"Take a seat, Janice," the braintech said, gesturing toward the chair. I sighed in resignation, as I always disliked being connected to that machine, but knew that it was critical that my every experience and thought from my latest assignment be extracted and stored and analyzed by what was rumored to be the most elaborate, complex, and thorough computer ever built for this purpose: MEGAN.
I crossed the small room toward the well-upholstered chair. It was effectively a chair like that used in the dentist's offices downstairs, but with several small holes along the center where one's head would rest. There were restraints built into the chair's design as well, allowing for an uncooperative agent/patient/victim/enemy to be secured in place. I certainly knew better than to be uncooperative – after all, Group 92 had been responsible for installing my extra hardware, turning me into a cyborg, giving me that extra advantage, that extra edge, which had proven itself extremely invaluable on several key assignments over the past six years of my life.
This particular braintech was not a favorite of mine, nor of most of the women in Group 92, but he was often the one on duty at this time of day, even on weekends, so it was extremely difficult to avoid him. Freud claimed that women have penis envy, but this braintech very clearly had breast envy. I had heard that when a braintech was needed offsite for the interrogation of a female enemy, he was often the one ordered to "do the honors," which could be quite useful if the rumors of his sadistic nature toward women were indeed true.
Then again, they could be rumors specifically planted by the higher-ups in Group 92 as part of the ongoing psychological war with other nation-planets and with the myriad terrorist organizations across the galaxy.
Still, as I settled back into the chair, I felt his eyes boring into my chest; I did not even need to look at him to know that he was enjoying what he was seeing, that he was clearly undressing me with his eyes. I had once tracked a terrorist leader to an S&M club, and had witnessed firsthand just how badly the right person could hurt a willing woman's breasts, those overly-important social symbols of one's femininity.
If the rumors were indeed true, this braintech would do far, far,
far
worse to an uncooperative female captive, especially if she was restrained to the chair with the machine also busy doing its work.
"Don't worry," he said with a grin, and an intentional leer aimed well south of my eyes, "you're not getting a tooth pulled today."
"Let's just hurry up with it," I said, reaching back to lift my lengthy black mane out of the way. "You know just how much I dislike this process."
...and you
, I added mentally.
He finally walked around the chair to stand behind me, finally giving my breasts a respite from his lecherous gaze. I heard him roll the large computer toward the back of the chair, and knew from having seen countless others endure this procedure that he had to kneel behind the chair to place the retractable cords through the appropriate hole closest to the base of my neck and make that inevitable connection.
I felt it: cold as ice, sharp as a dull knife. For nearly a full second, the connector slid into my dataport, into what many agents call "the ultimate orifice." I both heard and felt the soft
click
and the counterclockwise slide to lock the connector into place. I let out the breath I had not consciously realized I had been holding, and released my hair, my hands gripping the ends of the armrests.
This is when I felt the most vulnerable, even more vulnerable than when I had been raped as a young teenager. That stranger had simply plundered my body. Group 92 was about to – once again – plunder by mind.
But, of course, I had given away all rights to my own mind by joining Group 92. The many implants were property of Group 92, and the so-called "mental capacity enhancers" supplied by Group 92 were specifically designed to fuse with my own natural brain in such a way that removing them would effectively remove me from this world, as I would be left with a brain so incredibly scrambled that I might not even be able to do such instinctive acts as breathe on my own, and higher functions such as holding a semi-intelligible conversation would be virtually impossible. I would be useless as an agent, unable to care for myself, and a complete drain upon society – the latter being the most dangerous to me, as the government could then enforce euthanasia upon me in the name of "the public good."
Then again, enforcing euthanasia upon this particular braintech could also be considered to be in the name of "the public good."
I looked up at the ceiling, at the bright silver-white light descending upon me, knowing that there were tiny cameras and microphones up there recording me, with people and computers alike scrutinizing my every movement and sound. Literally nothing escaped the notice and the analysis of Group 92. I wondered if there were others with an overdeveloped sense of breast envy watching my image on their screens, licking their lips and imagining those same lips wrapped around one of my nipples.
He turned on the computer behind the chair, its power-up cycle short but frightening with its deep intonation. It was a rather foreboding sound, one which I learned did not need to be but which was done specifically to affect the psyche of potentially-uncooperative persons.
"I'm about to initiate the data transfer," he informed me. At the edge of my peripheral vision, he appeared again at a small console. Even without turning my head toward him, I knew that his eyes were flickering back and forth between the screen before him and the twin protrusions upon my chest. I closed my eyes and tried to forget him, forget the situation.
Seconds later, the transfer had been indeed initiated. I could feel practically every data-loaded charge flowing from my "mental capacity enhancers" to the connector at the base of my neck. For every single incoming pulse of data, there were nearly five hundred pulses of data headed toward the connector and ultimately toward the computer. While the data transfer itself did not hurt me physically, it certainly hurt me mentally, scarring me forever as yet more of my own mind was being made "public."
Every action, thought, and experience from my last assignment was being copied from my mind (or, depending on one's point of view, from my "minds"). Once the offline computer behind me had verified that no potentially-harmful programs had been somehow embedded within the data from my mind, it would be connected to several scrubber systems, and the data from my mind(s) would ultimately be analyzed by MEGAN. Named after its chief engineer's wife, MEGAN would then know what I had eaten for each meal during my last assignment, the approximate air temperature of each location I had visited, even how many millimeters my mane had grown during the assignment.