What's the nicest part about the tank?

Perhaps it's how it cradles you, holds you snug and secure. Nestled into the one place in the world you know you're supposed to be.

It might be the liminality of it. When you're in the tank, you aren't anywhere. You can't say for sure that you truly exist. You're simply in between. Julia bids you goodbye on one side, and Julia waits for you to return on the other. In the interim, there's just the purity of the tank.

The nicest thing is probably Julia's voice, though. That's the only remnant of the outside world that enters into the world of the tank, which is perfect. You get to be sealed off from everything but her whispers, filling the place where you half-exist for whatever shadow of time you're there for. There's nothing else you'd want in here with you.

You think about that as you begin to surface from the dreamlike state of the tank. You float below the surface a while, letting thoughts gently drift past your awareness, noted and considered and calmly passing back into the void. You ruminate on how your life has been whittled down to just this. The tank, Julia. Your clone, destroyed and dispatched, replaced the next time around. Nothing more. 

Surely that ought to be horrifying? Surely there was more to you once. A full person, with experiences beyond Julia's pleasure, with a self that was more than just her shadow.

It's not horrifying, though. It's majestic, stupendous, inexplicably perfect. You've honed the entirely of who you are down to the things that matter. Though, no, that's not quite right. Julia has honed you down to this. An elegant, aerodynamic thing, moving through existence without friction or doubt. A perfectly tuned object with one categorical purpose, one that you can achieve again and again and again. 

So when the tank abrades you down a little more, you don't fight it. You revel in it. You're being polished like a stone, made to gleam. 

You begin to lift, rising from the morass of tank-state. Your fingers gently grope forward for the release. Before you can find it, there's a sudden meaty crash in front of you. The glass shudders, and your vision is obscured by the sight of your own face, mashed flat, driven down hard.

The sudden impact makes you startle, but there's not really anywhere to recoil to within the tank. All you can do is press back into it, ensconcing yourself further. Your clone's face peels back from the glass for a moment, and that's when you can see the silhouette of Julia behind it. She's got the clone's hair in her fist, and with a mighty crunch, she drives it face-first into the glass again. Its nose breaks, its lip splits. Blood smears in front of you.

Quietly, in the deep background of the tank, you hear Julia's voice.

Instantly and instinctively you relax. Her words are a lullaby that rock you into peaceful stillness, even in a moment like this. Even when you can't fully make them out. You've heard them enough over all these iterations to know that the specifics don't really matter. They're affirmations, telling you what you already know - that you're Julia's perfect toy, her idealized subject, the tool that's shaped from use and formed precisely to the wielder's grip. They're instructions, lines of code, machine language snippets that winnow into the deepest recesses of your brain and write themselves over and over. 

Another heavy crash rattles the tank, but you're soothed now. Drifting. Julia's voice is bathing you, swaddling you, even as the shape of Julia grinds a facsimile of your face into pulp before you. It's difficult to see her through the mottled blood on the glass, but her posture shifts, and you realize she's not just pummeling your clone into the glass. She's got them bent over and she's fucking them from behind at the same time.

You can't even feel jealous this time. Everything's too perfect, here in the tank. You're where you're supposed to be. You are what Julia wants you to be. Needs you to be. Julia's needs are the fundamental forces, the gravitational and electrical and magnetic fields that govern every atom of your life. Right now she needs you to see her pummel-fuck your clone into utter destruction. How could you ever refuse? Why would you?

Her voice in your ears. Her violence before your eyes. Your perfect everything. Julia.

It takes a long time. At least, you think so. Time isn't real in the tank, even in a moment like this. Eventually, though, it's over. The clone is on the ground, and the glass is opaque with its wreckage. Julia pushes the button to open your chamber from the outside, and she walks away as you emerge. She's out of breath, spent, sweaty.

You're so hazy from the tank's continued stimulation, it's hard to focus. Everything is gauzy and bright. Julia lets you rub her shoulders, sore and exhausted from her hard work. She lets you fetch her water, holding her glass while she drinks. You feel so soft and tender you could cry, caring for your perfect love as she recovers her energy.

She helps you dispose of the mess her game left behind. You want to tell her you can do it yourself, she shouldn't have to strain herself, but it's clear she needs that, too. It's part of it for her. Getting rid of what she's destroyed. Erasing it.

She gives you a gentle kiss on the cheek when she guides you back to the tank again, making your dull and dizzy mind feel even more fuzzed-over and delighted. You can't wait to see her again.

You get into the left side.

You get into the right side.