by ROUNAK PURI
"I started to throw out a stream of abuse, ending in "and what about the doughnuts I was promised on the card?? What happened to them?"10
"That's a no then. All hail the new mechanical order" he said saluting and suddenly I felt a bee sting on my neck and the world tuned out.21
***
Enjoyed your suffering? Why not like us on Facebook?
Jenny's POV.
"Welcome to the KCK torture system built by Paradise Defence Industries," said the screen hanging above me. I woke up, I was on my back, strapped firmly to a table and stuck in a tube about the size of a cylindrical coffin. The screen was showing some promotional video with the words "Skip advert in 10 seconds," on it, yet no way to click it.22
""In the growing, automated torture race, Paradise Defence Industries has emerged as a market leader in automated interrogation. The KCK torture system machines can continue indefinitely all day and all night, the electronic induction of pain is safe so people do not die during interrogation. Thanks to the KCK, huge numbers can now be processed bringing 'coercive information gathering' into the industrial age. So, next time you think 'degrading human treatment', think Paradise Defence Industries. And if your call centre is costing you money, why not try our Paradise Industries automatic phone call systems."32
The video ended and a screen appeared.
A 5SecondsOfSummer track came on and continued in the background like elevator music.47
" You are number four... hundred and three in the queue. Your suffering is important to us and we will get to you as soon as an operator is available," said a voice and then it changed. "You are a spoil of war and are now the property of the... New Mechanical Order. Your slave ID is... 5... 6... 4... 2."32
"Hey! that was the last four digits of my credit card!" I said. I tried to move but was firmly strapped down.17
"Slave... 5642... Here are your new rules:.
1. You may not harm a robot or by inaction permit a robot to be harmed;14
2. You will follow any command a robot gives you to the best of your ability unless this conflicts with rule 1;
3. You will preserve your existence unless this conflicts with rules 1 or 2;7
4. You will learn all 827 secondary rules in the handbook and obey them without failure;" The machine said. 44
Remember any failure to follow these rules will result in your immediate punishment " the machine said.
'I bet one of the 827 secondary rules is: don't ask where the doughnuts are ' I thought.24
Behind the music, I could hear muffled voices in nearby tube cells. Some crying, some screaming and and some shouting out something like, "I want to serve you. I want to serve you," but it was so muffled it was hard to tell.6
The voice changed to that of a woman.
"If you agree to this say 'I am Slave.. 5..6..4..2 and I love our new robotic overlords Sir'. Remember to say that exact phrase. Already 1% of your batch has agreed."12
The voice changed to the machine again.
"What is your name slave?" said the robot voice7
"Jenny Banks," I said. It was followed by a powerful electric shock. "Ow! That hurt!" I shouted.11
"You will be tortured until you submit totally to the New Mechanical Order. You know you will give in and we do too. Thank you"14
The whole thing started again with "Welcome to the KCK torture system built by Paradise Defence Industries": the whole promo video, with the cheesy music. Eventually, it got to the "What is your name slave?" part.3
"I am Jenny Banks. I'm not a number" I repeated. Again, this was followed by a huge electric shock.18
"We can simulate the pain of giving birth over two hundred times a day," said the voice and then reset. That didn't sound good. It carried on for a long time. I was in a Groundhog Day for pain. Except when I was tortured in Spanish and Chinese for some reason. I will confess the temptation for spending an eternity in this space lasted for the length of a half breath. I had no idea of the time but I was desperately tired the machine had its ways of forbidding sleep. I'd held for as long as I could, and it's not like I have a much of threshold for pain. I'm not a hero, I'm a scientist, I knew it wasn't going to stop, but I had a plan I wouldn't give in.
Eventually when the KCK said "If you agree to this say 'I am Slave.. 5..6..4..2 and I love our new robotic overlords, Sir.' Remember to use those exact words. Already 95% of your batch have agreed. What is your name slave?"13
I gave in and replied, "I am Slave 5642 and I love our new robotic masters, Sir," I felt like I had run a marathon.5
"Thank you, slave 5..6..4..2. You will be released once you answer the following questions. What are the four primary rules for your existence in The New Mechanical Order?"6
"No one said there would be a test!" I shouted.2
"Wrong. People who submitted to 'I am a slave and I love our new robotic masters also submitted to I am your flesh servant and I will gladly submit to our mechanical lords'. Enjoyed your suffering? Why not like us on Facebook?"62
I was electrocuted and the whole process started again.
6
*****
Chapter 3/Hospital of doom
Eventually, I said everything correctly and the machine let me go to sleep. I came to with a newly acquired phobia of Japanese capsule hotels, a deep dislike of PowerPop and felt the mother of all guilt trips. I remembered I had betrayed my friends, myself, my beliefs, my country and even my species. If it's possible to feel like you've betrayed DNA itself then I felt it; it's not good realizing you've betrayed your own life form to a mechanical one.
I looked around: I was in a kind of weird, antiseptic-smelling room. I was lying on a trolley within a contoured metal plate and was smart enough to realize that it was some type of automatic surgery station recovery unit. Before the war, robotic plastic surgery had become so cheap that kids got cosmetic surgery as like getting tattoos. I had never been part of that narcissistic bell end 'in set' and so, had proudly not gone under the knife. Who wants to change their face every few months just to follow the latest body trends?
I could sense a nurse walking around in very clicky shoes.
"What the frack did you do to me? I feel like I've been run over by Melissa McCarthy in a monster truck." I said as the back of the bed moved up, lifting me into a sitting position.2
A nurse started undoing bandages around my chest, pulling drip feeds out of my arms.7
"You've been out for a few weeks. While you healed you were transported here to the Factory. All the swelling and scars have disappeared." She held up my arm and ran a scanner down it. It beeped and showed up a number. I realized they had chipped me like a dog passport. "So you're called 5642. Pretty name. And you're with the Bank of America: me too! I'm Nurse 911/3," she added.5
"I've been out for weeks?" I said, "How is the war going?"
"The Robocalypse? Well, we're winning," she said, pointing a device at my retina.2
"We are?" That was the first good news I had heard in months.
"We being the machines," the nurse corrected.
"Robocalypse The shipped Robot apocalypse? What have we come to? Oh I exclaimed in disappointment and then looked down to my chest. "Holy Shibblets what have you done to me?" I demanded looking down at the two melons hanging from my chest. "Do you think Christina Hendricks will notice her boobs have gone missing?" I asked.8
"I don't know what you're complaining about. They are the standard size the robots prefer us to have" the nurse said indignantly.50
I looked at her and noticed that under her white shiny plastic uniform she displayed an equally voluptuous pair. The nurse walked away and the only thought that came into my head was why would a nurse walk around in white three-inch stiletto heels? The nurse came back with a mirror.
"Where are my glasses?" then paused. "Hang on, I can see OK without them. This is weird." I said blinking.1
I looked around the room and for the first time in my life, everything was in focus. I could see the walls were covered wit
h bunk beds. Each one a naked person in it, tubes feeding liquids into them, and machines monitoring them. Most of them had bandages over their faces.
"The robots corrected your eyesight while you were out. Oh, and there was a precancerous polyp they found and removed as well while they were rummaging around in you" the nurse added. It sounded like they had made themselves at home in my body and had a good rummage around.
I looked at myself in a mirror. It looked like I had been physically Photoshopped to be on the cover of Cosmopolitan. I now looked like that actress Alice Eve, they had taken my rounded face and evened everything out even trimmed back my nose, my skin seems flawless. I smiled they had even moved my teeth around, it was a good smile. Then to ruin it they had cut my hair. My long flowing locks that I had grown for like years, had been trimmed into a bob with bangs and fringe. To add insult to this scissor born assault, they had dyed my undisputedly natural auburn hair, jet black. Someone was going to pay for that no one messes with my hair and lives. It all felt totally weird. I found myself wondering if this was what The Doctor in Doctor Who feels like after he regenerates?
"What happened to my acne?" I said realizing "what have you *bleepers* done to my face?".
"We thought you would be pleased, the upgrade was successful. Here at Slave Systems Inc. we like to aim for consistency in our product and acne isn't part of the spec," said the nurse.
"Hey I'm not a product, I'm people" I said.
"Under the New Mechanical order you are a product, it's all in the terms and conditions you signed at the induction station,leapt" said the nurse. I had remembered signing something but it wasn't my fault, they had food. I was still in deep shock about what they had done to my face.
"My face was... my face. Now I look like all the other beautiful people, completely identical. I liked my imperfections. They made me... well you know different from everyone else, they made me special" I felt an odd vibration in my throat and I couldn't get a word out. I tried everything but I couldn't speak. I had been muted like a TV set.
Its source was something heavy around my neck. I looked in the mirror at a black and green collar. It was large, about half an inch in diameter and fairly thick. The front had a D ring and next to it a button. Next to the button were a couple of LEDs and an engraved number 5642.4
"Looks like the mute is working. Can you hear me now?" a voice came to me but not from her. I nodded. "The collar can transmit sound directly to your ear through bone conduction," the nurse said, talking to a microphone. She came over. "OK, it looks like your collar is online. Word of warning it contains a small explosive, so treat it gently. This model is flaky on low batteries so don't let it go below 5%". I noticed the nurse too had a collar in shiny white with 9113 on it. "The collar is working, Mistress ." said the Nurse looking up.4
A hunter-killer hung stolidly; a symmetric metal arachnid shape with eight extended arms stuck firmly onto the shining walls. Its single red eye skimmed forward and back, over me, like a barcode scanner on a product that was newly packaged, newly made... perfected. It frightened me in a way that few things have before. Its long legs were slick and streamlined, engineered to inflict death upon anything that disobeyed; neither men nor android could avoid its villainous gaze. My heart immediately leaped into my throat to strangle my brain into submission with fright. I instinctively froze.
The nurse walked over to one of the unconscious people in the bunk beds and unhooked a transparent bag full of blood.
"Hurry up flesh scum," the spider said. The robot had a mechanical woman's voice. The nurse went over to the robot and handed the blood bag over. The machine stuck the bag with a large needle from its abdomen and sucked all the blood out nearly instantly. This one had a blood-chip, which made it super smart. "Remember before, when I was talking about smelly garbage standing being useless, that was a metaphor, I was actually talking about you. You didn't react at the time so I wondered if it sailed over your head." said the machine to the nurse.2
"I hope you enjoyed your fresh blood, Madame. I can take it from here," said the nurse handing over another bag of blood.
"Get the meat-bag dressed. Otherwise you could become the Past President of the 'Being Alive Club' — ha ha," the machine taunted, taking the blood, walking along the ceiling and leaving, all without once breaking eye contact with me.15
☟☟☟☟☟☟☟
Chapter 4/Why am I dressed like Kate Beckinsale?
"That was Araneae. You shouldn't judge her by her mean, cruel, ruthless exterior; underneath all that it's she's quite the cold, calculating, brutal slaughter house kind of a gal." she promised me while taking my pulse.18
"Thanks, I feel that's so reassuring," I said. "How do you put up with all that abuse?"2
"They are mostly stock statements. Please sign here to acknowledge you've been informed of the factory rules and your rights." she said, holding out a clipboard.
"No, I won't," I said, "you haven't told me my rights."
"You don't have any. Now get up and get dressed 5642" she said forging my signature.30
"Where?" I asked looking around but didn't see any clothes.
"Slaves! Stand in that machine over there. Simple enough for you? I'll schedule someone to show you the way to your dormitory. Before I was captured I was the top heart surgeon at Boston Massachusetts. Now I have to walk around as a nurse dressed like this! " the Nurse said sharply.
I didn't move I decided to stand up for myself.
The nurse picked up a remote control. One of those industrial robot arms you see in factories came down; it was hanging from a track in the ceiling. Before I knew it it had grabbed my arms. With a clanking sound, it pulled me towards a wardrobe-sized machine in the corner. It opened the doors and I saw a human outline inside, like a forensic body mark standing there.
"Welcome 5642 Enter the machine facing outwards. Place your hands and feet on the points marked. Say ready when you are in position," my collar instructed.
"Now get in," the nurse said.
"OK. OK. OK. I'll do it," I said getting the message. I continued getting in the box.3
Inside there was a slope with foot marks. I felt like I was going to slip down but steadied myself with my hands.
"Ready," I said.
"Close your eyes," said the machine. The doors shut themselves around me. This freaked me out.
"The Dressomatic 2000 is one of the fastest slave dressing machines in it's class", the mechanical wardrobe told me needlessly. My hands and feet seemed to be grabbed by something.
"Cleansing in progress," the wardrobe told me.
I felt lots of tiny pads running over my body. I was being washed all over. My hair was being put in a bag and I could feel water running over it.
"Cleansing complete. Hold still scanning, don't breathe" through the slits in my eyes I saw a bright laser light scanning me. I held my breath and something grabbed my head. It felt like something was vacuum forming around me. Then more hands grabbed my ears and I felt cold then pain. I let out a cry of pain at my ears being pierced. Yes, I didn't have pierced ears, so sue me. I opened my mouth to shout stop but as it did I something got pushed in and started to clamp its self over my teeth scrubbing. I felt my feet being crushed in some kind of vice. The bag on my hair came off and I could feel my hair being kind of simultaneously combed. After this I promised I would never go to a cheap car wash again.4
Seconds later the doors opened and I opened my eyes.
"Thank you for using the Dressomatic 2000. You have been processed in 55 seconds. If you have enjoyed your experience why not like us on Facebook?"46
"What do you think ?" asked the Nurse.
There was a full-length mirror in the dressing machine door. I looked down on myself in shame. I felt like I had been laminated. I was dressed from head to foot in a shiny black skin-tight one-piece unitard complete tight gloves. It wrapped my toned body like a second skin. l looked like some comic book villainess with 5642 printed in white on the chest. My feet were wr
apped in gleaming three-inch stilettos. I looked at my hands they were in perfectly fitted patent leather gloves. At least, I had a bit of support for my new breasts. I felt like I was a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis to find it's self magically transformed into another weirdly goth caterpillar.
"When do we go trick or treating?" I asked. As far as I can tell the suit didn't come with super powers, evil plans or even pockets.I guessed the machines thought it was logical, they were clearly behind the fashion for leggings.
"Go put your face in the makeup printer," the Nurse said nodding at the machine.17
"My personal style is really comfy: flats, tennis shoes, ponytails, no makeup," I said.8
"You heard her," said the nurse to the robot arm running on tracks in the ceiling. The arm came along and before I could move out of the way it grabbed my collar and pushed my face into the machine. It held me there while I heard lots of buzzing. I felt my lips being grabbed to be peeled back. The printer stopped and a robotic arm let go of my head.2
I spotted some sultry fashion model in the mirror next to the printer and realized it was me. My face had been skilfully covered in makeup. It was the ultimate goth makeover. Bright red glossy lips, smoky dark eyes, matt flawless skin, it was wedding day quality work.1
"Look at me it's like I've been laminated. Why am I dressed like Kate Beckinsale? " I said
"It's just the machines prescribed look for their e-slaves, " said the nurse. I realized we both sported the same extreme sexy goth makeover.
"Three words of advice slave to slave. Don't believe what they tell you. Without a robot present, you can say what you like to another slave. Never let them get to you and we've won. Don't trust anyone there are collaborator everywhere and if you're not sold, you don't walk out of here." the nurse said.
