The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Once inside the prison and moving towards the walls Ayleen felt a strange sense of peace and security. For one thing she was now close enough to the towers to realize that they weren’t manned. Very odd indeed, but she was thankful for it. Perhaps it was an abandoned prison. The thought gave her enough courage to continue walking until she was right under the wall. Evidently this was one of the back or sides of the prison, since a main gate was nowhere in evidence. She resolved to scout it out and turned left, walking about a hundred yards until she came to one of the abandoned corner towers.

Another wall sheered off to the right and there was a gap in the perimeter fence, a gap not a gate, as it curved around the same side. There was also a small guard house set against the wall on this side, which was evidently the front side of the complex. The guardhouse was illuminated from the inside, which sent a tingle down Ayleen’s naked, sweaty back. Whether it was a tingle of fear or excitement she couldn’t tell, and it was hardly relevant, because a sort of morbid curiosity was impelling her forward in an effort to determine if the structure was actually occupied.

Naked though she was, Ayleen strode boldly up to the window of the guardhouse, which she could now see was adjacent to a large gap in the main wall of the prison. Yes, there was someone inside, fortunately a woman. She acknowledged Ayleen’s presence without any evidence of surprise at an unexpected, nude, visitor.

She smiled pleasantly and asked, “Name?”

“Ayleen Cotrelle.”

“Sentence?”

“Life.” The monosyllable simply slipped out of Ayleen’s mouth without premeditation. It all happened so smoothly and quickly that she didn’t have time to register the alarm which her rational mind told her was the correct response.

“And I guess you won’t know anything else, but let me check.” The woman was young, about Sharon’s age, and she wore exactly the kind of denims that Ayleen had used as her uniform at the Hot Biscuit. She radiated warmth, friendliness and...inexperience. Now she was on the intercom with somebody, evidently her superior. “We have one incoming lifer here...what do I do?”

“Is she clean?”

“She’s nude.”

“Hair?”

“Hair.”

“OK, in that case you’re going to have to walk her through processing yourself. I think there is a larceny down there to help you. Remember, it’s not a matter of experience, you rank over a larceny no matter what. So if she gives you any sass just kick her naked butt. Is that understood? And by the way, who is it who just came into receiving?”

“Name is Cotrelle, Ayleen.”

“The Ayleen Cotrelle?”

“I don’t know. Are there supposed to be more than one?”

“You’re either pulling my leg or you’re totally hopeless. Just take whoever she is down to processing OK? Over and out.”

Hanging up the intercom and emerging from the guard house the young woman offered her apologies. “I’m sorry, I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet. But we’ll try to get you processed through as efficiently as we can. Just follow me.”

Ayleen found herself following the woman through the open gap in the wall and asking, “So, how long have you been a guard?”

The young woman smiled, “Oh, I’m not a guard...there aren’t such things as guards any more, not since the reform. I’m an intern. You can spot us because we’re the ones who have to wear clothes. We don’t even get to live full time at the prison and we have to be phased out eventually. But I don’t mind, we do a lot of important, administrative work, and a lot of public relations, community interface stuff.”

“Community interface?”

“Sure, it’s really important. People need to be told about the reform...it’s really beneficial. I always tell them how great it is to be inside a reformed prison, and they look at me like I’m crazy. And that’s exactly how they’re supposed to react...I guess it’s that people fear going insane worse than anything else. It’s already made a big reduction in the crime rate.”

“Funny that you should mention going insane. I think at some point I started loosing my marbles...well, I mean here I am, naked and walking into a prison!”

“Oh, don’t worry about your sanity. Everybody thinks they’re going insane when they first get here. It’s just all the stuff that your board has programmed into you: Mental blocks, amnesia, strange aversions and attractions. It’s all just the secondary conditioning designed to corral you in here sooner or later on your own two feet. It will wash out soon enough. It’s not like your primary, sentence conditioning. Soon you will have just as good brains as when you were...what did you do on the outside?”

“I was a lawyer.”

“Oh, that’s a cinch! If you had said nuclear physicist or something I might have quibbled. You’ll have total recall in no time...which is, of course, a mixed blessing. And while we’re on the subject, although I hate to keep plugging myself so shamelessly, that’s another thing that interns excel at. We’re very good empathic counselors during the trauma of memory retrieval. The more hardened women either can’t do it or they won’t do it. I think that they are of the opinion that it’s part of the whole erotic self-torture process, and it should be prolonged and savored rather than ameliorated. Beats me! I’m just the new girl on the block. I guess when the time comes you can take it either way.”

“I can see that the reformed system is a lot more sophisticated than I had imagined, maybe even more sophisticated than I could have imagined when I had all my marbles.”

“Oh, that’s not even the beginning of it! I mean, don’t get me started. The women you’ll see in here...you, me, all the rest. We may be part of the last generation of criminals in this state, and if that happens everybody is going to want to adopt the reform. Whoever thought of this was a genius, I mean an absolute genius. And...” the intern leaned over in a hushed but excited voice, “this is just my pet theory, and who am I to know, right? I don’t think the people who got the credit for it had much to do with it. It wasn’t Senator Jaegger or Senator Bloefield who wrote the enabling legislation, the Jaegger-Bloefield act. It was some genius working in a back room. How do I know? I’ve never met either of the senators, and I’m sure they’re very smart men. But the operational word is “men.” No man could be that smart. The more I look around and see how intuitively this system works, the more convinced I am that it wasn’t just a genius...but specifically a female genius who designed its essentials.”

“What you’re saying,” Ayleen laughed, “is that we’ve been screwed again. Well, I guess we’ll just have to accept it this time. Besides, I accepted at some point that I enjoyed getting screwed.”

“Don’t we all!” the younger woman smiled, “And that should show you that you’re going to be happy here.”

As they talked they had passed a number of the outer buildings of the prison complex. Ayleen noticed that they had yet to pass through a single gate, everything was free of access and even the doors had been removed from the entrances of the buildings, leaving them open and free for anyone to walk in or out. The auxilary buildings were all uniform rectangles, some of them, the ones with the unbarred windows, evidently for administrative purposes, while others with no windows at all were clearly for storage.

“Do you see how different this is from your image of a prison?” the intern continued to enthuse. “Everything is open and accessible There are no constraints, no barriers, no separations. You wear no shackles, or for that matter, anything else to separate yourself from the environment. Even your skin will soon become a transparent reflection of your mind.”

It was all starting to make sense to Ayleen, except for the last rather enigmatic statement of the intern. She was on the point of asking for some clarification when they arrived at their destination. It was a building completely different from the rest, notably in being sealed by a steel door bearing the yellow and black trefoil symbol which designated a radiation hazard.

“Larceny! Open up.” Commanded the intern. Then she turned to Ayleen and announced in a stern voice, “And now we have come to the point of no return!” Then she broke down into a silly giggle. “Actually, we’re just supposed to say that for dramatic effect...in reality you reached the point of no return when you had your first session with your sentencing review board and they started implanting your primary sentence conditioning. And don’t worry about that nagging feeling that you have missed another appointment, that’s just for use on the outside, and will go away soon now that it’s not needed. Your programing is complete, all we do here is add a few physiological alterations. It’s a fall back system, which provides for convict identification and retrieval in the unlikely event that anyone were able to break through their primary conditioning.”

The door had swung away revealing a large, dark brunette, wearing nothing more than Ayleen with the exception of some boldfaced alphanumerical symbols tattooed across her breasts. “Well, if it isn’t Miss Goody Two Shoes paying us a visit to the Processing Facility. Step on in and bring your guest with you.”

When Ayleen entered the building she noticed that it was nothing more than an enormous shell of concrete. Its major contents were three machine like structures, each quite different in appearance. The one on the nearest side was a large steel cubicle, accessed by a hatch with some sort of charred fabric partially protruding from it, obviously an incinerator. The other two were harder to figure out. The one on the far side was a black rectangle the size of a pool table or a queen sized bed with a computer console attached to it. In between was an enormous tube, sealed on the near end with a portal large enough for a human being to enter.

“Well,” continued the brunette who was obviously ‘larceny’ in some sense, “what shall we do you for today?”

“She’s going to be a lifer.” The intern answered in what was clearly an attempt at an authoritative voice.

“Whooo!” Larceny shook a limp but vigorous hand in the universal sign for ‘this is too hot to handle’ while she expelled a long breath. “She’s going to get a total makeover. Lucky her! All I ever got were these boring tattoos. I bet even you would like a total makeover wouldn’t you Goody Two Shoes? Once you get out of here, you’re gonna go out and commit the most horrendous crime ever just so you can come back and let me give you the full treatment.”

“You know that’s not how it works. There’s a total inhibitor once a non-lifer has served their term. It will even happen to you some day. They may have to drag you out of here kicking and screaming but you’ll have to go, and once you go you can never come back. So just cut the shit and do your job.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not how it works. But I can dream can’t I? You see doll,” she was addressing Ayleen now, “once you become a lifer you can tell these little intern types a piece of your mind, and they can’t say anything worth hearing in return. You’ll be the elite, even better than me, and they won’t have a clue about what is going on in your head, either the agony or the ecstasy...as if there were a difference, which there isn’t!”

“OK Larceny, you’ve made your unpaid political announcement. Its time for you to get her ready for the vaporizer.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job. First we’ve got to make sure she doesn’t have anything on her.”

“Can’t you see she’s nude?” Two Shoes protested.

Larceny rolled her eyes and made an aside to Ayleen, “You see what I told you about interns.” she said before facing off against Two Shoes, “Listen! Do I have to get anatomical? She might have a pierce in her tongue or in her internal genitalia. I’m not going to be responsible for somebody winding up with an irradiated piece of metal inside their body. I mean, have a little compassion for the woman.”

“Well, do you have anything like that?” Two Shoes inquired of Ayleen.

Before Ayleen could answer Larceny lashed out at Two Shoes. “Don’t you understand anything about how this system works? Her genitals could have been numbed by her board. They like to do that sort of thing you know, orgasm inhibitors and that sort of thing to make people increasingly frustrated with life on the outside. I mean, it’s a twisted system. That’s why I love it. So with her selective amnesia and anesthesia she wouldn’t have a clue. You’ve got to let me check out her cunt.”

“Larceny,” the intern responded sarcastically, “if it weren’t for your well known reputation for wisdom and compassion, I’d almost be taken in by your clever arguments. But I think it’s more likely that you’re trying to get friendly a little to fast with one of our inductees.”

“Hey, can I have a word in edgewise while the two of you are trying to decide my fate?” Ayleen piped up with fear in her voice.

“Sure.” Larceny replied.

“You have the right to ask any question you want.” Two Shoes agreed.

“I thought the whole idea of the reform was compassion. But the way you two are talking it sounds like I’m being inducted into some sort of concentration camp. I hate to sound like a lawyer...I mean, apparently I tried that once and it didn’t work out. But don’t I have any rights?” She could feel he old Ayleen trying to make a final come back, trying to wriggle out of whatever fate she had incurred for herself.

Larceny seemed to want to respond but Two Shoes upstaged her. “Let me handle this, briefing the inductees is my job.” Then she looked at Ayleen with a friendly but firm gaze. “The answer is no on both counts. The reform’s sole purpose is to remove miscreants from society, permanently. It is only cruel or compassionate as an incidental effect of implementing that policy. Rights are also completely irrelevant here, and you won’t need them any more than you need any other kind of property or possession. But don’t panic. This is no concentration camp, and the very reason why you won’t need rights is because nobody is going to compel you to do anything that you don’t want to do. In fact, if you want to, you can still walk right out that door and out of the prison. Neither I nor Larceny will lift a hand against you or pursue you. Take it which ever way you want it.”

There was a small terrified voice in the back of Ayleen’s head that told her she should take up Two Shoe’s offer while she had the chance. But for the most part she was convinced that it was just the old Ayleen dragging her heels on something which was, ultimately, for her own good. The two women might be opinionated and quarrelsome, but in some way Ayleen sensed that they were both on her side, and neither had the makings of a torturer. If anything it was her turn to make some gesture of goodwill signaling her acceptance of her fate, a gesture which would signal her willingness to expedite her processing, and perhaps even contribute to the reconciliation of her two warders.

“Look, I think I have a way to get out of this bind. I mean, if there are any internal piercings that I have forgotten about. Why don’t I just check myself out? After all, I’m sure the board didn’t anesthetize my fingers. You two can watch.”

“OK,” Larceny reluctantly agreed, “but don’t have too much fun. We’re on a time schedule here.”

As she probed herself in front of the two other women Ayleen started to become aroused. Clearly, if there had been any selective anesthesia in her genital region it had been removed, and removed in a big way, now that she was in prison. As far as she could remember, and she was starting to sense her memory coming back in dribs and drabs, she had never been as sensitive down there as she was now. Larceny, in spite of her crack about the ‘time schedule’ insisted that Ayleen probe herself slowly and thoroughly. The upshot was that, in spite of finding absolutely nothing, by the end of her searches Ayleen was shivering with heat and ready to be taken to the next stage of the process.

“OK doll, I guess you’re ready for the vaporizer.” Larceny stated and Two Shoes concurred.

“The vaporizer?” Something about the phrase set off alarm bells in Ayleen’s head.

“Oh it’s nothing to worry about doll. All it does is make the exterior of your body smooth and antiseptic...so you won’t have to worry about shaving your legs again. It gets you clean. Spank’n clean!”

“Spank’n clean?” Ayleen mumbled, realizing the phrase had some hidden significance. Neither Larceny or Two Shoes could contain themselves at her reaction and both burst out in riotous laughter. “Hey...what’s so funny?” Their unexpected joviality sparked an unexpected fire of indignation. It was the old Ayleen trying to surface again, this time much stronger and more determined.

“Sorry if it seems like we’re making fun of you,” Two Shoes apologized, “but from our point of view everything is always so predictable. ‘Spank’n clean’ is just a prep phrase that the boards feed to lifers in order to induce them into the vaporizer.”

Far from assuaging her anger the explanation touched off an explosion in Ayleen’s head, allowing her old persona to come back with full force. “Well it’s no laughing matter! I don’t know if it was deliberate or not but during a casual conversation with a convict on Route 86 he used the same phrase and it nearly sent me off on a nymphomaniacal rampage. What’s with these boards anyway? Do they think they can just fuck with people’s minds any way they want? Fucking, yeah fucking all right! They almost had me fucking on the shoulders of the highway with every man I met up and down Route 86! Instead of standing there and laughing at me, Ms. Intern Goody Two Shoes or whatever your real name is, perhaps you should be questioning the system. Or perhaps we should visit your superior and see if she shares my point of view?”

The old Ayleen was now fully aroused and in control. The intern, for her part, was surprised and visibly shaken at the sudden wrath that her ward had displayed. This had never happened before, but then she had never had the privilege, if privilege it was, to check an ex-lawyer through. Perhaps it was indeed best to contact the prison administrator, or just send this enraged woman outside again to see if she had the will to break back in.

However Larceny was unfazed by the inductee’s sudden outburst. She had seen women balk at the prospect of the vaporizer before. Whether or not something had indeed been mistakenly triggered by the prep phrase, she wasn’t at all impressed by this woman’s alibi. She figured it was the moment to seize the initiative before Two Shoes had time to confuse the issue. “Excuse me doll but I have some difficulties with what you’re saying.”

“How so?”

“Well, first of all, the boards may be twisted but they aren’t dumb. I like the idea of their turning you boy-crazy and making you walk the street...or the highway in this case. It’s a deliciously twisted idea, but too farfetched. Why would they be turning you on to men if they are trying to corral you into a woman’s correctional institute? If anything, I’d expect them to give you an aversion to men. But who knows? It’s a weird system, and who knows how they think. That’s not what makes me doubt your story...it’s something else.”

“Which is?” Somehow Ayleen enjoyed the cross interrogation. Now she would either triumph or it would be the last legal argument in her life.

“You say,” continued Larceny, “that you were normal until the board screwed you up. Then you suddenly hear this phrase while talking to a convict by the side of the road. After that you flip out, you start doing all sorts of outrageous things that you would never, ever have considered doing before. Am I getting this right doll? Because it all hinges on the fact that the board planted this phrase in your mind, and it’s all their doing, not your fault at all. Right?”

“That’s exactly it.”

“Then my question to you is simple. If you were so normal, what the hell were you doing there in the first place, standing around talking to a convict by the side of the highway?”

Ayleen, unable to look her antagonist in the face, lowered her gaze to the floor. It was true. She had condemned herself out of her own mouth, and in front of an entire road crew of witnesses. The great Ayleen Cotrelle had struck out, losing not even to a lawyer but to a nameless, naked felon who owned nothing but the tattoos emblazoned on her chest. It was time to give in and come clean. Yes, spank’n clean, spank’n clean indeed! “I guess I owe both of you an apology for my outbursts. Tell me what I have to do in the vaporizer.”

Larceny smiled indicating that the apology was accepted. “You don’t have to do a thing. A conveyer belt takes you through it. Well, except these...” she withdrew a pair of black goggles from the utility box behind the controller’s screen of the vaporizer, “...don’t have a strap. You have to press them snugly down over your eyes. The vaporizer is basically a single pulse of radiation. After that you get a cool shower.”

It didn’t sound so bad. After Larceny and Two Shoes had taken refuge behind the lead screen in front of the controler’s station, Ayleen could feel the conveyor belt moving her through the machine. It stopped and shortly thereafter she felt a bolt of energy singeing the surface of her body. Then the conveyor belt resumed its motion, tempting Ayleen to think she had the all clear to remove her goggles. Doing so she was shocked to see that the skin on her arms, legs, and torso had undergone a transformation. It had been calcinated into a white, cracked surface, somewhat like the basin of a dried salt lake. The conveyor belt stopped again and streams of water started spraying down from the roof of the tunnel like machine. Unlike what Larceny had led her to expect it was hot, scalding water. Belatedly Ayleen replaced her goggles, hoping at least to save her eyes from the boiling torrent. She could feel sheets of flesh being dislodged from her body by the flaming current. If she didn’t scream out loud it was either because she wasn’t the screaming type or it had all happened so fast that it had knocked her breath away. Then the belt started again, and she could feel currents of warm air wafting against her smarting body.

“You’re out doll,” it was Larceny’s mocking voice, “you can remove your goggles.”

Removing the protection from her eyes and looking down at herself again, Ayleen saw that her flesh had undergone yet another transformation. Now her skin, or perhaps her under-skin, was a deep salmon pink, almost as unnatural as the white powder of her previous molting. Also there wasn’t a single blade of hair on her bald crotch. Bald? Suddenly Ayleen realized that her head had been unprotected. Gingerly she reached up to touch her scalp. Instead of hair there was nothing but a slick pate.

“I hope you like the bald look doll.” Larceny snickered. “Your hair follicles have been cauterized.”

“I do!” Ayleen was surprised at her own response. However it was true. It was precisely the new look that she had been searching for: Total hairlessness.

“Well, that’s as far as I can take you. Two Shoes runs the tattoo machine. I’ll just hang around to watch.”

“Thanks Larceny. The vaporizer wasn’t half as bad as I had imagined, but I wish you hadn’t lied about the cold water.”

“I didn’t. But any water that strips off the outer layers of your skin is going to hurt like hell, no matter what.”

Two Shoes was sitting next to the machine which looked like a steel bed attached to a computer console. Now that Ayleen could examine it at close range, she could see that if it was was a bed it was a bed of nails. Its “mattress” was composed of a myriad of tightly packed needles. For induction into a supposedly benign reformed prison, the processing equipment certainly had all the earmarks of medieval instruments of torture. Noticing the look of alarm on Ayleen’s face, Two Shoes quickly moved to explain the machine. “This isn’t anything to be afraid of, and it’s not a ‘tattoo machine’. Larceny just calls it that because she’s mentally challenged. It’s a Digital Epidermal Sequentializer, or DES machine for short. Yes, it does make indelible patterns on your body, but that is only one of its many functions. For example, the liquid that is injected into you contains an irritant which makes it impossible for you to wear anything next to the skin. That’s why in the men’s prisons they only go down to the waist, since they have to work the road crews. But female lifers are able to get full body suits.”

“Question. Why is that necessary? The first thing I wanted to do when I got to the prison was to ditch my clothes, and never wear a stitch again. I assume that’s all an outcome of my primary conditioning.”

“Wow, smart question,” Two Shoes was reduced to flattery since she didn’t want more outbursts and balking from this erstwhile legal eagle. “Yes. It’s redundant. There are all sorts of redundancies built into this system. It was necessary to sell the program to the wider community outside. Somehow they just can’t grasp the idea of being able to contain prisoners without passive restraints. Redundancy quiets their willies, as well as locking us in even tighter...which is sort of nice on principle. But the DES patterns, in addition to having all sorts of nonessential properties like redundant nudification, have a very major significance. They publicize the criminal record of the bearer on the surface of the body.”

“I see. Total transparency.”

“Exactly! Imagine a bar code stamped on somebody’s body. Well, that’s basicly what the DES patterns are. Of course, it takes a while to catch on to the codes, but pretty soon you’ll be able to see into somebody’s heart with a single glance. You won’t have to spend a long time on introductions and lingering conversations. You’ll know who everybody is, where you stand in relation to them, and what they deserve, instantly. And vice versa, of course. Which brings us back to the task at hand. I need to access your record from the main data banks. You don’t happen to remember your crime and court verdict do you?”

“No, I’m sorry. I’ve got the feeling like my memory is coming back but things are really hazy. Especially anything having to do with the trial.”

“Yeah, it’s that secondary conditioning starting to wash out. I’m sure if we waited about half an hour you’d be crystal clear, but it’s a lot quicker just to type in your name and do a search through central records. Let’s see, it’s Cotrelle, Ayleen. That’s C-O-T-R-E...”

“What the fuck!” It was Larceny’s voice. She had been minding her own business while Two Shoes explained the DES machine to Ayleen. Now that the other women turned to her they saw that her jaw had dropped and she was staring at the new inductee.”

“What’s wrong with you now?” queried Two Shoes in an irritated tone.

“What’s wrong?” Stammered Larceny, “I’ll tell you what’s wrong! This is too hot to sit on...at least with my bare butt!” Then she turned and fled out of the processing room, “bare butt” and much else bouncing as she made rapid progress to destinations unknown.

“Don’t mind her,” said Two Shoes, “she’s unreliable. I just want you to sit on the edge of the DES machine, and be prepared to scoot yourself over to the center and lay down on your back. As soon as your criminal record is accessed it will fill in the variables in the algorithm for your patterning which in turn with translate into the actual mechanical operation of the DES. Ah, there is...” In the illumination cast by the computer monitor Ayleen thought she could catch a brief spike of emotion in the intern’s face, but the latter caught herself and proceeded without missing a beat, “...your criminal record.”

“You know, I really am curious...” Ayleen wondered if she should make a direct request to the intern, “...I mean, about the trial, the verdict, and before...”

“Now you can slide to the middle and lay down on your back.” Two shoes had artfully ignored he implicit question. Now Ayleen could see that the “needles” were actually fine hollow tubes, perhaps containing even smaller needles or wires within. She lay down on the black metal surface consisting of discreet objects, but objects packed so closely that it felt smooth, cold, and hard, like a very firm mattress. Suddenly the firmness of the “mattress” gave way and Ayleen found herself sinking down into a hollow in the machine formed by the contours of her own body. Then there was an excruciating pain, sending something like fire from the tip of her bare scalp down to the bottom of her last vertebrae and branching out down to her heels. Evidently she passed out because the next thing she was aware of was laying flat on the rehardened surface, with Two Shoes handing her the goggles and telling her to roll over onto her stomach and put them on. This she did, and then the surface gave way again into a concave formed by her body. Two Shoes, not satisfied, pressed firmly on Ayleen’s rump and head. Then the pain once more.

“Your finished!” Two Shoes announced as the bed resumed its rigidity. “How do you feel?”

This time Ayleen had not passed out after the pain and realized that it was followed by some sort of high. “Really great. I don’t know why.”

Two Shoes giggled, “That’s another side effect of the ink-like substance that the DES injects into you. It contains compounds that trigger the body’s endorphins. Sorry, you can only be processed once in your life time...that’s the next thing people always ask. But now you’re ready for your next big thrill: Seeing what you look like.”

Ayleen hadn’t dared to look down at herself after recieving the DES treatment. Her resistance was so strong that she suspected it might be some sort of implanted block. Now Two Shoes was leading her over to a full length mirror at the rear of the building. Well, Ayleen reasoned,it was better to get the full impact of the shock all at once, and get things over with.

Indeed, thought Ayleen as she gazed at her image in the mirror, it was a total metamorphosis. Shocking indeed, but not horrible or entirely without esthetic merit. It was no longer the blond woman that she was accustomed to seeing when she looked at herself in the mirror. Indeed, the thing in the mirror no longer looked entirely human, hominid yes, but of a rather variant type. The only human image that Ayleen could bring herself to compare it with was a naked mannekin which she had once seen used by students of traditional Chinese acupuncture. Unlike the mannequin she was pink rather than ocher, but similarly adorned with black pinstripe meridians stretching from head to toe. The vertical meridians maintained their equidistance, flaring out or contracting with the contours of her body, wide at the hips and the breasts, tightening at the neck, and converging like the spokes of a wheel at the tip of her head.

“Well,” asked Two Shoes, “how do you like yourself?”

Again, Ayleen was at a loss to account for her reaction. By her previous standards of beauty she had been totally disfigured, but she couldn’t contain her approval. “It’s beautiful. I feel like, what should I say...a dolphin wearing body paint...if such a thing were possible.”

Before Two Shoes could give her any further strokes of encouragement, they found themselves being rejoined by Larceny. She too had undergone some slight body modification in her absence, a shining bruise around her left eye. Whatever had hit her seemed to have knocked the sass out of her as well. Instead of making some ironic comment about Ayleen’s transformation, Larceny just stood at attention with downcast eyes in front of the intern and the inductee.

“I’m sorry for leaving my post during your processing Ms. Cotrelle. Sometimes I just can’t stand to keep my mouth from blabbing when there’s big news.”

“It’s all right.” Ayleen said with less than total sincerity. Somehow the assumed personality of the “good sport” Ayleen, so necessary during the term of her half-way status was begining to fade out, and she barely checked an impulse to even out Larceny’s make up with a blow to the other side of her face.

“Well,” Larceny continued her apology in a bitter tone, “at least I found out some useful information for you. Your room mate will be Arsony. Arsony TX-9211. She’s very popular...a genuine lifer like yourself. I’m sure I wouldn’t have made a very good room mate. I’m just what they call a mop, a Mid-security-level Onsite Prisoner. Of course, if you ever get tired of Arsony...remember who your first friend here was OK?” She peeked up to Ayleen through her unkempt brunette tresses, awed by the transformation of the new inductee but attempting to snatch at a small ray of hope.

Ayleen looked at her erstwhile warders with a new contempt. Evidently there was a hierarchy of prestige and honor here that was parallel to and the inverse of the administrative hierarchy. The mops were nothing more than a kind of non-commisioned officer interposed between the interns and the lifers. With that in mind she addressed Larceny. “My first friend, eh? Well friend, what’s your full name?”

Instead of answering, Larceny just cupped her breasts and held them out to Ayleen so the alphanumerical pattern of her comparatively minimalist DES identification could be read without distortion. Clearly one couldn’t read a mop’s entire life history from such a minimal amount of data...but it was enough for Ayleen’s purposes.

“Very well Larceny TY-6988. I may decide to hold you to your offer of friendship at some future time. But bear this in mind, the woman you befriend won’t be the same mental cripple who limped into your processing facility and whom you showed such solicitous concern for.”

Larceny shuddered, understanding only too well the implications of Ayleen’s remarks and withdrew herself from the company of the two women. Two Shoes, sill buoyant and making an effort to appear in command, chirped up, “Well, now that you are processed, it’s time to take you over to the main facility for orientation. I can give you the grand tour!”

Somehow time had slipped by unnoticed. It was bright outside the processing facility, not the brightness of artificial illumination, but the glare of midmorning. Ayleen felt good being totally exposed from her bald head to her bare feet while sporting the telltale DES patterns which stripped away the last shred of privacy from her soul. At last she had come totally clean, spank’n clean! She strode boldly forward towards the massive main facility building, alongside the shod and denim clothed intern. Two Shoes indeed, and wasn’t she full of it too, Ayleen thought with amusement.

Total transparency! It made a lot of sense, and Ayleen could do nothing more than admire the anonymous genius who had thought out the system to its last economical measure. What didn’t make sense was the depth of her own implicate understanding of the facility in all its details. She didn’t need Two Shoe’s pretentious explanations, often riddled with gross inaccuracies. As soon as they entered the doorless portals of the cavernous facility, Ayleen was overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity. Everything was where she had expected it to be, from the exercise grounds in the forecourt of the facility to the enormous Roman baths and “preening stations” towards the rear. The galleries of semi-private cubicles stretched up to the distant roof, six catwalks above. Six catwalks, no more, no less, and Ayleen didn’t even bother to count.

For some reason Two Shoes was totally blowing her information tour. They glided through the forecourt without any mention of the essential distinction between the exercise stations and the punishment stations. True, they both triggered endorphin responses, but there were considerable distinctions in method and intensity. After observing the women on the exercise machines they walked quickly, perhaps too quickly, past a sweating mid-level-security onsite prisoner applying a switch to the bottom of a lifer bent over a gymnastics horse. Perhaps, thought Ayleen in a moment of reverie, Two Shoes wouldn’t be making such a glaring omission if she had direct, rather than just theoretical, acquaintance with the punishment stations.

It was passing strange...this overwhelming confidence in and knowledge about the facility that Ayleen possessed. Perhaps it was just another piece of gratuitous mind work courtesy of her sentence review board. She might have been subliminally provided with schematics of the facility and a thorough outline of their functioning. In that case, the whole charade of Two Shoes’ orientation and information tour would just be another instance of the reform’s penchant for redundancy. But Ayleen’s sharp lawyer’s mind was making a comeback, and she realized that there was something fatally non-cogent about this flawed redundancy. If the full status prisoners were being programed with orientation schematics, why didn’t the interns, who’s function it was to introduce people to the facility, get the same program. Perhaps the interns were considered such sinless little innocents that the sentence review boards couldn’t find it in their tender consciences to fuck with their little minds more than absolutely necessary. Ayleen resigned herself to that conclusion, and conseled herself to put up with Two Shoes’ amateurism however much it galled her.

“And finally here are the feeding stations.” Two Shoes grinned as she pointed out several women sucking from hoses hanging off dispensers which loosely resembled gasoline pumps. “Everybody is on a healthy, balanced, liquid diet formula. And most interestingly, the formula is laced with the same aphrodisiac compound as in the DES ink.”

“Ayleen felt it was time to plumb the depths of the intern’s ignorance, and reverted to her favorite pastime of cross examination. “What about dental decalcification?”

“Oh, I’m glad you asked!” At least she was on her toes. “As you can see there are hard rubber nozzles at the end of the dispenser hoses. The women can teeth on the nozzles, and maintain their dental hygiene.”

Wrong! Ayleen knew that there were special teething bars, something like a dog’s toy bone, that the women were supposed to be supplied with. Chewing directly on the nozzles would put wear on a major item of prison equipment, and the bill for the depreciation would have to be footed by the state’s taxpayers. She was about to lay into Two Shoes for general incompetence when she saw another piece of shocking material evidence. There were teeth marks on the nozzles, the women, or evidently a lot of them, were habitually gnawing on the feeding tubes. Something about that observation made Ayleen uneasy. It was more than just being deprived of the satisfaction of blasting Two Shoes for being an idiot. Two Shoes really wasn’t that badly out of line compared to the rest of the prisoners, many of whom had much more experience than she did. Something was radically wrong here. It was as if nobody was really getting down to brass tacks on how a reformed prison should operate. Ayleen was suddenly confronted with the possibility that she was the smartest person in the joint. Not that that should have been a particularly unwelcome insight...but for some reason it was hurling her back through a portal in her mind, a portal which, until that moment, had been hermetically sealed.

“Are you all right?” Two Shoes had noticed the shock on Ayleen’s face.

“Yeah, I’m all right. It’s just those memories... they’re starting to come back.”

“I told you that was going to be rough. In that case I think we’d better get you up to your new room.”

“Right. As great as your orientation tour has been, I think we’d better cut it short.”

Predictably, none of the rooms in the facility had doors or bars. They were in effect booths with bunk beds one either side, a wall with an open window at the back and an open front onto the catwalk. Ayleen’s room was on the third catwalk level. They found it occupied by two women. One was lounging on a bottom bunk, a lifer with thick horizontal stripes like an old prison uniform emblazoned on her hairless and rather corpulent body. Ayleen almost laughed at the comical thought that she looked rather like the Michelin Tire Man. But she was serene in her own way, lounging on the bed and rubbing the labia of her genetelia while she watched another woman clean the floor with her hair.

Two Shoes began,“Let me introduce your new room mate Arsony TX-9211. Arsony this is...”

“I know who the hell it is. So does everybody else...with the possible exception of you, cunt! So why don’t you do everybody a big favor and scram, OK?”

Two Shoes didn’t enjoy being called “cunt” and felt it was best to comply, but not before making a last attempt at cementing her relationship with the arriving celebrity. “Of course, you two take your time and get acquainted. But one last thing, Two Shoes is just a nickname, and interns don’t get to have their real names erased like full, numbered, prisoners. So if you want to get in contact with me it’s Patricia Stone...or just Patty. And...”

“I said scram!” Arsony got out of bed and made a threatening gesture. It was enough to send the intern fleeing down the catwalk on the double. “And you too!”

The woman who had been wringing water out of her hair into a bucket jumped up and fled likewise.

“Now you can see why we call those kinds mops!” laughed Arsony. “That’s all they’re good for...which is more than I can say for the interns.”

In spite of herself Ayleen had an instant liking for Arsony. It was that confident, controlled, no bullshit attitude which reminded her of her former self. Former self? No, rather it was her present self who had been reinstituted after having suffered a long displacement by the weak kneed, mild tempered, woman who had worked as a waitress in a cafe off Route 86. It was good being back, even though she was seeing her new home for the first time.

“Arsony, eh?”

Arsony smiled, “Used to burn down buildings. Sometimes the buildings had people in them. I guess I’m a celebrity. In a minor sort of way. Nothing like you...to be sure.”

For the first time it struck Ayleen that, with the tattoos, or patterns, or whatever they were, everybody who was literate in the code knew who she was even if she didn’t. “I’m sorry. It’s my memories. They’re just begining to come back...”

“Yeah, I understand,” Arsony said in a sympathetic tone of voice. “You’ve been through plenty today, and you’re going to go through plenty more. Look, us lifers have to take care of each other. Why don’t you lay down and get some rest, OK hun? I’ll go down and make sure nobody comes up and distracts you.” She patted Ayleen on the buns and exited out onto the catwalk. “Oh fuck! Too late.”

Converging from both sides of the catwalk were two processions of women: Lifers, mops, even a few interns. They were converging on the open booth which was Ayleen”s new home. Arsony made some rude gestures to drive them back.

“Arsony. Don’t bother.” Ayleen mumbled in a tired but resigned voice. “They’re curious. They probably have questions to ask. Questions that deserve answers.”

“Nice of you to see it that way.” Arsony shrugged as the streams of visitors converged and overflowed into the small space of the cubicle. There were scores of awed faces, faces of women of every hue, and bearing every identifying pattern on their nude bodies. Ayleen could see that the looks they were giving her were the precise counterpart to the horrified glances that she had received from her anonymous former friends at the Hot Biscuit Eatery. These were looks of adulation. “It’s her! Look at the patterns!” Some of the women were crying.

After a while a few women got up the nerve to ask questions. Fortunately by this time Ayleen’s memory was clear enough that she could give reasonably good answers. Many of the questions were just clumsy attempts to bring the questioner to Ayleen’s attention, which was only understandable. Others were legitimate questions, but not so difficult that they needed to pester someone of Ayleen’s caliber to get an answer. The lifers had the only truly relevant question: Where does this all end?

“It ends with death.” Ayleen answered without demure. “That was one of the hypocrisies of the old system, that there is any essential difference between a life sentence and a death sentence. That was one of the principles that I felt was absolutely non-negotiable: That you lifers will be able to walk out of this place the same way you came in, on your own two feet, so to speak. I fought all the forces of hypocrisy in this state to make sure that you could dispatch yourselves before the forces of ennui and physical dissolution take their toll, that you could destroy yourselves voluntarily as you had committed yourselves voluntarily.”

Women were sobbing, and some in the front of the crowd were reaching out to touch Ayleen as one might reach out to touch a holy relic. An older clothed woman wedged her way through the crowd, and introduced herself. “I’m terribly sorry. I’m the prison administrator, but I wasn’t informed until a moment ago that you had been processed through. If there is any thing that we can do to make your stay here more comfortable Ms. Cotrelle, just let us know and we’ll be glad to...”

She was caught in mid-sentence by a piercing look from Ayleen. “Look! I played a big part in designing this system, and I don’t recall that there was any provision in it for special treatment for VIPs. And don’t ‘Ms. Cotrelle’ me either. Just look at the tats I’m wearing, they should tell you everything you need to know about me. I gave no mercy, and I expect none in return. Special requests? All I ask for is what I deserve, and no stinting. Well, actually there is one, or you might say two, other things, but they don’t directly concern me.”

“Whatever we can do...”

“The two women who inducted me into the facility were ever so conscientious in their duties. I think I can say, without recourse to metaphor, that they have made an indelible impression on me. I wonder if there is some way that they could be rewarded for so effectively stripping me of everything that I once was and graciously introducing me to the narrow precincts of my new and permanent abode? I wonder if the intern, a Ms. Stone, could be promoted to the status of a full prisoner, and if the mid-level prisoner, Larceny TY-6988 could be given a life sentence?”

“Well, it’s unprecedented. After all, their primary conditioning will have to be reprogrammed. But then you’re a pretty unprecedented lady yourself. And it’s evidently true what they say, that you take care of others before you take care of yourself. We’ll see what we can do.” The administrator weaved her way out of the room, barely concealing her bitterness that she had recieved no similar commendation from her famous ward.

“OK everybody!” It was the husky voice of Arsony TX-9211 heard above the crowd, “you’ve got what you came for, now scram! This lady has been through the wringer today and she needs a little privacy and rest...at least as much as anybody can get in a joint like this.”

After their fellow prisoners had been herded out of the immediate vicinity of their booth-like cell on the third floor, Ayleen and Arsony sat down on opposed beds, taking stock of each other. At last Arsony decided that, in the name of compassion, getting more friendly would have to wait. “You look tired hun, how about some sleepy-by?”

“Thanks for the thought Arsony, but I feel those memories bursting through the last firewalls left by my sentencing board. I have a feeling I should stay up and ride it out.”

“That’s the spirit hun,” Arsony admitted with genuine admiration, “it’s gonna hurt plenty, but there’s a secret to getting through it.”

“What’s that?”

“Balance the mental pain with physical stimulation. First of all, better lay down on that bed, because you’re going to be thrashing around a lot. Fortunately old Arsony has some little gimmicks that are going to help you out.” She reached down below her bed and pulled out a utility box, of the kind that the prisoners kept their bare necessities in. “Grab the headposts of the bunk and press your feet against the opposite ones.”

Ayleen did as she was told while Arsony pulled out four pairs of silver rings from the box, each pair attached with chains. Quickly she snapped a ring around Ayleen’s right wrist and secured the other to the post of the bed, repeating the same operation with her left wrist and the left post before going on to attend to her feet in similar manner.

Only by the time she was firmly secured did it occur to Ayleen that this was cheating. “Arsony! Those are handcuffs, and handcuffs are illegal in a reformed prison! They are a kind of passive restraint, and reformed prisons are supposed to rely exclusively on positive, active bonding! Ummpppphhh....”

During Ayleen’s protest Arsony had fished out another item from her utility stash, a rubber teething bar, and quickly wedged it between her manacled room mate’s jaws. Finding herself in a position to deliver her admonishments without fear of rebuttal, Arsony sat down on the edge of the bed and in a quiet but firm voice said, “One thing you’d better understand from now on is that there is no longer any such person as Ayleen Cotrelle. Yeah, we all know that she was the genius behind the system, and for that we should be pathetically grateful, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda...but Ms. Cotrelle has taken her final bow, and all there is now is this...” Arsony took a finger and traced a path down one of the DES meridians from the top of her room mate’s naked scalp, down her face, between her breasts, to the tummy, past the bare labia, down inside of the thigh, along the calf, and terminating at the heel,"...which you can’t read. So let me introduce you to yourself Homicide TX-4411. Don’t worry, I won’t stint you, or grant you VIP treatment by listening to any of your silly legal advice. In any prison, reformed or otherwise, people are going to bootleg stuff in. And I don’t think that the reform is going to come crashing down just because old Arsony TX-9211 has a few toys hidden away in her secret stash. Moreover, when those memories come rushing in, you’ll need all the help you can get, and you’ll be grateful. Believe me, if anyone knows how to build a fire, it’s me. And you’re going to want my fire, Homicide TX-4411, just to distract you from the flames of remorse which are going to be kindling in your soul from now on. Remorse for crimes which are written all over your body, but which your mind is only now coming to grips with.”

Arsony TX-9211, having said her piece, retired to her bed, and producing a large vibrating dildo from under the mattress, started to pleasure herself as she waited for Homicide TX-4411 to start her “show.” It wasn’t long in coming. The thing that had once been Ayleen Cotrelle began to writhe in agony, at first to the delight of Arsony who always enjoyed seeing the mighty brought low. Homicide TX-4411 was thrashing on the bed, her back alternately arching and crashing into the mattress, her hips gyrating. However as the suffering of her room mate continued to what were apparently even higher intensities Arsony began to feel like a cad. It was time to cut her a little slack, to show her a little compassion. Sacrificing her own pleasure, Arsony pulled out the now well lubricated vibrator from her own vagina and plunged it with only a minimum of difficulty between the dripping labia of Homicide TX-4411. Gagged but eloquently emotive, Homicide TX-4411 looked up to Arsony with an expression of pathetic gratitude for the skewering which both distracted her from her mental torment, and officially initiated her status as Arsony’s lover. For her part, Arsony TX-9211, hardened though she was, had never seen suffering of this magnitude, and could no longer bear to watch the ordeal that her new friend was enduring. She pushed the vibrator as far as it would go into Homicide TX-4411, lodging it securely and turning the power to maximum. Then she excused herself from the room, darkly commenting, “I sense you have issues which will need a long time to resolve. So I’ll leave you alone.”

Homicide TX-4411 had now attained total recall. It was the last, save perhaps one, tumbler to fall into place within the mental lock which had been honed to perfection by the reform. With total recall came total remorse, and the poisoning of the world beyond the prison walls with guilt, a world to which she now had no desire to return to ever again. In her unclouded mind she realized that there were green, bright places to be seen outside he unbarred window of her cell, that less than half a mile from where she writhed on her bed, cars were speeding down Route 86, bearing happy men, women, and families who still inhabited the world of the living. Even if her body had been free to move, she had no curiosity about such things. The world along Route 86 no longer existed for her, it seemed as far away as the galaxy in Andromeda. They had designed the perfect machine, one that she could see, as it was meant to be seen, from the inside. True, the idea of a penal system based on hypnotic induction was Bill Jaegger’s pet idea. But it was Ayleen Cotrelle who had insisted that it would never work unless they “hit below the belt” and used the full power of human psycho-erotic energies to attract and bind the convicts.

How ironical had been the administrator’s comment: “You take care of others before you take care of yourself.” Well, she had certainly taken care of Bill. Bill who she had deeply, and sincerely loved more than anything save her ambition itself. But she had given him fair warning on that account, and announced that if one of them had to be sacrificed to attain what she wanted, it would be him, not her. As long as they both wanted the same thing it seemed to be a moot issue. Senator Bill Jaegger had wanted nothing more than to effect a total reform of the penal system, and so, at least initially, had she. He had been easy to work with, first as his legal and research advisor, and then as his lover. Eventually through thorough legwork she had come to know more about the ins and outs of the proposed system than any of the others, the legislators, the lawyers, the penologists, the sociologists...even more than Bill. She came to live it, she could imagine what it would be like to live as a prisoner. She no longer was just talking the talk, she was walking the walk.

That was when she began to realize that Bill would have to go. Bill would have to be sacrificed, and it would have to be a bloody sacrifice, as in ancient times. Bill would have to be sacrificed to get Homicide TX-4411’s dream to come true. Wait a minute, she thought, I hadn’t been named that in those days. I was still a lawyer with long blond hair and good looking suits...named...who? Damn, she thought, the last tumbler had fallen into place. Total recall, with the symbolic omission of one’s previous name! The sentence boards really knew how to stick it to you! She could hardly complain, after all she had been in on the creation of the system. Alice, that had to be it, Alice. At any rate, Alice, or whatever her name had been, wound up working harder on her own conviction than she had on devising the system in the first place. It was a hard nut to crack, after all, the politically well connected just didn’t get that sort of sentencing. But she was a genius at redundancy, and made sure that every last avenue of escape had been blocked, every plea of mercy silenced. Bill hadn’t felt any pain, but she had to make it look like he had...lots of gore on their suburban mansion halls. It had to be proved malice aforethought, which meant that she had to tell her plans to people who would be discrete before the event, and crack afterwards. Then, of course, the necessary anonymous tip off to make her escape futile. Then the obligatory car chase down the Interstate to the road block. She, what had her name been, probably Alexis, had been an excellent sharpshooter. Lots of blood, but no dead officers, after all, she only needed one premeditated homicide to make the charges stick. All assuming that she was defended by an incompetent legal team. It takes a brilliant lawyer to pick an incompetent legal representative, and make it look as if the defense was adequate.

That was how Homicide TX-4411’s dream had come true. The point of no return, intern’s wisdom aside, hadn’t come when she had her first sentence review board session, it came the day she realized what she had created. Even her sojourn as a witless half-way probationary living off Route 86 was choreographed by the true Alison or whoever, to get Homicide TX-4411 to cakewalk into her dream. A dream? A nightmare? What did it matter, she wanted to live it, to make it come true. She...whatever her name had been. Homicide TX-4411 forced herself to remember her original name. Andromeda! Yes, her name must have been Andromeda. A strange sort of Andromeda who had murdered her Perseus in order to stay naked and chained forever on an adamantine rock. Now the monsters of her own mind were in the process of devouring her, and her only recourse was to drown her mind itself in the unconscious instincts of animal sexuality. It had all worked out according to plan. In the immortal words of the late Sen. Bill Jaegger who had declared, “We will create the moral equivalent of what a black hole is in the physical world, a pit into which miscreants shall disappear and never return.” Now she was falling irrecoverably below the event horizon, this woman who no longer even had a name. Her body was on fire, a fire contracting to an intense point of heat located midway between her thighs and her breasts. It was torment, it was ecstasy, and it was perfect justice.