Chapter 1

 

Richard Howard and I were classmates all through our school lives and even into university but we were never friends. He came from a family of early South Carolina colonists who have dominated the plantation, political and commercial areas of the state from its earliest foundations. My family, until two generations ago, were either slaves or underpaid employees of successive generations of the Howards' and Richard never ever let me forget it.

However I was born with good genes and I worked hard both at school and at sports, for which my body was particularly favoured and in most cases I just pipped Richard both in our exams and on the sports field and this made him as mad as hell.

But apart from making fun of me to his friends and generally denigrating blacks and all we stood for, he didn't resort to any overt actions until that fateful day when Alex, that is Alexandra de Winter, daughter of another ancient South Carolina family that was almost as illustrious as the Howards', and who had been Richard's girlfriend and many would say fiancée to be, suddenly decided that she wanted me and not him.

I had admired and yearned after her from afar for years but given my black racial origins and that my ancestors had been slaves to the Howards', I merely looked on her from afar.

But unlike the Howards', every one of whom almost openly mourned the loss of the old South, her family were very tolerant of and welcoming to up-and-coming black men and women. And so I became a regular invitee to the De Winter home that was just as magnificent as Rathdowney, the old Howard family seat.

And so now Richard and his family joined forces to teach me a lesson I would not forget.

 

What neither I, nor anyone else in the world knew, was that that family possessed a secret which was the reason for their enormous wealth and power. They held the secret of time travel.

You don't believe me? I'm not surprised. Although my studies were in the area of law, as indeed were Richard's, I have always had an abiding interest in science fiction in general but in the most interesting and least understood area of physics, namely that of time and the possibility (or not) of moving backwards and forwards through it.

I doubt there would be very many physicists at all, anywhere in the world, who would, at least publicly, admit that there is a possibility that such a phenomenon is even possible, let alone that the means of achieving it existed.

I was to find out differently.

All scientists and Sci-Fi buffs are well aware of the paradox of time travel. Say one was to go back to that fateful day at Sarajevo on 28th June 1914 and knowing history, was able to prevent Gavrilo Princip from shooting the Austrian heir and his wife. Wold War I may never have erupted! Or say, someone else was able to go back to the birth of Adolf Hitler and slay him in his cot. No WWII!

The results of either of these events would totally change world history.

But whichever of Richard's future descendants discovered the secret and went back in time to ensure the family's future wealth, power and influence, he was well enough versed in the paradox to ensure that his meddling with the future was totally restricted to his own aims and nothing more.

By that I mean that he apparently used his ability to move back and forward in time to read future stock prices and adjust his buying and selling accordingly. When there is no risk, one can bet vast sums on a surety. And in this way he quickly amassed a fortune for his descendants. All he had to do then was to monitor that first ancestor's descendants and the way they administered the fortune he had created.

I gathered, because Richard eventually informed me of his descendant's manipulations of his family down through the generations, that this man, named Dudley, surreptitiously and very privately made his presence known to each successive ancestor and assisted them to continue with the extraordinarily successful playing of the stock market and the acquisition of companies which eventually included a railroad company, airline, three hotel chains, four retail chains, etc, etc, et cetera, until the family was certainly the wealthiest and most powerful in South Carolina but also ranked very high for the whole of the United States.

He only ever contacted the senior member of his family in that generation. Stayed for as brief a time as possible, imparting the critical knowledge and then returning to his own time. In this way, he interfered with the timelines with as minimal an impact on them as possible.

But now it was my turn to suffer at Richard's hands, knowingly aided and abetted by his dreadful family, for they were as outraged by Alex' desertion of Richard as he was.

When one has unlimited money and the power that goes with that, one can achieve just about anything including the framing and conviction of enemies. It was therefore easy for them to have me set up as the mastermind of a particularly nasty drug ring. I suspect it may actually have been under the family's control however I can't prove that. What I do know is that I had nothing to do with it and yet there was the evidence in my room at the college and on my laptop computer and the subsequent court case took only a few hours and then there I was, sentenced to slavery for life while my parents and friends looked on in astonishment and disbelief but powerless to do anything to help.

By this time, well into the second half of the 21st century, slavery was well established as the penalty for all middling to major crime. It had been established some thirty years earlier in response to a near-total breakdown in law and order and especially religious terrorism, child and wife abuse, street-crime gone mad and burglaries a common occurrence.

The moment it had been introduced, world-wide, and due to the Draconian nature of its application, criminals of all classes rapidly saw the error of their ways and the crime statistics were slashed.

The Draconian nature of the punishment included total and permanent nakedness and nudity, the latter term being adopted as to mean the removal of all facial and body hair below the eyes. Thus the naked slaves were totally and completely bared for all to see even down to their genitalia. They were required to be worked a minimum of twelve and up to fifteen hours a day. They were fed Slave Chow, a pelletised dried food that was extremely cheap and simple to administer, a double handful night and morning followed by as much water as the slave could take in, provided a quite adequate diet. It cost less than a dollar a day and there were no costs of buying and cooking food and providing catering facilities for slaves. The product could be bought in one-kilogram paper bags, fifty-kilogram sacks or in bulk delivered to the hopper of a unit fixed to the outer wall of the owner's slave quarters and topped up regularly by a delivery truck.

Slaves could be used for any purpose their owner desired. In some cases, particularly those where the slaves had committed acts of violence or terrorism, the sentencing judge could order that the slave must be used for hard labour for at least the first specified number of years of his sentence. But otherwise, as long as he was fully employed for the twelve to fifteen hours of his labour, any form of employment was acceptable.

However it has to be remembered that at the moment of sentence, the person ceased to be a citizen of his country and became an object that could be bought and sold like any commodity. He could be used for sex without regard for his own natural preferences and he could be punished severely for disobedience, lack of performance or zeal, insolence or sullenness, and of course that included a failure to please his owner in bed.

I say 'he' but that term of course includes female slaves who are just as subject to the provisions of the Slave Control Act, as her male counterparts.

Anyway, I didn't spend even the night at the Charleston SSC (State Slave Centre). Within hours of my arrival, Richard was there to take delivery of me. And not only that, he had asked that I not be stripped of my clothes and denuded until he arrived to observe this rite of passage from free man to slave.

Until the moment of his arrival, while I suspected he (and/or his family) had something to do with my being framed, I didn't know for sure, especially as none of them had been present at my trial.

Now though, with him standing there at the door to my cell in the SSC and with a broad gloating grin all over his face, I realised with a thud that my life from here on in was going to be pretty dreadful.

"So, slave, not the uppity nigger upstart now, are you?"

What could I say to that? This so insulting word was never heard these days. Black Americans, or African-Americans, yes, but that hateful word hadn't been in use for fifty years. But he could call me anything he liked and no-one would criticise him for it. The racial overtones had nothing to do with it so far as the public was concerned. Anything that demeaned a slave and brought him or her down to the absolute basics was perfectly legitimate.

Now he stared at me triumphantly then turned to the guard who had accompanied him to my holding-cell. "Isn't he a bit overdressed for a nigger-slave, sir?"

The guard grinned, obviously going along with the charade. And then, opening the door, he gestured for me to come out.

"Strip naked, slave!" He ordered harshly. "And tear up each of your items of clothing as you do so."

This was also part of the rite of passage from free man to slave. The ripping apart of one's clothing sets the final seal on your life as a free person. I didn't hesitate. Every citizen, all over the world, was taught from the earliest stage just about every aspect of slavery and what it meant. This was intended as a deterrent to children, teenagers and adults to even think about committing a crime.

Having no need of care for my clothes, I ripped off my suit coat, in the process tearing off its buttons and then tearing apart the fabric with my hands. My tie and shirt came next and all while Richard and the guard watched me avidly. I suspected the guard may well have had designs on my body but I hadn't realised that Richard also seemed interested in me sexually.

I groaned (inwardly). It appeared he was now my owner (God knows how he and his family had short-circuited the normal Saturday auction process, but then with their wealth and power, anything was possible) and I began to tremble at the thought that he was going to use me sexually.

Actually, to that point, I hadn't even considered how I would end up as a slave. Yes, of course I knew that slaves were vulnerable in this regard but the events over the last couple of weeks had been so dreadful that I hadn't had time to consider the full ramifications of what had happened to me.

And now as I undid the belt of my trousers and lifted first one leg and then the other to shed them I noted Richard actually licking his lips as he observed the powerful muscles of my thighs flexing with each such movement.

I have already mentioned that I excelled at most sports including athletics and gymnastics both of which tend to develop the human body to its peak. I hope I will not seem immodest if I say that I doubt the athletic muscles of my body could be improved.

Now, as I looked (surreptitiously) at Richard, I was horrified to see him actually licking his lips and as I glanced down at his middle, even more so to note that he now appeared to have a rather prominent erection.

Now totally naked (but not nude), the guard ordered me into the Position of Inspection. This is the primary position, although certainly not the only one, of slavery and involves the slave spreading his feet a half metre apart, placing his hands up behind his head, pulling his elbows right back behind his shoulders, and flexing every muscle in his body. He is now ready to be physically examined by a prospective buyer or perhaps his owner.

I shuddered as I thought of my enemy's hands stroking and caressing my body and feeling my muscles but then as I thought it through I knew that the culmination of every such inspection was to investigate the slave's genital organs be he male or female.

And yes, Richard now proceeded to do just that, feeling and fondling my body in ways that told me without a shadow of doubt that this was no legitimate inspection of my body but an assessment of my use to him as a sex-slave. And that was confirmed when towards the end he reached down and fondled my cock and then my balls, manipulating them extensively while the guard looked on and licked his lips in appreciation of my shame and humiliation at my enemy's hands.

But they weren't finished yet. There were two more procedures to be undertaken at the SSC before Richard would be ready to take me home. The first was my denuding. To that point I had not been very interested in slavery and while I was aware that all slaves were treated to permanently remove them of all facial and body hair, I had no idea really of the method used to achieve this.

If a free man or woman desires to have part or all of their bodies denuded, they go to a clinic where the process is handled painlessly and quite quickly in a sort of electronic booth where the hairs are zapped from his or her body in just a few minutes.

But those machines are expensive and the governments of the world had hit on a much cheaper method of achieving the same result although not without a great deal of discomfort not to mention pain for the slave concerned.

The pair of them now lead me to the room containing what is called the hot-tank. It is a cylindrical metal tank set into the floor (but with a ten-centimetre section above floor level). It is two metres deep and one in diameter and contains a liquid containing the various exfoliant substances that open the skin's pores and kill the roots of the hairs once and for all. It also leaches tattoos from a slave's body.

It is called the 'hot' tank because in order to achieve this aim, the liquid must be heated to a point just short of scalding the victims' bodies. I was led up to the platform beside the tank and handed over to the technician who fitted me into a sort of harness that went under my armpits and then he cuffed my thumbs behind my back. In seconds more he had attached the hook on the pulley above my head to the harness then operated it so that I was drawn up until my feet were dangling right over the steaming red liquid below me.

I glanced down at Richard and wasn't surprised to see him almost salivating as he watched my coming torture. For torture it most certainly was. This part of the rite of passage from free man to slave very intentionally involves a great deal of pain. And as I was now lowered into the liquid I screamed as my feet were, I thought, being boiled alive by that ominous red liquid.

They weren't, but it took me some time to realise that while extremely painful, it was bearable. He only left me in it for about ten seconds and then reversed the winch dragging me up and out of the liquid which now dripped from the level of my nose right down to my big toes. He waited a minute and then down I went again and this was repeated for the next hour. After which he drew me to the side of the tank and set me down again on the platform, removing the harness, hosing me down with clear cold water and then handing me back to Richard and the guard.

They stopped me in front of a full-length mirror and I have to say that I thought what faced me now was a great deal better than what I had seen as I had moved into the room and up onto the platform. Negroes are not excessively hairy people normally but I had had a moustache and beard, a smattering of chest and belly hair and of course a rather luxuriant pubic brush. Now I was totally nude, my face clean and smooth as was my chest but it was my pubic area that was the most different.

All the hair there was now gone and my rather large cock and the testicles that hung from its root were now very much more prominently displayed than before. This of course is the principal reason for treating both male and female slaves in this manner. Exposing their genitals so blatantly was seen from the very beginning of this modern slavery as being such a humiliating part of it as to add significantly to the deterrent value of the whole system.

The last part of my induction into slavery was the insertion of my silicon chip. Every slave on the planet is routinely fitted with one of these tiny, wafer-thin slivers of silicon which performed so many useful functions for their owners.