This story was typed with one hand.

Whether or not you read it with one hand depends on whether you find the same stuff exciting as me. There's obviously gender reassignment involved, as well as non-consensual or semi-consensual sexual practices, behavior modification, brainwashing, mind control, BDSM, etc. There's even Marines in there somewhere, but don't worry, they just stand around and look mean. You get the picture. Read on if you like that. It'll be quite boring if you don't like any of the above, since this is not literature, but wank fiction.

Comments, like "This story sucks", or "Um, you ended a paragraph in midsentence", or quite possibly, "Thank you", can be sent to aly_ssas@yahoo.com.

Thanks for reading.

 

Nano

by Alyssa S.

 

I'd been riding the cunt pretty hard, these past two days, I thought to myself as I tightened the leather straps that pulled her elbows together behind her. She grunted but said nothing as I pushed her down, her face against the floor of the van. I clipped her collar to the retaining ring set in the floor, patted her ass and climbed out of the van.

I'd ridden her hard, but it was worth the work. My client would be happy. Two days ago she'd had a brutish, nasty, philandering millionaire of a husband. Now that bastard would suffer a complete reversal of fortune. My client was now, for all intents and purposes, John Maynard the third, esquire, etcetera, while her husband was now the pretty young wife the idiot was stupid enough to ignore.

The girl in the van who days earlier had been John was now Natalie Maynard. She had a complete set of her wife's memories laid over her own memories of life as a man. But I'd modified her sexual and emotional makeup to fit much more closely the kind of woman she'd wanted to marry in the first place - a submissive, emotionally fragile fuckpet.

Though she was the most radical nano-modification I'd ever done, she had the simple unaugmented good looks of a very pretty natural. That was rare and striking; most people these days opted to improve their looks to the point where nearly everyone with any money had the bland beauty of movie stars. Modelling the modification to exactly match a natural beauty like Natalie made the job more fun. She even had crooked teeth and a mole on her left breast. The imperfections made her look even more striking, in my opinion.

I climbed into the cab of the van. I fingered the closed-circuit monitor switch, and checked on my cargo. Natalie was squirming a little, but knew not to shift her position substantially. I chuckled. The little cunt didn't know very much about what was happening to her. She'd figured out she'd been made her wife's twin, but not yet why.

I'd had to use nano-induced sadistic impulses to do this job, since abduction, rape and torture aren't usually my cup of tea. It turned out to be kind of fun - for a while. I shook out a pill from a bottle and downed it, washing it down with a squirt from a water bottle. I let the new nanobots do their work for awhile, dismantling the psychopathic urges that fuelled the training I'd given the girl. It took maybe a half hour. I felt a little sick to my stomach, but otherwise okay.

I didn't let myself reflect too deeply on the things I'd done to the girl in back. She got what she deserved, I told myself. Everything I'd done to her she'd done to other women, once. I took another gulp of water to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

I'd been doing nano long enough that I no longer had what other people called feelings. You do nano long enough, emotions don't seem real anymore, and after awhile they become irrelevant. People tend to use behavioral nano sparingly, to improve themselves - to become more honest, or to have a higher sex drive, or aquire more confidence. It was expensive stuff, and tricky. It took an artist to craft the little 'bots software.

Certain jobs require extensive use of the stuff. Soldiers and prostitutes practically ate it for breakfast, actors depended on the stuff, and of course there were abusers lying in prisons or asylums or on the street. That last problem was rare - it was hundred times as expensive as coke. Sane, sober people took it maybe two or three times in their life, and generally for the right reasons.

I guess I was an actor of sorts. I was the rapist, or the doctor, or the father figure. Anything to get the client. It had taken its toll.

Body-mod nano was safer, though I'd never touched the stuff. I kind of liked being ugly. It made me stand out. Maybe I was just old-fashioned.

I flipped open my cell and rang the client.

"Mr. Maynard's office," the brisk voice of a female secretary announced.

"This is Sam Smith," I said, "I believe he's expecting a call from me."

"Yes, he is. I'll put you through." I endured Musak for a few minutes.

"Hi Sam," John's voice answered.

"Hi, John. How's the new name and life suit you?"

"Oh, I can't complain. My husband's memories are pretty ugly. It took some getting used to the behavioral nano, too. But now it seems pretty natural, being a bastard. It has its advantages, you know."

"I take it you took the other treatment I recommended as well?"

"Yep. Kinda had to, you know. The old me didn't much like the prospect of treating my spouse like a piece of trash, no matter how bad he was to me. Now it seems a pretty natural thing to do. She certainly deserves it. And it's giving me...ideas."

Hmmn. "Well, you can always reverse the effect if you tire of being a sadistic prick. Which is more than she can expect. I capped her DNA so no further physical changes can be made - I deleted the encryption code. You can use whatever behavioral nano you like. She's ready now. I don't think she's happy, exactly, with what you've done to her, but she'll obey, and enjoy it despite herself."

He laughed. "You bringing her by now?"

"Yeah. She's packed and ready for delivery. I'll go over the nano-mods with you in person."

"Sounds good. I'll take the afternoon off. You know where to bring her."

++++

Of all the "relocation" jobs I'd done, the Maynard case was the strangest, and the only one involving a complete reversal of roles. Most jobs were straightforward - middle-aged wife wants a new body to recapture her husband's attentions; the occasional lesbian couple with an FTM who wants a real life and history associated with his new gender - stuff like that. They were all drastic enough changes that a conventional nano-therapist would refuse the job. Assuming a new identity is, of course, legal so long as the change is recorded. But these people wanted new lives, and I fabricated new identities for them. It was better than being a divorce lawyer, and I figured I salvaged quite a few marriages. And the rates I charged were proportionate with the illegality of the services.

I saw the Maynards on social occasions a few times over the next few years. John invited me to some of his larger, more vanilla parties. Rumors were widespread about the "other" parties, the ones for select guests, where the dozens of pretty maids John kept on his estate were revealed in their proper state - naked slave girls - and Natalie among them.

The parties I was invited to were more dignified - though I could certainly imagine that the girls serving on those occasions were picked more for their sexual compatibility with John's dominant nature than any particular catering skills.

Natalie seemed to have learned her place well, and when we talked at those parties, she never mentioned the drastic changes in circumstances I'd reduced her to. I didn't know if this was out of a natural reticence or if John had forbidden her to mention it - and given her nature now, his word would be Law to her. She was certainly very agreeable company - she was beautiful, after all, and extremely deferential. John had a tendency to dress her up provocatively, which seemed to embarass her vaguely. But if I got any sense of her emotional state from those conversations, to me she seemed quite content, not at all put out by her sudden feminization.

It was some time before I realized that Natalie fascinated me. I shouldn't have found it strange that she seemed so happy in her imprisonment, since that was a natural consequence of the nano-mods I did on her. Something about her, something about her coy smile - she seemed alive to the fact that her life had been taken from her, aware of it and fully accepting.

Most behavioral nano-mod recipients didn't have the kind of self-knowledge she seemed to exude. The emotions and instincts were so natural it was difficult to second-guess them. And with the few unwilling recipients, there was a sense that the victim knew something was wrong, but couldn't pinpoint it exactly. Natalie's composure in the face of her victimization would have felt like smugness if she were capable of such emotions - which I knew for a fact she wasn't.

So I wondered about her. Professionally speaking, she was a bit of a puzzle.

One evening, at one of John's parties, I found myself alone with her in the study. She and I had been part of a larger circle of conversation - about politics - and the other three had gone off together to refresh her drinks.

She looked bashfully down at her coke - John didn't let her drink.

I decided an indirect approach was best. "I think I owe you an apology, Natalie," I said. She looked up, wide-eyed. "Your...spouse paid me a very large sum of money to do what I did to you. I don't regret taking the money, or your particular fate. You weren't exactly undeserving. But I think I could have treated you a little better when you were in my care."

She looked about her; seeing we were alone, she smiled, almost conspiratorially.

"May we sit, Mister Smith?" she asked, sounding for all the world like a little schoolgirl as she gestured to the sofa.

"Of course, Natalie," I said, and sat down. She stepped forward hesitantly, and then sat down gingerly on an ottoman directly in front of me, as if sitting in a chair were something foriegn to her. Perhaps by now it was. Her knees were together and, after some deliberation as to what to do with her hands, she clasped them on her lap.

"Mr. Smith, my nano-conditioning controls much of the way I behave - my demeanor, my body language and so on. It's what makes me act like a schoogirl instead of a clumsy, brash forty year old man in a twenty year old woman's body. I can't help it. Everyone at this party believes me to be as I am because I can't help acting the part. But it would be a mistake to think that because I appear innocent, I am in fact so. I was a manipulative bastard once, and though I'm not in a position where I can manipulate people any longer, I can tell you that Natalie was not your true client. I was."

I sat up now, interested.

"I used an implant, you see. She told you it was a therapy implant, to slow aging - and it was - but it also modified her mindset considerably. It gave her the drive and vengeful streak to want to do this to me, which was augmented by my habitual mistreatment of her. Everything you did to us was as I wished it."

I was flabbergasted. "Why?" I asked.

She smiled. "Everyone knows power is a drug, potent, attractive and addictive. Also destructive.

"So is powerlessness, That's rarely noticed, I think, but it's true. Potent, attractive and addictive. It's animal instinct - there are alphas and there are betas, and each derives satisfaction from his or her particular place in the world. There's one difference though: you can never have enough power. Power is thirsty work. If you choose to relinquish power, however, you can achieve a state of absolute powerlessness rather easily, because others are happy to take power from you.

"I strive to be perfectly helpless, which is a form of perfection, and perfection is what we all seek, right? I'm incapable of resisting John's will. I'm nano-conditioned to respond to his voice signature with utter obedience.

But it's not effortless. I strive hard to be more abject, and just when I think I've reached the lowest point John pushes me further.

"I don't expect you to understand what I'm talking about; looking at your face, I guess you're a little confused by my words. Anyway, I'm just trying to say there's no need for apology. I should be thanking you."

I looked at her in disbelief. "I guess I just don't understand why you would want to do this to yourself," I said finally.

She paused. "Mr. Smith, I think I have something you don't, though it might be hard to imagine that. Think about it later. Think about the one emotion I'm consumed with, day in and day out, and when you name it, try to remember the last time you felt it yourself."

Just then John walked in the room. Natalie immediately stood, head downcast.

"What's the punishment for sitting on furniture, Natalie?" he asked calmly.

"Thirty lashes, Sir," she whispered.

"Go prepare yourself for them."

++++

For some reason, that conversation had an effect on me. Weeks later I was still thinking about it, and about Natalie. Poor Natalie, whose desires were so unusual she had to resort to the ultimate self-abnegation - surrendering her identity, exchanging it for a life in which she had no options left - to fulfill them.

And yet I realized that she was possibly the happiest person I'd ever met.

I went back the the Maynard house, during the day.

++++

Natalie received me in the study. Curiously, she wore a maid's outfit, albeit a very skimpy one. I sat down; she remained standing.

"May I get you a drink, Mr. Smith?" she asked.

"Don't you have help for that, Natalie?" I asked in return.

"It's one of my duties. During the day the staff may assign me to any household duty they like - today it's parlour servant. I'm on my lunch break or I wouldn't be able to see you. I make a good martini, if you'd like one."

She went to the bar and mixed a martini, put a twist of lemon in it, and returned. She knelt in front of me, holding the drink up. I took it. She remained on her knees.

"Um, wouldn't you like to sit? Your husband isn't around."

"I can't, Mr. Smith. John made a few changes to my nano regimen the last time I sat in a chair. I can't do it any longer. It makes me nauseous. I'm quite comfortable kneeling; don't let it bother you."

"I suppose you don't drink for the same reason."

"Yes, Mr. Smith. Cigarettes and alcohol throw me into convulsions."

"Could you just call me Sam?"

"No, I can't, Mr. Smith. As I said, John made a few changes - "

"To your nano regimen, I know, I know. You know, it's a little annoying, all this crap. How do you put up with it? Why the hell does John like it? I can't figure it out."

"Which is why you came, I imagine, Mr. Smith. Have you thought about what we talked about last time?"

"Yes," I admitted. "Tell me, Natalie. Are you happy?"

"Yes, Mr. Smith," she said.

"Why?"

"Because I can't change my emotions, Mr. Smith. I can't hide from them. I can't take nano because I would need the encryption key that made me what I am to do so, and only you John has that. So I'm stuck with my feelings and emotions. It had been a long time since the only thing I could say were my own were my feelings. Nothing else belongs to me here.

"You have to remember that, while some of the things I feel now are nano-induced, they might as well be real, since I have no way of escaping or finding respite from them. I can't take a pill and feel differently. And since I've been conditioned to find happiness on my knees, at the mercy of a man who treats me like something lower than a dog - even our bullmastiff can run freely about the house, while I'm usually chained - then happiness is what I feel.

"That's the gentle way of explaining my decision - the one that reflects well on me. Here's another way of looking at it: I simply couldn't hack being a man. I wasn't strong, just rich. I had wealth and that gave me power; I used both irresponsibly. In a just world I should never have had either. I grew to hate myself and the life I led because I knew it was a lie. My mistreatment of Natalie was just the latest in a long history of injustices I perpetrated against women - and men too, but women especially. Natalie was unhappy but could have left me. There were others I kept forcibly. It provided a sheen of masculinity and virility; but I knew that by all rights I should have been the one on her knees, in chains.

"Now I am kept forcibly. The tools I used to have women at my beck and call now render me utterly helpless. Natalie married me for my money, you know. She wanted wealth and power, however she could get it. Now, as my husband, he has what he wanted in the purest way possible. I have also given him a rather extreme means of revenge upon me for what I put him through.

"He's a better man than I ever was. Being a woman - a slave - isn't easy, but it's what I deserve. Now I feel like my physical form - weak, dependent, fragile - finally matches my true character.

"And John now has what he wanted. He's much more truly John Maynard than I ever was. Where I subjugated women as a form of overcompensation, he does so because he has the right to do so. He is superior to me, and his control over me is a reflection of his superiority, rather than a feeble act of bravado."

++++

I left Natalie bewildered and a little bemused. I went back to work, giving her little thought; I had a backlog of clients to tend to.

But her words came back to haunt me. And I began to realize that my attraction to her and her story, her motives, was more than just idle curiousity.

Several months passed.

++++

I wasn't really sure why I was doing this. It felt like a strange obsession.

The encryption key on the nano I'd worked up for the job would unlock automatically after one year. Until then it couldn't be broken, not even by me, and would prevent further physical modification.

The nano would transform the subject into a eighteen year old girl. Five foot even, 95 pounds, 34-17-33. Doing the waist so narrow required pushing the internal organs around a little, but women in the 19th century had gotten by with even smaller waistlines, and this one, encoded into the DNA, wouldn't require a corset.

I'd never had transgendered inclinations before in my life. Strange now that I'd become so captivated by the idea. I told myself it was an experiment - I wouldn't really understand Natalie unless I spent some time in her shoes. But some part of me knew that to be a lie. The motivation was much harder to pin down. I felt like I wasn't really in control of what I was doing.

All I knew was that for the past three months, every time I tried to put this project aside, it consumed me, and I thought about it compulsively. I justified going through with it, telling myself it was either that or go crazy resisting the urge.

I never once considered, however, that perhaps my wanting desperately to go through with this was fuelled by anything other than personal motive.

Long brown hair, olive skin, brown eyes. Small feet and hands. Full lips on a tiny face. The simulation looked pretty good.

The nano included behavior modification as well. Highly submissive tendencies, shyness, an ingrained deferentiality to men, a highly keyed sex drive. Punching it up that high gave her the libido of a thirty year old woman or an 18 year old boy.

I did a complete set of paperwork on her. She was a matriculating freshman at NYU, and I'd rented a tiny apartment for her in the East Village. She had a monthly stipend from her scholarship that would keep her in beans and rice, and not much else. Everything looked legal - sort of. Forging an identity from scratch always leaves holes. Anne-Marie La Fontaine died shortly after her birth, and it was concievable that this fact could be dug up.

I'd fitted my nano-lab and apartment with DNA locks designed to deny access to Anne-Marie La Fontaine's particular DNA signature. Anne-Marie wouldn't be able to access either location until the locks deactivated a year from now. The lab would be rented out to Johnny Dentz, a friend in the business I sometimes did jobs with. My bank accounts were frozen for the same period. Sam Smith was taking a sabbatical in Asia and wouldn't be returning for some time.

++++

I awoke feeling like I had just run a marathon. Every muscle in my body ached.

I was lying on my back on a gurney in a pool of sweat and mucous. The overhead flourescents drilled holes in my brain, and I covered my face with my arm.

A small arm, drenched in sweat. With little tiny hairs. I remembered.

I sat up groggily and swung my legs over the side of the gurney, feeling hung over and clumsy. My little bare legs dangled, my feet a good foot further from the floor than when I'd lain down before.

Breasts. I cupped them with my tiny hands; they were soft and heavy and felt bizarre.

I sat for a moment, fighting the temporary sense of vertigo all radical transformees felt. I let it pass, then slid off the gurney and planted my feet on the floor.

Okay. Time to get this shit off of me. I walked gingerly to the shower.

I turned on the water and let its hot steam wash off the considerable residue the nano had pushed through my sweat glands to the surface of my skin. Most of it was lying in a pool on the gurney, material discarded by the nano as being superfluous to its mission of reshaping me into something 80 pounds lighter. Tissue rendered into a fat-like substance, mixed with chemicals and hormones, enzymes created by the nano and discarded, the job done. I knew if I ran the stuff through an analyzer I'd find a lot of testosterone, broken down and rendered inviable, muscle protiens broken into small enough pieces to sweat out, and other biological detritus. The radical reshaping was done by the nano; my pituitary gland, now fed instructions from XX chromosomes, would regulate my body's hormones as if I were any other teenaged girl. Which, in fact, I was. Biologically I was indistinguishable from a born female, even upon the closest examination. The distinction was purely semantic.

That's why what I just did to myself was very illegal. I was an unregistered nano-mod; a tax-evader's wet dream and Government's bane.

My DNA now was so different from what it had been that there was no way to connect me with Sam Smith. You could tell that nano was present and active, under a microscope, but since it was now in maintenance mode, it would appear to be therapeutic nano - to manage my weight, or mood, or something else quite legal and unobjectionable.

My hair had grown about eight inches in the two days I was comatose, and had turned from a grey-blond to nut brown. It would keep growing another ten inches over the next few days, then slow to normal growth rate. The nano was programmed to keep hair length down below the shoulder blades, so even if it cut it short the nano would kick back in, and my hair would return to the programmed length.

Similarly, my physical strength was monitored my the nano. If I joined a gym and worked out every day for a year, I would end up without an ounce of extra muscle tone or strength. The nano would disassemble the new tissues as soon as my body developed them.

Soon the floor of the shower was covered with sticky goo. I let it wash down the drain, turned the spigots off, and grabbed a towel. I dried myself as I stepped out in front of the sink and mirror.

The sink was a foot higher than it had been before. I reached over it and used the towel to wipe off the steam, noting the way my breasts swayed forward as I did so.

The girl staring back at me was Anne-Marie, all right. No way around it. I'd chosen a composite of several natural girls I'd nano-improved to make Anne-Marie. They had all been beautiful, but, of course, wanted perfection. I preferred using their pre-nano DNA as source material. The result of mixing the DNA from these sources was a healthy prettiness with a few flaws. I noted the freckling around my chest and on my cheeks, and my lopsided smile, with the practiced eye of a nano-surgeon. I liked what I saw, which was good, since I wasn't in a position to change it now.

I dried off clumsily, my hands overreaching in the wrong places finding curves blocking the places they were accustomed to moving to. I brushed my hair inexpertly - I would need to comb it in a few days, I realized. Better get used to it.

Now. I went back out to the lab, opened a closet and pulled out the brown paper bag containing the accoutrements of my new life. Shoes, panties and a sundress, and a purse.

I slipped the panties - I'd perversely chosen a bright pink thong, to remind myself what was happening - over my ankles and pulled them up over my hips. The thong strap slipped between my buttocks and nestled comfortably there, while the elastic rode high on my flared hips, scooping low to expose my belly button.

I pulled the sundress over my head and let its silk fall down the length of my body. The white fabric sat smoothly on my breasts, and the hem tickled my thighs.

Okay, now the shoes. I'd chosen heels, I think just to piss myself off. I put these on and took a few steps forward, immediately regretting it as I swayed into a lab table. They were the only shoes I had here. Hmmn. A little practice was in order.

I looked at the clock. 4:30 PM. I had a half hour before the night alarm would activate; since my DNA no longer matched the list of approved night visitors, that meant I had a half-hour before the alarm went off. I did a few runway walks to gain my footing, then gathered up my male clothing and effects and threw them in the small incinerator I kept to remove nano-waste. I stripped the sheets from the gurney and threw these in too, then turned the incinerator on.

I activated the air-scrubbers, which would filter out the rest of the stray DNA.

That done, I picked up my handbag, screwed up my courage, opened the lab door, walked through it, and shut it behind me.

I turned and tried the door. Though unlocked, when I touched the handle I heard the lock engage, then disengage when I removed my hand. I knew that even using a stick or something to open it wouldn't work, since it worked on the presence of DNA in the room and touching combined.

I turned around and leaned back against the lab door, breathing heavily.

One long phase of my life was over, at least for the time being. Now I was someone else.

++++

The doorman glanced at me as I walked out of the lobby, but I sensed the look was more for the purpose of ogling me than anything else. He frightened me a little. I stepped out onto the street.

Washington Street, where my lab was housed, was a daytime cocktail of dock workers, homeless and the stray office worker leaving for home early. I immediately felt vulnerable in my little white dress and heels. I clutched my bag and headed east on King Street, pretending not to hear the catcalls from the construction crew sitting on the back of a flatbed and smoking.

Those first few minutes were hard. It wasn't until I'd reached 6th Avenue that I felt somewhat safe. I sank into a park bench on the wide median and let myself address the sudden emotions that two block walk had induced in me. I was shaking.

I'd never been in a position before where talking back to a man was not only inadvisable, but dangerous. That scared me, but what scared me even more was the instinctive urge to go to them and submit to their questioning deferentially. This, I expected, was not what most women felt in these kinds of situations. Rather, I blamed the nano-conditioning I'd programmed. I'd experienced nano that made you strong, or confident, or a prick, or a saint, but never nano that made one want to submit oneself to the tender mercies of a bunch of assholes.

The strange thing about it, of course, was that it felt completely natural. My brain was telling me those thugs should be shot with a firearm, but my body was telling me that they had every right to ogle me, to address me with the slurs they used. Or maybe...not that they had the right, but that it excited me.

The thought of going back and submitting myself to their gaze, their words, their hands - stop it! I told myself. So, I thought. That's what Natalie feels. I never thought something as humiliating as that could be so arousing.

I stood up again, blushing and confused and flushed. With a shock I realized my panties were damp.

I continued moving east, through Soho, then northwards into the East Village. One thing I noted rather quickly was that my sense of fashion didn't fit at all. On a street awash in middys, pierced navels, leather pants and skirts, and boots, I looked like a stripped down version of a bodice-ripper novel. And a very short one at that.

The novelty of being short didn't last long. I missed the luxury of being able to see further down the street than the backside of the guy in front of you, who really wasn't that big, just much bigger than you. I felt surrounded on all sides, like a little kid.

Soon I made my way to the brownstone on East 6th Street, turned my key in the lock of the front door, and made my way up to the fifth floor apartment. The smell of Indian food from the shops downstairs permeated the building; a condition I would later discover to be permanent and often overwhelming.

I got into my apartment. 200 square feet of blissful privacy, furnished by one Sam Smith. Thank you, Sam, I thought, as I locked the door. Already I felt the man I had been just a few days earlier was almost a stranger. He and I simply had no shared points of reference. He was strong, middle aged, wealthy, masculine; I was eighteen, tiny, fragile, and poor. Our instincts were different; our reactions to stimulus different - and now I was attracted to men, not women. The shock of these drastic changes was exhausting. I got onto the bed - the only piece of furniture that fit - and promptly fell asleep.

++++

I awoke to sunlight streaming through the windows. I lifted my head and looked around, discovered that I was still Anne-Marie, and that I was in my apartment, and that it was morning. I also found myself still dressed, though my dress was hiked up around my waist, the strap over my right shoulder had worked its way down, exposing my breast, and I was only wearing one heel. Not a decorous start to my new life, I thought wryly.

I sat up, again feeling the strange sensation of flesh swaying on my chest, spun my legs off the bed and stood up.

I felt much better. The way I had felt yesterday was like an extreme case of jet-lag, and I was glad to wake up clear-headed.

I showered and dressed in some of the more up-to-date items I'd picked out before the transformation: jeans (cut with a narrow enough waist for me), a bright orange sleeveless tee with blue and white racing stripes down the flanks, a silver chain bracelet for my right wrist and a matching silver choker. I'd probably look out of place with no jewelry at all, and besides I liked the way they looked. Nikes too - I hadn't worn sneakers in some time, but I'd bought more fashionable wear to complement the more feminine clothing I preferred on a girl like me, and needed footgear to match. I figured I'd have to blend in with the college crowd. Besides, silk and chiffon doesn't last long, and as of now I didn't have the money to replace the things I'd bought.

The sneakers were impossibly tiny, only about seven inches long, but my little feet slipped in like a hand in a glove. I laced them up.

I stood and surveyed the results in the mirror. My hair had grown out overnight, down to below my shoulder blades, and I hadn't figured out what to do with it - there was so much. Otherwise the overall effect looked okay. By now I'd resigned myself to the fact that no matter how I dressed I'd look like a kid trying to be a grownup, so dressing like a kid at least seemed to fit.

I sat back down on the bed and opened my purse. I counted out my cash - a little over seventy dollars to last me five days until the start of class, when I could pick up my scholarship check. I used to spend that much in a day.

I headed out the door, onto the street, feeling very small and vulnerable as I made my way west through the normal crush of morning people. They were all so big, so wide, and so damned slow, I thought to myself.

Though the ones who annoyed me the most were the men, because they dwarfed me, I found myself noticing things about them I'd never really noticed before, which, after some thought, I had to recognize as features I now found sexually attractive.

Their muscles, for instance. Not the overdeveloped muscles of the occasional obvious bodybuilder, but the thick, well-toned muscles of a man who kept fit. The way even the muscles of their forearms were defined, easily identified as separate tissues, built to do heavy lifting. I found myself, as I walked west on East 5th street, following a man in black slacks and a tanktop, noting the differences between his broad shoulders and my tiny ones, his wrists, thicker than my forearms, his muscle definition creating a pattern of ripples and bulges, where the only bulges I sported gave me no physical advantage. I looked at my arms, thin, smooth; whatever muscles lying underneath could never be trained into the shapes I saw on this man's form, and all my strength could never withstand his slightest effort against me.

And yet I knew this physical disadvantage served to make me attractive in turn; thinking about the contrast aroused me.

I'd never been attracted to men, and hadn't built any nano-conditioning in to force me to feel this way - only to make me submit, to defer to men. I surmised that some of this was attributable to the inborn tendencies of the DNA I'd been fashioned from.

At the corner of East 5th and Bowery, the man turned a corner, looking back at me, and smiled. He went on.

I blushed furiously. Of course he knew I'd been following him, and I knew what kind of signals that sent in a city where women learned to never make eye contact with strangers. I rushed across the Bowery and made my down to the NYU campus.

++++

I learned quickly to keep my eyes to myself if I wanted to stay out of trouble. Fraternizing was safe for the other girls my age, but for me, and my inordinately keyed-up libido, it was practically begging for a fuck. After several hours of waiting in lines to register for classes, I concluded that my wandering eye was being interpreted by the young men around me as an invitation to flirt, and while I was pleased that their interest was piqued, I really didn't have any idea how to keep flirtation safe, never mind how to progress after that, or even if I wanted to. Mostly it bugged me that I couldn't help myself. I found myself sucked into conversations, and because my nano-conditioning made me so agreeable, my natural deference was interpreted as sexual interest.

Well, it was sexual interest - I was getting pretty horny - but I wasn't ready to find out how my submissive tendencies would manifest themselves in a bedroom with a young, inexperienced boy. I wasn't ready to be called the class slut yet either.

So I took my lunch in a cafe up in Chelsea, where I could be assured that most of the men around me weren't interested in women, and I could admire them without fear. I tried to smoke, but it made me nauseous, and I decided now was as good a time as any to give that up. I settled for coffee and a salad, which filled me much faster than I thought it would. I pushed the plate away half-eaten. Maybe I could get away with ten bucks a day after all.

I asked the waiter to bag the rest of the salad, which earned me a dirty look. But I got the bag. Screw you, wait-boy - I'm on a budget here.

By late afternoon, I'd walked back to my new neighborhood, returned to my little room, and was sitting on my bed, feeling tired and a little lonely. One immediate consequence of my one-year experiment was that I was now friendless. I knew lots of people in the city, but none now knew me, and I couldn't approach them. I felt lonely, which was strange, because though I'd had many friends, I spent most of my time alone, and never tired of solitude. Now that solitude left me feeling cut off.

I couldn't yet imagine making friends with people my own age. I had the brain and life experience of a forty year old, while my peers were now teenagers.

Almost out of instinct, I picked up my cellphone - I didn't have a landline in the apartment - and dialed the Maynard's number. It wasn't something I thought about or planned, but now I felt an urge to talk to Natalie.

To my surprise, I heard John's voice answer.

"Hello?" he asked over the line. I hung up and tossed the phone on the bed.

I let my heart slow from a pounding to something approximating normal, and wondered why the sound of his voice made me feel afraid.

Suddenly my cellphone rang. I picked it up; no one had my number. I looked at the Caller ID - restricted. I pressed the button and put the phone to my ear.

"Hello, Anne-Marie," John's voice answered.

"Who - who is this?" I said, stammering, pretending not to recognize him.

"Don't be a fool, Anne-Marie. Your name is writ large on my Caller ID."

"Oh. I must have dialed a wrong number," I said, relieved.

"I'm glad you called, Anne-Marie," he continued, "I know generally where you live, but couldn't pinpoint it exactly." I sucked in my breath. "I keep close tabs on anyone I do business with. One of my associates started making arrangements for a long vacation recently. At the same time he made lots of arrangements for a young girl named Anne-Marie. This intrigued me, for reasons you can imagine. A little detective work turned up enough evidence to determine that Anne-Marie *was* my associate's vacation. More digging produced the fact that you live on East 6th street, along with some other interesting facts." He paused.

"I - yes, John," I answered, not knowing what else to say. "It's me." I blushed.

"So, Anne-Marie, why did you call me?" he asked.

"I - I didn't - I mean - I wanted to talk to Natalie," I sputtered.

"You may not speak to her." It wasn't so much a statement as a command, and sudddenly I felt my heart flutter and pound. "However," he continued, "I wish to speak to you - in person." Oh God. "I understand you have a few days before class begins. Meet me tomorrow evening at the Mercer Hotel, in the bar, at 8:00 PM. Wear something nice. And remember I know exactly what kind of nano-mods you've inflicted on yourself."

"And what will we talk about?" I asked.

"Your future, of course."

"What if I don't want to?" I said, knowing it sounded lame, and feeling afraid.

"Don't make me remind you not to act like a fool. You will be there." The line went dead. I put the phone down on the pillow and fell back on the bed, feeling weak and loose.

That night I masturbated for the first time as a woman. The fantasies that drove me to climax were unlike any I'd dreamed up before - lurid, abject, painful and absolute slavery - and the foriegnness and instinctive naturalness of the imagery and narrative terrified me. But the orgasm was undeniable. I fell asleep drained and scared of what I'd done to myself.

++++

The next day went by in a blur. Part of me felt terrified, I felt like I was running out of time and needed to run; another part of me wanted the hours to rush forward.

The car parked outside my door had two men as its occupants. They never left, and when I looked out at it from my fifth story window, I could see one of them looking back at me, smiling.

When I left to buy groceries at the corner store, one of them got out and followed me from a discreet distance.

When I came back out, he was leaning against a lamp post, still grinning.

I confronted him. I realized quickly that that was something I simply wasn't any good at any more.

"What do you want?" I demanded.

His grin grew wider. "You have an appointment to keep. I'm here to make sure you keep it."

Something in the tone of his voice drained the fight out of me. An irrational train of thought ensued - What right do I have to question him? He knows what's best - for me - he's a man - just do as he says - if I'm going to be a girl for the next year, I should at least be a good girl - "H-how do you propose to do that?" I stammered, fighting my nano-conditioning in a futile effort to assert myself. The question came out in a half-whisper.

"We already know you're a slut. Don't prove yourself a stupid one as well. I have orders to abduct you if you don't meet my employer at the appointed hour. I have keys to your apartment. We will come up, strip you, hogtie and gag you, and stuff you into a suitcase. You're small; you'll fit pretty easily, though it won't be terribly comfortable for you. Better to just be a good girl and show up."

I backed away from him, towards my building. A good girl. The words cut like a knife. For most girls, the words probably brought forth visions of sugar plums or some such crap. For me, they conjured images of a man hovering over my naked, kneeling body and -

I ran back to my building, up the steps and into the door. I shut it behind me, hearing the lock catch. I caught my breath, then worked my way up the steps. I'd dropped one of my bags, but didn't care.

Once home, I propped my only chair under the doorknob, something I'd seen in movies - but I doubted it would help any.

++++

In the end I chose not to be stuffed into a suitcase.

For the date I chose a simple crimson silk spaghetti strap dress, with a scooped neck and a high hemline. I wore matching thong panties and no bra. Red flats and a matching handbag. Red lipstick. I told myself that I was dressing up to show John I wasn't afraid of him; but on some level I think it was a form of provocation - I might as well have worn a sign around my neck with the words "break me".

The Mercer Hotel Bar was crowded and smoky and smelled of money. The Mercer was not cheap. A Maitre'd appeared among the throng.

"You are Miss LaFontaine?" he asked, his eyes taking in what my dress revealed.

"Yes," I replied.

"Follow me, please," he said, and led me through the crowd by the bar into a back room.

"Please wait here," he said, gesturing into the small room, and closed the door behind me once I'd passed him through the door. I heard the lock turn and whirled around.

Testing the door proved it was indeed locked. I turned back around. The room was a foyer, really, small and lined with green felt and oak trim. It was about five feet square, and there were no seats. Another door stood in the wall opposite the one I'd come in. It was locked also.

I waited in the little foyer perhaps a half hour, my fear and anxiety building, before the second door opened.

John stood smiling, holding the door open. "Come in, Anne-Marie," he said. I screwed up my courage and walked past him into what turned out be a small private dining room for one.

"Stand over here," he commanded, gesturing to his side as he sat down. I obeyed nervously, butterflies in my stomach.

A waiter appeared, and John ordered dinner for himself. The waiter didn't seem to think the spectacle of a seated man, middle aged and impeccably dressed, with a small, frail looking young girl in a red dress, standing attention at his side, trembling noticeably, merited comment - as a matter of fact, he ignored me. I felt like a wayward schoolgirl, awaiting the judgement of a schoolmaster. The waiter dissappeared after taking the order.

He looked up sideways at me. "Kneel," he ordered. Fear spiked somewhere in my mind. In all my life I'd never had to obey an order like that. I stood motionless, unable to move.

"Kneel!" he hissed, and reached up and grabbed a fistful of my hair. He pulled me flailing to my knees. He held on tight, batting away my hands easily with his free hand. He pushed my head down until my forehead was pressed against the floor, and held me there. I fought to control myself - I was hyperventilating, and struggling, I realized, was getting me nowhere. I opened my eyes, focused on the carpeting my nose was pressed into.

God, he was strong. Not having a cock, and the physiology that comes with it, had its disadvantages. Suddenly I had an inkling of what kind of peril I'd exposed myself to in becoming female.

I was of the weaker sex. When someone can overpower you with one hand, while keeping a wineglass steady in the other, you know you've become something very, very vulnerable.

After a few minutes, he relented, and pulled me to an upright kneeling position and let my hair go.

"Are you going to obey?" he demanded.

I nodded, tears welling in my eyes.

"Good. But I want you to say it. Say, 'I will obey, John.'"

"I-I will obey, John," I stuttered, appalled at the words - part of me wanted to reach up and strangle the bastard, but some deeper part of me felt excitement at the abandonment the words represented, and that was what appalled me.

"Good. You're beginning to understand the true nature of the creature you've transformed yourself into. Full understanding will take some time, I think - but I've got plenty of that. Do you know why you chose to do this to yourself?" he asked.

"I-I'm not really sure," I answered honestly. "I - I wanted, for once, to feel emotions that I couldn't control with more nano. This - this I think was just the first example I had to work with."

"Well, there's lots of other kinds of lives to lead. I'll tell you why you did it. I made you do it."

"I don't understand."

"I nano-conditioned you - a minor tweak - to predispose you to taking this kind of action. If I had tried something more abrupt you would have recognized and fought it - you're too experienced with behavior modification. You had to choose freely to become a submissive female."

Hot flashes of anger welled up in me. "I don't believe it. Why the hell would you want to do that? What purpose would it serve?"

He smiled. "To neutralize you - and the threat you posed - of course. You're the only one who knows who I once was. I could have killed you, but that's not my style. I only wanted control over you, so you wouldn't go blabbing secrets. Another man would have just brain-wiped you, maybe, but I'm the kind of man who sees this kind of punishment as more just and more useful.

He paused to light a cigarette as the waiter came in and refilled his wineglass. The waiter left.

"I have the penthouse of this hotel permanently rented out for those nights I spend in town. You're going to go up there now, take off your clothes, put them in the box beside the front door and shut it. Then you're going to walk to the coffee table in the living room, climb onto it and wait for me on all fours like a good little slut. A concierge will assist you in these tasks. I'll be up when I'm done with my meal."

I bowed my head. "What if - what if I don't want to?"

He laughed. "Of course you want to. I can tell. But it doesn't matter. There's only one way out of this room now, and that's through the door behind me." The door opened as if on cue, and a hotel concierge stepped in. He smiled at my surprise. "This gentleman will show you the way - and coerce you, if necessary. If you're wise, you won't make it necessary. Do you understand me, slut?" he hissed. I nodded. I noted with dull anger that my panties were wet. "Now go."

The concierge wrapped his hand around my bare arm and led me to an elevator at the end of a short hall. He turned a key in a lock beside the call button and the doors opened.

"If you please, miss," he gestured. I got in, and he stepped in behind me.

The doors shut, and the elevator ascended. There were no buttons to any floors; this one went directly to the penthouse. The concierge was a big man, tall and heavily muscled, and the elevator was barely built for two, so I was sandwiched between his bulk and the wainscoting, terrified and feeling very small. I had a sinking feeling this guy was not on the hotel payroll; he had a feral, predatory aura about him that thoroughly cowed me.

Predators. That's what these people were. And I was prey. Pretty and harmless as a fawn, and as easy to take down.

A minute later the doors opened. Timidly following the concierge in my heels, I stepped into the foyer of the apartment, and the doors shut behind me.

"Take off her clothes," John's voice commanded. I jumped. "I can see you over a closed-circuit cam, so don't be stupid."

The concierge undressed me. There wasn't much to take off anyway. He pulled the dress over my head, and dumped it in the open iron box. He helped me shimmy out of my panties. I saw his slow smile when he saw the dark stain of my wetness in the fabric. I felt like dying right there and then.

He laid the thong panties over the dress, then removed my shoes. These he laid to one side inside the box. I covered my breasts and pubic mound with my hands. He saw this and gently, firmly took hold of my hands and brought them behind my back. I took the implicit order to heart, though I was blushing furiously and felt as naked and exposed as never before. There's nude, you know, and then there's naked. Nudity is a natural state, freeing and healthful. Naked is when you're the only one in the room without clothing, and that nakedness implies powerlessness. I certainly felt like I had no control over the situation.

"Mr. Brown, please close the box."

The concierge closed the lid, and I heard the faint click of a lock mechanism.

"Bring her to the table."

The concierge led me, naked, into the living room. Arms behind me, walking naked. Barefoot. Exposed. In the clutches of cruel men. Goosebumps rose on my bare skin. Any word of protest died a quiet death; fear lodged in my throat, rendering speech impossible. I swallowed hard.

The short walk to the table was one of the longest of my life. Sam would have never done this, would never have permitted his dignity to be so compromised. Fear would have turned into violent anger. For Anne-Marie, fear was fuel for intense sexual arousal.

Who the hell was I becoming?

The room was a sumptuous assortment of rare woods and inlays, and rows upon rows of books. I saw the table in front of the leather sofa; the concierge led me onto all fours on top of it. The table surface was covered with hardwood diamond inlays mixed with ivory details. Steel rings set flush with the wooden surface lined the rim of the table.

"Keep your head down and don't get curious." The concierge buckled leather restraints around my wrists and padlocked them to a steel ring set in the center of one end. Leather cuffs around my wrists. My wrists were bound. Never in my life had I been restrained like this.

He walked around behind me and wrapped my ankles with identical restraints. These he padlocked to rings on each corner of the far end of the table, splaying my knees apart.

He cupped my pubic mound with the palm of his big hand. I gasped; a moan escaped me in spite of myself. He patted my ass.

"There's a good girl," he said.

He put the key to the padlocks on a little endtable a few feet from my head, close but utterly beyond my reach. He left the way we had come, by the elevator. I stared after him.

"I said, don't get curious, Anne-Marie. Keep your eyes focused on that little white ivory inlay between your hands. See it? Good. Stay like that until I come."

My heart was racing, thumping against the inside of my ribcage like a trapped bird. I thought with sinking dismay that, given the nano-conditioning I'd given my captor, and the stories I'd heard since, I was hardly likely to have been the first girl strapped to this table. A man with a taste for conquest wouldn't be satisfied with having only Natalie to torment.

The bastard had made me do it! I fumed, even as my cunt burned with the implications of my situation. And now I had no access to my own labs, my DNA was encrypted, and I was stuck in this fucking slave girl persona that, given enough time, would probably reshape my natural brainwave patterns permanently. Slowly, inexorably, anger fed by my betrayal would ebb, replaced, presumably, with a natural slave girl's gratitude for denying her a life and gender she had had no right to pretend to.

And just like that, because of a little tweak in my brain chemistry, he'd made me transform myself into a submissive, eager, easily controlled little slut. Now that I was in this female form, with this...abject outlook on life, I was helpless to stop him.

Or was I? I struggled for composure. Just because I was aching for his cock inside me, didn't mean I shouldn't try to reason out my situation, try to figure a way out of this mess.

I wondered about his long term plans. What did he want from me? My lurid imagination conjured up fantasies of total, complete slavery, chained in a dungeon for months on end. I stopped that train of thought when I realized I was getting even more aroused by it.

He could make Anne-Marie disappear, but it would be expensive. Not so expensive he couldn't pay for it, but I surmised the risk wouldn't be worth it. He wouldn't want charges of kidnapping on his hands.

More likely, he would take advantage of me only to the extent that I was willing to permit - or at least not run to the authorities. He would push me to my limits, but not far beyond. The important thing for him would probably be the appearance of legality, so he would have to be immune from rape or kidnapping charges.

For someone like Natalie, that meant little, since she was nano-modified to believe abject slavery to be just. She wouldn't complain to the police. She would likely even protest if she were dragged from under John's thumb. Under his thumb was exactly where she liked to be.

For me - well, that was harder to guess. The nano-mods were nowhere as extreme as the one I'd used for Natalie, though they were modeled exactly like hers - just less deep compulsory urges. But even now part of me felt grateful to John for doing this to me, and was eagerly running through the painful possibilities of the night. Reluctantly I acknowledged that I didn't really know what my limits would be, how hard I could be pushed before I pushed back - if I ever did.

With resignation I concluded that controlling me would be rather easy for him. If, as he said, he knew exactly what my nano-mod specs were, he would be able to pinpoint to a very narrow margin a training program that would balance the two goals of keeping me harmless and getting the most use out of me. I had no doubt he'd already outlined such a plan. And I knew enough about manipulating nano-modified subjects to know I had no effective way of resisting him.

His worldview, as I'd modified it, was clearcut and absolute. Women were for a man's pleasure. They were very intelligent animals, but animals nonetheless, and to a man like him that innate intelligence was given them solely so that they could be trained more easily. I thought about it. A man coerced into femininity might appeal to him even more, given that I'd designed his psyche to deeply desire Natalie's feminized state. I'd had to make him believe, in a general sense, that men who were a threat to him were dealt with best by feminization. I hadn't expected that impulse to apply to me.

Any goals or dreams I may have had for the life ahead of me would be irrelevant to him - to John, my value was in direct proportion to the degree to which he derived pleasure, satisfaction, and entertainment from me. In large part, I surmised, that pleasure and satisfaction came from the fact that I was once a man, and the he had reduced me to this.

The problem here, of course, was that my own worldview had been altered to correspond neatly with his. Not nearly with the clearcut vision he held - because I did want to make something out of this new life besides being a fucktoy - but I felt instinctively that on some core level that's exactly what I was, deep down. How could I possibly compete with, resist against, someone stronger than me, more powerful, more wealthy? This body of mine, frail, slender, exquisitely breakable, was the perfect object of a man's domination. And since I was the inhabitant of this body, that made me subject to his will.

My train of thought, scattered as it was, was further confused by the physical reality of my situation. I was naked, on all fours on a coffee table, chained to it like a wayward pet. John had managed to get me up here, exactly where he wanted, when he wanted me, and I hadn't so much as lifted a hand to defend myself. That in itself said volumes about how different I was now from the man I had been - argumentative, belligerent, stubborn, dominating.

I had simply acceded to his demands.

++++

There were no clocks in the room that I could see, but my guess was that I spent something like three hours chained and alone before John finally decided to check in on his evening's entertainment. God knows what John did with that time; he certainly didn't tell me.

I had never been a patient man; apparently that hadn't changed one bit with my gender. Waiting in itself was frustrating. Waiting on my hands and knees for three hours was hard work, emotionally and physically. My wrists were cramped; my kneecaps sore. My breasts, small though they were, hung heavily from my chest, and I was acutely aware that, when John came, I would be unable to protect them from him. Similarly, in this position my pubic mound was exposed, framed by my spread thighs. I could lie down on the table, my hands pinned under me, and so afford some measure of protection to both, but I knew all John would have to do was to yank me up to a kneeling position again - and I'd already found out how much stronger he was than me.

No matter how you sliced it, I was in a predicament. The leather cuffs were lined with fur; they were supple, but strong - two inches wide and a quarter inch thick - and wouldn't stretch. I tried twisting my hand out of one of them, to no avail. I didn't even try with my feet. These damned things would have been impossible to free myself from even if I were still a man.

Four simple bands of leather, with grooves at quarter inch intervals to slip the D ring through. Four simple bands of leather, probably costing about sixty bucks, stood between me and freedom - a human being made chattel with a simple click shut of a lock hasp.

And left exposed for the world to see. The south wall of the penthouse consisted of floor to ceiling glass panels overlooking downtown Manhattan. The table to which I was confined was a scant three feet from the center of that wall. I could see down, across the street and two floors below, a young couple, framed by yellow light of bay windows, moving about their apartment. The girl was in her bra and panties, and talking on the phone. The man was washing dishes. I say they were young, but in fact they were now probably thirty or so ten more than a decade older than the teenaged girl I'd become.

I would have to reassess my sense of relative age, I realized. I was truly young now, and people like the couple below were much, much older. Strange to see them moving about freely while I was chained.

I suddenly felt an intense envy of them. They had normal lives, jobs, free will to do as they wished, and each other. Tonight, when normal people might choose to stay at home or go about on the town, I waited on the whim of a forty year old man.

It was about an hour before the girl noticed me. She called to her boyfriend, pointed up at me.

I hung my head, ashamed and embarassed. I pretended not to see them, watched them out of the corner of my eye. I thought for a moment that perhaps they would call the police, do something to help me.

But no. Instead, they set up a telescope. They checked in on me from time to time over the next few hours, as if waiting for the show to begin. I guessed the spectacle of a young girl chained in this penthouse was a common enough occurence for them to assume my waiting here was voluntary - part of a sex game.

Which I supposed it was. I just hated the prospect of whatever John was going to do to me being seen by them. I would have happily crawled into a hole and died right there and then.

That option, unfortunately, wasn't available to me. At least, I told myself, the couple were the only ones I could see who'd noticed me in my high window. They were watching TV now, returning to the telescope during commercials, fondling each other as they ogled me.

The girl was naked now, and her wrists cuffed together in front with steel handcuffs. They were playful, running their hands over each other as they sat on the sofa, the blue light of the television flickering out the window. The girl held a glass of wine in her bound hands, sipping from it as the evening progressed.

++++

My heart jumped into my throat as I heard the whine of the elevator cables. I began to tremble all over. I forgot all about the voyeuristic couple, remembering why I was here in the first place, and who put me here.

John.

The door opened.

I didn't look. I didn't dare. To be honest, by now I felt so firmly in John's grip, and was so afraid of what he was going to do to me, that I froze when that door opened. I was afraid to do anything he interpreted as disobedience, and I didn't even know what he would consider to be so. I heard a closet door open, some shuffling around, then the door shut. Footsteps approaching.

I saw his pants standing between me and the stool on which the key rested. For some reason the fact that his slacks were neatly pressed made an impression on me. Men's slacks. And I was a woman.

His hand was in my hair, and he pulled it back, forcing my face upward to look up at him. He still wore his business suit - expensive, black and custom tailored, with a navy blue tie. His chest was broad, his waist trim, and the cut of the suit accentuated this. I gazed dazedly up at his looming figure, affected by the severe features of his face, and struck by the contrast between his formal attire, a very symbol of authority, and my chained nakedness. I could never wear such clothing again. I shuddered, feeling very feminine and weak. His free hand ranged over my shoulders, cupped one of my breasts, feeling its heft and shape. A shudder rippled through me as he smiled down at me. His smile was unkind and unnerving.

It felt right, God help me.

He gazed into my eyes calmly. His eyes were cold, appraising. If anything, I felt even more vulnerable, pinned by his icy blue eyes. I felt - well, like the submissive girl I was, an object to be appraised, measured for worth by a set of criteria that left no room for independence, self-worth - measured solely by what use might be made of me.

"I see you understand. Good," he said calmly.

He slowly circled me, running his fingers along the curve of my spine. Once behind me, he pried my bare buttocks apart, exposing my anus. He forced a thumb in. I gasped. The thumb wriggled around, and I writhed like a marionette in time with his manipulations. He knelt behind me, removed his thumb and wiped it on my asscheek. He spread my cuntlips, and then I felt his probing fingers inspecting, coldly appraising the particuliarities of my anatomy. He parted each labial fold carefully, individually, inspecting the shape and elasticity of each, tugging, pulling, twisting. I caught my breath as he pulled back the sheath covering my clitoris, gripped the hard nub between thumb and forefinger, and twisted hard. The intense pain, overwhelming all thought, broke through and became a twisted kind of pleasure. The little nub grew so slick with my moisture that he lost his grip. He chuckled.

He stood again. "What was Sam, anyway, but a cheap counterfeit of a man?" he said, walking slowly, deliberately to face me again.

"Unbuckle my belt with your mouth." He moved forward, and his crotch was now eye level with my lips.

I obeyed - what else could I do? I grasped the tongue of the belt between my teeth and tugged. It was clumsy work. He was patient. His hands were on my bare shoulders. I pulled the tongue back enough to let the steel tong slide free of its hole, then released. I leaned forward, gripping the buckle gingerly between my lips, fumbled it to one side. The belt parted.

I undid the top button of his slacks in similar fashion, pulling it free of its buttonhole. I gripped the zipper between my lips and tugged downward over the thick bulge of his cock.

And then his cock was free, sticking out from his groin like a massive club. The unnatural length and girth of the thing had been my work - at John's request. His cock was a foot long and two inches in diameter. I remembered designing it to be just a little too large for Natalie to suck comfortably. I hadn't ever expected to see the thing from her viewpoint. I had been amused by it before; now it was frightening. I was afraid of what it might do to my insides.

The hot helmet head grazed my cheek. I involuntarily shrank back. John pulled me roughly forward, pressing my face against the underside of the shaft, my nose buried in his hairy scrotum. His balls slapped against my lips.

"Smell it," he said calmly. "Smell it; there is a lesson here." I obeyed reluctantly. It smelled of sweat, of a man's sex. I was breathing heavily now.

"This is something which you have lived with all your life - it was a part of you, integral to your sense of self. I have taken it from you, and in so doing am forcing you to become something, someone utterly different from the person you might have become, if you had assumed the station and role your born gender demanded. I'm sure you're not happy with that fact. But the fact that you were forcibly made female, that your devolution to an inferior gender was not voluntary, does not change your circumstances. Whatever your potential as a man had been, you are a woman now, and must be made to understand your place.

"You have a lot to relearn. I'm going to help you in this, Anne-Marie. And I'm going to start by helping you understand what your new relationship to this cock is. It's no longer simply an organ; it's a demonstration of what you're missing, what you cannot have, and whom you must serve." He pressed the tip of his shaft against my parted lips, holding my head immobile in his strong hands.

"That you were born a man was an accident, a mistake, as was my birth gender. I am strong, yet was born into a weak body. I had the courage and willpower to attain the gender that accident denied me."

I kept my mouth clamped shut, horrified at the prospect of his huge flesh in my mouth. His left hand slid over my forehead to my nose; he held my nostrils shut with his fingers and calmly waited. When I couldnt' hold my breath any longer, and sucked in air, the hot helmet head of his cock slid easily into my mouth. He held the tip there, where my lips could rest just over the smooth, ovoid ridge of his cock's tip. His cock head was so large my lips stretched to fit it.

"You might be thinking it would be a simple matter to just bite the end of my cock off. I welcome you to try. The nano-conditioning prevents you from doing conscious harm to any man."

I tried. I found that commanding my body to bite down on his hot member was reinterpreted into the opposite of my intention - instead of clamping my jaw down, my jaw relaxed, opened wider. I shuddered in fear.

"You were born of the stronger sex, yet you were weak. Your presence here, in this room, in the body of a woman proves this, since if you had been strong you would have resisted the nano-suggestion I implanted in you. You didn't; and so you now possess the body fate should have assigned to you in the first place. That's a good girl, open wide."

He shoved as much as he could into my mouth. I gagged; the head pressed against my throat. He held it there, choking me, for a few moments, then began to slowly pump, holding my head rigid in his hands. My hands curled into helpless fists; my arms jerked uselessly against the fetters. It was no use. He could fuck my mouth as quickly or as leisurely as he liked, and there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it.

And, to my chagrin, what John was doing to me made me feel incredibly...sexy. Which was a novel feeling for me. Men don't feel sexy, they feel horny. John's clear pleasure in using me somehow pushed buttons - it made me feel even more feminine, more...desired, desirable.

He took his time satifying himself. When he was done, he had me lick him clean, then dried his cock with my hair.

He went into the bedroom. When he returned, he wore a red silk bathrobe. He unlocked my ankles, then rearranged the lock on my wrist cuffs so that they were still joined together, but not to the ring set in the table.

"Fix me a martini. The bar is over there." He sat down at a desk by the window.

I got up off the table, feeling very small. I walked over to the bar and made a martini for him. My hands were shaking as I brought the glass over to him and laid it on the table.

"No," he said, with an edge in his voice. "Kneel first, then offer me the glass in both hands." I took the drink again, knelt, and held the glass up to him.

"Better." He took it and laid it on the desk. "Bring your hands up behind your head, elbows out." I obeyed. The position thrust my chest forward. He tied a black cloth over my eyes.

John played with my nipples, stiffening them idly, as he picked up the phone and dialed.

"Hi, Leonard, it's John. Good, thank you. And yourself? Good, good. Listen, I wanted to talk to you about that LBE merger." John then launched into a long monologue about corporate strategy. I marveled that he could maintain a sober conversation while taking the time to administer minor tortures - twisting my nipples painfully between his thumb and finger, or wrenching my mouth open with his hand. Evidently I was, for the moment, a toy to be played with while engrossed with more important matters.

That was okay by me. It gave me a little time to cool down, and I needed cooling down. It also gave me time to think and regroup.

When I took the time to look past my instinctive awe of this man's power over me, I could begin to get a sense of his character. I thought back to the nano-mods I'd used to shape his new personality: overriding everything else was a deep-seated urge to feminize and enslave Natalie. This urge had evidently blossomed, and turned towards other targets - among them, me.

It had a psychopathic taste to it. He had gone through the ritual of femininizing Natalie, forcing her to submit to his will, and yet found that once she had been conquered, his desire to conquer was left unsated. Natalie had been so thoroughly changed that she offered no resistance to him, so thoroughly satisfied with her lot in life that, ironically, she could not offer him the pleasure of her mental anguish.

So he was repeating the ritual, with variations. Perfecting his technique. I had not been given the benefit of Natalie's secret complicitness, nor her extreme behavioral nano-mods. I had just enough left of me to want to resist, but not enough to actually do so. Unlike Natalie, I felt shame at what John had done to me, but like her, I couldn't do anything about it.

This man was dangerous. He was a rapist of a kind for whom men were more vulnerable than women. Slowly it dawned on me that new technologies permitted new perversions. This man preyed on other men. A decade ago he would have to have satisfied himself with beating the shit out of me, or killing me, to express his dominance. Now he needed only to transform his victim into the kind of person who would respond to his aggression with proper submission. Why kill a man, when you can transform him into a woman, use her, and have your victim agree it's the best thing for her?

 

 

 

None of the things he did to me that night were left open to interpretation. In all things I was his servant. He was careful when he fucked me from behind not to even touch my clitoris - my satisfaction was expressly forbidden that night. And when he chained me spreadeagled to a rolling drawer and slid me under the bed for the night, I heard him climb onto the mattress above me and I cried silently. No longer of use, I'd been put neatly away, just as he'd neatly hung the quirt and riding crop he'd used on me.

++++

The next morning, after I had served him breakfast on my knees, and washed him, and dressed him, he had me kneel on the coffee table once more. My wrists were padlocked together in front of me.

He set the key to the padlock in a small steel box, and placed a pager next to it, and shut it.

"The lock will disengage at ten AM. You may remove your restraints at that time, dress and leave. Take the pager with you and wear it at all times. When I want you, I'll send a text message telling where and when. You will show up at the appointed time and place, with no excuses or exceptions.

"You have done well, Anne-Marie. You showed no sign of inward or outward disobedience. But this first chapter of training was simple stuff, to take your measure and to give you a sense of the kind of behavior I expect from you. I think you understand that I believe you to be worthy of nothing better than the pathetic role I've cast you in.

"The next time will be harder. I will begin to train you in earnest. Simple submission will not be enough."

He left. I realized then that I hadn't spoken a word since I'd first walked onto the elevator.

 

++++

I opted to wear the pager on my belt, rather than hide it in my purse. That way I could keep it on vibrate and not announce to the world that I was at the beck and call of a relative stranger.

I wasn't wholly good. Over the next week, even as I began classes, I did some furtive research on how to get myself out of this mess.

My own nano lab was off-limits; by now it was in use by my old colleague, Johnny Dentz, and even if I snuck in at night the doors had DNA locks on them. I was the last person in the world they would open for.

Besides, I didn't have the crypto to break the mods on my DNA. I needed better facilities than even I had had to crack them.

There were such facilities in town, and I briefly considered applying for a job at one of them - as secretary, washerwoman, whatever - but even if I did this, and somehow got surreptitious access to their systems, the kind of background knowledge I would need was not currently available to me. I cursed myself for suppressing all academic knowledge beyond that typical of a freshman college student. It more or less put a monkey wrench in my plans.

School work also kept me busy. I found myself reapplying myself to subjects I was sure I had known before, but were now fresh and new to me.

It wasn't until a week later, that I thought of a possibility. I needed help. I obviously couldn't look to John for it, since it served his purposes well to keep me as I was. I would have to let someone else in on the secret. Someone I trusted. Johnny Dentz. Not exactly a saint, but he had the ability to do what I needed done, and he had most of the facilities.

The only problem was, though I had trusted him implicitly when I was a man, my intuition told me I would now have to be careful around him. If I let him in on my secret, he'd know the mods I'd made, and could wield considerable power over me.

But he was a known quantity. I didn't have the ability to change myself back - the knowledge, the facilities, the resources - I had put everything I could in my own way. But he could do it. The trick was to not let him know he was doing it.

++++

The pager startled me, buzzing its silent call for attention as I was walking out the door of my own old office, tired from my first day of work as Mr. Dentz's secretary. I'd gotten my foot in the door; Mr. Dentz had treated me as I'd expected he would a fresh looking girl with little office experience. I'd been thinking about how different a man can be depending on who he's talking to when the pager went off.

I walked around the corner and ducked into a doorway. I pulled the pager off my hip, where it'd been resting quietly for the past ten days.

The page read, "6:30 PM 9th/29th. 335 9th Ave. Basement apt." I frowned. I'd been too busy scheming lately to have anything like a life, so it wasn't like I would have to change my plans much. But I didn't have money for subway fare - I'd have to walk something like forty blocks. In a half hour I could just make it. I briefly considered ignoring the page, but thought better of it. His watchers were still camped out in front of my house. He'd get me one way or another if he wanted me. Better to obey.

Besides, my adrenaline was kicking in again, my nipples hardening. Dammit. Damn this horny little body.

I walked fast, and just made it to the building with five minutes to spare. It was a tenement building, ill-kept and in disrepair, with a bodega storefront. Two old Cuban men eyed me with evident but vague interest. They had the look of old men too poor for nano; their age was written on their faces. A cute young office girl? White? In that building? I could see them mentally ticking off the names of men they knew living there, to figure out who the lucky guy was.

I found the stairs down to the basement apartment. I knocked on the old wooden frame.

The door opened, a large hand shot out, grabbed me by my dress and yanked me inside.

It was dark, and my eyes didn't have time to adjust as the hands pinioned my wrists, twisted them over my head and pinning them against the wall. My hands felt and tried to grasp a wall-mounted lamp; the man's hands jerked mine to the left, out of reach. A knife turned downward between my breasts, and jerked down to my pubic mound, the dull side against my skin. My dress ripped open, fell wide, exposing my front.

Two quick cuts and the straps fell away, along with my dress. I was thrown to the ground, and a heavy weight sat on my back. The man cut away my g-string and pulled off my shoes. Leather cuffs around my ankles; a padlock.

The weight shifted and hands grabbed my wrists. They were similarly restrained behind me. A blindfold over my eyes.

I was yanked up to my knees. A third padlock joined my wrists to my ankles. I remember thinking angrily that that had been my best dress - and what would I wear when he'd finished with me, anyway?

Those thoughts were running through my head as I heard the man walking slowly around me, not speaking. I heard a strange whistling sound - like a fly swatter - and a half-second later felt my body struck backwards a fraction by the force of a blow across my small breasts. At the same moment I felt the pain flame outward through my whole body from two thin lines of white injury - one across each breast. I cried out, and would have fallen backwards helplessly if a hand didn't steady me.

That fucking riding crop. It had left streaks across my buttocks the last time, and had hurt; this was far worse. There was less padding, so I felt the blow compress my breast flesh into my ribcage, practically cutting my breasts in two.

And, as I'd already discovered, my breasts were far more sensitive to touch, and to pain, than my ass.

Another blow whistled across my tender flesh. This time I braced for it; incredibly, the pain was even greater.

Five more and I'd fallen backward, my arms and legs chained under me, and there was no hand to steady me. Another eight blows and the pain was left to fester; he'd stopped. I was sobbing.

His hands lifted me back up onto my knees. They were not gentle hands.

"Kiss my boots," he commanded. At least the voice was John's. I leaned forward blindly, and was grateful that he'd placed his boots accurately. I found them with my lips and kissed one, then the other.

He lifted a boot and brought it down slowly on my neck, pinning my head sideways against his other boot, my cheek squished against the unforgiving toe. I jerked, but found no way out; my ankles were already pulled up against my ass by the short lead between them and my wrists.

"What is my name, slut?" John asked.

"John Maynard," I whispered. The whistle of the crop as it struck my left buttock.

"You don't have the right to use my given name. You're not worthy of it. You call me Master, you little cunt. Say it."

"Master," I sobbed.

"Yes. Good." The boot lifted and he stepped away. "Sit up; you look pathetic like that." I obeyed, gratefully - the tension in my restraints slackened and stopped digging into my flesh. "Don't slouch. Shoulders back, tits out. Put your hands on the soles of your feet. Good." He kicked my thighs apart. "Although you hardly deserved the gift of manhood, you did have qualities admirable in a man, Anne-Marie - you were clever, agressive, and cunning. You stripped yourself of all agressive tendencies when you changed. I want you to understand that cleverness and cunning are no longer desirable qualities, and I don't want to see you exhibiting them. I understand you're now in Mr. Dentz's employ. Fine. I like to see you doing secretary's work. But don't attempt anything stupid. You need to begin to think like a slave girl, and the qualities that are becoming in a slave girl are entirely different from the qualities you possess or used to possess. The qualities I seek are already instinctive in you, thanks to your nano-conditioning; but I expect you to cultivate them actively.

"To that end, some formal training, to help you focus. Tonight you're going to learn the slave positions, Anne-Marie. The slave positions are poses I require all my slaves to learn to perform instinctively. The positions have various practical uses for me, but additionally provide structure to your submission. By learning them, you will hopefully begin to see your position relative to me as one not of simple obedience, but of active submission. I don't want to just use you; I want you to present yourself for my use.

"You will learn them blindfolded. This is to center your focus on your own body, its position, its uses in each position, without outside distraction. When you have learned to peform the slave positions blindfolded, then you will be free to go for the evening. It will take longer than you might think though; I'm very exacting."

I felt his hand on my shoulder. "When I command you to kneel, you will assume this position, with your hands on the soles of your feet, close together so that I can padlock them. I'm going to remove the locks now." He knelt behind me and removed the three padlocks. I heard him stand again.

"When I tell you to present yourself, you move onto all fours, then lay your face and shoulders on the floor, bringing your hands together behind you, palms facing away from the small of your back. Keep your ass exposed. Present yourself, Anne-Marie."

I hesitantly leaned forward onto my hands and knees, blindly feeling for obstructions. I bent down and pressed my cheek against the floor, then twisted my hands behind me.

He kicked my ankles apart.

"Always keep your legs as far apart as your flexibility allows. If your ankles are chained together, it's acceptable to spread only your knees. But since they aren't, keep them out here. Arch your back, so that your tits are pressed against the floor and your ass is in the air." I obeyed. "Good. I can see your cunt is already wet." He slipped a finger into my cleft, feeling the moisture. I moaned.

"Kneel, Anne-Marie," he commanded. I obediently rolled back up to a kneeling position, carefully assuming the pose he'd dictated before.

"Stand at attention, Anne-Marie," he commanded. I rose unsteadily to my feet, not sure what stance to position myself in.

Again he kicked my feet apart, and twisted my arms behind me. He pushed my head down.

"At ease, Anne-Marie," he commanded, and twisted my body into the pose he desired - my right leg bent to one side, my wieght borne by the other, and my hands at my sides. He pushed my head to the right, following the direction of my right upper leg. "This position is actually more fatiguing than attention, but it looks relaxed."

He walked me through a dozen other poses - kneeling back on my haunches, with my hands supporting my weight; lying on my back, hands pinned under my back; spreadeagled against the wall, leaning forward; and so on.

Once I'd gotten the rudiments, he began to work me, commanding me to change positions faster than I could assume them, and using the riding crop to encourage speed. He ran me through the complete set of positions five times, correcting posture and stance with a push of the crop's shaft or tip. In all that time his hands never touched me.

He padlocked my wrists behind me, and ran me through the positions again, showing me the alterations in form required by my reduced mobility - which compromises were acceptable, which were not. By now I was damp with sweat.

Four more repetitions with my wrists bound behind me. Five with them bound in front. Five with my ankles chained together. Five with my ankles chained, and my wrists bound behind me. Five with my ankles chained, and my wrists bound in front.

Abrubtly the stream of commands stopped. I was kneeling upright, my ankles padlocked together and my wrists padlocked in front of me, so my wrists were at the back of my neck, and my elbows out. I was panting heavily, sweaty, sore, bruised, and barely able to keep position, because I was so weary.

"A good start." He hung a kind of chain necklace around my neck. "Wait until you hear the alarm chime. Then you may free yourself and leave." I heard his footsteps move to the door. Then the door shut.

I waited. For all I knew he had a goon watching me; I decided to be a good girl.

Something like an hour later (maybe two?) an alarm clock pinged twice. I let my hands drop to my lap and slouched forward. My arms were shuddering and twitching from holding the kneeling stance for so long, and I simply lay down on my side in exhaustion. I reached back and felt for the buckle cinching down my blindfold; I found it and undid the hasp.

The room was floodlit with flourescents, and they hurt my eyes. I had imagined the room to be dimly lit at best. I looked down at the necklace John had put on me; at the end hung a single key.

It took some work to angle the key into the padlock joining my wrists; I had to hold it between two thumbs and hold the padlock with my pinkies - but I got the hasp open and my wrists fell free. It was easy then to open the locks on each of my wrist cuffs. Soon all four fetters were on the ground, and I was standing shakily, looking around.

Aside from the leather cuffs and padlocks, the room was completely bare - except for a red dress on a hanger, hung on a nail, and my shoes and purse laid underneath it.

It was the same design as the one I had worn, but with a higher hemline. I put it on and saw that it just barely covered my ass and crotch. No bending over for me, not tonight anyway. I put on the shoes, picked up my purse.

Hell, I thought to myself, as I walked back up the steps. I've been scheming for over a week to get out of this man's power, and he just pages me and I flip over like a ditz and give him what he wants. My cuntlips felt swollen and sensitive from overstimulation and lack of release. I checked out my body for unseemly exposure; I found that John had placed each of his blows with the crop expertly. All were - barely - hidden under the dress - though if I leaned forward a fraction I'd expose bluish welts at either angle.

When I got home it was midnight. I fell into bed, fully clothed, and dropped into a heavy slumber that lasted until next morning.

++++

I awoke feeling like every muscle in my body had been ripped apart. It was the feeling I used to get when I'd pushed a workout too far. The sad part was that I wouldn't gain any muscle mass for the effort. I sat up, groaning.

I was sore, and I stank. I got up and stumbled into the bathroom. I peed, then, deciding on a bath instead of a shower, ran water and minced painfully out to the kitchenette, doffing the wrinkled dress and shoes along the way.

Whoever designed my kitchenette clearly didn't have a petite girl in mind. There were no shelves under the tiny countertop, and the shelves above the sink were well out of reach. If I'd made myself just four inches taller, I reprimanded myself for the hundredth time as I used a milk crate to reach for the coffee tin. I made a pot and stuffed the tin in the fridge - screw the shelves if I can't reach them.

Back in the bathroom, I sipped coffee and sat gingerly, my bare ass perched on the toilet seat, watching the water rise. I poured some bubble bath stuff in and let the foam fill the tub.

What a mess I'd made. Or rather, what a mess John had mad of me. I hadn't forgotten that his scheming, his nano-mods, had persuaded me to do this to myself. The problem, in my mind, was that to the man I had been, his actions would have incited murderous impulses, while to the woman - to the girl - I now was, they only inspired fear and a vague awe at his power. That and a sense of excited, humming arousal. I confessed to myself: I was attracted to the man.

Don't dwell on it.

I slipped into the tub gratefully, coffee mug still in hand. I cradled it in both hands and sipped.

I had to admit to myself that everything John had done to me so far had invariably pushed me to the edge of sexual arousal. The man had a knack for knowing exactly what to do to me, and when.

So here was a dilemma. I had a choice: try to escape - to my masculinity, to my old life, out of John's clutches, free; or remain in this body, as it was, and so remain under John's power.

The attraction of my old life was obvious: it was mine. I had friends, family, money, power, a profession. Currently I had none of these, unless you counted a guy who liked to beat you a friend.

On the other hand...I tried hard to remember the last time I had been kept on the brink of orgasm as long as I had the night before, working my way through an impossibly humiliating set of positions, with John's occasional cruel or caressing touch keeping me on the edge. I didn't think I had. Ever. The closest thing was copping a feel with a date when I was fourteen. Sex after that had been...reliable. This was four hours of unbearable excitement.

Besides, I was younger. Much younger. This body had the strength and resilience of youth, with none of the aches and pains. Unless you counted whipmarks.

But on the other hand: I had much more in common with people of my generation than I did with the young know-nothings surrounding me in class. Who could I really talk to here?

Then again, did I really know more than them? My educational level was now in keeping with my physical age. I doubted I could hold up my end of a conversation with a forty-year old any better than another kid my age, and would come across as naive as the rest.

My biggest blind spot was culture. I knew nothing of contemporary fashion, music, slang - none of it.

I ended up feeling even more confused than ever. The tennis match going on in my brain was dizzying and deeply unsatisfying. Compounding the problem was the fact that I knew I couldn't go to work today - for Mr. Dentz. Another day lost for Plan A. Reluctantly I sat up and reached for my cellphone, sitting on the sink countertop.

I knew he wouldn't fire me - I was useless anyway, and it was obvious he hired me purely as an office decoration. So I went ahead and called in sick. I dropped the phone over the rim of the tub and sank down into the water, letting the hot suds wash over my face.

God dammit! What the hell had happened to my life? And what was I going to do?

++++

Three days passed before I could sit down without wincing. The welts on my breasts had faded to faint purplish bruises, and now only stung if I unwisely prodded them.

Those three days were the first time I'd really given myself to reflect on my dilemma since John had come into the picture. I skipped work, skipped school, and only left the house to get groceries.

I don't think I was depressed, exactly - just overwhelmed. The more I thought about the problem, the more indecisive I became. And indecisiveness was not something I was used to. I was sure my new submissive nature figured in there somewhere. Like it or not, I was literally a different person. Anne-Marie, I was discovering, was a nail biter, angst-ridden and had a hard time choosing between different courses of action. Which made me easily dominated. Part of me was quite happy to let others decide what was best for me.

Lengthy contemplation of my dilemma invariably regressed into masturbation. The main problem was that my dilemma fit perfectly the kind of fantasies my new bio-emotional makeup responded strongly to. In the face of an overbearing, dominating force, my instinctive reaction was no longer to fight back, but to submit. And the idea of a man having as much control over me as John did made me unspeakably horny.

So I masturbated almost hourly. I'd get worked up trying to figure a way out of my mess, and wouldn't get anywhere because I'd end up on my bed fingering my clit, dreaming of blindfolds and whips and a cock in my mouth. The place began to smell downright funky with my feminine odor. I was vaguely embarassed, but couldn't help myself.

Some small part of my obsession with it was the novel physical differences between a girl's orgasm and a man's. As a man, coming felt like it looked - like my very soul was streaming out of my cock. Being female, that feeling was trapped inside me, and seemed to ricochet throughout my body, until my whole being was suffused with this wierd trapped energy, which then, almost through osmosis, seeped away through my skin. That doesn't really capture the feeling, but I guess it's about as close as I can come. Another startling discovery was the fact that every time I came, I also burst into tears. It wasn't despair, or anything bad like that - it was just - emotional.

I finally grew sick of my hermit-like reclusiveness, and went back to school.

I hadn't missed much.

I also went back to work, although my stratagem there was pretty cloudy. I couldn't think clearly enough to see a workable plan for returning my masculinity. But I worked anyway. I realized after a few days of this that I was really going because I liked the way Mr. Dentz condescended to me. I was more or less invisible to him unless he wanted to ogle me, in which case he would call me into his office and have me lean over his desk to give him papers to sign. He would gaze down my shirt at his leisure while I obediently held papers out for him.

I tried to reason out why I liked this dynamic so much - my serving a man who was once a colleague and competitor. I think part of it was the fact that I was no longer in competition with him. He was my superior in fact and in his own worldview. He didn't seem to notice that the more he bossed me around, the happier I was. I did. And noted it ruefully. I was instinctively putting myself in situations in which I was subservient to men, and they all seemed to think it natural.

Even in school. I ended up taking a side job as a maid to one of my professors after I noted aloud the mess in his apartment during a party he threw for my art history class.

"Why don't you clean it up?" he said, laughing.

"Okay," I answered. "What will you pay me?"

So I ended up with a once a week gig cleaning up after him. He was home the first time I showed up for work, and I secretly loved the fact that while I was scrubbing the kitchen floor on my hands and knees, he was sitting at the kitchen table tapping away on his laptop. It would have been even better if I had been naked, instead of jeans and a tanktop, but you can't have everything.

Which is all by way of saying I was a horny, submissive little slut, and hadn't gotten a page from the man I'd really been obsessing about for two weeks now. I was finding outlets. My intellectual side had a hard time coping with the kind of behavior I was exhibiting, but my libido had no problem with it.

I was a girl. I was submissive. It was natural that I would put myself in servile positions. The problem was not how I was behaving, but how to get myself into a body and frame of mind that didn't feel compelled to lick the boots of every guy that walked by. Until then, do what comes naturally. Submit.

I didn't get a page for another two weeks. The initial fear I'd had in the first days after my last encounter with John - apprehension that the pager would go off - had long been replaced by frustration and anticipation. It was as if the brutal beatings he'd given me were irrelevant - or that if I had to withstand them in order to be in his presence, feel his authority, then so be it.

++++

When I finally recieved the page I'd been longing for, I hurried to the appointed meeting place - the men's public restroom of the New York Public Library opposite Bryant Park. I was about halfway there when I realized the irony of the choice. Our rendevous was to be in a place where I was no longer allowed.

I ascended the marble staircase to the third floor in a state of agitation and anticipation. I hesitated in front of the men's room door - up until a few weeks ago it would have been natural to just walk in, but by now I was so used to heading for the women's room that it was instinctive.

Now the door seemed imposing, mysterious and forbidden.

I glanced around, to make sure that no one was watching, then pushed open the door and slipped inside.

It was a large restroom, with a marble sink and a row of tall, old-fashioned urinals along one wall. A man in a janitor's outfit was mopping. I didn't think much of his cleaning job - the place was filthy.

He looked up at me, nodded. He walked over to me, reached behind me and locked the door.

"I was told to take your belongings, ma'am, including your clothes." He smiled sheepishly. He was an old guy, probably lived in Queens. I reflected that he'd have seemed small to me when I was still a man; now I had to crane my neck to look up at him.

After an awkward moment, I shrugged in defeat, stripped naked and handed him my clothes, along with my purse and shoes. I stood barefoot on the freshly mopped tile, covering my crotch and breasts with my hands, as he stuffed my belongings in a garbage bag tied to the side of his wheeled cart.

"I was told to tell you to present yourself in the center, over there," he said, pointing to the floor. "I'll be going now." He unlocked the door, rolled his cart out, and locked it behind him.

I walked across the damp tile to the center of the restroom on shaky legs. I knelt and leaned forward into the position I'd been taught. I looked out sideways, my cheek against the tile, across the expanse of black and white checked tile to the urinals. Funny now to think that I'd make a big mess trying to use them now. Even pissing for me was now a distinctively feminine procedure.

John was clever, sending me here. In the past couple of weeks I'd gotten used to being a girl, at least by most measures. I'd grown accustomed to the constant and casual scrutiny of men. The sexual undertones of every conversation I had with the stronger sex had at first frustrated me, since I knew that whatever I said wouldn't be taken seriously - to most, if not all men, I was pretty first and the quality of my mind came a distant second. By now, however, I realized that if that was a man's natural response to a sweet, deferential girl like me, then I too had a natural response - probably unlike most women's - and such interactions left me feeling even more like my life was a fantasy fulfilled. Let other women feel indignant at such treatment. I thrived on it. Knowing what men wanted to do to me made me feel safe somehow - a submissive woman feels most vulnerable when she isn't being put in her place.

But.

Here, in this room, I was reminded that my masculinity had been taken from me. In the aggressive, dog-eat-dog world that I had once inhabited, I was no longer a participant. I was now a toy for the competitors to play with.

In this room, I felt completely powerless, cowed by the enormity of what John had done to me, had made me do to myself.

This was a place for men. A woman didn't belong here. I was here only by the command of my master, and by his indulgence. He was letting me see once more, briefly, into the world I had once belonged to.

Well, I thought, I did still belong to that world - but as a servant. Here on my knees, my face on the floor, was the only place proper for me.

I heard the door unlock, and the bootsteps against tile. The door shut and locked again.

"At ease, Anne-Marie." It was John's voice, Master's voice. I rolled back onto my haunches, then stood, one knee bent sideways, hands at my sides, my cheek turned to the right. I heard his bootsteps approach, and shuddered. His presence always had that effect on me.

He circled me, using his hands to make slight corrections in my posture - minor ones, really, but which had the effect of making the position slightly more uncomfortable.

"You've adjusted well, Anne-Marie," he finally said. He was now standing directly in front of me, although because my head was turned I could only see him in my peripheral vision. He towered over me, standing inches from my naked body, not touching me. I could feel his body heat, smell his distinctly male odor. Something about the way he smelled always made me feel weak, made me feel as if I were in the presence of some kind of god. "You train well, are obedient and eager, and judging from my surveillance reports, you've fully acclimated to the sex and life I've consigned you to. I note that you haven't attempted anything objectionable as Mr. Dentz's secretary, and according to my projections you've passed the point where you'll have the courage to do so. In fact, as of last week the computer analysis showed you to be effectively neutralized as a threat. You are no longer dangerous to me."

He ran his fingers lightly over my nipples, which stiffened under his touch.

"I believe it's therefore safe to tell you that the nano-modification you self-administered was not exactly what you programmed. I made slight changes. I found nothing objectionable in the physical and emotional programming you made - you did quite well there, exactly what I expected. The duration, however, was unsatisfactory. It was unacceptable to me for you to have your previous identity returned to you, even after a year, because I have other plans for Sam Smith. The DNA caps, I'm afraid, are encoded to my private encryption key. And I have no intention of unlocking them. You are Anne-Marie for the rest of your life."

I gasped, and turned to look at him in amazement. He roughly pushed my face to one side again.

"Sam Smith will be returning today. Only you will not be him. I've found a substitute instead, a man who will look exactly like you once did, and will have all of your personality traits and memories. All your memories except those concerning a job you once did for me. This man now believes himself to be Sam Smith.

"You will cease working at the lab. Remember that Sam knows nothing of you, of who you once were.

"Do you understand everything I've told you, Anne-Marie?" he asked.

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Do you have any questions, slave?"

"Yes, Master. Why - why go to all this trouble? You could have simply erased my memories, as you've done with my double - I mean, with Mr. Smith."

He chuckled. "Because you made me a manipulative bastard. It's in my nature to create complicated methods of humiliation and torture. This is much more fun, don't you think? For most men of power, control is simply a method, a means to an end. For me, it's an art form. And you are one of my artworks. I am shaping you, making you what you are. My power over you, for me, is a form of expression. I take pleasure in seeing you devolve further and further from the man you once were into a girl designed down to the last detail, physically and emotionally sculpted specifically to please me. I think you once understood what that was like, when you were a man - the satisfaction of knowing that the sole purpose of the creature before you is to give you pleasure, and that you made her that way. You even felt that way with Natalie, didn't you? Now stand at attention, slut."

I quickly spread my feet apart and put my hands behind me, at the small of my back, and lowered my head.

"Good. As you can see, this new bit of information doesn't change a thing. You'll still obey me, won't you, you silly little cunt? You see, if I told you everything at the beginning, you might have resisted, perhaps run away. But the nano has had almost a month to fine-tune your pheremonal receptors to my specific scent. My presence alone conditions you, sparks the submissive urges your body and mind find naturally seek.

"Now you need me. You think about me every day. You wait impatiently for the pager to go off, so that you can once again find yourself naked in my presence. Is that not so?"

"Y-yes, Master," I whispered. That was certainly true - over the past month I'd found myself obsessing more and more about these encounters, reliving the things he'd done to me and fantasizing about what he would do to me next. I hadn't thought it to be a result of conditioning, however, and it surprised me.

"Tell me, slut, do you recall what it felt like to enslave Natalie? Do you remember the pleasure you felt?"

I thought about it. The mind of Sam Smith was still alive in me, but his motivations, his desires were hard for me to focus on. My memory was completely intact. I could remember transforming Natalie, training her, delivering her to her new Master. But I had no sense of what I, Sam Smith, was feeling then. If anything, I seemed to visualize the memories from Natalie's point of view. I remembered restraining Natalie in the cargo van, but when I tried to visualize, to piece together the sequence and logic of events, it was my elbows being strapped together behind me, my neck collar being padlocked to the ring in the floor of the van. I felt pleasure, but it was a slave girl's pleasure of submission, not of a master's control.

"Yes, Master," I said quietly. "But not the way I know it happened. In my memories I'm - I'm Natalie."

"Yes. Well, some of that may be residual memories from your nano-conditioning. Natalie's memories were subliminally implanted in your mind to induce you to follow her path. It was why you continued to be obsessed with her so long after the job was done. But now that you are more or less in her position, those memories more properly fit the girl you are now, so they're slowly replacing those other, incompatible memories. The same thing will happen with other memories. You probably don't even remember what it was like to have a cock, do you?"

"No, Master," I admitted.

"Again, such memories are incompatible with who you are now. You'll keep the facts straight, but your memories will shift gender wherever possible, and it will be very hard for you to make sense of those memories where your masculinity is central to the memory - such as sex, for instance. In your memories of your sexual encounters, you will find yourself visualizing the moment from the viewpoint of the woman you were with."

Reflecting, I found this to be true. Even going back to my first love, Jenny, if I tried to visualize the first time we had sex, in the tableau I was Jenny, heavy breasted, brunette Jenny, and Sam slid his cock into me.

Weird. This was all really, really weird.

John now rolled over what turned out to be a medium-sized black suitcase. He laid it flat at my feet, bent down and unzipped the lid. He threw it back.

"Get in," he commanded.

I was flustered by this. "How?" I asked, confused.

He slapped me. "'How, Master?' is the proper phrase, cunt. Step into it and kneel."

My cheek stinging, I obeyed, and knelt inside the suitcase.

He bent me forward and rolled me onto my side. My body was now inside the suitcase, but my head was leaning against one wall. My arms were tucked in between my knees and my breasts. He pushed my head into the remaining space an closed the lid. He zipped it up. I heard a padlock snap.

It was a snug, uncomfortable fit, but there wasn't any way out even if I wanted to resist. I leaned against one side as John uprighted the case, tilted it back on its wheels, and rolled me out of the bathroom.

++++

I spent what must have been a few hours in that suitcase, blind and cramped, but I didn't utter a peep. There was a long period when I must have been in the trunk of a car. When the case was finally opened, and John helped me out, I tumbled onto a large bed clumsily. My legs had gone to sleep.

John had put the suitcase on the bed before opening it. Now he put it away in a closet.

I lay on my back, waiting for feeling to return to my limbs, as John busied himself with padlocking leather cuffs around my wrists and ankles. He rolled me over onto my stomach and padlocked all four limbs together behind me. He then pulled down a chain from the ceiling, attached it to the padlock, and pulled up the slack, in the process pulling my ankles and wrists up with it, so they hovered a good foot over my ass.

I looked around the room. It wasn't a hotel room; this room probably was John's own master bedroom. The furniture was period French Empire; bookshelves lined the walls.

"Master, permission to speak, sir," I croaked, still recovering from the trip.

"Yes, Anne-Marie," he said with a faint note of indulgence.

"Master, how long - how long will I be here?"

"As long as I want you here. You will be returned to your apartment the way you came here, when I'm done with you. No sooner." He closed the drawer he'd gotten the restraints from.

"Master - how long will you want me?"

"I don't know yet. A day. A week. Fifteen years. And in any case you don't need to know. You only need to know that you are in my home, and that you are here to serve me."

I thought about that as he turned me clockwise so that my head hung over the bed. The bed was a high four-poster, and, I soon discovered, my mouth was at exactly the right height to suck his cock.

His male odor was doing its pheremonal thing with my sex drive, and he pumped his cock into my throat leisurely, taking his time. It didn't seem to matter to him that I was gagging on the thing.

I tried to concentrate on doing my duty - giving him pleasure - but he wasn't really giving me the opportunity to take any initiative. So I worked on simply not choking as he finally shot his sperm against the back of my throat, his hands gripping my hair tightly.

He had me lick him clean, then rotated me back in line with the length of the bed.

"I have a dinner appointment. Natalie has chambermaid duty today, which includes attending to the bodily needs of my other property. She should be here in an hour or so; I'll tell her to take care of you then." With that he left.

And left me helpless on his bed, his come still coating my throat and mouth.

I didn't have much in the way of entertainment to pass the time with. It wasn't like I could pick up a book or anything, much less reach for one. Hell, I couldn't even masturbate.

And yet what was I going to do about it? This was a sorry state of affairs. My life had been more or less taken over by this man, and I hadn't done a thing to stop him. I just about walked into his arms without a word of complaint. Even my fantasy of starting a new life as a young female college student seemed just that, a fantasy, a secondary life to be resumed at those intervals when John was too busy to take the time to humiliate me.

It was clear to me now that my humiliation was one of his primary objects in enslaving me. Why? Because I made him that way - a personality so dominant that it can't bear the thought of other sources of strength and power, and seeks to emasculate them. He had made me into the very opposite of him, of what I once was. I was the epitome of physical and emotional emasculation.

To his mind, I probably didn't even belong to the category of "woman"; I was in his worldview something lower, something of his creation - a slave girl, good only for, and only aroused when, serving him.

I wasn't going to prove myself otherwise if I kept obeying him, kept submitting without protest. Yet I wasn't sure I was really capable any more of protesting; or at least the protestation would be somewhat insincere. The fact was, given the new psychological and emotional personality traits I now posessed, John was actually treating me the way someone like me wanted to be treated. I just didn't like the fact that he'd induced me to put myself in this position.

Damn him! My cuntlips felt swollen, my clitoris was stiff and sensitive, and I couldn't even touch it. What good is a nymphomaniacal sex drive if you can't satisfy it?

I knew what John's answer to that question would be, and it bothered me. It made me more easily controllable, of course.

And control was the issue. He wanted power over me , to control me, so made me crave to be in someone else's power, under their control.

His methods, if convoluted, were admirably effective. Despite myself I wanted his cock in my mouth again.

++++

Natalie was naked, her wrists bound together with cuffs identical to mine. She was accompanied by a large man in a valet's uniform. He produced a key and proceeded to unlock my ankle cuffs, and remove the lock binding my wrists to the chain. My wrists were still bound behind me.

"Attend her. And Natalie, I expect this room to be spotless in an hour." He left the way the two of them had come.

Natalie looked at me, then back at the closed door. She turned again to me, smiling.

"How do you like your new life, Anne-Marie?" she asked. "When we last met, you didn't seem so sure of my choice."

I stared at her. "Jesus. Does everybody on the planet know?" I retorted, exasperated. "Why does a slave like you get told something like that?"

"I wasn't told. Our Master just places too much faith on earplugs and my irrelevancy. And no, not everyone knows. But - most among John's friends certainly know that you have been feminized, and that your former life has been taken over by a replacement. They just don't know who. All the girls here share that story. It's one of John's pet projects, and looked on with curiosity and a little bafflement by his fellow Masters and Mistresses. You have to remember that the old Natalie was sort of an oddball feminist. She believed women were superior beings born into inferior bodies. This way of thinking, coupled with the changes I hired you to make in her, has caused her to develop a rather absolutist mindset. Becoming John did something to him. It's been interesting to watch. To John, you and I were inferior creatures born in superior bodies. He realized he could free the born women by exchanging their lives with their oppressors - us. This, to him, represents a more balanced world - inferior creatures trapped in inferior bodies."

I thought about this as she helped me off the bed.

"All of us? How many are there?" I asked.

"I'm not sure, since I think he has slaves at all four of his houses, and I never leave this one. There are thirty one here fulltime - meaning 24/7. Plus he brings in occasionals like you that he generally keeps at large, for his use away from home.

"I was the first, of course, but he began his project almost immediately. From what I gather, they were all very important people. Maybe not you, but I think with you he developed a fixation on his creator. He wanted to take you down pretty badly."

"Natalie? Do me a favor," I asked. "Take off my cuffs. I'd like to at least poke around a little, see if there's any chance of escape."

Natalie paled, and her eyes widened in shock and terror. "I - I can't. For one thing, Anne-Marie, I don't have the keys, and you should know that. No female in this house has keys to anything. John is...very controlling. As for wandering around the house, I'm only supposed to help you use the bathroom. If you go looking about, one of the staff will find you - your status is pretty obvious - and they have orders regarding that kind of insubordination. Look, I have to start cleaning soon, or I won't get done in time, and I get whipped pretty badly when I don't finish my chores. I can't really stop you, but - listen, you won't get past the hallway. Please, just follow me." She walked over to the open bathroom door.

She turned back and glared at me. I was still hesitating. "Don't be stupid, Anne-Marie!" she said crossly. "You know what kind of man John is now. He's got hidden cameras all over the place. Whatever you're thinking, if anything at all, it's an idiotic idea. He'll stop you. And even if you made it past the mansion walls, he'd find you and drag you back. And you know what? You'd be overjoyed to see him. You're a slave girl, honey - whether you like it or not, here is the place for you, and it's the only place in the world where you're going to feel most truly yourself. Now come here." Her girlish voice tried to assume an authoritative tone, but it came out sounding petulant. I stifled a chuckle, then realized I probably wasn't any more capable of assuming a commanding tone of voice than she was.

Well, hell.

I followed her.

After using the toilet and taking a short bath - in which Natalie bade me keep my hands over my head, so as not to wet the leather cuffs - she led me back to the bed.

She pulled a sash, and a bell rang. The door opened and the valet returned. The valet buckled a collar around my neck and attached a leash.

"Get back to work, Natalie," he hissed. Natalie, who'd been eyeing us as she stood at attention, jumped, then turned to the bathroom and collected a bucket and sponge. She dropped to her hands and knees and began scrubbing the tile. I saw with a shock that a kind of dogtag hung from her labia.

The valet jerked on the leash, and I stumbled forward.

"Follow me, slut," he said, and led me out down the hallway. I furtively looked around, trying to get my bearings without obviously lifting my chin from my collarbone. Funny, I thought, how I could talk back to Natalie, demand justification for a command or redress for a wrong, but when a man was in the room I became as docile as a lamb.

The hallway was rich in textures - an oriental runner carpet covered marble tiles; on the wall to my left were framed oil paintings. I recognized a large Matisse and two De Koonings - more indications of John's power, for each would have fetched over ten million at auction. One my right was a marble banister.

The valet led me down a circular marble staircase, and here I recognized John's atrium from some of the parties I'd attended. I made a mental note that at least I now knew which mansion he'd taken me to. The thought wasn't comforting - I was in Briarcliff, built on a peninsula jutting into the Hudson River and flanked on three sides with high cliffs. The west end of the mansion was gated and protected with military detachments - courtesy the US Government, for the classified work John had inherited from his predecessor, the erstwhile and infuriatingly coy Natalie.

The scale of the place - grand even for the tall man I had been - seemed made for a giant to me. The valet led me past a butler and a Marine who seemed to be discussing guest lists. I kept my eyes firmly on the ground, blushing. I felt sure the Marine was looking at me.

The valet brought me to the far corner of the atrium. He commanded me to kneel, and when I obeyed, he rearranged my restraints so that my wrists were bound in front of me. He pulled a bucket and sponge from a utility closet and placed them before me.

"Scrub the floor. You can get fresh water from the sink here. I'll inspect your work in a few hours, so do a good job." He gave me a kick to get me moving.

I hurried to obey, and soon I was washing the marble tile, doing my best to remove scuff marks and dirt. At least he didn't give me a toothbrush, I thought ruefully.

Damn John. I really liked this. Crawling around on my hands and knees, feeling tiny and helpless, servile. The Marine and the butler walked out the front door, leaving me alone with the immense task of washing a thousand square feet of marble with a little sponge.

++++

A few hours later I'd worked my way across to the other side of the atrium. The hardest part was carrying the bucket of water back from the sink - my body was simply weak, and carrying several gallons of water was backbreaking work for my little underdeveloped muscles.

A valet had me kneel face forward - presenting myself - and inspected the cleaning job. He had me clean several spots again where Marines had tracked in mud near the front door.

He hovered over me as I scrubbed. I got a peek out the front door, which was propped open. Past the two Marines posted one either side of the door, a wide marble staircase descended to a circular carraigeway. A Bentley was parked directly in front. High walls ran on either side of the front lawn, and I saw they were topped with barbed wire. At the far end was the gate - the only gate - which was shut and guarded. Jesus, John even merited an armored personnel carrier. It was parked on the far side of the gate, blocking the road.

Okay, I thought. Natalie's right. Even if I managed to get out of the house, I'd have to get past a small army, or scale sheer twenty foot walls and over barbed wire naked. Hmmn. Not a pleasant thought.

The sight of the kind of military protection John had made me realize two things. First, John's power over me was more than sexual domination. He could easily own me - literally. Within these walls slavery wasn't just a sexual role, it was a fact. Outside, in free America, slavery was quite illegal. But I was in here, which seemed tantamount to being trapped in a minor kingdom. Second, I was probably of incidental interest to him - a plaything, representing his power - while his true interest was in power of a more expansive flavor. This man wanted dominion over much more than a few slavegirls.

I'd created him that way, of course. But it was still terrifying to think of it. I'd made a megalomaniac.

And, of course, the thought of being controlled, subjugated by such a man made the sweet little slave girl I'd become wet with longing.

What a predicament.

++++

When the valet was satisfied with my work, he led me back through the house to the kitchen.

Three cooks were busy with what looked to be a feast. Assistants were busy chopping vegetables while two of the cooks were basting a whole pig.

"Anne-Marie is to work dinner service," the valet said. "She's yours for the night."

One of the cooks came over, eyed me. "Get up, slut," he commanded. I rose to my feet and stood at attention.

He opened a cabinet and pulled out a few small items of clothing. He handed them to me.

"Put them on."

I rolled black thigh-high hose up my legs. I slipped into a black corset. The cook turned me around and laced it up, very tight. He slapped my ass.

"Exhale." I obeyed.

He cinched the thing so tight that I had to work to inhale. I felt dizzy. I tried to suck in air as he padlocked the corset at four places along the seam.

"Don't hyperventilate," he said. "The intention isn't to suffocate you, it's to debilitate you. Move slowly, and pace yourself, and you'll be okay. Exert yourself too much and you'll faint."

He removed my wrist cuffs and slipped loops of black silk around my wrists. The silk had plastic ribs around the loop; once cinched tight through a slot in one end, they didn't loosen. They would have to be cut off. Each loop continued at one end to sewn openings in the back of the corset. The cook demonstrated their purpose by pulling on two cords at the top of the back of the corset. My wrists were pulled behind me, until they stopped at the small of my back, tethered to the corset.

"The corset has small cleats that hold the cordage in place. You can't reach them, so don't bother trying. It operates so smoothly because, in the lining of the corset, along the whaleboning, are four small bearing wheels. It's as effective as the leather cuffs for a girl as small and weak as you, and looks more elegant. Okay then."

He pulled the release and my hands were free again. I brought them together in front of me, the silk cords pulling out of their pockets and hanging loosely at my sides.

He led me to a pile of dishes and cutlery.

"Through those doors," he said, pointing to the wide kitchen doors, "is the dining hall. We have forty guests tonight. Lay out the table settings,

then come back here. And don't get any funny ideas. You could easily cut those cords with one of these steak knives. You won't if you're smart."

I took only a few plates at a time, afraid that with what the corset was doing to me, I'd get dizzy and drop them. The room was vast, with a large fireplace at one end and a row of bay windows overlooking the Hudson. It was night now. I'd been a prisoner since noon.

The tables were loosely arranged in a semicircle around a larger table that clearly was John's. I wondered who was coming tonight. I didn't like the idea that my situation would be so publicly acknowledged. It was bad enough that the house staff and the Marines took my enslavement for granted; that guests would accept it too was too much to bear.

I did briefly consider the cook's idea, and found myself hesitating, knife in hand. I held it a little too long to not be noticed if anyone was looking, and this thought was what made me finally put it in its arranged place on the table.

What good would it have done me? What good is a knife to a girl trapped in a corset that prevents her from even breathing properly, in a house where her continued abasement was seen as perfectly natural, on grounds overrun with Marines and fenced with barbed wire? It was all too big for me. My feelings of helplessness and defeat made the use of the knife impossible.

I was five feet tall, under a hundred pounds, nearly naked, and could be subdued with the simple pull of a cord. Everyone within a quarter mile was bigger than me, stronger than me, certainly more aggressive, and likely had explicit orders to prevent escape.

I realized as I put the knife down that my sole, if meager, advantage in this very uneven contest of wills was that no one would suspect that I would attempt to escape. After all, I had nano-conditioned urges to remain compliant, and, libidinally speaking, was in a state of near bliss. I was exactly where my body wanted me to be. And while the men around me were - so far - thorough and consistent in keeping me under scrutiny and in restraints at all times, it seemed to me their motivation to do so was more the pleasure of the rituals, and the control they symbolized, than any real fear that I could do anything to change my circumstances.

With the exception of Natalie, in whom I'd confided my escape fantasies, I was sure that everyone here took me for the sweet, pretty, compliant, feminized victim I appeared to be. So, I thought, if John insists on keeping me here longer, let that be my angle. Play the part. Don't let them see what you're really thinking. Then wait for an opportunity. Don't worry about what happens after.

It wouldn't be hard playing the part - for in truth I wouldn't be acting. No, the hard part would be resisting the attraction that staying here held for me. I reminded myself that in large measure I wasn't really myself anymore. Sam Smith was a very different person, whose motivations, loves and fears now seemed strange to me. The only thing that seemed a continuous personality trait between me and Sam was a shared sense of indignation at what John had done to me. That and intellectual curiousity - even with only a high school education, my intellect itself was unimpaired.

But where Sam might have fought his way out, or schemed revenge, Anne-Marie had to take a different approach. The thought of raising a hand against a man so terrified me that I knew it to be impossible. I was fundamentally non-violent now. Besides, my instictive conception of men was to treat them as near God-like figures, to be obeyed unconditionally. That put an open fight out of the question. Where Sam would have acted out of anger and retribution, I was fighting an instinct so strong as to cloud judgement. I had to fight an instinctive belief that I was finally, happily in my proper place. I had to force myself to recognize that no matter how wonderful what John was doing to me felt, freedom was still something I wanted - even if it cost me the pleasurable, abject humiliation my imprisonment here imposed on me.

I wasn't Sam anymore. And never would be again - John had seen to that, by making my DNA encryption permanent, and by finding a replacement Sam.

I was just Anne-Marie now, and while I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, I knew that, again thanks to DNA encryption, I wasn't going to ever be able to escape from or change Anne-Marie's basic personality traits. So. Stuck in this body, with this new, hybrid personality profile. Accept that, at least, and work with what you've got. Discover what kind of stuff Anne-Marie is made of. I could, perhaps, be tough in ways other than brute strength. If I tried hard enough. My escape would be because of my weakness, rather than in spite of it. What did that mean? And what were my opportunities, given that?

++++

The head cook pulled the cord, and my wrists were pinioned behind me. He had me kneel in a long line of slave girls, identically dressed, facing the wall. Natalie was to my right; a tall black teenager to my left. I knew, from what Natalie had told me, that each of these girls had been, like Natalie and me, forcibly feminized. For all I knew the black girl was once a CEO or something. Probably a white supremacist to boot. I noted as I was placed in line that between the thighs of most of the girls I could see was that small dogtag, hanging from a pierced labial fold.

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.

++++

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, along 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.

++++

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.

++++

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 imbedded 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 the 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."

"When is this going to happen?"

"You forgot 'Master', Anne-Marie. Just so we understand each other, every time you forget will earn you twenty-five lashes. I'm adding twenty-five to the twenty you already have coming, just for being you. And you know from last night I don't hold back."

"Yes, Master." I shuddered at the thought of forty-five strokes from the whip - his whip.

"To answer your question, tomorrow night. Remember, I'll forget who you once were, but not how many strokes you're due for. The context of our conversation will, in all likelihood, simply be reorganized.

"When the lock joining your wrists disengages, you're free to do what you like. Keep the gear handy. I want you wearing them at 10:00 PM. The lock is on a ten hour timer, and has a transponder that sends messages to my Blackberry. I'll know when it's engaged or disengaged. It also senses, through the conductive O-rings on your cuffs, when it's actually restraining the body of a human being, based on the electrical output of your nervous system, and whether or not your tag is within four feet of it. Unless you have someone else willing to wear the cuffs for you, and stand at your side at all times, you won't be able to fool me. Failure to comply will earn you a hundred lashes for each infraction. That's all for now. Wait for my page."

He hung up, and I held the phone to my ear, unable to move, until the disconnect tone startled me out of my reverie.

++++

Three hours later, I was lying naked on my back, a pillow propped under my back to take the weight off my sore buttocks. I was reading Seventeen magazine, I suppose out of sheer perversity. It was dull reading. "How to get a man" indeed. How do you get rid of them, I wondered?

The padlock clicked open, startling me, and fell onto my belly. I sat up and unbuckled the leather restraints. I put the gear into a drawer in my endtable, and noted the time. 11:00 AM. I had eleven hours before my implicit curfew.

Well, at least I could get dressed and try to live like I'm a normal human being, and not cattle, I told myself.

I got up and showered. I was careful when soaping around my newly pierced area. I brushed my hair, and started to dress.

I decided jeans were out of the question. I needed something loose, something that wouldn't chafe the tag or its attachment point. I ended up choosing a blue spaghetti strap silk dress with an empire waist. It had enough extra fabric around my hips for me to rearrange it if I were uncomfortable, and silk felt better on bruised flesh than denim.

I pulled out my Filofax and looked at my schedule for the day. I was free through the next day. Tomorrow I had an early Psych class.

Homework. I'm a student; I'm supposed to do homework, right?

I spent the afternoon working on a report for the Pysch class, and catching up on American Lit reading assignments. Being a student was actually kind of fun. Besides, it helped take my mind off the fact that I was a piece of property. Even if I asserted to myself that I was more than cattle, I had the tag to prove otherwise.

I was probably the only girl at my school with involuntary piercings. The only one who wouldn't be able to go to parties because I had to lock myself up by ten. The only girl who had to obey or die. Literally.

I shook my head to clear my mind. No point thinking about it; it is what it is. I'm never going to be a man again; and I'll never be a normal girl either. Okay, I'm a freak. Fine. Lots of those in New York. Just now I've got homework; concentrate on that.

++++

A week later I was kneeling beside Sam in his study. I was naked, my thumbs were restrained behind me with thumbcuffs, and my toes were cuffed in identical fashion. I rested the backs of my hands on the soles of my feet.

It had taken him less than sixty seconds to drag me from his front door, strip me, and put me on my knees beside him. I was a little awed by his efficiency - he had a no-nonsense approach that made up in authority what it lacked in style. While I tended to fantasize situations a little more ceremonious and ritualistic than my first five minutes here, Sam had, in a short space of time, demonstrated that he was Master of this house, and that I was a guest suffered only to the extent that I was at his mercy.

He had his hand in my hair, and was forcing me to look at a computer screen on his desk.

"This is your apartment," Sam said, pointing at a floor plan displayed on the monitor. "I wanted to show you this right off, before we begin, so you understand how short your leash is. Here," he fingered a bright red wobbly line moving about the apartment, "are your movements over the past week. I can filter the vector diagrams out by time, and expand or compress the time scale for better analysis. The tracking is done by triangulation on your ID tag via sensors installed around your street block - you won't be able to find them. They're sensitive enough to determine whether you're clothed, whether you're standing or kneeling, and how fast you're moving. Thus far the only warning flag I've configured has to do with the cuffs - which you've worn as commanded, I see. Good girl.

"However," he said, stroking my hair, "I can configure other flags as well. One, which I've just programmed, will notify me if you're wearing clothing inside the apartment for longer than sixty seconds. I want you naked in there at all times. In addition to the nano-disassemblers, by the way, your tag also contains generic nano which can be programmed on the fly to administer pain in the form of nerve stimulation. If you don't strip immediately on entering the apartment, you'll feel pain. It won't be pleasant. Do you understand, Anne-Marie?"

"Yes, Master," I whispered.

"Good. I want you to understand that the fact you were a man once earns you no privileges with me. I don't know who you were, and don't care. I bought you from John because you're pretty and have potential. Admittedly not much, but it's there."

He smiled down at me. "You know, I couldn't have done this to most women - they would have rebelled far too early for me to have set this up. But you love it - you can't help yourself - and that fact condemns you to slavery. Up to a certain point you had some volition in your submission - you could, after all, choose not to do so. I've removed that option, put it out of your reach. You let me do it, of course - that bit about buying you from John is merely the transferral of his claim on you - but now that it's done, now that I've got effective physical controls over you, submission to my will is your only option. John used psychology to control you. Psychological control is nice, but I like actual, physical ownership. I can now do anything I like with you - anything at all. I can kill you, or cause you pain, at a keystroke. John owned your mind. I own your mind, and your body. You're a piece of property. How does that feel, my little fuckpet?"

"I - it feels good, Master," I admitted, blushing.

He laughed. "So I guessed. Now let's see how good you are at sucking cock."

Sam turned his chair toward me, and pulled me forward between his legs. He drew his cock out from the folds of his kimono and pressed my lips to it. I opened my mouth obediently and he shoved his member in.

This had been my cock once. Well, not exactly - it was a nano-produced replica - but the effect on me was similar to the way being in the men's room of the library had made me feel. I had been robbed of my masculinity. And now it was literally being shoved in my face.

For all that, it was still arousing, having a cock in my mouth, sucking it. And though I knew this hot, throbbing, stiff staff of flesh had once been a part of me, now it was unfamiliar and daunting. A symbol of power - and I couldn't even recall what it had felt like to have one. I knew intellectually that my body, its curves and soft flesh, was not the body I was born with, but at the same time Sam's masculinity was as foriegn and mysterious to me as if I had never been a man. I simply couldn't visualize what had been like to be on the other side of this power dynamic.

John had done his work well.

As Sam slowly pumped my throat, his thickness stuffing me, I thought about my conversation with Natalie - now almost six months ago - and realized that she had it right. If nano meant you could be anyone, then your body had little bearing on who you really were. Deprived of the ability to change, I was now fixed into one discrete identitiy - Anne-Marie - and since I could no longer change, my whole essence was dominated by the feelings, emotions and worldview that this frail, feminine body promoted - I couldn't escape or ignore them. I was a woman. And I couldn't imagine otherwise.

It had been a gradual evolution, I realized. I thought back to that first day, and remembered how strange my body had felt at first - my soft breasts, the curve of my belly down into the pubic mound, my wide hips. And how, later, when I learned that my change was not really of my own volition, I had yearned to fight my inevitable subjugation. Now all that seemed remote, as if another person had thought those thoughts and felt those feelings.

Now, in the presence of the man I had been, it really struck home. Why had I bothered to fight it? For better or for worse, this female form - on my knees, sucking a man's cock - was my proper place. I was happy, healthy, and that counted for a lot. I was owned property. And being the creature I was, this was enormously satisfying. So what if I had been made to feel this way? I felt it, it was real, I - Anne-Marie - was a real, living, breathing human being. I knew my body well enough now that I could no longer think of it as something I had been forced into. The imperfections - the freckling, the mole on my right forearm, my crooked smile - reinforced the feeling I had of being a natural female, rather than one created by nano. I was quite different from the person I had once been, but this was who I was now. Why had I resisted, in the hope of regaining my masculinity, when I no longer even identified with the gender I was born into, could no longer remember what satisfactions were to be had from being a man? I glanced up at Sam's muscled stomach and realized I felt no identification with his physical form at all. It might as well have been a stranger's body, it seemed so unfamiliar and foriegn to me.

How could I be angry with Sam for exercising his power over me when I needed someone so badly to do to me what he had done? The fact of the matter was that I needed to submit - emotionally, physically, psychically.

From that moment on, I could only see Sam as who he was - my Master - and no longer harbored any hope of being anything other than his slave.

++++

Eleven months passed. I figured this out later.

Two weeks after Master purchased me, he decided my memories of my former life were impeding my training, and subjected me to a series of memory blocks. To be honest, I almost welcomed the enforced amnesia. The very concept that I had not always been Anne-Marie troubled me.

From then on, from the suppression of my memories until I was liberated, I didn't just believe I was living Anne-Marie's life - I believed I *was* Anne-Marie. Her memories were overlaid where my own had been blocked.

I had no sense of the passing days. I think after the third month he moved me into his home. I lived full-time in Master's house, a live-in slave, with no clothing, no money, and no say whatsoever. I didn't even know my captor's name, and knew enough to guess that he wanted to keep it that way. It was actually a pretty good life, though it doesn't sound like it. A slave needs structure and rules to be happy - and I had plenty of both.

In retrospect, it was an interesting situation. We were living each other's lives and didn't even know it. There was no longer any angst-ridden introspection on my part; in my mind - remember that, for all intents and purposes, I was Anne-Marie, an avowed submissive - and even a DNA test would prove it - this was the life I had dreamed of having. All my life I'd wanted to be with a man like Master - cruel, commanding, authoritarian - and

Master knew exactly how to handle me.

He had me withdraw from school - and put the money in a trust fund, which he would sign over to me when he freed me from his service. According to Master, that would be in about ten years, sooner if he tired of having me around. I hoped desperately that would never happen, and the implicit threat made me work harder to please him. I didn't mind giving up college too much, though I did miss being around people my own age. Master's friends were all in their forties, and the closest I got to people in my generation was seeing them from the small barred window in my fourth floor cell.

Not that I didn't like the fact that all those men were so much older. It somehow made them more authoritative. I liked the grey on thier temples, and their natural confidence that boys my age lacked.

I loved them all, with the kind of awe one usually reserves for gods. They were beings to be worshipped, and I did so in the only way I knew how, in the only form they recognized. I was a nothing animal to be used by them, and when they used me, I felt safe and valued. I felt lucky when I was chosen, and not Anya or Sarah, to serve in Master's bedchamber for the night. I knew I wasn't exactly loved in return - but I didn't expect or deserve that - it was a demand I was in no position to make of them. Being a slave, in a sense, is an utterly one-way street: Any demand could justly be made of me, yet I could ask for nothing in return. I had no bargaining power. I didn't want any.

Mr. Dentz, to whom Master lent me for weeks at a time when he was out of town, seemed to regard me his favorite. On those occasions when I was his, Mr. Dentz would bring me up to his country house (packed safely in the trunk, of course) where he had a custom-built dungeon almost as well-stocked as my Master's.

Whereas Master was diffidently cruel, in predictable ways, Mr. Dentz had imagination. He was a font of new and novel methods of torture, sexual and otherwise. When not torturing me, he would sit out by the pool and I would serve him and his friends drinks. He had even more of a controlling nature than Master; when at his disposal, I wore a collar that paralyzed my vocal cords, making speech impossible, and when put away for the night I wore opaque contact lenses, to blind me.

I loved it. And, over the course of a year, I grew to love him - Mr. Dentz - more even than my Master. Rendered forcibly mute, blind, stumbling to please him, I felt as though my wildest dreams had been granted.

Thinking back on it, actually *being* Anne-Marie for so long was probably what made becoming a man again such a difficult experience. Anne-Marie's needs and desires were simple, clear, and satisfied in every respect by her enslavement to Mr. Smith. The life I returned to was much more complicated, and my emotional state much less blissful.

++++

One morning, I woke up feeling very, very strange.

Even before I opened my eyes, I knew that I was no longer in my snug little holding cell. I also knew, by the sensory feedback my body gave me, that I was Sam again, and found my memories intact once more.

I could remember being Anne-Marie; in fact, in my mind, I still *felt* like Anne-Marie, felt as if my essence had been poured into a scary, foriegn physical form.

I sat up groggily, opened my eyes.

I was wearing a hospital gown, sitting upright on a gurney. I looked around. I was in a nano lab, by the looks of it.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Smith?" a doctor said, walking briskly into the room. He had a clipboard under his arm.

"Like shit," I answered. My head was throbbing, my muscles sore. "How did I get here?"

"Mr. Maynard's slave ring was discovered a few months back. One of his victims had a case of appendicitis. Her owner brought her to the hospital. The nano-modifications were so cleverly done that it would normally have been impossible to detect them. But because the girl developed complications, more thorough blood tests were done, and the nano discovered.

"Her owner wasn't even aware that she had been nano-modified - he thought he had bought a born girl. The police used the slavery charges to get the seller's name from him, and that led them to Mr. Maynard. They've been tracking down his other victims and handing them over to us for restitition of their gender. You were lucky - your owner kept you on U.S. soil. There are fifteen girls abroad, and we haven't yet been able to extradite their owners. We have hope for a few of them, but most I think we'll have to give up on. The people involved in this ring are very wealthy and have a lot of political influence, and some are in countries where slavery is tolerated."

"What about -" I paused, biting down the word 'Master', "what about the other Sam? The guy who replaced me?"

"She is Anne-Marie again, and is in another nano lab downtown. I hear she's doing well, although I think she's having a hard time coming to terms with the conflict between the sexual inclinations she used to have as a man, and the ones she was born with, and has regained. We had to force your memories of the past year onto her to get the nano to take at all. She's apparently complaining we took her masculinity from her."

"May I see her?" I asked.

"In a few days, maybe. We need to do some more psych work on you first."

++++

It was strange, being the owner of my house, rather than a prisoner of it. My role under this roof had been so tightly circumscribed for so long that there was a certain wonderment in poking into rooms where I had been forbidden to go.

The fifth floor had been locked at all times. I had the key now, and went up exploring tentatively. It was still my library, but more sumptuously furnished. Funny that for a full year I hadn't even known what was up here; I'd long wondered, my imagination wrapping a crazy mystique around it. It wasn't so mysterious now.

I felt as though I were walking through a haunted house. This place had been the home of Sam and his slave girl, and I felt like a stranger here, not the Sam who had been and no longer Anne-Marie.

My old cell was smaller than I thought - or I was just bigger now. It seemed claustrophobic. It still smelled of perfume.

When I first met Sam, I thought of him as a sort of thief - he had stolen my life. Now I felt like the pretender.

++++

Anne-Marie wore a pink spaghetti-strap sundress with a matching barrette to hold her hair back. She saw me sitting at the far end of the restaurant, and crossed to meet me. I gestured to the chair opposite. She sat down gracefully, folding her hands in her lap, with her knees parted.

"You look nice," I said.

She grimaced. "The fuckers didn't just change me back. They restored the nano-conditioning I'd self-administered a few years back, before John changed me. I can't help but wear this crap. Did you order? I need a drink. May I?" she said, holding her handbag up. I nodded. She set it on the table.

We ordered.

"I wasn't expecting you to call me," she said finally, after a long silence. "I kind of figured you'd steer clear of your former tormentor. Not that I'm capable of doing anything to you now." She looked down at her wineglass.

"You know," she continued, "I'd forgotten what being...well, me, I guess, is like. It must have been hard for you, feeling the way I do now. I'm sorry I put you through it." She grimaced. "Did you invite me here to gloat? Because it's not nice, though I guess I deserve it."

I shook my head.

She looked thoughtful. "Are you going to claim me?" she asked. "You know what I'm like. Probably better than anybody. I suppose you could do to me as I did to you. I'd make a good slave, God help me. I'd even be grateful, in a way, though I'd hate you for it."

"I know I could. But you aren't the same anymore. This Anne-Marie, the girl you've become again, it isn't really you - not now. Not after everything that's happened. Being Sam Smith, I think, made you happy. This is just a torment for you. Am I right?"

"Yes," she confessed, "it is. I have to tell you, I *liked* being powerful. I liked having the world at my fingertips. I liked feeling I had the right to do anything I wanted. It was so freeing, you know? After a lifetime of feeling my proper place was on my knees. Now, I look at you, and wonder how I could ever have felt that way. I want it back, but know I don't have the right."

"Anne-Marie, what if, this time tomorrow, you were Sam Smith again - forever - and no one could take it away from you again?"

Her eyes locked on mine. "What?"

"It's why I invited you here. I want to make - let's call it an arrangement. I give you what you want, and you give me what I want."

"What do you get out of it?" she asked incredulously.

"Look, I'm as uncomfortable in this body as you are in yours. I spent a year believing I was you. It's a hard thing to shake off - a whole identity. I *want* to be stuffed back into that pretty little body of yours. But I'll do it only on two conditions."

"What are they?"

"One. I won't be your slave. Two. Johnny Dentz is still out of town. He doesn't know what's happened. I don't want him to."

She shook her head, laughing. "I can't believe you'd want to throw your life away, to be - this," she said, gesturing to her own body. "You're nearly as fucked up as I am. Okay, Mr. Smith - I agree to the first of your terms. Knowing what I know now, I don't think I'd want you around as a slave. It'd be too weird.

"As to the second - for one thing, we're going to do this legal. I don't want anybody saying I forced you to do anything - to have any excuse for changing us back. So we're going to register the nano-mods. That, for one thing, will mean Mr. Dentz could find out if he wanted to.

"Besides, I don't like the idea that you get everything you want out of this. So, this is my condition, non-negotiable - that, once you're Anne-Marie again, you surrender yourself to Mr. Dentz. Fully and unconditionally. And with full admission of who you once were. I want him to know what you've become. Further, I want him to know that you're my gift to him - from one good friend to another. If, knowing who you were and what you are now, he rejects you, then you're free to do as you wish. Not before. And, as you know, I'm very good at making Anne-Marie obey my wishes."

I thought about this. "You know, I can do this without you. I can just become a different woman, and you'll still be trapped as Anne-Marie."

"Don't kid yourself. See, I know exactly how you think - or used to think, anyway. It's not good enough to simply become a woman anymore. You need someone to take your masculinity from you. I'm going to do that. But only on my terms."

I could tell the authoritative tone she used was forced. It was as if she were trying to assume a power and authority she knew she was not capable of wielding, so her tone seemed brittle.

Yet, in her position, I wouldn't have even been able to negotiate.

"Agreed. On your terms."

The drinks arrived. She lifted her glass. "A toast - to us." We drank.

++++

The train rattled through the heavy woods. I watched the pines streak by, lightly peppered with country houses and railroad crossings. I felt a little frightened.

I wore the pink sundress Anne-Marie had worn to our luncheon, and the little barrette held my long hair back. Mr. Smith had added a few stipulations to our deal; wearing this was one of them. He let me stay in Anne-Marie's apartment - her real apartment - last night, and a thorough investigation of her wardrobe revealed that all of her clothing was as feminine and exposing as the dress I wore now. And in any case the nano she'd self-administered now flowed in my veins; wearing anything else would cause me physical pain. Another stipulation of Mr. Smith's I agreed to. I held the ticket stub in my hand, and a ten dollar bill. I had no hand bag to put them in, and no pockets.

I got off at my stop - a crossroads, really. I had the waystation call a taxi.

The woods grew denser, the road turned to packed dirt. Finally the taxi stopped at the base of a logging road.

"I can't bring you up, miss," the cabbie said. "You'll have to walk from here, I'm afraid."

"That's okay. Keep the change." It wasn't enough for a return train ticket anyway, and I knew I'd pay dearly if I didn't keep my part of my deal. Backing out now was out of the question.

I got out. The sun was shining, still high in the sky. The taxi drove off.

I felt the sun on my face, warming my skin, my bare arms and legs where the dress left them exposed. The woods were full of the rustling of small animals and birds. I walked up the dirt path in my pink heels.

The path wound back and forth up the mountain. In my all my time as a man, I'd never guessed Mr. Dentz kept his house here because a woman's screams would be far from any ears that might hear. I knew it now, and it made continuing up the hill an exercise in self-composure.

Finally I was at the house.

I stripped naked, carried the small pile of clothing over to the cliff behind the house. I looked over the precipice. Only a few hundred feet down, but it would take a day to walk around to get to the foot of the cliff. I hesitated a moment, then threw the bundle over. Another of Mr. Smith's stipulations.

Every act was a divestiture of power. My body. My clothing.

I walked barefoot back to the house. The key was under the welcome mat.

I remembered the smell of this place. I remembered things done to me here.

As Sam it would have been perfectly natural for me to make myself at home now. I wasn't Sam, though, and never would be again. The DNA encryption could only be decoded by Mr. Smith, and I knew very well he had no intention of helping me. Now I felt vulnerable; I knew Mr. Dentz wouldn't have permitted me to walk about freely in his absence.

I turned to the DNA lock controls and activated it. I heard the front door lock. I pressed a couple of keys on the keypad; no effect.

Now every door, every window in the house would only unlock for someone with a Y chromosome. Which I no longer had. I had been used to this method of imprisonment in Mr. Smith's house; but it had been nearly a month since I'd lived as a slave there, and the sound of the locks engaging was frightening.

Another act, rendering me progressively more helpless. And each dictated by Mr. Smith.

The key in my hand was now useless. I set it on a sideboard.

It was a simple matter - a ballgag, four leather cuffs and a single padlock from Mr. Dentz's cabinet in the basement. I knelt, trembling, brought my wrists behind me. I hesitated - only for a second - before I snapped the padlock shut, joining all four cuffs by means of the D-rings set in their faces. It was the last thing Mr. Smith had commanded me to do. Further instructions were unnecessary; I was completely helpless.

Now that I'd completed his instructions to the letter, I was left without a script to follow, and felt nervous and flustered. I had no idea what would happen next. Would Mr. Dentz even come today? Had he been told I would be here? Or would I wait and starve?

A folded note, in a sealed envelope, hung from a string around my neck. Mr. Smith hadn't let me read the contents.

I knelt, in Mr. Dentz's living room, and waited.

++++

Mr. Dentz read the note. He sat in a wicker chair, smoking a cigarette, glancing over at me from time to time, as he read.

Finally he stood, walked over to the fireplace, stacked a few logs on top of some kindling, and lit it. He waited until the fire was roaring. I felt the heat on my bare breasts, cheeks and thighs. He held the note over the flame. It caught, and he dropped it into the fire. It blackened, shriveled. Then it was gone. He returned to his seat. He lit another cigarette and looked at me without speaking for a long time.

I shifted my weight uncomfortably. I'd been kneeling for six straight hours.

"I came up for a little quiet fishing trip," he finally said. His tone was matter-of-fact, emotionless. "Now I find you." He exhaled smoke. "I bet you took a taxi from the train, and dumped your clothes somewhere inaccessible. Am I right?"

I nodded mutely. The ballgag left no room for my tongue to form even muffled words.

"Curious. It's hard to believe it's really you, Sam - that it was always you. And curiouser still that you would submit yourself to the indignity twice. One would think, after all you've been through, you'd have learned your lesson. You know, I'd always thought that girls like Anne-Marie were born, not made." He smiled. "You learn something new every day. Today I learn that a man I counted a friend has been living the life of a slave girl for the past year, right under my nose, and under my whip - and apparently will continue to do so, of her own free will. Hmmn. Was coming here your idea?"

I shook my head.

"So, you're a gift from Sam, I guess, as he says. Yet you obeyed and came. That's very like you - very Anne-Marie of you."

He sat in thought, then seemed to come to a decision. "Well now - Anne-Marie, I think is what I should continue to call you, since you really are the Anne-Marie I always knew - it looks like this is going to be an interesting weekend. I came to fish, and not ten minutes into the weekend I've already caught something. I have a choice to make, apparently - to reject or keep Sam's gift. In either case, you're still a woman - Sam made it clear he wasn't going to unlock your DNA. So the question is what to do with you. You make a very attractive package, a nice little present, all tied and prepared.

"Hmmn. There are decided benefits to keeping you. I know from experience that you're well trained. You were always my favorite before, and I don't see why that should change. I had use of you off and on for a year, and I imagine you're as pleasant a fuck as ever."

He stubbed the cigarette out. He leaned forward, his face inches from mine.

"You're at my mercy. You can't leave here without my help. You're a helplessly bound little fuckpet in a house with locks that won't open for you, ten miles from the nearest neighbor, with no clothes and no money. Whether you wished to come here or not, your agreement with Sam apparently stipulated that you come here, no? Therefore you've delivered yourself to me, I suppose, as part of the price of becoming the slave girl you are. Your slavery is a fait accompli. You're here, you're under my thumb, and I don't intend to release you."

He leaned forward, lifting my chin to look into my eyes. "I want you to understand something, Anne-Marie. I will be no kinder knowing who you once were than I was when, to me, you were just a pretty little slut. For it's clear now that that's all you really are - a sexy little cunt - and maybe always were. Do you understand me, bitch?"

I nodded, lowering my head.

"Good."

He sat back, then stood. He towered over me.

"You've had a month's reprieve from slavery, Anne-Marie. A month to unlearn behaviors which should be innate. A month to convince yourself you have a right to be free. I think some extensive retraining is in order. I think now I need to remind you what a whip feels like." He got up, pushed me over onto my side, and rearranged my restraints, so that my wrists were still cuffed behind me, but my legs were free.

"Get up, slut." I obeyed, shaking like a leaf, my cunt sopping wet. He grabbed my arm and led me to the basement stairs.

"This, I think, will be the best fishing trip on record," he said, chuckling as he led me down into the dark.

++++

Epilogue:

I never did become a man again, in case you're wondering.

By the time the DNA encryption technology used on me was made obsolescent by organic nano (replacing the microbots of old with programmable, self-aware bacteria), and I once more had the option of returning to my old gender without Mr. Smith's decryption key, I'd been Anne-Marie for six years. Long enough that being anybody else was pretty much out of the question.

Mr. Dentz gave me my freedom when he decided to settle down and marry. I don't begrudge him that - I'm not really cut out for the wife thing. I make a much better fuckpet.

So, I have freedom to choose again. And Mr. Dentz has given me an emancipation fund large enough to afford nano, so I could become male again if I wanted.

I don't. What I am interested in now, is the fact that I never really was a girl - I mean, a girl-child. My life as a woman started at eighteen.

Anne-Marie has become a good deal younger - like about eleven years younger.

Tomorrow, I'll be on a bus, on my way to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts. I'm part of the incoming freshman class. Phillips is one of the schools enlightened enough to permit age-regressed nano-mods to apply, if thier higher educational memories are wiped. They're more concerned about throwing the grade curve off than propriety.

Thirteen years old.

Nothing in my wardrobe fits me anymore. My breasts have developed, but the curves and all are still shifting, not where they'll be a few years from now, and I'm only 4'9". I'm a kid, really. Innocent again. Sort of. Probably more of a Lolita than anything else. Not that it's illegal for teachers to have sex with nano-regressed minors - it's not - and I'm looking forward to looking up to my teachers in more ways than one.

But you know, it isn't like the old days, when nano was expensive and a guy like Sam Smith could make a fortune from working the trade. Those were cowboy times.

Now you can buy it off the shelf - products like "Eternal Youth" deliver on the promise, and pills to "increase your sex drive" are so effective they come with intimidating advisory warnings on the packages. They even come with software interfaces so you can customize your appearance, age and sex to your heart's content. The little things log onto the Gov servers and register any changes.

A lot more people are changing gender than I would have thought. Largely it's for temporary, recreational purposes. There are even those who cross the species divide - to become horses, or eagles, or whatever.

And looking like a movie star has gone out of style. The natural look is in.

It's a brave new world, all right, though I sometimes wonder if it's lost some of the magic in the process. When I was first transformed, nano gender-reassigns were so rare that the fact that I was one, well, it made me feel special, chosen, in some way, for the life I now have. That anybody can be anybody, literally, within the reasonable bounds of the law, makes it seem...commercial.

But then I'm old fashioned. Inside this thirteen year old's head is a very old mind. I only have an 8th grade education now - and in a few days much of what I've written here will read like somebody else's lurid imaginings, since I'll be wiping all memories of my sexual history - I'll literally be a virgin again, physically, emotionally, and intellectually. But I'd have to do a total brainwipe in order to forget that I was born many decades before the date on my birth certificate. That I'm old, though my body is young.

They say youth is wasted on the young. Now it's hard to tell just what the hell that means, when anybody can be any physical age, and any gender. Every generation has trouble adjusting to the strange ways in which the world moves on, leaving them behind. But I think these are the first days of an era in which the generation gap will erode, blur, and eventually become meaningless.

Religions that espouse reincarnation are undergoing explosive growth. People always need to wrap meaning around what becomes possible through science, and now that one can literally become reborn, become a new incarnation of self, they feel a need to frame it in religious terms.

Me, I'm not ready for that yet. I want to remember who I once was, though I no longer much identify with the man I was born as. But I am willing to make concessions.

I'll remember who I was, but not my name. The name Sam Smith will mean nothing to me. Maybe the next time around, I'll be ready to be reborn fully - a new person with no memory.

But not yet.

 

++++

The end

 

 

 

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© 2002 by Alyssa S. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.