Chapters Beta Academy Chapter 8
With a subtle vibration in her seat joining the bell chime to bring the class period to a close, the passenger felt her chair unlock and reverse away from her place among her sisters, slowly, steadily, as the din of gossip rose around her. All her classmates’ heads were whipping around, shoulders shrugging, wondering what they had just seen and heard, what it meant for their future.
For their Purpose.
The passenger’s head remained fixed and steady, her lazy stare scanned the room as her chair turned toward the door. She found no pleasure in the curtain pulling back, in the other Betas finally realizing how cruel Alphas like the Sergeant could be.
Out of the corner of her eye, the passenger could see Jessica, Amy, and the new boy Adam were already thick as thieves, and every ounce of her wanted to stay and discuss what had just been put on full display. Like old times. Just to listen would be enough, maybe get a good look up close at a real Betaboy, but with the charade they had just witnessed, there were so many questions to ask! Indeed that’s what she would have done, before.
Yet asking questions is exactly what had gotten her into this… life… but the passenger had long since given up on trying to warn her old friends away from the questions.
Another girl zipped in front of her and out the door, making the passenger’s autopilot brake awkwardly, feeling her tiny body recoil against the straps keeping her tightly in her chair.
Yet her eyes didn’t flinch, her neck didn’t bow forward, she couldn’t tell her sister off; no, the chair just started back up again, calmly at that same steady speed which had just removed their guest speaker from the room too. That same inevitable procession which had dragged the pregnant heroine of Cascadia onward now pulled the passenger toward the next entry in her schedule: Lunch.
Sticking to the slowest ‘lane’ of the hall on the far left, the passenger followed a stream of younger girls, each placed in their own chair, still a bit large for them, not yet entrusted to drive it themselves — perhaps ten or twelve. As usual, she was stuck following a procession of children, and with even fewer privileges. Some days this left her quite embarrassed, unable to join sisters her own age whizzing by, heading wherever they wanted to go. Not that she could show it, she couldn’t even mimic the younger girls gawking at the magnificent idea of moving themselves, anywhere! Or gawking at her, a slack-jawed passenger following along behind them, by all appearances half-asleep — or braindead.
Some days she would worry about that, or the drool dripping down her chin and making a mess of her uniform, sure, and some days she would find herself consumed in the unquenchable fire of fury and rage at how a life with a Purpose and friends had been shown to her and then placed so close, yet forever out of reach. And then of course some other days that fire would settle to background hum, and the passenger would numb herself to the world passing by.
Today had started out numb, but it was revealing itself to be something different.
Someone had talked to her. They had called her ‘Catherine’ again…
It was a sobering moment in what had felt like complete invisibility for weeks— no, months — since the last time someone had even tried and failed to strike up a conversation with the locked-in girl, or even made idle smalltalk to fill the stagnant air.
That last time, Jessica — maybe her oldest friend, since preschool, a self-serious goodie the passenger couldn’t help but adore — had come to sit with her by the fountain, and it hardly mattered that the passenger’s bestest friend was mid-sentence recounting how she remembered Cathy’s sardonic and twisted sense of humor. Five minutes before the bell, her chair had simply received its next destination and driven her away. Jess hadn’t followed, or tried again.
Even the rotation of supervisors who picked Cathy up for dressing, PT, and Amatory; they usually manipulated her limbless body without a word. It’s not like any great font of conversation had ever come from a super changing a tampon, but since no one but her and a few medical staff even knew Cathy was awake inside what used to be the flexible, expressive little body of a promising young Betagirl, these days the passenger might sometimes hear a muttered curse while being lifted, and even that was rare.
No, when she wasn’t a burden she was completely ignored, like all young girls learned to accept in the group strollers; inevitably sat down next to your bully, or your sister-crush who didn’t feel quite the same.
What differed here was the silent chasm of indifference.
Shay had said aloud what her classmates all thought: the passenger was oblivious, gone.
She hadn’t played a real role in her friends’ lives for almost three years now.
They had forgotten about her.
Cathy was just a passenger.
Her half-lidded eyes blinked on cue with every sixth heartbeat.
It was enough to detach someone from reality, to make her think the supervisors had her head in some magic machine, or she was really dead, or any millions of other fears which occupied her idle time, all her time — except in class. The only thing anchoring her to reality were the lessons she was still allowed to sit in on from the back row, a trickle of stimulus to her isolated mind.
And now this: this guest speaker Lexi had talked directly to her! The plump, triply-fulfilled woman had addressed ‘Catherine’ directly, prompting the whole class to glance her way, to disprove the passenger’s latest suspicion; no, she wasn’t a ghost. Not only that, but the graduate had spoke to her with some odd, patronizing admiration which finally — after almost three years — left some sliver of an answer to the millions of questions her slack jaw could no longer ask:
She might still have her Purpose fulfilled… or she might be part of a global effort to cure the Beta Virus. Either way she was still bound inside this unresponsive body. Lacking limbs, well — she had never known different — but maybe this frozen fate wasn’t as pointless or arbitrary as she had been left to believe?
Or maybe it was still cruel and twisted and demented and AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!
The passenger imagined screaming out, but in reality made no sound or movement, her heart rate elevating slightly as the chair continued rolling forward unabated, her slight breasts rising and falling as they always did. Even her breath was beyond her control, the rhythmic in and out of her diaphragm a now-familiar sensation.
The long line of pre-teens in front of her turned at the next hall toward the North Cafeteria, one after the other, but the passenger’s chair stayed true, heading to the medical wing, past the helpdesk, through an automatic door to join another line, this time of girls much like her; each body rigid and still, with no shoulder controls and no voice of their own; each chair precisely spaced in single file to the left side so Alphas could still stroll by easily. No girlish chatter filled this clinic hall, no, that was shut out by the automatic doors closing behind her. This line was hidden from the others, which made some sick sort of sense. It would have disturbed Cathy’s sisters to see how she was fed, as it had her the first time…
Here she waited, the story of her life. Cathy followed her locked gaze to the Beta seated in front of her, and the next, and the next. Back when she had asked the question, she had been the only one in this line, but now there were at least five or six of them. Everyday she found herself wondering what their last words had been, what hidden sliver of forbidden thought had forced the supervisors to abandon all pretense of ‘caring’ and just reduce each of these girls to a body and their Purpose.
Cathy tensed her pelvic floor reflexively at the thought of her Purpose, the last bundle of nerves she had any conscious control over, a sick joke in comparison to the question that had landed her here, years ago, a simple question.
The door behind her slid open again, and instead of just the faint whirr of wheels ferrying another girl like her in line, Cathy heard… their guest presenter! Lexi!
“I didn’t mean to, Kyra, I swear! I just got to talking and— They’re just like I was, they deserve to know things!”
“Yes but there’s a method to how Betas learn what comes next, it’s all been well-studied by Central. They’re free to ask Miss Dierdre or any other teacher, just like you can talk to me.”
That old instinct to turn her head to the source of her curiosity plagued Cathy yet again as her neck muscle twitched and her gaze drifted not even a sliver. Parked as she was in the medical wing’s hallway, a pair of supervisor’s legs strutted by before cutting in front of her to enter the adjacent checkup room, closely followed by Lexi rolling along at her level. Cathy seemed to catch the pregnant Beta’s eye, who gave her a double-take and an, “Oh, hello again!” as her chair passed by on its ordered course.
Today was turning out to be like a Unification Day feast, albeit for the professional eavesdropper. Cathy tried her best to listen even as she moved up in her line, and the open door slipped behind her.
“I just think, like—”
“You’re not supposed to think, Alexandra! It’s your Purpose to reproduce! I know it’s misleading, with all this time in school, and now this tour. I get why you think you have other abilities or responsibilities…
“I could!” Lexi attempted to interject.
“No. You saw the same video of the Eastern Bloc as every other graduate, you know why we educate you in Cascadia instead of keeping you in—”
“Don’t say it! I don’t want to even think about that video again! Like I’m grateful, okay, but if you keep Betas in lecture rooms instead of boxes, but like just as much in the dark, we are going to be curious!”
“With talk like that, triplets or not, you’re going to end up like those sample collectors out there.”
There was a heavy silence for a moment, before the super spoke again, “Here, let’s get your mid-day checks out of the way. We can skip the dilation check, my treat, and then some relief for your poor butt and maybe a different kind of relief, yeah? I’ll turn the massager up just how you like it.”
A meek “yes please” preceded the door sliding closed with a click, and Cathy’s chair moved forward in line, one step closer to understanding her place in all this, and one step closer to lunch…
When the passenger was second in line, a passing nurse bent down to put a bib on her just before she felt some spittle drip from her mouth.
Putting aside the significance of seeing a real Betawoman, graduated and fulfilling her Purpose three times over — and how that actually stoked the cold embers of her heart more than she could admit to herself — Cathy’s thoughts swirled around Lexi’s seeming respect for her and what she claimed the passenger had been assigned to do.
What the heck was a “sample collector?” Lexi’s admiration had seemed so real, as if this punishment for asking questions was worthy of respect.
Of course, Cathy couldn’t help but think she might not look so admirable if everyone knew about the many “Company Benefits Nights” with the Enforcers in Barrack B in her first year in this changed body, when some of the men had discovered there was a new type of Beta inside the Academy walls who couldn’t report ungentlemanly conduct, when they had programmed Mr. Pick-Me-Up to fetch her from the room full of snoozing Betas, shaken her from her dreams of before, made her eyes blink open as a passenger again, made her chair follow them back outside to the smelly men’s quarter’s by the fences, a dozen men ready to push their bedtimes and set her Purpose ablaze.
Cathy tensed her pelvic floor again, trying to shut out the terrible memory and the aching desire for it to happen again.
No, instead she tried to recall the red-haired nurse who had comforted her when she found the evidence leaking out of her, that and the bruising. The Alpha had gone against orders almost every night for a week, refusing to send Cathy back to the sleeping quarters until the men of Barracks B had been reassigned. Not discharged, but apparently there weren’t enough Alphas around to get rid of the bad ones.
Cathy loved that nurse, probably the only Super or Alpha who had ever held her and made her feel like more than her Purpose. Not that the passenger could ask her name. It had never been mentioned within eavesdropping distance.
The girl ahead finished up and Cathy’s private ponderings were interrupted as her chair rolled her toward one of the two special feeding machines. While her sisters Jess and Amy were undoubtedly sipping from something similar to this towering column in the cafeteria, the straw attachment here had been replaced with a curved nozzle not unlike the shape of a banana, a fruit she had seen in her childhood lessons which apparently didn’t exist anymore, except in the flavored meals she was about to have fed to her. The attending nurse hooked a finger in her mouth to nudge her slack jaw ajar, grabbed the plastic banana, and unceremoniously filled the passenger’s open mouth. Like always, the Super pushed it deep, past the tubes connecting her nostrils to her lungs — ensuring her access to air yet endlessly tickling her throat — before pressing a button to deposit a meal down her throat in three precise, vitamin-enriched spurts.
All this was necessary thanks to the punishment taking away her ability to swallow.
All this was necessary to sustain this simple life of passivity.
Even if, most days, she didn’t want it sustained anymore.
Everything moved in reverse after that: her jaw was released letting her mouth close somewhat, her bib was pulled off, and Cathy soon found herself rolling to another part of the medical wing, past women in lab coats rather of the normal white super uniform, almost past the recovery room where she had woken up like this so long ago. Cathy tried to shut her eyes to block out the memory: the panic of waking up covered in braces, the terrible ache of full immobilization as her body had slowly solidified, but it was no use. It wasn’t just her bones that refused to respond.
Of course knowing her luck, she was driven right into that specific recovery room, where a Pick-Me-Up descended from the ceiling track to release her straps and lift her tiny, rigid body to one of the three medical beds, massive things high off the ground that only served to frighten the tiny Beta, who missed her box.
A faint roar flared up in the back of Cathy’s head, the same disgust and hatred at her situation returning as she was left to stare lazily up at the same speckled ceiling tiles her blank gaze had first woken up to, as the robot arm covered in smiley face stickers released her and whizzed away to attend another room.
But that roar quieted when she heard the Nurse come in. The redhead with freckles and a friendly voice who had discovered her, protected her, began doing weekly checkups on Cathy and the other Betas just like her, to ensure what happened in Barrack B would never happen to anyone ever again.
No matter how good it felt. No matter how Cathy’s Purpose had ensured she would enjoy it over the many weeks and months before the Enforcers were caught and stopped…
“Good morning! How’s your day going, sweetie?”
She placed her fingers on Cathy’s mound, right between her fleshy hips, above her slit, and Cathy tensed her pelvic muscles once for “Yes”, or “Good” in this case. Cathy got the impression that no one knew she and the nurse did this, as some of the other medical staff looked at her oddly for “talking to the vegetables.”
“Were you in the Giving Life class that got a guest presenter today? I’ve read about that girl, she’s an inspiration!”
Cathy tensed once for “Yes”, the rest of her body immobile and unresponsive.
“Oh you were! I don’t know what happened, but everyone is sure worked up! The Head Supervisor is down the hall yelling at some sergeant. Hard not to overhear. I wish you could tell me everything that happened sweetie. I bet you hear everything. I’m such a sucker for gossip, you don’t even know.” The Nurse laughed and let her other hand massage Cathy’s immobilized shoulder and neck, kneading some of the tension out. The yelling of a man and woman echoed down the hall, and she just rolled her eyes. “Honestly. The girl’s a little hero, I would’ve let her say her piece, but I guess that’s why I’m not a Teacher.” She let out a sour little chuckle.
Cathy pulsed herself below in agreement and blinked blankly, unable to tell her what revelations today had brought, unable to ask what being a “sample collector for the UN Cure Programme” might entail, unable to ask why the medical staff hadn’t explained anything when she was given the Punishment Without A Name — made a passenger within her own body.
Laid down too soon after eating, a bit of her puree lunch slipped up her throat and Cathy’s body spit it up reflexively, to which the Nurse tsked, grabbed a sanitary wipe, and lifted the Betagirl up into her lap, holding her rigid body tightly. There was no reaction from Cathy except for a compulsive retching as the Nurse soothed, “It’s alright, it’s okay. Let it out. I’m sorry, sweetie.”
The passenger’s thoughts skipped a beat. No one had ever apologized to her, not even the sweet red-haired Nurse before now. No one.
The arms around her limbless body tightened once Cathy’s slack mouth was wiped clean and her stomach had settled.
“I’m sorry that Betagirl gets three little ones and you won’t get any. I know what it means to me, being unable to conceive, but I’ve known since my parents told me where I came from as a girl. I mean, outside these walls it’s simply a fact of life. I can only imagine what it means to a sweet girl like you, Cathy, being raised for this and all.”
The passenger’s stomach turned and it wasn’t her lunch.
She wouldn’t be fulfilling her Purpose?
The nurse soothed her, felt what few twitches escaped the little prison in her arms, the girl inside secretly screaming and howling as her worst fears were confirmed. She wiped the tears which welled and fell from Cathy’s heavy-lidded eyes, staring at nothing.
So that explained it. Why Cathy had never gotten pregnant after a whole company of Enforcers passed her body around, thrust her slack face into their crusty sheets from dusk till dawn, and came back to repeat the moonlight serenade over and over again. Cathy had thought she was born defective, but no.
Sample collecting.
The Cure Programme.
Infertility.
Her only remaining muscle control.
Cathy knew then for certain: she was going to be a sperm collector at the Future Centers. She was going to collect men’s deposited “samples” ad infinitum, and her tubes must have been tied to allow her to “collect” without complications.
The Nurse hugged her and slipped a finger down, under her skirt but over the spandex bottom of her uniform, against her vulva. “I know you must hate this question by now, but do I need to check you down below, sweetie?”
“No.” Cathy tensed her lower holes twice quickly. She did so carefully, sincerely, ensuring her voice was heard in this one meager way. If Cathy were to tense only once for Yes, then she knew her uniform would be off in a heartbeat, and the Nurse would be checking every square centimeter for any signs of use or abuse.
She didn’t want the one boy from Barrack C who treated her well to get in trouble.
She loved that her Nurse cared, but now Cathy knew for certain she wasn’t meant for anything greater. The way the young Enforcer — the way his cock made her feel — was how she would be used for the rest of her life.
Cathy was picked up and placed back in her chair, a passenger strapped in securely with a pat on the head, and sent off to enjoy the rest of the lunch period.