Feedback Loop

From the 33rd Floor, Thirteen was called down to the 31st. Interoffice. Then up to the 34th. Another interoffice. Then back down to the 33rd for a memo. Standard mail pick-up at the reception desk on the 28th, and then out and about amongst the cubicles on that floor. And so the morning sped on, with Thirteen running, jogging, speed-walking through the building, as the timer on her smartphone dictated her pace. And, though she wasn't called down for her break until as late as possible – 10:15 to 10:30 – Thirteen still managed to avoid another demerit. A punishment was coming, sure; likely at lunch. But at least for this morning, those fifteen minutes were all hers, to do as she pleased.

Never wanting to pull too many girls off-duty at one time, Human Capital had staggered the mailgirls' breaks. The first of the morning breaks was scheduled from 9:30 to 9:45, and consisted of a random assortment of six girls, based on current activity level. From the tablet at her desk, and thanks to the geo-locators inside each of their smartphones, Mistress Zero could see exactly where all twenty-four girls were at any given time. She could see who was engaged in an active delivery, who was being "held" and expecting a delivery, who was on a bathroom break, who was currently at rest and waiting for her next assignment. She took them off duty six at a time, with their fifteen minute breaks beginning the moment they were notified by a chime from their smartphones on the band on their arms. Afternoon breaks were similar, at fifteen minute intervals between 3:30 and 4:30. Lunches, too, though they were allotted thirty minutes at lunch, and were split twelve and twelve between First Lunch at twelve-thirty and Second Lunch at one o'clock.

Because breaks included the time it took for a mailgirl to get back to the locker room, time itself was precious, and it could be tortuous to see the countdown begin if a girl were on one of the upper floors. That was what Thirteen was dealing with now, watching her smartphone tick down from 14:50 to 14:49, as she waited for the service elevator on the 42nd floor.

Unlike a number of companies that Thirteen had studied on the West Coast, with their suburban campuses and office parks, US Financial Plaza posed a challenge to a commonly enforced prohibition against mailgirls riding in elevators. Most programs had some allowances for service elevators when a delivery was big enough or heavy enough, and the employee sending the delivery granted permission. A forty-eight story skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, however, made such restrictions difficult to put into practice, as the ascent from the locker room on the 2nd Floor to the Executive Offices on the 47th or 48th might well have killed a girl. Let alone the time it would take to make the run.

Instead, USF had followed the lead of a handful of other programs in Tokyo and Frankfurt, and allowed the use of service elevators when necessary. What Human Capital had decided to call "necessary," however, was an ascent or descent of more than ten stories. If Thirteen needed to get from the mail room on B2 to the 18th Floor, she was allowed to use the elevator. If she needed to get from B2 to the 6th, it was the stairs.

Because of the tracking and analytics that Human Capital had its fingertips, because the closest mailgirl was the one who was called (unless an executive was willing to spend a few chits to call a specific girl), and because they'd continued to refine and find efficiencies the longer the program was active, the bulk of Thirteen's deliveries were usually within ten floors and required the stairs. Standard mail and packages from the actual mail room in the basement were an exception, but a high percentage of those were taken care of early in the morning, between seven and eight, before most employees arrived for the day. A significant portion of Thirteen's daily activity was interoffice and memos, and a significant portion of those were between and within departments clustered together in the building. Which wasn't to say that use of the elevators was rare; Thirteen was on and off the service elevators all day. It was just that, nine times out of ten, she was taking the stairs.

The elevators, though, brought with them their own challenges. There were only four service elevators, compared to the plethora of regular elevators that the regular employees rode. And the mailgirls shared them with each other, as well as Maintenance, Custodial, and other members of the building staff. A mailgirl might pull out her hair waiting for a car to arrive, all while the timer on her smartphone ticked closer and closer to a deadline. Delivery times, thanks to the analysts in Human Capital, accounted for average service elevator wait times - but average was just that, and Thirteen had missed more than a few deadlines because her chariot was slow to arrive.

Thus, the "greater than ten floors" allowance had, in practice, mutated into thirteen, fourteen, or even sixteen floors, depending on the mailgirl herself. Climbing the stairs, even at the risk of missing a deadline, meant that a girl had at least some control over her own fate; better to make a valiant effort and fail than fail because an elevator took too long to arrive. For Thirteen, fourteen floors was about her limit for an ascent, and even then she'd at least press the elevator button and then gauge how fast she thought it might arrive. For a descent, she might decide to take the stairs for as many as sixteen or seventeen floors; again, though, she'd try the elevator button first before gritting her teeth and betting on herself, betting that she could get there faster via the stairwell.

The upside was that Thirteen was now in better shape than she'd ever been. All of the girls had been thin and athletic before signing on, but a few months of a mailgirl's routine had erased any excess pounds and left them all well-toned, well-sculpted, sights to behold. There were some deliveries that required little more than a fast-paced walk, but Thirteen generally spent most of her day at a light jog, with full-out sprints required at fairly regular intervals. She'd never been much of an exercise freak in New Haven or at Pepperdine, but she now found herself going stir-crazy on Saturdays and Sundays if she didn't get in at least one, ridiculously long run per day. And, because she'd gotten so accustomed to making such runs while barefoot, that meant a long, sneaker-less session in her building's basement gym.

The elevator finally, thankfully, arrived, and Thirteen immediately reached for the button to hurry along the closing doors. She pressed the button for the 2nd Floor, and then prayed there'd be no stops on her way down.

As she stood, fixated on the descent from 41 to 40, from 40 to 39, from 39 to 38, Thirteen ever-so-slightly parted her legs, and used her right middle finger to begin gently teasing her clit. Masturbation was strictly, strictly forbidden anywhere outside of the locker room, but Thirteen knew what she could get away with and what she couldn't. Mistress Zero could punish her for doing even this, of course, as punishments could be as trumped up and arbitrary as her mood varied. But though there were cameras watching Thirteen even now, touching herself in the service elevator was relatively private, and out-of-sight from the regular, non-mailgirl employees for whom USF was still a place of real work.

Given the limited time her break in the locker room allowed, Thirteen was priming herself in the elevator, despite the fact that she was already dripping wet, and likely required only a quick minute or two to hit her first climax. If she had allowed herself, she was sure that she could find her orgasm even before the elevator reached the second floor.

It didn't help that she could smell her own scent as well as she could in the confined space; no amount of cheap, mailgirl-issue perfume could mask the musky odor of Thirteen's own pussy. The very smell of arousal only served as a feedback loop. And the fact that it wasn't just her own smell sent a current of excitement running up and down her spine. There was a time that Thirteen might have thought that smell of pussy was the smell of pussy, but she'd become a bit of a connoisseur over the course of the summer, and she knew – almost instinctively – that Seven had been on this particular elevator at some point in the last few minutes.

Thirteen groaned – not out of pleasure, but out of frustration and desperation – as the elevator slowed to a stop on the 21st Floor. She dutifully took a step back, into the rear, left side of the car, and parted her legs that much further, to make sure they were shoulder-width apart. And, excruciatingly, she removed her right hand from her pussy, and clutched her left behind her back.

As the doors slid open, Thirteen was joined by one of the building's many custodians. She knew the smell of sex was obvious, even to someone without as fine a palate as her own. But Thirteen doubted any of the janitors or building maintenance staff minded all that much; Thirteen suspected that it was less of a problem and more of a perk. What was more, Thirteen knew that her arousal was the least she needed to be embarrassed about. A quick glance at the older, Eastern European gentleman confirmed that this particular custodian was the very one who'd shown up on that fateful day in Investment Financing, the one who'd handed Thirteen a mop to clean her own mess.

She blushed, all over. Thirteen's embarrassment only emboldened her excitement. Not so much the activity in Investment Financing itself (though, some), but rather the punishment that followed. She couldn't help it – being left overnight, with the blindfold, with the gag, with the handcuffs, turned her on.

The girls' Friday night Bitch Sessions at the Imperial were for blowing off steam, sure, but they'd also become one part support group and one part confessional. And, inevitably, at least a portion of every night out, week in and week out, was a game of one-upsmanship around what screwed-up thing they had discovered turned them on that week. For a random cross-section of America, maybe folks might have confessed to being into feet, or leather, or fat girls, or bondage. Mailgirl confessions could be just as wide-ranging, but typically boiled down to some combination of exhibitionism, humiliation, submission, and punishment. A girl might cop to an inadvertent orgasm during a spanking, or to just how turned on they'd become while making a delivery to their old floor, or at their secret arousal being ogled while trying to get a signature.

The confessions were met with hoots and hollers, with laughs and screams. But the power behind them was that they were all experiencing the same thing, that this wasn't a kink or fetish specific to one girl. Maybe this was due to the fact that USF had researched its volunteers, and approached only those exhibiting certain traits or psychological make-ups (they hadn't; Thirteen had checked). Or maybe they'd tapped into something more universal, something deep-seated but denied, something that had lain in wait within their collective unconscious. Most of the girls believed the former - that they themselves were damaged and screwed up, and that USF had somehow targeted them specifically. But, faced with confessions and interviews of mailgirls worldwide, Thirteen was firmly in the other camp; she suspected that anyone in this position might have struggled with the same unexpected sources of arousal.

Whether this arousal was unique to these twenty-four girls, or whether it was something more universal, the very fact that it was "normal" (or, at least, "normal" for this group) brought with it a certain freedom. Yes, Thirteen was ashamed that shame itself seemed to turn her on, but she could cop to it, own it, and act on it, because she knew that Seven was feeling the same way, and Twelve, and Fourteen, and Fifteen, and so on.

Lost her own thoughts, Thirteen almost didn't get out of the elevator when it chimed its arrival on the 2nd Floor; her janitor was continuing his descent to B4. But, once awoken, Thirteen leapt to life, knowing that she was once more racing against the clock.

She stepped into the elevator lobby, and then hurried through the gauntlet of toilets lining the hall into the locker room. She barely grunted an acknowledgement to either Four or Twenty-Three as she sped past them, but neither girl would take offense. Not only did they entirely understand, but they were otherwise engaged. Both were down on their hands and knees at a communal dog bowl at Mistress Zero's desk, sharing a quick morning snack.

Fourteen was waiting for Thirteen at their adjoining lockers, and Thirteen hesitated momentarily, ticking through a handful of alternatives – the showers, the sinks, the locker of another girl. But the very fact that the brunette was already on her back, with her legs spread and her hand between them, was a temptation in and off itself. Not only did it mean that Thirteen wouldn't be alone, that she'd be just another masturbating mailgirl to the croissant-and-coffee crowd on the far side of the mirror glass, but – God help her – the idea of getting off next to Fourteen made it that much hotter.

She glanced down at her leash, and was tempted to clip herself in, as Fourteen had done. But time was limited. Any chance she'd have to do something on her break other than get herself off, once she was done, would be at the mercy of Mistress Zero unlocking her. It wasn't a requirement, at least not until her break was over, but – again, God help her! – she'd learned from previous experience that it heightened the whole thing. And was a turn on, as evidenced by Fourteen, that she shared with others.