AGAINST THE MACHINE
CHAPTER ONE by Riley Jericho rileyjericho@yahoo.com
The attending Care-Giver glanced around the spacious room at his charges that formed group M-9985201.12 (12 being the number of Male patients, put together in group identifier 9985201). There didn't have to be twelve, but he certainly preferred not to have many more than that in one go. Over his years in this role he had processed many such groups and, no doubt, there would be many more - though if plans for his future worked as he was hoping, those ones might be under someone else's care.
This particular group didn't know he was there yet and he moved quietly to his master console and studied the readouts on M-9985201.12.
This particular room - the Treatment Room - was clean and futuristically equipped, but quite functional and clinically stark compared to some in this sizeable establishment. It wasn't really a big place either and, despite the name, didn't really have any particular odour to it that would shout `hospital!'. It was simple, warm, clean, white and bright; although the lighting levels could be manipulated if the Attendant cared to - just like the people were being manipulated in front of his eyes. Just now, the room was quiet, though it was unlikely to remain that way for long.
The hapless twelve lay supine, each on their individual couches, without a shred of clothing covering their bodies and secured there by arm and leg restraints. Each couch provided simple monitoring functions for its occupant and he could see from the readouts that most were just coming round from the enforced unconsciousness. At that moment they were still disorientated and he could see a few heads twisting from side to side where they lay, trying to make some sense of their surroundings.
They had actually been in the facility for several days, but the last thing they would remember would probably be the Courtroom just after they received their sentence. And then nothing...until now.
About 30 minutes earlier he had overseen bringing the twelve unconscious occupants of these couches from the surgical section to this, the Treatment Room, and had arranged them into the places he had pre-assigned. This was primarily a younger group of mid to late teens - that is with the exceptions of young boy, Noah, and also the man in his 30's who, according to his notes, was here of his own accord. He posed no threat and in fact the Attendant had specifically picked him out of the secondary listings and added him to this quota. From experience he knew such an adult in a group like this brought a calming influence, which could really help.
Finally all were awake and, as the grogginess dissipated, the sense of disquiet grew, though the silence was still maintained. None of them realised he was there until he pressed a key on his console. Several started in surprise as, seemingly of its own accord, each couch began to move to take up the position he required. At the same time the lighting levels came up.
As the backrest began to raise them to the sitting position, there were mutters of dismay as, for the first time, they saw the Treatment Room properly and knew it for what it was.
They would be attempting to piece it together in their heads, he knew. They would remember that they had been in a courtroom where this particular sentence had been pronounced. Perhaps they hoped there would be time and opportunity to change the course that had been set? Maybe, if they had a good lawyer, they had hoped there would still be time to wriggle away; opportunity to negotiate or get some kind of stay of execution of the Court's decision? To suddenly awake in this particular room and to look down on themselves and realise that the surgical modifications had already been completed without them even knowing would be a complete shock!
`Wait! I'm not ready!' they would be shouting in their heads. "This is a mistake! Fuck - can't we talk about this?"
And those same heads began to turn rapidly as they saw others caught in this same trap as themselves -- bound naked and helpless to the couches. Some stared down at their own bodies and then at those nearby to see the smooth skin and the same flash of metal that indicated that they had already been surgically prepared. And then they saw the Attendant too, and the fear that spread was palpable. He could see it rippling in waves around the room. He could almost taste it, though that gave him no sense of satisfaction.
Many of them were struggling now - straining at the bonds that captured them, fully aware of exactly where they were, and what was intended for them in this place. Most were terrified -- and maybe they had every right to be. The reason was simple and the implications profound; they were about to be joined to The Machine and, whatever people claimed, none survived that unchanged.
Once an individual found him or herself in the Treatment Room and made ready for the Machine, how long would it take?
Once they were connected, his average was 15 minutes. Not long at all really, but he knew it could feel like a lifetime for those already pulling at the restraints round about him.
He walked slowly down the middle of the room. If he didn't have their attention before, he certainly did now and 24 eyeballs were locked on to him, though still not a word passed their lips. Finally, as he reached the last couch, one finally broke and, with a voice that was dry and edgy, screeched at him.
"Fuck you, Gringo. You let me out of this now, and maybe I won't slit your throat tomorrow!"
The Attendant noted him as he had passed by the end of his couch. He was one of the Hispanics, an 18 year old street-wise, lifetime trouble maker, and one of the eldest of the group of twelve. What was unsurprising was that he had ended up in this room. What was a minor miracle was that it had taken so long to get here! The Attendant usually got the Hispanic guys, as he spoke fluent Spanish. Not that it was usually needed, as personal conversation didn't rate highly in this place - though he'd learned some quite colourful phrases over the last years!
As if that first threat had emboldened them all, swearing and expletives gathered apace and seared the air around the room. Of course, they were angry and maybe they had right to be; bitterly angry that the rest of society had singled them out to be sent here; angry at him as the one who would press the button on them. But most of all they were scared...really scared, as the reputation of the Machine was well known.
Disbelief in the power of Machine evoked plenty of bravado and many (at least at a safe distance from the gates to this establishment) held the firm belief that they would somehow be different from everyone else. They could never be taken and there was plenty of stuff out there that gave 'unbeatable expertise' of how to cheat it; hundreds of articles written by hotheads explaining how they would or had resisted and fooled it to somehow escape its grip intact.
It made him smile.
Everyone resisted - some even successfully for a while - but always, as with the thousands he had seen being modified in this way, he knew without doubt that to a man (or woman), everyone succumbed. And those that claimed they had taken it on and foiled it were liars and had never felt the irresistible mating of the umbilical to the surgically embedded ring, or the demonic caress of the Machine as it began to overwhelm them.
Slowly he passed through the group once more. After the initial outburst, they had mostly gone quiet as if fearing it would land them in even greater trouble. Every head tracked with him and he took stock of them once more. A few thugs; some here for sex crimes; mostly the usual breed that ended up here. Except the older guy and young Noah who were a bit different of course.
And what was `here'?
'Here' was a prison of sorts - maybe better called a 'correctional facility', although time and political correctness now described this place as a 'Centre for Emotional Wellness'. Well-spun government PR kept the public (as if they cared anyway) in the happy belief that what was done within these walls was only for the long-term good of the patients (a more pleasant term than prisoner).
Actually, for many it could be surprisingly true; life might well be better. But the majority were not here by choice, and were being detained here for some misdemeanor at the request of a judge, who had decided they had some problem that could and would be dealt with; those particular individuals being offered (with or with out their consent) a better and more fulfilling life.
But, however you looked at it, they were still inmates and this was correctional treatment.
In the old days, young men who fell foul of the law had been placed in prisons and other long-term correctional institutions, but there were very few of those around anymore. Why? The reality was that those old fashioned methods were unbelievably expensive and, in the end, did nothing much to change negative behaviour. In fact, often the opposite occurred; some young guy put away for a few months for a minor misdemeanor could, through peer pressure and less than perfect role models, end up spending most of his life in and out of those facilities.
It was costly and useless.
Whatever people said about the physical alterations that took place here, they were relatively minor. The rather radicle circumcision of course, followed by the implanting of the collar and the biotechnology nerve sleeve under the skin that surrounded the full length of the shaft. This tried and tested technology was fairly simple and none of it was dangerous or life threatening -- although, through those alterations, irrevocable change would be achieved.
The technology for everything that happened here had been around for some time and, in fact, bizarrely, it had begun with sex!
In the last century, science had conquered the junction between flesh and the inanimate; the marrying together of man-made materials and human flesh to develop a nanotechnology that could integrate with the body on a cellular level with no fear of rejection - deftly sidestepping the human body's natural cellular reaction to eliminate the foreign intruder. In time, the potential of the technology was explored and fully developed into useful practice, allowing the lame to walk again and the blind to see once more.
The researchers made even more breakthroughs when they discovered how to apply the theories of nanotechnology to connect to the tissues of the human brain; nanotechnology referring to a technology of being able to work with materials small enough to fit in and around human cells. Implementing this nanotechnology, Bio-Fibers were constructed that were part micro computer and part human flesh; specialized tissue that could literally be trained to grow into the body and splice into the existing nervous system.
The scientists, of course, only had good intentions at heart...to help people. It was what had made sight reconstruction a possibility as researchers experimented growing tiny filaments of the Bio-Fibers that they had developed; introducing them into the eye socket and, guided by computers, directing their growth directly into the brain to successfully synchronise with the nerve plexus where visual data was processed. Once this newly grown nerve connection was in place, it was simple to add a small camera into the eye socket itself and for the brain to receive images from there. It was a bit ropey at first but, for their own reasons, billions in funding got poured in by the military and the technology improved rapidly.
It came down to a bored young university graduate who first began to seriously check out the less esoteric outcomes of the technology as he explored both pleasure and pain to pinpoint exactly how the brain dealt with those and also with the emotions that went with them.
Quickly deciding that there was not much future in pain, he wired up endless mice and fried most of their brains before perfecting access to the specific part of the brain's cortex that dealt with pleasurable feelings.
In particular - sexual pleasure.
He successfully progressed to monkeys and, because nobody else was willing to risk it, finally went the whole hog and grew the Bio-Fibers into his own central nervous system to join with the now, well-understood, cortico-sensory pleasure tract. For publicity reasons, he wrote papers calling it "The Pleasure Zone!" and struck gold. This was almost 50 years ago now. Sadly he had overloaded in one experiment, but had died exceedingly happy!
Others took up the baton, and money poured in and, not surprisingly, the "Pleasure Zone" found market interest in a proliferation of new-style sex toys!
That made a lot of people happy, though the government and the armed forces had a slightly less humanitarian interest in the technology. For them, the potential for hard wired access the human brain - and to that more indefinable entity "the mind", was high on their agenda - mostly so they could strip it of its secrets!
For centuries the Human Race had tried to perfect ways of breaking into a person's mind against the will of that individual. It was called torture. And, whilst the world got giddy with a new range of sex toys, it was the military that took the technology forward and pioneered the process of breaking the locks and removing the barriers to give unhindered access to both take and to plant whatever they chose into a subject's mind.
In this developing technology, they also realised the clear connection between pain and pleasure though, staying true to form, they initially focused on the former with their unfortunate subjects. Finally, a group of slightly more intelligent army scientists understood that pleasure could unlock the gates of the mind just as effectively...and even leave the individual sane at the end of the day!
The bio-science was fast tracked and the Bio-Fibers were integrated with nanite robots - cell sized computer entities that could swarm and act as a collective and could quickly and safely be grown deep into the central nervous system. The technique was simple enough and, as they perfected it, the process could be completed in a matter of days rather than months.
Once 'wired' into the subject like this, computers could probe the mind and, by stimulating the pleasure tracts of the cortex, were able to simulate all kinds of ecstasy.
Apart from offering their subjects a good time (whether they wanted one or not), it was found to be the key to the critical disengaging of the individuals's control over themselves. The keystone to this disengagement was compulsion. Compelled to do something remarkably simple in the end -- to willingly say yes'. Because, in the right circumstances, if the mind gives in and says YES' to one thing, it could be quite hard to say NO to another.
The compulsion employed for this was also simple, and as old as the hills.
Ejaculate.
But it was far deeper than just causing an individual to have an orgasm. Even in those early days there were stacks of quite effective tools that could fully guarantee a man squirted on command, even if he didn't plan to, or actually even want to! No, the key to the compulsion was that the subject needed to be brought to the point where rather than resisting orgasm, he became desperate for it and fully welcomed it fully. And as he welcomed it, for that briefest period of time, a wide range of subconscious barriers were lowered. That was the moment that the mind probes waited for and took advantage of and, unexpectedly for the hapless individual, he found himself then saying yes to anything else the computer probes required.
The military were pretty happy with that, although it was still limited, and they wanted more. It was OK for a one time entry into an individual mind, to sift through and take what they wanted but, as soon as the probes withdrew, the barriers reformed. At that point they found that to subsequently open up a subject again was time consuming, and much harder the second time. Additionally they wanted to mentally condition individuals with different objectives and they wanted the individual to remain under their control permanently. But there was the problem that most of the conditioning performed tended to be temporary if there wasn't regular reinforcement.
They wanted one final solution, because the pot of honey at the end of the rainbow was permanent access. And finally they got it.
They got it by creating a way to physically re-engineer the way the brain transferred data.
The concept was simple.
Imagine a single neural pathway through which information is passing up and down; a road that is accessing a part of the central nervous system and through which the brain controls the body. But the problem is, it has a gate half way down it, which the owner can close at will to deny access.
Previously, the only way through was to smash the gate -- only to discover, when travelling that route again, that it had been reformed by the owner. So, instead of trying to negotiate the gate every time, the military neuro- scientists perfected a technique of destroying the old road completely and building a new one.
And this one had no gate, and the road belonged to them and them alone.
It was called Synaptic Remodeling.
With the Remodeling completed, the individual often had little inkling anything had changed...other than a temporary headache...and, oh yes, the total loss of the ability to say `NO' ever again to requests by whoever now owned that highway! They could be conditioned and reconditioned at will to accept whatever personality and values needed to be programmed into them. The whole mind could be re-engineered if desired.
Finally, as is often he case with these things, the costs of the technique dropped such that it wasn't only the military that could afford it. The national legal system began to think it was a good idea too, as a way of dealing with persistent offenders. And, in the intervening half-century, the technology and techniques had developed hugely. Conditioning that had taken weeks, could now be achieved in a few short days.
Gradually, the old prison system was phased out and replaced by facilities, like this one where men and women (and even boys and girls) could be simply reprogrammed and returned to society, rather than housed for years on end, in expensive lockups.
It seemed to work, and was definitely a lot cheaper than life imprisonment!
The Attendant looked around the room. Today's twelve were all held securely, each one bound to one of the restraining couches on which they would now remain until the full re-engineering process was completed; a process that took 4 or 5 days.
During the final couple of days, they would be able to get up and enjoy being outside, socializing with others to start the road down their changed worlds, but would return to the couch each night to be reconnected to the Machine. This could go on for for extended periods of time though which the Machine would finalise the conditioning it was imposing; up to the point where it had decided they were ready.
Having got their attention, the Attendant began to make the final preparations for the procedure.
This was a fairly modern facility and the couches were the newer floating type, an electromagnetic technology that made things so much easier! They floated around a metre off the ground and could be programmed to follow him, or even be sent off on their own, to whatever destination he chose. He preferred them to the old style beds that needed pushing and pulling. It used to be a complete pain, especially when you had to manually connect them into the lift mechanism that would store the couch, and it's owner, in the holding bays; storage rooms containing efficient stacks of beds, with their unconscious occupants, all plugged in and being conditioned as they slept; oblivious to what was being done to them.
Here in the Treatment Room, the backrest of the couch was now set so that each patient was sitting partially upright; enough to see what was going on with themselves and the other patients.
Different Attendants did different things. Some just left the patients flat, connected them to the umbilical and went off to read a book, not really caring how they were doing. But they were officially called 'Care-Givers', and he for one felt much more of a responsibility to show that care than just sit and read a novel.
Anyway, few could match his 15 minute average.
Standing now roughly in the middle of the two rows of couches, he began to speak, turning ever so often to try to make eye contact with each one individually. Not wanting to frighten the young boy, Noah, he chose his words carefully.
"I realise that the majority of you don't want to be here, but your transfer to this facility has been the decision of the court," he began. Maybe they were surprised to hear his voice, but there was no response to his words. He glanced briefly at the older guy, Jack Clifford, who unusually, was here by choice.
"I'm also fully aware of the full reasons the court decided you should be here, but I'm not here to judge you, I'm here to help you through this process."
"Fuck you!" screamed Carlos, the Hispanic teen, finding his tongue at last.
The Attendant ignored him for the moment.
"I'm sure most of you know about the Machine and what the process is about. It goes without saying that not everyone finds this easy, but try to stay relaxed and not fight it and it will be much easier."
Saying that, he knew that everyone fought and everyone struggled. It was instinctive.
"As you can already see, a special implant has been embedded into you penis and this is the point where a connection will be made that will allow the process to run and fully complete in you. If you have anything you want to ask me, do so as I come round, but I suggest we just get on with this so it's completed as soon as possible now."
There was no need to say any more. All those here -- except perhaps Noah -- would know exactly what the Machine was programmed to do, so with that he moved towards the first patient he would mate via the umbilical.
He had come to realise that the positioning of the couch was crucial at this stage in the process. Over the years he'd experimented with both flat and various degrees of incline and found it much more effective the second way, especially with men and boys. To have them actually watch -- and to have others watch them - as they were personally mated to the Machine and then find themselves helpless to stop the inevitable and very personal erection that followed, was often enough to initiate the disintegration of their mental blockade.
Sitting up also meant that they couldn't really avoid seeing what was happening with the others, and to that purpose they were all gathered quite close together. To be forced to observe others finally succumb to the compulsion and to the orgasm that was waiting for them, weakened those that remained.
Arrayed along the room at regular intervals, but set out from the wall a couple of metres, were a series of posts. Each couch rested near a post. The post housed the hard-wired connection to the Machine -- the umbilical - as well as patient monitoring equipment. There was additional computer access built in to control and enhance the process if needed. For the most part it was fully automatic, but the Attendant was also quite experienced and would often guide the Machine as needed. From each post that was currently in operation this morning, the umbilical rested, ready to be snaked out to where the patient sat waiting.
He moved to the first one and began lowering the stirrups.
The side stirrups on the new model were clever - in fact, the whole design was clever! Like all the others, this young man had both legs from the knee down encased in a stirrup that molded itself snuggly to the shape of his leg. Each stirrup could then move independently from the couch and from each other. If you wanted the legs flat, then they would be flat; if you wanted them up in the air and widely split then they could do that too!
Each individual had been in the supine position up until this point and the stirrups had been positioned horizontally. But now it was time to change that and he began to prepare the first one in the same way that he would for all the others, by moving the stirrups down and out from either side of the couch; widely separating the young man's thighs so that the groin would be fully accessible. The lower part of the bed also folded back and under, to make it easier for him to work.
The first one was the Hispanic guy. He always chose that first one carefully, taking the toughest and most verbal...and it was clear who that was!
As the stirrups operated and the bed under his thighs disappeared, the boy growled at him dangerously, straining at the bonds in the belief he could break them. As his muscular legs separated, his rather long circumcised appendage came onto display. It was quite impressive! The rest of the boys also could see the impact of the removal of the guy's pubic hair as, like all the rest of them, he had been made completely smooth down there.
"You fucking bastard!" Carlos shouted struggling hard. He spat at the Attendant, but it was poorly aimed and missed the mark.
After having opened his legs, the Attendant pulled a soft rubberized band over and across the boy's stomach and hips. Know simply as the Ab-Band, it was a bit like rubberized saron wrap. Once stretched across and clipped, the band mechanism would pull out all the slack down, effectively restricting any movement of his hips that might interfere with trying to make the connection with the umbilical.
He was ready.
"You touch that dick, I kill you! No machine is gonna fuck me, motherfucker!"
But with everyone else quietly - and fearfully -watching and wondering what would happen next, the Attendant moved between the boy's splayed legs, took the umbilical and, without a word, connected the boy to the Machine.
At the end of each umbilical was an innocuous, simple looking, collar that went over the head of the glans and bio-mechanically docked with its counterpart ring, previously surgically implanted into the sulcus of the male. It was silver coloured, and looked a little like a wide wedding band. Which, frankly, is exactly what it was.
It was called mating and it was the most devastating sexual encounter a man or boy would ever experience -- and, to sexually encounter the Machine in this way and be mated to it for the FIRST time marked the moment from which it would be the ONLY type of sexual encounter they would ever be free to enjoy.
For the rest of their lives. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- AGAINST THE MACHINE is a story by Riley Jericho rileyjericho@yahoo.com