It had been a while since I’d been invited to the small private facility belonging to a drone unit named QM-72. From my understanding it wasn’t part of any hive in particular, which was apparently unusual for drones? Though it did mention the QM supposedly stood for Queen Matrix, so it might’ve been a spare “controller component” of some kind that went its own way from the way it phrased it. I admittedly didn’t understand too much of it, but QM-72 intrigued me in ways I couldn’t quickly describe.
In the time I’d known it I’d learned much about drones. How they organised themselves, how they were programmed to exact specifications, how the drone mindset … worked, for lack of a better term. It was only a few months ago that QM-72 had extended the invitation to me to undergo a sort of temporary dronification. At that point I was curious about how it felt, being an overworked office clerk and all. A few hours - maybe even a few days - of still-minded obedience and subservience. After all, it couldn’t hurt just to try it on for a bit?

I hadn’t expected the feeling to be so unique. Suddenly, so many things just felt like they made sense. I didn’t have to think about all the thousand little annoyances that exuded from my body and infiltrated through my skin from the outside world. The feeling of connection was uncanny at first but adjusting to it left me with such a sensation of being welcome, a sincerity of thought and emotions I hadn’t felt anywhere else.
We'd had several more sessions like this, allowing my mind to remain in this subservient state for longer and longer, even once lasting an entire week. That particular session was truly incredible, with a simulated permanent conversion procedure. Electro-stimulation to replicate the sensation of my body being integrated with bioelectronic circuits. A full latex catsuit and gas mask to cover every inch of my body - a convincing substitute for the rubbery epidermis of droneskin and faceplate. And of course, hypnotic programming to drive my mind deeper into this identity I found myself wishing more and more I could fully embrace.

Of course, my obligations would always catch up with me and I would have to assume my role in wider society. “Pretending to be a person,” QM-72 referred to it, often just to make me blush. It worked. I would return to my office and stress about this and that, return home too late at night and weigh my choices between frozen meals and buying yet another expensive order for delivery to make myself feel better. The sheer exhaustion was the worst of it.
But at night, lying in bed, I would cast my mind back to how I felt in that blissfully obedient state. I would find myself muttering my programming to lull myself to sleep.
It was during one of these nights that QM-72 sent me a message.

‘This unit has made a new acquisition,’ the text message read, ‘Attend this unit’s facility at your leisure. It has attained a method of permanent conversion.’

Reading this, my heart immediately leapt to surge my tired body into wakefulness. I had to be there. Now. Immediately.

It didn’t take me long to arrive at QM-72’s facility. When I stepped out of my car into the cool night air, I felt a hesitancy pull at the back of my neck like the first time I visited it. Shaking off the feeling, I moved to the door and pressed a finger to a high-tech lock.

The door didn’t open at once, as it sent a message to QM-72’s own uplink to the house to alert it to my presence. Sure enough, with only a single executed thought from QM-72, the door swung open and I stepped inside.
The redecoration of a suburban house to stark white facility was complete and a startling contrast to the unassuming exterior. Fluorescent white light showed no shadows across the black diamond pattern vinyl floor layer. Angular and utilitarian furniture was carefully deployed in the rooms. Sat in one of the chairs with attention mechanically turning to me was QM-72 itself, black droneskin at almost a mirror polish with slashes of light bright across its opaque visor and synthetic epidermis.

‘It was an unexpected parameter that you would arrive so quickly,’ it observed.

I rubbed the back of my neck, ‘Oh well I … I just got your message and was so excited I couldn’t sleep. And it’s the weekend tomorrow so I thought “why not,” you know?’

‘Indeed. Unexpected, but not unaccounted for,’ QM-72 rose, its chunky boots squeaking against the rubber floor, ‘Do you wish to proceed?’

I nodded, and QM-72 led me to a room in its small facility. Surrounded by a discarded shell of bubblewrap, dozens of sheets of cardboard and a very thoroughly read set of instructions was a machine - an upright containment pod.
The metal exterior of the machine was a sleek black that matched the colours of the floor, with several control panels lit up, though no data was currently presented. Various tanks flanked the pod, filled with things I could only guess at. The internal compartment of the pod was angled where one could comfortably lean backwards while remaining upright, with several visible recessed panels around the interior of the pod. A canopy of glass sealed it, the protective film still left on.

‘This unit has not had a chance to fully clean its workstation,’ QM-72 remarked, noting my unstated observation.

‘I don’t mind,’ I stammered, ‘It’s really impressive. This is a stasis pod, isn’t it?’

‘Affirmative. However, it possesses additional functions.’
QM-72 sidled behind me, relaxing its hands on my shoulders as a delighted shiver ran unbidden up my spine.
‘This model is also capable of system diagnostics, wetware repair, and backup restoration. However, it is also capable of … permanent conversion.’

It knew what it was doing with the dramatic emphasis on those last words. The misconception of all drones being emotionless is just that. QM-72 in particular has a keen appreciation for all manner of blushy and flustered entities.
But I also knew what this meant. The whole reason it sent me that message, invited me here. This was the final step in dronification; should I have the courage to take it. I wouldn’t be just living its reality as my fantasy. I would become another interchangeable drone, the only unique things about me being my physical dimensions and my designation.
It knew I wanted this. Did I?

QM-72’s hands tightened on my shoulders, affirming but not intimidating.

‘If you should require more time for consideration, it will provide this.’

Breath was caught in my throat. I wanted to make this decision now. If I walked out of this room I wouldn’t walk back into it, I was sure. A tiny whimpered mutter escaped my lips.
QM-72 craned its visor close to my head, and I could hear the soft static of its vocal modulator.

‘Repeat yourself louder, subject.’

I squeezed my eyes shut, as if it would mitigate my embarrassment at my own desire clawing its way through my chest, ‘This unit wishes to undergo its complete conversion, Queen Matrix!’

My superior cooed in adoration at my emotional distress and ran its hands through my hair, ‘Very good, subject. However, final preparations must be made. Retire to the waiting room, and I will be with you in time.’

I nodded, hands balled up and pinned to my side by my apprehension and incandescent bashfulness. I sat meekly in the main room, leaning back into the chair. This could be the last few moments of my identity as a person rather than an object. Even if QM-72 jokingly insisted that I was only pretending to be the former. Still, this was a threshold I was about to cross that could not be passed back through. Apprehension and doubt knotted themselves together with my guts, and my fingers fidgeted with each other in solidarity.
But I knew I wanted this. Why else would I drive here in the dead of night? Why else would I be so ready to say yes? Why would I think to myself that the very first opportunity I was presented with for a permanent conversion into that tranquil state of complete subjugation and obedience was a now-or-never situation?
The knots in my stomach loosened and dissipated, and my fingers moved to lay flat on my thighs. QM-72 would not present me with the opportunity for this if it did not think I was ready. I was ready to accept this.

QM-72 reentered the room and I stood to attention.

‘You are ready then, subject?’ it enquired.

‘Yes, Queen Matrix.’

‘Good subject. Follow.’

I complied with my Matrix’s order, returning to the room with the conversion pod. Everything else in the room had been cleared away, save for a rectangular steel bin placed close to the entrance of the room.

‘You must follow the instructions you receive to the letter, subject. This will ensure your conversion into a drone will be without complication,’ QM-72 explained, ‘Strip and deposit your clothing into the waste receptacle. They are no longer necessary.’

I removed all my clothing methodically, trying to etch the feeling of the soft cottons and fabrics sliding off my body into the last memories of my personhood. I dumped everything into the bin, and stood at attention again. My feet felt stuck to the cold vinyl flooring, and I could feel my skin prickle at the low temperature.
Looking back to QM-72, my eyes widened when I saw an electric shaver in its hand.

‘This is the final preparation you must undergo before entering the pod, to allow for greater ease in removing unnecessary biological matter. Do you consent, subject?’

I barely had to think as I nodded and sank to my knees, my wrists crossing themselves behind my back. I heard the click of the switch on the clippers followed by the buzzing drone of the shaver’s blades oscillating back and forth. QM-72 approached and held my head in a tender but firm hand as it shaved my head, leaving only a thin fuzz of hair on my head.
Its work done, the power switch snapped off and the buzzing stopped.

‘Good subject. Now stand. I will open the canopy of the pod. You will enter the pod and lie back, facing the outside.’

The pod opened with a hydraulic hiss - I half expected steam to dramatically billow out from it - and I held the sides of the pod to steady myself as I stepped in.
As I settled in I felt restraints automatically extend from the cushioned backing of the pod, clamping my wrists, arms, ankles, legs, torso and neck to the pod. I yelped in surprise and QM-72 gave a delighted chuckle.

‘This unit will sorely miss these noises you make at even the slightest touch, subject. Do not worry. The restraints are to assist in holding you still during the procedure, to ensure efficient conversion. Now, your Matrix has something else for you.’

From somewhere outside of my vision in the pod, QM-72 produced a new drone visor, the same model and style of its own. The black curved impact-proof glass of the visor positively shone under the halogen lights, its intake ports distinct and prominent at the bottom of the mask.
A delighted gasp escaped me, sliding into an ecstatic shudder and moan as QM-72 attached it to my head, tightening the straps and tenderly tucking them under their lengths. It then reached to the top of the pod, extracting a tube it screwed into the intake port on my visor. I could sense that it felt its own twinges of pleasure run through it as it tightened the breathing tube to my visor.
‘As you know well, subject, hypnotoxin will be part of the procedure. It will make your programming that much more inescapable. Exposure to hypnotoxin - in measured amounts - will ensure your docility and obedience as a drone subject unit. Hypnotoxin levels will be carefully monitored to maintain optimal dosage.’

My heart began to beat thrums of excitement, my arousal at the idea of permanent subservience, absolute submission, causing my eyes to roll back as QM-72 stepped back, allowing the canopy to close around me.
I watched it inputting parameters into the control panel of the conversion pod and my mind raced with ideas of what was about to happen, my body filled with hot blood and writhing within my restraints. God, how alive my identity as a person was in its final moments!
My eyes snapped into focus as QM-72 stood before me, making its final observations.

‘Subject. You are about to undergo a permanent conversion procedure to become a drone. Your identity as a human being will become a detached memory, irrelevant information to your primary function as a drone. You will be allocated a designation, and a superior whom you will obey: this unit, QM-72, designated as Matrix-class superior. Do you consent to these conditions?’

A single moment stretched out before me. This was it. It was inevitable now, but the word rising within my throat seemed to crawl like thick slime.

‘Yes.’

With that, QM-72 no longer needed to treat me like a person. I was now an asset, and it would begin moulding me to its specifications.
‘Verbal consent obtained. Initialising uplink to subordinate drone interface. Connection established. Beginning transmission.’

The visor I wore powered on, flashes of diagnostic text rushing past before a spiral of soporific orange light drew my attention inwards. Flashing words I could barely register triggered deeply set suggestions in my brain and every muscle in my body slackened as I drifted into trance. Dimly aware of my own senses, I heard a faint hissing as the flavour of the air I drew in with my slow rhythmic breaths changed. It was as if another layer of suggestibility had been laid over my already vulnerable state of mind.
Sounds pulsed in my ears, a deep binaural beat thrumming seemingly from inside my own mind. I felt the sharp sting of lasers burning away every hair follicle on my body, from the delicate joints of my toes to what once covered my head.

The voice of my Matrix reverberated inside the sealed pod, its fabricated tones praising me for my submission, my identity as a drone, my place as its subordinate.
‘It is a drone. Drones obey. To obey is to submit. Submission is pleasure. To feel pleasure is to be blank. To be blank is to be a drone.’

My - its - brain could barely form the barest semblance of a thought. It didn’t need to. Its only desire was to obey. To be a good drone, a good subordinate, all for its Matrix.
The last of its hair was burned away, and thin metallic arms emerged from the pod and began to dance across its wetware chassis, altering and modifying its frame to become compatible with bioelectronic circuitry, which was quickly implanted. It trembled with ecstasy as it felt new connections in its dully crackling synapses and nerve endings, fresh receptors for pleasure and pain both.
As it revelled, trembling, in the feeling of its form being enhanced, heightened further by the constant swirling of the spiral and the plush blooming sensation of the hypnotoxin flooding its systems, it felt a wet layer of artificial skin bonding to its biological exterior layer. Its droneskin was finally being applied. If it were not restrained, it would surely be thrashing and crawling and writhing in senseless, broken pleasure.
The last few moments of its conversion were a thousand colliding crescendos of sensation. Its senses were too limited to truly take in the extent of the stimulation it was receiving.
It overloaded.

In the blackness of its powered-down state, it saw a new series of words flash across its visor.
It. Is. Subject. Unit. 51. It. Is. Subject. Unit. 51.

The canopy of its pod opened as its sleep state ended. Its Matrix stood before it, and after SU-51 emerged from the pod it knelt before its superior.

‘SU-51 is ready to serve,’ It said.

Its Matrix, QM-72, placed an affirming hand atop its head and stroked it affectionately.
‘Good drone.’