Jackie and the Tickling Machines

Somewhere near Old Detroit, a program loaded into the Net: 314986970.ANGL. It was time to recapture subject 314-98-6970 for close examination and possible treatment.

In what was once a suburb to the southwest of Detroit, Jackie of the Elm-Streeters poked through a pile of rubble, digging out old cookware. She was a Rat Bastard: A feral human, a mongrel with genes from five continents. In the summer heat, her clothing revealed much of her tan-brown skin, consisting as it did of salvaged cut-off shorts, a halter top to hold her more than ample breasts, and floppy sandals on her otherwise bare feet. Her black hair, cut short in what once was called a pageboy bob, had reddish highlights and framed a face with a generous mouth and dark eyes with just a hint of epicanthic fold.

Jackie looked up from the cookware she’d been scavenging when she heard the sound, and rose to her feet when she identified it. The Clanks were on the hunt again.

She slipped through a ruined doorway, leaving behind her pack, the better to dodge and hide. She’d managed to dodge a Clank just a few days ago while wearing her pack, but it had been a narrow thing, and this Clank sounded closer than that other one.

Data poured into .ANGL. The subject 314-98-6970 was female. More importantly, 314-98-6970 was human, and thus True Harm was not to befall her. This complicated matters, requiring the attention of a full AI. Avoiding True Harm involved psychological factors, as well as physical ones. For example, a subject sometimes had to be allowed to avoid capture by the remotes. Sometimes... but not this time.

“Saint Jackson and Lady Mary, help me,” Jackie whispered. The sounds of the Clank were very close as she ducked into another ruined building. This one had a back door - she had used it herself, just that morning - and if she could get through it and slip into the next building over, she’d have a good chance of shaking the Clank completely.

She heard the metal footfalls of the Clank behind her as she reached the back door. Heart pounding, she opened it - or attempted to. It was stuck. She tried forcing it, and rubble fell outside, rendering the door even more stuck. Muttering bad words she turned and fled. Her chances of getting out the front again, past the Clank, were now as poor as dried spit, but she was a Rat Bastard and an Elm-Streeter. She would not quit fighting until the Clank had her.

.ANGL admired the aesthetics of the situation. The subject did not have time or opportunity to observe that the second exit had been deliberately sabotaged. She would conclude, based on her limited information, that her capture was due to ‘bad luck’ rather than to the overwhelming superior abilities of the Net and its remotes. And thus psychological True Harm would be avoided.

But now the moment of physical capture approached. .ANGL decided that it would be better to handle this directly, rather than relying on the limited processor of the remote.

This Clank was bigger than the one she’d escaped earlier, Jackie realized. Newer. Faster. It stood on four legs, taller than her, taller even than Tall John. It had four grabber-manipulators, rather than the usual two, and ports for either glue sprays or net-throwers as well.

She feinted in one direction and started to dodge in another, only to stop short, losing her footing in a barely successful attempt to avoid the net-thrower. Two grabbers reached for her ankles, and she drew her legs back. The clank pulled away her sandals as a consolation prize, and Jackie spat another bad word as she came to her feet. As the machine tossed the sandals aside, she sprang forward, in a last desperate attempt to get under it and past it, risking a grab from the other two manipulators. The Clank did not grab, however. Instead it backpedaled and threw another net.

This time, the net-thrower caught Jackie square on. She went down, tangled in the mesh, and the Clank stepped forward again, all four arms reaching to pluck away her knife and to bundle her up more thoroughly. She struggled, uselessly, and then fell still as the Clank carried her off, dangling in the net. Wiser to wait, so that she would not be exhausted when a fresh opportunity came up. In the meantime, she favored the Clank with a stream of vitriolic words that affected it not at all.

.ANGL felt a certain electronic smugness. The recapture had gone off well: The subject was annoyed, but not frightened, and the words she directed to the remote indicated a healthy degree of anger. Of course the remote was not equipped for verbal response, but .ANGL would continue monitoring as the subject was transported to the examination suite.

Jackie quit cussing out the Clank when she found herself starting to repeat. So she was silent as it entered the long dark tunnel of the Clank Bunker and deposited her in her cell. She had lost this round, but the game wasn’t over yet. She’d been caught by hunting Clanks before - no one could manage to escape them every time - and while Clank restraints were devilishly effective, the Clanks themselves weren’t perfect. They had their blind spots, and if she kept alert she’d be able to find - or make - a chance to escape.

In the meantime, though, she was stuck in a Clank cell. Nude, since the Clank had ripped away her clothing when it deposited her here. She looked around. This cell wasn’t identical to the ones she’d been in earlier, but the design was similar. Glowing panels on the ceiling provided light, and the floor was covered by something like a cross between cloth and grass. The main room held a bed: A mattress in a wooden frame set right on the floor. Examining it more closely, Jackie found the attachment points for Clank restraints. She frowned. The hardware was solid, heavy metal, nothing she’d be able to jam up with the resources of her cell.

The main room also held a rack of clothing. Clank clothing, prisoner’s clothing. She would put them on later, and when she escaped she would accept the chaff due to one who got captured by the Clanks. But for the moment she let the clothes be.

One of the two smaller rooms was the expected micro-kitchen, with plastic utensils, the odd packages of Clank foodstuffs, and the magic oven that heated food without growing hot itself. The other was a bathroom with running water, something that Jackie had never encountered outside a Clank cell.

In all, it would be a comfortable little place, if she were not a prisoner. Some people, Jackie knew, even let themselves be deliberately captured by hunting Clanks, in order to enjoy this luxury. But those weren’t true Rat Bastards - they were more than halfway to being Highlanders, the humans who lived like gods in exchange for selling their souls to the Clanks.

Jackie certainly wasn’t one of those: She had tried her best to avoid capture, and only bad luck had beaten her. But now that she was here, she would take a bath.

.ANGL noted with approval the subject’s self-grooming. Some subjects had to have hygiene measures imposed on them, a procedure that ran the risk of inflicting True Harm.

The randomizer module recommended that the standard ambiguously-aversive stimulus be applied at once, in this case. .ANGL issued a partial over-ride. It would not do to create a dis-incentive to further self-grooming, so the ambiguous stimulus would have to wait until the subject finished that activity. Preparations could be made in advance, however, and so instructions were transmitted to the appropriate remote.

After drying herself, Jackie paused to admire her reflection in the bathroom’s full-length mirror. It was, she told herself, her one indulgence in Clank captivity. Her image looked back at her, smiling slightly as she made her usual self-evaluation.

Tan-brown skin, dark enough that the palms of her hands and soles of her feet showed pale. A well-shaped feminine face, with a broad nose, generous lips, and almost-black eyes looking back at her. White, even teeth showing when she smiled. Black hair, cut to hang just below the ears: Jackie had considered letting it grow longer, and keeping it in a ponytail or braid. But short was practical, even if Tall John had hinted that he would like to see it longer.

Body: Lean, although at least her breasts had filled out in the past two summers - no longer the buds they’d been at her Eighteening. Her belly-button was just slightly recessed, and lower down her pussy-hair was still a bit sparse, not as womanly as she would like. Butt - well, Long John said that he liked it, but she felt to be a bit too... round. Legs: At least her legs looked good, to her critical eyes, as did her feet.

Not too bad, Jackie thought, wiggling a bit before the mirror. She turned away and left the bathroom, walking straight into the ambush.

The subject’s self-grooming and self-examination gave .ANGL an opportunity to run its own preliminary diagnostics. Initial results were in well within acceptable parameters, although the subject’s dental nanites were depleted and would have to be renewed.

.ANGL also loaded an emotion module. Past evidence showed that ambiguously-aversive stimuli gave superior results when the directing intellect could take pleasure in applying the stimulus. .ANGL grinned an electronic grin, in anticipation of what was to come.

The two ambushing Clanks were low-squatting wheeled jobs, obviously meant for indoor use. Two rubber-coated tentacles grabbed Jackie’s ankles as she stepped out of the bathroom, and two more lashed out to grip her wrists. “Let go of me, you bastard pieces of junk!” Jackie cried as she struggled in their grip. The clanks didn’t respond, but continued to half-carry and half drag the writhing, squirming woman to the bed. “Saint Jackson and Lady Mary,” she gasped. She knew what was coming even before the clanks produced their soft brushes, set on the ends of articulated limbs. But the tickling sessions had never begun so soon, in Jackie’s earlier bouts of Clank captivity.

Straps fastened Jackie securely to the bed: Wrist and ankle, thigh and upper arm, and a final strap across her waist holding her in place, face up and spread-eagled. One of the Clanks eased a pillow under her head, and she glared at it for its mocking courtesy, before snapping her attention down to what the other clank was doing at the foot of the bed.

The helpless soles of Jackie’s helpless feet were in easy reach of the second Clank. The ends of two rubber-coated tentacles grasped her two large toes, gently but firmly, and a pair of brushes began to lightly stroke her insteps.

“No ha no no ha ha noooo eeeeee hahahahaha!” Jackie giggled and shrieked. She could squirm, and did. Her well-placed bonds denied her further resistance, however, and even her squirming was limited. It did her no good at all as the Clank tickled every part of her exposed soles: Heel, instep, ball, the pads of her toes, and then, as it shifted its grip, the tender-ticklish portions between her toes.

.ANGL was pleased. Thanks to the emotion module, it could enjoy applying this stimulation to the subject. And the subject’s reactions were entirely within parameters, even though .ANGL could not understand why the subject found it ambiguous, rather than entirely aversive or entirely pleasurable. A civilized human - a ‘highlander’ in the human self-labeling - once tried to explain the paradox of tickling, but comprehending the why of the matter was beyond .ANGL’s capacity.

No matter. .ANGL’s own enjoyment was sufficient to guide the process.

As Jackie giggled and squirmed in response to the foot-tickling, she was vaguely aware of the first Clank standing by. When the foot-tickling stopped, she was surprised and vaguely disappointed that it didn’t immediately begin to work on her upper body. Instead it just continued to wave its brushes in the air.

Disappointed? her conscience chided her. You weren’t just expecting this tickling - you were looking forward to it.

“No I wasn’t,” Jackie gasped. The Clank by her head continued to wave its brushes, and she eyed it warily as she caught her breath.

Continuous stimulation was not the optimal plan. .ANGL would not have realized this if it weren’t for the emotion module: A simple analysis would have continued the stimulation to a simple, sub-optimal, end-point. A more complex analysis, one that took .ANGL’s own enjoyment as a parameter, called for tactical pauses in the direct physical stimulation, resulting in a more nearly optimal end-point.

Through the remotes, .ANGL looked at the helpless subject as she awaited further tickling, and found the sight good.

“Go on, you piles of junk. Get it over with.” If the Clanks heard her, they showed no sign of it. Jackie twisted in her bonds. And then finally, gently, the Clank began to brush her upper body. “Oh no, ha. Hee hee. No hahahahaha!” The tickling ran down her arms and along her ribs. It crossed over her belly and worked around and between her breasts. It brushed once, lightly, very lightly, over her tits, and she squealed and attempted to arch her body, pressing against the straps that held her down.

Then the second Clank started once again to tickle her feet.

“No no no not my feet not my feeeeetheeheeheehee!”

The tickling went on and on as the Clanks applied their gentle, irresistible brush-strokes. Sometimes they alternated, and sometimes they worked together to make Jackie giggle and squirm. Occasionally they would pause, allowing Jackie to catch her breath, but even then the brushes waved in the air, promising that the tickling wasn’t finished yet. And then the promise was fulfilled as the brushes once again stroked sensitive skin: On the soles of her feet, behind her knees, across her belly, and up her ribs and under her arms. And back again to her helpless bare feet.

It seemed to continue for days, until, at last, it stopped. The brushes withdrew. A grinding noise came from the wall and a doorway appeared. One of the clanks released the straps holding Jackie’s right arm, and then followed its companion into the newly-revealed passageway. The grinding noise started up again, and the doorway closed.

The initial application of ambiguously-aversive stimuli ended after 57 minutes and 23 seconds. It had gone well, and during it the MedScan sensors concealed in the bed had completed a full scan. .ANGL would process this data and then would allow the subject to rest and eat before initiating the second session.

The next morning, Jackie ate a hot breakfast, prepared from the odd packages of Clank food she found in the tiny kitchen, and heated in the magic oven. Ovens like that were common in Clank cells, she knew, and unknown anywhere else. They heated the food put in them, slightly warming the plastic dish in the process, but the air inside remained cool. As did the ovens themselves. Jackie shrugged. Clank magic.

After eating, Jackie went back to the main room and once again examined the wall. She knew that the wall opened, but still had difficulty finding the seam of the hidden door. As for opening it from her side... she tapped and prodded, but the wall was impervious to any of the plastic utensils she could find in her cell.

A grinding noise came from the wall, and Jackie stepped back. The noise rose and fell, and the doorway began to open. Slowly, by fits and starts. Jackie smiled tightly. The Clanks weren’t perfect; the door obviously had problems. Unfortunately the three clanks behind the door didn’t share them. There were the two from yesterday, and a third, larger one that wheeled in behind them.

Jackie’s attempt to dodge into the bathroom was blocked by one of the smaller Clanks, and then, at three-to-one odds, the resulting struggle was short. Once again rubber-coated tentacles held her fast and half carried her away.

This time, however, they didn’t tie her to the bed. The third clank included, or was built around, a large chair. Jackie found herself sitting in it, arms strapped to the armrests, legs held out straight before her with her ankles bound to a footrest. Jackie cried out in dismay as the Clanks pulled her slippers away.

In response, one of the Clanks forced a thick cable, rubber-coated and chewy, between her teeth, and fastened the ends behind her head. Thus gagged, she could only make muffled, mewing protests as mechanical snippers cut away the rest of her clothing.

“Mphmmm, mphmmm, mpph!” Jackie said as the Clanks displayed their fine manipulators. Not soft brushes, this time, but little white-gloved hands that wiggled and vibrated before her face. “Mpph, mpeeeeeee!” she protested as the little hands went to work, tickling her feet. She wiggled and twisted her feet, clenching her toes, attempting to throw the hands away, and the Clanks responded to her half-success by applying a further restraint. Two uprights were slotted into place, around her ankles and behind her feet, and two additional straps went around her insteps, just below the balls of her feet. Then the white-gloved hands went back to work.

The new straps gave some slight - very slight - protection from the questing tickling fingers, but as Jackie soon learned, they had built in vibrators. Their buzz, going off at random intervals, tickled the sensitive skin underneath them, where the questing fingers could not reach.

Those fingers could reach elsewhere, though, and did. They tickled the heels of her feet, the insteps below the straps and the balls above them, and they gently pried open Jackie’s desperately clenched toes to tickle them as well. And now the larger Clank deployed little hands of its own to tickle Jackie’s legs, her belly, her ribs, her arms, and everywhere they could reach. Which was everywhere, or so it seemed to Jackie as she squirmed her body within the strict limits imposed by her restraints and mewed into her gag.

.ANGL grinned a huge electronic grin as it directed the remotes in applying the ambiguously-aversive tickle-stimulation. The subject’s were strong, and all the diagnostics showed her to be in good health. Except for the depleted dental nanites, of course, and the gag on which the subject chewed were renewing those.

This session would continue for approximately 30 minutes longer, and would be followed by a final bout of ambiguous stimuli 7 hours later. Psychological approximations indicated that the subject would be suspicious and disappointed if the stimulation were abruptly cut short, and while this would not result in True Harm, it would still be sub-optimal.

The emotion module that .ANGL had loaded into itself signaled its approval. The tickling would continue.

Once again the tickling seemed to go on for days. When it finally ended, Jackie felt completely drained. She was only half aware of being released to lie on the bed, or of the largest clank tucking a blanket around her. As she hugged her pillow, curled up on her side, she heard the doorway grinding, as if it were having problems closing. However, she felt far too exhausted to take advantage of this, or even to look.

You missed an opportunity, here, her conscience chided her. Are you sure you want to escape?

“I’m sure,” she muttered. “Just watch.” She levered herself out of the bed and over to where the Clanks had discarded her clothing. After a moment’s inspection, she tossed them into a corner as not being worth fussing with. Outside, she would have tried to repair the cuts, where they had been snipped away from her body. But not here, with so many replacements at hand.

The rack from which the Clank clothing hung provided a new shirt and pair of shorts. The slippers were still good, and Jackie slipped them on, feeling much better at having her feet covered. Of course if the Clanks caught her again they could slip them off just as easily as she slipped them on... Jackie shivered. Bare feet made her feel - bare. In a way that slippers or even sandals did not, no matter how flimsy or easily removed they might be.

Jackie thrust the thought aside, and turned to making an ‘escape package.’ Food from the Clank kitchen, wrapped in an improvised sack and set by the doorway, where it would be easy to grab and carry off. Clothing from the Clank rack, ditto. Two or three of the plastic kitchen utensils that looked to be most useful in jamming the door when it opened again. Then back to the bed, to sit, and watch, and wait.

.ANGL noted the subject’s preparations. Psychological approximations concluded that she would think she had made a successful escape, when .ANGL released her back into the wild. Of course, those same approximations indicated that she would ‘escape.’ She was not yet ready to stay and request a change of status to that of a civilized ‘highlander’ human. Which was a pity. But in order to avoid True Harm, it was necessary for .ANGL to pose as an enemy. If .ANGL initiated the offer, psychological approximations showed an excellent chance that the subject would accept. Unfortunately, data from many previous cases indicated that making such an offer would heighten the risk of destructive behavior, intoxicant abuse, and suicide - True Harm by any measure. So .ANGL would continue its plans to release the subject, and would not even speak to her unless she first demanded communication.

When the door began to grind open again, Jackie was ready. She pushed at the left panel, “assisting” the servos in opening it completely. Grabbing a plastic spatula, she jammed it in place, wedging the panel open. As she did this, she ignored the quivering feeling inside telling her that the Clanks were about to grab her. Until the Clanks grabbed her.

They were the same two smaller ones as before, without their big brother, and again rubber-coated tentacles gripped wrists and ankles to drag her to the bed. This time, however, they fastened her face-down, with the straps of restraints replacing the grip of the tentacles. This time too, they didn’t remove her clothes, but only the slippers.

Each Clank stationed itself by one of her bare feet. By her naked, vulnerable, sensitive, ticklish bare feet. “Saint Jackson and Lady Mary, help me,” Jackie whispered. She couldn’t see the Clanks, but she could hear them. Likewise, she couldn’t see what the Clanks were doing to her feet, but she could feel it.

It felt like the Clanks were using knobby rollers on her soles, mixed with puffs of compressed air. “Yeeee!” Jackie squealed as the air-jet played between her toes. She tried to wiggle her feet, to clench her toes to avoid the tickling, but once again the rubber-coated Clank manipulators prevented this, grasping her toes and holding her soles steady to receive their punishment. Or their reward: It might even be something enjoyable if it weren’t so extreme, Jackie though. You wouldn’t be enjoying this nearly so much if it weren’t so extreme, her conscience whispered. The thread of guilt made Jackie feel even more sensitive and squirmish. “Stop it stop it stop it hee heeheeeheeheehee!” she cried. Her conscience stopped, but the Clanks didn’t.

They kept on tickling, ignoring anything Jackie said. They didn’t keep a regular pace, though. Sometimes they’d pause, and Jackie would catch her breath. Sometimes they’d speed up, and she would squeal, and sometimes they’d slow down, making her squirm as the knobby rollers crept across her insteps. In the end, Jackie couldn’t tell which was worst, the fast treatment or the slow. As before, the tickling seemed to go on for days, but this time the Clanks didn’t touch anything but her feet - and this time, that was enough.

At long last, one of the Clanks released her right arm before following its partner through the doorway. The door strained and groaned, attempting to close against the jamming spatula, and Jackie hurried to free herself before it could succeed. The last strap fell loose, she stumbled to the door, and... there! Jackie set the mechanical latch intended to hold open the door for repairs.

Jackie pulled on her sandals, wincing a little at the sensitivity of her soles. She grabbed her bundles and made her way into the dark tunnel. Not completely dark, though. Small tell-tale lights glowed, allowing her to make her way to the surface. An hour’s walk in a random direction and she was again in territory she recognized. She had escaped. The hunting Clanks had caught her, and had tormented her with tickling, but she had escaped.

Tormented? the little voice in her head asked.

“Shut up,” she growled at it, and started the walk back to Elm Street.

The tunnel lights winked out, now that the subject no longer needed them. Remotes entered the examination suite, to clean and prepare it for the next subject. The spatula was removed and sent for recycling, and the mechanical latch released. The doors closed swiftly and silently after the last departing remote, with the noisemaker remaining quiet since there was no human to hear it. A successful examination, .ANGL concluded. It dumped its data into the central banks, and unloaded itself from the Net.