Suspended mid-air, your body still trembles with the pulses of the probe in your ass. The latest loop of your own moans begins to fade away in your ears, the droning binaural tones soothing you in their absence. You realize with sudden, visceral disappointment that the Machine is cooling you down. Like your Master does after he spanks your ass red and raw. Like a massage therapist when the time’s up. Your heart aches – you aren’t ready for the pain and pleasure to stop, and there’s still so much left of your open mind that needs to be taught the proper lessons.

It’s a small comfort, but a thrill of pleasure sparks up from your groin as your mindfucked brain once again rewards you for this correct thought. You are a good slave. You want to keep returning here, to be a horny, hypnotized slave, absorbing the Machine’s lessons so that you can better please it, and, of course, your Master. The tendrils of the Machine deposit you back in your berth, gently but efficiently. The coiling arms pull that rubbery lattice of neoprene, cables, and sensors back up over you. The sheet is warm and soothing.

As you lay there, ensconced under the heavy sheets, the face mask withdraws, taking away your sustenance and that heady scent of vanilla and woodsmoke, the earbuds pulling away simultaneously. The headset that covered your eyes, painting a hyperreality for you, is removed as well. The restraints are loose now, caressing your skin. You find yourself feeling completely drained, completely spent. There’s a lonely, aching pit in your stomach.

It is your Master who comes to fill it.

Sensitized as you are right now, you hear the vibration of another person on the ladder that leads into the Machine’s now semi-translucent, semi-opaque shell. You see a shadow in the doorway. It opens, and he stands above you, perfect and strong. Your Master enters the Machine, carrying a microfibre blanket and a solidly-built metal bottle. Your tired eyes blink, shutting more often than they open. You blink them open to find that he has come to sit beside you. He strokes your body through the sheet with one hand soothingly. Holding the bottle between his thighs, he squeezes to keep hold of it as he opens it. When you blink again, the bottle is at your mouth, and he has hold of your upper back, tilting you toward the bottle and the bottle towards you.

“You were so good for me, for the Machine,” he says. “Drink.”

You drink. The water is cold and sweet.

After a time, your Master pulls you into his arms and carries you through the door out of the Machine. That aching regret returns, but it is overshadowed by the feeling of being in his arms. You have always enjoyed the heavy thud of foot on ladder as you climb your way toward the Machine. This has been a part of your ritual for some time now. Your Master takes an alternate route, carrying you toward a motorized platform (all slaves are welcome in the Machine, a voice whispers inside you), and you descend, still held up by his strength.

You fall asleep again as your Master speaks with the creator and caretaker of the Machine. In your dreams, there is still a murmur of voices – your own and others – reinforcing your training as you sleep, absorbing all that your mind and body have learned into your long-term memory. You dream of pre-cum spreading across your lips, of your wet tongue coaxing more from Master’s shaft.

When you wake, you can hear the droning of isochronic and binaural tones, but there’s no source for them except your brain. You have that same sense of hyperreality – you feel that if you turn your head to just the right angle, you’ll be able to see the Machine’s cables and tendrils manipulating your body into a sitting position. But no – it’s just your own muscles and (fading) will, isn’t it?

You remember what your Master told you, some months ago, as he held you up against a kitchen wall. Speaking into your ear, warm breath sending a bolt of pleasure straight to your gonads, Master said, “You’re not allowed to go so deep that you can’t come up again, slave. I have no use for a slave who can never act without my say-so. I expect you to be independent…when I tell you to be. Is that understood?”

You nodded. You promised. And your Master pulled you close with your collar and began to ravish you. He told you that the Machine would teach you to please him. Once, you and he were rivals. Once, you fought him, not fucked him. Once, you were wrong. Even long after you had consciously given all of that up, it still took the Machine to teach you to truly give in and go deep, to fuck the last bits of resistance from your mind.

You know that keeping a part of yourself for when your Master needs you to pretend to be your own person is part of being a good slave.

So, when you wake up and sit up in bed beside your Master, you don’t need him to tell you that it’s time to tease him awake before you both go off and pretend to be perfectly normal upstanding citizens who do not, certainly not, breakfast on each other’s throbbing erections before one of you (your Master) sticks a plug up the other’s ass (yours, naturally) and locks him inside a leather harness that only just disappears under your button-down shirt. You like it that way – it helps you feel contained, controlled.

This morning is a little different. Your hunger for cock is insistent, irresistible, in a way that you have not yet felt outside of the Machine. You nuzzle your Master’s thick dick through his nightclothes. It is already plump and firm, and hardening every second. You rub your face languorously against the fabric and the cock that greets you from beneath it. You inhale your Master’s scent – musky, with a hint of vanilla – and feel your mind relaxing into a trance. That’s all it takes, these days. You give in and go deep so easily.

Entranced, you flatten your tongue against your Master’s cock, still encased. The ridge along the tip of his cut cock is one of your favourite parts, and you trace it in a slow pattern. You rest your face against his lower stomach, right around the pubic bone. It isn’t long before you feel his hand entwine with your hair – this is why he lets you keep it longer on top of your head. The crest of hair is just the width of his hand, and perfect for gripping you and keeping you where he wants you. He retrieves his dick from inside his pants, and it rubs against your cheek sensuously, dripping thick pre-cum in a line across your face.

Right now, he wants his cocksucking slave’s mouth to do what it was trained to do. You give in; his dick goes deep. Your mind goes deep. Sucking your Master’s cock is meditative. You’re going deeper still, hypnotized by his dick in your warm, wet mouth. You’re hungry for it – salivating, in fact. Good slave. Give in and go deep.

You blink, that sense of hyperreality stronger than ever. You can practically feel the Machine’s claws in your brain, guiding your actions. You expect to see the thin shell, at times opaque, at times semi-translucent, surrounding you. Your Master says your name, and calls you back to him. He smiles at you, and a thrill of arousal and love – devotion – rushes through you. “Swallow for me.”

He holds your head in place by your hair and ears, and —- ! Your favourite cock pulses and spurts down your throat, and you can’t help but let out a small “unhf” of surprise. Your Master bucks but restrains himself, gripping your hair tighter.

Finally, he withdraws and wipes his damp cock in your hair. Another reason to keep it around – it makes you such a good cumrag, the Machine’s voice whispers inside of you. Your Master nods to the bathroom and the shower within. After you soap up his body, rubbing the soap into the dense forest of fur that covers his chest, after you gently massage his back under the hard spray of warm water, running your hands through his hair as you work shampoo and relaxation into his scalp, your Master rinses and leaves you to take care of yourself in the shower.

When you leave the warm spray, you note that your Master has left out a number of tools for you on the counter: a can of shaving cream, a razor, and a heavy pair of clippers with no guards. You pick up the clippers and are pulled into your memories of the Machine:

The nozzle at the end of the hose covers your entire body with a thin coating of warm, white cream, already worked into a lather by the pressure of being extruded from the tip. It is precise, leaving certain parts of your body clean – the top of your head, your eyebrows – “to catch the sweat when I fuck you into the mattress, Slave”, your eyes, nostrils, and mouth. Nowhere else is spared.

You are already suspended in the air, helpless to do anything but moan. The warm sensation of the cream dripping down your body is maddening. There’s a tension in you. You know that you are about to be shaved by the Machine. You know that it will take especially good care not to leave a single unwanted hair behind. But you see the straight razors approaching, and you can’t help but wonder just how perfect a control this programmed, mechanical entity can have. Your training tells you that the Machine is perfect. It is you who are imperfect. You will have to do your best not to twitch or startle as the sharp knives cut and clear the hair from your body.

The lather is already cooling, but the Machine moves quickly. You tense, but the restraints keep you still. Stroke by stroke, starting at your head and ending at your well-stretched asshole, the Machine efficiently whirs and hums as it removes your hair. The feel of the straight razors dragging across your skin is thrilling, and your arousal spikes at the thought of your smooth skin, and how sensitive it will be to the Machine’s ministrations – and, once you are allowed to leave, to your Master’s touch and tongue.

When you come to yourself again, your task is done. You wet the face cloth in the bathroom sink and wipe the last of the shaving cream and hair from your genitals. You are completely smooth from below your eyebrows to the tips of your toes, except for the hair that your Master has allowed you to keep to better serve him. If your co-workers find it strange that you have changed up your grooming routine, they are too polite to say so. As you get ready for work, the feel of your leather harness, locked in place by your Master before he left, rubbing against your smoothshaven skin, is enough that you need to pause. The Machine, still inside of you, even if you are not currently inside of it, reminds you that good slaves do not hold back their moans, and you stop biting your lower lip to stifle them.

You swear that you can hear your moans playing back to you in a looped, layered chorus, a susurrus of satisfaction and need.