Overlord

On one cold, April day, Winston found a note on his desk when he came back from lunch break. The text was face down, and written in words too small and messy for the security cameras to read. It said, "I love you."

He stared at the note and thought carefully.

Who could this possibly be from?

Going through his memories of the day, he thought he recalled seeing that young woman from Tech Support outside his cubicle, but he had hardly exchanged a dozen words with her. Could this be a prank by one of his supervisors? Much worse, could it be a test? He decided the safest idea was to toss it in the shredder; it was very likely something that could get him in trouble, and the Disciplinarians - not all of whom wore uniforms - were as numerous in the office complex as they were on the streets. He thought of what could happen to him if he were caught doing anything that even

looked

out of order, and his buttocks clenched. He dropped it into the wastepaper slot and did his best not to think about it for the rest of the day.

Winston was still trying not to think about it when he logged his work hours and walked home that afternoon. The freshly build City-71 was as crisp and smooth as the April wind, and as chilling. Three months ago, Winston had been a moderately happy denizen of London, England. He was pretty sure City-71 was somewhere on the European continent, but he had no more specific idea than that. Like every other citizen, he had been unconscious when he was brought here. The words "I love you" surged back into his mind. The person who wrote those words, if it was a real person at all...he wondered where he or she had been brought from, and how much better or worse the new order had treated them.

The wind picked up, and Winston started walking faster, letting the cold invigorate his lungs and muscles. That was one good thing, at least; he didn't tire nearly as easily as he used to. Three months ago, after Winston was put under sedation in London and woke up in his new apartment in City-71, he had immediately felt lighter and stronger, and his first look in the mirror looked more like his college graduation photos than anything more recent. A slightly shorter than average, but stocky, man of Caribbean descent, with a smoothly sculpted face, hard, streamlined muscles, and rich brown-black skin from which his bright eyes peered like reflective pools. Winston looked at least twenty years younger and thirty pounds lighter than he knew he should. Once he had gotten over the sense of violation, he had reluctantly gained a grudging appreciation for Overlord's changes to his body; at least it meant he could hurry home on chilly days like this one without exhausting himself.

Upon rounding the corner by the city park, he saw the woman from Tech Support walking ahead of him.

Funny. I've never seen her outside of work before

. She was walking ahead of him, about thirty meters away, which allowed him to observe without being seen. She was very short and thin, and wore one of those skintight, short-skirted black dresses that seemed the norm in City-71. As they always did, the dress called Winston's attention away from her short, glossy black head of hair where it belonged and down to the second biggest part of her body. Under the skirt, her petite hips carried a perfectly round little bottom that twitched and bounced up and down under the short skirt. It wasn't very wide, but it pushed the skirt out behind her in a nearly perfect ball. The sight sent a certain frustration through Winston, the feeling of being a child in a candy store with no allowance that was inherent in City-71. The girl stopped and looked up at a small, budding tree whose branches hung over the sidewalk, giving Winston a look at her profile. A dainty, Chinese face, round and girlish, her skin just starting to lose its yellow tan color in the weaker sunlight of her new home. She was either wearing lipstick (damn Overlord for not making cosmetics illegal along with sex!), or had naturally red and lustrous lips. A perfect East Asian beauty, if a little on the small side. Her eyes were hard to see from this angle, but Winston was pretty sure he remembered the sharp green, intelligent things as they darted around from behind the Tech Support desk.

She looked back ahead of herself and kept walking. Winston did the same, slowly gaining on her without being too conspicuous.

Should I try to start up a conversation?

If she wasn't the one who left the note, he could probably find that out quickly and pass the conversation off as merely friendly. If the note had been hers, though, there was a very real possibility that she was an undercover Disciplinarian. He thought the possible futures through. If she

was

a Disciplinarian, he could still act curious about the note without making it seem like he was interested in her. Hopefully, in this case, she would be levelheaded enough to understand his asexual curiosity, and let him off with a pat on the head (or, at most, a slap on the wrist). If, on the other hand, she was genuine, coming across as too eager might make her think that

he

was an undercover Disciplinarian. Casual friendliness was the way to go.

"Hello," Winston said, his Anglicized Jamaican accent breaking the silence as he came up, at a naturally faster pace, beside her, "I think we work together."

She turned her head and looked up at him, green irises cutting straight into his own. "Oh, yes," she said, her small, red mouth forming a nervous smile, "I see you when I pass the Analysis department. Hi."

Her sharp eyes darted left and right, even as the smile remained in place. Winston knew he was involuntarily looking around as well. The young woman had some accent he didn't recognize, which intrigued him.

"I haven't seen you go this way before," he said, still with carefully affected friendliness, "just exploring?"

That was a stupid question, of course. No one went "just exploring" in the late afternoon, for fear of wandering too far from home and not being able to make it back before curfew. This had led to Winston's first encounter with the Disciplinarians, and was a mistake he hadn't repeated.

"Oh, no," she said, a bit more nervously, looking away from him in a manner that wasn't as subtle as she probably thought, "I was just...um...my section's grocery store was out of milk, and I was looking for the closest one."

Winston wasn't sure he believed that. He had known the stores to run out of veal or olive oil, but milk was produced in such abundance that he had never seen it run close to dry. He supposed that her section might have had a higher demand for milk, or that some rare and probably punishable-by-law event had stopped a train from running on time, but her story still sounded kind of fishy. He grew a little more cautious.

"My name is Julia," she said after a moment, offering him a dainty hand.

"Winston," he said, taking it and giving a firm shake before returning his hand carefully to his side.

"Right," Julia said, "I remember your name from the Support logs."

He wished he could ask her about that funny accent - not quite Chinese, Southeast Asian, or British - but one's life in the Old World was not something that should be discussed. At least, not in the open.

"Well," he said after taking a second to plan his next words, "your GPS seems to be broken. The grocery store is that way." He pointed.

"Oh," she said, looking flustered, "thank you."

"Here," he said, casting one last look around the street before gesturing to the crosswalk, "let me walk you there. It's not far out of my way."

They walked in silence through the April chill. The words "I love you" ran through Winston's mind as he observed his pretty co-worker. Julia's body language was tense, like she was expecting something or waiting for something. Winston let his mind wander as they approached the grocery store. There was a dark, seemingly purposeless little alley that ran behind the shop. Winston felt his face burn at the sight of it, as he remembered. A month into his new life in the new world, he had managed to flirt one of his female neighbors into that alley, where they had enjoyed each other's companies until getting caught by-

"Hold it, toots!" the Texas-accented voice of Disciplinarian O'Brien shattered the windy silence. "That's right, come over here!"

Winston and Julia both looked up. A man and a woman, both in dark blue Disciplinarian uniforms, were standing in front of the shop's entrance, muscular-inhibition pistols raised. Frozen in the doorway was a girl who looked around twenty, whose eyes had just gone as wide as saucers. The uniformed woman whose badge read "O'Brien" beckoned with her pistol, motioning for the girl to approach.

Julia looked up at Winston, her face apprehensive. "Do you know that girl?" she whispered.

Winston nodded his head. "I've met her a few times. She's named Maria something."

Maria with the unknown last name gave a silent whimper and put down her standard-issue shopping bag before tiptoing up to the Disciplinarians. She had a very broad, flat face, with an olive complexion that suggested a Latin American ancestry. She wasn't conventionally beautiful, but there was an appealing innocence to her wide, open features, a kind of cuteness that made one want to just squeeze or cuddle her. Her body was big boned, well fleshed, and incredibly voluptuous; breasts that strained her vest like a pair of water balloons stuffed into a purse; hips that would fit better on a much larger skeleton. Trembling, she forced herself to make eye contact with O'Brien and said, "Y-yes, Ma'am?"

O'Brien turned to her male counterpart. "Do we have a photo match? She looks like the one, but what's the computer say?"

The man consulted a handheld machine before looking back up with a smug smile. "Match confirmed."

The girl looked, panicked, between both their smirking faces. "I didn't do nuthin'!" she insisted. "I ain't done nothing wrong!"

"Except violate curfew two nights ago," O'Brien said. The Latina girl's innocent face fell.

At his side, Winston felt Julia retreat to a safe distance. Realizing he should do the same, he backed up along with her, keeping his eyes on the scene. Disciplinarian Laura O'Brien was a tanned, muscular blonde with the body of a hardened cowgirl and the soft, Texas accent to match. The male Disciplinarian was new to Winston; a tall, dark man with crystalline features and a badge that read "Charrington." For an instant, Maria's eyes met Winston's and pleaded with him to do something. Winston looked down and took another step away.

Maria tried to run for it. They often did. It rarely worked. Disciplinarian Charrington fired his pistol, and - with a mechanical hum - Maria's legs turned to jelly. The poor girl grabbed the wall of the shop to stop herself from collapsing on the pavement, her muscles barely working. According to the posters, the pistols reduced their target's muscular strength by 75% and took fifteen minutes to wear off, depending on the size and constitution of the target. Maria was a heavy girl, but she wasn't a tall one, and the weapon's disruptive pulse didn't have to spread far to knock out her strength.

"Resisting arrest," Disciplinarian Charrington said as he replaced the pistol in the leather belt that was part of his uniform, "you've clearly not got your own best interests at heart."

"Your heart is the last part of your body you should be worried about," chuckled O'Brien as she advanced on the paralyzed girl and grabbed her by the shoulder, "but I'll bet you know what is."

To accentuate her point, she reached down and gave Maria's bottom a possessive slap. The girl cringed. Despite himself, Winston felt his eyes widening. Maria probably had the proportionately largest bottom he had ever seen on a woman; her hips were almost absurdly wide, and her pleasant chubbiness was much more concentrated behind them. It was fat, but just springy enough to not sag, though her jeans were probably also helping there. O'Brien withdrew her hand from Maria's giant buns and used both arms to pull the babbling, begging girl to the nearest bench.

"Now, let's see," the blonde officer said cruelly as she sat down and pulled her victim over her lap, "one count of curfew violation is fifty points. Two counts of resisting arrest are worth a total of three hundred. Lying to a disciplinarian is another one hundred." She rested her hands languidly on Maria's back as the girl whimpered and weakly tried to move her limbs. "What's that come to, Mr. Charrington?"

"Four hundred and fifty points, Ms. O'Brien," Charrington said with a satisfied tone. He was standing before the bench on which the two women sat, eagerly watching O'Brien's hands as they drifted toward Maria's corpulent seat.

Winston felt himself instinctively move closer to Julia, and had to stop himself from touching her. The last thing these Disciplinarians needed to see right now was two more "criminals." Across the street, a pair of women stopped and timidly watched. Several other faces appeared in the shop windows. Winston knew what the poor girl was feeling. How she wished she could black out and wake up the next day, or at least that everyone would stop watching and try to avoid worsening her humiliation. But no one had looked away when it was Winston over O'Brien's knee. No one had looked away when it was Sergei a week ago. And Winston couldn't look away from Maria right now, as O'Brien's practiced hands undid the clasps of her jeans and worked their hem over her enormous rump.

"Four hundred and fifty points," she drawled cheerfully. "How about two hundred by hand, one hundred and fifty with the paddle, and a hundred left over so we can have some extra fun next time you're a naughty girl?"

Maria shivered in cold and terror as the older, stronger woman managed to get her pants down to her pudgy thighs, exposing two mountains of goosebumpy flesh in a pair of pink panties. "I...okay. Is there any way you could just gimme fifty now, and I'll come into court for the rest?"

Charrington shook his head and laughed. O'Brien looked quietly amused. "Not a chance, honeybuns. And that's fifteen points for disrespecting an officer. You call me

ma'am

, got it?"

The girl moaned in broken despair. Charrington looked immensely satisfied as he punched this latest charge into his wrist-computer. Winston's mind raced. Unless they changed the formula, this poor girl was in for two hundred merciless slaps and thirty paddle licks. Unless, of course...

"And I think," O'Brien narrated once she had accepted her victim's apology, "that you'll be taking it bare-tail." With that, she hooked her fingers under Maria's panties and practically tore them down to her pants, making her tremendous bottom cheeks jiggle and wobble back up. The girl's buttocks shivered and dimpled up in the cool wind, their immense surfaces pointed at Winston and Julia, obscuring their view of the rest of Maria's body. All Winston could see was Disciplinarian O'Brien, a pair of female legs, and a helpless, naked bottom.

Maria's throaty, high-pitched cries started as soon as the spanking did, as O'Brien lost no time in driving her strong arm into the girl's naked buns as hard and as fast as she could. Sharp, fleshy

cracks

echoed across the street, red handprints piling atop one another as the Disciplinarian tried to spank as much of the girl's generous ass as she possibly could. Maria kicked and waved her arms, but even spurred by pain her 25% functional muscles were unable to so much as inconvenience the officer. Winston felt her pain, winced at the sight of her red and angry flesh, as he counted the frenzied smacks that were being laid into Maria's sensitive cheeks.

Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three

, only one third of the way done, and O'Brien had already turned her ass a light pink from crown to crease. And she wasn't slowing down even remotely.

Winston could hear Julia's breath getting louder beside him as the ninetieth smack turned a spot on her lower buttock a true, brilliant red. He didn't know what was going through Julia's head as she watched with him, but he was sure it wasn't as shameful as his own reactions. The front of his slacks was getting tight and uncomfortable, the sexual frustration that was endemic to City-71 being caught by the merciless spanking and funneled in through Winston's eyes and ears. He was terrible, he knew it. Everyone would hate him if they knew. He tried, really tried, to think about something less arousing, but Maria's mistreated buns danced and reddened in his mind's eye no matter where he fled.

"That's one big booty," O'Brien chortled as she withdrew her hand, having delivered the hundredth and final stroke. "Good thing we aren't done just yet, or I couldn't color all of it."

"That really should be taken into account," Charrington said, a little breathlessly, as his partner unhooked her synthetic paddle and cracked her knuckles, "I'm positive more padding back there means they feel it less."

Maria, who was softly crying by now, shook her ruffled head in disagreement.

"You couldn't get more agreement from me," O'Brien nodded at him, "but I guess a perfect world would be a boring world." She finished flexing her wrist and picked up the paddle, its long, shining black blade gleaming in the weak sunlight. Winston was almost positive that the Disciplinarians were given some sort of drug or genetic treatment that stopped their arms from tiring; he had never seen one slow down before the end of a punishment unless he or she wanted to. Maria's buns were already a mess of pink and red handprints, but O'Brien showed no sign of compassion as she raised the acryllic spanker...

Julia looked away, as did some of the other, more strong-minded or virtuous onlookers. Winston cursed himself as a lecher as his eyes stayed level. The first paddle crack sent Maria's bottom splashing and jiggling around it and left a bright white rectangle that quickly turned crimson atop the pile of handprints. The second did the same a little higher, the long blade managing to bite both cheeks. Fifteen slow, hard, bare-bottomed paddle licks were given, each exploding like a loud firecracker and provoking a scream from Maria. Winston's eyes were bulging. Whoever wrote the "I love you" note, assuming they meant it, obviously didn't know him well enough. He was still hardly blinking when Charrington helped pull Maria's shuddering, sobbing body off O'Brien's lap, letting the blonde put her paddle away and stand up.

"I need to start making the chubby ones touch their toes," O'Brien said as she massaged her thighs, "my legs almost fell asleep."

Maria sobbed even louder, more humiliation being added to her pain. Winston redeemed himself by feeling some outrage for the girl. It wasn't like she was really

fat.

Winston then realized that this was the single, pettiest thing he could be outraged over, and hated himself all over again.

"Your identity's confirmed as Maria Saldana," O'Brien said with professional cheer. "This will be added to your disciplinary history, with my partner's video footage. Any questions, toots?"

Maria was too busy getting her tears under control to answer. O'Brien grinned. Just as Winston was thanking whatever apathetic god there was in this universe that it was over, Charrington reached out and stopped Maria from pulling up her panties.

"Not so fast," said the tall, angular man, "there are one hundred points outstanding on your record, authorized by Corporal O'Brian on Monday, April fifth, at 17:36 hours."

Maria looked up at him, tear-stained, bang-ridden face twisted in horror. O'Brien rolled her eyes at her partner. "Those are the ones I just gave her."

"Yes," said Charrington with barely repressed glee, "but as an officer at the scene of the crime, it is within my discretion to activate the suspect's remaining points for a period of up to fifteen minutes."