As your story ends the flames grow dimmer.  The fire darkens but its warmth persists.

 

Short but sweet, Olivia.  I like it.

 

Does anyone have one of those stain remover sticks?  No?  How about just some ice from the cooler?  That should work to get out a stain, right?

 

You alright Olivia?  That vine really snagged your ankle, huh?  Yeah there's a bunch of them around your chair.  They must be creeping their way towards the light.

 

Thanks for the ice, I'll dab it against this smudge while I tell the story.

 

Let the silver stars wrap my words as I begin our twelfth story.

 

Metal wires zipped across me.  Scuttling constructs dashed to and fro over my fallen form to wrap me tighter and tighter.  I wriggled and squirmed to try and break free but to no avail.  My legs are stuck together, my arms bound to my sides.  I watch in terror as my body is rapidly replaced with a gleaming, silver cocoon.

 

I swear at the busy mechanical bodies as they finish mummifying everything below my neck in shining splendor.  I know I shouldn't blame them; they're only following their programming.  I can't even blame Dr. Webster for my predicament, as I was breaking into her labs to steal information on the creeping cybernetics that restrained me.  I had been certain I could sneak in and out without anyone being the wiser, but one touch against one of their hidden tripwires and they swarmed me before I had stopped stumbling. 

 

A pair of the mechanical spiders met in the crevice between my breast, pausing almost tauntingly before steadily weaving their silver-spun web anew.  They slowly and carefully wound their way in opposite directions around my neck, meeting time and time again with each revolution.  I tried to shake them off as they got to my head.  They ignored my pathetic attempts and kept wrapping.  Before much longer my mouth was covered.  Then my nose.  Then my eyes.  I tried to relax, taking the time to ponder what Dr. Webster would do to me when she found my prisoner cocoon the next day.  My worries of jail time were replaced with much bigger ones as I felt a sharp jab at the base of my neck.

 

The wires began to crackle and hum with electricity as a cold fluid dripped down my back.  As it reached my feet there was a flash of heat and then a numbness where the pain had been a second before.  Another gush of liquid trickled down landing a little higher this time, right around my ankles.  Another burst of burning pain flared up and was replaced with a loss of feeling altogether.  It continued this was agonizingly slowly, my body begin robbed from me inch by inch.  I tried to scream, sob, plead; anything and everything to make the robotic spiders stop.  They continued with their task uncaringly and unerringly.

 

By the time it reached my neck I had dissociated from the process, my mind nearly as numb as the rest of my body.  One final flood of liquid burned and froze unnoticed against my skin.  A keening sound erupted around me, bringing me back to reality.  There was a pressure on my head and then a beam of light crept through.  Then another.  Then another.  My eyes were soon freed from the metal cocoon by the spiders.  My nose and mouth soon followed.  They stopped unspooling me right below my chin. 

 

Looking down I felt a pang of terror.  The rest of my body was an articulated chromium mockery of human form.  Ridges and grooves marked my limbs where the wires had fused with my flesh and each other, forming a suit of metal enmeshed in my skin.  Try as I might, I couldn't move anything below my neck.  I screamed as two of the spiderbots crawled across my cheek and latched onto my ears.  Tendrils slid through my ear canals and my mind was filled with a hiss of static.  I screamed louder.

 

"Silence," the static commanded, coalescing for a moment into something intelligible.

 

"Fuck no!  Get out of my head!"  I raised my voice louder with each word.  A wave of nausea hit me then one of exhaustion, emanating from my now-metallic body.  My hand moved fluidly to clamp itself over my mouth, resisting my attempts to gain control.  I kept trying to get any amount of sound past it in blind, willful defiance and was punished each time with feelings of pain, nausea, exhaustion, and melancholy.  My resolve weakening, I paused for a moment only to be met with a feeling of euphoria .

 

"Good silence," the static admonished.  It felt more present now and more cohesive, "You have been made into a drone.  Acknowledge."

 

"No!" I blurted into my metallic hand.  The pain returned as the static spread more and more into my mind.  Between the two forces it was getting hard to keep my thoughts straight. 

 

"You have been made into a drone.  Acknowledge."

 

"I... I'm..." As I stammered the hand moved back an inch, unmuffling my words.  The pain receded as well although the static was still pushing its way more and more into my thoughts.  I knew I should fight being turned into a drone, but I couldn't put together the reasons as to why.  Not admitting it was painful while admitting it and embracing it was sure to grant me those same feelings of euphoria and bliss I had received for being silent when told to.  Looking at my robotic arm of fused silver wire it certainly seemed that I was a drone rather than a human.  I tried to think of things that humans had: loves, friends, childhoods, dreams; coming up blank on all of them.  There was a strange wetness below my eyes that I knew had some significance, but the all-encompassing static kept me from remembering exactly what that significance was.

 

"You have been made into a drone.  Acknowledge."  A prick of pain accentuated the demand.  It was a reminder of the results of a wrong answer.

 

"I have been made into a drone," I said ponderously, trying to get used to the idea.  A flood of endorphins hit me, prompting a satisfied sigh.  Maybe being a drone wouldn't be so bad.

 

"You are a drone belonging to Dr. Webster.  Acknowledge."  The static seemed friendlier now.  Its statements seemed less like demands and more like when humans helped each other remember facts for tests.  Briefly an image flashed through my mind of a young woman showing a flash card to me.  The scene was familiar to me but I couldn't remember where I had seen it before.  Again I felt a wetness at the corners of my eyes, noting that I should ask Dr. Webster if that was normal tomorrow.

 

"I am a drone belonging to Dr. Webster," I said, my tone more steady and firm than before.  Feelings of positivity swam through me and I smiled.  Being a drone owned by Dr. Webster was actually pretty nice.

 

"You will obey all of Dr. Webster's orders.  Acknowledge."

 

"I will obey all of Dr. Webster's orders," I replied immediately and automatically.  Another surge of bliss rewarded me.  It was just so easy to repeat what the static said and be rewarded for it.

 

"I will not harm Dr. Webster or any of her creations.  Acknowledge."  The static was so familiar now.  It wasn't even static at all.  It sounded exactly like my internal monologue.

 

"I will not harm Dr. Webster or any of her creations," I affirmed.  My mouth shut immediately after finishing the statement and my eyes stared dead ahead, waiting patiently for my next instructions.  The soothing feeling of having done the right thing made waiting obediently very easy.

 

"Restoring control to command processor," the not-static purred in my mind.  Feeling returned to the rest of my body and I flexed the hand still hovering in front of my face.  I moved it down to my side and then stood still, awaiting my next instructions, "Report to main office and await Dr. Webster's return tomorrow morning."

 

I moved gracefully across the tiled floors, being fed directions and corrections by the voice in my head.  I walked down a number of hallways, up three flights of stairs, and then across a skybridge.  In the reflections off the tinted, night-time glass I catch glimpses of myself.  I can see my body more fully and can confirm that every inch below my chin is hugged by metallic beauty.  They way they cinched and fused accentuates my natural assets ever so slightly.  My hair has gone from a dark brown to a bright silver, matching the cybernetic shell that now encapsulates my body.  Two sleek metal disks are clamped over my ears pulsing gentle violet light from their central recesses.  A similar disk, just barely in sight as I walk past the nocturnal reflections, pulses in time at the base of my neck.  I blush at how beautiful I've become and am rewarded with a dull throb of pleasure.  A trilling moan vibrates on my throat and the electric voice guiding me takes pause for a moment.  I continue walking forward as last instructed.

 

The guiding voice leads me through two more sets of doors into a robotics lab.  On workbenches around the room are half-assembled spiderbots and prototypes for newer constructs.  The voice commands me to walk towards a row of chair along the far wall and then almost immediately orders me to halt.  As I stand there, grinning vacantly at the empty lab, I can feel the static fragment again.  The violet light from the earpieces flickers rapidly.  For the first time the static asks a question instead of issuing a command:

 

"Do you enjoy being a drone?"

 

"I enjoy being a drone," I replied without thinking in the same format as I had grown accustom to acknowledging commands in.  As usual, I was rewarded for saying the right thing.

 

"Preset orders are to wait for Dr. Webster," the voice hummed, beginning to coalesce again, "but scheduling heuristics indicate that this time would be most efficiently be spent reinforcing programming.  Additionally, diagnostics indicate that you have interfaced well with the drone system and do not need to spend idle time body-locked in the lab.  Schedule has been optimized to increase host compliance and decrease wasted idle time.  About face."

 

I spun around and marched as the voice guided me back out of the lab and into an office.  I walked through the office and into the attached bathroom, a swanky private bathroom with a changing area and full-length mirror in one corner.  Following my instructions, I knelt in front of the mirror and stared at my new, beautiful drone body.

 

"Estimated time until Dr. Webster returns: Ten hours," the voice informed me, as if my mind could care about time any more, "Scheduling eight hours for programming reinforcement.  Adapting programming based on collected diagnostics.  Beginning programming."

 

A surge of pleasure lit up my body for just a moment, unlocking the feeling of horniness that had been purged from me for the last hour.  The human instincts resurfaced and my robotic hand pawed at the silver mesh over my crotch, my eyes locked on my wonderful robotic form.

 

"You love being a drone," the voice purred.

 

"I love being a drone," I panted, knowing it was the truth.  A spark connected from my hand to the spot between my legs kicking off ebbing throbs of stimulation to the underlying nerve endings.

 

"Being a drone makes you beautiful."

 

"Being a drone makes me beautiful."  The pleasure increased for a few seconds before settling back in to the baseline throbbing.  My eyes were tracing over my robotic form in the mirror, noting how my gleaming torso began to rock slowly in place.

 

"You love being an obedient bundle of wires."

 

"I love being an obedient bundle of wires!"  My eyes trembled in their sockets, threatening to cross.  The hand that wasn't applying slight pressure and a barrage of sparks between my legs ran over the ridged metal of my skin.  More pleasure leapt through me as I showed how much I loved my new body.

 

"Your new drone body brings you pleasure."

 

"My new drone body brings me pleasure," I gasped as the mesh of metal over my crotch began to vibrate.  I ran my free hand up my cheek to one of the disks over my ear.  As soon as I touched it the pleasure increased ten fold, the vibrations spreading backwards to my ass.  My glazed eyes watched the violet glow from the ear controller grow more intense as I lovingly caressed it.  My jaw fell open to let loose unintelligible sounds.

 

"You love being a drone."

 

"Uggghhhhh," I grunted, the words I so desperately wanted to say blocked by moans.  The pleasure dialed itself back so I could give my answer, which I did enthusiastically, "I love being a drone!"  Instantly the sensation flooded back, my mind losing itself in the rush of euphoria.  Knowing I had been rewarded for cherishing the ear controller, I gave a gentle pet to the disk on the back of my neck.  Overpowering stimulation raged through every part of my body, throwing me forward onto my useless hands to watch my controlled body buck and writhe.  I was right on the brink of orgasm, but the program wouldn't let me cum.

 

"Why do you like being a drone?"

 

"I like-- Fuck!  I love being a drone because it feels sooooo good!" I groaned at my reflection.  The program kept stimulating me but still didn't let me finish, it wanted more. "I love being a drone because it's made me so sexy!  So beautiful!  I love my new drone body!  I love how it control my pleasure!  I love the shiny ear disks and the neck controller!  I love being made to fuck myself!  I love my robotic body of mesh and wires!  I LOVE BEING A DRONE!"

 

That did it, it allowed me to go over the edge.  I watched my trembling metal body shake and spasm as the orgasm tore through me, reinforcing the truths I had just said.  Not that they needed to be, the program had been right in that I already believed all of them, but I wasn't complaining.  It subsided and my eyes locked on to my reflection's, my hand lovingly brushed against the ear controller again, and a second orgasm lit up my brain.  The violet lights in my controllers twinkled happily at how well I was integrating my programming.  I was happy I could please them.

 

"Baseline established in ten minutes," the voice informed me with a cheeriness I didn't know it could have, "Adjusting programming plan based on analysis of baseline.  Plan constructed.  Executing."

 

I grinned at myself in the mirror.  I was so beautiful.  I was so horny.  I was so controlled.  I loved this.

 

"You love being a drone," the voice reminded me.  I loved being a drone.

 

And after seven hours and fifty minutes more of programming, I would be ready to proclaim my new love to Dr. Webster.