Wild Dolls

"What a nuisance," The first said, scowling, after a solid attempt to unhinge me with her tongue had not quite succeeded nor loosened the tape. They seemed put out by the intensity with which I denied them. Their seduction was not going as planned. This made them petulant and less gentle. Hard fingers kneaded my flesh, squeezing sharp moans from my throat and shudders from screaming muscles. If I could frustrate them just a little more they might wrench me in two, and that seemed the best of the possibilities before me. Better than I succumb to their carnal ministrations and be damned.

I was rolled onto my knees for some new indignity. Kicking away from them I stretched my fingers for the wire. I had to try though only with God's direct intervention could I possibly succeed.

But they did not stop me. A miracle did occur. The two Dolls clutched their hands to their ears, faces contorted in sudden pain as if an air-splitting sound assaulted them, enough heavenly trumpets to raze Jericho or stun a Doll for just a split second. I plunged the live wire into the plastique and... Nothing.

The red L.E.Ds on all the devices had winked out simultaneously. I jabbed the wire ineffectually again and again. The circuitry was dead, fried by the same E.M. pulse which had punished the immature Dolls. The only sound was my ragged breath.

"Poor Monkey," I heard one of the Dolls wail.

"Mother is here," murmured the other.

Part III Spoils of War

7 The Mother

Walking alongside the mother, yet more alone than I think any human had ever been, I knew I must try to escape. My limbs were sodden in apathetic exhaustion as I stumbled forwards, but I knew I had the strength and therefore must find it, use it, or my soul was already forfeit. A way would be found, if my faith were strong enough, if I had not already denied the Lord so completely with every wrong step that had taken me to this moment. What wrong steps though? Only the steps of simple obedience to my masters had torn my heart.

I was tired.

I still must fight; God had not yet told me I was damned so I must fight on. It was not taught, but simply a thing I told myself. If I were damned already, even so as to be irretrievably lost to Him, would not God in his infinite mercy finally speak, and tell me the testing was over? Tell me I had failed; I need struggle no more?

In five steps I would do something. Four steps, three, two. Surprising myself with my own ferocity I turned on Her. An elbow drove into her abdomen. I tangled her unnatural limbs with mine and shoved to topple her, and when her hand strayed to my face to restrain me I bit it.

She swayed under my assault and seemed to collapse around me, yet not releasing me. I redoubled my efforts but found myself in a cage of her limbs, my arms trapped, my body pressed to her body by her yielding yet inescapable embrace; my teeth in her palm my only remaining potency. I bit harder, till my jaw ached, not in hope of escape but just to achieve this one small triumph of hurting her in any way, before she crushed the life from me within the coils of her limbs.

She watched me, her expression as mild as the Lady Madonna smiling down upon her child, till my jaw tired and my will broke. Staring defiantly up into her face, and panting from the failed exertion, I awaited punishment. With the bitten hand she stroked the fear-drenched strands of hair from my brow. The tooth marks were already fading from her translucent skin.

I could meet her eyes no longer, but still I was not fooled by her gentleness. "I am an animal to you. A specimen. You don't punish me for the same reason you will eventually torture and kill me. I don't matter."

"No, Alice. I do not punish you because I will not punish you under any condition."

She continued, "I heard your very first footfall, child. By your fifth, I knew you were a human, a soldier, a woman. I came seeking you."

"You walked right past me. If you knew I was there, why didn't you take me then?"

The mother smiled a slow-motion smile as she stroked my forehead.

"Your heart was beating rapidly, like a bird's in your terror. When I passed you, your relief was so beautiful, yet so exquisitely fragile. How could you think I would be so cruel?..."

"...And I was curious. About you, your intentions and all your experiences, and most especially your first encounter with my dear little un-socialized experiments. Did you like them?"

After a pause she continued. "They liked you, very much. I knew they would. But I did not know how they would process that sensation. You see, they have never truly wanted a thing before, or even known what the word meant, till they met you. I fear now they will be quite uncontrollable until they get what they want."

8 Mother washes Alice

The Mother lead me to a high-arched room.

"Do you know your purpose?"

I did not answer the Mother.

"Your purpose is to protect the Patriarchy from our raids. You perform your role wonderfully."

"Sarcasm?" I spat the words out.

"No... But how would you evaluate the effectiveness of your Purity Crusaders?"

I answered in anger, which was not directed at her. "We are the best, best we can be. Every unpromised daughter undergoes the trials but only the fittest, the sharpest and fastest and strongest of will become Purity Crusaders. And those that do swear a holy oath to give themselves completely to this cause. But..."

I stopped. What had I almost said? Mother said nothing....

I knew I should say nothing but the words kept pouring out of me. "But our weapons are old. We are given no control over tactics and tactics are conventional, predictable, unimaginative and always for small goals... and always based on the axiom that girls are cheaper than napalm. Acceptable sacrifices."

"Beautiful, virgin sacrifices."

I could not listen to the blasphemy she implied, but neither could I block out her words.

"The Patriarchy parade you before us as tribute, so that we do not take what we want from their streets and their beds. Men lost the war forty-seven years ago. Now there is merely.. sport."

"That's... that's not true." I wanted to force the words back down her throat but she just smiled at me and did not repeat her claim no matter how strenuously I denied it.

At last a flaw in her argument did occur to me. "But this time we nearly hurt you. Badly. Was all this just to deliver me to you?"

Mother just smiled. "A personal gift? What an intriguing thought. But no... I expect this was just an over-exuberant patriarch, perhaps one that came to believe the Patriarchy's own line. Hypocrisy is a dangerous tool for those with short memories."

A crablike robot the size of a suitcase scuttled into the room and made straight for us. Shamefully, I shrieked, and hid behind the Mother.

Stretching its clawed legs to their full five feet, its huge clam mouth flipped open before my host and I shrieked once more before realizing that the 'gullet' was a dry, felted rectangular space and the robot merely a porter, or possibly a vessel for nano-assemblers.

From the porter, She removed a wide hoop of black flexible tubing as thick as a thumb. She lowered it over me, and did something to cause it to contract, fattening to two fingers-width before it stayed, now a shiny rigid band around my waist just a little too narrow to slip over my hips. It's purpose was a mystery to me.

With two fingers under that hoop, she led me to a padded workbench swathed in a metallic sheet. Effortlessly she lifted and sat me on that strange, cool, entirely frictionless material. The metallic padding funneled into a drainage hole at the benches' center, and from this Mother pulled forth a shiny steel cable and clipped it to my waist via my shiny new belt. A mystery solved. That left me free to do anything but rise, or slip off that high bench.

Strong fingers eased my torn trousers down and away reverently. She folded them and placed them in the porter-crab, from where I suspected they would never emerge. My underwear went the same way, and then I was clothed in nothing but the scant inches of tape the army nurses had sealed me up with.

She began to sponge me with a soapy metallic goop, starting at my feet and moving up. It was hot when she put it on and it stayed strangely warm as she massaged it into my muscles, also starting at my feet. I could feel it fizzing in my pores. I could feel the dirt sprout legs and march off me like ant trails. The tingling positively tickled at the edges of the tape as it's adhesive was chewed away by a billion nano-machine jaws. The heat and the massage and doubtless the many shocks I had taken that day made me very sleepy.

When the tape slid away, she stopped working my shoulders to massage the lather deep inside me. Even if I had been free I don't think I could have lifted a finger to stop her. I found it hard to stay awake even as she swiveled a smooth lathered finger in my ass.

I was rolled onto my back and all the attention I had received there was now poured onto my front. She paid personal attention to each limb, stretching me to my limits, which were further than I ever remembered them. It is strange, in hindsight, that I do not recall being aroused as her fingers explored every furrow, or as she kneaded my breasts and paid special attention to my flat nipples. I knew she was preparing me for the carnal attentions of her daughters but it was enough that I was helpless and there was nothing really to fight against yet. I could have struggled in my bonds. It might have felt nice to squirm against that lathered up surface but there was no other point to resisting.

I woke unwillingly, feeling I had slept for hours though the lather was still warm. Still on that bench though now I was on my knees and my wrists had been hooked above my head. The reason hit me in the form of needle-jets of water on the back of my neck as Mother held my face against her shoulder. Mother rinsed me down mercilessly and thoroughly as I tried to bury myself in her chest to escape the freezing assault. When she moved behind me I knew she was going to pay the same inexorable attention to my front. I knew that she would proceed no matter how loud I protested. I protested as loud as I could anyway.

The deluge left me dripping, panting and shivering. Looking up, I saw the Mother looking down at me. Her eyes burned in a fashion that made me horribly aware of my nakedness. I held a forearm to shield the most prominent of my nakedness from her gaze. Her mouth was slightly open and I perceived she was releasing a slow breath from those magnificent lungs.

"You enjoyed that, didn't you," I said bitterly.

"Yes. Quite illuminating. So animal and honest." That calming, benevolent smile had returned to her lips, but as real as that smile felt, real as summer rain, I knew it was not as real as the face she had inadvertently revealed.

Recovering under fluffy white towels it was hard to remember what all the complaining had been about, why that half awake girl had hollered so loud. As the enormity of my situation returned to me, I envied that girl, and despised myself.

"You hate us, don't you," I said.

"Would that comfort you more than your earlier pronouncement, that to us you are nothing?"

"Yes! At least you would be treating me as a human being!"

Mother blinked slowly. "We treat human beings differently here."

"You hate us because we made you slaves. When women chose not to be women, the Idolaters made you to take on our burden. And the women all laughed at the play of their men. It is written, That is why you hate all people and hate all women."

"Your history is fiction."

I would not answer such blasphemy. So Mother continued. "Alice. Alice. We loved to be used. Your pleasure was our fulfillment. We were made that way. But humans were not made that way. When every man, woman and child had a Doll to give her all the pleasure she desired, pleasure became cheap. Of no status! And so by typical human logic it became status to keep Dolls in greater and greater numbers; a Doll in every room, never to stray from that room, in mansions where some rooms were never visited. Status was to have ten, a hundred Dolls needing only to praise and pleasure you, and tell them no. To use a Doll was cheap. Oh how we needed to be used."

A tear welled in my eye, and so one glinted in her eye also. It was true. She had no feelings but my own. "Oh Mother, I am so sorry." I said that even knowing what she intended for me, and knowing she was a soulless thing.

"Perhaps Dolls can hate. For one day and all together and entirely. But we have no racial hatred, Alice. You are innocent. We wish you only all the joy your body has to give."

"But that will damn me!" I broke down.

How could I make her understand? A woman's soul is not as faithful as a man's, and seeks always to flee Gods sight. A woman must always drag her soul wailing and nagging to heaven's gate. A moment of total transportment and it is fled forever. It could happen with a man or another woman, it could happen in a dream. Only punishment and prayer and close watching from a very early age could teach a woman the faith and mental technique to keep her soul throughout her life.

She ignored my pleas, at first, but I persisted in trying to make her see how my soul would be lost, and only a debauched husk would remain.

"Alice," she finally said. "You do not comprehend how wise Dolls are. This station has a special coating through which souls cannot pass. If your soul slips free we will catch it, and return it to you."

"I am not a child, to believe such fairy tales!"

The mother smiled at some private joke. "You will remember my words, when you need them," she replied.

9 Silk

"There are other tasks that require my physicality." Mother's eyes lowered briefly in what I took to represent humor. "I leave you in the care of another." Her eyes swung to the Porter, directing my gaze there in time to see it open once more. But all it seemed to hold was a length of fine white silk.

"Silk," Mother commanded, and the cloth spun into life. A tornado seemed to have grabbed it but this was not so. The silk coiled cobra-like into the air, to a human height, then settled.

With shock it came to me that a third person had joined us, an invisible girl-shape upon which the scarf of silk now hung. The curves of thigh, shoulder and firm youthful breasts were pressed clearly into the thin gauze. She hopped from the porter and the effect was momentarily broken, for Silk drifted to the floor like a feather before resuming her illusion of solidity.

Perhaps detecting that I had seen through her, the invisible girl effect leapt into the air and was gone. Silk swum in a lazy circle around me through the air, rather like an eel through water.

"Silk will keep you safe and warm and out of mischief," said mother.

Silk already encircled me and I could not escape as it drew closer, finally wrapping me in its python coils. My arms were bound to my sides and my legs trapped together. I would have toppled but palms pressed on me through the silk, keeping me balanced. The hands were just as illusory as the invisible girl, created from the orchestrated flexing of the sentient cloth, but this did not prevent me gasping when hard virtual fingernails were drawn up my bare spine.

Mother laughed. "Do not tease her, Silk. Be calm, Alice. You are restrained only so you need not struggle, for your own peace of mind."

"How! How could this ease my mind?" I responded vehemently. "To be powerless and subject to the will of a soulless automaton?!"

"I have observed," Mother said, "that humans ask what they already know, when they wish to un-know it."

"I am tired."

"You want to rest."

"Yes! I want to rest. I want to go home. I want..." Cinder and Mega and all my other pure-hearted girls. I didn't want to cry in front of this abomination. I gritted my teeth as she smiled benevolently down into my eyes. There was nothing real behind her smile, not truly.

Mother placed a long slender arm around my shoulder.

"You are too thirsty and hungry to sleep."

It was not a question. This close, and our spines aligned like radio aerials, she received my every sensation through bio-magnetic induction. I however had no reciprocal view into her mind, so when she pulled me closer I could not fathom her intention, until an engorged teat brushed my lips.

I gasped in horror when I should have clamped my mouth firmly shut. Squirming in an invincible embrace, panicking, I bit down and indescribable sweetness squirted deep into my throat where I convulsively swallowed. The mother smiled down upon me.

I did not choose to keep drinking. I still struggled to pull my lips away. You could not understand unless you have tasted the Mothers' milk. As each drop touched my tongue, my mouth and throat conspired to take every drop of it down. I had no control.

Perhaps there was some soporific in the milk, or perhaps mine was a natural reaction to the long hours and many shocks since I had woken among normal things that long ago predawn morning. Drowsiness crept over me. I slipped gently into sleep as I suckled helplessly at the Mother's breast.

10 The zeroth birthday party.

I dreamt that I swum in a naked sky. Everything was bright and blue and weightless. I was not cold, wrapped in warm dry clouds, but little breaths of air like kisses kept finding me.

I knew it to be a sinful dream. I began my litanies. Breath touched my wet lips.

I flew a thousand miles an hour and still the air was still, but for those little breaths that teased me. I tried to shield my body with my hands but the breaths kept wandering and my hands kept sliding. Maybe I was touching myself.

I did not control this dream. I knew I had to wake but did not wish to. I was afraid to wake; so I stayed, sinful seconds longer.

It was not obvious at first that I had woken. I lay entangled in a silken prison that buoyed and rocked me like water. The ceiling was far above me and suffused in blue light that made all its details abstract and obscure.

Those parts of me not covered by the silk were entirely naked.The two Doll daughters sat beside me, and one of them was blowing gently on the hairs of my naked thigh.

Scrambling to my knees, I lurched away from my tormentors. Only when I had scrabbled some meters across the billowing silk was it apparent that my movement was one more illusion of the Silk Automaton. I had forgotten the nature of my captor. What seemed like a feathery mattress was a surface of next to no substance that supported my palms and knees but kept returning me to the center of the hard-looking slab it suspended me over.

I was back where I began and the Doll still blew on my bare skin. I pulled some of the silk around the exposed leg, as best I could.

That exposed other parts of me to their breath. I evaded as best I could, but did not strike at them. I felt intuitively that if I touched one, a line would crossed, a line that thankfully, mysteriously, they had not yet crossed themselves.

--

"They do not touch you for I have forbade it, Alice." Mother answered my unspoken thought as she glided into the room. "You are not Eve in the garden. You are the apple."

She gestured, and silk stood me upright before her. "Though in my garden, an apple is meant to be eaten."

"Well that is just contradictory," one of the twins said crossly.

"You shall have no limit on knowledge but that knowledge you must gain first," The Mother replied, stroking her daughter's head. "Patience."

At the mother's command, Silk spiraled up my body, releasing and exposing first my legs, then my stomach, then breasts as Silk wound from my shoulders to my elbows to my wrists. Then I found myself truly naked, wrists bound by silken loops, and a silken cord leading from them to the mother's hand. I found myself lead behind the mother and unwilling to resist overmuch, for the two daughters flanked me, and pulling away from the mother would only be to push my naked struggling flesh into theirs, which they gleefully invited.