by Trent Evans
A missing piece that would make sense of this surreal mess.
He picked up the composite cane. He had no real idea what it might do to her, but it was time to escalate things. He was going to have an answer from her.
It was simply impossible for him to believe D hadn’t been told anything, or really didn’t know a thing about what was happening. She was… she had to know. And he was going to get the answer from her.
Even if he had to hurt her.
Pressing the cane to her bottom, he lowered his voice. “Do you know what this is?”
“A c-cane.” She breathed out. “Sir.”
“That’s right. And I’m going to cane you until you tell me what it is I need to know. For all I know, our lives might depend on it. Either way, you’re going to tell what the fuck is going on here. How much pain you go through before is up to you. Anything you have to say?”
“Sir… please, don’t…”
He didn’t let her finish though, snapping the fearsome implement across the fullest part of her bottom. The flesh seemed to recoil from the sting, then rippled accompanied by a ragged shriek.
“Do I have to continue?” He prodded the swelling weal, the color already deepening to scarlet. Another stroke across that same line, and he had no doubt the skin would break.
“Please…”
His stomach was tied in sickening knots as he placed the implement to her shivering buttocks again. Despite the fact his cock was diamond hard, he most definitely did not want to continue with something this harsh. There was punishment, and there was pure sadism.
And it was clear where this stood.
“I’m waiting, D. Somewhere in that clever electronic brain of yours, it’s there. I want it.”
“No!”
Slicing into her again, he caught her even lower, her legs flailing at the awful stroke. She took in a great lungful of air and screamed then, bursting into tears.
“Oh please… n-no more…”
He tapped her bottom with the horrid rod. “I want anything but to give you a single stroke more, D. But I swear to God, if I have to, I’ll whip your ass until the blood is running down your thighs. For the love of God, tell me what is going on!”
She tried to stifle her crying, sniffling, but though she craned her head back to look at him, her lips twisted, as if she were chewing upon the very words themselves.
With a sigh, he placed the cane against her upper thighs. “Last chance, D.”
Silence.
He pulled it back and just as he began the stroke, she cried out.
“It’s me, Martin!” She began to weep harder. “Martin, it’s me, me! Oh God, please, don’t hurt me anymore!” She buried her tear-soaked face against her upper arm, the sounds of her sobs tearing at his heart.
He stumbled backward, the cane clattering against the floor grating.
“Diandra?”
But she only cried harder, her body wracked with sobs, her words a pleading, incoherent mess.
“Oh… oh fuck. Diandra… what have I done?”
Chapter 12
As I sat there, the heavy, scratchy blanket wrapped around my shoulders, I still had no idea what to say. I looked at him now and then, where he sat across the table from me. My food, still steaming, was piled atop the tray before me.
I had watched him — after he had lowered me back down to the floor, of course — as he had busied himself in the galley, preparing me more food than I’d had in a week. I had just gotten my sniffling back under control by the time the tray was placed in front of me.
I wanted him to touch me, even something as simple as a squeeze of my shoulder. The tiniest gesture to show me things weren’t as irretrievably fucked up as I feared.
But he gave me nothing, not so much as a smile.
Where is my husband?
My ass burned insistently, the welts there feeling like I was sitting on lengths of rope, the flesh tight, swollen.
Even the memory of my most recent punishment caused strange stirrings deep in my belly. It was a mix of horror and an unsettling feeling resembling an out of body experience. That it was another me undergoing such torment — and trying to ignore the fact part of me enjoyed it.
My mind… it was a mess. A complete and total mess.
But my body, oh, it was singing an entirely different tune.
Which one was the real me now?
“I want to know one thing.” His voice rattled like a speaker turned up much too high. “Why?”
I took a deep breath, the muscles of my legs shuddering as I posed my bare feet up on tip-toe.
The floor was dreadfully cold, as it had been since the first moment I’d set foot on that station.
Only now, I didn’t have to hide that it bothered me.
“I… I don’t know where to even start.” I wiped a last patch of wetness from my cheek.
“Try at the beginning.”
The rebuke in his voice, that tinge of caustic sarcasm stung.
Staring at the food on my tray as I picked at it with a fork, I began. “It wasn’t my idea — well, not entirely.” I glanced up at him, checking for a reaction.
Nothing.
He stared, intently yes, but without any emotion I could discern. It didn’t seem like… Martin.
God, what have I done to him?
“The company…I had requested a way to visit you. I… missed you so much. So much.”
Dark clouds flitted across his gaze, the first real sign of emotion.
I’d have to take it.
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have turned down some contracts…”
“Tell you what, Martin? That I couldn’t bear you being away for months? That the money didn’t matter? That only you mattered?”
“Well…yes.”
I put my face in my hands.
Don’t cry, Dee. Not now.
There was far more to it than that though, and no matter how much I wanted to — even then — I still didn’t have the courage to tell him.
I had had… suspicions about him. For a long time. Those suspicions had come to a head, so to speak, right before he had left for one of his latest contracts. He had been… rough with me.
Sexually.
It was something he had never done before.
And I liked it. More than a little.
But I had always wondered. With Martin, there was a hint of steel just under the surface. It was subtle, quite easy to miss — unless a girl was looking for it.
And considering how much use my vibrator got as I had fantasized every night about what that potential hidden side to Martin was, I was definitely looking for anything I could get!
What if there really was a whole other Martin somewhere deep down inside, a primitive, savage animal just waiting to be set free?
Forcing myself to meet his gaze, I pressed on.
“It’s not that simple. I… I needed to know. Know who you really were.”
“Did you try just asking me?” He cut a hand through the air, as if to banish the line of questioning. “I don’t like this. You’re being evasive, D.”
“Don’t call me that…”
“And why not?”
“Because I’m your wife, not some… machine.”
Martin sat back in his chair then, his fingers drumming upon the white tabletop. “How do I know that?”
“How do you know? Are you… you aren’t serious, are you? I’m me. Diandra. Your wife.”
He looked away then, and cold fingers tightened around my heart.
He doesn’t believe you. Dear God, what if he doesn’t believe you…
“You’re stalling. Finish it.” His voice softened the tiniest bit. “Please.”
“Okay… okay.” I took a breath again, willing myself to tell him all of it — despite my shame at how stupid I could now see the whole thing was.
“Brent Cartlan. He—”
“Oh, Christ.” Martin ran a hand through his hair. “Is he involved in this?”
&n
bsp; “Sort of.” I cleared my throat. “Okay, yes, more than sort of.”
The line of Martin’s strong jaw twitched ever so slightly, but he said nothing.
“He shot me down on the whole idea of visiting you, said it violated all sorts of protocols, regulations — I don’t even remember which. Bottom line, it wasn’t just no — it was hell no.”
The memory of leaving Cartlan’s office that day was still vivid. I was crying as the door closed behind me — and I had no real idea why.
That wasn’t quite true though.
I had felt like one of Pavlov’s dogs; there it was, that goal, that knowledge, that discovery. Right there in front of me… and there was no way I could reach it.
“My boss though? You went to see my boss?” Martin shook his head. “Cartlan is an asshole. He knows it, I know it — the whole fucking company knows it. It’s probably what got him the job in the first place.”
“He… he called me back to his office the next day though. Wouldn’t tell me what it was about. Took me to what he said was the company’s ‘R&D’ division.”
Martin sneered. “More like spook city. Company is into all sorts of weird shit with the Core Council. The less you know, the better.”
I swallowed, hard. “Well, I… I don’t know about any of that. But what Cartlan showed me… I still can’t believe it.”
“Artificials.”
I frowned at him, feeling an odd frustration I couldn’t explain. “How’d you know that?”
“The androids are the next frontier.” Martin shrugged. “The other station jockeys have been talking about them for months. It’s not exactly a development that’s going to be a positive thing for the job prospects of poor bastards like me.”
It dawned on me then — and I hated myself for not figuring it out sooner.
The artificials were going to eventually replace humans — at least out here.
“Oh no…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Martin said, resting his hands on the table as he shifted forward. “We’re getting off track here.”
I — sorry, you’re right.” I scooped some food into my mouth and forced myself to swallow it. “It was Cartlan who came up with the plan. To send me to you.”
“But he’d already told you no…”
“They had an experiment. A, uh, case study they needed to conduct. So… they offered it to me.”
“Offered you what?”
My heart was like a frightened animal at that point, pattering frantically in my chest.
Just get it out, Dee.
“The current contract. They wanted to send artificials to a group of stations. Including yours. They showed me one — the, uh, androids. Introduced me to one of them, I guess I should say. You know how the old ones, the androids we’ve seen up to now, they’ve got that weird sort of synthetic smell?”
“They are synthetic,” Martin drawled.
“You know what I mean. Well, the one I met. Was shown — whatever. She was… she smelled nice. Like a person.”
Martin said nothing, only a slight incline of his head giving anything away. His patience was coming to an end, and I couldn’t blame him one bit either.
I had to tell him all of it.
“The company planned to send out artificials to this group of stations — one per station — during this current contract. And they weren’t scheduled visits. All of them — they were surprises, I guess.”
“Oh fuck,” Martin said, his eyes blinking rapidly.
“What?” Dread began to seep into my bones. Nothing much rattled my husband. Something had him spooked at that moment though.
“Do you remember which stations?” His eyes glinted, his expression suddenly grave. “I need to know.”
“I-I can’t recall all of them. Shiva something? Glasya? I think there might have been another. Plus yours.”
“But why you though? If you are who you say you are — my wife?”
A chill ran down my spine at the prospect that he still, even now, might be unsure whether or not to believe the woman seated across the table from him was in fact his own flesh and blood wife.
The woman who loved him more than anything in this universe.
You sure about that? After what he did to you?
The thought made her sick at the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t ready to confront that yet.
“Cartlan needed a — what did he call it — a ‘control subject.’”
“I was a fucking guinea pig.”
I nodded at that, heat blooming at my cheeks. My shame in that moment, in my deception, was real, even if I couldn’t explain exactly why I felt it.
“Cartlan needed to know if humans really could tell the artificials from the real thing.”
“Or my real wife.”
“I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know why I said it, but at that moment, the truth of it was as profound as it was painful. “So, I-I had to pretend. I had to convince you I was one of… them.”
He scowled then, unable to meet my gaze. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
I nodded miserably. “I… I wanted to know. I… there was something within you. I sensed it, but I couldn’t figure out how to get you to show it to me. This was a way for me to get you to… let your guard down. To show it to me, that other side of you. The — hell, I don’t know what to call it — the mean Martin, I guess.”
“Mean? Mean?”
“What else would I call it? What you did to me?”
I knew it was horribly unfair of me to say such a thing, but the words tumbled out of my mouth before I realized how terrible they sounded.
He shoved himself back from the table then, as if I had physically struck him across the face. His expression was pure hurt anguish, but his eyes were twin glittering pools of rage.
My mouth suddenly went dry as he rose to his feet. “W-where are you going?”
“I need to think.” He strode for the entrance hatch, pausing at the threshold, turning his head, not quite meeting my gaze from over his shoulder. “Finish your food.”
Then he was gone.
* * *
The glass was icy against his forehead. His pulse pounded in his temple as he leaned against the broad, inches thick pane, watching the sparkling, flashing red and amber lights of the shuttles traversing the route from the surface of the asteroid to the station payload dock. The payload module was noisy, and dirty, the pungent miasma of ore dust and the ozone smell of hot machinery ever present, despite the fact the vibration of the processing units was isolated from the rest of the station by two bulkheads separated by an acoustic void of more than thirty meters.
The walls of the station shuddered as another load was transferred, the hum of the payload door closing once more as the docking couplings released the shuttle to make yet another of its countless treks back down to the rocky surface. It was mundane, but elegant. Simple, yet ingenious.
And watching it helped him forget, if only for a minute, how insane the situation there on Charon 90 had become.
The stress, the confusion, it had his mind paralyzed, numb.
He wanted to believe it really was her. Even if that made what he had done to her completely indefensible.
He missed her that much. He loved her that much.
But there was a very real chance that it wasn’t her.
There’s also a very real chance you’re going shithouse.
The technical term for such mental deterioration was Marooning Syndrome. The mind tended to wander, in increasingly bizarre directions, until reality and the fantastic, the concrete and the illusory, became difficult to distinguish.
It was a very well-known danger of mid-length contracts in mining station work. It was long considered by the company to be a persistent, if manageable, risk. There was still no solid explanation for it, other than the obvious: humans weren’t meant to be isolated for long periods of time in the black silence of deep space.
But was that the case here? How did one know? Was the ability to
even pose such a question an indication of a sound mind, or was this the beginnings of those mental “wanderings?”
“Fuck!” The snarled word echoed off the steel bulkheads as he slapped his palms against the unforgiving glass.
If it was her, he might not be crazy — but the situation surely was. Beyond crazy.
For her to do what she had done, to maintain the deception, to stay “in character” the whole time was… he didn’t know what. It was as unsettling as it was impressive.
More like freaking you the fuck out.
How… after what he had put her through. How did she manage it?
Diandra was either a world-class actress — or there was much more to his wife than he had ever imagined. He wasn’t sure if he even knew who she was anymore.
The biggest question though — and the one virtually impossible to answer — was: what did it mean?
For them?
Not only did she allow him to do… everything. She encouraged it. She had been aroused by it, at times hugely so. What did that mean? If it was her? Who was this woman?
Worse, who was he? A normal man, a loving, sane man, would have been crestfallen, horrified at all that he had done, at the sadistic — and selfish — lengths he had gone to in order to live out his fantasies. That he thought it was with an artificial replica of his wife was a fig leaf, wasn’t it? Did moral and ethical considerations really cease to matter when the human was removed from such a situation?
Some might answer an emphatic yes. But to him? Perhaps that was when ethics, and morals — and one’s conscience — mattered most.
That’s the least of your troubles. Stop ignoring it, Martin.
The question was obvious, a maddening simplicity to it that belied the gravity of its meaning.
If it wasn’t Diandra, what then?
The possibility of what that might mean hadn’t escaped his notice either. She had confirmed something critically important, beyond the fact her presence there may — or may not — have been a ruse.
There was something serious going on with the other stations, and this experiment from hell was now obviously involved in it. At least something made sense, even if that discovery itself only posed more questions.
If her story was true, and in fact she was actually Diandra, then that meant something had gone wrong at the stations that had received the androids. There were no such things as coincidences, especially out at the edge of the galaxy.