My first new story in a while. This involves themes of cybernetic fetish transformation, body mods, mind control, depersonalization, and general filth, so if that offends or upsets you, you should read something else. Those interested, I hope you enjoy.
“What’s transhumanism?” Abel asked. If Cliff’s law business demanded that they were going on a detour out to this cult compound or whatever it was before their date, he wanted to know what he was in for.
By now they were on the interstate outside town. Businesses and shopping centers were becoming sparse, and the houses further and further apart. “Transhumanism,” Cliff began, “is the notion that people can improve themselves by incorporating technology into their bodies, and into the consciousness, really, in such a way as to become something more than human.”
Abel screwed his face with disbelief and laughed a bit, unsure what to make of this. “So they’re like what, cyborgs?”
“Some of the ones who are further along, yes.”
Cliff laughed again. “Well you can see for yourself when we get there.”
Hearing that, Abel’s eyes got huge.
By now they were pulling off the four-lane onto an off ramp that fed onto a rural road that wound through unspoiled countryside. Tall trees stood at the shoulder.
Abel thought that if these people wanted seclusion, they chose the right place. “So what are they called? These transhumanists?”
Abel laughed at his own uneasiness. “Are they, like, friendly?”
“Very,” Cliff answered with a prim smile. “These are really good clients of mine, that’s why I don’t mind running out there after office hours before our date. And they’re completely harmless.”
“No Heaven’s Gate bullshit?”
“Promise.” Cliff added a knowing wink.
This reminded Abel how lucky he was someone like Cliff would ask him out. He had an incredible body, movie-star good looks of the sort that got better with a little bit of age, smart, professional.
Whereas Abel, though he still had the advantages of his 24 years and a 30” waist, was awkward, had a gigantic nose, stringy hair, and clothes purchased under the last president. Worse still, he was drifting out of his grad program without knowing precisely what he was drifting into. How was he to know a background in continental philosophy would not wow prospective employers?
So when Cliff had asked Abel out that day at the gym, Abel’s first instinct had been to look for hidden cameras. But finally, and only after some doing, had Cliff convinced him that his interest was genuine.
Abel had taken the whole incident to indicate he was letting his low self-esteem get the better of him. So he had bought new clothes for the date, and resolved that he wasn’t going to assume the worst, or engage in any of the countless forms of self-sabotage that made his sex life the wasteland it was.
They hung a right off the road and started ascending a winding driveway with woods on either side. Finally they emerged onto a lawn with a fairly non-descript large Tudor home looming at one end.
“Not exactly a futuristic choice of house.”
Cliff curled his lip at the tone. “I think the idea was that this was going to be something like camouflage.”
But before the words were completely out Abel blurted out a “holy shit!” and it took Cliff a bit to realize that he was referring to a man raking leaves at the edge of the yard. He was wearing what looked like some kind of close-fitting helmet and a tracksuit.
“’Daft Punk is playing at my house,’” Abel whispered, in a remembered singing voice.
“What’s that?” Cliff asked, oblivious.
Arriving at the front of the house, they pulled into a shallow line of six or seven parked cars. Cliff stopped, turned off the ignition, and looked at Abel with a serious expression. “Really, if you’d be better off in the car, I completely understand. I don’t want to take you out of your comfort zone.”
Abel bit his lip. He understood immediately that he was being tested. Cliff was older. Moreover, he was obviously a sophisticated, eclectic guy. Abel knew that if he hoped to build on this date, to turn it into something more permanent, he was going to have to show he could deal wasn’t delicate, or prudish, or conservative.
“No, you’ve piqued my curiosity.”
Cliff didn’t say anything to that, but just smiled and got out of the car. He climbed up the steps to the front door, Abel making an effort to catch up behind him.
Before Cliff could knock the door opened, just as Abel was reaching the top step. Behind it was a figure whose head was in a shiny hard black shell reminiscent of a motorcycle helmet but smaller and more contoured, like a fencing mask. It was featureless. The rest of the body was in a skintight latex sheathe with no visible zippers or seams.
Abel couldn’t keep himself from looking at the crotch, which betrayed no bulge at all. He could only imagine that beneath the rubber it was like a Ken doll. Everything about it completely unnerved him.
Without saying anything, the servant stood back from the door and gestured toward the right, where Abel could tell the door was open to a study.
They stepped in the door, first Cliff and then Abel. “Oh wait,” Cliff looked back at Abel and winked, “this is cool.” Then he turned to the faceless servant. “Fuck you, cunt.”
The figure in black did not respond or even move.
Then Cliff looked back at Abel: “part of their programming is that they lose pretty much all human ego. There’s no sense of self-interest, self-investment, or even really emotion. You can say whatever you want to them once they’re at servitor stage, and it’s all the same.”
“No thank you,” Abel answered, a sick expression on his face. “Isn’t it kind of sad?”
“Not really,” a voice came from the door of the study. An older man, slim, less muscular than Cliff, but nonetheless healthy stood there in ordinary slacks and a button-up shirt. “At least once you understand how that’s part of their choice.”
“Jasper!” Cliff called out, “how are you?”
“Good,” Jasper replied. “I am so sorry to call you out here after your ordinary work hours, but we wanted to be able to go ahead and file tomorrow morning first thing.”
Cliff walked over, shook Jasper’s hand and slapped him on the back. “Anything for my best client!”
“And who is this?” Jasper looked over at Abel. “You said you would have someone with you when you came by, but I don’t believe I’ve met this young man.”
“This is Abel,” Cliff answered, and it was to Abel’s disappointment he declined to specify further.
“Now I don’t want to keep you, but I do have just a few questions,” Jasper insisted.
Cliff sighed. “I figured.” Then he turned to Abel: “I hate to do this to you, but we have to go have this conversation in private, client confidentiality and all. Maybe you might want to go outside to the car?”
Abel was not about to be so easily dislodged. “No that’s fine, I’ll wait out here with—“With that he looked at the black-sheathed butler, who just stood there, still as a post.
“They don’t have names,” Jasper advised him, a bit embarrassed at the boy’s ignorance.
“Oh.” Abel’s tone was apologetic.
“Actually,” Jasper added, “there is a meeting down the hall if you want to sit in. A very basic introductory presentation.”
“Nah,” Abel shook his head. “I don’t think it’s for me.” He rather liked having memories, emotions and a sense of his own well-being, now that he thought of it.
“Well, there are refreshments.”
Abel laughed, “then how can I say no?”
With that, Jasper and Cliff turned to walk into the library. Cliff glanced back over his shoulder before shutting the library door behind him: “I promise, this’ll just take a second. I have no intention of losing those reservations.”
“Allow me to escort you to the information session.” Abel just about jumped out of his skin. The flat electronic voice came from the butler.
“Sure,” he answered, a little scared to refuse.
They started walking across the house’s two-story foyer. On the left, leading to the rear of the house, was a pair of paneled doubled doors. The servant reached in front of Abel and opened the door to let him in.
As promised there was against the side wall of the large room a buffet, with cold cuts, cheeses, fruit and wine. There was also a line of canisters of the type that looked that they might fit as replacements in an aerosol can. Abel smirked. WD-40?
The rest of the room was arranged in rows of chairs, with a small podium at the front. There were eight or nine people there, all men as far as he could tell. Two or three were wearing hoodies indoors, which made Abel uneasy. Two or three others looked like bodybuilders, but were dressed nondescript as possible, in gray unmarked sweatsuits.
Realizing the unnamed servant hadn’t followed him in but had just shut the door behind him, Abel realized it might be for the best if he just grabbed a glass of wine and found a secluded bench somewhere in this rambling house to wait for Cliff. His hand shaking, he started to pour a glass—
“No need to ask whether it’s your first time to one of these—“
Abel looked up with a start. One of the men in hoodies had wandered over and thought to make conversation. “Why’s that?” He didn’t really want to know, but it seemed the only thing to say.
“Just the general look of you, plus the fact that you’re still interested in things like wine.”
Abel studied the man. His eyes seemed hollow, unfocused, and different in some other way that Abel couldn’t quite describe. It was plain beneath the hood that either his head was shaved, or he was otherwise bald. But all the same, he seemed to have a kind smile. Abel wanted to trust him.
“So, why are you into all this?” Abel asked. “What’s so great about a life without wine?” He only realized too late he might have sounded too cocky.
He chuckled, a bit. “Freedom from conventions that make no sense to what we’re becoming.”
A shiver ran through Abel. “You mean who, don’t you? Who you’re becoming.”
“Maybe.” Abel grinned a bit. “But three weeks ago I had a co-actor, which is to say, something like an onboard computer but for people, installed. It analyzes my blood chemistry in real time. It compensates for any deficiencies and shapes my emotional life toward greater calm and productivity. So believe me when I say I really don’t miss wine.”
Abel’s answer was, first, to take a sip. “More for me, then. So where did they put this—?”
“Organ,” the man supplied. “It’s between my legs. Just behind the scrotum. No larger than a quarter, really.”
“Is it a big change for you?”
“No, not as much as you might think. They build you up to it. Much of what the co-actor supplies to the blood stream also comes in capsule form. It’s called manna. I took it for a few months before I had the co-actor implanted. I liked the changes. It wasn’t just that life was better, I was better, in every way.”
“I see.” This made Abel more, and not less, uneasy.
“Would you like to try some?” From out a pocket the man produced a small pill bottle. “I would actually describe the first time you take it as something of a high. It’s like an out-of-body experience.”
Abel laughed. “They sound habit-forming.”
“That, they’re very much meant to be.”
“So,” Abel took another sip of wine, “what else you got under the hood?” Still too cocky, he thought.
“Take a look.” With that the man pulled his back, revealing that where each of his outer ears used to be was now a mere small hole, the remnants of the middle and inner ear without the cartilage. “You may or may not have been able to notice, but the editors are so close-fitting they don’t leave enough room for paleo-human ears. Which if you ask me are awkward things anyway.”
“Yeah,” he answered. “You would refer to them as helmets. The servitor who showed you in here was wearing one.”
Abel screwed his face. “Why ‘editors’?”
“They fix your perceptions. Improve them. It’s not just that there’s a data rich display running inside, explaining what you encounter with your senses. It’s that things you need to know are emphasized and extraneous, mission-unnecessary things are automatically hidden so as to not present distractions.”
“I see.” This was honestly making Abel truly scared.
“Some of the latter stage synthetic organs, like Amanuensis, go further, rerouting some of your thinking functions and editing your memories.”
Abel re-filled his empty wine glass and laughed nervously. “And where does that one go?”
“Where do you think?” he answered. The scar from Amanuensis goes all the way from the forehead to the base of the skull. That’s usually when servitors start wearing the editor helmet fulltime.”
“So, what’s next for you?”
“Once they’re certain I’m free of infection from the previous surgeries, I’m going to have my vocal cords removed. From then on, when I speak it’ll be through electronic speakers in the editor. The same voice all servitors have. And part of the editor’s function is both to prevent undesired, and compel desired, speech.
“Really,” he continued, “it’ll be pretty much all the same. It’s not like by that point I’ll be able to tell what the editor wants and what I want apart. It’ll feel like it’s all one voice, smooth, without suture, without doubt.”
“Wow,” Abel said, trying to sound impressed when in fact he was terrified.
“It looks like we have several new people here.” The man standing at the podium, talking into the microphone, was musclebound, and dressed in a shirt that exposed extraordinarily thick arms. Only as an afterthought did Abel notice he was without ears too. He had long scars, running down the right side of his neck and beneath his chin.
Immediately, Abel started to wonder if the incisions he saw, and the surgeries that caused them, were related to the man’s enormous, exaggerated, almost inhuman, physique.
“You will forgive us if we do not do what normally happens now in presentations of this type and ask you to introduce yourselves,” the hulk-like speaker continued. Several people in the audience took this as if it were a funny joke, and the speaker himself smiled.
“But I do want to welcome you to the future of human consciousness. In the end, my ability to present what PostPersonage is about is limited, because I still represent an imperfect, incomplete artifact, a servitor still in the earliest stages of improvement.
“However, those limitations also represent the usefulness of me occupying the role I do, for those further along in the process of improvement are less able to communicate, to report back, in a way that those humans who are still limited by contingent evolutionary process, will understand.”
Abel looked around. All the other men were taking their seats. Some were nodding with great enthusiasm at what was being said at the head of the room.
“But my role is limited, not just by the place I occupy between human and posthuman. You see, PostPersonage in its truest sense is not an idea system that exists in the hierarchical relationship of teacher and student, leader and follower, boss and worker, or anything similar.”
“Don’t you want to take a seat?” The man wearing the hoodie who had been speaking to Abel leaned in and spoke, just above a whisper.
“I really do have to go,” Abel apologized, speaking low so as to not be heard, and more than a little worried. “My friend is probably waiting for me.”
The speaker at the lectern continued. “Instead, rather than my explaining PostPersonage to you as a doctrine, giving you reasons to pursue transformation within the structure it offers, I merely offer you the opportunity to experience it for yourself.
“In addition to the information-rich display, information retrieval and integration features, and the communications tools, our editor headgear offer in every way a superior alternative to evolutionarily contingent human organs.
“This is in fact why we are going to begin over the next year conducting research into next stage advanced editors. Rather than relaying sensory content through the overburdened and outdated human eyeballs, these superior models will require their extraction. Our only eyes will be the editor visiscreen.”
Awed murmurs spread through the room. A few figures, who Abel was certain had metal plates covering parts of their heads beneath their hoods, applauded.
But hearing it, Abel thought he might faint. He turned pale and swayed. Then he heard the voice from the lectern speak up. “You sir, would you like to try on one of the editor helmets yourself, and see what you think of the experience?”
“I promise, once you try it, you’ll never want to take it off.”
All the heads in the room turned and looked at Abel. “Uh,” his jaw worked soundlessly. He was unable to hide his panic. “I gotta find a restroom.”
And with that he shot out of the room, giving neither the guy at the podium nor the man he had been talking to the chance to say anything more.
Back in the hall, he realized he actually did have to piss. And maybe ducking into an enclosed space would help him regain some kind of calm. He certainly didn’t want to come off this way when Cliff got out of his meeting.
Just then a servitor walked by, carrying a large bouquet of mixed flowers towards the library. It was a different one than the one Abel had met previously, though he could just barely tell from slight differences in build and walk. Like the other, this one was clad head to toe in black latex with the identical close-fitting head-piece. “Excuse me,” Abel asked, “where is the restroom?”
“To the left side of the wall behind that door,” answered a smooth electronic voice that Abel queasily realized was identical to the first servitor’s. “Would you like assistance?”
“No.” Abel blurted out the word not wanting to really think too hard about the question.
Instead he ran headlong into the restroom.
At first sight the burgundy-walled room, richly finished in a steel trim, was much more like the restroom of a public facility than the bathroom of a home. It was large, obviously meant for gatherings rather than just whoever actually lived here. There was a stall, a bank of two urinals, and a sink separated from the rest by a half-wall that went up to the shoulder.
Cautious, still trying to catch his breath, Abel approached the sink. It was actually quite beautiful, in a way. There was a basin, a spigot and above that a mirror, all dressed in ultramodern gleaming steel. What set the fixture apart though was that just above the sink in place of knobs or some other means of operating the spigot were two black sculptured hands. Just below them and over a sink was a metal basket of towels.
Suddenly Abel realized the sculptured hands were the same color as the servitors’ latex skin. He extended his hand down towards the sink. One of the hands reached out to grab his, as the other turned itself palm-side down to reveal that on the back of the wrist was a raised line snaking beneath the surface, whether skin or latex he couldn’t know, terminating in what was apparently an implanted soap dispenser.
Unnerved, Abel walked over towards the urinal closest to him. There was a ledge over the urinals, indicating the wall had been modified when they were added, and now it was plain a gentleman could use it to set his drink down when he needed to piss.
Initially, the urinals themselves looked like the old-fashioned kind one usually doesn’t see much outside old buildings, recessed arches going all the way to the floor, with drains at the very bottom. These looked different however in that they were almost all steel.
Then as he came around the half-wall, Abel saw it. At the top of the urinal, at literal crotch height, was a chin. Literally, the lower half of someone’s face was hanging out of the fixture, with their mouth open, like a gargoyle. The rest of the face was buried within the wall, supported in place but also fixed in position by what looked like a thick rubber piece. However, there was no mistaking that the mouth and chin that hung there was human skin, maybe Mediterranean or Latino in ethnicity. The mouth closed, then opened. A tongue flicked inside.
“Jesus!” Abel jumped, and started to hyperventilate.
At that point came the sound of running water somewhere, and a well-dressed businessman stepped out of the stall, as nonchalant as if the encounter was at a roadside diner. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Abel answered with a ragged laugh. “Trust me, it wasn’t you that startled me.”
“Yes, well you know how it is. Someone thinks they’re alone. Which is the ruder thing to do? Announce your presence and ruin their privacy, or let them go on thinking they’re the only one there?” Something about his warmth set Abel at ease.
“You really want to try the new septic servitor they have in there. Very talented. And, they’ve cut a hole in the back of the cheek so he’s fully plumbed. When you’re done they just pump fresh water through, just like a flush toilet.”
Abel’s smile disappeared. It was possible he might vomit.
“Hahahahaha!” Something about the look on Abel’s face set the man laughing. “I guess you’re servitor-side, then?”
Abel felt really uneasy. “Why would you say that?”
“Clearly from how exercised you are over all this, it’s your first time here. But I’ve never seen a control-side man come in here, see these fixtures, and have a look on his face other than what a small child would have on their birthday, getting some gift better than they even thought existed in the world.”
“So there’s like two types, then?”
The man in the suit kept laughing. “You really are new to this, aren’t you? I am control-side. Now, there are several different programs that occupy control-side. The one I am identified with is Androgarchy. We are committed to using technology to create highly structured, service-based societies that are unapologetically, unabashedly, dominated by, and exist for, a select few men who take pleasure in, well, being men. All volunteer, of course.”
Abel gulped. “That sounds vaguely fascist.”
“Well that’s unfair,” the executive grinned. “One’s McDonald’s, and the other’s a Micheline star restaurant with foam, French words, and horrible but expensive greens on the menu.”
“I see.” It seemed the only thing Abel could possibly say to that.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” the businessman ducked in front of the mirror and slicked back his thinning blonde hair. “Go ahead and make use of the facilities.”
That didn’t sit well with Abel. “I might hold it for later.”
Suddenly kindness broke across the older man’s face. “I understand,” he answered, putting a hand on Abel’s shoulder. “It can be a difficult adjustment. But once you’re cropped, perma-cathed, and ported, you won’t be making use of any type of conventional toilet facility anyway.”
The Androgarch now started his way out of the restroom. “The name’s Claudius, by the way.”
“I thought—“Abel started.
“Oh, several groups on control-side, though not all, keep names. We that do call ourselves The Named. We’re kind of a thing.”
“Okay.” This made Abel more, and not less, nervous.
“One more question?” Claudius lingered there, the restroom door half-open.
“What?” Abel was genuinely terrified of what this might be.
“Have you been deeded and allocated yet?”
Whatever that was, Abel was certain it was worse than he could imagine. “I don’t know what that means.”
“You know, I think I’m going to stop by and have a chat with Jasper before I leave.” Claudius’s grin, and the way he stood there looking at him a second too long, suddenly made Abel sick to his stomach.
And with that he was gone. Abel decided to wait a few moments, and then he sprung out into the corridor. There was no way he was going to stay in this place a second longer. It was crazy. It was dangerous. Whatever game these people were playing, it was obvious that it had no boundaries with respect to him.
Claudius was just stepping inside the library when Abel bounded by just behind him, bolting down the front steps.
He would get in Cliff’s car, lock the doors, and wait. It was that simple. He had to put some kind of safety between himself and—
Abel stood there, terrified. Cliff’s car was gone. “FUCK!” He screamed, loud enough that the servitor still raking leaves on the front ground looked up, concerned that something was amiss, before going back to his assignment.
Getting out his cell phone, Abel called Cliff. No answer, no voicemail. He opened his mouth to scream. He was certain he was crying
When Abel woke it was in a delicately balanced half-light. He was on a hard surface, but his with his back partly raised and his knees up. It felt somehow clinical, but warmer and more welcoming than a hospital. Also, he could tell from a residual pain in his arm he was hooked up to some kind of an IV. “Okay, the balloon is fully inflated so the catheter is operational.”
The figure which had been bent over his crotch looked up. It was one of the servitors, behind the featureless opaque masks that now scared Abel far more than when he knew nothing about them.
He was naked? Why was he naked?
“Aaaah!” He tried to pull himself up, but the servitor rushed to push him back down again.
Then Abel realized the voice that spoke had not been the servitor’s. It hadn’t had the same electric drone they all had. It was a human’s voice.
Then another form looked over him. It was the guy he had talked to over that glass of wine before that horrifying speech. His hoodie was pulled down now. The earless outline of his head was just barely visible in the room.
“You were so upset when you realized Cliff had left, we were scared for your well-being.”
Immediately, Abel realized that both did, and did not, explain what had happened.
“It’s okay,” the man said, and this failed completely to set Abel’s mind at ease.
“Now, I want you to take this,” he held a capsule in his fingers for Abel to take between his lips.
To his own surprise, Abel did. And then looked up at the man. Suddenly he was resentful, though he could not quite put into words why. “What was that? What was that you gave me? Was it that—?”
Then the man turned to the servitor who was in the room. “Go ahead and strap him in place. I don’t think he’ll resist but we need to begin physical restriction training.” And with that, the servitor inserted Abel’s right wrist into a canvass cuff, which he threaded, fastened and tightened by his side.
“Now when I tell you it doesn’t matter, how does that make you feel?”
Abel wanted to yell at him “how the fuck do you think it makes me feel?” But instead he said, in a way that made him want to weep again, “good.” And after he said it, somehow he knew it was true.
The servitor moved now to cuff his right foot. Abel noticed, but did nothing.
“And when I tell you there was no date, that Cliff was not even a lawyer but a failed soap opera actor who gets paid five-hundred dollars for every future servitor he brings here, how do you feel?”
“See, and that’s good, isn’t it?” The man smiled. “Look, you have all these new feelings inside you, and right now, you don’t really have names and concepts to put to them. A lot of them don’t even feel like they belong to you.
“That was me, three weeks ago,” he continued. “A big part of what the process from here on out is going to be understanding the posthuman entity that you are becoming. And you can’t do that with the concepts you’ve been made to think with all your life, like consent and freedom.”
“But I don’t want—“the thought left him.
“Don’t worry about it,” the man put his hand on Abel’s shoulder, as the servitor tightened the strap on the left foot.
“Now, I have a surprise for you.” And with that, the guy in the hoodie produced what looked to Abel at first like a large black tulip. He set it down on his naked crotch.
“The artificial plastic muscle fibers enable it to tighten further and with more strength than the human version, and the cybernetic interface will provide you greater control so you will be able to flex it with greater dexterity even than you do the fingers of your hand. It is ridged for additional pleasure, and it comes with the standard port utility.” As he spoke, the servitor tightened the final, left strap. Abel barely noticed that he didn’t move as it did so.
“Oh my God,” Abel’s whole body went numb.
“This is going to be your first enhancement. You have been allocated to Androgarchy, so violence, cigars and penthouses are in your future. One of the leading, or worst, Androgarchs, has taken an interest in your posthuman development. The list of enhancements requested for you seems to get longer by the hour, many of them involving cutting-edge, first-of-their kind septic functions.
“But what if—“once again, he lost his train of thought.
Abel wanted to curse at him. He wasn’t worried that he wasn’t going to like them, he was—
Suddenly his mind was blank. He shook himself to when the servitor jammed a large hypodermic needle into his balls.
“What the fuck?” he cried out.
Abel panicked even more, as he felt something sliding over his face. He couldn’t see. “This is just a temporary editor,” the man explained. It’s going to start assisting you in the process of adapting to life post-identity and post-humanity.
Something clicked into place. A face-plate tightened. There were whirring noises as the two metal halves of the editor came together around the front and back of his head.
Then something pushed its way into Abel’s nostrils. He felt something pumping through it. There was nothing between it and him. He had to breathe it. Then the thought hit him: why would he not want to? Nothing here was to hurt him—
“I—“he started, but a metal piece under his jaw slid into place tight, so that he could not move his mouth at all.
Then there was nothing but static and chaff, and the realization that he was cumming, over and over again, as hard as he could, without even knowing why, jerking against the restraints like he was in a seizure.
And then he simply wasn’t there anymore. He wasn’t anywhere.
