Subject: Diaspora Machine/f (severe)
SF NC
From: Lurking Dragon <lurkdrag@nym.alias.net>
Date: 28 Sep 1998 20:10:48 -0700
New Return Address: lurkdrag@nym.alias.net (It works. Not very fast, but it works.)
Background: This story is set in the 28th century. Rejuvenation is common, and is used not only to extend life but as a punishment for criminal behavior. Melody is a fifty year old woman who was convicted of embezzlement last October. She was sentenced to three cycles from 6 to 12 years old. Like all convicted criminals, she is spending her first cycle(s) in the custody of 'spanko' parents, who are authorized, even encouraged to spank her as often as possible, AS WELL AS as often as she deserves...
WARNING: The spanking in this story goes WAY beyond anything remotely reasonable. It is definitely abusive. But this is driven by the story.... if you have problems with this, I suggest you move on.
WARNING--WARNING--WARNING--WARNING--WARNING--WARNING--WARNING
Expanding on the above: This is an old nightmare of mine. It is really pretty extreme. If you are easily 'squicked' by stories of extreme severity, do NOT read this one. You HAVE been WARNED!! --LD [He means it. It's very squicky, but it does advance the plot. -- Laura]
* * *
Melody: Diaspora Sept. 30, 2748
Diaspora had always been Melody's favorite holiday when she was growing up. Maybe it shouldn't be counted a holiday at all, since the kids didn't actually get off school, but it was wonderful. By tradition, almost every child on the planet was taken on a special field trip that day.
Diaspora is the celebration of the first faster than light flight of the Photon Racer, Earth's first vessel to break the lightspeed barrier. It is a celebration of science and technology in all its varied forms. The schools are left all but empty on this wonderful day, as all the students visit museums, expositions, and displays. Sometimes older children are even taken to spend the night in another city, in a carefully supervised road trip.
Diaspora had always been Melody's favorite.
But it never would be again. Like all the Great Children's Days, Diaspora was an especially horrible day for Penitatas. It was bad enough for the 'soft time' Penitatas. While all the other children were off having adventures, the Soft Timers were seated together in a giant study hall in their school's library, set to work in groups on science and technology-related projects assigned and to be completed that same day. The only unusual activity was that the groups were assigned independently of age; six and seven year old first graders worked in the same teams as twelve and thirteen year old seventh graders on their projects.
(N.B.-In 2748, for rejuves, there are only two schools, Elementary and High School. Elementary School handled grades 1-7, High School grades 8-12. This division is mostly because it puts most Penitatas actually serving their sentences into Elementary school, while the majority of other rejuves will be in High School. The Kindern system is kept totally separate from the rejuve school system with very limited overlap for obvious reasons. THAT system maintains 3 school levels as ours does, Lower, Middle and Upper.)
Hard timers 'celebrated' technology in a very different way, and Melody knew that the 'high' point of her day would be an encounter with a SpankMaster 3000, the latest and most sophisticated punishment machine yet developed. These machines were not used very much on Earth, since she had a plentiful supply of people more than willing to care for and discipline her Penitatas. But they were quite popular on some of the outer colonies, where they were used to punish Penitatas who sometimes had to share one Mommy and Daddy between fifteen or twenty children. Most people would rather have and raise their own kids than Penitatas, and some of the colonies didn't even require parenting licenses.
But several thousand machines were kept around on Earth, and were trucked out to the playgrounds of all the Penitatas schools the day before Diaspora, ready to thoroughly and impersonally punish all the poor little hard timers, and totally ruin their days.
Melody arrived at her home room class at eight, as usual. When she sat at her desk, the interface top lit up and informed her that her session with SpankMaster 3000 number 1247 was scheduled for eight thirty, along with the first group of the day, and that she should start her assignment until it was time.
Her assignment was simple. To take the stylus and start printing "I will be a good girl." on her interactive desktop 300 times. Since Melody was still regaining her writing skills, this would be both painful and interminably dull. But she dutifully began her assignment, and got over fifty lines done before her desk reminded her to go to the playground for her punishment.
The bright blue-green booths stood in rows all across the playground. Melody quickly noticed that they were in order, and located booth 1247. Despite the fact that several of the booths were already in use, Mel couldn't hear anything; the soundproofing was that good. Melody inserted the chip her teacher had given her, and the door opened. Down the row she saw Mrs. Garrett, the assistant principal, walking up and down the rows, checking up. Melody sighed and entered the booth.
The door locked behind her. "Please remove all clothing and deposit it in the receptacle on the door." The mechanical voice was impersonal and dead-sounding. With a sniffle, Melody reached behind her head and unfastened her dark blue frock. Unzipping it, she slipped it off and hung it up neatly. Her slip and white blouse followed. Shoes, socks, and finally (and reluctantly) white panties were folded and put away.
"Beep. Very good. Place yourself in front of the panel. Please insure that all lights turn green."
Melody stepped up to the lit panel. There was a round, padded bolster in front of her chest. As she watched, it slowly lowered itself to the level of her hips. She moved forward, and as her lower tummy pressed into the padded fabric, the lights next to it turned green.
Looking up, Melody saw the loops of inch-thick padded cloth that were obviously meant to restrain her hands. She lifted her hands above her head and slipped them in. The soft bands then gently contracted around her wrists, gripping them tightly. Then Melody felt her legs being gently forced apart. Glancing down. she saw that more gentle loops were tugging her ankles into place.
Now all the lights were green. Melody was in position, and softly padded bars locked into position behind her. One was across her knee hollows, another across her lower back. As they held her firmly against the padded wall, the wall began to move forward. It bent in the middle, the upper padded bar forcing her to bend right over the padded bolster as it moved backwards and upwards. In seconds, Melody found herself well bent over and in a terribly exposed position, ready for her mechanical punishment.
She was now lying along a padded surface, her head and legs sharply angled down. But below her knees, the table had lifted, forcing her knees to bend partially. Melody knew that this was to force her bottom to relax for the swats. The knee and back bars held Melody immovably in place, and the bolster had actually pushed her bottom up and away from the table, thrusting it upwards and exposing all of its tender surface for punishment. Even the tender reaches of the crease between bottom and thighs, and the tender thighs themselves were totally helpless and vulnerable.
Melody knew only generally what to expect. There would be three sound spankings, one with a stiff paddle, one with a flexible paddle and one with a cane. Since she was only six, she figured the stiff paddle would be about like her Very Own paddle, the flexible paddle she wasn't sure about, but the cane was certain to be very much like the Nursery Cane she'd gotten Easter. Melody had been told that she would get between ten and twenty licks with the cane, twenty to thirty with the stiff paddle, and thirty to fifty with the flexible paddle. The exact number of swats would be randomly determined by the spanking machine.
The worst thing about this punishment was the total impersonality of it. No warm parental presence to comfort the poor victim. No chance to mediate the punishment through begging and pleading. (Not that that ever WORKED...). Just the totally mechanical application of pain.
Another nasty bit of randomness; nobody knew in what order the machine would choose to apply the punishment. The older kids, and the ones who were on their second or third cycles, had told Melody that getting the flexible paddle first, then the stiff paddle, then the cane was 'best'. The worst possible combination was the stiff paddle first, since it burned deepest, then the cane, which left awful welts, and then the flexible paddle, which under those circumstances would just terribly reinforce the earlier punishments intolerably.
But now the machine was ready to begin. A monitor came on, showing Melody the view of her own bottom, so she could watch herself getting her sound spanking. "Beep. Melody Johnson. Prisoner number 253322455. Age twelve. Computing punishment......."
"Huh? Age TWELVE?? Hey! I'm only SIX! Hey MACHINE!!" But the machine was programmed to ignore anything its subject said or did. Another small screen illuminated and gave Melody's punishment. At the same time the machine voice declared her doom.
"Part 1: One Hundred Sixty strokes of the #14 Stiff Paddle. Prepare yourself!!"
In the other screen, a mechanical arm was lowering a large, rectangular paddle towards Melody's bare bottom. It was at LEAST forty centimeters long...and had 1.5 cm holes cut through all over the spanking surface. "NOOO! THAT'S A BUMBLEBEE-PADDLE!! I'M TOO LITTLE FOR THAT!! NOOOO!" But the machine ignored Melody's pleas. She was right, too. A Bumblebee paddle was designed to inflict a severely blistered bottom, and Melody was far too little for such a punishment.
SOMETHING HAD GONE WRONG.
Then the paddle began to SMACK...SMACK...SMACK...SMACK into Melody's bare bottom, one spank every few seconds.
Melody gasped at the horrible burning sting of the first swat. NOTHING could hurt that much!! She COULDN'T STAND IT!!
The second swat was MUCH worse.
The third was intolerable.
But Melody had no choice BUT to tolerate it.
Melody was screaming by the fourth swat to her defenseless bottom.
After the tenth swat, she was simply bawling and crying as hard as she could. She'd NEVER felt pain like this. It even made the horrible caning she'd had last Christmas seem like nothing.
"My bottom!....My Bottom!!.....OH MY GOD MY BOTTOM!!!!!" Soon even Melody's thoughts lost their coherence, and she was simply submerged in a total morass of intolerable pain. She cried. She bawled. Her eyes streamed with tears as her nose ran copiously down her face. The pain was totally incomprehensible; it was torture in the first degree. Melody gave up all hope and wished fervently to die right there. She grew sick to her stomach and threw up. And still the horrible paddle swatted on and on and on.
Now the paddle was doing its job, and horrible white sting blisters began to appear all over Melody's bare bottom and thighs, and even in the crease between. The computer's scanner sensed these, and concentrated on spreading the blisters around evenly. Instead of a heavy crop of blistered flesh on each 'spank spot', the computer emotionlessly blistered the entire surface of Melody's bottom, and her thighs, and even the crease between.
Finally the torture ended. Melody was still screaming, only partially conscious. She never heard the passionless voice of the computer saying:
"Part 2: Eighty strokes of the Penal Punishment Cane. Prepare yourself!!"
The first stroke caught Melody totally by surprise as it blazed across her bare bottom, breaking a half-dozen white blisters in the process. Her screams redoubled in intensity. She could barely breathe. There was nothing in her mind except horrible, blinding, intolerable PAIN. She screamed. She cried. Her face turned a horrible red as her heart rate went ballistic, her blood pressure skyrocketed.
After the twenty-seventh stroke she threw up again, and this time she couldn't clear her throat. Her nose was helplessly blocked, and even as the machine continued caning her Melody began to choke.
Finally after thirty-two brutally hard strokes of the punishment cane, the machine realized that something was wrong. It couldn't figure out what; it was performing exactly as programmed, but the subject was definitely having trouble breathing. Choking required that the machine pause so that the subject could recover her breath. SpankMaster 3000 #1247 stopped Melody's punishment and began a thirty-second wait.
Then Melody stopped even trying to breathe, or move. The machine noted this and set off the corresponding alarm outside, lighting it's 'Assistance required' light.
* * *
Mrs. Garrett was shocked when she saw the light. These units were supposedly foolproof; she'd NEVER seen the emergency light go on. She raced quickly over to the appropriate unit and used her master key to open the door.
Inside she saw a scene out of Torquemada's dungeon. A tiny child was grasped in the clutches of the horrible machine. A large, bloody cane dangled from a mechanical arm. A bloody paddle rested in a small sink, being cleaned by a chemical spreay. And her bottom...
Her bottom was unmentionable.
And she wasn't breathing. She lay there limply; she looked dead. Garrett hit the panic button, and all the restraints fell free. She was gently turning Melody over and trying to clear her mouth and throat for mouth-to-mouth even as she hit the emergency caller on her belt.
"EMERGENCY EMERGENCY. Get an ambulance to Assville Elementary NOW!! Full support team and equipment. We have a MAJOR failure of a SpankMaster and she's NOT BREATHING. MOVE IT PEOPLE!!! NOW!!!"
Mrs. Garrett had spent forty years in the Confederation Space Marines before becoming a teacher after her last rejuve. Even twenty years hadn't dulled her old reflexes. She pulled Melody out of the machine and laid her on the ground. She immediately started mouth-to-mouth, even as she frantically felt for a pulse. Even after her throat was clear Melody still wasn't breathing.
Garrett kept working over Melody until the ambulance arrived. There was another brief moment of panic when her heart stopped, and for a terrible moment the EMT's were afraid they would have to use their Emergency Rejuvenation System to revive her, which would leave poor Melody a three year old. But fortunately the scanner showed that the problem was a nasty cerebral hemorrhage; the technician quickly patched it with a neural bonder. That done, Melody's heart and brainwaves crept back towards normal, her breathing and heartbeat resumed, and she even showed signs of returning consciousness awakening.
"Keep her under" ordered Mrs. Garrett in a tone that would brook NO argument. "My authority. After what happened...I don't want her conscious until most of THAT is repaired. Now get her out of here. I'll call her parents."
Even as Melody was loaded into the ambulance, Mrs. Garrett made one of the snap insights that made Marines so deadly. Wasn't that kid the one who had the hassle with that guy from Corrections last year? Sure it was. Which means this might not be an accident. With that, she went to the back of the SpankMaster and yanked out the main power cable -- despite the lack of any connector. Then she quickly unfastened the 'service personnel only' panel and pulled out the main memory and processor unit. It there was any evidence there, she'd make DAMN sure it STAYED there.
Then she called the office, told them what had happened, and 'suggested' that they terminate all the SpankMaster's NOW, as they ALL might be compromised somehow, then get the police and a forensics computer team down to the school.
NOW.
For the first time in living memory, the Diaspora spankings were given by human hands holding wooden paddles and switches, applying stinging spanks to bare human bottoms. Those fortunate few who had had their SpankMaster sessions interrupted were sent straight home, to be checked out by their parents and doctors. The other units stood dark and silent as SpankMaster technicians quietly disassembled them.
And a forensics team went over the unit Mrs. Garrett had pulled byte by byte.
* * *
Melody ALMOST awoke. She seemed to be floating in a blue haze. The world was drifting in and out of focus. Her bottom...there was something about her bottom. It...tingled a bit. Vaguely her hand drifted down, and brushed not soft flesh, but hard plastic.
"No, Melody." The quiet voice commanded, as a soft hand gently pulled Melody's away from the nano-repair unit fastened around her hips. "Leave the equipment alone." Melody was coming more awake now.
She saw a pretty young woman holding her hand. She also saw the steel railing of the bed she was lying on her side in. There was quiet monitoring equipment around the hospital bed. Suddenly her Mommy appeared from behind the nurse, and took over her hand.
"Melody? Are you there? How do you feel, dear? I'm afraid something went very wrong. Y-You almost...well, lets just say you were almost our VERY little girl. Like in diapers, almost. But you made it, you're going to be OK."
"But. What happened. I-I remember...it was terrible. Horrible. I-I don't WANT to remember..."
Another voice joined the discussion. A large man stepped forward, and introduced himself. "I'm Detective Jenkins. I know its hard, Melody, but we really need to know what happened in there."
The POLICE??? Melody paled a bit at that. Police can be VERY serious for a Penitatas. But SHE was certainly innocent. And she was certainly going to cooperate as best she could!! "W-Well, It-it all seemed OK, but then the 'puter announced my pun'shment. It said I was twelve. I'm NOT twelve, I'm SIX." Melody was becoming a bit vague again. "Then it said hunnersixty paddle swaz. Too many!! An' the paddle! It'uz a Bumbee paddl'. Blistererer. Then the swats...Please don't make me remember the swats!!!"
"Sorry, sir, but her blood pressure is increasing again, and we cannot have that." said the nurse. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to use the delta inducer to put her back to sleep for now."
"That's all right. Twelve, eh? That may be important. I'd better pass it along to the rest of the team."
Team? thought Melody. They put a whole team on a busted SpankMaster???
She fell back asleep.