Nano (10 page)

Eleven months passed.  I figured this out later.

Two weeks after Master purchased me, he decided my memories of my former life were impeding my training, and subjected me to a series of memory blocks.  To be honest, I almost welcomed the enforced amnesia.  The very concept that I had not always been Anne-Marie troubled me.

From then on, from the suppression of my memories until I was liberated, I didn't just believe I was living Anne-Marie's life - I believed I
was
Anne-Marie.  Her memories were overlaid where my own had been blocked.

I had no sense of the passing days.  I think after the third month he moved me into his home. I lived full-time in Master's house, a live-in slave, with no clothing, no money, and no say whatsoever.  I didn't even know my captor's name, and knew enough to guess that he wanted to keep it that way.  It was actually a pretty good life, though it doesn't sound like it.  A slave needs structure and rules to be happy - and I had plenty of both.

In retrospect, it was an interesting situation.  We were living each other's lives and didn't even know it.  There was no longer any angst-ridden introspection on my part; in my mind - remember that, for all intents and purposes, I was Anne-Marie, an avowed submissive - and even a DNA test would prove it - this was the life I had dreamed of having.  All my life I'd wanted to be with a man like Master - cruel, commanding, authoritarian - and

Master knew exactly how to handle me.

He had me withdraw from school - and put the money in a trust fund, which he would sign over to me when he freed me from his service.  According to Master, that would be in about ten years, sooner if he tired of having me around.  I hoped desperately that would never happen, and the implicit threat made me work harder to please him.  I didn't mind giving up college too much, though I did miss being around people my own age.  Master's friends were all in their forties, and the closest I got to people in my generation was seeing them from the small barred window in my fourth floor cell.

Not that I didn't like the fact that all those men were so much older.  It somehow made them more authoritative.  I liked the grey on thier temples, and their natural confidence that boys my age lacked.

I loved them all, with the kind of awe one usually reserves for gods.  They were beings to be worshipped, and I did so in the only way I knew how, in the only form they recognized.  I was a nothing animal to be used by them, and when they used me, I felt safe and valued.  I felt lucky when I was chosen, and not Anya or Sarah, to serve in Master's bedchamber for the night. I knew I wasn't exactly loved in return - but I didn't expect or deserve that - it was a demand I was in no position to make of them.  Being a slave, in a sense, is an utterly one-way street: Any demand could justly be made of me, yet I could ask for nothing in return.  I had no bargaining power.  I didn't want any.

Mr. Dentz, to whom Master lent me for weeks at a time when he was out of town, seemed to regard me his favorite.  On those occasions when I was his, Mr. Dentz would bring me up to his country house (packed safely in the trunk, of course) where he had a custom-built dungeon almost as well-stocked as my Master's.

Whereas Master was diffidently cruel, in predictable ways, Mr. Dentz had imagination.  He was a font of new and novel methods of torture, sexual and otherwise. When not torturing me, he would sit out by the pool and I would serve him and his friends drinks.  He had even more of a controlling nature than Master; when at his disposal, I wore a collar that paralyzed my vocal cords, making speech impossible, and when put away for the night I wore opaque contact lenses, to blind me.

I loved it.  And, over the course of a year, I grew to love him - Mr. Dentz - more even than my Master.  Rendered forcibly mute, blind, stumbling to please him, I felt as though my wildest dreams had been granted.

Thinking back on it, actually
being
Anne-Marie for so long was probably what made becoming a man again such a difficult experience.  Anne-Marie's needs and desires were simple, clear, and satisfied in every respect by her enslavement to Mr. Smith.  The life I returned to was much more complicated, and my emotional state much less blissful.

One morning, I woke up feeling very, very strange.

Even before I opened my eyes, I knew that I was no longer in my snug little holding cell.  I also knew, by the sensory feedback my body gave me, that I was Sam again, and found my memories intact once more.

I could remember being Anne-Marie; in fact, in my mind, I still
felt
like Anne-Marie, felt as if my essence had been poured into a scary, foriegn physical form.

I sat up groggily, opened my eyes.

I was wearing a hospital gown, sitting upright on a gurney.  I looked around.  I was in a nano lab, by the looks of it.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Smith?" a doctor said, walking briskly into the room.  He had a clipboard under his arm.

"Like shit," I answered.  My head was throbbing, my muscles sore.  "How did I get here?"

"Mr. Maynard's slave ring was discovered a few months back.  One of his victims had a case of appendicitis.  Her owner brought her to the hospital.  The nano-modifications were so cleverly done that it would normally have been impossible to detect them.  But because the girl developed complications, more thorough blood tests were done, and the nano discovered.

"Her owner wasn't even aware that she had been nano-modified - he thought he had bought a born girl.  The police used the slavery charges to get the seller's name from him, and that led them to Mr. Maynard.  They've been tracking down his other victims and handing them over to us for restitition of their gender.  You were lucky - your owner kept you on U.S. soil.  There are fifteen girls abroad, and we haven't yet been able to extradite their owners.  We have hope for a few of them, but most I think we'll have to give up on.  The people involved in this ring are very wealthy and have a lot of political influence, and some are in countries where slavery is tolerated."

"What about -" I paused, biting down the word 'Master', "what about the other Sam?  The guy who replaced me?"

"She is Anne-Marie again, and is in another nano lab downtown.  I hear she's doing well, although I think she's having a hard time coming to terms with the conflict between the sexual inclinations she used to have as a man, and the ones she was born with, and has regained.  We had to force your memories of the past year onto her to get the nano to take at all.  She's apparently complaining we took her masculinity from her."

"May I see her?" I asked.

"In a few days, maybe.  We need to do some more psych work on you first."

It was strange, being the owner of my house, rather than a prisoner of it.  My role under this roof had been so tightly circumscribed for so long that there was a certain wonderment in poking into rooms where I had been forbidden to go.

The fifth floor had been locked at all times.  I had the key now, and went up exploring tentatively.  It was still my library, but more sumptuously furnished.  Funny that for a full year I hadn't even known what was up here; I'd long wondered, my imagination wrapping a crazy mystique around it.  It wasn't so mysterious now.

I felt as though I were walking through a haunted house.  This place had been the home of Sam and his slave girl, and I felt like a stranger here, not the Sam who had been and no longer Anne-Marie.

My old cell was smaller than I thought - or I was just bigger now.  It seemed claustrophobic.  It still smelled of perfume.

When I first met Sam, I thought of him as a sort of thief - he had stolen my life.  Now I felt like the pretender.

Anne-Marie wore a pink spaghetti-strap sundress with a matching barrette to hold her hair back.  She saw me sitting at the far end of the restaurant, and crossed to meet me.  I gestured to the chair opposite.  She sat down gracefully, folding her hands in her lap, with her knees parted.

"You look nice," I said.

She grimaced.  "The fuckers didn't just change me back.  They restored the nano-conditioning I'd self-administered a few years back, before John changed me.  I can't help but wear this crap.  Did you order?  I need a drink.  May I?"  she said, holding her handbag up.  I nodded.  She set it on the table.

We ordered.

"I wasn't expecting you to call me," she said finally, after a long silence.  "I kind of figured you'd steer clear of your former tormentor.  Not that I'm capable of doing anything to you now."  She looked down at her wineglass.

"You know," she continued, "I'd forgotten what being...well, me, I guess, is like.  It must have been hard for you, feeling the way I do now.  I'm sorry I put you through it."  She grimaced.  "Did you invite me here to gloat?  Because it's not nice, though I guess I deserve it."

I shook my head.

She looked thoughtful.  "Are you going to claim me?" she asked.  "You know what I'm like.  Probably better than anybody.  I suppose you could do to me as I did to you.  I'd make a good slave, God help me. I'd even be grateful, in a way, though I'd hate you for it."

"I know I could.  But you aren't the same anymore.  This Anne-Marie, the girl you've become again, it isn't really you - not now.  Not after everything that's happened.  Being Sam Smith, I think, made you happy.  This is just a torment for you.  Am I right?"

"Yes," she confessed, "it is.  I have to tell you, I
liked
being powerful.  I liked having the world at my fingertips.  I liked feeling I had the right to do anything I wanted.  It was so freeing, you know?  After a lifetime of feeling my proper place was on my knees.  Now, I look at you, and wonder how I could ever have felt that way.  I want it back, but know I don't have the right."

"Anne-Marie, what if, this time tomorrow, you were Sam Smith again - forever - and no one could take it away from you again?"

Her eyes locked on mine.  "What?"

"It's why I invited you here.  I want to make - let's call it an arrangement.  I give you what you want, and you give me what I want."

"What do you get out of it?" she asked incredulously.

"Look, I'm as uncomfortable in this body as you are in yours.  I spent a year believing I was you.  It's a hard thing to shake off - a whole identity.  I
want
to be stuffed back into that pretty little body of yours.  But I'll do it only on two conditions."

"What are they?"

"One.  I won't be your slave.  Two.  Johnny Dentz is still out of town.  He doesn't know what's happened.  I don't want him to."

She shook her head, laughing.  "I can't believe you'd want to throw your life away, to be - this," she said, gesturing to her own body.  "You're nearly as fucked up as I am.  Okay, Mr. Smith - I agree to the first of your terms.  Knowing what I know now, I don't think I'd want you around as a slave.  It'd be too weird.

"As to the second - for one thing, we're going to do this legal.  I don't want anybody saying I forced you to do anything - to have any excuse for changing us back.  So we're going to register the nano-mods.  That, for one thing, will mean Mr. Dentz could find out if he wanted to.

"Besides, I don't like the idea that you get everything you want out of this.  So, this is my condition, non-negotiable - that, once you're Anne-Marie again, you surrender yourself to Mr. Dentz.  Fully and unconditionally.  And with full admission of who you once were.  I want him to know what you've become.  Further, I want him to know that you're my gift to him - from one good friend to another.  If, knowing who you were and what you are now, he rejects you, then you're free to do as you wish.  Not before.  And, as you know, I'm very good at making Anne-Marie obey my wishes."

I thought about this.  "You know, I can do this without you.  I can just become a different woman, and you'll still be trapped as Anne-Marie."

"Don't kid yourself.  See, I know exactly how you think - or used to think, anyway.  It's not good enough to simply become a woman anymore.  You need someone to take your masculinity from you.  I'm going to do that.  But only on my terms."

I could tell the authoritative tone she used was forced.  It was as if she were trying to assume a power and authority she knew she was not capable of wielding, so her tone seemed brittle.

Yet, in her position, I wouldn't have even been able to negotiate.

"Agreed.  On your terms."

The drinks arrived.  She lifted her glass.  "A toast - to us."  We drank.

The train rattled through the heavy woods.  I watched the pines streak by, lightly peppered with country houses and railroad crossings.  I felt a little frightened.

I wore the pink sundress Anne-Marie had worn to our luncheon, and the little barrette held my long hair back.  Mr. Smith had added a few stipulations to our deal; wearing this was one of them. He let me stay in Anne-Marie's apartment - her real apartment - last night, and a thorough investigation of her wardrobe revealed that all of her clothing was as feminine and exposing as the dress I wore now.  And in any case the nano she'd self-administered now flowed in my veins; wearing anything else would cause me physical pain.  Another stipulation of Mr. Smith's I agreed to.  I held the ticket stub in my hand, and a ten dollar bill.  I had no hand bag to put them in, and no pockets.

I got off at my stop - a crossroads, really.  I had the way station call a taxi.

The woods grew denser, the road turned to packed dirt.  Finally the taxi stopped at the base of a logging road.

"I can't bring you up, miss," the cabbie said.  "You'll have to walk from here, I'm afraid."

"That's okay.  Keep the change."  It wasn't enough for a return train ticket anyway, and I knew I'd pay dearly if I didn't keep my part of my deal.  Backing out now was out of the question.

I got out.  The sun was shining, still high in the sky.  The taxi drove off.

I felt the sun on my face, warming my skin, my bare arms and legs where the dress left them exposed.  The woods were full of the rustling of small animals and birds.  I walked up the dirt path in my pink heels.

The path wound back and forth up the mountain.  In my all my time as a man, I'd never guessed Mr. Dentz kept his house here because a woman's screams would be far from any ears that might hear.  I knew it now, and it made continuing up the hill an exercise in self-composure.

Finally I was at the house.

I stripped naked, carried the small pile of clothing over to the cliff behind the house.  I looked over the precipice.  Only a few hundred feet down, but it would take a day to walk around to get to the foot of the cliff.  I hesitated a moment, then threw the bundle over.  Another of Mr. Smith's stipulations.

Every act was a divestiture of power.  My body.  My clothing.

I walked barefoot back to the house.  The key was under the welcome mat.

I remembered the smell of this place.  I remembered things done to me here.

As Sam it would have been perfectly natural for me to make myself at home now.  I wasn't Sam, though, and never would be again.  The DNA encryption could only be decoded by Mr. Smith, and I knew very well he had no intention of helping me.  Now I felt vulnerable; I knew Mr. Dentz wouldn't have permitted me to walk about freely in his absence.

I turned to the DNA lock controls and activated it.  I heard the front door lock.  I pressed a couple of keys on the keypad; no effect.

Now every door, every window in the house would only unlock for someone with a Y chromosome.  Which I no longer had.  I had been used to this method of imprisonment in Mr. Smith's house; but it had been nearly a month since I'd lived as a slave there, and the sound of the locks engaging was frightening.

Another act, rendering me progressively more helpless.  And each dictated by Mr. Smith.

The key in my hand was now useless.  I set it on a sideboard.

It was a simple matter - a ballgag, four leather cuffs and a single padlock from Mr. Dentz's cabinet in the basement. I knelt, trembling, brought my wrists behind me.  I hesitated - only for a second - before I snapped the padlock shut, joining all four cuffs by means of the D-rings set in their faces.  It was the last thing Mr. Smith had commanded me to do.  Further instructions were unnecessary; I was completely helpless.

Now that I'd completed his instructions to the letter, I was left without a script to follow, and felt nervous and flustered.  I had no idea what would happen next.  Would Mr. Dentz even come today?  Had he been told I would be here?  Or would I wait and starve?

A folded note, in a sealed envelope, hung from a string around my neck.  Mr. Smith hadn't let me read the contents.

I knelt, in Mr. Dentz's living room, and waited.