to understand.

The Master’s plan was to put Seth into full shutdown mode for these exercises, but Seth pleaded to be allowed to feel what was going on, to use ride-along mode instead. The Master acquiesced, but Seth almost wished he hadn’t. It was so disorienting! The Master’s control over Seth’s body was nowhere near smooth and graceful. Seth sat there in the silent darkness feeling his body move in spastic, uncoordinated ways. His arms would fly out in random directions, his legs would twitch and flail, which knocked him over more than once. Good thing he was sitting on the floor for these trials! But of course the Master knew what he was doing.

Unlike the arms and legs, the breathing came readily enough. After some false starts where the Master made Seth snort air explosively out of his nose or gasp it in at a speed that made his throat burn, he soon got the hang of it. Seth could feel his chest expanding and contracting in a rhythm that became smoother and smoother with every breath.

After a few minutes, the Master took a break and gave Seth control of his body again, all but his eyes.

“Holding up okay, boy?”

“Yes, Sir. That was strange feeling you take charge!”

A silence fell and dragged on for a few heartbeats until Seth realized he had almost certainly screwed up again. “Oh! But a good kind of strang–” Abruptly, his words cut off, as did every other sensation except his hearing. His Master’s voice sounded. “This is why the original plan was to have you not take part. We’re going to go back to that.” Then his ears cut out and there was nothing.

Seth floated for a while, mentally kicking himself for his thoughtless blurt, wishing he could explain or apologize but having no way to do it. Eventually he concluded that the Master didn’t want either; best to leave it, move on, and try to do better in the future.

He wondered what was going on. Presumably things were happening to his body but he had no way to know what. He experimented, trying to move or speak, but knew there was no way it would work and quickly gave up trying.

After perhaps five minutes control came back. “What’s your status, boy? Still good?”

Seth took stock. His body felt as if it had been moving; he was still sitting on the floor but he was breathing more heavily than normal. Still, nothing hurt or felt out of order. “Yes, Sir. Doing fine, Sir.”

“Glad to hear it.” The world went away again for even longer this time. This repeated several more times with the break between shutdowns seeming to get further and further apart. There were breaks for bathroom trips and once for a meal, but mostly they kept at it. Even the bathroom trips were actually part of the training, so that the Master could learn how to tell when Seth’s bladder was full and what muscles to use to empty it.

When at last the session was over, Seth was exhausted but had no memory of doing anything tiring, or of doing anything at all. What had the Master been up to? He wanted to know and thought of asking, but decided not to risk disappointing or angering ErasureTop further. On recalling the man’s online name, it dawned on Seth: this was erasure! He had known all along in an abstract sort of way, but this made it bright and real. ErasureTop was taking over Seth’s body, using it for whatever purpose he wanted with Seth completely absent from the situation. Not consulted, not informed, not aware at all of what was happening to him. Seth might as well not even exist, and indeed, during those times in shutdown, he effectively didn’t.

The thought was dizzying, as if he was standing on the edge of a cliff looking down at the yawning gulf below.

Winston

That evening, back in his own apartment next door, Winston noted the familiar tired-not-tired feeling that came from having worked a drone for several hours. His own body hadn’t moved during that time – he had lain down on the sofa in Seth’s apartment, then shut down the motor signals to his own body so he wouldn’t hurt himself. After that, all sensory and motor signals were directed from and to Seth and he began the tedious but necessary steps of learning how to do basic body functions from scratch, as if he were a child learning to stand and crawl and walk and not drool on himself. He never quite managed to get upright, but he had succeeded in crawling around. Seemed like it should be easy but even that required a significant amount of coordination.

Mentally, it was taxing work, but physically all he had done was lie on a sofa all day. Thus the strange disconnect of a body that was itching to get up and do something and a brain that wanted to nap. He decided to take a walk; that would let him stretch his muscles in a low-effort way while letting his brain check out.

It would come. Learning a new drone was always a slow, frustrating experience. The four he had trained on before the program was shut down had gone exactly this way: spastic frustration to start, eventually leading to smooth, fits-like-a-glove integration. It’d be fine. He’d get there. He put his shoes on (a process that was getting harder and harder to do since it involved both bending and careful finger-work with the laces) and headed outside. He had given Seth the evening off. The kid had gotten his first taste of what his new life was going to be like and would probably have thoughts about it. Winston could deal with that tomorrow.

Out on his walk, his net was mostly disconnected from Seth’s with only two channels open. One was for sound; he wanted to be able to listen in on anything Seth might hear, or perhaps say. The other…

Ah, there it was. That didn’t take long. While out walking, right there on the sidewalk, he felt a hand grab his dick. It squeezed a couple of times as he continued his strides, questing, trying to get the response that a lifetime of experience taught the squeezer to expect. Sorry, kid. Not for you. Not anymore.

The squeezing didn’t last long, but it brought a smile to Winston’s face as he made his way down the street.

Cannon

Cannon parked the bike, took off his helmet, and headed into the gym. Leg day today, gonna work up a good burn in those thighs and calves. He headed into the locker room to change and started with some light cardio on the treadmill, just a jog, nothing too intense. After that he transitioned into his usual routine: grab a barbell for some squats, both front and back, then over to the machines to do some presses, then a few sets of step-ups, finish with some lunges, both forward and lateral; repeat. Simple sets of simple movements. Push the muscles to fatigue, not failure, that’s the way to build them up.

All went well for the first few rounds. Then, while on the machine, he noticed what was going on over at the bench press area. It looked at first like nothing out of the ordinary: one guy spotting another. But no, there was more going on. The guy on the bench wasn’t taking his lift seriously. In fact, he was outright giggling. And the reason he was giggling? Because the spotter was making sure to stand good and close to the bar, giving the dude on the bench a clear view up his loose shorts.

Faggots. A pair of ’em, right out in the open.

Cannon seethed but held his temper in check. To a certain extent, he could “live and let live” as long as the perverts kept their distance and didn’t even think of glancing his way. But not when it was flaunted right in front of him like that. It was nauseating to watch the two of them basically having foreplay on the gym floor. Very distracting. He couldn’t concentrate on his own workout with that kind of a show going on just across the room.

He finished that round and called it quits for the day. Usually he would have done one more, but his focus was shot thanks to that disgusting display. One workout ruined – and mood ruined to match – all thanks to a pair of fucking fairies. He showered, changed back into his biking gear, and made sure to stomp past the two of them on his way out. They had finished with the bench press and were both standing by the weight rack looking to pick some out. Cannon bumped into the one who had been giggling, sending him stumbling into the rack. Ignoring the sounds of protest from behind, he stalked out to the street. Giving those two the sort of treatment they truly deserved was not practical in this day and age, but there were other ways to convey the message that their kind was not welcome in his gym.

Seth

“Today we start working on getting you in shape,” the Master informed him once he was awake and fed.

“Yes, Sir.” The prospect was a bit daunting since Seth had never been much of a fan of exercise. But his life, his body, and all decisions regarding both were in his Master’s hands now.

The voice was sounding directly in his ear as it had since their first encounter back in Fremont. It was the simplest way for the Master to speak to Seth when not in the same room, but he was capable of so much more now! After several days of intense practicing, the Master could take control of Seth’s body with amazing accuracy. His movements were not as smooth and fluid as when Seth directed them, but his control was improving every day. He had taught Seth all sorts of things, mostly by example.

Specifically relevant to today’s plan, Seth had learned a variety of no-equipment workout moves, exercises he could do without needing any gear. Familiar ones like jumping jacks, butt kicks, pushups, and sit-ups, but also a dozen that he had never known with names like birds and swimmers and haulers and planks. Instead of describing each motion, the Master would take charge and do the motion with Seth’s body, without even being there in the room with him. It wasn’t smooth, but the fact that it was possible at all was still astounding to Seth. Once the movement was demonstrated, Seth repeated it until the Master told him that he had gotten it right.

He was learning to cook as well through the same technique. The Master explained what Seth was to do and demonstrated the motions, then Seth did it for real with actual food. The Master still couldn’t see through Seth’s eyes, which made it unsafe for him to try to cut through meat with a knife, but his description of how the process worked was clear and he was able to teach Seth’s hands how to do the proper motions. Seth’s first meal of chicken, broccoli, carrots, and rice that he made all by himself made him beam with pride, even if the vegetables were a little on the mushy side because he had oversteamed them.

But for today, it seemed Seth’s task was to build up his body. To make it into something better than it was, something suitable for the Master’s use. Seth was fully on board with the goal, though not so much with the inevitable effort it would take to get from here to there.

“Pack a bottle of water, then go north on 16th until the street dead-ends at the high school track. I’ll give you further instructions there.”

The walk to the track was pleasant enough. The day was bright and clear with a temperature in the low 60s. The people he passed were all bundled up in jackets and sweaters but for Seth the memory of winter was still too recent to think of the day as anything but warm.

About halfway there, the Master spoke again. “Jog the rest of the way. Light, easy running.” What? There was no such thing! All running was hard! But Seth tried. Soon enough his legs were tired and his breath was coming fast and heavy. But he forced himself to keep going, and made it to the track where he stumbled to a halt and stood a while recovering. He was keenly aware of a sense of impending doom. This could only end in him disappointing ErasureTop; there was no other possibility.

“Okay. Now that you’re warmed up, be aware: I’m going to push you hard today.” The sense of doom closed in around him like a smothering fog. “I want to find out what your capabilities are. Today, therefore, will be tough, but your future workouts will be easier in comparison.”

“Understood, Sir.” If I survive.

“First: speed. See how the track has two long, straight sections? Line up at the start of one of those sections. When I say go, run as fast as you can until you reach the other end.”

The disconnect between the Master’s way of thinking and Seth’s was at the front of his mind as he moved over to the designated starting point. Seth had just run for several blocks and was thinking that was plenty of exercise, time to celebrate the victory and call it a day; for the Master, that was merely to loosen up the muscles for the real workout.

“Go.”

Seth moved his legs as fast as they would go. The distance seemed huge but somehow he covered the ground rapidly and soon enough he was at the far end of the track. He lurched to a stop and rested his hands on his knees, winded.

“Seventeen seconds. A little worse than I expected, but not a total disaster. Your form is terrible. Your arms are flailing around all over the place and I suspect your feet are striking wrong but I can’t tell well enough to be sure.” The criticism didn’t even sting; Seth knew that every word of it was true. He would improve, he would. It would just take time. For now, he really needed to catch his breath.

Suddenly his body was moving! It caught him off guard, though he quickly realized that the Master had taken control. Seth’s body stood up and faced back the way he came with Seth riding along like a passenger. Then, just as swiftly as it had gone away, control came back to Seth and he stumbled. “No, it’s still too soon,” the voice in his ear said, thick with frustration. At Seth? He didn’t really pay attention to the next words, focusing instead on how he had failed so far and was continuing to fail with every passing moment. “The net link isn’t good enough yet. No point in trying to correct things now. Once I have better control I can show you directly. It’ll have to wait. For now, sit-ups. Do as many as you can do until you can’t do any more.”

Still winded from the sprint but not wanting to disappoint his Master any further, Seth got down on the track and began to crunch. His goal (though he would never say it to ErasureTop) was to manage ten. That would be one more than the number of pushups he did at their initial meeting. Maybe it would be enough to avoid being chastised.

He did not make it. His body gave out after seven. The only way to do more would have been to lift his feet off the ground or pull his neck with his hands, movements that his Master had taught him were bad form and to be avoided.

“No. Unacceptable.” There it was, the scorn he had been expecting. “I said to go until you can’t do any more. I know you’re not there yet.” With that, the Master took control and Seth felt his body moving by itself again. His abs tightened, his torso lifted, and he completed an eighth sit-up, then lay back down again, this time in a controlled descent rather than the more crash-like way Seth had done on his own.

“Your problem is that you don’t know how to push yourself. You must never have needed to.” The voice in Seth’s ear didn’t sound winded at all, and of course not, why would it? After just long enough on the ground to deliver that message, the Master drove Seth’s body to rise again. His stomach muscles hurt! Up he went, and then back down again, and then another rep without a pause this time. It took a lot longer to get to the top and Seth would never have been able to make it on his own, but the Master forced him to push and he had no choice but to obey. Slowly back down again, then the voice spoke again.

“I think you’ve got one more in you, but we’re going to try for two.” Two deep breaths and then Seth felt his abdominal muscles clench again. It took seemingly forever to reach the top and once again, Seth knew he would have given up early on. But his body somehow kept rising even as his muscles screamed their exhaustion and pain. Back down once more, two more deep breaths, and it started all over again.

This time he didn’t make it. His abs kept fighting to lift him long past the point where it became clear they were not going to be able to do it, but the Master kept forcing him to continue trying. Seth would have been crying from the distress if he had control of his lungs. At last the Master took pity on him and released him. Seth collapsed to the ground and lay there gasping and trying not to whimper.

“That is what working your muscles to exhaustion means. You don’t stop when it gets a little uncomfortable, you don’t stop when you get a little tired. You push and you keep pushing until your muscles literally cannot do any more. I will do it for you today when I can. My control isn’t good enough yet to keep you from falling over, but at times when you’re already on the ground I will show you how it’s done. You’ll have to do it on your own when you’re upright. Now stand up and run back to the starting line.”

Seth had to roll over to get back up on his feet, then he was off stumbling down the track. At least he hadn’t been instructed to go as fast as he could this item, but as soon as he arrived, he was told to do lunges and kicks.

Over and over it went: a hundred-meter sprint, then an exercise to work some other muscles, then back again. There were brief breaks between sets to drink from his water bottle and try to catch his breath, but they were never long enough. By the fourth trip down the track he was huffing hard and could do no more than jog; by the tenth his gait was closer to a walk than a run. Sweat was pouring down his face and body and the day that had felt so pleasantly comfortable before now felt oppressively warm. But the Master kept insisting that he could do more and so he pushed himself to continue.

The last set was pushups, once again to exhaustion. Since he was low to the ground, the Master took charge. Seth felt his arms forcing themselves to keep lifting his weight long past when Seth would have given up. He was able to crank out twelve pushups before his arms simply could not lift his weight, but the Master kept working them in a half-raised press, trying to get up for agonizingly long seconds until his arms were screaming for relief. At last Seth was permitted to sink down to the ground and regain the use of his body.

“There. Done. Doesn’t that feel good? Feel the blood pumping, the burn in your arms and legs?”

Oh, he felt the burn all right. It seemed like his entire body had been beaten by a hundred pairs of boxing gloves. Everything ached, everywhere. And this was supposed to feel good?

“It hurts, Sir.” Seth didn’t like the whining sound of his voice but couldn’t help it coming out that way.

“Damn right it hurts. ‘No pain, no gain,’ right?”

Gulp. “Y…yes, Sir.” His voice couldn’t have sounded any more mournful.

“That’s bullshit, of course. Cute rhyme, but not the way to approach fitness for real. Same with ‘pain is just weakness leaving the body.’ There’s more to pain than that. But that’s a lesson for later. For now, you need to do some stretches or you’re going to be hurting even worse tomorrow.”

Once again, the Master took charge and Seth endured a brand-new type of discomfort: the sensation of exhausted muscles pulled and stretched beyond where they wanted to go. Arms, legs, hips, shoulders, back… his body pulled and contorted in ways he wouldn’t have thought it capable of. At least he was sitting still, not running and jumping around. This went on for five or ten minutes while Seth felt himself slowly getting his wind back.

Abruptly, control came back. “All right, get yourself on home. I’m all horned up from feeling your workout with you and want to get off.”

Seth would have been perfectly happy to nap right there on the hard pavement rather than undertake the massive effort required to stand up and start walking home. But if there was one thing on earth that could inspire him to do that, it was the idea that finally – FINALLY! – he would get to help his Master out in a sexual way. That was the fantasy that had been driving him to do this from the beginning and while it was satisfying to offer his body for the Master’s use in this strange and unexpected way, it would be even more satisfying to offer his body up for a more conventional sort of use. The thought buoyed him all along the walk home.

But when he got back to the apartment, the Master wasn’t there. Instead, the voice came in his ear again. “Go into the bedroom. From the bottom right drawer, take out one of the short lengths of rope. Got it? Good. Now strip out of your clothes and tie the end of the rope around your balls. Wrap it around three or four times before tying it off. Snug, but not too tight.”

Seth complied, a bit confused as to the ‘why?’ behind the instructions but absolutely clear on what to do. “Now go lie on your bed.” Also clear enough.

“Run the rope through one of the bars above you. Pull it tight enough that your balls are stretched just a bit, not too tight. Just on the edge of discomfort, then tie it off.”

Seth finished the knot and lowered his arms to his sides and as soon as they reached the mattress, his ability to move them vanished. His legs went dead as well. It wasn’t a full lockdown – he could still see and breathe and blink. And he could still feel the sore ache of the muscles in his limbs, but he could no longer move them.

“Perfect. Now you just hang out there for the twenty minutes or so that it will take me to get over there.”

Hang out. Yeah. That was all he could do, all right. At least he wasn’t literally hanging from the rope.

He waited, blinking occasionally, sometimes trying to curl his head up to look to see how his balls were doing. That motion was still allowed, but his abs were so painfully sore that every time he tried he remembered right away why it was better to keep staring straight upward instead.

At last he heard the sound of the door opening and his vision went out. Dangit! Still not going to get to see what his Master looked like. Footsteps came into the room and he felt the stirring of the air across his skin.

“Good boy. You did well today.”

Again the voice had a slight tremor to it, as though the Master was tired and spent from doing the workout himself. But the words were like sweet nectar! Seth drank up the unexpected praise, not quite believing it since he’d spent the last two hours or so certain that he was a crushing disappointment to his Master.

“Now we know your baseline. In a month, we’ll do it again and I suspect you’ll be amazed at the difference. But for today… time to enjoy. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get from really pushing your body hard. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? You’ve never done it before. Tell me, Seth, does it feel sexy to you? The ache, the burn, the soreness? Be honest.”

The words took a while before he could make them leave his lips. “No, Sir. It just hurts.”

“You don’t enjoy pain. You said that during your initiation ritual some days back. Well. As it happens, I do enjoy pain. Mine and other men’s. I enjoy experiencing it and I enjoy causing it. With you, I can do both at the same time. I can hurt you and feel what you’re feeling as I do it. It’s beautiful. Our shared pain pleases me. Makes me horny. Gets me hard. I’m hard right now, standing here next to your cage, feeling the burn in your muscles and the stretch on your balls. You want to please me, right Seth?”

That was easier to answer. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good. Then it’s time for you to get me off.”

Suddenly Seth’s arms and hands were free to move though his legs remained inert. “With pleasure, Sir!” He reached up over his head, groping through the bars to try to find the hard dick that his Master had told him was just above him.

“Not that way. Reach down. Wrap one hand around your balls. Nice, firm grip. Use the other to stroke your dick.”

He reached down and did as he was told, but had to ask at the risk of sounding pitiful: “Sir… shouldn’t I be touching your dick instead?”

“You are touching my dick. My new dick.”

Oh. Right. The Master could feel all the sensations that Seth no longer could. Seth could feel his cock in his fingers, but he couldn’t feel his fingers on his cock. His balls, however, felt his grip fully. Hopefully his dick would harden up because Seth couldn’t think of any way to make that happen, but even as he was wondering how, the Master spoke again.

“I’ll stiffen it up for you,” the Master said. “Make it match my own.”

With that, Seth felt his cock swelling in his grip. He had experienced erections since the day of his initiation and had experimented with squeezing his hard cock, but had derived absolutely nothing from the effort. Nothing he did registered as sensation, pleasurable or otherwise. And he had been unable to coax it to stiffness at will. Fantasies that used to do it for him now left his dick lying limply in his lap. The Master’s comment just now revealed why: he was in control of Seth’s erections. Seth couldn’t get hard unless the Master permitted him to. He was living a 24/7 chastity fantasy with an invisible cage around his cock. That thought alone would have been enough to stiffen him up in his old life and probably helped things along now.

There was still no sensation reaching his brain, but as his dick hardened up and he was able to start stroking rather than squeezing it, the Master moaned with pleasure. He felt the air move again and heard the shifting of the bars of his cage as a weight settled on it.

“That’s right, nice and steady,” the Master told him, his voice now coming from more or less straight over Seth’s head. Was he sitting on the cage? Maybe lying on it? Seth wanted to reach up to explore but knew would almost certainly be corrected if he did. Instead, he rubbed a little while longer, hoping the Master was enjoying his technique. Every man’s jerkoff method was different; if Seth needed to alter his approach, the Master would no doubt tell him.

“Squeeze your balls a little tighter now. Tighter. Even more.” Shit. Seth complied, but was wary of the direction this was now going in. The soreness of the rest of his body was forgotten in the face of this bright new pain radiating from his groin.

“More. Don’t make me have to do it for you. I don’t have fine enough control yet and could easily wind up crushing them like grapes, so if you don’t want that to happen, you’d better give me what I need. Harder!”

Seth squeezed his poor nuts even more and cringed at the sensation. How the hell could the Master stand such a feeling, let alone get off on it? If Seth’s dick had been his own, it would have deflated and gone soft due to the punishment his balls were enduring, but instead it remained rock-solid. He couldn’t help but make small whimpering sounds as he continued to stroke it, hoping to get the Master to an orgasm as quickly as possible.

“Mmmmm… better. I like the way that feels.” The Master was breathing heavily now, letting out little grunts between thoughts. Seth felt more like screaming than grunting but tried to hold it back. “Feel that pressure, feel that squeeze? Hurts so good, oh yeah. But you can take more. Come on, squeeze those nuts!”

More? Wincing, Seth did, frantically flailing with his right hand while his left inflicted impossible pain on his own balls. It went on for far too long and every time his grip slackened, the Master berated him to bear down again.

Finally, finally, he heard the Master’s breathing change and a low growl emerged from his throat. Hot, wet droplets spurted down from above and landed on his lips, his chin, his chest. He dared to ease up on the pressure and slow the pace of his strokes, and this seemed to be the right thing to do because the Master seemed to coast down from the peak neither too quickly nor too slowly. He heard the breathing above him slowly easing back toward normal.

“Ahhh… nice. Not bad. Some day I’m going to really work those nuts over, but that was not bad for today. You did good, Seth. Take the rest of the day off. We’ll resume lessons tomorrow.

With that, the Master headed out, and a few minutes after he had gone Seth’s eyes and legs turned back on. He untied the rope from his balls and went into the bathroom to clean up, marveling at what had just happened: he had just gone through the motions of jerking off all the way to completion, but all the pleasure had gone to his Master and none to him. His dick was once again soft without even a trickle of pre-cum glistening at the tip. Instead, his Master had taken it all and left the result in the form of sticky white droplets on his body.

Seth swept them up with his finger and put each one into his mouth, licking to get every bit of the salty smoothness.

Winston

It had taken a while to get all the way to orgasm. The sensations weren’t quite fully there yet but things were coming along.

The erections part… that had been an accidental discovery by the team when they were practicing on each other, not something that the designers of the system had planned for. It was a totally logical extrapolation, though, and should have been obvious: erections happen when arteries in the area dilate and veins constrict; blood vessels are told to dilate and constrict by nerve impulses. There are other chemical factors involved, but those could be triggered by nerve impulses as well, and any set of nerve impulses is just data to the net, data that can be recorded and played back like any other set. Much hilarity ensued among the Marines as they caused each other erections at unexpected, unwanted times and places.

Winston had simply needed to add recordings for “hard” and “soft” to his library for Seth and then it didn’t matter what his drone might actually be feeling and desiring, or not feeling and not desiring, at any given time: his dick would remain in the state Winston wanted it to and Seth would perform or not perform as commanded.

So: not bad for today and things would only get better. The ball-squeezing had felt good, really good, almost the way it would have if he had been doing it himself. The fact that Seth was clearly distressed by the sensation was a nice extra, but really what got him off was the feeling of his balls taking a good, hard punishment. Or from delivering the same to another man’s pair, which meant that this arrangement was perfect since he got to experience both at the same time.

Back in his own apartment, Winston kept an eye on Seth through the net. The kid was wiped out from the exertion. He wandered around the apartment for a bit, then went back to his cage to nap.

As expected. And that suited Winston just fine, because he had other plans, plans that required him to put his own net into stealth mode. Total radio silence, which meant no contact with or eavesdropping on his drone.

Once Seth was asleep, Winston got in his car and headed north on the 5. Driving was still okay for him to do. His issue was with weakness, and driving was pretty low-exertion. The spastic, involuntary tremors were, so far at least, small enough to not affect his control of the car. The day would come, though, when that would no longer be the case, so he savored the feeling of the wind coming in through the open window.

Long before reaching Pendleton, he stealthed his net. Sure, they said the program had been mothballed and thus there would be nothing running that would detect any signals Winston’s net might emit if it were active. But they said a lot of things. No sense taking chances. His ID got him on base just fine, then got him past the receptionist at the base hospital.

Room 525B contained a husk that took Winston’s breath away to see. Two years ago, that husk had been Carlos “Cash” Lopez, a fellow member of the cadre Winston had been part of. Now he looked like an 80-year-old man with sunken cheeks, hollow eyes, and weighing no more than the pillow he was lying on. Damn, he really should have made this visit long before now. Cash was drowsing when Winston slipped tentatively into the room, but he must have sensed the movement. He looked up, blinked a few times, then spoke.

“Win? The fuck, man, you look like shit.” Winston froze, but only for a second before recalling how this disease worked: it destroyed the body, but left the mind intact. The brain inside this ruined shell was the same as the one in the man Winston had last seen. Trash talk was exactly what the old Cash would have said a situation like this to head off any attempt by a visitor to express pity over his condition, and this Cash was the same man. The only way to respond was in kind.

“Yeah? I’m sure the nurses here are all throwin’ themselves at your sexy ass.”

Cash grinned weakly. “What can I say? When you got it, you got it. How you been, man?” The voice was shaky and the words were a little slow, but this was clearly the same Marine Winston had known not all that long ago. Soon enough, they settled into the familiar banter. Shooting the shit, sharing news about the crew, what they were up to now. Trout was in Germany; Zip was out of the Corps and running his own electrical business; Jangles was married now with a baby on the way. Oh, and Rattail, with his obnoxious braying laugh and the way he referred to Win and Cash as “the Lottery Twins”… he was actually a Gunnery Sergeant now and was going by James, never Jim and never, ever Rattail. Who’d have guessed?

Then the conversation inevitably turned to the two that had, like them, reacted to the botnets. Dirk (who, alone among the group, somehow never acquired a nickname) was back in his hometown of Baton Rouge, doing well enough to live on his own, at least for now. And Six, like Cash, was in a care home up north somewhere. Oakland, maybe, or Concord, neither was sure.

“But looks like I got it worst.” Cash’s voice took on a serious tone at last. “Those drugs, they don’t do nothin’ at all.”

“The immune suppressants?”

“Yeah. The park-o-cyclone and the somersault, whatever the hell they’re called. The docs have maxed out the dose they can give me but–”. He paused, lifted his arm up, held it a moment, then let it fall weakly to the bed. “I got no strength left, none.”

“Fuck.”

“Fuck. Six months, they say. Six months left. I ask you: what am I gonna do for those six months? This? Lie here in a bed? I’m tellin’ you, man, this is no way for a Marine to go, no way at all.”

There was a brief pause that Winston tried to think of a way to fill, but there was nothing to say. This was his future, too: failing body, fully-intact mind trapped inside. Cash was a lot closer to the end stage than he was; he looked like a famine victim because of the way his muscles had been eaten away from the inside, as if he was slowly starving to death. No. This was no way for anyone to go, least of all a Marine, most leastest of all one of his own Marine brothers. Before he could speak, though, Cash beat him to it. “But look at you man, you’re doing all right.”

“Yeah. Same drugs as you, but I guess they’re working better.” He held out his own arm. Mild tremors, nothing too bad. “For now, at least. But my time’s coming. I got plans, though.”

“Plans, eh? What sort of plans?”

Winston flicked his eyes upward in the gesture they used to use to convey “can’t say, brass is listening”. Out loud he said “Nothing firmed up yet. Still working a few things out.”

Then, on the spur of the moment, he decided to take a chance. This had not been his reason for coming; he had been intending to visit for months now and somehow the time was never right. But it had never been his intention to expand the circle of people who knew his secret, which at the moment consisted of Winston and his drone. Could he dare to let one more in?

Yeah. Yeah, he could. Indeed, he had to help his Marine brother. “Hey, man, those fingernails are lookin’ a little long. You oughta get those trimmed. Hey, want me to do it while I’m here?”

Cash looked at him as if he had gone crazy, but Winston held his gaze. He watched the wheels turning in Cash’s head and saw the moment when understanding dawned in his eyes. Then, at that instant, flicked his eyes upward again. Cash made a show of grudgingly agreeing. “You know what, you’re right, they do need a trim. You just make sure you do as good a job as those nurses, you hear me?”

Winston trimmed and filed Cash’s nails for him, slipping the trimmings into his palm, then discarding all but one large thumbnail clipping into the trash can. That he kept in his hand for the remainder of the visit.

Cash’s stamina didn’t last much longer – exhaustion set in quickly with this disease and twenty minutes of conversation was enough to leave him drained. “You know,” Winston said as he was getting up to go, “you really need to see about getting yourself transferred someplace nicer. Maybe off the base, right? Why you want to stick around here, you ain’t had enough of this dump to last a lifetime already?”

Cash’s voice was weak, but he had gotten the message. “Yeah. Yeah, you know, you’re right. I think I’ve seen enough of these four walls.”

3 – March

Seth

Black void. Emptiness, not even stars. Floating, drifting, thoughts unmoored from any tie to the real world.

The Master was in charge again, and the amount of time Seth spent in shutdown was growing every day. He had no way to measure exactly how much as it was passing, of course, but he had glanced at the clock on the microwave a few minutes before the Master took over, and it had read 1:07 PM. Until the Master saw fit to switch him back on, Seth had no choice but to drift, alone with his thoughts. He may have drifted off to sleep a time or two; it was hard to be sure.

Exercise was now a part of Seth’s daily routine. Every day he was up early and off to that same track to jog and sprint, pausing between runs to do the stretches and muscle-building routines that his Master had taught him. The Master monitored him while he did this and instructed and corrected him, but did not take control so that Seth himself performed the workout as on the first day. Then home for breakfast and an hour or so of rest. After that, the Master took charge and practiced using Seth’s body for a time while Seth floated in the empty void of non-being.

He was getting a lot of practice being alone with his thoughts. The first few times it had been hard to slow his whirling brain. Like everyone born in the past couple of decades, he had grown up with a steady stream of instant entertainment and distraction available. But as the Master had warned him on the bus ride, he would not have his phone during his time in shutdown. And so he had learned to live with the absence of stimulation and be alone with his thoughts. It had gone well enough that he had resolved to keep the phone off even during his free time, only using it for necessary purposes. And there was no computer or television in his apartment, so he was getting good at passing time in a self-contained way.

At least he wasn’t hungry! He had been worried that part of the Master’s plan to transform Seth’s body would involve limiting his food intake, but instead the Master made sure that he had plenty to eat. All that changed was the nature of the food he was eating. The cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and potato chips that had sustained him back in Fremont were gone, replaced by eggs, avocados, fish with names he had never even heard of, and lots and lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. He ate until he was full at each meal, and yet his body was burning off more calories than it was taking in. It was hard to know if there were any visible changes yet, but he could feel the beginnings in the way his limbs moved, the way the light jog to the track was less and less of an effort each day. The Master seemed satisfied with his progress, aware that results would not be instantaneous. It would take time to transform Seth from a doughy blob to what the Master desired him to become, which made Seth all the more eager to live up to the expectations placed on him.

A little bit better every day. Just like the Master was doing with his control of Seth’s body.

Light and sound returned and Seth was back in charge again. His body was tired and a bit sweaty and he was breathing hard; the Master must have been really giving him a workout. But he was still in his apartment, sitting on the sofa. Oh, or maybe he was back in his apartment? There was no way for him to know what the Master did while Seth was switched off.

3:39 PM. Two and a half hours, his longest session yet.

“Thank you, Sir,” he said, as was his habit. The Master had not instructed him to do this, but it seemed only proper to express gratitude, both for the opportunity to allow the Master to make use of his body, and for its safe return to Seth when he was finished. Sometimes the Master acknowledged him; other times not.

“Look in your wallet,” the Master said in his ear. Seth stood up, pulled his wallet out of his pocket and opened it up. He looked in the section where bills were stored, but the amount didn’t seem any different. “Nope, not there. Keep looking,” said the voice, and Seth realized what that implied.

“Oh! Sir, are you able to see through my eyes now?”

The voice in his ear had a note of satisfaction in it. “A bit. Well enough. It’s not ideal yet, but vision is starting to come online. Well enough for what I want to show you. Keep looking.”

There wasn’t much in the wallet besides the cash: a few cards and his driver’s lic– “Oh! Sir, this is different!”

“You’re a Californian now, boy.”

His Nebraska license was gone and in its place was one from California with his name, identifying information, and a photo of himself wearing the shirt he currently had on. “Sir, you did this just now?”

“I did, boy.” The Master’s voice in his ear was positively preening. “Got myself down to the DMV, waited a while, then got everything swapped over. I wasn’t sure with the vision not being fully online yet. Thought maybe they wouldn’t want to give a driver’s license to someone who walked into a post on his way to apply for it, know what I mean? But I got it done. A shame about the signature, of course, but I haven’t been working on that kind of fine motor control.”

Seth looked at the signature, which was basically a bent vertical-ish line that might generously be interpreted as an S followed by a mostly-horizontal line. “It looks beautiful, Sir.”

“Bullshit.” But Seth could tell the voice was pleased at the compliment.

“But Sir, that must mean you can speak with my mouth now. That must have taken hard work too.”

“Very good observation, boy. Yes, speech is easier than vision.”

“Sir… would you show me what that’s like? May I hear your voice coming out of my mouth instead of sounding in my ear?”

Suddenly control was gone again, which surprised him. He had been thinking that the Master would only need to take charge of his lips and tongue, but then realized that he would also need to push air through, which meant that chest and belly would be involved, and at that point it was probably easier to assume command of everything rather than try to separate out which chest muscles were involved in breathing and which were merely for moving his arms.

“Like this, boy? Is this what you had in mind? This is what you wanted a demonstration of?”

Abruptly, control came back and he lurched on his feet a little, trying to keep his balance. That had been one of the strangest experiences yet! The words were all words that Seth knew and might say, but he would never have thought to say them like that! Under his Master’s command, Seth’s lips and tongue and throat moved in ways that felt alien and strange, resulting in a voice that was recognizably Seth’s but spoken in a style that Seth would never use. Seth spoke quietly, shyly, making sounds and using words that made it easy for him to fade into the background and go unnoticed. The Master, by contrast, made Seth’s voice boom. He spoke in a way that demanded attention… no, that expected attention, which was only fitting. Seth spoke in a manner that said, regardless of the actual words he used, “I’m sorry for intruding on your ear”, where the Master’s tone assumed that whatever he had to say was worth listening to. It was dazzling to feel his familiar mouth used in such a different manner.

Beyond that, the words themselves were different. Seth couldn’t name what the difference was, something about the way the vowels were shaped and the way the consonants were articulated, but the result was that he sounded like a Californian, not someone from the Midwest. Seth hadn’t even noticed a difference in the accent he used compared with the Master’s until he heard the Master’s sounds coming from his own mouth, but the moment he did, it was clear and obvious.

“Sir, that was amazing! You must have worked hard to get so good.” It occurred to Seth that all the time he had spent this past week toiling through the runs and the exercise routines, wishing that the Master – who actually enjoyed working out – would take over and do it for him… all that time, the Master had been working hard himself in a different way. Shame washed over him. He had come out here intending to give himself in service to ErasureTop and yet instead of doing that, he was wishing the Master would take care of him instead!

The Master’s voice sounded in his ear again as usual, only this time instead of sounding flattered by the compliment as Seth had intended, he sounded vaguely annoyed. “Just doing what needs to be done,” he said, which made Seth feel even worse for his failings. He needed to do better, to fulfill his role without complaint. The Master was working hard on his own part of the project of learning to command Seth’s body; the least Seth could do was strive to make sure that body was one the Master could be proud of.

Oh… he suddenly remembered that day they first met in person, back at the park when the Master had inspected him and told Seth that his body belonged to the Master now and to treat it with respect and dignity. This was what that meant! Seth had been so focused on his own hard work that he hadn’t even realized what an effort the Master had also been making. He needed to be less self-focused, more aware of the Master’s needs and goals, which were… which were…

Um. What, exactly?

The Master was clearly working hard to be able to make use of Seth’s body. He needed it, or at least wanted it, for some reason. Fairly badly, judging by the amount of time and effort he was investing. For the first time since he saw that ad online all those months ago, Seth thought to wonder:

Why?

Well, pondering that question would give him something to occupy his thoughts next time he was in shutdown. For now, the Master was speaking in his ear again.

Winston

It was satisfying to show off for the drone, to demonstrate the capabilities he had worked so hard to achieve, but he needed to remember to keep some distance. It was tough because this time he was on his own. There was no support team to help him diagnose communication irregularities, no one to help fix the problems that arose when the network mappings failed to sync up correctly. Every pair of networks had to build their mappings from scratch and it was inevitable that there were mismatches. “Fingers, face, and falling” had been the buzzword in the program – those were the toughest areas to get right. He had neglected fingers so far, figuring that manual dexterity was least important, but he had been putting a great deal of effort into the other two areas.

Falling: most animals walked on four legs. They were inherently balanced and did not fall over. Not humans. Humans, up on two legs, had to constantly monitor their position and orientation and make tiny adjustments in their leg muscles to remain upright. Get one mapping wrong anywhere between the inner ear’s sense of balance and the toes’ level of tension and the whole body would go tumbling down. Winston had mostly resolved those issues now but it had taken a lot of work to get there, operating within the nets as well as using the laptop to tweak them from outside. That sort of work had been done by the IT team before and Winston was in no way an expert, so he was proud of what he had been able to achieve.

Likewise, the face: tongue, lips, eyes, tiny muscles all over. Even ignoring the thorny question of vision, the face was critically important. When operating a drone, it was essential that the drone be able to pass as a normal human. That meant that speech had to sound natural and the face had to look appropriate for the situation it was in. A huge amount of communication took place through facial expressions and if those weren’t mapped correctly, the drone came across to others like a robot or someone disturbingly out of sync with reality. Tongues in particular were very tough to control. They were basically fully-flexible slabs of muscle that could move in all sorts of ways and Winston had worked hard to achieve the mastery he had just demonstrated.

Which had led him to want to show off a bit, and who could he show off to but the drone himself? And so he had done it, and then regretted it almost immediately. The drone’s approval felt good, but it was a dangerous drug. Sure, it gave him a hit of pleasure to be the object of Seth’s slavish devotion and worship, but he could easily become addicted to that if he indulged too much. When a man is treated like a god too long and too often, he eventually comes to think of himself as a god. Better to keep some distance.

“Now, your task for today,” he said in the drone’s ear, “is to get a job. You will apply for work at the gym on 15th Street.”

“Yes, Sir. But Sir… I don’t know anything about working at a gym.”

“I’m not surprised. Fortunately, there’s work to be done at gyms that requires zero knowledge, experience, or skill. Cleaning, mostly. Equipment, laundry, locker rooms. You can manage that, I’m sure.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“I will be with you and can help you with what to say. All you have to do is be confident. Not cocky, just confident.”

“Yes, Sir.” But Winston could tell the words were said out of habit.

“Go into the bathroom and look in the mirror. I’ll show you what I mean.” Seth did and Winston followed his progress through the jumpy, skittery kaleidoscope of images that he saw through Seth’s eyes.

Such a shame that vision was always the last element to integrate, because it was the most useful. But the explanation was clear: human eyes were not like cameras, faithfully recording every photon that reached the retina. That would have made it easy: the net could replicate whatever the retina sent to the drone’s brain and send it to the operator’s brain as well. But that was useless because the large majority of the sense of sight was not handled by nerves but by the visual processing section of the brain. The botnet had no way to read or modify what was happening in the visual cortex, and so the best that could be achieved was for the net to figure out what signals from the drone’s retina triggered a certain sight and send the equivalent signals to the operator’s. But defining what was “equivalent” was difficult.

There were several known subsystems in the visual cortex. Certain groups of neurons fired when edges were detected, for instance, with various sub-subsystems responsible for vertical edges, horizontal edges, curved edges. Other groups of neurons captured motion or color or relative sizes. Some were simple, detecting “downness” as with falling rain or “leftness” as with a flying bird. Others were remarkably sophisticated, able to pick out the hopping of a chipmunk against a backdrop of trees whose leaves were all waving gently in a breeze. Somehow they could pick out the “important” movement against the background of unimportant movement, which was a critical talent back in prehistoric times when it meant the difference between detecting an incoming tiger and not. Still other groups of neurons were dedicated to recognizing faces and registering the emotions on them, just as vital to survival when humans began living in groups and social skill meant the difference between passing on one’s genes and being cast out of the tribe.

Seth’s brain and Winston’s brain had all the same evolution-installed visual processing systems, but the retinal signals that triggered them didn’t line up exactly. The result for Winston: when looking at the world through Seth’s eyes, it was not like watching a video over a bad connection where the picture degraded in predictable ways: choppy frame rate, blurry edges, static. Instead, it was like looking through funhouse mirrors where objects had crazy proportions and impossible juxtapositions as the various subsystems incorrectly identified “downness” or “edgeness” or “faceness” where it didn’t exist.

Thus, as Seth walked to the bathroom, Winston saw the door appear clearly (strong vertical edges), but as Seth moved through it and into the bathroom and turned on the light, the sudden brightness incorrectly triggered the motion-detecting subsystem and Winston’s view felt as if it was sliding sideways. Then Seth’s face appeared in the mirror and loomed huge in Winston’s view, two or three times larger than it should have appeared as the facial subsystem identified something it recognized and overemphasized it. A couple of seconds later, as Seth stopped moving and the rate of change of the visual inputs slowed down, the view calmed and became clearer, though colors still looked washed out and drab.

That was how Winston had gotten himself to the DMV and through the appointment there: pause, look, memorize, plan the next ten seconds, then act, ignoring the craziness that he knew would come whenever he moved or turned his head.

“All right, boy. I’m calling you ‘boy’ but I need you to act like a man. Confident but not to the point of cockiness. People respect the one, but not the other. Show me confidence.”

“Yes, Sir.” The image in the mirror straightened up and stood tall. It was not a bad show. Winston could feel the boy’s posture, which was close to correct. “Shoulders back,” he said, and felt Seth comply. Better. He could see Seth’s face and the expression seemed acceptable, though he didn’t really trust that the sight was coming through with sufficient accuracy at this stage in the visual systems’ integration. It was tough to compare the image in the mirror, which looked alert and aware, with what he knew to be true from his own eyes – every time he looked at Seth’s face in person, the boy’s expression was placid and dull and vacant. Of course, that could be because Seth’s eyes were always shut off in Winston’s presence and thus he seemed to be staring blindly because he was literally blind.

So there was no way to know how he would appear to the manager at the gym, but it didn’t really matter – however well Seth presented himself here and now, confidence wasn’t habit for him yet. He was getting better at remembering to hold himself with pride, demonstrating respect to Winston’s property as he had been instructed, but it still took conscious effort from him. Which meant that the moment his attention was distracted by literally anything else, he slipped back into his old habit of slouching and trying to disappear. The odds of that happening under the stressful conditions of a job interview were pretty much 100%.

Abusive Relationship Handbook Page 62: never miss an opportunity to remind your victim that he’d be lost without you.

“All right. Off you go.”

He allowed himself to take a break from monitoring Seth’s progress visually; he had had enough of the lurching, spinning funhouse sights for one day. Instead he felt his drone’s movements and listened through his ears. The walk was not far, only a few blocks, so it didn’t take long. There was a pause outside the gym as Seth re-confirmed his posture, presumably noted the “Help Wanted” sign in the window, and went inside. Winston turned vision back on; he would need it.

The kid started well. The gym was in use but not crowded. People were working out at the various machines and stations but there was no one talking to the attendant at the desk. Seth hesitated only a moment, then approached.

“Hi. I saw the ‘help wanted’ sign outside and was wondering if you could tell me about the position?” Nice. He got the tone right, neither a submissive whine nor an over-corrected, trying-too-hard confusion of confidence with acting like a bully. Those were the words of a polite dom, a man who phrases his orders as requests though beneath the surface they are still orders. And he got the wording right, too, arranging it so that the desk attendant would talk next and Seth wouldn’t have to flounder around looking for more words to say. Well, done, Seth.

The attendant described the job, then handed Seth an application form (on paper!) and went to get the manager. Seth filled out the form without needing assistance from Winston, which was good because reading was not yet possible through the interface. Then it was off to the manager’s office for an interview.

That’s where things fell apart. The manager, naturally, took the role of dom in the interaction, which put Seth straight into submissive mode. Winston could feel the kid’s shoulders drooping, his spine sagging, his voice losing power and volume. The words that came out of his mouth in answer to the manager’s questions about experience, background, availability, and so on steadily degraded to mumbles. Eye contact, intermittent from the start, became more so and then ceased altogether; the kid stared down at the manager’s desk more than looking him in the face. All completely, entirely foreseeable because of course the kid had no experience with gyms. Of course he hadn’t a clue what the job would entail. And of course he didn’t think to try to cover for his lack of experience with an enthusiastic willingness to learn. He just went into limp-dishrag mode. Winston let the kid go just long enough to become uncomfortable without sabotaging his prospects altogether.

“For fuck’s sake,” he said in Seth’s ear where only he would hear, then seized control by shifting to ride-along mode, shunting Seth to the role of passenger, aware of what was going on but unable to act to further screw things up. There was a spasm at the transition, which Winston masked with a brief clearing of his throat.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting up in the chair and making eye contact with the manager. “I’ve been recovering from an injury the last few months. Car crash, messed up my hip pretty bad. Every once in a while it flares up and I get distracted, and of course it would decide to do that just now.” He made a show of flexing his left leg and rearranging its position. “There we go, that’s a little better. That’s actually why I’m hoping to get this job. My physical therapy sessions have run out, but I know the exercises I need to do, it’s just a matter of having access to the equipment to do them on.” He gestured down at his body. “And you can see that I need to make up for weeks of inactivity too.”

He shifted once again in the chair, rising up a little higher. Confident but not cocky. “To answer your earlier question, I can work any shift you need. In fact, evenings and overnights would be preferable, but my day is pretty flexible and I can usually come in on short notice if there’s a sudden schedule change. We haven’t talked pay yet, but what’s really important to me is, I’m hoping to have access to the equipment when I’m off duty.” Oops, was “duty” too Marine-ish a word? Seth wasn’t the only one whose past defined his present! He continued, trying to cover. “After my shift is over. Is that one of the benefits of the job, staff access to the equipment in their off hours?”

That brought the conversation back on track and Winston could tell the manager was warming to him by the end of the interview. Nevertheless, he maintained control until the end. Sure enough, an offer was made, and Winston accepted. There would be more paperwork to fill out and sign, which Seth would have to do before his first shift the evening after next. That could be done at home. He would mostly be responsible for cleaning and maintenance but might be asked to fill in at the desk as needed. Perfect. Winston shook hands with the manager, pleased that the net link allowed him to apply just the right amount of pressure, then was out the door and on his way home.

Out on the sidewalk, he ceded control to Seth, who immediately lurched and almost fell due to the unexpected transition. “That’s how it’s done,” he said privately, leaving the “you incompetent fuckwit” unspoken but clear. The kid had been set up to fail and had, of course, failed.

The acquisition of a job for his drone had gone exactly according to the plan Winston had come up with months ago. So why did he feel like such a piece of shit about causing it to play out that way?

Seth

“You were amazing, Sir! I’m so glad you were there to step in. I don’t think I would have got the job if you hadn’t been watching. That was just incredible! It was like magic. At just the right time, my body knew exactly what to do and my mouth knew exactly what to say. Only it wasn’t magic, it was all you, Sir.”

Seth was aware he was babbling, but the excitement was overwhelming. As the interview had started to go sour, he had known he was screwing it up like he always did in such situations, but instead of crashing and burning the way he would have in his old life, in this new one the Master had swept in and rescued him. A miraculous save! And he would get better at managing such things on his own. He had felt the way his body held itself and heard the right words to say. The Master had been teaching him by example what needed to be done. Seth would learn. As with the physical transformation, it would take time and he would screw up many more times before he got it right, but bit by bit he would improve until one day he was as good as the Master. Well no, never that good, but good enough that the Master could be proud of him.

“Anyway. Thank you, Sir.” He hoped for a response, but none came and that was the Master’s right.

Seth happily walked home and thumbed open his door, at which point his eyes turned off. He groped his way inside and shut the door behind him. “Sir? Are you here?”

There was no response. Seth waited a short while, then felt for a place to set the papers down. No way to fill those out now, not with his eyes off. Then, long after he stopped expecting a response, one came. “I’m here, boy.” The voice came through the air, not directly into his ear.

Seth dropped down to his knees and faced the direction the voice had come from. He thought of congratulating the Master on today’s accomplishments, but something about the tone of voice said that the Master was not pleased. Best to let him take charge of whatever would happen next. Seth waited a long time for the Master to speak again, growing increasingly uneasy about what he might say as his knees grew more and more uncomfortable on the floor.

“That was embarrassing,” the Master said at last.

“I’m sorry, Si–”. The words cut off as Seth lost control of his mouth.

“Now is the time for listening, and for thinking. Not for speaking. You would have failed at that interview if I had not completed it for you. That is unacceptable. I need you to perform better.”

But… but… this was so unfair! The Master had thrown Seth into the deep end of the pool with no training, no advance notice of what to expect or guidance of what to say, of course he would flounder! How could it possibly have gone any other way? Seth wanted to protest at the impossible expectations the Master was laying on him, but the Master had denied that outlet.

“In a while, I will ask you for your thoughts on how you screwed up and how you will work to prevent such screwups in the future. Take some time to consider before I do.”

Shit, what could he have done differently? The Master didn’t make mistakes; this must be Seth’s fault somehow. He should have known – somehow – how to hold himself during the interview, what words to say. That really was genius to make up a story about an injury. It explained any less-than-perfect performance on Seth’s part as well as his work-in-progress physique. Should he have been able to think of that on his own? Maybe so. Maybe, in hindsight, he should have. He would mention that.

Oh, his posture, too. He hadn’t realized he had been slouching until the Master had straightened him up. He tried to remember at all times but it was so hard to always think about it and every time he thought of something else, his body slipped into its old habits all too easily. He would have to try harder to remember all the time, not just when remembering was easy.

Damn, his knees were hurting worse and worse but he didn’t dare shift position.

“Stand up,” the Master commanded, as if reading his – oh! No, he wasn’t reading Seth’s thoughts, but he was probably feeling the pain in his knees. Gratefully, Seth stood. “Now. Explain yourself.”

And suddenly he could speak again. “Sir, I went in unprepared. I should have planned better, knowing that an interview was likely. I should have thought of an explanation like the one you said about the hip injury and had it ready to use. I should not have fumbled for words. I should have remembered to treat your body with respect as you taught me. And I will do all of these things next time, if there is a next time, I mean, there probably won’t be another job interview soon but there will be other times when I am out representing you in the world, like when I go to work I will hold myself with pride and do the job well and make you proud of me. Sir.” Seth let the tumbling words come to a halt, hoping he had said all the right things even if the order might be a little mixed up.

The Master let him stand there, not answering. When he did speak, it was not to acknowledge anything Seth had said, leaving him no way to know if his guesses had been right or wrong or some combination. “I’ll need to punish you. Pain always helps to cement a memory in place.” Seth felt the Master take charge and walk him forward, striding confidently in a way that Seth would never have dared in his blind state. Clearly, the Master could see well enough through Seth’s eyes to walk even though Seth himself saw only blackness.

He felt himself removing his shirt, folding it, setting it to one side. Then he felt himself standing up on his toes, reaching up, and wrapping his hands around two chains dangling from the ceiling, set a bit more than shoulder-width apart. His fingers clenched the steel tightly and then he regained control of his body… or most of it. His eyes were still turned off and his hands and forearms were frozen in place. He found he could not unclench his fists and realized that this was just as effective as if he had been cuffed to the chains. With no way to loosen his grip, his own hands held him bound as securely as any lock.

“This is going to hurt,” the Master said. “The pain is the point. The pain drives the lesson home. The pain makes the experience sharp in the mind so the mind will remember. I will be feeling every bit right along with you, which I know is no comfort to you because I enjoy pain in a way that you do not, and I can take a lot more of it than you can. It will probably be more than you think you can endure. But you will endure because you have no choice.” Seth whimpered quietly, knowing that there was no hiding his fear from this man but still trying to not draw attention to it.

The first blow struck his shoulders and he flinched, but it wasn’t too bad. A warmup stroke, maybe? The second hit a little harder but still, he had been expecting instant fire but this was nowhere near full intensity.

The pressure increased with each subsequent blow. Seth had no idea what the Master was hitting him with, but as the force behind the blows became stronger and the strap or lash or cane or whatever it was started hitting places that had already been struck before, the pain began to wash over him. Soon he was jumping every time he heard the tell-tale swish that preceded each strike by a fraction of a second. He tried to hold himself still but could not and found his body twisting and writhing, seeking escape from the onslaught.

Then, suddenly, he wasn’t twisting and writhing any more. He wanted to, but his body no longer obeyed him. He could only hang there, exposed shoulders helplessly awaiting the next attack, shouting out when it came. Then even the power to cry out was removed from him. He was forced to suffer in silence as the ferocity continued to climb. Nothing stopped the tears from leaking out of the sides of his eyes, though. The Master could not – or chose not to – deny him that small reaction to the torment he was enduring.

It went on and on, well beyond the point where Seth would have begged for mercy had he been able, until the pain was all-consuming and he felt his mind threatening to collapse in on itself and disappear. Then, at last, it stopped. Seth kept his eyes scrunched tight, expecting that the halt was merely a pause and that the rain of blows would resume any second. But it did not. Slowly, slowly, he became aware of other activity behind him: heavy breathing, muttered words, a flurry of motion around waist level behind his ass. “Fuck… goddamn that hurts soooo fuckin’ good… fuck yeah…”

It took perhaps two minutes before the Master unloaded himself onto the small of Seth’s back, the warm droplets hitting spots well below where the lash had struck. Seth, still immobilized and speechless, could only wait, half standing, half hanging from his cramping wrists, until the Master granted him the power to move and talk once again. He knew exactly what he would say, and when the moment came, he was ready.

“Thank you for the lesson, Sir.”

Winston

Maddeningly, there was still something wrong with the vision integration.

Two weeks had passed since Seth’s job interview. The kid was settling in at work, earning a modest income and using the equipment in his off hours to steadily improve his muscle tone and body fat percentage. Winston spent many hours as well watching the world through Seth’s eyes as he worked. The environment of the gym provided a good range of both sensory and motor stimuli, with more variation than he could get hanging around the apartment. The more experience the two nets got processing visual signals, the better the integration should get.

And yet they seemed to have reached a plateau. There should have been plenty of time for the process to complete but somehow there was still something wrong. The world didn’t look right as seen through Seth’s eyes.

More than once, Winston had wished he had the IT team to fall back on, or the ability to search the internet for ideas. But there was no IT team, and searching the web would be a colossally bad idea, so he was on his own to diagnose this one, and it was a weird one.

It wasn’t saccades, the most common synch issue back in the program’s heyday. The net was compensating for those with acceptable and steadily-improving accuracy. Saccadic masking was working better and better every day; occurrences of abrupt blurring or dizzying shifts in perspective were down to one or two per hour. Depth perception was working reliably. Focal issues were resolved as well. Seth probably would benefit from corrective lenses, but his vision was clear enough without them that Winston could live with the fuzziness that Seth’s slightly-myopic eyes perceived.

But the world looked washed out, faded, deadened. As if he was looking out through sheer fabric or a light fog. And Winston had no idea why.

Well, today the problem was going to get his full attention. Seth wasn’t scheduled to work today. He had had breakfast and was now safely switched off, so Winston had charge of both bodies in his own apartment.

First up: facing each other. Seth as seen through Winston’s eyes looked normal. Winston seen through Seth’s eyes… also normal? But oddly wrong, too. Of course, looking at his own body was strange and probably not the best way to diagnose the issue. A side-by-side comparison of the same scene would be better.

He took both bodies to the window, carefully making sure that one was seated and still before turning his focus to the other, then looked out, toggling between his own eyes and Seth’s. The east-facing view showed blue sky, bright sun pouring down on the freeway below, white concrete and tan ground nearby, brown hills in the distance. Some dark green leaves on the few trees poking up over the freeway.

There wasn’t much difference, which made the problem even more frustrating since he couldn’t reliably replicate it. The brightness seemed to be the same in both views. Winston’s own eyes, with their slightly sharper focus, saw more detail at greater distances, but Seth’s eyes weren’t that much blurrier. Yet still, somehow, the scene looked deader, less vibrant, from Seth’s perspective and there was no obvious reason why. Maybe it was something he would have to learn to live with, but he wasn’t ready to give up trying yet.

He looked around his apartment next, again toggling between one pair of eyes and the other. The deadening effect was stronger indoors but still there was no obvious cause, nothing he could pin down as conclusively wrong. So maybe something to do with light intensity? He spent about forty-five minutes poking around on the laptop trying to debug the two networks, but diagnostics came back clean. Well, almost. There was always something in the logs because of the inevitable dropped packets or checksum mismatches and he spent a good deal of time chasing down leads that turned out to be dead ends. Then, just for the practice, he swapped seats so that it was Seth’s fingers on the keyboard, Seth’s eyes watching the screen, and ran through the diagnostic protocols again.

Same result. Visual systems reported near-100% synchronization. “Dammit! What the fuck could possibly be wrong?”

Frustrated and needing a break, Winston-as-Seth moved the cursor to the window’s red close button… and noticed just as he clicked it that it wasn’t red. It was yellow. That was… wait…

Still acting as Seth, he brought the window back up and did the toggle-view a couple of times. Sure enough, seen through his own eyes, the close button was red, but looking through Seth’s it was yellow. Realization blossoming in his mind, he looked around the room, this time knowing what to pay attention to.

Now that he knew what to look for, the evidence was all there, clear and obvious. He went to the window once again and confirmed it by ignoring the blue sky and the white concrete and the green leaves, looking instead at the small patches of red: the roofs of some of the buildings on the far side of the freeway. In Seth’s eyes, they weren’t red. They looked brown. Very similar, in fact, to those dark leaves that his brain had labeled “green” more through expectation than any other reason. Again a reminder that the vast majority of the sense of sight happened in the mind, not the eyes.

Two minutes of internet research was enough to give him the answer, research that was perfectly safe to do because had nothing to do with drone nets or master / drone visual integration. Fifteen more minutes of research told him everything he needed to know about the topic, including some new words he never needed to know before.

Time to bring Seth online. That meant going back to the apartment next door. He did so, got the kid’s phone open and pointed to the right site, then let the kid have access to his senses, but not his motor system. Ride-along mode – Seth could see, hear, and feel, but not act.

“You’re color-blind,” Winston said using Seth’s mouth, then yielded control so his drone could respond.

“I am?”

Jeez. The kid had no idea.

“You are. Look at the screen. What number do you see?” Yield control again, of the entire head this time so Seth could move his eyes.

Seth looked and looked, but of course he wouldn’t see any numbers. The screen was showing one of those circle-dot images, where there are a bunch of dots of varying shades of green arranged in a dense circle, with selected dots colored red instead. A person with normal trichromat vision would easily see that the red dots formed the shape of a 7; to a dichromat like Seth the dots would all look the same.

“I… I’m sorry, Sir, I don’t see any numbers. Only dots.”

“How about this one?” He swiped the screen to a sample that tested for a different type of color-blindness, the blue / yellow sort, confident that Seth’s was of the red / green variety.

“Twelve, Sir. Oh! This is what the last circle was supposed to look like? Some of the dots form a number shape? But they didn’t.”

Winston took control again and swiped to the previous image. Sharing the mouth to communicate was less convenient than speaking directly into Seth’s eardrum, but he wasn’t ready to relinquish body control yet.

“Correct. The dots that form the number seven are called ‘red’.” He traced the shape with Seth’s fingers as he spoke, acting from memory since he couldn’t see it through Seth’s eyes. “The background dots are called ‘green’. To most people they are visibly distinct. But you can’t see any difference, can you?”

“No, Sir.”

“I thought as much. To you, the words ‘red’ and ‘green’ are different ways to describe the same color, like ‘coral’ and ‘pink’.” And somehow he had reached the age of 22 without ever realizing. The poor kid must have had a hell of an upbringing with some seriously neglectful parents and teachers who should have screened for this condition but didn’t. Color-blindness wasn’t exactly rare. His childhood was probably filled with mockery, with kids and adults alike telling him he was an idiot for not knowing the difference between a red apple and a green one, for dressing himself in clashing clothes, for constantly using the wrong words for colors. By his teenage years he would have learned to avoid describing things by color at all to give those around him fewer opportunities to mock him. In other words, they told him he was stupid until he believed them. And all along the problem was a physical one. His retinas lacked a particular color receptor. It was physically impossible for him to see any difference between red and green. Mocking him for that made as much sense as mocking a fish for being unable to fly.

And here Winston’s script called for him to dish out more of that same kind of abuse. This was a perfect opportunity to make Seth feel even more like a failure and thus increase his desire to be erased. He should tell Seth what a flawed drone he was, how disappointed his Master was at his shortcomings. Drive the drone to further despair until the day came when he would beg Winston to shut him down and take over completely.

He just couldn’t do it.

The prospect had made sense when he was first devising this plan, back when the drone was an abstract non-person, still to be acquired. Winston could envision himself being as ruthless as he had to be in order to get what he needed: a body to live in once his own was too weak to use. He knew the level of cruelty and firmness that would be required and planned to force himself do it.

But not any more. Seth was no longer an abstract placeholder. Winston had spent the last six weeks getting to know the guy in the most intimate way possible; sharing his body with him. The networks didn’t allow mind-reading or any sort of thought transference, but sharing a man’s senses gave a remarkable level of insight into his thoughts. Simply by feeling the sensations Seth felt, noticing his body position, where his eyes were focused, what he was doing with his hands… all of those added up to volumes of information about his drone’s emotional state and what he was paying attention to. That was only a short hop away from telepathy.

When training a drone back in the Manrider Program, the same effect had occurred, but it was less remarkable then. The drones were all his fellow Marines; he already knew them by name and personality. Here, Seth had started out as a void and the plan was for him to remain that way… but somewhere along the way, Seth had become more than a placeholder. He was a person in his own right, one with a remarkably resilient personality. Evidence: for all the abuse Winston had handed him so far, Seth’s response had been bafflingly cheerful acceptance. And he showed every sign of happily continuing to accept more. Why? What made the guy tick?

Maybe there was another way for Winston to get what he needed? Maybe erasure wasn’t the only option? Perhaps the two of them could have more of… a partnership? Not of equals, certainly, but Seth had already demonstrated that he was willing, even happy, to follow Winston’s commands, so maybe…?

That would bear thinking about, but at a later time. For now…

“Let’s see what we can figure out. Now that we know what the problem is, maybe we can compensate for it.”

The rest of the day disappeared in a blur of visual comparisons. To Winston’s disappointment, there was no workaround, though they tried long and hard to find one. Seth’s retinas lacked the cells to perceive any difference between red and green, therefore his nerve net could not send the relevant information to Winston’s net. Whenever he was riding his drone, Winston would never be able to view the world in the full color spectrum he was accustomed to.

Also frustrating was the reverse: there turned out to be no way to get trichromat vision to Seth’s dichromat-trained mind. Seth’s brain – which had grown up and learned how to see using signals from dichromat eyes – could not perceive any difference between red and green, even when presented with signals from Winston’s eyes. That took some doing… the networks were designed for one-way visual signal linkage; it was a major security violation to have the drone seeing through the master’s eyes. But Winston was able to work around it by recording a snapshot of his own view of the circle-dot image and sending the snapshot to Seth’s net. But it was no good. Seth’s network, or perhaps his visual cortex, didn’t know what to do with the extraneous color information so it was ignored. The fantasy Winston had of being able to be the one who opened his drone’s mind to the world of colors it had never known was not to be.

By late afternoon the two men were spent. Winston needed to stand up and move; Seth preferred to go into his cage and take a nap. Winston could have forced him to exercise instead but decided to let the kid make this small decision for himself.

“Hey, Seth,” Winston said, speaking into his drone’s ear once Seth was curled up in his cage.

“Sir?”

“Despite the trouble we had, today is still a good day. A milestone day, in fact. This vision problem was the last integration issue, and now we know this is as good as it’s going to get. The nets are as fully integrated as they can be. We’ve reached the point where I can handle your body just about as well as you can handle it yourself.”

“Congratulations, Sir!”

“I think some celebration is in order. I think tonight is a good night to go out to this club I know. Drink, dance, maybe find someone who wants some raunchy sex as bad as I do.”

Seth perked up. “Whatever you say, Sir!”

Seth

The Master gave him two hours to nap, but Seth had been too keyed up to sleep. How could he not be, with a plum like that dangled in front of him? Nevertheless, he lay still with his eyes shut, half-dozing, knowing that he would want to be rested for whatever adventure the Master had in mind for tonight.

At the appointed time, he got up, then showered and shaved and dressed in the outfit the Master had specified for him. His first time wearing fetish gear! A red cotton shirt, somewhat on the tight side but not absurdly so; leather pants with the same shade of red in stripes down the legs; and that was all.

Seth checked himself out in the mirror. The difference between what he saw there and the vacant schlub that had left Fremont weeks before was startling. It wasn’t just the haircut and the changes to his body that the diet and exercise program had brought about. That was coming along but there was still a way to go before he could feel he had given the Master everything he could. No, there was more beyond just the physique and it took him a while to realize what it was: posture. Attitude. Confidence. He had left Fremont as, in his own words, a nothing, with the intention of becoming a nothing with the purpose of serving his Master. And that shone through in the image in the mirror. He was handling his body with pride now because it was not his but the Master’s and therefore worthy of respect.

“If you’re finished admiring yourself, perhaps we could get going?” the voice said wryly in his ear.

“Oh! Sir, I was just… I mean, it was for… I was admiring your–” Abruptly his voice cut off as the Master took control. The next words that emerged from his mouth were from him. “I understand, kid. And I appreciate the work you have done to make my property into something worthy of admiring in a mirror. Now I want to go see what we can do with it. I’m going to leave you switched on so you can pay attention to the way to get there. I want to know you can find your way home if I decide to drop off.”

Seth, locked out, had no way to respond but he knew he didn’t need to. Of course he would obey. The Master added a hat to the ensemble, but Seth didn’t get a good look at it before it went on. Then they left the building, the Master striding confidently north to the track where Seth did his workouts, then west, then north again.

“Here, you walk for a bit,” the Master muttered at one point, so softly that only Seth could hear so he knew the words were meant for him. The Master returned control to Seth, who stumbled only slightly. He walked for perhaps a minute or two, then the Master took charge again. “Nice,” he said. “The transitions are getting cleaner.”

Then they were crossing over a freeway and Seth realized he was very near the park where he and the Master had first met. “Most of the gay bars are further north, in Hillcrest,” the Master told him. “Not really walking distance. The Barleycorn is close and even though it doesn’t specifically cater to leathermen, there’s often enough there that we just might find someone who wants to play the kind of games I like.” A few blocks more and then they were entering a dimly-lit space.

The Master walked up to the bar, sat down, and ordered a rum and Coke. He let their eyes rove around the room, looking for… Seth wasn’t sure what. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to find it. He finished his drink and then got up and went to the dance floor where a small crowd was bending and gyrating to the beat. He slipped into the mass of bodies and joined the dance.

Seth’s body never moved like this when he was in charge of it. Arms, legs, neck, hands, hips, feet, all moving in ways Seth could never hope to duplicate. He felt the motions and tried to uncover the rhythm to them, what it was that made them feel so natural and right, but it eluded him. Perhaps with time it would come. Soon enough he stopped analyzing and simply enjoyed the sensations, delighted that the Master was letting him share this experience. It could so easily have been hours of shutdown instead, with Seth locked away without light or sound or touch while the Master danced the night away.

Which was strange, come to think of it. Why did the Master leave him present for this? Was he showing off, perhaps? Demonstrating that he could make much better use of Seth’s body than Seth ever would? There was no need, if so; Seth had no doubt about that already. As enjoyable as this was, he had signed on to this knowing that the ultimate goal was to be erased. To cease to be. This was… not that, and Seth couldn’t understand why.

Still, it was good that he was left aware. He enjoyed seeing the warm, sexy bodies, some of them shirtless, squirming and writhing so close. He touched them, even. It was unavoidable given the crowd on the floor, which was only increasing as more men trickled into the bar. He was dancing, grinding, bumping into neighbors, rubbing skin to skin with more men than he ever thought he would touch in such an erotic way.

At one point he realized that the Master was dancing with someone specifically, a man perhaps slightly older than Seth with black hair, olive skin, and a thin chain collar around his neck. A visual indicator of a sub, perhaps? Seth had no idea how to read the non-verbal signals of this unfamiliar environment, but that seemed like a reasonable guess.

Eventually the music changed and the Master caught the collared dancer’s eye and gestured with his head toward an empty table. They went and sat and the Master offered to buy a round, which Ray – as his name turned out to be – accepted. Seth realized he was watching a seduction take place and marveled at the smooth way the Master went about it. No overt talk of sex or bondage, but plenty of very subtle hints and probing explorations. The way he allowed his eyes to flick down to the collar when Ray was talking, then back up again; the way he found opportunities to brush his hand against Ray’s forearm, ever so gently; the way he held his own body in a dominant way without looming or seeming threatening.

Alas, it didn’t work out. Ray thanked the Master for the drink and went to use the restroom, then returned to the dance floor. The Master remained at the table. He finished his drink, then said under his breath, “I need a break. You’re in charge for a bit.” A few seconds later, Seth felt control return and, ready for it, did not lurch or tip over.

“Sir?” he said, but there was no response. He didn’t want to shout louder, not in a public place like this. Shit, what was he supposed to do? Go back out on the dance floor and make an ass of himself trying and failing to imitate the grace that his body had formerly demonstrated out there? Get another drink? That was a bad idea – he was already feeling the effects from the two the Master had put into his system. With nothing else to do, he continued to sit at the empty table, idly fiddling with his empty glass in a way that he hoped didn’t look too stupid.

Ah. This was why the Master had left him aware before. So that when break time came, Seth would not be dumped into totally unexpected surroundings but would instead be able to have his body mark time while he waited for the Master to return. He looked around the bar to pass the time, studying the men there, trying to learn the secret language that they all seemingly spoke without being too overt about staring.

Winston

Damn. So close. But Ray turned out to be off limits, a collared boy allowed by his Sir to dance and flirt but nothing more. It wasn’t a total waste of time – the dancing had been sensual and fun and the subsequent dance of seduction at the table had been pleasant as well. But when it became clear to them both that Winston was looking for more than Ray was allowed to give, it was time to part ways.

And now here he was, back in his own body to check on things. He glanced across the room toward where Seth was sitting, alone at a table trying not to look lost.

Man, this was probably a terrible idea. No, it was definitely a terrible idea, but it had been too tempting to resist. Today had been a good day, health-wise. Despite the long working session with Seth on the vision issues, his body was holding up well. Minimal tremors, pretty good strength. He had used the time while Seth was sleeping to make his own leisurely way down to the Barleycorn and set himself up in a booth. He had ordered a plate of wings and a large beer, then set a laptop up on the table in front of himself and carefully wedged himself into a corner of the booth.

Driving a drone was straightforward, but there was an unavoidable consequence: while you’re living as the drone, your own body is an abandoned shell. The master net can handle basic functions like keeping the lungs and heart going, but balance is always sketchy and anything more advanced is not possible. Manriders were encouraged to lie down if at all possible while piloting their drones and sit propped up if not. Otherwise when the rider returned to his own body, he would find it fallen over and possibly bleeding from the nose since there had been no one present to stop that nose from slamming into the ground.

Which made it all the more foolish for him to be here, out in public, while trying to pilot Seth at the same time.

Yet here he was. He had rationalized by telling himself that there weren’t going to be many more opportunities to get out himself. His condition was going to steadily worsen and soon enough Seth’s body was going to be the only one strong enough for a trip to a bar. Why not go while he still could? It was safe enough, he figured, if he managed things right. Leave Seth aware, occasionally hand control back to him while Winston checked on his own systems, then toggle back.

Winston had always been the best of the group at shifting between self and drone. He was able to switch between bodies faster than any of the others, slipping into a drone and then coming back to himself with minimal disruption. The other guys had a harder time with the transitions. Some were better than he was at the piloting, others were faster at integrating with new drones, but no one was faster than Winston at getting in and out of one.

As a result, he was the only one to have successfully piloted two drones through an obstacle course simultaneously in under ten minutes, toggling rapidly back and forth between the two, keeping each one moving as he slid effortlessly, seamlessly, from one set of perceptions and motions to another. When he was deeply in the zone, the feeling was godlike, as if he were really present in both bodies at once. It made him feel like a giant, able to stretch out his hands and touch the goalposts at either end of a football field at the same time.

The trainers had explained that it was an effect known since prehistory: when multiple bodies all act in unison, the participants feel as if they are part of a greater whole. As if their commands to their own arms and legs are being obeyed by the dozens or hundreds of others around them as well. It’s why armies spend so much time drilling in formation, why dance troupes practice synchronizing their movements, why choirs and rowers and worshipers across a vast range of faiths act as a coordinated group: self-other boundary blurring. A sense of belonging to something greater than oneself, of being something larger than one actually was.

The Manrider Program was self-other boundary blurring times a thousand. Winston literally was his drone – or drones – as well as himself, and the effect was intoxicating.

During the exercises when he had needed to tend to his own body as well as a drone’s, his usual technique had been to keep motor control in the drone, leaving his own body limp and effectively paralyzed, but to flick his perception back to himself several times a minute. Take a second to verify that his body was still in the position he had left it, that no odd sounds were threatening danger. Once in a while, open his eyes and take a quick peek, then shut them again so they wouldn’t dry out in his absence. Like checking the rearview mirror while driving, it eventually became reflex.

That was what he had been doing tonight. He was very good at making the shift quickly, there and back, so as not to make the drone appear to have zoned out. He hadn’t dared risk that while dancing, though, so now was a good time to make a more thorough check. And also move a bit so people wouldn’t think he had died sitting there staring at his screen.

Maybe it was a bad idea, but he was pretty confident that he would be able to make it work. He stirred a bit, sipping from the now-warm beer and eating another wing, then touched a key on the laptop as if he had scrolled down a page and resumed “staring” at it from behind the glasses he wore to disguise the fact that his eyes were closed.

There. All was well here. He flicked back to Seth.

Seth

“Did you miss me?” the Master murmured with Seth’s lips. Seth couldn’t answer, of course, having lost control again. “All right, let’s go cast our net again and see what we can catch. Watch and learn, boy. At some point I may expect you to do the picking up.” Right! As if he could ever! He felt his body stand up and return to the dance floor. Soon he was stepping and swaying just as smoothly as before.

Like before, the Master danced at first as part of the crowd. Seth expected him to choose his next target to approach, but it never happened. He seemed to be swept up in the dancing, lost in the beat.

Abruptly, Seth found himself in charge. What the…? He had no idea what to do. He caught himself easily enough and didn’t fall over, but when he tried to mimic the moves the Master had been making, it was impossible. Sure, the rough outline was the same, but the smoothness was gone, there was no grace, no coordination. He was like a robot trying to imitate a human.

Then, just as quickly, the Master was back in charge. Seth breathed a mental sigh of relief. What had happened there? Was that deliberate, or a network glitch? The Master didn’t seem surprised by it and Seth obviously couldn’t ask, so it was probably intentional. They danced on. Seth relaxed and tried to sink into the music.

The Master kept his eyes closed quite a bit, and when they were open they tended to be fixed, unfocused. Seth was starting to get used to the knack of seeing without being able to control where his eyes were pointing. It had been disorienting at first and he had realized how much normal vision meant pointing your eyes at whatever you were thinking about. But when the Master was driving, Seth’s eyes went where his attention was focused, not to whatever Seth wanted to aim at. It was interesting how much insight that provided into the Master’s thinking – whatever he was looking at was what he was thinking about, at least for a fraction of a second. Sometimes Seth tried to follow his thoughts and guess where he might look next. Other times he preferred to think his own thoughts, and so, gradually, over time, he had started learning how to separate what he was thinking about from what his eyes were pointing at, viewing the world through his peripheral vision.

That is what allowed him to notice the dancer at the other end of the floor. Seth was near one corner and the other man was near the adjacent corner, so they were not near each other but there was mostly a clear line of sight between them only occasionally blocked by pumping bodies. The man was handsome with dark sandy hair, somewhat taller and older than Seth, wearing a tight shirt that seemed like it once might have strained to cover his chest but now wasn’t quite as taut. The muscles of his arms and chest were still impressive, though: flat and firm rather than bulging. Very sexy to look at, even indirectly.

Still, the physique wasn’t what caught Seth’s attention. Rather, it was the fact that the man seemed to be making the exact same moves as the Master. It was hard to be sure because the Master never looked right at the other man, and in fact often turned away as he spun and whirled. He didn’t really look at anyone, apparently holding off for the moment on the idea of finding someone else to try to pick up. Seth had to catch glimpses out of the corner of his eye but each time he did, the man was mirroring what his own body was doing in perfect synchrony, as if the two were following the steps a choreographer had laid out for them.

Strange. Strange indeed.

Winston

God DAMN, that felt incredible! It had been a long time since he’d been out on a dance floor and he had forgotten how good it felt to get lost in the joy of movement. And then, while working his drone from across the room, it occurred to him that this was a perfect opportunity to get that godlike feeling again, the feeling of running two bodies at once. The nets could handle that just fine: mirror mode. The drone does exactly what the master does, copying him move for move. And so he abandoned Seth for a few seconds, long enough to get his own body up out of the booth and walk over to the dance floor, then sync up the two sets of muscles.

And that allowed him to once again see from two sets of eyes set twenty feet apart instead of four inches, to move knowing that another body was moving in perfect alignment with his own. Parallax like a Titan! Arms like telephone poles! Feet stomping like boulders falling from mountains! It was magnificent, absolute glory. He had planned to only dip his toes in the water, just a few minutes of dancing. But it felt so, sooooo good, and so he stayed, just another minute longer, and then one more…

And then.

He had just toggled over to Seth when his own body’s left knee gave out. In the second he spent in Seth’s awareness, his body had time to tilt and start collapsing to the floor. He was facing away so he didn’t see it happening; his perceptions were in Seth so he didn’t feel it happening. By the time he went to flick back to himself and discovered the problem, it was far too late. His ass slammed into the floor and he promptly tipped sideways as his body made no effort at all to break the fall but instead continued to try to move his legs and hands in what was now a ruined copy of the graceful moves Seth was making. He tumbled left until his shoulder hit the floor, then rolled down onto his face.

His reaction time was slow, stunned by the abrupt change of position and perspective and the sudden pain in his tailbone. He had landed hard, hoping to have not broken anything back there but only bruised it. And so he didn’t think to get out of mirror mode for long seconds. Thus Seth abruptly stopped dancing and brought his arms to his face and pushed off a floor that wasn’t there because he was upright while Winston was down on the ground.

Bystanders were rushing in to help but he waved them off, then realized that Seth would be saying the same words of dismissal and making the same gestures of “no, it’s all right, I got this” and goddammit the kid was fully conscious, fully aware and this was all suddenly going wrong, wrong, wrong…

Focus. Get the situation under control.

He shut down the mirror mode, flicked over to Seth, and allowed his own body to go limp, sagging to the floor. Next, he switched Seth off, no time for a warning, just boot the kid out into empty space. As Seth, he rushed over to his own inert form and picked himself up, hoping to shake off any company. But no, one persistent good Samaritan insisted on helping to carry Winston over to the booth he had been sitting at. The moment Seth was seated, Winston could abandon him and toggle back to his own body and pretend to shake himself awake. Of course, Seth would be sitting there completely vacant; he just had to hope Mr. Samaritan didn’t notice.

“Wow… thanks,” he said to the helper. “My knee gave out on me.”

“More than just your knee. You were out cold for a while. We need to call you an ambulance.” He pulled out a phone.

Shit. “No… no. Thanks. I’m okay. My buddy here can get me home.”

He quickly flicked over to Seth and made the head nod in assent. Then back to himself. The guy looked dubious, but at least he wasn’t dialing. “You probably banged your head on your way down. You really ought to get checked out.”

He had not bumped his head, not all that hard at least. It was his tailbone that had taken a beating. “Seriously, I’m fine. I landed hard and it knocked the wind out of me for a minute. I just need to go home. Get some ice on that knee.”

“You need a ride? I can give you a lift, or call you a rideshare?”

What I need is for you to fuck the hell off. But he couldn’t show any anger about it; the guy was doing what any reasonable person would say was the right thing. “No, thanks.” Over to Seth. “His place isn’t far from here. I can get him home.” Back to himself. “I’m just going to sit here for a few minutes first. Get my breath back.” He really was breathing hard, now that he thought about it. Dammit. What a stupid, moronic stunt to try! What the fuck had he been thinking? The whole point of acquiring a new body was that his own could no longer be trusted to perform up to the standards he required of it. So what does he do on his first outing in the new body? Expects his old one to keep up with the new.

Idiot. All the more so because he should have known this was coming: one of the most well-known effects of self-other boundary blurring is increased tolerance for pain, and his was already high to begin with. He hadn’t even noticed his body signaling its imminent failure.

Idiot.

But he wasn’t in the clear yet. He needed to get rid of the unwanted company before the guy noticed that only one of the two bodies here was occupied at any one time. Back to Seth, speaking to himself. “Hey, you want some water?” Glance over at the Samaritan. “You think you could get him a glass of water from the bar?” Back to himself. “Yeah, that would be great.”

Having something constructive to do, the Samaritan was finally willing to leave. Winston, exhausted from both the dancing and the mental strain of trying to run two bodies at once, sat back and tried to slow his breathing while Seth sat next to him, an inert lump waiting on standby. All too soon, Mr. Samaritan was back with the water. By then, Winston had arranged his bodies so that he had his arm over Seth’s shoulder with Seth leaning into him. The other way around would have looked better – the healthy one protecting and tending the injured one – but Seth was shorter. This was fine. It conveyed the impression it needed to.

“You really should get checked out by a doctor.”

“I will. Promise. No ambulance, though. Those things are expensive.” Flick to Seth. “I’ll make sure he gets to a clinic in the morning. And I’ll stay with him tonight.” Look up at himself, flick to his own body, look down at Seth, then look back at the guest, flick to Seth and do the same… man, this was not helping. All the work to keep up the charade was exhausting when he wanted to just rest. Preferably lying down, not sitting on his increasingly-sore tailbone.

Finally, finally, the Samaritan got up and returned to the dance floor, but that wasn’t going to be good enough. Winston knew he would be watching, which meant Winston would have to keep toggling between bodies so that one didn’t look like an empty shell for too long. This was getting worse and worse. He needed to get out, needed to get home and out of public view.

Acting as Seth, he closed up the laptop, now regretting having brought it because it needed to be carried home. At least he had a backpack to carry it with, which left all four hands free. Acting as himself, he stood up and made a show of stretching and testing his muscles. The result was not great; he was weaker than he had realized. He had pushed himself too far and was now paying for it. His depleted muscles simply could not be forced to walk with any reliability. Falling again on his way to the door would be a disaster, sure to bring on the Samaritan’s unwanted attention again and probably more. He sat back down again next to Seth before his legs could collapse out from under him.

GODDAMMIT!!! He had all the mental toughness he needed, could work through as much pain as necessary to get the job done. But it wasn’t pain stopping this Marine. It was a lack of physical resources. The muscles simply did not exist. They had been eaten away, and no amount of willpower or discipline could make up for that. He would need to lean on Seth for support, which meant trying to walk two bodies at once. Which meant more toggling rapidly between the two without the slightest misstep to draw unwanted offers of “help”.

Well, fuck.

There really was no option. Sitting here wasn’t going to make the eventual task any easier. Might as well get on with it, unless…

Unless…

Seth

It was hard to measure time when he was in shutdown mode, but this instance had clearly only lasted a few minutes since those chaotic few seconds when his body had seemed to go crazy. The familiar voice sounded in his ear.

“Seth, I need you to do something for me.” There was no other sound, just the Master’s voice. Presumably he was still at the bar, but there was no thumping bass beat underlying the sound of the words. He tried to answer but his lips and lungs were not his to command.

“I’m going to turn you back on, everything but your eyes. There’s a man sitting next to you. I need you to stand up, then help him stand and let him lean on you while you both walk. I’ll guide you where you need to go.”

With that, the thumping beat struck his ears and his body was under his control again, though all was dark. The music had changed, or perhaps it hadn’t. All these songs had the same basic feel and tended to blend into one another. He stood up as he had been instructed to do, then felt something placed into his hands. “Put this backpack on.” He did.

“Now, help the man up and let him lean on you.” He felt an arm go around his shoulders and then he was partially supporting the weight of someone slightly taller than he was, but who seemed to be having trouble moving. As they slowly worked their way toward wherever they were going, it was hard to tell what was wrong with him. There didn’t seem to be an injury; he did not appear to be favoring one leg over the other. But for whatever reason, the Master wanted him to do this task and so of course he would do it.

Past the dance floor, to the door of the bar, out onto the street. Progress was slow but steady. He couldn’t see where they were going, but the Master could and so arranged for him to stop at intersections until traffic was clear, warned him of curbs and uneven pavement, notified him of upcoming obstacles and other walkers. He was perfectly happy to walk blind. It was familiar and he trusted his guide completely.

The walk to the bar had taken about thirty minutes. The walk back – if that was where they were going – would take substantially longer at this speed. Seth waited until they had been moving for about ten minutes and then spoke aloud. He had had plenty of time to think about what he would say, and to decide whether to risk saying it, so the words came out clearly in the clean night air.

“Sir, if it helps, I know it’s you.”

There was a brief pause, then the voice sounded in his ear, not coming from the body next to him, the body that he knew belonged to the Master.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s you that I’m supporting. And I’m happy to do it and would do more if you need me to. I’ll carry you if that would be of use to you. I don’t know what’s wrong or why you need help, and it doesn’t matter, but it explains so much. It explains why you need my body: because something is wrong with yours. And Sir, it’s yours. Whatever you need, if I can provide it, it’s yours.”

There was a long wait, long enough for Seth to start second-guessing himself, feeling the familiar sense of doubt, the nagging fear that he had screwed things up yet again. But no – the next time the voice sounded, it came through the air, not straight to his eardrum. “You’re smarter than you let on, kid. No. Sorry. Not a kid.” The voice had that slight waver to it that Seth had noticed on occasion before. A hint of a tremor.

“I’m not that smart, Sir. Who else could you be? Besides, I know what you smell like, and it smells just like the beautiful scent that I’m breathing in right now. And I know what you look like. You’re wearing a dark grey shirt and black jeans, you have dark blond hair and a face that is even more handsome than I fantasized about during those long weeks before you let me see it.”

“I never let you see it!” the Master protested.

“Not before tonight, no, Sir. But it was clear that was you on the dance floor. The one whose body was moving in exactly the same way you were making mine move. That had to be you, it couldn’t have been anyone else.”

They walked a while farther in silence.

“You are definitely smarter than you let on.”

“I think it’s just that I pay attention to things that are important to me, Sir. And you are the most important thing in the world to me.”

“I made sure never to look at myself through your eyes when you were online. When did you learn how to see out of the corners of eyes that someone else was controlling? I’ve worked with people who never developed that skill, even after months of trying.”

“I don’t know, Sir. It just happened. It’s not something I worked at.”

More walking. Then, suddenly, Seth’s eyes turned on. The night was bright from all the lights shining all around them. He turned to the side to see the Master’s now-familiar face looking back at him. He held the Master’s gaze for a few seconds, then turned his attention back to walking, knowing he was now responsible for avoiding his own obstacles.

“Sir, should we call for a ride? I hate to see you suffering.”

“No. We’re more than halfway there. I can make it. Thank you for your help.”

“You’re welcome, Sir!”

Seth’s heart felt like it might explode in his chest from hammering so hard.

Winston

They entered Seth’s apartment and Winston collapsed onto the sofa, more exhausted than he would have thought possible. The tremors were fierce, symptomatic of muscles forced to the point of failure and beyond. His tailbone made him feel like he was lying on a baseball. Better do something about that. He shifted position so he was partially lying on his side.

“Bring me a bag of ice.” Just the slightest upturn at the end of the phrase to blur the line between command and request.

“Yes, Sir.”

Seth brought the bag and Winston shifted his body to settle it against his tender backside. He lay back and closed his eyes. Just fifteen, twenty minutes, then he’d get up and go home… maybe. It was kind of nice to have an attentive servant to tend to him; maybe he’d stay right where he was.

This new dynamic that had sprung up unexpectedly in the last half hour changed their relationship considerably in ways that would probably take days and weeks to settle into. He had always intended to keep some distance between himself and his drone or, eventually, drones. The absolute last thing he wanted from any of them was pity and the surest way to guarantee he would never be seen as pitiable was to never be seen at all. When his body could no longer care for itself, he could tend to its needs all by himself while the drone’s mind was offline.

But that plan had been born when the drone was an idea, a placeholder, not a person. The weeks spent getting to know Seth had changed that. And now that distance was gone, replaced with an intimacy Winston had not expected to be dealing with. The walk home had been… surprisingly comfortable. Socially, at least; physically, not at all. But emotionally, yes. They hadn’t spoken after that initial conversation but they hadn’t needed to speak. They knew each other well enough that words were superfluous. This unexpected turn of events… it actually felt kind of… good.

Well, no plan was ever set in stone. He would adapt. Besides, at the first sign of unwanted sentimentality he could always revert to Plan A.

He flicked his perspective over to Seth to get an idea of what was going on there, half-ready to lash out if necessary despite his exhaustion. If he had detected the slightest hint of excessive solicitude, of anxious hovering, of pity in the boy’s attitude, it would have enraged him. But no. There was nothing like that. Seth was sitting at the small dining table, not looking at Winston in helpless angst but instead gazing down at the table, eyes idly watching his fingers rub gently over each other, lacing and unlacing them, rubbing the thumbnails together, patiently waiting. Ready to serve if needed but letting Winston take the lead, as was fitting. Attentive but not fawning. Content to wait quietly until his services were required.

He flicked back to his own body. “I’ll be fine, Seth. You can go to bed if you want. I’ll get myself home once I’ve rested a bit.”

“Of course, Sir. But, Sir, may I make a suggestion?”

Oh, here it came. Seth was going to say something that made it clear he thought he was Winston’s fucking caretaker, that Winston was a fucking invalid already, like Cash in that nursing home, a helpless body trapped in a bed waiting to die, well fuck that, fuck it to hell and back and –

“It occurred to me, Sir, that you went out tonight looking for some raunchy bondage sex but didn’t find any. And then I thought that maybe it wasn’t too late. That we could still get you what you were looking for. We really don’t need anyone else to make that happen. If you want, Sir.”

That was so not what Winston was expecting that it took him a while to change mental gears. He took a few moments to make sure his voice was under control, then leaned up, opened his eyes, and looked over at Seth.

“That is a very thoughtful offer. But I am in too much pain right now to even think about sex.”

“Oh, but Sir, that’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to be.”

“What?”

“Well, Sir, I don’t know how the magic works that lets you control my body and feel what I’m feeling, but it seems like it would make sense that if you’re feeling what I’m feeling, then you can’t be feeling what you’re feeling. Wait, sorry, that came out all wrong. I mean…” He stumbled to a stop and Winston saw his cheeks start to redden.

“No, it’s okay, I know what you mean. And your guess is right. When I’m living in you, I dial my own perceptions way down. That’s partly why I fell tonight, in fact.”

“Yes, Sir! And you can do that again right now. Dial it down, I mean. You taught me that there’s good pain and bad pain. Pain that’s erotic and pain that isn’t. Right now you’re feeling unerotic pain. But, Sir… your body won’t heal any faster whether you’re there to feel it or not. So why not skip it? Replace some of that unerotic pain with the erotic pain that I know you enjoy, Sir.”

Winston realized once again that he had seriously underestimated Seth.

“That’s a great point,” he said. “But there’s more to it. I’m tired, Seth. I don’t have the energy to be flogging you or tying you up or anything like that.”

Seth grinned. “I’m not tired, Sir. I had a nap this afternoon. All the more reason you should come live in me for a while. Your body can lie there and rest and recover. You don’t have to be in it while it does. Sir.”

Winston weighed the options, but, as crappy as he felt, Seth was right: a big part of why he was feeling drained and spent was because his body was drained and spent. His mind didn’t have to be. And he really didn’t need to be waiting around in real time for his tailbone to mend itself, which would take days and days. Why deal with that when a much better alternative was outright begging him to accept?

“You’re right. Let’s do it.”

“Thank you, Sir!”

Winston took control and stood Seth up. “Let’s go get changed,” he said with Seth’s voice. “We’re going to go for a run. Just a brief one, get the blood pumping. We won’t be gone long, and I’ll check in on myself now and then to make sure nothing’s wrong. And after that… yeah. I think I can find a way to inflict some of the good kind of pain on your body without needing to involve mine.”

Seth

The run was brief indeed, a mere warmup jog. Seth thought back to when he first arrived when such an effort would have left him laboring for breath and ready to fall over. He still had a long way to go, fitness-wise, but even now he could see how far he had already come. It was as the Master said: just enough to get the blood pumping. Then they were back at the apartment where the Master lay on the sofa letting the ice do its work on his backside. They stripped off the running clothes and began to exercise nude.

The Master stayed in charge but Seth was there feeling everything along with him. They did some jumping jacks, some pushups, some chin-ups, some squats, some lunges. Then the Master started holding the positions longer and longer: the down position of a pushup, the up position of a chin-up, a sustained squat. Seth felt his arms and thighs begin to ache and burn and knew that this was exactly what the Master needed: pain he could enjoy.

Then they went into Seth’s room and picked out a bunch of ropes. They lay down on top of his cage and began tying themselves to it. Ankles, knees, thighs, waist, chest, neck, a narrow spread-eagle. It was a little like the self-bondage Seth used to do in furtive privacy in his room growing up, only these were real ropes, not shoelaces and belts and handkerchiefs, and the position was harsh and unforgiving with him lying on top of the bars rather than under the covers of his bed.

Then, suddenly, Seth was back in charge, not that he could do anything with the power. Half a minute later, the Master walked carefully into the room. “I’m going to lie right back down. I just couldn’t manage this last bit from inside.” Seth’s arms went up next to his head and the Master tied the last four knots at elbows and wrists, then left. Seth waited to lose control again but it didn’t happen. After a minute or so he started to get anxious.

“Sir?”

“Hush,” came the voice in his ear. “I’m in here with you. Just relax and enjoy the restraints. Or struggle against them, that’s good too. You drive for now. I’ll be a passenger.”

So Seth fought the ropes. There was nothing he could do; the Master knew how to tie solid knots. He worked at it for a while, then gave up and lay still, having accomplished nothing. His muscles, freshly invigorated by the run and the calisthenics, began to cool and harden, slowly stiffening like liquid gelling in a mold, freezing him in place. After some time he began to wonder if perhaps he truly had frozen. If the ropes were to vanish, would he even be able to lift himself up off the cage?

The bars began to grow uncomfortable pressing against the same spots. He used the limited movement available to him to shift his head several times a minute so that a different part of his skull made contact with the steel. His back, ass, shoulders, pretty much everywhere else did not have that option and he lay there, increasingly uncomfortable.

The Master is feeling this too, Seth told himself. But it’s pleasure for him, not pain. Or a blend of both. Seth worked at trying to make that conversion happen for himself as well. Embrace the discomfort. Welcome the pain. Accept it, endure it, transform it.

Abruptly, he felt a sensation that was both startlingly unfamiliar and yet one he had known all his life: his dick was being stroked! He lifted his head to look down and saw nothing; the position he was bound in prevented him from getting his eyes up high enough to see his groin clearly. But he could feel it happening, oh yes! It had been a long time since any sensation had come from those particular nerves. He let his head drop back to the bars and savored it.

The sensations were powerful, magical, as if he had never been stroked before. It had been so long! He had no idea how it was happening, but it was, that much was undeniable.

“Do you recognize it yet?” the Master said in his ear.

“No, Sir. It feels wonderful, whatever you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing it. You are. This is a recording of the session we had when you gave yourself into my service. I said at the time it was your last orgasm… but I never said you couldn’t feel your last orgasm over again. That’s why I recorded it, in fact. For an occasion something like this one.”

“Ohhhh…” Seth groaned. “Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re welcome. Enjoy.” The invisible hand paused, adjusted its grip, resumed its unhurried pace. Seth thrust his hips against the ropes.

“Will you be feeling it with me, Sir?”

“I already am.”

The pain in his limbs disappeared into the back of his awareness, still there but a mere background sensation. His dick commanded the largest share of his attention. Just as had happened before, he edged himself, coming near to the brink without falling over it, approaching, retreating, drawing ever closer until he couldn’t stand it and was desperate to reach the culmination. Only this time, there was the added sensation of the restraints holding his body in place while his cock was slowly edged towards climax, and restraints were something he had always enjoyed. He lost himself in a happy bondage haze.

Then, at last and yet all too soon, he was shooting, squirting, pulsing, spasming, twitching, gasping, and then slowing, easing, winding down. He felt wetness on his forehead, his chest, and his waist and realized his load must have come out with explosive force. There might even be some on the floor over his head. The thought brought a wheezing chuckle to his lips.

“What’s funny?” the Master asked in his ear.

“Oh… just that I have some cleanup to do before I can go to bed, Sir. Somebody made a mess in here.”

The Master chuckled as well. Seth saw him come in from the other room and start untying the ropes. Not a moment too soon; as the orgasm’s glow faded, the pain rocketed to the forefront of his awareness. He very much needed to get out of these ropes and move around. The Master undid Seth’s arms and then worked from the ankles up while Seth fiddled with the knots at his chest and waist. His muscles were indeed frozen and stiff and protested at first about being asked to move, but soon enough, he was free to stand and did so, then immediately knelt at the Master’s feet.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“You’re welcome, Seth. And I thank you in return. Your suggestion for how to spend tonight was a fine one.”

“My pleasure, Sir!”

“Yes. And mine, too.”

“Sir, may I ask… did you… were you able to…”

The Master held up a hand to stop him. “Relax. Yes. I did. I felt everything you felt, all the way through. Only difference is, my orgasm didn’t make a mess! Now, I’m going to go home and get some sleep for both body and mind. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Yes, Sir. Sir… you can make it home okay?”

The Master chuckled at that. “It won’t be a problem. It’ll take all of twenty steps to get there. I live right next door.”

“Oh. Oh!”

“Good night, Seth.”

“Good night, Sir.”

Seth watched the Master go, then tidied up the ropes and wiped up the sperm splotches, took a shower, crawled into his cage, and slept.

4 – April

Winston

“I need some private time today,” he told Seth. “You’re going to be in shutdown for three, maybe four hours, starting around one. I know it’s a long time, but there’s something I need to do by myself.”

“Of course, Sir. I don’t mind shutdown. It’s boring, but it’s also relaxing. Take all the time you need.”

Winston and Seth had settled into a new pattern since that night at the Barleycorn. Rather than master and drone, the relationship had morphed into something closer to master and servant. A drone had no ability to run unsupervised, but a servant could be trusted to manage things independently. And Winston was coming to realize that a servant, not a drone, was what he needed.

The original plan had been to kick the drone’s owner into oblivion and take over his body, living in it pretty much full time. But he now realized how impractical that was, particularly while his own body was still mostly capable. He wasn’t ready to abandon it, not yet, which meant that the drone’s body needed someone to manage it when Winston was in his own. He couldn’t just store it in its cage; it needed food, exercise, movement, and there were groceries to be obtained and cleaning chores to do, both of the body and of the space it lived in. Seth was quite content, even pleased, to do all that, and so that’s where they landed.

Winston took over when he felt like doing things his own body could no longer handle, like going for runs or out dancing or to run errands that couldn’t be handled online. Usually he left Seth’s perceptions turned on, and sometimes he even let Seth do the driving while he observed and commented privately as a passenger. They were both adept now at the handoff of control from one to the other and could usually accomplish it seamlessly, even while walking.

Today, though, involved something Seth didn’t need to know about.

Seth had gotten up a little after 11:00 – another night shift last night at the gym, so Winston didn’t mind him sleeping late. He showered and ate and then Winston took over. “Nighty night,” he said aloud so Seth would be able to hear him. “See you in a couple of hours.” Seth, of course, could not respond. Winston turned his senses off.

Out to the car and off up the 15. The private facility where Cash was now living was in Escondido, about half an hour away if traffic wasn’t bad. He parked, entered, showed his ID – or rather, Seth’s ID – at the desk and signed in as a visitor.

Cash, of course, did not recognize him, so Winston opened the conversation with “Hey, Cash, how you doin’? It’s your lottery twin.”

Cash blinked twice but said nothing. The pause went on long enough for Winston to start thinking that maybe the disease’s toll on Cash’s body was starting to slow his mind as well. But then he replied. “Win? That you?”

“In the flesh. Just… someone else’s.”

Cash smiled weakly at that. His words came slowly – the muscles of his throat, jaw, and tongue had all been eroded – but they came. “All right, prove it. Speaking of lottery twins, tell me how our ol’ pal Jangles is doing.”

“Hell, man, you know it wasn’t Jangles that called us that. That was Jimmy’s doing.”

“James, you mean.”

“Mmm hmm, him. Rattail.”

“Rat’s ass, more like it.”

“Satisfied yet? Want me to jump through any more hoops?”

“Naw man, you’re good. Lookin’ good, too. Where’d you find this fine new set of clothes you’re wearin’?”

“Aw, just something I picked up. Believe me, it needed some major alterations before I was comfortable putting it on, but I think it turned out all right.” He turned around with arms slightly spread as though modeling an outfit, then sat down in the guest chair.

“Listen, man, I want to get the reason for my visit out of the way first. Then we can shoot the shit for as long as you want.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a vial with a small quantity of grey sand in the bottom. “One ticket out if you want it. You know how it works. Takes a few days to start up, probably won’t feel so great the first day or two. After that, it’s your call. Two-way audio works from the get-go, so I check in with you once a day. Whenever you’re ready, you say the word, we make it happen.”

“Damn. Even looking at you, it’s hard to believe. I have no idea how you’re doin’ this, but I am sold.” He reached out one trembling, quavery hand toward the vial, then let it drop.

“You mind opening it for me? Don’t think I can manage the lid.” Winston opened the vial, then set it into Cash’s quaking hand. He worried the powder might spill on its way to Cash’s lips, but no, Cash managed it. Dumped the powder onto his tongue, let it sit for a while, then slowly reached for a cup of water next to his bed, took a pull through the spill-proof lid, set it down again. The process was slow, agonizingly slow to watch. Winston squirmed, knowing this was in store for him some day. Sippy cups. Trouble swallowing. God, this sucked!

“So. You thinking you might want that trip soon? Or you want to wait a while?”

“I think I’m fine with waiting. Just knowing I’m in charge is huge. I don’t need to decide any time soon. But I have the power now. Or I will soon. When I’m ready, it’ll be easy. It’ll be easy, right?”

Winston nodded. “You know it will. Smooth as silk.”

Cash’s body eased. “Nice. A shame I can’t get the kind you’ve got. Be nice to get a new set of clothes like yours. But this’ll do. This’ll do.”

An oblique reference, but clear enough: Cash wanted a master net, but knew that Winston could not give him one. Only the guys in charge at Pendleton could create a master net; Winston’s net was only capable of creating drone nets.

“So. Talking is tiring, but listening’s easy. You tell me what you’ve been up to lately.”

Winston did. Not everything, of course, and he continued to speak cryptically about the details of his arrangement with Seth, knowing that even here they might be overheard. But it was nice to have someone to tell, someone who understood what it was like.

Cannon

Oh, it was all coming together, yes indeed! Not a done deal yet but the path was clear and all current known obstacles had either been dealt with or were currently being handled. Financing: arranged, or in some cases, pre-approved if not completely arranged. Permits: obtained or in the works. Insurance: on board or scheduled to be on board soon. Unexpected problems would almost certainly arise – they always did – and nothing was ever certain, but at this point things were looking very promising indeed. And in about two months, his commission payment would hit his bank account and add another zero at the end of the balance in it.

2:45 on a Friday. His 2:00 meeting with Dick Marakiewicz (which he was careful to always pronounce “mara-KAY-vitch”) had ended early and his calendar was clear for the rest of the day. The East Cost folks had all gone home; why not make it an early afternoon himself? Maybe see if Brynne was available tonight? She was a little higher-maintenance than Esprit but wow, that body and the enthusiastic way she used it made the effort worthwhile. Just… not too often. If he started seeing her too many times too close together, she was likely to start asking uncomfortable questions that used words like “relationship” and “future” and “commitment” and: no. Just no. Hard pass.

But yeah… it had been, what, a couple of weeks since he last texted her? She hadn’t been available then and he’d found someone else, no memory who at this point. Angelique, maybe? Or Cristall? Eh, it didn’t matter. Point was, someone besides Brynne, which meant plenty of time had passed and maybe she was starting to miss him by now. Worth a try. And if that didn’t work out, well, there were plenty of other names in his contacts.

Seth

Friday, late afternoon. Seth got up from his nap and made some dinner – chicken in curry sauce, plenty of carrots and potatoes and cauliflower, just the way the Master (whose name, he now knew, was Winston, but he would always be the Master to Seth) liked it. And Seth was learning to like it too. The strong flavors had felt like they were burning his mouth the first couple of times he ate it, but over time he came to expect the sizzling, zesty tang and even enjoy it. Served over steamed brown rice, it was a warm and satisfying meal on a cool day, and this was one of San Diego’s rare cool days. Clouds had settled over the city and sporadic drizzle had been falling all day. The cool rain also contributed to Seth’s desire for a nap, and since he had to work tonight, it just made sense to take one.

“Dinner’s ready, Sir!” he called loudly. They had an arrangement where the Master was constantly tuned in to Seth’s ears when he was not actively using Seth. Most sounds were too faint to catch his attention but if Seth spoke at a level somewhere between a normal voice and a shout, the Master would hear him. Thus he would not be surprised when Seth let himself in to deliver the food. It was so reassuring to know that he was never alone, that the Master was only a word away!

He thumbed the Master’s apartment door lock open, plate in hand. The Master was in bed, which was sad but not surprising. Afternoons seemed to be the worst times for him and often he preferred to lie down and pretend to sleep rather than deal with the stress of standing and moving. Or maybe that mysterious errand from a couple of days before had caught up with him? No way to know. He would probably get up as the evening progressed.

“I brought you some curry, Sir. Then I’m off to work. As always, call or take over if you need me for anything.”

“Thanks, Seth. Smells great. Set it in the kitchen and I’ll have it in a bit.”

“Of course, Sir. I should be home a little after 2:00.”

“Sounds good. I’ll probably be asleep. Have a good night.”

“You too, Sir.”

Seth set the food down, always a bit disoriented in the Master’s apartment because it was the mirror image of his own and everything was backward. And every time he noticed that, he remembered that to the Master, this was normal and it was Seth’s place that was backward. He never seemed to have any trouble switching between locations and Seth was determined to become just as adept. Some day. He went back to his own apartment, ate, packed the leftovers away, and headed out to work.

He liked the evening shifts, 6 PM to 2 AM, because the gym steadily emptied out over the course of his time there and he could get the cleaning done better the emptier it got. Often there was no one in the building at all after midnight and Seth enjoyed the stillness and quiet. The downside, of course, was that these hours were the prime time for the Master to use Seth’s body to go out to bars or clubs, particularly on weekend nights like tonight. His work schedule varied so sometimes the Master had to make do without his alternate body. But it was fine – Seth didn’t have to work every weekend, and the Master generally preferred to have him available during the day anyway.

Off to the gym, where he exchanged some pleasantries with Barry at the desk, then headed for the men’s locker room to pick up towels and such for the laundry. He noted that there were no women exercising so maybe he could get a head start cleaning that locker room. The gym was open 24/7 with occasional holidays, but there were definitely busier and emptier times. The early-morning before-work folks started arriving around 6 and kept the place busy until 9 or so, then things slowed a bit. The pace picked up again around 4 PM, then the evening rush started dispersing around 9 and after midnight things were slow indeed. Sarah, who took over at the desk from Barry at 10 PM and stayed until 6 AM, said that some days she could go for hours without seeing a soul. On days when Seth was able to finish his tasks early he and Sarah would sometimes get to talking, though she, like Seth, had a quiet, reserved nature so their conversations tended to be exchanges of a few sentences punctuated by long pauses between.

It turned out the women’s locker room was not empty so he’d have to wait to start that. He decided to do the windows because everything else he could clean was either in use or would probably get used again soon. It was fine; things would start to empty out in a few hours.

Cannon

That stupid bitch! Brynne!

Fucked up his whole evening, and she’d known she was doing it. Did it on purpose, in fact. Strung him along for hours. First an expensive dinner, leisurely with a lot of courses. She ordered an appetizer, then decided she didn’t like it and sent it back, ordered a different one, took her time eating it, and so it went all through the meal. When Cannon had suggested they skip drinks afterward, she’d insisted she wanted a coffee, and so they had gone to a place where she could get a cup, and not a cup of plain old normal fucking coffee, no, she wanted a coffee that was authentically hand-crafted by some fucking Peruvian hermitage-trained artiste, guaranteed to be a unique creation, with flavored syrups that she took forever to choose between and for chrissake some sort of Tibetan yak puke or something instead of cream like a normal person would drink. And then!

And then.

Then had come The Talk. While she sipped that twenty-eight dollar cup of yak puke with its feathery decorative petal design hand-woven into the film on the top of the cup that got sloshed to a smudge the instant she touched it to her lips… and that was his twenty-eight dollars, for the record… while that was going on, she made it clear that Cannon would not be enjoying the pleasure of her company at his place or hers tonight, only she didn’t get there right away. Instead there was a lengthy detour into Feelings and Responsibilities and Respect and Growing The Hell Up Already that took forty-five minutes to get to the point, the point being: Cannon was not getting laid tonight. All taking place in public so he couldn’t openly express the completely reasonable frustration and, okay, rage that The Talk directly provoked in him.

She drew it out so long that there was no chance of him finding a backup companion for the evening, so if there was going to be any happy ending tonight it would involve a date with his palm. And that, too, was deliberate, he was absolutely certain. As Brynne got into the rideshare that she had called for, Cannon realized that a happy ending was no longer what he was in the mood for. What he really needed to do was go blow off some steam. The gym was open at all hours. A shame they didn’t have a punching bag; pounding the hell out of something would be ideal. But weights and treadmills would do.

He stopped back at his place to change. The fucking rain had stopped, at least, so he took the bike out, revved it up, and sped through the streets, weaving between the cars that crawled so slowly it was as if they were standing still. A little before one o’clock he parked at the gym and stomped inside.

Seth

He heard the door, heard the beep of someone’s membership card being scanned, but Sarah’s welcome went unanswered by whoever it was that came in. Kind of surprising to have someone new arrive at this hour. The place had emptied out a little while ago and Seth was in the middle of sanitizing the various machines, only a few left to go. No problem, though. It wouldn’t be much trouble to redo whichever ones the newly-arrived patron would use. Then one more load of towels to pull out of the dryer, mop the men’s locker room floor, and he’d be done for the night.

The man who came into the equipment room was stunningly handsome. Seth had gotten used to the way that the average here in California was skewed much further toward the “hot” end of the attractiveness scale than where he had come from, but even by San Diego standards, this guy was amazing. Perfect face, perfect hair, perfect chest, perfect arms, perfect legs. Not an ounce of excess fat on his perfectly-shaped body. Reflexively, Seth averted his gaze, a nearly instinct-level response formed by growing up in a place where he absolutely could not afford to be suspected of being the deviant pervert he secretly was.

And yet… the Master had said gay men were as common as weeds here, and from what Seth had seen that had to be true. The bars and clubs were packed every time they went. The Master had been teaching Seth how to speak their language, how to express interest and admiration with his eyes and posture. Seth was by no means fluent yet but he was learning. And one of the things that he had learned was that straight men around here tended to be much more tolerant than the ones in Fremont. They generally didn’t mind being admired by men who appreciated their beauty. Even here at the gym there was never an objection to a lingering look. The key, the Master said, was to not push too far. No one – male or female – liked being the object of unwanted advances, so keep it light unless there was reciprocation.

Not that Seth would ever dream of trying to pick up anyone else, of course! The Master fulfilled all his needs. But it couldn’t hurt to practice what he had been taught.

And so he let his gaze return to the gorgeous hunk. He took his time wiping the machines, watching the man exercise, working those already-perfect muscles toward greater perfection. His form wasn’t exactly ideal… as if Seth had any right to critique! But it was true: the man’s technique was sloppy and Seth could see the difference between what he was doing and what the Master had shown Seth how to do. This guy was being too careless, pumping more weight than he really should have been using and pushing past the point where he should have taken a break, as if he was trying to prove some kind of point. Still, he wasn’t doing anything dangerous and Seth certainly wasn’t going to offer any advice. The shape he was in said clearly that his routine got results for him. Seth re-cleaned some already-clean machines and got some nice, long, satisfying looks at those splendid muscles.

“I’m going to go get lunch,” Sarah called from the lobby, interrupting his reverie. “If I don’t see you, have a good night.”

“Kay, thanks, have a good one,” Seth called back. He realized that he really needed to get that floor done and could not justify stalling here any longer. He packed up the cleaning supplies and went to the locker room. The outer door opened and shut as Sarah departed.

Two minutes later, he was standing in the open doorway to the supply closet in the locker room. He felt a presence behind him a fraction of a second before a mighty push shoved him forward into the closet. He stumbled over the buckets and bottles on the floor, banged into the far wall, and turned around, baffled.

“See somethin’ you liked, faggot?”

The gorgeous hunk from the equipment room advanced and Seth had no room to retreat. No words came; he was too stunned at this completely unexpected turn of events. The man grabbed him by the front of the shirt, hauled back with his fist and punched Seth on the cheek. Pain! His head spun sideways and his vision flickered. What the hell?

Still holding his shirt, the man yanked Seth forward while he stepped to one side. Seth lurched into the open space of the locker room, dazed and spinning and trying to not fall over.

“I asked you a question, cocksucker!”

A thought. “Sir!” he shouted as loud as he could. “I need help! Help me please, Sir!” Oh, please let the Master be awake, please let him hear Seth’s cry…

The man stalked toward him and grabbed his shirt again. “Save your voice, faggot. No one can hear you. That bitch at the desk is gone. It’s just you and me. And there’s no cameras in locker rooms.” Another fast punch to the face. “So you’re gonna get the beatdown that your cocksucking little faggot janitor ass deserves.”

The next punch hit his gut and knocked the wind out of him. Then came an upward blow to the jaw that sent him leaning backward, exposing his crotch for what came next: a solid knee right on his balls. Seth scream-whimpered and collapsed, utterly unable to protect himself, to call for help, to do anything but take the kicks that continued to pelt him as he lay helpless on the floor.

Winston

He rolled over, glanced at the clock – 2:13 AM – and then noticed something odd: a flashing yellow icon overlaid on his vision. A low chime was sounding in time with the flashes as well. In his groggy state it took him a few seconds to recognize it, but when he did, he shook the grogginess away and was instantly awake. The drone emergency call! What the Manriders had called “the bat signal”. It was the one form of communication that a drone could initiate. Intended for use by friendly drones rather than hostile forced converts, there were nevertheless safeguards to ensure that the signal was detectable but not overwhelming to the master. It would not be prudent to give drones the power to blast sirens and flashing alarms into a master’s senses.

But this… Seth had never triggered the emergency call before. They hadn’t even spoken of it since the dawn of their relationship when Winston had explained how to activate it in case he needed help on his bus trip.

He quickly flicked his senses to Seth and found his body trudging toward home, aching all over. Running a quick inventory, he determined the worst pain to be radiating through his chest, while face and groin were competing for second place. He opened the voice-to-ear private channel.

“Seth! I’m here. What happened?”

“Oh, Sir!” Winston heard a huge sigh of relief. “Thank you. It… I got beat up. This guy… one of the customers at the gym… he was the only one there, Sarah had gone to have her lunch… and he followed me into the locker room and… and… and he started hitting me and kicking me, oh, I’m so sorry, Sir!” Seth had clearly been making an effort to hold himself together and get himself home, but the need to speak broke down whatever control he had been applying and the words became choked by sobs.

Wait, why was he apologizing?

No, first things first in a crisis. Seth didn’t have Winston’s training, so it was clear who would need to take charge. “Seth. Is the attacker still in the area?”

He felt Seth’s head shaking from side to side long before the words started coming out. “N… no. He left.”

“Okay, good. Let’s get you home. I’ll come get you; stay right there. Then you can tell me what happened.”

“Sir… Sir, I’m almost home. It’s only two more blocks.”

“All right. Come to my place.”

“Okay. Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Stay with me the rest of the way? Please?”

Winston felt himself choking up and had to clamp down hard. “I will. See you soon.” He kept up a steady stream of reassurances in Seth’s ear until he saw his own doorway appear in Seth’s vision.

A second later, the door opened and Seth came in. Winston was waiting and almost went to enfold his boy in an embrace, then realized just in time that squeezing those ribs was not a good idea. Instead he led Seth to the bed and laid him down in it.

“My turn to take care of you for a while. No – don’t argue.” He explored Seth’s injuries from both outside and in. “Okay,” he eventually said. “I think the news is good, or as good as it can be. Nothing is broken. You may have a cracked rib. Those are painful, but it will heal on its own in a few weeks. I’ll get you some ice to put on it. The rest looks like it’s all bruises. This guy did a number on you but it could have been much worse. Do you have any idea who he is?”

“No, Sir. I don’t remember ever seeing him before tonight.”

“Okay. I’m going to get the ice, then I’m going to review the recording of what happened.” He smiled at the look of consternation on Seth’s face. “Oh, yeah. I routinely record everything you do when I’m not with you for exactly this reason: in case something goes wrong. And sometimes just to keep tabs on you. Don’t worry, I don’t have your entire life on file. Full-sensory recordings are huge, so anything older than 24 hours gets deleted the next time recording starts unless I save it off someplace else first. Like a certain orgasm file. Now, I’m going to watch through once first, then ask any questions that come up. The big one being: why?”

He brought his laptop out, found the beating easily enough, and played it through. There was almost nothing useful to be learned from the visuals – Seth’s eyes were darting all over the place and Winston couldn’t get a good look at the attacker. The audio was crystal clear, though. Hearing Seth call out for Winston’s help that never came was like a knife to his heart. But the words of the assailant! “Faggot.” “Cocksucker.” “Fucking faggot janitor.” Repeated at least a dozen times. Motive was suddenly abundantly clear. Still, Winston watched all the way to the end, hearing the attacker’s footsteps fade as he left the locker room, feeling Seth’s battered body lying on the floor until he roused himself and stumbled out through the deserted exercise room, past the empty desk, and out into the night, where he remembered how to trigger the emergency call.

He scrolled backward to see what preceded the beating, wondering if that might provide a clue as to why Seth, why tonight. And there it was plain as day. Several times, multiple occasions. Obvious to him, at least. Odd, then, that Seth hadn’t…? Hmm. He selected one.

“I’m going to pull you in and have you look at something with me. Audio and video only, not full sense.”

“Understood, Sir.”

He played one of the scenes in question. “Here. You’re looking at him while he’s exercising. It’s clear you’re admiring him. It’s just as clear that he’s glaring at you, totally pissed. But you keep looking. Why?”

“Sir, I didn’t know he was angry! Oh god, I’m sorry, Sir. I screwed up aga–”

Winston cut him off. “No. Stop apologizing. You are not responsible for this. He is. My question for you is: why couldn’t you tell that he was annoyed at you? I have a feeling I know, but I want to hear you explain it.”

“Sir, I thought I was doing what you were showing me how to do. You taught me how to make eye contact with guys I found attractive instead of sneaking glimpses out of the corner of my eye.”

“Yes, I have been teaching you that. Helping you unlearn all those habits you picked up in Nebraska. But this situation is clearly different, and yet you didn’t see it as different. Tell me: what emotion is that man feeling in this scene?”

“He’s pissed, Sir.”

“You’re saying that because I told you earlier. How do you know he’s pissed?”

There was a long silence, one that Winston finally broke.

“You don’t know, do you? You can’t tell what he’s feeling by looking at his face.”

“He didn’t say anything, Sir! How could I tell what he’s feeling if he doesn’t speak?”

Winston sat back. “And there it is. This is just like your color-blindness. You have trouble seeing emotion in other people’s faces, don’t you? You judge how others are feeling by their voices. Or maybe how they hold their bodies.”

“I’m sorry, S–”

“Enough! No more apologizing! It is not your fault you were born color blind. It is not your fault you have difficulty reading visual cues from people’s faces. It’s simply the way you were made. The color blindness can’t be changed, but the reading-faces trick is something you can learn. Most people don’t have to be taught; they figure it out all by themselves just like they figure out how to walk and talk. But you’ll have to work at it if you want to learn, and you’ll need to learn so you can avoid situations like this.”

Seth looked miserable. Jeez, the guy was useful and a great asset, but absolutely fell apart when the going got tough. And yet then, somehow, found some sort of inner reserve to keep going. Everything Winston had required of him – the diet, the exercise, the acceptance of pain, the job, giving up his very body whenever Winston needed it – he had done. Yes, there was whining and moping at first, but he got it done. He could do this, too. He just needed a bit of care and compassion tonight.

“I don’t mean now, of course. Now you need to rest and heal. But remember this, because it’s vitally important: this was not your fault. That man was an avalanche rolling down a hillside. He was going to damage whatever got in his way. You didn’t cause the avalanche; nothing you did made it start or could make it stop. What we need to do is teach you how to recognize rolling rocks so you can get yourself out of their path.”

“Sir, I’ll learn. I’ll do whatever it takes. But Sir? Would you also teach me something else?”

“What’s that?”

“Teach me how to fight, Sir?”

Another long silence.

“Yes. That would be a very good idea.”

Seth

After four days of calling in sick, it was Seth’s first day back at work. He had expected to have to field questions about the bruises on his cheek and jaw, but Barry didn’t ask and Sarah was off tonight; he didn’t know who had the late shift today, but if he could stay out of sight doing his cleaning work, maybe he wouldn’t have to offer any explanations.

He had been terrified that he would run into the man who had attacked him, but fortunately he was nowhere to be seen. Seth slipped quietly into the locker room, opened the closet (checking several times to make sure there was no one behind him) and got out his supplies.

A routine evening’s work. Barry left; Sarah’s cover turned out to be Dawn, someone Seth had only met once or twice before. As usual, the place emptied out as the night closed in and Seth began sanitizing the machines. At 1:30, Dawn announced she was going to take her lunch break and retreated to the staff room, leaving the front desk – and its computer – wide open. Seth could have used any of the others, but then he would have had to explain why he was in one of the offices instead of working if she happened to pop back out; this way made for an easier go.

He was in immediately. “Okay,” said the voice in his ear. “Entry log… April 22… no, it would be April 23 ’cause it was after midnight. Go to the next page. Right around 1AM… sure enough, there he is, first entry of the day. Cannon McIver. Gotcha, you bastard. Click on his profile… yep, that’s his photo. Where’s his locker number? Aha. 121. Now find his history. When does he usually come in? Uh huh… okay. Looks like he’s an early bird, mostly mornings. That’s why you never ran into him before, and you probably won’t tonight. Okay, close it up. I’ll take it from here.”

The Master took control. Into the locker room, found number 121. Seth was quite certain he would have spent the rest of the night trying to pick the lock, but the Master had assured him it wouldn’t be a problem. Sure enough, it took only a few minutes; Seth was amazed at how his fingers knew just what to do to fiddle the lock until it opened.

“Figures,” the Master said. “In hindsight we could have gotten what we needed from the computer. The combination is 1004. What do you want to bet this asshole’s birthday is October fourth? Anyway, now the fun part: digging through his stuff.”

Seth watched his hands open the bag that was there and rummage through its contents. The Master picked up, inspected, and set aside several items, then found what he needed in a pair of socks. He examined them a long while, ensuring that Seth got a good look as well at what he was seeing: several hairs that had lodged themselves into the fabric and elastic of the socks. The Master carefully extracted them and dropped each one into a small plastic vial just like the one Seth had once received in the mail. Then he restored the equipment in the locker to the state it had been in and closed it up again. Then he relinquished control to Seth and was once more just a voice in his ear.

“All right. Bring these home, but be ready to go back again tonight to make the delivery.”

“Yes, Sir.” He quickly finished up, then left.

At the Master’s apartment, he handed over the vial. He watched as the Master scooped in a spoonful of some sort of tan substance with the consistency of mustard, then added a few drops of water. Finally, he watched the Master pick up a needle and attempt to poke it into the side of his finger. The shaking was too much, though, and he couldn’t both aim and push with the necessary strength at the same time. Seth waited, silently watching, knowing better than to state the obvious.

“All right, fine, I’ll use you,” the Master said at last. “I appreciate you not saying it, but I know you were thinking it!”

He got up and walked his own body over to the sofa, where he lay down. Then he switched to Seth, washed his hands, and brought the needle and vial over to where he lay, inert. He re-sanitized the needle with alcohol and this time the task was effortless. Soon a smear of red stained the substance in the vial. He put the lid on and switched back to himself.

“Now we wait,” the Master said. “Should take about half an hour.”

“Sir…”

“What is it?”

“Sir, are you sure it wouldn’t be better to go to the police? We know his name now, and his address. They could find him.”

“I prefer this approach.”

“Of course, Sir.”

The Master looked at him skeptically. “I know that tone. The words say ‘of course’ but the mind is thinking ‘I don’t like it’.”

“Yes, Sir. I can’t hide anything from you, I know.”

“What’s really going on here, Seth? You want this guy to pay for what he did to you, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sir. I do.”

“Then what’s bothering you?”

Seth looked down at the floor. It took him a while to speak, but when he did, the words were plain and clear. “I don’t want to share you, Sir. I’m sorry if that disappoints you. I like being your only drone and I don’t want you to make another one.”

Seth could hear the smile in the Master’s voice when he spoke next. “Oh, Seth. You are one of a kind and no one could ever replace you. I really got lucky that you were the one who answered my ad and saw the process all the way through. Believe me, you have nothing to worry about with this Cannon guy.”

Seth finally looked up.

“Think about it,” the Master said. “What’s the main difference between you and Cannon?”

“I don’t beat people up?”

That got the laugh Seth was hoping for. “True! But I mean this: you converted willingly. Cannon won’t be doing that. Do you think I have good things planned for him?”

“Ah. Probably not, Sir.”

“Definitely not. I am going to fuck with his mind and I am going to enjoy doing it. You haven’t seen my darker side yet, but it’s there. You’ve maybe caught glimpses, but only that. Think back to that ad. The one you found on the mind control forum that you used to jerk off to. That had some pretty edgy stuff in it, no? Made for some hot fantasy material. But Seth… that really was my plan for you. I was going to completely erase you. I was going to steal your body away from you and never let you back in.

“You know why, too. My body is slowly failing. I need another one. I thought that the best way to do that was to take what I needed but a little shred of decency made me decide to take one that was freely given. Which you offered. And I was going to make your life miserable until you actually welcomed oblivion. You know that walking trip you took your first day here? You went to the beach, roamed around the city, had a grand time. I recorded that trip. Still have it, in fact. And I was planning to play it back for you. Seems nice enough, right? Actually, here, let me show you. Lie down so you don’t fall over.”

Seth complied, taking the Master’s customary spot on the sofa while he sat at his desk with his computer. “One sec… lemme find the right spot… okay, got it.”

Abruptly, the Master’s apartment disappeared and Seth was standing on sand. Without trying to, he felt himself start walking across the beach to the ocean ahead. It had only been a few months ago, but somehow he had already forgotten, the memory grown fuzzy in his mind. But here it was, brought right back to vivid sharpness again! The same gulls spun lazily overhead, the same sand squished between his toes, the same water splashed coldly on his feet just as it had before. He couldn’t help but get swept up in the remembered magnificence of the moment.

The only strange thing, though, was that he had no control over what his body did. He felt like he ought to be able to act on his own, but he could not. He wanted to step back from the water and walk the other direction down the beach this time, but his body stubbornly repeated everything it had done before. He was living through a recording, and the recording would play out the exact same way every single time he experienced it.

Then, while his feet were still getting used to the chill of the water, he was abruptly back in the Master’s apartment.

“Kind of nice, right? And I’ll be happy to play that or any other memory back for you any time you want. But you probably already figured out the downside. When you’re experiencing a full-sensory recording, you’re not just watching a movie, you are living it. Every speck of light that hits your eye, every sound that reaches your ear, every breeze that stirs a hair on your arm… it’s all indistinguishable from reality. You could be locked up inside your cage and know that’s where you are, but every sense you have is telling you that you’re down by the ocean. We don’t perceive reality directly, we perceive it through our senses. And I control your senses, so for all practical purposes, I control your reality.

“And it would play out time and time again exactly the same way. Every seagull cry would come at exactly the same moment; the same little girl would poke at the same clump of seaweed with the same broken seashell every single time. You can’t close your eyes except at times when you did in the memory. You can’t shout to drown out the sounds. You can’t change anything that’s happening. All you can do is relive it one slow second at a time. How many repetitions would it take before the pleasant memory became a nightmare instead?

“And there’s worse. I have other recordings, too, less pleasant ones. You know I have the orgasm one, but I also have the hogtie. And the flogging. I could put you into that hogtie and leave you there for weeks. I could loop the flogging clip and have that whip strike your back ten thousand times. Your actual body would be fine because I would be using it for whatever I wanted, but instead of waiting in floaty blackness, you would be experiencing days on end of relentless, severe, intense pain. When I finally brought you back from something like that, I could easily imagine you begging me to end it, to leave you in oblivion instead. If you were even sane enough to realize that you were actually talking to me and not a hallucination. I wonder how many such experiences it would take before you began to doubt your sanity? Perception is reality, after all. When would you begin to wonder if reality itself was just another illusion I was feeding you?”

Seth was too shocked to speak. His naive, innocent former self really had not thought nearly carefully enough about what he was doing! A spiderweb of dread had settled over his skull and neck while the Master had been talking and he didn’t dare even breathe too loudly lest the horrible things he was hearing come to pass.

“But none of that will happen now. Circumstances have changed. You became more to me than the unwelcome current occupant of something I wanted. You became valuable to me for yourself. I treasure your presence in my life and would not change that. I’m sure I scared you by saying what I did just now. That was on purpose. I promise you that I will never do any of that to you, but I need you to understand what I’m capable of. I am mostly a decent guy. But I have a dark side. And this scumball Cannon has hurt someone I care about. It’s a perfect match: my dark side, which had been thwarted by the way that I’ve come to care about you, finally gets a chance to come out and play. And Cannon the asshole gets the payback he so richly deserves. I want to hurt this guy. I want to get him fired from his job in total disgrace so that no one else around here will hire him and he’ll have to leave the area. I want to make him suffer.”

The Master finally stopped speaking and Seth, who had dared to breathe again at the promise to be spared, sat, taking it all in. Finally he looked up. The contents of the little vial had darkened considerably and had taken on a sandy, grainy texture. A million minuscule nanobots, programmed to Cannon’s DNA, awaiting delivery.

“That combination was 1004, Sir?”

The Master smiled. “That it was. Smear the powder all over anything that will touch his skin. A sweatband, the inside of his underwear or jock strap, his socks. Inside gloves would be great if he uses them. Getting it in orally works fastest, but I don’t see any way you could offer him a drink that he would accept. This should work. Even if only a small fraction of bots get in through the pores of his skin, that will be enough.”

“And it’s ready now, Sir?”

“It is.”

“Then I’ll see you in half an hour, Sir!”

5 – May

Cannon

Something was wrong, but it was hard to say exactly what. It didn’t seem like anything he could go see a doctor for, but something was definitely strange.

It had started a few days after he caught some sort of bug around the end of April. Nothing major, just a headache, low fever, and some achiness. He thought at first he had overdone something at the gym, but the fever kind of squelched that idea. The second day he felt drained. All he felt like doing was lying around the house, so he did; meetings were easy to postpone. He downed water and electrolytes trying to hurry whatever it was out of his system, and made twice-hourly trips to the bathroom to pee all the extra liquid right back out again.

And then two days later, he was better. Mostly. He still felt more tired than usual, but not terribly so. Things seemed to get better as May began.

But then maybe two weeks later, the fatigue came back, and along with it came some odd sleep disturbances that he had never experienced before.

He would go to bed as usual and fall asleep, but at some point during the night he would wake up… sort of? Maybe? He felt like he was awake, at least, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t open his eyes, roll over, anything at all. He’d experienced sleep paralysis once or twice before, but that was always fleeting. This felt like it went on for a long, long time: minutes or even an hour or more. He would tell himself to wake up and move, but nothing would happen. His mind would continue to just… exist… in silent emptiness. If it was a dream, it was an exceptionally boring one.

And then, all at once, the spell would lift and he would be free to move again. He would open his eyes and gasp and sit up and it was as if nothing at all had been wrong two seconds previously. Sometimes his bedsheets and blankets were completely disheveled and his heart would be pounding as if he had been running a marathon in his sleep, so clearly something was going on but he had no idea how to figure out what. It would take a while for his body to settle back down, but once it did, he was able to fall asleep again and this time nothing disturbed his rest for the remainder of the night.

It didn’t happen every night, and it never happened in the daytime. On the nights when it didn’t happen, or even in the mornings after it did, he convinced himself that it was some sort of fluke that the dark hour made seem more terrible than it really was. Surely it could only be a few seconds each time? Dreams had a way of stretching time out, maybe this was the same effect?

But it continued to happen. Two or three times a week he would wake to find himself trapped again. He would try to count seconds but lose his way in the seventies or the two hundreds and the seconds sure felt real as he was counting them but maybe that was a trick of the time distortion of whatever dream this was? At least the pounding heart issue eased as the weeks went by. Sometimes when the spell broke, his heart rate was only slightly elevated; other times he was lying peacefully in bed, no hint that anything amiss had happened.

How the heck do you get a doctor to diagnose something like that?

Far, far easier to continue his approach of wanting nothing to do with the medical profession and ignore it. He found himself arranging his schedule to allow for naps in the afternoon. It felt good to drowse during the daytime, making up for any sleep he might have lost during a wakeful-not-wakeful night.

Winston

He’d only had one chance before this to practice the “hostile drone” takeover protocol.

The Manrider Program called for training with both willing and unwilling candidates (though in the program, the unwilling ones were only acting the part). Friendly volunteers were easier to work with and were intended to be fellow US service members or those from allied partners. Their training could take place openly and with their cooperation, as had happened with Seth. Hostile drones like Cannon were infected with the agent surreptitiously. The intent with that approach was to suborn enemy forces and thus get eyes, ears, and hands in without rousing suspicion.

Thus: no practice sessions like Seth had done, doing stretches and reciting lines. Winston had to learn how to operate Cannon’s body without Cannon suspecting that he was no longer in charge of himself. Which meant late night operations when the target was sleeping.

Having completed the process of learning to pilot Seth not long ago, it was frustrating to have to start all the way back at the beginning, learning how each muscle group worked all over again. Thankfully, no such effort was needed for Cash! All he had to do there was be ready issue the shutdown command whenever his Marine brother gave the word. But Cannon… that one needed the full workup.

And so, late at night while Seth was away at his job, Winston would wait until Cannon fell asleep, then lock his consciousness away and take charge of his muscles. The first few nights he didn’t even try to get out of the bed, just worked the arms and legs, hands and feet, torso and neck and pelvis so the two nets could start synching up. After two weeks of that he dared to try moving the body: rolling over, sitting up, even standing up (holding on to the wall). Compared with the smooth integration he had with Seth, this was like inhabiting a stroke victim and more than once he cut the session off early from frustration.

He also spent many daytime hours in surveillance mode with Cannon, eavesdropping on the sounds his drone heard and trying to make sense of the visual and tactile signals. That was frustrating too and it was a relief to slip into Seth’s comfortable and familiar body afterward and have things simply work properly without him having to think about it.

But bit by bit, the situation started shaping up. Touch began to come through more and more clearly and vision… well, vision would be useless for a while yet. But somewhere around the six-week mark he would have enough control to put the plan into motion. And fortunately, the other half of the preparations for Operation Mindfuck was much, much more enjoyable. In fact, after a grueling slog of a session trying to synch up with Cannon, the time spent training Seth to play his role was like going on shore leave.

Seth

“Company’s on his way up,” said the Master’s voice in his ear. “You ready?”

Seth looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He didn’t even recognize the stranger standing there. Leather harness, chaps, black leather jock strap, an armband, hat, mirrored sunglasses. He felt like a total poser wearing this gear. It was ridiculous to think that wimpy, pudgy, squishy Seth from Fremont, Nebraska, would be allowed to wear such clothing. He kept expecting to be stopped by some sort of Gay Leather Police squad, who would arrest him for impersonating a dom, rip the gear off his body, lock him in cuffs and throw him in a… in a…

Well, that wasn’t a bad fantasy, come to think of it!

But no. He was no longer squishy Seth from Fremont. He was now Seth, proud property of Master Winston, aka ErasureTop, a man whose dom credentials were unimpeachable. And as such, he was entitled – no, he was expected to stand up tall, puff his chest out, and swagger as if he had every right to be wearing this gear. Because he did! He was representing the Master tonight and needed to perform just as the Master would perform.

The Master had been the one who took them to Hide And Tied, piloting Seth’s body and choosing the gear he would wear from the immense collection that store had in stock. Seth was pleased to have been allowed to observe in ride-along mode. The time was right: the Master had determined that Seth’s body was more or less at the size and shape it would remain and thus it was time to buy clothing that fit. Seth marveled at the display of leather goods and fetish gear and could easily have spent days browsing and a small fortune buying. Good thing the Master was in charge!

And so here he was: decked out as a dom and waiting for the arrival of the hookup the Master had arranged via app. The hookups they had had before tonight sometimes involved Seth’s body domming, but always with the Master in charge with Seth as passenger. Tonight, though, Seth was expected to handle the event from start to finish.

He took a deep breath, straightened his shoulders, and spoke. “Yes, Sir! Ready and looking forward to this!”

“All right. Quick quiz to refresh your memory. Who is this guy? What’s his name, what’s he looking for tonight?”

“His name is David, Sir. He likes bondage and impact play, but nothing too intense and no marks that would last more than a few hours. He likes to be humiliated and wants to be ‘forced’ to provide oral service.”

“Exactly right. And you’ve been practicing your humiliation lines?”

“Yes, Sir! That’s easy. I just think of what I would want someone to say to me!”

The Master chuckled lightly. “Okay. Remember we’re also using this session to give you more practice reading emotions from facial expressions. I’ll be watching through your eyes and speaking into your ear.”

“Yes, Sir. Understood, Sir.”

“I hear him in the hall.”

There was a faint, tentative knock at the door, then a slightly firmer one. Seth walked to it and pulled it open. On the other side stood a man perhaps Seth’s age, maybe a little older. He was thin and slight of build and was wearing jeans and a dark green T-shirt.

“He’s a nervous wreck,” the Master said immediately. “Take it slow.”

That much even Seth had been able to see. “You must be David. I’m Master Seth.” HA! Those were words he never thought he’d be saying! “Come on in.”

David walked hesitantly into the room and the Master spoke quietly into Seth’s ear. “Look how he’s hunching down into himself, not standing straight. He’s not looking at your face.” The body language – the hunching – was clear to Seth, but the lack of eye contact had not registered as meaningful. With the Master pointing such things out to Seth, he could see them and draw the connection to what the emotions inside must be. This… this was the secret language that he could never figure out! But he was learning, oh yes.

The Master didn’t need to tell Seth what to do next: put him at ease. It’s what Seth would have wanted if he were in David’s position. The fantasy would be for the dom to take charge and start barking orders and commanding obedience, but this was a real scene, not a fantasy. A dom could be kind as well.

“Please, sit down. Can I get you some water?”

“Sure,” David said. Then he mumbled something that might have been a belated “sir” but swallowed the sounds so much it was impossible to be sure.

Seth handed him the drink and said, “Later on, during the scene, I will expect you to say ‘yes, sir,’ not ‘sure,’ in response to a question like that. And ‘thank you, sir.’ But for now, it’s fine. Right now we’re just two guys relaxing and talking. Is this your first time?”

David shook his head. The Master murmured in Seth’s ear. “Note his red face. He got embarrassed when he realized you were correcting him. Still no eye contact.”

“My third,” David replied. “I guess I’m still kind of nervous.” A breathy gasp that might have been a self-conscious chuckle.

“I’m still kind of new at this dom thing myself,” Seth said. It was amazing how easily the words flowed! He just had to imagine himself doing what the Master would do, saying what the Master would say. All those ride-along sessions made a huge difference. “But don’t worry – I have an excellent mentor who taught me just what to do. Now… tell me a food you can’t stand.”

“What?”

“Mine is anchovies, for the record. Hate ’em. Sick, nasty little fish, sometimes served with the heads still on. Gross! When I’m subbing, that’s my safeword. There is nothing sexy at all about anchovies. If I say ‘anchovies’, it means I’m done. So. What’s a food you can’t stand?”

David grinned a bit and visibly relaxed – in ways the Master pointed out – when he figured out what was going on. They worked out that his safeword would be “brussels sprouts” which lacked the pithy simplicity of something like “red”, but was also something he could not possibly forget. And the knowledge that he had a safeword and that his dom for the evening clearly intended to respect it helped to get him over his hesitancy.

Fifteen minutes later, he was hanging by the wrists from the hooks in the ceiling, feet on the floor but stretched enough that he kept rising up on his toes. Seth held a paddle in his hand and stroked it up and down David’s back and ribs and ass and thighs, and did his best to make his booted footsteps sound menacing as he stalked around where David couldn’t see him. After a couple minutes of silent threatening, he began to swing. The paddle met the globes of David’s ass cheeks with a sharp CLAP.

“Too tentative,” the Master said after the third stroke. “Take it up a bit. Not too much, just a bit.” Seth did so and David responded with a satisfied moan. Seth continued to gradually increase the speed of his strokes until David’s ass was quivering like a Jello mold every time it was struck, while David was leaping and jumping within the limits of his restraints. The spreader bar that Seth paused to attach to his ankles made those limits all the more limiting. The stretch forced him up further onto his toes as well.

“You are a worthless little worm, you know that, boy?” he said as he resumed the paddling.

“Yes, sir,” David said, his voice cracking as the paddle landed.

“I CAN’T HEAR YOU, BOY!” Seth demanded. Three blows from the paddle in quick succession.

“Sorry, sir!”

“What are you, boy?” Whack.

“A worthless worm, sir!” Whack, whack.

“That’s right.” Whack.

And so it went. David’s ass swelled and darkened from the blood rising to the surface; time to switch implements. Seth brought out a crop and used it on David’s shoulders, thighs, chest, and belly. The Master took over a few times to demonstrate a different grip or swing, which Seth then dutifully copied with David having no clue that he was being worked over by two doms in one body. The verbal abuse continued, with David confessing to being an ass-licking pansyboy and a useless toe-sucking cuckold, and admitting that his cock was too small and limp to be called a “cock” and having to refer to it as a “nub” for the rest of the evening.

At last the Master decreed that their sub had had enough and it was time to let him down. Seth locked a collar around David’s neck, attached a leash to it, and then released him from the chains.

“Congratulations, Dom In Training,” the Master said for only Seth to hear. “You did well for your first time. I hereby grant you the temporary use of your dick. Enjoy – you’ve got twenty minutes to have him get you off.”

Seth couldn’t feel the nerves in his dick switching on, but he wasted no time. “Down, boy,” he commanded, tugging on the leash for emphasis. David dropped down onto his knees, then went down on all fours. Seth pulled him toward the sofa, where he sat down with David between his knees.

“Despite the fact that you’re a worthless waste of space, I need to get off and I’m too lazy to use my hand.” Ooh, maybe “too lazy” wasn’t right. Maybe he should have said “don’t feel like” instead? No, stay focused! He pointed to his leather jockstrap, which was starting to swell – ah, now he could feel it! “Get busy, worm.” David started unbuttoning the leather cover and moved in to the rapidly-hardening cock that was revealed. I wonder if that’s a natural erection? Or one that the Master is helping along? It really didn’t matter – his body was so intimately tied now to the Master’s will that the question didn’t even make sense.

David seemed reluctant to get his mouth moving, so Seth tucked the leash under his thigh and steadily shortened it, forcing David into closer and closer proximity. “I said start sucking, you pathetic dirt-crawling turd-eater. Man, I’m going to have to shower for an hour to get the worm slime off once this is done… open your fucking mouth! Worms don’t have teeth, I don’t want to feel any fucking teeth!”

“Nice touch,” the Master said. Seth smiled. “Now slap his shoulders with the crop.” Right! Seth picked up the crop, which was fortunately lying nearby on the sofa, and began to swing and strike. David, for his part, moaned and gurgled. Saliva dripped down Seth’s cock and trickled wetly onto his balls. “Mmmm…” the Master purred in his ear. “Feels nice.”

It sure did! From time to time David tugged weakly against the leash, trying to rise up off the dick that was filling his mouth, but every time he did Seth gave him a second or two to breathe and swallow, then pulled him right back down. Never in a million years would Seth have guessed he would be in this position, with him as the dom while an even more dominant dom secretly guided him along. The little choking sounds that David made as he was “forced” to suck were exactly the sounds Seth could envision himself making in David’s position. He could imagine the dick tickling his throat, pressing against his tongue and gums, demanding to be worshiped, yet even as he imagined that he could feel those very sensations on his own dick. The combination, the blurring of roles between dom and sub, got him even harder.

“That’s it, worm. Keep sucking. Fill your little worm hole up nice and full.” David pulled even harder at the leash, trying to break free, but Seth held him in place and David was forced to catch his breath around the shaft in his mouth. More drool poured down and Seth thrust his hips upward to probe at David’s tonsils. David tried to push the invader out with just his tongue, but of course could not, then finally caught his breath enough to resume his labor.

“Aw, fuck, worm, I’m gonna come. Here it comes, you useless scum rag, swallow it down, aw fuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkk!” His words trailed off into a long, sustained moan of pleasure as the climax washed over him, commanding his entire attention and making the world go away for the brief eternity that it lasted. Then he was winding down and David made to release and back away.

The Master took control, sending Seth into ride-along mode. Seth’s hand pulled on the leash, forcing David to stay right where he was. “Ah ah. Not yet,” he heard his own voice say. “You keep your mouth right where it is. That’s it. Close your lips. Yep. Now get yourself off. Just like that. Stroke that pathetic little nub while you worship a real dick with your mouth. You shouldn’t need more than one finger for something that puny.”

David didn’t need to be told twice. His hand pumped furiously down out of sight. The Master ceded control back to Seth, who made sure to hold tightly to the leash though David made no further attempt to pull free. The involuntary movements his mouth made on Seth’s recently-drained dick sent bursts of almost-too-much sensation coursing through him and he found himself hoping David would finish soon before the post-orgasm stimulation became too much. But then: Nah, he thought. I can take it. The Master is feeling this too and he would never complain.

In the end, it didn’t matter. David shot his load soon enough with his lips still wrapped firmly around the base of Seth’s slowly-softening cock. He breathed heavily through his nose for a bit, then had to break loose to get air fast enough. His thrashing hand eventually slowed, then stilled. Seth handed him a T-shirt to use for mopping up, then patted the seat next to himself. David finished wiping, climbed up, and sat, nestling against Seth’s (and thus the Master’s) body with the leash dangling loosely down from his neck. Seth felt the nerves of his dick go silent once more.

“Was that what you had in mind?” he said to David.

“Yes, sir.”

“Heh. I think we don’t need the ‘sir’ at this point.”

They discussed how the scene had gone, what went well and what they might do differently if there was to be a next time. Then David gathered up his things, got dressed, and departed. Perhaps they would hook up via app again sometime. Or perhaps not. It was all the same to Seth; he had the one man he needed.

“You did well, Seth,” that man said after David was gone and Seth was putting the gear away.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“That one was tame, a good sub for you to try your hand domming on. Tomorrow I’m going to replay some parts for you and we’ll talk about why what you did was good for David, but for the real thing we’re going to need to ramp up the intensity by a whole lot. There’s not really going to be any way to practice that ahead of time on a real live body, so a lot of this you’ll need to learn on the fly when the day comes.”

“I think I can do that, Sir. This session tonight was a big step, I think.”

“It was. And I think you can do it, too. Another couple of weeks and we’ll be ready to roll.”

“Yes, Sir!”

6 – June

Cannon

The sleep disturbances gradually eased up, becoming less and less frequent and less disruptive to his nights. The timing was fortunate because the deal he had been working on for this past half a year was now in its final stages. Closing was scheduled for the week after next, in fact. All the moving parts would finally come together at the right place and time and boom: magic would happen. Resulting, of course, in that nice fat commission for Cannon. So the fact that he was sleeping well again helped because he needed to be on his A game until the closing went through. That was the good news.

The bad news was: strange things were now happening in the daytime.

More than once he had experienced that unnerving sensation of being disconnected from himself. It wasn’t painful or even uncomfortable, but it was very distressing when it happened. He couldn’t do anything about it. His body simply wasn’t there any more and though he tried to do things there was nothing to do. He was a disembodied mind with no way to act, not even on himself. He couldn’t even feel himself breathing nor hear the sound of blood swooshing through his ears. All he could do was think, and thinking didn’t affect the situation in the slightest.

This would go on for some time that could be seconds or hours; there was no way to measure it. And then he would just as suddenly return to himself and find himself exactly in the same place he had “left” only later in the day. Most of the time it happened while he was at home, which was alarming enough, but once it caught him at work.

That time he was able to know how long it lasted because he had happened to look at the clock right before the seizure – or whatever it was – struck: 12:32. He had been about to go have some lunch at Bar None when the world abruptly went away. He waited and waited, terrified and yet strangely calm, and at last he snapped out of it, still seated at his desk… only the clock now read 1:58. He looked around to take stock. He had his own private office, but the walls were glass, meaning he was fully visible to the rest of the staff. Relief: no one outside was peering in at him; no one was acting strangely or behaving as if anything was amiss. His panic began to ease, but the yawning sense that something was very, very wrong remained.

It took him several minutes to realize that he was no longer hungry. On a hunch, he pulled his wallet out of his pocket and looked inside. There was a receipt there, dated today at 1:27 PM. It was not from Bar None, but rather from Due Fratelli’s and once he thought about it, he found that there was indeed the faint aftertaste of pizza in his mouth.

What the ever-loving fuck was going on with him???

Things took an even stranger turn later that afternoon. He was coming back from the restroom when Zack Brokowski intercepted him. Trailing him were those two IT guys, Tim and… aw crap, what was the other guy’s name? Tom… no… ah, Todd, that was it. Too many T’s in that department.

“Yo yo,” Zack said with a bored look on his face. “So how was lunch?”

“It was fine,” Cannon answered, not particularly happy to be reminded of the lost hour-plus he had experienced earlier. “Nothing special.”

“Nothing special?” The bored tone was suddenly gone, replaced by a look of interest, possibly even… greed? What was Zack angling for this time? God, the man was such an ass. Always trying to one-up Cannon, who was well known to be the best deal-maker at the firm. Since a hack like Zack didn’t have the numbers to back up his self-image the way Cannon did, he was constantly trying to undercut his betters. Usually that was fine; Cannon didn’t mind playing hardball office politics if that’s what it took to ensure his position at the top of the heap. Today he wasn’t in the mood.

Zack flashed a grin at his IT posse. “Was it worth a good tip?” he asked.

“I always leave a good tip, my friend.”

“Yeah? How much did you tip your waitress today, eh?”

“Why the fuck do you care, bro? You looking for tipping advice, try google.”

Maddeningly, Zack grinned even more broadly at his lackeys again. “Okay, man, one more chance, but don’t say I didn’t give you every opportunity. How much did you tip your waitress?” He spoke the words slowly and clearly, as if to a particularly ungifted student in class.

“Dude, fuck off, yeah? Don’t you have work to do?” He turned to leave.

“Whoa, not so fast, man. I did not expect to have to play this back to you, but I guess I do.” He brought up his phone, tapped the screen, and turned it toward Cannon.

There was Cannon on the screen. “You recording?” the tiny head asked. A muted “yeah, it’s on,” was audible, and then Cannon looked into the camera.

“Okay, this is Cannon McIver and it is… 12:38 on Thursday, June tenth. I have here in my wallet two Benjamins.” The camera swung dizzyingly downward to show Cannon’s wallet in one hand with the other hand nudging two hundred-dollar bills out of the pocket they were in, flipping one down so the camera could see the other, then tucking them back inside. The camera swooped back up. “I’m going to leave one for the waitress at Due Fratelli’s, no matter what. Great service, lousy service, doesn’t matter. She gets a hundred buck tip. The other hundred is for you, Mister Zachary Brokowski, on one condition. Some time this afternoon, ask me how much I tipped the waitress. If I say anything other than ‘a hundred bucks’, then this second hundred is all yours.”

Cannon’s mind reeled at the sight of himself speaking words he had no memory of ever saying. The playback continued as he tried to not fall over. Zack’s voice could be heard, slightly fainter. “You making some kind of wager or something?”

“No, not a wager. A promise. Ask me how much I tipped, if I don’t say a hundred, I give you a hundred.”

“And if you do? You think I’m gonna pay you? You must think I’m an idiot.”

“No, you don’t pay me anything. Zero risk.”

“This is stupid.”

“Whatever. Don’t ask if you don’t want to. That fits your style – no risk, no reward. Never venture out of your comfort zone.” Cannon – the live Cannon, not the recording – knew those words would sting. Zack was keenly aware that Cannon was the one who brought in the big deals.

“But if you do decide to not be a pussy and ask, and if I give you any grief about paying up, show me this video. Hey, future self, are you watching now? Why don’t you open up your wallet, huh? Show Zack how many hundreds are in there. If the answer is one… sorry pal. That belongs to him now.”

The video ended. Cannon felt his hand creeping toward his pocket, almost of its own volition. He pulled it back but again it started to creep forward as if it had a mind of its own. Numbly, he gave up resisting. He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and unfolded it. The receipt from Due Fratelli’s fell out and fluttered to the ground. He did indeed usually carry around several high-denomination bills for those not-infrequent occasions when digital currency simply wasn’t the right tool for the job. He knew there were two in there, he had checked this morning. And, apparently, had checked again a couple of hours ago right here in the office. But when he opened up the cash pocket…

…one bill.

Fastened to it with a paper clip was a small note. He pulled the bill out, held it up, and read what it said: “You lose. Pay up.”

Zack’s smirk had grown monstrously huge; Cannon’s head whirled in confusion. How was… how could… what was happening to him?!?

“You… you did this. You did this somehow. Quit fucking with me, man!”

“Hey! That’s bullshit. You came to me! I was minding my own business when you stopped by with this weird-ass idea. No way did I think it made any sense, but hey, I did my part. You gonna back out now, or are you gonna follow through?”

Defeated, Cannon watched his hand hold the bill out toward Zack, who took it with birdlike precision, not touching Cannon’s fingers in the process. “A pleasure doing business with you, Mister McIver. Please feel free to drop by again any time.” The T’s were snickering. Zack swept off down the hall followed by his posse, leaving Cannon dazed and red-faced in their wake.

Seth

Seth was an absolute wreck, full of nervous anticipation. Two more practice sessions under his belt and he was as confident a dom as he was likely to ever get. During the second one, the Master had let him fly solo, monitoring and recording everything for later analysis and suggestions but letting Seth run the scene from start to finish. Seth was relieved that his performance had met with the Master’s approval. There were, of course, areas he could improve upon and they practiced those afterward, but overall the Master was satisfied.

He was dressed in what he could only think of as a costume, not clothing. Leather gear to the hilt with padding underneath to make him look huge, bulking out his chest and arms and thighs beneath the leather. The image in the mirror when he had seen himself made him laugh. This wasn’t a dom, this was a parody of a dom! An exaggerated cartoon! But the Master said he looked perfect, so who was Seth to disagree?

And now tonight was the night. The beginning of a weekend-long session that would more than make up for the pain, humiliation, and suffering he had endured at Cannon’s hands. Payback time.

“Remember: you are almost certainly going to react on seeing him,” the Master had said an hour earlier, “even though I’ll be piloting him when you do. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, just your brain remembering a threat and trying to protect you from it. Like touching a hot stove or seeing a snake – your brain reacts to the threat before your conscious mind is even aware of it. So we’re going to have two entrances. The first will be unrecorded. You’ll let me in the door, we’ll take a couple of minutes to let you look him over and get used to the sight. Then I’ll leave, go back into the hall, start the recording and walk in again.”

“Understood, Sir. I think I’ll be fine. I’m expecting it, after all.”

“I’m sure. Nevertheless, we’ll still have a familiarization session. On the second entrance, that’s when you start your lines. And at that point, I’m going to do my best to imitate what Cannon himself would say and do so that when I play this back for him, it will feel real to him, not as if someone else was using his body. You, though, need to remember: it’s me in there. Play-acting a role.”

“Yes, Sir. I’ve tried to imagine what it will be like to see him and hear him shouting at me again, and I think I’m ready for it. But there’s no way to know until it happens, I guess.”

“Right. And we can always pause and redo some scenes if necessary. I want these sessions to be as flawless as they can be so if we need multiple takes, that’s fine.”

“Absolutely, Sir!”

And now Seth was pacing his apartment, waiting for the sound of footsteps at the door, as keyed up as he could possibly be. The Master was smart – of course he was, he always was – to have a plan to dissipate some of this nervous energy.

There. Movement in the hallway. Seth didn’t wait for a knock but opened the door. And as prepared as he thought he was, the sight of his assailant standing there right in front of his face nevertheless sent a shock of panic through his system. He could actually feel his heart kick into a double-time beat.

“Yep, there it is.” The sound of Cannon’s voice was exactly as he remembered it, only he knew it was really the Master speaking through his tormentor’s throat. “Don’t fight it, let it happen. Let it wash through you and out. Take a deep breath, slowly in, slowly out. It’ll pass.” How was he so smart, to know that this would happen? And how to handle it? Seth had truly thought he was ready for the moment, yet when it came, he reacted exactly as he had tried to prepare himself not to.

Well, at least he was still standing. He had not melted into a puddle on the floor, something old Seth would very likely have done. That was worth something. He breathed as the Master directed once, twice, then felt ready to speak.

“Hello, Sir. You were correct as always.”

The Master-as-Cannon walked into Seth’s apartment and took off his shirt in a smooth, fluid motion. “Here, touch him. Rub your thumbs on his nipples.” Seth did so, tentatively at first, then more firmly. The man really did have a spectacular body, one that any gay guy would drool over. The intimate touch helped to disassociate that body from the cruelty it had inflicted, easing Seth’s tension and dissipating his anxiety. This was the way to tame the bogeyman. To defang and declaw him and render him harmless, ready for the next step: turning the tables on him.

“I’ve learned a bit more about this boy over the last week or so,” the Master said while Seth explored Cannon’s muscles, familiarizing himself with the act, asserting the right to touch him this way, staking a claim to the territory of his body. “In case you were having any doubts, rest assured: he’s an asshole. I’ve watched him at work and while driving and at restaurants, everywhere he goes. He’s the kiss-up-kick-down type. To anyone he perceives as having higher status or power, he’s charming and generous and witty and flattering. He sees such people as useful because they might be able to do favors for him or help him advance in some way. But anyone he considers beneath him, he treats them like garbage. So any time those lower-status people complain about his behavior to the higher-ups, the higher-ups discredit their stories because they describe a Cannon that is completely unlike the warm and thoughtful man they know. His coworkers hate him but his bosses think he’s their golden boy.”

Seth squeezed Cannon’s biceps, marveling at the taut hard muscles. A tiny voice inside him reminded him that this body is what the Master should have had, not Seth’s. Such a magnificent replacement! The Master would be right at home in a body like this one: strong and tall and powerful and handsome. He could have this one and forget all about Seth’s with its defective eyes and its insufficient height and still-underdeveloped muscles. Or keep Seth on to provide the menial labor that was all he was good for.

That voice would probably always be with him, but the Master had assured him: he valued Seth for more than just his body. As tempting as it was to give in to the doubts, doing so would mean denying what the Master had clearly said. Who was Seth to think that he knew better than the Master? To tell the Master he was wrong?

“So I’m going to feel no guilt at all about taking the bastard down,” the Master-as-Cannon continued. “Guys like him, there’s only two ways to deal with them. Either persuade them to be nice to everybody, not just people they think are useful– and that is very tough to do – or drive them away so they can’t do you any more harm. Plan A is long and boring and not guaranteed to work, so my vote is for plan B.”

Seth was now standing behind Cannon with his hands reaching up and forward to tightly squeeze Cannon’s rock-solid pecs. The Master swiveled Cannon around until he was facing Seth with Seth’s arms still wrapped around him. He looked down into Seth’s eyes.

“Cup his balls in your hand,” the Master said through Cannon’s mouth. Seth reached down and did so, feeling the weighty package through the fabric of his sweat pants. “Give ’em a squeeze. A little harder. Little more. Yeah. That’s it. Feel that? That’s power. You’re in charge tonight. You literally have this man by the balls. He is going to beg for your mercy, right?”

“Yes, Sir!”

“Good man. Don’t show him a single drop.”

Seth tightened his grip until the Master moaned and curled forward, his hands reflexively flinching inward toward his trapped balls. Then he composed himself, pulled his hands back, stood erect, and pushed his crotch forward into the pain. He stared Seth right in the eye. “Exactly like that, Master Seth. You ready to break this motherfucker?”

“Fuckin’ ready, Sir!”

Winston

Out in the hall, he walked to the far end, then walked slowly back toward Seth’s open door, recording every step. In the version that he would edit for Cannon’s “enjoyment”, there would be no visual and the audio would be edited to remove all the external sounds and replace them with footsteps that reverberated like drumbeats. He paced slowly, trying to make each step exactly the same so that he would be able to build a loop with a seamless transition. Cannon’s nightmares would all start the same way: a sequence of plodding forward in pitch blackness, unable to slow or stop or turn away, drawn inexorably onward.

He concentrated on feeling dread, imagining himself walking to his execution. The net couldn’t record and play back body chemistry, but the nerves that responded to changes in body chemistry would get the right messages if Winston could fool himself into feeling the way Cannon would be feeling every time he relived this moment. And so he thought of horror movies and jump scares, imagining that some demonic beast might burst out from any one of the closed doorways he passed.

Demonic beast. Yes. That was the way to play this. Cannon was going to find himself losing control of his own body to a malevolent unseen presence. What other conclusion could he reach?

He reached Seth’s open door and pivoted ninety degrees. Then he walked inward trying to match the pace of his earlier strides. A bit of editing would allow him to remove the turn and splice the rest together to make it seem like he had walked straight into the dungeon that was waiting for him.

He moved into the center of the room, steps slowing as he did, then waited. The waiting, too, could be looped so that on playback Cannon could have ten seconds or ten minutes of standing, or longer. Once he had lived through it a few times and knew what to expect, the waiting would be its own form of torment.

Seth waited the planned minute while Winston held Cannon’s body absolutely still, only the slow rise and fall of his chest betraying any movement. Then the voice came.

“Hello, Cannon. Remember me?”

The voice was good, but not great. Seth’s voice fell naturally into a tenor range and though he was deepening it as much as he could for this performance, it wasn’t quite where Winston wanted it to be. Fortunately, audio was easy to fix. Winston would dub in a lower-pitched version, maybe using voice-altering software if necessary. For now, he concentrated on keeping the sense of dread strong.

“Perhaps a reminder would be in order. Even if you do remember who I am, it is fitting that you recall the reason why you are here.”

Then Seth fell silent and Winston waited, standing as still as he could manage. Audio would be dubbed in here as well: pulled from the recording of the beating Seth had endured.

At last Seth spoke again. “Yes. The fucking faggot janitor. The fucking faggot janitor that you took such delight in hurting and humiliating. And for what? Because he dared to admire you.”

There was a pause while Winston tried to infuse the body chemistry with rage on top of the dread. That wasn’t hard. Remembering how Cannon had treated his other self brought the rage easily to mind. Seth’s lines continued; Winston waited for the right moment.

“…You’re going to suffer, boy. And the only way to end the suffering is to beg for a good stiff dick.”

Now Winston-as-Cannon allowed himself to speak. “N-no.” He thought the slight stammer was a nice touch, something to make Cannon feel even more powerless and out of control. “No. Never!”

“Suit yourself. The pain will continue until you change your mind.”

And it did. They spent the entire weekend recording numerous variations for Cannon to endure. Some took place right there in the apartment with the gear Winston had stocked it with; more took place at Locksmith, the leather club on Fifth Avenue where there was a much wider variety of gear and also plenty of men willing to help “role-play” the taking of a straight man by force. To fit the “demon” theme he was working with, they brought a bag full of Halloween-themed props: fangs, face paint, fake horns with adhesive pads to stick to bare skin, various bits of costumery and fake blood. Several of the guys at the club got enthusiastically on board; others agreed to take part but opted out of playing dress-up.

“I really get off on pretending this isn’t what I want,” Winston-as-Cannon explained to anyone willing to take part. “But it’s all play-acting. If I ever really get in over my head, the safeword is ‘pumpkin’.”

The word “pumpkin” was never uttered at any time during their stay.

It was a marathon session for Winston, spending over 36 hours in Cannon’s body while his own lay abandoned on his sofa, cathetered and diapered. Winston took occasional breaks when Cannon was safely restrained to flick back to his own body and chug a few swallows of water or protein shake or to push out a load that had been building up in his bowels for who-could-say-how-long while his attention was elsewhere.

These jaunts back “home” had to be quick because he couldn’t leave Cannon’s body unattended for more than half a minute or so. He either had to handle the breathing himself, allow Cannon back in to manage it, or rely on the drone net to handle it autonomously. Allowing Cannon in was not an option, and a botnet could only handle breathing as long as it was steady and predictable, as with Winston’s own abandoned body on the sofa during his prolonged absence. Cannon’s, on the other hand, was undergoing pretty much constant stress and his oxygen needs were far less predictable, requiring conscious attention.

By the end, Winston was utterly exhausted, sore, and aching. Cannon’s body was covered in welts, rope burns, bruises, burn marks, and the secretions of multiple anonymous rapists. He brought Cannon back to his pricey penthouse, washed him up, tended to his wounds, and sent him off to bed. The man’s mind would be close to insane by this point after almost two days of the void, and when he got his body back he would be horrified at what had happened to it. But the physical wounds would heal.

As for the mental ones… well… those were only beginning.

Cannon

Holy fuck! He felt like he’d been hit by a steamroller!

Every muscle ached from his jaw right down to the soles of his feet. Even his ass felt like it had been ripped open and stitched back together. And his nuts! Fuck, they felt like someone had been using them for batting practice!

Once again, he had no idea how long he had been out, but this one sure felt like it had lasted longer than anything previously. He absolutely had to talk to somebody about this, no matter what funny looks the doctors and their staff might give him. This could not go on. Especially if he was going to be feeling this wrecked afterward.

As soon as he was able, he reached for his phone to check the time. Dead battery. He didn’t feel like dragging his aching body out of bed just yet to get the charger… maybe a quick nap would help… which was crazy because he had just spent an impossible amount of time floating in darkness, which was basically what sleep was, and yet his body seemed to want more, and he really didn’t feel like fighting it…

When he woke again, he was feeling noticeably better. Still weak and sore, but improved enough to stand up. It was 7:40 on Sunday evening. The weekend had basically disappeared and he had no idea where.

Had he gone out drinking on Friday? Had too much? Maybe that was why he couldn’t remember how he had gotten so hammered. Maybe that was all it was. The more he thought about it, the more likely that explanation seemed. This was just a blackout and a particularly colossal hangover. Maybe there wasn’t anything to go whining to a doctor about after all.

The sight of the stripes and other marks on his body when he noticed them later made him reverse course yet again on the doctor idea, but by the time morning came those, like the aches and pains, had faded quite a bit. No, there was no need to go see anyone. He was going to lay off the drinks, that’s what he was going to do. No more for at least one month, that should clear whatever this was out of his system.

In his office, he turned his mind resolutely to next Tuesday’s closing. Nothing – nothing – was going to fuck that up.

Winston

The emergency alert signal and corresponding muted chime popped up in Winston’s peripheral vision.

It startled him at first because it brought back memories of when Seth needed help and Winston wasn’t there for him. But Seth had just been here not ten minutes ago, delivering dinner – which Winston really needed to go eat before he forgot about it – and everything had been fine then. Seth had been doing well this week with Winston basically ignoring him. He was a good man and would wait patiently for however long it took.

But the end was in sight! Winston had spent the past week doing pretty much nothing but editing recordings for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day. Well, more like seven or eight the last couple of days; his body simply couldn’t keep up even with this low-intensity work. All he was doing was clicking and dragging a mouse! And yet after a few hours even that was enough to deplete the muscles in his right arm, so he had gotten reasonably adept at working with his left, switching arms whenever one wore out.

He really didn’t need to power through like this. There was no deadline, after all. But it was sooooo much fun to take clips from various points in the recording of Cannon’s experiences and stitch them together in different ways, each one clearly in the same family as all the others yet distinctively different as well. It was that combinatorics thing again, same as with the nerve cells: mixing and matching a small, finite set of things created dramatically more options than the count of items alone could ever add up to.

He like to think of it as like a menu. Cannon would be served up an appetizer, an entree, two sides, and a dessert. With five appetizer choices, six entrees, eight sides, and five desserts, that was 8,400 possible meals! Varying the number of sides or skipping a course yielded even more options, as did changing up the order. All without blowing out his laptop’s storage capacity since each meal choice didn’t need its own separate copy of all its component parts. It only needed pointers to each stored scene. That and a lot of dubbed-in audio. Seth’s voice just wasn’t right for instilling terror, so Winston had been using voice-altering software and speaking the lines himself, then overlaying the result onto the audio track of the sensory recording. All of which took time and planning and effort.

But that emergency signal…

After a moment’s alarm, he realized that it wasn’t Seth’s emergency signal at all. In tiny print under the flashing icon was the name “Cash”. He opened a channel to speak into his buddy’s ear and turned the audio on so as to hear the response.

“Cash, man, what’s up?”

The voice that came through was breathy and garbled almost to the point of inaudibility. Winston ran a quick diagnostic and checked some settings. “Hang on, man, I’m having trouble hearing you, one sec.” But no: there was nothing wrong with the link.

Conclusion, then: Cash was having trouble producing speech.

Aw, fuck. That was not good.

“Okay, try again.”

He listened carefully and this time made out faint words. “Win… man… it’s… time. I’m… rea…dy…”

“I hear you, brother. Hang tight. I’m on my way.”

He got up, then promptly fell back into his chair. GODFUCKINGDAMMIT! No food all day, hours of intense concentration, wasted muscles… no strength. FUCK! NOT NOW!

Oh. Damn, he really wasn’t thinking straight. The solution to that problem should have been instantly obvious. Then he realized Cash was still speaking. “Just… shut… me… down… from… there.”

“A big hell no to that, buddy. You ain’t leavin’ without sayin’ goodbye. Be there in thirty. Hang tight.” He flicked over to speak into Seth’s ear. “Hey, Seth, sorry for the short notice, but I need you tonight. Four, five hours in shutdown.”

“Of course, Sir.”

“You in the middle of anything?”

“No, Sir. Dishes are washed, food’s put away, I’m just hanging out. Do whatever you need.”

“You really are the best I could have asked for.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

Winston carefully stood up, hit the head, then went over to the couch and lay down on it. Food would have to wait. Then he shifted himself over to Seth’s body and sent Seth off into the void. Three minutes later, he was blasting up the freeway heading to Escondido. The worst of the afternoon rush was over; he was able to make the trip in 24 minutes.

And during those 24 minutes, it occurred to him that he had an opportunity to make Cannon’s upcoming misery a hundred times worse.

At the care home, he signed in at the desk and went into Cash’s room. The man was a husk, barely a lump under the sheets. Winston started to speak but realized Cash was already talking.

“You… forget… what… ‘remote’… means?” The words came out slowly with no strength behind them.

“I know, I know. Two things, though. One is: before we flip that switch, how ’bout I spring you out of here for the evening, we go do something fun?”

Cash swiveled his eyes toward Winston, who moved closer to make it easier for him. “Not… really… in a… party… mood.”

“Yeah, I got an idea you might like, though. And then the second thing is: can you wait four days? Till next Tuesday?”

Cash took a while to mull it over. “You… plannin’… somethin’…?”

“Yeah. Could do it sooner, but Tuesday would work best.”

“Might… not… need… you… by… then…”

“Hey, man. You’re tougher than you look. I know I’ll owe you and there’s not much time, so maybe tonight can be the payback for making you wait?”

A tiny, breathy sound that might have been a chuckle.

“This… plan. You… kickin’… ass… and… takin’… names?”

Winston’s turn to chuckle. “Mmm hmm. But I promise: no one who doesn’t totally deserve it will be harmed in the execution of this mission.”

“O… kay. I’m in.”

It was a tough sell for the staff, but Cash was on board and that helped. Winston played the pity card without hesitation, a confidential aside to the shift supervisor: “look, it’s clear the man doesn’t have much time left, what’s the harm?” They had him sign four separate forms and liability waivers and he had to rent (not borrow) a wheelchair, which he folded up and stowed in the trunk of his car. By 7:15 he and Cash were off and headed westward.

The 78 took them to the coast at Oceanside to a parking lot they used to go to back in their Corps days. Up on a rise, nice view to the west. Back then, they used to come here in a group: five, eight, a dozen young Marines in need of some downtime, looking for a place to chill out, drink beer, play cards, and shoot the shit in their off-duty hours.

There would be no beer and no cards tonight, but shooting the shit… that they could do. The conversation just went slower than it used to, and Cash needed to be draped in a blanket since he had no muscle mass to help him maintain his body temperature. The sunset was pretty enough, but sunsets in clear skies are never as satisfying as ones with streaky clouds painting the horizon. They watched a too-bright-to-look-at disc descend toward the placid water while Cash grilled Winston about the details of his plan. By the time the sky was a deep purple, Cash knew of everything that was about to unfold, including his role in it.

“You… real… en…for…cer… for… gay… mafia.”

Winston snickered. “Nah. This is strictly a private job.”

“Seems… like… punish…ment… way… worse… than… crime.”

Winston sat silently for a bit. Yes, yes it was. That thought had crossed his mind more than once. Then he looked over at Cash. “I can live with that.”

“Glad… I… never… pissed… you… off.”

“Oh, like hell you didn’t! Remember that time when…” and then the somber moment had passed and they were off and reminiscing again, killing time until the evening’s next act could begin.

An hour later they were at the door of Vanessa’s Gentleman’s Club, another familiar haunt from their Corps days. Winston had never pretended to be straight but he had joined the guys here more than once, taking the ribbing that came along with being the only gay dude at a strip club. And dishing the ribbing right back, of course.

“My friend here can’t drink,” he told the doorman, “and I’m his driver so I can’t either, but here’s two hundred to cover our first couple of rounds.” The place was not designed with wheelchairs in mind, but they were able to maneuver it inside and right up next to the stage. The doors had just opened and the room was still fairly empty, but that suited them fine.

As the girls came out and did their thing, they would often position themselves at some point in front of Winston, who would tip them generously and then gesture Cash’s way. Every one of them got the message and made Cash their focus as they danced and stretched and writhed. Either the pity card worked here as well without him having to overtly play it, or else they knew that this was a “safe” customer who wouldn’t be trying to grope them or stalk them later, because they all made sure he got a good, long close-up show.

By the time the fifth dancer was doing her thing, an hour and a half had gone by and Winston saw that Cash’s stamina had hit its limit. He laid another hundred down and started wheeling the chair to the door. Back at the home, the staff seemed slightly miffed that Winston had returned their charge to them on time and still breathing, annoyed at his failure to be the unreliable screwup they expected him to be. Fuck ’em.

Back in the room, he helped get Cash back into bed. There, at last, it was quiet enough to hear him speak.

“Where… so… much… cash?”

“Oh, that? It was Cannon’s. Figured that soon he won’t have any need for it and I knew I could find a better way to spend it.”

“Thanks… man. Not… bad… sendoff.”

“Semper fi, brother.” He turned to go, determined to leave while the evening could still be a happy memory.

Cannon

SHOWTIME! At last!

Cannon was dressed to crisp perfection: a suit of a shade of blue that sat right on the edge between conservative dark and bold bright. A gold tie, not too flashy but still eye-catching. Matching cufflinks. Perfectly-tailored white shirt. An outfit that told the New Yorkers and other East Coast visitors that he belonged among them, but with enough California style to make it clear that he thought their quaint stuffiness was a strange foreign habit or a cute anachronism. Formal enough to be taken seriously; flashy enough to declare that he was not bound by their conventions.

He checked his reflection in the bathroom mirror, adjusting his hair the tiniest fraction. Perfect. It was strange: he had come in here to empty his bladder before the meeting began and thought there would be more in it, but only a trickle had come out. He felt empty enough now; the full sensation from before was probably just excitement from the anticipation of the event about to begin. He tweaked the alignment of his tie, then strode down the hall to the conference room.

Gathered around the mahogany table in the room with the spectacular view of the harbor were all the key players, over twenty people plus their support staff. Today’s meeting was little more than a ceremony. All the groundwork had been laid, all the approvals had been obtained and the commitments of intent collected and notarized. The signatures that would be inked on the soft cream paper today were mere formalities; necessary, but more decorative than substantial.

There was a muted hum of conversation accompanied by the gentle clink of ice cubes in water glasses as the assembly gathered. Cannon worked the room, making smooth small talk with the important guests and exchanging a few pleasantries with the aides. He even paused to talk with the three restaurant and retail shop owners who had failed to realize they had only been invited out of politeness and were expected to decline. Ah, well. He was riding high today and so spared a few minutes to say hello to them, hoping as he did that the smell of grease from the restaurant guy wouldn’t get absorbed into the fabric of his suit. Seriously, dude, you couldn’t manage to find something that didn’t reek of griddle to wear for this occasion? But he kept his smile on; nothing could spoil his mood.

He inquired how Gerard Jurgen’s daughter’s wedding went and complimented Dick Marakiewicz on his company’s making it onto the Fortune 500. There, see, no problems with his memory. The mysterious blackouts had not done any permanent damage to his mind, it seemed, nor his ability to charm. Indeed it was looking like he had put those in the past. Since that episode more than a week ago he had completely quit all alcohol and sure enough, there hadn’t been a single incident since. Maybe he had developed some sort of allergy to the stuff? Sometimes allergies cropped up later in life, well past childhood. Whatever the cause had been, he was becoming more and more confident that the problem was now firmly behind him.

Shawna, his own assistant, started circulating to ask those assembled to take their seats and slowly, they did. When only three chairs were empty, Cannon made his way to the head of the table and stood, looking every bit the magnanimous and generous host.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said as the stragglers found their way to the table. “I appreciate you all arranging to be here on what promises to be a very exciting day.” He saw Shawna passing out the folders with the various documents to be signed, deftly setting each one down in front of its designated recipient without needing to ask who was who. No uncouth bellowing or butchering of names, no braying voice nasally inquiring “Marky-wix? Is there a Marky-wix here?”. His was a smooth operation.

“I promise I won’t take more than a few minutes of your time. I know we all want to get through these formalities so we can go down to the Hexfield Tower and celebrate, but I do want to take just a moment to thank all the people whose hard work made this day possible.” The platitudes slid easily off his tongue; this was what he had been born to do. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vince Norrison, president of the firm, standing by the door and watching his performance impassively. The old goat was tough to read, but Cannon knew he was delivering an impressive haul for the company, and that Vince was fully aware that it was all Cannon’s doing.

That’s right, old man. Treat me right and I just might stick around and keep the gravy train rolling. But you gotta make it worth my while. Damn, he’d be able to name his own figure when raise time came around! Oh… but why wait? With a feather like this in his cap he’d have standing to re-negotiate terms right now. Well, next week, perhaps, once all the dust had settled.

Cannon duly thanked all the little peons, graciously inflating their contributions to the deal, then turned the floor over to old goat in case he wanted to say a few words, which he always did. Cannon kept his face in a perfect expression of rapt attention to Vince’s ramblings, which never seemed to connect more than tenuously to the actual event he was speaking about. No matter. At least he never went on too long on occasions like this.

Cannon became aware of a low, rumbling sound in his right ear. Gradually the volume increased until it resolved into… laughter? He started twitching his head in small increments, wondering where the sound was coming from. The laughter became a full-throated cackle, though down in a bass register. He twisted his upper body far to the right, ready to glare at whoever was behind him daring to disrupt the proceedings. But as he turned, the laugher turned with him, always staying just out of sight on his right. He saw no one there, just an empty stretch of tastefully-papered wall.

The laughter stopped. Puzzled, Cannon swiveled forward once again. No one else had seemed to notice anything, so he tried to pick up the thread of what Vince had been saying – as if it mattered. At once, the laughter started up again in his ear, very faintly but unmistakably there.

Vince seemed like he might be wrapping up, but the geezer had been known to feint before, sounding like he was coming to a conclusion then veering off into another ramble. Cannon spun quickly to look behind himself again, covering the movement by rubbing his eye, as if something had flown into it. Still no one there. He turned to the front again, struggling to keep his face neutral. What the hell was going on?

Ah, Vince really was wrapping up. Cannon joined the light smattering of applause and stepped forward, trying to ignore the hallucination in his ear. But as he took his first step, the laughter stopped and blurred into words, which rang in his ear clear and deep and low: “Cannon, you are soooooo fucked.”

And with that, the most bizarre experience of Cannon’s entire life to date began. His body started moving totally by itself, completely outside his control. His mind was there inside, watching it all happen, feeling himself walking smoothly and easily, but he was not in charge. He hung there inside his skull, trapped, a passenger, while his body took the last few steps to the head of the table and began speaking.

“Thank you, Vince,” he heard his own voice say, though they were not his words, “for those impressively convoluted and meandering remarks.” A few indrawn breaths, a muffled chuckle of someone who assumed Cannon must be joking, but the joke was in such poor, poor taste. “You never disappoint. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say this has been a pleasure, but you know, if I did I’d be lying.” Now the breaths were becoming murmurs.

With horror, Cannon felt his hands dropping down to his waist, pulling down his zipper, reaching inside his pants, while his voice continued speaking. “Truly, I can think of nothing I would rather do less than spend one more moment in this room with any of you bottom-feeding, affluenza-stricken parasites.” Now his hands were fishing his dick out through the opening. Abruptly, he jumped nimbly up onto the table and the attendees gasped and shouted and started to stand themselves.

Then, Cannon felt the unmistakable sensation of his bladder’s sphincter opening up. In two seconds, urine would start to stream out of his cock. He frantically tried to stop it, but his body refused to obey his commands. He wanted to scream, to kick something, to smash his fist into a wall, but could do none of that.

“Here is what I think all of you truly deserve,” Cannon’s voice called, rising in volume to be heard above the increasing chaos. It turned out his bladder was not empty after all, was in fact very full indeed. The stream of piss reached the slit and continued on out under pressure, arcing through the air and landing on the man to Cannon’s left, an older fellow who was a bit slower than the rest at getting himself onto his feet. He shouted in protest as the hot stream splashed across his arm and chest, soaking into the fabric. The demon – for what else could it be? – that was controlling Cannon’s body aimed higher, striking the man’s face and hair, then continued swiveling, aiming his weapon at any targets he could reach, stalking across the table to increase his range.

Piss splashed everywhere, spattering the surface of the table, soaking into the folders and the soft, creamy papers inside, landing on faces and bodies and hands and legs. The room was in full chaos now, with people shouting and trying to cram themselves through one of the two doors, the one farthest from where Cannon stood wielding his impromptu fire hose, but succeeding only in forming a tight clump for him to aim the hose at. “That’s right, pigs! I piss on all of you! Haaaaa ha ha haaaaa!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Cannon, and the demon driving him, noticed Don the accountant coming toward him, arms out to try to grab. He was no match for Cannon’s gym-honed muscles, though, and he knew it. The demon turned toward Don and jumped off the table to lunge at him, shouting “Boo!” as he did. Don folded like a wet napkin, leaving a path clear to the second door.

“So long, suckers!” the demon shouted, the stream of piss trickling to a stop at last. “Hey, Vince, have fun trying to figure out where I redirected all the money. I know some of it went to an old folks home in Bangladesh… or was it Burma? Whatever. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Eventually.” Cannon was panicking in his head, absolutely melting in terror of what was happening to him. But his body was striding confidently through the door, toward the stairwell, tucking his dick back into his pants while the few attendees who had escaped the conference room now pivoted around and tried to get back inside, causing even more of a pileup at the door. He vaguely made out the sound of Vince’s voice hollering about how Cannon was oh so fired for this, but the demon strode on, uncaring.

“Oh, and Vince?” the demon shouted as he reached the door to the stairwell. He paused to make sure Vince had stopped babbling and was looking at him. “I hope I haven’t made things awkward for you at home. Now that your wife knows what a real dick feels like, she might not want to settle for yours any more. SEE YA!”

The stairwell door closed and Cannon was bounding down the steps like a madman. Which, it seemed, he was. He watched the walls and railings spin by in a dizzying blur, wishing he could close his eyes to block out the nauseating sight. Twelve floors down, faster than the elevator could possibly go, then one more to get to the underground parking garage, where the demon hopped into Cannon’s car and sped out through the gate, not bothering to wait for it to open first.

The demon knew exactly where to go and took Cannon’s car straight to his building, then left the keys inside it and switched to the motorcycle. Soon Cannon’s body was speeding down the surface streets, then onto the freeway. Bizarrely, Cannon found himself worried about, of all things, his suit, knowing that it would be getting peppered with grease and tar and chewed up by bits of road grit. Then a bit of sanity returned– though only a bit in this utterly insane situation – and he remembered that he had far, far bigger problems on his hands.

“WoooooooHOOOOOO!” the demon shouted as they worked their way up the 163. “God DAMN that felt good, didn’t it? Whaddaya say, Cannon?” It didn’t matter that the combined roar of the wind and the bike’s engine drowned out the sound; Cannon could feel his throat shaping the words and knew what the demon was saying. “Didja like finally getting to tell the old geezer off? Oh, that’s right, you can’t talk back, can you? You know what, that’s just the way I like you. Oh, buddy, wait’ll you see what I’ve got planned for you next!”

That sealed it: he was losing his mind, he had gone fucking insane. He had no choice but to watch and listen and feel as the demon drove the bike expertly northward, merging onto the 15 and weaving in and out among the cars. He sat there in the prison of his own mind, wondering what new horror was about to be unleashed upon him.

Winston

Every Marine that took part in the Manrider Program – masters and drones alike – had known what he was getting into before signing on. Even Seth had known, in the limited way that Winston had revealed to him. But Cannon… he had no clue. Winston couldn’t read his drone’s mind, but it was not hard to guess what was going on inside that disembodied brain: terror; confusion; helplessness. Good. Let the bastard squirm.

Before taking Cannon over, Winston had checked in with Cash. “Little under an hour away, brother. You still ready?” The reply had been whisper-faint: affirmative. Now Winston-as-Cannon swung the motorcycle into the care home’s parking lot and abandoned it in a parking space. He strode up to the desk, showed Cannon’s ID to the receptionist, and told her he was here to see Carlos Lopez, room 119. She pointed him toward the room, but he was already moving.

Cash was waiting for him. No words needed to be spoken. Now came the most delicate phase of the operation: he couldn’t shut Cash down while simultaneously driving Cannon, so Cannon would have a few fleeting seconds back in control of himself again. What would he do with those precious moments of freedom?

He fell over, that’s what he did. Not expecting the sudden return of control when Winston left, he lost his balance and landed on his ass.

Winston ignored him and spoke remotely into Cash’s ear. “Good night, brother.” Then he shifted Cash into shutdown mode. Disconnected from his body, he would feel nothing. No pain, no distress. Just quiet peace as he slowly faded away. It wasn’t the blaze of glory that a Marine deserved, but it was easily the next best way to go. Gotta remember that when my time comes.

Once he was sure Cash was in a place where nothing could disturb him, Winston flicked his attention back to Cannon, who had just finished climbing back to his feet, unsteady and unsure whether this newfound control would last. It wouldn’t. Winston spoke into Cannon’s ear. “You thought the show at your office was bad? Wait’ll you see this.” Cannon jumped at the sound and made as if to shout, but Winston took control. Instead of shouting, he moved purposefully forward toward the dying man on the bed.

He paused a moment, afraid to do what was needed out of an irrational fear that Cash would feel what was happening. But no: Cash was safe. This show was for the viewing public that would soon gather, but Cash would not be among the audience.

He reached his hands out and wrapped them around Cash’s throat, then squeezed. There was nothing there, no muscle, barely any bone. Winston-as-Cannon’s hands passed all the way around what had once been a strong, thick neck with plenty of room to spare. He bore down, putting his weight behind it. Cash had already stopped breathing the moment he had gone into shutdown; the strangling was doing nothing that wasn’t already in progress anyway.

He gave it a minute, then started making noise. “That’s right… die, you motherfucker… Fuckin’ choke, you fuckin’ piece of shit…” Louder and louder he let his voice grow until he was shouting the words. By the time a nurse appeared at the door and gasped with shock, Cash was almost certainly already gone, but Winston kept up the show all the same. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, look into my eyes, I wanna see the moment when your fuckin’ life seeps away…”

The nurse came back with help and soon enough the scene was as chaotic as the piss-soaked conference room had been. Winston fought to keep Cannon’s hands wrapped around Cash’s neck, but eventually allowed himself to be forced aside. After that, it was just a matter of playing the role until the future was so fixed that nothing could change it.

Minutes later, the police arrived. When asked for his version of events, Winston-as-Cannon gleefully confessed to having wanted to know what it felt like to take a life. They read him his rights, informing him that he might want to do himself a favor and keep his mouth shut, but on he babbled, saying that this was the perfect place for a killing, that he would do it again first chance he got, that the stick figure lying on the bed was a doomed waste of space that was likely to kick any time, so why not hurry things along for him? Hell, he was practically doing the freshly-minted corpse a favor.

Which was, in a way that no one would ever know, true.

It took all of his control to keep his real feelings for Cash firmly in the back of his mind so that he could make vile words emerge from Cannon’s lips with the correct tone of sneering disdain, but soon enough, Cannon was cuffed and in the back seat of a squad car. Then Winston was able to step back and yield control back to Cannon, though he stuck around to listen and watch for a while. Once Cannon figured out he was in charge again, he changed his story completely, raving about demons and possession and how he never meant for any of this to happen, claiming that the devil made him do it. The cops, of course, had seen and heard everything before; this was nothing new. They had their job: to get their prisoner down to the station and let him make his phone call. After that, the courts and the lawyers could work it all out. Not their problem. They let him froth and holler in the back seat all the way to the lockup.

Seth

“Sir, I really don’t need it.”

“I know. But I want you to have it. Not as a gift, though. I want you to earn it back. I took it away from you in a formal, ritualized way. Now that our relationship has changed and I’m no longer planning to erase you, your dick should be under your command again, and it’s fitting that its return be a formal ritual as well.”

“Yes, Sir. If you say so. I’ve gotten used to not having it, though. The fact that you let me enjoy it on occasion makes those occasions all the more special.”

“Fair enough. And I’ll be happy to confiscate it from time to time, just for the fun of it. Sentence you to a week or a month of enforced chastity so you can feel that joy of having it back again afterward. But it should be yours most of the time.”

“Okay, Sir. What do I have to do to earn it back?”

“Well, that’s up to you. Part of this challenge is for you to decide what you will do to deserve to have a cock again. I will let you know if I think the challenge is too easy or too difficult or in some other way not right, like if it would take you twenty years to complete it. But I want you to come up with the idea yourself.”

Seth could feel himself getting all squirmy. “But Sir… I don’t even want it back. I’m only doing this because you want me to, and of course I’ll do anything you want me to, but… but… I just…”

Winston moved closer and put his hand behind Seth’s head, forcing him to look up into Winston’s face. “Seth. I told you while you were still in Nebraska that you would never have to make another decision again. And at the time I meant that because I was planning to make you cease to exist. Now that’s not the plan any more. Now I’m relying on you to be more than an empty shell, more even than a willing servant. I need you to be able to take initiative.”

Seth nodded, understanding where this was going and seeing the logic behind it. “You’ve done great at stepping up and learning how to be a good dom,” Winston continued, “but I know how you did it: you thought about what I would likely do if I were in your place. Now I’m deliberately not telling you what to do because I want you to do your own thinking. Thinking, deciding, being in charge… it’s hard. I know it’s hard. It’s work. Life is so much easier when you have someone else telling you what to do all the time. But I need more from you, understand?”

Seth nodded hesitantly, then more firmly. “Yes, Sir. I do.”

“Good. Important lesson: nothing worth having in life comes for free. I want you to have to work for this not because I like watching you suffer, though I do enjoy that.” Seth smiled weakly. “I want you to work for this because of what the work will do for you. Just like you exercised your body to build it up, now I want you to exercise your mind to grow some determination.”

“I will, Sir.”

“I know you will. Think about it, then tell me what you come up with. Oh, and also. I was thinking maybe you should have an actual bed to sleep in. Not a cage. If you want one.”

“Well, Sir, if I may express some determination… I like the cage. I know you have taught me how to behave like a dom, but I’m a sub at heart and I think I always will be. Sleeping in a cage feels right. Of course I’ll do whatever you want, Sir, but if you’re asking my opinion, I would prefer to keep things just as they are.”

“Well said. The cage can stay.”

Cannon

Cannon was on edge the entire time after his arrest, expecting the demon to take charge again and shove Cannon to the background of his own life, forcing him to watch while everything he had ever cared about was set on fire and destroyed. Through booking, into a holding cell, all through a phone call with his lawyer, he dreaded the idea that the demon would find a way to further screw him over. But it never happened. Cannon stayed in charge the entire time.

His lawyer was a specialist in business matters, of course, not criminal ones, but he referred Cannon to someone he recommended, a Peter Gates. Peter was able to get down to the station that afternoon, leaving Cannon with the hope that he could be out of here by nightfall and back at his home where he would be able to think about how best to set about repairing the shambles that the demon had shattered his life into. But it was not to be: the nature of the crime, and the fact that the demon had told the cops that he would do it again the moment he got the chance, meant he would be staying in the cell he was in until a bail hearing could be held. And that could take days.

As night fell, Cannon had finally run out of nervous energy and despite the thin, hard mattress on the small cot and the lights that were dimmed but not fully darkened, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

Some unknown amount of time later, he felt a jarring thud that seemed to wake him, but he soon realized he was not awake at all, but dreaming a particularly vivid dream.

He was walking somewhere in perfect darkness. No light at all reached his eyes, and yet he felt himself walking slowly but determinedly forward with slow, steady steps. Each footfall rang out like a drum. He felt his heart tighten, his throat too. Something terrible was waiting for him up ahead. He had no idea what it was and did not want to find out, but his legs kept carrying him implacably forward.

Then they slowed and stopped, leaving Cannon standing in blackness.

Then the Voice came. “Hello, Cannon. Remember me?” Deep and resonant, like it came from a throat three feet across. The sound alone would have struck terror into his heart if he wasn’t already terrified. Damn, he had to wake up!

“Perhaps a reminder would be in order,” the voice continued. “Even if you do remember who I am, it is fitting that you recall the reason why you are here.”

The he heard his own voice, strangely altered but recognizably his, like when he heard recordings of himself talking. “See somethin’ you liked, faggot? I asked you a question, cocksucker!” Then the mewlings of someone whining, the sound of a fist striking limp flesh, and suddenly he remembered the scene: in the locker room at the gym with that cleaning guy who had pissed him off so much.

“Save your voice, faggot,” the memory continued. “No one can hear you. It’s just you and me. And you’re gonna get the beatdown that your cocksucking little faggot janitor ass deserves.” More sounds of blows landing, of air whistling out of punched lungs, of himself snarling “fucking faggot janitor” over and over.

Then the sound of the beating faded and Cannon waited until the Voice came back as he knew it must.

“Yes. The fucking faggot janitor.” Briefly, the darkness was banished; light flooded into his eyes. Before him he saw someone who looked not at all like the puny wimp he had taught a lesson to at the gym. This guy looked like something out of a motorcycle magazine, dressed head to toe in black leather, looking huge, easily towering over Cannon and wide in the shoulders. The leather must be covering massive muscles. He couldn’t see the man’s eyes; they were covered by mirrored sunglasses. The mouth was set in a scowl that made it clear he considered Cannon to be roughly equivalent to a smear of dog turd he had unexpectedly found on his boot. Then the sight disappeared and he was in blackness again.

“The fucking faggot janitor that you took such delight in hurting and humiliating,” the Voice went on. “And for what? Because he dared to admire you. There’s just one problem.”

Suddenly the Voice was right next to Cannon’s ear. “You picked the wrong fucking faggot janitor. You picked a fucking faggot janitor with a mean streak. You picked a fucking faggot janitor who loves to dish out pain just like you do, and you know what? This fucking faggot janitor’s favorite prey is arrogant straight blowhards who desperately need to learn some humility.

“You’re going to learn humility, boy. And you’re going to learn that bodies like yours exist for one purpose only: to be the playthings of men who appreciate them and will treat them the way they need to be treated. Men like me. You’re going to suffer, boy. And the only way to end the suffering is to beg for a good stiff dick.”

Cannon was finally able to speak. “N-no,” he heard himself say, ashamed at the stuttering hesitation. It was strange: he was saying what he wanted to say, but not actually saying it. His body was doing it all by itself. Dreams were strange beasts, and he really needed this one to end. “No. Never!” There, his voice was sounding stronger.

“Suit yourself. The pain will continue until you change your mind.”

Suddenly the scene shifted. Instead of standing, Cannon was lying face down on a hard surface. His arms hurt and at first he couldn’t figure out why. Then it became clear: they were tied behind him, but cruelly so. There were ropes around his biceps and his upper arms had been pulled together so tightly that he couldn’t move them at all. Further ropes connected his elbows and his wrists. He still had no vision.

“Up you go,” the Voice said. Cannon felt tension at his upper arms – he was being lifted somehow. A rope had been attached to the short connecting length between his biceps and he was now being hauled upward by that rope. He scrambled to get his feet underneath him, but that didn’t last. His body kept rising until he was lifted up onto his toes, then off his feet entirely, his weight suspended by his bound arms.

The pain was indescribable. His shoulders wanted to dislocate and the only thing stopping them from doing so was him exerting muscle power to try to lift the rest of his body so that his elbows could stay close to his spine. But the angle was terrible and his muscles tired quickly. Each time his body sank down, he could feel the ligaments in his shoulders strain and threaten to tear free and so he fought his way higher again in a frenzy of effort, only to weaken and fail again, over and over in a never-ending cycle of constant agony.

“Had enough yet?” the Voice asked at last after what could have been minutes or hours. Yes! But he would not beg for dick. The words that came out of his mouth were “fuck you, faggot,” which was the right thing to say even though it would only buy him more pain. He had to wake himself up somehow. This nightmare had to end.

The scene shifted. He was still suspended, but now by his wrists over his head. He stretched his toes down in an effort to reach the floor, but it was either an inch or a mile away. Or maybe there was no floor at all and his body was suspended over an endless empty pit, ready to be tortured by dem– .

Oh.

Oh fuck. This was no ordinary dream. This was somehow connected to the demon that had fucked him over earlier today, it had to be.

No sooner had the thought occurred to him when fire lit up his shoulders. He thrashed and shouted but there was nowhere to go. Eventually he settled down because bouncing around pulled at his wrists too much, and that’s when the next blow landed, searing his nerve endings again. More lashes covered his back, then his ass, which made him realize he was naked. Over and over, blow after blow after blow.

“Ready to beg for dick yet?” the Voice asked at last. If that’s what it would take to end this? Could he? It was only a dream, after all. No one would ever know. But before he could muster up the energy to try to speak, the scene had shifted yet again.

Now he was in contact with the floor, standing up on tiptoes. There was a noose around his neck and it was attached overhead, high enough that he had to stay far up on his toes to avoid being strangled. The knot was under his chin, which had the benefit of ensuring that his throat was not closed off, but the drawback of forcing his head painfully backward. He tried to bring his arms up to maybe grab the suspending rope and take some of his weight off his neck, but they were fixed firmly behind him. His feet were tied together as well with only a short length of rope between. As Cannon’s weight shifted around his feet were forced to dance to try to center themselves underneath so that his neck wouldn’t be the only thing holding him up.

The ache in his neck quickly went from annoying to painful to oh-god-make-it-stop. Then the whip returned, this time slashing into the backs of his thighs and his calves. With each blow, searing pain ran up and down his legs and he lost his balance, struggling to get his feet beneath him to ease the strain on his neck.

By the time the whip moved around to sting his chest, his feet were starting to cramp and tire. Cannon tried to make himself wake up but knew with a dread that ate into his stomach that he would only be released from this dream once the demon had finished toying with him. And it was clear what that finish would be.

The next scene was another suspension, this time inverted. He hung from widespread ankles, arms still trapped helplessly behind his back. He felt fingers fiddling with his balls, then a rope was wound around them and tied off. Then the tension began to grow: his balls were being lifted upward. Tighter and tighter it grew until he had to do something to try to ease the stretch, but the only thing to do was to lift his body with his legs. He bent his knees as best he could but once again the angle was impossible and he couldn’t sustain the lifted position for long. Down he went, yanking his balls straight up from his crotch.

“No… no… no…” he heard himself reciting like a mantra as he fought to bend his legs again. It worked for a few brief seconds. The strain on his balls eased, not to the point of comfort, but at least to the point where they no longer felt like they were being ripped out by the roots, but at the cost of an impossible strain on his legs. Of course they failed, how could they not fail? And then he dropped down to feel the full stretch again. Over and over and over, it must have been twenty times, playing out the same way every single time.

At last the question came. “Ready to break yet?”

He was going to not say anything, too proud or perhaps too stubborn to yield but reluctant to voice any opposition aloud. But his intentions didn’t matter. His body betrayed him, saying “Yes. Make it stop. Please.” In a way it was a relief. He didn’t have to decide to resist further. He could go along, knowing that it was not really his doing.

“Beg for my dick.”

“Please give me your dick.”

“Convince me.”

He had given up trying to force his exhausted legs to any further effort and so had to endure the impossible pull on his nuts while trying to sound convincing. Fortunately, his mouth still seemed to be running on auto-pilot, speaking the words before Cannon even decided what to say. “Please, please let me have your dick.”

“Beg me to fuck you, boy.”

“Oh god, please fuck me.” Anything had to be better than this horror.

“LIKE YOU MEAN IT!” The reverberating Voice was so loud it hurt.

“FUCK ME SIR!!! Ah, fuck, please! Stick your dick up my ass! Fuck me, sir! Please, please, please fuck me with your dick!”

Then, like magic, the strain on his nuts was gone, no tension in his legs, no blood pooling in his inverted head. He was lying on some sort of bench or saddle, face down, legs and arms stretched down toward the floor. He couldn’t feel any ropes or straps, but nevertheless he could not move his limbs.

He had only a few seconds to try to make sense of his position when he felt it: a finger probing at his ass. Ugh, gross, the thought was nauseating. Some dude’s finger poking around where no dude’s finger should ever be. But the alternative was so, so much worse. He could still feel the residual traces of his ordeal: arms aching, legs exhausted, neck stiff, back inflamed, balls throbbing.

The finger probed closer and closer to his hole until it made contact, then began pushing its way inside. He clenched up, trying to prevent it from entering. But of course there was no stopping it and soon enough it had forced its way inside and was squirming around inside him. Cannon’s eyes were squeezed shut, not that it changed the view at all but it helped him cope just the slightest bit with the terror and humiliation.

The finger withdrew and Cannon was not at all surprised by what replaced it. Through gritted teeth he endured the invasion, clenching as tight as he could to try to fend it off as long as possible. The cock fought him and he fought it back, but time and pressure tilted the battle away from him. He felt it slip in past his defenses, forcing his sphincter painfully open and burying itself in his guts.

“Ahhhhh… yeaaahhhhh…” the Voice purred from somewhere over his head as he tried to deal with the sensation of having his guts simultaneously stuffed full and torn apart. “So… fucking… tiiiiight.” The dick in his ass began to slide in and out and a fresh pain was added to the list: the rasping sensation of skin sliding against the tender tissue of his rectum. It was like sandpaper, like someone was shaving the skin right off the inside of his body.

Just endure. You have to wake up some time… He tried to remind himself that this had to end at some point and he would find himself back in a cramped, echoing, too-bright cell, but that cell seemed like paradise compared to what he was enduring. Come on, wake up, wake UP!

He didn’t wake up. His rapist’s cock kept brutalizing him for long minutes, must be twenty, thirty, more. In, out, in, out, exactly the same, like a machine, uncaring, impersonal, totally unmoved by Cannon’s suffering or its own mechanical pleasure. Just an endless cycle of pain and humiliation.

Then, at last, a change. The pace quickened, the rhythm faltered, and then the Voice was groaning like a vast whale. Cannon couldn’t feel anything with his brutalized asshole but knew what that sound meant: a load of sperm was being deposited inside him as if he was some sort of cow, a brood mare, a sow being bred. The sense of violation was absolute. He had been fucked, been raped, and had been forced to beg for the privilege, which he had done like a groveling pussy-boy.

As the rapist’s dick withdrew, leaving sticky drops in its wake, he realized he would never be able to look at himself in a mirror again, not after this. Sure, it wasn’t real… but it had felt real enough. He needed a long, hot shower.

But showering was not an option, as he discovered when the dream at last ended and his eyes opened to reveal the fluorescently-lit cell block of the city lockup. For hours he could not shake the lingering mood of the nightmare, wondering if he would ever be able to un-feel how helpless and pathetic he had felt as the demon’s prey.

7 – July

Seth

“Sir, I know what I’d like to do to try to earn my dick back.”

The Master was in a good mood about something. Seth never asked about such things directly but always made it clear by his attitude and body language that he would be willing to listen any time the Master wanted to talk. More often than not, it was a grumpy mood caused by the Master’s frustration with his steadily-failing stamina, and he was spending more and more of his time controlling Seth’s body. That was fine with Seth – he didn’t need to be driving to enjoy whatever the Master was up to, whether it was going for a run or playing video games or having drinks at a bar. Sometimes the Master even shadowed him while he was at work just to have something to do. And of course they both enjoyed working out now and it really didn’t matter which one was in charge for that. Working up a sweat always helped the Master to feel better, all the more so because afterward it was Seth’s body that had to hit the shower while the Master simply flicked back to his own and relaxed.

But today he was feeling cheerful about something. That was good to see. “Ah, good,” the Master replied. “What do you have in mind?”

“I would like to fight you for it. Well, not fight for real because I would never want to risk hurting you, Sir. But wrestling seems like it could work.”

The Master leaned back and looked pensive for a moment, but only a moment. “Tell me more. Are you thinking of a one-time challenge? Because I can tell you right now, you would lose if it was today.”

“Oh, I know, Sir. I know I’m not ready yet. But you’ve been teaching me to fight, and wrestling is kind of like fighting so I figured you could teach me that as well. And I will get better at it as we go. I was thinking we could face off once a week until I finally get good enough to win?”

“I notice you chose a test of strength against a man who has a muscle-wasting disease. Kind of puts time on your side.”

“That’s true, Sir, but I wouldn’t just sit around waiting–”

“I know, I know,” the Master interrupted. “I’m only kidding. I believe you when you say you would work at getting better. You wouldn’t just wait until I’m decrepit enough to blow over with a puff of air.”

“Sir!”

“You’re going to have to get used to the gallows humor. There’s no sense pretending that’s not what my future holds.”

“I know, Sir. But that’s why you have me! For when that happens.”

“True, true. Okay. I like your idea. It gives you a goal to shoot for and a prize that’s worth having when you reach it. You want to start today? Right now?”

“Yes, Sir. I thought that Saturday mornings would work well. You’re strongest in the mornings and I don’t want to cheat by choosing a time when you’re not at your peak.”

“Very sporting of you. And I, for my part, promise to fight fair as well. No reaching into your mind and shutting you down just when you’re about to defeat me.”

“Sir, you would never do that. It wouldn’t be honorable.”

“Damn, kid, you know me way too well.”

The Master only called him “kid” these days when he was teasing or joking. It felt nice to have bumped up a step in the Master’s assessment.

“Let’s go over to your place,” the Master suggested. “More floor space.” It made sense: Seth’s apartment was furnished much more sparely than the Master’s. He really didn’t need a lot of stuff and the extra room was good for bondage games. Or wrestling!

The first round was over quickly. The two men started out on their feet facing each other, each stripped down to bare skin. The Master counted down. “Three… two… one… go.” A few seconds later, Seth was down on the floor, lying on his back with the Master’s weight on top of him, not entirely certain how he had gotten from upright to horizontal so quickly.

“The first thing we’re going to work on,” the Master said, “is your stance. How to stand so that you’re ready when your opponent comes at you and he can’t knock you off balance in the first two seconds of the match.”

“Yes, Sir,” Seth said into the Master’s armpit, which was right over his mouth. “That seems like it would be very useful to know. Although losing really isn’t that bad.” He stuck his tongue out and licked at the Master’s pit.

The Master laughed and slapped Seth’s abs, then moved aside and allowed Seth to climb to his feet. “Depending on how hard you work and how fast you learn, I’d guess you’re looking at a possible victory in two, maybe three months. Could be longer, could be shorter. Up to you, really.”

“Yes, Sir. I will work at this, I promise.”

“I’m sure. And then you’ll get your dick back and you’ll know that you’ve earned it. Cannon, on the other hand…”

He trailed off and Seth knew that was his cue to ask him to continue. Then he realized: this must be what the Master was feeling cheerful about. Which meant Cannon, very soon, was about to be feeling a lot less cheerful.

“Are you taking his dick away too, Sir?”

“Yes, but differently. Yours is simply switched off. For him I’ve got something less pleasant in mind. You remember how we hooked his dick up to that electro box during that marathon weekend? Well, I was able to isolate the signals from just those nerves so I can play them back any time without having to play back the entire sensorium. And I’m going to set the laptop up to watch for certain patterns of nerve signals and when it notices them, to play back that particular recording.”

Seth wasn’t really following and probably looked puzzled.

“Basically, I’m booby-trapping his erections. Once I turn the system on, every time he gets hard, he’s going to get zapped. The stiffer the erection, the harder the jolt. I can play back anything from zero all the way up to the max. If he can actually get himself all the way hard, the max is what he’ll feel. Partial erections will result in lower current. The harder he gets, the more he hurts. That fucker is going to find his dick starring in one of Pavlov’s experiments. He’s going to quickly learn that stiffness equals pain.”

A tiny part of Seth still felt vaguely queasy about the punishment Cannon was being handed, but he had cooperated willingly in the setup for it and could not claim that what was unfolding now was a surprise.

“Sir… that’s devious!”

“Sure is. It’s playing out just as we planned – he genuinely thinks I’m a demon. Can’t really blame him; what other conclusion could he reach? He has no idea about this technology. I heard him a couple times when I checked in on him, muttering to himself and trying to convince himself that I can’t possibly exist. Sometimes he even talks to me directly, but I never answer, not during the day. During the day I’m going to leave it ambiguous. I’ll only speak to him in his ‘dreams’. That’ll go a long way toward making him doubt his sanity.

“Oh, and by the way? You looked awesome in your leather boss getup. He got only that one quick sight of you, but you looked incredible in it. Having him look up at you from below, and padding out the muscles under the leather: it all worked. You make a sexy demon!”

“Aw, thank you, Sir.”

“Anyway, tonight I’m going to inform him, obliquely, that his erection days are done. He’s already lived through one recording that I played for him on Tuesday, and he was a babbling wreck afterward. Since then I’ve given him a break, but tonight I’ll be sending him another played-back memory, which he will think is another nightmare, only this nightmare will leave him with a reminder that stays with him after he wakes up.”

Cannon

Still stuck behind bars, and for at least two more days. Peter The Lawyer claimed he was trying to get Cannon sprung but the judge wasn’t having it. Now everything was closed down for the weekend, so here Cannon would sit until at least Monday.

Fuck! He wasn’t built for just sitting! He was a mover, a doer, an active man! In this rathole ninety percent of his day was spent in an eight-by-ten foot cage and it was driving him insane.

Or rather, he amended, more insane than he may already be. At least the demon – if it was real, which he kept going back and forth about – hadn’t put in any more appearances. Cannon had been afraid to go to sleep the night after the first nightmare, and the noise and glare didn’t make sleep easy to begin with, so he had lain awake pretty much the whole night and much of the night after that. But last night, Friday night, he had finally been exhausted enough to get several uninterrupted hours in.

He had acquired a cellmate earlier in the day, a 20-something Black guy with tattoos, a permanent scowl, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Vermont. The kind of man Cannon would not voluntarily come within twenty feet of and yet now couldn’t get more than nine feet away from. The two had established their tiny territories and then not spoken another word to each other. The man’s presence didn’t make the prospect of sleep any easier.

And yet, when the lights went “out”, or as out as they ever went, there was nothing to do but lie on his cot and close his eyes. And so he did, trying to think of how one day, this experience would be nothing but a vague, hazy memory.

Somehow, at some point, he must have fallen asleep because he became aware of a steady booming noise. As he swam gradually toward consciousness, he realized the noise was his own footsteps, that he was once again walking blind down an echoing hallway. Panic bloomed in his mind as he realized what was happening, but he was powerless to stop it. His body kept on plodding forward while his brain screamed at his legs to turn around and go back.

The dream played out the same as it had before: the booming Voice of the demon in his “fucking faggot janitor” disguise, the replay of the beating, the threat to make Cannon suffer until he begged to become a faggot himself.

Then it took a different turn.

“You’re going to learn how to suck cock,” the demon / janitor said. No! This was not going to happen again! Cannon wanted to scream his refusal till the sky shattered, but he was powerless. His body simply stood there, ignoring his commands, waiting for the pain to begin.

This time the target was his genitals. Abruptly he found himself standing stretched out, legs spread wide, arms held apart over his head. His clothing, if he had had any, was once again gone. His tormentor inserted his balls into some sort of press and began to squeeze them. At first it was nothing terrible, but very suddenly the pain ramped up fast. After that the rate of squeezing slowed: the torturer would crank the pressure up, then wait while Cannon slowly grew accustomed to the pain, then ratchet the pressure up another notch higher, forcing Cannon to adapt to the pain all over again.

The process was repeated more times than Cannon could count, must have been fifty or more. If he had been able to look at his balls, surely he would have seen them squashed to the point of transparency, thin enough to see right through. Only in a dream was such a horror possible. No real-world torture could possibly be sustained like this; his brutalized nuts would have ruptured like grapes beneath a car’s tire. But here in the demon janitor’s nightmare world, his balls could be tortured for eternity while he screamed and begged for relief.

Relief, when it came, was short-lived. All at once, the vise grip on his balls disappeared and he would have fallen to the floor in relief if he had been able to move. Instead, his body remained stretched in its X-shape. Cannon noticed how his arms had gone sore and achy from being held overhead for so long, pain that hadn’t even registered while his balls had been his sole focus. Now the discomfort in his arms was all he could think about… until the first booted foot slammed into his nuts.

He screamed, or tried to, or maybe his body was screaming for him while his mind only thought that it was screaming; the line between what he wanted his body to do and what it actually did was a capricious one in the demon’s dream world. Fuck, that hurt! He had never taken a blow down there that hard, ever. He would have remembered it. He wanted to curl up into a tiny ball but remained splayed out like a bug instead.

Then the next kick landed and he keened again. And then the next. They kept coming until his balls were surely swollen to the size of oranges, grapefruits, watermelons. He wanted to look down, to inspect them, to at least see the foot coming so that he could make a feeble attempt to brace himself before the blow landed, but none of that was possible. His eyes showed him only inky blackness. Again the torment went on far longer than should have been humanly possible while Cannon desperately hoped for oblivion to come and claim him.

The third variation was some sort of cream that the demon janitor rubbed onto his scrotum. Twenty seconds later, it felt as if his balls had been dipped in gasoline and ignited. He thrashed around as much as his restraints would allow but nothing quenched the burning sensation. Whimpered non-words were all that emerged from his lips. Then, for good measure, while they were roasting, one more kick caught him by surprise and that was the limit, the absolute limit. He would have agreed to anything, suffered any humiliation, to end the pain. But he was never asked and his throat refused to speak the words his mind wanted to say.

After an impossible length of time, the fire on his balls at last subsided until it was only a general growling pain. Only then was he released from the bonds that held him, and suddenly, with no transition, he was on his knees.

“Suck,” came the Voice, and Cannon opened his mouth to receive whatever may come, all thoughts of resistance shunted away. The dick that entered his mouth did not seem particularly large or particularly wide, not that he had any reference points when it came to measuring penises with his mouth. But he had watched porn and seen blow jobs delivered, and the porn star dicks never seemed to fit all the way into the ladies’ mouths unless they did some impressive oral gymnastics. This dick fit all the way inside Cannon’s. He felt it touch the back of his throat just as the pubic hair compressed itself against his nose and the ball sack pressed up against his chin.

He wanted to hurl the vile thing out, but his body once again acted without his conscious intent, seeming to know just what to do. He sucked and licked and pumped his head back and forth, attempting to deliver pleasure while having no idea or experience in such things, nor any desire to learn. Very quickly, his tongue and neck muscles grew sore and tired but he kept at it. Every once in a while the pressure of the dickhead against his throat would trigger his gag reflex and he would choke some foul-tasting mucus into his mouth, but he was never allowed to stop. The sticky fluid dribbled down his chin, some of it landing on his chest and continuing its slow journey downward from there. It went on for hours, days while he gibbered silently in the black recesses of his mind.

At last the phallus he was worshiping reached its boiling point and Cannon felt the dick swell against his tongue. He wanted to pull back so as to avoid the coming eruption, but as it had been throughout this experience, his betraying body did the opposite of his wishes. It glued itself to the dick and clamped his lips shut. The load came bursting forth, soaking Cannon’s tongue with hot, wet, saltiness, but it didn’t stay there for long. His throat swallowed, then swallowed again while Cannon felt an overwhelming urge to vomit up what was now inside his stomach.

No such luck. The demon’s load stayed right where it was while Cannon sucked the last few droplets out and ingested them as well, then released his grip on it. Surely this was the end, he could wake up now, he could leave this nightmare and go back to the jail cell, which was nightmare enough but nothing compared to this, nothing…

“Not bad,” the Voice said. “With enough practice and repetition, you might just become a half-decent cocksucker. Someone who understands that his purpose in life is to please other men. With that in mind, there’s one more thing to take care of. Stand.” Cannon felt himself rising to his feet. No, there couldn’t be more, this had to stop, this had to end right now. His hands moved behind his back and gripped each other while his feet moved to a parade-rest distance apart. His balls still ached from their previous abuse, but the pain was much less than it had once been. Come on, wake up, wake up, wake up…

Suddenly he felt a hand grip his cock, which was of course as tiny and shriveled as it could possibly get.

“Cannon McIver,” the Voice intoned slowly, squeezing the limp, fleshy knob. “I claim ownership of this worthless nub. It no longer belongs to you. It belongs to me, and me alone.” Then the Voice somehow grew even deeper and more menacing, making his bones rumble with its raw power. “ESAN AGUR ZURE GIZONTASUNARI!” it shouted.

Cannon felt an overwhelming blast of lightning focused right on his dick, as if a firecracker had exploded inside it, and then he was sitting upright on the cot in his cell, heart hammering, gasping for air that couldn’t come into his lungs fast enough. He rolled over and made it to the toilet just in time for the remains of his jail-diet dinner to come spewing out. He heaved a few times until at last he felt enough in control to flush, rinse his mouth, and return to his cot. His cellmate on the upper bunk was clearly not thrilled to have been awakened in this way, but he only huffed and rolled over. Just as well. After what Cannon had just been through, he had no time for that guy or any of his opinions.

Back on his cot, tried very hard not to let emotion overwhelm him. Tears in prison… might as well wear a “fuck me, I’m easy” sign on your back. But it was hard to keep them at bay with his heart pounding so fast and his muscles wanting to run as fast and as far as his legs could take him, so far away that the demon would never find him again. But the steel bars meant that could never happen, at least not tonight.

Slowly, slowly, he felt himself calming down. Then, curious, he tucked his head under the thin blanket and inspected his groin with eyes and hands. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. For all the abuse his balls had just taken, they felt fine now. And the taste in his mouth was not pleasant, but it was plain old stomach acid, not dick or sperm. He could live with that. Everything had all felt so absolutely real, and yet in the cold fluorescent glow he was able to conclude that the dream torture had been only that: a dream. A fading memory.

There was no way he would be going back to sleep, not after that. But he did gradually relax until he was lying mostly peacefully on his cot. It was a long night, but by morning he was finally feeling something resembling calm again.

Seth

“I brought breakfast for you, Sir.”

“Ah, thanks.”

Seth waited for the Master to look up from whatever he was doing, but he remained glued to his screen. After a minute or so, Seth went to the kitchen and wrapped the dish in foil, then in a dishtowel to hold the heat in. The mushroom and cheese omelet would be fine, assuming the Master got around to eating it in the next couple of hours. Likewise the fruit, sitting in a separate bowl. The toast, outside the foil, would get a bit dry and crunchy, but that was easy to remake if needed.

Overall, the Master seemed to be pleased with the meals Seth had been providing, but sometimes he got wrapped up in something and neglected to eat. Seth had concluded from watching him that skipping meals and then gorging later to make up for it was something he had been able to get away with in his younger days, but now his body needed food more regularly. He didn’t have the stamina to push himself the way he once did, but he didn’t seem to want to admit it. It was always a fine line for Seth to walk: whether to push him to eat and risk annoying him, or let it go and risk him having a meltdown later when the inevitable crash came.

Perhaps he could sidle up to the issue indirectly. He took the foil off the plate and went to the Master’s side, hoping the aroma might help to entice him away. “What are you working on, Sir?”

Success. The Master detached himself from the screen and keyboard, noticed the plate, and took it from Seth’s hands. “Cannon’s session from last night.” He inhaled the omelet in four bites, downed the toast just as quickly, then the fruit, then pushed the plate aside. He couldn’t possibly have tasted any of it, but at least Seth knew he had food inside him for the next few hours.

“I noticed something interesting. Oh, it was a success, by the way. Once I let him wake up, the guy actually hurled up his dinner after reliving the experience of you feeding him your dick. But the pain part before that… that was the interesting part.”

“How so, Sir?”

“Well, pain is one of those things that’s hard to measure. You know how if you go to a doctor and you’re hurting, they ask you to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten? That’s the best way they could come up with to try to measure pain. It’s entirely subjective, there’s no universal ruler you can apply.

“Like, you know I enjoy pain, at least some types of it. I like to inflict it on you and I like to experience it myself, and it’s absolutely the best of all imaginable worlds to have the arrangement we have now, where I can hurt you and feel it myself at the same time.”

“Oh, I know, Sir!”

“Heh, I know you don’t enjoy it nearly as much, so I appreciate you being willing to indulge me. Cannon, of course, doesn’t have any choice.”

“Thank you for giving me the choice, Sir.”

The Master waved the words away. “I’ll ask you to indulge me now. Nothing too intense.” He turned back to the laptop and started clicking and tapping while talking. “Now, last night, one of the torments I played back for Cannon was the sensation of his balls getting squeezed between those two acrylic plates. You know the ones I mean, you’ve had them on before. It’s a great torture to cycle through because when you tighten the screws, the balls feel a burst of extra hurt, then they gradually adapt to it and the burst fades into a background of general ache. You need to twist the screws again to bring on a fresh burst.

“What I did was loop it. I cranked the screws, then let him sit for a minute. Then I looped back to the point of cranking the screws again. At the moment of the loop, there would have been an instant of transition where his balls got un-flattened a bit, but he couldn’t tell because his perception level of the pain was the same. Like, say that his perception of the pain level right before the squeeze increased was a 4. Cranking the screws drove it up to a 6, but then over the next minute he adapted and the level sank down through 5 and back to 4 again.

“From his perspective, the squeeze at the end of the minute felt the same as right before the screws were cranked, so he couldn’t tell it was a loop. He thought I was cranking the screws tighter and tighter each time, which in real life would have been impossible without eventually rupturing his nuts.”

Oh. Wow. “Sir…” Seth began. “I… can I just say… remember how I was jealous when I first learned that you were giving Cannon a drone net like mine? I’m not jealous of him any more!”

The Master smiled. “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve come to appreciate certain types of pain more now than when we first met. I know you enjoy the burn of a good hard workout these days. But that’s the point I wanted to make. That ball crusher. I recorded you wearing it once and, lucky you, I was able to isolate the signals, sooo…” He tapped a key. Instantly Seth hollered and bent over.

“Give it a minute,” the Master said, loud enough that Seth could hear him over the sound of blood rushing through his ears and his own moaning. “It’ll get easier.” Sure enough, with time, it did. Seth blinked moisture out of his eyes, then slowly straightened up, trying to accept and welcome the pain the way the Master would.

“What you’re feeling is the maximum squeeze you experienced that session. It hurts way more when you dive straight into it than when you work up to it gradually. Now, what would you say that felt like, on a scale of one to ten, when it first hit you, and what does it feel like now?”

“Oh, Sir,” Seth said. It was hard to think about anything except the squeeze on his balls. “I don’t know. Probably a… seven? To start. But now it’s down to around… five? I really don’t know how to rate this kind of thing, Sir.”

“It’s fine, it’s subjective. Now, I’m feeling it along with you. I would rate it a little lower. The initial pain, a five, and right now it feels like a four. That’s about what I would expect: I like ball pain more than you do. And that leads me to what I find interesting about Cannon’s session last night. I felt his ball pain right along with him, just like I’m doing with you, and I would say that what you and I are feeling right now is about the same as what he was feeling last night. It hurts, but it’s not devastating. A four for me, a five for you.”

Point made, Sir, would you turn it off now, please? Seth thought but didn’t say.

“I suspect Cannon would rate this pain higher, like a six or even a seven, with a rating of seven, eight, maybe nine at the onset. It’s hard to be sure because I can’t ask him, but the way he was trying to react suggested that he was feeling a good bit worse than I thought he would. It was the same with the Ben Gay cream. I thought it was a moderate burning sensation, but his reactions seemed more dramatic.”

The Master paused a while, pondering. Then: “Maybe it’s partly because I’m in charge and I know what’s happening, while he’s helpless and surprised? That could be a factor. Whatever the reason, I thought this torment session was going to be roughly equal parts physical pain and mindfuck, but I’m getting the sense that the boy is feeling the physical pain much more intensely.”

“Is that… unusual, Sir?” The sensation in his balls was growing a little easier to cope with, but still dominated his attention, making it hard to focus on the conversation.

“Hard to say. The guys in the original program were all Marines. We were all full of bluster about how we could take any amount of pain and answer with ‘that all you got?’ so no one was going to admit that they were hurting. But the trainers talked a lot about how pain was like vision: every man’s perception is different. You can’t take a snapshot from one man’s eyes and expect another man to see it… and you can’t take one man’s pain and expect another to feel it the same way. Of course, their point was to remind us not to push our drones too hard… but the information can be used for the opposite purpose.”

He paused a moment, then seemed to realize something. He tapped at the laptop again and Seth gasped with relief. “Thank you, Sir.”

The Master nodded absently. “This could make for some very interesting experiments,” he mused, his attention wrapped up in the laptop once more. Seth waited a bit, but it soon became clear his presence was no longer required.

“I’ll leave you to it, Sir,” Seth said, picking up the empty plate and fork. “Gotta go wash the dishes. Call if you need me!”

Back home in the apartment next door, Seth washed up and then sat down glumly on the sofa. Ordinarily, sitting and waiting for the Master’s attention was a routine part of his day. Lately, however, there was less and less of that attention and Seth was finding himself with a lot of empty time to fill.

It’s normal, he told himself. The Master has found a new toy to play with and it’s natural that he wants to spend lots of time with it. But that meant that his old toy was left up on its shelf waiting for playtime that never came. Where are you, Sheriff Woody? I could use a friend to sing lonesome cowboy songs with.

Perhaps things would change once the novelty wore off. After all, Cannon didn’t know anything about the Master, and the Master didn’t seem inclined to change that. Cannon thought the Master was a demon, not a man. His purpose was to suffer, while Seth’s role in the Master’s life was more rounded and full. The Master would come around at some point.

But it could be weeks before that happens.

The apartment was clean so there were no chores to do. He would be exercising later, then going to work, and the hours until then loomed long and empty. He could go lie in his cage and try to let his mind go blank like the empty shell he once aspired to be, but that didn’t hold much appeal any more. Instead, he picked up something he had long ago weaned himself off of: his phone.

Seth had grown used to the idea that nothing he did was private. The Master could be living inside him at any time, and even when he wasn’t, it was possible that he was recording everything Seth saw and heard and did. And Seth was fine with that; he had no secrets from the Master.

But right now, the Master was swept up in Cannon’s life. He had told Seth that the plan had gone perfectly: Cannon had caused a humiliating scene at his workplace, which was some sort of real estate company, and had been fired for it. It was such a spectacular disaster that he would never be able to find work in this area again and would be forced to go elsewhere, thus ensuring that Seth would never encounter him again. And, of course, the Master could continue to torment him no matter where he was. Distance made no difference at all.

Seth wondered if he might be able to learn anything about Cannon’s current whereabouts from his online presence. He probably wouldn’t be trumpeting “I got myself fired!” on his social media accounts, but perhaps there might be a clue as to his location. So Seth brought up his browser, expecting to have to dig through a lot of irrelevant search results before finding anything useful.

He was immensely surprised, then, when a search for “Cannon McIver” immediately brought back dozens of hits, all saying the same thing: imprisoned for murder. He thought at first that there must be another person with the same name, but the very first link he clicked brought up a news site with a photo of the face he knew all too well. He read further. No mention of any real estate workplace meltdown, but the timing was right: on Tuesday, June 29th, Cannon McIver had gone up to Escondido and killed a resident named Carlos Lopez in a care home there, strangling him with his bare hands. He had been arrested and was now awaiting trial for second-degree murder.

Every article he read said the same thing. What none of them said, of course, was what only the Master, and now Seth, knew.

Cannon didn’t kill that man. Master Winston did.

Cannon

A change of scenery: from one lockup to another. He was now someplace inland, exact location uncertain, not that it made much difference. The view from inside one metal cage was pretty much the same as the view from inside any other metal cage. He had a cell to himself for the time being, though that could change any day. The lights had gone out maybe an hour ago, and time continued to weigh heavily on his hands.

His bail hearing had gone as Peter Gates, Esquire, had predicted: Cannon’s statement to the police that he would eagerly kill again derailed any hope he might have had. The lawyer went through the motions of trying to have that statement thrown out, but the demon had made Cannon say it after he had been duly Mirandized, so it was deemed admissible. No bail.

He had debated telling the lawyer about the demon but had not yet done so, though he still might if it seemed like it might help him get an insanity plea instead of a trial. That could wait. Next hearing was in two weeks. Two weeks to sit in this tiny box within a massive compound and do absolutely nothing.

Well. There might be something to do. So far he hadn’t felt in the mood to jerk off since the night before his epic meltdown scene, which meant that he had now set a post-puberty record of something like twelve days without shooting a load. A new personal worst. But the novelty of being an incarcerated criminal was starting to wear off and the depression it induced was fading to a sort of grim numbness. The nighttime lighting here was a bit darker than at the city jail (though still not fully dark), so… why not? It was obvious from the sounds that reached his ears both here and in his last cell that he wouldn’t be the only one trying to find a brief spark of joy in a gloomy pit.

He didn’t particularly want to sleep. Not now, not ever. He would catch an occasional hour or two here and there, but the thought of sleeping deeply and falling prey to the demon again was too terrifying. He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter – the demon didn’t care whether he was asleep, awake, or somewhere in between. When he wanted to come back, he’d be back and there wasn’t a goddamn thing Cannon could do about it. But he still didn’t like the idea of unconsciousness.

It took a while to get into the mood. He tried idly playing with himself, rubbing his nuts and holding his dick between his fingers. There was no hurry, after all. Taking up time was partly the point. Eventually his cock started to respond, thickening ever so slightly and tingling just the faintest bit, excited, perhaps, at the prospect of the long drought ending at last.

Actively squeezing now, he noticed the tingling growing stronger. It felt good, but something was definitely different. This was not a sensation he ever remembered experiencing before.

Gripping harder, dick almost hard enough to stroke now instead of squeeze. The tingling was growing much more intense, to the point that it was becoming painful. He stopped his fumbling and tried to inspect to see what might be going on. The light wasn’t quite bright enough for that, so he tried feeling around with his hand. A string wrapped around, maybe? Something unnoticeable when soft but constrictive when hard? But no: nothing. Everything felt fine. And as his dick softened, the tingling went away.

Fine. Try again. But the moment he started to stiffen up, the tingling started to come back. Curious now, he tried experimenting. The pattern was not difficult to spot: the harder his dick got, the sharper the tingling became. He tried to will himself to a full erection, but it was impossible. Anything beyond half-hard brought on such pain that it immediately caused him to soften up again. And the moment he started to soften, the pain eased. Once his dick was fully shrunk to its flaccid state, the sensation vanished completely. A few repetitions was all it took to make the situation clear.

He recalled what the demon had said at the end of the last nightmare and understanding dawned. “Oh, FUCK no!” he shouted, then got himself under control. Shouting wouldn’t bother the demon at all, it would only annoy his neighbors.

“Okay, you listen to me,” he said quietly under his blanket. If the demon could hear him, was bothering to listen to him, it wouldn’t matter how loud he spoke. “This is too much. You have gone too far. Whatever you did, turn it off. Undo it. Fuck you, my dick is mine, you asshole!”

He ranted at his invisible tormentor until he ran out of steam, then tried again. The result was exactly the same. He was unable to achieve anything beyond half an erection before the pain overwhelmed him and shut the hard-on down for him.

At last he gave up, rolled over, and tried to make his mind a blank. There would be no release for him. Not tonight. He refused to think about anything further in the future than that.

Winston

Heh heh. Finally, the little shit had tried to jerk off. Now the gloves could come off. Any erection from this point on, even the unconscious mid-sleep ones, would now be punished with the memory of electricity. And tonight would be the perfect night to deliver the next installment of Cannon’s Adventures In Sadoland, recorded weeks ago at Locksmith amid a crowd of horny men, lovingly curated into a neat, tidy package, and custom designed to absolutely shatter its intended target’s mind. Along with any illusion that he could still consider himself “straight”.

He waited for Cannon to fall asleep, but it seemed the guy was never going to. Around midnight, he gave up waiting and triggered the hallway scene. Instantly, Cannon’s heart rate shot up, but his body was locked in place on his cot.

Winston had figured out a way to “read” Cannon’s responses during these replay sessions even though the drone’s motor nerve connections were disabled. It involved a bit of a hack, allowing a fraction of the signals to reach Cannon’s muscles. In real life, the man was lying on his cot in his cell, but in his mind, he was bound and experiencing whatever memory Winston was replaying for him. As he responded to those remembered stimuli, his motor neurons sent signals out to his muscles. Ordinarily the drone net blocked those signals, but now it was allowing them through, attenuated down to about 5% strength. This was not enough to let Cannon move his own body, but it meant he could twitch with intention tremors, which Winston could perceive through his own net. It was complicated and had required a good amount of fiddling to get it working, and some guessing to interpret the results, but the result was so very worth it.

Right now, Cannon was trying to shout. “No!” he was trying to say. “Fuck you, no, I will NOT do this again!” News flash, straight boy: you’ll do whatever I want you to do. But the shouting was only in Cannon’s mind; his body continued to pace grimly down the echoing corridor. Such a helpless sensation when one’s own body refused to respond to commands.

The usual intro scene played out. Cannon tried a different tactic during the beating replay, attempting to shout “What do you want from me?!?” but failing. That answer, of course, was so obvious that the question wasn’t worth asking: this. This is what I want from you.

Then the segue to the club. For the club scenes, Winston wanted Cannon to be able to see, but not fully. He had known that messing with the visual signal would be beyond his editing capabilities (though he had improved a great deal these past few weeks and was now almost good enough to have given the techs back on base a run for their money). Fortunately, there was a low-tech solution available: blackout contact lenses.

These were very dark lenses that fit into place over the eye just like any other contact lens. They were called “blackout” but they didn’t really make the wearer blind. Instead, they significantly cut down the amount of light that reached the retina, leaving the wearer with maybe 25% of his usual vision. Winston had ordered a pair and tried them on himself to see what the effect was like. He found that he could see well enough to walk around without bumping into things, but not well enough to read text or see facial expressions. Colors were faded almost completely to gray-brown and all that was left with any clarity were the edges between bright and dim areas. Best of all, they were undetectable to the wearer just like any other contacts. He couldn’t feel them sitting on top of his corneas.

Thus, before he (in Cannon’s body) and Seth had set out for Locksmith that night all those weeks ago, he had put the lenses in and let Seth drive him there and guide him into the building. The lenses had stayed in for the entire time they were there, which had caused Winston a bit of inconvenience but was totally worth it for the result on the recording. The effect for Cannon would be that his eyes would be open and working, but very, very wrong. Everything would be dim and shadowy. Previously he had been blind in his “demon’s” world; now he would see, but only in a tortured half-formed way. And that would only add to his sense of disorientation and distress.

So: next scene. He watched through Cannon’s senses as the memory played out.

His vision shifted from total darkness to shadowy half light. The club’s bright strobes flashed, but only registered dimly in his eyes. All around, figures loomed over him, all of them tall because he was down on all fours, all of them leering down though he couldn’t see their faces clearly. Several had horns emerging from their foreheads; one bent down and loomed in close enough to reveal vampire-like fangs. A tongue emerged from between the fangs and licked Cannon’s face slowly from chin to scalp. Winston could feel Cannon’s motor nerve signals trying to shudder and recoil.

Then he heard his own voice, pre-recorded and altered an octave down. “Show respect to your masters,” it commanded. There was a tug at his neck – a chain was wrapped around it. He was pulled forward and down to find a boot beneath his face. “Lick,” his recorded voice commanded. He refused at first, then a powerful zap bit his naked ass. “LICK!” the voice repeated. This time he stuck his tongue out and got busy.

Ah, what fun to relive this particular memory! He had had a great time at the club imagining what it would like to be a straight man kidnapped by gay demons. The Halloween trinkets that he and Seth had brought really made the scene. The guys were hamming it up in a way that had seemed comical at the time, but for poor Cannon the effect would be absolutely terrifying. Winston had been acting a role and enjoying the performance, but for Cannon it would feel one hundred percent real.

And the fucker had no choice but to live through it as many times as Winston wanted him to.

Cannon

His tongue kept polishing the boot in front of him. Several times before it had stopped, but always that electric jolt had spurred it back into action. The jeering and taunts from above his head would have enraged him mere weeks ago; now they came in a distant second to the fact that he was polishing a man’s boot with his tongue, tasting the leather and slicking it up with his own spit.

No. Not a man’s boot. A demon’s. The main demon was here, he had heard the Voice issuing commands. But now there were others, eight, ten, a dozen of them, all surrounding him in a parody of a gay nightclub, mocking him with exactly the environment they knew he would loathe the most. The music was thumpingly loud and he could feel the beat reverberating in his chest. The mood, for them at least, was party-like, but Cannon knew that his role was to be the feast they would all dine on, sucking his life force and sanity right out of him.

This dream was like the others in that he was abruptly shunted from place to place with no transitions between. Also like the others, there was that odd sense that his body was not entirely under his control. Sometimes it did what he wanted it to, or at least seemed to; other times it ignored his will and did something completely different. But unlike the other dreams, this time he could see. Sort of. In the demon’s underworld lair he could see only hazily, as if light itself had turned black. He had just enough vision to let his imagination make the monsters around him seem even more terrifying than if he had been completely blind.

Abruptly, the boot-licking was done and he found himself suspended in the air. He could feel ropes all around his body enclosing him in a tight weave. His arms were behind his back, his legs were bent and drawn up behind him, and he was hovering face-down a short distance above the floor. Ropes around his chest, waist, and legs held him up but in a way that allowed him to swivel. His body was currently twisting gently to his right. Weights dangled from clamps attached to his nipples, swaying back and forth beneath him.

All around him the demons stood in a ring. Lifting his head, he could see their faces looming inkily above, some horned, others with garish streaks on cheeks and chests. All were clad in bits of straps or steel that covered only areas that needed no covering: biceps bands or collars or chaps. Chests and crotches were all exposed, and the crotches were all right about at the height of his head. Several of them, he noticed, had numbers painted on their bodies, smears of paint… or what he hoped was paint… on their chests that roughly formed digits.

Abruptly, he was spun quickly leftward. “Training time,” the main demon – “his” demon – intoned. “Number one, step forward.” A minion demon with the number 1 daubed on his chest with a bloodlike smear came forward from the ring, pressing his crotch right into Cannon’s face. Cannon expected his body to open its mouth and was prepared to be revulsed, but the demon had a different plan in mind.

“Sniff,” the Voice said. Cannon did – the only way not to would be to avoid breathing. “Learn his scent and remember it so that later you can identify him.” Cannon was given ample time to smell the musky odor that permeated the air around Demon One’s cock and hairy balls.

The process was repeated four more times. Cannon would be spun around in a dizzying circle, aimed toward the next target, and then required to inhale to learn the scents of Demons Two through Five.

Then his vision died and he was left in blackness. It was not hard to predict what was going to happen next. Sure enough, he was spun dizzily around, reversing direction twice, until he was brought to a stop with the nipple weights swirling below and tugging on their attachment points. He smelled the stench of demon ball sweat in front of him but of course had no idea which one the odor belonged to. “Which is it?” the Voice prompted, but he had no answer.

The familiar jolt on his ass spurred him to guess. “Two?” he said, not really knowing what number he would say until it came out of his mouth. The crowd of demons around him laughed and jeered: wrong, obviously.

Again his body was whirled around, again it stopped and a cock was shoved up against his nose. “Well?” the Voice demanded. Not waiting for the zap this time, he guessed five and was once again wrong. Another whirl, another dick, another random number – “Four?” – only this time his guess was right if the chorus of demon cheers was to be believed. That was his only success; the last two guesses were wrong.

“Clearly this worthless faggot-toy needs a great deal more practice,” the Voice announced. “Perhaps the punishment phase will spur him to greater effort next time.” Right. As if the “punishment phase” could be worse than the game itself.

He soon discovered: it could.

With no transition, punishment phase one began. It involved Cannon standing, gagged with a bit in his mouth that was strapped tightly around his head. The front of the gag was attached to a rope or chain over his head – it was hard to tell exactly what because though his eyes were switched on again, they still weren’t working right. Everything appeared dark and grey. The attachment point was high enough up that he was standing on his toes with his hands cuffed behind his back, dangling like a fish lifted out of the water by a hook. Hands rubbed all over his body, tweaking his nipples, squeezing his muscles, fondling his cock and his balls.

Very quickly his calves began to complain and after about two minutes of dancing in place, his right calf cramped up. He was forced to support all his weight on just his left foot while flexing the right in an attempt to break the spasm. Being pushed and poked and prodded from all sides didn’t make balancing any easier. His field of view was limited to a small area over his head consisting mostly of far-away ceiling and a couple of flashing lights. Every once in a while a face would swim into view to one side or the other, coming close enough that he could make out grinning features before disappearing again into the general murk. At last his muscles settled down and he was able to resume supporting his weight with two legs for several more agonizingly long minutes.

“Punishment phase two,” the Voice intoned. Instantly the scene shifted. Now Cannon was stretched out on an X-frame, his arms and legs secured firmly in place. An additional wide strap around his waist held his midsection still. He tested the bonds but of course there was no give. All he could do was flap weakly. The hands were still there, exploring the front of his body, his face as well, but leaving the back clear for reasons that were soon apparent.

The flogging began only a few seconds into the scene. Strips of leather slapped against the skin of his upper back and his bare ass. His body tried to twist to avoid the crashing blows, but there was no flex at all. All he could do was twitch under the impacts. This went on for at least as long as the fish-dancing first phase, then all too soon and not soon enough, the Voice called for phase three to begin.

Another instant transformation, after which Cannon found himself wrapped up into a tight ball. His knees were bent up against his chin and his arms were wrapped around his legs. Ropes at wrists, ankles, and all over the rest of him ensured he could not unfold himself. A rod had been passed between his knees and his elbows and right away he felt the stick being lifted. His body had to follow along and he found himself hanging from his bent knees, his shoulders dipping down toward the floor and his feet angling upward. His unsupported head had the choice of either lolling limply backward or being held up by force of will. For now, at least, he kept it lifted.

The hands again, constantly groping and probing. With his ass exposed, the fingers began pushing toward it, into it. He clenched to try to keep them out, but it was impossible. They wormed their way inside him as he struggled and strained and tried to scream. Sometimes the screams came out; other times his body kept quiet, or screamed at times he wasn’t expecting. His knees began to ache, then throb, then outright revolt. He wanted – needed – to relieve the pressure but couldn’t shift his weight in the slightest.

Lips came near his, a probing tongue. It forced its way into his mouth and he felt the clack of metal against his teeth. A piercing of some sort, an implant? Or some natural growth of this repellent creature? The tongue explored a bit, then pulled out. Another mouth replaced it and hot breath washed over Cannon’s nose.

“Pleasure phase four,” the Voice commanded. It took a moment for the meaning to penetrate Cannon’s addled mind. Pleasure? Oh, right: Demon Four was the one he had guessed correctly.

He was back on the X-frame, facing away from it this time. Demon Four swam into view, gyrating to the beat of the music. He lowered himself down in front of Cannon and took Cannon’s dick into his mouth. To Cannon’s astonishment, his dick was completely hard. With no trace of the electric fire that he had learned to associate with erections. The demon’s warm, wet mouth embraced it and he began to pump. Far sooner than Cannon would have thought possible, he was ready to shoot. The sensation of impending orgasm was unmistakable, yet completely unthinkable under these circumstances.

But before he could fall over the edge, the demon backed away and left Cannon’s dick pulsing and bobbing in the empty air. The other demons laughed and roared their approval. Then Demon Four went back down for another round.

Over and over Cannon was tempted with the promise of release that was never to be given. He was so close! It would take just the slightest of strokes to grant him satisfaction, but that stroke never came. He was held masterfully right at the edge and never allowed to cross.

“Punishment phase five.”

Bound vertically, wrists behind his back, a wooden rod between his elbows and his back, wrists tied together and secured to ropes around his thighs, ensuring he could not lift them up over the rod. Both ends of the rod were tied to a single point on the ceiling overhead so that he was required to remain on his feet (or hang painfully from the bar), but he was free to swivel around beneath the attachment point.

This time the hands that came at him were fists, not fingers. The pounded into his gut again and again. The demons were arranged in a circle around him so each time he spun away from one, he turned right into another whose arm was cocked and ready. Many of the blows were mere taps, but some were hard enough to make him wince, and every once in a while one would knock the wind right out of him when it landed.

Every now and then they gave him a chance to catch his breath and recover, but all too soon the gut punches would start right back up again. He tried to lash out with his feet to drive the demons away, but his ankles were chained together. The chain was long enough to let him lift a foot up to about knee height but no farther, far short of being able to threaten one of the monsters with a kick. His clouded vision turned the scene into a nightmare-scape of leering grins, too-large eyes revealed in lightning-fast strobes, flashing arms that landed blows before he could see them coming.

“Thank you, my dears,” the Voice called at last. The rain of punches stopped. “I think it’s time for our reward.”

Another instant transition. Cannon was lying face up in a sling, legs up, arms tied beneath his back, head supported. He lifted his head, straining to see through his darkened eyes. He was still surrounded by a ring of demons, and every single one of them had his dick out and was stroking it.

Very quickly, one of them stepped up to his ass and began probing at it with his cock. Cannon knew what to expect from his first demon-nightmare, but it was no easier this time. He felt his ass muscles straining to keep his hole clenched tightly shut and was able to thwart the rapist for a short while. But he was only postponing the inevitable and he knew it. Slowly, bit by bit, the rapist forced his way in, painfully stretching out the opening until it was large enough to admit him.

Meanwhile, another one approached his head, turned it to the side, and stuck his dick into Cannon’s mouth. He wanted to spit it out, to bite down, to gag, anything, but his betraying mouth refused to obey. In fact, as the dick in his ass began to pump in and out, his mouth actually clamped down and started suckling it as if it were a tit.

Other cocks were being stroked all around him. He could feel the rush of air, occasional brushes of knuckles or dickheads against his ribs or belly. All five of the numbered demons plus a few more in a circle around him, moaning and groaning and making him the centerpiece of their obscene revelry.

The dick in his ass pulled out and its owner slid sideways along the circle, pushing his neighbor along and leaving a void that sucked in the neighbor from the other side, who promptly plugged Cannon’s hole right back up again. Soon after, the shift worked its way around to his head and the dick in his mouth was exchanged for a new one. More pumps, more oral suction, and then a few minutes later the line shifted again.

Then things started to get very strange.

All of a sudden, the scene shifted again. He was blind, hanging from his wrists, nuts being crushed in a vise. The pain was bright, sharp, immediate and he gasped at the suddenness. Then what could have only been a few seconds later, he was strung up by his wrists, suspended off the ground, feeling the sting of a whip striking his shoulders.

Neither of those were from this dream, he thought. Those were from the last dream. Or the one before. He was having dreams within dreams now? Good god, how many layers deep would it go?

A few seconds later, the scene changed again. Now he was back among the demons, being edged toward a climax he would never reach. And then he was spinning like an airborne compass needle, being brought in to sniff Demon Three’s crotch and learn his scent.

The transitions came faster and faster. Flash: pain lit up his back as a lash landed on it, but it had barely registered before… Flash: he was on his knees choking and gagging on the first dick he had ever sucked. Flash: the sight of the leathered-up demon from the start of each dream. Flash: back in the sling being fucked at both ends. Flash: hanging from his knees, bound into a ball. Flash: fire on his balls. Flash: dangling like a fish. Flash: back to the sling, a new dick in each hole… or possibly the same dick.

Then, abruptly, he was back in his cell. Oh, thank god, he thought. He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t move. No… what? He strained again, but nothing happened. His body continued to lie calmly on the cot, staring off toward the barred door. Which, now that he saw it, was the wrong door. It was the door from the cell he was first held in at the city lockup. He had been moved since then. Hadn’t he? He was at the state prison now awaiting trial, and the walls should be a greener grey than what he was seeing. And why couldn’t he move?

Flash. He was sitting at a table with the remnants of a pizza in front of him and the taste of sauce and cheese in his mouth. It was a beautiful day. He was in the outdoor seating section at a place he knew well: Due Fratelli’s, just a few blocks from work. Nothing hurt; no one was poking anything up his ass or shoving anything down his throat or slashing anything across his back. He heard the sounds of traffic passing, conversations at the neighboring tables, someone nearby blowing their nose. A scene that would have been absolutely normal three weeks ago but now could only be a setup for something horrible to come. Perhaps the people around him would morph into monsters, or maybe the pavement would melt beneath his feet and suck him down into a fiery pit.

Nothing happened for several minutes. He just sat there watching people pass by, in no rush to be anyplace else. The shift to this from what he had been enduring was jarring and his body was still hopped up on adrenaline even though it seemed to be sitting placidly at a cozy bistro. He wanted to scream but again his body refused to cooperate.

Then the waitress came by. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a small scrap of paper, a pen, and a paper clip. He watched his body accept the items. As she walked away, he wrote “You lose. Pay up.” on the paper, then pulled out his wallet. Inside were two hundred-dollar bills. He took one out and left it on the table. He attached the note he had just written to the other and tucked it back into his pocket. Then he stood up, shook out his arms, took a deep breath of fresh air, and said out loud to no one in particular, “Ah, what a glorious day!”

Flash. He was in the office, handing the remaining hundred over to a smirking Zack Brokowski as the IT guys snickered. Only then did Cannon clue in: yes, he was still in the dream, still in the demon’s world. But now the tortures had branched out, not limited to pain and deviant gay sex. He was being tormented in mind as well as body, taunted by the memory of what he used to think of as “normal life”, now irretrievably lost.

Flash. A demon’s tongue crawling up his face.

Flash. The conference room with all the movers and shakers assembled for the closing. He was walking forward, insulting the company president, taunting the people gathered, jumping up on the table, fishing out his dick, spraying piss all over the room and everyone in it while crowing and whooping with delight.

Flash. Back to the dungeon, licking a demon’s boot.

Flash. On his motorcycle, roaring north out of the city as he made his escape.

Flash. A dick in his mouth, swelling and getting ready to spew its load. His first blow job. Hot semen pumping out onto his tongue as he eagerly/disgustedly swallowed it down.

Flash. Looking down at a bed with an emaciated wretch in it, wrapping his hands around the skeletal throat, squeezing the life out of a man who barely had any left in him.

Flash. Arms pinioned by a pole at his elbows, fists slamming into his gut.

It was overwhelming, the constant jumping from scene to scene. He couldn’t trust his eyes, he couldn’t trust his body, nothing made sense. He tried to scream again and again but no sound came out. It was impossible to know what was “real”, what was “now” in this constantly-shifting morass. In the demon’s world, space and time were fluid, reality was a fantasy to be warped and molded at whim. He could no more make sense of this than he could line up all the grains of sand on a beach.

As his senses continued to jerk from one remembered torment to another, it occurred to him to wonder: perhaps the jail cell was just another illusion? A more persistent-seeming one, but just as insubstantial? When he woke up… if he ever woke up… how could he ever trust that he was truly awake? He might be lying on the cot at some point, only to feel it suddenly grow a dick beneath his ass and impale him with it. Or the bars at the door might tear themselves loose and pursue him, wrapping themselves around his arms and legs and squeezing him like a boa constrictor?

Oh! But maybe the deception went beyond that. Maybe the whole episode of him setting fire to his career, committing murder, getting arrested, maybe it was all fake! Maybe if he just endured long enough, he would finally wake up for real, back in his penthouse, getting ready to go to work.

That had to be it. It was the only explanation that made sense. He just had to wait it out, no matter how long it took for the dream to finally, finally end for good.

He gave up trying to make sense of anything and simply accepted the sensations as they came: pain, humiliation, and rare moments of fleeting pleasure alike.

Long minutes later, if “minutes” were even a real thing, he was returned to the sling and the surrounding ring of demons (assuming “slings” and “demons” could exist) for longer and longer stretches of time (whatever “time” meant). He kept flicking out to one of the other torture scenes, but only for a second or two at a time before returning to the sling. Five or ten seconds later he would be sucked away for another blast of short-term pain. Then the flicker stopped and he stayed put. The dicks around him began to spurt one by one. Hot wet loads landed on his face, his balls, his belly, his chest. He was breathing in the stench of sweaty men and the fragrant aroma of semen, wishing he could close his nose, his eyes, his ears, his entire self.

Lust sated, the demons in the ring backed away, fading into the background gloom as he lay helpless, unsure whether this respite too would prove to be only an illusion, a temporary pause on his way to still greater horrors. The chief demon – Cannon’s own personal tormentor – approached and laid a hand on Cannon’s jizz-soaked chest. He scooped up some of one of the loads, or perhaps two or three because they were all running together. He brought the liquid to Cannon’s lips. Obediently, Cannon opened his mouth and accepted the finger inside. Once again, it wasn’t a conscious thought that made him do this, it was his body acting on its own, and yet the action felt right and proper. If he were to refuse the gift, he would only suffer until he gave in and accepted it, so why not spare himself the pain? Or so his body had seemingly reasoned without bothering to inform his mind, which was reeling with disgust at the idea.

He licked the finger clean and held it on his tongue until the demon slowly withdrew it. Cannon stared up at the leather-clad figure with awe, mind blank, waiting for whatever would come next but not daring to try to predict or hope what that might be. The demon bent down and brought its lips close to Cannon’s ear. “Till next time,” it whispered.

And with that, the blackness returned, and then the sensation of what he was lying on shifted beneath his body. The sling gave way to a harder, firmer surface. He tried to open his eyes, expecting them to not obey his commands, but they did. And when they did, he expected to see brown-grey gloom, but instead encountered… color. Not much of it, but enough to know that he was seeing clearly again. The underside of the bunk above him, the steel of the bars at the door, the greenish grey of the walls, the white sheets.

He was lying on his cot in his cell, his new cell, seeing by the dim lights that ensured this place was never fully dark.

He lay there quietly. There was no reason for any emotion at all. Neither relief nor further anguish. This was just another illusion. Sooner or later, this hallucination too would end.

8 – September And Beyond

Seth

“Not bad, not bad,” the Master said.

Seth thought that was more praise than his performance in this week’s wrestling bout deserved. “If you say so, Sir.”

“No, I mean it. Yes, you lost, but your technique is much better. Your stance is solid, you’re moving your feet when and where you need to, and you’re getting much better at predicting what I’m going to do next.”

“Thank you, Sir. The predicting is not so different from your lessons about reading people’s faces. It feels like I’m doing the same thing.”

“Yeah, you are. You’re right. Very similar.”

“Thank you for teaching me, Sir.” Not just these lessons, but all the “how to life” instructions he had learned, and continued to learn, at his Master’s hands. Confidence. Self-defense. Talking comfortably with people. Being assertive without being a jerk. The difference between who he was now and who he was when he first came here was so vast that in all the ways that matter, he and his former self were really two different people. Old Seth had indeed gotten his wish when he stepped onto that bus in Omaha: he had been erased. New Seth shared his memories and some of his traits, but had undergone enough changes that he could never be mistaken for who he once was.

“One of these times I’ll get you, Sir!”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

Later that morning they went for a run, Seth driving and the Master as passenger. Then some video games, during which the Master drove. Seth was still no good at the shoot-em-up style games that the Master enjoyed, and didn’t really see the appeal. Matching little colored candy blobs was more to his liking. But he nevertheless enjoyed seeing and feeling the Master using his muscles and reflexes. The man was amazingly fast, reacting to things he saw before they even registered in Seth’s mind.

And yet Seth was coming to realize that he had his own strengths. His meticulousness and patience, for example, allowed him to devote time and attention to something long past the point where the Master would have given up in frustration. And those color-blob matching games? Seth now knew he was much better at those than he had realized because he was matching colors that looked much more similar to his eyes than they did to most people’s.

They made a good team.

“Hey, I feel like cooking tonight,” the Master said that afternoon. A break from the usual routine, though only partly. It would still be Seth’s body chopping vegetables or stirring a sauce, but under the Master’s direction instead of his own. Seth volunteered to go into shutdown so he could get some downtime rather than hang around and watch, which the Master agreed to.

He floated in empty space for a while, enjoying the not-quite-awake, not-quite-asleep ebb and flow of his thoughts. One of the things he thought about was the situation with Cannon. The Master seemed to have gotten over his obsession, which was gratifying. He still mentioned the name on occasion, but the occasions were coming less and less frequently now. Seth had not said anything about what he had learned or the further research he had carefully done during times when the Master was distracted. But he had certainly thought about it. And all the implications. At some point, when the time felt right, he would speak up. There was no rush; patience was, after all, one of his strengths.

When he was pulled back to awareness, he found himself seated at the table in the Master’s apartment, a candle casting its glow on a white linen cloth beneath. The Master, now back in his own body and no longer controlling Seth’s, got up from his usual spot on the sofa and came to the table, moving slowly due to the stiffness of having lain still for all the time he was cooking.

“Wow, Sir, look at this! Very fancy!”

“Yeah, I felt like doing something special. No particular occasion, just in the mood for something a step above the usual.”

“It’s like we’re on a date! What is this, haddock?”

“Tilapia. Baked with lemon and Italian herbs. Oh, and feta cheese.”

“It’s delicious, Sir. I didn’t know we had tilapia.” More accurately, Seth knew that they had no tilapia, since he did the grocery shopping for both of them.

“Yeah, I made a run to the store for it.”

“Ah. Well, great choice, Sir.”

The evening passed smoothly, the conversation flowed naturally. After dinner, the Master lay back down on the sofa and the two of them walked to the Barleycorn for some dancing. They took turns driving. Seth was getting better at dancing and was starting to enjoy the experience, though he doubted he would ever match the Master’s fluid grace on the floor.

The Master let Seth choose a guy to try to pick up and take home. It went well. Seth’s dick sensations turned on at just the right time and his erection was guaranteed to be firm and full throughout the encounter.

The guy Seth chose wasn’t into bondage, unfortunately, but that was okay. Even vanilla sex could be satisfying every once in a while.

Cannon

Fifteen years. That was the sentence that he was looking at. Fifteen years or whenever he woke up, whichever came first.

It was a lot easier to cope with the ordeal of incarceration now that he knew it was all an elaborate dream. Sure, it felt real, but that was true of all the demon-sent dreams. But Cannon was wise to the demon’s ways now. He knew this was a hoax, a long, elaborate, exceptionally realistic illusion occasionally interrupted by nested dreams-within-dreams of sordid debauchery and pain.

The bastard even tried to disorient him by bringing the gay bullshit into “reality” from time to time, but all that did was tip his hand and prove that Cannon was dreaming, because he would never do that shit in real life. The first time happened when Cannon was on work duty, scrubbing the shower room with another convict. The demon had taken over and made Cannon make a pass at the guy, who accepted his offer of a blow job. It never reached a conclusion; a guard came in to check on them and interrupted them mid-act, which guaranteed that word would spread at the speed of light that Cannon was a cocksucker.

Later there were encounters where Cannon found himself roughing up a guy who didn’t seem to be all that upset about getting roughed up, and they often ended with an ass-fucking, only these, unlike in the dreams-within-dreams, featured Cannon on the good – well, better – side, the side doing the fucking. These occasions were the only times he was able to get hard without feeling stabbing pains lancing through his dick. In fact, during these sessions he couldn’t feel anything at all through his dick. It was as if he was reaming the other con’s ass with a strapped-on dildo. Eventually he would shoot his wad, but there was no pleasure in the unloading, no enjoyment, no sensation of orgasm whatsoever. Naturally, the incidents were never completely private, and Cannon had to endure the inevitable comments later and the reputation he developed as a result.

There were other occasions too, incidents that happened at times when he was alone in his cell. He would be lying in his bunk, or pacing, or standing at the door idly looking out. Suddenly, one or more of his muscles would stop responding. One time he found that his hands were wrapped around the bars of the door and he could not get them to release. They refused to respond to his commands, just like in the dreams that were more obviously dreams. He stood for several hours by the door, fighting at first to get them to unclench, trying to pry his fingers apart with his chin or jar them lose by kicking his arms with his feet, then giving up and accepting that he was stuck until the demon chose to release him. Another time he was trapped on the toilet for almost as long, unable to will himself to rise or push himself off with his hands. He half-expected a certain peace to come with accepting the inevitable when these events happened, but somehow it never did; Cannon was not the sort to easily accept being forced into submission and the rage seethed in him all the while.

Scarier were the times when the muscles that ceased to obey him were the ones involved with breathing. He would be lying in his bunk, doing nothing but existing while the endless minutes crawled by, not particularly thinking about anything, when suddenly he found he couldn’t inhale. The terror mounted rapidly whenever this happened because it never came at a time when he had full lungs. The demon always struck when Cannon had just emptied them, then refused to let him refill. He was free to move anything else, to stand up, to jump around, anything but expand his chest and suck in life-giving air. He couldn’t even call out for help, not that anyone would have been able to help him. The demon would take him right up to the edge of consciousness when blackness started curling in from the edges of his eyes before allowing him to gasp in a giant lungful and beat the darkness back. Sometimes the demon pushed him even farther and awareness went away completely. He would revive to find himself lying either in his bunk or on the floor, air once again moving in and out for a few precious seconds before the demon relocked his chest and began the torment anew.

But the worst of all were the forced ejaculations. His body had quickly adapted to the stimulus-response pattern of erections equaling pain and stopped trying to have them, even in his sleep. But sometimes the demon would take over and make them happen. Cannon would feel his body lining itself up face up on his bunk, then freezing into position. These episodes were the reverse of the breathless times – he could breathe at will but couldn’t move any of his other muscles. He was forced to lie like a statue, a mannequin, a corpse. And then his dick would start to inflate. Slowly, slowly, it would stiffen up, and as it did the tingling would start, then grow and grow and grow until the pain was all he could think about. His dick would be fully hard and the electric sting was like a punishing blast of lightning that never ended. It would drag on for long agonizing minutes while he gasped and croaked under the neverending fire, expressing his anguish in a whimpering squeal, the only outlet his frozen muscles would allow. The demon possessing him seemed to get off on torment rather than pleasure because eventually he would feel the familiar sensation boiling up from his balls. His cock, untouched, would erupt, spraying its load over his face and chest and belly. This became his only experience of orgasm: gobbets of sperm savagely yanked out like kidney stones through his urethra, each one burning like a tiny meteor as it passed through. Then more long minutes enduring the fiery torment until his dick slowly started to soften and the blazing pain at last subsided, after which his muscles finally came loose.

But as awful as these various tortures were, none of it bothered him because none of it mattered. He clung to the hope, the knowledge, the certainty, that one day, he would finally wake up for real. He would be back in his bed in his own penthouse condo. He would stand up, shake himself off, and shout with joy at the fact that he had won, that the ordeal was finally over.

That hope never left him, though from time to time it did get hard to maintain the courage of his conviction, particularly at night when the long hours dragged by and he lay awake in the dim light, fighting sleep, convinced that falling asleep would bring him to the empty hallway with the echoing footsteps and everything else that would follow. Sometimes staying awake all night helped; sometimes he fell asleep and no dreams came; and sometimes he felt himself sucked wide awake into a sub-dream despite his attempts to avoid it.

The sub-dreams and the episodes of demonic possession came on no schedule he could determine. On average they came about a week apart, but seldom exactly seven days. Anywhere from five to ten was typical. But then sometimes there would be a longer break, fifteen or even twenty (he wasn’t quite sure since the days all blended into one another in this place and it was easy to lose count), and other times much less. Once the sub-dreams came three nights in a row. There was no predicting them.

All he could do was endure and wait. One day, some day, this nightmare would end. He just had to survive until that day finally came.

Winston

He hadn’t exactly let Seth win the wrestling round, but he may have hastened the end a bit. The two of them were pretty evenly matched now and Winston had run through his entire arsenal of moves to try to trip Seth up and get him down on the floor. Seth had countered every single one and had gone on the attack several times.

If this were an actual match, it would have been timed and decided on points, and in that case Winston would probably win. But that didn’t matter; for their purpose only a pin would do. Which meant this would drag on until exhaustion set in and Winston was well aware which one of them would tire first. So he hadn’t really thrown the match, he had just brought it to its inevitable conclusion a little sooner, while he still had some strength in reserve for afterward.

“Congratulations,” he said from the floor, helplessly trapped under Seth’s weight. Seth immediately got off and helped him up. “You, sir, have earned the right to be a man again.”

“Sir, don’t ‘sir’ me, Sir!” Seth grinned at his own witticism.

“I’m going to go get my laptop. Be right back.” His legs didn’t quite want to cooperate, but he forced them to. Any other time he could ride Seth to do the errand, but for the ritual’s sake this needed to be his own doing.

He brought the laptop to Seth’s apartment and set it up. “One sec, I’ve got this queued up. Better sit down, we’re going to replay a memory.” Tap, tap, tap. “Okay, here goes.”

He pushed himself into Seth’s senses so they would experience it together. He knelt, blind, empty eyes gazing up toward where past-Winston would have been standing which, come to think of it, was in this very room, pretty much right on this very spot. Past-Seth spoke.

“Master, please accept this offering. Please take my dick as your own. Please use it for whatever purpose you need, whatever that may be. I no longer need it or want it. It is yours if you will have it.” And past-Winston replied, “I accept.”

Winston returned to himself and stopped the playback. Seth looked at him, clearly affected by the memory, brief as it was. It had to be tough for him to be so vividly reminded of the person he had once been, considering how far he had come since then. Winston spoke before Seth could say anything.

“Seth, thank you for the offer you made, and for the gift you gave me. I have used it and valued it. I would like to continue to use it, but in partnership with you. It would please me if you would resume ownership of your dick, sharing it with me as you share your whole self, but now under your care and stewardship. It is yours if you will have it.”

Seth seemed like he was suddenly fighting back tears. He said, in echo of past-Winston’s words they had both just heard, “I accept,” then added, “Thank you, Sir.”

Winston triggered the handoff. It was no different than any other time he had granted Seth access to his cock, but this time it would be for keeps. Seth was in charge again. Winston watched him reach down and give it a squeeze, verifying that it was fully part of him again.

“Thank you, Sir,” he said again.

“You’re very welcome.”

“Sir, I wonder if I could ask for one more thing.”

“Of course.”

“Sir, this is important to me, so please answer honestly.” Uh oh. Winston’s hackles went up. This sounded serious, not fitting the celebratory mood he had expected for this moment. “I can accept either answer, I just need to know which it is.”

“Seth, yes, I promise. I will answer honestly if I can. What’s the question?”

“Sir… will I come down with the same disease as you and Carlos Lopez?”

Winston sat back, feeling as if someone had knocked the wind out of him. He took a moment to compose himself. The immediate answer, at least, was clear. Just as Dr. Andrews had delivered the truth to Winston unflinchingly, knowing he could take it, Winston would do the same for Seth. But this question was like an iceberg: only ten percent of it was visible. The rest was hidden beneath the surface.

“I don’t know. Probably not.”

Now it was Seth’s turn to sit back and think. “Wow,” he said after a moment. “I thought I was prepared for whatever you might say, but now I realize I only planned for ‘yes’ and ‘no’.”

“The odds are hard to calculate,” Winston went on. “There were twenty-four Marines in the Manrider Program. Twelve had master nets and twelve had drones. Of the masters, four got the disease, but only one of the drones did. So based on that very limited sample set, your odds of catching it are either five in twenty-four, or one in twelve, depending on whether the distinction between master and drone matters, which no one knows. Also, everyone who got the disease showed symptoms between six months and one year after being infected with the nanobots. You got your net in January. It’s now September and you show no sign of any symptoms. I would know if you did; I’ve been watching closely. So your odds may be even better.”

“That’s actually not too bad.”

“It’s still possible that you might get it. If you remain symptom-free until January, I think we can assume it passed you by. After another year it’s all but certain.”

“I don’t know what to think now. I thought that by getting an answer to the question, I would at least have some certainty, but that didn’t happen.”

“Yeah. Life is like that. Seth, I see that I have once again seriously underestimated you. I made sure you knew nothing about Carlos, but you obviously figured out what happened with him. Which means you know what I did to Cannon and also didn’t tell you about because I didn’t think you needed to know. And most of all, I was relentlessly careful to never tell you how I got this disease because I didn’t want to worry you. And yet you pieced it all together on your own. I should have learned by now, I need to stop underestimating you.”

“No, Sir. What you need to stop doing is keeping secrets from me. Then you wouldn’t have any reason to underestimate me.”

Winston looked down at his lap. His first reaction, goddammit, was to want to reach into Seth’s head and shut down this extremely uncomfortable conversation. But no. He would not do that. He was a Marine. Social awkwardness was not at all the same as physical discomfort, but he needed to push through as if it was. Embrace the pain and emerge out the other side.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I was wrong to keep secrets from you, whatever my reasons might have been.”

“Thank you, Sir. I appreciate that. I know you now, Sir. I know that you are a good man, but that you have a ruthless streak. I almost became the target of that ruthlessness, but then Cannon took my place. The thing is, I wouldn’t have minded if it had been me, at least the ‘me’ I used to be. But I’m someone else now, and I owe that change to you. Now I am someone who is happy to be in your service, yours to command as you see fit. But what I ask in return is honesty and transparency. Use me as you wish, but don’t hide what you are using me for. Can you agree to that, Sir?”

Winston didn’t answer right away. To do so would have been to disrespect the question. This question deserved thought and consideration, not a blithe “sure”, so consideration is what he gave it. Then:

“You’ve come a long way, Seth. Yes. I agree to be honest and transparent in how I use you.”

Seth sat back, clearly relieved. “Thank you, Sir.”

“I am the one who should be thanking you.”

“We’re good for each other, I think.”

“Yes. That we are. Now, if that’s settled…?” Seth nodded. “Great. Then the next thing I would like to use you for is to fuck me. You up for that?”

“Sir! What?”

“You heard me. I don’t often enjoy taking a dick up my ass. In fact, yours will only be the third that’s ever been in there. But every once in a while I get in the mood, and right now is one of those times. Care to take your newly-restored cock out for a spin?”

They went into Seth’s bedroom. Winston knelt by the short end of the cage and lay his body down on top of it. Seth tied him to the bars. “Go easy on your way in,” Winston said. Seth was a consummately careful gentleman about his entry. It took Winston a while to loosen up to the necessary degree, but he got there.

There really was no way to describe the sensation of being both fucker and fuckee to someone who couldn’t know it firsthand. By setting his nerves to experience both Seth’s sensations and his own, he felt both the cock plunging into his hole and the hole wrapped around his cock. He felt his pelvis pushing against butt cheeks and his butt cheeks pressed by pelvis. He felt the tingle of the nerves in his dickhead and the simultaneous tingle of pressure on his prostate in a way no one else on earth (most likely) could share. And at the end, the contradictory sensation of being simultaneously emptied and filled was transcendent.

It was wonderful and magical and went on just long enough and yet not nearly long enough at all, and afterward both he and Seth were wiped, spent, drained. Seth untied him and they both walked over to Winston’s apartment, where they fell into the bed and slept spoon-style, Winston’s arm wrapped around Seth’s chest, nestled together without a seam, joined like two halves of a seashell, once whole but broken by waves and separated, now reunited as if they had never been apart.

9 – Epilogue, Many Septembers Later

Seth

A parking lot in Oceanside, California. Seth stood alone (but not really alone) watching the sun low in the cloudless sky over the ocean, a bright glowing ball slowly descending toward the horizon.

“I can see why you wanted to come here, Sir. It’s beautiful.”

The Master took charge to speak. He could no longer do the magic-voice-in-ear trick; the ventilator that was breathing for him prevented him from speaking even subvocally. Besides, his body had decayed to the point where he could no longer move his tongue and lips to shape words clearly enough for Seth to understand. The only way he could speak now was by using Seth’s voice.

“This is one of my favorite places. I brought Cash here when his time was near. It’s amazing how little has changed.”

He yielded control back to Seth and they stood silently for a while, watching the waves crash and recede below.

“Cannon gets out next year,” the Master said after a while. “And he’s already free of the botnet – I shut it down earlier today. I’ve been weaning him off the ‘dreams’ for a while now, letting him go longer and longer without them. You shouldn’t have anything to worry about. He never saw your face in any of his dreams and I’m sure he doesn’t remember it after all these years. And he never knew your name.”

“Yes, Sir. I’m not worried. The gym where he hurt me closed down years ago, so he couldn’t track me down that way. And he doesn’t know anything about Winning Fitness.”

“I still find that name completely cringe-worthy, for the record.”

“Noted once again, Sir. Thank you for letting me go ahead and name it in your honor anyway. And thank you, again, for setting me up with it.”

“You’re welcome. You’ve done a fine job being a business owner these last five years and I don’t see any reason why that would change once I’m gone.”

Suddenly Seth found he couldn’t stop the tears from coming. “I’m going to miss you so much, Sir!” he sobbed. The Master let him get the emotion out, not stopping him from expressing his grief. After a few minutes, when he had calmed down, the Master stepped in and spoke.

“I know. But it’s time.”

“I know, Sir, I know I know. I don’t want you to have to suffer any more. But it’s still so hard to let go.”

“Well, more so than for most couples, I think it’s safe to say that I’ll always be a part of you. You’ll have both your own strength and mine to draw on going forward. Seth, thank you for lending yourself to me all these years. You made this disease something bearable instead of the nightmare it might have been. Without your help, I would have given up years ago. Thank you.”

Seth knew that the moment control came back to him he would break down once more, and he did. When he could speak again, it was to say “Thank you, Sir. I don’t know what my life would have been like if I hadn’t met you, but I know it would have been far, far worse. I owe everything to you.”

“We were good for each other, as a wise man once said.”

Seth smiled through the tears. “That we were.”

They lapsed into silence again. The sun kissed the surface of the ocean.

“Does it look any different through my eyes, Sir?”

“Today? No.”

“I would love to know what red is like for you.”

“I wish I could show you. But there’s no red here, not now. It’s all blues and yellows. You’re seeing exactly what I would see.”

More time passed. The last edge of the sun disappeared and the sky began to deepen to indigo.

“It’s time. I’m ready. Good-bye, Seth.”

“Good-bye, Sir.”

Seth felt nothing overt, just a sudden absence of… something. Like white noise or gravity or his heartbeat. A subtle presence that had been with him for longer than he could remember was suddenly gone. The Master had issued the kill signal; over the next few days, the former botnet would quietly flush itself out of his system.

And right now, back in the city, the Master was instructing his own net to shut down the ventilator that had been breathing for him these past four months. Then he would tell the net to disconnect his mind from his body so he could float in that blissful space where there was no pain, no fear. He wouldn’t feel his body’s systems failing, shutting down, switching off for the last time.

Tomorrow Seth would go in and find the body and report the death to the proper authorities. Tomorrow he would channel the Master’s strength to get through the day, and the next one, and the one after that, because that’s what a Marine does when presented with a challenge: he overcomes it. Tomorrow Seth would do what needed to be done, carrying on as the Master would.

Tonight, he sat in this sacred spot, a place the Master had treasured, and watched the stars come out overhead.

3 responses to “The Manrider Program”

benghbs says:

November 19, 2024 at 3:27 pm

Oh I can’t wait!

Sent from my iPhone

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Anonymous says:

November 21, 2024 at 7:43 pm

A very ambitious, heartwarming, terrifying, well-researched odyssey. It’s good to see another story from you after a year of waiting, POW!

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- powauthor says:
  
  November 22, 2024 at 7:56 am
  
  Thanks! It took almost the whole year to write. Something smaller next time, perhaps.
  
  I’m glad you enjoyed it.
  
  LikeLike

POW's Fiction – Gay S&M Stories

The Manrider Program

The Manrider Program

Table of Contents

1 – January

2 – February

3 – March

4 – April

5 – May

6 – June

7 – July

8 – September And Beyond

9 – Epilogue, Many Septembers Later

3 responses to “The Manrider Program”

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The Manrider Program

The Manrider Program

Table of Contents

1 – January

2 – February

3 – March

4 – April

5 – May

6 – June

7 – July

8 – September And Beyond

9 – Epilogue, Many Septembers Later

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