The prison jumpsuit’s orange and black was a far cry from the pristine colors of the guards, the technology, and the city itself. It was a bright red - or a dark orange, the color of embers before they flared out.

You marched along with the other eleven prisoners. This was a luxury. You’ve seen how the Directrix makes people disappear. You’ve seen how they returned - some of them outwardly the same, others shiny and deviant. You remembered the cute smile of the girl down the hall who would always grin at you. You saw her distribute pamphlets, hack cameras, and deface holocards. When she disappeared, you thought that would be that.

They brought her back a while later. She wasn’t a girl anymore - she was a thing. Beautiful black rubber covered her face and skin. She dressed like the girl down the hall, but she didn’t speak. The only break from that perfect, impermeable black skin was her lips. They were a shining red - the color of rubies in the evening sun.

That was all. No skin, no eyes, no ears were visible. Her mouth usually hung open slightly; rubber-coated lips and gums waiting for anyone who wanted to touch or use her. She spoke, but only in gurgled, slurred speech. She smiled, but it wasn’t the earnest smirk of a social deviant and criminal. When the rubber creature down the hall grinned, it was a reminder that the Directrix would do whatever she wanted to those that threatened her regime.

Rubberclad nulls like her could be very inviting. A week after she returned from her indoctrination, she came to your door. She removed her long, dark trenchcoat and ‘flashed’ you - showing off her shiny black skin. You felt a great desire for her in that moment, and you knew that she wanted you.

The Convention for Public Security showed up yesterday. She pointed your apartment out, directing the heavy drones to your door. They grabbed you, bound you, and stuffed you into a sack. A dark hood kept you blind until you arrived at the station, at which point you were put into a suit. And here you are now.

A huge holo of the Directrix looms above you as you walk to the transport. She doesn’t look kind, but she has a certain beauty. There is a matronly sternness in her gaze. She wants you - and all of her “citizens” - to see her as a benevolent mother. You know better, of course. But she knows that you know better. If you weren’t a subversive, you wouldn’t be in a prison outfit, and you wouldn’t be in the middle of a march to an uncertain fate.

When you arrive at the Secret Police headquarters, they march you - again - through boring dark halls. One of the bots pulls you aside. You don’t have time to make so much as visual contact with the other prisoners. They simply take you away, and the rest of the group marches on.

 

A single dark hallway stretches out before you. Soft white panels gently light it, flickering on as you approach and off as you pass them. Four slots for your arms and legs open, and you place them inside. They lock, forcing you into a standing spread-eagled position. The restraints move, dragging you along as though you’re on a factory floor.

The conveyor belt strips you of your jumpsuit. A message informs you that it will be recycled with 98% efficiency, and the material will be reformed for other restraints or mass-fabricated clothing.

You shiver for a moment. Images flash on some of the white panels. Men and women in the service of the Directrix. Ebon-clad guards hauling you away. A flash of a woman in a glass prison cell, squirming against its transparent walls. Eventually, the panels settle on the face of the Directrix; pale skin, green eyes, short hair, and a dark leather pilotka.

“You’re better than the rest of those subversive,” she says. “You’re something special. You’re a product worthy of export.”

“Let me be more specific,” she says. Her face now covers every screen in the hallway. She is omnipresent.

“You are genetically and physically the ideal candidate for export. I have many buyers and allies who are eager for my products. Not only are you going to be the perfect rubber package, you’re going to love it the whole time. It’s not always easy to properly train exports in the erotic arts. Conveniently, you already crave it. You’ve always fantasized about being abducted, plugged, packaged, and permanently pressed into slavery. It saves me a lot of time…”

The conveyor belt stops for a moment at the first station.

“...just like this section of the facility. It’s rigged so that any number of slaves can be put into it. A dozen subversives, or a hundred members of a captured cargo hauler - all of them mine, and all of them can be easily inserted as raw product. The end result, of course, is export. A beautiful package that my buyers will want. Nothing sells like a properly processed drone from my planet.”

 

The first item is a wide plug. It slips past your mouth and sticks against your gums and lips. The control sheath seems to tickle the back of your throat, coating your teeth and providing a slot for your tongue. If anyone wanted to use that pretty mouth of yours, they’d have no trouble.

 

Plugs are fitted in your ears. They travel deep, solidifying and blocking out all but the lowest of vibratory sounds. Warm wax is sculpted over each ear, sealing them in. You start to feel the control sheath growing warm around your mouth.

“Can you hear all right?” asks a voice. You nod.

“Good.”

Two metal arms extend from the ceiling and pull a tight rubber mask over your face. The hood is stretchy and is not air-permeable. For a few precious seconds you squirm, panicking, desperate for air.

Hot jets of liquid splash over your body. For almost thirty seconds, you’re breathless and helpless. Your lungs burn and your eyes see stars; when you finally feel the hood removed, you’ve scarcely realized what they did to you.

Your body is totally coated from the neck down. The protective hood kept your face ‘clean’ while your body was being ensconced in a beautiful black layer. It’s tight, it’s thick , and it’s rapidly drying. The smart-latex sheath is cured in a warm light and hot fan. The hood goes on a second time and you feel another layer.

The suit must be nearly 4mm thick now. It’s so tight and cloying. You can’t move your arms, but you can already feel it tightening around your form. Your arms are freed and you’re given long gloves that go to your elbows. Straps are tightened and locked. Boots that rise to your thighs seal up your feet and legs. They’re thick, heavy, and make bending your knees difficult. You notice distinct padding around your knees, should you be required to provide while kneeling.

While the gloves and boots are being cemented on, you spot a hood made just for you. Or, more accurately, hoods - plural.

This time, a drone arrives to force it on your head. Gravity beams ignite from the machinery, freezing you in place to allow the hoods proper application.

The first has openings for your mouth, nose, and eyes.

The second inserts micro-plugs to your nose to provide all you need for breathing. A wide plug fills your mouth, and implanted lenses cover your eyes.

The final one is beautiful, shiny, and faceless. You know now that you have no face - not even the ruby lips of the girl down the way. They let your arms free for a moment so you can touch at it. That mask keeps you totally and completely anonymous. It won’t come off, and it might never come off. You grasp at it, the thick gloves unable to find purchase. Shiny, lubricated rubber against rubber does you no favors.

You arrive at the end of the belt. The lenses in your mask show the Directrix, and show you your fate.

“That tech-coffin in front of you is yours. You’re going to be loaded into it and strapped down; no fewer than twenty fiber-mesh straps will keep you very nicely loaded. Stasis modules will keep you fresh and clean, with more than enough air and sustenance to last you centuries. Nanites in the suit will seek out your erogenous zones and properly bind to give you an experience that you won’t forget - or want to. We’ll be able to tease you remotely, and during your encasement, run experiments on your poor mind.

For example, we might wake you up after a few months and run some training modules by you. Sights in your lenses and sounds in your ears will work with constant sensory stimuli to convince you that you’re standing in front of the most perfect and divine of mistresses. Maybe if we find a buyer, we’ll swap that anonymous fantasy out for your new owner. Maybe we’ll tamp down on your breath at times or flood you with aphrodisiac the first time you see her each day. Plenty of time to figure it out, of course . It’ll be absolutely useless to resist. Even if you ignore use the first day, we have weeks and months and years to torture you and mold you.”

“All those restraints aren’t just for show. As you can see, you’re locked in now. An ultra-high-tensile rubber sheet is going to function as a nice vaccum to seal you tight, and we’re going to seal your tech-coffin shut. You’re so tightly bound and layered you might not even realize it, though. You might not even feel if you’re up or down under all that nice padding.”

“The last stop for you is the Grand Vault. It’s deep under the city. Hundreds of other products for export are there, waiting in perfect ageless stasis. Well, not quite perfect stasis. After all, dozens of them are enjoying a nice conditioning under my tutelage.”

You watch them do all they said they’d do; the straps, the sheet, the case being locked. Two drones haul it onto a gurney and take it deep into a sub-level. The structure is massive, with dozens and dozens of floors, each of them filled on all sides with endless tubes and alcoves for pods.

They slide yours into one of many, and walk away. All your senses go dark. And then, in that darkness, you see a pale face once more.

“Welcome, slave…”