Asylum
I waited on the cement porch. If only it were raining, the slightly run down grey street of apartments would have suited my mood perfectly. I could have ordered up a rainstorm if I really wanted to, of course. The holographic sky on the station ceiling could be set for all kinds of weather conditions.
I told myself, "He'll be out when he's done. Don't be clingy. Don't be so damned insecure." Feelings overwhelmed me, recent events, old memories. Tears tried to start in the corners of my eyes. "Don't cry out here. Just hang on."
Finally the door opened, revealing a young, slender man in an old-fashioned, Earth-style button front shirt.
I wasted no time on small talk. "Take me to the Place of No Mind."
"What's wrong?"
"Can I tell you later, Razor? Right now I need it."
"Heathen…"
"Please. I need it. I need a fix."
"Alright, come in."
The apartment was awash in old fashioned furniture, all warm wood and embroidered silk, and women swooned over every available surface: tables, divans, overstuffed armless chairs, benches, and of course, fainting couches.
"You're going to need a staff. A receptionist/secretary, a nurse to take care of the ladies afterwards, a maid."
"And which uniform do you want to wear, heathen?"
I appreciated the joke, but I just wasn't in the mood to laugh. I followed him through the house as he checked on the various ladies, with a tender word for each. There was no place else left to put another play partner, so we went all the way through to the balcony. It faced a holographic image of a view of mountains, identical from both sides, for this building and the one across the air flow space. The projection blurred the other building to a watery surrealistic smear.
"What has you so upset?"
"There was another attack."
"Damn them! I thought that was over, now that you and the Patience Council hired the Dorsai to protect the station."
"The aerial bombardments have stopped. There are still a few bombs on the ground. And I don't think today's attack had any political intent. Never mind, I don't want to think about it, that's why I'm here."
"Alright. We can play first and talk later, if that's what you want."
"I want. Please. Please."
"Then put your hands on the railing."
I bent over and leaned on the white metal balcony rail. He pulled up my blouse to expose my back, in such a way that my breasts remained covered. Then he pulled up my skirt and let it hang down in front, and pulled down my satin panties. This left my backside bare facing him, but my front side protected from stray eyes. So considerate. He was always so considerate.
Razor began flogging. Stinging strokes landed on my back, buttocks, and thighs. Each blow was as stimulating as the shock of a cold lake on a summer afternoon. I could almost hear the birds.
He changed to a heavier flogger, raining blows like thunder and lightning. I started holding my breath to keep from screaming, because I knew he would stop if I screamed, and I didn't want him to stop. The falls fell like driven sleet. I gasped between blows, and the world started spinning. There it was: the eternal birdsong of subspace, the Place of No Mind.
Subspace. Dimensions shifted around me, endlessly changing fractal geometry suffused in hazy golden light. Traveling without moving.
I was only vaguely aware of my body, quivering under a sheen of sweat. Then the flogging stopped. Razor helped me stand up with an arm around my waist.
The chill wind of the station air circulation pumps moving up between the buildings became sheets of icy silk as the breeze moved over my inflamed flesh. He fiddled with my clothes, concerned for my modesty while my mind still turned in the age-old swoop of the spiral galaxy.
He arranged me on a deck chair. Now I was part of the collection of swooning ladies. After making sure I was settled, he made his rounds again, checking on the day's previous recipients of his ministrations. He checked on me several more times as the world spun around me. I lost myself in the beauty of the holographic mountain, an artwork I myself had designed.
But the return of thought was as relentless as time. Bad old memories again. Old Baggage, iteration, what, 5.8 by now?
But he must never know. Must never suspect. I would not sully his purity with the dark tide of my past.
He checked on me again, and saw I was awake and aware. He asked again what's wrong.
I stood and stretched, leaning a little against the balcony rail to steady myself.
"When I founded Asylum, I knew some groups wouldn't get along. I knew some people would bring grudges here from their own world. But I never imagined how many different worlds would try to make war on us from outside."
That wasn't it, of course. This most recent attack was random street crime, not war or terrorism. But I had been rejected before, for what lay inside my mind. Damaged goods. I couldn't risk that again.
"What are you going to do?" Razor asked. He came to stand beside me at the railing.
I shrugged. "The Dorsai can keep the station from being blown out of space. I don't have a good answer for ground attacks by infiltrators. I'm certainly not about to turn Asylum into a police state. Freedom is wild and wooly."
He patted me on the small of my back, precisely where he had avoiding striking to protect the kidneys, where my skin was untouched and not sore. So considerate. Always, so considerate of my physical and emotional wellbeing. Small gestures like that are why I love him so.
"You'll think of something. You always do."
It was day again in Asylum. On? In. I could never decide; Asylum was a space station, but it was built inside an asteroid. And now, parts of it had been built up beyond the irregular stony surface, some low and squat warehouses and docks, and some ridiculously thin spires like glittering fairy castles growing into the forever night.
The main passenger locks just off the commercial port were a little of both, practical dock spaces and pretty tourist galleries with broad transparent windows affording views of the stars, and of the lights on the moving ships.
The Line always reminded me of an exclusive nightclub. Except that instead of a bouncer, admittance to the sanctuary of the station was granted by three members of the Patience Council.
A redhead shimmied her way through the crowd. "Ass-CUSE-me!" That was Katie, the third member of the Tuesday Triumvirate. We began interviewing prospective station residents and guests.
The first person—individual? Yes, the first individual we admitted was a gengineered human who thought he was a robot. To his credit, he had been told so. What a convenient fiction that must have been for his creators. His name was David-7.
The next beings in line were a pair of short fellows with green weskits and furry feet.
"Tired of Valinor?" I asked them.
"Just here to shop, your ladyship. The Thither Shores have many wonders, and it's not for the likes of me to criticize, you understand, but good weed is not among the pleasures to be had, and it does my Master such good, don't you know. Not that I turn my nose up at some fine Old Toby myself, begging your pardon."
I smiled. "Go right on in." There were many such things to be had in the station bazaar, but I had never sampled them. The high I craved came from the cells of my own brain, assisted to burst forth into rapturous flood by skilled Tops such as darling Razor.
A rather short fellow approached us three Wyrd Sisters. "I'm here to meet a female? Delta?"
"Welcome to Asylum. Go right on in."
Next was a man with a Roman nose. "Name?" Katie asked him.
"Do-Si-Do."
"Origin?"
"Gor."
"No pulp fiction allowed. Classics only."
"You let the giant cockroach in!" he protested.
"That's Gregor Samsa. He works here."
"Doing what?"
"Quality assurance testing of hydroponic apples."
After door duty, the three of us moved off through the bazaar, debating where to eat.
"The We for some piroshki and syrniki?" I suggested.
"Nah, that's boring," said the blonde, "nothing but Stoli to drink."
"There's always the Martian place," suggested Katie, the redhead.
"That's even worse! Nothing but water!"
In this trio, I was the brunette. "As long as we stay away from that silicon-based life form place."
"Agreed!" chorused my two compatriots.
"The cantina?"
"Oh, that's such a dive!"
"Not dressed for Titania's."
"And I'm not about to, either! Imagine, enforcing a dress code that calls for pearls and wings!"
Then we saw David-7 standing in front of the closed real estate office, looking forlorn.
"He's so hunky," said the blonde.
"Looks like he arrived too late to get a rental," I said. "Wonder if he'd like to stay in one of the empties we've been renovating 'til the office reopens?"
"We do have hotels here," Katie pointed out.
The blonde put in, "True, but that doesn't give us an excuse to do him a favor. Let's take him home and order in pizza. We can use the new transporter to bring it to us hot from New York."
"Clear from Earth," Katie marveled, shaking her head a bit in wonder at the latest technology we had imported.
"I love it when a plan comes together," I said.
We approached him—well, we surrounded him. The blonde did the talking. "Please allow us to offer you the hospitality of the station tonight," she began in formal phrases. Then she reverted to her usual ways and added, "There's no furniture, but the tri-D projector is built in, and we can have a pizza party."
He quickly assented, and soon we were in one of the flats undergoing remodeling. In this unit, the ladder and construction mess were in the kitchen. We ordered in the old fashioned pepperoni pizza, very hard to get now even on Earth, what with the rarity of animal ranching.
After pizza and beer, the blonde said, "Here on the station we have a popular dance. We call it the Moon Shot dance: ladies mooning, Top landing on us." She demonstratied by swatting her own rump.
Katie and I laughed out loud.
David-7 grinned. "I know that dance, ladies. Where I come from we don't call it a dance, we call it a spanking."
"We call it that here too," I said softly, smiling.
"Have you ladies been naughty?"
"What, me naughty?" Katie teased, "Oh no siree!"
"She's naughty," I said. "I just like to get spanked."
"Well, line up then!"
We started to form a line, with Katie first in line to get spanked and me second as always.
But he said, "Not like that. Face that way. Hip to hip, hands on your knees. Squeeze in together. I want to see one continuous spankable surface."
He lined us up in a row, hands on our knees, and spanked us in sequence, back and forth, warming us up with his hand over our skirts. Then he lifted our skirts and made an appreciative sound at the sight of our pretty panties. He spanked us some more on our panties. Then he pulled them down and rubbed our bottoms, and then spanked us on the bare.
Then he said, "Aw, now look, you've made my hand all dry with your butts. I think I'll just have to find something else to smack you with."
There wasn't much in the empty apartment, but he went into the kitchen and came back with an old fashioned wooden broom. He tested out the length of it against all three of our bottoms at once. At first we giggled, but when the first blow landed we stopped giggling and started squealing. He thwacked our butts good. Good and sore! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!
The room started to spin. What a buzz! What a life!
When he was done with us we all collapsed in a pile of skirts and curves and mussed up blonde, brunette, and red hair. He plopped down with us and we watched a tri-V show, and David-7 rubbed lotion into our butts.
This was the life. The work of running the station was by turns boring, terrifying, and frustrating, but nights like this made it all worthwhile.
The next day Katie and I were in the station control room, adjusting a finicky atmosphere cycling plant. The control room had started as a grey, sterile place with lots of blinking lights, but we had decided early on that the standard sci fi bridge image wasn't really a nice place to work. So we had added paintings and cloth hangings on the wall, and lots of potted plants.
A man stalked in. He wasn't a member of the Patience Council. He was rugged looking, with a slight scar on his face. There was no one feature that could be called beautiful, except perhaps his Earth sky eyes, but the whole added up to an indefinable handsomeness.
"Where's the replicant?" he demanded.
"The who what?" Katie asked.
"The replicant!" he repeated. He grabbed Katie by the hair and dragged her out from behind her control console. "David-7. Where is he?"
"Oh." Her eyes widened and she looked at me.
I ran for the alert button, but the man with the scar—Deckard— pulled Katie along with him and grabbed me too. He had both of us by the hair.
"What do you care?" Katie asked. "This isn't Earth."
"Never mind why I'm after him. Just tell me where to find him."
"Never!" Katie sang.
"Oh gods, Katie, cut the bravado!" I said. "He's not playing."
"Where?" Deckard repeated.
"He left at dawn. Into the bazaar." I said. "He could be anywhere by now."
Deckard looked like he was trying to decide if that was the truth.
Katie tried to draw his gun. He clamped a hand on her arm and whirled us both to the floor. I kicked his legs out from under him and he fell, but he was on us before I could stand up. He pushed us down and drew his sidearm.
"Freeze! That'll be enough, you two. Just tell me where the replicant is and I'll let you go."
"I'll never talk!" Katie shrilled.
Deckard shifted his gun to his left hand and pulled off his belt. He rolled Katie over, face down.
I tried to speak and could only make a pathetic little whimper.
Deckard's left hand never wavered as he brought the belt down on Katie's rear. "TELL me WHERE is the REPlicant!" He punctuated his words with hard blows of the belt.
"I don't know!" Katie screamed. He landed more licks on her.
I moved my hands a little, preparing to try to jump up and fight. He sighted in on me and commanded, "Stay still!"
He turned me over too and started alternating one whack to Katie and one to me.
Then another being entered the control room. It was bipedal and generally human shaped, but entirely closed in armor. The armor had an odd little flag on the helmet like the red metal signal on a mailbox. It pointed its ray gun at Deckard.
"At last I have you, Solo." His voice was deep and grating.
"Do I know you?" Deckard asked.
"What a wonderful bonus for me. I came here thinking I was going to get paid twice for the same trip. One bounty for Comrade Bork, and one for Captain Nemo. You are a special prize, Solo."
"Sorry, neither." Deckard rolled away and squeezed off a wild shot to distract his opponent.
Boba Fett fired his blaster at Deckard, sinking smoking bolts of energy into the deckplates and station consoles. Deckard escaped out the door.
Fett hesitated between chasing him and looking at us. His masked head swiveled back and forth.
"Thank you," Katie said.
I was still in a nonverbal state.
"The bounty on Nemo is worth a lot more than personal vengeange," said Boba Fett. He turned back to us as we rose from the floor. "Where is Capt. Nemo?"
"Who?" Katie asked.
I groaned a little, realizing it was about to start all over again. I thought of trying the old, just let me pull up that info on the computer routine, and to try to get to the panic button. But I couldn't get words to come out of my mouth.
Fett held his blaster on us as he clanked closer. With his left hand, he withdrew a device from his utility belt. He pressed the button and showed what it did: it lit up with a tiny tongue of miniature lightning.
"Where's Nemo?"
"Where's Waldo?" Katie replied.
Fett regarded her for a long moment. Then he pressed the device against my chest. Zap!
I had thought I was too scared to squeak, but I roared, "Oh holy Frack!" as I fell to my knees.
At just that moment, the viewscreen came to life. A Dorsai ship captain began a rapid report, "The station is under attack by a fleet of—Alert! Ground forces respond to station control!"
Boba Fett cursed and fled.
"He went down the shaft to the computer core!" Katie cried. "After him!"
I struggled to speak, but could not.
The Dorsai captain said, "Telepaths are hanging off the station."
"Telepaths?" Katie asked. "What did we ever do to them?"
I shut my eyes and reinforced my mental shields. It was only a stopgap measure, I knew. Shields drew attention. The best defense against telepaths was to be totally wide open, and think nothing at all. To look uninteresting. I needed to descend to the state of No Mind.
Katie and the captain handled details of the defense while I recovered my wits and my voice. When the viewscreen clicked off, I told Katie, "I have to protect station passwords and security from the telepaths. I need to blank my mind." I knew what I needed, and I knew who could give it to me. "Computer, locate Razor."
The computer's voice—I had programmed it to sound like Max Headroom—responded, "A debit to Razor's account was recorded 34 minutes ago at the Mining Tunnel."
"Ah. Indulging in some guy time." I pressed the button to open the giant window, and stepped onto a Disk. "Katie, please clear me a route through the traffic pattern." Then I flipped up the Disk and pushed up at an extreme angle, and dropped through the lines of aircars, past grey concrete and flashing glass buildings and Las Vegas style moving flat screen billboards touting the latest Geisha Gummies, Clockwork Orange Julius, and Denham's Dentifrice.
The Mining Tunnel really was a mine once. It was still a warren of bare rock tunnels, starkly lit by work-lights in places, dim in others, with nary a potted plant to be seen, decorated only with obsolete mining equipment piled haphazardly in various tunnel-ends, and not kept exceptionally clean. That was half its attraction for the largely male clientele. The other half was the bar and poker tables. If it were on a planet, it would have been smoky inside. Of course, Asylum had to manufacture its own air, so releasing pollutants into the public air was strictly forbidden. Asylum had a reputation as a lawless place, but even bedlam had to bend to the needs of the lifesupport system.
I found Razor, David-7, and a tall, dapper black fellow in a private side tunnel, playing a game of Antares 5-Card. The stranger in the purple sharkskin suit was asking David-7, "Well, do you follow the 3 Laws?"
"What 3 laws?"
"You've never heard of them?"
"No."
"Then you aren't a robot."
I announced my presence by putting my two bits into the conversation, though not into the poker pot. "It would be kind of hard to top as a 3 Laws type, I'd think. Hello, gents."
Razor grinned at me and his eyes twinkled. I would never get tired of that smile.
"Pull up a chair," invited David-7. "I'll deal you in." So, it had not taken him long to find a place for himself in the society of Asylum. He was a dealer here now.
"Sorry. No time." I turned to Razor, handsome as always even in the terrible lighting of the Mining Tunnel. How did he make his brown agate eyes glitter like that under these awful work lights? "Telepaths are attacking the station. I need to white out my mind."
"Aw, sweetheart. Telepaths?"
"I can shield, but that only makes me a more attractive target. I can't hold it forever. The best defense is to convince them there's nothing here to find. Once they've seen the inside of my head while I'm in a state of No Mind, they'll cross my particular mental flavor off their list and go sniffing for something juicier. And by the time they realize their error, hopefully, the Dorsai will have driven them off."
He nodded. His expression turned serious, the way he looked when concentrated upon his art. "And here I was winning, too." He stood up and swept all the cards, poker chips, gold nuggets, and spaceship title certificates to one side of the table. "Get your butt over here, babe."
As I bent over the green felt poker table, Razor and David-7 pulled off their belts with a double shirrrr sound. Hands bared my buttocks and back.
"Arms out front," Razor commanded. I moved my arms across the table. "Perfect."
Razor measured out a strap-length on his belt and wrapped the extra around his arm to get it out of his way, tucking in the buckle amid the wrapping. David-7 doubled his belt over, taking the buckle in the palm of his hand.
Razor started on my back, and David-7 on my buttocks. The two belts made slightly different whapping sounds, and the sensations were incredible, molten. I felt my mind sinking toward subspace with an inaudible sigh of contentment. For a moment I flashed on thousands of tiny, glowing gold wires sliding through my body. Not like the insides of a computer, but something else: a sort of universal holonet, communicating with all its parts, but more than that, more ancient, like the web of wyrd becoming visible.
The man in the sharkskin suit whistled appreciatively. "Whooo-eeee! The folks back home are never going to believe this." He pulled out a little tourist camera and started taking snapshots.
Then Razor and David-7 traded targets. Now Razor was whipping the red globes, and David-7 was striking my equally reddened back. I started holding my breath, just for a second, with each blow, to keep quiet.
Razor started hitting harder, and I flinched, just a little. I felt him hesitate, breaking the rhythm. Under any other circumstances, he would have stopped then, and leaned over me and whispered in my ear to ask if I was OK. But he knew what was at stake now.
On his next blow I held myself stock-still, and he continued the belting. Silent and still was my natural state when playing, but Razor's alertness to the tiniest sound and movement completed a feedback loop, or a vicious circle, depending on how one looked at it. The more I held still, the more he expected me to hold still, and grew concerned if I flinched or made even the littlest mew. Hence, I struggled to reach deeper states of silence and stillness.
Like drummers at a drum circle, Razor and David-7 suddenly fell into synchrony. Rhythm, rhythm, rhythm like the heartbeat of creation.
I sank into the lake of all-potential. The water transmuted around me to otherworldly ether. Currents drifted across the darkness, eddying around glowing planets. Impossible fairy-beings flapped slowly through space with delicate wings and a faint chime of bells.
My last coherent thought was, that's not the way you fly in space. Then I reached it: the Place of No Mind.
Consciousness returned slowly. I was lying on something cold and hard; it must be the stone floor. I was curled up like a napping cat, and something had been stuffed under my head for a pillow. I opened my eyes. No one was sitting at the poker table. Razor and David-7 were sitting under it, eyes glued to the curve of the tunnel. What in space?
A furry creature darted around the corner, saw the two humans under the table, and dived in to join them. Then a large insectoid scuttled by, heading for the dead end just around the corner from the poker table.
The apelike alien asked,"Who's the BEM?"
"That's no BEM, it's a Sandking," said David-7.
"And who are YOU?" asked Razor.
"Flying monkey."
"I see." He replied.
I thought, oh oh, what could make a Sandking and a flying monkey run away? I decided that I really didn't want to be awake again. But I was station administrator, and that made whatever this was my business. I stretched experimentally. I didn't know if I would still be dizzy if I stood up, but that didn't sound like a particularly smart idea anyway. I rose to hands and knees and crawled under the table with the two tops and the flying monkey.
"What's the situation?" I whispered.
"Not sure exactly," David-7 replied, "but some barfight turned into a bomb scare."
"Sapper charges," said the flying monkey. "I was there when the numbskull whipped them out. He'll collapse the tunnel if he sets them off. Best we all stay under this table."
"Damn," I said. "Any sign of station response?"
"Not that I've seen," replied the monkey.
Razor asked me, "How long before you're missed?"
"What?" I responded. My mind was still a bit scattered.
"It's nearly three now. If you don't report in, how long before the Dorsai show up?"
"Why would I arrange a safecall to go play with YOU?"
"Oh. Oh, heathen." He put a caressing hand to my waist. "Sweetie, have you got a communicator with you, or a weapon?"
"No, nothing. I didn't prepare for this. When I left the control room the only thing on my mind was turning off my mind."
"Let's jump him," said David-7. "Four against one."
"Three and a half," Razor corrected. "Heathen's in no condition to stand up, let alone fight."
"True," I agreed. "I'm drunk off my ass!" For some reason I found this observation exceedingly witty, and proceeded to giggle and snort myself halfway to an asthma attack before Razor helpfully slapped me quiet. I leaned against a table leg and recovered my breath.
"That's it," said the flying monkey. "That's a beautiful plan!"
"What is?" asked David-7.
The monkey gestured at me and Razor. "They distract him by pretending to have a fight. You sneak up behind him and grab him, and I'll soar in and take away the blasting charges."
"Sounds simple enough," said David-7. "But we're in a tunnel. How do I sneak up on him?"
"Side tunnel. The one that goes to the wine cellar. He's standing on the bar, or at least he was when I saw him last."
"Ah! Of course. Of course. I think this might work."
Razor thought a moment. Then an evil gleam came to his eyes. "OK. You two go get ready to spring the ambush. We'll give you ten minutes before we start making noise."
David-7 and the flying monkey went off to get into position to spring the trap. Razor plucked the cards off the table and idly shuffled the deck for a while. Then he stuffed his winnings in his pockets. He had a really sadistic grin on his face.
"Ready, babe?"
I nodded.
We crawled out from under the poker table. He stood up, inhaled deeply, and started shouting. "Drunk again! I always find you here!"
He turned a chair over loudly. Then he gave me a hand up and helped me walk down the tunnel, shouting all the way and kicking things over. I did my part by shrieking when he knocked something down. When we got near the bend in the tunnel just before the main bar, he picked a bottle off a table and smashed it against the wall. The tinkling sound of glass shards hitting the stone floor was following by more shouting from the both of us.
He whispered, "Let's get you back on the floor," and let me down. Then he took me by the hair and led me around the bend in the corridor. He shouted, "How many times have I found you here now? Seven? Eight times?"
"Nooooo." All eyes were on us. We had just become the main show, for sure. "I'll be good, I promise." Briefly, I was embarrassed to realize some of the bar's patrons were people I knew. But as long as the bomber didn't realize we were acting, and kept his attention on us and not the ambush, that was just something I'd have to ignore.
"You will, huh? That's what you said last time! I think you need a good spanking!"
He pulled off his belt again, and I started breathing hard— and definitely not from fear. It took me a second to remember I was supposed to be struggling. I grabbed for the hand on my hair. "No, please, honey! I'll be a good girlfriend!"
He let my hair go, moved around and let fly with the belt in front of everyone. Smack! Smack! Smack! Blows hit my butt and back through my clothes. I scuttled toward the door to the street, tried to stand up and swayed right into a table, knocking it over and ploughing into one of the terrified bar patrons.
That was when David-7 and the flying monkey made their move. There was a shout from the crowd, and I looked over to see David-7 with a firm chokehold on the mad bomber, and the monkey perched on top of a table with the sapper charges, looking like he knew what he was doing with them.
The bomber bent and threw David-7 over his head. David-7 landed and rolled back to his feet, coming up in a karate fighting stance. The bomber dropped into a wing chun position. Razor came at the bomber from another angle with an aikido move. They fought and circled, throwing kicks, punches, elbows, karate chops, all countered by the smooth circular defenses of the wing chun energy ball hand.
It was up to me to represent kung fu, but at the moment I was sure I would have to abandon my usual tiger style, because I doubted I could pull off anything but drunken monkey. But there was more than one way to win a fight, if there weren't any tournament judges around.
I crawled around behind the bar while Razor and David-7 kept the bomber busy, pulled myself up, grabbed a bottle of Romulan Ale, gathered as much strength and balance as I could, rolled across the bar, staggered over to the fight, and bashed the bomber over the head with the bottle.
He didn't go down, but he did stumble dizzily, and that was enough for Razor and David-7 to grab him and take him down. The fight was over. Razor was kneeling on the bomber's back, with the man's wrists in his hands.
I fell to the floor and exclaimed, "Wheeeeeee! Now that was fun!"
About a week later, the whole station prepared for celebration. Purple and orange Foundation Day bunting hung from balconies all over Asylum. There was a parade, complete with floats. There was even a marching band. And ponies. Well, not actual real equines, on a space station, of course, but, well, pony girls. Dressed up with glittery headstalls. It was an Asylum parade, after all.
It was the private Foundation Day party that the Patience Council was throwing only for special friends that was the highlight of the day, of course. We took over one of Asylum's largest hotels, and everyone was playing.
I watched the festivities appreciatively. So many lovely butts turning red. Some of my favorite people, tops, bottoms, and switches, all having fun, either participating or watching. People were draped over tables, chairs, beds, and ottomans all over the hotel. Others were standing up, hands behind their heads or against walls. One remarkably flexible woman was even bent over backwards with her hands on the floor behind her, getting her breasts attended to with a flogger.
This Foundation Day was going to be a very special night for me as well. I had been exploring—reclaiming—my sexuality through spanking play. Now I was ready for the next step. And a certain someone was going to be there with me, every step of the way. Whenever he arrived.
A boy and girl appeared at the party. "Are you two old enough to be here?" I asked.
"It's her 18th birthday."
"Really? Well, then, we'll have to find someone around here to give you a birthday spanking."
"Preee-CISE-ly," said the boy.
"I take it you're both bottoms?"
"Preee-CISE-ly," he said again.
They were a cute couple. I introduced them around, and fetched up by the snack table. Real Earth strawberries. Heavenly!
I looked around at all the guests as I munched on fruit. Nope, he wasn't here yet.
I was sufficiently recovered from the previous week's exertions in the Mining Tunnel to play a bit. There was a game of Musical Spanking Chairs, taking lapsurfing to new heights (or lows). I joined in, and went over a random lap for a nice spanking over my gown. The strains of a Beethoven melody blasted incongruously from a floating musicube. Then it was on to the next lap, and my gown was pulled up, and knotted to keep it up. I was spanked only lightly over my lace panties. Then the next lap. My bottom was bared, and my panties pulled down to my knees. I was spanked hard. I started to go lightheaded. There it was! A light subspace buzz.
When the music started again I quickly discovered how difficult it was to dance and compete for a lap with my panties way down. I missed the lap I was aiming towards, and had to leave the game. It sure was fun, though! I was smiling as I pulled up my panties and let down my dress.
I looked around again. He wasn't there yet.
There was a giant spray of snapdragons in the middle of a table. Of course I smelled them, and they had the most exquisite scent, just like they'd been in an English country garden drenched in Earthly sunlight. It was hard to get snapdragons to produce their signature volatiles in a space station hydroponics garden. I made a mental note to commend the station gardeners.
Then I realized I was bent over the table, and straightened up quickly. No sense giving anyone any ideas.
I drifted over to the wet bar and poured myself a lime and tonic. I found Katie and a few of the other Council members deep in a discussion of whether Daedelus should be admitted to Asylum. He was currently housed in the next hotel over, where the Council stored folks it wasn't quite sure about.
Dr. Frankenstein was turned out nattily in a pinstripe suit. He was the only member of the Patience Council who came from the classics rather than being one of the latter day authors who mostly produced stories for the amusement of other members of the Patience Council. The good doctor was vehemently in favor of declaring the inventor of the flying contraption to be an example of science fiction.
I joined the discussion, but kept an eye out for Razor. At last I saw him join the party. I broke away from the literary committee, and so did Katie. He was already playing by the time we crossed the crowded room. We dragged up a couple of chairs and settled in to watch him play. Parades were all well and good, but this was the show we wanted to see. Oh, how sweet it was to watch him, and to share this delicacy with Katie.
We watched him flog and strap and paddle. We watched him switch and take it hard. How delicious he was to see! The perfection of every limb, the blank canvas of his back side being painted red, and the smile that went all the way to his eyes. Most of all, the smile, as he looked right at us.
He went away with his latest play partner, and Katie and I left our seats with twin sighs. We mingled our way to the snack table and noshed on station-grown celery sticks. "Next time let's bring popcorn," I said.
Katie laughed. "Good idea."
David-7 spirited Katie away from the food, and I struck up a conversation with another Council member on some light subject, carefully staying away from real station business. I didn't want to think about our trade balance, or the proposed ordinance ban, or the threatened air workers' strike tonight. Tonight was I going to break my long fast. Tonight was I going to fully reclaim my stolen sexuality, for the first time as a whole person, for the first time since fitting the jagged puzzle pieces of my mind together, a decade ago.
But then the party wound down, and he did not appear again. Could I have misinterpreted him? But no. Weeks ago, I had said, 'I wonder what it would be like to make love in subspace.' There was no misinterpreting his words. 'Try me.' Surely I could not have so mistaken their meaning.
And 'I love you'? But I had never read anything into that. I knew he said that to all the ladies. His was a free and nonpossessive love, a pure love, without expectation or jealousy. The very highest kind.
My own love fell short of that ideal.
Partiers drifted off to their rooms, or exited the hotel to return home. I sighed. It was futile. But—there were still a handful of Earth strawberries, imported at ghastly expense, on the snack bar. Shame if they went to waste.
Everyone was gone. I was dead tired myself, being up way past my usual bedtime. Finally I admitted to myself that the party was over, and I walked out into the night—or the dimmed lighting that simulated night on Asylum. I needed to go home and sleep.
I walked through the trashed streets of the grey city.
"Razor is one of those people like my big brother, whom you can trust with your life as long as he's in the same room with you, but can't be counted on to show up at a particular place and time."
I was talking to myself. Well, I was sleep-deprived, and still spinning in subspace from all the party spanking. And myself was a good listener.
"Oh why oh why did he have to remind me of my brother? Damn. He even sort of looks like him, a little. Lean, brown-haired, brown-eyed, vaguely British features. Of course, there are differences. Big Brother wears his hair in unruly curls, like mine."
I turned a corner and cut through the now-deserted bazaar. The marketplace looked forlorn with all the stalls covered up with tarps. Or, perhaps I was projecting.
"Did I just fall out of love?"
Foundation Day confetti covered the ground. When it was falling, no doubt it looked festive. Now it just looked like a mess.
"Well, good. What a relief. Inconvenient emotion."
I mentally probed the new wound. "Still like him? Check. Still want to play with him? Check. Still want to fuck him? Check. Still love him? Yeah. Yeah, I do still love him. Just not 'in love' with him. Good. Better that way. Love should be happy, selfless—no, wrong word. Contented? Wrong again. Universal."
I cut down a side alley to shorten my walk home.
"Don't you dare fucking cry." My vision blurred.
"Don't have to stop loving him just 'cause he reminds me of my brother. I love Big Brother."
I wasn't really looking where I was going when I rounded the corner chuckling through my tears, "OK, OK, that one was a cheap shot."
My eyes were closed, and I was wiping a hand across them when the cold circle pressed into my back.
I froze. A dozen possible kung fu moves flitted through my mind, each rejected for the same reason: I wasn't fast enough to dodge a laser beam.
"Walk to the elevator," ordered the enemy.
I started walking. How could I have been so stupid? I knew how much random street crime there was in Asylum. It didn't used to be this way. These streets used to be safe, back when there was nobody here but us nuts and freaks. But then we'd let in a whole bunch of sci fi characters, villains included.
I should have been paying attention. I shouldn't've walked down a dark alley in the first place.
"I know why this station is called Asylum. I know why the station government is called the Patience Council."
"A lot of people know that," I said.
"I know you changed the spelling."
"Who are you? What do you want?" Not random street crime, after all. I didn't know if I ought to be relieved, or not.
He said nothing more until we reached the elevator. It was part of the original mining complex, even before the old tunnels had been taken over for use as a warehouse for those desperate enough to ask strangers for help. People like me, back then. Long before the Council, and Foundation Day.
The old mine elevator was little more than a cage and a cable. The gate screeched as its long unoiled metal moved.
"Going down." He pressed the button to start the descent with his free hand.
In his moment of distraction, I whirled and chopped at a pressure point in the arm holding the gun, but he dodged back and wedged himself against the corner of the cage as the elevator started with a clang and a jerk. He brought the gun back in line before I could advance past his guard. "Don't try it," he grated.
I noted the gun was not a beam weapon at all, but an old fashioned twentieth century gunpowder pistol. Then I forgot all about the gun as I noticed the face.
Or, lack thereof. There was a hole between his collar and cap. For a moment I thought, invisible man, but no. His hand had been clearly visible reaching for the button. I glanced at it again, to be sure. Yes, a flesh and blood hand.
I whispered, "Faceless… You're the Faceless Bureaucracy." It was the old enemy again, the one whose defeat I had just celebrated for Foundation Day.
"No. I'm a Tralfamadorian."
"How did you get in here? Slaughterhouse-5 isn't science fiction! It's a psychological thriller. Or, a psychological something. Or, well, it just isn't science fiction, despite what the author said!"
"But you can't deny it's a classic."
"Yes, yes, it's a classic, but it's a totally realistic portrayal of the inside of the mind of a traumatized person."
"And you would know."
The elevator stopped at the lowest level. The original delving, the very first part of the station, before the Patience Council took control of Asylum. The actual Asylum.
"No! This is MY fantasy! It's supposed to be filled with things I like!"
"You abandoned fantasy for raw emotional truth two pages ago."
"I want to wake up now!"
"You're not asleep, heathen. This Is Your Mind Without Your Meds."
He gestured me to get off the elevator, but I was frozen in place. He grabbed my arm and pushed me off the elevator ahead of him.
Clawing at the doorway, I tried to scream "Nooooooooooo!" but it came out a pathetic voiceless whisper.
A short trip down the corridor. I wanted to fight. I wanted to scream. I couldn't. I slipped back into the old responses. I hated this sense of loss of control, loss of will. Silent tears rolled down my face, just like ten years ago.
There it was. The scuffed up door, that didn't shut with any dungeon clang but was far more ominous in its run-down, government-issue, dirty chipped paint.
"This is where it all began," said Faceless.
No, I thought. But I had already lost speech. This was the primal state of submission, that had nothing to do with trust or love or pleasure. Just like the last time I was here.
This was not where it had all begun. It began before memory. But this was where I lost my illusion of safety: the self-deception that I was safe because I was an adult now; because I was big and strong; because I had studied the martial arts, and shooting, and learned to control my inborn berserker gift. None of that mattered.
A decade, after the last time I was here, spent thinking, What the hell's wrong with me? Why didn't I fight back? I knew how. I knew how to fight. I just hadn't.
But nothing is wrong with me. It simply isn't my nature to defy, to resist. I had come to that conclusion when I built the higher portions of the station, and began my pursuit of the perfect subspace. I had accepted myself; I had let go of my guilt at not having resisted. I had begun to explore myself, and find my friends, and my bliss.
Why then was I back here, now? Had I not let go of this?
But this time, I wasn't helpless, or hopeless. This time, I had friends on my side. This time, the hunt would be up for me if I didn't show up to work this morning at station control.
My feet propelled me down the dingy white hallway. Fight, move, something, do something, I told myself.
I managed to choke out words: "Are you one of those telepaths who was attacking the station?"
He didn't answer. The hallway opened out onto the observation ward. Beds. Beds with leather restraints. With metal locks. I couldn't face this again. Once in a lifetime was already too much.
He gestured with the gun for me to keep moving, and I did, hating myself for my obedience. But this time, I did not despair. This time, I knew I was still within my own fantasy, not in the cold real world where no one in places like this cares about the emotions of those living within.
This was still MY world, MY fantasy, despite being dragged into darkness by this telepath or whoever he was. Like magic—like the Matrix—I could affect this world simply by willing it so. And I willed to be rescued. I willed to be rescued from the evil hospital like that military truck driver woman, whatshername.
The world whited out with a roar and a peculiar scent. It wasn't subspace. It was a flashbang grenade. When my sight returned, the room was full of US Marines.
They had Faceless's horrible non-visage covered by a black hood. Yeah, I thought. See if he likes a taste of his own medicine.
I wiped off my tears, coughed a couple of times to recover my voice, and smiled upon the Marines. "Thank you," I said.
"Aw shucks, Ma'am, it tweren't nothin'."
Later that same day, I was directing a robot cleaning crew in the lower levels. I spoke aloud, but not to the droids, mostly to myself.
"Pitch it all out. The mental furniture needs to be changed. Out with the scuffed door. Out with the locks. Out with the terrible, banal, horrifying, ordinary, chairs and beds and lockable leather. Out with the charts and the checklists and the faceless bureaucrats' inability to see a human being with human feelings inside a patient's gown. Get rid of it all. I need to be free. I need to be free."
A woman I recognized from the Foundation Day party appeared in the doorway.
"You're throwing THAT away?"
"You want it?"
"Oh hell yes!"
"It's yours."
I grinned, and muttered, "That's perfect. That's it. Not throw away, give away. Giveaway. Giveaway is a sacred rite. Let those who enjoy such things have them. Get them out of the rummage-room of my mind."
I called out to her, "Spread the word. Everything in here is up for grabs. I'm pitching out the dusty files, but the file cabinets and computers and everything, and most especially the furniture, is all for giveaway."
Before long there was a horde of people in Asylum's lowest level. Some were carrying things themselves, others were directing the robots to help them load things on hover carts. With a start, I saw a familiar military burr that wasn't on one of the jarheads. Razor was helping a pair of women lift something onto a cart. Pressed into service by whoever he happened to be with when the announcement was made, no doubt.
I thought, 'He shouldn't have to see this place.' But then a new thought occurred to me: 'What in space makes me think he's pure? People don't just magically grow a taste for subspace like mushrooms growing in the green dank of a moldy-leafed summer forest after a rainstorm.'
Soon the lower level was stripped of everything anyone had a use for, and I was finally free of it forever. Free.
I reflected on freedom as I rode the old mine elevator up to my home level. I thought out loud, "Maybe it's time for free elections. Get a debate going, generate some ideas on how to solve the station's problems. Yes."
I called in to station control and told them I was too shaken up to come to work today. Then I arranged a snack tray for myself with chips and salsa, a lime and tonic, and a carton of French Silk chocolate ice cream on a stay-cold plate, and called up a holo. A Razor movie, of course.
The doorbell rang. Who could it be, at this time of day, when I was supposed to be at work?
It was the flying monkey. "Hi," he said. "I've been thinking since I met you. Can I come in?"
"Sure." The movie played in three-D in the center of the room. "Ah, I'll pause that. Just a second."
"No, let it run," said the monkey. "This is sort of what I wanted to ask you about. See, I was at that Foundation Day party. I was kind of shy, so I just hung out on the chandelier. But I liked what I saw. I think I might be one of you. Spankos."
"Really? Sit down." We settled on the sofa. "Snack?"
"Don't mind if I do."
"What's your name?"
"The witch never gave any of us names. Just called us all Flying Monkey."
"Oh. Well, how about if I call you Fly for short?"
He grinned a wide monkey grin. "Hi, I'm Fly. Yeah, I like that."
"So which part in this movie would you like to have?"
"Oh, I could never top. There's too much real violence in me. I'm afraid if I let loose I'd end up really hurting someone."
"Oh, Fly, that's exactly how I feel too! Though, I was going to try switching. Once the seed of the idea was planted in my mind, it took root and grew. It will bear fruit someday. I thought, if I try it with someone I love, to please them, then I would be able to keep their pleasure in mind instead of just going off on them. As long as it's someone I really care about."
"What about trying it with someone who can't really be harmed at all? Like a flying monkey?"
I smiled. "But with all that fur on your butt, how could I tell how red you were getting?"
"Really, I'm nearly invulnerable," he claimed. "A collapsing mine tunnel might do for me, but a human being is really unlikely to be able to do me any harm without meaning to."
"Alright. I'll try it. Come here, Fly. Over the lap you go."
I moved his wings aside and started spanking, lightly at first, then getting harder. He squirmed just a little, then settled in and relaxed. He turned his head, and I could see he was smiling contentedly. He was also watching the movie.
"You're my buttmonkey, aren't you, Fly?" I asked.
"I sure am Heathen Ma'am!"
We both grinned and divided our attention between each other and the 3-D holo images in front of us.
Ah. This was the way to unwind. Chips and salsa, chocolate ice cream. Watching a Razor movie.
Spanking the monkey.
The End