Slumming

Ms. Cheryl Cabrera hesitated at the glittering safety line on the floor. The mood ring on her left hand showed a dried-blood brown, indicating that she badly needed a tickle, and she didn’t disagree. She just wondered why she had brought herself to this tickle.

She had initially gone, as usual, to McKay’s, to give herself to the fingers and feathers of Maestro Thomas. Unfortunately, Maestro Thomas wasn’t available, and Cheryl did not want Maestro Alexander as a substitute. She didn’t want any of McKay’s other tickle-masters, nor any of the tickle-masters in the neighboring establishments. She had gone straight back to her apartment and stripped off her elegant tickle-outfit.

That was when the angry whim had seized her, sending her out again. She had walked briskly to the slideway station, inserted her pass, and let the slideway deliver her to Delwood Street SouthWest, in the seedy half of New Seattle.

On actually seeing the seedy tickle-shops that lined Delwood, Cheryl had hesitated, with anger giving way to doubt. Then she had seen the storefront sign: “Hog-Heaven: All Automatic Tickle Center.” She had entered, she had paid her credit-tokens, and now here she was.

She’d changed in the locker room into a form-fitting ‘Paradise Suit’ of sheer smoothalene, covering her from calves to forearms to neck. She’d bundled her hair into a hairnet to keep it from accidentally being pulled and, as instructed, she’d put four toe-rings of plain brass on the second and fourth toes of each foot. The cage-machine had then secured her hand-cages, spheres of clear plastic that both protected her hands and rendered them helpless.

And out of a perversity that Cheryl was now regretting, the Paradise Suit she had purchased was of the cheapest, tackiest color available: Hot pink.

Two other women had been ahead of Cheryl when she stepped out the back door of the locker room and onto the platform where the captive-trolleys waited. She had watched them step over the safety line without hesitation, and now it was her turn.

“No point in turning back now, you idiot,” Cheryl told herself. “Step over that line. Step over that line.” And gritting her teeth, Cheryl stepped over the glittering safety line.

The handlers dropped down at once to seize her, bundling her into a waiting captive-trolley. Cheryl felt the straps snapping into place to secure her in a simple reclining tickle-position: Face up and feet out. A localized tractor beam grabbed her hand-cages, forcing her arms to extend over her head, and more tractors clamped onto the brass rings on her toes, forcing her feet to hold still.

The trolley trundled to where its assigned bay waited. Cheryl caught a glimpse of the closed doors of the neighboring bays and heard the happy hysterical laughter coming faintly from within them. Then her trolley entered its tickle-bay, the doors closed, and the automatic tickle-implements extended and descended and began their work.

When she’d paid for her session, Cheryl had chosen a ‘halfer’ program: Half the tickles focused on her feet, and half on the rest of her skin. Now she felt a lick-lick-tickle on the trapped soles of her bare feet, but that was just a distraction tickle. The major tickle was coming through the sheer smoothalene covering her body. A multitude of implements tickled her arms and her legs, her sides and her belly, in her armpits, along her collarbones, and around and over her breasts.

Cheryl howled and screeched with laughter. This was not at all like the elegant tickle of Maestro Thomas. Nor was it a ‘halfer’ tickle evenly applied between her feet and the rest of her. Instead, the licking foot-tickle was just enough to distract any of her attempts to resist while the overhead tickle devices – the many different tickle devices – tickled Cheryl with cheerful rudeness through the surface of her Paradise Suit.

The different implements supplied soft tickles, and twisty tickles, and squirmy tickles, and vibrating tickles, and it applied them through the smoothaline Cheryl wore. The old, ‘traditional’ material still found use because of its cheapness and its ability to provide a simple, unpowered amplification of tickle-sensations transmitted through it.

The teasing touches continued with the cheerful implacability expected of a machine-tickle. Cheryl’s laughter continued, testifying to the effectiveness of the tickles she was receiving. The tempo applied by the devices rose and fell, and rose and fell, and rose and fell again, without ever coming to a complete stop.

The lighting changed, not to signal the end of the session but rather a change of focus. The tickles raining down through the Paradise Suit diminished to a light patter. Cheryl watch as most of the overhead devices pulled back, leaving only a few to continue with a distraction-tickle. She sensed, and then felt, more and more implements focusing on her helpless feet, adding to the lick-lick-tickle already in place.

Cheryl was forced to laugh again, this time by the implements tickling her feet. She felt tickles running over each of her bare soles, held vulnerable by the ankle-restraints and the toe rings. She felt the machine-tickles wrap around to tease the tops of her feet, as well. Separate implements teased the pads of her toes and squirmed in the spaces between them. They attended to her heels, to her arches, and to the balls of her feet. Cheryl felt the multiplex machine in the tickle bay apply straight and curving tickles, smooth and wiggly tickles, and soft and sharp tickles. A few were distraction-tickles, teasing her through the smoothalene she wore, intended to break any effort she might make to resist. Most were foot-tickles, however, focused on her bare soles and effective even without the smoothalene’s enhancement.

The tickle-tempo rose and fell as before, never stopping completely and never causing Cheryl to lose her breath. Cheryl hadn’t bothered paying for a visible timer when she’d purchased this session, so she couldn’t tell how long this foot-tickle was lasting, but she believed, she guessed, that it would last as long as her earlier body-tickle. She twisted her head to catch a glimpse of her mood ring, in the clear hand-cage enclosing her left hand. Its color had improved to a dull green. This machine-tickle was effective, despite lacking the sophistication and artistry of a tickle-master’s hand-crafted tickle. Effective, but still less than halfway to complete. Cheryl was trying to guess how much less when the tickle-tempo rose and she lost her train of thought.

When the tempo slowed again, Cheryl’s next thought was that she was getting what she had paid for. The wiggle-ticklers lightly teased her arches, making her giggle, and the following thought was that she would have to take what she had paid for. What she had asked for. She couldn’t make it stop. Biosensors built into the captive-trolley would bring the session to a crashing halt if they detected any real distress. But Cheryl wasn’t feeling distress. She was feeling tickled.

The tempo increased again, leaving Cheryl stuck on that thought. She was feeling tickled. Her feet were being tickled. Her soles were being tickled! The machine was tickling them! And when the tempo slowed again, she didn’t try to think. She just giggled and squirmed. She squirmed and laughed, her body secured in the captive-cart, her feet trapped to keep them vulnerable, and her attention focused on the bay’s various devices as they tickled and tickled and tickled.

The lighting changed again, and Cheryl became aware that her feet were now receiving only that distracting lick-lick-tickle. The other foot-ticklers had withdrawn, and Cheryl saw the clusters of body-tickling implements descending again. This time she noticed how their arms differed in form. Some were mechanically jointed, some were metallic cables, and some were rubbery tentacles of colored velexite. The implements on their tips likewise varied in form, each of them designed to transmit a different tickle through the sheer fabric of her Paradise Suit and into her sensitive skin. They were designed to tickle her helpless body, held in place on the captive-trolley. And then Cheryl felt them do so.

Once more Cheryl laughed as she felt the various body tickles, all amplified by the hot pink smoothalene she wore. Once more the tickle tempo rose and fell, in a crude parody of a tickle-master’s sophistication. But it was a cheerful parody. It worked. It tickled. Cheryl could feel every one of the tickles on her arms and her legs, on her sides and her belly, in her armpits, along her collarbones, and around and over her breasts. Again and again and again. Making her squirm and giggle when the tempo fell. Making her howl with laughter when the tempo rose. And the light, distracting lick-tickle on her feet meant that she could not set herself to resist.

And all those tickles were serving their purpose. They were improving Cheryl’s mood. They were lightening her mood ring. They were making her happy.

Another change of lighting, and Cheryl felt the body-tickles fade back to a distracting tease. She watched the majority of the overhead arms withdraw, and glanced down to see the foot-ticklers moving back into position. As she felt their first touch adding to the persistent lick-lick-tickle, a shocking thought ran through her mind.

The tickle implements were holding back.

When purchasing her session here at Hog-Heaven, Cheryl had paid extra for a longer, lower-intensity option. But that just meant running a different program through the controllers. These same tickle implements could easily – easily! – put a captive through a much more vigorous tickle, and based on the menu choices, they often did.

Like everyone else on Washington World (and especially here in the city of New Seattle) Cheryl liked being tickled. She didn’t just enjoy the improved mood that came with regular tickle-therapy sessions; she actually enjoyed the sessions themselves. However she was also a woman who knew her limitations. She was not one to indulge in extreme tickles.

The lower-income sorts often did indulge, and Hog-Heaven offered several different high-intensity and extreme options, all at no extra charge. High intensity tickle sessions were short and therefore cheap, which is one reason for their popularity. Those sessions were also much better than no tickling at all, which is why the authorities tolerated them, despite their increased risks of side effects and complications. And the implements now tickling Cheryl’s feet had imposed extreme tickles on the soles of others. They could impose those extreme tickles on her soles, with nothing more than a simple program switch.

Cheryl lost that train of thought as the foot-tickle reached its programmed level – one far far below an extreme level, but still enough to claim Cheryl’s attention there. Again the implements tickled both Cheryl’s soles and the tops of her feet. Again they squirmed and teased and tickle-raked her heels and arches and the balls of her feet. Again they tickled with a cheerful crudeness, teasing everywhere without regard to her spots of greater and lesser sensitivity. The machine just tickled, and Cheryl just laughed.

Time passed, carefully measured by the tickle bay and unmeasured by Cheryl. As with the body-tickle, she giggled and squirmed when the tempo slowed, and howled with laughter when the implements poured more tickles onto her bare feet. She couldn’t resist it, especially with the light distraction-tickle they tickle-bay applied to her smoothalene-covered belly. She didn’t even try. She simply surrendered to the straight and curving strokes, to the squirms, to the wiggles, and to the various sharp-and-soft tickle-rakes of implements she couldn’t identify. She felt every touch on her heels and arches, the balls of her feet, and the bases of her toes. And she felt the ever-present lick-lick-tickle.

Yet another change of lighting and that lick-tickle became the only tickle on Cheryl’s feet. She saw the overhead arms descend for a third time, and that was when she had another Horrid Realization. Each cycle of body tickling, and each cycle of foot tickling, was exactly the same. Each had mechanically applied identical sequences of tickles, without any variation at all. But the repetition hadn’t acclimated Cheryl to the tickles; it hadn’t dulled her sensitivity. The cheerful crudeness of Hog-Heaven’s tickle-programs overcame the limitations of repetition.

And they overcame those limitations for a third cycle. Cheryl felt the same teasing touches as before, through the pink smoothalene of her Paradise Suit. She felt the same tickles on her arms and legs, on her sides and her belly, in her armpits, along her collarbones, and around and over her breasts. The very same tickles, and they made her howl and screech with laughter, just as they had during the first and second cycles.

The third tickle-cycle continued, just as the first two had, with Cheryl now having completely lost track of time. Her third body-tickle would last until it ended, and it would tickle just as much as the first two. And then Hog-Heaven would treat her to one more foot-tickle. To at least one more foot-tickle.

The captive-trolley decanted Cheryl at the inner entrance to the locker room, and the handlers released her hands from the hand-cages. Her mood ring now glowed a bright sapphire, indicating the fully successful completion of a tickle-session – mechanical and unartistic as it might have been.

As Cheryl slowly changed back into her street clothing, she tried to decide if she felt more washed out now than she would have from a session at McKay’s. She had to admit to feeling just as tickle-refreshed, in a cheerfully crude and rude sort of way. But a crude mechanical tickle had to be more exhausting than a refined session under the artistic fingers of Maestro Thomas. Hadn’t it?

Cheryl took her newly-purchased Paradise Suit to the disposer, and then changed her mind. She would keep it. She did swear that she would go to McKay’s for her next session, and if Maestro Thomas wasn’t available, she’d put herself under the artistic fingers and implements of Maestro Alexander, or one of the other tickle-masters. She would not return here to Hog-Heaven for her next session.

“Definitely not,” she spoke the promise aloud. But she didn’t – she couldn’t – make a promise, even to herself, that she would never again return to Hog-Heaven and its all-automatic tickle bays.

(end)