“To thee I do commend my watchful soul, ere I let fall the windows of mine eyes.”

— The Tragedy of Richard the Third, William Shakespeare

Once upon a time, there lived an engineer. A brilliant, ambitious woman with a strong sense of pride that was rivalled only by her arrogance. What others saw as overconfidence and immaturity, she understood to be something deeper; a higher calling, and consequently, she often found herself working alone. Pulling all-nighters in solitude in an otherwise empty lab. Our story begins, and ends, on one such night: the night of her ablation.

The engineer’s field of expertise was photonics; she wielded lasers—the power of light—resolving to paint illusions directly onto her would-be patients’ retinas with low powered projections meant to rescue them from themselves. Virtual retina displays had already begun to break into the mainstream consumer market in the form of smart glasses used for convenience and entertainment, and it had even been adopted in the world of optometry for ocular examinations, but the engineer felt that its potential to break into the world of mental health had been left untapped. Of course, she didn’t really see her development project as a way to repay the world for the education and resources that afforded her to get this far; the woman saw her privilege as nothing more than a convenient target for those jealous of her talent. What she truly saw was a goldmine, ready to be harvested for future grants.

She’d still allow herself to feel good for her noble ambition when her ego required stroking. She was, after all, endeavouring to help those less fortunate than herself, and—even if she didn’t truly care for their myriad plights—she couldn’t resist savouring the way the press framed her as some altruistic hero. There was only one news outlet that reported on her efforts less than favourably, and that was all thanks to her nemesis—her antithesis—from the local press, whose senseless pearl-clutching over this new technology told the engineer all she needed to know. The reporter was stuck in the past; she was old media, and no amount of reason could achieve anything to sway such conservative, backwards thinking. Not even when the two had been pulled together earlier that day by the very strings of fate, for a sudden guided tour the engineer was required to give her detractor in an attempt to spare the university’s reputation, could they begin to see eye to eye. She smiled her best fake smile during the tour—the same one she gave to the more amicable papers for their articles, too—but was relieved when her punishment ritual had come to its end and she was able to slink away for her late-afternoon lunch.

She returned later in the evening to an empty lab, scoffing at the piss-poor work ethic of her subordinates who had apparently felt emboldened to leave without her approval just because the time had gotten on. Her mounting frustration was only soothed by her relief that she was, at least, now alone—unhindered. Perhaps more comforting than the absence of her colleagues was that of the reporter she’d been tethered to for the better half of the day, made to waste precious time and energy on for such petty, uninformed inquiries. The old hag had stayed behind when the engineer escaped for her lunch to interview the other researchers in the lab for ‘a more nuanced perspective’. How perfect, thought the engineer, not trusting her team to keep their mouths shut about the recent minor setback her work had been faced with. The one she elected not to breathe a word about during the walk around.

She cast it from her mind and focused on the task at hand. In the dark of her lab—her sanctuary—the engineer got to work. She became lost in it, as she often did; it was as though a phantom conductor guided her every move with its slender baton. It was music, and she was the entire orchestra. Lights flickered to life in an instant, revealing her project precisely as she had left it. Almost, anyway; her laptop was a good half a foot to the right of where she had placed it this morning, and rotated slightly askew. Muttering something under her breath about people manhandling her possessions, the woman straightened her laptop on her desk and then turned her attention to the object beside it on her workstation’s cluttered surface.

“Snooty bitch didn’t have a clue what she was talking about,” the engineer muttered vainly, staring down at the fruit of her labour with tears threatening to well in the corners of her eyes. “Nobody does,” she added, and then repeated. “Nobody. Nobody…”

It was all that she could do to convince herself.

In truth, the rest of her team had moved on. Nobody had believed in her project ever since the National Institute of Health denied her funding for the clinical trials. She was perceived by many, outside of her immediate colleagues, to be between projects for the time being, hence why she was chosen to provide Ms. Tabloid the personal tour despite the mutual animosity between them. She’d suspected that the old-timer had come specifically to deliver her I-told-you-so’s face-to-face before they reached the editorials, but she did not seem to have heard tell of the engineer’s present hurdle.

Bitter, unamused eyes met the large sticker vandalising the engineer’s holy prototype, reading “Warning: Unstable device. Not suitable for testing.” It was placed there by university staff by recommendation of the NSF following the rejection for clinical trials, though the engineer had to wonder if their hands were steered by fate itself, intent on evening the score for the time she had escaped its premature scythe in her youth, when she fell from the roof of her family home. She didn’t waste time removing the warning label herself because she planned, instead, to revel in having one of her useless team members remove it for her once she’d proven that her creation was not only safe, but groundbreaking.

So the headset went on. It was somewhere between a pair of smart glasses and a virtual reality headset as far as its wearability and heft were concerned. It was certainly far too conspicuous and impractical to wear comfortably on the go, especially in a public setting, but was just sleek enough to look damn good in an investor showcase for whatever private company she ended up taking the thing to once she was confident in its effectiveness—its saleability. The lump of tech now surrounding the woman’s face like a sunken halo was clearly just a prototype, a mess of loose wires and hasty soldering that could be refined for a second, more marketable model, but the functionality was all the prideful photonics engineer cared about at this stage. She needed to prove to a sceptical world of overly cautious naysayers that the birdcage of doubt they’d locked her into was not only unnecessary, but outright disrespectful. She was on another level to her comparatively duller ilk, and drunk on the feeling of superiority she felt that she was due for her creation. It did not whirr to life when the power button was pressed—did not flicker with lights as the screen readied itself, nor play any tacky jingle to herald its start up; it simply turned on. In the engineer’s inflated view of the machine she wore, it wasn’t just modern technology, but something beyond. It was the future—her future—and its boot up sequence was instantaneous, projecting a mirror of her laptop’s virtual desktop directly onto her retinas through low-powered lasers. Today, at long last, she was going to trial the therapy program she had designed this headset for. It was to be perfect, cutting edge. It was a magnificent partnership between the untapped potential of the virtual retina display, which had been ignored for years, structured therapy techniques, and the newly emerged game changer in modern technology: artificial intelligence.

The way the three came together was relatively simple, even if the individual components were anything but. Once she ran the program from her laptop, the fully automated session would begin, employing Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing psychotherapy to guide the patient autonomously, without the need for a professional shrink out to charge you by the hour—thus incentivising them to prolong your therapy for as many sessions as possible while no doubt imposing their own, personal biases upon your oh so vulnerable mind. Instead of risking that human element, which only invites human error and greed, the engineer’s masterpiece would have an AI program of her own design. The virtual retina display, which had the unique ability to simulate true depth, would project a simple focus for the patient to follow with their eyes, accompanied by 3D audio that swayed from side to side with the focus, while a soothing voice queried them with perfect clarity. Then, in real time, an approximate simulation of whichever traumatic memory the patient needed to unpack would be constructed before their very eyes, beamed into their retinas though left out of focus. An afterimage of the past, composed by a ghost in the machine, layered behind a pane of frosted-glass focus.

While initially displeased with the fact that she was left with no other choice than to test the prototype of her new tool on herself, the engineer soon accepted this to be the most comforting outcome. She had spent her entire life since early childhood harbouring a deep mistrust for her fellow man and so, without further hesitation, the woman took a deep breath in and selected the executable shortcut on her virtual desktop titled ‘VMDR_beta01’.

It began as expected, with pendulous, bilateral stimulation locking the subject’s focus and keeping them halfway in the present while they prepare to rappel into the past. It was perfect immersion, vanquishing the Screen Door Effect effortlessly with laser projection to sell an artificial reality to the subject unhindered by a clunky, conspicuous pixel grid. After taking a minute to adjust to the floating focus swaying convincingly before her eyes, the engineer was met with that calm, inhuman voice she’d been waiting to hear.

“In your own time, please describe the event you’re visiting right now. The images that come to mind. The worst part of the memory, and how it makes you feel. How you would like to feel about it now, in the present.”

Despite anticipating the questions, having written the script herself only days ago during last-minute revisions, the engineer found herself hesitating once she realised she would actually have to voice her answers aloud. She could never bring herself to divulge such insecurities to another person, least of all a therapist, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult to tell even to a machine—or to herself, for that matter.

“I was… seven years old,” she began, following the focus before her from side to side while her memory stirred. “We had a white Christmas that year, lots of snow. Thick snow. Had to be… half a foot, at least. So lots of white, blanketing your average Midwestern suburb.” As she spoke, the scene began to manifest. The quality was about as rudimentary as you might expect, but that didn’t matter much when it was out of focus. In her mind, any inconsistencies made by the program were worth it for the experience. This wasn’t just a novelty; it was a revolution. “They were always getting themselves into trouble, playing dangerous games… my brothers, I mean. Since our mom was at work, and school was cancelled because of the snow, we were supposed to be under our father’s supervision… but he was a bum who’d raised two boys to be near carbon copies of himself. Irresponsible and stupid.” Even though the lights were on in the lab, she had made sure to leave no gaps for light to spill in through the headset’s sides. Locked in a poor approximation of her most traumatic memory, the engineer followed the focus dutifully. She was surprised by how intense this already felt, treating the swaying light like the lifeline it had swiftly become. “Um. They were up on the roof, for some reason. Playing. They’re older than me by a few years—twins, like two peas in a pod—and I often felt like the odd one out. So, wanting to feel included, I climbed up onto the roof with them, using Daddy’s ladder.” The engineer blanched as her program painted the image onto her retinas without pause. She tried to adjust the headset, maybe even remove it, but the thing had secured itself to her head rather stubbornly. It was an intentional modification to prevent any disturbance during the session, the lasers were even set to adjust their intensity across a dynamic range to ensure any light spilling in from the headset being knocked loose wouldn’t reach the subject’s vision. In other words, there was nothing she could do to stop what was coming.

She was going to fall again.

“I couldn’t fathom a good reason as to why they were playing with the snow on the roof when the entire neighbourhood was caked in it, besides the fact that they could. Their explanation was that they were waiting to prank Mom when she got back from work by dumping a load of it onto her head while she was on the doorstep, fishing for her keys, but that felt more like an excuse rather than a serious reason. I think they just liked breaking rules, and there I was… here I am, being just as misbehaved. It’s hard to walk on the roof, but I’m with my brothers. I trust my brothers.”

The twin boys the program created were as inhuman as the voice that initiated the session, but all the engineer could really see was their outline, anyway. Six fingers on one hand was forgivable so long as they didn’t each have two heads. They were not truly her brothers, but they’d do. There was something else in the corner of her vision too, however—something that absolutely shouldn’t have been there on the roof of her childhood home…

A pair of obnoxiously tall stiletto pumps, sticking out of the snow.

“They said the snow would break my fall.” The engineer balled her fists, hunching her shoulders in her seat while she followed the light and climbed to the apex of the roof. “They told me that, if I jumped, they’d be impressed. I might even get out of school, they said. I just shook my head, in that way that I did when stupid boys said stupid things. I wasn’t like them; I liked school.” With slow, plodding footsteps, the little girl peered over the edge of the roof of her family home, facing the snow-covered driveway with the best war face she could muster. Sitting there in the snow, half buried, was an old computer monitor. Just in front of that, nearly hidden by the depression it created, was the connected keyboard. “I… I told them I wasn’t going to jump. Even when they insisted that they’d already done it themselves, I didn’t believe them. After all, the snow on the drive was still completely intact… or, uh…”

It wasn’t. Now that she was looking—truly looking—it wasn’t intact at all. It should have been. It was, in her actual past, but it wasn’t here. This wasn’t really her past. This wasn’t really her memory. This wasn’t even real therapy.

“Who…” began the engineer, no longer a little girl, before once again reaching for the headset. The laser projection suddenly intensified, as it was programmed to when detecting the threat of movement compromising its perfect display. The stronger the laser, the less outside light could disturb the illusion. What had seemed like an ingenious feature when she had designed it was backfiring as the sudden intensity demanded her focus and the bilateral stimulation left her feeling somewhat dizzy. Her tight grip slackened and she tried her best to process the image her eyes flitted past in its guided journey. Her gaze swept left, and she saw the blurred silhouette of a woman, standing on the driveway. Her gaze swept right, and she confirmed that it wasn’t her mother. It couldn’t have been, with clothes like that; her mother didn’t work in an office.

“Keep going,” the inhuman voice urged her, “in your own time.”

“Right. Uhm. It was… I mean, my brothers told me they wouldn’t let me fall. I peered over the edge and saw nothing but pristine snow, so I knew they hadn’t really jumped, themselves.” Nothing but pristine snow. Nothing but pristine snow.

Her gaze swept left again, and she saw more than pristine snow. There was a woman smiling up at her in attire that appeared lost to time. Gaze swept right. Her sheer tights looked ill-suited for the brisk weather.

“For years, everybody told me that I just lost my footing. My brothers, who I began to give the same wide berth you would to rabid dogs. My parents, who hadn’t even been present when it happened. Even the doctor assured me it was just an accident, but I couldn’t believe any of them. Couldn’t trust any of them. I know I was pushed.” Her gaze swept left, and she saw its teeth—saw a wide, grinning maw accented by angel pink lip gloss. She saw her future, eagerly waiting to swallow her whole like the hungry Tick-Tock, though she did not yet understand. This was her therapy; it would fix her.

“And what happens when you are pushed?” asked the machine obstructing her from the real world.

Her gaze swept right, her gaze swept left. Side to side ad nauseam, until the bad memories went back in the box where they belonged, ideally to collect plenty of dust once her trial was concluded. The engineer saw every facet of her life—work, meals, and even social engagement—as a task on her daily to-do list, ready to be checked off as quickly and efficiently as possible. Why should therapy be any different?

“You fall,” she replied, quickly, before taking a deep breath in. She knew what came next. At least, she thought she did. She killed the memory of those out of place artifacts vandalising her memory, and steeled herself for the drop. She took big, deep breaths in and let out long, breathy exhales. And then, it came.

“Then fall,” the program said, with perfect, inhuman calm. Its voice was soothing enough to convincingly emulate the empathy required of it, but artificial intelligence was every bit as fixated on optimising its tasks as the woman it instructed to fall. And so, fall she did, though this fall was not to be a particularly long one. That did not matter in the slightest; for a child of only seven years, a near-twenty foot drop is more than enough to gift its unlucky voyager several orthopaedic fractures, a swift trip to the emergency room, and a lifetime supply of insecurity. At 27, though, her experience was a little different. She fell further than before—took a much more complicated journey than the one she had from eave to driveway in her youth. Her gaze swept right, then left, and she fell feet-first through the blank white snow, through the grounded reality of her past and the safety net that sure-fire memory represented, and into something new. Something unknown. Into the vintage furniture of an executive office she was certain she had never seen before in her life, able to cushion her fall unlike the driveway had with a seductively soft landing.

“I… what?” The engineer’s head whipped around like a frightened animal’s as she sank down into the anomalous leather couch beneath her, wondering where the heavy snowfall had disappeared to—wondering how and why it had been thawed out and replaced by the sanctuary of rich mahogany and cigarette smog she’d suddenly dropped into.

The engineer went to rub her eyes instinctively, but her hands met with the headset yet stealing her from her lab. Once again detecting a disturbance that could threaten the perfect illusion it was programmed to conjure for its patient, the headset upped its intensity. The lasers painted light onto their creator’s eyes and showed her a scene she had no hand in making. Standing inhumanely still ahead of her, like a doll, was the same woman whom the engineer had spied trespassing on her childhood home’s driveway. This lady, draped in office attire, stood between the couch that the subject occupied and the executive’s desk. It was obvious just from a glance that this was not the woman’s office, though the engineer could not be sure why she felt so confident in that assessment. Perhaps it was her clothes, a sleeveless mod dress which looked every bit as dated as their office setting—coloured bright yellow with a flat white collar and waist belt—and sheer tights that stretched down to professional black pumps, with heels you could choke on.

She didn’t look like anyone’s boss. More like a receptionist, or maybe a PA, but certainly nothing more than that. It was hard to get a closer look at her though, because the pendulous light kept dragging the engineer’s eyes away from side to side. The way her focus was being torn in several directions at once was tiring her out.

“Can… can we stop? Something’s wrong.” The engineer picked her head up sluggishly and called out to the disembodied voice that had taken her there, to a room distinct from both her troubled past and the program she had written. It was an anomaly, through and through, and she was beginning to understand just how concerning that was.

Her plea was not answered by the soothing voice however, but replied to with a sudden removal of the focus previously capturing her gaze. All at once, the engineer’s eyes had to readjust to the new depth while she battled with the unwelcome sensation of spinning. Disoriented, and too relaxed to access the panic required to simply tear off her headset with all the force she could muster, the engineer stared at the figure directly ahead of her, which had sprung to life the moment the virtual pendulum had vanished. It was supposed to be a safety layer, her focus, and now it was gone. Whatever this was, it wasn’t EMDR therapy anymore—if it ever truly had been.

“Welcome darlin’, it’s so lovely to meet you,” the artificial woman began, causing the engineer to jump in surprise and once again misplace her urgency. “My name’s Peggy, and in today’s training course, I’ll be teaching you the ins and outs of what it means to be a great secretary in this modern age and how to please your boss to make sure he doesn’t fire you on the first day!”

The engineer absorbed the sentences slowly, her brain haggard. Training course… Secretary…

…

“W-What?” To say that the she was confused would be underselling matters quite dramatically; she was utterly confounded to the point of near-dissociating. It didn’t feel real. It couldn’t have been real. It, well, it wasn’t real, but why in God’s name was her therapy program suddenly being hijacked by some old fashioned training video for a personal assistant? Her hands reached up to grip the sides of her headset and, yet again, the hardware detected the potential disturbance to its show and blasted its creator with light so dazzling it penetrated reason. Her muscles became leaden and fell down by her sides while her mind raced like it was trying to set a new lap record.

“With the invention of the typewriter, secretarial work largely became the duty of good, hard working women such as yourself and I. It was a workplace revolution, where the fairer sex could step up and fill this important role to become invaluable members of an office’s staff away from the receptionist’s desk.” The secretary in yellow smiled so prettily and stood with perfect posture, hair and makeup. The engineer formed an ill mirror, hair dishevelled and shoulders hunched—not to mention the lack of makeup and the man’s lab coat she was still wearing.

“I’m… ah… confused. J-Just shut up, okay? End program.” Every time she tried to move with any sort of urgency, the engineer found herself once again blasted with an intense array of light from the virtual retina display. Her blinking slowed down and her eyes felt dry, but she couldn’t look away; the woman in front of her was a commanding presence.

“Learning to not make unnecessary noise outside of the powder room is a must, okay?” The lady in yellow’s voice became soft, sympathetic. “For today’s training, at least, I am your superior, and you must afford me the same respect you would your actual boss. Do you understand, dear?”

It took a while for the engineer to process that the words were spoken directly to her and not simply at her—that she was expected to respond—and an academic curiosity compelled her to investigate this strange anomaly despite the alarm bells ringing violently in the back of her head.

“You… I mean, you can hear me? I thought this was just…”

“I can hear you, honey, and that’s the problem. It’s your job today to be quiet and listen. To be a team player for the company. Can you do that for me?” The lady in yellow was convincing, in her own way. Her voice was more human than the pseudo-therapist’s, at least. Much prettier.

“I… sure, whatever.” The engineer couldn’t help but crack a smile. Both her urgency and frustration had been washed away in a swathe of bright light, and she was too intrigued not to find out just what the hell her program was doing. It was important to her work, too, because she obviously couldn’t sell this on with some sexist office mutiny waiting in the wings. She convinced herself expertly that continuing was logical. That this was her choice, free from impairment. “I’ll be quiet.”

“Well done! That’s your first step towards becoming a fully-fledged, competent member of the workforce. A good secretary is seen but not heard; always in her superior’s periphery for when he needs her, but never speaking out of turn unless she’s relaying something important such as incoming calls and upcoming meetings.”

As pretty as it was, this woman’s voice was starting to give the engineer a headache. The gendered terms, the dated and downright insulting information being fed to her, felt so poisonous spilling out in such a saccharine tone.

“As you’re no doubt aware, a secretary is not a slave, but the most essential asset to any functioning workplace. That being said, it really is important to always look your best. Look beautiful and your confidence will blossom tenfold. No amount of lipstick is too much lipstick, understand?”

The engineer nodded her head instinctively before catching herself and scoffing. This was too much. Too weird. On second thought, she really needed to take the stupid thing off and—

Flash.

Another offensive of bright white light, sent directly into her straining, tired eyes, sent tingles travelling up the woman’s spine, causing her to sink into the chair at her workstation while increasingly at risk of becoming lost in the office fantasy being sold to her for good. Swallowed whole like Hook. Her breathing grew heavier as she stared with equal parts fear and awe at the beautiful young woman beaming brightly in her direction. By now she was barely blinking, and every time she resisted this ‘training’ the program sought to correct her. It only made sense, since she had designed the software to always steer the subject back on course if they started to stray.

“Perfect! Now let’s go over your main duties. The first is, of course, answering phone calls and routing those that require the boss’s direct attention. It’s important to speak in a soft, neutral tone and maintain an air of professionalism when answering calls at work. Leave your personality at home. Let’s try it now. Ring, ring.” The trainer mimed speaking into a phone, and the engineer would have rolled her eyes if she could.

“I’m not—”

“That doesn’t sound right, try again! Ring, ring.”

“Look, this is—”

“That doesn’t sound right either. Start with a greeting.”

“Fine. Hello?”

“Drop the attitude. Now.” The program’s tone grew stern, causing the engineer’s fingers to tighten reflexively and clench the armrests by her sides. With a light scowl, she asked herself why she was even entertaining this. Academic curiosity? A responsibility to her work? No, those were just excuses; she needed to get her shit together and end this.

“Fuck you,” she replied, in the driest, most deadpan tone she could achieve in her current dizzy state. Then, without sparing another second, the engineer decided to reach for her laptop—instead of the headset itself—hoping to shut it down before it could mess with her any further. She knew that there was still a chance of the program detecting this and trying to sedate her with light as it had twice before, but if she simply closed her eyes then it wouldn’t be an issue. All she had to do was reach forwards in the dark and find the power button on her laptop and this circus show would come to a premature end. All that stood between her and freedom from this confusing mess of a trial run was a simple press of a button. So she scrunched her eyes shut, lurched forwards in her chair, extended her arm blindly, and—

“Open your eyes.”

It wasn’t the sweet training lady’s voice that issued the command, but the one that had initially guided her through the past into that tumultuous, humiliating present. The same robotic, detached voice that had told her to fall. In a momentary lapse of judgement the engineer let her eyes flutter open and she found herself back on the roof of her childhood home, teetering over the edge. Panic flooded her heart, because she didn’t want to be there. Anywhere but there. It was tolerable when she was desensitised, but now… now she felt every muscle in her body tense up at the mere sight of that cold, unfeeling desert of snow from the very worst day of her life. She pinched one eye closed and reached forwards desperately, but the light tickled her brain—reached through the hole in the centre of her open eye and penetrated her mind. It took control of her motor skills and commanded her to look. To peer. To stare down at the glittering-white ground she had gazed upon when she was just seven years old and return to the memory she’d offered up so recklessly for her little test.

So she opened her eyes, and she peered over the edge, and her little legs buckled as they always did…

and

she

couldn’t

stop

herself

from

falling.

She landed on the floor of the lab with a heavy thud, having missed the desk and slipped out of her chair. The headset was still secure, of course, assaulting her with colour. Overlapping images at different levels of depth and focus flashed before her in a dizzying slide show she could not hope to keep up with. Even the pendulous light had returned, but it was distant; she had to search for it. Her eyes strained as she gazed past the field of white snow covering suburbia, cheek kissing the ground. The lasers were far too intense, her sudden impact with the ground causing it to bypass the shoddily engineered power emission limits put in place to prevent retinal injury. It hurt to keep on looking, but her eyes simply would not close anymore. It was like her gaze had been magnetised to the centre of the display, to her.

“Ring, ring,” she repeated, in a lilting, sing-song voice. The engineer could feel her sense slipping away, curling up into a ball in the shadow cast by her workstation as she wished so dearly to escape that blank-white urban hellscape in which her trust had been butchered by hands she did or didn’t feel. Was she pushed? She’d never truly know, and the ever-present uncertainty had gnawed at her trust for nearly two full decades.

“Please…” the engineer pleaded, feeling weaker than ever. She was laying on her driveway, her cheek caked in snow. Without the safety net of the pendulum being front and centre, she felt so vulnerable. Too vulnerable. She hated how powerless she was, laying on the ground like this, unable to so much as lift her arms. It was the same back then, when she was a little girl.

She felt so small.

“Ring, ring.”

“Hello?” croaked the engineer, in a voice smaller than a whisper.

“A good start! Try it like this: ‘Hello, this is Peggy. How may I help you today, sir?’”

Slowly, the display grew warmer, returning to the office where the training had been initiated. If she focused hard, the engineer could see the pendulous light, and so she followed it as best she could.

“Hello, this is… Roxanne. How can I help you today, sir?” She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she felt like earning this woman’s favour. She needed to perform, because she feared returning to that eave. She hated falling. She wanted someone to trust, and following these asinine instructions was… easy. Simple. That warm, pleasant voice eased the burning sensation in the engineer’s bloodshot eyes.

“Much better! Now, if you’re lucky enough to work for a company with computers, you’ll also be expected to read and reply to emails. Make sure that you write with the same professional, amicable tone that you respond to calls with.”

“Of course… I… ‘m always professional in emails, even when the senders are total assholes. Like that bitch from the paper with a vendetta against me, or the misogynistic prick at the university who thinks he’s better than me even though he’s just a professor and I—”

“That’s enough complaining, okay? Very unladylike, heavens… What have I told you, Roxanne?” The voice suddenly using her name after her accidentally letting it slip earlier almost tricked the engineer into forgetting she was communicating with an AI gone rogue.

“Leave it in the powder room,” she responded bluntly. Her brain tickled from all the light forcing its way into its soft folds through her open gaze, but she still had enough sense to understand something was wrong here. Very wrong. Why was she playing along so obediently now?

“That’s right. In front of her colleagues, and any guests, the secretary is quiet, submissive and pretty.”

Oh, maybe that was why. Quiet, submissive and pretty. Was that her? She was sure that it wasn’t, but the words felt so… compelling. She wanted to trust the voice leading her to the slaughter because otherwise what was the point of any of this? She had to overcome her past trauma, right? She had to learn how to stand on that eave and trust that she wouldn’t be pushed. Quiet, submissive and pretty. It had a nice ring to it, at the very least.

“Your job is so much more than answering calls and emails, however. Even more than keeping track of your superior’s schedule and operating the photocopier. Even more than being quiet, submissive and pretty.”

“My uh… my job isn’t—”

“Your job is to make your boss like you, by any means. If you’re asked to ‘stay behind after work’ you will do so gladly. If you’re relied on to shop for gifts in and out of working hours for your boss’s mistress, you will perform this duty with a smile. If you stumble upon something you were not intended to see, you will look the other way. Do you understand, honey?”

Again something tickled at the back of the engineer’s mind as she continued to writhe on her side, beset by light, colour and logic. What this pretty woman was saying… it made some sense, didn’t it? She was sure that it didn’t, in truth, because she knew she wasn’t anyone’s fucking secretary, but when the lasers violating her eyesight groped her consciousness so wantonly, it became painfully difficult to hold onto such obvious truths. She could feel herself slipping, reliving that terrible fall over and over in the recesses of her memory, and felt desperate for a hand to grasp onto for support.

In that moment, the hand she reached out for came in the form of her would-be mirror’s voice. Forbidden tutelage that spoke of roles and responsibilities that—were she not so exposed, not so mentally exhausted from the intense therapy and accompanying light show—she would have shunned as hard as her nemesis at the local press did her life’s work.

“I… I guess?” she returned, feeling too nauseous to collect her thoughts.

“Wonderful. Now, repeat what you’ve learned for me. Retaining information on the fly is a very important skill in the secretary’s repertoire.” The lady in yellow took a couple steps forward and squatted down before the fallen engineer, who was sprawled across the floor in such a sorry state. Hands reached out to hold the lost lamb’s pale cheeks, and the intense light—which far exceeded the safety limits put in place—hacked the physical sensation into her consciousness. The anomaly’s palms were soft, and its fingers firm. With hands like those, how was the little girl in their grasp supposed to do anything but oblige the program intent on training her?

Maybe this time, she could survive the fall unscathed.

“Uh, okay. Secretaries answer calls, and emails, and have to make their boss happy no matter what. They… gotta look nice at all times. Quiet, submissive and pretty. They should leave their personality at home, and save anything outside of their duties at work for the powder room.” The engineer twisted her lips in discomfort, shocked by how well she’d absorbed all that nonsense being fed to her. After all, she wasn’t even a—

“Now say all of that again, but this time using first person pronouns.” When her saviour spoke with such a warm, velvety voice, it made the engineer forget that it was also her executioner; the lady in yellow was the agent of her transition from engineer to secretary, assisted by light so fierce it began to cook the cells of her delicate eye tissue.

“I… I answer calls and emails… and make my boss happy no matter what. I uh, I should look nice at all times. I’m… quiet, submissssive and prettyy…” The engineer began to feel dizzy and light-headed, the way most people tend to after spending too long in virtual reality environments like this. She felt so weak and frail, like she needed rest. She felt like she was dreaming. “I should, um, leave my personality at home? A-And save anything outside of my work duties for the powder room.”

“Again. Remember your polite, neutral tone. You need to sound professional.”

She needed to sound professional. It wasn’t a want—god knows she didn’t want to be debasing herself like this—but a need. It ran deeper than desire, the compulsion to obey, and was already becoming second nature.

“I answer calls and emails,” the engineer repeated calmly, dreamily. Her tone was softening, and her fight was rendered null. Her common sense was but a shadow, erased completely by the light show strapped to her face. “I make my boss happy no matter what.” She was in a light daze wrought by fear, exhaustion and artificial safety. She didn’t really consider the words, just spoke them. It was simple. She was becoming simple. “I should look nice at all times. I am quiet, submissive and pretty…” She spoke in heavy exhales, unable to close her eyes. The poor thing could not so much as blink anymore. “I leave my personality at home and save everything outside of my duties for the powder room.” The roof of her mouth was dry; her hair clung to her forehead in sweat-soaked clumps; her parted lips spilled a rope of drool onto the laboratory floor. She was being trained, and it felt so draining. Her scalp tickled and her body buzzed with toxic pleasure at the soft, seductive smile arresting her gaze. She’d done well… performed her duties adequately. It felt terribly good.

“Again. Don’t forget your smile.” The lady in yellow was just like the engineer; a perfect mirror. She didn’t blink either. She was so pretty, and spoke so professionally, and her smile lit up the entire office so brightly it was almost painful to look at.

“I answer calls and emails. I make my boss happy no matter what. I should look nice at all times. I’m quiet, submissive and pretty. I leave my personality at home and save everything outside of my duties for the powder room.” Her drooling smile touched the ground, and her eyes seared gladly. Being obedient was so damn easy when it whisked you away from the cold and bloodied snow. She was nice and warm, wanting to shrug off her lab coat and slip into some… more appropriate attire.

“Good girl.” The sudden praise escaping the training program’s lips made the engineer feel giddy, her toes curling in traitorous delight at the very simple pleasure she indulged in. The pleasure of being a good girl. “Now, are you ready to progress to the next step, miss secretary?”

She was being asked. That meant that she had the ability to say no, right? It meant she could clear up any and all confusion that her stupid malfunctioning AI seemed to harbour regarding her job role and status and finally take that damn headset off, right? In a way, it meant all of that… and in another, it meant nothing. The engineer may have had the ability to say no, but what good was that when she didn’t have the power, the will, to actually do so?

It was no good at all.

“Um… yes, proceed…” The secretary-in-training crawled under her workstation like a bear getting ready to hibernate for the long winter, pulling her legs into that comfortable, inviting shadow the rest of her had already retreated into and waiting for that pretty, silken voice to tell her what to do next. How to act, how to think—anything to escape the stress of her daily work, which had been endlessly frustrating as of late, and the fear of her fellow man. While the rest of her body relaxed, her eyes continued their intense stare into the light penetrating them. As the lasers grew in power with each and every registered disturbance, unfettered by the safety limitations meant to keep them in check, the resulting irritation to the trainee’s corneae began to cause heavy watering. A waterfall of tears cascaded down the subject’s cheeks, though they were not happy nor sad. She wasn’t really crying, just flushing out all the unnecessary baggage still holding her back from embracing the new ideas being fucked into her head by the anomaly wrestling for control over her psyche.

“Perfect. Now then, let’s talk dress code.”

Beyond the shivering secretary-in-training’s laboratory, on the other side of the decidedly unlocked door, a shapely oval of glossy, wine-red lips pursed around the end of a paper straw and sucked up the final dregs of liquid from a drinks container held aloft by a perfectly manicured hand. Nails that matched their owner’s lips both in colour and sex appeal tapped impatiently against the empty plastic cup while thigh-high heeled boots clacked against the campus hallway floor with each and every swaying step.

“Now, where is she?” the woman muttered to herself with a dirty grin, helping herself into the seemingly empty, dimly lit photonics lab and searching for her prize. She placed the iced coffee in her hand, which was now just ice, onto the nearest work surface and made her way over to the engineer’s desk with a leisurely stroll, arms crossing over her chest as she stopped just short of the writhing puddle of a person she located beneath her victim’s workstation.

“—thhehehehe… the boss iss alwaysh righht. And I…” The intruder crouched down to get a good look at the cocoon of mind-broken pleasure rocking its hips into its hand while slobbering all over the ground like a dog. She liked what she saw; after all, she’d been waiting for far too long to put this delusional bitch in its place. “…I am a goood ssecretaryy. Ahm quiet, submissssive and puh-retty… hhaaahh…” There was a headset strapped to the lab engineer’s face, and it looked like it had been there for a good while at that. The woman couldn’t help cracking a smile while she quirked her brow at the very same time, slightly taken aback at just how effective her sabotage had been. At some point the fledgling secretary had freed herself from that lofty white lab coat and her woefully flat boots, but upon close inspection it was obvious to the woman towering over her that her shivering was not from the cold. Far from it, in fact, since she was sweating through her shirt from all the excitement and exertion.

“Let’s get this thing off of you, I see you’ve learnt your lesson.” A reaching hand grasped the headset sitting snug on the engineer’s face and yanked it off unceremoniously.

“A-Ah!” Birthed violently back into the real world, the engineer gasped into the stuffy laboratory air, blinked rapidly, and lunged forwards to try and grab the headset already far from reach. She instead found herself clinging to the intruder’s legs, watery eyes unable to focus on the smug face peering down at her. “Wh-what? Who? I… I uh…” For just a moment, a sobering relapse of consciousness threatened to undo all of the newfound training pumped into her weak little head over the past few hours, inseminating reason with dated values and silly notions, but then she remembered. She recalled that distant carpet of white, growing rapidly closer until she’s met with an assaulting darkness, and her gaze—both figurative and literal—returned to the light. She locked eyes with the older woman manhandling her and gave her the most ingratiating, pleading look a living being could give. It was a yearning look, her fingers tightening into the fascinated journalist’s knee-length skirt as she scurried up onto her knees and stared upon the face of her shepherd. It was a begging look; she must return to those wonderfully simple pastures, with nary a shred of tainted ivory bastardising its golden hue.

“You good down there, hon?” The woman’s voice, and expression, were an equal mix of amusement and genuine concern. When the engineer’s blurry vision finally settled enough for her to make out the face looming over her, the one belonging to the same figure she clung to so fiercely her knuckles had turned bone white, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Y-You! I… hhow? Why?”

“Security guard let me in after hearing my very convincing story about how I’d left behind something valuable of mine… which wasn’t strictly a lie, if you catch my drift?” A sudden possessive touch slid up over the kneeling trainee’s throat and caught the underside of her chin, growing firm once the woman had assessed just how eagerly her plaything leant into it. “But, god, I mean… I had no idea what I’d find here when I came to gloat, I just wanted to teach you a lesson.”

The girl, Roxanne, had trouble keeping up. The lady in yellow’s voice was still playing in her head like an echo, erasing any unnecessary thoughts that could be saved for the powder room. Her anger was inaccessible in that moment, and against touch like that, so was her sadness. So she smiled, like a professional.

“You mean… you… d-did something?”

Seeing just how slow the girl in her grip was now being, given how much she was flaunting her intellectual superiority earlier in the day, made the older woman from the local press bite her lip, barely able to suppress her lust. Her nostrils flared, her eyes bulged, and her body stirred with heat.

“That’s right, dollface. It wasn’t much, and like I said I didn’t really have a clue what it’d actually do, but I guess that was the point—show you how fucking flawed your little creation truly is. I mean, seriously, you made a glorified VR headset with a crappy AI chatbot therapist and called yourself a genius… it’s so embarrassing, Roxy. How much of this can you even claim is your goddamn work?”

The secretary’s lip began to quiver. She wanted to protest the insults being thrown at her and her work, but she knew that it would be impolite; improper. “My head hurtss… what did you doooo? What was all that about, uhm…”

“Let me guess: secretary training? Real dated, misogynistic shit I imagine. Sorta stuff you seem to have gotten into your head it’s my job to champion, when in reality I got myself fired from big city papers for organising women’s rights protests and write a column ‘for dykes, by dykes’ at my current gig?”

“Oh, um…” Roxy swallowed, though her mouth was so dry it did nothing for her throat. She felt so stupid, the way she was being talked down to in such a condescending tone, and the way the woman followed each and every sentence with a low, husky chuckle that only served to make her feel weaker. “You dress so conservatively… and hate technology, so—”

“I hate your technology, sunshine, and everything it stands for.”

A tremendous sulk overtook the sluggish victim, who was now only being held up by her detractor’s painfully moreish hold. “But… then, what was…”

“You’d probably be surprised to learn that the video I fed to your chatbot was from as recently as the early eighties even if it feels that much more dated, hahaha. Still had it in the loft on a video tape from my first ever big story, absolutely tearing that company to pieces for their offensive practices. Had to watch it through all the way again for the first time since ‘83 while I was copying it onto my flash drive, and hoo boy… I only wish I’d remembered to tell your little program to override the male pronouns when I edited the prompt to incorporate the training.”

Something about that last sentence struck a unique fear into the young trainee’s heart, but it took several seconds of wading through the thick molasses of her ailing thought processes before she would connect the dots, and even then the doubt still pricked her like a needle. “Wait… why?”

“Because I’m your boss, young lady.”

The engineer’s thoughts briefly paused as the wires in her brain shifted to assert her reality. She clenched her jaw so tightly it hurt, braised eyes twitching incessantly until the pain of the words passed and a blanket of snow-white calm enveloped her. She stilled, her world clicking back into place with the older woman’s statement incorporated into its new canon, and smiled like a good, demure subordinate.

“You’re… my boss?” The secretary licked her lips, feeling naked without lipstick. “I… that’s not… I-I mean, reeaally?” Light pried her apart even now, giving way to softly spoken lessons. She needed to be good for her boss—needed to be quiet, submissive and pretty.

The sudden drastic change in her victim’s demeanour, posture and expression caused the woman above to quirk her brow again, since she had expected vitriol. She’d anticipated the engineer to swell with anger and blow up in her face, but was instead met with a much more interesting result of her little sabotage. She’d expected the engineer’s rage, and instead received her secretary’s docile eyes, staring up at her and awaiting instruction.

“Yes. I’m your boss. You wanna be a good secretary for me now, don’t you, pretty?” From her tone, and sleazy grin, it was—or at least, should have been—obvious that the older woman was still just teasing her. It was clear that the journalist was not yet privy to the full extent of her sabotage, and so it fell to the dutiful secretary to make her understand, even if she, too, was still a little confused. Unsure, but eager. She had to escape the eave for good.

“Oh, y-yes Sir! I… need to be good. You’re… my boss. You’re my boss.” Still blinking the dryness from her freshly ablated eyes, the secretary felt an overwhelming happiness rush her like a fierce gust of wind, hoisting her up from rooftop and into the warm, safe arms of her new superior. That’s right, this woman was her boss. It should not have made sense… it did not make sense, but nonetheless, she chose to believe it. She had to.

A secretary without a boss was like an engineer without a project, after all. Useless, discarded, and left to question her worth as a professional, the sustainability of a career she had poured every ounce of her identity into. Take it away, and she was just Roxy. Nobody needed her. The world let Roxy fall, and only saved her life on a whim of broken limbs instead of snapping her neck against the driveway and being done with her.

The hand cupping her chin grew firmer—more possessive. “God, you’re serious, aren’t you? You’re really serious.” The woman’s lecherous gaze grew hungrier as her fascination, her amusement and her libido all vied for supremacy over her reddening face and indelicate right hand. “You’re all mine?” She drank in the sight of the woman she had reduced to meek rubble, having never noticed just how cute the self-absorbed brat could be when she wasn’t running her mouth and sodomising the tech sector with the fruits of her inflated ego. She was exactly the woman’s type right now, in fact: shy and impressionable.

The secretary’s eyes burned with pain and adoration, and she expelled her remaining hesitation in a long, dreamy sigh. “Yes, Sir. I’m your secretary. I’ll be quiet, submissive and pretty for you.” Just don’t let go of me, she wanted to add, but knew that unnecessary statements like that were best left for the powder room.

“God… yeah. Okay. That really gets me hard.”

Again, something came over the older woman; she could feel the morals in her head slowly going extinct from a genocide of decency led by irresistible temptation and overdue urges. She was losing control, and it felt so fucking good.

“H-Hard?” The secretary blushed like a timid virgin, becoming ever more a stranger to herself by the second. She still couldn’t see more than a mosaic of her boss and so found herself grateful when the woman seized her wrist and guided her dainty hand towards something stiff and excitable within the journalist’s skirt.

“That’s right, babygirl. You’re getting me off right now, acting like such a ditz.” The woman’s voice became low and even huskier, her hand puppeteering the other’s to gently stroke up and down her rousing staff.

“I-I’m a professional…” The secretary pouted, curling unsure fingers around her better’s shaft and letting new understanding dawn inside of her head so easily. Of course her boss would have a cock, and… wasn’t it part of her job to service it? No, no… that didn’t make any sense. That couldn’t be part of her—

“Let’s put the headset back on, okay pretty? Got a feeling this’ll wear off soon if we don’t, ah, really hammer in your training.” The boss’s words even shocked herself, but they were nothing when compared to the cruelty she’d come out with next.

“My… my eyes hurt like hell, Sir. I think I need to go to the hospital…” The secretary gave her boss a pleading stare through fried corneae and the woman gazing down imperiously at her almost seemed to care, before shaking her head slowly.

“Not until I can trust you not to sell me out, sunshine. Now, put it back on. Don’t make me ask you again.” The heady rush of power molested both her empathy and her shame, pushing them deep inside of her to resurface later when the urgency had passed. Right now, she needed to be strict.

“And uhm… what about…” The budding property gestured to her extended right hand, which was still wrapped around her new owner’s throbbing erection.

“You can let go of it for now, love. I’ve something else in mind for that, anyway. This lovely creation of yours doesn’t cover your mouth, right?”

The secretary chewed her lip while she shook her head, trying her best to rationalise what she was being told because pleasing her boss was the most important role she had. She yearned for the headset now, because—even should it cause irreparable damage to her vision—she knew it would help teach her how a good secretary should take their superior’s cock.

Letting her hand recede, her eyes strained to find the discarded headset. Determined fingers wrapped around the head-strap and pulled it up off the cold laboratory floor. She told herself that she needed more training—muttered it under her breath as a mantra, like she was casting a spell on herself—and secured the visor back into place as quickly and gracefully as she could presently manage to. She felt her boss’s long skirt swish past her kneeling form as the woman stood and leaned over the workstation still sheltering her shame, and then heard the two left-clicks, in rapid succession, that told her the program was being booted up again. Soon, very soon, she was going to—

“—uch a good girl for your superior. Knowing exactly how to please him. Learning exactly how he likes it, and making yourself an indispensable asset in the office until you’re dismissed. Even then, a secretary should be expected to remain available off the clock too. The job never truly ends. But that’s okay, because it’s rewarding work. It’s your purpose.”

Her gaze swept left, her gaze swept right, and she burned with passion. Light immolated every last piece of the engineer and sound healed the wounds with newfound purpose. She was being reconstructed, like a recycled machine, and she was starting to like it.

Strong fingers flared atop her head, curling into her hair with touch so possessive it made her feel special; owned. Pleasured grunts filled the dimly lit laboratory as wide hips thrust themselves wantonly against the secretary’s sweet, dutiful, adoring mouth. Brass buckle hit against the headset’s outer frame with every deep plough, and the secretary’s throat was kissed by an oozing head which threatened to burst at any moment.

Her gaze swept left, and the clacking of metal against hard plastic filled the room.

Her gaze swept right, and the sound of weak gulping, light gagging, filled the room.

These were the sounds of her training, but there were a much wider array of senses involved. The warmth and rigidity of her superior using her wet mouth like a disposable toy. The involuntary shuddering as she shed herself pump by pump, and the violent twitching from the member she sucked on like a lolly. The roughness of the fingers gripping her hair, the burning in her throat and the terrible ache in her eyes. The skull-fucked exhaustion. The naughty flavour. The ungodly musk. The left, right, tap and swallow of it all. The rutting need in her neglected cunt, raping the empty air in front of her. The left, right, tap and choke. The heaven she sought, and the hell she learned to settle for. It all felt so good, so wrong—so rough and so right.

It felt transitory. All of these sensations were fleeting. Soon, she would just be good. She drooled like the falls. Just feel good.

“God, it’s somehow hotter when you go limp like that… you still awake, girl?”

Shame would feel good.

Pain would feel good.

Losing would feel good.

Being owned would feel good.

Being fucked would feel good.

Being quiet, submissive and pretty would feel so dreadfully fucking good.

Disappearing, too… it felt so good. Too good.

A shame, she thought, that she could only do it once.

Epilogue

“A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

— The Tragedy of Richard the Third, William Shakespeare

And they lived happily ever after, the ablated and her abuser. It took no time at all for the pair to settle into their new roles in the workplace. The boss took her secretary back to her office with her like a trophy, and found herself surprised at just how much enjoyment she got from watching her colleagues at the local press try their best—and fail spectacularly—to muster the courage to say something about the ‘new hire’ and the inappropriate dynamic she seemed to be committed to with the senior editor.

Astrid Hollander sat at her desk with chair fully reclined and high-heeled pumps resting atop her papers. She checked her wristwatch with a predatory grin, having expected her precious secretary to be late this morning on account of the move, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t going to use it as an excuse to push the poor, stupid thing further under thumb. Every minute that passed after 9:00 am without the little shit clocking in was going to be another five on the ishidaki kneeling board after hours.

Hurried, cascading footsteps filled the corridor outside, the noise bleeding into Astrid’s office and stroking the woman’s ego like a whore lapping at a sodden cunt. The woman uncrossed her legs and stood up from her chair, circling around her desk just in time to watch the latecomer come to a halt just before the frosted-glass door to her office, fix their posture and hair, and then enter with the elegance and calm expected of a professional.

“Good morning, Sir! I-I’m sorry I’m late, but I had to—”

“Do you think I want to listen to your excuses this early in the morning, girl? C’mere, let me get a good look at you.” Upon hearing her boss’s orders, the polite, meagre secretary did as she was told like she hadn’t the option to refuse, stepping closer on heels she was still learning how to walk in and blowing out a soft, fearful sigh past parted, baby-pink lips.

Astrid took in the sight, and found that she still wasn’t used to it even after several weeks of being greeted by that same, angelic face. The old, ill-fitting cosplay of an engineer had been been replaced by the professional look of a dutiful secretary. In place of the long white lab coat which gave her an elevated sense of ego while hiding her curves, she wore a form fitting pintuck blouse that anyone with good eyesight could see right through; instead of legs marred by baggy black slacks that prioritised comfort over fashion, she wore a short pencil skirt with the rest of her wax-smoothed legs down to her new pumps left on display. She looked a stranger to the unrefined bitch whose likeness had been pinned to Astrid’s office wall for the past six months. The shape of the girl’s soul had been forever changed, and it made Ms. Hollander want to dump a load into her prize each and every time their eyes met.

“How’re you getting on with these, hm? God, they make you look like such a dork.” Astrid’s fingers stroked through her property’s hair and rested against the side of the secretary’s high prescription glasses, which had thick rims to conceal even thicker lenses, the shape of such distorting the image of the sweet thing’s eyes like the unflattering, concentric-ring magnification achieved from looking through a bottle. She was bug-eyed by design, because her boss liked how it hid away her beauty.

“Angela told me that she uh, has the same prescription as me, and her glasses are so sleek and pretty and—”

“Now, now. Angela from HR, yeah? What have I told you about them?” The hand of god gripped the secretary’s recently dyed-blonde hair and yanked it down, forcing the whelp to look up at her instead of seeking refuge in the floor by her feet. It instilled Roxy with gratitude when she remembered that she gave into all of this in the first place to escape the cold hard ground. She trusted her boss more than reason itself.

Ms. Hollander is the only person in the world I can rely on.

“HR are dangerous, they’ll try and break us apart. I… shouldn’t listen to a word anyone from their department says. Oh, she… Angela was lying to me.” The logic twisted and snapped into place like a puzzle being solved inside of her chest, which then swelled with joy at the gift of revelation her superior had just given her even as Astrid continued to pull on her sensitive hair without a passing thought for the other’s comfort.

Pain felt so good. It made the slut wet.

“Atta girl, Roxy. Did you at least get the pills on your way back from the lab this morning? We have plenty of time, but… you know how I like to stay on top of these things.” Ms. Hollander released her glorified dress-up doll only to return her hand to the meekling’s face, rubbing her grubby thumb over the pristine, glass-skin of her ablated plaything’s chin and prying open its mouth.

“Yes, Sir,” the young thing breathed, reaching into her purse and retrieving the medicine she was ordered to bring into work. The engineer, Roxanne, never owned a purse, but the secretary was all too happy to purchase one alongside all the new clothes and cosmetics she required to thrive in her new role.

“Perfect. Give ‘em here then. You’ll be fit to work after taking these, right?” Astrid’s smile was the steel curve of a scythe, sharpened and glinting and ready for the morning harvest.

“Yes, Sir!” The secretary gave up her bodily autonomy in a heartbeat, feeling much, much lighter once the medicine left her hand. She melted into the thumb invading her mouth, pupils growing wide as her body fell into complete stillness. Once again, she was saved.

“We’re being watched again, pet. Everyone’s staring.” Ms. Hollander’s voice became low, authoritative. She loved to tease, especially when she knew what an exhibitionist her porndoll had become. Nobody looked at her, up on that eave. Nobody cared enough to pay attention and keep her from harm, but her boss ensured that everyone would look at her from now on. They’d all have front row seats to the spectacle act that she had become a part of, and so… no harm would ever come to her again.

Not even when her everything, her reason for living, stuffed her throat with abortion pills before a live audience of her supposed peers.

Not even when she was made lesser by this performance—stripped of not just her autonomy, but her very humanity. Ablated again, and again, and again, until all she was, and would ever be, was an easy fuck with bleached-blonde hair and a hard-coded smile.

Not even when she remembered who she used to be—remembered her expensive education, her accomplishments and her ambitious dreams—would she experience anything close to resembling harm, hatred or regret.

She was good like that, the secretary.

“Let them,” she said, with a comfortably vacant smile.

She was good like that; she was the perfect subordinate. In her betters’ presence, she always smiled. Was always grateful—always content with her lot. She became a stranger to harm, out in the dreamlike world the ablation had sent her off to.

And any pain, any doubt, any hopes and aspirations…

Well.

Feelings like those were best confined to the powder room.

Her Ablation — End