Part 37
Ronald looked down from the observation platform into the room where Seven of Nine was. She floated in the air, immobile, alone. She was screaming with laughter.
It was a fairly standard means of interrogation, although it was slightly adapted given Seven's unique weakness. She'd been immersed in a complex silicone-polymer blend that coated every single part of her body except the region around the mouth and nose and where two goggles protected her eyes. It had quickly dried, leaving Seven wrapped skin-tight within its cocoon. It was capable of stimulating the nerve cells and was commonly used in these sessions - searing heat, frigid cold, intense pain, incredible pressures could all be simulated without actually doing anything to the body. In Seven's case, it had been set to tickle, and was proving very effective, at least in terms of reaction. Her laughter and shrieks had only intensified as the procedure continued, showing that it was definitely having an effect. The only problem was that Seven refused to talk, even after several days of such treatment, of spending every waking moment being tickled non-stop.
There was no way he could have understood why she did it. Seven knew Mara, and she knew that Mara would come back for her. She knew that anything she told them could compromise her and her rescue efforts. So even as she felt the horrible, unrelenting sensations as they tickled her, she resisted, but it was anything but easy. Her soles, from the heel to the ball, were fighting madly against the sensations, and her toes bunched up to try and escape their teasing. She would twist madly as they tickled along each ribs. She found herself clenching as they applied it all along the curves of her behind and breasts. She sucked her stomach in in a vain attempt to protect her tummy, yet still with nothing to save her flanks. Her arms twisted in her restraints, trying to spare her underarms the intense sensations they were experiencing. She tried grinding her thighs together to protect them as well. None of it did much to help; she was as immersed in tickling as she'd ever been, and alone it would be overwhelming. So she thought about Mara, and it helped. She kept her focus on her, and Seven could endure the non-stop tickling.
All that was beyond the vision of Ronald, of course, but he could read a few things with his instruments. He could see that there was a definite undercurrent of sexual fulfillment in this. That would no doubt be useful in her reprogramming even if the interrogation offered no results.
It was probably hard to understand, but humanity had undergone a substantial leap in the last few centuries, becoming the greatest known power there was. This had happened because of a fundamental change to how humans lived, a change encouraged by the then-Emperor whose vision surpassed many. Advanced robots that were superficially identical to humans had been around for a long time and a well-known if snubbed appetite for the wealthy. The thing was, the Emperor had observed, was that these robots were so well-designed that they were sexually indistinguishable from their human counterparts, and because they were manufactured they were free of undesirable features. The Emperor decreed that the Imperial Treasury would purchase one device for every citizen of their make and choosing, a move that shocked everyone across the Empire. They weren't mandatory, of course, but even among happily married couples they were useful for cleaning and errands and helping with the children, and over time they'd become the norm. People still dated and married humans, but they were now more the exception than the rule. The robots offered human men and women the counterpart of their dreams, thus setting standards few real humans could measure up to.
Of course, the sole issue of robots was that they couldn't procreate, so the Emperor's other act was to decree that every human must produce two children. This actually is part of what made marriages with humans more difficult, because it demanded a couple produce and raise four children, and children were expensive to care for. With a robot spouse you only needed to raise two, and the robot would be there day and night to care for the child. It may have sounded awful in those early days, but Ronald had fond memories of the time he spent with his mother, and he'd cried more when she’d been disassembled after his father's death than he did over the man himself.
But the combination of the two edicts -the robots and the order about children- was where the Emperor's genius lay. When it came time to procreate, artificial insemination was the only choice, and the technicians responsible were instructed to select the most genetically advanced samples from the parent, and for the remaining half of the reproductive equation, the eggs or sperm were genetically purified; not racially, of course, or anything so distasteful, but free of disease, near-sightedness, palsy, deafness, all of that. The Emperor's plan was this: every generation humanity would be stronger, smarter, heartier, and would double in number. Even against coalitions of alien species, none of them had stood a chance against the evolved creatures that humanity had become, and were continuing to be.
And slavery? This fate was reserved for criminals deemed unworthy of being part of the apex of galactic power that was humanity. They lost everything - their freedom, their will, and their opportunity to be part of the gene pool, except when an owner requested it. There were several cases of men and women who wanted to reproduce the old-fashioned way without having to raise four children. Ronald hadn't personally understood the appeal; it was much more logical for them to allow the Firish females the honor of carrying three or four infants to term rather than encumbering a human female with a burden that seemed rather demeaning to Ronald, not to mention all the bodily side-effects of it.
Still, despite himself, Ronald watched Seven there, screaming and laughing under the ticklish influence, and he started toying with the idea of perhaps acquiring her himself. She was almost as beautiful as his own wife, and the mechanics added an interesting departure... realizing there was no small irony in that thought considering underneath all those perfect curves his wife was a machine.
Seven, of course, was completely oblivious to anyone beyond herself. They had increased the intensity of the tickling again, and she could hardly breathe she was laughing so hard. It was simply everywhere now. She could feel it where her neck ran into her collarbone, and running up behind her ears. She actually felt it along the lobes themselves, a horrible teasing sensation that made her thrash her head from time to time. The soft flesh behind her knees felt an awful stroking sensation driving her wild. With her laughter silenced she could hear the repeated message coming through again, of how her only way to escape was to tell them what she knew. No, she thought, or as best she could think under this endless tickling, her only way to escape was to wait and trust in Mara. And before the tickling drove her momentarily into unconsciousness, she kept repeating her name, to remind herself why she had to keep fighting.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The door to Ms. Danoob's office slid open. She'd been insistent in the design of this place that they function this way, so that the facility could be quickly locked down, even though the shareholders had been opposed to the added expense. As usual, Ms. Danoob won out, so when Mara barged into her office, the door slid open and closed without in any way reflecting her dark mood. "We're getting her out," Mara said, in a voice that not only left no room for argument, it sent argument a restraining order.
Ms. Danoob put down her pen and pushed the form aside; she could no doubt see how serious Mara took this situation. "We are," Ms. Danoob assured her. "I didn't spend all this time and money on her just to abandon her."
Unfortunately, this only darkened Mara's move. Ms. Danoob had made Seven seem like nothing more than an asset rather than a person, and right now she didn't need that. Nevertheless, at least their goals were in agreement, if not their motivations. "When do we move?"
Ms. Danoob was silent. "I don't know. But not for some time."
Mara stormed up to the desk and leaned over it towards Ms. Danoob. "Tonight," she said.
"No," Ms. Danoob replied, despite the severity of Mara's tone. "It would be doomed to failure."
"I'll do it alone if I have to," Mara growled.
"That would be foolish, you'd only allow yourself to be captured as well."
"I'd rather have that then not bother trying!"
Ms. Danoob sighed, then shook her head a little. "Mara, I don't know what happened to you on that station, but it's clear that your emotions got the better of you. That is likely why Seven was captured - if you'd stuck with protocol the three of you would have had a chance of eliminating the jamming suite. Instead they not only lost you but you became an encumbrance; the three of you are lucky you got away at all-"
"Don't you think I know that?!" Mara shouted. "I made a mistake, and Seven paid the price! Now do you honestly think I can sit here and do nothing while she's at the tender mercies of the Terran Empire?!"
"If you want to actually right this wrong, yes."
"I can't stand by while she suffers!" Mara shouted. "I have to do something! Anything!"
"What, stupidity got you into this, stupidity will get you out?" Ms. Danoob folded her hands and stared over them at Mara. "You acted with emotion rather than thinking, and that caused this to happen. Haven't you learned anything from this? The only way out is to approach this rationally, and see that premature action will fail. You've lost twenty-five percent of your squad, and what's more she represented the physically strongest and the most intelligent, so your effectiveness is severely hampered. You must look at what you can do and what you're up against, objectively; only then can you hope to succeed."
Mara let out a trembling breath, then straightened up. "Do you have a plan?"
"I have a start," Ms. Danoob said. "But you can't succeed, not yet. You'll need help." She tapped a few keys, then turned the monitor for Mara to see. "Her help."
Mara swallowed. "You need to recruit someone else, like we were?"
"There's no other way, Mara," Ms. Danoob said. "You three are good, no question, but you're not invincible. With her, you can pull this off." Mara stared a while at the screen. "Or we can leave her be. I'll see if I can come up with another plan, one that requires only the three of you. Of course, that would take even longer, if it even happened at all. The choice is up to you, Mara."
Mara swallowed. She remembered her own processing here as vividly as if it were yesterday, and it wasn't something she'd wish on anyone. But -and she hated to admit this even to herself- she'd been so close to killing Kara it was terrifying. Taking some stranger, as awful as it was, was certainly an acceptable alternative. "What's her name?" Mara asked, her throat dry.
Ronald looked down from the observation platform into the room where Seven of Nine was. She floated in the air, immobile, alone. She was screaming with laughter.
It was a fairly standard means of interrogation, although it was slightly adapted given Seven's unique weakness. She'd been immersed in a complex silicone-polymer blend that coated every single part of her body except the region around the mouth and nose and where two goggles protected her eyes. It had quickly dried, leaving Seven wrapped skin-tight within its cocoon. It was capable of stimulating the nerve cells and was commonly used in these sessions - searing heat, frigid cold, intense pain, incredible pressures could all be simulated without actually doing anything to the body. In Seven's case, it had been set to tickle, and was proving very effective, at least in terms of reaction. Her laughter and shrieks had only intensified as the procedure continued, showing that it was definitely having an effect. The only problem was that Seven refused to talk, even after several days of such treatment, of spending every waking moment being tickled non-stop.
There was no way he could have understood why she did it. Seven knew Mara, and she knew that Mara would come back for her. She knew that anything she told them could compromise her and her rescue efforts. So even as she felt the horrible, unrelenting sensations as they tickled her, she resisted, but it was anything but easy. Her soles, from the heel to the ball, were fighting madly against the sensations, and her toes bunched up to try and escape their teasing. She would twist madly as they tickled along each ribs. She found herself clenching as they applied it all along the curves of her behind and breasts. She sucked her stomach in in a vain attempt to protect her tummy, yet still with nothing to save her flanks. Her arms twisted in her restraints, trying to spare her underarms the intense sensations they were experiencing. She tried grinding her thighs together to protect them as well. None of it did much to help; she was as immersed in tickling as she'd ever been, and alone it would be overwhelming. So she thought about Mara, and it helped. She kept her focus on her, and Seven could endure the non-stop tickling.
All that was beyond the vision of Ronald, of course, but he could read a few things with his instruments. He could see that there was a definite undercurrent of sexual fulfillment in this. That would no doubt be useful in her reprogramming even if the interrogation offered no results.
It was probably hard to understand, but humanity had undergone a substantial leap in the last few centuries, becoming the greatest known power there was. This had happened because of a fundamental change to how humans lived, a change encouraged by the then-Emperor whose vision surpassed many. Advanced robots that were superficially identical to humans had been around for a long time and a well-known if snubbed appetite for the wealthy. The thing was, the Emperor had observed, was that these robots were so well-designed that they were sexually indistinguishable from their human counterparts, and because they were manufactured they were free of undesirable features. The Emperor decreed that the Imperial Treasury would purchase one device for every citizen of their make and choosing, a move that shocked everyone across the Empire. They weren't mandatory, of course, but even among happily married couples they were useful for cleaning and errands and helping with the children, and over time they'd become the norm. People still dated and married humans, but they were now more the exception than the rule. The robots offered human men and women the counterpart of their dreams, thus setting standards few real humans could measure up to.
Of course, the sole issue of robots was that they couldn't procreate, so the Emperor's other act was to decree that every human must produce two children. This actually is part of what made marriages with humans more difficult, because it demanded a couple produce and raise four children, and children were expensive to care for. With a robot spouse you only needed to raise two, and the robot would be there day and night to care for the child. It may have sounded awful in those early days, but Ronald had fond memories of the time he spent with his mother, and he'd cried more when she’d been disassembled after his father's death than he did over the man himself.
But the combination of the two edicts -the robots and the order about children- was where the Emperor's genius lay. When it came time to procreate, artificial insemination was the only choice, and the technicians responsible were instructed to select the most genetically advanced samples from the parent, and for the remaining half of the reproductive equation, the eggs or sperm were genetically purified; not racially, of course, or anything so distasteful, but free of disease, near-sightedness, palsy, deafness, all of that. The Emperor's plan was this: every generation humanity would be stronger, smarter, heartier, and would double in number. Even against coalitions of alien species, none of them had stood a chance against the evolved creatures that humanity had become, and were continuing to be.
And slavery? This fate was reserved for criminals deemed unworthy of being part of the apex of galactic power that was humanity. They lost everything - their freedom, their will, and their opportunity to be part of the gene pool, except when an owner requested it. There were several cases of men and women who wanted to reproduce the old-fashioned way without having to raise four children. Ronald hadn't personally understood the appeal; it was much more logical for them to allow the Firish females the honor of carrying three or four infants to term rather than encumbering a human female with a burden that seemed rather demeaning to Ronald, not to mention all the bodily side-effects of it.
Still, despite himself, Ronald watched Seven there, screaming and laughing under the ticklish influence, and he started toying with the idea of perhaps acquiring her himself. She was almost as beautiful as his own wife, and the mechanics added an interesting departure... realizing there was no small irony in that thought considering underneath all those perfect curves his wife was a machine.
Seven, of course, was completely oblivious to anyone beyond herself. They had increased the intensity of the tickling again, and she could hardly breathe she was laughing so hard. It was simply everywhere now. She could feel it where her neck ran into her collarbone, and running up behind her ears. She actually felt it along the lobes themselves, a horrible teasing sensation that made her thrash her head from time to time. The soft flesh behind her knees felt an awful stroking sensation driving her wild. With her laughter silenced she could hear the repeated message coming through again, of how her only way to escape was to tell them what she knew. No, she thought, or as best she could think under this endless tickling, her only way to escape was to wait and trust in Mara. And before the tickling drove her momentarily into unconsciousness, she kept repeating her name, to remind herself why she had to keep fighting.
--------------------------------------------------------------
The door to Ms. Danoob's office slid open. She'd been insistent in the design of this place that they function this way, so that the facility could be quickly locked down, even though the shareholders had been opposed to the added expense. As usual, Ms. Danoob won out, so when Mara barged into her office, the door slid open and closed without in any way reflecting her dark mood. "We're getting her out," Mara said, in a voice that not only left no room for argument, it sent argument a restraining order.
Ms. Danoob put down her pen and pushed the form aside; she could no doubt see how serious Mara took this situation. "We are," Ms. Danoob assured her. "I didn't spend all this time and money on her just to abandon her."
Unfortunately, this only darkened Mara's move. Ms. Danoob had made Seven seem like nothing more than an asset rather than a person, and right now she didn't need that. Nevertheless, at least their goals were in agreement, if not their motivations. "When do we move?"
Ms. Danoob was silent. "I don't know. But not for some time."
Mara stormed up to the desk and leaned over it towards Ms. Danoob. "Tonight," she said.
"No," Ms. Danoob replied, despite the severity of Mara's tone. "It would be doomed to failure."
"I'll do it alone if I have to," Mara growled.
"That would be foolish, you'd only allow yourself to be captured as well."
"I'd rather have that then not bother trying!"
Ms. Danoob sighed, then shook her head a little. "Mara, I don't know what happened to you on that station, but it's clear that your emotions got the better of you. That is likely why Seven was captured - if you'd stuck with protocol the three of you would have had a chance of eliminating the jamming suite. Instead they not only lost you but you became an encumbrance; the three of you are lucky you got away at all-"
"Don't you think I know that?!" Mara shouted. "I made a mistake, and Seven paid the price! Now do you honestly think I can sit here and do nothing while she's at the tender mercies of the Terran Empire?!"
"If you want to actually right this wrong, yes."
"I can't stand by while she suffers!" Mara shouted. "I have to do something! Anything!"
"What, stupidity got you into this, stupidity will get you out?" Ms. Danoob folded her hands and stared over them at Mara. "You acted with emotion rather than thinking, and that caused this to happen. Haven't you learned anything from this? The only way out is to approach this rationally, and see that premature action will fail. You've lost twenty-five percent of your squad, and what's more she represented the physically strongest and the most intelligent, so your effectiveness is severely hampered. You must look at what you can do and what you're up against, objectively; only then can you hope to succeed."
Mara let out a trembling breath, then straightened up. "Do you have a plan?"
"I have a start," Ms. Danoob said. "But you can't succeed, not yet. You'll need help." She tapped a few keys, then turned the monitor for Mara to see. "Her help."
Mara swallowed. "You need to recruit someone else, like we were?"
"There's no other way, Mara," Ms. Danoob said. "You three are good, no question, but you're not invincible. With her, you can pull this off." Mara stared a while at the screen. "Or we can leave her be. I'll see if I can come up with another plan, one that requires only the three of you. Of course, that would take even longer, if it even happened at all. The choice is up to you, Mara."
Mara swallowed. She remembered her own processing here as vividly as if it were yesterday, and it wasn't something she'd wish on anyone. But -and she hated to admit this even to herself- she'd been so close to killing Kara it was terrifying. Taking some stranger, as awful as it was, was certainly an acceptable alternative. "What's her name?" Mara asked, her throat dry.
