2018-10-05 - spike - The New Shop 81

Author: spike
Title: The New Shop 81
Date: 05 October 2018

Chapter 81
“Enjoyable day, Adam?”

I grinned and put my knife to one side so I could type. Oh god did I grin. “Yes, sir. God this place. Everything they said about it. Perkins and your handyman… I still don’t think I’ve seen everything there is to see, sir.”

“Oh, you haven’t. Some, you’ll never see. My R and D department for example. That’s strictly off limits to all apart from myself and my scientists. There are also a couple of… I suppose you could call them off-campus buildings. Those, you won’t see either.”

“Why, sir?”

“Because you need to be suited to get there, to live there. Two units of slaves live in them. They decontaminate too but also perform other functions.”

I nodded. “Sir, I do love this place and I’d like to experience a lot more of it once I’m suited, sir. If I could, I’d get down on my knees right now.”

“To beg for what, exactly?”

“An extra month, sir, as a blank. Seems it’s the best way to get a full taste of the life here, sir.”

“After what happened, you still want to be blanked?”

“Yes, sir. I do like being one and here, god it looks good.”

“Very well. I’ll program my computer. It will blank you. It’ll assign you a new core ID and even I won’t know which one you are. Just as I’ve done to myself a few times. Until…” He smiled. “Actually, no. Even after your month’s elapsed and you’re sent back to the store, you’ll remain a blank. You’ll join a new shipment. An even better way to hide because none of them there will know you’ve returned.”

“A new shipment, sir? So the ones currently there will be joining us soon?”

“Oh good lord no. They won’t leave until after their race. I’ve spoken to the doctor and though you’re not ready to put weight on your leg, he does believe its time you got some exercise. Swimming pool for one hour, tomorrow and every day from now on. The current slaves will remain until your shipment have trained too. What’s more, you’ll complete your training fully there, dog training and race included.”

“Race? I get to run, sir? Not hunt?”

“Of course. We have enough hunters now. We have more than enough to chase thirty-three dogs.”

“Oh god, if I could do a thank right now, sir. I’ll just have to say it, sir. Thank you.”

He nodded and an amused grin crossed his face. “You’ve been a little naughty with one of my slaves, haven’t you?”

“Bartholomew? Blank did say he was one of the bullies and his position was begging for a little… extra push, sir.”

“Telling him the blank was Dominic.” Q chuckled. “I’m not berating you, Adam. I think that was a master-stroke. I do admire Five’s little jokes sometimes though. He was the one who hung the tire. Amazing how far he’s progressed since he joined us. He was vanilla at the start. Even more so than your chunder but he is gay.”

“How did he end up here?”

“Ten was my Alpha in London. He recruited him. Seeing the fetish store after Four’s disappearance awoke a need… He had him in the dungeon within a fortnight. Only took three months for him to be mine.”

“Oh! Of course, he was a cop! M’s partner?”

Q nodded. “Now look at him. He’s developed a little bit of a sadistic side too. He still loves bondage of course, receiving, but he’s developed quite an imagination when it comes to handing it out. Perfect for a gold. Still shudders when he sees Four abusing the slug though.”

I took a couple of deep breaths before I said the next thing.

“Sir. I’ve seen the cemetery.”

“Yes. It’s inevitable when conducting a project this size there’ll be a few deaths. We do our best to ensure safety but the factory is terribly unstable and simply demolishing it isn’t enough.”

“I know, sir. It wasn’t the shock of seeing it. It was the shock of seeing the ones just labelled as Blank, sir.”

“It was their request. They’d fully embraced their lack of identity.”

“Yes, sir. And now I’d like to make mine. I’d like you to do the same with me if I do die, sir.”

“Just your name, date of capture and death?”

“I’m yours, sir. Fully. Fuck my old life. I’m sure I’ve said that before. I’m a completely different person, now. Why not mark my birth as the time the suit first went on, sir? Only details of my life as a slave, nothing more.”

“Very well. That is how you’ll appear. Nothing of your old existence will be remembered.”

“If what your said last night was right, sir, and I do remain a slave for another thousand or more years, I doubt even I’d remember anything before the suit anyway, sir.”

“Very good point. That’s one thing no-one knows. How human memory works beyond one hundred or so years. Does the brain have the capacity? What will be lost over the years? It does stand to reason that the earliest memories will be the first to go though.”

“Oh, yeah. Speaking of which, you have an unwilling volunteer, sir.”

He nodded. “The slug, I know. I reviewed the logs and what you said to it… Very well done.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I’ve thanked Four for the offer and accepted. As he said he wanted some too, I’ve told him he will and that’s all he’ll ever be told. Any enhancements now, he’ll only find out when he notices them, just as with you. I also informed M that the lift protocol update is now in place. How did you like Two?”

“I think when this is my home permanently, we’ll be the best of friends, sir. We seemed to hit it off anyway, sir.”

“What did you discuss?”

“After we’d allowed blank to halt the elevator between floors to speak to the blob, new ways to identify slaves in the elevator mainly, sir. Very technical, but as no slave weighs the same, we think it might be possible to determine their identities by weight alone, even if there’s more than one in the elevator, sir. It’d help with humans and dogs incapable of hitting the panel too, sir. It would require a more exact weight for everyone and that would need to be updated regularly. Especially in the case of the blob with its weight loss.”

“And if clothing offsets the weight too much?”

“Back to hitting the panel, sir. That’ll always be a fallback.”

“I approve. I may even implement it here once you think everything’s in place. That will require a lot more input from Two and its team though. A lot more jobs and a lot more places to go here.”
* * *
After breakfast the next morning, another session lying in the MRI. The doctor applied the waterproof covering to my dressing for the swim. God that was refreshing and there wasn’t even a need to wear trunks. He observed my performance and afterwards, changed the dressing.

It was a few hours later when I was summoned and carried back to the chair beside Q.

He rattled on the keyboard for a minute and two video feeds popped up. One in room four of a blank standing at ease before a work bench and a cloth covered… something. The room was immaculately clean. Whatever it’d made, it’d certainly tidied up after itself.

The other, the workbench in the rec room. Here, wood chippings littered the bench and the floor around it. Again, a blank stood at ease before something covered with a cloth.

“Hmm.” Q smiled. “Looks like we’ve already found it. Unless of course”

“Sir?”

“It was ordered to clean up after itself but maybe it’s only just finished, just on the deadline. Let’s see, shall we. M. Inspect the rec room one first, room four second. Let’s see if we have a winner and a very big loser.”

It wasn’t long before M entered the frame. He stood before the blank on the other side of the bench and tapped something onto his wrist. The blank immediately picked up whatever it was, held it up and swept off the cover.

Fuck me it was good but something was still wrong.

“Sir… Question for M?”

Q shrugged, “Well ask him then.”

“Oh… Oh right.” I selected him on my armband. “M… Not sure either of these are the one I interviewed.”

M tapped away. “What? What do you mean? Look at it. It’s astounding!”

A solid wooden base. At one end, two wooden pillars between which was a web of chain made from the finest links I’d ever seen. Attached to that by wrist and ankle restraints so the figure was in the centre of the web well off the ground, a blank in a spread eagle facing the chain. On the other side of the base, another black figure, this one wielding a whip. I smirked at the large golden eleven on the back of that one’s head. He’d even written the mark of ownership on my chest.

I shoved the beauty of the piece to one side. “The one I interviewed had a bit of a gut! Not exactly”

“Oh, that! We worked that off it in the gym already.”

“But it’s only been, what?”

“Couple of weeks. Wasn’t that much of a belly, Eleven.”

M stepped forward and leaned in to study it more closely. He turned it around in his hands and placed it carefully on the bench before tapping onto his armband again.

The blank twiddled. “It’s a practical piece, sir. It can just be used for decoration but it’s for master’s desk. It’s a letter rack, sir.”

My eyes boggled just as much as I imagined M’s were. “You said it was good, sir, but… Two days? That? You might have a new line to sell in your store if you put it on that permanently, sir.”

“The last piece was impressive enough but this one… Bloody hell, it’s got some talent. I might very well put that to use. What’s more, when it gets here, I might assign it the job of teacher.”

“If you do, sir… That’s one skill I’d love to learn, sir.”

M tapped something else into his band. The blank nodded and returned to the at ease stance while M made his way to the elevator.

He appeared before the other blank a few minutes later. Again, a repeat of the same at first.

The blank picked up the whatever-it-was and walked around to the front of the bench, it held it up in front of M’s face and in one swift move, thrust forward. The cover fell off revealing a chisel, the handle embedded into a block of wood.

The scene froze with the chisel less than an inch from M’s left goggle lens.

A minute later, the therapist and Alpha barged into the room. Alpha yanked the chisel out of its grasp and both hauled it up and carried it between them out of the room, one on the head, one on the feet.

Q sighed. “Well, that’s that.”

“Sir, it is up there now.”

“So?”

“Just make absolutely, positively sure, sir. No more errors, no more mistakes, please. Put it in the scanner just for confirmation.”

Q sighed and nodded. “It will take some time.”

“Is it necessary to do a full body one this time? If you could concentrate on just the head, wouldn’t that speed the process up?”

“Actually, yes. Good thought again, Adam.” A rattle of the keys. “Alpha. Put it in the scanner before taking it down to solitary confinement.”

“But sir, it attacked M!”

“Yes. It does seem to confirm our suspicions but without more evidence, it could be another blank. Better to be safe than sorry. Even attacking M wouldn’t warrant the punishment Eleven went through. The deaths of those children would. We’ll have the results in approximately…” he rattled on the keyboard again. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen, sir? It normally takes”

“Fifteen, Alpha. We’re only concentrating on the face, the rest is irrelevant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Q brought up the picture of the terrorist with his card and detonator again and beside it, the processed output of the scanner appeared. It was interesting to watch. All the different slices, different tissue types. Bone, cartilage, the muscle appeared and the blood vessels that fed them. All building up to an image that comprised mainly of muscle. No skin on this picture. Again, Q rattled on his keyboard.

“What are you doing, sir?”

“Contour comparison. With that, a 3D representation of the face… Watch.”

The muscles vanished to be replaced by what looked like a transparent face mask. Another rattle, he selected the eye dropper tool with the pointer and with that the skin tone from the CCTV image.

Clever.

As the final rendering completed, even with the bottom half of the face horribly distorted by the permanent gag it was quite clearly the same person. We had indeed got him.

“Alpha. We have confirmation. It’s the terrorist. Take it to block four solitary confinement cell. It isn’t going to see another human being for months. In fact… Just… put it in the block itself. We might as well have some fun with it first.”

Alpha nodded.

We watched its progress, Alpha at the head, the doc at the feet. They carried it down the stairs, onto the shop floor, into the elevator. Alpha headbutted the panel with the thing and then tapped two cards on it. The next thing we saw, the elevator on the cell level opened, they hauled it out, Alpha opened block four and both of them tossed it inside. The door slammed and the figure lay there. Immobile. Helpless. Trapped.

It was a while before I saw movement. They’d obviously returned to the control room to cancel the lockdown.

It sat up. It stood and walked back to the door it’d been thrown through. Then it looked up briefly as if hearing something. It shook its head, hit the panel and jumped.

Now it seemed the gravity of its situation was becoming apparent. It looked edgy, even panicked. It ran to the other end of the corridor and hit the panel on the double doors, another jump, another reaction as if it’d heard something.

Again, it ignored the voice. Obviously by this stage it was at “you have thirty seconds to comply.”

It ran down the line of cells, hitting each in turn resulting in further shocks, obviously neglecting to hit the panel of the one it’d been ordered to.

Just before it could hit the last, another shock. This one made it collapse to its knees.

“That looks a lot more powerful than the one I programmed, sir.”

Q nodded. “They have to learn obedience quickly. It is more severe. I ordered twelve to adjust the level. Seven. It won’t go higher than that though, unlike the blob’s code.”

Three more shocks, the third actually had it curl into a ball. Again it reacted to a voice in its head and this time, it bolted to the end by the double doors and slapped the panel it’d been told to. It looked in, stepped inside and while its back was to the door, it swung shut.

It looked at the bareness of the cell. Nothing but a bed and a mirror embedded into the wall. It turned to leave and only then noticed the door was closed. It ran to it and tried to force it open, then sank onto the bed and put its head in its hands.

“Can I, sir?”

“Speak to it?”

I nodded.

“Of course. You know its ID.”

I selected it on the armband.

“Your crimes are numerous, blank. I want to know why. We’ll begin with the least of them.”

It looked around in shock.

“Look up, blank. Back left corner of the cell. You can speak to us.”

It looked up at the camera and gave a… rather obscene gesture.

“Very well. If you won’t cooperate, we’ll just cut off your air.” I selected it on my fob and glanced at Q.

He nodded. “It’ll work. Repeaters, remember.”

A push of the button and a minute without left it heaving on the floor.

“Now. Why did you trash the store?”

It stared at the camera in what I could only guess was defiance. Another setting, it collapsed and writhed for ten seconds.

“Why did you trash the store? We can do a hell of a lot worse than that to you, blank. Answer the question or...” “Sir, what’s the worse we can do to it?”

Q chuckled. “A work of art. One of my blanks… Just select program P43. It lasts an hour and once it’s begun nothing can end it.”

It was signing now. “Or what?”

“Oh trust me, you don’t want to find out. Answer the question!”

“You’re disgusting perverts and that store is”

“You’re just as perverted as the rest of us, blank.” I glanced at Q, deselected it and asked “What did it enjoy, sir? In the fetish evaluation?”

Q chuckled. “Heap on the self loathing? I like it.” another rattle on the keyboard and its stats popped up.

“According to our tests on you, blank, you enjoyed a hell of a lot in our dungeon. You became sexually excited by every form of bondage we could throw at you. You also loved being caned. Now, why did you destroy thousands of dollars of your master’s stock?”

“I didn’t enjoy it. I hated what you did to me!”

“You might’ve hated yourself for finding enjoyment in it, but you did enjoy it, blank.”

It shook its head violently. “Hated it! I hated everything!”

“No, you hated yourself. I know another man like that. I won’t say like you because I for one am not that insulting. A man who found he became sexually excited by the things we did to him. A man forced against his will into the suit while paralysed. A man who over the last five years learned to accept what he is. More, learned to love it. You know that man, blank. That man’s M, blank.”

“Stop calling me blank! My name is”

“Oh, we know your name was Ibrahim Khan. It’s blank now. Goes with the suit and that is for life! That brings us on to your next crime. No point in even mentioning the crime of attacking M with a chisel, that’s one’s obvious, you knew you’d been discovered. Why did you murder over eight hundred children, blank?”

This really got its attention. It froze. It looked around. Finally, it signed. “That many?”

“More, those were just the ones you killed. What about the ones permanently maimed? The ones who lost legs? Arms? The ones blinded? Why?”

“They were infidels! They deserve to die. Nowhere near as much as you deserve to die but”

“They were innocents. They committed no crimes by any stretch of any holy book! Most of them were under ten years old, you fucker!”

“Kill the next generation and the infidels will falter! Kill them all! We will not rest until the whole world bows to Sharia law!”

“Just out of curiosity, what sin are we committing?”

“Homosexuality is a sin! Sodomy is a sin!”

“Much as it may have escaped your attention but no-one here is even capable of any homosexual acts as described by you. How can you be sodomised when your ass is filled with a permanent plug? How can you commit sodomy when your cock’s in a permanent cage, you utter fuckwit? Now... You put on the suit. Allowed yourself to be sealed into it. Why?”

It collapsed onto the bed. It stared at the wall opposite. Its fingers still.

I gave it another zap. This time, a thirty second level ten. Oh god did it writhe.

The moment it ended, the blank rolled off the bed and forced itself back to its feet. Its knees collapsed out from under it the first time but eventually it managed.

“That still isn’t the worst we can do to you, blank. I asked you a question. Answer it. Why did you give yourself to my master, allow a permanent suit? Allow yourself to be silenced and plugged for the rest of your life?”

“Nothing lasts forever, you fools! You got me out of the city. You’ll get me out of the country”

I chuckled. “Oh god, you think you’re leaving the country? After we discovered the e… I don’t even think evil is strong enough a word. I don’t think there is a word strong enough for what you’ve done! Oh, eventually, maybe in a few months, you will be leaving this place. So what? You thought…” I could barely contain myself. “You thought you could just put on a suit, join us and then escape when you felt like it! Is that it?”

Its shoulders sagged and it nodded.

“Well, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. I’ll give you the bad news first. I know that suit’s utterly impossible to remove because I’ve suffered in mine. Someone shot me once and the bullet turned to dust on impact. It still caused me some serious damage and I took months to recover! Knives can’t cut it. Power tools can’t cut it and anything more powerful than those will only cook you in the suit without damaging the suit itself. It is impossible to escape that suit. That’s the bad news… for you… Good for us though.”

It started shaking its head again.

“The good news is we’ll be letting you go in a few months. We’ll return you to your little friends in Atlanta. Let them deal with you.”

It backed into the wall and shook its head even more. It collapsed onto its knees.

“Oh, I have one piece of advice. You will be sent there. You’ll go for your normal flush and wash and while there you’ll be drugged and wake up in that marvellous city. Full of delightful lynch mobs out for your blood. Hand yourself in at the nearest police station when you wake up, blank. If you want to survive the day, do that. We’ve been keeping them stirred up. They know exactly what you look like in that suit and if even one of them sees you, you’re not likely to survive. Fine by me although I would prefer it if you did.”

Its head snapped back to the camera.

“Of course I want you to survive, blank. I want you to suffer. I want you to pay for what you’ve done. Of course, nothing can pay for all the lives you’ve ended and ruined but I want you to suffer for the rest of your life. Ah yes, and as the plug is also permanent the only way for you to expel bodily waste, or, if you like, take a shit, is to remove the core. That core is locked and we handed the key to the police along with all the tubing, food and cleaner you need to survive. Even if you evade the lynch mobs you’ll be dead in a month without those things.”

It didn’t move. It didn’t say anything.

“I suppose you believe that bullshit about the fifty virgins awaiting you when you die too, do you?”

It nodded slowly. “Seventy-two.”

“Errr… How does that work in your case? How can you expect that? I may be wrong, I’m not a an Islamic scholar but doesn’t that virgin crap only apply to martyrs?”

It jumped. I saw that much.

“You do know what a martyr is don’t you? It’s not someone who goes around bombing schools, it’s someone who died for their beliefs! My god, you’re even dumber than I suspected. I just hope you do get those however many virgins when you die, but that every single one of them is an incredibly horny, ugly, obese, hairy, sixty year old man with eye watering BO and halitosis. Until we send you back to face your crimes, solitary confinement. The only voice you hear from now on is that of the computer. You won’t see another human being and none will talk to you. We’ll start at three months.”

The blank collapsed back onto the bed and rolled into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably.