Someone Has To Do It
By Pete Brown petebrownuk @ yahoo.com
Read all of Pete's stories at groups.yahoo.com/group/petebrownsetoticstries
Part 1
My alarm went off at six. Another fucking day - and it's going to be a bad one. My head's splitting as I know I had just a couple more than I should have last night. And it's "new arrivals" day, which always makes it hard when it comes around every eight weeks. I lie there for minute, wondering whether to do something about my morning hard-on - I slide my 'skin up and down once or twice, enjoying the sensation as it slips on and off my cock head, and letting my fingers caress the silky hardness of my shaft, but I know I don't really have time as the boss is really tough on those of us who don't punch in on time, especially on "new arrivals" day. So I throw the bedclothes off, and stride towards the shower, scratching my balls as I go as guys do in the morning, and I suppose I'm glad I do shave them, even though it's a lot of trouble to keep them smooth, as they do feel so much better when I'm holding them like this than they did when I used to let the hair grow naturally - that's one thing I learned soon after I took this fucking job, at least.
The shower' helps a bit, but when I look around the bathroom I have to agree it's pretty bad - I mean, it's OK for a guy living by himself, but the last time I brought a woman back I noticed she kind of curled her lip up in distaste when she saw all my stuff around, the state of the towels, and the layer of dust and dried skin everywhere. Or was that when she saw the unmade bed, with the sheets all crumpled? I always thought that sheets that had been slept in were kind of sexy, as they'd be impregnated with my male scent - all that sweat and cum, and I guess the odd drop of piss that leaks from my prick if I've not shaken it off well enough if I've had to get up in I the night to empty a full bladder after a night's drinking. I suppose that's why some blokes go to bed in boxer shorts and stuff, as it catches them, but I like to sleep totally naked. Still, I haven't been having too much success with women recently - I wonder if the bitches have been talking, and telling each other about my place and how it's not all that nice to come back to? You'd have thought that that coming back to a real man's place and having a really good time would more than compensate for that, wouldn't you? I mean, if you want some fancy lawyer or accountant to hire a swanky hotel room that's spotless, you're not likely to get such good sex as coming back to a real man's lair, a man with a good body and a big cock, and who knows how to use it.
Still, no time to lose, as I mustn't be late, so I stand there and scrape away at the rough stubble all over my face - that's one of my problems, as I've got such a tough beard that the "five o'clock shadow" starts around noon as my thick black hair really does show up. The boss is fanatical about neatness, as he says it sets a good example, and I daren't go in unshaven, though, so to save a bit of time I carry on shaving as I let some piss trickle down into the basin as I stand there. I've found I can save two or three minutes in the morning by pissing as I shower, and then having that "second one" as I stand there shaving - although I don't much like the smell as the running hot water I shave with mixes with my piss before it runs down the waste. I'd thought of saving more time by having my hair cropped really short, as I used to have it when I was in the Marines, but the boss says that we need to "differentiate ourselves" and so although it's short, I still need to pull my fingers through it to put in some sort of order, and then I'm ready to dress.
It's a fucking nuisance, actually, this job. But I suppose I'm lucky to have anything at all at my age, without any university education. The boss insists on clean, pressed uniforms every day and although they get washed and ironed at work, I have to remember to bring them home with me. And of course sometimes I forget, and have to go back, or have to get up specially early to be able to change at work as the boss would dock my wages if he saw me in a crumpled uniform, or one with yesterday's sweat stains still on it. I've still got to launder my own cotton boxers, though, and I seem to have fucked up again as there's no clean ones in the drawer, so it's wearing yesterday's for a second time - not too bad, though, as there's no skid marks or dried piss, as I'm careful that way. I can't do anything about the slight smell of sweat, though, as it was a hot day yesterday. I have to admit the boss is right, though: we do look good in the uniform - the dark green khaki colour suits most blokes' colouring, and the crisp, short sleeved shirt with the epaulets and the matching shorts cut well above the knee do show off my body quite well - at first, I'd hated wearing these short shorts, as they just aren't the kind of things you see men wearing in the streets where universally men tend to wear shorts cut mid-calf, but around here it's almost a mark of respect as it signals that we're from the base. It's almost like being back in the service, I suppose - they're really keen on you being neat and tidy when you're not on combat duty, as you may know: guys around Marines bases always look crisp and neat, don't they? I reckon that when I do pull a woman it's probably because she's seen my lean, tight body in the uniform, so I suppose I shouldn't complain.
The boots will do - a bit dusty, but the boss probably won't notice and I can get them cleaned up later - and it doesn't really matter that the socks have to be yesterday's as well, as there aren't any clean ones: no one is going to be sniffing at my feet today! And then once I've threaded the thick leather belt through my shorts, I'm ready. House keys, car keys, wallet.... And I'm away.
It's still early, and so the commuter traffic into the outskirts of London hasn't really started yet and, anyway, I'm kind of heading out and around and so I don't usually get held up except for other "cross commuters" like me, heading from one suburb to another. My apartment's not in the best place, as I can't afford to live out in the really leafy bits where the base is, so it's this ride every morning and evening. Still, there's my usual McDonalds on the way and I pull in to the drive-through lane, although it's tricky in my truck as it's so wide: I reckon a big guy needs to drive a big truck, or else he looks stupid. There's some stupid woman in front of me who can't seem to make up her mind as he just sits there at the window, and seems to be having a conversation with the server - for fuck's sake, what's so hard about choosing your breakfast? And who wants to talk to a McDonald's server anyway? It was bad enough when you occasionally got a pretty university girl, but now.... Well - it's mostly indentured servants anyway!
My head's cleared a bit by now from the beers so I wonder whether to have just my usual one sausage McMuffin, or two - I didn't eat much last night, I think, and with my big, lanky frame there's not much danger of a second one making me fat. I work hard physically anyway, so it's not like some of hose tubs of lard you see here who take the full breakfast just because it's on special offer, then eat all the greasy hash browns and sauces and stuff and then go and sit at an office desk all day. It wouldn't be so bad if, like me, they were on their feet all day and running around.... I decide on two, and a giant coffee, as "arrivals day" can make it hard to take time out for a proper lunch, and I wolf them down as I drive along .
There's still spaces in the front row of the employee car park, which is good, and I stride in through the pass gate, waving to Charlie the guard as I do. It's easy to get into the base, but you try getting out without a valid ID card and stuff - the two sequential gates will both lock, and you can only be released by the guards. Lieutenant Andrews is parking at the same time as me, and I wave at him as I usually do, but the fucker doesn't even acknowledge me. It's not right - he knows I was in the Marines, after all, and I think he ought to have a bit of respect for that. It's not my fault I'm having to do this shit job, after all - when I joined up at eighteen I thought I had a job for life, and I could do something I really liked until I left at about fifty with enough money to buy a pub, or something. But the constant defence cutbacks and the so-called "peace" where we rely on those wimps in the UN to do everything, meant they didn't renew my enlistment at the end of the first fifteen year term. So there I was, thirty-three years old, no job, and no prospects of getting one - whilst I was soldiering away everyone else seemed to be getting a college education, and without it, there's no work at all. Well, things have changed, haven't they - all the stuff guys like me would have done in the past is now done by slaves, or indentured servants, to give them their proper name, I suppose. So I'm lucky to have this, even though it's not what I would have chosen. And I know a lot of people sneer at guys who work in this area, but that Lieutenant shouldn't be one of them - it's his men who provide the security to stop them escaping, and if he thinks I'm working in a shit job, well, what's he doing?
In the locker room my mate Rob is already there, and he's ready to go - typical of Rob: he's so organised, and he wouldn't be wearing yesterday's boxer shorts or anything (and in any case I expect his wife, Julie, has them all laid out for him anyway. I can't help wondering whether Rob has fucked her this morning, or did he do it last night after he'd left the bar hours before I did? He's a bit of a randy bugger, almost as bad as me at chatting up the women, and I think that if he wasn't so loyal to Julie he'd be able to score most nights as he takes time to listen to what they have to say, tells them he likes kids (he's got three, so I suppose he must do), and does all that other "new man" stuff. Whereas me, well, after a few beers, all I want to do is fuck - and why isn't it that the women aren't like men like that? It's not as if a casual fuck is going to hurt anyone, is it? And it's natural for men to need it, and they don't always want to be spinning a line about "settling down" and all that crap before they can get a woman into bed.
Rob slaps me on the back and says "Jesus, Steve! Cheer up. Head still aching? It's a great morning, and a new intake.... How long were you at the bar after I left? Did you score? You ought to find a nice girl like Julie and settle down, then you'd get it as often as I do!"
I mumble something back and fiddle with the combination on my locker, as Rob stands there and starts telling me about the latest exploits of Darren - his eldest - who's just started school. I'm sure the little guy is quite bright, but to hear Rob talk you'd think he ought already to be saving for Eton and Oxford - not that there's much chance of that, as they pay us a pittance down here and I sometimes wonder how Rob manages that house, Julie, and the kids on our wages - I have a hard enough time managing, and there's only one of me! I keep looking at him as I fumble to put all my kit on to my belt, and he seems the usual cheerful Rob, immaculately turned out, always smiling, and somehow this all creates an air of a bloke who's really in control of himself and his life. He's like one of those "ideal husbands" you see on the TV shows, who helps around the house, plays with the kids, is a great lover to his wife ("and I'm her best friend", as he says) and is really handsome. Well, at least in the latter stakes I can agree as he's the same height as me, at six four, has the same wide shouldered slim waist build as me, but has a shock of dark blond hair in stead of my black - and like a lot of blondes, he's not got much of it as he's smooth-chested, has only a thin coating on his arms and legs, and his cock, although respectably large, like mine, pokes out from only a straggly patch of thin pubes instead of emerging from a veritable forest, as mine does!
I've got my phone, panic alarm, prod and all the other stuff a guard needs hung on my belt now, though, and we go out into the warm morning sunshine and stand around chatting to the other blokes on our shift. The trucks bringing today's new intake must have arrived overnight as they're already parked at the edge of the parade ground, and we can hear shuffling and muttering sounds coming from them just faintly. There's that sense of anticipation that's always around on "new arrivals" day as most of us have a preferred kind of man we like to work on. But until the truck doors have been opened and we've got them out, and done an initial "sort" and the boss has handed out our assignments, you never really know whether you're going to have all that much fun for the next few weeks, or not. Personally I don't like having a group of fat, overweight slobs - for one thing, the programme is then extended as we can't really start until the proper diet and hard exercise regime has burned off most of their blubber; but even when they're reasonably presentable after that, I somehow can't get the initial sight of their great rolls of fat out of my mind, and it spoils it for me the whole time. Still, the boss is pretty good, and he knows more or less what each of us likes and tries to accommodate us as best he can within the limits of what's been sent. It's always amusing, for example, to see Jeff, a real rough northern lad, angling to take on a batch of niggas as it's as if he thinks he's going to redress the way they've taken over his home town. The boss always does split up the niggas from the white guys as it seems to make for smoother training, but he's always half-teasing Jeff and threatening to spread the niggas around and make Jeff do the fat guys!
The boss comes out of the office building then, though, and cuts my daydreaming short, and we all line up and stand more or less at "attention". Most of us come from the forces, so it's not all that hard, but we don't make a big thing of it and there's no need to have your fingers pointing directly down the seam of your trousers and your eyes looking directly ahead or any of that other stuff: just a straight line, evenly spaced, hands to the side, feet together. The boss gives us a quick inspection, and thankfully I pass as I can't stand losing another day's pay for not having the proper "regulation" items for work, and then he looks a us and says "Right, gentlemen, you all know the form by now. This a batch of eighty, mostly from Birmingham. But that's pretty much of a collections centre, so as usual we'll have some from all over the country. And a couple of illegals, tool, who are finding that life in the UK is not quite as they expected. So let's take a look at them...."
He ordered a couple of us to go over and open the trucks, and there was the usual thing: it's dark in there, so as you throw open the doors at the back, all the prisoners blink and start to rub their eyes. And they've been in there for ten or twelve hours, so the straw on the floor is stinking of their piss - and worse. They really are like animals, as there's a hole in the corner of these transporters for stuff like that to drop out directly on to the road, but some of them don't - or won't - use it.
Some of them have a problem in jumping down as we scream at them to get their asses on the move, as they still look as if they're half asleep. But one bloke - a slim young man - seems to be in real pain and starts moaning that he's been raped and his ass is torn and sore. I see there's a couple of big buck niggas in the same truck, so it wouldn't surprise me - still, they'll soon learn just how unpleasant that can be. I tell the young bloke to hang in there as they'll all be inspected medically soon, and all of us guards stand and tell them to line up in four ranks.
It gets so fuckingly boringly predictable - some of them just want a quiet life (not that they'll get it!) and they obey as best they can, trying to get some sort of formation going. Some, mostly the niggas, who are here anyway probably here because of their arrogant defiance of the law, just stand there as if they can do what they want, and some - fortunately, very few - are real trouble makers who shout and tell us to fuck off. It usually only takes two or three of them to be "prodded" with one of our control prods at medium power for them all to learn their first lesson, that we give orders, and they obey! The sight of the three bodies thrashing around on the groomed and the kind of strangled screams they make as every muscle in their bodies spasms from the shock are usually enough to convince most of them - we usually do two of the real "trouble makers" and a nigga, as that seems to be the msot effective.
Once the ones we prodded are somewhat recovered and have been helped to their feet, the boss does a rough initial sort - as I've said, anyone who's grossly overweight goes into one group, whether he's a nigga or not, then groups of niggas, as they seem to respond better if they're all together, and then "the rest" - white blokes and orientals (although the boss will do a further sorting of the whites in to a group of normal Europeans and Turks, Arabs, and stuff like that if there's enough of them), and on one memorable occasion he did a whole group of Koreans (and fuck, were they difficult to train!). And then he assigns the guards to them - Jeff, as I've said, always wants niggas; there's an older guy, Jerry, a Jew from somewhere in Poland originally, who seems to like the fat guys - we're glad of that as we don't have to work with him all that often as their training takes longer, as I've explained, and so our work patterns don't often coincide; and "regular" guys like Rob and me, well, we get "mixed" batches.
There's a bit of horse trading goes on between us guards then as we swap prisoners between ourselves to "even up" our groups - well, you do want them to be as alike as possible, as otherwise there can be problems in some of the more physical stuff: on the assault course, for example, they've got to be capable of helping each other over the obstacles, and if you've got very slim guys and big hunky guys, it makes it so much more difficult (for us, not for them!). I ended up with a pretty average bunch - none of them was as tall as me, and that's good, as men instinctively tend to obey guys bigger than they are; and they were all at the younger end of the age range, I suppose, although it's hard to tell until I got a chance to look at their records tonight. We only have men between sixteen and fifty, and I'm thirty four, and although I don't mind all that much, I don't want to end up with a group all older than me as establishing control is so much more difficult.
We have to keep a really close watch on them next, as it can be a bit of a "flash point", even though they've seen what a prod can do! The boss has a loud hailer, and he orders all of them to strip, and at first they all do nothing - they just stand there, as if in shock. So he tells them again, and if there's no movement, all of us guards kind of go in to our groups and start shouting at them to get naked. The prisoners can be really fucking stupid - I mean, doesn't it occur to them that they're not going to be allowed to wear civilian clothes during training? And some of them even start to argue, and that's what you've got to nip in the bud - any insubordination at this point, before it gets serious. I usually set my prod at ten percent for this, and it's surprising what even this can do to the nerves in most of the body, and the sight of a couple of their companions screaming and jumping around is usually all it takes before at least one of them starts to unclothe. And once one has started, it seems to spread relatively quickly.
It's always comical, though, to see how few men understand that "strip" means just that! We want them naked, totally naked, without underwear, or wristwatches, or jewellery, or anything, and it usually takes several attempts to achieve this: firstly it's the guys who stand there in their underwear, or, as some of them are evidently "commando", in their jeans. They usually have to be threatened again before they drop them and stand there. But then there's usually some kind of emotional crap when you go through them and insist they take off their watches, rings, necklaces and all the other stuff. "It's a present from my mom....", "My girlfriend gave it to me...", "You can't want me to take off my wedding ring, my wife and I....", and all the other crap. They don't realise yet that it makes no difference! All that is over, and from now on they'd do well to put all those memories aside. We make them just drop all this stuff down amongst their clothes, and some of them get quite distressed as they think they ought to be put into sealed bags or something so that they can be returned to them later - for fuck's sake, what do they think this is? Some sort of old-style prison?
We "march" them off then, leaving all their clothes and stuff just as heaps on the parade ground. We had some sort of psychologist here once who lectured us about the importance of things like that, saying that as the naked men moved off, they'd see the "symbols" of their lives being left behind. Personally, I think it's a load of crap - it just makes it easier for us!
Even though we only have new prisoners once every couple of weeks, we still have a dedicated processing facility, and that makes everything so much easier. As they come in off the parade ground they go straight into a holding cage, and all you have to do is to remind them that they need to remember their groups as any of them that doesn't will be punished, and then us guards can go back to the parade ground and pick over the spoils. We're allowed to keep any money that's in wallets, and that's "yours", personally, from the guys in your group - I was particularly lucky this time a I got about sixty pounds from my eight: if they thought about it they'd know that bringing any money was pretty pointless, but looking at the quality of some of the leather in the wallets, some of these guys must have been used to having a lot more than that. Still, it was better than nothing. All the watches, rings and other jewellery are collected together and taken to town and sold to some sort of dealer, and we split the proceeds later: we never get what they're really worth, of course, especially as sometimes guys arrive here with Rolexes (or, most probably, fake ones) - but what can you do?
All of us go back inside then and the laborious job of initial processing of the prisoners begins. Firstly, of course, you want them nice and clean. I mean, you're going to be handling them, and at least are going to be in the same room as them for the rest of the day, so you don't want a lot of dirty, stinking flesh around you, do you? So they need to go through the showers, and those of them who didn't piss and crap in the trucks need to do that. Most men are used to the idea of showering with others, I suppose - after all, we stamped out that nonsense of "individual showers" in schools long ago and they're all communal.
But somehow they're never really for having to stand there in a line and piss without doing it into a proper urinal - we just have a grating in the floor; and they're especially not used to being told to squat down and crap, just letting it fall through the grating, either. It's one of the last taboos, I suppose - having to crap in public - so it's a good start of their training for them.
It's not too much like hard work the first day, actually - a guard mostly just follows his batch of men around through the various processing stations, making sure there's no trouble. As we keep them stark naked all day it tends to lessen their resistance anyway, as they have all see the effects of the prod and most of us guards keep it in one hand and stand there tapping it on the other, just to emphasise the point. So we watch as they shower, and then as the barber gives them the "servant crop" - you know, very short all over, with no sideboards or anything. Some of the niggas with those dreadlocks really start to complain when they get their "servant crop", but Jerry is pretty tough with them and they soon quieten down. They all start whining, though, when the barber moves on to trim their pubes! Well, I mean, they're mostly going to have their contracts put up for auction after eight weeks here, so they may as well get used to the idea that the purchasers might want to see their cocks. And, anyway, what's there to be ashamed about here - it's a "men only" training camp, as the women are done somewhere else.
They all hate having their ISN (Indentured Servant Number) tattooed on them, though - even the blokes with a lot of tattoos already. But it's the law - you get sentenced, you're sent to this training camp, and you get your SIN tattooed on. Some of then think it will spoil their looks for "afterwards", but it's not all that grim, actually: the standard position is of course on the underside of the right wrist, and I suppose it does hurt a bit as there are all those veins and things around there; but, anyway, it doesn't matter: they've all been indentured, and so they've now all got to be marked.
This time in my batch of eight there are only two who have got to be branded, thank goodness. That almost always causes trouble, and I really don't like having to stun men with the prod just because they're not ready to take a bit of pain. As you probably know only those indentured for life get the "I" branded into their bum (and even then it's a very stylised "I" - just a vertical stroke, really, so it can't be all that bad). But these two are an odd mixture - one bloke is in his mid twenties, and he looks really "hard" - I can see all the muscles in his body as he moves, and he's tattooed with what looks like a regimental badge, so I think he's almost certainly ex-army. But the other's really only a kid - a thin, almost weedy, pale, white lad who ought really still to be at school. What the fuck can he have done to merit being indentured for life? The most you'd think he'd warrant would be a few months. But come to that, what could the army guy have done, either?
Still, that's not my problem - my immediate action is to march all eight of them to the barracks and put six of them into their cell. I lock the door and tell them they'll be fed later, and march the army guy and the young kid back over to the processing centre. The more I look at the army guy the more convinced I am that that's what he is - he falls naturally into a marching rhythm, and carries his body in the way that soldier does. Still, I bet that's something he never learned before - to do it naked.
There can't have been too many "lifers" as when we get there there's no one else waiting. I can smell the residual burnt flesh smell in the air, and I hope they don't notice - branding's the worse thing we do to them, and even knowing I've got my prod ready, I've had blokes try to escape and stuff before. Still, these don't seem too aware of what might happen to them - in all the "slave" stories on the TV and such like they tend to gloss over this part of it, and as you never really see the servants naked, I suppose you could be forgiven for not knowing that a "lifer" has a regulation five inch brand on the left ass cheek. Before they become aware of what's going to happen, though, I think it's best if I act quickly so I tell them to face the wall, and then quickly slip cuffs on to each of them. I'm almost home and dry then, but I leave them there whilst I buckle a temporary collar (as "lifers" they'll get a permanent one tomorrow) around their necks, and then go to force their wrists as high up their backs as I can before chaining them to the collar. The army guys resists me as I do this, trying to keep his wrists down, but he's got no chance - for one thing, I'm a lot stronger than he is, and for another, I've got the advantage of surprise: I slam his forward against the wall (probably "painfully forward" would be more accurate), and then as he's partially winded and not really in a position to resist, I force his wrists up as high as I can - so much so that he gives a kind of "Oooofffff" of pain, before attaching the chain. Men chained like this are pretty helpless and you don't generally have too many problems with them - to avoid choking they tend to stand bent a bit backwards, and then it's hard for them to make sudden movements or to resist you as they know the whole of the front of their bodies - including their cocks - are very exposed to you.
We've got a soundproofed branding room as it makes for less distress when there are a number of them to be done. I decided to have the young kid done first, so I push the army guy over to where the line is usually waiting, and slipped one of the tethering cuffs around his ankle. He gave me a look of pure hate - I guess it was starting to come home to him that the rules for "lifers" are all different - as a free man he'd probably never been tethered anywhere before in his life, especially when not totally naked and so very, very vulnerable as his hands were out of action. It was easy then to open the double sets of doors with the airspace in between and push the young kid in, and when they saw how young and vulnerable he looked, even the toughies who actually do the branding seemed to melt a little. I've seen them be really rough as they use the element of surprise to push the man down onto the branding table, but now they were really incredibly gentle, leading him to it, then bending him down gently before tightening the holding straps.
As they always give the men a painkilling injection afterwards I've never really understood why they couldn't do it first, before the hot iron touches the skin, and thus save a lot of unnecessary pain (and screaming!). I think it's something to do with wanting the new servant to really know that his life has changed now - the absolute agony he must be in must leave him in no doubt about that! Still, it's all over relatively quickly - they keep the iron out of sight until the bloke's absolutely immobile, then they get it out and pressed onto his bum before he really realises it. The screaming's pretty dreadful, though, and personally the smell of the barbecuing flesh makes me nauseous. It's also not very nice if they lose control of their bowels and bladders - as this young kid did - and that all adds to the general air of humiliation and degradation. Still, after they stick the needle in, the pain mostly goes away and they're pretty quick at swabbing the area down (and the bloke's bum and thighs) with a hose, and then you can lead him away through the opposite set of doors and tether him there whilst you go back and see to the rest of the men that you're responsible for.
Still, in my case this was only the ex-army bloke, and as I bent down to undo the tether, he said to me "Is this where I get the big 'I'?"
"Yes. So you know about that, do you?"
"My major had a personal servant and he came into the barracks one night and told us all about it. Is there any avoiding it?"
"No. I'm sorry - I was in the marines, you know: a soldier, like you. But it's the law. All lifers have to have it."
"Listen, mate, I'm going to scream..."
"...you all do."
"No, I mean I don't want you to think I'm a wimp. But he told me it was the worse pain he'd ever experienced. Worse, even, than being shot."
"I think he was probably right. You will scream. You all do. And I won't think you're a wimp. Now, come on...."
I'll say that for him - he showed a lot of courage in just walking through the doors and then almost disdainfully walking over to the branding table and lying down himself.
He did scream, too - and hearing a grown man do that is never pleasant. But by the time they'd cleaned him up and given him the painkiller, he was sort of recovered and I led him out to where the kid was shackled.
The boss was waiting there, and he said "Ah, Steve, I'm glad I found you. There's a change of plan - I've redistributed the rest of your trainees to the others, and you're to focus on just these two lifers. They're not going through the normal programme - there's a shortage of lifers, and so we're cutting out all the toughening and muscle building stuff and just getting them ready for next week's auction. One of them's ex-army and is in pretty fair nick anyway, and the kid's going to put on muscle naturally as soon as his new indenture holder gets him to work. So you're relieved of all other duties - I just want these two properly obedient ready for the pre-auction viewing.
I felt my heart sinking, as "getting them properly obedient" was the bit of the training I disliked the most: with a group of eight I could really work on one of them and make them do it to each other once they'd seen what was required; and, of course, I could pick which one I was going to use as my "example". But with just two I was going to have to do them myself, separately - and each in his own way would be a problem. For one thing, I hate doing it to other blokes who have been in the services as I think they deserve a bit more respect - I mean, I gave the country fifteen years of my life, and what did I get for it? And this bloke wasn't even free any more. And as for the kid - well, I mean, what kind of life was he going to have now? He ought to be at school, then off to University or something - and instead of that he was going to get me giving him my personal attention.
"Couldn't you get one of the other blokes to do it, boss? You know I'm really good on the training ground, putting them through all the exercises and stuff...."
"Steve, I sometimes think you don't like this work! Most of the others would be happy to just get these two to do the obedience training with! You're not going soft on us, are you, Steve?"
"No, boss!". Actually I was. I wasn't sure I really did like the "obedience" stuff. But still, I didn't have any choice, did I? I needed this job, and it was the only one I seemed likely to get. Without work I'd soon be in debt, and everyone knows that debt leads to indentured servanthood now that they'd stopped all that stuff they had earlier in the century like unemployment pay and social security benefits.
"Well start with them tomorrow - give the brands time to scab over. But be sure, Steve, that you get them finished before the auction: we've published all the notices saying that there are some lifers coming up this time, and have only just realised that we're out of stock. Is that clear?"
"Yes, boss", I said meekly, and led the two men off to a different cell in the residential block - it's not good practice to mix men at different stages of their training as they talk to each other, and that can lead to unnecessary further complications.
Rob was changing back into his "civvies" as I was, and we stood there chatting about it generally. He had a fairly routine batch, but he sensed I was a bit less than happy and asked me why. Once I'd told him, he just shrugged. "Hey, Steve, you knew what the job was when you took it - and most men here would look forward to those two: I noticed the army guy when he first stripped, and I'd say he was going to be a whole lot of fun to train. And, well, a sixteen year old - well, they're always nice for a change.... You're not going soft, are you?"
"No, Rob. But... Well..... Oh, I don't know. I can do it, of course. But I just don't enjoy it all that much."
"Perhaps you should get out and do something different...."
"I only wish I could - but you know how it is - there's just no work without a degree any longer, as the indentured servants do all the low-grade stuff. I know you have to stick it, Rob, wit the wife and kids and everything.... But I wish I could just quit...."
Rob looked a little uneasy. "Steve, I think you've got the wrong idea about me. I don't work for the money as such - my wife's got money and we don't really have to work at all. No, I do enjoy it, actually, and I think it does the kids good to see dad going off to work every morning..."
"Do they know what you do, though, Rob? And what about your wife... Surely...."
"Well the kids are a bit young to understand all of it, but they're quite proud of their dad being a man who 'trains servants to be good' as the little one said the other day. And my wife - no, of course not! She knows that what we do here is all part of the training, it's not serious.... And, anyway, I've got three kids to prove it!"
I couldn't help thinking that he was a lucky bastard not to have to work, but I had to. I closed my locker with a sharp, and walked out feeling pretty gloomy, to the car park. That fucking Lieutenant Andrews was there again, just getting into his car, and he almost sneered at me "Had a good job tormenting the servants, Steve?"
"I was only doing my job, sir", I said as civilly as I could. "Someone has to do it, you know".
End Of Part One