Again the switch rose and fell, but Nadia shook her head and held up her hand.
‘No, no, no!’ she cried. Becky stopped, but did not turn to face her and Nadia let out a deep sigh of frustration.
‘Can’t you at least try to put something into this?’ she said, at the same time aware that she was addressing what were only electronic images, but hoping that her intervention might trigger some response deep within VESTA’s data banks. She decided that maybe it was best to lead by example.
‘Troy,’ she ordered, ‘pull out of her and turn around.’ With calm deliberation, Troy withdrew and pivoted to face her, his organ still glistening from Gina’s juices. VESTA had got that much right, at least, Nadia grimaced. She reached down and swiftly detached the studs that held the triangular leather crotch piece over her own sex.
‘Stand still,’ she said and moved up to him, raising herself even taller on her toes, gripping his penis and straddling it. ‘Now,’ she said, as she sank down over his length, pleasantly surprised by the pure physical contact, ‘this is what I mean by putting something into it.’
Gripping his shoulders, she swung her legs up and around, crossing them behind the small of his back and quickly began to raise and lower herself on him, astonished at how good it felt.
‘Now,’ she breathed, ‘this is more like - oh shit!’ She swung her legs back around and dropped her feet to the floor, lifted herself clear of him and stepped back, slapping him hard across the face as she did so. He flinched and his cheek reddened immediately, but he scarcely took a backward step.
‘This is a waste of time,’ Nadia rasped. ‘I’d be better employed seeing how some of the others are getting on and I just hope they’re having better luck than I am. Now, what’s the phrase? Oh yes.’
She uttered the failsafe words and waited. Nothing happened.
‘Bag and baggage,’ she repeated. There was a slight shimmering in the air and the image of Troy blinked out, but Nadia remained in the room with the two women. She tried again. This time the women dematerialised, but everything else remained the same. A third try brought no further change, so Nadia turned back towards the door, hand extended towards the handle. It turned, but the door itself refused to open.
‘Bag and baggage!’ Nadia shouted, but to no avail and that was when she began to realise that something might be seriously wrong.
Once again, the woods seemed totally deserted and as endless as before. Pausing every now and then, Ellen strained to listen through the latex cat helmet, but as far as she could discern, everywhere was absolute silence, not even a breeze to stir the foliage overhead.
She stopped, squatted against a handy tree and for at least the tenth time tried the mask helmet, padded fingers probing for any clue as to its means of removal and, for the tenth time, drew a blank. Exasperated, she lowered herself even further, settling on her buttocks, legs stretched out before her, and considered her situation.
Further walking was almost certainly likely to prove a waste of time and effort. Not that there seemed to be that much effort involved, for the virtual reality set-up, whilst programmed for such things as pain and pleasure, did not seem to recognise more mundane symptoms and Ellen guessed she could probably walk another hundred miles without becoming physically tired.
The problem was, she reflected ruefully, that she could also probably walk another hundred miles and still not find the end of these interminable trees. Presumably because the environment was created from some sort of loop system, a theory which was borne out to a great degree by the regular reappearance of certain distinctive trees and bush clumps, a repetition that was not completely obvious to the casual observer, but one which, despite the subtlety of its various combinations and variations was nonetheless inescapable to someone who had walked through it with nothing to do but use her eyes.
So I wait, Ellen told herself. I sit here and I wait, stuck inside a giant sized pussycat skin, without a fag, without a drink, and without anything else to relieve the boredom.
She closed her eyes and wondered if it were possible to sleep in a world which largely existed inside her own brain...
Marlon had been inside VESTA’s world many times before, but never as a passive participant, and his first hour had not been an enjoyable one; how Nadia thought people would ever pay good money for similar experiences was beyond him. It was one thing to put oneself into a position of absolute power, with a bevy of willing slaves conjured up out of his brainchild’s massive memory banks, but quite another when one of the slaves was him and he had no way of telling which, if any, of the creatures that kept arriving to torment him were hooked up to real players and which were simply creations of the computer.
He looked down at himself and shook his head. The costume he was wearing - and costume was a word he selected only advisedly - was like hundreds of others he had seen during the programming and development stages of the VESTA project. But it was one thing to see illustrations and photographs of it, quite another to experience it first hand.
Basically, it was a body harness, fashioned from what appeared to be heavy rubber straps, all dependent upon a central body belt, or corset, which had been laced and buckled until Marlon’s waist was as slim and tightly compressed as those of any of the females that populated this scenario.
From this, straps went up and down, over his shoulders to support another web that criss-crossed his upper torso and also fastened to a thick rubber collar, down his legs to connect to knee length boots, a series of transverse straps biting into the flesh of his thighs en route and a final series of straps performing a similar duty down the length of his arms, to where they fastened to padded mittens that held his hands clenched into useless fists.
Thus attired, and hampered by the fact that his boots perched upon outlandishly elevated wedged heels, Marlon was a helpless puppet in the hands of a series of tormentors, the latest of which was a willowy brunette who, in her own high heels, towered over him by several inches. She was dressed - surprise, surprise, he thought - in dark red leather, the boots thigh length, the studded skirt barely reaching the top of her thighs and the matching halter-top plunging to reveal most of what was an inordinately large cleavage for so slim a woman.
The long gloves had an open-work design throughout, a pattern which was repeated in the leather choker, and the fingers were cut away to reveal long, black lacquered nails. With her severely styled hair, heavy eye makeup and black lip-gloss, the woman was an imposing and intimidating sight, an effect not lessened by the multi-thonged whip she carried clipped to her waistband.
She had lost no time in arranging Marlon beneath the suspension frame, cuffing his wrists to either side of his collar and attaching chains to various parts of his body harness, where sturdy rings had been strategically positioned. Then, using the winch mechanism at one side, she had quickly hoisted his feet clear of the ground, bent his legs back and up at the knees and kept them in that position by clipping short chains between his ankles and the corset belt.
Stalking around him, she reached out one hand and cupped his scrotum with surprising gentleness, but Marlon’s organ steadfastly refused to stir.
‘The little man is reluctant, little man,’ she smiled. Marlon tried not to look into those green eyes, but it was a losing battle. With her other hand, she took hold of his limp penis and began to massage it.
‘Perhaps we should have a little slave come in and suck it for you,’ the woman suggested, her eyes twinkling. ‘We appear to have tried everything else and you don’t seem to respond to all the usual methods, so whipping you would be a waste of time, I suppose?’
‘Unless you just want to cause me pain and suffering,’ Marlon said quietly. ‘I’m afraid I don’t really get off on that stuff.’
‘It is a predilection not shared by everyone, I agree,’ she replied. ‘However, it is what I generally specialise in.’ She continued to play with him all the while an
d, to his chagrin, Marlon realised that her ministrations were beginning to have some effect at last. She peered down, saw the evidence for herself, and smiled.
‘The problem is,’ she continued, ‘that my instructions are that you are to be prepared and trained as a slave, which means you must quickly accustom yourself to all this.’ She nodded to include the frame, chains, and Marlon’s own attire.
‘And you must also learn to respond at the behest of your superiors, master or mistress. This thing,’ she said, squeezing his slowly thickening shaft harder, ‘must learn to serve and obey.’ She looked down again and nodded once more.
‘That’s better,’ she said, her voice dropping almost to a whisper, ‘nearly there. And, when we have you good and hard, do you know what we’re going to do next?’
‘I can’t imagine,’ Marlon replied, through gritted teeth. The smell of her perfume, mixed with the twin odours of her leatherwear and the rubber about his own warm body, was beginning to have a strange, heady effect on him.
‘Well, let’s see now,’ she said, smiling enigmatically and looking up into the air above his head, ‘should we maybe have a couple of girls in here to keep this thing nice and hard for a few hours? After all my efforts to make it stand up, it would be a great shame to waste it all immediately.’
‘Then why don’t you put it to use yourself?’ Marlon groaned. ‘Or do you prefer just to tease?’
The woman looked horrified. ‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed. ‘How could you possibly suggest such a thing? You don’t for one moment suppose this miserable object is worthy enough for me, do you? I can see you need a severe lesson in humility.’ She stepped back and released her hold on Marlon. ‘I think now I know exactly what to do with you next,’ she said, turning away. ‘Just you wait there a moment and don’t go wandering off.’
Hanging helplessly clear of the floor, Marlon did not appreciate her attempt at humour, nor the sight of the object she drew out of the trunk that stood against the wall. She brought it back over to him and held it up in front of his face, giving him a good close-up view so there could be no mistaking what was about to happen.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is one of my favourite adornments for my slaves, especially those who get ideas above their station. See this?’ she asked, pointing to the curiously shaped leather spheroid and probing for something with her long nails. ‘This fits nice and snugly around your balls.’
She finally found what she had been looking for and the spheroid suddenly hinged apart in two sections, revealing a lining of dozens of short steel spikes, the needle-sharp points gleaming against the black of the leather.
‘And then this,’ she added, turning over the attached strap to reveal a further band of the same spikes, ‘buckles around the base of your cock. Even a partial erection becomes very painful after a time, but then you have to get hard before you can come, and coming is the only way to take some of the pressure off your poor balls - at least, for a little while.
‘So you see, this is quite an interesting little game. If you don’t come, the needles play havoc with your balls. If you get hard they also play havoc with your cock stem, so the sooner you manage to come, the better. The skill in this is to see just how long we can keep you nice and hard without actually letting you come.’
She stooped down and began fitting the leather sac about his testicles, and the first touch of the devilish barbs brought a gasp of anguish from Marlon. There was no doubt that she heard this, but she did not deign to look up and acknowledge the fact.
‘I think I shall send Penny and Patsy in to play with you for a while,’ she murmured, tugging the various adjustments into place. ‘And I think they will amaze you with the different ways they have of keeping a man on the verge. Hours at a time is nothing to them.’
She buckled the spiked strap about the base of his now tumescent shaft, dragging another gasping cry from his lips as she pulled it tight.
‘Comfortable?’ she enquired, standing up again, an evil smile on her lips. ‘I sincerely hope not.’ She patted his cheek and made a moue with her mouth. ‘Feel free to scream,’ she said. ‘Of course, if you scream too loudly we’ll have to gag you, but then maybe we’ll do that anyway. I do so hate to hear grown men grovelling.’
‘Christina insists they should all be able to watch this idiotic contest affair,’ Naylor said. Jurgen Koenig nodded.
‘So I understand,’ he confirmed. ‘Actually, I do not share your opinion of what she intends. I think this could be very interesting indeed and will also serve as a salutary lesson to the others.’
‘I doubt they’ll need any extra lessons,’ Naylor grunted. ‘In any case, all the time they’re safely wired up to VESTA they have little alternative. They do, after all, have no control over events whatsoever.’
‘Quite so,’ Koenig agreed, ‘but there is yet another factor you appear not to have considered.’
‘Oh yes?’ Naylor raised on eyebrow, almost a challenge, but the German remained unperturbed. He eased himself down into the armchair opposite, crossed his legs and leaned back, making himself comfortable.
‘Yes indeed,’ he said, ‘for there is a very interesting possibility here. You see,’ he continued, placing his fingers together and making a steeple of them, ‘it is your idea to keep them all inside VESTA’s world indefinitely, yes?’
Naylor nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Indefinitely. They will make interesting slave characters for our future clients.’
‘Of course,’ Koenig said, ‘but would they not perhaps make even better slaves out here, in the real world? After all, we can generate slave clones electronically and, whilst it would no doubt suit your sense of retribution to have them all suffer for as long as possible, why waste them so?’
‘Because they’d be unmanageable out here,’ Naylor said. ‘One or two of them might be trainable, but I can’t see the likes of Nadia Muirhead kow-towing as a humble sex slave.’
‘Maybe not the Nadia you know now,’ Koenig said, sagely. ‘But who’s to say any of them will be the same people after a few weeks in VESTA?’
‘You think this machine might break their spirits? That’s an interesting thought.’
‘Fascinating,’ Koenig concurred. ‘But it is a little more than just breaking their spirits that we are talking about.’ He leaned forward again. ‘I cannot be sure - not one hundred percent sure, anyway - but I have a theory that, if they remain in there for long enough and if everything is handled carefully, we may find that they become... well, brainwashed, I suppose is the best way I can put it.
‘You see, after a while the human body is pushed to its limits. In the real world overexposure to pain causes certain parts of the brain to close down in an automated defence or self-preservation move. The victim faints, passes out, whatever you wish to call it, and only regains consciousness again when the system has had a little time to recover.
‘However, inside VESTA they are deprived of this safety valve. Our little friend has carefully ensured that there is a pain threshold - for instance, you could place a welding torch to their most sensitive parts and the pain experienced would be no greater, nor less, than that of a sound whipping.’
‘But you could reprogramme to alter that, I assume?’ Naylor demanded.
Koenig gave him a patronising look. ‘Of course,’ he replied, casually, ‘but it would not be a wise move. You see, although they are not actually experiencing genuine physical pain stimulus inside VESTA, the effect upon their brains is just the same. After all, the various stimulating electrodes are designed and positioned for just that result.
‘Because of that, if you push any of them too hard or too far, it is quite possible that the shock could kill them. Much better to leave that buffer effect as it is.’
‘Point taken,’ Naylor conceded. ‘But I still don’t get what you’re driving at.’
‘Then let me finish explaining,’ Koenig sai
d patiently. ‘Even with the buffer effect in place, they are all still capable of experiencing quite a high degree of pain, but after a while they can grow accustomed to this. Even in the real world this has been known to happen.
‘However, it is a curious fact that the one thing the human mind cannot condition itself to accept is the pain and suffering of others, especially when those others are near and dear to them. Of course, only Marlon has any direct condition with the artist woman, but to see her suffer a bad beating at Christina’s hands would be a salutary first lesson for them all.
‘But even that is only the smaller part of what I am trying to explain. You see, if they remain inside VESTA for long enough, especially if they are all made to witness the punishments and humiliations of their friends, they will eventually come to a stage when the brain has to resort to different failsafe measures.
‘It is quite possible - highly likely in fact - that they will ultimately become quite mad; in the strictest sense of the word, that is. Eventually they will be so conditioned to their new existence that they will be totally unable to distinguish reality from virtual reality.’
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ Naylor asked, his eyes narrowing.
His own eyes still closed, Koenig smiled. ‘It depends upon what you think I am saying, Herr Naylor,’ he replied, quietly. ‘But to save an extended guessing game, let me make it clear.
‘If I am right, and I have every reason to believe I am, then eventually you should be able to remove the subjects from VESTA and they will continue to act as if they were still inside its world. They will have become so accustomed to the maxim that resistance is futile that they will lose any ability to do so.
Vesta - Painworld Page 20
