CHAPTER 1

 

 

 

"What in hell am I looking at?" Is what blurted out of me.

What I was looking at was a cylinder, six, maybe seven feet long and about three feet in diameter. The cylinder was painted white. There where large, double pained glass portholes, and the holes where someone could put their hand into fixed, goofy rubber gloves to interact with the cylinder's contents. The cylinder was hooked up to banks of quietly purring and softly beeping machines. One machine had a bladder that expanded and contracted, pumping air.

It was all something from a cheesy, Sci-Fi movie; an escape pod, or an alien incubator. At that moment I couldn't imagine how close my guess was.

It was the occupant of the cylinder that freaked me out.

Her skin, glistening like wet tar, was sealed completely in thick, shiny rubber. Her head, save the plume of wiry red hair spewing from a hole in her crown, was a featureless ovoid. A steel breathing-mask covered her lower face and jaw with flexible metal hoses running in and out of it. Shining stainless steel bands held her down to the bed. Her neck, upper arms, wrists, waist, knees, and ankles were all securely fastened this way. Her hands were embedded in bulbous rubber mittens that blended seamlessly into the sleeves of the suit, but even if they had not been so immobilized, there was no possible way she could reach any of her restraints, let alone manage a way to unlock them.

Shining metal cups trapped her copious breasts, and wire leads spiraled out from the nipples for reasons I could only guess. Her sex was locked in massive steel underwear. Hoses sprouting like charmed snakes made their way into fittings and couplings in the cylinder's hull.

She wreathed like a belly dancer, then grew ridged, then twitched, and then relaxed, only to repeat the cycle again.

I looked up at George for an answer, but his face was only forlorn, his eyes helpless.

"What am I looking at?" I repeated, my voice barely a whisper.

He looked up, almost surprised I was still standing there, that I hadn't run from the madness before us.

"My wife." He said, his voice as dry as a grave.

I had just been laid off and George had offered me a full time job. He was having back surgery and would be in the hospital for a month straight and then bed bound for another two months. He needed his farm tended to.

I didn't hesitate. It was serendipitous! I was on the out with my louse of a boyfriend and needed a place to live. As a young woman in a tiny, gossipy town, hiding out on George's little farm would be perfect for me. I accepted instantly, but George cautioned me. I dismissed the thought. I already knew how to care for the farm and the lay of the house, but he shook his head and beckoned me to follow him to the basement. Looking at the back of his head and consumed with curiosity, I followed him, then stood in amazement when he pulled the workbench and its tool-laden back plate away from the wall to reveal a steel door. He reached up over the sill, retrieved a key from its hiding spot, and worked the well-oiled lock. The door swung slowly outward and revealed a windowless, hidden room. Stepping inside, he turned on the lights.

What was revealed was a sterile chamber. The floor tiles, walls and the ceiling were all a gleaming white, and the room must have been fifteen feet on a side with a ceiling of maybe seven feet; brilliantly lit by fluorescent lights mounted on the ceiling. The room was packed with banks of machinery leaving just enough space to walk around the cylinder. I stood hesitantly in the doorway while George walked over to the long, large diameter, shiny white cylinder with gleaming chrome hardware, then stood looking down at it, his shoulders slumped despondently. I came further into the room and saw the thing was essentially a large diameter pipe with shallow domed ends, one of which was fitted with sturdy hinges, a hand wheel and complex-looking locks, with a smaller observation port located beneath the hand wheel. Along the sides and top were oblong observation ports, about five inches wide and twenty inches long, and the whole thing was held about three feet above the floor; resting in what looked like the skeleton of an old hospital gurney so it could be raised and lowered and easily wheeled around. From the bottom of the gurney, a small pipe led across the floor to the bank of computers and machinery where wires and hoses emerged and were connected to various ports on their respective panels.

I moved over to where George stood, almost hiding behind him as I peered into the ports of the cylinder. The woman confined inside was now bucking violently against her bonds, at all of the machinery, at everything, and I could only mouth the words, 'What the fuck' over and over again.

When I graduated college a few years ago I was up to my eyeballs in debt. With little job options for a young woman, I took to doing house keeping on the side. Like many of my clients I met George through church. In his old life he had been a government agent, a US Marshall. One day, he and his partner got into in a gunfight with three bank robbers. In the first seconds of the battle his partner was killed. Out matched, outgunned, and wounded, George continued the fight. He got a medal and was given a permanent disability. The robbers were given permanent graves. As his housekeeper, I would come over twice a week for a couple hours; vacuum, run the laundry, and cook some meals George could easily heat up so he would have something healthy to eat. The job was easy, if not somewhat rewarding, and when I got a real job I continued being George's occasional housemaid/farmhand. He was kind, straightforward, and I liked him. He was ruggedly handsome and a get it done kind of guy. He lived on a micro-farm raising free-range chickens for eggs to sell at market, and game hens, pheasants, and grouse to sell to the sportsman club.

His little farm was a respite from the hectic world, a quiet, quaint private place. I liked it.

I had once noticed his wife's picture sitting on top of the old, tube TV and I asked him about her. Her image in the picture showed an amazing smile, full apple cheeks and a mad blast of copper hair. Her personality radiated out of the frame.

She was enchanting.

George's dark look ended any further inquiry. "She's gone." He grumbled.

That was that. I was the sometimes occasional part time farmhand, who was I to question the boss?

I never asked again.

Now, standing in the basement in a mysterious room I never knew existed, we were looking at his wife's... life support pod?

"George," I squeaked, exasperated. "Just what the hell is this?"

His face, resigning to have to explain the unexplainable, only looked dubious. He turned to a bookshelf filled with tiny, micro cassettes and pulled out the top one. He then dropped it into a VCR, glancing over his shoulder. "One of your jobs," He said, nonchalantly. "will be to update these to a new media. Digital or something."

As the machine rewound the tape, he turned on the monitor. It was like everything about George, technology that had ended decades ago.

He hit 'play', and shuffled away.

There she was, a smile like a lighthouse beacon in the fog, her hair moving as if there was always a breeze, primeval forest green eyes looking right into the camera and right at me. "Hi, my name is Barbra Wyer." She laughed breathlessly. "That's right, Barb Wire, and I'm about to embark on an amazing sexual experiment."

She was so pretty! So vibrant! You hardly noticed she was completely naked. She had the classic body of a Greek statue, and breasts... well, as a woman, I could only envy. Her hips and curves and lips and eyes and smile and wow and wow and wow.

"I am a heavy bondage enthusiast," She spoke matter of factly, as if she was saying, 'I'm a Gemini', or, 'I like ice cream'. She said it conversationally, as if it were a normal thing. "I'm a HEAVY bondage enthusiast". Not light, not medium, heavy.

"and after numerous sessions of deeper and deeper forays into bondage and S&M," She went on, "I'm putting myself into a long term session that will be something for the medical books. For the record, I do not wish to harm myself or others and I am not being forced in any way." She glanced over her shoulder and there was George in the background working on something that appeared to be double-checking hoses and scribbling in a logbook. His hair was a little less grey and his beard was a few inches shorter. He looked up and grinned, then resumed his work. I noticed rather clearly his smile never reached his eyes.

"In fact," Barbra went on. "using long term methods of influence and manipulation I have forced my husband to be my accomplice. He is innocent in this scheme. He's actually dead set against it. But this is my choice and he will have to accept that." She was talking half to the camera, and half to him. If he heard or pretended not to, I couldn't tell. He only continued what he was doing which appeared to be touching and jiggling every cable to make sure they were properly connected.

I realized he wasn't actually doing anything. He was puttering to have something to do while he waited for something real to do, something he dreaded to do.

"This is the last of my video diary, and the beginning of my embarkation of this amazing adventure!" Barbra announced.

As she talked about technical things such as thrombosis and bacteria and boredom, I looked at current George. He was scrutinizing a bank of machines, touching cables and hoses and inspecting them. I looked back at video George who was doing the same thing. Seeing them both mirror each other dizzied my brain. I was looking at Barbra on the screen talking, and in a pod at the same time. Past and current events were over-riding each other.

I was about to formally and elaborately freak the fuck out, but current George turned back to look at me. His face of sadness and defeat defused my building bomb. I glanced at video George who was looking at his clipboard, wearing the same, tragic expression.

"George," I pleaded, glancing at Barbra who in the video was emphatically pointing at her pussy. "What. The. Fuck?"

He grasped for words with his hands and pointed at the tapes, the pod, the room. "If you watch the..." He tried to begin, then sagged, and buried his face in his hands. "She..." He slapped his hips in frustration. "She was always a little kinky. I was never really into the bondage thing. Seemed like a lot of work, but she loved it. I went along with it and we were happy. I learned how to build some things for her, how to weld, do a little metal work... but she's... was... is... insatiable." He looked at the pod. "It always had to be more."

"...possibly permanently." Barbra added.

I looked at the screen. Barbra's cheeks were a blazing red. "Because of the advanced locking mechanism I designed, I may spend the rest of my life in this bondage device." She shuddered and her eyes thinned to slits. "The thought of permanent bondage is thrilling! The rest of my life in total restraint! My sex, my body functions, every aspect of my life controlled completely by the set orders of an unmerciful computer!" Her smile was orgasmic. "I know that I'll be doing solitary confinement; that I'll always be constantly and strongly stimulated and tortured, with no means of escape or avoidance and no possible way to tell anyone that I want to be released. The computer will apply whatever stimuli that is programmed to occur, and needless to say, it has no feelings, sympathy, mercy, or concern about the torment, or joy, it is inflicting."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" I leapt forward and paused the tape. "What?"

George's face was wracked with pain. He only waved his hand for the video to continue as he looked away.

"There is an electric auto-lock feature." Barbra explained. "Once I am secured, and the lock is engaged, there are two number generators. Every twenty-eight days the numbers will be randomly chosen. If the numbers match, the system will unlock. So, it is possible I'll be out in twenty-eight days, but the odds of that happening is the equivalent of winning the lottery five times in a row, so my chances are astronomically small." She shivered, but not from cold. "So you see, it is very possible I will remain in bondage for, well, ever."

I turned it off, leaving the hum of the machines as the only sound in the room. I looked at the pod and watched her wriggling around inside. "How long..." I murmured, disbelieving everything I saw, "has she been in there?"

George pointed to one of the clipboards on the wall. "Six years, eight months, eleven days, thirteen hours and," he checked his watch, "seventeen minutes." His voice was like sand.

The words flowed over my brain like a wave. "She's insane. She'll never get out."

George pointed to a bank of machines with numbers rolling across their display. "This machine runs a sub-routine, like mini lotteries with much better odds. Everyday it runs and if Barbra 'wins', her odds in the main lottery improve, as much as a million..." He sighed tiredly, "...or less. Usually much, much less." He looked at Barbra in her pod longingly, watching her moving around for a while, and then back to the odds machine. "The longer she stays in there, the numbers from the sub-lottery will increase her chances dramatically in the main lottery."

"What are her odds right now?"

He pointed to the number display, counting the placement. "Something with sixteen zeros to one."

Stunned, I actually started counting zeros on my fingers trying to visualize what that would look like. "Sixteen zeroes?" I gasped.

"Yeah," He said gravely.

"So what will be her odds in ten years?"

He shrugged. "Depends how lucky she is in the sub-lottery routine. Maybe winning the lottery four times in a row."

"And in twenty years?"

He winced. "There's a diminishing return value calculator so in twenty years it will be winning the lottery three times in a row. In forty years it will be closer to winning the lottery twice in a row."

I was spiraling. "Twice in a row? Not just winning the lottery twice, but in a row? What are the odds of that?"

He coughed something.

"What?" I pressed him.

"Five and a half trillion to one."

It was if I had been slapped. "Trillion? Wait, meaning every twenty-eight days she has one chance to hit a magic number..." My brain stumbled. "out of five and a half trillion?"

He looked abashed. "Well, in forty years. Right now it's a number with sixteen zeros." He pointed to the odds machine. "They haven't named that number yet."

I looked at the machine with its flickering numbers. It was overwhelming. "And you don't have a key?"

He looked impassive. "There is a break out panel. I would have to effectively smash the pod and manually unlock it."

"And why don't you do that?" I almost screamed at him.

"Because there would be another!" He barked sharply, making me jump back. George was a bear in height and stature. A cuddly, amicable bear, but a bear non-the-less; a bear that once killed three men in the line of duty. He softened. "She would build another. She would go in again. I thought she would have this out of her system after her year long trial run, but instead she spent night and day tweaking the machines to prepare for this stage." He looked up, his face so sad. "With or without me." He started looking over the bank of videocassettes. "I was terrified I'd come home one day to find her locked up in her Death Pod variant."

My eyebrows shot up. "Death Pod?"

He went to the wall of tapes and sorted through them. "One of these tapes she talks about it." He gave up looking. "She didn't do it, but she designed a feature that if I arbitrarily opened the pod it would initiate some protocol that would suffocate her before I could get her out. It was to take the decision of opening the pod away from me." He looked down, his eyes heavy. "To take away the guilt, really." He glanced up. "I refused, we argued, we compromised." He waved at the pod. "This is the compromise. Yes, I can let her out, but there would be a new pod, stronger, and... well, a pod that would in fact be her tomb." His hand caressed the pod casing. "I don't know, I guess I feel a little better knowing that I have some power over all of this even though I don't. I didn't want this at all, but at least this way I have her with me. I dream that someday she hits the magic number, or more likely a machine hiccups and produces the right number, and unlocks the pod and she gets out and smiles at me and goes, 'What a rush! I'm good for now.' and we go off and do things normal people do." His face was grim.

I thought about the image in the video. Her aura in a low resolution, grainy, track-streaked video was undiminished. In seconds I wanted to be her best friend, help her move a couch, go clubbing. A woman I had never knew existed and all I wanted was her approval. George had been in direct fire of that glow every day for years.

I looked at her writhing around, sliding, curling, then tightening and shivering. "Why is she doing that?"

George pointed to another bank of machines. "She's being stimulated. Sometimes nice stimulation, some times not so nice, sometimes painful, and sometimes... worse than painful." He waved at three machines. "It's another lottery, sort of. Intensity, depth and duration. They're random. If all three machines have the right stimulation simultaneously, long enough, she might get an orgasm. If they are not, then she gets teased but no joy, sort of a torture all on its own. On occasion, the three will be in full pain mode together. Not fun."

"And how many orgasms has she had in six years?"

He pulled down another clipboard, flipping pages. "One definite. I base that on heart, respiration, o2 saturations, endocrine perspirations, and blood pressure." He nodded to a monitor that looked like it was stolen from a 1970s TV medical show to check if there had been another orgasm. A curl of paper hung from a slot on its face. He ripped off the paper, noted whatever it read, and tacked it with a nest of other printouts which indicated there hadn't. He then pointed to a metal box with hoses connected to it. "This is an old lie detector machine we got from the State Troopers when they upgraded a few years back. With modifications it works as a rather accurate orgasm detector."

My head jerked back as the information sank in. "And it detected one orgasm in six years?"

"Yeah." He grunted.

I mentally questioned the accuracy of his, 'orgasm detector' as I looked back at the machines. "And that, worse than pain thing, one of those too?"

I predicted his answer. "No. She get's maximum pain more often."

I ran my fingers through my hair trying to think. "Of course it is." I mumbled sardonically.

"See, the machine's 'brain' is actually from an old stereo equalizer component but the control is a random generator cycling through One and Ten. On One or Ten the channel is wide open and it hurts like... well, I tested the connections myself and compared to when I cut my arm open on a ragged piece of tin sheeting. I would prefer the tin sheeting every time." He pulled up his sleeve and showed me the faint, Frankenstein scar ripped up his arm. "Twenty-one stitches." His voice hinted with pride. "We had chased a File 5 perp through a junk yard. Outta nowhere, SKKKERK!" He drew his thumb across the scar.

I paused, almost looking for an oasis of logic. "File 5 perp?"

He shifted his head, trying to switch back into English. "A Perpetrator with an active Fugitive From Justice Warrant." He grinned a little. "Blood was every where. I tackled him and got him in cuffs. We were both covered in blood by time my back up arrived. The guys thought I'd inflicted a little street justice on him."

I nodded, then motioned with my head back to the Pod, ready to address Barbra again. "So there are more chances for pain." I thought it through. "Another lottery."

"Yeah." He went on, although I could read in his face he wanted to talk about anything but the machine that was torturing his wife. "Pain is easy, pleasure... not so much. You can't just flip from agony to ecstasy. You still have to deal with..." he struggled to find the words, "you know, the brain and the body."

"So the right mix, the right intensity, at the right time."

"and the right duration." He finished.

I peered into the Pod and watched her. "So when she moves like that, it's good?" I watched her for a while. George was watching the lights on the machines. Seeing a bunch of green lights I smiled. "She's doing good, right?"

He shook his head, pointing to the third machine. "This one's changing over, you can tell by the hum it makes, it won't be enough duration."

Sure enough the lights began to change over to yellow with a couple green and a couple red. "And red is pain?"