Subject A

Dr. Susan Maus paced in her office, waving her arms around as usual as she spoke. Her assistant, Ming Roberts stood in her usual spot in the doorway, safely out of reach of those flailing arms. Dr. Susan was a tall woman, made taller by the high leather boots she always wore. She kept her hair in a ponytail, dyed a conservative violet, because she didn’t have the patience for anything fancier. And because she was not “good with her hands.” For that same reason she kept her office clear of breakables and let Ming do most of the bench-work in the lab.

“Division Y screwed up again,” Dr. Susan said, pointing into the air. “Look at that!”

“Ma’am,” Ming interrupted, “I can’t see.”

“Oh, sorry.” Dr. Susan touched her data interface, a device that looked like an old-fashioned pair of round-lensed glasses perched on her nose. “Computer - public.” At that command, the office filled with a holographic display of a cat-boy, along with his medical records. A rather cute-looking cat-boy, Ming though, and then she frowned as she read his chart.

“Here’s an example,” Dr. Susan went on. “Subject A - nicknamed ‘Alex’ - height 138 centimeters, weight 34 kg. Age 24 years. But does he look 24? Ha! Maybe in the pubic region, but otherwise? Ha! And look at those hormone levels! Division Y completely screwed up. Again. And we have to fix it. Again.”

Ming looked at the hormone levels on the chart and winced. “I’d like to have that rechecked.”

“I want you to run complete blood tests on all of them. Alex and his eleven brothers. Littermates. Whatever. Division Y will be sending them over at 11:30. And order some clothes for them - shorts with a tail opening, shirts, the usual. Knowing Division Y, they’ll send them over in their undies. Or nude.”

“Complete blood-work for twelve cat-boys,” Ming said. “Will they bite and scratch?”

“Division Y didn’t say,” Dr. Susan smiled sourly. “You’ll just have to find out.”

Alex didn’t bite or scratch. He could bite, he knew. His teeth were sharper than a human’s, although his fingernails were blunt and kept trimmed short. But he didn’t want to antagonize this lady whose dark hair had sparkling bits in it, who had introduced herself as ‘Dr. Ming Roberts.’ She’d been nice, so far, and he wanted to keep her that way for as long as possible. A medical lab was bad enough news, without the humans in it taking a dislike to you on top of it all.

“You’ve been very good Alex,” Dr. Roberts said. “Thank you. If your... What do you call them, brothers? littermates?”

“They’re my littermates, Dr. Roberts.”

“Then if your littermates are as cooperative as you are, we should get through this quickly. Now go back to the waiting room and send your next littermate in.”

“Yes Dr. Roberts.” He started toward the door, barefoot but dressed in a new shirt and shorts. He quickly weighed the guilt of speaking vs not speaking and made a decision. “Dr. Roberts,” he said, turning around.

“Yes?”

“My littermate John,” he hesitated and then went on quickly. “He’s sometimes a troublemaker. Not always, you understand, just some of the time.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

Alex went on to where his littermates waited, reading, playing games on handhelds, or swinging on the exerciser. They were all dressed as he was, in new shirts and shorts, but barefoot. Shoes and socks were out of stock, the humans in this new department had said, and this time he thought they were telling the truth. He missed having socks, but not shoes so much. Shoes, in his experience, usually didn’t fit right.

“Bill, you’re next,” Alex said.

“Is she a nice one?” Bill asked as he stood up, putting his reader aside.

“So far she is.”

John looked up from his own handheld. “It doesn’t matter. This is medical, if you haven’t noticed. Medical is always nasty, in the end. No matter how nice the humans pretend to be.”

“We don’t have to make it worse. And I warned Dr. Roberts about you.”

“Good,” John grinned. “Then I can make you a liar by being perfectly polite.”

Alex looked John directly in the eye. “You do that. Look, you’re right that medical always ends up being nasty in the end. But if humans get mad at us, they’ll make it even nastier. On the other hand, if we stay on good terms with them, they’ll at least warn us about any nastiness coming down. That’s worth a lot.”

“Do we have to do this without warning them?” Dr. Susan asked.

“I’m afraid so, ma’am,” Ming replied. They were back in Dr. Susan’s office, and Ming pointed at the hologramic display. “It’s a ticklish situation - no pun intended. See, here and here are zones of chaos in the model. If we warn them, the zones of chaos expand. And it’s good thing the stockroom was out of shoes and socks - if we’d had to take them away, the zones would expand even more, from the LGS effect.” She keyed in a command with her handheld, demonstrating.

“Um, so it would,” Dr. Susan said. “But if we keep them in the dark, we could use this modification.” She keyed in a command with her own handheld. “No, that doesn’t work - the MRK would be too low. How about this?”

Ming studied the display. “Maybe,” she said. “But if we...”

There followed twenty minutes of discussion that would have been incomprehensible to most outsiders, even if they could have seen the display as well as heard the conversation. It was filled not only with mysterious references to “this” and “that” as the two women pointed at and modified the display, it also was littered with three letter acronyms and references to “type 1” vs “type 2.” At the end, Dr. Susan said, “That’s the plan, then. We’ll try it on Alex, first, and put him in isolation. If it works, we’ll start on the others. If not,” she frowned.

“If not,” Ming said, “I still want to try a variant or two before resorting to hormone injections.”

“Yes,” Dr. Susan agreed. “Go now and bang out what you need on the fabricator. I’ll sign off on it.”

“But what is the treatment?” Alex asked. Dr. Roberts didn’t answer. That was a bad sign.

Alex sat on a rug in an alcove labeled with his name: “Subject A.” That meant the machinery around him had been newly created just for him, by a fabricator. Beyond the alcove was tiled floor that had been cold against his bare feet as he was led here. Behind him, on the gray metal wall making up the back of the alcove were a number of displays: A timer, a text-readout, and a pair of linear indicators, one numeric and one a bar graph. On either side of him were two low metal banks, sloped, with lights on top and portals set in the sloped sides. Seven lights and seven portals on each side, Alex counted, all currently glowing red, inactive.

“Dr. Roberts, please tell me,” Alex begged, giving Dr. Roberts his most soulful look. But at the sight of her tight smile, he looked down. She didn’t like not-telling him, that smile said. She must be under orders not to talk. It was some other human who wanted to punish him, then.

Looking down brought the cuff around his ankle into view. It was attached to the floor with a short metal chain, but the cuff itself was a simple leather strap, with a buckle. He had fastened it himself, in fact, at Dr. Robert’s orders. “I can easily undo this,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I know. In fact, you have permission to remove it at any time, once the treatment starts. That’s how we’ll know when to end the treatment.”

“Oh,” He screwed up his courage. “I’m ready then.”

Dr. Roberts walked away, unhappiness apparent in her body language. That makes two of us. Alex thought. She’d told him that the treatment would benefit him, that it would cure the hormone imbalance that was slowly killing him. And he believed her. But she wouldn’t tell him what the treatment was, and so he expected the worst.

He considered the portals to either side. It was going to be a shock treatment, he decided, with painful electric jolts sent through his body. He braced himself in anticipation, looking rapidly from side to side as he waited for the lights to turn green. He heard the machinery begin a louder hum around him, and he took a deep breath.

It was a shock when six of the lights turned green and three portals on either side opened. But not the shock he expected. Instead of probes delivering electric jolts, a half dozen mechanical arms reached out, each tipped with a tiny, white-gloved hand. And as each gloved hand reached him, it began to tickle.

“Heeheeheehee!” Alex squealed. He fell to his side, and tried to roll away, but the white hands were too quick for him. One reached under his shirt to tickle his belly. “Ha haha heehahahee!” Alex giggled. Three more hands tickled his bare legs and feet. One took hold of his tail, and one reached in through his sleeve to tickle under his arm. “Hee heeheehahahaha!” he laughed.

Two additional mechanical arms came out of their portals; two additional white hands joined the tickling. Now he had one hand tickling the sole of each foot, and one tickling each leg. The hand under his shirt was still tickling his belly as it sought his belly button, and the one that had been tickling him under his arm dodged his attempt to grab it and began to tickle the back of his neck. And now there were the two hands tickling his tail! One held his tail in place while the other ran lightly up and down its length. It was driving him crazy!

Belatedly, he tried to reach the leather cuff holding his ankle, but the white hands tickled too much for him to ignore them, and moved too fast for him to avoid them. Two of them continued to wiggle up and down his legs with a light, grabbing touch. Two were under his shirt now, tickling his belly and his sides. One had grabbed the large toe of his right foot, while another wiggled its little white fingers over the instep. One tickled his left foot, staying with it no matter how hard he kicked, and one reached down the back of his shirt to tickle along his spine. The laughter poured out of him, and no matter what he did, he could not avoid the tickle tickle tickle of the little white hands.

Alex felt his face flush. Tears of laughter begin to sting his eyes from the intensity of the tickling. He tried to protect himself, but no matter what he did, the little white hands darted in to tickle the unprotected portions of his anatomy. And then, unable to ignore their implacable tickling touch, he uncovered his protected portions - which only resulted in them getting tickled too.

He drew the tickle-frazzled remains of his will together, and made one last desperate attempt to reach the cuff holding his ankle. He failed. There were too many of the little white hands, they were too quick, and their touch was too effective. He could only squirm and thrash, uselessly, as the hands followed his every desperate, unconscious attempt to avoid them, and continued to wring the laughter out of him.

The tickling went on and on and on. Alex felt himself weakening from the useless struggles he could not keep himself from making, from the giggles and laughter that those white mechanical hands forced from him. He found himself lying on his back, with two of the hands holding down his thumbs, and two more holding his big toes. He was now too weak to break their grip, and the other ten hands were now free to work him over.

He felt them tickling the soles of his feet, up and down, and back and forth, seeming to seek out every ticklish nerve ending he had there. He felt them run a light tickle-touch over his legs, and a heavier touch under his shirt, across his belly and ribs. He giggled and giggled, but could only wiggle weakly. Soon, he felt, he would not be able to move at all.

After what seemed like hours, the tickling finally - finally! - ended. The little white hands withdrew into their portals, and the lights turned red again. Alex lay there on his rug, feeling too washed out to even groan. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he saw that he was no longer in the alcove. He was in a bed, watching Dr. Roberts slip out a door. A blanket lay over him, and a pillow was under his head. He could sleep. He couldn’t do anything else, but he could sleep.

When Alex woke up, his first though was that he was hungry and intensely thirsty. Then he realized that he was in a strange bed.

Then he remembered his ‘treatment.’

He rolled out of bed, filled with a sudden rush of adrenaline, and looked around. He was in an isolation ward, with the exit closed and the lock-out lights on. There was a bath-unit though, that allowed him to slake his thirst and take care of his immediate needs. The shower could wait.

There was also a handheld on the small table. Taking it, he found that he could punch up breakfast, and a fresh shirt, shorts, and briefs, but not socks or shoes. #Subject A not authorized# the unit told him. He tried to send mail to his littermates, and got the same response: #Subject A not authorized.#

Well. Someone wanted to give him a big surprise, and it seemed that that same someone wanted to give that same nasty surprise to his littermates as well. At the moment, though, there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it, so he decided to shower while waiting for breakfast to arrive.

He stripped and turned on the shower, and as he always did he hesitated before stepping under the spray. Cat genes, he and his littermates had joked. None of them liked taking that initial plunge. It was OK once he started, though.

He looked down at himself as he applied soap. A short and boyish body, hairless except for the furry tail. And except for the hair and adult thickness between his legs, a sign of that hormone imbalance afflicting him. The imbalance that his ‘treatments’ were suppose to fix. He shuddered, remembering the tickling, and the bar of soap shot from his hands as he squeezed it. He forced his teeth to unclench. That was another sign of the imbalance: Most of the time he was a cool cat, but occasionally the Craziness would try to take him.

And even without the Craziness, the thought of further ‘treatment’ was... frightening. Dr. Roberts had implied that he’d have to go through many sessions of treatment to cure his hormone imbalance. Many sessions, on that rug in the alcove, chained by the ankle while those little white hands came out to tickle and tickle and tickle...

Alex gulped, and made himself take a deep breath. The thing to do, he told himself, was to put it out of his mind while he rinsed, dried, dressed, and ate. To be the cool cat, and not the crazy one.

An hour after breakfast, the door chimed and the lock-out lights turned off. “Alex?” a voice came through the comm. “This is Dr. Roberts. Are you decent? It’s time for your next treatment.”

Alex felt himself start to sweat. Cool cat he told himself. It wasn’t as if anything he could do or say would stop Dr. Roberts, after all. She was a human, with all the human overrides, while he was just a cat-boy. “Come on in!” he called, and she came through the door, all smiling and pleasant.

“It’s time for your next treatment, Alex,” she said.

The tiles were cold against his bare feet, on the way to the alcove, and his heart was pounding. “Dr. Roberts?” Alex said. “Could you please tell me whose idea it was not to warn me about yesterday’s treatment?”

Dr. Roberts flushed. “Um. Er. Well. That is,” she stammered. “Actually it was my idea. Dr. Susan Maus concurred.” She flushed even more as he stopped and looked up at her, a good thirty centimeters taller than he was. “Alex, I’m sorry. We had to surprise you with the first session; it was part of the treatment. It wouldn’t work if we told you about it ahead of time.”

“All right,” he said, his voice sounding surly even in his own ears. Cool cat he told himself.

“Besides,” Dr. Roberts said brightly. “You do know now. Let’s look forward, not back at the past.”

“All right,” he repeated. Cool cat. And then THE HELL WITH THAT!

He turned and lept at Dr. Roberts as the Craziness took him. He wanted to bite her. To hit her. To knock her down and drag her through the mud for what she had done to him. But she was much taller and heavier than him, and managed to hold off his initial pounce. “Stop that! Alex! Stop!” she shouted. “Help! Help! Stop that Alex! Help!”

Two security robots came scooting up. They were the ‘she hulk’ model, with a box for a lower body and a female bust for the upper. Their eyes glowed as they targeted Alex, and then white glue spurted from their breasts in a faintly obscene display that showed their designer’s perverted sense of humor. The glue hit Alex, entangling him, trapping him, ending his attack if not his Craziness. He snarled at Dr. Roberts as she leaned over him.

“Alex, please. This isn’t doing you any good. It isn’t helping. You have to relax and go along with your treatment.”

“That’s enough of that,” another woman’s voice cut in.

“Oh.” Dr. Roberts backed away. “Ma’am, this is Alex, Subject A. Alex, this is Dr. Susan Maus, my boss.”

Dr. Maus was even taller than Dr. Roberts, Alex saw, and held a collar in her hand. Some of his Craziness retreated as he recognized the collar. “Ming, I’m declaring the ‘dangerous animal’ protocol on our Subject A.”

“Ma’am, that’s not fair!”

“No, its not. But I’m doing it anyway.” She squatted down beside Alex. “This cat has to be belled.” She opened the collar, and it slipped out of her hands. She grabbed for it, waved her arms as she lost her balance, and suddenly fell back on her behind, her legs flying up and out past Alex’s nose. He grinned. Those were nice legs, and he was pleased by Dr. Maus falling and displaying them. On the other hand, his instincts told him that Dr. Maus was genuinely sorry about the situtation, despite the coldness of her tone, and that Dr. Roberts, despite her protests, wasn’t.

Not that it would make any difference in the short run. “Let me get that ma’am,” Dr. Roberts said, and in a few seconds she had retrieved the collar and fastened it around Alex’s neck. He heard and felt the click when it locked: Tracking collar, control collar, slave collar. Life would not be any fun at all as long as it stayed in place.

The security robots then dragged him bodily to the alcove labeled ‘Subject A’ and stood by as Dr. Roberts applied the de-gluing spray. In a few minutes Alex found himself sitting on the rug once more, but this time he was stripped to his briefs, and the cuff around his ankle was a locking metal band with a padded foam lining, rather than a simple leather cuff. “Get it over with,” Dr. Maus ordered curtly, and a dozen lights turned green. A dozen small white-gloved hands reached out of their portals to tickle a victim who was even more defenseless than he had been during his last session.

“Heeheehaheeheehee!” Alex giggled as a half-dozen of the little hands tickled his torso. “Hahaha hahaheeha!” he laughed as four more tickled his bare legs and bare feet. “Noooohohoheehahaha!” he cried as two of the hands applied maddening tickles to his tail, and spine, and the back of his ears. No matter how he thrashed, no matter how he kicked, no matter how he twisted and turned and tried to cover himself, the little white hands reached in too fast to avoid, tickling him here, and there, and everywhere where they had a moment’s opening.

They tickled his chest and his belly, and reached wiggling fingers into his belly button. They dug in lightly to run up and down his sides, from his armpits to his hips. They stroked lightly and teasingly along his arms and the nape of his neck. They applied wiggly tickles over his thighs and his calves, behind his knees and on his kneecaps. Along the tops of his feet. And over the terribly sensitive, ticklish soles of his feet.

For long periods the little mechanical hands would ignore his feet, concentrating on one spot or another on his body - his belly, his sides, the backs of his knees - or giving the entire surface of his skin, from the ankles up, a thorough going-over. Then those white-gloved hands would change their targets, zeroing in on his tender soles, applying their gentle, irresistible, unavoidable attacks to his insteps, to his heels, to the balls of his feet, and to the spaces between his toes. And to the pads of his toes and the extra-sensitive spot at the base of the balls of his feet. He’d laugh uproariously at that foot-tickling, and it would seem to go on forever. And then the tickling hands would abandon his feet for another endless period of tickling the rest of him.

Alex felt himself flush as the laughter was forced to pour out of him. He felt the tears of laughter start in his eyes, just like they had during his last treatment. He wanted to conserve his strength, but it was impossible to resist the tickling. Impossible to keep from giggling as those tiny fingers wiggled over sensitive skin. Impossible to keep from making those wild, futile efforts to avoid those mechanical arms and to escape those tickling hands. Impossible to keep from thrashing and struggling as those inescapable tickle-sensations seemed to soak through his skin and penetrate into the core of his being. He screwed his eyes shut and let the giggles pour out of him as he squirmed in his alcove. There was the tickling, and only the tickling, and nothing but the tickling in the entire universe...

He found himself lying on his back, gasping for air. He’d stopped laughing, but not because the tickle session had ended. The white tickle-hands had only paused, and were still hovering over him, fingers wiggling. They were only waiting for him to recover a bit before they once again renewed their gentle, maddening attack.

They struck, continuing their programmed tickle routine with unabated mechanical vigor and mechanical quickness. But Alex felt himself weakening; the tickle-sensations he felt were as intense as ever, but his struggles against them were becoming less so. The tickle-machinery seemed to sense his weakness, at any rate four of the white hands reached out to grab thumbs and big toes just as Alex had become too weak to break their grip.

Just as they had during the last treatment, the remaining ten little white hands reached out to apply their tickles unhindered by the need to dodge and dart in. They tickled him in a wave, starting at his head, working down to his feet, and then working their way up again. Each wave concentrated its efforts on his armpits, his belly, the backs of his knees, and the soles of his feet. On his most ticklish spots, in other words, as the tickle-wave ran over them. Alex continued to giggle - he couldn’t possibly stop, even if he couldn’t do anything else - as each wave of tickling left him weaker and weaker.

Alex managed to remain awake, this time, when the tickling finally ended. He saw Dr. Roberts come over, and felt as she unlocked the cuff on his ankle. He heard her direct the security robots as they rolled him onto a stretcher and carried him off to the now-familiar bed in the isolation ward. The pillow was soft, under him, and the blanket warm, over him. And blessedly, neither of them tickled at all. He heard the hiss and click as the exit sealed, just before he fell asleep.

It was late afternoon when Alex woke up again. The second tickle-session had been that morning, and he had napped, rather than sleeping the night away as he had before. He had the evening and night before him, and then - another treatment. The third of nine, according to Dr. Roberts, one each day for nine days. Alex wasn’t sure his sanity could survive another seven tickle-treatments.

Then there was this damn collar. He and his littermates had worn collars like them, at times, depending on how the winds of policy in Division Y blew. A slave collar like the one he now wore would allow any human employee of Phenotech to track his location. It would cause any security robots in the area to linger nearby, and it would make those ‘bots quicker to attack him. It would allow any human to paralyze him, either rendering him bonelessly limp or stiff as a board, depending on the command word that the human chose. Finally, there were persistent rumors that it could do other things as well: Paralyze the victim’s vocal cords, making him unable to speak. Administer painful electric shocks to punish the victim. Choke the victim, making him unable to breathe. And even cause the victims heart to stop, making him drop dead in his tracks.

Well, he could at least wash and dress and eat, and pretend to be at least a quarter civilized until they dragged him off for his next ‘treatment.’ With that thought, he rolled out of bed and slouched into the bath-unit.

Later, as he buttoned up his new shirt, he heard a voice. “Subject A - Alex, can you hear me?” A female voice; it sounded like Dr. Maus. “Let me check this... I know you can hear me Alex. Please subvocalize an answer.”

“Yes, I can hear you,” Alex subvocalized. The voice, he realized, was coming through his collar. Dr. Maus’ next words confirmed this.

“This is Dr. Maus. I’m talking to you through an undocumented feature of your collar. It’s the most secure channel I have, so I’m using it to make you a proposition. An offer of alliance.”

“Yes, Dr. Maus?”

“Would you like to get revenge on Dr. Ming Roberts?”

“Oh,” Alex breathed. “Yes!”

“Subvocalize please! We can’t afford any security leaks on this.”

“I’m sorry Dr. Maus,” Alex subvocalized. “Yes, I’d like revenge against Dr. Roberts - but why would you help me?”

“She’s a threat to my position,” Dr. Maus replied. Too smoothly, Alex thought. “I’d like that threat eliminated, and if you were to humiliate her, that would do nicely.”

“Don’t make me -” Alex swallowed the last word; in his current situation, it cut a little too deeply. “You could break her like a stick, at any time you wanted. I’ve seen enough corporate political infighting in Division Y to know that.”

“All right then,” Dr. Maus’ voice took on an angry edge. “If you have to know, it’s because she spurned me!”

“What?”

“I wanted her in my bed. I made advances, invitations - and she ignored them. She turned me down! Yes, I could break her - even get her fired and blackballed - but I don’t want that. I want to see her humiliated. And that’s where you come in. If you agree.”

“Maybe.” Alex thought fast. It was a gamble - a huge gamble. Even if it wasn’t a trap, it could still go wrong. On the other hand, he was a mere cat-boy, and slave-collared to boot. He’d have to take gambles if he ever were to get anywhere. “All right, Dr. Maus, I agree. I’ll help you. What’s your plan?”

“I can download security updates to you. Not very fast; just a little bit at a time. So it will take several days to complete, unfortunately. But at the end, you’ll have a trapdoor in the local net. You can turn the security ‘bots against Ming, and, and...”

“And I could give her the same treatment I’ve been getting, Dr. Maus?” Alex suggested.

“Yes! That would be excellent. I’ll want to watch.” A pause. “Here’s the first download.”

Alex considered the file he was receiving. An encrypted file, stored in his collar’s auxiliary memory. It was just one piece, but with enough such pieces he could assemble an attack program in his handheld. And then... “Thank you, Dr. Maus,” he subvocalized, and cut the connection.

Supper tasted good. It was amazing how much a chance to strike back improved things. Of course he’d still have to suffer through the full round of ‘treatments,’ but he told himself that he’d endure them when they came, and that until they came he should do his best not to think about them.

After supper, he heard a voice again: “Hello, Alex? This is Dr. Roberts. Please subvocalize if you can hear me. Alex?”

His ears pricked up. Dr. Roberts voice was coming through the collar, just as Dr. Maus’ voice had. “Yes, I hear you Dr. Roberts,” he managed to subvocalize. He felt his heart begin to pound, and his tail start to lash. Was he caught, already?

“Alex, this talk-channel is an undocumented feature of your collar. It’s the closest thing to a secure channel I have to you, and so I can use it to tell you: It wasn’t my idea to spring your treatment on you without warning you, it was the bitch’s. She insisted on it, and then insisted that I take the blame for it.”

“The ‘bitch’ Dr. Roberts? You mean Dr Maus?”

“That’s right. Dr. Susan Maus. I’d like to see her humiliated for making me take the blame, and I’m guessing that you’d like revenge against her too.”

“Well... But why should you care if I blame you, Dr. Roberts? Not that I do,” Alex put in quickly. “But even if I did, I’m just a lowly cat-boy in a slave collar.”

“I have other reasons too,” Dr Roberts sent back. And then: “The bitch spurned me! I flirted with her, I made advances - and she ignored me! I want to see her humiliated for that - not hurt, mind you, just utterly stripped of her dignity.”

Alex clenched his teeth together to keep from reacting. He took his tail in both hands to control it. Either this was a set-up - in which case he was already a skinned cat for agreeing to help Dr. Maus - or else those two human women had both been utterly clueless about each other. And had handed him a glorious opportunity as a result. “All right, Dr. Roberts,” he said at last. “I’ll admit I’d like to see that too. But again, I’m just a cat-boy in a slave collar. What could I do?”

“I can download some security updates to you. It will take several days since I can only sent a little at a time. It won’t be enough to stop your treatment, but afterwards - you can assemble them into a trapdoor in the local net. And then we can have our revenge on Dr. Susan Maus!”

Alex sensed the security download depositing itself in his collar’s auxiliary storage, and then the connection snapped. He sat very still for a minute, as a huge smile slowly grew over his face. Things were looking up. All he had to do now was wait, and avoid thinking about his next treatment.

The next day’s treatment didn’t start with him on the rug at all. Instead, he was made to strip to his briefs once more, and fastened vertically to an X-cross. Paramagnetic clamps held him suspended, so that he did not actually touch either the X-cross or the restraints. This, he realized, would let the fingers of those diabolical little white hands access every square centimeter of his skin.

Except that when the lights turned green and fourteen mechanical arms extended from their portals, the white-gloved hands did not dig wiggling fingers into ticklish cat-boy skin. Instead each little hand held a little feather, and each little feather was run, ever so softly and gently, over legs and belly, chest and ribs, arms and neck and the soles of his feet.

“Arrgh!” Alex cried, and then the giggles began to come out. “Heeheeheehee heeheehee!” This was not the playfully fierce and intense tickling of his last two treatments. This was a light tickling. A slow tickling. A tickling that might even have seemed kindly if it weren’t so utterly maddening.

Alex couldn’t squirm much at all, held as he was. He couldn’t even lash his tail, for it had a clamp of its own, holding it to a vertical post. He could only laugh - and he had to laugh, under that feathery assault.

The initial all-over tickling did not last long. The feather-wielding hands broke into two groups, each group wandering over Alex’s bare and sensitive skin like a pair of giggle-inducing spotlights.

One set of seven feathers would concentrate on his right foot, both the top and the sole, the sides and the instep and the spaces between the toes. The second set would, at the same time, focus on his side just under his left arm, reaching into the armpit and along the ribs. Then the hands would shift, with a set of feathers in and around his belly button and the second group of hands softly feathering his left kneecap and behind his left knee. And then the dual focus of the tickling would shift once again. The only constant was the giggling and laughter that Alex could not help but to deliver in response to the ever-so-gentle touch of the tickling feathers.

In the course of things, both feet got it, and both legs. Both arms. Both sides, and back and belly and chest. Always soft. Always gentle. Always irresistible.

At length, the little white hands withdrew with their feathers, and the cross was lowered to horizontal, in preparation for releasing Alex from the restraints. Dr. Roberts came up to supervise. “Are you less exhausted than yesterday, Alex?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted.

“Good.” With a sudden grin, she began to give him a finger-tickling of her own, starting up under the paramagnetic shackles that held his wrists, and working down his arms, down the sides of his ribs, across his belly, down the outsides of his legs, behind his knees, and then finally working one foot and then the other, spending quite some time on each instep.

“S-stop heehahahah p-please heehahahohoha stop Dr. haha heehee hee Roberts hahahaha,” Alex begged. But Dr. Roberts didn’t stop until she had given him a complete going over.

“Dr.-” Alex gasped when she finished. “Dr. Roberts,” Alex found he couldn’t be Crazy, not after that tickling. “Was that really a necessary part of my treatment?” he ended up saying.

“Not strictly necessary,” Dr. Roberts answered. “Just helpful. And without it, you would be itching terribly a few minutes from now.”

“I suppose so, Dr. Roberts.” But Alex found it hard to be grateful. And later, when she sent him the next security download, her subvocalized explanation that she also had to avoid arousing Dr. Maus’s suspicions didn’t mollify him either.

The next half-dozen days mostly passed in a blur for Alex. He slept and ate in the isolation ward. He received encrypted security downloads from Dr. Maus and Dr. Roberts and hid them away for later assembly. He browsed the limited, censored cache that was all the local new would allow him. He received daily physical checkups, five times from Dr. Roberts, and once from Dr. Maus - with the latter dropping and breaking two diagnostic scanners in the course of her examination. And he endured six more ‘treatment’ sessions, sessions that stuck in his memory despite his best efforts not to think about them.

There were two sessions similar to his first, where an ankle-cuff chained him in place while he suffered a thorough tickling. There was a second session on the X-cross, where the little white hands tickled him directly, rather than holding little feathers. There were a couple of sessions where his hands were bound and held above his head while he sat on the rug and squirmed helplessly under the tickle stimulation. And then there was the session in the stocks, where his bare feet were feather-tickled for what seemed like an eternity ¬- and then, when Alex though that his treatment had finally come to an end, the mechanical hands moved in to tickle the rest of his body for a second eternity.

Dr. Maus had sent her last download just before that double session in the stocks, and Dr. Roberts sent hers a short time afterwards. That night, Alex lay in bed, carefully assembling the program-pieces, setting up the trap-door in the local net, and subverting the security system.

The next morning, Dr. Roberts summoned him for one last checkup. “It’s just a formality, really,” she said. “We already know that your treatment worked from yesterday’s checkup; your hormones are now rebalanced, and you should be seeing physical effects in just a few weeks. In fact, Dr. Maus is just putting your littermates through their first treatment right now.” She raised an eyebrow to him. “She’ll be here in a few minutes, though, and you can properly express your appreciation to her.”

“And to you, Dr. Roberts,” Alex answered. “Computer: Stage one.” The slave collar clicked, and he removed it. “Stage two.” Two of the ‘she hulk’ security robots scooted in and immediately fired on the female human with their breast-mounted glue guns, rendering her helpless.

“Alex!” Dr. Roberts cried. “What are you doing?”

“Getting my revenge - Ming,” Alex answered. “Hello, Dr. Susan,” he greeted the other woman as she entered. “Computer: Stage three.” At this command, the two security robots turned their glue guns on Ming’s boss, trapping her in place as well.

“Alex!” Dr. Susan Maus protested.

Alex smiled. “Ming, your downloads had a limitation that kept me from using them against you. And Susan, your downloads were limited so that I couldn’t use them against you.” His grin grew broader. “Unfortunately - for both of you - the combined downloads don’t have any limitation at all.”

“This had better be good, Alex,” Bill glared at his littermate, backed by the other ten cat-boys. “You had control of security, and you still let Dr. Maus put us through that first ‘treatment’ session.”

“Dr. Maus and Dr. Roberts convinced me that the treatments are necessary,” Alex stood there, all Cool Cat, unaffected by the redoubled glares from his littermates. “But I’ve arranged a little something to compensate us for that. Computer: Depolarize.”

The wall of the room to Alex’s right turned into a transparent window. Beyond was the lab with its tiled floor. Two alcoves were set up on the far side and brass plates on the floor named the alcoves’ occupants: Dr. Susan Maus and Dr. Ming Roberts. The two human women were stripped to their panties and chained in place by cuffs on their right ankles. And they laughed helplessly as the little white mechanical hands reached out from either side to tickle them.

Suddenly, eleven cat-boys were at the window, noses pressed against it, tails lashing. Alex walked over - Cool Cat he told himself - and looked out himself. “I’ve arranged things so that for each treatment session one of us goes through, one of them will receive a treatment session as well. That’s only fair, don’t you think?”