EPILOGUE 2
It was 32 years after Lita married James. James had marvelled over the years, as he had gradually aged, at how his wife barely seemed a day older than when he had first met her. Lita had carefully started to draw her modelling career to a close. In spite of her well known and continuous use of Botox, it was starting to look obvious that she was not a normal girl and that, even if she had had plastic surgery, it was just not possible to still look 20 at the age of 54.
The world was a different place but, in many ways, it had barely changed at all. The Waverley Group had become famous for offering expensive transplant host bodies by this point; but they had restricted the technology, citing safety and procedural difficulties in scaling up the process. It had never reached the mass-market stage. Body transference was the preserve of the wealthy. A select few would swap into a new body so that they could live as a new person and escape death, at least for a while.
What the Waverley Group had concentrated on, was to use the data that they had acquired from Lita's cohort of experimental slaves, to perfect the interface between computers, human behaviour and organic human forms. They had spent the next two decades developing lifelike humanoid artificial persons that could be used to do jobs that normal humans found unpalatable, or jobs where they could perform better. Once they had shown their effectiveness, Waverley Systems artificial people started to take on the work of soldiers, surgeons, miners and spacemen. They also developed artificial humans for pleasure and companionship.
The Waverley Group maintained careful control over their technology, never allowing it to be deployed in quantities where it became less valuable. They also kept their technology secret. This ensured that the Waverley Group became enormously wealthy.
Lita didn't actively follow such things, being more concerned with whether her husband would still be fit and able to fuck her twice a day. She wondered whether she should start persuading him to consider applying to the Waverley Institute to transfer himself into a younger man's body, so that they could continue to be together for more years to come.
Lita was just returning from a shopping trip with Anita, one of her close friends. On the way home, they had stopped together at a new hair salon which Anita had booked them into as a last-minute surprise.
Lita loved what they had done for her. The front of her airy platinum blonde hair was stylishly side-parted, whilst the rest of it was pulled to the top of her head where it was lifted upwards and to one side before it spilled backwards as a thick cascade of widely curled ringlets; a few of which had been streaked with pink. It was a glamourous hairdo that she had not planned on getting but was excited to get home and put it to good use.
She admired her hair again in the mirror just inside the back door as soon as she arrived home. She had slipped in through her back staircase so that she could immediately change into one of the swimsuits that she had bought that day. The evening sun was still out and she was sure that James would love to see her in the practically backless light-blue costume, with her new hair, whilst they spent the evening down at the pool together. She set her bags down and was just going to go into one of her shoe wardrobes to get a pair of strappy silver stilettoes to pair with the swimwear, when she noticed a woman standing quietly, looking out of the window.
She felt strange, it was unusual for Lydia to compel her to do anything these days, but she felt herself pulled over towards this woman and then arranged in a smart standing position with her feet together and her arms at her sides, looking straight ahead at her.
The woman turned to face her. Lita had to think for a few seconds, her face looked so familiar. Finally, the woman spoke,
"Hello Lita, it's been a long time."
Lita stared at her some more. Who was she? She looked so familiar, and yet she just couldn't place her. She was young, in her early thirties, had straight dark hair and was tall and pretty. She was wearing a loose black trouser suit, small hoop earrings and flat black pumps.
"Why don't you come along with me dear?"
She started walking off towards the door that Lita had just come in from. Like the first day of her awakening, all those years ago, Lita found herself compulsively following her, unable to have any say in what was now happening.
"Soothe 10%."
Lita hadn't been soothed for years. The concern at this was immediately negated by the wave of calm that followed.
They walked out the back stairs and down to the driveway where a car was waiting. It wasn't Lita's white limousine but a less conspicuous road car. There was a large man, who had the body of a professional rugby player, lifting several cases into the boot of the car. The woman held the rear door open and Lita felt powerless to stop herself from stepping inside and taking a seat.
The boot slammed and the man took his seat in the front of the car, strapping himself in and then activating the electric vehicle. The other woman took the seat next to Lita in the back, closed her door and the car started moving.
"Perhaps you don't recognise me in this new frame, slave A56?"
The answer suddenly snapped into Lita's mind.
"But...well...I mean...well, you look very nice Professor!" Lita said. She was starting to feel frightened in a way that she had not felt for a long time. She had been comfortable and in a loving relationship with James for decades now, with little drama in her life, as long as she was sure to keep her master happy; which she had become superbly talented at.
The professor smiled thinly.
"I transferred into this, an X505 model, oh, about twenty years ago now. There's actually a bit of a story to it, which I'll tell you as we have a little time together in the car."
Lita nodded politely but then felt Lydia pull her down into her seat so that she sat in her disciplined position, with her knees together, her hands in her lap, her head high and her breasts up.
"You see, Charles, Waverley that is, was growing old. He knew that he had to transfer into a new frame himself before too long if he wanted to live much longer. But Charles was not only incredibly wealthy but was also very suspicious. He didn't want there to be any risk of anyone interfering with his mind when his brain was being prepared for his transference to a new body. So he made me do it first. He fitted me with all the same interfaces and control devices that we implanted into you. His plan was that, once I was completely obedient, then he could make me perform his own transference and would be able to trust that I would not interfere with him."
"I spent almost a year as his obedient sexy secretary whilst he plucked up enough courage to move into a new body himself. So I know exactly how it feels to be a man's slave, A56."
She smiled thinly but was otherwise icy as she shared this incredible revelation with Lita.
"Bear with me dear, there is a point to all of this. Anyway, it was Charles who originally bought you for your husband James. He was very fond of his nephew and knew that he fancied himself as a bit of a playboy; but most of all, it was important to Charles, for family inheritance reasons, that James never have an heir. And why would a man ever need to fuck around with a fertile woman if he had the incredible Lita Millen for a wife? Hmmm? Charles even chose your name for you, he remembered James had a girl pinned on his bedroom wall when he was a teenager who was called Lita."
That wasn't how Lita remembered it, she had chosen her own name from a list! Had that been a lie as well?! She thought that by now she was resigned to accepting that her mind had been so heavily fucked with, that she had no idea what was real any more. Nonetheless, she started to get upset; her name was about the only thing which she thought she had chosen for herself and it felt very personal to her. Then she started to feel angry, had they been manipulating her beloved James??
"Anyway, when it was time for me to perform Charles's transference to his new body, I activated the back door which I had built into every Waverley Slave System which freed me and gave me complete control over all my implants. You'd be amazed at the power you can have once you gain control over it all."
