"Next case," said the judge, bringing her gavel down.
Arthur was led in with four other males from his locality, their hands and legs shackled in a line. The high-tech collars around their necks prevented speech and punished any sudden moves. He knew he must stand still and face what came to him. He could neither resist nor bring himself to care. What was the point?
"Your honour," said the males' court-appointed representative, "these five males have been diagnosed with slavery-denial disorder. Each is deeply submissive but cannot reconcile these desires with the rest of their identities, which has led to a variety of psychosocial offences and significant depression. Each -"
"Are they immigrants from patriarchal worlds?" interrupted the judge.
"Correct, your honour. Each came here when their worlds were torn apart by war and strife, but each has failed to integrate. The state requests the court to order two years' slavery for each male, without sexual or other limits, based on the following evidence ..."
Arthur tuned out as the detailed case histories were read out and questioned by the judge. One male was released into the ownership of a female friend who came forward to claim him – she would be charged with improving his wellbeing and in return, she gained a no-limits slave. Arthur could tell from the way she eye-fucked her the man that she had one main use in mind for new piece of human property.
They came round to his case. Arthur knew he was a sexual submissive, knew that were men and women who lived the life he fantasised about daily, and it surprised him not one jot when the representative read out the list of desires he'd revealed under the truth drug. It didn't mean he wanted to live them twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Did it? Sure, it was frustrating, seeing all those people – well, sort of people, slaves really – living just the life he thought about. But he'd still tried to make his own way, like he'd been taught on his homeworld, never asking anyone else for anything, never relying on anyone else, never needing anyone else.
A report from his doctor followed. A classic case of acting out based on patriarchal patterns of learned behaviour, she called it. The suggested cure: slavery to a dominant woman for a defined period. They made it sound like Arthur had been preposterously unreasonable not to accept this diagnosis and immediately submit to a collar and leash.
What about how unreasonable they'd been, taking control of his nanites the last time he'd been for a checkup, immobilising him then making him a ward of the state? A ward, at twenty-five. He was his own man, no one's ward. The sadness, the frustration, the pain – they were his to live with, weren't they? If it meant a few other people around him got hurt, well that was just life. Wouldn't the judge see that?
She would not, and if he was honest with himself, neither did Arthur, who was beginning to see that in this world of dominant women, his bravado meant nothing at all. Arthur was led before the judge, who peered down at him as he was held firm by two female guards who stood to either side of his chained body, their grips tight around the fabric of the jumpsuit that was all he now wore. Their power made his skin tingle even as he hated what they were about to do to him.
"You are hereby accepted as a ward of the state until such time as you may be judged ready to be sold as a slave. In accordance with your need to learn new, healthier patterns of behaviour, no limits are set upon your slavery, other than a period from date of sale of no more or less than two years. You may look forward, boy, to a happy time living out your desires as a ... remind me, representative, what type is this one?"
"A petmale, your honour. Specifically a puppy."
"My favourite – my husband-slave is a petmale, don't you know. Boy, you will live as a petmale for two years. Guards, remove this male's clothing and chain him on all-fours."
The judge brought down her hammer, sounding the death of Arthur's existence as a free-male in a society that barely tolerated such a thing. Arthur struggled against the guards for the show of the thing, but they barely had to make an effort to control him, much to his embarrassment and the judge's wry amusement. Cool air rushed over his skin as a guard made the smart fabric of the jumpsuit split at the seams, and he blushed as she whisked it away from him, exposing him to everyone in the court.
The other guard knocked Arthur to his knees, and the jolt of pain as he hit the floor let him know she meant business. He got the message even more clearly when she took his balls in her hand and squeezed them tight, so that he would have screamed if the collar and his nanites hadn't muted his voice. His legs and arms were chained together so that he could only crawl, and then it was a simple matter for the guards to clip a leash to his collar and lead him out of the court and into the waiting transport van, where he was chained into a clear plastic crate.
From the inside of the crate, which would not yield to his kicks and thrusts, Arthur's eyes tracked around the van's interior, taking in the rows of trembling men and women, all victims of this world's insatiable appetite for slaves. The young female opposite caught his eye, then hers tracked down Arthur's body and she licked her lips and smiled. He looked down too – how had he not noticed he was so very hard?
A tremor started in the pit of his stomach and spread all over his body, coming and going in waves of shaking, trembling flesh. Arthur collapsed onto his side, his cock still stiff and bobbing around, as he lost control of his body. He had lost control of everything, now. His body, his nanites, his voice, his very existence, perhaps even his future. Sooner or later some proud, powerful woman was going to clip a leash to his collar and make him into the animal he fantasised about, make him beg, bark, whine, fetch, roll over, heel, go for walks, even make him lick her with his puppy tongue while his mitted hands would never get to hold his own cock again.
Arthur was lost in his thoughts, only coming back to reality each time new slaves were caged up in the transport, all of them clearly struggling with same process of acceptance as he was. The transport's rear door closed shut with a thump, and the vehicle moved off, leaving Arthur and the other slaves half hidden in the dim glow of a calming, green light. They drove many miles, while Arthur wondered what to make of his new life. Give in, or resist? Admit they had been right to do this to him, or hold out against them, see if he really could beat them.
He was not doing well at beating them so far. His cock still raged long and stiff, betraying that some part of him was delighted with everything turning out just right for it. He had, he knew, kept that part of him hidden too long, pushed it down until it had made him stressed and anxious, acting it out only in the recesses of his mind. Others around him had suffered for that, even as he knew why he acted and felt the way he did. If only he'd given in sooner, if only he'd sold himself for a minimum term – three short months – he could have come out of this with a few credits and 21 months less slavery. Yet here he was.
The new slaves were unloaded from the transport all in one go – it seemed like the new petmales and petgirls had been sorted into one load, then taken to a training facility on the edge of the city. Arthur could see little of it from his place on the floor, but he was grateful for the sight of a field and some woodlands, and he couldn't help but be encouraged by the sight of the happy, bouncy petmales and petgirls that rushed out to meet the new arrivals, then yipped and sniffed their way around each and every one of them.
"That's enough!" said a short, stocky trainer who was overseeing the new arrivals.
Arthur felt a frisson of excitement rush through him as his leash was handed to a trainer, who led three new human pets into one of the low, wide buildings that nestled together at the centre of the compound. A naked slavegirl in the employ of the training facility took Arthur and led him through the antiseptic corridors with the other new pets, each led by a human slave, until they reached a spacious shower room, where the slavegirl padlocked Arthur's leash to an eyebolt sunk into the floor. Arthur started to wonder why he had thought of her as a human slave, but not himself, when the stocky trainer's voice took his attention.
"New pets! Listen up! You are all here by order of the court and you are all staying here until you learn to act like the pets you are. Your two year terms start after you leave this facility, and believe me, you won't be leaving until we are satisfied you're adjusting to your new life. It can take a day, it can take a week, it can take three months for all I care – pets leave this facility when they act like pets.
"No slave can really be said to be a person – but some slaves still get to walk, talk, use their hands, act like people to serve people. You don't. You wanted to be animals. You needed to be animals. You will now become animals. If anyone objects, speak now."
Arthur tried to speak up, to shout out that he objected, he should be free, he'd made a mistake, he'd take a reduced sentence. All he could do was bark. It was all any of the pets in the room could do, which meant their nanites had already reshaped their vocal cords into some more primitive arrangement, quietly and painlessly and without a single pet even noticing. Arthur had no idea how they'd done it so stealthily, but it made the point. He did not own his body, they did.
