The first thing that Suzy realized when she awoke was that she was naked. That alone was not surprising because she usually slept naked. But she wasn’t in her bed. She wasn’t even in her bedroom. She was in a large, clear, sealed cube in the middle of the village square. She could see the lights of the festival all around her and feel the vibrations of the loud music from the band over by the park. A large crowd was gathered around the cube watching her. She screamed a long, loud “Noooooo!” as she pounded her fists against the glass-like walls of her enclosure. She had been chosen!
She yelled at the people who were just inches away from her naked body. “This is a mistake!” she screamed. “I didn’t volunteer to be in here!” she cried out to the watching faces. “No, no, no, I don’t want to be in here! Let me out!” she pleaded with the crowd, but she knew that no one could hear her.
Suzy knew that no one could hear her because for many years she had stood in that crowd and watched the chosen one pound on these transparent walls and beg and plead to be released from their captivity. You could see the terror on their faces. You could see the tears flow down from their eyes. You could see the hopelessness begin to overwhelm them. Sometimes you could even see them piss themselves in fear. But you could never hear them. For the entire three or four or five days of the festival, you could not hear them.
The length of the festival depended upon the actions of the offering. The festival continued until the offering finally mounted the saddle. No one knew for sure how an offering was chosen. Nor did anyone know how the offering came to be placed in the cube. There did not appear to be an opening in the cube. The cube itself would just suddenly appear in the town square every 4 to 6 months. When it appeared, that meant it was time for the festival.
All work would cease. Everyone in the village would come to the town square and party continuously for the entire time of the festival. It has always amazed Suzy that for festival time she could go without sleep for so many days and nights.
Sometime during the second day of the festival, the offering would suddenly appear in the cube, usually lying unconscious on the thickly carpeted floor of the enclosure. It wasn’t always a naked woman. Sometimes it was one of the young men of the village who would be naked and screaming and pounding against the glass when they awoke.
Suzy stopped her pounding and stood staring at the crowd outside her window. For the first time since she had moved to the village more than a dozen years ago, she noticed something odd about the population of the village. Everyone in the entire village was now in the village square, but there were no children present. And there were no old people. Everyone was between twenty and forty years of age. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?
Suzy, herself, was twenty-six. She worked as a…???? She couldn’t remember! Whatever it was that happened to the chosen ones was starting to happen to her. She couldn’t remember what she did in the village. She couldn’t remember where she lived in the village. She could remember the festivals. Dozens and dozens of festivals were very clear in her mind, but she could remember nothing else. She recognized people in the crowd, but could place them nowhere else but here, at the festivals.
Something within the cube must be draining her of her memories. But if that were so, why then could she remember her years of schooling. She could clearly remember growing up on Colony Twelve. She could remember classrooms in the complex as she grew up. Even her college and post-graduate work in astro-physics and planetary systems was very clear in her mind. But her life in the village was fading from her mind. She could remember attending the festival many, many times, but where she lived and what she did in the village had been erased from her mind.
She sank to the carpeted floor. It seemed strangely warm against her naked body. The entire cube seemed warm. It was not uncomfortably warm, she was not sweating, but it was definitely warm. And her body was beginning to warm also, only this was a different kind of warm. This was not a thermal warm, this was a sexual warm.
“No!” she screamed aloud. “I will not do it! I will not make a spectacle of myself in public. I will not do it!”
Even as she screamed, however, her eyes were drawn to the only piece of “furniture” in the cube. There, in the very middle of the enclosure, sat a large saddle . She had never seen a real saddle. For that matter, she had never seen a horse, but she had read of them. They were creatures from the home planet and people once rode on their backs using seats of leather and wood that had been strapped to the beast.
What sat in the middle of the cube on a stand, concealed by the same carpet which covered the floor, looked exactly like the saddles she had seen in the recreational videos she had watched as a youth. Well, not exactly. Those saddles didn’t have two rather large metal dildos sticking straight up from the center of the seat.
She tried to remember if she had looked into the empty cube when festival had first begun. You could tell if the offering was going to be male or female by the shape of the saddle. For a woman, there were always two dildos, but for a man, there was only one, and a strange leather-looking humped opening in the saddle that almost exactly replicated the female vagina. For male or female, there were stirrups on the saddle and a saddle horn like on what she thought was called a western saddle, except it was not covered in leather. The saddle horn was the very same shiny material as the dildos.
Silently, Suzy circled the walls of her cell like she had seen countless offerings do so many times before. She could hear the village clock strike the hours in the distance as she yelled at the crowd that they might as well go home because she was not going to do it.
Did the offerings who had come before her also say that? Did they also say that they would never mount the saddle? She had never been able to hear what they actually said. As they screamed and yelled, did they also feel that warm sexual feeling slowly building within their bodies that they knew would eventually drive them to impale themselves on those shiny pieces of polished metal?
She turned and looked out once again at the crowd. It was now dark, but the square was brightly lit. She could see the flushed faces of the young women in the front row. She knew what they were thinking. They were thinking-and some were even saying, “Do it. Do it. Do it!” She knew what they were saying because she could read their lips as they mouthed their simple chant. She knew what they were thinking because she herself had stood exactly where they were standing in festivals past and chanted the same words at the hapless offering year after year.
Just last festival, Suzy had stood in the cool fall air, flushed and sweaty, chanting with the people gathered around her as the offering slowly gave in to whatever it was that compelled her to mount the saddle. She remembered her chant changing to “Yes, yes, yes,” as the chosen one began to writhe in the saddle with her hands held tightly to the shiny saddle horn and her legs thrashing in the stirrups. She herself had felt a powerful sexual rush flow through her body as she watched the offering’s lewd ride toward orgasm.
Some of the chosen ones would ride for only a short time. Others seemed to stay on the saddle forever, extending their ecstasy for hours, or even days before finally exploding in the release of a violent orgasm that seemed to be shared by the entire village.
Exploding was the proper description of the offering’s orgasm because that is exactly what happened to the chosen one. They exploded. At least their bodies were suddenly surrounded by an extreme flash of light and then they were gone. No trace of them remained afterwards except perhaps some glistening fluids on the seat of the saddle. Then the cube would slowly fade away and the bright lights of the village square would dim until the next festival.
Suzy was not going to let that happen to her. She was not going to mount the saddle. If she had her way, this festival was going to last a very long time. But as the hours passed, the warmth continued to grow within her. She could feel her hunger rising for those shiny spears. Her body was starting to betray her. Her legs were growing weak. Her pelvis was beginning to undulate on its own, seeking the pleasure.., and release, offered by the saddle.
“No!” she screamed. “I will not give in!” But the need was growing. She had to do something to cool the fire and quell that need. She sat down on the floor and leaned against the corner of her glass room. Her left hand slid across her breasts and pulled and pinched at her nipples. Her right hand went between her legs and plunged into her flowing sex. She raised her knees and spread wide her thighs to give herself better access to her clit.
How could she be doing this? She was lustfully masturbating in front of the entire village. She had seen some of the chosen ones do this in the past. She could not imagine someone being such a wanton slut so as to open wide their legs and let everyone watch them plunge their hands into their gaping cunt, and yet that was exactly what she, herself, was doing.
In the past, when this had occurred, she and her friends had gleefully chanted, “Slut! Slut! Slut!” at the hapless offering as she took herself repeatedly to orgasm in front of the crowd. Suzy looked out through the glass of the enclosure. She could see Mary and Charlene and Omira. Their eyes were almost glazed. Their hands were balled into fists pumping in the air as they chanted, “Slut! Slut! Slut!” There was a slight gap in the crowd next to them where she, herself, had stood just at the last festival.
Her shame overwhelmed her and Suzy closed her eyes as she had seen so many chosen ones do in years before. But she did not remove her hand from between her legs. Instead, if anything, with the faces of the crowd blocked from her mind, she forced her fingers harder and deeper into her now sopping slit.
She screamed out in orgasm and the crowd applauded, but the need did not go away, and the sexual fire did not cool. The burning within her continued to flow to her nipples and her ass and her clit setting them aflame. She now lay flat on the floor with her feet planted securely against the glass wall and forced her entire hand into her cunt. Only once or twice had she seen an offering slutty enough to be reduced to this, but it did not matter. The fire within her had to be quenched. The need must be slaked or there would be no alternative but to impale herself on those shiny dildos which called out to her and seemed to somehow pull her toward that awful saddle.
She looked out through the glass. Her friends were now chanting “Whore! Whore! Whore!” at her. Had she looked like that as she had chanted those words at other offerings? Were they getting the pleasure from her suffering that she had gotten from watching those who had been in this cube before her? Would they someday find themselves where she now was?
Suzy smiled slightly as she pictured prim and proper Omira with her legs splayed against the glass. No, Omira wouldn’t do that. Mary or Charlene might, but Omira would jump on that saddle and get it over with as soon as possible. There had been some offerings who had done exactly that. They didn’t scream and pound on the glass. They didn’t walk endlessly around the edge of the cube trying to escape. As soon as they awoke in the cube, they went over to the saddle and let it explode them in orgasm. Maybe that is what Suzy should have done. At least it would already be over. At least she wouldn’t be lying in a puddle of her own juices watching her friends call her whore and slut.
Why was she fighting? It was inevitable anyway. Sooner or later she was going to lower herself onto the saddle and let it take her to that one, final orgasm. No chosen one had ever been able to resist. She had thought them all weak, but now she knew that it wasn’t their weakness that caused them to willingly make that final ride. It was the strength of whatever it was that burned within her and slowly forced her body to seek what only the saddle could provide. It was the strength of that heat and need that would eventually cause even her to finally swing her leg across that leather seat and lower herself down onto the twin dildos.
Suzy didn’t remember making that final action. She didn’t remember getting up from the floor and moving to the center of the cube. She didn’t remember swinging her leg over those shiny peaks. Her body must have acted on its own because she suddenly found herself on the saddle. Her legs were in the stirrups. Her hands were clutching the metal saddle horn. And the two dildos were buried deep within her.
She had expected them to be cold, or at least solid and uncomfortable, but instead they were warm and soft and seemed to pulsate within her. In surprise she raised her hands from the silver saddle horn and suddenly both dildos went cold and rigid within her and an uncomfortable-no painful, electrical pulse flowed through her body between them. She immediately re-established her grip on the saddle horn and the warm pulsations returned.
Now she knew why the offerings always clung so tightly to the saddle horn. A tingling in her legs told her that pulses were also flowing down to the metal stirrups. Her head was now tilted back in the throes of passion. Her mouth was open in a large O as she gulped in deep breaths of air. She could just make out Mary and Charlene and Omira in the crowd around her. Their fists were once again pumping in the air, but now they were chanting “Go! Go! Go!”
Suzy knew that they would continue that chant until she exploded in orgasm. She dreaded that final moment, but at the same time her body craved it. She was pulled between many desires. She wanted this extreme pleasure that she was now feeling to last and last and last, but at the same time she wanted… needed… craved… that final orgasmic release from life itself.
She rocked her pelvis against the saddle to increase the sensations that were overwhelming her body. She kicked her legs in the stirrups, not attempting to pull herself up off the invaders that were penetrating her body, but to force them deeper and deeper into her cunt and ass. Then she felt it building within her like an impending atomic explosion. Higher and higher and higher she went until suddenly the world around her was bathed in a brilliant white light and she exploded in orgasm.
= = || = =
A voice was calling her name. “Susan?” it said.
Another voice called, “Dr. Anderson, can you hear me?”
She was lying on a raised cot of some sort surrounded by what appeared to be medical devices. “Dr. Anderson,” the voice continued, “we have brought you out of stasis. It is time for you to begin your first duty cycle. Do you know where you are?”
She heard herself answer, “I think so.”
The voice replied, “You are on Stellar Probe Twenty-Seven. We launched from Colony Twelve and are now fourteen years into deep space. We are approaching what might be a viable planet for the new colony. If it meets all our criteria, you will help supervise attaining orbit and transferring the colonists to the surface. If not, you will have a one-year tour of duty before being returned to stasis.”
It was all coming back to her. She was part of the pre-planet team for Stellar Probe Twenty-Seven. Crew were rotated in and out of stasis on a one-year basis. Scientists once every four years. The pre-planet team was to be brought out only when approaching what might be a solar system with an inhabitable planet. If she and the rest of the team determined that it was a suitable planet, then the planet team would be brought out, and finally the colonists themselves.
As her vision cleared and her eyes became accustomed to the light in the room, Susan could see that there were two women standing before her. The older of the two spoke. “Since this is your first time being brought out of stasis, I think we need to explain to you that the original program that was supposed to awaken crew from stasis did not seem to be successful. Although the new mental stimulation routines keep the mind active during stasis and prevent stagnation, they create an artificial world that the mind thinks is real. Leaving that world is interpreted as death, so it proved more difficult than expected to break the mind out of the stasis world. The artificial intelligence of the control computer finally determined that only by pulling someone out of stasis in a moment where the mind was effectively not functioning, could we reliably make the transfer. And there is only one mental stimulation which will cause that.”
The doctor smiled at Dr. Susan Anderson and said, “In other words, we have to blow your mind with a tremendous orgasm so the computer can disconnect you from stasis reality. While your mind is effectively blank, we can easily bring you back into the real world.”
“Your transition took much longer than anticipated,” said the other woman. “Are you feeling any ill effects that you know of?”
“No,” Susan answered, “I feel fine. I should be ready for duty tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” said the doctor. She then added in a very clinical voice, “We have discovered, that there is one lingering side effect of the retrieval program, especially for certain women. However, the ship’s fabrication computers have been able to construct very realistic duplicates of the stasis saddle cube, including 4D animation of the village square and crowd. The music that the band plays can even be selected. You can reserve one for use during your free time after you have been out of stasis for a full week.”
Something in Susan’s face must have betrayed something, because the younger of the two medics laughed and said, “No more than once a week. Those things can be very addictive.” She laughed again and added, “And that is not just a medical opinion.”
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
END OF STORY
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =