The Morphite 4 - Jay
by Joan Banks
“Wow, Jay you are looking fit.” Pete said, slapping his friend on the back. Jay was proud of the way he had worked out (Thrum) and how much weight he had lost.
“Thanks, Pete. It really is great to have all that other stuff behind us, eh?”
“Sure, with you cleaning up courtesy of the Boss.”
“Not my fault, man.” Jay had tried to interfere with the process of acclimatizing David Kilmer to his new role of Debra Mills. After some humiliating punishment designed at undermining his creditability (even sanity), the Boss had forgiven him.
She had not forgiven him.
Jay Weathers injected himself with the Morphite Treatment, a process whereby a person’s very genetic structure was changed. In Jay’s case, he was going to become, at least genetically, his own sister. Anyway, Jay was told that the treatment was deactivated when he was forgiven: it was not. Jay was quickly on the road to his more feminine side.
Jay walked back to his apartment, a nice setup given to him in compensation for his silence. He had his own entrance, which was nice, and recently they deigned to let him use a company car for his own purposes. In his mind he was wealthy and pretty lucky, all in all.
He stripped out of his gym clothes and admired his hairless body for a moment. Still not cut, he said to himself. His body was lean but he couldn’t see the muscles below the skin like he used to. Must come with age, he thought. The panties he wore all the time, he didn’t regard as a sign of anything. He simply liked how they felt against his skin (thrum).
-- -- -- -- --
“Status?” Pete asked his people.
“Check out the new display, Pete.” He noted the screens in front of him.
“You control it with this.” He showed the joystick.
The screens showed a movable picture. A portion of the screen, like a compressed sideways figure eight was in color, the rest was not. The display stretched and skewed as the colored area focus changed, but it give a hint of being 3D.
“Explain what I’m looking at.”
“The colored area is the area of focus. We actually only see color with a portion of our vision. When the focus changes, we leave a remnant or ghost behind. We take this information and process it to give this stabilized picture. We have a VR project in the works but no real schedule on that.”
“Excellent, we can save money on Dramamine.” Most of the operators were experiencing motion sickness when they had been on shift too long.
“How is our subject?”
“Accepting all inputs at the desired level. He is starting to wear women’s underwear all the time and keeps his body totally hairless. Since we can see what he is focusing on we are keeping his attention away from his most obvious changes. I need at least a week or two more before I can start to let him see what is happening to his chest and groin. No haircuts right now, also by shifting focus. He won’t be up to ponytail length for at least two more months.”
“Bio?”
“I am a bit concerned with skin problems. He is developing acne. I believe it will only last a short time and then clear up. There is a family history of pubescent acne but nothing reaching into adulthood. Body hair is severely decreased and his beard is finally regressing. I need the psyche side to give me a couple things.”
“Shoot.”
“Keep him from popping the zits.” They laughed “also I need less body building and more aerobic workout. Testosterone is building up in the system from the exercise and it is fighting the process. Also, pheromone receptor shift is happening. I need him around groups of men and groups of women, to test reaction.”
“School?” Pete asked.
“Sure, we will get him into some classes.”
-- -- -- -- -- --
Jay was getting a little bored with his life. Sure being relatively wealthy wasn’t a bad way to go, but he was used to a life of intellectual challenges. He was stagnating (thrum).
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
DJ wandered through the stacks of the Medical School. She was equipped with a library location for the theses of both Brian and Ashley. She wasn’t so worried about Brian, it was Ashley’s work that had her fascinated. It took nearly an hour, but she found the thesis.
Direct Manipulation of Behavior Patterns through
excitement of emotional centers in the brain.
Ashley Forester
Not being allowed to take the thesis out of the library, she photocopied until her change ran out. She didn’t stop reading until the library closed.
‘It is possible to entice any response or behavior through means of operant conditioning…’
‘To engrain a new pattern in the subject it is imperative that consistent reinforcement be applied (Table 2-2).’
‘A thoroughly monitored environment will ensure the consistency in the application of the program…’
‘In the absence of a sterile, controlled environment a thorough surveillance system can achieve close to the same results.(Table 5-1, Figure 5-1)’
‘The conditioning implant (figure 13-4) is vital to this theory. It’s construction would involve a biological interface that is adaptable with failsafe capabilities built in (Figure 13-5). Insertion procedures are outlined in Appendix D.’
DJ was astounded, Ashley had written a handbook for brainwashing. Here it was step by step.
‘A sentient subject should not be made aware of the implant or its’ use. Such knowledge would be a detriment to successful implementation.’
DJ turned to Appendix D. It was a graphic representation of the brain surgery necessary to insert the implant. It showed a cutaway of the probe being inserted halfway between the left ear and the crown of the head. Then there was a representation of the closed operating area, the stitches looked like a ‘C’ about the size of a dime. Absent-mindedly DJ ran her hand against her head. She screamed when she felt the small ‘C’ shaped scar.
She kept screaming until the campus police came.
She was hysterical as they drove her to the hospital.
She wept ineffectually as the sedative took effect.
She was restrained when she awoke. A good thing too….
Brian was sitting next to her when she awoke. He had a sorrowful look on his face.
“You put this thing into my head, didn’t you?” He nodded.
“I understand the other changes.. this…body.” She looked down at herself, unable to gesture with her hands. “But why take away my mind? And GET ME OUT OF THESE THINGS!” She rocked back and forth as if she could break them. The bonds would not be broken.
“I think it’s best to leave them on for a moment.” Brian said calmly “You might hurt yourself. Drink?” he held the cup and straw to her mouth, she drank.
She spit it into his face.
“What, do you think I’m stupid? Trying to drug me now?!” He wiped his face and took a step back.
“No, I thought you might be thirsty. I’m not trying to drug you. I think you should calm down.”(Thrum) DJ shook her head.
“I don’t want to calm down!” (Thrum) she shook her head.
“You better tell them to stop that right now or I am going to…” Brian looked confused.
“Stop what?” Is it possible? Did he not know?
“This little remote control you have in my head. Turn it off!” she was starting to raise her voice again.
“I ca…’
“Please Daddy?” it came out sarcastically “Don’t you think I can read? There are at least ten failsafes that you can implement. I recommend…no demand.. that you implement the one outlined in Mommy’s thesis. You know the one she called ‘receptor cutoff’ the one that disables the antenna, permanently.”
“Honey, if you’ll just…”
“I demand that you implement it NOW! Call up your little cronies and…no, wait a minute….Take me to your cronies and disable it in front of me!” he looked defeated.
“Let me get you out of here. I’ve already had you released to me…” Get dressed…” he released the restraints.
“Turn around.” He complied. She dressed quickly.
“Okay, I’m ready…” Brian turned around “Oh, I forgot.” She slapped him, hard. He rubbed his face and held the door. She took a step and staggered. He stepped to her and took her arm. Reluctantly, she took it.
DJ was surprised to see that she was not anywhere near Meriweather, he was in the same hospital as after his ‘accident’. It was a short drive. At first DJ thought they were going home but about halfway there, Brian pulled into a relatively non-descript parking lot near a large multi-story office building. He led her in.
The receptionist was alarmed to see them. She started insisting on filling out a visitor form. DJ shook her head. Brian put his hand on a small plate and the door opened. After three similar checkpoints along the hallway they stopped at a small side door. Brian put his hand to the plate but the door opened before he had a chance to activate it. Ashley waited for them.
“Hello dear…” DJ ignored her and tried to push past, Ashley held her back.
“Before you go in there. I want you to know something.”
“What?” she was exasperated. DJ struggled but could not get free.
“What we did, we did to save your life. You can hate me if you want…”
“and?” there was venom in her voice.
“…but I will always love you. You won’t believe me for a while, maybe never…”
“Just let me in there…” Ashley let her go. DJ pushed in. Two techs sat staring at her. They were in front of a strange television screen, partly color, mostly blurry. Across the room was the mother load.
A bank of 12 monitors was on, over what appeared to be a sound mixing board. Several sliding levers appeared to be arranged haphazardly, each over a digital numeric display. The bank of monitors showed DJ’s life, her room, house, car, classrooms, and a strangely moving picture of this very room, in general, everything.
“Show me how it works.” There was a slight squeal of feedback. Ashley adjusted a rather ordinary looking volume control, the squeal stopped.
“Let me show you…” Ashley walked to the board.
“What do you want to feel?”
DJ thought for a moment, what indeed? She felt as if her anger was earned, a right. Still a little calmness could be in order….
“I need to be a little more clear headed, do that.”
“I can’t do that, honey…”
“Why?”
“I can’t put thoughts into your head, just chemical reactions. How about a touch of happiness?”
“I am so angry, I don’t think it could affect anything.”
Ashley reset all the levers to the bottom. She moved a single slide up slightly.
“Why only that much?” DJ moved the lever up again. It stopped at a setting of 7, not much further than Ashley had put it.
“We wanted to help you accept your new self, not make you a robot. There is a firm limit on what settings I allow to be used.” She gestured at a button.
“Care for the honors?” DJ pushed it. (Thrum) she felt a slight wave of happiness.
“Is that it?”
“That is it, it was gentle nudging to help you in your new role.”
“Deactivate it.”
“I…alright.” She opened a hatch, like she was going to activate some kind of bomb “You’d better sit down.” DJ took a seat in front of the monitors, realizing where the moving image of this room came from, she ripped the necklace from her neck and threw it away from her. The image vanished. Ashley hit the switch. DJ blacked out.
DJ awoke to smelling salts, administered by Brian. The strong ammonia smell sent her into a short sneezing fit that really woke her up.
“Make me feel anger.” She ordered Ashley. Ashley complied without complaint. She pushed the engage button.
Nothing.
No effect whatsoever. For the first time in days she felt relief, and not artificial relief.
“I want all the surveillance to stop.”
“It is being deactivated as we speak.” Ashley was becoming aware of something. She really wasn’t used to taking orders, DJ gave them naturally.
“What’s going on over there?” DJ gestured to the new monitor setup.
“Who are these people? Why is this door unsecure? I told you MY control room must always…” Pete was well into his tirade at the doorway when he discovered who it was exactly he was yelling at.
“Ashley, Brian, what brings you here?” he stepped into the room, letting the door close behind him, he noticed DJ staring back at the new console, the one that controlled Jay.
“DJ, how are you?” he was wearing a very fake smile. He couldn’t hide his nervousness. He inched over to DJ’s control board.
“I don’t believe we’ve met. You are?”
“I’m Pete.” He held out his hand to shake, she ignored it.
“So are you the one running this puppet show?” Pete played nonchalantly with the slides behind him. He gave one a half twist and slid it to its maximum.
“I’m just a tech….” He jabbed the ‘engage button’. He didn’t try to hide it. DJ stared at him in shock, and stood there quietly. Pete, thinking he had effectively distracted DJ with a wave of happiness, turned to Ashley and Brian as if DJ wasn’t there.
“Are you two crazy? Bringing her here? You know that Jay’s proximity protocol implant is still activated, he’s got to be going crazy up there…” there was a tap on his shoulder…
Pete turned, DJ was standing right behind him. Pete was shocked, she shouldn’t be able to recover so fast.
“I have to thank you Pete…” she said dreamily, as if in a state of bliss “…for the happiness…” Pete realized that she hadn’t fought it off. He felt completely safe.
She kneed him in the balls.
“You are giving me right now, you son of a bitch.” She was no longer faking the daze. She continued beating on him. Suffice it to say, he had no chance, his ass was kicked. She let him recover on the ground for a moment.
“Now, Ashley, who is…I know this guy!” DJ noted in the monitor.
“Is that my stalker?”
Ashley looked smug.
“That’s him, dear.”
“So he has MsG too? Right?” Brian stepped forward.
“Not exactly…” he replied. Ashley stepped up.
“He tried to kill you, DJ. So we are taking care of it ourselves.”
“If I remember right, he actually knew the whole story. He was trying to warn me…about you.”
“He wanted to isolate you out of society. He wanted you to be ashamed of your body, to reject it.”
“Once again, he tried to warn me. Right?”
“Right.”
“So what are you doing to him?”
“A little lesson. We are showing him what he was trying to do to you.”
“So you are making him your little robot. What is this ‘proximity protocol’ that bleeding balls here was talking about?” Pete had made it up to the chair. He was seething, this little girl had just beaten the hell out of him, without breaking much of a sweat.
“Since he was trying to hurt you we added something to his chip. He feels a little more displeasure the closer he gets to you. Unbearable if you are face to face. Oh, and he can’t talk to you, either.”
“Where is he? I want to talk to him.”
“You can’t. Well you can, he just can’t talk back. He is in the apartment upstairs.”
“You can undo that, right. Well, undo it!”
Ashley looked at Pete, who signaled the shocked techs. They punched up a window on the touch screen. They nodded to Ashley.
“There, it will take a minute to take effect. Do you want me to take you to him? He is still a little afraid of me, maybe a neutral spot.”
“Fine, and you stay close. I will have some questions. And keep the puppeteers away from those consoles. Brian stay and make sure they do. And get Pete some medical attention, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
Ashley led DJ to the conference room and went to sit in one of the side chambers. A few minutes later, Jay came in.
“Pete, I was really getting into my sho…” he saw DJ “Oh, it’s you. Well, all you are hearing is gibberish now isn’t it?”
“No, I understand you. Please, sit down. Jay, is it?”
“Yes. So what brings you here, Debra?”
“Cut the crap, Jay. I know what they did to me. In a large part, I guess I have you to thank for that knowledge?”
“That was me.” DJ walked over to him and stood in front of him. She hugged him. For the first time in a while, Jay enjoyed the touch of a woman without feeling bad about it.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. So are they going to reverse the process on you, now?”
DJ thought for a moment.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea. From what I understand, after the process is started there is no stopping it and no going back. Is that right?”
“I was on the psyche side, that is bio.” Was this true, did Pete lie? Sure Pete lied, that is what they do around here.
“Oh, I’m still learning.” DJ sat back down.
“No, I’m a woman now, whether I like it or not. I kind of like it now.”
“That’s the programming…”
“In part, I’m sure. On some deeper level this feels right, you know?”
“I suppose.” Jay started feeling his own body. Noticing the changes as if for the first time. Panic was starting to build up inside him. He felt like there were tiny bugs inside him, stripping him of his masculinity. He started slapping at his skin. He stood to lower his trousers to check himself.
“Calm down, Jay.” He wouldn’t calm. Ashley rushed into the room. Jay went into a terrified rant when he saw her. Ashley rushed DJ back to the control room.
“DJ let me fix this! This is what happens when people know! I have about thirty seconds before too much time has passed. Let me use the console.”
Pete was frantic now. The doors were locked and he was screaming to get out. He was clawing at his body. Bleeding in several places, he kept clawing and clawing.
“Help him.” DJ said.
“Protocol lethe!” she yelled at the techs. “That will erase his short term memory.”
“Can we calm him, too?” DJ nodded. The picture of the frantic Jay calmed and he slumped into a chair. Medical personnel were entering the room.
“No we never did that one to you.” Ashley stopped the question. “Do you understand the reason we do the conditioning? That could have been you.”
“DJ, I have some videos to show you…” Brian led the small family away from the control room. The techs, dealing with an unconscious subject and having a lack of orders, at back and did nothing. Pete left shortly after the family. He went to R&D.
“All of the people that I am about to show you had Morgenson’s. We cured them all, at a cost. This is Bob.” He cued up the tape and showed DJ. There was a series of 5 minute interviews. In the first Bob appeared physically fit, viril. In the second, he had obviously gained a lot of weight and he was irate about what was happening.
“Bob gained a total of 40 pounds in one day. He died. His system could not take the shock of the therapy. That is why we developed the slow implementation method. This is Bill…” Another vignette. The changes were subtle.
This was over the course of a year. The treatment or MgS did not kill him. Bill killed himself because of the change. The final scene was his body, or rather, her body in the morgue.
“And this is Sam…” again there was a slow change in physical appearance. This person was acting strangely. It was almost as if he watched cartoons of women and was imitating them.
“and how did Sam die?”
“Oh, Sam didn’t die. She’s on our team. Logistics, isn’t she Ash?” Ashley nodded “You can meet her if you want. She’s happy and healthy.”
“And a puppet, right? Where was ‘Sam’s’ console?”
“Sam graduated, just as you were about to. We have done all we could, she had adjusted to life as a woman.”
“Which brings you to me.”
“Which brings us to you. You were the whole reason the project existed. Actually, your father was the reason, you were just going to benefit as well.”
“What about Jay?”
“Jay is complicated, our first non-MgS subject. I am truly sorry for that but we can’t reverse the Morphite Therapy, that would kill him and you saw what would happen if we stopped the conditioning…”
DJ thought for a moment.
“So what Jay needs is to be happy with the woman he will become and help with the transition.”
“Exactly.” Brian and Ashley said in unison.
“And no more just doing this because you can. No more punishment changes.”
“I want to help.”
-- -- -- -- -- --
Pete walked in the R&D room like he belonged there. In truth, he did. This is where the implants were built. This is where the serum that caused the Morphite effect was built. This is the room that would make the little bitch pay. No one paid any attention to him when he left with briefcase of random donor serum. They paid it no mind when he walked off with the next generation implant.
He took the company van home, one of the sleek surveillance models.
He had no intention of going back.
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