For the return of stolen property

“You’ve got to give her back!”

Jesse stomped his bare foot in frustration, standing basically naked in front of this horde of unwashed strangers. He could see in their eyes how little respect they held for him, manicured and make-upped and made into a pretty plaything by the Grand Algorithm and rules of society they had all rejected. The same eyes that had looked down and masturbated over him as they shocked him into paralysis, all those months ago.

Only Fran looked at him as if he was a person, not a plastic advertisement for everything they hated. But she sighed and shook her head, unable to meet his gaze.

“We can’t do that, Jesse! She’s the only lead we’ve got towards trying to get Sean back… and all of our other friends who have ‘mysteriously disappeared’ recently. This is it. We’ve risked so much to get this one chance, and if we don’t figure out how to stop this it’s only a matter of time until all of us are turned into… into…”

The sissy slutwife-to-be stared his friend down, forcing her eyes to meet his own. Forcing her to lay the statement bare. Turned into him… and her, and all their other classmates. Turned into Betsy or George or Silvertongue or any of the other friends and lovers and mentors that he loved and cared for and respected. People who worked hard and devoted themselves daily towards filling the role they’d been assigned. People who had the same doubts and fears and insecurities about their place in the world but overcame them in order to offer everything they could towards something greater than themselves. Who didn’t run and hide to spend their days stealing and scrounging on the fringes of civilisation.

Standing there alone, faced with this sneering, jeering crowd who were willing to sacrifice his friend for their own selfish pride and ‘independence’. Jesse looked back on his own early refusals to accept who he was with nothing but scorn. It seemed so childish now, to reject all the wisdom and guidance of 200,000 years of social evolution and the great machine mind that had solved so many of the world’s problems. He thought back to the satisfaction he felt as he got on his knees and sucked or licked whatever was given to him. The nights he had collapsed into bed utterly exhausted, but filled with the warm glow and leaking fluids of another twenty or so satisfied customers. Who were these infantile parasites to tell him that they shouldn’t also have to put such effort in? That earning such fulfillment was something to be embarrassed or afraid of.

“Look Jess, I… I don’t know if we’ll be able to fix what we’ve done to her, but it’s our mistake and we are trying. And if we do manage to figure it out it might save a helluva lot more people than just one trainee prostitute! I’ve told you I can’t remember anything about my first Home, but I can tell you the one thing I did manage to find out: the man who was in charge of it. I don’t know if we’ll be able to fix Binita, but I do know Derrick Carter. I know that taking her back to him won’t end up in anything good for her, or you, or any of us. He’s using all of us as guinea pigs for his sick little plans and ambitions and none of our ‘teachers’ or ‘superiors’ or Grand-Fucking-Algorithm is doing anything to stop him.”

The exasperation on Franceska’s face was plain to see. For all of his anger… Jesse couldn’t help but feel sorry for her, caught between these two conflicting worlds. Yet it did not change his certainty that what she was asking was no better than those she was criticising. Either way their friend and classmate became just an object to be poked and prodded, only in one case it was in a nice, clean lab by people who knew what they were doing; while in the other… it was here by the people who had already accidentally made a monster out of her.

“I’m not going back there Jesse… never again.” The finality and conviction in the girl’s voice said all that it needed to.

“Binita’s staying with us… and if you want to, you can too.”