May woke a few minutes before the alarm would have. With a quiet groan, the young woman rose from her position, curled in a tight ball, though not by much. The small cage she slept in barely had room for her to kneel, except with her head bowed low to keep from brushing the metal roof. She didn’t have room to stretch out her full length either, much as she wanted to stretch after a night curled up. Not that she knew for sure what was ‘night’ and what was ‘day’ anymore. It had been a long time since she’d seen a clock and could tell. For her, morning was when she was woken up and taken out of this cage, and night was when they put her back here.
The young woman’s eyes blinked, struggling to see anything in the patch blackness of the cage. Not that there was anything to see, really. Six perfectly blank walls of metal, trapping her into the tight space. Some of the girls tried scratching the walls, using whatever bits of scrap metal they could scavenge, some marking the days of their captivity, others scratching out images, figures, or geometric designs, working by touch alone. Something to mark the cage as their own, or leave something behind to greet the next girl to find herself inhabiting that particular cage.
Not long after May had awoken, an insistent beeping came from her collar, loud in the stillness of the cage. A red light flashed on the side, the only light in the darkness. The collar was blank, apart from the recessed lights on the sides. A band of polished, silver metal circling the young woman’s throat. It was the only thing May wore. Other than that, the young woman was completely naked.
After a few seconds, it or the sensors monitoring the cage and its occupant, registered that May was up and kneeling in the center of her cage. The beeping stopped, the light went out, leaving her in the dark again. Had she still been sleeping, or tried to ignore the alarm, it would have kept beeping, growing steadily louder, for another minute or so. Then it would employ more…’forceful’ methods of waking her up.
May waited in the darkness for another minute or so. Then another light, this one green, flashed, accompanied by an instruction, the same one May received every ‘morning’. “Slave will exit her cage now.” An electronic voice, vaguely female, ordered. At the same moment, there was an audible “click” from one of the steel panels forming the cage, as it popped out of place. Light spilled into the dark space, causing May to shield her eyes for a moment as it slid upwards, disappearing into a recess.
Hurriedly, the young woman clambered out of her cage, stepping onto the steel grill floor of the corridor beyond. With groans of relief, she stood up, straightening up and stretching out her back and limbs as best she could. Around May, in front of her and behind, the rest of the cages spaced along both sides of the corridor and stacked two high, had also opened, their occupants spilling out as well. Like May, they were all women, girls really, and all naked, save their collars.
“Slaves will form into column.” May’s collar ordered, echoed by the collars of all of the other slaves. Hurriedly, May finished her morning stretching and rushed into position. The girls quickly formed a coffle, two girls wide and stretching the length of the corridor. Along with the rest, May stood at attention, back straight as tall as she could, hands folded behind her back, head bowed. As before, sensors in the facility would tell if a slave had failed to get into the correct place and administer punishment accordingly.
“Begin march.” The collars ordered. As one, the slaves began to shuffle forward, down the hallway. At the end of the cellblock, they passed through a pair of thick security doors, currently open. May assumed when she and the other girls were locked up for the ‘night’, the doors were kept closed, to foil any escape attempts. Not that she’d ever know. She couldn’t see anything while in her cage, and she doubted she’d ever leave it, except when they allowed her to. Past they doors, they went into another corridor. Save the lack of cell doors, it was otherwise identical to the cellblock they had left.
“Turn left.” The collar ordered as the column came to an intersection. The order flashed down the line as each girl in turn came to it. Two other corridors stretched out, straight ahead and to the right. May had never gone down either of those corridors, had no idea what lay down them. Once or twice, when she risked raising her head, to quickly glance down one of them, she’d seen another column of girls, naked and collared, like hers, shuffling in another direction, arms folded, heads bowed, being led to some other part of the facility.
Of course, raising her head risked the system detecting her out of the ordered position and receiving punishment, so for now, May kept her head bowed submissively. In that position, her eyes settled awkwardly on the naked ass of the girl in front of her, wiggling erotically as the line shuffled forward. Spread across one cheek was a geometric design, a series of interlocking figures that formed stylized letters “SMS”. May knew she had the same design tattooed across her right ass cheek, as did every other girl in the line and, she presumed, in the facility. It was the logo of the corporation that owned them.
Like the collars they wore, the nano-tattoos marked the girls as slaves, property. The nano-tattoo was made of small nanobots, instead of ink. They formed a thin layer, just beneath the skin. At an electrical signal, individual bots could rotate, reflecting more or less light, in different wavelengths, to present any sort of design the person with the control code wanted. When May had first been enslaved, it had been set to show the generic brand of an unsold slave. When she’d been purchased at auction following her training, it had been changed to the SMS corporation. If May was sold somewhere else, it would be changed to reflect her new ownership.
Arriving at their destination, the slaves went through their ‘morning’ routine. First was the bathroom, of sorts, where the slaves were allowed to relieve themselves. They passed through a long shower, in line, arms raised above their heads as automated nozzles sprayed them with water, first mixed with cleansing agent solutions to clean them then clean to rinse off. They passed through a bank of ultraviolet light which quickly dried the girls off.
In the next room, the slaves received their breakfast. They received it in the form of nutrient paste, carefully engineered to provide everything a human needed in her diet, with the exception of taste. Not for the first time since her enslavement, May cursed the man, for surely it had been a man, who’d designed the nutrient paste dispensers in just such a way the slaves had to kneel, taking the dispenser nozzles in their mouths as it shot the sticky, cloying paste into their mouths. Hunger helped the slaves choke down the only substance they’d receive; once in the ‘morning’ and a second time in the ‘evening’. Than it was time for the girls to be suited up.
Out of the feeding area, the slaves marched, at the instructions of their collars, down another corridor. This one ended in a t-intersection. Here, the wall in front of them perpendicular to the hallway they’d come down, was lined with doors, spread every couple of meters with numbers painted onto the metal. As the line reached the intersection, the collars of the girls in front spoke up, giving them a number. With quick efficiency, the line split up, each girl going to her assigned door. With a hiss, the doors opened, just long enough for the slave to step through, before they closed with another hiss.
Once all of the doors had been assigned, the column came to a halt and waited. Ten, fifteen minutes later, orders were issued to the next girls in line, who stepped forward, all those behind them shuffling forward. None of the original bunch had come back out. From her position halfway down the line, May had to wait through several batches before her turn came. “Door 7.” The collar at her throat ordered. Obediently, May turned, walking past several of the doors until she came to the one marked with a 7. It slid open and she stepped through.
The handlers were waiting for her, as they always were. They were slaves like her, naked and collared, bearing the corps logo on their bottoms. It was always the same girls, a tall, thin blonde girl and a shorter, dark skinned one with curly black hair. May didn’t know their names, just as they presumably didn’t know hers. None of them had ever spoken while in here. The only time speaking was permitted and didn’t bring swift and immediately punishment from the collar was when she was in her cage. From time to time, May would talk to herself in the cage, even sing a few songs she remembered from before her enslavement, just to hear what her voice sounded like.
A fraction of a second before the collar issued the order, May stepped into the center of the room and extended her arms out. They’d gone through this process often enough she knew what to do without having to be told anymore. First came the harness, a web of straps made of a soft, synthetic material textured to look like fine leather and dyed a deep, emerald green, joined by shiny brass rings. The handlers pulled it out of a black plastic case that contained all the pieces of May’s harness. Her harness. Though she had no way to be sure, May was pretty sure it was always the same one. The straps were slid around her body and pulled snug against her skin.
Next came the sleeves. A faux leather sack, inside two sleeves which trapped May’s arms into the same box-tie position they’d been in before. Straps joined the armbinder to the rest of the harness, pinning her arms to her back. After cinching every strap tight, the handlers turned back to the case. Sometimes, May wondered where the case came from and where the cases for the other slave’s harnesses were, as her case was the only one present at the moment. The walls were the same blank metal of the rest of the facility, though that didn’t mean they couldn’t hide storage compartments or even a system of transporting the cases to and from another part of the facility.
The next pieces were the boots. Thigh high, it took some effort to slide them all the way up May’s long, toned legs. Inside, the bottoms of the boots forced her feet into an arched position, not quite on tip-toes, but not far off either. Outside, the bottoms of the faux-leather pieces were molded into something like a horse’s foot, complete with hooves. Early in her enslavement, May had found walking in the boots awkward and disorienting, but now she accepted the transition from feet to artificial hooves as easily as putting on sneakers or flats, though it had been years since May had worn any shoes other than the boots, or any clothes other than her harness.
There were only a few pieces left now. May opened her mouth to accept the padded horses bit between her teeth. A head-encircling harness ensured it would stay there until the end of her work period and everything was removed. With only slight hesitation, May bent over slightly, spreading her legs to present her sex and ass for the twin plugs that formed the suit’s “Motivation Center”. She groaned softly, muffled by the gag in her mouth, as the greased phalluses were slid inside her, one inside her sex, a second into her ass. The latter had a plume of green strands extending from it, to form an artificial tail for May.
The last piece was the hood. May gave a quiet whimper, trembling slightly. She hated this part, even worse than the plugs she was once against trying to get used to, filling her insides. The hood was a solid piece, shaped to fit the top half of May’s head snug. At the bottom, the edges of the hood rose, peaking at the bridge of the young woman’s nose where it rested, diving down on either side to cover her eyes. They swept around the sides, covering her ears before continuing around the back. About halfway up, a hole pieced the hood, through which May’s hair would spill out in a ponytail. The outside was covered in more of the same faux leather. On the sides, the material had been formed into fake horses’ ears, over her real ones and at the top, rising up, was a fluttering green plume.
May held her breath as the hood descended over her face, held by blonde, as her partner gathered May’s hair into its usual ponytail. For May, everything went black, as if she was back in her cage, only with the added claustrophobic presence of the hood, covering the top half of her head. The pieces covering her ears blocked out all sound, even her own, quickened breathing, leaving May all but completely cut off from the outside world.
Gently, the handlers took hold of May. Even expecting it, she still jumped at the feel of their hands on her body. Helpless, the pony girl was led across the chamber, through another door, into a larger room. The cart was waiting for her, as it always was. May was led to her position and left there. She stood in place as the handlers went to work, quickly attaching her to the cart by the rings spread across her harness. At some point, they switched the cart’s systems on, linking it to the hood covering May’s head.
Inside, the VR system lit up. Against the black background, bright green lines scratched across it, quickly forming a wire frame display of the large room she was in. To one side, the handlers were rendered as blocky figures, devoid of any identifiers. In front of May, she could see a large pair of doors, now sliding open. A bright green arrow slid across the floor of the room, pointing out the doors. At the same time, a voice inside the helmet, same was the one from the collar, spoke up. “Slave will follow the indicated path now.”
May leaned forward, pulling on the handles of the cart. As always, it was harder to get the cart moving than to keep it moving once she was going. From the resistance to her tugging, and the way the harness pulled against her naked body, May knew she was in one of the single-pony carts, with two small shafts on either side of her, instead of one of the larger multi-pony carts, with one central shaft and several girls harnessed on either side. That was the only way she could tell. Neither she, nor the cart, appeared in the VR display. The people who programmed it hadn’t bothered including that in the VR display, no doubt assuming she knew where she was already.
The cart rolled smoothly out of the chamber, moving easier now, and up a long corridor. Then, May was out of the facility and rolling down the street. She could feel warm sunlight on her bare skin, better than the days she left the facility and felt rain coming down. A breeze blew across May’s body, naked save for the harness, still cold enough to raise goosebumps across May’s skin and cause her nipples to grow hard. It was still early spring, she guessed. A few weeks ago, she’s worn a skintight body stocking underneath the harness to keep warm. Now, though it was still somewhat chilly, she didn’t need one.
As May came out onto the street, the VR display started lighting up, filling in the new details. Buildings were rendered in wireframe, people on the sidewalks as blocky figures, vehicles and other ponycarts as cubes, moving faster and slower respectively. Below, the counters of the street were rendered in more detail, showing her where street met sidewalk as well as potholes and any other impediments that might affect the cart’s movements. The information was supplied by sensors in the back of the cart, thus the disorienting moments of blindness she experienced before being hitched up to it.
The VR system was programmed to give May only what information was necessary. Names on buildings and street signs? Faces of people passing by? Irrelevant. All she need to know was how to follow the glowing arrow showing the route the system had assigned her. May didn’t know what city she was in. Standard enslavement practice was to make sure new slaves weren’t sold back in their home towns after training, less chance to them escaping or finding help from people they’d known in their old lives. In the years May had been pulling the cart, she’d built up a partial mental map of the city she served in, how the streets were laid out, but couldn’t say anything more than that.
Here, she knew, a left turn immediately after leaving the facility meant her route would take her to the heights, her given name for the area of the town built around a series of rolling hills. She didn’t care much for that route, second only to the down-town routes and the constant stop-start movement of traffic in that busy area. Not that what she felt mattered much. She’d run the route assigned her, or else the system would punish her until she obeyed.
May jogged easily up the long, rising stretch of road that marked the entrance to the heights. She was a fit, athletic woman. Before her enslavement, she’d run track and played soccer in school, and her recent years of pulling a cart each day had kept her in shape. Early in the day, when she was still fresh, it felt good to run, working out the kinks a night in the cage had left her.
Up in the heights, the flashing arrow led May down one street after another. The buildings here were smaller than the skyscrapers downtown. May wondered if they were shops, or perhaps houses in a wealthy part of town. Up ahead, the arrow indicated for her to pull over to the side of the street. Standing at that spot were several figures, the VR giving no other indication as to their identity save a flashing icon which said they were marked as May’s first passengers of the day. Two stood close together, the third half a step behind, slightly bent over. Even without the extra information her regular eyes would have allowed her, May could easily picture the group; two men or free women, out shopping. The third a slave girl, burdened with parcels from their successes.
Through her bit, May gave a slight groan. Why three people? And why her first fair of the day? Pulling all of them around would tire her out much too fast. Still, she had no choice but to pull the cart over to the side of the street, stopping the cart right in front of them. She knelt, submissively, as they clambered in. Looking over her shoulder, May saw the front two climb into the main seating well of the cart while the third walked around to the back, where luggage was stored. The figure climbed in here, confirming May’s guess about her identity.
Meanwhile, one of the free passengers had entered their destination into the cart’s system. The arrow flashed back ahead, at the same time May received an order to start moving. Smoothly, she rose to her feet and pulled on the cart, groaning softly as she once again struggled to overcome the weight of the cart added with its three new passengers and their baggage. She looked over her shoulder as well, to make sure there were no swift moving cars coming up behind as she pulled out into the street.
As always, May felt a brief nervousness during her first few fares. The ponycarts were always the slowest vehicles on the busy streets, car and bikes zipping past her, indistinct blocks in the VR system. She couldn’t turn quickly to avoid the other vehicles, and anyway if she tried the system would punish her for deviating from her assigned route. She could only run as fast as she could, following the glowing line in front of her and hope everyone else gave her a wide berth.
Fortunately, this first route proved to be an easy one, aside from the heavy load. After only a short trip down the busy street, they detoured through a wide gate into what she assumed to be a park, slowing to avoid the crowd of pedestrians around it. Beyond it was a long stretch of road that twisted and turned its way through an area devoid of the wireframe buildings that dominated the rest of May’s VR world. There were plenty of people walking in the street and the only vehicles were a few bikes and ponycarts like May’s. She wondered if any of them were being pulled by other girls from her cellblock.
To May’s relief, her passengers didn’t repeated mash the ‘virtual whip’ button that would signal her to run faster and deliver a short jolt through the plugs to encourage her forward. In fact, the headset told her they wanted to slow down a bit, take their time on a gentle promenade through the park. Given their limitations, a ponycart was a more fashionable than practical mode of transportation. Her passengers wanted to be seen taking one on their shopping day to the big city.
Eventually though, on the far side of the park, they once more passed through a gate and onto the busy street. May had to speed up now, if only to keep the cars and bikes from zooming past her at too alarming a rate. A few blocks away, she dropped the trio and their slave off at what she assumed to be the city’s main train terminal. She’d occasionally see some large, elongated rectangle zooming past when she came by her, which, given the number of people coming and going, was quite often.
May knelt by the side of the road ss two of her passengers debarked, their slave once more taking up her burden of parcels. Meanwhile the third rider settled their fare. The system beeped cheerfully, signaling the company had been paid, not that that meant much to the slave pulling the cart. Her reward came a second later…
The passenger hit a button in the cab, signaling that May had been a good pony for them. A moment later, the plugs burst into life, not to shock her in punishment, but buzzing, stimulating her sex. May chewed on the bit in her mouth, giving a brief moan of pleasure. It wasn’t much, didn’t last long enough to push her over the edge, save late in the day when the constant pressure of the plugs and strap between her legs as she ran all day, teased right up to the line, but as her only pleasure, May still treasure those few second of pleasure she got for a job well done.
Stopping at the train station also meant May didn’t have long to wait for her next fare. A single person, in a hurry, if the stiff, body language of the featureless, blocky figure that jumped into her cart. They quickly hit the buttons on the screen to enter their destination which popped up on May’s VR. She jumped to her feet, looking over her shoulder to make sure she had a gap in traffic to slip out, then got the cart moving again, quick as she could.
However quick she was, it wasn’t quick enough for her fare. She’d barely taken four steps before the virtual whip began to beep, rapidly, as if he was hitting the button over and over again. Before long, the system started shocking May. She ran as fast as she could, but however fast she got, it didn’t seem enough for the rider. The virtual whip cracked again, and again. When she got him to his destination, he didn’t even reward her for a good job, though she wasn’t surprised at that point.
Through the rest of the day, May ran fare after fare. Some were good, like her first trip, slow promenades down quiet streets and parks and at the end, the buzzing reward between her legs. Others were like the second, a mad dash across down, her passengers mercilessly punishing her with the whip. Her only indication that the day was passing was the angle of the sun on her naked skin; now high above, baking her as she ran, now lower and cooler. That, and the increasing tiredness of her limbs. With each new fare dropped off, May hoped the system would decide she had done enough for the day. Again and again, she was disappointed and had to force herself to keep running, hoping this one would be her last.
Finally, the system realized what her sore limbs and sweaty body had known for a while. As her last fare got off, pushing the reward button which set May’s pussy, tingling from a long day of denial, quivering with delight, a new route popped up on her display, not to pick up a new fare, but back to the facility. Her body desperately wanted rest, but May forced herself to pick up the pace, knowing the sooner she got back, the sooner she would get the rest she needed. Fortunately, her last fare had dropped her off not far from the center. Some days, she’d had to cross most of the city again to get back. The extra time that took came out of her rest period, not her work.
Today, though, she arrived back in good time. Unlike the morning, when all of the carts were dispatched at once, in the evening, the carts came in one by one, as they finished their last fares and headed home. May was the only cart visible as she rolled up to the entrance, the same one she’d left earlier that day.
The handlers were waiting for her in the large room, as they always were. Mechanically, they went through the morning’s routine in reverse. May was unhitched from the cart, once again going blind as she was disconnected from its sensors. Gentle hands led her through a door into the next room where her hood and harness were removed and deposited once more into their containers, ready for her to don again the next day.
When they had finished, May’s collar took over, order the slave girl through the door into the featureless metal hallways. May was first led to the showers. She always looked forward to this part of her day. For whatever reason, someone in the company had had a brief moment of sympathy for the slaves, or maybe studies had found it was necessary to keep up productivity, but for the evening shower the temperature of the water, and the ambient temperature of the room, were turned slightly up. The spray lasted a little longer then the morning shower as well, giving May and chance to relax her limbs in the hot, steamy room, to loosen them up before she was caged up for the night.
When May arrived at the showers, she had it to herself, but while she was being sprayed down, the door opened and two more girls came in. Perhaps they’d been hitched to one of the dual carts, or maybe they’d simply both arrived separately at roughly the same time. Without a word, the other two went to their assigned stalls to be hosed down. Outside of the cells, talking was forbidden among the slaves. Their collars had sensors that would detects it and immediately dish out punishment.
“Besides, what would we talk about?” May wondered. The quality, or lack thereof, of the food that came out of the dispensers? The hardships of pulling a cart? The isolation of the hood or the cages? What was there to say? How they’d wound up enslaved and sold here? What kind of life they’d had before? May didn’t like thinking of her old life. It was too painful, knowing she would never had that kind of life again. She didn’t think she wanted to share it with the other girls. They had their own, painful, stories of their own.
With a beep, May’s collar informed her, her shower was over. She turned, giving a last look to the other two girls and headed through the ultraviolet dryer to get the last of the warm water off her bare skin. Then it was into the feeding area, kneeling at the dispenser to get her evening’s mouthful of bland nutrient-rich paste and back to the cellblock. May cage, as always, was open and waiting for her the bend over and crawl on her knees into the small, bare space inside. When the sensors detected she was completely inside, the cage door slid shut, once more plunging May into darkness.
“Another day…” May whispered to herself, surprised at hearing her own voice, instead of the harsh, mechanical orders of her collar. For the first few months, May had tried to keep track of her days of slavery, counting the number in her head, but she quickly lost track. By now it had to be hundreds, maybe thousands.
With a sigh, May lay down on the metal floor of the cage, trying to get as comfortable as she could. There was little she could do in the cage except try and get as much sleep as she could. She’d need it for the next day’s toil. Maybe one day it would come to an end. She couldn’t keep pulling the cart forever, right? When that happened, they would find something else for her to do. She hoped it was better than this, but feared it wouldn’t be. Until then, though, the cart would be waiting for her tomorrow…