The following story contains material of an adult nature. If you are offended by such things or are restricted by laws in your area from viewing such things, please turn away now.

LEGAL BS: Feel free to read this story at your leisure. The characters, the plot, and the machine which makes all this happen belong to me and may not be borrowed or stolen without written permission. If you are an archiver, please contact me if you are interested in putting this story up on your site. I will allow all free sites to post my work so long as I know where it is going and you allow me to prepare a copy of the story which is specifically "branded" with your site's information. (i.e. I put a Meta Tag in it with your site info so that we can identify that you do, in fact, have permission to post it) I will also write up a custom "Author's Notes" for the beginning of the tale which addresses your readers directly. You may NOT archive the TEXT versions of this story which have gone out onto the newsgroups. I have posted a few copies, but they lose considerable punch because of the format structure of a ascii text file. You MAY feel free to pass versions along to your friends, so long as you aren't making any cash from it. Again, I would prefer that the text versions just be used for the newsgroups, while the HTML versions are used for all other purposes. If you have questions about whether or not I'll approve of something you wish to do with the stuff, just ask. :)

Note from the Author: This story is a little different from most of the things I've seen posted around the net. In addition to being along a SciFi vein, it also has a plot which (I hope) people will find both entertaining and thought provoking. I have to admit, there are some pretty weird things in here, so I'm assuming that this probably won't be to everyone's liking. This is my first stab at writing erotic fiction for public consumption, so I'd be interested in hearing from people. You can reach me at grumpus@mail.gv2.net.

ONE – "Welcome to the Game"

It wasn’t so bad, really – once you learned how to "detach" yourself from it all. I was getting pretty good at it, too. As the music soared, I parted the smoke stained curtains and strutted my stuff right out onto the stage as if I truly wanted to be there. The lights reflected off my skin tight latex skirt and halter as I strode confidently over to the brass pole in the center of the tiny stage. I began to seductively move my lean frame along its smooth cylindrical surface, my eyes scanning the row of grubby men seated along the edge of the low stage.

Despite the fact that my dancer’s skills – though probably not my dancing skills - had increased tremendously during the years leading up to this, my looks had really begun to take a turn the other way. As I looked up at myself in the mirrored ceiling, I was almost sucked back into the reality of it all – something I couldn’t afford to do if I was going to continue to survive in this drab existence. I’d lost thirty pounds, which brought me down to a sickly twig of 98 – unhealthy for my 5’9" height. My cheeks had hollowed and large dark bags had appeared under my once bright and shining blue eyes. Most of this was due to the fact that I had prioritized the booze and drugs I had been using to assist in detaching myself from this shameful existence than the food and nourishment I needed to sustain any existence at all. Time was starting to work against me, as well. I was only 27, but the constant flow of drugs and booze through my system seemed to have accelerated the whole process considerably. Fortunately, I had stayed away from the addictive and lethal stuff like heroine or cocaine. I was looking for temporary escape from this life, not a permanent way out.

I still had my moves, though. And the dollar bills had already begun to appear on the low rail by the time I had finished my first sequence with the cold brass of the pole. My tired eyes scanned the low rail, searching for the spot to start the main part of the show. There was a trick to it; one taught to me by a girl named Debbie. She’d since died of a heroine overdose, but I had somehow, despite the horrifying mix of drugs, booze, and lack of self respect constantly numbing my brain, managed to remember all she had taught me.

In this case, it was important not to reach "Mr. Hollywood" – the biggest tipper in the crowd – too soon or too late. If you got there too early, you’d still have too many clothes on. If you got there too late, it would take too long to make the circuit and return to him for another round of exorbitant tips before your set ran out. The first trick was to guess who tonight’s Mr. Hollywood was going to be. The next part just came from practice.

As my eyes scanned the crowd, I was startled to discover that Mr. Hollywood seemed to actually be a Ms! She had flowing red hair and green eyes that seemed to pierce through the shell of what I had become and could actually see the old me somewhere beneath it all. I couldn’t see much below her shoulders, but she seemed to be wearing some sort of shiny red sequin thing which reflected the lights back from the stage almost hypnotically. She had two dollars up on the rail already – and there was a large roll of bills beside her drink on the ledge.

Having found my "mark" I strode two bills to her left and began my slow dance. I gyrated my hips seductively as the grubby little man in a mechanic’s uniform stared up at me. I glanced down for a moment and smiled captivatingly. I could almost see the spittle forming in the corner of his mouth. I slid my hands up over my sickly thin stomach and to my smallish breasts as my thoughts turned, for the moment, back to the woman two seats to "Mr. Goodwrench’s" right.

She was definitely out of place, here in this seedy strip joint. I guessed she was in town on business and probably had been away from her husband for some time. Hmmm – no ring, though. She might have taken it off…. She was probably horny and, possibly, in her own mind, she could justify that being with another woman wasn’t really cheating on her man.

Too bad for you! I thought. I never did the hooking thing - well, I had slept with a few people in return for a night of good drugs and dinner, but that was more like "dating" than being a whore. And I certainly had never even considered being with another woman. There was no way I was going home with this woman no matter how much she offered me.

I wasn’t, of course, above taking her money from the relative safety of the stage.

The latex outer garments had been removed and tossed to the floor by the pole by the time I reached her. I was left in just a matching set of a black silk g-string and a bra which was more there for effect than practical "holstering" purposes. Two liquor moistened bills hung off my square hip as I flashed Ms. Hollywood my best smile which, with all the dental work I needed, wasn’t as dazzling as it once had been. She smiled back and added another dollar to the stack with a wink.

"Hello," I beamed as I kneeled and leaned in. I brought my smallish chest as close to her face as I could without making contact with it. My intent was for her to smell my thick perfume as it mixed with the thin layer of sweat which was starting to form on my exposed flesh.

Instead, I found myself taking in a most marvelous scent which seemed to be emanating from my Ms. Hollywood. It was thick and musky with a hint of maybe honey. It wasn’t particularly sweet. It was more like – well, to put it frankly, she smelled like pure and raw sexuality.

Never in my two years of dancing had I ever become aroused during a dance. Remember, I liked to detach myself from it all and just go through the motions. That’s why I was surprised to find that as I moved away from her, I was becoming damp between my legs. Even more disconcerting was what flashed through my mind at that very moment.

She moved in quickly and wrapped her lips around my rock hard cock. My cock? My male body reacted instantly as I pressed my six fat inches deep into her hungry mouth. She worked me like a pro, her hands coming up and cupping my balls, her blond hair tossing lightly as she moved herself quickly up and down my length. I could feel the orgasm building quickly and it felt somehow different from anything I had felt before. It was foreign. But, God, it was good!

The people around the stage must have seen it as my body rocked with an orgasm. I don’t think I screamed, but there was definitely a gasp or two. Gathering my wits, I glanced around as a volley of new dollar bills appeared on the rail. I turned my attention back to Ms. Hollywood. She winked and placed a hundred atop the stack, then stood and walked out of the club without so much as a glance back.

The rest of my routine ran in standard "automatic" mode, but my little orgasmic display did help the tips quite a bit and it carried through the entire set. One man, having seen Ms. Hollywood sweeten the pot even put a C-Note up in hopes of having me repeat my experience in front of him.

It didn’t happen, but I also didn’t try. It was too weird – and too real for that matter. It seemed as if, for a second, I had really been standing there with my cock in some unknown blonde’s mouth. I didn’t want to experience it again.

It was way too fucking weird.

I stumbled back into the dressing room covered in sweat. I felt like I was going through withdrawal or something. The only problem was that I steered way clear of addicting drugs like heroine or cocaine. I was strictly pot, shrooms, and maybe even some LSD now and again. None of that stuff was physically addicting, so I really was at a loss.

"You okay, Jackie?" asked Robbie, my co-worker and roommate. "You look like hell."

I nodded. Like me, Robbie had taken little or no care of herself over the past few years, but unlike me, she still had an affinity for food – especially the stuff that was bad for you. While I had lost thirty pounds in a couple years, she had put on at least that much. Her blonde hair was thinning, but her breasts were still large and that made up for the rest in the eyes of the customers. In fact, she made a little more money than I did, as a rule.

"I’ll be fine," I muttered as I flopped down into my seat.

"When was the last time you ate something?" asked my robust friend.

I thought about it. I hadn’t eaten more than a stalk of celery from a Bloody Mary since yesterday morning. I’d gone longer than that in the past, but my body didn’t have much stored energy left. That was probably it. The hallucination on stage, the weak, strung out feelings I was having now – it could all be chalked up as lack of food. The gender bender aspect of it all still didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but hell, it was a lot easier just to lump it all together and put it in the back of my mind.

"Too long ago," I muttered. "Be a dear and grab me an orange or something from the bar?"

Robbie waddled off and I smiled. If the roles were reversed, she would have surely asked for a bag of chips or something along those lines. Despite the fact that I didn’t give two shits about whether I lived or died so long as I was comfortable through it all, I still had some semblance of self preservation left in me. When I did bother to eat, I usually made sure that it was at least healthy food.

In the mirror which spat my sickly image back at me, I saw Robbie coming back. She held an orange in one hand and a strange looking plant in the other. It was in a pot designed for hanging and had vines like a spider plant which hung down a foot or so below the base of the plastic housing. In the center though was a purplish pod which looked rather like a cucumber stuck into the dirt which a small ring of lush green leaves surrounding the base.

"Looks like you have a fan," smiled Robbie as she tossed me the orange and set the plant down on the makeup table several feet away from me. "Some woman left this for you at the bar."

I peeled the orange while my stomach continued to churn. I regarded the plant absently, my thoughts fixed on the piece of fruit which would surely be my salvation. It wasn’t uncommon for customers to leave flowers, though potted plants were a bit out of the norm. At this point, I couldn’t be bothered with it. Ms. Hollywood had obviously figured that $103 wasn’t enough and had returned with another gift in an effort to make me more accepting of her advances in the coming nights.

"You in there, Jax?" asked Robbie as she glanced at the stage.

I glanced up at my overweight friend, my trembling hands still working on getting the rind from my supper. She stood there shifting in her mini skirt, looking very much like she had to go to the bathroom or something like that.

To be honest, I was already starting to feel a little better. I waved the orange at her, "I’ll be fine in a minute. How about you? Are you okay?"

Robbie considered this for a moment and smiled, "Nothing a good fuck wouldn’t solve, I guess."

The curtains to the stage parted and Karen, a tall muscular brunette with her leather biker outfit in her hands strode in. "You’re up, Robbie," she said in her low husky voice as she tossed her leathers onto a chair.

"Get that orange into you and we’ll head home right after my set," said Robbie as she ran a finger through the elastic of her panties which ran between her plump legs. I nodded and waved as she vanished through the curtains.

Surprisingly, I was already feeling almost normal before the first slice of orange hit my tongue and gushed through my mouth as I closed my badly neglected teeth on it. My stomach had eased up and despite the fact that I was soaking wet with sweat, my body seemed to have stopped producing new perspiration to add to it.

"You gotta start takin’ better care of yourself," husked Karen as she strode absently over toward my plant. I placed another slice of orange in my mouth as she leaned in and took a big whiff of the plant. She seemed to falter for a moment, then pulled the card from its sheath and read it. "You got yourself a freak, here."

Karen’s eyes closed and she smiled as I impatiently waited for her to elaborate. "What’s it say?"

She opened her eyes and took two steps toward me. Her bare leg pressed against my naked shoulder as she handed the card down to me.

Welcome To The Game, ---XOXOXOX Ms. Hollywood

I turned the card over in my hand, half expecting more of an explanation to be written on the back of it. There was nothing at all. Just that strange, almost cryptic message from a woman whom I’d never really met. It was a little bit strange that she had signed it with the name I had given to her only in my own mind, but then again, every stripper – at least in this part of the Northeast – called the big tippers "Hollywood." I just wondered what the game was? Was she going to try to seduce me and make me her lover? Was that the game? Or, was it something else altogether?

"I wouldn’t worry about it," said Karen, her voice even more husky than usual.

I suddenly became aware that her leg was slowly, almost imperceptibly rubbing against my shoulder. Her hips were so close to my head that I could smell her arousal. When I turned my head, I could even see the damp spot forming in her pink silk panties. Karen and I had never been particularly close before, so it came as quite a surprise. Most of us had guessed that she had some kind of lesbian tendencies, but as far as I knew, she’d never done anything which remotely resembled making a pass at any of the dancers here.

Yet, though her movements were very subtle, they were distinct in their own way and her arousal was undeniable. The most disconcerting thing about it was that despite the fact that I had never had a lesbian experience, nor the slightest inkling to have one, I was becoming aroused at the thought of it. I could feel the familiar warmth building between my legs and there was nothing I could do.

"A – are you okay?" I asked, looking up at the stunning brunette.

"Oh yeah," she smiled. "Nothing a good fuck wouldn’t solve."

Nothing a good fuck wouldn’t solve.

That was the second time in ten minutes that I had heard that very phrase. I don’t know why it struck me as so strange, we girls often joked about sex and such. It just didn’t seem to fit. While to the men out there in the club, this whole experience was quite sexual, to us girls, it was a job – a job that we all rather detached ourselves from. If we didn’t, none of us would be capable of enjoying sex in our real lives at all. I’d seen it happen to several girls who thought of this job as sexy.

Now, with this strange comment, I had also detected sexual arousal in both of the people who had spoken it in the past several minutes. Sure, I didn’t recognize it at first in Robbie, mistaking it for the need to go to the bathroom, but now that I had seen Karen and had been out of my hunger induced stupor, I realized that both physical reactions had been the same.

"I’ll be right back," breathed Karen as she walked off to the bathroom with a bit of a stumble every few strides. She had a hand down into her panties even before the door was completely closed.

My god! I thought as I stared at the door to the tiny bathroom dumbly. She’s in their frigging off to thoughts of me!!! Welcome to the game!

I don’t know why the last part of that thought popped into my head, but it did. My sickness was completely subsided now and I felt completely normal except for feeling a bit aroused at the thought of Karen’s sudden attraction to me. I don’t know why I thought it was sudden. It could have been feelings she had all along. After all, I had just gotten a gift from another woman. Maybe she thought I must go that way if I’m getting gifts from girls. Maybe she thought she would give it a try. Then, when I didn’t react as she’d hoped, she just decided to head to the can, take care of herself, and forget about it.

There was still the Robbie thing, though. I stood and walked toward the curtains, my pussy lips squishing pleasantly between my legs as I walked. I passed by the plant and noticed something odd – a familiar smell emanating from it. It was musky and heady and had maybe a hint of honey.

It smelled just like Ms. Hollywood’s perfume!

I thought back. The smell of her perfume had given me that strange and very disturbing vision, earlier. But, it was undeniably very sexual, despite the inner repulsion I felt. Robbie had shown her signs of arousal after bringing the plant to me. Karen had started her strange behavior after reading the card and taking a good whiff.

Shit, she has handed me the ultimate aphrodisiac!

Was that the game? To see how I would utilize this plant? To see how I would handle the power of being able to seduce anyone I wanted? To see if I would use this power for good? For evil? Was it all just a sick little game where she – or the government, or something bigger – could watch me, their little lab rat, handle what many might consider the ultimate power?

I had already stood there in close proximity to the plant for too long. My nipples were hardening and I could tell that there was an obvious wet spot in my panties. Running a hand over my sickly stomach, I felt a gush of pleasure wash over me.

I was falling victim to it, myself!