The Cost of My Dreams

The Cost of My Dreams Ch. 01 - Induction

By LoyalHound

All characters are fictitious and are adults.

I haven't given up on "The Kingdom of God's Grace" but I am taking a break from it. The story below is set in the 34th Amendment universe of Joe Doe et. al. To summarize for those not familiar with it, this is a world of non-hereditary slavery where slave indentures usually have time limits and other restrictions to protect the slave. Further, slave grading of eighteen-year-old adults is commonly required as security for credit cards and loans, especially student loans. Young women in particular are often targeted to be tricked and trapped into slavery, though there's a market for highly rated young men as well.

The package of papers was thick and included an indenture contract, a proposed training schedule, and a limited power of attorney to manage funds received while enslaved. There was a web address to download additional copies of the forms if they were damaged.

I was looking over the indenture contract and contemplating the only path I now had to being one of the first humans on Mars when George Marshall nodded at the guard and entered the classroom. Mister Marshall was the president of the Martian Exploration and Colony Company and a billionaire in his own right. He stood at the front of the mostly empty classroom and looked at us.

There were supposed to be ten of us here, but Shirley hadn't shown up. Nine of us still eager to be the among first humans on Mars. Nine of us were still considering the situation and wanting to hear the real offer.

"Ladies," said George "as you know, Jerry Black, Brad Jefferson, and Linda Gonzales have qualified as the best fit for the three primary mission slots. Since Jerry and Brad are heterosexual males and Linda is a lesbian, all candidates for the fourth slot must be technically qualified, female, have a slave grade of at least Choice Plus, and be willing to indenture themselves for about six months of training and, if chosen for the mission, about 19 additional months to cover the travel times to and from Mars and two months on and around the red planet. You nine meet the first three qualifications and you have a decision to make by Friday next week."

"Study the proposed indenture," he continued "and have a lawyer who's qualified in slave law review it and place your property in trust. This is not a FINO contract; it's full slavery. Review the proposed training schedule. If you show up in conference room 603 by Noon on Friday next week with the signed and notarized contract, you'll be stripped, collared, processed in Jacksonville sent to a slave training school."

"After four and a half weeks," George continued "you will be returned here to complete your training. This will include slave training, technical training, and mission simulation training. Jerry, Brad, and Linda will be instructed in slave handling so you will learn perfect and immediate obedience to your masters and mistress and how to anticipate their needs while also preforming your technical duties.

Your compensation for this will be quite generous. First, you'll receive a fifty thousand dollar signing bonus that will be held in trust for you during your indenture. Next, as your lawyers should explain, when your term of service ends, you will receive lump sum payment equivalent to the average price of a slave of the equivalent rating and sold for the term of service you actually served, said price to be determined for the day you start your indenture and to be adjusted for interest it would have earned over the course of your indenture. Further, you will also collect twice the full pay you would have received as a member of the primary crew for the duration of your actual service, less any payments on outstanding loans or other payments you owe, starting the first day of your indenture. After any payments you owe have been deducted, this money will be held in trust for your manumission. This is how much we value your service, but that doesn't mean we won't shock you or whip you when required."

"Do not underestimate your role in this mission," George concluded. "Having a slave provide intimate service and total submission to the other crew is considered so important that both Linda and Brad will wear special collars and be fitted with special implants for the duration of their training and the voyage. If you die or become incapacitated, Linda's signed indenture will be activated and she will assume your duties. If she also dies or becomes incapacitated. Brad will have his slave contract activated and assume your duties. Do you have any questions?"

"What about the backup crews?" asked Cindy.

"Since Beth Henderson and Diana Bowman are heterosexual females, and Robert Washington is a bisexual male, they'll have a separate group of male candidates for their fourth slot. The second backup crew is Keith Hunter and Jacob Gardner, both heterosexual males, and Elain Whitacre, who is bisexual. You'll also train with them and, if necessary, may become their fourth crew member."

"Will Linda and Brad be joining us for slave yoga?" I asked.

"Yes, though they'll remain clothed for it. Their indentures will not be activated unless the fourth crew member is unable to fulfill their duty."

"Also," George finished "you should get used to calling them Master Jefferson and Mistress Gonzales. We're also signing up some technically qualified candidates with lesser slave grades in case not enough of you accept the indenture but understand, before you sign your indenture, that you'll really be slaves and will be treated as such. When you leave here today, you should refer to me as Master Marshall. Start wrapping your minds around the idea."

"What if my lawyer has a problem with part of the indenture, or wants to include an additional clause?" asked Susan.

"This document has been gone over with a backhoe to ensure it's fair and covers all points of contention. I doubt your attorney will have any legitimate issue, but get any feedback to use by Friday this week and we'll consider it, thought I doubt we'll change anything. The deal is straightforward and generous; don't waste our time attempting to bargain."

"What slave training school will we be sent to?" asked Denise.

"We've made arrangements to send you to The Sharks Slave Training Academy for High Value Slaves. They specialize in training subjects who must be adapted to their new life as obedient, submissive slaves and fucktoys without being allowed to go slave stupid or develop more than a mild case of slave mind."

I asked one last question. "Your wetware company has just received Department of Agriculture approval for a chip that allows a master to enhance a slave's sexual arousal. Are you planning to implant that chip in us?"

"We are currently testing to ensure that those chips will not fail, or will fail safely, in the radiation you might experience. We will not have a final decision on whether to implant them for several months. In the meantime, we'll be using the older drug and hormonal supplements to enhance your libido. These are already quite effective, even if they don't give us the fine control of the chip."

I looked at the other women. At least six months actual slavery if not selected. A decent payout, but at what cost? Used and humiliated multiple times a day while loudly proclaiming your joy in your own debasement. How would you face your coworkers who had also been your masters, especially after you had been begging for their touch and rubbing yourself off in front of them? How to explain that to your family?

I thought about standing collared and slave naked before my father and imagined a disappointed look on his face. It's said a slave has no family and many fathers would look upon their newly enslaved daughters and see a woman who had voluntarily elected to become a fucktoy and treat them as such, but my father would never do that. I was his daughter and he would never forget that. That didn't mean he'd support my choice.

I remembered the last time I had seriously disappointed my dad. I'd been nineteen and still living at home while I attended the University of Maryland. I drank way too much with my friends and we all got busted for drinking on false IDs. My dad had to pick me up from jail in the morning. Lest you wonder, it turns out nineteen is not, in fact, too old to spank. It only ensured I got a big girl spanking and the arrest meant it was a special spanking indeed.

He waited until midafternoon, when I'd be better able to understand and appreciate the punishment. He made me go to his bedroom and fetch the strap from when he'd laid it out on top of the dresser and bring it to him in the living room. He had me hold the strap while he lectured me on how stupid I had been. Not just for drinking, which he might have let slide, but especially for getting caught. For hanging out with friends whose judgement was as bad as mine; for getting drunk while I was committing a crime, and for helping make the kind of scene that attracted the cops when I should have either been trying to calm my friends and extract them before we got arrested for drunk and disorderly or been putting distance between myself and those that could not be saved at that point.

He sat in a straight-backed chair brought in from the kitchen for the purpose and had me lay myself on his lap. He put the strap on the floor, had me slide my skirt down around my ankles and pulled down my panties. He rubbed my rear and reminded me that I had earned this. Then he started to give me a hand spanking. He started slow and held back a little to start with, but then started to spank hard and fast while I cried and promised to be good. I was well and truly sobbing and begging for some other punishment when he stopped and reminded me that the strapping was next.

He helped me stand and then bent me over the back of the chair, with me holding the edge of the seat in my hands. Then he wielded the strap. Damn, that thing was loud and damn, it hurt. After two dozen, he stopped and helped me stand and held me until I stopped crying, telling me that I would always be his daughter and he would always love me, no matter what I did. I had earned this, he said, but I had taken my punishment well and he forgave me. He took me to the mirror in his bedroom and showed me my red and slightly bruised rear end. It took several days before I could sit comfortably.

He also hired an attorney and went with me to court two weeks later. My friends all got judicial canings. My lawyer got me down to a shaming punishment. I reported to the police substation in the local mall that weekend and they had me strip. There were several poles in the display case at the front of the station. I was secured to one with my hands locked to the pole above my head and my feet locked in a short spreader bar which was also secured to the pole. There was a sign above me indicating my name and my crimes. I stood there in fifty-minute shifts with a ten-minute break between them for four hours between 11 AM and 3 PM one Saturday, while people walked by or stood and watched. A few of the watchers were people I knew. Some of them made a point of pointing and smirking at me.

If I was selected, between training and the voyage it would be just over two years in slavery but a career milestone that could never be topped. One of the first humans on Mars. My name in the history books, or would it be my name? Maybe it would be a slave name or the last four digits of my Slave Registration Number. Still, one of the first humans on Mars, when I wasn't being plowed in every orifice or eagerly lapping Linda's pussy.

Eagerly? Where had that come from? I wasn't into women, not that that would matter once I was enslaved, but why eagerly? If I'd been bisexual I might have been a better fit for primary crew.

I considered my student loans. I was keeping up the payments, but if the company decided they no longer needed me, since I hadn't qualified as primary crew and wasn't willing to fill that forth crew spot, I might end up indentured anyway. After all, I'd been hired, in part, for my slave grade. With what they were offering, even the six-month indenture would wipe out my debt and give me a nice nest egg for the future.

Maybe I wouldn't be choosing slavery. Maybe I was only choosing the form and duration of the enslavement.

When I returned to my apartment that night, I stripped and looked at myself in the mirror. I went into "Present" position, standing straight with my legs apart and my hands laced behind my neck. Then I dropped into "Slave Spread", kneeling with my knees spread, my head up, and my hands still laced behind my head. I had to break position briefly to adjust the mirror, but I resumed position and studied myself: Short blond hair, thin and somewhat athletic, small breasts, powerful legs. Not to everyone's taste, but I had never had a problem getting boyfriends. No problem keeping them either. My Prime Minus rating probably helped with that.

When they'd recruited for this mission, it was obvious that they had the fourth mission slot firmly in mind. Except for the candidates for pilots, all applicants had to have a slave grade of "Select Plus" or better to even be considered for training and testing. A number of applicants had to have an official slave grading for the first time. Linda, I recalled, had been sent to the Jacksonville Slave Market to be graded and groped while a representative of Martian Exploration and Colony Company observed her reaction. They'd put her on extended public display, slave naked and bound while she was groped by the public. She'd been graded Choice Plus, though I expect it was her sex, rather than her slave grade, that made her the first backup slave. She was a lesbian, but she'd be slave sexual if her indenture was invoked and the other two primary crew were heterosexual man. That libido chip would be a great help for her in her new duties if the primary slave died.

Except for the pilots, we had all been put thru slave yoga sessions for the past year as we trained and worked on various portions of the mission hardware and software. This had included a number of weeks in orbit aboard the Aries 4 interplanetary transport and its landing craft as field trials continued and its hardware and software were updated and adjusted. They really let us lose to try some stupid stunts to prove the design. We managed to wreck two subsystems rather thoroughly, which made the engineers cringe but that was one of our jobs: finding hidden flaws. Because once we launched, everything had to work.

I thought back to my own slave grading at the Baltimore Slave Market when I was applying to college. It had been my dad, not my mom, who had led me naked with my hands zip tied behind me from the associated parking garage to the grading entrance. He had leashed me in the parking lot to help me get in the right mindset for grading. He'd also specified no anesthetic when they tattooed my SID inside my upper lip for the same reason. He knew what I was getting myself into and he wanted to make sure I knew there was no romance about it. Maybe he could help me make up my mind.

I took a few days off work to visit my family and talk to my dad. I'd already met with a recommended lawyer and had him review the documents. I made an appointment to sign off on everything Tuesday next week, assuming I didn't change my mind. My parents were now living in Florida, so it was only a three-hour drive to their beachfront condo on Thursday morning. I managed to get time alone with my dad Friday afternoon. He knew what I needed to discuss with him and he convinced my mom to go to the pool for a few hours while we talked.

Once my mom left, he joined me in the living room and I asked him "If I do this, will you be disappointed in me?"

"No, you'll always be my daughter and I'll always be proud of what you have achieved."

I looked him straight in the eye as I pulled off my top and then pulled down my skirt and panties. I wasn't wearing a bra.

"Are you sure?" I asked. I dropped to a slave spread, facing him with my knees spread, back straight and my hands behind my neck. "Dad, if I do this will you be disappointed in me? Will you think I'm some slut who doesn't deserve any better?"

"Pumpkin," he said "am I going to have to put you over my knee for lewd behavior?"

"If you do, I've just made it that much easier for you. Nothing to pull down or lift up to expose the target."

"No, you'll always be the daughter I raised, the daughter who wondered why there was water on the outside of her coke glass, the daughter who made us all proud when she got her PhD in Aeronautical Engineering. But if you're determined to have the discussion at this level, let me add a prop to your presentation." He went into his bedroom and returned with what I assumed was a prop slave collar for role play.

He walked over to me and ordered "Collar," and I lifted my hair out of the way with my left hand and rested the right on the top of my right thigh. He snapped the collar in place and moved to a chair. He pointed in front of him and I moved to the position he indicated and assumed a slave spread facing him.

"Pumpkin," he said "I've always tried to protect you, especially from this 34th amendment stuff. From the constant propaganda, the stupid slave romance novels, the predatory lenders, the sleazy politicians who think it's A OK to trick a young woman into slavery as long as it doesn't happen to anyone they know, and the people who financed your company in part to make it seem normal for young women to aspire to be slave girl explorers. I won't be disappointed in your actions or your status; I'll be disappointed in your influence, but you will always be my daughter. You know very well that the B team with the two women on it is just there so that they can claim that heterosexual women ever had a chance as primary crew. It's there so that they can claim to have a crew with a woman pilot, but if someone from the A crew becomes unfit, they'll move someone from the C crew over. You'd have lose matching crew from the A and C crews for the B crew to fly, because B crew won't give them their slave girl hero."

"Slave girl hero? I'm not even sure most of the public will even hear my real name."

"Trust me, they'll be action figures and calling yours Six Seven One Nine will just add to the appeal. They'll be pushing your story to young women. They might even have a contest to pick a slave name for you. If you do this, you'll be setting an example that will lead some young women to ruin. They may be playing this fair with your group, but I wouldn't expect that to continue."

"I think they may already have caught me. I'm well paid but in a specialized field. If they decide they don't need the not a team player who's not as in love with Mars as they thought, it might take me awhile to find work, and none of it would be as well paid as my current job. Then the lenders might deploy their 'well she's not in default *yet* but her value as security on her loan declines every day she's not sold' horse shit and attempt to foreclose even though I've not missed a payment. If they can get one of their judges to sign off on that, they can have a third-party sale before the judge can be reversed and that will be the last you'll see of me for five years."

"I thought with your reduced principle, they term would have been reduced to more like two years by this time."

"It should be reduced to two years, but with my salary history it shouldn't be possible at all. I'm presuming malevolent incompetence."

"That might be a little too blatant even for predatory lenders. Don't assume you're already trapped. Probably a lot of your colleagues won't be accepting this indenture. I doubt they'd want to pull that on all of you and I can probably get enough money together to pay off your remaining debt, if it comes to that."