Naked bodies on an assembly line (8)

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.

Doubt my Directors would take a favourable view though...

"Me? I'm all about the hugs.
And cruelty. Hugs and cruelty basically."

He moves me...he moves me not...

Maybe I'll give you a private tour sometime then...

Fasten your body down, immobile on a pallet, a last tender stroke of your hair then I'll press the 'Start' button; the automated sequence taking over. Oh, there's always the E-stop button... but will my hand be near it? Close enough to stop the machines if you are too distressed by their unthinking routines?

The pallet takes you along the line, to Station One. Sensors measure, evaluate. The decision flies along the wires - reject the Part or continue the process?

The interlocks release and the palet moves again...forwards into the machine. You pass through the lightguard, calibrated only to accept a Part of certain dimensions; your dimensions.

A pause. You can see the world outside through the mesh of the guards, an unbreachable barrier. You look up at the mechanisms surrounding you. The wires, the pneumatic pipes.

The robots. The speed they advance is not the true terror; it's the way they stop in an instant, millimeters from your body.

And then...and then...

"Me? I'm all about the hugs.
And cruelty. Hugs and cruelty basically."

What are they doing? Why are they doing this? Did you design this machine for me or am I just the guineau pig, the lab rat? I'm scared and I strain to see you, get a sense of you nearby somewhere, a glimpse of movement, flicker, sound, cough, anything. Anything human to let me know you have not just left me here with these mechanical feelingless monsters.

"Relax please". A voice sounds through the metallic grid, though I can't tell where it comes from. It has your intonation and timbre and yet the subtle quality of a recording. Are you out there somewhere pressing buttons?

The metallic fingers press down and then spread sideways so that the skin is taught and the arm locked firmly in place. I can't relax, and any wish to do is far behind me. Far from it, the instruction makes me tense up. I want out, but there isn't anyone to tell and just for the moment I am still more afraid of shouting or begging and causing you displeasure than I am of these machines. Helplessness begins to spread through my body in a kind of frozen tension. Panic is trying to take over but chemicals designed for fight or flight won't help me now and I don't want to lose it in here, strapped down tight in a metal tunnel. I can feel my heart hammering in my ears and sense that everything is happening much faster than it seems to be; I am in the slow-motion extended time of adrenaline rush.

A cold fine mist sprays out of the mechanism above the metal fingers and settles on my skin. An antiseptic stink assails my nostrils. There is a hard pinch on the arm and I look sideways to see a fine scraping of skin placed in a tiny canister and dropped down a tube where it whirls away. I feel sick now. I open my mouth to scream and a metal gag whips into place, locking open. Another scraping is taken from inside my cheek, but this I barely notice as I watch the hypodermic syringe extending from a newly opened hatch to the right. I want to thrash and stop it going in to my skin but the straps have tightened further so that they are cutting in. Movement is out of the question except my eyes and the panting rise and fall of my chest. Something invades my mouth and begins to inflate. The needle stings and a sweet lassitude spreads through my system. I am now longer fighting now, no longer tense, accepting your design, my purpose in your metallic dream…Your voice speaks again with that strange metallic burr: behind it, there is the sound of more machinery coming to life … …

He moves me...he moves me not...

;; Semper in faecibus sumus, sole profundum variat.
Some of my stories are here. Others are here.

www.twitter.com/@woeuk

FuerstvonBismarck wrote: I'm afraid you did... nimue_in_the_woods wrote: Oh wow ... my first fantasy turned up in a photograph! Wait! Did I just say that aloud?

I've been sleep-typing again, haven't I?

He moves me...he moves me not...