Marina forgot what she was doing.

Well, for one thing, she was holding a phone in her hand.

She put it to her ear, partly to see whether someone was on the other end. But there was nothing, no sound, not even a dialtone. Which told her she was in the midst of dialing. Yet, even with this obvious piece of information, she was compelled to ask herself:

What am I doing?

Something important. That was all she had: something important.

Marina sat still for several seconds. She was in her cubicle. Dimly aware of the clattering of mid-morning work rising from the 8th floor office. She looked to Kelli's office at her left, which was empty. What brought her to this point, phone in hand, unfinished with dialing who knows where. The phone said: If you'd like to make a call, please hang up...

Greatly uncertain, reluctant even, she obeyed the message and placed the phone back into the cradle. A sense of failure lingered inside her.

What was she doing with the phone in the first place? It's ok to ask that question, she reasoned. Think - it was important.

She felt lost, but not helpless. Never helpless. Marina was a doer. A Division 1 volleyball player, an athlete who, like a soldier, was in love with commitment and discipline. Who, had there been any way to make a living as a volleyball player without having to go to another country, probably would have been playing striving, competing because nothing beats competing. Instead she was sitting in a cubicle at Paisley, Inc. With a phone in her hand.

But she accepted a quiet retirement and made the jump to assistant supervisor of marketing communications after realizing she didn't have to throw away her highly developed senses of dedication and ambition. They could be used in the office, where she far outpaced people who liked letting things slide. She was naturally tuned to avoid any detachment from reality, to any loss of presence, and because of this, even though she sat in her cubicle dazed, shoulders slumped in vagueness, eyes wearily unable to focus peripherally, she, internally, was making her way to regain clarity. Even if she wasn't too sure that anything was wrong or altered, voiceless instincts were goading her on.

She was getting pretty close. Hoping to jump-start her memory, she turned her head to look at something else in her cubicle. The thing that was important, or something which might be related to the thing that was important, was probably lying nearby.

Yes...

She became conscious of the presence of her own thinking. It was a weird, but welcome feeling. She was working her way out of some dead-end of thought, a progression whose origin she didn't remember but had led her into a dark area of no thought and holding a phone and like a little patch of daylight burning through the haze, her mind was slowly glimpsing some space between herself and that emptiness. Which was very close, still very approachable, hanging there, waiting.

Like waking up from a nap, time began reestablishing itself but on a pretty big scale: she'd been in this on again, off again state for days. That much she remembered. Her breathing was fast, deep, working hard; and she was aware of her surroundings, at work, in her cubicle. What was going on? And then, getting her bearings, it was lightening clear: she was terrified. Something was wrong, really fucking wrong.

She didn't want to move. The less she moved the more she remembered.

She was back in a state of wakefulness she had hoped would come back again the last time she felt the daze seep down over her mind, behind her eyes, into her mouth and down her chest as she slipped away to god only knows where....

"What are you doing, Marina?"

Marina wasn't startled. The voice was helpful and then became familiar ... Suzette's voice. Marina carefully turned around. Suzette Minelli stood just outside Marina's cubicle, trying to look relaxed. She had one hand calmly on the cubicle wall, but her face was a contorted, whirling with confusion herself. She was breathing quickly too. Is there something going on everywhere? ... Marina wondered. She was relieved with the idea.

With a little humor, trying to regain some social composure, she answered Suzette. "I - don't even know. What's going on?"

A smile also forced its way across Suzette's lips. "What ... do you ... mean?" It was an unconvincing smile, difficult to make. Her tiny body, with its tiny, sinewy oval muscles, and smooth bronze skin, shook like a chill just ran through it. She opened her eyes wide as if she were getting used to contacts, took a deep breath, and then suffered a violent shake that sent several blond strands of her thick, permed hair out of place. Her breathing grew deeper and heavier.

Marina saw all of this and somehow put together that whatever was happening to her, it might also be affecting Suzette, who was usually so energetic and on top of things she moved through the office like a starling.

Marina had the feeling they both knew they were underwater, but didn't want to talk about it.

"Well, what I - mean - is - " Marina also began to smile. She went back into her mind. What did she mean? Wasn't everything ok? Or was it wrong? Thinking was getting so goddamned hard, exhausting.

Smiling....

"Did - ummm - did you want - to - ummm - make a phone call?" Suzette asked. She gulped a few times, drily and her voice cracked. Her big, blue eyes, wider than normal, blinked laboriously, but when they opened she looked hopeful, trusting. Thinking was really getting hard for her too.

"Yes - that's right." Marina couldn't help but notice that Suzette was struggling too. Her chest was rising and falling with every breath. This non-interference was too hard to take. The smile on her own face was hard and painful and she determined to stop. Her lips came together slowly. She now had to ask. "Suzette - are you - ok?"

It was like opening the lid to boiling pot. Suzette's face suddenly betrayed every conflicted emotion running wildly inside, her red lips stretched wide with alarm and with sadness. Her eyes bulged, wetly, and her brow wrinkled not just helplessly, but thankfully. In fact, so thankful that someone could see the state she was in, that she felt herself gush with loving gratitude that Marina noticed.

"I don't - know - Marina. I have - to ... ggohddth - "

Her body quaked again. Her left ankle gave way on the precarious sandal she wore and she grasped for the cubicle wall. Her head lowered, and rose again with a deep, restorative inhale. Something glistening on the inside of her thigh caught Marina's attention and suddenly the temperature of the air thickened and hung with musk.

She just came ... Marina realized, partly amazed, partly embarrassed for Suzzette. But when she saw Suzette bent over slightly, catching her breath like she'd been hit hard and didn't see it coming, fear began to take over in Marina. She watched Suzette pull herself to together and then turn towards Marina. Her expression was hungry, like a convert. And grateful. She was turned into something far more deliciously depraved and wanting more orgasms.

"You should call ... Marina - god, please call, please.... Please call, you have to ... nnnnngggh!" She grasped the cubicle wall again. Inside, Suzette was doubled over with conflict, both pain and pleasure, obedience and disobedience fighting inside.

The seizure controlled the small woman. But the words, You should call made a lot of sense. Marina was listening again. Yes, she had to call. Only the logic of calling mattered. Suzette was right...,

Goddammit, that's right! She was back again. She'd made it to the surface again. Dammit!

She had to call - to help both of them, maybe others, that was why she was here, trying to get Marina to help... .

All at once Marina remembered what she was doing before. She wheeled around, scrambled for the phone, the daze forgotten: oh my god please be home please be home, Bruce, please be home please be home...

... to tell him that something was wrong with her, within her, without her, everything was so completely wrong, all around, and she didn't know why but she was losing it, I'm losing it completely, come get me, take me home, call the police keep me safe.... She managed to punch the first five digits of her home number before the dialtone trigger set in.

It stopped her in her tracks.

She heard the dial tone when she picked up the phone. Or really, the tone reached out to her ear. It crept into the tunnel of her ear and slipped inside, taking a split second to confuse the synapses of her brain and deliver the trigger to the space in her mind already co-opted for processing. There the trigger could set up shop and restart the dismantling of Marina's conscious, what she was when she spoke of herself to herself, what sat behind her eyes to look when she looked in a mirror, the Marina of Marina, and the reassembling of it according to ...

.... Ok. Enough pretending to be some unknown, unseen author. These are my memoirs after all. Theirs too but, really, from about that moment in the office onward the memoirs of, Suzette and Marina and Kelli and Leilani and Darrah and about fourteen other people are what I write for them now any way.

Simply put, Marina was undergoing a total reassemblage, a process that follows a script prepared for her and many others. She had no idea at all of course who I was, let alone the extent of the peril she was in.

(From her previously lucid point of view of course. She wasn't going to be physically harmed or mentally tortured, mind you. Although, having your freedom and will taken away from you without your prior consent could amount to a perilous threat to your life, I guess. I won't argue.)

Nor did she know fully what she was going through. Which, together with the mystery of her looming peril and my utter anonymity happen to be a few of the little pleasures I pluck out of this wonderful life.

Picture Marina. She's just scrambled to put the phone to her ear to call her husband. It was actually the third time that hour that she resorted to calling for help. She was caught in a loop. Perniciously predictable and self-defeating. She would slowly wake up to her environment, realize what was going on, remember to call her husband for help, and the trigger planted inside her over the last three days gets reinforced a little more. Suzette had been sent to break that loop

By just the fifth number the trigger exposes itself, switching on its light and blinding everything she knows, momentarily freezing every action and behavior, in order to get to work. There sits Marina in her cubicle, 11.28 am, Wednesday, the rest of the office murmuring its way through the morning. Eyes open, head tilted slightly, long, thick fingers recoiling slightly from the phone's touch pad. Suzette has pulled herself together with the aid of her own internal programming and moved on, sent to check up on each of the selected acquisitions. Her agile, tennis-conditioned self (and a mother of two, but still cute and perky as all get out) is deep in her own looping behavioral patterns (approach the subject, inquire about current activity, realize momentarily that she and they are in trouble, beg for them to call for help, get rewarded by orgasm at the sight of the subject getting triggered deeper, cleaning herself up with her fingers, moving on).

So: the trigger. The trigger's first and most important task (to subdue, or rather, subvert critical thinking by as pleasant and non-threatening means, and therefore seductive, as possible), sprang into action by mimicking Marina's mental voice of reason. Like a calm hospital orderly, the trigger approached her panicking conscious, stopped the dialing and made her ask herself: What am I doing?

And cloaked in a phony voice of reason, she hears herself reply, there's nothing wrong here, you need to relax.

Outwardly, Marina exhales. Though her eyes still move around, looking for a clue, something to grab a hold of and climb out of this confounding situation, she answers herself: Ok, I'm relaxed.

The trigger then digs in a little more. It seeks out her conscious in order to bring it back to a peaceful place where she could rest, in a secure, enveloping, warm and sleepy daze. Needless to say, the induction needs to be as convincing as possible, so the trigger opens up a phony reminder, masquerading as a kind of New Age exercise Marina mistakenly attributes to an interest in yoga. A brand new interest, in fact, one she picked up at the beginning of the week when she faithfully acted on the department-wide memo that urged all Sales and Marketing staff to sit with two company "consultants," a meeting which turned into an hour long session in front of a terminal with twirling, mesmerizing colors.

As I said, the phoney yogic exercise suggests to Marina she locate a secure, enveloping, warm and sleepy daze whenever she catches herself becoming overanxious, stressed and unnerved. This state of mind is accessed easily, because it already exists in a part of her mind secured and hidden in plain sight in her mind during her consultations. While it has all the trappings of a lovely, dharmic sanctuary, once entered it is little more than a mental sand trap that sucks the subject down into paralyzing compliance.

Let's go back to the cubicle. There's Marina, seemingly lost in thought, her back turned to the aisle outside her cubicle, one hand moved away from the phone, arms resting on chair's arm rests, hands dangling over her lap. The little goldfish in the aquarium on the shelf above her desk, lazily swimming around. Her computer beeps: she's got email, but it's not important. She is deeply involved with something. She is recognizing the need to relax. Let's look at her: her wide, strikingly mighty mouth slightly open, breathing through her wide, handsome nose, eyelids a little heavier than normal. Inside, she accepts she's out of sorts and calmly blinks her eyes and concentrates: You're a little stressed now, you'll figure out what's going on, just relax, create a lovely, suggestive picture of mental stability and peace....

And so she sits like this, ruminating. Until a little moan rises up her throat. She has not only found that private place, she took that one step into the sand trap though which she experiences a sudden sinking feeling (thus the moan). Freefall panic is mitigated by her first reward: suspension of reality and a nice bloodrush. The darkness she falls into dissipates and up springs the image of a room, bathed in cool afternoon light, in the middle of which sits a long, wide bed, overflowing with quilts and a white down comforter. It is a familiar, welcome sight, a memory dream. The bed sits in the middle of the room. Her room, she remembers. Her room to come to when she needs to feel safe. And she needs to feel safe now. Instructions rise up with tranquil certainty: I should go to the bed, and on the way I will slowly count each step toward the bed each step relaxing me more and more....

The first step: she realizes she is naked. She also realizes it is a freedom to be naked. The smooth floor is cool to her wide barefeet which makes her body feel flush, agitated. Relax... She doesn't stop stepping or counting, or trying to relax, but she wonders, when did I become naked? Just like you ask yourself a question during a dream. How did I get naked? I'm in my cube at work, naked, about to fall asleep, someone's going to find me like this ... But within a moment or two, the questioning falls away, heavily. It's too heavy to continue thinking this way. She makes it to the bed and out of dim curiosity, runs her hand over the fresh covers. Yes, this is where she needs to be.

Marina crawls onto the bed and gently lies down on her back. She swings her legs up so that she lying in perfect comfort and posture on the pillowy bed. When she lowers her arms to her sides and they are limp, she knows she is done. Restful. So restful...yes... comfort. She could stay like this forever. A temporal change in the environment is felt at the edge of her bed. The daze is beginning to accumulate there. She recognizes, this has happened before.... The daze has crept along the floor like a soothing, golden fog and gathers at the foot of the bed. When Marina feels she is ready, she exhales deeply. Her body feels heavy on the bed. She allows the fog to drift up and reach the top of the bed, to swaddle her bare legs and feet first. Then it crawls up her body, caressing, entwining. While Marina senses the daze is drawing near and feels passive to its gathering presence, for a few seconds, her survival instincts, the urge to run, kick in - shouting without voice -

Shit! No, no, not again! I know what's going on, I know what's happening, I'm not going under! Fight, damn it... But the already attractively soothing voice of reason put that to rest: That's exactly what you don't want to do. It wants you to fight it. Don't fight it, because you need to relax, sweetie, she told herself. Let it settle over you, just for a minute. Ok... She feels her tense muscles give way and the daze begin to creep up her body. Oh... she moans, yes, that's right. The daze is both cooling and imprisoning. Palpable. It settles over her like a fine plastic sheet. It draws over her breasts and tummy, is pulled taut down her legs which were pinned together, immobile, ankle to ankle, and tucked over her feet. The palms of her hands are pressed to her hips, her arms pinned to her sides, achieving the most perfect position to be in, a phrase that arises from time to time to remind her where and how she is. The plastic sheet is tucked tightly under her, over her, across her, and finally creeps up over her face and stretches over her head so she can't move it. She presses her face to the sheet, it feels cool and taut on her cheeks, and when that first moment of panic of suffocation strikes, she takes in a breath, finds she can breath after all, and relaxes. Finally, I'm immobile, she thinks.

Everything plummets away from her. She is empty.

Emptiness.

She breathes.

There is the dim, white noise sound of the office from outside her. This orients her. Her mouth emits a sigh, a child's sigh, and Marina likes the sound.

She realizes she is waiting.

And that's it. Just like that, Marina's conscience, the guard of all her critical faculties, the Marina of Marina, is tucked in for good, bound securely, in delicious immobility. Immobiled, on her back, comfortable and still in touch with every pleasant stimulus that settles over her. She opens her eyes and can see everything around happening around her. She's in her cubicle, in her office, and waits for the next round of information. The small sigh escapes her conscious and surfaces through her lips in the cubicle. On her back, immobile, she knew then it was for good, that she'd lost. But the mind that worked, the mind that she could sense coursing all around her, separated from her but in constant communication with her too told her she'd might have lost, but she won, too. If she had to stay this way, she would stay this way. Marina's conscious sighed again. Watching and waiting for her separated mind and body to respond to information she no longer produced.

This is how Marina pretty much came to me, days later. Her conscious wrapped in a warm, humid, self-marinating tomb of benign repose. Soaking in her own delicious juices by triggers that come to her in her own voice (there's nothing quite like self-hypnosis). Watching her body respond to these triggers, feeling the sensual rewards on her body, and best of all being the seat from which each orgasm begins. And every independent, interior thought that raises from her pacified conscious, like is this really right, or even - help! - drifts away like exhale. She is conditioned, responding and behaving every way I like her to. To this day.

It just takes a couple of phone calls.

A buzzing sound. The telephone. The sound interrupted Karen's dream. She was at home, her parents' home, another Kentucky summer filling every room with warmth and softness. It was prettier than she'd ever remembered consciously, and she was waking from room to room, looking for Gilda, the cat. It scuttled from the hallway up the stairs, deliberately leading her on and avoiding her at the same time. Cats love games, Karen told herself, not entirely sure why. The thought seemed a little extraneous and phony, but still, cats love games!

Up the stairs it went and Karen followed, one step at a time. It's going to take me to my room, she realized. And sure enough she could see its butt zip into her bright bedroom. And straight for beneath the bed. Karen stepped towards her bedroom, glad to be home. It had been so long since she'd been back and though her parents were here somewhere and she hadn't seen them, she was content in the deepest sense to just wander around it alone.

The phone rang. In her bedroom. She stepped to the doorway. And saw Rita sitting on her bed. What the...

Naked. A gold chain around her dark neck. Rita lives here?

I'm in my house. Rita lives ... Domina's chambers....

Domina ...

The phone rang again, even as Rita held the phone out to Karen in the doorway. So beautiful and luscious....

Karen has to answer the phone. The dream is forgotten. Dawn is filtering through the window next to her, she's aware of that much and it pleases her: beautiful day outside? Her hand reached for the phone, instinctively guided to the handle.

It's cumbersome, but she pulls it to her ear.

"Hello?"

"Good morning, this is the front desk. This is your wake up call..."

"Yes...?" Karen asks. There is a pause. She's in a hotel?

The voice on the phone, a husky, womanly voice, suddenly changes. A shift occurs in the voice. It is information.

"External maneuvers."

All senses plummet away from karen.

"I understand. Thank you. Internal deceit."

"In - in - yesss...?! Internal deceit - !"

charmain the night manager finds her voice again and becomes Charmain again, mother of two, churchgoer, loving wife. It feels like she just ... blipped right out there ... in the middle of a wake up call. I have to stop doing this, she chides herself.

But she's done her duty. I'm ok with that.

"Yes, ma'am. Have a pleasant day."

Upstairs in Penthouse 5, the room is still dark. karen is sitting in a deep leather chair where she has spent the night, facing the phone. Ready, but out of service until roused by the sound of a telephone.

She replaces the phone. Her head is buzzing. It has information in it.

She must awaken Carmela.

karen rises and walks across the room. It is dark in the room, but she knows where to step, a straight line from the chair to the center of the room where a pulsing bodyheat stands. karen approaches and in the half light of early morning sees the relaxed face of Carmela. Carmela is older than karen, the way a learned veteran is older and yet somehow in her physique has turned maturity into beauty, the way innocence or sweet unknowing is molded into beauty earlier in life. Carmela stands with her arms at her sides, head straight, ashen blonde hair holding its shape, unmoving. Her eyes are closed, but her makeup still looks fresh. karen feels herself descend into submissive devotion standing before Carmela.

One day will you own me? It isn't a thought, it's an impulse. karen loves Carmela and wants to debase herself and yet prove the quality of her tender love for this woman. This yearning exists just for the moment. karen is a dense hot star of devotion, love, submission, and a need to demonstrate all of these to a woman stronger than she is. I didn't necessarily program her this way. Much of it was found roilling beneath, a happy, some might say normal upper-middle class girl who one day would have found a banker or venture capitalist, and lead a gracious life.

She is now a warm, bighearted, desperately willing, pliable girltool.

karen takes her hands and holds them onto Carmela's face. her palms are warm against Carmela's cool, cataplectic state. She knows what elegant, princessly shaped hands she has and they rest gently over the cheeks and the temples of Carmela's face. karen leans forward and places her lips against Carmela's. It's like kissing the cool wet flesh of a cucumber. karen kisses and kisses, wanting to open her mouth and penetrate Carmela's, but removes that thought, puts it away, because it is not permitted and the role she is in now is servant.

Carmela's own dreams lift away. She feels sensation, from outside. On her body. Warmth again. A kiss.

A servant's kiss.

Carmela's eyes draw open. karen is with her, kissing her, her lovely hands holding her face with gentleness and shy devotion. It may be difficult to completely remember her life before a drastic change of some ill-defined shape took place some time ago. But ever since that change occurred, being kissed awake by a female servant is deeply satisfying. Anything to do with women is deeply satisfying, because whatever caused that drastic change it unleashed an intoxicating capability for controlling the lives and the minds of women.

She lifts her hands, places them on karen's hips and benignly pushes down. karen obeys the pressure, and sinks to her knees. It is a familiar guidance. Her mouth waters, filling instantly with saliva. Had it been a lingering push, karen would have been ready to lower her mouth to the ground and begin the long tonguestrokes of foot worship. Instead Carmela's pressure was light. karen' arms wrap around Carmela's thighs and she presses her face into the Carmela's cotton business suit, between her legs, where her pussy lay curtained off, even from devoted servant girls.

Carmela herself runs her hands through and up karen's long cornsilk hair ....so thick... Carmela appraises.

"Awaken the others, lovely," Carmela says. karen remembers again: she is not permitted to demonstrate anything right now, and suffers the slight lapse in love and purpose. her magnificently bright face, with its aquiline nose, curvy lips, and periwinkle eyes, is eager as she lifts it to Carmela's downward gaze. Both women, dressed in corporate chic, before their minds were rearranged, would scarcely believe they would be in this position, engaged in this sensual ritual a year before. They certainly would not have known each other.

Three other women sit on the beds, in the dark. They are asleep too, just as Carmela was, but they are sisters. Not Commanders. But nonetheless pretty, soft, pliant, juicy, and so tasty. tiffany, beth, and katherine. Girls who karen spends much of her time with. There on the beds, each girl, tranced, conditioned, vibrating internally with the pleasures of mindfucking, are dreaming too. I can condition them, reorient and reconstruct them, but the mind is enormous, psychically spacious. I can't prevent them from dreaming, even when they are automatons. I like it that way, any way. They tell me their dreams, too, confidentially.

karen bends her face to katherine's and kisses her.

When katherine's eyes flutter open, karen parts. "i obey," katherine whispers, with thanks.

Another kiss.

"i obey," beth intones.

A kiss more passionate than the others greets tiffany.

tiffany's green eyes draw open. Sitting before her is karen. Their eyes hold one another.

"i obey," tiffany assents, a little flirtingly. karen smiles and returns to tiffany once more. tiffany returns the kiss, her own hands returning the face caress that karen offers. They are drawn to each other with shared memories of occupying a life in which the other played a role.

(They were coworkers, actually. Respectful of each other, but not great friends, though their first sample of lesbian servitude was with each other, on tiffany's desk, one sunny day a year or so ago. They were processed together and were given to each other for the first few months. It was a little intense, their partnership, and a potentially dangerous one, in that the subservience that ought to have flowed to Domina was kept within the relationship. Entire days passed with neither of them willing or able to break from each other. Their mouths and pussy lips would chap, their nipples chafe, their toes wrinkle from excess attention. When they had to, they simply opened their bowels right there, in bed, in one form of 69 or another. The drenching only furthered the other's subjugation more and pushed them further from coherence. After four days of not being seen and even missing a Call to Worship, I sent a girl to find them. She found them locked in an ecstatic, trembling embrace, arms around calves, mouths enveloping soaked toes, hair matted, bodies bruised, whimpering helplessly, despite their mouths being full. They were quickly corrected. These things happen. Today, they can't really remember any of that, though sometimes I try to draw it out of them, just for fun. Here in the hotel, as elsewhere though, proximity, a shared kiss, can prompt a longing for something, a phantom of feeling, a lover's nostalgia, barely recalled. It's a sweet pain.)

In the dim hotel room, karen breaks away from tiffany, rises and strides to Carmela, who has been observing karen's ritual. It pleases Carmela to watch a pretty girl sweetly kissing a deeply tranced girl to wakefulness. She looks down at karen, who's lipstick is now slightly smeared.

"We must prepare. Acquisition procedures begin in forty-three minutes."

Acquisition procedures at Paisley, Inc. began on a Monday. That was when the consultants arrived: Carmela Gold and Associates, famous in the world of management for insight, creativity, a willingness to work with what is given her, and not spend money that isn't hers.

It was Paisley's hiring of Carmela Gold which produced the memo that went out to Sales and Marketing that changed everything for everybody there:

In order to facilitate our department's mission to implement effective marketing strategies blah blah blah .... ALL departmental staff are required to spend at the minimum one day with the consultants, and those earmarked for return meetings will he given the appropriate time away from work ... blahblah blah.... We know how busy everyone is these days, etc., but everyone is required to participate in at least one session. I expect nothing less from my team, signed Marcia Springer.

On CEO Walter Paisley's stationary. I particularly liked the "those earmarked for return meetings."

For many in the department, the memo and the program it described was a little out of the ordinary: an employee by employee review of operations, company direction, corporate structure. Paisley was notoriously hands off; department wags had him down as an old fashioned three-martini luncher, Sun Belt golfer, and owner of ugly suits. Yet there in the memo were the words "...explore every possible idea of improved efficiency.... Collect ideas from the ones who do the work .... Air company grievances anonymously, safely .... Gold and Associates are here to help."

(Incidentally, a lot of this was not my idea. Most of the planning and oversight on the ground came from Carmela herself. Though a former executive director of a philanthropic foundation, her own conditioning exposed a mind happily suited not only to the coldness of planning and seeing through complex long-term operations; it had a zest for ruthless infiltration, a kind of sexual deviancy similar to the way burglars get off burglarizing homes. Oh, and a secret, very secret masturbatory fantasy of capture and control. Many of these fine qualities probably got her far in the non-profit world, no doubt in a twisted perverted way, and attracted me even more to Carmela when I was inducing her, so many years ago. It's a pity what's happened since, but oh well. I have the memories.)

Forgive me: a little more history on the whole corporate ops thing.

I started this when I became fixated on aquiring whole herds of new inductees, not just to perform on my island or sell as product but also to participate on the island as audience, as travellers to a tropical paradise, as customers (or rather, imbibers) of my product. Which itself was a by-product of something Domina, the magnificently regal center of island life, declared was a necessity during one of the langorous, shadowy bacchanals on Her behalf. She was lounging in Her resplendent alcazar, high on Her pillowed divan, simultaneously participating with and observing the twenty or thirty enthralled girls and boys surrounding Her. Even as She came up for air, She had several still clinging to Her like worshipful apparel, thralls who moved when she did never letting go. Two sets of girlish lips were fastened to each golden nipple; two wriggling former cheerleaders vying for space within Her succulent pussy; a small agile woman clutching Her hips to keep her face and tongue planted in Her spicy and sweaty brown anus-star; five or six mewling high school girls crowding around Her feet to hold and suckle a golden brown toe or two in their mouths; a former hippie chick, still in lovely blonde dreads, langorously cleaning Her bellybutton; two males, studs standing ready on either side of Her head, emptyheaded, their veiny cocks still glistening with Domina spit; a couple of older women, each holding, caressing, lapping the length of an arm until Domina wrested it from them to work on one of Her willing subjects.... The rest of the coterie, maybe twenty in all, automatically feasted on a body next to theirs when there was no more room on Her body to worship. They would first worship those physically connected to Domina because those thralls were In Contact with Her - while others teamed up nearby in two's and three's, making love just so Domina could glance their way. They were the garni. Each body was Hers by extension, fully owned by Her. Their candlelit bodies spread away from Her like a royal train of reverent squirming flesh.

When She emerged from another deeply satisfying orgasm, Her own face wet with juice and spittle. All the sounds, all the human energy were directed to her. Her own mind, warped into regal carnality, now accepted nothing less than an orgy on Her behalf. Drunk on Her exaltedness, eyes half lidded with exhaustion and arousal, her body steamy beneath her thralls attentions, she moaned: "More ... I want more...."

I was nearby, my cock deeply embedded in the upturned, bouqueted ass of a lovely girl formerly known as Trina who I think was accidentally induced while working at a record store by one of my girls who should have been acquiring Trina's sister, but somehow got mixed up. Trina was now trawling her tongue through the pink pussywalls of Domina's primary consort Rita while impaled by me. But the sincerity and spontaneity of Domina's wish, emitted without any programming on my part, a genuine, libidinous hunger for more, made me come. Even back in my own luxuriant quarters, later on, laying on my bed, I couldn't get the sound of her desire out of my mind. Inspired, I agreed: we should have more people at my disposal and Hers, but not necessarily as drones or thralls. But as vacationers.

Consumers became the vast majority of people we condition in corporate ops. Conditioned to obey a simple, very simple implant: that San Piex, my beautiful island, is a wonderful alternative travel destination for any upcoming vacation plans. That it's ok to accept the pursuit of whatever fantasies each vacationer has when he or she comes here. Much like, yes (and this is the part I'm a bit embarrassed about) that dumb tv show. The theory being that the more people who knew about my island world-wide and "approved" of it and what went on there, the less I had to worry about security.

So I sent Carmela out to several corporations, programmed to behave as her former self but retired now from executive directing. Reborn as a corporate consultant pitching employee/employer communication improvement programs.

In the case of Paisley, Inc., I had already approached Walter Paisley and got him very interested in what I could deliver for him personally: two programmed slaves and two new titanium-plated girlsconces for his library. And in return for a heavily discounted rate we got to go in and pretty much raid his store. As well as the four other clothing affiliates that were under his protection. It comes in handy having the CEO (somewhat) willing to let me take what I want. It saves time and headaches - I can get to the good stuff quicker.