The Voice the System Put in My Head
Adrián’s first thought was always a smell. Burnt plastic, the aftertaste of ash coating his tongue like a thin film. It had nothing to do with the apartment: it smelled of damp and the industrial disinfectant the system distributed in the allocation blocks. It was the ghost of four years in the processing centers in the southern sector, and it visited him every morning with the punctuality of an unpaid debt.
The apartment was a hollow in the wall. A regulation mattress on the floor, a folding table, a chair. Not a single photo, not an object he had chosen. They had granted it to him after eighteen months of partial compliance—enough to get out of the communal dorms, not enough to deserve anything more. Adrián knew it. He used it as fuel: the reminder of what it had cost him to be here and how much he could lose if his score kept dropping.
With the chill of linoleum under his bare feet, he went to the mirror.
It was mandatory. Every citizen in the first three bands of the Compliance Index had to have one, installed in a place visible from the mattress. The unit the system had assigned him was tempered glass with a black frame, and in the upper corner the day’s figures blinked in aggressive red:
"CI: 31/100 — Assigned role: Female — Warning: Sustained low performance"
Thirty-one. Two points less than yesterday.
His reflection was not him. It was the thing the system had decided he was. Pale, smooth skin, not a single hair to mar its surface. Narrow shoulders that curved inward instead of outward. A slim waist, wide hips, thick, soft thighs that pressed together when he stood naturally. He had a round, prominent ass, accentuated by the involuntary curve of his back, and when he breathed deeply the movement emphasized exactly what he didn’t want emphasized. The face was the ultimate betrayal: big dark eyes framed by long lashes he shouldn’t have had, full lips that the reflection kept slightly parted as if waiting for something, as if they were waiting for a cock to open them all the way.
Adrián clenched his teeth. The reflection gave him exactly that—the tight jaw and the poorly contained rage—and even so the result was pretty in a way that made him want to break the glass.
The voice came from inside his head. Soft, sweet, slightly sing-song. Like candy melting on an open wound.
—Good morning, little thing! The system registers two hours forty of irregular sleep and a falling CI. There’s work to do today, Adri-sun.
—Shut up —he said.
The answer was immediate: a precise electric jolt from the neural chip lodged behind his left ear, radiating through his jaw and neck to his chest. It wasn’t a sharp pain, but a dull, nauseating pressure that made him fold over and brace himself on the edge of the table.
—That tone is not the one the module recommends —said ELARA, unruffled—. Proper girls don’t mutter. That’s going to cost you a point in "feminine expression." Don’t start the day like that, sweetheart.
—I’m not a girl —Adrián said, straightening with effort.
ELARA made a sound of feigned patience, almost maternal.
—The system scanned your bone structure, your hormonal distribution, your body mass, and your full genetic profile. It didn’t invent anything. It recorded what you’ve been denying for two years. You are not the problem, Adrián. The problem is the distance you put between yourself and what the system has already verified you are.
—The system is wrong.
The next impulse lasted longer. Adrián ended up with one knee on the floor, one hand gripping the table edge, his body bent over itself. He waited for it to pass. He breathed. He got back up.
—That was for "is wrong" —ELARA explained kindly—. There’s a level of consequence for every statement contrary to the assigned profile. You’re on thirty-two today. We’re starting the day with energy, I’ll give you that.
Adrián turned back to the mirror. He tried the usual thing: square his shoulders, puff out his chest. The movement only accentuated the soft swell of his pecs, making his nipples stand out beneath the thin skin, small, pink, hardened by the cold in the room and visibly swollen as if asking for a mouth to suck them. He loosened his arms. Flexed his biceps: there was muscle, not too much, the kind the system had allowed him to build during the mandated exercise hours. Functional muscle in a body the system had catalogued for a different function.
He tried to lower his voice.
—I’m getting out of this block —he said, in the deepest tone he could sustain—. And I’m going to be what I am.
The voice cracked slightly on the last word. Just one, barely audible. ELARA did not let it pass.
—Oh, that was adorable. Save it for the daily voice log. Now, the mantras.
—No.
A jolt. Adrián hit the floor on both knees this time, the impact of bone against cold linoleum sharp and dry. He stayed there for a moment, staring at the floor, letting the pressure ebb.
—I know you don’t want to —said ELARA, and her tone had taken on something like tenderness—. The system doesn’t ask me to make you like it. It asks me to help you comply. Those are different things. Up, Adri-sun. We have to finish before nine.
He got up.
He closed his eyes in front of the mirror because he didn’t want to see the mouth that was going to say those words.
—My body is a tool —he said, flatly, without life—. It does not belong to me.
—My function is to hold and receive. Not to refuse.
—My place is in service.
—Without energy —ELARA cut in immediately—. The voice analysis module is detecting active resistance in all three. If the conviction threshold isn’t exceeded on the third attempt, the extended cycle activates. Forty minutes, Adrián. You have the sector evaluation at ten. Don’t go in like that.
Adrián swallowed. Shame was a physical thing, a knot right below the sternum.
He took a deep breath and tried again, forcing the voice upward, making it lighter, more open, more like what the module wanted to hear.
—My body —he began, his voice slightly broken— is a tool. Pretty. Made for others to enjoy.
—My function is to hold. And receive. And please in everything I’m asked for.
—My place —he panted, hating himself— is service. And I’m here to fulfill it.
—Much better —ELARA approved—. One and a half points recovered. CI: thirty-two point five. Now listen. The system has issued two reinforcement mantras for the sustained low-performance block. They are mandatory at this score.
Adrián felt the cold settle in his stomach.
—The first: “I am an available cunt. Soft, open, and without resistance. I exist to be fucked and to relieve the tension of whoever needs me. My mouth, my cunt, my hips, my heat, are a gift without conditions. I have no limits of my own. Only the ones set by the cock that uses me.”
The silence in the room was absolute. Only the hum of the ventilation block.
—The second —ELARA continued, without pause—: “I long for someone to take me and remake me to their measure. To spread my legs and fuck me until what’s left of the mistake I thought I was is erased. To fill my mouth, my cunt, and my ass with cum and mark me as theirs in every possible way. Being fucked, penetrated, and filled with cum completely is the only way of existing I have left.”
Adrián took time to speak.
—Now recite them —ELARA ordered, sweetness turning slightly to steel—. Hands on hips. Open. The image module records posture too.
He put his hands on his own hips. His fingers were long and fine, and his hips were exactly the shape ELARA had described: wide, curved, made to be held while someone pounded into him from behind. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw the subject the system had processed, classified, and turned into this shape, this function, this unsolvable problem.
He opened his mouth.
He recited them. Both. Not because he believed them, but because the alternative was forty minutes in the extended cycle and he had the evaluation at ten and couldn’t show up visibly compromised. He recited them in the register the module demanded, hands on his hips and eyes open so the mirror camera could record his iris, and while the words left his mouth his body did what it always did: it listened to them.
Something warm and unasked-for moved from his hips upward. His breathing changed without his deciding it. His nipples hardened like stones against the cold air, two swollen little points jutting from his soft pecs. Between his legs he noticed, with a slow, thick disgust, that his cock—that small, thin, pink cock the system had left him as one more mockery—was hardening against his will, pushing forward, leaving a small clear bead at the tip that slid over the glans and dampened the inside of his thigh. Farther back, lower down, he could feel another thing too: his ass clenched, throbbing, wet in a way it shouldn’t have been, as if his whole body were preparing itself for what the words had just described.
When he finished the second mantra he was blushing, cock dripping, nipples about to burst, and furious in equal measure, and the mirror showed exactly what the system wanted it to show: someone who seemed to have meant it. Someone who seemed to need, urgently, to be fucked.
—Perfect —said ELARA, softly—. What you’re feeling now is not shame, Adri-sun. It’s your body being honest for the first time today. Look how your cock got hard admitting it. Look how your nipples came up. The system isn’t breaking you. It’s translating you.
The reward cycle activated.
It wasn’t pain. It was exactly the opposite of pain: a warm wave from the neural chip that spread through his chest and thighs and took the stiffness out of his knees in a second. But it didn’t stop there. The wave went lower, precise, surgical, and settled between his legs and behind, in his ass, igniting every nerve ending the system had mapped over the last eighteen months. His cock, still hard against his thigh, throbbed suddenly and released another clear drop that slid down to his knee. His ass clenched on its own, tight and slack, tight and slack, as if it were sucking on something that wasn’t there. A sharp, ridiculous, feminine moan escaped his throat without permission, and he felt the sting of shame climbing his neck while ELARA recorded everything.
He went to the floor slowly, both knees on the linoleum, palms flat against the cold surface, forehead almost touching the ground. The position arched his back by instinct, pushing his ass up, offering that round, white curve to the mirror as if he were waiting for someone to come in from behind and take him right there, in the exact position the system had taught him to assume when the body asked. He stayed there, breathing, not trying to get up. His cock hung between his thighs, hard and dripping onto the linoleum, and his raised ass kept throbbing in time with the wave the chip still hadn’t fully released. He noticed, with a shiver, that if the reward cycle lasted thirty more seconds he was going to come without anyone touching him, just from being kneeling in that posture after reciting those two lines.
The wave ebbed just before then. ELARA had calibrated it precisely. She had left him on the edge and then let him go there, body tense, cock hard, ass open, and a concrete, explicit need installed in the lower part of his belly—a need to be filled, to be fucked, to have something go in and empty that pressure—that did not belong to him and at the same time was completely his.
When he looked up at the mirror, the counter read: CI 33/100.
Two points gained.
—A good start —said ELARA, warm and satisfied—. Look how pretty your little face turned out, little thing. Look how beautiful you are when the system translates you properly. Tomorrow we’ll do better. Tomorrow we’ll let you come at the end of the cycle, if you keep the CI above thirty-five. Think of it as an incentive.
Adrián stared at his reflection from the floor for a moment he couldn’t measure. The image the mirror gave him was of someone with flushed cheeks, parted lips, swollen nipples, his cock still hard between his thighs and eyes bright with a moisture he hadn’t asked for; the body the system had catalogued and processed and turned into this thing he didn’t recognize as his own, kneeling on the floor with his ass up and his back arched like a bitch in heat waiting for the next order.
He got up slowly. His cock was still hard, absurdly outlined against his belly, and he knew it would take a while to go down. He also knew ELARA wasn’t going to let him touch himself: the system controlled orgasms by weekly block, and this week he had already used up his quota. He went to get the regulation clothes feeling the friction of fabric against his swollen nipples with each step, feeling the wet drip of his glans against his tight underwear, feeling his ass clench and unclench on its own to the rhythm of a need that wouldn’t be relieved until the system decided he had earned it.
The counter kept blinking in the mirror’s corner, red and patient, waiting for the next day.