Department of Happiness

Elanor Laul wore her moodstone set in a collar, in the gothesque style. It currently gleamed orange, bordering on red. Downshifted enough for her to be taken in, except that she had a permit to be grumpy. She needed to be grumpy. She had a commission to finish: Subtle Truths, a sculpture for the Zeke Group, and she needed to be able to tell if the final touches had appropriate gravitas or were just kitsch.

As for the rest of her, she wore a red blouse, a matching red denim skirt (which she preferred to the traditional blue), and serious black boots that came up to her knees. Her skin was dark enough for an Afro-Earther but her ancestry was mostly Indian-subcontinent, which left her constantly explaining that her complexion was natural and not enhanced by cosmetics. Her face had a prominent nose, big dark eyes, and a generous mouth, and a poetic friend had once called her hair “black and straight as rain at midnight.”

Elanor frowned at her unfinished sculpture, examining the arches of bronze and stainless steel, and the places she had tentatively assigned as the attachment points for the onyx falcons and the centaur. “Ugly,” she muttered under her breath. “Kitsch. You’re kitsch!” she accused the bronze centaur. It didn’t reply.

Her ‘phone rang, and she flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Hello!” the voice at the other end responded. “Ms. Laul? This is Sam Freds at the DOH. An issue has come up with your permit, and we need your sig on some additional paperwork. Could you come down and take care of it, sometime this afternoon?”

“Huh!” Elanor answered. “All right, I’d better do that.” She glanced at the time display on her ‘phone. “Two-thirty all right? I might get there sooner, but certainly by two-thirty.”

“Let’s see,” A pause, then, “That will be just fine,” Sam told her.

“All right then,” Elanor said. “I’ll see you at two-thirty, or maybe sooner.” She flipped her ‘phone back off and slipped it into its pocket.

New Seattle was gray and drizzly, as always. Not that the entire planet was that way: Centaur II (known as Beauty to its inhabitants) had its tropical beaches, howling deserts and snow-capped mountains just like any other inhabited planet. But the weather over New Seattle was typically gloomy, which was one reason why the local Department of Happiness had so much power.

Elanor wore her permit like a badge as she left her studio, but people still shied away from the sight of her orange-red moodstone set in her collar. Their stones ranged from a contented aqua to a pleased violet, typically worn in rings or bracelets.

Their reactions didn’t help Elanor’s grumpiness, certainly not on top of this time-wasting trip. As she climbed into an autocab, Elanor promised herself that she would go for a cheer-up session at Dan’s Dozens. (“The finest feathers in New Seattle!”) But until she finished this commission, she couldn’t afford that, either financially or emotionally.

Once in the big white DOH building, Elanor made her way to Sam Freds’ cube. “Hello!” he greeted her, his own moodstone (worn on a chain around his neck) gleaming a bright blue. “You need to sign a -440 variance, and then we need to get my boss’s sig on it as well. We can go right over to her office, right now. How’s that for service?” he smiled at her.

Elanor managed to smile back. Sam scooped up some papers (Paper was cheap on Centaur II.) and led Elanor through the cubes to the office of Tracy Nng. “Hello Sam, Ms. Laul,” the diminutive blonde greeted them. “The network’s being stubborn today, and I’m still trying to pull up your records. Please, have a seat.” Sam put the papers on his boss’s desk, and he and Elanor sat. “Ah. Here we go.” Tracy tapped the keys to scroll. “OK... OK... OK... Hmm... OK then.” She then pulled the form over and stamped it with a big red REJECTED before initialing it. “I’ll need your current permit too, Ms. Laul.” She held out her hand for it.

“What? Why?” Elanor asked as she unpinned her permit-badge. “You’re not revoking my permit, are you?”

“Why?” Elanor tried to keep her voice calm and reasonable. The DOH bureaucrats were generally friendly and helpful, but the also held great power, here in New Seattle. It wouldn’t do to unnecessarily antagonize them. “But – why? I’ve never had a problem with my permits before. And I need this one, for my commission.”

Tracy still had her hand out. I’ll explain when you hand it over was the silent message. Elanor handed her permit over, and Tracy explained: “That’s actually the problem. You’ve had four unhappiness permits issued already this year, and four the year before that. And another four permits back two years ago. That’s the unofficial limit: Four permits per year. So you see I can’t possibly approve another permit for you this year.”

Elanor asked carefully, “Four permits per year is the unofficial limit?”

“That’s right,” Tracy said brightly. “Officially it’s ten every three years, without a special variance, but four per year is much easier to implement, and it’s how we’ve always done things. Four a year; that’s just the way things are.”

“But– “ Elanor made herself fall silent. She’d dealt with the DOH enough to know the meaning of that’s just the way things are. Once one of their agents spoke those words, there was no moving them.

“I’m glad you understand,” Tracy smiled. “One more thing: I’ll have Sam escort you over to J-wing. You clearly need cheering up, but I don’t think we’ll need to call an orderly.”

Elanor knew herself trapped. For a wild moment, she imagined making a break for it, and escaping into the noir sector of the city. Only she then wouldn’t be able to work on her commission at all. Worse, an escape attempt would fail miserably, and only earn her the rejection of any further permit applications she might make. She stood up and forced a smile. “Thank you,” she told Tracy.

J-wing looked just as hospital-like as Elanor remembered, with its wide corridors, pastel walls, and white ceilings. It also sounded like she remembered, with faint sounds of mad laughter filtered through beneath the announcements. The sound-insulation here, while good, was far from perfect. Still, it wasn’t bad, for a free service, and Elanor had been here any number of times before. While she preferred a paid provider of cheer-up services, she had often been too short of cash to afford one.

Elanor stepped out of the dressing room wearing the skimpy two-piece outfit that everyone but the pedants called a ‘teekini.’ A bright red teekini, in this case – it was what had come up in her size. In addition, she still wore her moodstone, set in its collar-necklace, and nothing else. Her feet were bare on the tile floor as she left the changing room, her creamy soles a contrast to the darkness of her skin. She let Sam help her up onto a waiting gurney, and thrust hands and feet through the dilated openings of the stocks. “Ready,” she told the gurney’s computer.

She lay back half-reclined. The openings contracted, trapping her ankles at the foot of the gurney, and her wrists above her head. “Please test,” the gurney said in the deliberately mechanical tone used for unintelligent machines. Elanor struggled, hard. She shared the common belief that the harder you struggled when testing the stocks, the better. After a quarter-minute of futile struggles, the gurney said, “Restraints satisfactory. Confirm?”

Elanor sighed. “Confirm.” Then she turned her head aside to Sam, who still stood by, watching. “This will ruin my commission, you know.”

“It will come out all right,” Sam answered. “Cheer up!” He reached over to give Elanor’s chocolate-dark belly a quick wiggling stroke, making her squirm and grimace. Then he left.

Elanor lay trapped, waiting for her tickle session to begin. The gurney would not release her unless its power died, it sensed her in serious physiological distress, or it heard an authorized person commanding it. As a cheer-up client, Elanor was of course not authorized.

In a way, Elanor actually looked forward to the tickling to come. Any dislike of it had been trained out of her during the mandatory “Health and Happiness” she’d taken on turning eighteen. Not that there was all that much to train away, she remembered. She hadn’t been one of the few lucky ones who didn’t need any training at all, but neither had she been one of the unfortunates who needed to run through the course two or three times. But damn it to fuck, she couldn’t afford cheerfulness right now. She needed that grumpy cynicism to properly finish Subtile Truths, and ensure that it didn’t come out as a mere piece of kitsch.

An older man came by, dressed in the traditional red-stripped smock and bunny-slippers of a volunteer. “Hello!” he greeted Elanor cheerfully. “You are Elanor Laul?” He consulted his ‘pad and reeled off her public ID number.

“That’s me,” Elanor admitted, then squirmed and giggled at the touch of a fleecy-tipped duster running over her trapped bare soles and scantily-clad body.

“You do need cheering up,” the man said, “but this is all I can give you right now. Let’s get you into a room.” He unchocked the gurney’s wheels and rolled Elanor down the corridor and through one of the doors leading off it.

The sounds of laughter were much louder here, with six other women undergoing their cheer-up tickling. Two other red-stripped volunteers and a white-coated Maestro supervised the tickle-machines and applied personal touches to bare soles and skin. The six women varied in size and complexion, but they all were secured in gurneys like Elanor’s, and they all wore variously-colored teekinis, their moodstones, and nothing else besides. The sight of their struggles and the sound of their shrieks and laughter made Elanor’s heart beat more quickly in anticipation. Very soon now, she would also be squirming and laughing under the gentle lashings of a cheer-up tickling.

“Ms. Elanor Laul? I’m Maestro Jones,” the white-coated man introduced himself. He confirmed her public ID, then told a volunteer, “Let’s start with a pair of hangers.” Elanor watched as the two men snapped the tickle devices onto the stocks holding her ankles, arranging them so that they hooded her bare feet. Elanor heard two switches thrown, and the tickling began.

It was a buzzing sort of tickle. Hundreds of thin probes extended within each of the two devices, and Elanor felt them vibrate and stroke as they encountered her skin. She burst into laughter at the tickle-sensations inflicted on her and twisted in an involuntary attempt to escape them. They were too soft to be prickly, too rough to be silky, and they tickled all of her feet, not just the soles. Elanor could not escape them, no matter how she tried to flap and wiggle her feet, or clench her toes. The probes kept pursuing her within the device, tickling and tickling.

Elanor caught a glimpse of Maestro Jones gesturing to the volunteer, and then she howled with redoubled laughter as the belly-tickling began. The volunteer applied a broad brush with silky-soft bristles, first across her belly, then pausing for a dozen seconds, then up and down one side. Another pause (but with the tickle-device continuing its steady tease of her feet), and then more tickle strokes up and down her other side. Tickle. Pause. Tickle. Pause. Elanor felt him work all over her upper body, and up and down her arms. And her legs. All while the mechanical foot-tickling continued without letup.

During those brush-strokes, Elanor could think of nothing but the tickle-sensations being inflicted on her. In the interval between them, she became aware of the cheer-ups that some of the other women were undergoing.

Tickle tickle tickle tickle, the brush strokes went over Elanor’s upper body.

Pause. Elanor heard the slightly chubby brunette in the next gurney cry out: “Oh please, oh please, oh pleaseeeese heeheehee hahahahaha!”

Tickle tickle tickle tickle, the brush strokes made Elanor squirm and laugh as well.

Pause. “...know you like this,” the volunteer tickling the brunette’s feet told her.

Tickle tickle tickle tickle, making it impossible to think.

Pause. “Put a belly cover in place before you continue,” Maestro Jones told the volunteer.

Tickle tickle tickle tickle.

Pause. Elanor turned her head to see a metal shroud snap into place over the brunette’s stomach. Maestro Jones started to key in a code.

Tickle tickle tickle tickle.

Pause. The brunette was laughing madly once again, not for a foot tickling, but from the tickle-probes that had to be teasing her bare midriff, under the belly-cover.

And then Elanor’s own expected belly-tickle, from the volunteer’s brush, failed to arrive. “Go see to Ms. Milcic,” Maestro Jones told the volunteer as he turned off Elanor’s foot-hangers. “As for you, Ms Laul,” he continued, “you need to focus on your feet some more.” He punched in a code and reactivated the devices.

“Oh,” Elanor said, as she felt the tickle-probes touch her feet once more. “Heehee hahahaha, oh no, hahahahaha!” She recognized the pattern being played over her helpless soles. Diamond Ruby. In a very few minutes it would reduce her to a pile of quivering goo. And so it did. Tears of laughter ran from her eyes as the implacable tickle-pattern ran across the soles of her bound and helpless feet. A mechanical pattern, with a tempo perfectly tuned, so that she wanted to squirm at each touch. But there were too many touches. Again and again the pattern ran, melting her just as she had known it would, and then continuing to tickle her, and tickle her, and tickle her.

Elanor dragged herself into her studio with her moodstone a sickly yellow-green and a stern warning in her hand to report for another cheer-up session then next morning. At that, she was lucky; they’d been on the edge of keeping her overnight. As it was, she had a chance to work on Subtle Truths while she still has some shreds of the necessary grumpiness left. If she could find the energy.

She fixed herself a mug of tea (sacrilege in New Seattle, which was just as religious about its coffee as Old Seattle back on Old Earth). A few sips later, she felt up to making a few notes on a drawing pad. She alternated between the pad of real paper, the computer with its holographic model, and the mug of tea. Slowly she made progress, forcing herself to judge various placements as either gravitas or kitsch. A dismayingly large amount of work was left when her eyes and mind finally glazed over. But sitting up and staring at the unfinished work wouldn’t help. Admitting defeat to herself, she crawled off to bed.

The next morning Elanor tried to squeeze in some more work on Subtle Truths. She got much more done than she had feared, much less than she had hoped, and ended up arriving at J-wing a half-hour late. As a result, she had to endure a tut-tutting spiel from the reception-machine before being rushed off to change into a teekini be restrained on a tickle-gurney once again.

There Elanor waited, until the gurney began to complain. “Notice: Client requires attention,” it announced in a mechanical voice, and then repeated itself every several seconds. Unable to stop it, Elanor gritted her teeth. This provided neither the grumpiness she needed, nor the cheer-up she craved. It was just annoying.

At last, a candy-striped volunteer came by, pushing a cart. He flicked the switch that Elanor couldn’t reach, cutting off the mechanical voice in mid-sentence. Then he grinned at her. “There you are, Ms. Laul. Maestro Jones said to put a belly-cover on, as soon as I found you.” His grin widened, and he picked up a device from his cart. “Fortunately I have one right here.” The cover snapped in place, bridging Elanor’s midsection, just as it had that brunette’s the day before.

“You’ll never make me talk,” Elanor growled at the volunteer. He nodded acknowledgement of her joke and activated the device. Immediately things that felt to Elanor like feathers (but that she knew weren’t feathers) began to caress her belly and sides. A moment later, she began to giggle. “Heehee, heeheeheehee!”

It was a slow, lazy tickling, almost relaxing. Almost. Elanor might even have held in her giggles, but she knew it was better not to. Better to squirm and laugh at the gentle, patient strokes, rather than to allow the tickle-pressure to build up within her. With some tickling, of course, she didn’t have a choice – the tickle-sensations came pouring in faster than her laughter could let them out. But this wasn’t that sort of furious, intense tickling.

Beyond the gentle tickling, Elanor heard the volunteer say, “Maestro also said I should use my own judgment about the foot-hangers.” She sensed him put those devices in place as well, and then her soles also began to receive a slow, gentle tickling as well. She giggled some more.

Elanor continued to giggle as the volunteer pushed her down the corridor and into the same room as before. He maneuvered her gurney to the side and left her, still giggling, in order to attend to the other occupants.

Maestro Jones was there, along with a number of volunteers, half of whom Elanor recognized from the day before. There were also several other women bound to their tickle-gurneys, giggling, squirming, and laughing out loud as various cheer-up techniques were applied to them. Again, Elanor recognized some of them from yesterday, but others were new to her.

Elanor gave up trying to distract herself from the incoming tickle-sensations. It wasn’t working anyway. The tickling of her belly and sides, and on the soles of her feet, was light and gentle but also mechanically relentless. Every so often, a candy-stripped volunteer would stop by to give her a sip of water, or to change the tickle-pattern, but the tempo remained the same. Light. Slow. Never intense, but ultimately and deliciously maddening as it made her squirm and giggle. It continued to the end of the ‘One-Eleven’: The one-hundred and eleven minute period after which a cheer-up client was temporarily released to stretch, relieve herself, and grab a snack if so desired.

Then back onto the gurney. Once more automatic stocks trapped Elanor’s wrists and ankles, and once more the automatic tickle devices were snapped in place. Once more Elanor felt a light and gentle tickling being applied to her feet, and to her belly and sides, by things that felt like feathers but weren’t. Once more Elanor giggled and squirmed at the light but unending tickle-sensations being applied to cheer her up.

This time, the light tickling didn’t last for a full one-hundred eleven minutes. Half-way through, Maestro Jones stopped by and shut the devices off. “Take down the belly-cover,” he told a volunteer, and then to Elanor, “You’re doing well, Ms. Laul.” He brushed a wisp of hair from her face, and ran his hands over her belly and sides. Soothing hands, that didn’t tickle at all. They just prepared her dark skin for further tickling to come. “Very well,” he repeated. “But your feet could use some more attention.” He punched a program into the foot-hangers. “There. I’ll send a volunteer around to give you some upper-body cheer-ups later, once your soles have been made happy.” He left, and Elanor felt the new tickle-program begin.

Elanor struggled wildly, squealing, as she recognized the pattern. She felt the hangers softly hammer Diamond Ruby into her trapped and vulnerable soles, and she felt herself begin to melt from the tickle-sensations so inflicted. Just like yesterday. Just like all the other times when she had received the tickle pattern to which she was so particularly vulnerable. It sent sugar-sweet shockwaves up her legs and into her body, waves of sugar-sweet sensation that went further and further each time. Yet the focus of the tickles remained on her soles. Red-hot tickle sensations that softened her, and melted her, and turned her into a pile of goo. Just as they always did.

A brief pause. Elanor sipped water through a straw held by a volunteer. Then the Diamond Ruby resumed, but with its fluffy hammering driven back toward her feet by the soft brush-tickles that the candy-striper applied to her belly and all across her upper body. The brush tickling stopped, as the volunteer left to attend the other women, and the Diamond Ruby had its way again on Elanor’s hot blushing feet. Another volunteer came by, wielding his brush against her upper body. More vigorously, this time. Elanor felt herself cry tears of laughter. A sure sign of the cheer-up therapy taking hold. She wouldn’t be grumpy at all once this finished.

The Diamond Ruby reasserted itself, tickling Elanor’s feet and nothing but her feet. Melting her with laughter; making her struggles feeble. Tickling and tickling and tickling her soles. Tickle tickle tickle tickle. Tickle tickle tickle tickle.

“And how are you doing now, Ms. Laul?” Maestro Jones asked her from some huge distance away.

“Heeheehee hahaha heehee hahahaha heehee hahahahahaha!” Elanor answered.

Elanor left J-wing just after noon, her moodstone now a calm green-blue. She felt calmly-cheerful too: That particular shade in her moodstone was an exact measure of her mood, she thought. The only thing it didn’t show was her exhaustion. Well that, and her hunger.

She set aside thoughts of curling up for a nap and ate lunch. Afterwards she set aside thoughts of a nap for a second time and tackled Subtle Truths once again. “Kitsch,” she kept muttering under her breath as she adjusted positions and poses. But she couldn’t tell. Not without her grumpy mood. And that mood was now off in orbit somewhere, after those two cheer-up sessions. “I’ll just have to work blind,” she told the centaur. The centaur, of course, remained silent in its bronze-cast pose.

The next morning, Elanor decided that she still couldn’t decide. Subtle Truths was completed, at least as far as it could be while still allowing for last-minute changes. But Elanor couldn’t decide if it was finished or not. Whether it had the gravitas she desired for it, or whether it was just a big piece of kitsch. “You know, I hate working blind,” she told the centaur. Without heat, for she was too cheered-up to feel the proper annoyance at it. “So you tell me. Are you kitsch?”

Her ‘phone rang. It was Sam Freds again. “Hello, Sam. I hope there isn’t a problem,” she told him.

“Not a problem, really,” Sam answered. “It’s just that your moodstone was practically red the other day. Policy says that a red stone has to go to three cheer-ups. On the other hand, Maestro Jones reports that you were fine, after your second session yesterday. So. I could put in a waiver for you, if you’d like. Or would you rather come down again, today?”

“Umm,” Elanor considered. And considered. And again she couldn’t decide.

“Hello? Ms. Laul?”

“Sorry. I’m still here.” Elanor decided, or rather let that craving within decide for her. “I’ll come,” she said. “You don’t need to put in a waiver for me. But thanks for offering; I appreciate it. Yes, I’ll cc you the appointment for your records. Bye.”

She used her ‘phone to make the appointment in J-wing and cc’d Sam as promised. Then she spoke to the bronze centaur once again. “If I have to work blind, I might as well be cheerful about it.”

For the third time in three days, Elanor changed into the teekini and allowed herself to be trapped on the tickle-gurney. This time the candy-stripped volunteer was waiting for her, and rolled her immediately down the corridor and into a room. A different room than the past two days. One of the same size, but with only three other gurneys in it. Maestro Jones was there too, with two other volunteers oiling down a tickle victim with a bottle of lotion. The two other cheer-up clients were already laughing, one with a pair of hangers over her feet, and the other with a belly-cover.

“Hello, Ms. Laul!” he called. “New room today. I’ll be with you in a jiffy.” Then to his assistants: “Warm up Ms. Milcic before attaching the hangers.”

“Yes Maestro,” came the answer, followed by a giggle from Ms. Milcic. Then more giggling as gloved fingers tickled her oily skin.

“And now we’ll see to you, Ms. Laul,” Maestro Jones said as he began to apply the lotion. “You’ll want us to make a thorough job of it.” The third volunteer moved to help. Elanor felt the warm oil spread over all of her skin not covered by the teekini or restrained by the gurney-stocks. “This will both sooth and sensitize your skin,” the Maestro explained. Unnecessarily, since Elanor recognized the lotion.

“No expense spared,” she said. Then she squirmed a little as the volunteer rubbed the stuff in between her toes.

“Your tax money at work,” Maestro Jones said. “Actually, the department got this at a discount. A second run. I think it’s all right, but the private inspectors didn’t agree.”

Over on the next gurney, Ms. Milcic began a louder laugh as the foot-hangers began to work on her soles. The giggles and laugher of the other two women changed as well, as the first two volunteers applied the human tickle-touch to their exposed and helpless skin, augmenting the efforts of the mechanical tickle-devices. Elanor squirmed in anticipation. In moments her own dark body would be laughing uncontrollably in a cheer-up session, squirming and struggling just like the pale-complexioned bodies of the other three.

“No need for a warm-up, here,” Maestro Jones pronounced. “Apply the hangers at once to Ms. Laul.”

Elanor twisted to watch in happy anticipation as the volunteer snapped the two devices in place, shrouding her feet. Maestro Jones punched in a code, the devices started up, and Elanor shrieked. She laughed wildly, madly, at the familiar tickle-sensations playing over her helpless soles. Diamond Ruby once again. The pattern that seemed to seek out all the most vulnerably ticklish parts of her soles, and then proceeded to turn every square millimeter into the most ticklish parts. Tickle tickle tickle tickle. Tickle tickle tickle tickle. Tickle tickle tickle tickle. Tickle tickle tickle tickle.

The day went by in a blur. There were four sessions of one-hundred eleven minutes, with barely-remembered breaks between them. Part of the time one of the volunteers would tickle her oily belly and the rest of her upper body with his gloved fingers. Part of the time they snapped a belly-cover over her, so that squirmy wiggly tentacle-feeling things tickled her dark skin, seeking out her belly-button and occasionally finding it. Part of the time she enjoyed / suffered / enjoyed a foot-tickling alone. But always the soft oily pattern of the Diamond Ruby hammered gently into her soles. Maddening, unbearable tickles that heated her to blushing red hot, and melted her into a pile of goo. Tickle tickle tickle tickle.

“Heeheehee hahaha heehee, ohplease,” Elanor laughed. “Hahaheeheehee hahahaha it’ssogood heehee hahahahahaha!”

Elanor got up late the next morning. Barely morning. She looked in the mirror where her moodstone still shone a deep purple, just like last night, and fixed herself a sacrilegious pot of tea. “Kitsch or not, we’ll just have to do it.” she told the bronze centaur when she entered her studio. Then she set to work.

“And here it is. Subtle Truths,” she told her potential new patron. The stood in the atrium-lobby of the Zeke Group, where her sculpture had been installed. Today, a good dozen weeks after the work was finished, she could judge it without needing to force a grumpy mood to do so. And it wasn’t kitsch. Not kitsch at all. Instead, it had a sort of Jovian joviality about it. Her potential patron fingered the moodstone set in his ring and nodded little nods, she noticed. A good sign. Working blindly to finish Subtle Truths had been a huge gamble, but seemed to have paid off. She gave the bronze centaur a small nod of her own and began to point out the other features of her work. In her gothesque collar, her own moodstone shone a pleasant sapphire blue.