War had taken a rather interesting turn in the last few years of the fighting. Trenches still crossed the land in Europe, the forces of the second holy empire holding out in a war turned stagnant. Forces in the west fought the newly-unified European league, a small scattering of forces in the east to defend against the Russian reformists. The fall of the tsar last year led to chaos, the reds successfully driving out the whites. The empire did not really know if they would be attacked or not yet, but a skeleton reinforcement suitably dug in would buy some time. The western front was another story altogether with recent innovations in technology. First had come the radio, troops carrying battery-powered boxes on their packs to allow commands to be relayed over the chatter of machine-gun fire and the drumbeat of artillery. Then came the messages, first to confuse and disarray. Nobody anymore knows who created the first attempt at encryption or who figured out the first hypnotic broadcast, only that success in the mental realm would result in soldiers crossing no man's land to join the opposing force. When the radio became less effective, the broadcasts began. Directional speakers in the trenches hoping to shout out the headphones with their mantras and suggestions. Headphones turned to isolation as much as information, straps securing them to the head of the soldiers. Only new food for the front or those who had grown entirely complacent began to fall to the mantras. Then came the aero-plane and projectors. Messages could be made visual and sent wirelessly, airplanes carrying bombs now converted to haul massive eidophor projectors to bathe the battlefield itself in the hypnotic symbols. Uniforms had to change to add blinders, allowing a soldier minimal viewing of the signs. Enough for the glass of a rifle to be viewed, yet still a danger. Each side had to add their own broadcast counter-mantras, enough to slide the fingers of the commanders into the minds of the soldiers and keep the enemy out. To keep them malleable enough to kill and not fall victim to the enemy sigils dancing on the mud. Then came the enhancements from the witches overseas. Doll-like parts that would graft onto the body of a soldier, complex clockwork mechanisms and electric motors serving to enhance the capabilities of a single soldier to superhuman. Only the witches understood why the soldiers needed premarin to use these second skeletons. Perhaps it had something to do with the technology being derived from the way they made their dolls. Nobody alive knew how a doll was made, merely that a doll was always once a person. That spark of life inside the automata had to come from somewhere after all. The effects of the drugs reduced the fighting force in number, even if the individual strength gained meant no change truly took place. Those who could not handle their bodies changing went either AWOL or sucked off their rifles to finally soar free of the surreal hell they lived in. The women left were even more motivated to fight, to see the holy empire torn to shreds once more and to truly unite Europe under a banner of progress. The first mech was entirely unexpected. The empire had likely been working on it for years in order to make a portion of a trench get up and walk around. Black smoke rose from the back as a two-stroke diesel sang to give life to it, the banner of the empire hanging on a flagpole. Guns best described as artillery flanked the sandbags and operator, ducking behind the defenses as shots rang out at them. Blinders and ear coverings serving their purpose, even as the air support focused their sigils onto it. One shot clipped the steel helmet they were wearing, leaving a gouge down the side. An oxygen mask obscured the face as they racked various controls on the machine to try and assault the trench.

You racked the handles of the repurposed streetcar drum controllers, cursing to yourself as one shot smashed into your helmet. The soft hiss of the oxygen supply filled your mask, the gentle floral taste of the added gases making life more pleasant. Controlling this mobile trench was a nightmare, repurposed levers controlling synchronizing drums and cams to power the walk. A diesel engine thumped away behind you, massive exhausts belching puffs of sooty exhaust. A mobile electricity generator, what would they think of next. Four pistons so large across you could stand inside the cylinder, fuel barely a step above tar providing the motive force. The dynamo brushes crackled and sparked as the shaft turned, the deep hum of the 33 1/3 Hz AC power from the massive generator shaking you to your very core. The sound was some of the lowest a person could hear, and it cut through the chants in your radio headset. Yet there was a comfort to the hum, a softness to it. In a way it was familiar, comforting. A part of you in the way the feel of breathing was. Life was emptier when the generator shut down and you no longer felt the power inside yourself. Steam billowed from the mesh tower next to you, clouds condensing on your mask lenses. Cooling water for the machine poured over a complex set of wire meshes before landing in a sump to be pumped back. Steam escaping kept the trench machinery cool, even if it was miserable for you on warm days. This machine was supposed to be the epitome of technology, the latest and greatest controls ideas from iconic corporations who commercialized the uses for electricity. Hand-blown vacuum tubes based on research of last year provided true variable controls for the joint motors. You’d been operating this mobile trench since the secret tests and initial development. What a day that was for you, getting pulled from your support unit to work on a special project. You’d been sent back from the fighting on a train car, empty of cargo and with all gaps filled in. Food and water were stocked at the start, and you had no way to tell where you ended up. The last thing you saw on that trip was the bit of a drill piercing through the wooden side of the car, the last thing you heard the hiss of nitrous.

When you came to, you were in a subterranean operations room. If it was not for the silence, you’d have believed you were at the front-lines. There’s a woman sitting across the table from you. She’s wearing a black woolen dress uniform, a formal cap, and a heavy woolen cloak with red lining. You look down and see she’s wearing leather riding boots. Some sort of cavalry officer, going by the gold detailing on her epaulets. You see no rank insignia, nor do you recognize the golden metal sigil on her uniform where her unit type would be designated. A golden eye on top of a silver chronograph. That was nothing you recognized from training. Her face and body features were indistinct and unremarkable. She simply looked at you to start as you slowly woke up. You could hear a faint rhythmic ticking sound coming from behind you, but you could not identify what it was from. The longer she stares unmoving at you, the more she seems to fade away. The ticking sound fills your mind, your heart slowing unconsciously to match the beat. The more the sound fills every gap of your mind, the more she sits without blinking; the more you fall away from your situation. She’s talking now, words slipping through your mind with no discernible form to feel. There’s a hollowness to her speech as you cease to notice if she has a mouth or not. You can feel words in your head, thoughts slipping away to make room for new ideas. Her face and sound are gone, indiscernible haze that you only understand the intentions of. She’s slipped her way inside your head and taken more than you could ever know. Her words replaced memories and thoughts, your existence changed for that of an obedient shell. You’ve sunken into her influence and been subsumed for good. No interrogation could ever pull out information about her, the trials you’re about to participate in, or any of the others you will interact with. The perfect counter to espionage and torture. She beckons, but you only are aware of the other shell of an operator walking in. Commands are muttered and indistinct, but the message is clear. You move together with the other, arms wrapping around each other as you lock lips. Passion, programmed in. A test of obedience, of how far you have sunk. You can feel the tongue of the other woman in your mouth, yet she has no taste to her. You instinctively have done the same, yet her mouth is lacking. She has no taste, just an indistinct warmth and wetness. No matter how much you explore each other with your tongues, there is nothing either of you really find there. Artificial, mechanical passion that is indistinct from true desire to ones submerged as you both are abounds. It doesn’t matter who took the lead and who didn’t, you’re both on the floor tearing at each other’s uniforms. There’s a comfort to their softness as the clothing winds up under you both on the floor, protecting you from the rough floor timbers of the training trench. You’re both on your sides, hands to tits neither of you recalls having. It doesn’t matter when they happened, the feel of her hands grabbing at you is simply correct. The pleasure is indistinct and hollow, but you can feel your arousal building. The feel of her cock pressed against yours drives you on, yet no matter how much you grind against each other you cannot climax. You’re unaware of your own needy whimpering, but the feel of the gloved hand around you cuts through all thoughts. You don’t recall leather gloves on anyone, nor do you recognize the vague shadow hovering over you and your partner. Yet, you feel the texture of the leather, the shaft of your partner pressing into yours as someone or something begins to stroke you both. You shudder as you immediately climax, you and your partner mixing your cum into the glove cradling your cocks. Control over you has been confirmed to be complete subsumption, and the glove is gone. The haze must have shaken whatever had the leather, as flecks of cum spatter across you and your partner. The last thing you saw before you slipped into unconsciousness is their face, the command to sleep taking hold of you both. Their face would be only a haze in your mind.

Faces may have vanished from select people, but you had your job ahead of you. The prototype trench awaited you, the ladder beckoning you to climb aboard. Whispers in your ears gave you direction on the simulated battlefield ahead of you, controls falling naturally to your hands. You don’t recall donning the mask, but your vision is clouded by rubberized cloth and smoked glass. Whispers tell you of the battlefield ahead, the terrain intrinsically known to you. You can sense where the simulated soldiers in the test trench are located as the observers whisper direction to you. The orders of the officer in charge slipped through the whispers, the path forward known. The mobile trench was not even the primary weapon being tested as you found out and promptly forgot when you fired upon the trench. Directed hypnotic audio and shells bursting steam swamped the trench as you and your comrades attacked. The officers of unknown rank observing seemed pleased, the effects deemed to be sufficient to serve as a weapon to change the war for good. The second holy empire would spread the word of their religion and push through Europe. The league would fall, and then the scattered Russian empire would be next. Hubris rang eternal in their words, but you did not register anything they said. You stood simply at attention in your mobile trench as directed. Your chest hurt; your uniform and coat weren’t fitting as they used to. You don’t recall having breasts, but you did now. You don’t really remember anything outside of operating your trench. Your past, your command, your person-hood are all gone. Even memories of operating the trench are hazy, viewed as if on rotting nitrate film. Distant, yet familiar. The whispers took greater hold of your mind, and you walked from your mech over to the barracks. You would be deployed soon and had to be ready. For you, ready meant standing at ease in the barracks. Your trench would be loaded onto a locomotive along with the others and you would be shipped to the front.

You don’t recall the train ride, but you have a feeling there was an oddly familiar officer along for the ride. You’re fairly sure the officer was a her, but any further details of her elude you. It didn’t matter, you had your purpose. Ieper, Belgium. One of the smaller states in the European league. The second holy empire had been stalled there for over a year against an effective set of dug-in defenders. Trenches crossed the city and outskirts, bunkers and pillboxes dotted the ruins of the city. All conventional attacks had been repelled, and you were to provide the breakthrough. Your trench was unloaded at night, dozens of illuminating shells sent over the defending trenches to block out their vision. Your attack plan relied on surprise and utmost secrecy. Dawn broke, the sun greeted by the continued drumbeat of artillery and gunfire. Your engine coughed slowly into life on this cold morning, the fog of your breath condensing on the inside of the smoked-glass lenses of your gas mask. A day that will forevermore live on in history had arrived. Orders came in from command, cutting through the broadcast mantras in your headset. The attack was to commence, and the mobile trenches would lead the way. You didn’t know what weapons you had, but you gripped the firing control on top of the control knobs. Engines coughed into life, generators groaning into motion. The tubes flickered into activity, the actinic glow of the mercury discharge beginning to form. Cam mechanisms turned, regulators for the walking systems creaking into motion. You gripped the lever handles of the drum controllers, your mobile trench ready to move out. The command came, and you racked the levers forward. The lumbering steps began, the diesel engine chugging louder as the trench moves off. The defended fort of Ieper had withstood attack for almost a year at this point and would stand in the way of the empire no more. If the main defense core fell, the pillboxes should in turn fall and the empire can expand. The main fort comes into view, and the order comes. Your hands controlled like a puppet as you fire all offensive systems. An eidophor projector, focused beam slaved to where you were looking. The beam swept over the faces of the enemy troops, each in turn falling to the messages blasted directly into their minds. Any mental defenses their hypnotists could install crumbled away, the soldiers ripping at the clothes of their comrades. You fired the other weapon again, unsure of the effect. The first shots had flown past, but the next were dead on. Canisters burst, foggy clouds obscuring the view of the enemy forces. You can see the gas moving deeper into the bunker as the wind blows, the soldiers revealed again. They’re all naked, limbs entwined with each other in a pile of flesh, sex, fluids, and moans. Any defense they had put up vanished, the other mobile trenches dumping their gas shells into the pillboxes that had yet to be affected. Hypnotic aphrodisiac gas swirled around the Belgian troops as they fell to the pleasures of each other. Words of praise and recall drifted into your mind, and you turned from the sight of the sex to return. The life fire test had been successful, and no troops had escaped the effects to provide a warning to Belgian leadership.