It’s Friday evening, and Dr. Haskins unexpectedly comes by the Delta lab. Two young women are working there despite the work day being done. There was no reason to stop since they were locked in.
“I need one of you two to come with me.” Haskins points to the first woman. “You.”
The woman hesitates. “I’m right in the middle of finishing up one of the receiver node’s Zero-G testing plans. Can this wait?”
“No. Come.”
The second woman stands. “I just finished up my work for the day. Maybe you could take me instead?”
Dr. Haskins considers this and shrugs. “Sure. It makes no difference.”
The first woman returns to her work, and the second woman follows Haskins. They walk side-by-side to the elevators. The two make a contrasting pair.
She’s gorgeous, flawless, and gifted, and she knows it. The evidence is in her three doctorates and her understanding of higher dimensional topology that surpasses everyone else on the planet. It’s also in her body. Ten weekly hours at the gym had kept her form tighter than the tucked sheets of a drill sergeant’s bed. Meanwhile, Haskins is a portly little man with a history of bureaucracy, divorce settlements, and maybe a science degree or two. She always figured that the only reason he’s her boss is because he came from Washington. He knew the right people.
They get off on the second floor, and he leads her to an equipment bay. Here, Dr. Shun Yano is waiting for them. He’s the equipment oversight manager at this facility, arguably third in line in the pecking order, at least where it concerns the program.
In his hands is a bulky injector gun—the kind used to embed trackers under the flesh of test animals. The woman is well familiar with it, and what it’s used for here.
“Lift your hair,” Haskins says.
“Wait,” she replies. “What is this?”
“Lift your hair,” he repeats.
She lifts the back of her blond hair up. Yano presses the gun to the back of her neck and pulls the trigger. The punch rattles her skull. Pain explodes from the contact point. She staggers. Thanks to her heeled pumps and the pencil skirt constricting her legs, she would have toppled if Yano didn’t catch her.
Except he isn’t just holding her. Yano pulls her hands behind her back. Handcuffs snap around her wrists. She can’t rub at her neck now like she wants.
“What’s going on?” she asks.
Haskins answers. “I’m taking you to some men who would like to have sex with you. They’re all going to take a turn doing whatever they want to you, and afterward, we’re going to kill you and have your body incinerated.”
The woman blanks. “What?”
“I’m sure you realize we just put a micro-bomb in your neck. If you resist or try to run, I can detonate it remotely.”
“But… I… I just started my work in that lab today.”
“We never intended for you to work for us,” he replies.
“Wait… But… is that really the only reason I’m here?”
“Well, it was you or the other one, but yes.”
Oh right. She volunteered. If she’d stayed quiet when Haskins had arrived…
“Are you going to be a problem?” Haskins holds up a small device. It would be keyed to the bomb in her brain.
“No, no,” she says. “I just… this is happen very quickly. And why are you doing this?”
“There’s no point in explaining it. You’re going to be dead soon, so why don’t you just come along. After all, you’re the one who rationalized this.”
Well, shit. He’s right about that. Truthfully, she put herself in this situation with her own experiment. So fine.
Dr. Haskins and Dr. Yano lead her onward, and though she follows, her heart starts to race.
“This idea is crazy,” said Dr. Haskins. “It’s not just that, it’s unethical. It’s probably illegal.”
“It’s rational,” Eleanor replied. Legs crossed, she sat across from him in his office, having arrived uninvited as she usually did. Whatever he’d been doing could wait. “I spent the entire afternoon in communication with the Harris shuttle trying to walk them through the orbital L-node setup, and it’s still not done. I’ll have to spend tomorrow holding their hand too. It will amount to nearly twenty-four hours away from my work to deal with those imbeciles.”
“Those astronauts have over thirty years of training and education between them.”
“As far as this project is concerned, they’re imbeciles. There was a mere six-second round-trip delay in my communication with them, and after four hours of correcting their mistakes, I wanted to smash the console to pieces. How exactly are these teams supposed to operate these nodes once we move to the solar stage of the project? The delay will be twenty to thirty minutes.”
“By then the teams will have figured it out,” Haskins replied. “This is the first time these astronauts have worked with this technology. They’re still figuring it out.”
“They will never figure it out. You can find the smartest and most capable teams in the world, they will never be as qualified as me.”
“Look. Maybe not everyone is as brilliant as you are—”
“It’s not simply brilliance. I was writing papers on higher dimensional topology in college. I designed the manifold we’re using today—”
“You were on the team that designed it.”
“We both know I’m the reason this project moves forward. No one understands deformation physics like I do. Every minute of mine is more valuable than an hour of any other member of this team.”
“You’re not irreplaceable.”
“I’m absolutely irreplaceable. I’ve always been irreplaceable. This project dies if I disappear.”
“Other people will catch up.”
Eleanor scoffed, recrossed her legs. “Let’s pretend for a second that anyone in the space agency has the capability of understanding this technology as well as I do. The time and resources it would take to train not one, but six people for each shuttle mission, is one of the greatest bottlenecks we face. My idea would waste far less time and money. All we’d need is for me to undergo the same training the astronauts do, and Lord knows I’m capable of that. We use the matter manifold on our most valuable assets. Well, I am this project’s most valuable asset. Send me.”
“I’m not sure you’ve considered the ethics of what you’re proposing—”
“Of course I have. There’s nothing unethical about this. I’m consenting.”
“…Or the legal ramifications—”
“There are no laws regarding this.”
“There would be if Congress knew we were considering this. The very idea of this would set the public off—”
“The public would never have to know.” She enjoyed interrupting him. It saved herself the time of having to listen, especially since she’d long since predicted his side of this argument. “Once the crews are away, who’s to say who’s aboard?”
“…And when the crews return to Earth in five years?”
“I stay behind.”
He settle back into his chair and eyed her. “So you’d die up there?”
“That would be the idea.”
“No. I don’t think you’ve really thought this through. You’d work in tough conditions for years, and your reward would be to starve to death or suffocate when the air runs out.”
“Of course not. I’d euthanize myself.”
He scoffed. “Not a chance.”
“You’re going to stop me despite how beneficial it would be to the project?”
“I’m not saying I’ll stop you. I’m saying you can’t. You’re only thinking about it theoretically. It’s going to be a very different story once you’re up there, and you know you’re going to die. You’ll get cold feet. The will to survive is human nature.”
“It is a simple human instinct, and like any other instinct, such as our cognitive dissonance or our general selfishness, we can use our rational minds to overcome it. At least I can.”
“The will to survive is a little stronger than our tendency to clutch to irrational opinions.”
“Nonsense. One need only to internalize that death is a change of state. Our fear of it is nothing more than a leftover from our evolution. It was beneficial in nature, but not now.”
“Not even you can shake your fear of death. You don’t walk down dark alleys, do you? You don’t play Russian roulette. You eat healthy.”
“My reasons to avoid death are rational. This project is my live’s work. If I die, it dies. I keep my health up so I can work more effectively. That is it. If I no longer face these obligations, then death is of no concern.”
“You’re just telling yourself that.”
“No.” She leaned forward. “I mean it, and I’ll prove it to you. We’ll conduct an experiment…”
Since it’s after work hours, no one is around to see Haskins escorting the woman through the facility. They arrive at the loading bay. Here, rocket parts would come and go, along with billions worth of equipment all intended to be run through the Manifold. In her life, she’s been here three times, once during the tour after the facility was complete, and twice more to find out why equipment she’d ordered hadn’t arrived.
To her surprise, ten men are gathered here, some who work the loading bay, some scientists, and a few of the space team. They aren’t working, but drinking. Beer cans litter the ground, and some awful hiphop music blasts from a bluetooth speaker someone brought in.
They begin cheering and applauding at her approach, as though the stripper has finally arrived to the bachelor party.
“Please tell me these aren’t the men,” she whispers to Haskins.
“They are.”
“They’re with the project.”
“Yes. They are.”
“They’re not supposed to know about the experiment.”
This time he doesn’t reply. Instead, he steps forward and addresses the men. “Gentlemen. I present to you Delta. She’ll be entertaining you tonight.”
More hoots and hollers.
“Who among you is first?”
One man finishes his beer and steps forward—Marco Beni, sales manager. He’s a man who keeps filling up their Manifold batches with government hardware, leaving barely any room for supplies intended for the very Manifold project he’s supposed to be furthering. He has no vision past dollar signs.
Marco grabs her and pulls her along. With her hands still cuffed behind her, she stumbles in her heels and nearly falls into him. He just grabs her and hooks an arm under her knees to carry her like a bride. Everyone finds this hilarious.
He takes her to a cleaning closet down the hall from the warehouse floor. It smells like bleach and dust. Here, he presses her up against a yellow plastic cleaning cart and paws at her breasts through her cream silk blouse. Her bound hands pinch painfully between her back and the plastic. Should she resist? No. Not yet anyway. She is supposedly prepared for this.
With a yank, he tears her blouse open. Buttons launch off. He yanks down her bra, and her ample tits wobble free. He squeezes and tweaks her perfect pink nipples, and stooping, he sucks on them.
The woman’s heart is hammering. She’s starting to hyperventilate, and yet she feels herself getting wet. All her fantasizing and mental preparation frazzles together her mind. Can she actually go through with this, now that it’s actually happening?
Marco sees her expression. “Yeah. It’s sinking in, huh? That’s why I’m glad to go first. I’ll be the one who breaks you in.”
Her can’t think of what to say. “…Oh.”
“You’ll be saying that nice and loud in a second.” He fidgets at his trousers and brings out his cock. “Now it’s my turn, Eleanor. It’s time to make you pay for all those times you’ve been a complete bitch.”
Marco yanks her pencil skirt around her belly and her panties down to her knees. He situates to stab his cock inside her. Despite everything else going on in her head, one thought stands out.
“My name isn’t Eleanor,” she says. “It’s Delta.”
“Oh. Right. Sure.”
And he stabs inside her. The gangbang has begun, and Marco channels every grievance he’d ever had with Eleanor into her to try and make this gangbang into a rape.
They had to let Dr. Yano know about the experiment since they needed his help smuggling her into the Manifold. He’d been with the project nearly as long as Eleanor had, and unlike a bureaucrat like Haskins, he hadn’t needed convincing. He saw the value in this experiment.
Yano and Haskins had worked together to seal Eleanor into a wood cargo crate. Cramped in a fetal position with her pack of toiletries, she prepared to wait for hours. First, the crate had to be wheeled into the staging area, along with shuttle parts, military equipment, electronics, pharmaceuticals, and an entire crate of laboratory mice. Those last ones were property of AlvinKline, the pharmaceutical company. All of it would be loaded into a specialized shipping crate and then shunted through a high-energy spacial manifold. It’d arrive at two destinations on the other side.
In practical terms, perfect duplication.
The world was on the verge of becoming a post-scarcity society thanks to this technology. Masterwork products would become cheap and common. The only problem was it required a machine so massive and sophisticated, it made the Large Hadron Collider look like a convection oven, and generating the manifold for a single use required annihilating over four tankers of liquid hydrogen in a specialized containment system. Each run cost millions of dollars, but if they were to use a more efficient container of unlimited hydrogen—the sun?
Setting up the solar orbital manifold would take over two hundred shuttle launches and six longterm voyages around the solar system, but if it worked—and the science said it would—they could duplicate entire spaceships around the sun, many times a second instead of twice a week, and at negligible costs. Every problem humanity faced would be solved.
But it would take sacrifice. Eleanor understood that, so here she was, proving it. Hot and sweaty inside her box, she could hear the cargo inspections. They confirmed that her box was in the manifest as a Manifold Project resource. Fitting.
The box jostled when they loaded it into the Manifold along with everything else. A hum came. She was nervous, but knew she would be all right. Countless crates of laboratory animals had survived this trip.
The shunt felt like the box dropped—sudden weightlessness for a fraction of a second, and then thump. She banged her head and bumped her butt, but all she could think was that in the other reciever chamber, an alternate version of her now existed, and she’d just suffered the same bruises.
Unloading took hours. They moved her by dolly three times. She had to pee so badly, but the moment someone began prying the lid off her crate, that concern flittered away. The Decision was going to happen now.
Light and cool air rushed in when the lid lifted. She blinked. Yano was there to help her out. She stood on stiff, cramped legs. They were in Haskins’s office, and there she was—her alternate. Haskins and Yano had let the other out first, and she’d watched, sitting on her own crate, as they’d helped Eleanor step out.
Her twin looked strange—not really a mirror reflection. Same business skirt, same blouse soaked through with sweat, same exhaustion, and the same look of marvel. There were two of her.
The other cautiously approached and reached. Eleanor touched hands with her double, and her double chewed her lip. They were both having the same thought…
“Now we decide,” Haskins said. His words broke the moment.
Night after night, Eleanor had imagined herself at this point. All of her rationalizing and debating had told her that she could do this, that she truly believed that she had mastered her own instincts and could accept this decision, and yet every fiber inside her was wired up. It took everything inside her to keep her breath steady and wear a face of calm.
Her double was already doing just that, but Eleanor could see the tremble in her double’s fingers.
Haskins brought out a penny. “The one who’s face comes up on this coin-toss is the one we pick to be the subject.” He pointed to Eleanor. “Heads.” He then pointed Eleanor’s double—who was no less Eleanor than Eleanor was. “Tails.”
He flipped the penny.
So much adrenaline was coursing behind Eleanor’s calm veneer that she could have counted the flips of that coin. A fifty-percent chance. One-to-one. Live or die.
The coin fell noiselessly onto Haskins’ office carpet. He stooped to see. Neither Eleanor did. She’d told herself earlier that she’d act more dignified than to stoop to learn her fate.
“Tails.”
The sudden release of tension was so great her knees nearly buckled. It wasn’t her. But the other one—the Eleanor across from her—her body was still wired. Her eyes flickered wider, but the control was back. Both women were experiencing a different soup of emotions, but externally they mirrored each other, as she’d promised herself they would.
Haskins straightened. “It’s you,” he said to the double unnecessarily. He then pointed to Eleanor. “So let’s make this clear now to avoid confusion. From now on, you are Eleanor.” He pointed to woman across from her. “And you are now trial subject Alpha. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly,” Alpha replied. There was a quiver to her voice. Haskins caught it too, given his little smirk.
“Yano,” he said. “Are you ready?”
Yano approached Alpha holding an injector gun. “Can you lift your hair?”
Alpha scooped her hair together and bowed her head forward so that Yano could press the gun’s tip to the base of her skull.
He hesitated. “You are sure about this? We won’t be able to take this out.”
“Do it,” Alpha said. Less quiver.
Yano pulled the trigger. A hydraulic thump sounded, and Alpha buckled forward, face twisted in pain. She rubbed the injection point. In the base of her brainstem was now a micro-bead. She was officially a test subject now.
“All right,” Haskins said. “You two can go home. You can figure out between the two of you which one of you will come into the office and which of you works remotely. Make sure when you ride home that one of you hides in the back seat. We can’t have any traffic camera’s pick up—”
“We know, Haskins,” Eleanor said.
“We’ve put a lot more thought into this than you have,” Alpha added.
“Great. Twice the arrogance,” Haskins muttered. “But remember this, Alpha. That’s your name now, you’re not Eleanor. You’re a test subject, and once the test is over, you come back here to die, so that we can dispose of your body. And if you get cold feet, and you try to run—”
“Then you will detonate the bead in her skull,” Eleanor said.
“I’m not going to run, Haskins,” Alpha added. “In two weeks I must be euthanized, or I put the project at risk.”
“Fine. Then both of you get out of here. I’ll see you both in the Manifold venting chamber two weeks from now.”
With a calm front, Alpha strode from the room. Eleanor didn’t.
Haskins frowned at her. “Is there something else?”
“We leave for the car separately, so that in case anyone is still in the building, they don’t see us together. Surely you’d considered that, Dr. Haskins.”
His look was dark. No he hadn’t.
“We’re more prepared for this than you can fathom,” Eleanor told him.
Marco unceremoniously finishes inside of her. He stays leaned against her catching his breath, while she awkwardly waits. Eventually he pulls away and tucks away his dick.
“That was what? The third time a man has ever fucked you?” he asks.
She gapes back at him.
He chuckles. “Jesus, you’re like a virgin. You’re actually bashful.”
Abruptly, he pulls her close and kisses her. His tongue forces its way into her mouth. Somehow, this act leaves her more startled than their abrupt fuck.
Just as abruptly, he pulls away. She’s left breathless.
“Figure I should kiss a virgin while I can,” he says. “By tonight, you’re going to be too used used up to be worth kissing. Wait here.” And with that, he leaves.
She remains, leaned against the cleaning cart, her blouse torn open, her work skirt about her waist and her panties about her knees. Hands cuffed behind her. She was too stunned to move.
Somehow he was right. That was her third ever time. As much attention as she’d gotten from men in her life, she’d hardly ever engaged with anyone. It was a consequence of her accelerated childhood. As a young girl prodigy, she’d entered undergrad at twelve and got her first doctorate—particle physics—at a record-setting seventeen. Her childhood was one prolonged study session, with her parents and teachers pushing her constantly onward, away from distractions. Her first rebellion had been an unremarkable undergrad at Cornell, but he ghosted her after learning she was only sixteen. Her second was a fellow scientist during her internship at FelterSmith Labs. The sex had been nice, but his following attempts to for a relationship had distracted from her work. Despite protection, both times had left her dreading STDs and pregnancy, both of which would have been disastrous in her pursuit of her higher dimensional deformation theory—the Manifold.
But that doesn’t matter anymore, a good thing since Marco’s cum is now basting inside her. Nothing matters anymore, not her work, nor her health, nor her education, nor her dream. Eleanor will carry the torch. All she has to worry about is the next man who comes into this closet.
Footfalls come down the hall outside. Hastily, she tugs up her panties and pulls her skirt back down. Why? She’s not sure. Decency, perhaps, or maybe she’s making herself presentable.
One of the equipment bay crew enter. She doesn’t know his name. Pedro, maybe. Is that racist?
The man closes and approaches. No words. He yanks her skirt and panties to her ankles. It seems she just slowed him down by correcting them.
When he sees the cum leaking from her, he grunts. The closet has rolls of single-ply brown paper towels. He unravels more than necessary and uses the giant wad to scrub at her pussy. The paper abrades. It dries her up. She doesn’t remark though, only watches him work.
After that, jeans down, hard cock free, and he’s inside her.
Ohh. He’s big. This fills her. She should be mortified by all of this, but maybe she’s finally starting to internalize all that she boasted she could do.
She has no future. The worst thing that could ever happen to her is already going to happen. If she can accept that, she’d be free.
Eleanor kicks one high-heeled foot free from her skirt and panties. She wraps it around the man to take him deeper.
“I’ll keep looking,” Alpha clicked through the numbers on the laptop, “but in my opinion, this is the best alignment we can use.”
“If that’s your opinion, then it is the best,” Eleanor replied. She’d have to look over the finer points, but the manifold heat simulation seemed good to her—not as good as she’d hoped, but certainly satisfactory, and certainly better than what any of the crew at the office would come up with.
“Still,” Alpha replied, “I should walk you through my thought process. These results are satisfactory, but they aren’t as good as I’d hoped, and I think you should see why.”
“Of course.” Eleanor smiled at the curious parallel between her thoughts and her doppelgänger’s words. Finally, a colleague who was her intellectual equal. These last week, she’d come to look forward to returning home, where Alpha would have spent the day working on tasks that had historically been a waste of her time, but still too important or challenging to leave in the hands of other scientists.
They’d sit on her couch together. Alpha would recap all of the work she’d done on Eleanor’s behalf. All Eleanor did was listen, and watch, and marvel at how she was getting tutored by her perfect copy.
Well, not perfect anymore. Eleanor’s makeup was on point, as it always was when she left the house, while Alpha didn’t look like she’d bothered showering. Eleanor wore one of her usual silk blouses and work skirts, while Alpha was in a scanty tank top and panties. Her cleavage was practically spilling out.
…and what was that on her neck? Was that…?
“Do you have a hickey?” Eleanor asked, interrupting Alpha’s recap.
“What? Do I?” Alpha felt her neck. “I haven’t really looked in the mirror today.”
“How do you have a hickey?”
“It’s probably from last night. While you were at the shareholders conference, I took a bus across town to a bar.”
“And did what?”
Alpha grinned evilly. “You know what. You had the same fantasies I did.”
Eleanor stared, astonished. “I thought about it. I didn’t think I’d actually go through with it.”
“Maybe one day if your imminent death becomes certain, you’ll think about it a lot more.”
“So what happened? Tell me.”
“What’d you’d expect. I met a guy. We talked. Then he took me back to his hotel.” She mouthed her next words. “Three times. ”
Eleanor covered her mouth in shock. “Oh my God. Where was this?”
“Some seedy dive in Weston. Don’t remember the name. Don’t remember his either.”
“But isn’t it…? What about…?”
“The consequences?” Alpha replied.
“What about my reputation? What if someone recognizes you?”
“Trust me. At the bar I was at, no one knew anything about the scientific community.”
“But still, if word got out that I was seen in a bar like that—”
“It would what? Ruin your reputation? You know very well everyone at work resents us. And the shareholders don’t care what we do as long as it doesn’t risk the project. We are rational, aren’t we? A reputation is of no real value to us. All that matters is that our work is complete. I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”
“But, I…” Eleanor stumbled for words. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s not like you don’t deserve to enjoy yourself.”
“Certainly not,” Alpha replied. “And actually, now that it’s out in the open, can I count on you staying here so I can go out tonight?”
“Again?”
“I have ten days left to live. Should I put it off?”
“But shouldn’t we prioritize work.”
“Of course we should,” Alpha said, “but after I’ve given you my recap, there’s nothing more to talk about. There’s no point in you catching me up on what you’re doing, and there’s no point in my remaining here afterward. It’s not like we have anything to talk about.”
“Well… uh… all right, I guess.”
“Great. Let’s finish up quickly then.”
In the mornings that followed, Alpha would not be in the house when Eleanor woke up, but come night, she’d be back and at work, ready to recap. However, they did develop something to talk about after work was done.
“So what did you do last night?” Eleanor would ask.
“Last night, two men. They fondled me at the bar. I was topless in public?”
“Seriously?”
“Then I fucked them both in their truck in the parking lot.”
The next night, Eleanor asked again.
“I sucked a guy off in a public bathroom,” Alpha replied. “I didn’t even know his name.”
Eleanor gasped. “Oh my God! Why?”
“Because it was so fucking hot. That’s why. So hot I played with myself in the stall while two guys watched.”
“You slut!”
“I know!”
Another night: “Anal!”
Eleanor gasped. “Oh my God! What was it like.”
“It took some getting used to, but by the third guy, I was loving it.”
“Three guys?!”
“No. Four. It’s a good thing won’t have to worry about my ass recovering, because I think it’s ruined!”
And later: “A gangbang.”
“How many?”
“Why don’t you count for me.” She spun and tugged down the micro skirt she’d taken to wearing. Sloppy tally marks scored the globes of her blemished and bruised ass.
“Really?” Eleanor said.
“Well, go on, count for me. I was very drunk, and I don’t remember.”
The number was fourteen.
Every night Eleanor came home, it took more willpower for her to wait until after work was done to find out what Alpha had gotten up to. Sometimes Alpha would be coy about the details, especially after she came back late Sunday after having disappeared for the weekend.
She looked cheaper. That’s how Eleanor would have put it. Alpha put it differently.
“I look like a dirty tramp.” Alpha spun around let Eleanor look her over, from the garish makeup to the six-inch stiletto heels. “Look at it this way,” she said. “No one will ever mistake me for you.”
“What did you do?”
“I’m going to keep this weekend as my personal secret,” she said, “but here’s a hint.” She reached down her cleavage into her strapless top and brought out a bundle of bills. “Here’s eight hundred dollars for rent money. I’ll let you imagine what shameless things I did to earn it.”
“Are you really enjoying doing this to yourself?”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Alpha replied. “Everything we’ve done with our lives has been for our future. We study. We work. We train our perfect body and protect our health. Everyone has has always had such high expectations for our future, but finally, I have no future. The worst thing that could ever happen to me is already going to happen. Once I accepted that, I was free.”
After the equipment crew member finishes in her and leaves, she doesn’t bother pulling her panties or skirt up. Handcuffed as she is, it would be incredibly awkward, and what’s the point?
She kicks them aside. All she wears now is her cream blouse and her heels. Her pussy drips, and her blonde bush feels damp with perspiration. If she’d known she was going to be gang-banged today, she might have shaved, but it’s too late to worry about that now.
Another man enters. She knows him. He works on the magnetic containment system. Four times in the past his mistakes nearly caused the Manifold’s plasma to leak. She personally caught two of those mistakes and demanded Haskins fire him, but apparently men of his expertise are hard to recruit, and “he’s only human. It’s why we double-check each other’s work.”
She spreads her legs for him.
The man speaks while he fucks her. “You like this, bitch? Giving me so much shit over the years, when you should have been on you knees servicing men. It’s where women like you belong.”
More nasty sexism, just like Marco. It should have left her feeling appalled. Instead, the words stirred her now. After all, nothing worse can happen to her.
He climaxes first though and leaves her frustrated.
The next man was on the hardware maintenance team. “To think I once respected you,” he says. “I guess underneath all great women, they’re just sluts.”
Getting closer still, but not quite. She shouldn’t be going along with this, not with the project team.
The next man is one of the space crew down on leave. “You know what we’re going to happen to all those copies of you we’re going to send onto the shuttles? Once we’re out in space, you’re going to become the ship’s slut. Your duties are going to be to keep our balls drained.”
This snaps her out of her lust. They’re perverting the Solar Manifold project. This is exactly why she didn’t want the crew getting involved. Her reason for going to spaces is supposed to make sure the greatest world wonder of mankind comes to be. Now she might just get fucked and abused up there.
Nothing must interfere with the project, not even this.
The man keeps fucking her. Damn his cock feels good. He whispers in her ear about what filthy things he and the other astronauts are planning on doing to her.
They’re dirty things.
Nasty things.
She’ll have to make a plan to protect the Solar Manifold project later, if ever. Right now, she needs more cock.
It’s not like she has a choice.
“You’re both here,” Haskins said as he emerged up the ladder chute.
Yano came up behind him and saw for himself. “Huh. Glad I didn’t take you up on the bet.”
“Did you think we wouldn’t be here?” Alpha asked. Eleanor and Alpha had been waiting in the venting chamber above the Manifold’s annihilation core for twenty minutes now. The boys had flashlights with them, but they was unnecessary. The Eleanors had brought an electric lantern each which lit the chamber far better.
For a heat duct, the space was spacious. Room enough for the men to stand across from the two women.
“I knew you’d be here,” Haskins said. “I know how stubborn you are. You’d die before admitting you made a mistake. Yano here thought Alpha would be in South America by now, paying some veterinarian to pull that bomb out of her skull.” He looked the women over. “Which one of you is Alpha anyway?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Eleanor asked. That was a tease. Of course it wasn’t. Despite how much of a tramp Alpha had turned into, come the morning of her last day, she and Eleanor had worked together to clean her up, remove her piercings, and turn her back into a mirror reflection. Her clean shaven snatch and her score of rashes and hickeys were all hidden under a two-thousand dollar dress suit, exactly like Eleanor’s.
“Do I need to press this button to figure it out?” Haskins held up a small remote.
“It’s me.” Alpha stepped forward.
Haskins studied her. “Welcome to the End of the Line. Any last words?”
“Don’t be foolish.”
“No regrets? No butterflies in your stomach?”
“Not a single one. As we’ve told you, we are psychologically prepared for this.”
And for what Eleanor could tell, this was true. She had always figured that if there was ever a day her double would regret this, it would be the last, when she’d be looking down the barrel. But all morning, while Eleanor could feel her pulse racing at the thought of what was about to happen, Alpha didn’t even have a quiver in her hand. This morning in the car, she’d talked nonchalantly about her coming death as though she were talking about an upcoming vacation.
“All right then.” Haskins lifted the cap off the remote.
“Wait!” Alpha said. “Actually, there is something I’d like to say.”
Haskins’ eyebrow went up. “Well, go on.”
“To Eleanor. And only to Eleanor.”
Alpha turned and approached. Eleanor was unsure what to do. This was unexpected. In all her pre-split pondering about how she’d behave in these final moments, she’d never imagined having a final message for her surviving counterpart. What could she possibly have to say that Eleanor didn’t already know?
But clearly Alpha had something. She pulled Eleanor in close by the waist to bring her mouth to Eleanor’s ear. And to Eleanor’s shock, she felt lips suckle her earlobe. This was the ear facing away from the men. They couldn’t see. Eleanor tried to keep her face straight, but she was sure she failed.
Then came the words.
“You could be me some day.”
Alpha broke away and strutted to Haskins. She snatched the remote from his hands, sat down on the vent floor, and pressed the button.
A small pop, like a cracking joint.
Alpha jerked and slumped onto her side. Eyes open. Face calm.
Everyone stood in stunned silence, including Eleanor.
“Holy shit…” muttered Yano.
Eleanor felt the same. She had known academically that it would come to this, but seeing it was so much different, and yet Alpha had been fearless. She’d changed so much in such a short time.
Eleanor thought about the stories of Alpha’s adventures—things Eleanor would never dare do.
She steadied herself with a breath before speaking. “Well, Dr. Haskins. Clearly this experiment was a success. Clearly I am psychologically prepared for the consequences.”
“Clearly…” Yano said.
“Contact the Florida team and arrange for me to undergo space training. When the time comes for the shuttles to break from Harris station, we will create eight copies of me.”
Haskins recovered from his own shock. “Eight? You mean seven. One for each of the six shuttles, and one of you to stay here.”
Eleanor thought about Alpha’s clitoral-hood piercing. Alpha had let Eleanor play with it…
“Eight,” she corrected. “Making both seven and eight copies require three uses of the Manifold. There’s no reason not to create an extra.”
“We’d have an unnecessary copy of you.”
“Not at all. I’ve been twice as productive these last two weeks thanks to this trial, but after we launch the shuttles, that’s when our work down here really begins. We’ll be under severe time-crunch, and we’ll benefit greatly if I can double my workload for those coming months.”
“Having copies of you on shuttles millions of miles from Earth is one thing, but having two copies of you down here on the longterm is something else.”
Eleanor thought about those tally marks on Alpha’s rump. She’d seen Alpha’s ass and pussy then too, both crusted with cum and enflamed. No condoms. Had Alpha contract any diseases? Was she pregnant? Had it mattered?
“Only until the work rush is complete,” she said, “and then we’d terminate one of us.”
Haskins scoffed. “You’re really that fine with duplicating yourself just to have spare parts?”
Eleanor thought about how she and Alpha had chatted this morning about how Alpha would die today, and how after her body cremated with the Manifold’s scheduled plasma exhaust this afternoon, she’d be unceremoniously forgotten. She remembered hearing Alpha moaning in the shower not ten minutes later, as though the conversation had turned her on.
“Clearly I am fine duplicating myself for any reason,” Eleanor said. “This trial had no purpose other than to satisfy your doubts, and yet I returned promptly for my scheduled termination.”
“She just killed herself,” Yano said. “You don’t think she’s ready?”
“No. I don’t. This was only a two week study, and I know you, Eleanor. You were trying to prove a point. Of course you followed through. But we’re talking letting you live for months knowing you’ll die. That’s a lot more time to regret your decision. A lot of time to resent being deemed disposable over a coin flip. Frankly, I’m worried the same thing will happen with the copies of you on those shuttles. Your life won’t be nearly as comfortable up there as it probably was in your own home. You’d effectively be a trapped slave.”
Eleanor thought about those lips suckling her earlobe. That breath on her neck. You could be me some day.
“Then we need to be sure,” Eleanor said. ”We’ll run another test. This time, we’ll make it more extreme…”
She doesn’t recognize the next man at all, just some overweight schlub. “Get on your knees,” he says while bringing out his dick. It’s half hard. With her hands tied, she resorts to fishing her face around to get it in her mouth, but he stops her. “No. First I’m going to piss in your mouth. You’re going to swallow it all.”
She recoils.
“Don’t act like you don’t want it,” he said. “I’ve seen your videos.”
“You what?”
He chuckles. “Yeah. We all have.”
“My videos? Ohh…”
“You are one freaky bitch. Now open wide.”
Stunned, her mind feels locked in place, but she has to put this revelation aside and process it later. The man isn’t wrong, after all. She knows what was in those videos.
Eleanor turns her head up and opens her mouth. His piss is hot, and so salty. Is this what beer piss tastes like? Doesn’t matter. She swallows, and swallows, and swallows.
The penny arced through the air. Eleanor’s heart raced. Her breath held. Her body was wired with electric charge.
Haskins caught it and slapped it down on his wrist. This time, it seemed, he wouldn’t bother letting it fall so everyone could see it was a legitimate coin flip.
He peeked for himself, not letting the other Eleanor’s see at first.
What if he was about to make it up? He’d pick for himself which Eleanor would die. That would be appallingly unfair, yet it made the jittery knot of energy in her abdomen squeeze all the tighter. She decided she wouldn’t complain if he did, no matter the outcome.
But he did show the coin.
“Heads.”
And there it was, the electric charge inside her released, and the rush of relief was downright exhilarating.
It wasn’t her.
Across from her, the other Eleanor was going through a maelstrom of her own, so subtle that only Eleanor noticed the small shuddered breath, the flicker of shock, and the sudden and absolute return to control, but her knees probably wanted to buckle just like Eleanor’s did.
Haskins faced the other Eleanor. “From here on, you are now trial subject Beta. Dr. Yano, if you’d please.”
Yano stepped up. Beta obediently lifted her hair to give him access, and he pressed the inserter gun against her neck. Thunk, and Beta stumbled forward with a moan. It almost sounded like she enjoyed that.
Beta was probably aroused right now. Eleanor certainly was. She’d played with herself enough while waiting inside the crate to be doubled.
All right, ladies,” Haskins said. “Four weeks this time.”
Beta hid in the backseat on the drive home that night. Once they were safely hidden in Eleanor’s garage, Beta climbed out and stretched her legs. “Wish me luck,” she said with a slight tremble, and she walked out. There was no need to explain where she was going. Eleanor had daydreamed about this while tucked inside the crate. Beta was going out to get fucked.
She returned the next morning, giddy with energy and proud to show off her leaking pussy. That was how the Beta trial started: Beta was already indulging by day one, and it only got more extreme.
On day two, she came home with her muff waxed bald and a glittering stud piercing right through the meat of her clit. By day five, she was bringing home money.
Every day, Eleanor couldn’t wait to get home and hear how Beta had outdone herself, but even within one week, the stories became concerning.
She came back once with cigarette burns around her nipples. “They tied me up,” she explained. “I didn’t have a choice.”
Another time: “The biggest guy you’ve ever seen just fisted me. God, it hurt!”
“Why’d you let him do it?”
“He said he’d always wanted to. What’s it matter if it hurts me if it fulfills his wish? It’s really going to hurt in two weeks. He made me promise to come back so he could double fist me.”
“And you’re going back?”
“I promised.”
The next night, she returned with frazzled hair. “This big biker guy kept pressing my face into a public toilet while he fucked me from behind. I nearly drowned!”
The night after she came home with a bruised eye: “They were vicious, but God did I cum so hard!”
Then the most alarming night: “I made a porn!”
“A porn? You put us on the internet?”
“Don’t worry. They let me wear a mask.”
“But why?”
“They wouldn’t let me leave until I did it. They made me fuck three guys at once, and then they all slapped me around and called me names.”
“Oh my God. I’m sorry.”
“It’ll be on the internet next week. I’ll show you the website.”
And she did, by leaving a PostIt by the computer so Eleanor could watch alone. It was the seediest porn site, and they’d done a lot more than fuck Beta. They’d pissed on her too, and apparently she’d gotten accustomed to fisting. In the whole video, her hands had been bound with ropes above her head.
And good God did that video have a lot of views. People were masturbating while watching that perfect body Eleanor had spent her life toning was molested. And to her burning embarrassment, Eleanor was one of those people.
Beta never talked about making porn again, but as the four weeks passed, more videos appeared on that site. The titles said it all.
“Blonde choked while cumming.”
“Three girls fist each other.”
“Double anal + fisting.”
“Hot blonde with a doberman.”
“Truckstop restroom bukkake.”
“Submissive bitch w/ urinals.”
“Rim job train.”
“Girl raped until sobbing. Then branded.”
“Girl w/ stallion. Full penetration.”
“Late night kennel slut. Four dogs.”
“Extreme pet play. Hot blond. Eats dogfood and garbage.”
“Extreme sub abuse. Warning. Blood. Cruel.”
“Extreme copr, vomit, piss. Caution.”
So many, and they became so increasingly extreme after four short weeks. Eleanor had never fantasized about any of these things, but she watched them all. It was surreal to see a version of herself become so perverted. So broken. So submissive. Is this what happens to her when she no longer had to worry about her future?
The morning it came for Beta to return for her termination, they both had to wear a turtleneck to hide the bruises on Beta’s neck, a work blazer to hide her pierced nipples, and long sleeves to hide the track marks from Beta’s substance exploration. Her kennel slut tattoo from the video was on her pubic mound where it couldn’t be seen, but the cattle brand on her inner thigh required a longer skirt. However, nothing could quite hide the weight loss Beta had experienced, or the general grungy look, or the smell the shower didn’t wash away, but none of it really mattered.
An elaboration on this trial was that Beta had to demonstrate that she could conveniently die alone, unseen and unthought, like a used up tool disposing of itself.
She skulked upstairs and climbed into the vent chamber before anyone got a good look at her, and later that morning, Haskins pressed the remote kill switch from his office without having seen her at all.
“Another successful trial,” Eleanor said.
“I’d like to check that she was actually in there before the Manifold run.”
“She was,” Eleanor assured him. “I lingered by the door this morning to make sure no one entered, or left.”
“Seems you’ve thought of everything,” he said. “I hardly saw her this iteration. Did she have any doubts?”
Eleanor thought about the letter she’d found by her bed that morning, weighed down by the leather mask Beta had worn in all those porn videos. Here’s the address for the guys who do the porn. They think our name is Lily. Don’t reach out to them unless you’re sure you’re ready. They’ll think you’re comfortable with some very wild kinks.
“She’d had none,” Eleanor said to Haskins.
He grunted. “Then I guess it’s time I reach out to Houston about enrolling you in the training program. Satisfied?”
Also, there’s a man on Porter street named Tyrone. He’ll pimp you out if you come to him, no strings attached, but he keeps 80% of the money.
“Quite,” Eleanor replied, “but I think we should do another trial nonetheless.”
Haskins frowned. “Why? I believe you now.”
“Because we still have two years before any of our launch windows come up, and there’s no reason not to collect more data, and every reason to have two of me working on this project in the meantime.”
“Are you enjoying this?”
Most of all. Just try exploring. I once found a glory hole at a club called the Lion’s Den in Weston, which led to such a wild night. There’s so much fun to be had out there when you have no consequences or expectations.
“It’s simply rational,” Eleanor replied. “You’ve seen how much more smoothly the project has been going. We’ll design another test, and push myself farther, just to make sure.”
He sighed. “Fine. When do we do this?”
Because always remember, you could be me some day.
“There’s still time to smuggle me into the Manifold run this afternoon. We’ll use the same run that will burn up Beta’s body.”
After two more men, she has cum running down her thighs to her ankles. The next man takes the time to wipe her clean with another wad of scratchy paper towels. She knows him from the containment chamber maintenance team, a big guy and a real gym bro despite his nerdy career.
“Has anyone fucked you in the ass yet?” he asks
She shook her head.
“Good. I’m going to enjoy that. Gamma told us about your anal training.”
She startles. “Gamma… told you?”
“Heh. Yeah. She told us everything. She showed us your porn website. She made sure we all knew to fuck you after you came back and ruin these tight holes of yours. Told us you’d be ready to be treated like a real piece of shit. You did train your ass, didn’t you?”
Dumbly, she nods. At least now she knows how they found out about the porn site, or how the crew found out at all.
“Turn around,” he says. “I’m going in dry.”
What choice does she have?
She turns around.
“From now on, you are trial subject Gamma. You are no longer Eleanor. Clear?”
“Perfectly,” said the duplicate standing across from Eleanor, voice level. Eleanor was still coming down from the rush of the coin-flip, but she was sure she’d have managed the level voice too.
Yano approached with the injector, and Gamma soon had a bomb in her brain stem.
“Now I want to make sure it’s perfectly clear. You’re due back here in twelve weeks, Gamma. And this time—”
“I am to show up the weekend beforehand and wait in the venting chamber for my own incineration without food or water, thus proving that I really don’t care what happens to me.”
“Are you sure this is what you want?” Haskins warned. “There’s no reason to starve yourself. We can use the bomb instead.”
“We’ve already established that I’m willing to die,” Gamma said. “The purpose of this trial is to ensure I will tolerate any conditions necessary for the sake of the project.”
“If you say so. You’re going to burn alive in there.”
“Hardly. It will reach fifteen hundred celsius in under five seconds.”
“Those will be five long seconds.”
“…And I will happily face them to prove my commitment to this project. Let’s not waste our time going over this again. Eleanor and I have work to do.” Gamma strode from the room.
Eleanor was left with Haskins and Yano. Haskins shook his head at her. “There’s something wrong with your brain, Eleanor. This isn’t necessary. This isn’t natural.”
“Of course not,” Eleanor said. “Natural is to follow our animal instincts. I, on the other hand, am strictly rational. I’m beyond my instincts.”
“No one is beyond their instincts,” Haskins warned. “We’re all slaves to them, including you. You just don’t realize it yet.”
When Eleanor reached her car in the west campus garage. Gamma was already curled up beneath a blanket on the backseat floor. Neither girl spoke while Eleanor drove home. Nothing to say. They both knew what was going to happen. There was a twist to this trial that Haskins didn’t know about.
In their garage, both girls got out and entered Eleanor’s house. Gamma strutted into the living room and turned to face Eleanor. “Strip out of your clothes.”
This was the twist. In the previous two iterations, Eleanor had watched as her doubles had slowly transformed down a path of hedonistic masochism. It had bewildered her to watch, especially those videos. That submissive tramp came out both times. In Beta, it was startling how extreme she became.
That part must live inside Eleanor then. This trial was to find out.
Gamma would be going to the office while Eleanor stayed home. No one else would know about this. Also, Gamma would be in charge, while Eleanor would submit to her demands.
Of course, there was only so much they could experiment. Eleanor was still the torch-bearer for their line, so no random sex, no tattoos, no piercings, no risks. But there were things she’d imagined doing.
Forcing herself to remain naked while at home was one of those things.
Eleanor shimmied out of her work skirt and unbuttoned her blouse. Underwear off, she stood naked.
Gamma leered at her. She stepped close and grabbed hold of Eleanor. Their lips met. Gamma’s fingers wormed inside of her. Oh yes. Eleanor’s heart was racing now.
Gamma pulled away and looked into Eleanor’s eyes. She chewed her lip suggestively. “Lie down on the ground.”
This… was unexpected, but Eleanor did so. Gamma towered over her. She shimmed out of her own skirt and panties. Blouse and heels only. Good lord was she sexy.
“I’m going to crouch over your face now,” Gamma said, “and you’re going to tongue my ass until I’m good and satisfied.”
“Wait. What?” Eleanor propped up on her elbows. “That wasn’t—”
“Part of the plan? There is no plan except for you to submit to me.”
“But I was never thinking about anything like that. I thought I’d go slow. Ease into this.”
“I changed my mind.” Gamma straddled Eleanor’s head and squatted down.
She changed her mind? Already? The coin flip had only been forty minutes ago. How much of a different person could she possibly be?
Fine. She’d play along.
It was strange to look at her own anus, brown yet dainty, with sparse little blond hairs. It was stranger yet to run her tongue over it—greasy sweat and a slight funk—no doubt from having spent five hours today sweating inside of a cramped shipping crate. The taste faded with each lick, and soon Eleanor fixed her lips over the hole and burrowed her tongue deep. The little hole twitched and squeezed back.
Gamma started talking. “It’s better to push you into the deep end like this. Alpha and Beta got to go at their own pace, but your future iterations might not. Who knows? You might have to go from zero to a hundred overnight some day. You’ll be thanking me then for acclimating you then.”
Gamma adjusted herself so she was resting on her knees, a more comfortable position. She was going to be sitting on Eleanor’s face for a while.
“Starting today,” she continued, “I expect you to be naked whenever you’re in this house, which will be most of the time. You expected that. What you might not have expected is that I’m not going to bathe anymore. You’ll be using your tongue to clean me instead. All of my holes.”
Gamma shuddered. She was enjoying Eleanor’s tongue. “That does mean I won’t be fucking any strangers during this trial, not without a condom anyway. I can’t risk bringing a disease home to you and infecting the oh so perfect Eleanor. There will be no scarring or tattoos or piercings either, no bruising or whipping. But don’t think that means I won’t be training your body. I’ll buy some dildos for you tomorrow, and you’ll add anal fucking to your workout routines so you’re used to it. Kegels too. And of course we’ll break that gag reflex of yours. Anything to make you better to fuck. In other words, welcome to submissive boot camp. I’m your coach, and I’m going to turn you into the perfect submissive fuck toy for all of your future selves to come. What do you say to that?”
Eleanor had a lot to say about that. Protests. Refusals. Demands for where these ideas were suddenly coming from. However, she sensed there was only one correct response. She kept her lips fixed to Gamma’s ass. Her tongue wormed harder.
“Good girl,” Gamma said. “No open your mouth wide. I’m going to piss down your throat, and then you’re going to cook dinner for me, as you will every day this coming trial. If you’re going to become an obedient slut, you’ll need to learn all those domestic chores you’ve always considered beneath you.”
The next man who comes into the cleaning closet must work at the loading bay. Eleanor had seen him around there smoking cigarettes. She smell those cigarettes on his breath while he squeezes her tits and leers.
“You know, I fucked Gamma right here on this same spot,” he says.
“…What?” she asks. “You had sex with her?”
“Well, not her,” he says. “Refused to let us touch her, but she made some single-night clones of herself a few times so we could have a party. She put on a hot little twins show for us, then we got to pick which of the two to fuck senseless. It was her treat to us, as long as we promised to treat Delta’s like you like trash.” He emphasizes this by squeezing her nipple painfully. “You want that, don’t you?”
She knows the right answer. “Yes. Please, treat me like trash.”
“Yeah, I thought so. She told us about how she made you watch all your own porn videos every single day and cum to each one. That way you’d get really used to the idea of being treated like this. You did it, right?”
She nods. It had taken her two hours every day, intermingling her watching with her project work. It got to the point that she was having wet dreams about them.
“You know what she said you got really good at?” He leans close and whispers in her ear. His words causes a deep blush of shame to bloom across her face.
Yes, she’d done that; Gamma had made her. She remembered when Gamma had first demanded it
“But that’s disgusting!” she’d said.
“Beta did it,” Gamma had countered.
“Beta went a little insane.”
“Beta learned how to indulge, and she learned to in only four weeks. You need to be able to do it sooner than that.”
“But… but there are health risks!”
“Nonsense. I have a perfectly healthy diet, just like you, and trust me, you may be thankful one day that I trained you to tolerate this. Now lie down and get ready.”
That had been on week one of Gamma’s reign. By week four, Eleanor had stopped retching. By week seven, Gamma had pronounced her to be properly housebroken.
“Before I fuck your ass,” the man whispers, “you’re going to do that for me.” He backs up and undoes his jeans. She lies down on the cement, and when he squats his bare ass over her face, she gets to work sucking and tonguing his hairy asshole. The taste is far more potent than Gamma’s ass had ever been. His diet must be poor. His hygiene worse.
Then he starts to strain.
In hindsight, she is grateful for Gamma’s training. She would have never managed to control her stomach otherwise.
By the end of the Gamma trial, Eleanor had become quite proficient at cooking. Gamma never made clear why she was making her learn it. It wasn’t like Alpha or Beta ever cooked. But she figured it was about conditioning her to be accustomed to jobs she once considered beneath her, training her future duplicates would certainly benefit from.
It was all about getting her accustomed to things. Gamma had her sleep in the closet to acclimate her to frugal living. Forbidding her to bathe acclimated her to feeling filthy. Gamma even trained her to shit and piss on newspapers in the kitchen to grow accustomed to face-burning indignity. Any of her future duplicates might benefit from this.
But ultimately, Eleanor figured it was all for Gamma’s enjoyment. It wasn’t like Gamma was actually preparing her to be a sex slave.
Either way, Eleanor never backed down from challenges. She’d strived so much be such a perfect submissive that she wondered whether she’d able to adjust to coming back to work next week. She’d been working remotely this whole time, but showing up in person and carrying her head high seemed unnatural to her now, especially given how she was currently kneeling by her own door, naked, head bowed, mouth gagged, waiting for her mistress to return.
She did, near midnight. Gamma wore her work clothes, but they’d clearly been ruffled. She’d been out fucking again, as she had been every day for her last two weeks. “There’s going to be a hell of a video added to the porn site soon,” Gamma said. “Is dinner ready?”
Eleanor nodded.
“It better be good. It’s my last meal.”
Eleanor had applied everything she’d learned, from her cooking classes and studying. All the foods were things someone would eat only if they had no care for the future: fat meats, sweet pies, ice cream, and more. Gamma gorged, all the while recapping any remaining technical knowledge Eleanor needed to know.
“This was satisfactory,” Gamma said at the end. “Too bad I won’t be able to feed it to you later.” She studied Eleanor. “You can start speaking now. Might as well break the act. Come Monday you’ll need to behave like I was, and I spent these twelve weeks being bossy.”
Eleanor removed her gag, and the used menstrual pad that had been soaking in her mouth all day. “What about the space program?”
“It’s happening. You’ll be shipping out to Houston in two weeks for a year of space training, and I expect you to be top of the class. You represent the rest of us after all.” She ate more of her pecan pie. “I told Haskins we would do a Delta trial while you’re away.”
“How’s that going to work?”
The spare will stay here, of course. Though she won’t be implanted with a bomb in case anything should happen to Eleanor. Since everyone will think Eleanor will be away, the spares can’t be seen around town. They’ll need to confine themselves to the third floor lab. Haskins has already moved several workstations up there.”
“They? Several?”
“Yes. Since there will be a dedicated lab set up for you away from prying eyes, there’s no reason not to make several versions of yourself to move the project along. Yano has also created a special crate for putting you through the Manifold. You’ll get to enjoy it on Tuesday when you spawn off the Eleanor who’ll go to Houston.” Gamma finished her pie. “But that’s next week. For now, it’s my time. Clear the table and meet me in the bathroom. I’m surely too diseased right now to touch you, especially after this evening, but I’m going to have fun making you do things to yourself.”
Eleanor hurried to comply.
By the time Gamma let Eleanor retire to her sleeping closet, she was sore, smelly, and exhausted. When dawn came, Gamma was already gone, off to finish one final Friday of work. Then She’d confine herself to the venting chamber for Tuesday’s Manifold run in one final demonstration of commitment to this duplicated lifestyle.
The rest of the night blends together. After all ten men had a turn with her, others start returning for seconds. Her asshole is more popular on their second run. To better position her, one man gets her onto her knees and shoves her forward so her face and tits press to the cold cement floor of the cleaning closet. The man who’d promised to treat her like trash has his own reprisal when he fucks her ass with a broom handle, then scrubs her pussy raw with the bristles.
By the time the men are done, everything aches. Her holes are tender to the touch. Except that’s when they drag her back to the loading bay, where the music blasts and the men are still crushing drinks. They make her squat and fuck a beer bottle. She loses one up her ass at some point, which they find hilarious, especially when she struggles to push it out.
They hold a bottle of beer to her lips to drink, only for her to learn after gulping that’s mostly just piss. When she sputters, they make her get down and suck the mess off the floor, then soak up what’s left with her blouse. It plasters against her tits like a wet T-shirt.
By the end, Eleanor has forgotten all thoughts about the Manifold project, or her reputation, or her well-being. She’s here to fuck and be fucked, and that’s all that matters now.
Once it’s late, the men disperse. Haskins returns and has Eleanor follow him back upstairs to the Delta lab.
“You’re putting me back?” she asks. “I thought I was to be disposed of.”
“Eventually, but we’re going to have a little talk first.”
Back in the lab, the other woman is still there, and the two women are united again: Delta-A, who had just finished the gang-bang, and Delta-B, who has been here all evening working late. She jumps up from her desk and gapes at the state of Delta-A. “What is going on?”
“Why don’t you tell her,” Haskins says to Delta-A.
Delta-A swallows. “The men in the project know. Gamma told them everything.”
“She what?”
Haskins speaks. “While you were at home playing slave to Gamma, she was coming to work and preparing for your future. She told me all about Alpha and Beta’s sexual escapades, and the porn site, and your little sub/dom routine at home.”
“Why?”
“Because she’d come to realize what you never had. You had never really mastered your instincts over death. You’d simply fallen prey to your instincts of lust. So she did you a favor. The men around here know what you are now, and we’ll use you the way you want to be used.”
“No!” Delta-B yells. “This puts the project in jeopardy.”
“The project will be fine,” Haskins replies. “In twelve months, Eleanor will return from Houston as planned, and she will duplicate and send herself out on the different shuttles. In the meantime, we’re going to be duplicating you as often as we want. I think this lab can hold at least half a dozen of you. We’ll put you all to work on the Manifold project, just like you proposed.” He pauses, “and we’ll put you to work in other ways too. From everything Gamma has told us about your training, you’re quite suitable for any task now. Isn’t that right?”
“My God, Haskins. This… This is—”
“Exactly what you wanted all along. Tell me it isn’t.”
He waits. Delta-A watches Delta-B fluster for something to say. She seems ready to scream and rage, but it never quite comes. Then, “What are you going to make us do?”
“Many things. Gamma encouraged us to use you Delta’s for whatever else we want. I’ll probably take one of you home to tend to my house, and to me.”
“Haskins. You have kids.”
“Only on the weekends. You’ll wait in the closet on those days. The other men might want to take copies of you home too. Of course come next year before Eleanor returns, any remaining Delta strains will be returned and fed to the venting chamber. We’ll start up an Epsilon strain from Eleanor then. And we’ll make use of them instead. Any questions?”
Delta-B remains silent.
“Good. Come Tuesday, we’re going to start making copies of you with every Manifold run and putting you to work. This one was just for fun.” He gestures to Delta-A. “Good night, Delta. You are indeed the most valuable asset of this project.” And he leaves, dragging Delta-A with him. The last Delta-A sees of her counterpart is that same flabbergasted expression she probably had when she learned all this in the cleaning closet. Before they leave, Delta-A has a final urge to yell something back to her stunned counterpart.
“You could be me some day!”
The hatch to the venting chamber is just down the hall from the Delta lab, something that will likely be very convenient for the team in the coming year. Here, Haskins undoes the cuffs restraining her. She rubs at her wrists. They have nasty blisters, not that it’s important. She understands what she’s expected to do, and she starts climbing the ladder into the venting chamber.
Haskins stops her. “Wait.”
She pauses.
“The next Manifold run isn’t until next Tuesday. You’d be waiting in there all weekend.”
“So did Gamma,” she replies.
“She did, but what would you say if I offered to drive you to one of the Lost stations?”
She blinks. The Lost stations are the subway stations in the bad parts of town that the city decommissioned but never deconstructed. The region’s rampant homeless population commandeered them and turned them into underground shanties built right along the tracks. No one who isn’t a criminal or destitute would dare go near those, certainly not a young woman. Horror stories reach the news sometimes.
“Why?” she asks.
“Maybe I just want to see if you’ll do it, see just how far you’ll go for when I own my own copy of you. Or maybe I’m feeling generous. No one else has to know. Not Eleanor, or the other Deltas, or any of the men.”
“I might not ever return.”
“Maybe, but they say those groups have their own ways of disposing of bodies. If you do survive, I’ll be there Tuesday morning to pick you up. So how about it?”
Hanging on the ladder, she thinks about it.
She thinks about those times years ago when she’d inadvertently come near those subway dens when navigating the city. She’d seen the feral and grimy bums, or so she’d judged. There’d been scruffy dogs, and discarded needles, and all the filth and garbage. And that godawful stench. Eleanor had left quickly. An up-and-coming girl with such a promising future had no business being there, but Lord how her heart had raced…
She also thinks about her gangbang this evening. She’d been right on the edge of climaxing so many times, but never quite.
The worst thing that can possibly happen to her is already going to happen.
She steps off the ladder.
Haskins grins. “That’s what I figured.”
“You could be me some day!”
The other Delta yelled this over her shoulder as Haskins dragged her away.
Once they were gone, Delta dumbly slid onto her stool. It seemed like everything she’d ever feared had come true at once. The secret of the Eleanor trials was out. People knew she’d been copying herself, but it was so much worse than that. People knew about the porn, the prostitution, the slumming, the secret submissive life she’d been living for three months. Everything.
The thought made her hyperventilate.
But it was worse than that. The men in the project were now taking full advantage of her. She wouldn’t just be working on the Manifold project, she’d be a sex slave in whatever capacity they wanted. And after they killed her off in a year, Eleanor would come back and fall into the same trap. She had no idea. Why had Gamma done this to her? Had Gamma changed so much that she hadn’t cared about jeopardizing the Solar Manifold project?
Was it actually at risk? It sounded like work would continue as planned. Every Delta generated would know that the project came first above all else, and deep down, she must admit that Haskins cared too. He was doing this only because a version of her had convinced him to. She’d talk with him in the morning and make sure he was taking enough precautions.
Actually, having half a dozen of her working in here to supplement Eleanor’s remote work from Houston would supercharge the project. She glanced at the amenities in the lab suite. One bed. One toilet. One sink. It was going to be crowded. It might be just like those nights with Gamma.
And what about the Delta who’d just left? You could be me some day!
That woman had been wearing nothing but her cream silk blouse, and it had been plastered to her skin with what Delta was sure had been urine. And the woman’s pussy had been engorged and dripping. What had they put her through tonight?
The thought left her dipping her hand under the waistband of her skirt.
Oh hell, it was after hours. Time to enjoy herself. She shimmied out of her skirt and panties. She wasn’t under orders to watch them anymore, but she went to the same porn site anyway.
Oh! There were new videos. Those porn guys must have finally finished editing Gamma’s sessions. …And Gamma hadn’t bothered wearing the mask.
Oh well. Another secret out the window. As Alpha had put it rationally, a reputation was of no practical value. Maybe it was better this way. Another worst thing had happened, and now there was no more shame to be had.
Delta scanned the titles.
“Blonde fucks traffic cones in public. Football. Baseballs.” Not surprising. Gamma had insisted Eleanor retain her pussy’s virgin-like tightness, but no such requirement was on Gamma. Their house was filled with sex-toys only porn stars would dare use.
“Kennel slut returns. Double penetration. Anal.” Huh. Delta wondered what viewers must think about how her kennel slut tattoo disappeared.
“Two blonds have fun in men’s bathroom.” Judging from the thumbnail, Gamma was the dominant blonde. Delta had seen the other woman in different videos. She wondered who that was.
“Science slut experiments w/ street gang. 20M/F. Cum drinking.” Science slut, huh? A little on the nose. The thumbnail showed her in her own expensive work clothes. Very identifiable.
These videos seemed rather tame compared to Beta’s later work, but then Gamma had become more of a do unto others sort. Delta should talk to Haskins about sending copies of her off to the porn address. She was sure she could outdo both Beta and Gamma now, especially if they spawned off a Delta to spend months stretching her holes.
But not tonight. Gamma would have expected her to watch all of these videos now, one after another, so Delta clicked on the first one. As the video started, she propped her leg up on her stool and fetched one of her vibrators from her desk drawer. She was just warming herself up when a video call came in.
Eleanor.
Delta lowered her legs, straightened her blouse, and made sure the camera didn’t show anything from the waist down. Then she answered. Her double appeared on screen, though this double wore a blue jumpsuit.
“How’s space camp?” Delta asked.
“It will be trivial, as expected,” Eleanor said. “Orientation is done, and I’ve finally got some free time. Are you free to update me?”
“Of course.” Delta minimized the porn video and pulled up her notes. “Zero-G tests have begun on the solar receiver station. Mostly I’m just double-checking everyone else’s numbers. Nothing to learn, but let’s catch you up anyway.”
“Sure,” Eleanor replied, “but first, how is everything else going? I know you’re locked in a lab now, and Haskins has total control over you. Is the situation all right?”
Delta thought back on the encounter she’d just had, where Haskins had revealed to her how Gamma had set them up to be discardable sex toys.
She thought about how that portly little man planned to take a Delta for himself, to be a live-in maid/chef/concubine.
She thought about how Haskins had already condemned one of the Delta’s to be abused and snuffed.
She thought about how that Delta’s quim had been dripping even as Haskins had dragged her away.
“Everything is fine,” Delta replied.