In the kitchen I got a cup and put in a tea bag, then flashed some water into it and sat down at the table. Diane seemed preoccupied while I was making tea, but when I moved toward the table she looked up at me and smiled.

“You didn’t work very long,” she said. She seemed a bit distracted as she spoke, like she had something else on her mind.

“Well, I finished one of the things I had to do,” I answered. “So I thought I’d come and have some tea with you after all.”

Diane’s distraction increased as she tried to make conversation with me for the next several minutes, and when she finally got up from the table she gave the impression somehow of being extremely aware of her body. She told me rather abruptly that she had to do something and left the kitchen. I followed her upstairs to her room a minute later and saw the privacy light on her door, then went to my room and pulled out my viewer just in time to see her take something from a high shelf at the back of her closet. I hadn’t looked there when I was searching the room a few months earlier—it was Dad’s room too, so I was probably less thorough than I would have been normally—and I’d been too nervous an hour ago to ask Diane about her sex toys in Deep O-Mode. She was my stepmother, after all, and I was worried about doing anything too obvious that she might notice later, like keeping her in Trance too long.

I’d found it nerve-racking enough using her Keycode to create a compulsion that she wouldn’t notice the homebrain’s report of a security breach. The first time I’d hacked into the homebrain back in June to watch Diane, the security routine detected my modifications and I got caught. Dad and Diane decided to send me to a psychological agent after they found out.

I didn’t try to get out of psychological training right away, even though I’ve never had any trouble talking Dad around to what I want within a day or so. Dad was obviously upset by the nude vid-clips I’d taken of Diane and my step-sister Gwynn, so I decided to play along with what they told me to do until he and Diane calmed down. I expected the training sessions to be kind of boring, just a lot of mental training exercises to improve my maturity level, exercises I’d mostly avoided during my first six years of high school. Having my training overseen didn’t worry me. Sessions with my psychological agent only lasted seventy-five minutes a day, and I could always find an excuse to avoid doing homework.

I thought it was odd we all had to show up at the agent’s office on the first day to get Bonded so we couldn’t reveal any details of the training, but I didn’t expect to be talking about this anyway. It was embarrassing actually, since juvenile involuntaries were sent to psychological training when they got sentenced, and it wasn’t any picnic for them since the psychological agent used O-Mode compulsion, and I’d heard rumors of negative reinforcement if an involuntary didn’t follow directions without compulsion. I wasn’t guilty of any crimes, so I expected to keep my autonomy, but I figured the AI Council wanted some of the details of training kept secret. I hadn’t been able to find anything about it on the VirtWeb, not even on the hackers’ sites, so there had to be very strong security. I didn’t worry about this at the time though. In fact after our first visit when I got a look at my agent, I started looking forward to my sessions!

My psychological agent was Linda Fechtenbaum, a strikingly pretty woman who’d just finished college. She looked even younger than she was, and I felt attracted to her immediately. After a few sessions, I thought she also felt that way about me, not too surprising since people are always telling me how good looking I am. Most of the time, Linda sounded very professional, but sometimes her eyes would suddenly focus on my crotch or my butt and her voice, still talking about trivia, would take on a sultry, teasing tone. When I’d notice this, I’d start flushing and getting an erection, and she’d immediately return to acting totally professional. But she had a slightly smug expression afterward, as if she knew what she was doing and enjoyed the way it affected me. Once I was convinced she was doing it purposely, I started having serious fantasies about her every night. Since she was usually so bossy, trying to impose her authority during the sessions, in my fantasies I turned the tables and dominated HER, picturing what I’d do to her at the BAD SOMA VirtSite if she lost a high-forfeit bet!

Most of the time I spent in sessions wasn’t very stimulating though. Linda gave me dull tests and assigned me interactive mental exercises to do at home. I resisted, of course, since I was proud of not knuckling under to authority. I was always getting into mild scrapes in school because of that, but I could usually avoid real trouble since I was good at talking my way out of things. I was also the youngest kid at my class level at school, a child-prodigy at 18 in all the technical subjects, so most teachers made allowances.

Linda didn’t seem angry when I resisted her direction, but she didn’t stop trying to get me to cooperate either, and I couldn’t kid her along the way I did with my teachers. As my psychological agent she knew my Keycode, and her job was to understand all my motivations, so she spent a lot of time examining my memories in deep O-Mode at the beginning of every session. I was resigned to this in a general way, but I got a shock when Linda told me one day that she was aware of my erotic fantasies about her. She said she didn’t think it was appropriate for me to be viewing her erotically, and my fantasies about dominating her denigrated her authority role. My face got very hot while she was talking, since I’d never had anybody pry into my private thoughts that way, but I noticed she still didn’t really sound angry. In fact her voice sounded kind of mischievous, almost teasing, as if she was saying I was a bad boy and wondering what she was going to do with me. Then she made a remark in the same tone of voice that shocked me a little.

“You know, David, most of the training subjects who come to see me are subject to physical correction.” Linda smiled and looked at me carefully. “I punish them if they don’t follow my instructions.”

Her words worried me. I knew what she was saying was probably true when she dealt with involuntary discipline subjects, and I’d seen rumors on the VirtWeb about physical punishment. But of course I’d never committed any crimes, and Linda was still smiling, so I decided she was probably just teasing me again.

“But those are involuntaries you’re talking about, right? I’m here as a private patient, so you don’t have that kind of authority over me. You’re just trying to make me nervous so I’ll follow your orders. Am I right?”

Linda sat smiling at me for several seconds without responding, and I found myself becoming increasingly apprehensive.

“Come on, Linda!” I said. “You’ve brought up a very scary scenario, and I want to know if you’re seriously claiming that you have authority to punish me.”

“I didn’t say I was going to punish you right now,” Linda answered, with a teasing emphasis on ‘right now’, as if punishment was only being postponed. “I haven’t established a psychological baseline for you yet, so I won’t know what training option is appropriate until I’ve finished.”

“You’re not answering my question!” I said. “Do you have the AUTHORITY to punish me?”

“No, I don’t have that authority at this time,” she said flatly.

I felt a certain amount of relief and started to ask what she meant by saying, “at this time,” but she got ahead of me.

“And I’m not going to answer any hypothetical questions about what training option you’re likely to have, and what kind of authority I’ll have over you once that’s been settled. Why don’t you just try to be more cooperative, and follow my directions better? I’ve been asking you for over a week to do this sequence of mental training exercises at home, and you keep coming back with ridiculous excuses, which I know very well are fabrications . . .”

She went on like that in a lecturing tone, and I decided this was just a mind game she was using to get me to do boring homework. The teasing note in her voice when she mentioned physical correction kind of confirmed that she wasn’t being totally serious, and I thought she might just be bringing up the idea to see how I reacted. That evening I started fantasizing about Linda punishing me with a paddle or switch, just like a tough BAD SOMA forfeit, and I got very excited thinking about it. My excitement was only magnified by the knowledge that Linda would be likely to learn my fantasy when she examined me in Deep O-Mode the next day! Of course after I was done, I was embarrassed that I’d gotten excited about being punished—it was a loss of dignity for Linda to see me as a pathetic submissive.

After that I made it a point of honor to not do the homework exercises, but in every other way I tried to act as polite and thoughtful with everyone as I could, so I wouldn’t leave any openings for Linda to gain more authority over me. I also paid a lot more attention to the interactive tests I was taking. I thought I could avoid responses that might make me seem anti-social. I’d heard it was impossible to fool tests like this—the maturity level tests especially—but I noticed a lot of trick questions once I started paying attention, and I thought I was learning to avoid some of the traps.

I knew Linda called Dad and Diane in for a conference on Wednesday of the second week that took the place of my own regular session, and she gave me a real shock when I met with her on Thursday.

“I talked with your parents yesterday, David. You’re still going out of your way to be uncooperative about doing mental training exercises at home, and your sexual fantasies about me seem almost calculated to attack my authority. Your parents and I have agreed that I’m going to administer a series of whippings until you’re properly motivated to do what I tell you.”

It took a minute before I believed she was serious. A series of whippings! It sounded so brutal! I’d never been whipped in my life, and didn’t know anybody who had. Of course I’d experienced muted paddlings when I lost a bet with one of the girls who show up at the BAD SOMA VirtSite, but that was pretty tame stuff compared to what Linda seemed to be talking about. At the same time, I noticed she didn’t sound at all angry, so maybe she was just trying to scare me.

But I immediately started trying to talk my way out of what Linda was threatening, just in case she was serious. I argued that all a whipping would accomplish would be to intimidate me, and I couldn’t believe that’s what she wanted. But Linda answered immediately that intimidation was an important factor in Disciplinary Praxis—the only way she could overcome my resistance to authority and make me extinguish my selfish core attitudes. She was still smiling as she said this, but I was beginning to feel frightened anyway! I tried to keep arguing, but after a few exchanges Linda just ignored what I was saying and put me into O-Mode so I couldn’t talk. Then she led me into another room, next to her office, toward something that looked like an oddly shaped chaise lounge, with a hump in the middle and a very thin surface.

Then she told me to take all my clothes off.

I obeyed immediately of course, then stood in a relaxed position, as you do when you’re waiting for the next command in O-Mode. But O-Mode didn’t inure me to my situation, and I immediately got a rock-hard erection, humiliated, and at the same time sexually excited to be naked in front of Linda this way.

Linda ignored my erection, and told me to lie forward on what she called the positioner, pointing at the odd-looking sofa. I quickly understood the reason for the strange shape as I located foot stirrups at one end and stepped into them, then knelt into what looked like soccer shin guards, and lay forward, my erection protruding between the leg-rests that split as I knelt down. I fell into a crouching posture, my knees bent and my ass in a high exposed position on the humped section. My upper body draped down in front, with my arms almost in a position for push-ups, everything comfortably supported by depressions in the surface that seemed made-to-measure for my body. Linda used some control and I felt restraints clicking into place around all the joints in my legs and arms, including my shoulders and upper thighs, and another around belt level. Then the positioner rose a few feet off the floor and bent further in the middle, until I was bent about 90 degrees at the hips and my behind was even more prominent. A moment later Linda dropped me out of O-Mode.

“It’s not a good idea to whip someone in Obedience Mode, David,” Linda said, “so you’re being physically restrained. You can test your bonds if you like.”

She walked to the other side of the room, and I tested my restraints by trying to move. They were intimidatingly firm, and I felt almost ready to cry as I pictured what was going to happen next. When Linda walked back to my side I saw she was holding something that looked like a very broad ruler with a handle. It was about two feet long and nearly three inches wide, and I suddenly realized it was a paddle she was going to use on me—I whimpered a little as I took it in. Linda walked to the side of the sofa, just a few feet from my behind sticking up in the air, and without any preliminaries at all slapped my behind with the paddle. It was a humiliating shock, but at the same time I was relieved that it didn’t hurt as much as I’d feared.

“I’m starting off with easy slaps to habituate you,” Linda said. “I’ll gradually make them harder. I don’t want it to be too much of a shock all at once when I start full whipping strength.”

Then the slaps started again and built up until they really hurt. I could feel my buttocks starting to get desensitized after several slaps, which was obviously the point of a warm-up like this. At the beginning when the slaps still weren’t very hard, I started feeling tremendous sexual excitement. This wasn’t just a virtual experience: it was like fantasies I’d had of actually being whipped by a beautiful woman—or, more often, whipping a beautiful woman, but it was sexy to be in the submissive role too.

After a while though, the slaps got too hard to be a turn-on. I kept trying to talk to Linda as long as I could, asking her to stop, but as the slaps got harder I saved my breath. I was panting and making small yelps now, but the strength of the slaps eventually stopped increasing so I was convinced that this was it as hard as it was going to get. I pictured my butt getting pretty sore if Linda kept this up long enough, but I hadn’t started crying! Instead, the pain of the paddle on my behind made me angry, and I was determined not to give Linda any satisfaction. If she thought she was going to intimidate me this way, she was wrong. Suddenly I heard a little electronic “beep” that seemed to come from the paddle Linda was holding, and she spoke again.

“Now it’s time for your whipping, David,”

I quailed when I realized what Linda meant, and suddenly I felt an explosion of pain on my ass, and I screamed! A few seconds later, there was another, that hurt even more if that was possible, and I screamed again, and from then on didn’t stop screaming. Another one came, and another, spaced out about three seconds apart, an excruciating delay that made me anticipate them more than if they’d been close together! I couldn’t count the slaps because they hurt so much! All I could think of was the next one that was coming! I was screaming continuously, like a lost soul, and I couldn’t think of anything but the pain. If I could have put words together, I would have begged Linda to stop and promised to do anything she said! So much for my resistance to authority. But right from the first, I was screaming too much to get any words out. The pain was AWFUL! It was GHASTLY!

After what seemed a very long time, I realized that the next slap wasn’t coming. I’d been screaming without pause almost from the beginning and it took a few minutes to wind down after my whipping was finished. I trailed off slowly into normal crying, with small choking sobs that made it hard to catch my breath.

And the worst part was that Linda DIDN’T think my whipping was finished!

“You’ve had twenty-four slaps so far,” she said in a loud voice, to be heard over my crying. “I think you’re going to need another round of whipping, but I had to stop because you were losing too much sensitivity in your buttocks. I’ll check back with you a little later.”

With that, she walked out of the room and left me lying there. All I could think of for a while was how she’d be coming back to whip me again—I was terrified of a repetition of the pain I’d just been through! But after she’d been gone a few minutes, I started thinking of other things. I felt more humiliated than ever by the position I was in, bent over face down with my red ass in the air. For some reason I felt more exposed now than when I first lay down on the positioner. It felt like there were army ants crawling around on my behind and stinging me there. I knew it was probably just returning circulation, but it stung a LOT! And I’d only had twenty-four slaps! I would have guessed fifty!

During the whipping I’d lost my erection when the slaps started to really hurt during the warm-up. But now, exposed and sore as I felt, I was starting to feel a perverse excitement—I was getting turned on by my own pain and humiliation! My cock was fully erect, tingling with a sensitivity that began making it impossible to think about anything else, and I knew that if I could just stroke it a few times, I’d get off immediately. The whole situation of having Linda whip me was excruciatingly arousing now that it was over for a few minutes and I could sublimate the remaining pain into sexual excitement. I tried to thrust my hips to make contact against the positioner, but I was only able to twist in my restraints enough to touch my cock very lightly against one of the leg supports. It was just enough contact to frustrate me, not nearly enough to let me get off.

I gave up and tried to think constructively through my haze of arousal, about my situation and what I could do about it, but I didn’t come up with any ideas. I was restrained so tightly I couldn’t move an inch, and my behind was still stinging like fire. What struck me most was how enlarged I felt back there, like my whole ass was hot and swollen!

I began to feel angry about what Linda was doing. What right did she have to hurt me and humiliate me like this? I couldn’t believe Dad and Diane had given her permission to whip me! Well . . . anyway not a whipping that involved as much pain as this! Of course Linda was a psychological agent, but there must be some limit to what she could do to somebody under her authority who hadn’t really done much of anything to be punished. There must be a professional

society that licensed psychological agents, and maybe I could get her into trouble with the AI council for doing this . . .

Suddenly I heard the door open and Linda’s footsteps walking toward me. She was coming up from behind where I was faced on the positioner, so I couldn’t see if she had the broad ruler-like paddle with her, but I thought she probably did and I was immediately terrified again. I started crying and begging her not to hit me any more.

“O-Mode David,” Linda said, and I got the feeling of willingness to let someone make my decisions that I’d been familiar with since I was a little kid. Most parents have a high enough Maturity index that they’re licensed to use O-Mode to check their children don’t get into bad habits or do things that could hurt them.

“Tell me what you’ve been doing and thinking while I was out of the room,” Linda said. Since I was just in normal O-Mode, I was going to remember everything about this conversation.

“I, uh, started by thinking about how scared I was of more whipping and how sore my behind felt,” I answered immediately. “And then I got my erection back and I was really horny, so I tried to rub it against the positioner leg . . .” I began to feel intense embarrassment again, as I realized what I was saying. I’d always been in Deep O-Mode when Linda asked me about my fantasies, so I never remembered the conversations later.

“Uh huh,” Linda interrupted. “And did you have any thoughts about your whipping or about me in relation to your whipping?”

“Yes,” I said. “I started to get mad about how you were treating me, and I was wondering if I could get you in trouble with your professional society or the AI Council.”

I felt a rush of fear as I realized how poor an argument this was that I’d learned my lesson from the whipping I’d had so far! And Linda might be mad at me for planning to get her in trouble!

“Did you have any thoughts of being intimidated?” Linda probed, “Of thinking that you’d better behave yourself or you’ll get more whipping?”

“Uh. I felt intimidated,” I answered. “Especially right after. But I didn’t think about how I should behave.”

“Well, I think I can make that connection during this next round. Drop O-Mode. I’m going to start building up the slaps again now. My punishment wand readings show you’re much more sensitive again.”

“Wait, Linda,” I called out as soon as I could talk again out of O-Mode. “This punishment isn’t going to work! It’s a sham!” If begging didn’t work, I’d try to talk my way out of more whipping. If only she wouldn’t ignore me!

“Why do you think that, David?” She sounded willing to listen for just a moment, to find out if I had anything worth discussing before she started whipping me again.

“You said one of the reasons you’re doing this is so I’ll stop fantasizing about you sexually. But whipping me like this won’t do that. The pain is ghastly when you’re actually doing it, but I got aroused right after it stopped, and I was thinking of you. This isn’t going to stop me from thinking about you sexually!” I thought this was a pretty good argument, since it was perfectly true—right now it was nearly impossible to think of anything BUT Linda and my nudity and my erection and getting whipped, all mixed together.

Linda answered in a lecturing tone I’d always tuned out. “My main reason for whipping you, David, is to increase my authority. You have a set of basic attitudes that isolate you from others and justify your innate selfishness. This has extremely bad effects on your Maturity index. Your attitudes right now place you just this side of criminally delinquent, and that justifies the whippings. Remember that you’re going to be getting a series of whippings; there’ll be one every day until I’m satisfied. The object is to make you sufficiently intimidated that you’ll cooperate in extinguishing inappropriate attitudes. Intimidation is only the first step of course, but it’s a necessary one, and this is a very common form of training.”

“Well how many whippings am I going to get? When will I be done, according to you?” The position I was in made me feel much too vulnerable to be cross-examining Linda like this, but if I could keep her talking I might have a chance to convince her.

“Your progress is up to you,” Linda answered. “If you can apply a little rational thought and realize you have no alternative but to work at those interactive mental exercises I gave you, you’ll learn how to extinguish some of these attitudes. But it will be very difficult to extinguish the core attitudes that support your selfishness, since you won’t want to give them up. So you need to fear what will happen if you fail to satisfy me. There’ll be more to do after that, but I’ll be able to depend on you after several weeks to follow directions without any further encouragement, because you’ll be too afraid of backsliding and getting whipped again.”

“But what about my sexual fantasies about you?” I asked, desperate to drive my point across, “You’re not going to change that by doing this to me!”

“Actually, these sessions will extinguish your arousal in this situation,” Linda answered. “The punishment wand I’m using is nano-engineered so it can be set to the extremely high pain intensity appropriate for this training option, without any real physical damage. You’ll be sore for the rest of the day, but it won’t break any blood vessels—you won’t bruise deeply—and you’ll feel normal after about twelve hours. I’ll be able to whip you every day for weeks, until you’re completely intimidated, and by the end of that time you’ll be too concerned about satisfying me that your behavior is acceptable to think of me sexually. Also, a few weeks of whippings are very taxing physically. The pain intensity for this training option is clinically traumatic, meant to override any of your normal desires, and you’ll lose your sexual interpretation of the whippings by the end.”

“But that—that’s awful!” I was horrified by Linda’s description. “You’re talking about terrible physical trauma!”

“About the same as abdominal surgery, yes.” Linda sounded like she was giving an answer to a classroom. “And you really do have a medical problem, David, although it’s psychological rather than physical. It just turns out that physical treatment will work in your case.”

“You call whippings like this a treatment?” I was yelling, and I heard Linda say, “No more talking now.” Then she started my second whipping series.

I was very sore already, so the warm-up hurt more and didn’t make me as insensitive as it had the first time. When I heard the “beep” from the punishment wand again, signaling the real whipping was beginning, I started screaming continuously, a siren screech, punctuated with even louder screams as each new slap landed. I couldn’t believe how much it hurt! I was a creature of the moment, even worse than before, and it seemed to go on forever! When it finally stopped, I kept screaming for awhile, and then ended up bawling for several minutes before I was able to draw a full shaky breath. Linda was moving somewhere behind me and I was in constant fear that she’d give me more slaps. When I finally quieted down she came up beside me again, and I cried louder and begged her not to hurt me anymore.

“Are you beginning to feel intimidated now, David?” Linda asked, “Are you motivated to do what I tell you? The length and harshness of the whippings are up to me, you know. Are you going to be good?” She had that teasing note in her voice again!

“Yes, Linda,” I answered through my sobs, “I’ll do whatever you say from now on, I promise!”

Suddenly Linda brought the wand down on my behind again at full whipping strength, and I screamed. And again, and I hadn’t finished my first scream, but I screamed a second time. And again, and now I was screaming continuously, expecting another slap, but it didn’t come and I got myself under control after about a minute. Linda waited for this before she spoke again.

“I don’t want you to call me by my first name, anymore, David. You can call me ‘Ma’am’ or ‘Ms Fechtenbaum’. Do you think you can remember that?” And suddenly I felt another terrible slap on my behind.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I yelled out as soon as I could, before I’d stopped screaming really, so I wasn’t very intelligible. “I promise I’ll never call you by your first name again.”

“Don’t yell, David,” she said, and I felt another explosive slap, then heard Linda raising her voice to be heard over my screaming. “I want you to be polite and answer me civilly.” I sobbed that I would, that I’d do anything she said, but she kept talking.

“And how about those mental exercises I’ve been asking you to do? Will you work on them tonight?”

“Yes, Ma’am!” Suddenly I felt another slap and I screamed again.

“You’re sure you won’t forget?”

“No Ma’am! Please! Please!” I was really terrified now, since I didn’t know how long this was going to go on, or even what the rules were. I thought Linda was just punishing me to be arbitrary now, because she enjoyed hurting me and making me plead with her. Then I had a fleeting thought that I should stop even thinking of her as Linda so I wouldn’t slip when I spoke to her.

“Fine,” she said, with that teasing note still in her voice. “See that you don’t forget! I want to see good progress by tomorrow!” And she gave me three more explosive slaps. Then while I was still screaming, I felt the positioner sink back down to the floor and constraints around my body snap open. A moment later, through my sobbing, I heard her say, “You can get up and get dressed now, David. Your session time is up.”

After a minute of trying to catch my breath, I got up slowly from the positioner. I felt like I was stiff from lying in one position too long, and of course my behind was unbelievably sore. My erection was trying to come up again, and I didn’t want . . . Ms Fechtenbaum to see me that way. She’d already left the room but she might come back, so I walked slowly over to my clothes and pulled them on. I felt a little dizzy, but I came back to normal quickly as I dressed. My behind hurt like fire just from making contact with my underpants.

I walked carefully out the door to the main office and started out to the street, but Ms Fechtenbaum called to me before I could get out the door.

“David!” And she paused as I stopped and turned to her, then with a mean smile and a teasing voice that convinced me she was enjoying my humiliation, she said, “You’d better not do anything bad before I see you again tomorrow. I’m sure you wouldn’t want me to be annoyed with you when I whip you again!”

The hairs on the back of my neck went up as I felt a chill of fear! When Ms Fechtenbaum looked down at her work again, I fled out the front door.