Prologue.

Alice was looking forward to breaking up with her latest boyfriend. Breaking up was almost the most interesting part of the relationship. All the delicious details of how to let him off gently, so that he would remember their romance with a rosy glow, but not want to reestablish it. Having ex-boyfriends wandering around with a star-struck expression whenever her name came up was so much more satisfying than having hunks of beef stewing with murder in their eyes.

It also make hooking the next hunk of male beef that much easier. Not that it was very hard. At 5 foot 5 inches, she was a pert looking blue-eyed redhead with a sexy walk and an easy to get to know smile. Her C cup breasts were big enough to be fascinating, but not so big that they got in the way of her exercise and jogging program. She was a trim little package just waiting for the right male.

Her psychology professors would have been horrified at the use she was putting their lessons. However, they were unlikely to catch on. One of the first lessons she had learned, at the knees of an abusive father, was how easy it was to make people see what they wanted to see. So she collected her B average, and was practically invisible to all the right people. Meanwhile, the rest of her life was curious, to say the least.

She took a lot of care that her more unusual sexual escapades didn’t become publicly known. She had a few close friends that helped her satisfy her rather peculiar needs. Actually, the needs were not that uncommon, but the needs underlying the needs were.

Chapter 1.

The black van pulled into the parking lot right behind her, and three men poured out of it.

"Are you Alice Livingstone?" The first hunk held out an official looking badge.

"Why, yes, what do you need?"

"DEA, we need to talk to you. Get in the van, we're going downtown."

The procurement team had done this dozens of times. Before she had a chance to react, she was hustled to the van, and pushed inside. The waiting member of the team pulled the trigger on the prod. She convulsed once, and was out like a light. It was another clean pickup under way.

Jill and Sam got to work packaging her. First things first. Get the wrist and ankle cuffs on. Padlock them closed. Put on the waist belt. Padlock it. Clip her wrist cuffs to the belt. Get rid of her shoes and hose, and clip her ankle cuffs to the belt, leaving the large ring in back free.

Next, into the waiting padded box. Jill put a clever hood over her head, and pulled it tight. There were two tubes going to her nostrils, and another tube into her mouthpiece. She hooked up the mouthpiece to an empty container - it would collect any drool that she didn't swallow. They didn't want her to drown, after all the trouble they had gone to collect her. The nose tubes went to a clever little device that would force a mixture of air, oxygen and sleepy gas into and out of her lungs. It also scrubbed the CO2. There was a three day supply of oxygen. She wouldn't need anywhere near that much.

Meanwhile, Sam was busy attaching her to a webbing of straps that would hold her secure, and cushion her from sudden shocks. Wherever she was going, it wasn't under her own steam.

Finally, they put the lid on the box, and screwed it shut. Then they moved on to the next pickup of the day.

Alice came awake slowly. Something was wrong. She couldn't move. Whatever here was sometimes shook a bit. It took a while for her situation to soak into her sleepy gas soaked brain. Eventually she remembered: the DEA men, and then everything went black. She abided in her drug-induced haze, unable to either think coherently, or feel anything other than a delicious languor. Her various personalities milled about, assessing the situation.

Eventually, after some more banging around, someone opened her box, and removed the breathing mask. She felt a pair of hands checking her chest, and making certain she could breathe. Then they walked away.

Chapter 2. Orientation.

I came fully awake quickly. A quick flex. I’m not going anywhere, at least under my own steam. These people seem to be professionals. Just lie quiet and listen.

Three pairs of footsteps. Three voices, two male, one female. The woman seems to be named Joanne. Equipment being moved around. A couple of grunts, then Joanne asks "Are you thirsty?" Another voice. Younger female, scared almost out of her wits. Joanne using a soothing voice. Something about a hypersonic prod. The younger girl screaming. Joanne soothing her down, and telling her she has to be gagged. More equipment noises. Then something rolling out of the room.

Then the same sequence with another girl. A different scared girl’s voice. Joanne instructing them in the same soothing voice. Scream, equipment noises, roll out of the room.

Then hands around my box, removing the web of restraint straps. Two sets of male hands picked me up out of the box. I was tilted upright, and then lowered gently until my knees are on a padded surface. Hands on my legs, around the ankle cuffs. Clicks as the padlocks are opened. A pair of hands forces my legs down and spread out. Click. My ankle cuffs are padlocked flat behind me.

A couple of quick twists, and I realize that I’m attached to some kind of pole. It seems pretty inescapable - even if my hands were free, I probably couldn't twist around the pole enough to free my legs. Various parts of me are still assessing possibilities.

Joanne:

The first two had gone really well. Halfway into my fourth intake week, I was settling into a routine. Every girl was a little different, but so far, nothing had happened that was outside of my training. I expected to savor the little differences with the third girl, but wasn't expecting anything really unusual.

Now that Fred and Al had gotten her onto her display stand, the next step was to remove the gag and hood. This was the part that I never quite got used to - the fearful, questioning eyes as the hood came off.

This set of blue eyes was anything but fearful. Alert, interested, calm, in control. This was different. This was very different. I had no idea what to do. I froze for a moment.

"I'm thirsty. I'd like a little water". Fred and Al were staring. I got the water and held it up to her. She sucked it greedily through the straw as I regained some measure of control. How had she managed to grab the initiative? Here she was, pinned to her display stand like a butterfly, and she had grabbed control. Well, I just had to grab it back again. She couldn't be allowed to get away with it.

She finished sucking down the water. "More, please?" It was a question, but it re-exerted control. However, I was supposed to give her a second glass if she wanted it; it’s just that I was supposed to ask her. My training re-exerted itself somewhat. Go with the flow. In this case, the second glass of water. She sucked down about half of it as if she was a pump. "Can I go potty now?"

"No, honey, not yet. You'll get a chance in a little while". I had the feeling that although it was an honest question, she had also deliberately handed me back the initiative. Thank God the chair was next; that would break her down ok.

I brought out the prod. "Is that what you call the hypersonic prod?" I'm afraid I lost it for a minute.

"Where'd you hear about it?" My voice was a bit out of control.

"That’s what you called it for the first two girls. This seems to be the place in the procedure where you show it to me, and then hurt me with it."

I had it turned to the first, lowest setting, so I hit her arm with it. "Ouch, that smarts".

"Yes, it’s supposed to. We use this setting during training if you aren't paying attention. Now, this second setting is used for minor punishments". I twisted the ring and caressed her breast with it. She yelled. Loud.

"Sorry I had to hurt you, honey. It’s part of the procedure. You have to know how it feels."

She grimaced. "You're not really sorry at all. You were for the other two girls, but you're getting back at me for playing with you".

I laughed. It wasn't procedure, but I did laugh. "So right, honey. You do need to keep your trainer in a good mood." I turned to pick up the bridle and gag. When I turned back, she had her mouth wide open. I just shook my head, popped the gag into her mouth, and tightened the bridle straps. Now, the rest of the procedure would go as planned.

The headrest was next. This fitted on top of the pole, and was secured with a bolt.

"Tilt your head back onto the rest". She did immediately. A clip to fasten her headgear to the rest, and I was done with anything that needed her cooperation.

Next was removing her clothing. Out came the power sheers, and pretty soon it was off. This was a carefully calculated part of the procedure; it was supposed to reinforce the feeling of helplessness. She still had that calm, interested look about her.

The identification studs were next. When I pierced her ears, she winced. Well, the piercer did hurt; it was drilling a real hole through the earlobe, not the little hole normally used for earrings. Then I assembled the ID disks, and crimped them in place. They weren't going to fall out.

When I backed up to look at her, I had this feeling that I should hold up a mirror to let her check how she looked. I shook it off, and got out the breast piercing tools. Pretty soon, she was sporting a nice pair of permanent rings set through her breasts, just below the nipple.

She was done. Now, put a blanket over her so that she couldn't see, and wheel the display stand out into the corridor. She wasn't aware of it, but she would see me again shortly. I was going to be her trainer. To say I had mixed feelings about the assignment was an understatement. I didn't want anything to do with her, but I wanted to be the one that put her in the chair. I wanted someone else to handle her, but I didn't want to wish her off on someone else. And I was both fascinated and repelled.

Well, enough of that. Take a couple of deep breaths, let them out, and steady down. There was another girl to process, and it would be doing her no favors if I weren’t in complete control. I steadied down. Fortunately, the last girl was strictly routine.

Chapter 3. Interlude.

Joanne finished me up quite efficiently. She was obviously good at what she did, and took pride in her performance. When she wheeled my stand into the hall, I had a chance to take stock.

The situation didn’t look good. These people were obviously experienced, and were running some kind of large-scale operation. That implied good security. Escaping wasn’t going to be a matter of seizing an opportunity and making a run for it. I didn’t know any path between where I was and an exit. And somehow I didn’t think they were going to give me a map.

I consulted with myself about the display stand. Eventually, two parts came back and said they could get me off of it, but I would take some damage. One would be loud and noisy, and could get me killed quickly; the other would be quiet and stealthy – until I actually made my move. That second option looked interesting. I made my preparations.

Then I turned my attention to the corridor. The blanket cut off my sight, and muffled sounds. I could hear a number of girls crying. Also the sound of people walking by, and something that sounded like cleated shoes, or tap dancing shoes, but heavier. Bits of conversation here and there, but nobody stayed near long enough to make any sense out of it.

Clearly, there were a lot of people here, and equally clearly, they didn’t find captive girls tied to poles on wheeled carts at all unusual. Not a good situation.

I filed the location in my memory, and settled down to wait. I started some mental exercises I hadn’t done in a long time.

Eventually, someone grabbed the stand, and I started moving down the corridor. I tried to keep track of the path we took, but there were two elevators in the way. They certainly weren’t going to make escape easy.

Chapter 4. The Cell.

After a while, my platform stopped moving. I heard a door close with an authoritative thud. Someone removed the blanket. There were two men and a woman with me. The woman was Joanne.

"First lesson. From this point forward, you are not to talk. Ever. You will never speak another word as long as you live. Do you understand?"

I stared at Joanne in shock. She’d finally said something that got to me. I nodded.

"We’ll make it easy for you. You will be gagged most of the time. But some of the time you will be wearing things that will allow you to form words. If you do, you will regret it."

One of the men had left the cell, and returned with a couple of containers and something that looked like a funnel.

"This is how we are going to feed you." The man shoved the bottom part of the funnel thing through the hole in my gag, and then attached it to my head harness with straps. Joanne took the two bottles. One held a white substance, and one held a brown substance.

"The white stuff is your normal food. It’s a special compound with all the right vitamins, and so forth, to keep you healthy. It actually tastes quite good – normally like vanilla ice cream, although the staff varies the taste at times. Most of us like it – we use it ourselves when we don’t have time on the schedule for a regular meal."

"Now the brown stuff is almost the same base. It’s quite healthy. It just tastes awful. It’s supposed to. It’s your punishment if you talk. This isn’t a punishment, but you need to know how it tastes."

She poured a few ounces of the stuff into the funnel, and then turned a handle on the bottom. It oozed into my mouth. There was nothing I could do to stop it. And it did taste awful. Burned chocolate and bitter almonds. With a taste of cayenne. She kept turning the screw. I had to swallow. I had no choice in the matter.

"Like it?" I shook my head no. "You’re not supposed to."

She filled the funnel with the white stuff, and turned the screw. Something else oozed into my mouth. This helped cut the residue from the brown stuff. Then she quit forcing it.

"Suck on it. You’ll get the hang of it. This is how you will be fed."

I sucked. More of the white stuff oozed into my mouth. It did taste quite good, once that awful taste had gone away. Frankly, I thought they could make enough selling it to quite kidnapping women, especially if it was as nutritious as they said.

Joanne patted me on the head. "Good girl. You’ve got about ten minutes to finish it up, then we’ll go on with the next part of your training."

They left the cell, locking it behind them. I looked around, as well as I could with the funnel stuck in front of my face. I kept sucking, of course. I believed her when she said that this was now my feeding, and I was hungry.

There were three rooms in the back. One looked like a bathroom, one had an odd looking chair, and one had some kind of a stall. I expected I would find out what they were for in due course.

They came back in a few minutes, just as I ran out of appetite. Joanne asked "done?" I nodded.

"Well, most girls don’t take the full twelve ounces." She put a bit of water in the funnel, and I sucked it down greedily. Then one of the guys came over and unhooked it, and pulled it out of my gag. That was the end of feeding time at the zoo.

The men picked me up off of the display rack, and plopped me face down on a mat on one side of the cell. Then they proceeded to put a pair of boots on me. Surprisingly, the boots fit, although they had an atrociously high heel. They also put a short chain between my knees.

I felt myself getting wet. Obviously, being manhandled by these two hunks of beefcake was turning me on. I let it happen. If they were going to rape me, I was quite prepared to enjoy it. One of the legacies from my never sufficiently damned father – I had long ago lost any illusions about the connection between consent and sexual enjoyment.

It turned out that rape wasn’t next on the agenda. Sigh.

Joanne said "Stand up. If you try anything, you are going to regret it. Immediately." I heard her prod whining at a higher pitch than it had before. I believed her. Implicitly.

I stood. I’d worn higher heels before, but not for normal, everyday wear. Super high heels were useful for getting my male of the month in the mood, so I had plenty of practice. I looked down, and saw a hunk of iron or steel sticking out from the front.

"Horseshoes. You are going to become a ponygirl. We train ponygirls here, and sell them. That’s what you are, and that’s what you will be for the rest of your life."

I sucked in my breath. I could feel a part of me leap up in interest. The pony girl fantasy was one I had always intended to look into, but I had never had the time or opportunity. I let that part of me that wanted to be a ponygirl come forward. If they wanted to train me, I was certainly not going to object. At least, I now had a category to put these experiences.

Joanne: She surprised me again. Usually they looked either shocked or puzzled at this point. Or scared, but this one had never been scared. Now she looked, well, pliant. The change from alert interest to a more placid interest was subtle, but dramatic. She looked like a different person altogether.

"Another lesson. When I ask you a question, I want you to stomp your right hoof twice for yes, and three times for no. Understand?"

I nodded, and stamped my right foot twice.

"Good girl. But next time, don’t move your head. Just stamp your right hoof. Understand?"

I put in a quick block, and stamped my right foot twice. My head didn’t move at all.

Joanne: "Good girl". I patted her on the head. She was shaping up nicely. Most girls had to be shocked with the prod a few times before they stopped nodding their heads. Now that I thought of it, this was downright spooky. Every girl I had ever trained had to be disciplined before she stopped moving her head.

"Now, the next thing is going to sound weird. You will whinny like a pony. Do it, now."

Alice produced a whinny. "That was awful. Make that whinny louder; make it higher. Make it sound like you mean it."

Wheeheehee…

"Much better. Now. Whenever I tell you to do something, or tell you something you need to know, you will whinny. If it is a question, you will also respond by stamping your right hoof. Whinny, then stamp. Understand?"

Wheeheehee. Stomp. Stomp.

Chapter 5. The Chair.

"Now, the next thing is to soften you up a bit, make it easier for you to accept the training."

Wheeheehee.

"Good girl. See that chair?"

Wheeheehee. Stomp. Stomp.

"Go sit in it."

Wheeheehee. Alice walked over and looked at the chair. It looked like a wooden toilet. Turn around and sit. There was a device on the front of the seat that touched her stomach. The men came up on either side, and began strapping her legs to the legs of the chair. When they were done, she had about an inch of movement. Then they attached her arms to the armrests. The belt came off, and then they strapped her torso to the back of the chair.

Meanwhile, Joanne was fiddling with a set of short straps that came out of the back of the chair. When she had them to her liking, she attached them to either side of the bridle.

"Lean your head back against the rest, honey. You’re doing just fine".

Wheeheehee.

Joanne threw a switch on the control panel. "Now, you’re not to move your head. If you move your head enough to pull the reins taut, then the prod between your legs will hurt you."

"This is the worst punishment you will ever receive here. This time, it isn’t punishment, it’s to soften you up to make it easier to accept your training. Next time you are in the chair, it will be a punishment."

Wheeheehee.

"Good girl, you’ll do fine."

She turned around and left. The two men left with her. A mirror panel slid up, so that I could see myself sitting in the chair. As I watched, I saw an indicator change from 80:00 to 79:59. I was going to be in this chair for 80 hours? It seemed likely.

That much bondage would produce muscle cramps, and that much sleep deprivation would produce a compliant frame of mind in most people. Repeat as needed. I could really get to hate these people, if hating them would serve any purpose. It wouldn’t.

More important was to survive the experience. It was time to bring out some of those talents that made me a member of the few, the proud, the totally fucked up (at least, according to most shrinks I had ever dealt with). The first thing was to move my ponygirl subpersonality into the background. There was absolutely no reason why she needed this. I had created her as a sweet, gentle being, very submissive and eager to please. This experience would only hurt her.

Next was a strategy session on how to deal with the chair. Fortunately, neither long-term bondage nor sleep deprivation was exactly a foreign experience. However, I’d never had to combine them. I wasn’t certain that the subpersonality that kept my body supple while I was tightly confined would work properly if I slept. I needn’t have worried.

I felt my eyes close. When I opened them, the clock said 75:35. Over four hours of sleep. Things were looking up. I had over three days of solitary confinement to work in.

By now, the reader of this chronicle has probably figured out that I’m a multiple personality. One of the things that most shrinks that work with MPs know, but don’t tell, is that they produce all kinds of weird psychic phenomena. Talking about it would simply get the skeptic community all irritated. And they haven’t got a clue anyway about how it happens or what to do about it, so, silence.

The subpersonalities that handled psychic stuff for me were unusual. As far as I could tell, they simply didn’t believe in the same reality that most of us did. I had enough clairvoyance to find lost keys, and enough telekinesis to bend spoons and pick locks. I’d never bothered to develop it any further. Since I fully intended to live my life in the real world, and not in some freak sideshow, I had not seen any need beyond keeping my apartment secure by using locks that didn’t have a keyhole.

It was time to change that. I didn’t know how far three days of practice would get me, but I fully intended to find out.

The details of the next three days don’t matter. I got my clairvoyance working well enough to be able to scan the entire complex. It was huge. Three days wasn’t enough to even begin to find out everything I needed to know to escape. Improving my telekinesis was harder. The major problem was that it seemed to use some of the same parts of my body that the bondage subpersonality was using, so those two subs had to work out some highly creative accommodations. Actually, they never did integrate in any meaningful fashion. They simply agreed to alternate, which was OK by me. And the telekinetic facility did manage to gain both power and, I suppose, stamina.

At about the five-hour mark, the mirror came down, and a guy walked in. He removed the high headrest so I could bring my head back on a real rest, plugged in the funnel, and dumped in some of the white stuff. Fifteen minutes later, he came back, gave me some water, removed the funnel and put back the misnamed headrest. This happened every five hours or so.

Eventually, the clock counted down to zero. After a while, the mirror came down, and Joanne came in. I let the ponygirl subpersonality come to the front.

She looked worried. She didn’t like what she saw, and I can’t say I really blame her. In no way did I look like I should after over three days of sleep and movement deprivation. Joanne, to her credit, decided to ignore the problem for now, and just go with the program.

"Are you ready to obey?"

Wheeheehee. Stomp. Stomp.

"Ok, now, we’re going to get you out of the chair, and put you to bed so you can sleep for a while. When you wake up, you are going to be the most obedient pony that ever existed. If you ever refuse an order, you’re going back in the chair, and this time it will be four days. Understand?"

Wheeheehee. Stomp. Stomp.

They took me out, put me down on the mat, and then put me in a hogtie with a single glove and a single boot. They added several straps to keep me from moving on the mat. Even before the last three days, it would have been easy to escape. There was one ring connecting the feet and the hands, a couple of buckles on the single glove, and four straps. Seven pieces of metal to mangle with TK, and I’m out of it. Not a problem. Joanne put a pillow under my head, and pulled a helmet over my eyes.

I slept some, and I did some more practicing and scanning. The only real difference between this mat and the chair was that I didn’t need the bondage subpersonality.

Chapter 6. Training.

We let Silence be in charge of the body for the next few weeks. That was our new name; Silence is Golden. Normally, we didn’t name subpersonalities; it made them too hard to integrate. They just had position titles. Even Alice wasn’t one of our names; we used it as a convenience name for the entire consortium. If the original Alice was anywhere, after what our dear sadistic father did to her to cause us to fragment, she was still in catatonic shock somewhere out of the main flow.

The next day we learned what the other two rooms were for. The bathing room was for bathing. Also for enemas, changing dildos, and similar stuff. That day, Joanne taught Silence how to step, bringing the thighs up to a horizontal position, and then back down. Then she put Silence into the booth to increase stamina and practice the steps.

She called it the trotting booth. It had a floor that moved at the required pace. It was solid, not like a treadmill where you could feel the mat moving over the rollers. The front had a mirror that let me see myself, not that it did much good. Ponies didn’t understand reflections. Silence thought it was another pony, and the rest of us ignored it as essentially useless information. It was easier, and more accurate, to sense where the limbs were than to look at the mirror and try to calculate it.

There were two vertical bars of green indicators. They showed where the knees should be at any time. There was also a red light that signaled when Silence was supposed to whinny. A pair of reins came out the back, and attached to her bridle. A pair of rests against the buttock contained prods. There was also a seat that came up at times to let her rest.

The biggest problem we had was that we had created Silence as a ponygirl. She not only couldn’t talk, she also couldn’t understand normal language either. Her total linguistic skills were zip. Since Joanne persisted in explaining things rather than training them in, we assigned one of the watcher subpersonalities the duty of telling Silence what to do when Joanne said something incomprehensible.

This wasn’t a problem with the trained movements. Silence had no idea what "right", "left", "trot" or "take a knee" meant, but she had no problem identifying the sounds and associating them with actions. So in the next few weeks Silence was becoming a properly trained ponygirl.

Over the next few days, Joanne showed Silence several different march steps. She was always careful to give them a name, although she never associated them properly. Fortunately, it didn’t matter. We handled the association internally, and the trotting booth took care of the rest.

She also kept increasing the gag size. I was afraid I was going to have buckteeth. That could be fixed later. I found out why when she replaced the ball gag with a ring. When she said "sex" the monitor signaled emergency. It turned out that she was going to train Silence to be a sex slave. I had no real objection, except that Silence had not been created with that in mind. I had left sex out, just as I had left speech out. So I brought the slut subpersonality into the foreground.

The slut was one of the original subpersonalities created when our dear, departed daddy had abused Alice enough to cause the fragmentation. She just adored sex with several people at once. Any variety, any and all holes simultaneously. It was all the same to her. Like most specialists, she was totally useless for anything else, including normal one on one sex where there was actually a relationship involved. We had split the actual sexual act routines out long since, she used them, and so did any other subpersonality that needed them. They multiprogrammed, so she could do lots of people simultaneously. The rest of the subs that needed to do sex only did it one on one.

It turned out that choosing the slut as the key subpersonality was correct. They started out with a little instruction in licking a fake cunt, and then went to the main act. Silence was removed from her stand, and put in another piece of equipment called the bucking rack. She was bent over so her back was horizontal, feet on the floor spread apart. Her back was suspended off of ropes from the ceiling, and a rod was placed across her shoulders. The collar pitched her head at exactly the right angle for sucking cock.

This first time, all they wanted was for the two of them to be sucked off. One came in front, pulled up her skirt, and had us get her off. The other went in back, and worked the dildo and butt plugs. Things got a little intense for a while, because the slut was more used to saying things like "Ohhh, baby, more" than whinnying. Fortunately, we caught the verbalizations in time and managed to work out the whinny.

They put her back on the stand when they were done, and we put Silence back in control.

Tomorrow was to be Silence’s initiation in her other role, that of sex slave. I had gotten Dina, my team leader, to join me for a bit of instruction. I told Silence we were going to train her in forced sex. A number of expressions chased themselves across her face. When they stopped, I was looking at the most sexually wanton expression I have ever seen. The bridle looked out of place, but the ring gag looked like original equipment. Dina stared. I did too. This wasn’t the pony I had been training for the last couple of weeks. It also wasn’t whoever had gone through orientation, and seemed to have vanished after her first experience with the chair. This one looked like she would have fun with a platoon of marines. That expression would have driven half of the men I knew right out of the room. The other half would have to get a new pair of pants after their dicks ripped a hole in the old ones.

I had no idea what to do. I didn’t think anyone else would, either. Then training reasserted itself. When in doubt, follow the program. So we did. Her tongue shot out and licked my fingers when I held them up. I have no idea how she did it, but she made a tongue on two fingers sensuous. She licked the fake pussy like she was in love with it.

When we put her on the bucking rack, she looked like she was saying, "Hey, girls, where’s the cock or cunt? I want it. Now." She got both of us off. She took her time, but made us like it. I swear, if I could have gotten her for mine, I might swear off of men, she was that good. The only problem we had was getting her to whinny in time with the strokes. It started out like she had never heard of whinnying. Then she got the idea, and improved rapidly. She was perfect by the time I came. Dina almost sat down with a blissed out look on her face after her orgasm.

We put her back on her display rack, and replaced the ring with the ball gag. The pony I knew came back. There was just a trace of a smug look on her face.

I needed to talk to Lenore about this.

We left the cell, and I forgot about it completely.

Our escape plan was coming along beautifully. We had finally mapped enough of the complex to determine where we were with respect to entrances and exits. We had identified what looked like checkpoints, and were in the process of examining the security system.

Silence was having fun. She had learned a number of march steps, and several paces. Joanne had gotten her a lobo-ra trainer for cart and saddle work, and she was in her element. If her tail had been real, she would have been swishing it. Enthusiasm, thy name is Silence.

She wanted us to take Joanne and Stephanie (that was the lobo-ra) along with us when we escaped. She wanted to keep her trainers.

Then disaster struck.

Chapter 7. The Earthquake.

The best laid plans of mice and men. Well, I don’t know about the mice, but any plan I have ever had always needs revision in flight. No exceptions. In this case, we got thrown a dozy.

I was wakened out of a sound sleep by a deep shaking. When I woke up, I noticed that the noise the fans made wasn’t there any more. That woke me up completely. It didn’t take me very long to determine two things. First, Silence was absolutely no use in this situation. Second, I might have to do something. This put me on the horns of a real dilemma.

The dilemma was that I really wanted to save as many of the ponies as I could. While escape was the plan, the next step was to get the authorities involved, get the place raided, and release all of the prisoners. If the place was going to go bye-bye because of this earthquake, then I had to get out of there, fast. If they were going to get power restored in the next couple of hours, then the best strategy would be to go back to sleep. I needed information.

I had located the managing director, Leo, some time ago. I was quite amused with his special arrangements with his two ponygirls, Rainbow and Bluebird. I checked in on Leo first thing. Bluebird was with him. She was awake, and was just shaking him awake. No information there.

A quick scan elsewhere showed me the worst. In one of the major domes, several of the buildings had collapsed. Most of the rest of the complex looked structurally ok, but that was just a first cut. The generators were out, but there were people working on it, using emergency lights.

The next thing was to check the local cellblock. The block looked ok, but it did show me one thing that needed attention right away. Eight of the ponies were trapped in the sleep deprivation chairs. The other 41 were hogtied on their mats. Well, 42 if you counted me. They’d be ok until morning. But the ones in the chairs needed attention.

There was only one other person in the cellblock; she was a fairly junior attendant pulling night duty. Not even a trainer. And she was totally out of her element. It was black as pitch. No lights. There didn’t seem to be an emergency lighting system; somebody had skimped on the design.

By this time, an hour had passed. Time to check back on Leo.

Bless his black little heart. He had gotten communication going. The situation was grim. The generators wouldn’t be back on for at least a day, if then. The situation in the damaged dome was not good. There were a lot of injuries, quite a few major. Some deaths. The bottom line was that there wouldn’t be anyone coming to check on the cellblocks for quite some time.

Chapter 8. Holding it together.

Well, time to shed the sheep’s clothing, and see if I was a wolf or a coyote. That was a chuckle. Lobo-ra meant wolf rider, and one had been riding me for a couple of weeks.

A couple minutes concentration, and the ring holding the arm and leg binders together parted. Then the rings that held the arm binder went. Ditch the straps. It took another moment to slither out of the leg and arm binders. Then take off the bustier, the hood, and finally the bridle and ball gag. Find the dildo keys in the bathroom, and get rid of them.

After a moment’s thought, I located the pony boots and put them on. Partially, I needed shoes, and those were handy. The other, and more major reason was that they made a nice, loud, clip, clop noise, perfect for echolocation, and also perfect for letting anyone know that I really wasn’t trying to sneak around. At least, they’d know if they were thinking straight.

Opening the cell was easy. It wasn’t quite as easy as walking through the door. I had to use my clairvoyance to study the lock, and then the TK to manipulate it, since I had no key, and the electronics simply weren’t working. Whoever had done the security system had set it up to fail locked. Fortunately, picking locks was something I had been doing for the last few years, ever since I had gotten that part of my mind integrated.

The attendant was next. She was in a ready room at the end of one of the corridors. When I got there and opened the door, she just about jumped out of her skin.

"Hey, Jeanette, calm down. Nobody’s going to slaughter you today."

"Who are you? What’s going on? How did you escape?" She was babbling.

"Hey, slow down, take a deep breath and sit down. Turn off that thing before you hit yourself with it. I’ll explain everything, but you need to calm down first."

She backed up into a table, and fell into a chair. She sat there with the prod held out in front of her. I could tell from the whine that it was set on three. I walked over to the far end of the room and sat down.

"OK, some answers. First, I’m the one known as Silence is Golden. As to how I got out of the cell, that’s a long, and rather strange story. I’m a true multiple personality. Silence is my ponygirl subpersonality. I’d prefer that you call me Alice, since Silence is quiescent at the moment. She wouldn’t be any use anyway – she really is a ponygirl."

"What this means is that I’ve got some fairly unusual abilities. What matters in this situation is that I’ve got enough clairvoyance to be useful, and enough telekinesis to pick locks and break chains. Also, the reason I’m using pony boots is that I also can do echo location, like a bat. So I can move around without any difficulty."

"Now, the situation outside of this cellblock is bad. The power is out in the entire complex. They don’t think they can restore it in less than a day, more likely two. One of the domes cracked, a lot of buildings in that dome are down, and there are a lot of injured people. We’re the only people in this cellblock capable of doing anything, unless there are some community trainees I don’t know about."

Jeanette thought for a moment. Then she let out a big breath, turned off the prod and put it back on her belt.

"If you can do all of that, why don’t you just escape? Don’t tell me you actually like it here."

"Well, that’s the odd part. Silence likes it here. In fact, she wants to take her trainer and her rider along with us when we leave. As far as the rest of us are concerned, we’re basically misfits. We’re pissed at being kidnapped. Other than that, the sludge is awful, but we haven’t had any of that since the first free sample. Joanne has never had to use her prod beyond level one, again except for the first free sample. The chair doesn’t work on us; it’s too long a story to explain. We happen to like bondage, dominance and submission games. We also like the starring role in a gangbang. So, really, we don’t think we’ve been mistreated badly enough to hold a grudge."

"So the only thing we have against this place is the business you are in. Realistically, I’m not certain I could shut it down if I escaped. You’ve got to have some powerful political protection. Silence would be perfectly happy to be one of your ponygirls for the next however many years. The problem is that the rest of us don’t like that option. If you offered us community membership, I expect we’d take you up on it."

"But... I can’t offer you that. Nobody would go for it. We just don’t do that for ponies."

"I know you can’t. But Leo might be able to swing it. From what I’ve been seeing, Bluebird is doing some magnificent work in this emergency that really deserves recognition. I’m looking at an opportunity. If this doesn’t happen, the only other option is escape. And if they decide to try to put me down, well, the results will be very unfunny."

"Anyway, what we need to do now is to work out a plan for the next two days. Power should be back on by then, and the powers that be can start moving resources around. I can negotiate then with people that can deliver."

"But what can we do?"

"What needs to be done? First, we have eight ponies in sleep deprivation chairs. They need to be fed. Then the rest of the ponies need to be taken care of. There are only two of us; we need to be very minimalist. How are you on navigating in the dark? Or are there any emergency lights anywhere we can use? I can get around ok between echo location and clairvoyance."

"There aren’t any lights in the cellblock. There’s an emergency equipment store down the corridor, but I couldn’t get out of the cellblock to get to it. The power failure locked the doors."

"Ok, show me where it is. I should be able to deal with the door."

After some fumbling, we found the main cellblock door, and I got it open. Then we found the emergency cache. I must say there was a lot of equipment. There were even spare uniforms in a variety of sizes.

"You know something, Jeanette, I’m really tired of being naked. If it won’t send you hyperbolic, I’m going to appropriate a trainee uniform."

"Be my guest. It’ll save a lot of explanations about what a pony is doing loose. Bring along some more of the uniforms; there are six community trainees in the cell block, and we might as well get some use out of them."

"We’d better bring a couple of them back to get the emergency generator. We need to keep the refrigerators running."

"Good idea. Now, Alice, what’s occurring to me is that the major issue is going to be locks and cell doors. And you’re our specialist in opening them."

"OK, so why don’t I open the cells for the trainees and the chaired ponies, then we can roll it from there."

"Trainees first."

"Done, lead me to them."

We went down the cellblock, and I opened the indicated doors. It was easy to see the cells that contained chaired ponies. Jeanette had to point out the cells that had trainees. I opened all the doors first, and then we just took alternate cells. Jeanette had a bolt cutter; I had my TK. We did the trainees the same way. If they were asleep (and some of them were), we shook them awake. Then we told them there was an emergency, and they were being released for a couple of days to assist. Jeanette made some fairly bloodthirsty statements that if they screwed up, then she would chair them personally.

Jeanette took them out to the emergency cache to get outfitted. Meanwhile, I opened the cell doors to the ponies in sleep deprivation chairs. It took some time to wrestle the mirrors down. Once I did, I changed their headrests so that they wouldn’t yank on the reins when the power came back on.

Then Jeanette was back with the trainees, and an emergency generator on a dolly. We wheeled that sucker to the kitchens, and hooked it up to the refrigerators. Fortunately, the power hadn’t been off long enough for the mash to spoil. It actually kept quite well at room temperature. The rest of what was in there wasn’t really important. We could live off of mash.

Jeanette and I went out with our herd of six trainees. Jeanette used the first chaired pony to demonstrate how to attach the feeding funnel. Then we each did one of the others. When we were done, we came back and removed the funnels, but we left the headrests back.

By now, it was morning, and time to get the ponies ready for the day. With no power, we couldn’t run the trotting booths, so the options were either to leave them hogtied, or put them on the display stands. I opted to put them on the stands, partially because I didn’t like to see them hogtied for a couple of days, and partially because it would be easier to feed them.

Jeanette objected that they couldn’t manhandle them onto the stands.

"If you want to learn something new, you don’t really have to do it that way. Let me show you. We’ll go back to my cell, and I’ll demonstrate. Or rather, I’ll have Silence demonstrate".

That got the trainees going. None of them had twigged to the fact that I was one of the ponies. I settled them down by pointing out that I had been opening all of the cell doors by staring at them. They were intelligent girls; they got the point immediately.

We went back to my cell. I stripped out of the trainee uniform, and Jeanette put me back into the pony harness, but without the gag. She was interested in how I was going to do this.

"There are a couple of things here. First, I’m going to have Silence take over the body, except for the voice. I’m going to sound a bit strange; just remember that Silence is not capable of speech at all. Silence will be the one responding to your instructions. I’m going to be the one doing the commentary."

"Tell her to back up against the pole. Ok, good. Now notice where the rings are. They are actually above the pole. Now tell her to make a leg. Guide the rings down over the pole. Good. Now secure the right leg to the platform. Good. Now guide the left leg back until she is resting on both knees. Good. Now reverse."

She got me back up again. Then each one of them practiced. The whole thing took about an hour, but they had the procedure down.

There were 35 ponies to service. We did the first few together, and then split up. We did them the same way. First, we told them that there was an emergency; we wouldn’t be able to give them their usual morning shower or any training. They would spend the entire day on the display stand. Then we cut them out of the bondage with bolt cutters (I did it with TK). Then we got them into the bathroom to relieve themselves. We didn’t put the dildos back in, we just dressed them and put them on the stands. Then they got fed.

With an eight-person crew, we actually managed to have a semblance of order. Jeanette took the day shift with five trainees. I took the night shift with one trainee.

Chapter 9. Negotiations.

Eventually, we got power back. It took three days; I guess there were more problems than I saw in that first scan. Jeanette reported in. She was told that we were short on personnel. She was doing great, just carry on. So we did for another couple of days. Then the crews started coming back, although they were shorthanded. The trainees went back to their cells as ponies.

They wanted to put me back in my cell. I told them very sweetly that Joanne was my trainer; take it up with her. We had a short discussion on the phone. It ended when she told me that she would chair me for a week for disobeying an order, and I reminded her that the chair didn’t work on me.

Actually, Stephanie, my rider, got to me first. She simply walked up to me and told me that we had an arena reserved in a half hour. I said, sure, as long as I got unharnessed afterwards, and reverted to my trainee’s uniform. She harrumphed a bit, called Joanne, and then agreed. So I let them harness me, and she went for a workout with Silence. After five days, we really needed that. When we got back to the cell, she unharnessed me. I switched back to the negotiator, got dressed in my trainee’s uniform, and we went to one of the ready rooms to talk.

Joanne arrived about that time with blood in her eye. She got right to the point.

"So, tell me again why I shouldn’t chair you for a week for this stunt."

"Outside of the fact that it won’t work? You know perfectly well that the first session didn’t work, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. You haven’t had reason to try that since. You actually haven’t had reason for slop either, or for a level 2 prod. Silence has been a very good pony."

"I figure that I saved this cell block. The only staff inside when the power went off was Jeanette, and she wasn’t able to get out to the emergency cache." I saw a bunch of eyes go wide at that statement. "So I decided to help out. It’s a long story, but what it boils down to is that I’ve got some very unusual abilities, including clairvoyance and telekinesis. So I could open the doors to the emergency cache, where she couldn’t. I could open the cell doors, where she couldn’t. I also demonstrated the alternate method of getting a pony onto and off of her display stand. Other than that, she could have managed with the six trainees. They would just have had to work harder."

"Well, I should probably feed you slop for a week for talking."

"That’s a point, but it doesn’t work. Slop is to teach ponygirls not to talk. Silence is my ponygirl subpersonality, and she can’t talk. I left language out deliberately when I formed her. In fact, she can’t even understand you when you give her instructions, ask her questions or give her an order – unless it’s a stimulus/response type of order. I had to do some patchwork to let her understand you. And I need to redo it."

"Humph. Well then, what do you want out of this?"

"I want to be a community member. I also want to be a ponygirl. Or I want out of here. The thing is, what I don’t want is to be only a ponygirl. I figure there’s plenty of negotiating room in there. Lets start out with you or Jeanette putting me in for a major award, and then decide what to do until the powers that be come up with a decision."

"Jeanette already did. Now, tell me why I shouldn’t just put you back into your cell, and forbid you any special privileges?"

"Politics. Really, the place it fails is that if I want to get that community membership, I am going to have to work on it as me, not as Silence. There are too many political problems involved to just let it slide. So I can’t afford to go back as a full time ponygirl right now. On the other hand, staying in the ponygirl training program much of the time is going to help the politics along tremendously."

"Here’s the proposal. I’ll be Silence 18, 20 hours a day. We schedule a couple of times a day for me to be in the break room here to talk to people. Instead of being on the display rack to be fed and digest, I’ll be in here, and drink my mash from a glass. It shouldn’t interfere with the training program much at all. And it’ll give people an opportunity to come and see that I don’t have two heads, and I’m not about to steal their babies out of their cribs."

"Besides, I need to be able to talk to Leo. He’s on his way down now. And I’ll probably need to be taken out to several meetings with the powers that be. We also need to work on the dressage routine for the awards ceremony."

"Dressage routine? Why?"

"Well, I figure that there will be an awards ceremony. The board is probably going to be handing out awards right and left. Bluebird’s and my awards are going to be the only ones out of the ordinary, so we want to do some kind of crowd pleaser. Besides, I figure that the trainees should get their minutes in the sun, and since they’re doing their two years, a dressage routine for them would be appropriate. If we want to do something snazzy, we need to start working on it now."

"That makes sense. If Leo’s on his way, we should wait for him. While we’re waiting, explain how you can be three different people?"

"Well, I’m a multiple personality. Multiples are always the result of extreme child abuse of very specific types. We have a lot of subpersonalities. Most are specialists. Only a few can handle the body in the full range of normal situations. The one you’re talking to is called the negotiator. She’s in control whenever we have a people situation, so she’s mostly the one in control when anyone sees us. The one you’ve been working with is a ponygirl. She was created specifically to be one, and knows nothing about either language or sex. I left both out. We would have formed her differently if we had your specifications in front of us at the time. The other one is called the slut, and she’s the only original fragment you’ve seen. She was created because our dear, sadistic father liked to have a bunch of his so-called friends over to gang-bang his daughter. The negotiator was created when I got straightened out during psychotherapy."

"There’s one you don’t want to see. We call her the hulk. We can use it if we figure the only chance of survival is full steam ahead berserker, hysterical strength, rip it apart and stomp on the pieces. She’s only been out once. The cops still haven’t figured out what destroyed the house. All they found was a scared, crazy girl. I hope she never has to come out again, because she really doesn’t care if we survive."

"There are a bunch of others. Some of them do clairvoyance and telekinesis for me. That’s key. Normal people have to have a coherent view of the world across all of their subpersonalities, so it’s real easy to pretend that they’re only one person. Multiples don’t need that. All I need is for my subpersonalities to cooperate. They don’t have to agree about how the world functions."

"Shit. I’m out of my depth. With all of that, why haven’t you escaped?"

"I’m not the heroine of a science fiction epic. If I were, I would have found the proper two wires to short out, and been out of here the first night. No matter how many weird and wonderful things I can do, I’m still one person, with one body and one brain. You’ve got a real good security system. I’m at least a month away from penetrating it enough to create a feasible escape route and cover my tracks. I had to make a decision when the earthquake hit. Either I escaped and let all the people in this cellblock die of starvation and dehydration while I got the marines to raid this place, or I stayed and helped."

"The original plan was to simply vanish one night, and get the authorities involved, and come back in force and total surprise. That may or may not have worked. You’ve got to have some powerful political protection. The thing is, I can’t really see much difference between what you are doing to these girls, and a society that lets tens of thousands of people die a year because they can’t be bothered to test drivers adequately. Or lets more thousands die because they fall through the bottom of the economic net through sheer chance, and wind up homeless. Out there, I’ve got no leverage. Here, I’ve got a shot at being a bit more of who I am, and a shot at transforming a real problem."

Joanne thought for a moment. "Lets let Leo deal with all that. He gets paid for it. As long as I mostly have to deal with Silence, I’m happy. She’s a real dear. Now, what did you have in mind for the dressage?"

Chapter 10. Politics.

Just to go over the boring stuff fast. Silence spent most of our time training. Joanne and Stephanie were happy with her progress, not that they let up for a minute. I did PR from the ready room, discussed strategy with Leo, and went to a couple of meetings with the bigwigs.

They wanted to include Silence in the dressage routine, but Silence was simply not up to it yet. Good as she was, less than two months of training from a standing start didn’t hack it. We decided that it would work better with me in the trainee’s uniform anyway. I worked Silence in for a couple of quick maneuvers, and then it was show time.

Chapter 11. The awards ceremony.

Leo was first up. He pointed out that a lot of people were unhappy with the way community ponies were treated after they were too old to be ridden. So the board had decided to make some changes in the program.

First, community ponies were going to be allowed to talk after their first six months training. Their trainer was responsible for insuring that they never lost the ability to talk. There would be severe restrictions. Their trainer would decide when and if. Talking out of place would still be punished severely. They would also be given a set of signals. One tap of the left hoof meant, "I want to talk to you". Two taps meant, "I need to talk to you." Three taps meant safeword. It was up to the trainer whether to honor the request, and also up to the trainer to punish the pony if the request was being misused.

Second, they were establishing a new class of pony, the half breed. This was a class for ponies that also did something else, such as Leo’s two pets, Rainbow and Bluebird. There were a number of ponies in the community that were being used as maids part time. This would not only give them some recognition, but it would allow standard rules and regulations for what had been an essentially unregulated practice. It also meant that the trainer courses could include ways to handle the situation.

Finally, there would be a way for ponies to be promoted to full community membership. This was also carefully restricted. First, the trainer, rider or owner would have to propose it. Then a board would have to agree. Then the pony and the owner would have to agree. Then the pony would have to spend a lot of time learning how the community worked, what the life was like, what the duties and obligations were. And she would have to learn a trade to support herself.

Leo finished by saying that these were major changes to the entire way the community was organized, they would go slowly implementing them to find out how they worked.

Then Leo turned it over to the regular Master of Ceremonies.

We were first up. The MC announced the awards for Cell block three. Jeanette was first up. She got awarded a pony for her role in taking advantage of opportunity to prevent an absolute disaster. Then she said that she couldn’t have done it without the help of six of the community trainees and Silence is Golden. So would they come out on stage? That was our cue. The routine went off without a hitch.

The trainers came out from the left, marching in time to the music. I led the ponies out from the right, also right on the beat. I was dressed in the trainees uniform, and they were in their show harnesses. We went in front of the trainers. When we lined up perfectly, both the trainers and the ponies did a turn toward the audience in unison. Then the ponies did a knee on the next bar. The riders ran in right after, and sat in front of the ponies. The crowd gave us a standing ovation, it was that good.

Then the MC read off my award. I got my community membership for saving all the ponies in the cellblock, including the six community trainees. The MC read off the restrictions. I would have to finish the initial pony training sequence. And I would have to go through the community membership training program. I was also awarded half-breed status, so I could continue as a trainee part time.

The music came up, and we marched off, back the way we came. It was the most moving ceremony I had ever been in.

Bluebird got her community membership.

Epilog.

The last year has been wonderful. I’ve got an apartment in the executive residential block, near Leo’s, and I’ve also got a pony cell of my own on the first floor of Leo’s building. The board felt that they’d rather have me somewhere they can keep an eye on me. I think it’s a great idea, both politically and practically. I’d never be able to afford this on my own.

My pony cell is in Leo’s building. I started out using Bluebird’s old cell, until she decided to move back in. Between missing Rainbow, not having a skill set she could use to support herself, and having severe moral qualms about the community business, she told the Board that she would take a rain check, thank you. The board took her up on it.

Leo added two new cells. I’m using one; the other one is vacant for now. Joanne and Stephanie are still my trainer and rider. We’ve gotten more relaxed about schedules, but they are still as exacting as ever with Silence. And she loves it.

I fixed one of Leo’s problems. Thunder and Lightning hadn’t been working out. When the talking program got going, they found out why. They didn’t like Rainbow and Bluebird having privileges that they didn’t. Surprise, what? I suggested that they do talk time by putting the ponies in the same cell, on their stands but not gagged right after grooming. Let them yak at each other. Talk time would be over for the day whenever the trainers got them started on something. When Thunder and Lightning found out that Rainbow and Bluebird were actually old acquaintances of Leo’s, they settled down.

Silence got a minor award at the latest pony show. She’s getting to where she’s a credible show pony.

Stephanie acts as if she owns me. Silence certainly believes it. She also got this gleam in her eye after I called one of her acts a "dog and pony show". I have this sinking feeling. They are not called the lobo-ra for nothing.

The moral problem is still with us. The new programs are off to a good start. There are more ponies going to half-breed status. The talking program is now working well, although it had a somewhat rocky start. We figured out what had to be done to keep it in control. The younger ponies are going to keep their voices. The older ones are mostly a lost cause. I suspect that the brain areas have deteriorated beyond recovery from disuse.

The community membership program still stands at exactly two – Bluebird and me. And Bluebird, as I mentioned, dropped out. I can’t say I’m surprised. Societies change slowly, and the underlying feeling is that the next few candidates had better be outstanding. It brings the whole moral problem into focus.

I’ve got some ideas for fixing the acquisition program. We should be able to use the Internet. I think we can get by entirely with volunteers. We need about 600 a year as intake; the US produces over two million girls a year. Security will be the stumbling block.

I’ve discovered some interesting things I can do with my clairvoyance and telekinesis. I’ve even managed to make it work mechanically, although I need to build part of the equipment personally.

Life is good.