Drone
6
Alex was purchased by a brothel.
In spite of her declining mental state, it didn’t take her long after Master Torim’s recovery to figure this state of affairs out. Alex’s new owners, of whom Torim was the majority participant, were a consortium of Betan businessmen. They had managed to scrape together enough money to buy her and six other pleasure drones. Not everyone on Beta Prime could afford their own pleasure drone; few, in fact, possessed anywhere near the wealth or the political clout necessary. The consortium’s plan was to ensure that at least the temporary use of a pleasure drone was both enjoyable and affordable. Alex never learned exactly where her brothel was. She knew it was on Beta Prime by the accents and clothing of her patrons, but that was it. She settled into her life of coitus and fellatio with alarming ease.
She lost track of the time almost at once. She and her fellow drones almost never left the service rooms they were stationed in. Twenty-seven hours a day they spent, day after day, unless they were taken out for an inspection or a private party for their businessmen owners. They were not kept in perpetual use—there were long periods when Alex lay alone on the solitary bed in her chamber staring blankly at the ceiling—but months did go by without her ever leaving her workspace. By chance one period, glancing at the arm of her then use-Master, she had the presence of mind to notice his wrist chronometer. The date told her more than a year had gone by since her capture and transformation by Master Nax.
A year, she had thought numbly. It’s only been a year. Then she returned her proper attention to her current Master’s cock.
On the one hand, the length of time she had spent as a pleasure drone came as a surprise to Alex. The weeks on board the Solarian vessel, the months spent in her cubicle at the brothel, they had crawled by, agonizingly at some points. It’s only been a year, she had thought. At times, she had felt like it had been centuries. Millennia. At the same time, though, and quite paradoxically, it all felt like a blur, as if no time at all had passed. The simple reason was the Now . . . the blissful, mindless tranquility of being a pleasure drone, of always having been a pleasure drone. Noticing that use-Master’s watch was a big thing in her life. It had certainly been the highlight of her day, that day. Usually, the drone that she was becoming—of always having been—didn’t have the capacity, the mindfulness, to notice anything other than her orders, genitalia, and sexual maneuverings. Her attention span, she knew, was declining.
With every passing day, it was harder to keep track of who she was and what she had been.
She was becoming a pleasure drone, on the inside as completely as she was on the out.
She knew she had not always been a pleasure drone. Of that much, she was sure. She knew it, despite what she felt inside. Faces came to her when she was alone, alone and staring up at the ceiling. When she was with a use-Master, there was ordinarily nothing but the use-Master in her mind: his orders, his pleasure, her heat, her programming.
But alone, sometimes, faces came to her, and those told her that she was something different.
The names attached to those faces she was increasingly having trouble with. It was only by her constant repetition that she recalled the important ones.
Alex. Peter. Nax.
Beyond that, there were just faces, and, progressively more, the faces themselves would often blur.
One period one day, having just completed a full-body massage and intensive licking of a use-Master’s anus, alone once more, the pleasure drone was suddenly seized by a violent imagery. She saw from a woman’s perspective a leering, jowly, overly made-up face. She felt hair, brown hair, on her head and flowing down her back. The sensory input was so clear and immediate she nearly fell off of the bed.
No! You can’t! You mustn’t! she heard this woman say to the man, and he replied, But I can and I will, my royalist scum. It was a perplexing image, and not something for which the drone was programmed to respond. [Input Error] her internal processing declared. [Error. Error. Error].
No, not an error, she thought, coolly, trying to think around the [Error. Error] messages. A memory. That was a memory. That was when [the drone] . . I? . . I was . . . transformed . . ?
She felt no emotion. After the initial surprise, which had temporarily upset her balance, she felt no sense of panic. And in trying to figure out what had prompted the annoying image, the drone also felt no emotion. It was merely an anomaly, an inconsistency in her otherwise smoothly operating systems.
I was . . transformed into a pleasure drone. The [Error] messaging had ceased.
The drone considered what must have occurred.
I had been . . that woman . . before becoming a pleasure drone.
After a moment, she accepted this idea. It felt strange, but she knew it was true nonetheless.
That woman had a name, the drone went on to conjecture. That means, I had a name before becoming a pleasure drone. Again, the incongruity was obvious and threatened an [Input Error], but she persevered. All women have names, and I was a woman, so [the drone] once had a name.
She thought a moment more. Alex, she slowly recalled. My name was Alex.
That too felt true. It didn’t feel right, but it felt true.
Alex did not want to become [the drone], the drone calmly contemplated. She had struggled, but her struggle had not been successful. She had been transformed into a pleasure drone. This [drone]. That was a tough thought, yet having completed it, the drone felt something almost like a burst of pleasure. Pleasure reminded her of her burning, lowly heat then, and she lay for a long time boiling before returning to her mental exercise. The fact that she was having a mental exercise, she believed, was the proof for her conclusions, and again she felt a small measure of satisfaction with the notion.
The question which concerned the drone most was why Alex had not wanted to become a drone.
She was not put back into use for several hours, so she had sufficient downtime to think about it.
Why did Alex struggle? the drone asked herself. She tried to come up with reasons, but the reasons she put forth did not bring her the same sort of satisfaction she had felt before.
Alex must have wanted to keep her freedom. But why? The only thing the drone could hypothesize was that Alex must have felt freedom was more important than being a pleasure drone and servicing [Masters], and that didn’t make sense. Servicing [Masters] was the most important thing in reality.
It was reality.
There was nothing else but the Service of Masters.
If Alex had won her struggle, she thought, [the drone] would not exist. I would not exist. I would not be servicing [Masters]. If the drone could have seen herself in a mirror at that exact moment, the smallest of frowns would have been visible around her mouth. But there was no mirror, and the slight crease was immediately smoothed over by the perpetually placid countenance of a pleasure drone.
That was the wall. That absurd idea of not being able to service Masters was the impassable obstacle in her mind. The drone could not get past it, no matter how many different avenues in her mind she tried. Eventually, the complex yet ultimately futile speculating brought on an [Input Error], and she stopped thinking altogether, exhausted by the effort. [Error. Error. Error]. The pleasure drone relaxed and let the Now take her again. [Error Corrected. Activate Rest Mode. Rest Mode].
The wall had been closer this time.
Every time she had these pointless sessions with herself, the wall got just a little bit closer to the Now. It was as if some peculiarity, some flaw in her design, would compel her to periodically run down an alley somewhere, a narrow alley with high walls to either side, starting and away from the busy, ever productive continuum of her life, her Service, and ending at the wall, that absurdity of not being of Service to her Masters, and she stopped, unable, unwilling to go further.
The distance she ran to get to that point got shorter and shorter. The alley got shorter and shorter, the wall steadily approaching the street, the Now, the ever-present Now in which she spent her life.
Eventually, the drone knew, the wall would come even with the street. The alley would disappear, and there would only be the Now of fucking and sucking and caressing and Serving, always Serving.
That would be . . . peaceful. Serene. Utterly tranquil.
It would be a relief not to think anymore.
Aside from the pleasure she derived in pleasing her [Masters], this thought was the most comforting thought she had.