Subjection (9 page)

I should know. My family has restructured almost every re-education center in the country, and many across the world.

Chapter 8
Games

As my master leaves me with the doctor, I repress a giggle at the nickname. It’s nice to see evidence of a real human life with a childhood and twee nicknames, although I’m sure I’d be just as embarrassed if anyone ever used the nicknames that Abriel and I had for each other.

It hurts to think of him, of our happy childhood.

The doctor stands in front of me, looking serious. “Tell me, son, does Cashiel hurt you? Is he the one who did this?”

I shake my head, vehemently denying it. “No, sir, my master is very kind to me.” I’m surprised just how defensive I am, after all, it’s not like we have any sort of special bond. Compared to what I’m used to, my life now is paradise, and I suppose he deserves some credit for that. “It’s true, what he said about the brothel.”

“I’ve been seeing Cashiel since he was a little boy,” the doctor reveals, looking sad at my comment about the brothel. “I’ve known his family for years now, and they don’t leave their slaves with injuries like this. I would be very concerned to hear that Cashiel had lost his temper so violently.”

The familiar setting of the office and friendly nature of the doctor loosens my tongue. “The people who did this to me didn’t lose their tempers, sir. They did it on purpose.”

The doctor looks surprised, and I can’t tell if it’s because of what I said or the fact that I said it. “Well, I suppose that’s true,” he says quietly. “I’d be even more concerned to hear that Cashiel did anything of that nature. I know he’s been in a rough place for a while now, but he was never cruel, not even as a boy.”

I don’t know what to say to this, not sure if my master wants me to hear anything about him, and not wanting to speak out of turn again and risk getting into trouble. I sit quietly instead.

The moment passes. “Well, I doubt you’ll be coming into more injuries now.”

I nod, unable to say anything. I hope he’s right.

He gets me to drop my pants so he can check me there, too. I guess I’m glad he asked my master to leave. It’s already awkward enough between us without him watching his childhood doctor stick his finger up my ass while I try not to scream.

“You should have had stitches at some point,” he mentions, tossing away the glove.

I say nothing, just sit up. Medical treatment wasn’t exactly something that was allowed or accounted for in the brothel.

“Make sure your master knows, you must always,
always
use lubrication,” he advises.

I blush. I’ve been fisted, with and without lube, hell, I’ve wrestled in a fucking
pool
of lube before, but something about hearing the full word, “lubrication,” coming out of a doctor’s mouth… it’s fucking embarrassing. I mumble, “Yes, sir,” before I die.

He smiles at me and pats me on the leg, too high, like doctors always do after they stick their finger up your ass. Like we’re buddies now. He tells me to get dressed and I do, quickly, and he calls my master in.

The doctor explains how I’ve torn the tendons around my rotator cuff, which sounds familiar, and he goes on to describe some exercises I should do daily, maybe forever, how I should rest, and prescribes me some anti-inflammatories. He glares at my master and orders him never,
ever
to tie me with my arms above my head, and my master just nods, saying he wasn’t planning on doing it anyway. Finally, the doctor tells us that my chances for recovery are good, because I’m young, and I’ll likely be fine without surgery.

I’ve only been a slave for a little more than three years; already, I’m facing lifetime limitations. How much worse would it have been if I hadn’t been purchased when I was? I understand why slaves don’t live very long.

I am shocked when my master walks up to the counter and pays the exorbitant bill like it is pocket change. The doctor’s visit alone is nearly a third of what he paid for me. I can’t imagine this added expense will endear me to him. The last surprise is that he also stops off at a pharmacy and picks up the anti-inflammatories that were prescribed, tossing them to me casually as if it’s normal to care that a slave is in pain.

“Don’t overdose or anything stupid,” he warns. “You’d be miserable if you tried that with these, anyway.”

I read the label and swallow down two pills, the maximum I’m supposed to take at once. It seems too good to be true, and I want them in my system before my master has a chance to change his mind. The doctor has given me hope, for once, that I won’t be in pain. They are wonderful, and even though the exercises and stretches sound like they’ll be uncomfortable, I trust that they’ll help, and that I’ll once again be able to wash my hair or grab items off of high shelves without wincing.

I assumed I would never see a real doctor again, unless that’s how slaves get put down. My time at the brothel had pretty much confirmed that theory. Being taken not only to a doctor, but apparently my master’s personal doctor, blows my mind. The last time I saw a real doctor, it was for a far less pleasant procedure.

Our first day at the re-education center, we were taken to the local hospital. I felt about two seconds of relief before remembering what they were going to do. It didn’t matter that this was where all of my childhood injuries had been treated; that day, I was to be neutered like a dog. Well, not exactly; thankfully, some officials had determined that vasectomies were just as effective, less risky, and less expensive than complete castration.

A team of doctors and nurses waited for us. They started with a medical records scan, updating a few shots here and there. I was up to date, fortunately, so I spared myself the embarrassment of yelping and shedding a few tears like I always did when I got shots. I was always sensitive to pain.

We were ordered to strip from the waist down and lie on the cots they rolled out. It wasn’t too different from the state mandated yearly physicals, except the physicals never included being shaved with a straight razor by one of the nurses. I tried to pretend I was just visiting an aesthetician, like I did once before a date with a cute boy from the uppity private school. It was one of the only dates I ever went on, and it struck me as sad that I would never go on one again. Of all the things to miss, it seemed trivial.

Next came the cold, wet feeling of disinfectant. The moment it dried, a nurse gave me a shot, and I yelped and cried, and the nurse actually patted my head like I was a little kid again.

The shot was a local anesthetic, and I tried not to think of the fact that I was about to get my nuts operated on while I was conscious. I looked up at the ceiling, but the too-bright glare of the industrial strength eco-lights hurt my eyes. I closed them and tried to block out the panicked screams from the others who were being sterilized before me, mixed with the buzz of tasers from those who tried to escape. A doctor came by, and I sort of felt the hand that touched me, squeezing around for the right place, locating the tubes that were about to be severed. It was numb, but there was still a sense of pressure, and I felt the gloves brushing against the inside of my leg. I heard the doctor demanding tools, a scalpel, a clamp, someone to wipe away the blood. I couldn’t bring myself to look, but the smell of burning flesh suddenly wafted up, and I realized that I had been cauterized. The scar tissue would make sure that nothing regrew, that the little tubes that used to transport my sperm would never open again.

I heard the doctor call for stitches, and felt a light tugging sensation. The curious part of me would have liked to watch, just to see what I looked like on the inside. The whole ordeal was so unreal that the fact that my dick got snipped wouldn’t really set in until later. We were transported back to the re-education center, where our training began for real.

“Being Demoted means taking your place in society. Since the end of the fourth World War, the world has enjoyed peace and prosperity as a result of Demoting a small segment of the population,” a vidscreen presentation informed us. In reality, the world traded uneasy freedom for totalitarian control and government-sponsored terror. As that wasn’t enough to inspire a false sense of “Peace,” the forced sterilization and mass killings of protesters that erupted during the first few years did. Everyone was able to focus on one thing—not being Demoted.

“The re-education centers are vital to the functioning of the Demoted system. A properly trained slave can be a valuable asset to any individual or business, and nobody knows this better than Kristine Miller, the woman who revolutionized Demoted training worldwide!”

The bright colors and smiling presenters may well have been selling the newest wristband or tablet. After a dull history of the re-education centers, the “revolutionary” herself was shown.

Ms. Miller could have been anyone’s mother; she smiled brightly, wore a conservative business suit, and laughed at her own jokes. The only clues toward the horror she created were the rather severe hairstyle and the look of utter disgust on her face when she discussed the Demoted.

“The Demoted were one of the most underutilized resources for decades. But the Miller System has transformed you into one of the top trade and development industries in the world. Redeem your place in society by reciting our mottos, obeying your guards, and following the standardized training protocols. Our system ensures that you will become a fully functional product. Remember, your superiors know what’s best!”

As the last line was spoken, a loud buzzer went off, and the words flashed on another screen. “Say it!” a guard ordered, and we repeated the first of many standardized lines that Ms. Miller had developed to keep us subservient.

She was the one we could all thank for the routine beatings, starvation, and uncomfortable beds. I wondered what kind of monster spent her life thinking of newer and better ways to torture, ensuring that the “functionality of the product” was never compromised by beating it too much or starving it to death. If only the best and brightest work on the Demoted training projects, maybe society was all backward. Maybe they were the ones who should have been Demoted to keep the rest of the population safe.

We sat through many presentations that week, allowing us to heal from our sterilization surgeries with a minimum of disfigurement and infection risk. The presentations reminded me of school, which I figured was why so many accepted it. We were forbidden from talking to one another, and I got strange looks from the others when I whispered to them when we were alone. I had never been content to follow unquestioningly. I still wanted to learn, to find out if we were being taught the same things, if we all had the same fates planned. I wished I could read the research behind our training. Instead, we were given pointless tasks which could just as easily have been done by robots.

The guard who made me sleep on the floor my first night was a regular on our unit, and he took a particular dislike to me. I learned that his name was Devlin, and promptly started “accidentally” referring to him as Devil. I had to do something to amuse myself; I could feel my brain rotting away from lack of use. It never seemed worth it when he was hitting me, but the rest of the time, I knew I was winning.

“Clean this silverware,” the Devil Man grunted at me during one of our training sessions, dropping a box in front of me as I knelt before him.

There were plenty of machines and chemicals that could have done the task far more quickly, but I assumed that one of the hotels nearby had some sort of contract agreement with the re-education center. I wondered how many times I had been the beneficiary of slave labor in the past without realizing it.

He must have seen the skeptical look on my face, because he pulled me to my feet by my hair and yelled in my face. “You have two hours! Leave one spot and I’ll whip you bloody and make sure you don’t see the inside of the cafeteria for the rest of the week.”

There had only been one whipping on our unit so far, a slave who attacked his guard, so I assumed he was bluffing. Still, I started polishing. Once I completed a dozen, I realized that this was one of the impossible tasks that could never be completed. The pieces I polished took ten minutes, and there were hundreds in the box. In two hours, I would be nowhere near finished, and then the Devil Man would win.

They used impossible tasks to break us down and make us feel worthless, giving them a reason to punish us. The fact that the tasks were easy made it worse, because it hurt more to fail at an easy task than it would have to fail at a clearly difficult one. Most people actually believed they were doing poor jobs, and tried harder to do better, not seeing the futility. I got strange looks from the others when I tried explaining that, and some even asked why I thought our trainers were trying to be so cruel.

Everything at the re-education center was a lie.

I started looking around for an alternative method, recalling the chemistry classes I had breezed through just weeks before. I snuck off to the cleaning supply closet, where I found a few chemicals and a bucket. A bit of trial and error later, I mixed up a solution that would de-tarnish the silver in about five minutes, and I dropped a fork in and waited.