The door puffed open, stirring a spider's web in the corner of the room. It was dark down here, the only light spilling in from the top of the steps at a sharp angle. The pod system had been installed several months ago, and so far the results were outstanding. No more power bills at all, plus a little kickback from the power company for the excess capacity their system generated. Still though, it paid to check it on it every week or so.
The service agent who installed the pod in the basement said that while everyone expected a smaller bill by switching to o-power, he thought they would do much better than that. Pointing to the pod he said they'd struck gold; explaining that the focus they had been assigned was a premium one. Top of her class. He looked proud when he told them about her vitals; during training she would often run at 150bpm for hours at a time on very low level stim. It was well above the rates they were promised in the brochure.
Owner came down the stairs and stopped to glance at the small tablet computer that monitored the pod. Almost all of the dials and meters displayed on it were completely meaningless to him. The service agent had explained what they all meant during install - paying particular attention to describe how the bpm was the simplest indicator of power out - but not much of the technology behind o-power had actually sunk in.
He was more interested in the results, of course. The fact that through the small viewing portal he could see a gorgeous, smooth body wriggling desperately and soundlessly didn't really keep his interest. He looked back over at the screen and noticed that bpm had dropped to just 125. The power output was down too, it had been almost 9 minutes since the last o-burst, and all of this costing him an above average rate of stim. This was definitely not normal, he expected more from his pod-unit, especially after its performance during that blackout last month.
First he pushed the zap button. The salesman suggested he always start with this before changing any settings. It was to let the focus know a new program was commencing. At first he was unsure what to press next. There were so many different buttons on the panel. He hovered over a small square that said "Reset", and another that read "Maximum Output (Not Recommended)". He paused as his finger moved over the third button, a small yellow square that read "Surge Power". Sighing, he leaned in and pressed it. Just have to give the focus a little bit of help, he thought, then we'll be back up to regular capacity and profit.
A few moments after pressing the Surge Power button the panel was locked, and a little yellow zig-zag of electricity flashed on the screen. He turned and left the basement stepping carefully over the large black cables that connected the machine to the water and nutrient feeds, and then the bright orange cable that ran directly to the electrical distribution board and out onto the power grid beyond.
"O-Power - Caution" warned a heavy sign. The pod whirred quietly as he clambered up the steps and back into the warmth of the house. Surge mode was beginning to roll out across the whole pod now. Already the focus's bpm had begun to build back up.
At first the focus wasn't sure what was happening. Because her regular rates were so high she didn't have to deal with surges very often. In fact she had been semiconscious when the client had inspected her, and was still not fully awake. When he had pressed the zap button moments ago it filtered through to her dreams instead of waking her, the burst of stim tingling just above her crotch. It was the kind of stim designed to vibrate deep inside her and pleasure the longer internal wings of her clit. By the time she had regained enough awareness to understand what was happening she felt the buzzing nodes of the pod begin to push down into her crotch, breasts and face.
The surge light blinked silently. In her sleepy and vague state of mind it took a few extra moments to sink in. Surge, or hard-fast as she had come to think of it as. There was usually a minute or so before it really ramped up, so time was just on her side, but it wouldn't be long before she was a convulsing, climaxing mess. Surges could be some of the most intense blocks, and she was thankful they never lasted too long. Afterall, a body can only orgasm so hard before damage is done.
She blinked the awakening tears out of her eyes and tried to focus on the little screen on the inside of the pod. It had her contract term in days - 89 out of 365 - her bpm rate (132 and rising), and her o-power output, currently at 1.8. There were other numbers and readings but none of them mattered as much as those three, and she knew that 1.8 was far under what she needed to turn the surge off.
But it wasn't always easy to predict how hard she would have to push herself. Surge protocol was different because it didn't seem to be controlled by her output of o-power alone. She could generate 10 or even a hundred o-bursts and hold the power out at a steady 5.0, and still the pod would suck more out of her until the surge was finished. The owners might have some idea about how long it goes on for out on the controlling panel of the black pod, but inside the unit where she was there was no indication.
Most surges in the past had usually only been minutes long, but she could remember at least one time it had gone on for nearly an hour, pulsing her body and forcing so much direct stimulation onto her that she passed out, only to wake up to find herself literally midway through an o-burst. The machine hadn't stopped when she fell unconscious - it didn't seem to care.
More of the machine was booting up now and she heard the usual small, experimental clicking noises. It didn't just shove hard stim straight onto her, it had learned that she needed to be played more delicately and over time it had come to use a little more finesse. It gently added a few more vibration pads and stimulus points and began to ramp them up slowly. Its precision and calculations were so perfectly placed it was almost cruel. She knew it was getting itself ready to put her system through a massive surge of pleasure.
No, pleasure wasn't quite the right word for it. If a lover had done this to her it might have been pleasure. If she had some control over it, maybe had her old vibrator in her hands and could take care of it herself, it could have been pleasure for her. But instead all she had was the sensors, the probes, the monitors on her heart and temples. All of them reporting back to the pod, tracking every fluctuation in her biochemistry and learning how to pull every drop of o-power out of her. The program that controlled the flow of stimulation across her was not interested in her wellbeing. To it, she was a raw material to be harvested, a rat in a wheel it had to make run to keep the lights on upstairs.