Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 This is a sequel, but as the original is a published book, I can't ask you
to read that first.  Hopefully these bits of story stand on their own, but
it may help to know that they're set in a kind of pleasure resort of the
future, and that it is common in that time to modify your body just as much
as you can afford.  My interest is in those who have less control over how
their bodies turn out ...

   As you might imagine, I don't advise reading any further if you're
underage, nor if you're one of the many types of person who risks a
shattered world-view discovering what turns some people on.  All others -
read, save, distribute, whatever you like as long as the file stays in this
form.

   Comments, advice, suggestion, but no rants, to:
hugh@deaconstories.fsnet.co.uk

   Investigating the Palace

   by Hugh Deacon

   Interview One

   How did I get here?  The same way most did back then, I was plucked off
the streets.

   It's different now, of course.  Kids these days choose slavery as a
career option - they're psychologically profiled practically from birth, as
you know, and they're well aware they can't be happy except firmly under a
thumb if they're that type.  So they walk into it with their eyes open.  It
wasn't like that for me.  I was an addict with probably only weeks to live,
implant or no implant, and I was hardly alive when I was brought here. 
Certainly not aware or functioning.

   My first lucid moment for years occurred in a small room, white and
shiny metal everywhere.  I didn't want to move, I was so comfortable, lying
on a couch so soft I could hardly feel it.  A slim transparent tube snaked
from my blotched and wasted forearm and I followed it to the wall where it
plugged in below a large screen.

   "Ah, you've returned to the real world." The pleasant tenor came from
the foot of my couch.  A young man in a spotless white coat leaned in the
doorway only just beyond it.  He gave me a small smile.

   "Real world?  Where is this?" I'd been around.  I knew nobody like me
could expect anything free - nothing good, in any case.

   "Call it a clinic.  Its purpose so far has been to clean up your system,
a job that has been done very successfully.  You now have a clean bill of
health, and are incapable of becoming addicted - or readdicted - to any
drug at all."

   "Why?  Who pays for this?"

   "You do." He named an obscene figure.  "Immediate payment, or sign up
for fifty years level-one employment."

   I don't know a lot about employment.  My last job had been long before
the 'levels' classifications were brought in.  But everybody knows that
level-one jobs are for the desperate, the poor few who don't mind that they
lose every one of their rights while their employer gains total control. 
Now I could see what sort of trap this was.

   "So what are you, the modern press-gang?" I asked, casting round for any
means of escape.  Not a chance.  I could almost touch each of the walls,
and the doctor, or whatever he was, blocked the only exit.

   "Not far off." he replied with a smirk.  "We offer to clean the streets
of scum like you, free of charge, and the local government jumps at the
offer, I can tell you.  Then we make our profit out of you, one way or the
other, and everybody's happy."

   "Everybody?"

   "Do you think you count?"

   I lay back, thinking.  "What if I refuse to co-operate, and won't pay or
join you?"

   "No problem.  You need modification before you're any use to us, so we
simply start the treatment.  Without anaesthetic.  I'm told it's
extraordinarily painful, and people have a tendency to agree to all sorts
of things while it's going on."

   I didn't believe him.  "That's got to be a bluff.  There's no way you
can get away with that - it's coercion, and would never stand up in court."

   He shifted comfortably.  "But it never gets there.  Nobody has any
interest in spoiling the arrangement, because it solves so many problems
for the legal people.  Still, it's not worth arguing, I haven't got time
for it.  I'll talk to you a little later and take your agreement then."

   "You can't know . . ."

   But the man had pressed a button on the far wall on his way out and my
protests were cut short.  The tube into my arm twitched once, and then
again, like a snake trying to burrow under my skin.  As I looked at it in
horror, it poured its poison out into my veins, sending rivers of fiery
agony out from that point.  I gritted my teeth but within seconds all my
determination had dissolved and I began to scream herself hoarse, too
buried in panic and pain to notice at the time the thickness of the closing
door that shut me in alone, my noise with me.

   I had no way of knowing how long it was before the torture eased.  In
fact, it was only about half an hour later that my eyes unscrewed enough to
make out the same slimy young man looking down at me, completely
unconcerned by my thrashing and howls.

   "Does my offer sound any more attractive yet?"

   "Go to hell." I had to grind this out in a cracked whisper.

   "And join you there?"

   I only glowered at him.  My limbs wouldn't move and, besides, I was too
drained to struggle any more.

   "I had an idea you might be a tough one." he continued, "So I stopped
the treatment halfway.  You could survive, just about, in your current
state, and of course if you refuse to work for us there's no reason for us
to trouble with completing the process.  What do you think?"

   With a tremendous effort I managed to raise my head.  The sight made my
stomach turn over.  My body had been thin before, unhealthy, almost
emaciated, but now there wasn't much of it left.  I could see my ribs - in
one case literally showing through my skin - and my skin was black where it
wasn't red and oozing.  My muscles had been eaten away, leaving the
nauseating skin clinging tightly to what looked like a living skeleton.

   I sank back, trying to find words and the energy to speak them.  "Why
doesn't it hurt?" I asked, to distract myself from the rest of my
situation.

   "Because I want to get some sense out of you.  We can switch your pain
centres back on as soon as we finish - unless you become an employee, of
course, in which case you get to sleep through the remainder of the
treatment."

   "Otherwise you leave me like this?"

   "Exactly.  Given time, and assuming you didn't suffer organ failure from
fighting continual pain, you would heal.  Naturally you wouldn't be able to
do anything much for yourself, even then, and you'd look pretty bad, but
you would be free.  And that's all that matters to you, isn't it?"

   I closed my eyes.  I knew I was beaten and all the fight ebbed away. 
"OK.  You win."

   "You agree to fifty years employment with whatever remuneration we
decide?"

   "Yes."

   "Full class one.  no additional waivers or rights?"

   "Yes, damn you."

   He patted my forehead.  I would rather have been touched by a filthy
baboon, but I was too tired to shake him off.  "There, that wasn't so hard,
was it?" he said.  "I'll see you when you wake up."



   I knew I'd been moved the instant I came to.  I've woken in a good many
nasty places in my life, and without even opening my eyes I knew I was
enclosed.  Once again, like so many times in my life, I wanted to stay
buried in sleep, not wanting to know in what new and horrible circumstances
I would find myself.

   This was not allowed.  Something hard poked at my folded leg.  "Come on,
up!  You're wasting company money lying there."

   I moaned and lay still, hoping to be left alone a bit longer.

   "You're not fooling anyone.  Get on with it!  I know for a fact you're
feeling better than you have in years."

   He was right, whoever this was.  As I gradually unfolded myself, still
postponing opening my eyes, I felt fit.  Fit - there's no other way to
describe it.  I was aware, glowing deep inside with pure health, and could
have leapt up and run a marathon.  I didn't, though.  I don't do that sort
of thing.  Instead I slowly opened my eyes.

   I was in a box.  I could sit up with room to spare and it was more than
long enough to lie down full length, but I could touch both back and front
without stretching in the least and - to my embarrassment - the front was
only wire, beyond which was an expansive and luxurious hall.  I'd been
asleep, naked, with the world looking at me!  Except they hadn't, of
course, because even across the distance of the hall's width I could see
that the walls were lined with boxes like mine.  Why would they look at me
in particular?  Even so, I huddled into myself.

   "Welcome to your new life." The voice was not unkind, and the man it
belonged to had a soft look to his eye that gave me hope in spite of what
was obviously a whip in his right hand.

   "Where am I?  And what happens to me now?" As I spoke, I nearly turned
to see who was copying my words, because they didn't sound like me.

   "Well, first," he said, fiddling with one corner of the mesh screen
between us and then pulling it aside, "you get an introductory session. 
That's where you're going now, where I'm taking you." He stood aside to let
me down, a drop of a metre and a half or so.

   I sprang lightly to the floor.  As I did so, something I should have
noticed before became suddenly obvious.  "What have they done to me?" I
gasped.  My breasts, formerly small and shapely, at least until my later
drug-addled years when they'd become merely small, were now obscenely large
globes, like pillows on my chest.  The pull of them hurt as I landed and I
quickly moved to support them with my forearms.

   "More than just that, I wouldn't mind betting." was the dry reply.  "No
doubt you'll find out soon, at the session - another reason to hurry. 
Apart from the punishment if you're late."

   Several times I nearly stumbled as I followed him because I couldn't
help goggling at my body.  Those breasts seemed to be bigger than my torso.
They bulged over my folded arms, spilling out to the front and sides far
enough that I could have plunged my face in their soft mass if I lifted
them.  They jiggled with a life of their own as I hurried to keep up.

   Past a heavy door set into one wall of the hall, the decor became
utilitarian with a hard floor that slapped against my bare feet and shiny
windows I couldn't see through taking up most of one wall.  A short way
along this corridor my guide stopped at another door.  He'd been walking
quite fast but his legs were longer than mine - and showing hairy and
muscled below his shorts - so he wasn't out of breath.  He frowned at me as
i panted beside him, his dark brows lowered with concern.

   "You'll need to be fitter than that," he said.

   I made no reply, and after a moment he turned and ushered me through the
door, closing it behind me without entering himself.

   I didn't know what to do with myself.  There were five people facing me,
all smartly dressed, and I was acutely conscious of my nudity.  I dropped
my hands to cover my crotch, but then my breasts, suddenly unsupported,
pulled at my chest and I had to bend my back to keep balanced.  Doing that
thrust the blimp-like tits outwards as though I was offering them to the
world, embarrassing me even more.  I cuddled them as best I could with one
arm while preserving some cover of my genitals.

   "What do you think, people?"

   I focused to see that the speaker was the doctor from the time of my
capture.  My fingers curled as I resisted the temptation to leap forward
and scratch out his smug eyes.  His stare lingered on me for a while as he
waited for responses.  The others, two women and two men, seated casually
in a semi-circle, also looked me up and down.

   "Not bad," one man said.  "Those tits will be a hit, for sure.  Do they
work?"

   "Work?  Milk, you mean?  Not at the moment, but they can anytime it's
requested."

   The man pursed his lips, and suddenly his broad face reminded me of a
frog.  "I think she should produce all the time.  Add a daily milking
session to her routine and we can offer the stuff to the clients at meals.
I know I've suggested this before, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd
be interested.  It's all extra revenue, you know."

   My old friend shrugged.  "Well, we can give it a try.  It's not as
though this one needs any extra spent on her, this time.  Any other
comments?"

   I'm pretty sure my mouth was hanging open.  These people, businessmen
and women, were discussing me like I wasn't there.  No, worse, as though I
was an animal, one brought in to add to a prize herd.  Whether I noticed or
minded that they were talking about my body and the uses it could be put to
didn't even enter their heads.  I wanted to jump up and down, shouting
"This is ME you're talking about!" but something kept me still and silent,
something more than the pain I knew I'd get from agitating the massive
balloons of flesh swelling from my chest.

   One of the two women, one who looked as much like an eagle as her
colleague did a frog, beautiful but distant and cruel, studied me coolly.
"Won't she need some kind of support?"

   "No doubt, but I don't suppose that will be a problem, do you?  There's
no need for whatever garment she needs to give her any ideas of modesty."

   "No, but we don't want her sagging.  Nobody will pay for her if her
nipples end up between her knees."

   "Now, now, you're forgetting her implant.  That'll keep her in trim,
along with the occasional nano-treatment.  She'll still look exactly like
this in fifty years if we don't decide otherwise." He glanced around,
eyebrows raised.  "No more comments?  Doesn't anyone even want to know what
else is special?  Are her tits that attention-grabbing?"

   "They sure are." This came from the man furthest back, who hauled
himself upright in his chair, for the first time revealing how big he was.
"But you're itching to show us, so go ahead.  If you've given her any new
virginities I'll have one."

   "You won't, and you know it.  Clients pay too much for the privilege of
breaking a hymen.  Anyway, look at this."

   New vaginities?  Clients?  I was getting worried.  Worried enough that I
felt a trickle from my armpits as I reflexively fondled one nipple.  I had
no time to contemplate this before the smug man was beside me, gripping my
arm.  His fingers were firm on my muscle and I didn't resist as he pulled
it upwards.

   "Just the usual, but with more function than before," he said, turning
me side-on to the audience.

   I had no idea what he was talking about so I looked down.  And let out a
gasp that was nearly a scream.  Where there had always been a smooth
hollow, often with clumps of sparse hair in my bad times, was a fleshy pair
of lips.  With my arm pulled upwards the slit they guarded was as exposed
and obscene as if I'd thrust out my crotch, the red and glistening flesh
within just as lewd, as inviting.  I wrenched out of my captor's hand, so
desperate to cover this rude addition to my body that I forgot the power he
had over me.

   Fortunately he merely laughed.  "They all do that," he said to me.

   "All who?" I glanced warily around the half-circle of seats, but the
others seemed barely interested in me, and certainly weren't making fun.

   "Our employees, our contract slaves.  What makes you attractive to our
clients is very rarely what makes you feel good about yourselves, and to be
honest, that only adds to the allure."

   He reached for my arm again, so I stepped away.  "What kind of weirdos
do you entertain then?  Who pays for you to turn me into a freak?  What do
they get out of my shame?  I spend the next fifty years embarrassed to lift
my hands from my sides in case anybody gets a glimpse of cunt, and
struggling to control these insane boobs - what good does that do anyone?"

   He smiled even as his hand flashed out and caught mine.  "You'll learn
soon enough not to be embarrassed, I guarantee that.  Our guests here are
the richest and most influential people in the world, the most jaded, you
could say, the most likely to need titilating with something out of the
ordinary, and we can't jeopadise their custom by providing reluctant
companions.  If you can't offer yourself or any part of your body without
any hesitation, we punish you.  Punishment is a thing you'll get very
familiar with, here."

   "Raphael." A sharp voice interrupted, from the eagle-faced woman.  "She
may well need educating, but not on our time.  Finish your presentation and
take her away."

   I could tell there was something between the two of them.  The air
fairly crackled as they faced each other down.  h Eventually the man must
have lost, because he ripped his gaze away and looked at me instead.  He
flapped up my arm with unnecessary force, slapping my face when I resisted.

   "I wouldn't want to take up your time, your ladyship," he said with
patently false lightness, "so if I demonstrate the improvements quickly,
you can be off to the vitally important things that need your attention.  I
know you don't like to get too closely involved with the messy details."

   She frowned without actually looking displeased.  "I'd love to be more
intimate with your skills, Raphael, but my duties don't allow my interest
to go any further.  What's the great novelty about this one, then?"

   Frog-face butted in with "Yes, we've seen enough vaginas tucked in nooks
and crannies - delectable, some of them, too - what is there to improve?"

   "Ah." Some of Raphael's composture returned.  "Bernard, you'll know what
I'm talking about more than the ladies.  Have you found the additional
genitals always entirely satisfactory?  As accomodating as they might be?"

   The broad forehead descended, almost covering his eyes.  "No, perhaps
not.  Tight, yes.  Sweet and juicy, yes.  But not always very deep. 
Shallow, in fact, sometimes.  You mean to say . .  ?"

   "Yes, exactly.  This little girl," he patted the slope of one of my
breasts, "can accept the full length of your thirty-five-centimetre cock in
whichever hole you choose to plug it."

   My jaw dropped at this.  I was no stranger to impersonal sex.  It's a
convenient way of earning your next hit when you're desperate.  But big
cocks were painful, I knew, poking further than they should and assaulting
a girl's delicate inwards, bludgeoning parts better left untouched. 
Thirty-five centimetres?  I'd be tempted . . .  but no, thanks.

   "Are you sure?  Even into her chest cavity?"

   "Of course I'm sure." he snapped to his female adversary, who'd asked
this with ostentatious doubt.  "I won't bore you with the medical details -
if you could take them in - but we've hit upon an arrangement of the lungs
that allows a considerable tunnelling.  Not to mention the removal of her
womb to make space for lengthening of her original vagina, something you'd
be well advised to consider yourself.  Anything to give some pleasure at
least to any man unfortunate enough to find himself in your bed, and make
quite sure there's no little versions of you visited on this poor world."
Her brightly-painted lips thinned to a red line but she made no response.
Raphael himself seemed to feel he'd gone too far, because he purposefully
unclenched his fingers from deep within my bicep.  "Anyway, I'll gladly let
Bernard demonstrate for anyone who wants."

   "No.  If that's all the information you have, I'll leave you to your
sweaty fumblings.  Anyone else coming?"

   The woman stood up, revealing surprising height, and stalked out,
followed by her female colleague and the shadowy man at the back.  Bernard
mumbled something indistinguishable and stayed, watching until the door
closed behind the others.  "Why do you draw Tamara's attention?" he asked
as he sagged to his feet.  "I know you're a valuable man, with your
reliable and innovative handling of the medical department since Westman
cracked, but you're not indispensible.  She'll crush you without thinking
twice if you push her too far."

   Raphael ran his hand up my side, pausing to heft my right breast, then
sliding a finger into the hole under my arm.  I couldn't help wriggling at
this invasion.  He was entering a part of my body that was never intended
to receive him, and the sensations were too complex for me.  "I don't think
so," he replied at last.  "On the contrary, I think she's just given me the
final piece for my plan.  I won't say more for the moment.  Just that I
have more resources than she's bargained for."

   "Even with her connections?" Bernard was stepping out of his trousers,
showing that what had appeared to be a plumpness inexcusable in a man with
access to implant controls was actually solid muscle.  He was broad, and
heavily built up in places where most men wish to trim down, but he was not
fat.  And Raphael had not been exaggerating about his penis.

   "Her connections?  Nobody lifts a finger to protect anyone else in this
place, you know that.  You're important on the money side yourself - do you
think any of your fellow directors would do anything if you met with some
sort of accident if there was any plausible excuse for it?  Of course not."

   His hands on me showed his rising passion.  Both were busy on me, one
under each arm, burrowing and massaging, inflaming newly sensitive areas
that plugged straight into the primal part of my brain.  I couldn't bear
it, every pleasurable twinge a reminder of my forced new career as a
sex-toy, but I didn't want him to stop.  Still I tried to back away from
the approaching Bernard.  I wanted to fold myself out of his reach.  There
was a dirty glint in his eye, hints that he knew of depths of degradation
he'd love to take me to, places that years on the street had never dragged
me to.

   "Please, no," I gasped.  "Leave me alone.  I didn't ask for this, and I
can't stand it."

   The blissfully intrusive fingers left my intimacies to grip my upper
arms.  I could smell the arousal dripping from them.

   "It doesn't matter whether you can stand it." The cruel voice hissed in
my ear.  "Your opinion doesn't count.  Now, will you let us make use of
you, or do you need restraints?"

   I shuddered within his grasp.  As the squat figure of his companion
waddled towards me, a quarter-metre of rigid phallus straining from between
the tails of his shirt, I had to try to break free.  That pole was thick
enough to split me in two, without considering the horrible consequences of
having it ream deep into my chest cavity.

   "OK, restraints it is.  Bernard, would you flip one of those chairs?"

   As I was held helpless, sweating with the weight of my breasts on my
heaving chest, he folded the back down from a chair, forming a sort of
couch, then the two of them manhandled me to it, laying me on my back. 
Before I could react there was a belt around my waist and I was stuck.  It
chafed me as I struggled so I began to realise I'd be better off
submitting.

   "That's more sensible." Bernard said throatily.  "You'll enjoy it, let
me tell you.  They all do."

   I watched with bulging eyes as he approached.  Thankfully he seemed to
be concentrating on my crotch, where at least some familiarity remained.  I
could cope with a rampant male between my thighs, if not welcome him, but
there was something . . .  I don't know, creepy, about slavering over my
armpit, and it was worse that I could be excited by it.  He pushed my legs
apart, and I didn't resist, watching through the valley of my cleavage as
he lined up - then pushed home in one swift movement.  I let out a shout,
instantly muffled by Raphael's hand on my mouth.  I have never felt so
full. I strained to get my legs further apart, to somehow ease the passage
of the colossal cock, arching my back as much as my tie would allow.  Maybe
I had been made more sensitive inside there, because I swear I could feel
the tip of it nudging somewhere behind my navel.  Then I was crushed flat
as he lay forward onto me.  My tits pillowed him so that his face didn't
reach mine.  I could see the tense pleasure in his deep-set eyes, before he
twisted and nuzzled down the side of one breast, still pounding with slow
but irresistible strokes, to lick and suck at the waiting sliminess of my
new slit.

   One of them, anyway.  Even as I was gasping at the electric stabbing of
his tongue on virgin territory I became aware that my other arm was being
lifted clear of its protective duty.  I turned my head in time to see
Raphael's penis nudging at the unseemly hole there.  By then his wiry thigh
was in the way so that I could do nothing to prevent him.  I was torn -
even more mentally than physically.  The thrusting at my poor stretched
pussy continually hammered at my consciousness, while part of my mind was
taken up with the delicious but unmistakably odd and wrong slivers of
sensation spiking up from my left armpit, and all the time I was in an
agony of anticipation and dread at the penis invading from the other side.
It slipped easily inside to begin with, but it took two or three painful
strokes to go further.  If my mouth hadn't been stopped I would have
screamed the skin off my throat.  With a ripping agony what felt like an
iron bar drove straight towards my heart.

   I thrashed about then, heedless of the coarse belt shredding the skin of
my waist.  My mind was in pieces, tortured by simultaneous pleasure and
pain taking up my entire body while two ruthless men plundered me, the toy
they'd designed for that very purpose, filling me with ropes of their
despicable semen until I hung limp and dripping.

   That was the first time, of course.  I'm used to it by now.  I don't
mind if you want to feel my extra pussies, dip a finger in, squeeze my
breasts.  I'm here for you if you want me.  Only the dull ache in my tits
before milking still bothers me, and that soon disappears in the
undignified bliss of the suction machine at the end of the day.  Naturally
I don't always get there.  Sometimes - often even - a client will have paid
for the full benefit of those dominating mounds and the reward for me is
marvellous.  To cradle a man, knowing that he will be important and
possibly famous in the world outside, to hug him to me and let him suckle,
cuddling and draining me of life-giving fluid that's mine alone, is a
feeling I can't believe I will grow tired of.  At these times I can feel
real fondness for the men, however abusive they've been.  Then I almost
think it's all worth it.

   But not quite.  Pain is a bigger part of my life, and beyond it all I'm
just a slave.  And a freak of a slave at that.