THE MIRROR
CHAPTER 4 — THE REDHEAD
Weak sun through Tokyo smog. Takeshi wandered, shopping. Calm, now. A plan had formed, as it always did when she had a problem to solve.
As she walked, she reflected on her frustration, and decided that it stemmed from the fact that her previous assignments had been very straightforward in comparison. She was simply used to getting results, and she didn’t like things getting in the way. For example, take the Redhead. Easy, peasy!
Takeshi’s bots were all over the hundreds and thousands of websites and social media dealing with the areas that the subject needed to be interested in, scanning for links, traffic patterns, sequential clickthroughs, comments and contributions, aliases, creating and recreating a web of IP addresses, usernames, protocols.
The Redhead existed in a mesh of data, all unknown to her, her reflections all blithely unconsidered as she sashayed her way through the life of the mind. Takeshi’s bots could see through her like glass.
Browsing some of Shinjuku’s less mainstream outlets, Takeshi had decided to buy some very specific items today. She was seeking empathy. She needed to understand the target, if she was to make headway.
And it was exciting! All work and no play makes Tak a dull girl.
It was all about patterns. There were algorithms involved here. How frequently did the subjects visit website X, Y, Z? What content did they consume? What were the key words, concepts, that were patterned here? What were the signifiers of their usernames, their online dialogue, their hesitant conversations with other anonymous friends? What went on their dating profiles, the hookup sites, the forums? What did they buy?
The patterns determined and mirrored clusters of implicit preferences, unarticulated but present, and from this came the shortlist.
The Redhead had been option #1 in a shortlist of ten.
In this shop, Takeshi considered the weight and strength of the key items, hefting each of them in her hands against other, similar options. Tokyo neon gleamed, reflected in steel. Yes, the collar and cuffs were perfect. This would help her understand. Understanding meant power.
Professional judgement: Takeshi went looking through the Redhead’s pattern files and data streams, seeking things only human eyes and instinct can perceive. Very little could be hidden from Takeshi, and where it was unusually well hidden, she could usually hack through the screens and security in a few minutes.
This subject’s eyes. Sparky enough to be a challenge? That look. Bold enough, but submissive enough to pass? Open minded enough?
What was that … thing … they bought?
These conversations, threads, IM’s. Sufficiently graphic?
These fantasies. Real enough?
The Redhead had ticked all the boxes.
Takeshi usually tried not to speculate on exactly what the Client wanted with the Subject, beyond that which was relevant to her assignment. But always, she wondered. What did they do? What extremes of pleasure did they gain? What was real, and what was not?
Understanding. Empathy.
In the cool sterile quiet of the bodymod place, she winced at the sudden sharp stab of pain through her groin, as the piercing went in.
One down, three to go.
Takeshi’s clients wanted a clear outcome, and she had a reputation to consider. There was always a period of agonising before she prepared her final profile and wrote the email recommending a single Subject.
She often used her vibrator, or meditated for half an hour, or—as in the case of the Redhead project—both, before finally pressing “send”.
Thus, Subject became Target, and it was then Takeshi’s job to catfish her in.
The new member of a particular online community who immediately pushed all the right buttons, intriguing the subject to engage, converse, communicate, share. The steady drip of ideas and photos and media and shared thoughts, and then the leap of faith, the wild surmise, leading inevitably to the meeting, to the action, to whatever the Client had in mind.
Fishing always took Takeshi to edge, and she often had to tell herself to dial down and focus on the project.
The Redhead had taken the bait surprisingly quickly, and without hesitation.
The inversion of the virtual into the real.
At the precise moment Target met Client, all responsibility left Takeshi, and her contract was deemed fulfilled. It was over to them.
At the precise moment Winter had confirmed that he had met Redhead, in real life, and that she was exactly on brief as always, Takeshi’s fee landed.
Redhead had been top-decile active on all the key social sites: makemeyourslave.com; controllll.me; and most notably, cocksuckr.net. On the latter, her profile picture, whilst artfully anonymised, clearly showed the Redhead in the specified position, engaging in activity of the specified variety in keeping with the nature of the site. In fact, the Redhead had uploaded an unusually large and varied selection of photos, which Takeshi had enjoyed scanning through.
In pursuit of empathy, Takeshi had signed up, and enjoyed many wild evenings of anonymous service. Always, she imagined it was Winter in her mouth, though she had never met him. If her partners wanted to control and ride her in other ways too, then in her mind it was always the faceless, nameless, Client’s cock that filled her.
In the hotel in Macau, she had donned her new red wig and admired her pretty Eurasian face and slender figure in the mirror, before going out to party. And she was suddenly in the mood to party hard. It was in Macau that she had what she thought of as The Epiphany—from where it came, or how or why, she had no clue; she only knew that she had begun to learn how to truly express herself.
She had found herself doing things with her body that she’d never experienced before, and her body had responded as if with a mind of its own. Free, at last, from duty and obligation. Takeshi Version Three.
Takeshi wondered again what had happened to the Redhead, and what it was that Winter had wanted from her.
Back in her apartment, shopping concluded, she drew the blinds, stripped and admired her new look. In the full length mirror she saw herself as if for the first time. The nipple piercings caught the light beautifully, clearly visible against the dark aureolae. The heavy clit ring dangled, enticingly, invitingly, against her shaved pussy. She noted that the piercings made her nipples stand out, hard, just like Dancing Slut’s. She realised she was wet again. The pull of the clit ring.
Then, the ankle cuffs, inch wide bands with a seamless clasp. The wrist cuffs, almost identical, clicking into place. The little O-rings clinked. She saw herself, then, in the mirror, differently, somehow more obviously … available, pliable.
Finally, the collar. As she lifted it, she shivered with excitement. Was this how Dancing Slut had felt, the first time? It must be. With a deep breath, she lifted the collar to her neck and closed it, decisively. She felt the mechanism close with a clunk. She tugged at it—there was no give. Locked in.
She gazed at herself in the mirror, wondering what she saw.
On impulse, she threw open the blinds, and stood there, naked in front of the full height window, on full view to the world.
Imagining the window as a screen, she wondered. What did the Client see, when they looked at Dancing Slut?
She pleasured herself for a while, in front of the mirror, dancing, mimicking the moves, with some good moves of her own, and then, after a time, began to consider her report.
“Find her.”
That was all Winter had written in reply. Not even a thank you!
Easier said than done, thought Takeshi. She made herself a pot of green tea and considered the parameters of what she had.
Recap. Dead phone. Dormant credit cards. Complete absence of social media. Some film clips. Last known activity of any sort, via any trace at all, Seattle.
Options. CCTV? Takeshi knew from experience this would be a time consuming nightmare, a bottomless pit of precious processing resources. Last option, really. First option?
The films. She had spotted no clues from watching them so far, but this was the only viable option, really. Anyway, she enjoyed watching them, so it was hardly a chore. She loaded up Suffering Slut first, and prepared to go through it again, slowly, frame by individual frame.
Look. The girl, thrashing on the bed, in pain.
Look. The girl, orgasming, silently. There is nobody else there.
Look again.
Takeshi’s hand wanders unconsciously to her clit, stroking gently. The metal is a new and thrilling presence there. Takeshi fingers the ring down there, the steel at her nipples, feeling the alien rush of pleasure and remembering the pain of the piercing—what if—?
—Empathy.
There is something here. Yes. The bodymods must be more than just jewellery, she thinks. There must be some kind of pleasure/pain functionality, there, like electrodes, embedded in the flesh. Takeshi frowns, thinking. Clever, yes, but they weren’t large enough to hold much in the way of hardware so …
… of course: the collar. That must be the master unit, the others slave units. Quite literally, thinks Takeshi, if her dawning theory is correct. She guesses there must be some sort of control device, probably an infrared remote. Interesting.
She sketches out what she thought was the likely hardware configuration on a piece of paper. If this kit was for sale somewhere, she would be able find it, and that might lead her to the girl.
Takeshi moves on to Suckathon.
Look. The girl, in position in the middle of the room. The men, headless in the low angled shot. The apartment is anonymous. Although she enjoys the show, there is nothing for Takeshi here. She can see the girl is enjoying what she is doing. Takeshi feels a glimmer of understanding, and imagines herself in that position, in that nameless company, as ... entertainment.
Entertainment. She thinks she is beginning to understand.
She loads up Dancing Slut.
Look. The room. A bedroom. Freeze. Grey walls, blank. No clue there, no signal in the noise.
Look. Dancing Slut bending, showing her ass to the camera. Freeze. Zoom. Oh my.
Look. The tattoo, grainy at the limits of Takeshi’s magnification. Small letters, blurred and indistinct. An F? Is that a T? That’s all she can make out. Not enough to go on.
Her nipples tingle. She peers closer at the screen. A square. This has meaning, surely.
Understanding.
She screengrabs, crops, rotates, ratchets up the constrast to hi-def black and white, and she sees…
Data. Information. Structure. Code. A signal. Messy, but do-able. This is Takeshi’s true language, her element, her world.
She sets to work cleaning up the image: a pixel here, a pixel there; smooth and edge. It takes a little while, but soon all graininess is gone and there is only the pleasingly clean black and white geometry of something utterly familiar to Takeshi. She uploads it to her QR decoder and presses Submit.
On Takeshi’s screen, a new world opens to her.