Nano

by Melody Mounier

  For a while there was only the frenzied clatter of pans and sizzle of the grills and the gruff talk of busy cooks. But presently I began to hear voices in the next room - a crowd being brought in and seated.

  A few minutes later, the tall black girl and I were standing face to face. Her arms were freed, but mine were still bound behind me. One of the cooks had slung a strap around my neck and attached the free ends to a tray. A belt held one end of the tray against my belly - it was curved to accomodate my narrow waist. He loaded the tray with small appetizer plates; oysters and candied confections.

  "You work as a team. Tanesha, you serve the plates, Anne-Marie, you wait just behind. When the tray is empty, come back for more."

  We went out in pairs. Tanesha led the way.

  The dining hall was full. The guests were resplendent in what I supposed was haute-couture; they were impeccably dressed, some of them so stylish it seemed absurd. They had the kind of beauty that only expensive nano can buy. They were already seated and in animated conversation.

  Tanesha and I worked our way through two tables, returned to reload, and made a second trip.

  I was curious; this was my first time at one of John's "other" parties, and I wondered what kind of people were invited to them. I could only manage furtive glances out of the corner of my eye, but from what I could tell they didn't seem like monsters to me, aside from the fact that they took for granted being waited on by slaves.

  In all, from snippets of conversations, I gathered that these people were largely upper class, old wealth. There was none of the earnest striving of new money; these people had it, took it for granted, and didn't talk about it. I guessed they used behavioral nano as well; to make them even more confident and capable.

  But there was also a strange undertone that was hard to pin down. A set of assumptions; a belief system. I worked it over in my mind.

  They had slaves of their own. I caught a few guests talking over the training of them, in the manner one uses to discuss a horse of good lineage but difficult manner. And from what I could discern, it was generally known (and an item of gossip) that John's stable consisted solely of male to female nano-mods. Attitudes about this aberration varied from geniune atavistic interest to mild distaste. Coupled with that was a general bafflement as to why, if one was to feminize men with nano-mods, one would make them look so - well, unmodified.

  "I mean, okay, they're beautiful, in their own way," one man said as Tanesha and I served his table. "But they could be perfect. Look at this one - her breasts are too small, and her facial features asymmetrical. And the black girl - her hips are too wide. They both look like they were born with those bodies, for Christ's sake! Rather expensive, if you ask me, when you could just as easily pick something like that off the street."

  By now it had become clear to me that, in the moral code of these people, slavery was not only acceptable but necessary. I had, apparently, been inducted into a subculture of sorts, a caste system with at least two tiers, in which my membership among the lowest caste - the slave girl - was obvious, fixed and immutable. There was no such thing as upward mobility here. Though I didn't have a little dogtag dangling from my pudenda - yet - I guessed that I would sport one soon. I wondered if the other caste - the Masters - had their own mark - a ring or emblem, perhaps.

  It wasn't until the third trip out that I noticed Sam Smith, seated at John's table.

  I froze for a moment as Sam's eye caught mine. I held my breath as his gaze swept over my exposed body, then passed on. Then I remembered that, to him, I was simply a pretty slave girl, with no particular significance to him, and I exhaled raggedly. I lowered my eyes. The man was living in a borrowed life, and didn't even know it.

  He was Sam Smith. I was Anne-Marie. And he suspected nothing of it. I wondered who he had been, before he took over my life. I wondered why he merited being here; I'd never been invited. I had a sudden intuition that he had been invited here partly to humiliate me - unknowingly, of course. I made a mental note to try to discover who my fellow slaves had been, and if their replacements were here as well. I suspected that for every slave girl in the room, there was a man inhabiting her previous life also here.

  Chapter 23

  After the main course, a group of Moroccan musicians set up near the fireplace. They began to play, and a butler led three naked slave girls out in front of the musicians, pushed them to their knees. I watched them sidelong as Tanesha served coffee from my tray.

  The girls began to dance. Two of them were very good; I guessed they were given daily lessons. The dance appeared to be Indian style, but went well with the North African rhythm.

  The third girl was adequate. She seemed to be terrified, and this made her awkward. Her feet were out of step with the others, who danced in fluid, synchronous motions. But she was beautiful, more beautiful than the other two, and this compensated somewhat.

  I again wondered at the marvel that these three girls, so obviously feminine, so alluring, so available to a man's hand, had once been men themselves. Proud men. Men who perhaps would have opted for suicide over the prospect of being forced into the role these girls now lived - yet - now they lived, and were girls, and they obeyed and accepted this. What they once might have considered the lowest of low was now a role they felt was the highest they deserved. What better demonstration of dominance? I thought.

  By now several men had hung little colored markers on the back of my corset, out of reach of my hands and out of sight. Tanesha bore six of them, hanging from a little ring of silk on the upper hem of her corset. I had a sinking feeling that these were part of a sort of bidding or claimant system.

  My intuition was correct. After dessert, John stood and began pulling colored markers from a bag. As each color was called, a valet led the slave girls who sported the color to the table the man owning that marked sat at, and he would choose one.

  This went on through four markers. Then I was brought, with four other girls, to John's table.

  Sam Smith held a yellow marker. He looked each of us over, pointed to me, and said, "that one."

  A valet removed my corset and hose, and fitted me with leather restraints. He padlocked my wrists behind me. He fitted a collar around my neck, leashed me, and handed the handle of the leash to Sam.

  Sam stood and led me out of the dining hall. My heart sank.

  He sat in a leather armchair and had me kneel in front of him. We were in a small bedroom on the second floor.

  "I'm glad I got you the first time around, Anne-Marie," he said. "I had no way of tracking you down outside of here, and I wasn't sure if I'd be invited to one of these soirees again. I figure my primary value to John was my ability to humiliate you." He lit a cigarette, inhaled, and tapped the ash in an ashtray. I was surprised by his statement, which hung in the silence like a question mark.

  "Why - why did you want me, Master?" I asked hesitantly.

  "I wanted to meet the woman who took over my life, of course," he said. He chuckled; I must have looked as astonished as I felt. "Oh yes, as hard as it is for me to believe, I was born Anne-Marie. Unlike you, I don't have the benefit of having retained memories of my past life - I recall nothing of it, in fact, and had someone suggested the idea a few weeks back I would have thought it absurd. Looking at you, so sweet and innocent, so happily helpless, I can't imagine inhabiting such a body or life. But the evidence points to this explanation with painful obviousness.

  "John thought he was being very clever in exchanging us. He couldn't know you had backups of the data used to reshape you stored in a safety deposit box. That was the first mystery - why I would have a deposit box with a program designed to completely feminize myself - and make the process irreversible at that. I suspect you didn't even know that at the time.

  "I discovered a few things. My DNA had been encrypted - so the feminization routine would have been useless on me in any case. I also found traces of DNA in the lab that indicated the feminization nano had already been used. And that nano, alon
g with the supporting documentation, pointed not to a new composite identity, but a born woman - Anne-Marie La Fontaine. She'd moved to New York from a small town in western Pennsylvania a month ago to start college.

  "Other pieces of the puzzle came together. For instance, why, a few weeks back, did I wake up one morning feeling like my body was a completely foriegn, unfamiliar container? Why did I find even walking clumsy? Why couldn't I remember what had happened the night before? And why did the face staring out from that nano-program, that Anne-Marie, seem so familiar, while my own face so foriegn and strange?

  "I found nano lock on certain memory-storage areas in my brain. I couldn't open them. Strange. Obviously I had been tampered with, but how, and to what end?

  "A little deductive reasoning and I thought I had it worked out. I pulled backups of the security DVD recordings. They turned out to be quite different from standard recordings. I saw myself walk into the lab, and several days later a young woman walked out. Most interesting was the fact that the DNA locks on the doors were specifically prohibited from opening for one Anne-Marie La Fontaine's DNA.

  "I spent a few days tracking you down, and found that you were living on 6th street, and that you were under rather complete surveillance. I was still on vacation - or so I thought - and made a point of seeing where you went and what you did. To my surprise you became a secretary for Mr. Dentz. Also to my surprise, you seemed at the beck and call of Mr. Maynard.

  "From what I could tell, Anne-Marie chose to attend NYU specifically to be in a large city where her submissive fantasies could be satisfied. She had a membership to a local BDSM organization, thought I doubt she'd yet attended many meetings - they don't keep attendance records, of course. John belongs to that organization - which, being a much less elitist outfit, has very little crossover with the group meeting tonight. My guess is that he recruits submissive women from this organization, and 'frees' them from thier perceived need to submit, and from their weak bodies, at the same time acquiring appropriate body types and mindsets to imprison his male victims. As you know, the closer one maps a mindset to the body that formed it, the more tenacious its grip. It'd be quite easy for John to imprint you with the psycho-sexual predelictions of Anne-Marie, since those predelictions conformed physiologically with your new body perfectly. Your hormonal balance, your brainwave patterns, your neural pathways all perfectly fit the maintenance of Anne-Marie's worldview - a worldview in which your appropriate place is on your knees. It would be hard for you not to feel as the original Anne-Marie had done.

  "So, here we are. I was born a submissive woman, and now I'm a deeply dominant man. I don't think you had dominant tendencies before, so I think that part was manufactured in me. It feels real, but is something I can compartmentalize, put away in my mind. The mind-body fit is artificial, unlike yours, which is natural, and therefore much more difficult to separate from your sense of self. But the fact remains that we've exchanged lives, and can't change them back. I don't have any regrets, other than the fact that now I'm pretty ugly, and can't change even that. But I don't really mind, and I doubt you did either. It gets attention, being ugly. And as pretty as you are, kneeling there, I'm glad I'm not you."

  "So - so you came to ogle me, Master?" I asked, a little indignant.

  He laughed. "No, I came to purchase you from John. The chits we used tonight are to sample his wares, and give us first option to buy, for those girls he's willing to sell. You happen not to be on auction yet, but I think he'll accept my offer. He'll enjoy the irony. Don't protest - you should know by now you don't have a choice in the matter. He has the right to sell you, and I have the right to buy you, and your only option is to obey the man who owns you. I suppose I shouldn't feel such an attraction to a woman who is the mirror image of the woman I once was, but I do - and don't have any recollection of being you anyway. It's probably part of John's plan, but I don't care. You'll look good chained to my bed."

  I knelt silently as he described his plan. I was stunned. The thought of serving this man sexually, to my surprise, didn't disgust me. Though he inhabited my life and body, and wasn't exactly attractive in the traditional sense, like most men here, he exuded a sense of assurance and dominance that pressed buttons. And by this point I certainly wasn't jealous of his masculinity - it seemed foriegn and alluring to me, but not something I coveted.

  "What about - what about school? My own life?" I asked finally.

  "I have the same plans for you that John had. I'll call you by pager when I want you. Otherwise you're free to live your life. Except that you won't have other sexual partners. Your body is for my use. As you might guess, your enforced monogamy is a one-way street. I already have three other slaves, one living under my roof - she's forfeited her freedom and is my complete possession. Another girl a little older than you who, when I'm not using her, is a painter. The third runs a new media startup, which I now own. She signed over her shares to me, but still manages the company. I punish her when profits fall. You'll meet them all eventually. They won't know your origin, of course. Once I own you, no mention will be made of your past again. As far as I'm concerned, from now on you're just a pretty girl who likes being a slave. You're not to mention it either. Do you understand, Anne-Marie?"

  I hung my head in defeat. "Yes, Master," I whispered.

  Chapter 24

  With a whip, Sam proved as competent as John. He hung me by my wrists and laid into my buttocks with a ferocity and skill that showed that three weeks of experience had been supplemented by nano-conditioning. He seemed to know exactly how much I could take, and judged by my response when to give more, and where.

  After he'd beaten me to the point where I was willing to do anything to make it stop, he let me back down to my knees and put me through my poses, correcting in places with a riding crop. Then he bound my wrists, put me on my hands and knees, and fucked me from behind. He was careful not to let me come.

  The bastard knew how to keep me on my knees just as well as John had. Not that I complained too much.

  Chapter 25

  I awoke, bleary-eyed and sore, in my own apartment.

  I sat up in surprise. My wrists were in leather cuffs, and padlocked together. I was still naked. I closed my eyes and tried to recall what had happened last night.

  Sam had continued to use me after fucking me. He used every means at his disposal to break me to his will. Thumbscrews. A cat-nine tails. Hot wax. Clamps on my nipples and labia. I remembered at one point screaming as he held a hot flame to my toes - my ankles were in stocks, and a hood buckled over my head. I must have passed out.

  I examined the cuffs and padlock. The padlock had a digital LED clock set in its bronze shackle that seemed to be counting downward toward zero. It read 3:23:55.

  My labia stung. I felt down there with my bound hands and found a small steel plate hanging from a piercing in my left labial fold. I bent it forward and tried to examine it.

  I couldn't read it, so went to the bathroom and got out my handheld mirror - a beaten tin antique with a beveled edge. I sat forward on the toilet seat and read the tag backward through the reflection.

  "Anne-Marie La Fontaine

  DOB: 6/15/1987

  Age: 18

  Prop. of: Sam Smith"

  The tag was held in place by a small ring piercing that appeared to be welded into a solid ring. The skin was scabbing, but daubed with iodine. The piercing was deep; a good half inch of flesh held it in place. I'd have to cut deep to remove it. The flesh around the piercing was swollen and ached.

  The tag itself was stainless steel, with what looked like a small electronic chip embedded in one side. I wondered what that was for.

  I sat down gingerly at my little kitchen table. I popped a few Advil to lessen the pain from the piercing, and from the deep purplish welts on my ass, thighs, breasts - God, even the soles of my feet. I washed it down with cold two-day old coffee from the carafe and a slice of bread. I had a hard time taking my mind off the fact of that tag, resting on th
e wooden seat between my open thighs, the ring pressed flat between my labia and the seat.

  The phone rang. I went into the bedroom and picked it up nervously.

  "Hello, Anne-Marie," Sam's voice said.

  "H-hello. Master," I added after a moment.

  "I want to point out that your pager has been replaced. Please wear the new one at all times. Also, be aware that the tag senses proximity of your DNA. If you remove it, it will release nano keyed to your DNA signature, which will disassemble you in short order. You'll die within minutes. My recommendation is to be a good girl and leave it in place. I paid a steep price for you and this is protection on my investment. Remember. Your options are obedience or death. I give you wide latitude in how you choose to lead your life when not serving me, but you are first and foremost my property. That fact eclipses all else. The tag will serve both as a reminder and as a form of enforcement. You'll probably find it more comfortable to eschew underwear, though I leave that up to you.

  "Second item is your finances. I've frozen your bank account and your credit card, and cancelled your scholarships and loans. You are now technically listed as foriegn student with an F-1 visa - which isn't true, of course, but will prevent you from obtaining employment. I will finance your living expenses and tuition. If you need money you will request it from me, detailing exactly what you need it for. You usually won't get it. Clothing purchases can be made on my account, which I've set up at a list of retailers I'll provide you with later. Groceries can be purchased on my account at Dean & Deluca's.

  "Any questions, slave?"

  "Yes, Master." I paused, wondering if he would answer what I wanted to ask. "What did you pay - him - for me?"

  "I'm paying in the form of ignorance. He signed you over to me on the condition I agree to have my memories altered. In a few days I won't remember that I was once you, and any efforts on your part to remind me will fail. John didn't want money - he just wanted control over the situation. He seemed distressed to find out I knew what he was up to. For my part, I'm willing to do this because the knowledge is, to be frank, disquieting, and it's the price he asked for you. I won't mind not knowing you and I were once each other. I asked him to alter your memories as well but he refused. He wants things exactly as he planned them - me assuming the life I was intended to lead, ignorant of my past, and you condemned to live the life he's consigned to you, aware of the punishment he's placed on you."