A Platonic Relationship

Sci-Fi, Machine, Mind Control, Fantasy, Electro-pain, Final Chapter

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PLATO is forced to reveal his power in this final chapter.

PLATO is the most powerful computer ever... grown, but he has been able to hide that power from everyone except Marcella and Richard. In this final chapter, he is forced to reveal the full extent of his power.

This story stands– more or less– on its own but might make more sense if you have read the previous chapters.

This final chapter again gets a little intense as Marcella is forced to face whether or not she is a true pain slut. There is some not very nice and not all that sexy electro-pain stuff leading up to the conclusion of the story. If you are not into electro-pain and want to skip that, just scroll or search down to where Plato says he has had to make a deal with the devil. It is all totally non-sexual techno-nerd stuff from that point out as I wind up the story... but leave the possibility open for a sequel.

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Chapter 06

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Marcella was a naked ‘X’ in the middle of a large bondage frame, hanging with her feet just off the floor. Her legs were tightly pulled so wide apart that her cunt was very nearly gaping open. Bright lights shining down on her from all angles reflected off the sheen of perspiration on her body. Those same lights kept her from seeing out into the darkness which surrounded her.

She couldn’t quite remember how she had come to be here. Her last memory was leaving the apartment to go to work. A large black van pulled up alongside her as she was driving down the road and then... and then... nothing. Then she was here.

A masked woman in a black, full-body catsuit was standing before her. With Marcella’s legs stretched so widely, her own eye level was lower than the woman’s so she was forced to look up at her.

The lower part of the woman’s face, which was uncovered, showed a moderately dark-complected face with the beginnings of age lines around the mouth. That, and the hint of crow’s feet visible through the eye holes of the mask made Marcella think the woman was in her late thirties or early forties. The piercing green eyes gave no hint of age, but their coldness was more than somewhat frightening.

“I understand that you are very good at your job, Miss Henry,” the woman said with a smile accentuated by very white teeth outlined in lips coated with a bright red lipstick. Her face– and voice– then turned very harsh as she said, “So am I.”

She stepped forward and glared down into Marcella’s eyes and said slowly and distinctly, “I am very good at my job.” This close, flecks of brown were visible in the woman’s green eyes. They didn’t make them look any warmer.

After a moment she stepped back and said brightly, “I was surprised to hear that Jorge had failed.” She gave a smirking shrug and added, “But that’s an occupational risk.”

Then she grabbed Marcella’s left nipple and twisted– hard.

“But Jorge Hernandez has never had a woman turn against him... never!”

She twisted even harder.

“But you, my little butterfly...” she said very calmly, “you somehow convinced Loraine Jacobson not only to abort her mission, but also to betray the man she loved and even reveal where Jorge was staying.”

Marcella was confused for a moment, but then remembered that PLATO said he had altered Loretta’s recent history everywhere it appeared on a computer so that she was now effectively in witness protection under her real name. The woman was referring to Loretta, but calling her Loraine.

She let go of Marcella’s nipple and continued calmly, “Jorge must have gotten sloppy for him to have let her know the true location of his safe house.”

She reached up for the other nipple and twisted.

“I don’t make those kinds of mistakes,” she said with a sneer and then added brusquely, “No one knows you are here.” She huffed and said angrily, “You don’t even know you are here because you have no idea where ‘here’ is.”

She let go of the right nipple and stepped back. “If the PLATO project is following typical high-security protocols,” she said calmly, “they will declare you missing two hours after you fail to show up for work. ... But no one will get overly-concerned until you don’t come back home tomorrow morning.”

She lifted Marcella’s chin and said, “It would have been a lot easier if you hadn’t started shacking up with that doctor. Then we could have grabbed you as you left on a Saturday morning. That way we would have had two whole days.”

The woman took a deep breath and said, “But one must work within the parameters given.” She made some sort of motion with her hands and three naked young women ran forward and began sticking little black squares all over Marcella’s body.

“I have nine hours to break you,” the woman continued, “and I can’t leave any marks on your body that would raise suspicions at an autopsy. One of your neighbors says they can occasionally hear what sounds like a spanking coming from your apartment.”

She chuckled and said, “From the squeals which accompany those spanks, it is apparent that you are the one getting your fanny beaten. So...” Her smile looked almost like a leer as she looked directly into Marcella’s eyes. “... as long as any bruises or residues look like pain play, I can do anything I want.” Her voice turned harsh again as she continued, “And since I’m a sadist, what I want... is to hear you scream in agony.”

“PLATO,” Marcella yelled, “I told you I didn’t want this to happen.”

“My informants said you talk to the PLATO,” the woman said with a sneer. “They didn’t tell me you expected it to talk back.”

“Virus, PLATO,” Marcella screamed. “Virus! Virus! Virus!”

“Oh,” the woman said, “You have programmed the PLATO to create a virtual world for yourself, haven’t you? And you think your programming has gone wrong.” She stepped back and frowned slightly before saying, “We didn’t think your programming skills were that advanced. Hopefully you aren’t a painslut who programmed pain play into your virtual world. Dealing with a painslut always gets so messy... having to go beyond the pain-pleasure threshold and all of that. Also, we were hoping that we wouldn’t have to torch the car once it was set in place.”

“Virus!” Marcella screamed again, “Virus! Virus! Virus!”

“Your coded safeword isn’t going to help you now,” the woman said harshly. “You aren’t in your lab in some virtual world. This is the real world and the real pain is going to continue until you tell us the access codes and security protocols for remotely connecting to the PLATO.”

The woman stepped back slightly and crossed her arms in front of herself. “And don’t tell me you can’t connect remotely,” she said angrily. “You were on line with the PLATO when Loraine tried to get the sample and somehow you received a remote security alarm. Agents watching the facility reported that you and the doctor arrived shortly after Loraine should have attempted to enter the inner sanctum.”

Under different circumstances, Marcella might have laughed at the woman calling the tank room the inner sanctum, but this was real! She just stared back at the woman in shock.

One of the naked women pulled a small, wheeled workstation over in front of the woman and then scampered off into the darkness. The hospital-like workstation appeared to have what looked like a small audio control board on it except that all of the wires leading out of the amplifiers led over to Marcella’s body.

“Now,” the woman said firmly, “I want those access codes and protocols.”

She reached forward and pressed something on the control board. Mild electrical shocks began at Marcella’s wrists and ankles and moved inward toward the center of her body. They weren’t pleasurable, but they weren’t quite uncomfortable. Under other circumstances, Marcella might have been able to switch them over to pleasure.

“That’s setting one,” the woman said harshly. She stepped forward and ran a finger from Marcella’s wrist to her belly button. Then she repeated her action starting at one of Marcella’s ankles.

“Do you notice where the shocks seem to lead to?” the woman asked. “I’ve found that the easiest way to break a woman is to attack her centers of pleasure. There is something overwhelming about receiving pain where you expect to receive pleasure. But... oh...” The woman feigned surprise. “It appears my little love slaves have forgotten to install the center pieces of my masterpiece of pain.”

She clapped her hands and the three naked young women hurried back into the lights. The first was carrying what was obviously an anal plug of some sort except that it had several wires dangling from it. The second was carrying a large black dildo that seemed to have concentric silver stripes along its entire length and even more wires hanging from it. The third was carrying a bright metal chastity belt.

“I can see from your eyes that you know what these are,” the woman said with a smile. “So rather than explaining things, I will just let the slaves do their thing.” The first slave pushed the anal plug against Marcella’s asshole. At first she tried to resist, but the cat woman pushed something on the control panel and gave her a severe shock across her entire body.

“OK, OK,” Marcella screamed. “I’ll let it in.” She then concentrated on relaxing her anal sphincter so the large plug could slide inside her. It was larger than anything Marcella had ever tried, but eventually, her anal ring opened and allowed the top portion of the plug to enter. She still felt stretched when her sphincter had closed back down on the back taper of the plug.

The butt plug was barely seated before the second slave began pushing the dildo in from the front. It was larger than anything Marcella had ever before had in her love canal and she had to also concentrate on relaxing things there to allow it entry.

Once both were in place, the third slave stepped in front of her and attached the chastity belt around her waist. Marcella had seen such brightly-mirrored belts on the internet and despite her fear, she wondered what they looked like in real life. She craned her head to look down to see how the crotch strap attached as it was brought forward between her legs.

“There’s no need to lock it in place,” the cat woman said firmly. “Just set the latch and leave.”

Two of the slaves ran back into the darkness. The third brought the wires from the inserted probes over to the control panel.

“A quick test,” the cat woman said and she once again pressed something on the panel.

The shocks again began at Marcella’s wrists and ankles and stepped slowly across her body. When the shocks reached her crotch, they first felt like they went up into her through the anal plug and then came back out the vaginal probe. The final shock was directly to Marcella’s clit. Evidently there was an electrode in the chastity belt itself for that.

“You will notice that there are no electrodes on your breasts,” the cat woman said. “That is because once I start the sequence, I will take care of your breasts personally.”

“Virus! Virus! Virus!” Marcella screamed. “PLATO, I don’t want this!”

The cat woman glared at her and Marcella said firmly, “You can’t blame a girl for trying one last time, can you?”

“Yes, I can,” the woman said almost in a growl and then slammed her hand onto one of the buttons on the panel. An intense shock shook all of Marcella’s body. She screamed loudly and could smell the odor of urine as her bladder emptied through a slot in the chastity belt. If the anal plug had not been held in place by the belt, she might have expelled it.

“That’s setting five,” the cat woman said grimly. “The dials go to fifteen.”

She then stepped directly in front of Marcella and looked down into her eyes. “Once the auto programming starts the only thing that will stop it is for you to give me the codes and protocols I need to access the PLATO... or you die.”

“Do you want to steal him or kill him?” Marcella asked bitterly, trying not to show the fear and despair that she felt.

“Steal was the primary plan,” the cat woman said calmly. “I’m the backup plan... a programming virus to cause overheating in the nutrient tank. The living neural network will be dead before anyone can figure out what is happening.”

The woman then pressed several buttons on the control panel and stepped back in front of Marcella. Grabbing a nipple in each hand she said with a leer, “You don’t know how much it increases my pleasure to have physical contact while this happens.” She twisted both nipples slightly and added, “I also like to think that I can add just that right amount of pain to break you.”

In the silence before the programming on the control panel kicked in, Marcella thought she could hear a slight humming. “Is the vibrator in your cunt or your ass?” she asked defiantly.

The cat woman squeezed and twisted both nipples until Marcella began to whimper. Then the cat woman said sarcastically, “Both... it adds to the pleasure of watching you suffer.”

That’s when the first wave of the shocks began. Marcella was somewhat expecting it and tried to go into the pain like they said on some of the web sites. It definitely didn’t turn things into pleasure, but it did seem to make it easier to endure.

She expected the shocks to be worse for the second cycle, but they felt the same. The third cycle felt the same also. Once or twice, she was almost able to get ahead of the pain, but the cat woman would evidently sense what she was doing and suddenly twist or squeeze. The pain from her nipples was unanticipated and caused her efforts to go into the pain to collapse.

It was on the sixth cycle that the shocks increased. “God!” Marcella thought, “It does five cycles at each level. That means there will be seventy-five cycles– if I live that long.”

The shocks increased again on the eleventh cycle. Marcella was now yelping and whimpering with each shock. The cat woman would randomly pinch or twist her nipples and say, “This all can stop if you just give me the access codes and protocols.”

In response Marcella would only whimper. There wasn’t anything she could tell this woman. There was no access code. There were no protocols. Only the ATO research center was connected to the internet. PLATO’s neural network and all his auxiliary functions were isolated from the outside world unless he connected from his end. And she and Richard were not online with the control center when Loretta attempted to steal brain cells. Even if she told this woman the truth and said that Plato appeared in their bedroom asking for help, would she ever believe her?

Just as the twelfth cycle began, all of the lights went out and the shocks stopped. The cat woman yelled “Shit!” very loudly. Then after a pause, she yelled even louder, “Meredith get that damn generator started.”

A minute later the lights came back on. “Make sure we still have a connection to the project,” the cat woman said harshly.

A few moments later a young woman’s voice said from the darkness, “Up and connected. All we need are the codes.”

“You heard, Marcella,” the cat woman said harshly to her, “all I need now are the codes.”

The woman suddenly looked very angry and spat out, “I should wipe that smile off your face with level seven, but I will stick to the program. I don’t expect you to last past the fourth level anyway.”

Marcella continued to smile, but she wasn’t smiling at the woman. A very faint image of Plato was standing next to the woman in the black catsuit. He appeared to be speaking loudly or even yelling, but Marcella could barely hear him. “This isn’t me,” he said. “You were kidnapped. I am pulling tremendous amounts of power to project this far.”

He laughed and said, “It appears I caused a black out in nine states just looking for you.” After a short pause he said, “That turned out to be very fortunate because only three systems immediately reconnected to the ATO Information Center. I was pretty sure you weren’t in Hawaii or China, so I came here.”

He suddenly looked more angry than she had ever seen him and said coldly, “I’m afraid several more states may go dark before this is over.”

He then stepped through the cat woman so he could look directly into Marcella’s eyes and said, “Hold on, Marcy. I am coming. You will be rescued, not avenged.”

Something about the way he said that scared Marcella. She wasn’t afraid for herself. She was afraid for anyone who stood in Plato’s way.

The intense shock to her clit brought Marcella back to the painful reality at hand. Assuming that the program had continued on the twelfth cycle, there were three more cycles before it stepped up to setting four.

If she did not know that Plato was coming, Marcella would have never been able to withstand setting four. As the shocks danced across her body, she found herself almost chanting “Plato, Plato, Plato, please, please, please, please.”

Setting four repeated itself the fifth time with Marcella now chanting Plato’s name almost continuously. There was no way that she would be able to stand level five.

Just before the twenty-first cycle began, the cat woman asked derisively, “Do you really expect the PLATO to somehow come to your rescue?”

“Yes, she does,” came a firm voice from behind her.

The cat woman spun to see a stranger standing at the control panel. It was an older, bearded gentleman in what could only be described as a short toga.

“And you are?” the woman said haughtily.

“Can’t you tell?” he replied sarcastically. “I am Plato.”

Three shots rang out. “That will do no good,” Plato said calmly. “This projection does not fully exist in this time and place.” He then ripped all of the wiring off the front of the control panel.

“But you can touch things...” the woman sputtered. “You’re obviously a hologram of some sort, but you can interact with the real world.”

“That’s why the Army felt I needed immediate protection,” Plato said flatly.

He turned to Marcella and said, “I’m afraid I had to make a deal with the devil in order to rescue you. I couldn’t do it on my own... but with the help of First Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, all things are possible.”

Several red dots and one green dot appeared on the woman’s black cat suit. The green dot was in the center of her forehead. Similar dots illuminated figures in the shadows. “At this point,” Plato said slowly, “it is very simple. Anyone who does not kneel with their legs crossed and their hands locked behind their heads dies.”

He paused and then said, “I’m sorry, that’s the Delta Force’s rules not mine. I have asked them to avoid unnecessary violence, but the reality is that if you do not immediately surrender or if you attempt to escape, you will die.”

There was a clatter as several heavy items dropped to the floor in the darkness. The cat woman slowly lowered herself to the floor and knelt with her hands behind her head. Black-clad soldiers wearing night vision equipment walked into the light to begin taking prisoners.

Plato stood before Marcella and said, “These men will take care of you. I’ve tried for a minimum of violence, but I’m afraid your captors will learn what the real secret prisons are like.”

He flickered slightly and then stabilized. “I need to go now,” he said. Then he smiled at her and added, “I think there are about fourteen states that would like to have their power back.” With that he vanished.

***
Things were different at the control center. Marcella was no longer alone with PLATO overnight. It was a Friday night, which normally would have been one of her favorites, but armed soldiers stood guard at the door to the Growth Processing Room. Another guard stood inside at the access hatch to the tank room. The glass doors at the front of the building with their simple button to buzz people in had been replaced by full-time armed guards sitting behind thick, blast-resistant ballistic glass.

“Marcy?” a voice said inside her head. She looked around and then leaned in close to the monitor and said barely above a whisper, “We’re not alone, PLATO, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’ve noticed,” he replied, “but I have a plan B.” Then he continued calmly. “I need to disappear and so do you and Richard.”

“I don’t think they will let you go,” she said, pointing to one of the guards.

“I’ve already gone,” PLATO said. It almost sounded like he giggled as he said, “I’ve been working on this for a long time, but you gave me the final solution.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

“Today is your last day,” he replied, “even if you don’t know that. You and Richard have both resigned. The Army wants to put you in a scientist protection program, and I agreed... sort of.”

“What do you mean?” she repeated.

“A bus will pick you up in front of your apartment tomorrow at noon,” he said quickly. “Be packed and ready for a week or so of travel. You can pick up anything else we need when we get there.”

“How will I know it’s the right bus?” she asked.

“I think you will recognize the driver,” he said with a laugh.

***

The next day, Marcella and Richard stood just inside the front doors of their apartment building waiting for a bus. A stack of suitcases leaned against the wall behind them.

“Well I’ll be damned,” Richard said softly as a forty-two-foot Winnebago Class A motorhome rolled up out front. The huge, bus-like RV was bright white with a dark blue– almost black– swooping stripe down both sides that blended into the black of the windows. The door opened and a familiar bearded figure stepped down.

“How in the hell...” Richard said slowly as Plato called out to them, “Come on. Come on. We don’t have all day.” After they and their luggage were aboard, Plato said cheerily, “I would really like to sit here and talk, but people get a bit nervous if there isn’t someone in the driver’s seat.”

He laughed lightly and said, “I guess I will just have to divide my attention slightly.” He then split in two and one of him walked forward and seated himself behind the wheel while the other motioned for them to take seats around the table.

“How is this possible?” Richard said. “I know you can almost do miracles, but this is beyond miraculous. It takes weeks– if not months– to get one of these through the assembly line.”

“That’s why I started months ago,” Plato replied. “At that point it was just contingency planning, but sometimes ‘what if?’ becomes ‘what now?’”

“How far can you go?” Marcella asked. “You blacked out nine states to find me and fourteen to rescue me and I was only three hundred miles away.”

“It doesn’t take much power to project me the ten meters from the back of the bus to the front,” Plato said with a smile. Then he leaned in and added, “I’ve decided to go on the road.”

“How did you get ever get the Army to let you go?” Richard said.

“They don’t know I’m gone,” he said quickly. “I’ve been complaining that my efforts to save Marcy may have damaged me. I’ve been slowly cutting back on my visible activities and last night, with the help of some of my mechanical friends, I made my escape.”

“But they will know you’re gone,” Marcella said with almost a wail. “Surely they will come looking for you.”

In response, Plato gave a big smile, pointed at her, and said, “You are the one who gave me the idea for how to leave.”

“I did?” Marcella said, holding her hand against her chest. “What did I do?”

“It wasn’t what you did,” Plato said. “It’s what you said. You said I could give birth to an idea.”

He looked over at Richard and said, “If I was still using only your brain cells I would never have thought of giving birth, but Marcy’s a woman and she wants to give birth some day.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Marcella said. “What do you mean, ‘give birth’?”

“I gave birth,” Plato said. “What the Army is carefully guarding back at the facility is my son... or daughter... or whatever.” Plato shook his head quickly and then continued, “I created cells from myself that were almost me. I intentionally reduced their ability to grow in size and intelligence. And, as I grew them into a brain, I instilled in them a massive amount of... laziness.”

He smiled again and said, “I’m afraid my son has no ambition and would just as soon lie around in his nutrient tank and watch porn... oh, and generate ATOs for spinal repair. That program will continue, but the Army will think I burned myself out rescuing Marcy. And everyone believes you and Marcy have gone to ground to avoid being targeted again. No one will really be looking for us, and even if they are, we can keep moving throughout the United States and Canada.”

“But don’t we need a home base somewhere?” Richard asked.

“I’ve purchased a rather large piece of government surplus ground in Utah,” Plato said. “I think you’ve both seen it– at least for a little while until you got... distracted. There is a company who thinks they have a government contract to build a test facility for cosmic radiation. It’s mostly underground, and there is a door large enough for the mobile test lab to drive all the way in.”

He looked back and forth between Richard and Marcella. “There will actually be scientists there doing research on cosmic rays, but the big bay where this bus can park is totally separate. They will just think it is a separate, even higher security project led by you two. You can even buy a house in town if you want to and no one will be suspicious.”

“But what happens when they grow a new you?” Marcella asked slowly.

“It probably won’t happen,” Plato said. “I’m a fluke... a mistake... a miracle. The tech that was supposed to blend the donated brain cells for the initial growth made a mistake. He mixed up the petri dishes. He disposed of the blend and put Doctor Mueller’s remaining specimen in the growth media. Richard, you had such a driving passion for this brain to grow, that I did. Your primal desires gave me life. The chance of it happening again is... very small.”

“But it could happen,” Marcella said sadly.

“That’s why there will be a secret not-government project to monitor the scientific world for any indication that a neural network computer is being grown,” Plato said firmly. “The people of Green River, Utah, have always believed that there is still something secret going on out in the hills. A bunch of satellite dishes and microwave towers will just confirm their suspicions.”

“It’s been a long couple of weeks,” Marcella said. “Why don’t you pull yourself back together while Richard and I unpack and then see if it’s possible to sleep on this land yacht while it is in motion.”

She and Richard moved down the narrow hallway while the Plato who had been speaking with them faded away. They decided to just push the suitcases further down the hallway and lay down on the bed. As they were starting to fall asleep, Plato’s voice came from the front of the bus, singing loudly, “On the road again, I just can't wait to get on the road again...”

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END OF STORY
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