It's training day at the Proxima Centauri Puppet Lab.

 

On the downstairs end of the video link, on Earth, there are twenty uniformed soldiers standing at attention. They're seasoned soldiers already, we're told, but they're young, in baggy clothes, and they look scared.

 

On the upstairs end, here on Proxima Centauri, I'm standing in officer's kit telling the soldiers what comes next. And behind me, there's you in a full spit-and-polish dress uniform. I don't need to look back; I have every detail memorized. Your boots shine like a mirror. Your riding jacket accentuates your figure, hugging your breasts and waist and flaring over your hips.

 

You have a bright red mohawk, and to either side, hundreds of wires sink in to your head. Your eyes are glazed. Even through the video link, it's clear you've been hypnotized.

 

Hypnosis is what makes the space colonies run. We can send data faster than light — but not matter, not yet, which means not people. So when we need someone unusual up here, a scientist or a diplomat or a combat specialist, we take one of the bodies we have on hand, hypnotize them until they're a blank slate, and use them as a puppet, piping in their consciousness from Earth on a faster-than-light link.

 

They've been told the research about how they'll respond. They know some will vomit from the disorientation of being in another body, some will be immobilized with fear, and some will take to it instantly.

 

(And some, at least according to base gossip, will get off on it so hard they'll be having wet dreams for weeks. There are nasty words around the base for guys like that.)

 

While the recruits hold a salute and worry about whether they can do the job, I'm telling them to be gentle with you. This is their first time driving a puppet, I tell them, but this is your first time too. I tell them you were unlucky twice — drafted and sent to my office, and then immediately rented out for hard duty, to be used by a squad of men.

 

 

 

 

 

That's what we always tell them. Earthlings are such prudes.

 

On Proxima Centauri, our close friends know what you really are: my girlfriend, my favorite fucktoy, and my best volunteer hypno slut, who I've kindly kept off the open market until now.

 

Look, the draft is a lie. It's what we tell the army downstairs on Earth. In fact, we're all volunteers on both sides of the desk. As soon as the Puppet Lab was announced, people started showing up begging us to take their brains offline for a while and use their bodies however it pleased us. It was just a few here and there, but it started to add up, and when the office filtered out the ones who really needed something else — therapy, gender transition, better pain meds, a good long vacation — they were left with bottoms like you: sane, happy, healthy, and creaming your fucking pants at the thought of your first mission.

 

So they did the practical thing. They contracted out to tops like me who could give you what you wanted.

 

I'm sure we'll all be in deep trouble if they catch us, but for twenty years now I've been having too much fun to care. I've got eight puppets serving under me, emphasis on the "under me." I mean, okay, I do try to keep things by-the-book, but each needs their own approach. Some of them get there on gentle hypnosis day in and day out. Some need to get smacked around some. Some live like civilians on their days off. Others, like you, are fully owned in a collar and cock cage — and look, we hide the stuff that needs hiding from the folks downstairs, but up here I'm proud to say that wearing my collar gets you an occasional admiring look from your fellow perverts around the station.

 

I do try to keep feelings out of it. But fuck it. You're my favorite. You drop fast and hard for me, and you flirt like it's a game you're about to win, and your cock tastes sweeter than anything in the world — and now that you're ready to take the last few safeguards off your brain, today feels a little like a wedding. You're mine completely, now, mine forever, and these 20 dorks in uniform who are about to take over your body are here to help us celebrate.

 

So excuse me if I get a little sentimental. Before I flip the switch, I want to reminisce about how we got here.