This work is copyright 2002 by Xaltatun of Acheron (A Pseudonym). It may be posted on the Internet to any free forum, provided it is not modified in any way, and provided that this notice is included in its entirety. It may not be sold, or included in any compilation that is sold, or posted on any forum that requires a fee for access, without my written permission. My permission will require payment, terms to be negotiated. For purposes of this notice, sites guarded by Adult Check or similar packages are considered pay sites. Posting on any site must include this copyright notice.
Story codes: (MF, FF, ponygirl, SF)
Adult Content Warning - this story contains adult themes, including non-consensual bondage/slavery. It could also prove highly disturbing if you think our current socio/political worldview is the only one that exists. If you are under the lawful age for such materials (18 in most jurisdictions) or if you would find such material offensive, please go elsewhere.
The name New Babylon has no relationship to any other use of the term by any other author. No connection should be assumed, either derivative or as a base for parody.
Safety Warning. This story may contain descriptions of practices that are decidedly unsafe, either in general, or if performed by someone without adequate training. There are a number of good books available on safety in the BDSM scene. Most large cities, and some not so large ones, have organized BDSM groups that will usually welcome a newcomer. I’m not going to point out which practices are safe, and which aren’t. Any practice is unsafe if performed by someone with inadequate training and experience, or if performed when not paying attention. Please think before you act. Don’t make yourself a candidate for a Darwin award.
OK - now on to the story -------
Yvonne slouched along the gray street, navigating between the stinking pile of vomit where some wino had deposited his bottle of Ripple, and a decrepit street person doing the unmentionable against the building wall, looking for anyone she could touch for a handout. Yvonne, at 6’ 1”, wasn’t bad looking, but she’d never been an outstanding looker either, and the last couple of months after her parents had financially flamed out and died in a spectacular murder / suicide, leaving her with nothing, had not improved her looks either. The expensive college her parents had installed her in had promptly expelled her before she could make any connections.
The proctors had made it very clear that they would not permit her to maintain any contact with their students. Their students were from the upper flakes of the upper crust; all she had was her father’s money, which wasn’t the same thing as being rich. As soon as it vanished, they made her vanish, much like a conjuring trick. She sometimes wondered if any of her fellow students even noticed her absence.
She was sure that Sally had. Sally had been her roommate. She was never quite certain how close they were. Sally helped her keep her head above water academically, and she did everything Sally didn’t particularly want to do. Which was all the housekeeping, laundry and so forth. She also kept Sally’s schedule, for which Sally had at least appeared to be genuinely grateful. Sally occasionally teased her that it was a pity that her family had all that money (which was very carefully distinguished from rich); she would do very well as a personal assistant.
However, by the time she managed to call, the phone had been disconnected without a forwarding number. She’d never had Sally’s home address or phone number. And the college switchboard blandly hung up on her as soon as the robot identified her voice. They really did want nothing more to do with her.
The same thing had happened when she tried to get in touch with home. All of her family’s phones had been disconnected, and she had been hustled out without being able to take her PDA, which she was totally lost without. She vaguely supposed that they had confiscated it because it might contain phone numbers of some of their precious students.
She had found out what had happened to her family from the newspapers. By the time she recovered emotionally from the shock, she found herself totally out of her depth in a genuine slum. She was trying to learn street smarts quickly enough to survive. So far, she’d managed it.
The slum was one of the districts where society’s rejects drank and drugged themselves to death, or were addicted by pimps and had their asses peddled on the street until they burned out and died from whatever was going around. She’d gradually found out where she could get handouts, and where she could get temporary jobs to pay the rent.
This was a street she had not explored before. As she made her cautious way among the hazards, she spotted a storefront with the simple title “Jobs” displayed on the window in peeling characters. She shrugged minutely. She knew that the jobs it offered, if it was still in business, were temporary one day affairs, if that, that paid well below minimum wage. In fact, they paid only what would keep the laborers alive for the next day, and that grudgingly. She looked through the grimy window, and raised her eyebrows slightly. The man was actually behind something resembling a desk, and it looked like there was real office equipment. The factors she was used to, here in the ass end of hell, usually came equipped with a clipboard and a possibly working pen. Besides, it was mid morning, and the usual run of job centers were done for the day hours before.
She pushed her way inside, noting idly that the door opened the wrong way for the fire codes, not that anyone cared about the condition of the buildings here. Once she was inside, she noticed another man sitting back on a chair, doing something with a real computer. Amazing!
“I take it you want a job?” the man behind the desk said, a ripple of amusement barely perceptible in his voice. Or maybe it was irony.
“Whatcha got?”
“Lots. Sit down and tell me what you can do.”
Something about his manner triggered her to tell her story, at least the edited version that she had to drop out of college for lack of funds. He nodded. It wasn’t exactly a new story. He leaned back and considered her.
“Well, the Hot Stuff, the Blazing Tits and the Steaming Stew are always looking for exotic dancers. You up for that?”
She shook her head.
“Probably a good call. You go to work there, and some pimp or other will hook you sure. Then you’ll be turning your earnings over to him, and letting him peddle your ass on the side until you burn out and die of whatever’s going around.”
“Got a question. Why don’t you just take whatever clothes you’ve still got, put them in a knapsack, and walk whatever direction you’re pointed until you get out of this cesspool?”
“What’s the use?” she shrugged. “At least here, I can sometimes get handouts. Out there, they’ll put you in jail for trying.”
“Girl, staying here is exactly that stupid, though. Well, if you don’t want to take a good piece of advice, then you don’t. What did you do for athletics in college? Any cheerleading?”
She shook her head. “Was never pretty enough for a cheerleader. Ran a lot. Golfed and caddied some.”
He cocked his head. “Get up and turn around so I can see you. I just might have something.”
She looked at him, startled. Then she stood and turned slowly, expecting him to take her apart with his eyes. To her surprise, he didn’t seem to be looking at her tits, ass or other assets. He looked at her more like her running coach did, a sexless machine that might earn him some credit for turning out an athletic star.
“Siddown. It pays 20 grand a year, five year contract. All expenses paid, nothing deducted from your salary. That’s after taxes, adjusted for inflation.”
“Who do I have to kill?” she asked, astonished.
“Nobody, probably. Ever hear of New Babylon?”
She shook her head doubtfully. “Rumors here and there. Sex trade. Some kind of classy whorehouse?”
“You could call it that. If you’re in the habit of calling a skyscraper an outhouse. It’s the sex business, of course, and they’re always looking for workers. The contract prohibits any of their clients from damaging you beyond a short stay in the hospital.”
She nodded almost unconsciously. She knew that if a pimp caught her and started peddling her ass around, she wouldn’t have even that guarantee. “Five years, and I come back in good condition with 100 Gs?”
“That’s the deal. I won’t guarantee it will be a bed of roses, but they do stick to their contracts. There are too many people after them for them to fudge that.”
She looked at him a moment. “Where do I sign?”
He turned to the console of the ancient PC on the desk, called up a form, and checked a few boxes. “ID,” he said, sticking his hand out without looking. She put her expired driver’s license in it without a word. He entered her name and license number, and then put it face down on a scanner. In a moment, the contract came out of the printer.
She looked through it quickly, picked up the pen he held out to her, and signed where it said. He scribbled his signature, and held it out to the other man, who added his.
“OK,” the second man said. “Let’s pick up your things. I’m Frank, by the way.” He walked out the back door without looking to see if she followed. She hesitated a moment, and then picked up her purse and walked through the door.
Frank stood by the passenger door of a non-descript sedan. She scooted in and gave him directions to the apartment hotel she was currently staying at. Apartment hotel. That was a laugh and a half. He double parked the car, and they piled out. The landlady hurried out to see who was ascending the stairs, and then followed them screeching about the overdue rent. Frank turned calmly.
“She’s moving out. How much does she owe?”
The landlady named a figure.
“For that price, I get the title and any strings you got on the tenants.”
She spat at him. He looked back calmly. She named a more reasonable figure. He pulled out a roll and pealed off a few bills. “Get lost. We weren’t here. Yvonne left this morning; you don’t know where she is. She didn’t come back, you sold her things.”
The landlady took his money and smiled, displaying a mouth full of broken teeth and bad breath that would do instead of mace.
Yvonne came out, hauling an overstuffed suitcase.
“That all?”
“That’s it. Nothing else there worth keeping.”
He jerked his head toward the door. They piled into the car, which had miraculously not collected a ticket, and he drove down the street. He drove for a while, until they found themselves in an abandoned warehouse district. Then he pressed a button on the dash.
Yvonne clutched the dashboard and bent over, face green. When she came to, the warehouses had vanished, replaced by a short blacktop road lined with a forest dominated by palms. She noticed that the road didn’t seem to go anywhere; it ended about a block in front of the car, and a block behind it.
“Get out.” Frank nodded toward the dull red building set in among the trees. “Go in there and hand them your contract.” She looked at him in confusion until he handed her a manilla folder.
The first thing she notice when she opened the car door was the sound of the jungle. Then she noticed the smell, or rather, the lack of smell. The omnipresent smog of the cities she had lived in all of her life was gone like it had never existed. She drew a deep breath, picked up her luggage, got out and closed the car door behind her.
Frank drove away as soon as the door slammed. Her eyes followed the car down the short strip of blacktop, until it suddenly vanished in an eye-twisting whirl that caused her stomach to convulse in sympathy.
“Well, are you going to stand there all day?” a voice said from behind her.
She spun around, startled.
The speaker was a young woman who was dressed in a short tunic, sandals and a snugly fitting golden collar, which said Karen 6 in contrasting black cursive letters. She smiled and said: “This way, please.” Yvonne followed her, fascinated by the glimpses of the collar that peeped around the sides of her long, honey blond hair. She also noticed that the girl had a very flowing, sexy walk, that gave the impression of being both totally unaffected and calculated to excite any male (or lesbian) in the line of sight.
The blond vision lead the way into the building, past a cross-corridor that looked like it faced a number of offices, to a large, open room. Yvonne looked around, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. After a moment, she managed to sort out the confusion of people and equipment into four identical sections. Each of the sections had a short pole in the center, with what looked like a backrest and foot rests. The rest of the section was made up of different kinds of equipment. One of the poles was occupied by a nude young woman who seemed to be propped against the backrest; her legs spread apart on the footrests. It looked like it should be uncomfortable, even though she was smiling as if she enjoyed the attention.
While Yvonne gaped at the sight, a tall man dressed in a lab coat picked her contract out of her hand, and her guide took possession of her suitcase and purse.
“When you’re done lollygagging, disrobe and get up on that stand,” he told her as if the command was the most natural thing in the world.
She looked at him like he was insane.
“Do it,” he snapped. “I haven’t got all day.”
She took another look at the girl on the other pole, and then bent over to pull her shirt over her head. In a moment, she had discarded her pants, bra and panties, and padded over to the pole, stark naked except for the blush of embarrassment that suffused her skin. She looked at the pole, and then put her feet on the red footrests. Her guide came up behind her, and adjusted the backrest so that it nestled in the small of her back. Then the pole rose slowly, and the footrests separated, taking her feet with them. The man in the lab coat looked at a device in his hand, looked up, and looked at it again. Then he wrote something in the air above the device. Meanwhile, the footrests kept getting farther and farther apart, until Yvonne felt like she was ready to split apart. The man nodded at something only he could see, made a gesture, and the footrests stopped, and then came back together until her legs were spread at an exact right angle.
She heard a rustle of paper behind her. The man called out: “Anything different about the contract?”
“Not really. Standard five-year street sweepings, with the usual FTPG, LTPG and PEO clauses.”
“Those are usual for a gutter contract?”
“It is when its from recruiter 64.”
The lab technician chuckled. “He does like the ponies.”
He turned to Yvonne. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Yvonne Smitt, sir.” The honorific just seemed to pop out.
He looked at the almost featureless mechanism he held in his hand for a moment. “Forget the last name. You’re Yvonne 8.”
“I’m what?”
“Yvonne 8. Residents have last names. Slaves only have one name, and a number that lets us tell them apart. Consider yourself lucky. When we started, we gave all the slaves different names, but they found it too confusing. Now we mostly let them keep them.”
As the technician talked to Yvonne, his beautiful assistant entered the details of the contract into the system. Its uncaring program digested them, and then started a detailed body and genetic scan of the new slave. After a while, the program moved from data collection to analysis, and then began laying in a standard program of genetic modifications. All slaves got these changes. One protected them from the sun without changing their skin tone, another fixed most of the simpler genetic diseases. A third made a carefully chosen set of improvements to stamina and sexual functioning. A final series of changes conferred immunity to the most prevalent illnesses, and also made her proof against being addicted to most recreational drugs – although she could still enjoy the effects if she had the opportunity.
None of the changes were noticeable from the outside, although an up-time gene scan would identify her as a different person than the one who was on record with the more advanced governments. New Babylon didn’t care about that. They left most of the changes installed when the indenture expired and the former slave returned. One of the quiet agreements between New Babylon and the various governments was that they would update their records.
The blonde walked up with a tape measure, and wrapped it around Yvonne’s throat while this conversation was going on. Then she walked back to one of the pieces of equipment, and entered a number. She picked up two semi-circles off the wall behind Yvonne, and came back.
“Hold still, dear.” The man held Yvonne’s hair out of the way while the girl pressed the two semicircles around Yvonne’s neck, and twisted a latch that held them together. Then she picked up a large syringe and proceeded to inject the contents into the metal band that enclosed the new slave’s throat.
“In case you’re wondering,” the man said, “we actually mold your slave collar around your neck. Once it sets, it will need power tools to take it off. It does a number of things beside identify you. It’s got a little device that lets us know where you are at all times. It’s also got a lie detector, and various things that will facilitate training.”
“Don’t try to escape. You won’t succeed, and the managers are very … creative in their punishments.” The way he emphasized the word ‘creative’ stirred a primitive fear in her belly.
He turned his head to his assistant. “Warm her up.”
The blonde dropped to her knees in front of the girl straddling the pole, and started teasing her slit with her tongue. Above her, the new slave looked shocked, and then drew in her breath as the sensations spread. She felt herself getting wet. The blonde hummed slightly as she got into her work, and the new slave’s skin flushed, and glistened with sweat. She started panting faster and faster, and then shook in the throes of an orgasm. The watching man caught her before she fell off of her perch.
He looked at his readout. “Not bad. Stone cold to orgasm in two minutes. How did she taste?”
The blonde wrinkled her nose. “I’ve tasted worse.”
“Well, she hasn’t been eating right.”
“That’ll do it. Feed her right for a month, and she might be worth eating.”
“Minx! Let’s see how long she can hold out.”
The blonde made a face, and then thrust her head into the subject’s crotch and began lightly teasing. Eventually, the girl above her shook in orgasm again.
“Fifteen minutes,” the man said. “Not bad. She’s responding very well to oblique commands.”
Yvonne came out of her daze long enough to mutter “huh?”
“I didn’t tell you to hold out, dear. In fact, I wasn’t talking directly to you at all. You picked up on my comment, and did your part nicely. Sometimes that’s a good thing in a slave, and sometimes it’s not. We’ll see whether you can make the distinction in a little while.” He patted her cheek lightly, and then walked away as the blonde brought out a basin of soapy water, a sponge and a towel, and proceeded to clean the sweat-soaked girl on the stand.
The examiner then began asking her questions and giving her things to think about. It put Yvonne in mind of psychological testing, although she couldn’t make anything out what he was doing. In fact, the procedure was intended to be deliberately confusing; it was no part of New Babylon’s program that their slaves knew what the collars were capable of. As the examiner droned on, the newly installed collar sampled her brain activity until it associated the various activation patterns that it’s target used to accomplish her thinking. Toward the end, it began interfering with those patterns, deliberately shifting her thinking. It left Yvonne totally confused.
Then the examiner put Yvonne 8 through a series of stretching exercises, ending with her arms bound crosswise behind her, hands on opposite elbows. He massaged her shoulders, checking some kind of readout all the while.
Eventually, he seemed to wind down. “It’s done,” he announced suddenly. “Take it off.”
The blonde took a tool and pried the metal cover off of the band encircling the poor girl’s neck, revealing a light gray circlet, with “Yvonne 8” boldly scripted on the front.
“Do you know what a ponygirl is?” the examiner asked suddenly.
“Uh, no.”
“You’ve lived a sheltered life,” he said with mild amusement. “A ponygirl is a girl that’s been trained to act like a horse. She’s ridden, she pulls things, she lives in a stable or a meadow, and she whinnies and snorts instead of talks. Your contract specifies long term ponygirl bondage. You did read it, didn’t you?”
She shook her head, wide eyed.
“Well, you signed it. That recruiter always puts long-term ponygirl bondage in the contract if the recruit doesn’t check. He does like his ponies, and he gets a better commission. Our clients like ponygirls, and we never have enough of them. Or enough good ones, anyway.”
“Take her to the conditioning ring.”
His assistant snapped a leash to the ring on the front of Yvonne 8’s collar as the two leg supports came back together. She tugged lightly, and Yvonne 8 followed her out the back door.
The area in back of the building held three circular sawdust covered arenas below an open wooden canopy. Each of the arenas had a pole in the center, with two booms sticking out horizontally, each with a counterweight to balance it. One of the booms was about six feet off the floor; the other was about four feet high. A number of other vertical poles held various leather and metal accessories.
Karen 6 led her charge to the arena on the left, and looped the leash around a ring set in one of the poles. “Don’t worry, little one. We’re going to test your stamina next. Here’s your harness.” She selected a black leather waist cincher from one of the poles, and held it in front of the tethered slave. Then she wrapped it around Yvonne 8’s waist, drawing the buckles tight enough to keep it from falling off. Next, she ran the leather laces through the bottom eyelets, and, taking an odd looking tool from the post, applied it to the bottom of the corset. The tool set to work with a low buzz, pulling the cords through the eyelets all the way up the back, leaving them snug, but not tight. Karen took another tool, and ran it up the corset several times. Each time, it tightened the laces a bit more, until the girl was forced to breathe into her chest to get enough air.
“I’m glad they invented these tighteners. Pulling the laces by hand is such a drag.” She turned back to one of the posts and selected an assemblage of straps. “Here is your bridle. See? It goes on like this.” Then she fit the leather around Yvonne’s head, tightening the buckles until it was snug enough to be immobile.
“See? All comfy.” All Yvonne could do was nod. Karen took up a brush, and brought the tangle of hair to the top and back of the girl’s head, and then fastened it with a gaily decorated band.
She then looked over the bits arrayed on the pillar. “See,” she said, holding it out in front of Yvonne. “Size 8; you’ve got a bigger mouth, it needs a big bit.” Yvonne’s eyes bugged out as she looked at it.
“Please…” she whimpered.
“Please what?” asked Karen.
“Why are you doing this to me. I thought I was going to be a sex slave.”
“Well, your contract specifies FTPG and LTPG, you know. It’s kind of late to decide you don’t want that.”
“What do those mean? I never heard of them?”
Karen shrugged. “It’s in the contract you signed; if you didn’t read it, that’s your problem. FTPG means full time pony girl; you get to be a horse all day, every day for some time. All female slaves do a stint as pony girls, we can’t write it out of the contract. Mostly it’s for three months, although it could be longer if a guest likes you or you’re part of an act.”
“On the other hand. LTPG is long term pony girl. That lets us keep you as a pony girl for the full length of your contract. You’ll probably like it, once the genetic modifications kick in. Most of the real ponygirls seem to be quite happy.”
Yvonne looked at the bit again. “What was that other set of letters? PEO?”
“Permanent Enslavement Option? At the end of your contract, it lets us convert your contract to permanent without asking for your consent.”
Yvonne’s eyes bugged out even more. “Permanent?”
“Oh, don’t worry so about it. We have to let most of our contractees go, or people uptime would get very upset at us.”
Yvonne opened her mouth to say something else, and Karen adroitly stuffed the bit into it before she could get a word out. A couple of quick flicks of her fingers attached it to the bridle rings on each side of the girl’s mouth.
“There, that isn’t so bad,” she said brightly as Yvonne grunted around the intruder in her mouth. “Let’s get you harnessed.” She picked up a pair of long, thin leather straps and snapped them to the curved metal pieces that came down from the sides of the bit. Then she unsnapped the leash and pulled the girl after her by the reins, which she held close to the bit. In a moment, Yvonne found her reins attached to the end of the higher of the two bars. Karen walked behind her, and attached a pair of thick leather straps between her corset and the lower of the two bars; she was now between them.
Karen 6 opened a control box on one of the pillars and pushed a button. A set of low barriers rose from the ground. Then she pushed another button, and the boom with the reins began to move forward. Yvonne was forced to move with it, picking her feet up to avoid the barriers. As she moved, the other boom moved behind her. Yvonne watched for a while, and twisted a control, moving the barriers up and down, and watching how high the ponygirl brought her legs. When she was satisfied, she closed the control box with a snap. She watched Yvonne walk around the circle for a few minutes, and then turned and walked back inside.
The monitors in Yvonne’s collar sent in their data on her heart rate, blood sugar, lactic acid level and a dozen other measurements. The computer that controlled the post and the rotating boom decided to move to the next level, and put a brake on the trailing boom. The straps connecting Yvonne to it grew taut, and she almost stopped until her reins jerked her ahead. She pushed harder, and the boom came along. Her world narrowed to following the reins in front of her, and drawing enough air into her upper chest to function. When she started to flag, a thin whip flicked out of a box on the end of the following boom, and cut at her ass and thighs, leaving a thin red weal behind. The load she was pulling changed occasionally, and the speed that the reins pulled her changed. The boom moved her in and out to test her natural stride.
She never noticed when her overloaded bladder simply gave up, and she let go while she was moving. The monitor inside blinked red for a moment, and the technician looking at it smiled. The ponygirl’s pace never varied.
The computer that was monitoring her noticed that she had passed the basic strength and stamina requirements for ponygirls. It chuckled to itself, and began to lay in more modifications. These were longer term changes; Yvonne 8 would notice some of them in a few days, others would take longer to become obvious. Her hair would grow into a coat of short horsehair and a mane, her neck and lower back would reshape themselves slightly, she would grow a tail, and her feet would transform themselves into hooves.
Yvonne 8 never knew that she had passed a test; in fact, no one bothered to ask her if she thought passing it was good or bad. She was now officially a ponygirl.
After another hour, the machine finally thought she had had enough. It gradually slowed her down, and let the barriers sink back into the ground. The drag on her harness let up. She never noticed the lack of barriers, and kept bringing her knees up to her waist as her speed slowed to a walk. It led her around another ten times, as she cooled down. Finally it stopped, and she stopped before it, reins drooping, eyes glazed with fatigue, feet spread slightly in a waiting stance since her reins didn’t have enough slack to allow her to fall to the ground.
As the minutes passed, she gradually recovered from the stress test. She straightened up and began taking an interest in her surroundings. The forest beyond the canopy was a riot of different colors, lots of green, but flashes of red, yellow, blue and other shades. After a while, she noticed something. There were huge numbers of birds of all kinds, some flying, some walking. Everything seemed decorated with flowers. However, she had not seen any animals. Nothing with fur. It looked tropical, but there were no monkeys. Curious, she began looking closer, trying to spot something as elusive as a squirrel or a mouse. Still nothing. It was quite strange.
It didn’t occur to her to notice something else that was very strange. None of the insects took the least interest in her. If she had noticed, she would have been puzzled, since there was no obvious reason it should happen. The reason, however, was very close to her, in fact, it had just been molded around her neck. One of the functions of the equipment in the collar was to keep insects and other small vermin away from the neck it encircled. Of course, it didn’t stop at the neck; it took the rest of her body just as seriously.
What adventures await our novice ponygirl as she wonders about the future she’s high stepping toward? See the next exciting episode of “Read What You Sign” coming to a server near you!