Part Two: During.

Everything after that was a blur. I found the chair empty and Citizen DeVere gone, and raised the alarm before even thinking about it or wondering how it could have happened. After that, the sound of heavy boots on linoleum and loud questions, then a search, and a lockdown, and all throughout, an iron sense of cold dread in the back of my throat. 

It was over in less than five minutes. The material was a substance addict that had been resistant to sedation and desperate enough to mangle her own limbs to escape. She had managed to make her way into the stairwell and passed out there, having done no harm except to herself and the cleanliness of the facility.

It should have been some relief. A small one, at least. Something to dull the absolute horror of what was going to rain down on me. Surely this was better than if she had hurt someone, or escaped, or freed other material. Surely, that should matter. But none of that managed to reach the black pit of primal fear in my stomach. 

All I had to do was not fuck up.

“Citizen Banks.”

I looked up from my desk, hands trembling, then immediately shot up out of my chair and stood at attention.

“Minister,” I said. “I’m–”

“May I come in?”

“I… of course, Sir!”

He stepped into my station, his eyes darting to the brightly lit processing chair at the other end of the room, then back to me. My desk was tight against the corner of the room, and at that moment I felt entirely trapped.

He came closer, and behind him a young woman entered, dressed in a sensible-yet-elegant black dress. I had seen her before, in the lobby. She seemed as busy with her tablet as ever. She gave me a brief look, then silently maneuvered herself into the shadowy corner next to the door. An assistant, presumably.

The Minister didn’t sit down. There was no chair for guests, after all. Unless you counted the… other chair. Instead, he stood, his arms crossed, looming large. For a moment, he said nothing, and I don’t know if he was dragging out the silence on purpose or if he wanted to let me speak on my own behalf. The need to apologize and defend myself burned in my throat, but I couldn’t get anything out.

“Let me be clear,” he finally said. I winced. He noticed. He continued. “You fucked up. You know it. I know it. And there will be consequences. But…”

He looked at the chair again.

“But I’ve seen the logs. I’ve seen how difficult the material was to handle. I’ve seen the deliberations and precautions you took under time pressure. I also know that you voluntarily forfeited easier work to a colleague of yours, work that you would have undoubtedly been able to handle without any incident at all.”

My mouth felt dry. I was dizzy.

“Tell me, Citizen Banks. Would your colleague Julie Parker have thought to ascertain that the material was actually unconscious?”

My eyes instinctively darted to the woman that was still standing in the corner of the room. Her gaze briefly lifted itself off the tablet to look my way, then went back to the screen. If I had been looking for support, I wasn’t getting any. I looked back at the Minister, and shook my head in a noncommittal way.

No. Julie wouldn’t have thought of the possibility. That was what I was thinking.

“...I don’t know,” I said instead. 

“Correct,” said the Minister. “Neither do I. She might have. I consider it unlikely though. Mind you, there are better ways to confirm such circumstances. You could have done a beta-wave scan, or even attempted to use her control chip as an override. Those would be the textbook methods for dealing with the issue. Tell me why you didn’t follow protocol.”

Something strange told me to go against every animal instinct I had. I knew the answer, and I could just say that I had known the answer at the time. Except that hadn’t been it, and that wasn’t what I said.

“I didn’t really think about it at the time,” I admitted instead. “But looking back, a scan would have taken too long, and an ad-hoc hardware override would be too risky on a chip that’s liable to be faulty. I might have known that on some subconscious level, but it might have been luck. What I did know was that her ability to lie was fully suppressed, and when it occurred to me that she might be faking, that was the thing that came to mind to test it.”

He nodded. I swear I saw the hint of a smile. “You might think that was a small thing, Citizen Banks; something you did in the spur of the moment – an afterthought almost. I mean, how could you expect the material to escape even if she was faking her own unconsciousness? How could you be expected to deduce resistance to sedatives from a footnote about substance abuse?”

“I should have, though,” I said. “And we should update our protocols to make sure it doesn’t happen again. She could have faked her inability to lie as well. I didn’t think of that. I–”

I trailed off. What the fuck was I doing?!

‘It won’t happen to me.’

Except it already had.

The ground fell away beneath my feet. At that moment I realized that I had still been clinging to an outdated notion. I had been collaborating. I had been completely honest. I had offered every truth, because I had still been hanging on to the childish thought that I was safe as long as I was a good obedient citizen.

Except that had stopped being true the moment I had made myself the focus of scrutiny! This was no longer about being harmless and invisible! This was about fighting for my life!

And I had fucked that up, too.

When I had been supposed to do everything to save myself, I had failed to realize the danger I was in. Despite every past hypothetical of how I might lie in such a situation, I had never truly considered the possibility that it might actually happen – and I hadn’t been prepared to do it. And so, in the blind habit of cooperation, I had completely exposed myself! 

I had just admitted to blatant failure in front of the Minister of Citizen Volition! 

I was done. This was the end of my life. Criminal negligence. Demotion. Enslavement. Death.

“There’s lots of things you didn’t think of, Citizen Banks,” said the Minister, his eyes still fixed on the processing chair. 

I wanted to throw up.

But then he turned to me.

“A lesser Auditor might hold these things against you.”

Something like hope pushed its way past the dread.

He looked straight at me as he continued. “Thank you, Citizen Banks. Your exemplary analysis of this unforeseeable incident will prove invaluable to the future procedural effectiveness of this facility. I commend you for this, and award you the highest marks for the handling of the crisis you caused.”

My heart felt like it might explode.

“This will be more than enough to cancel out the markdowns that I must make for your regrettable oversights.”

“Thank you, Sir!” I said. There were tears in my eyes.

He nodded. This time, his smile was obvious.

“Furthermore, I shall think that keeping you in unnecessary suspense like that shall be more than enough disciplinary action for your failure to resume work. You do know that your colleagues are drowning in material, don’t you?”

I nodded, relief washing over me in prickling waves of hot and cold. “Yes, Sir,” I said. “Of course. I apologize.”

“No need, Citizen. It’s been a stressful day after all. I would have preferred to audit you during a more routine procedure than what ended up happening, but I should think that this whole affair has shed a thorough light on the quality of your work, and even more so: your character. You are an exemplary Citizen of our Great State, and I am proud to know that you will continue to serve it with such a keen intellect and unquestioning loyalty. This concludes your audit.”

I was speechless. I felt like I might pass out.

“Thank you, Sir,” I managed. “I will–”

He raised his hand with a smile, and I stopped myself.

“Administrative override, Hector Petrescou, 5-7-7-1 Gamma. Suspend recording.”

My eyes went wide, and I freshly realized just what a powerful man was standing in front of me. I also noticed that the Minister’s assistant had put her tablet down. She was watching me quite intently now.

“We’re off protocol,” said the Minister. “And let me just say how much I sympathize. It must be terrifying to face me, and I can’t imagine how you must have felt when that material escaped. To be honest like you were, in such a situation… I want to admire it. But honestly, it was fucking naive. Stupid, even. I would have had every reason to put you on the line for criminal negligence right then. I’m sure you realized that eventually, and that’s why you stopped talking. You’re really fucking lucky, Citizen. What’s your name?”

“Madeline.”

He nodded. There was a very long pause before he finally continued: “Listen, Madeline. I’m going to tell you something I haven’t told any of the other people I have audited today.”

I tensed. What was going on?

He shrugged noncommittally. “You know… this whole Audit is a sham. It was a sham from the beginning. Its only purpose is to produce the necessary protocols to justify everyone’s immediate termination. I have failed every single one of your colleagues I have visited, and I will fail all the ones that I haven’t yet gotten around to. The minute you left the main floor, the building was raided by mind-locked special forces to make sure that no one got out. They have apprehended all failed audit subjects and detained them in the unused sublevels of Intake. Once I am done, and all failed audits have been rightfully and lawfully protocolled, we will put them on the Line, and turn all of them into high-volition drones.”

I listened to him speak, my mouth hanging open in shocked disbelief. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Julie had been right. Oh Fate! Julie!

I stammered silently, until I finally found a single word.

“Why?”

“You’re one of the top-performing Volition Management facilities in the State. But even you employ mostly citizens that do this work not because of conviction, but out of self-preservation. Just because we all parrot the doublespeak doesn’t mean that the Government doesn’t know how you really feel: You follow the law because you have no other way to exist. You’re collaborators that comply because it is easy and because you are rewarded with privileges and social credits. And that is only what’s going on in the top percentiles. Everywhere else it’s even worse. There’s no way for you to know this of course, but there have been an alarming number of cases of treasonous negligence: Deliberately slow work; Raising the cognition level of drones without due cause; avoiding class-zero assignments or memory cullings. People aren’t willing to do what must be done.”

“But we do!” I pleaded. I hated myself for saying it. I suddenly had to think of Citizen DeVere. Clara. That had been her name. Clara DeVere. She had called me a class traitor. She had screamed at me that the Government wouldn’t hesitate to drone me at the first opportunity.

I had known even then that she was right. And yet, I had carried on. Because it wasn’t going to happen to me.

The Minister nodded. “Yes. You did. Despite your doubts. Despite your entirely understandable moral qualms, you behaved like good little Citizens and did exactly as you were told.”

He looked away from me. Not at the chair, but at a wall.

“But it’s been decided. Regardless of individual performance, Volition Management is now deemed too important to leave to anyone but the only kind of worker that will carry out their task with the utmost conviction and loyalty: Drones. And that means that the way forward is clear. The law requires due cause for termination, and my authority as the Minister of Citizen Volition means that my judgment is beyond reproach. The rest is… procedure.”

The silence was deafening. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t fair.

But then… when had any of this ever been fair?

“Just like that?” I asked. He looked at me with a look of mild surprise, as if he’d forgotten that I was even there.

“Just like that,” he said with a shrug and a smile. He seemed almost proud of it, as if it were nothing but a clever little trick he had managed to pull.

I didn’t know what to say beyond that. There were a thousand things running through my head, but it was hard to see the point in any of it. The parts of me that desperately wanted to fight and argue and panic and scream had apparently all given up. He had given me an entire speech, and it was utterly clear to me that nothing I could say was going to change the outcome of any of this. 

“I guess I can’t complain,” I finally muttered. “You’re just doing the same thing to us that I’ve been doing to others. If I get to live with it, so do you.”

“Speaking of you,” he said. “You might be wondering why I told all of this to you in particular.”

I felt numb. It was almost as if I had detached myself from the situation. I was a passenger in my own body, merely watching everything inevitably unfold around me.

“Is it because my indomitable spirit inspired you to think it all over?”

He chuckled and looked at his assistant, who seemed quietly amused, then back at me.

“I’m sorry Madeline – but if there’s anything you don’t have, it’s indomitable spirit. You’re a good little collaborator, and with enough time and pressure we could have probably pushed you to sell out your own mother. You wouldn’t have liked it – but you would have done it! Tell me: Do you think that there would have ever come a point where you would no longer go with the program? A point where you would have said ‘fuck it, that’s crossing the Line?’ – no pun intended, by the way.”

I swallowed down the lump in my throat. “...I don’t know,” I said. Both options seemed unimaginable.

“Indeed,” he said thoughtfully. “How can any of us know how we would act until we are face to face with the undeniable reality of it?”

The Minister cleared his throat. “But that’s neither here nor there,” he continued. “And your guess was actually closer than you thought. I might not admire your spirit, Madeline, but I do admire your resourcefulness, and your… willingness to conform. You might have never stood up for yourself or for what you think is right, but you’re smart, and you’re capable, and you’re willing to do what it takes. Those are qualities the Government values quite highly. So here’s the deal I am willing to offer to you:” 

He paused for effect, giving me an opportunity to appreciate that my entire future existence was currently being decided upon based on nothing but his personal whims. 

He went on. His voice wasn’t harsh, but it carried an even deeper shade of gravitas: “We will enslave this entire department. There’s no changing that. Your colleagues will become drones with the exact required amount of independent thought to carry out their work, and nothing more than that. They will be maintained and supervised by Government officials, and have no more lives outside of the tasks they are assigned to.”

His eyes bored into mine. “But you will have a choice: You can join your colleagues in blissful obedience, never thinking about who you were and what you have become. Some might argue that such an existence is preferable to serving the state through gritted teeth like you have been doing all your life–”

“-No!” I said, reflexively.

He smiled humorlessly. “I thought as much, but let me finish before you make your decision.” 

He smirked, and made a broad and open-handed gesture, pointing at his assistant. “The alternative is that you become one of my personal drones. Still Class 2. Still a citizen. Enslaved with maximum safe levels of cognition and volition. You’ll be as free as any drone could ever be. No memory erasure. No artificial blind spots in your cognition. Only fanatical loyalty and unshakable obedience to the system that took your will. You will do anything to be complicit, without hesitation, without shame – and you will thoroughly enjoy it.” 

He raised his eyebrows. “But let me say this: If there now exists a secret Madeline Banks that still still holds on to any rebellious notion that citizens should be free from slavery, some hidden part of your soul that you kept to yourself, away from the cruel things you have been made to do – that part of you will die, and you will be fully responsible for it. You will remember Julie Parker and Kilian Gonzales and Gabby Silverberg and think of them only as material. You will be glad to see them enslaved. Satisfied. Aroused.” 

He smiled weakly, as if there was nothing he could do about it. “But it will be you.”

A moment of silence, and then he looked to the side. “Isn’t that right, Helen?”

For the first time the assistant spoke, and her voice was bright and awake and entirely unlike anything I had ever heard from a drone. “Yes, Master,” she said, with a smile.

He turned back to me, and shrugged. “That’s the choice. You can become fully complicit in the act of your own oppression and be keenly aware of how utterly you’ve been made to serve – or you can just work here.”

I swallowed.

Some part of me really, honestly wished that it were a hard choice. Now would be the time for indignation, or protest, or even desperate violence. When Clara DeVere had been faced with the erasure of her own self, she had torn through her own skin and flesh to escape her fate – just to have one last moment of agency, one last moment of freedom, even if that moment was spent in agony.

But I was no Clara DeVere. Even if I knew the same truth that she did: I knew that what I was doing was unjust. I knew that I was serving an inhuman system. But I had sold my soul a long time ago, piece by piece, bit by bit, with every human being I referred to as ‘material’, with every soul I erased and called it ‘processing’. I was a class traitor and a Government bitch and no matter how much I wanted to justify my own powerlessness within the system, there had always been a choice. I had simply chosen to collaborate.

There was a choice, right now – and I knew what the correct option was. 

I chose the other one.

“I want to stay myself,” I said. It wasn’t right, and it wasn’t fair, but I didn’t want to be gone. No matter what they were going to make me do, no matter what they were going to make me think. I just didn’t want to be gone! If it wasn’t gonna be me, it would always be someone else, and I didn’t want to be gone!

Tears were running down my face. My entire body was shaking.

“Very well, get in the chair then.”

I took a step back. “What? Right now?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. His voice was calm and collected, as if this were a simple matter. “You have just agreed to be my personal assistant, and there is plenty of work for you to be done in that capacity. Sit down, or one of the men outside will make you sit down. Don’t make me feel like I wasted my time on you.”

He motioned towards the chair. I sat down. I knew how this went. 

It was like a dream. Things were happening faster than I could really process them. Some part of me thought how incredibly strange it felt to be on this side of the room. To feel the artificial leather against my arms. This was what all these countless people I had turned into drones had experienced in their last moments of freedom. Except that I wasn’t naked, and that I wasn’t wearing any shackles to fix me to the chair. I had agreed to this – except not really. I didn’t really have a choice. I could see the shape of a tall armed man outside the door. They must have been there the whole time, ready to act, ready to subdue me and take me away to Intake where all the other failed audits had ended up.

Absurdly, Helen was back on her tablet. Somehow that was the thing that bothered me the most.

The Minister stepped up to the terminal and started tapping buttons. It was a bit surprising to realize that he knew how to operate it. Speaking of which…

“How is this even going to work?” I asked, shifting in the chair. I wasn’t restrained at all, and my body was itching to get out of the device which it instinctively knew was built to harm. “Class 2s are locked against enslavement commands, that’s why we have to demote them first.”

The Minister chuckled. “You’re overthinking this. I’m the Minister, I can do what I want. Administrative override, Hector Petrescou, 5-7-7-1 Gamma. Resume recording.”

There was no sign that anything had changed, but I knew that at least three separate microphones in the room had just turned back on.

“Citizen Banks, you have spoken to me off-record and expressed a wish to surrender to ad-hoc Line processing to serve the Government in a special appointment. In my capacity as head of the Department of Citizen Volition, I am free to approve and carry out that request at my own discretion. All I need to proceed is your binding confirmation on record that you agree to the full permanent activation of your citizen suppression implant.”

He gave me a meaningful look. ‘Don’t make me feel like I wasted my time on you.’

I had already lost. This was me, making the best of things – like I always had. Like the Government slut class traitor that I was.

And here I was, facing the exact same choice I had been making every single day of my life, choosing comfort and safety and privilege over what I knew was right – except that this time, it would be permanent. After that, I would have no more excuses. I wouldn’t obey because I had no choice – but because I wanted to obey. Not that my doubts had ever made a difference to the people I help oppress anyway.

Fuck it. Might as well feel good about it.

“I understand and agree.”

And that was all it needed.

He activated my implant and did exactly what I had asked him to do.

It took longer than I thought. There was no protocol for this, at least not one that I knew of. It happened one step at a time, which was a strange experience to say the least. I had carried out a lot of enslavements, but most of those had been by-the-numbers affairs. Presets. Blunt and efficient work. This was… something else.

The first thing I felt when the chip in my skull turned on was – of course – a surge of utter satisfaction. It was one of the universal methods of control; direct stimulation of the reward center whenever program-aligned thought patterns were detected. But this one had felt aimless, or rather omnidirectional. It had made me know that I had made the right choice – even if I abstractly knew that I would have felt that way no matter what kind of enslavement I had agreed to.

After that came a strange sensation of skipping time. It was like almost falling asleep and waking back up, over and over and over, but without the drowsiness or the jerk of vertigo. I didn’t know what was changing. All I knew was that something was changing. I loved that so much. I was being enslaved! I had given myself up! I was being changed! Every part of me that didn’t serve the State was being ripped out or overwritten!

The next part was the most exciting one, and one I had always wondered about, even before I had known that I wanted to be enslaved. But when I felt the satisfaction of being controlled by the chip in my brain wander down between my legs and make me shiver with arousal I finally understood just how utterly I belonged to it. My brain and my body, my thoughts, my feelings, my urges and desires: In the end they were all the same thing. Nothing but electrical signals. Signals that could be controlled! Signals that could be bent and shaped until there was no way for me to tell if they were my own or entirely fabricated by the implant in my soul! None of my thoughts were ever going to be my own again! I was controlled!

Fuck, yes! I was going to serve so well, now. There were so many ways to serve I had never even thought about, but it all came to me with an irresistible feeling of excitement and deep, deep arousal: My body was property now! Like all the pretty drones that Gabby had assigned as comfort slaves for well-paying buyers! Like class-zero drones that could be used for anything! I wanted to spread my legs and offer my holes, and it would be such a wonderful act of submission, such a hot and satisfying way to prove how truly I wanted to serve at all costs! Yes!

I pulled down my pants and started masturbating, and I knew that my control chip had made me do it. It felt utterly correct. There was no part of me that should not be available to be used, no part of me that had any right to remain private or sacred or hidden. At least in front of my master, I was nothing but property, and I wasn’t ever going to waste his time with shame or hesitation or doubt. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that he might want to use my body, but of course he could use me any way he chose to. I wanted him. I loved him. Anything for him! Anything for my master! Anything for the Government! Anything for the State! Anything that was asked of me!  Anything I could possibly do! This was how I was going to serve – how everyone should serve! 

My thoughts jerked, and I suddenly had to think about Julie, one of the pieces of material that had been added to the inventory down in Intake. For a moment, I didn’t realize what had made me think of her – but then I remembered that she had predicted this. She had seen it coming. She had known that all of us were going to be enslaved. I remembered how afraid she had been, and how I had calmed her down. I had stopped her from panicking and possibly starting some desperate and stupid act of useless defiance. 

And now she was going to become a drone, and never have a single thought of her own again.

Good. Maybe I will even get to watch.

It was so fucking exciting to think about – and the part of me that knew how hot it was when anyone submitted to control shivered with arousal; Yes! Julie was going to be a good drone no matter what – but I couldn’t help but hope that she was going to be used for her body as well! That was going to show her for ever thinking that there was any part of her that the Government didn’t have a right to own! 

Yes… just like all the Class 2s disbelievingly protesting against their demotions, and just like Clara DeVere who had kicked and screamed and shouted and nearly escaped: In the end it was all the same misguided struggle, only to different degrees. Even myself, and the chaotic audit I went through; in the end nothing of what we did could have made a difference. Pass or fail, the decision had already been made in our absence, and none of our worries and struggles and thoughts had ever mattered. 

None of us had ever been anything but material. 

And now I no longer was. 

It had finally happened to me. 

I looked at my master, and smiled. I was ready to serve. They had me! I was theirs! My master, the State, the Government – I was their property now! I wasn’t ever going to doubt them again! I wasn’t ever going to have to worry about right or wrong again! It had all become meaningless in the face of my wonderful new purpose. This was better. So much better! 

“Thank you for enslaving me,” I said.

It was funny. I had already known that I was going to say it; everyone said it – every time. So of course, I was going to say it, too. But now that the moment had actually come and I had actually crossed the Line, it felt like the words weren’t enough to express the absolute world-shaking gratitude I felt. How could anything I said ever come close to doing justice to such an ecstatic feeling of purpose and arousal and satisfaction, such eagerness, such Need? 

I guess that these words would have to do for now. The rest I was going to prove with my body and my actions and my loyalty, over and over and over.

“You’re welcome,” said my master. “You may climax.”

And I did.