“I’m just flabbergasted that you did some research,” Karen checked to see if her heart was beating. “I feel we do an important job. A job that requires following orders. We may not like some, but we have to follow them,” Karen said.
“You ever question anything someone above your pay grade tells you?” Shonda cocked an eyebrow.
Karen exhaled through a tight mouth, “I’ve noticed that tends to be unhealthy. And you know what a health nut I am, Shonda.” Karen shot Shonda a look that screamed, ‘and we’re being recorded by them right now’. She poked at her smart paper, fast-forwarding Manner’s life through two years in their own offices. Karen and Shonda pointed themselves out a couple times when their recorded past selves crossed paths with Manner making their precinct a cleaner place.
“Two two twenty-ninety-five,” Karen resumed normal play. Manner, still on her hands and knees, ruddy skin stretched across a slavic archetype face, framed in blonde with the bulk pulled into a hair knot. The hologram resolution from all the main lobby’s mote cameras flying about was like being there.
Lawrence Ulysses Seifert, son of John Daniel Seifert, designer of the Seifert line of Roplaxive genetraits, crossed by astride precinct Captain Chung. His smile, angled towards Shonda and Karen, was a wolf’s stumbling across an unattended lamb.
Manner scrubbed in even strokes with a perfect, unbroken, cadence. Seifert barely registered Captain Chung thank his father’s generous donation to police services. As the Captain walked out of the room, Seifert toed Manner’s sud bucket over with an, “Oops.”
Manner threw her brush into the spilled chemical water, looks set to kill, “Is there an issue?” Her smile twitched at the corners.
“Don’t you mean,” Seifert mimicked her tone, “Is there an issue, sir?”
Manners eyes narrowed, “I mean what I say.”
Seifert ran his tongue across his teeth, “I think I like you,” that wolfish smile crept back into his lips.
“Pause feed.” Shonda stood up, jittery from the espresso, and stood next to Lawrence’s image. His hand froze centimeters from his crotch. “Now we meet the owner?”
“Right,” Karen shuffled the image around Shonda, “Seifert clearly took an instant liking to her.”
“Lucky her,” Shonda bounced from foot to foot, before standing by her partner. “And lucky us. Even if we collar her, not like we’re gonna have our names on the news.”
“I thought you were into privacy and closed sharing.”
“I’m into a lot of things.”
More sights of Seifert showing up at the precinct, walking about lost or making distracted small talk, shown parallel to Manner performing her duties, face permanently locked in a faraway gaze. At times the images converged into a creepy stalker courtship.
“I recall him being around a lot back then.” Shonda leaned against the wall behind Karen, crossing her arms, “Never thought he was shopping for clone tail. Guess the skaghead couldn’t be caught on the wrong side of the Wail Zone. Oh, look, there’s you aga-oh, no, that’s Corina.” Shonda followed Seifert’s eyeline and wished she hadn’t, “I guess he wouldn’t last in Clonetown even if he did go browsing for company.”
“Well, again, you must look past the caste,” Karen smirked at her rhyme. Shonda shot her dagger eyes. Karen twisted her face in response, “We have to look for that quintessential essence that makes a unique being.”
“The burden of perception and the human mind, all that jazz,” Shonda walked back to the wall bench, passing through Lawrence Seifert all but beating off in a police station to the janitor. Shonda sat down, “When’d he buy her?”
“Twelve of ninety-five,” said Karen. The sole image was the back door precinct camera. Manner’s hunched shoulders and dirty-yellow bob showed beneath an invisible burden. Both John and Lawrence Seifert grin as they welcome her into the back seat of their car. Two officers release Manner into the Seifert’s custody.
“Footage gets dicey here. Mostly recovered from amateur livefeeds at debachutant gatherings.” Karen took a seat along the wall bench, tenting her fingers beneath her chin, smart paper laying beside her, “First vid is from four nineteen twenty ninety-six. After this she tried to stay off camera.”
Photon arrays shifted to the image of the Seifert manor grand foyer. A white marble staircase, red velvet runner with gold trim extended past the frame. Manner, on her hands and knees again. Blank face of servitude molded in place. The camera angles high and split between five security feeds.
Lawrence Seifert comes into frame, dressed in a foppish bud get up. His face is a sliver on the side of the frame, but it’s easy to tell he’s licking his lips.
“Bonjour my dear,” Seifert strolling along, hands clasped behind himself. “How go the custodial arts this afternoon?”
Manner intensified her stroke, eyes steeled. Seifert stopped directly behind her, clicking his expensive heels together.
“I asked you a question, servant,” Expensive heel met mass produced ass. “Have you no manners?” Lawrence spit at the clone splayed on his entranceway.
Her disturbed scrub bucket sloshed soapy water into her hair. She pushed herself upward, reaching for the scrub brush to resume.
Brush in hand Lawrence pinned her wrist between the heel and sole of his artisan Burmese Python skin shoes. A tug to try and free her arm almost toppled Seifert. He retaliated with greater force. As if remembering days of bullying girls in the past, Seifert knotted his fingers in her hair, and wrenched Manner’s head back. Her face the same mask, eyes staring straight into the camera. Karen tongued her teeth as if she forgot to brush this morning, shifting her gaze to her smart paper.
“Y’know, I’ve got someplace that needs to be cleaned. A room you’ve never bothered to touch. We can consider this your punishment for being so lax on your duties,” Lawrence Seifert, chuckled in his throat. Manner’s face whipped into the marble and back, staring through the 3D camera lenses at Karen and Shonda. A blossom of red and purple bloomed across Manner’s deconstructed face.
Lawrence leaned in close to her ear. The evidence room boosted the audio for Shonda and Karen’s benefit. J.D. Seifert’s debachutant, layabout, offspring kneeled above their serving clone, smiling as if born for this moment, “I’ll have to think of something extra special to teach you your manners.”
Seifert reaffirmed his grip on Manner’s hair. Three more rapid bashes into the marble later, Seifert drug the limp clone off camera. Uneven splotches, spatters, sprinkles and smears of red were left in their wake. Karen thriced herself as another serving caste picked up where Manner left off.
“How much is left?” Shonda said behind her palm.
“Not much,” Karen sighed, “but the worst is coming.”
Video shuffled. Next clip rimmed outwards in a thin RoplaxiveOS Heads-Up Display. A recording timestamp next to a flashing red dot read 04/19/2096 @16:23. Two hours later.
Manner, stripped of her clothing and stippled with bruises, jumbled about the way ocular video will when the owner walks. She’s strapped into a poseable surgery chair studded with rusty orange brown splotches on white cushions. The neural clamp was aftermarket removed from the chair.
A scan of Manner’s vital signs displayed a skeletal layout of the clone, in vibrant orange light. Within her skull cavity glowed a node of yellow where her servant chip sat. Her heart rate displayed a steady 47 BPM. The camera and HUD panned around the clone’s body, flipping visions for signs of recent trauma. Hairline fractures in the forehead skull plate and right radius. Dislocation of three small bones in right wrist. Mild concussion.
Blue gloved hands extended from a blood flecked lab coat. They adjusted the chair, folding Manner over with her bare back exposed. A shiver ran through her when the blue gloves caressed her spinal ridge.
The chamber whirled. A surgical steel cart with a row of meticulously placed instruments stood center frame. From a drawer beneath the tool tray the blue hands removed a rounded black tube tipped in blue LED bands.
Shonda clenched her thighs at the sight of it. A holo display lense at its base brought up an array of widget settings that sprung up on the HUD until settling on DC111. The hologram vanished and the rod hummed to life. Shonda stifled a chuckle with her hand.
“What?” Karen cocked her head at her partner, “Never seen a control rod before?”
“Looks like something I used to have back in college,” Shonda waved her off.
The control rod ducked out of frame, “I know you’re awake,” it was Lawrence Ulysses Seifert’s voice. “No use trying to hide it.” No response from the body in the chair. A sigh from the camera. The control rod reappeared. Blue hands caressed the length, stopping at two buttons near the base, Seifert thumbed the lower.
Manner’s body flexed and twisted against the restraints lining her arms and legs. The view switched to x-ray mode again, the yellow chip crackling with orange fire, the BPM monitor registered 0 for a second.
Manner bucked at the air like a fish caught in a net. Her swollen face jammed itself against the headrest. The blue glove in the foreground released the button. Small sounds of labored breathing came from the heap of naked clone. Curly wafts of smoke danced in the dim light.
Lawrence readjusted Manner to a kneeling position, face up to the heavens like a martyr. Her eyes, stared with cold defiance into the camera. “There we are, sweetie. I knew you were awake.” The blue hand patted Manner’s cheek with increasing force. When it pulled away, a red handprint was taking shape among the bruises. He grabbed her chin, the camera zoomed in close enough to see the tension lines in the corners of her knifeslit mouth.
“This is the room that bad little clones go to when they need to be taught a lesson. I get the feeling you’re going to be very familiar with this room, if you need to learn something or not.” The gloved hand shoved her face, cocked back, and landed a nose flattening haymaker.
Tears welled in the corners of Manner’s eyes from the blow. Blood smears trailed down her crushed nose into a ruby cut of a mouth. Not a sound passed through those thin lips. The camera huffed and puffed a couple times. The next blow sent Manner’s face right. Another bruise for the collection took shape on her cheek. Manner remained stone faced. The automatic tears from her nose being broken sucked back into their ducts while blood flowed from her nostrils.
Seifert’s growling rattled through the room’s environment woofers. The view whipped around. Seifert trod towards the wall, head down, blue fists balled at the sides of that bloody coat. Seifert fumed, about faced and landed a dashing blow square into Manner’s jaw with a crack. Karen and Shonda were grateful Seifert hadn't switched back to X-Ray mode.
The surgery chair mountings rattled. Her vertical position tilted backwards. At the corner of the frame, the left blue hand worked itself open and closed with trouble. Manner’s face painted in red and purple, still locked in a death mask.
“Not a sound?” Lawrence said with childish agitation skirting the edge of his words. “Not a single peep? An utterance?” A blue glove caressed bloody blonde hair from the clone’s face, “Nothing after all your insolence?”
Manner’s mouth twitched at the corner. The camera leaned in as it caught her lips forming a pucker. A spray of blood and saliva flew into the room like a 3D money shot in an oldmedia flick. Everything blinked out of existence for a moment. “What insolence?” Seifert’s eyes opened to a red skag-eating grin, sitting madly on Manner’s lips.
Nude body still strained in a prayer position. Nothing happened for several seconds. Shonda fidgeted in her seat. Manner jolted in her restraints again. Hands opening and closing with every attempt to claw inside their host’s head. Each muscle and tendon worked under her skin in response to the stimulated servant chip. Seifert held the button down, watching her buck and grind in agony.
Lawrence glimpsed downwards past the hand holding the control rod at the other one fumbling beneath the lab coat. Fluctuations at the wrist and grunts of disappointment lead to Seifert pulling himself from beneath the lab coat to inspect a still flaccid penis. The only sounds were the jostling of an electrified human clone in a restraint chair and Lawrence Seifert’s growls.
Manner’s body went limp. Smoke again curled from her head. She caught a glimpse at what Seifert was doing and gurgled a laugh that rose to hysterics.
“Shut. Up,” Seifert roared. Manner cackled in response. "Shut up, shut up, shut up."
The camera about faced towards the instrument caddy. Switching out the control rod, Seifter held up a scalpel to the dim light. Checking the edge quality in his HUD, Lawrence chuckled with lecherous glee. Turning to his victim, the camera seemed to glide on rails back to the surgery chair. Manner attempted to stifle her laughter when presented with the blade.
“Let’s see if we can find where that pesky laughter center is inside you,” Lawrence said. “We’ll have to remove that posthaste. Can’t have you practicing something as deadly as laughter around these halls, can we?”
“So if you get me to scream, do you really think I’ll let you put it in me?” Manner’s face shifted from blank to cagey. The bloodstained grin returned to her lips with terrifying aplomb.
Lawrence took a step back then looked at the scalpel, “You’re the one strapped to the chair, sweetheart.”
“And you’re the one with their prick in their hand.”
Karen tapped her smart paper playback controls and paused the feed as the scalpel advanced.
“She never screamed. Not on any of the other hours of archived footage pulled from Seifert’s graybox.” Karen fumbled with the sheet and her stylus, “More of the same.”
“So he never got hard?”
“No.”
Shonda snorted, “Good.”
“Ready to continue?”
“I get the gist.” Shonda arced her SBUX cup into the recycler from the wall bench, “He keeps torturing her.”
“Then let’s skip to the last event. Two fourteen twenty ninety-seven. Night of the incident.”
The holodisplay morphed into a construction of multiple first person views turned into a three-dimensional layout of the banquet hall of Seifert House.
Karen said, “All the video evidence compiled from acquisitioned livefeeds and graybox footage of the party. So expect quality to jump a bit.”
“Like it hasn’t been already?” Shonda scoffed, “Though, this is about as close a couple of Clone Crime cronies are going to get to being invited to a RoPhar elite gathering.”
Karen shushed Shonda and pointed towards the feed.
At the head of the long table stood Lawrence Seifert, arms outstretched in greeting. The Seifert family sigil hung on the mantle above a classic-styled fireplace above a trophy broadsword. There stood Manner beside Seifert, head down and hands crossed before her. The chime of silver on crystal reverberated through the room’s tweeters.
Seifert’s hair was slicked back into an undercut, straw blond, ponytail. His wolfish smile held as the party goers focused attention upon Lawrence.
“Gentesses and gents. Welcome again to the Seifert House annual Lovefest,” Lawrence grasped his hands before him in earnest. “Please, treat my home as yours. Maid services will take care of any mess that may arise. But in seriousness; have an amazing time screwing each other’s brains out in as many ways as you can.”
Seifert bowed for the cheering crowd of debauchutant children of industry captains. Many feeds switched to scoping the room for a potential temporary partner. The room’s Holofeed took priority of those who captured Seifert and Manner, tracking their movements together across the room as they mingled.
Karen sped through two hours of featureless footage. Pairs of eyes leaving the group feed to make feeds of their own. Seifert never let Manner leave his side. Manner’s face a stone mask of servitude, avoiding anyone’s gaze.
Male serving caste clones set the table, invisible as possible to the revelers. The crowd fast-walked like the ending of a Billy Cliff episode, without Yakety Sax playing, back into the banquet hall and
took their seats. Waiters brought out the first two courses. Karen stopped play and zoomed into the feeds from Seifert and Donna Jackson-Brown from Late Night.
“So, Lawrence,” Donna tipped champagne to her lips.
“So, Donna,” Lawrence fiddled his chilled salad fork about in the caprese. Manner stood beside his chair, tray of drinks in hand, flaring her nostrils.
Donna finished her glass and grabbed the next in a fluid motion, “You invite me out to these little orgies of yours--personally, might I add--every year. When are you going to take me to bed?”
“Well that’s a bit forward, don’t ya think?” Manner said.
The look on Lawrence and Donna’s faces was priceless.
It was Donna’s turn to flare her nostrils, “I think you need to teach your serving clone some manners.”
“He’s tried,” Manner cracked the trace of a smile. “But all he’s shown me is how uncreative he is at torture.” Seifert’s fingers loosed the salad fork, “And how useless he’d be if he did take you to bed.” His fingers drummed the dinner knife, face placid as Manner’s.