2018-09-13 - spike - The New Shop 78

Author: spike
Title: The New Shop 78
Date: 13 September 2018

Chapter 78
It took another couple of hours to identify the rest. The teacher and its student resumed their work and finally, every blank had its correct ID associated with it again, apart from two.

Q’s fingers rattled on the keyboard for a few minutes once we were done.

“That’s that, then. Room four, tonight. One of my workmen will repurpose it into a workshop. Both blanks will work on their models independently. Neither will see the work the other’s doing.”

I nodded. “Sir, there are a lot of sharp objects involved in wood and metalwork.”

“I know, Adam. I know. When they work, both will be constantly supervised in the control room. We can hit lockdown on those rooms at a moment’s notice. Now… Let’s see what’s happening in Atlanta.”

Another rattle of the keyboard and a local news report popped up.

“The hunt goes on. Reports of the bomber dried up ten days ago after one anonymous caller informed us of his death. They claimed to have shot him, run him down and slit his throat before throwing him into a dumpster but no body was found and no-one has come forward stating they’ve taken it. If you have, release it to the police immediately.

In related news, the man found naked and badly injured in a dumpster on the other side of town has been identified as one Andrew Harrison. He remains in critical condition and doctors have so far been unable to wake him. The last CCTV footage we have of him shows his attacker and it is the bomber.”

The footage began to play. Me, walking down the street, the sign on my back plainly visible, looking at license plates, looking at the sky scratching my head. The man gripped my shoulder, spun me around, slashed me with the knife and my take down.

I watched as I slammed his head into the sidewalk and dragged him into the alley.

“Still… Oh shit! Oh fucking hell, sir!”

“It’s not your fault, Adam. You were attacked!”

“Justifiably so, not that I knew it at the time, sir! But look at him. Oh fuck, I could’ve murdered the guy, and for what?”

“That blade…” Q rewound and zoomed in, freezing the frame when it was clearly visible on the screen. The knife appeared to be over eight inches long and had a point, clearly capable of stabbing. “If you hadn’t he might have stabbed you. He could’ve killed you.”

I sighed and nodded.

“Don’t worry. Even if he does die, all blame will fall on the bomber, not you.”

“Blame? It’s not the blame I’m worried about, sir. I could be a murderer! I… Oh fuck if he does die now, I am a murderer!”

“Any court of law would put it down to self-defence. At the best, you’d get off Scott free. At the worst it’d be manslaughter. In that situation you did do the right thing. Please don’t let this plague your life, Adam.”

“Even after the other half? I did strip him, steal all his clothes, sir.”

“I suppose that might tip the scales more towards manslaughter but it was clear why you did that. You had to disguise yourself as much as possible to avoid more attacks and you didn’t even know about the sign on your back.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I think it’s time we gave the hornet’s nest another stir.” He tapped away again and a picture appeared, just as I’d envisioned. A blank holding up a cardboard sign, the same Arabic symbols as the first but this time the text said “Catch me if you can.”

Q opened twitter, logged in and attached the photo to a post.

“What do you think? For the post itself?”

I shrugged. “How about… hashtag lynchmob So dumb they don’t check for blood when slitting throats. If your brains were gunpowder you wouldn’t even have enough to blow your noses.”

Q chuckled. “That old chestnut. Still, it works, I suppose.” he rattled away for a few seconds and hit send.

It didn’t take long to see the hornets stir. Within five minutes there were a thousand retweets. Replies appeared.

“Oh, we’ll get you and when we do, we’ll really see you punished. Forget the lynching until you’re almost dead from the beating we give. #lynchmob”

A few more similar and then…

“I killed him! I swear I killed him!”

I smiled as the next reply came through.

“Visit your local PD with evidence. We need proof that photo isn’t a troll. Tell us everything. Where, when, how and what you did with the body.”

“I will! I’ll tell you everything, it has to be a fake but it looks just the same!”

“Fuck me, I knew they were dumb but… Looks like that’s one or two more arrested for attempted murder.”

“Good. Now they’re all, as you yanks so succinctly put it, het up, I think it’s time you went to see the doctor.” a flick of the switch. “Blank, take him to the scanner.”

Another blank freed from its pedestal carried me to the wheelchair and wheeled me out of the room.
* * *
Jesus it’s boring, lying in an MRI for hours a day, but that’s how it went from then on. Every day without fail. I knew what they were doing. Directing those nanites, making repairs and after a few treatments I did begin to feel the difference. The first to go was the bruising on my arm and leg, the pain of my operation scar began to diminish too but I was still forbidden from putting any weight on my leg.

After that first session though, the blank wheeled me all around the complex. The library was huge, filling three floors of the west wing.

The recreation facilities? Think ours times a thousand. Oh, there was all the usual, table tennis, foosball, air hockey and a three lane bowling alley, but at the end was and an area behind a glass wall with targets at the end. A firing range? Here? But no, as I approached I saw… Archery. Crossbow and long, both prominently displayed hanging from hooks on the wall.

Another room… A gallery. Paintings, drawings, sculptures and not all of them depicted fetish themes. A lot did admittedly. I looked at the corners. Most were painted by blank but I spotted a few with different names. Rover, Sebastian. Six. Even one by Q himself. I didn’t know he even had an artistic side but it was good. A blank hanging spreadeagled from the ceiling as another suited slave manipulated its cock. There was a glint of gold on the one doing the manipulation. Was that a five on the back of it… his head?

Every single leisure activity seemed to be catered for, as far as I could see. A pottery room with wheels and a kiln, another filled with lathes and workbenches, wood and metalworking tools lined the walls. Another was a little too hot for comfort. A forge? A blank wearing a leather apron and gauntlets hammered red hot iron.

Another section, classrooms. Not just the desks facing a chalkboard type either, practical ones. Ones for the teaching of useful woodworking, metalworking and building skills. Plumbing? Electrical installation and repair, joinery, carpentry, bricklaying and stone masonry? Everything seemed to be covered there too. When he’d said they had builders and architects trained and ready to build, he hadn’t been kidding.

As for the gym, eight boxing rings, three wrestling rings too and they looked quite new. All the other equipment you’d expect many times over and next door to that, an Olympic sized swimming pool.

That was just the complex itself and I’d barely scratched the surface. I hadn’t even got as far as the dungeon before the blank turned a corner, walked down a few corridors and I sat before Q’s throne room doors again.
* * *
“How are you feeling now?”

I finished chewing the chunk of steak and swallowed. “Still a little shocked, sir. Has there been any news? On Harrison?”

“I’m afraid not. Still in intensive care. How are you feeling, physically?”

“Much the same, sir.”

“Oh well, it’ll take some time for them to have an effect. I have instructed my doctors to lace all your bones with graphene now and line all your joints. You’ll never suffer a broken bone again.”

“I’m not comfortable being used as a Guinea pig, sir.”

“Trust me, it’s for your own good. I want you better than the rest. They’ll all receive such modifications in the future. Hell… So will I.”

I stared at him. “You, sir?”

“Of course, me! I did say I intended to live to see the completion of this project. Not just live to see it but live to enjoy the fruits of it. Anything that extends the life of a slave will also be used to extend mine.” He chuckled. “If we all end up living hundreds of years, so much the better.”

“You think that’s possible?”

“There was a saying bandied about around the turn of the millennium, Adam. Our generation may be the last to die. They believed medical technology might advance over the coming years by such an extent that children born at the time could be kept alive indefinitely. We’ve made more advances in that area than the rest of the world combined because we’re not bound by all their red tape, their ethics committees and so forth.”

“It does hold a certain appeal, sir. As long as that life isn’t kept going when we’re bed bound and in agony from all those age related ailments.”

“Oh, I can guarantee, that will not be the case here. If things work out, I believe I may even appear younger in a hundred years than I do now and that age could be kept stable. Have you ever heard of telomeres?”

“The junk DNA that protects the good stuff during cell division?”

“Yes, the only reason cancer becomes more prevalent in old age is because those telomeres have worn down and active DNA begins to fray. That’s the reason cells stop dividing too. They can be refreshed. They’ve known about telomerase for quite some time but experiments on animals showed replacing it could cause cancers in itself. Not an issue when you’re swarming with nanites. Any cell that became cancerous could be removed before it began to spread and with nanites as a delivery mechanism it could be applied with far more precision.”

“How far along are you, sir? You’ve not started doing that to me too, have you?”

“Not yet but once we’ve perfected the treatment, we will. Anything that works on a slave will then be used on me.”

I took a huge gulp of the wine before me.

He glanced up at me and smiled. “You did give yourself to me Adam. As a slave you know you forfeited all rights. You do understand that?”

“Yes, sir. It’s still a bit of a shock, though.”

He chuckled. “You will not spread what we discuss at the dinner table. To any slave. Understand? I prefer to keep them in the dark. If they wake up a thousand years from now and only realise they’ve been alive that long at that point… Well…”

“Yes, sir. Understood, sir.” A grin formed at a thought though. A malicious grin.

“What?”

“There is one slave it’d be safe to tell, sir. Permission to… well… ask Four for permission?”

“Ask Four? For p” he let out a huge belly laugh. “The slug? Tell it its life span’s likely… oh god that’s a good one. An added torture. One that’ll remain with it for a very very long time. Granted.”

“Does Four know about my current… enhancements, sir?”

“He does know about your injuries and what we did to repair them. He doesn’t know about the extras. And he won’t. How are you going to explain it to him?”

“How about… Sir believes some of the things he’s done to repair me could be used to extend life. Can I tell your slug it’s likely to live for a thousand years?”

“Yes, then. That’s ambiguous enough. He may even volunteer. He and Ten are currently unaware they’ve already undergone several similar treatments.”

“How did you do it, sir? I thought the nanites needed scanners and a computer to direct them.”

“They do, but time every month in a scanner is compulsory here. Identify a problem before it becomes a problem, remember? What they don’t know is we’re also eradicating those problems.”

“Yes, sir.”

At first, the idea scared the shit out of me. To be experimented on. To meddle with my body in ways I couldn’t even conceive in order to make me live longer but I was a slave. I did belong to him and I was his to do with as he pleased. What’s more… Those end results. After my recent near death experience… To have a skeleton that was pretty much indestructible? To live for hundreds of years? Maybe live forever? As a slave or a free man, at this point, I’d prefer eternal slavery.

“Sir?”

“Yes.”

“Now I know… When this is my permanent home… I’ve been around a lot of the place now, seen the classrooms.”

“Yes?”

“If I’m going to have hundreds of years, I’d like to learn it all, sir. Everything, every skill.”