New Chapter!

So, I think this will be Corporate Takeover: Femme and Balanced. Here's the first draft of chapter three!

The fact that Malcolm Seiver was now bald seemed the least of his worries. Of particular concern was the woman in a white coat of a smart black blouse looking down at a tablet. The screen lit her sharp features. When her eyes moved over the top of the tablet to Seiver, she lowered the pad and smiled.

“Welcome back, Mr. Seiver. I trust you aren’t too worse for the wear.”

He tried to speak but his mouth was full, jaws forced open. A strapw ound around his head to the nape of his neck. His wrists and ankles, too, were fixed to the sides of what appeared to be a standard hospital bed. The room was windowless, but could have been taken from a any medical facility, or the set of a television show about a medical facility. There was a faint air of the inauthentic in the room. 

“Allow me to save you some distress. Yes, you are bound and gagged and have been taken against your will. You will be released from the bonds when I have gone. No sooner, so you can stop your struggling. The sooner I am done with your orientation, the sooner I can leave and the sooner you will be free to move about the room.”

Seiver’s eyes were no less wild, nor his expression no less panicked, but he did settle on the bed in an impression of calm.

“Good. Now I am going to tell you what is going to happen as plainly as I can. For all the years that you have spent filling the airwaves with the kind of divisive bile that has torn at the very foundation of this nation, I have judged you guilty. As such, your sentence is to become an agent of good and a force for positive change in the world.”

Seiver’s wrestling slowed and thens topped. He felt sure the woman was crazy, how could she not be? But maybe there was something in her diatribe he could use. If she wanted him to be some kind of advocate for her causes, it would be easy to allow her to believe that. He adopted as sympathetic expression as he could muster. 

“You and your network will become an unyielding warrior for femininity and the overturning of the patriarchy in this country. You will be a leader in rooting out male dominance in this world. And do you know how I know that?”

Seiver shook his head. The false hope of talking this zealot into releasing him was gone. There was a mad look in the woman’s eyes that told him there would be no reasoning with her. 

“Because I will remake you into that agent of change. Your body and mind will be remade into that of the woman I need. You deserve worse. But you will be happy in your new life. More than that, you will be fulfilled. And now, Mr. Seiver, this will be the last time your masculine name is used. This room is a tomb of sorts for that old life. It is time for you to rest and to reawaken into a new world, one of my making.”

Benson moved to the IV pump standing beside the hospital bed. He released the dial on the next round of medication. Another sedative and another massive dose of hormones mixed with Benson’s own formula that would both enhance and speed the body’s acceptance of its new chemical mandate. And Seiver’s mind would be made soft and pliable. 

Malcolm Seiver always counted himself as a man of great will. Even as his body sagged and his muscles loosened unbidden by Seiver, he understood that it was will alone that would help him win this battle. And so he when he slept, he dreamed of Benson and her smug expression, and just how much he wanted to smash that coolly pretty face under his fists. 

Annie watched Seiver from one of the monitors in the observation room. There were four large rooms on the floor of Benson’s lair, a repurposed factory. She had never been on the set of a movie, but she imagined it’s what a studio set might look like. From the outside, four plain boxes. Inside, one room was a full fenctionla medical facility, which is where Seiver now rested. Across the hall to the South was the room where he would be taken for his mental conditioning. It was largely black, with screens over the walls so that images could be projected in a full three hundred and sixty degrees. Speakers werre hidden behind the screens and in the room’s single chair,w hich allowed for the person seated to be strapped in. 

Across from the training room was a surgical room, where the mor eintense procedures were done. Seiver would be in there soon enough. The last room was truly the most Hollywood-like. It was generally used as a space when the subject was nearly ready for release, dressed according to the role the new creation would play. Drones were already preparing Seiver’s illusionary home, with some help for Annie. 

While she watched the man lie silent and motionless, she imagined his face feminized, the mind behind his closed eyes sculpted into something new. It might have looked to an outside observer that Annie was doing nothing at all, but her mind raced with possibility. She had some ideas to offer to Doctor Benson when the time came. 

“You look lonely.”

The tablet in Annie’s lap clattered to the floor and she bent to scoop it up while turning in her chair to the intruder.

Diane stood in the doorway of the observation room with two cups of coffee. She entered and handed one to Annie. “Sorry I startled you.”

“Lost in my head,” Annie said with a faint laugh.

“I think I’m the only one around here sometimes who lives in the present. You and Raquel wander around with your head in the clouds. You two are so much alike. But different, too.”

“How are we different?” Annie took a sip of the coffee and raised her eyebrows at the richness of it. It was almost sweet.

Diane took one of the other chairs. When she crossed her long legs, the bottom of her red dress slipped up her legs and Annie got a welcome glimpse of her athletic thigh before Diane automatically drew her dress back over her legs. 

“Raquel is pure science.” She gently hammered her first into her hand to punctuate the description. “She know what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, who would be best to do it, and what the expected results ought to be. It is numbers and statistics and probability. But there is art, too. She has the soul of a creator. That’s why I think her subjects are given such good lives, for the most part. Raquel doesn’t want to see anyone suffer, not really. She only wants justice.”

“And me?” Annie prompted. The thought of the kiss shared in Diane’s car would not shake loose, and being close to her required effort not to linger too long in her gaze.

“I think you have some of the qualities, but you are emotional, too. Raquel is many things, but a font of emotion is not one of them. It’s nice to see what someone feels just by looking at them.”

“And when you look at me?”

Diane kept Annie’s eyes as the question hung between them. 

“I think that’s a very dangerous game we would be playing. Whether or not we want it is incidental. I am with Raquel, and happily so. I don’t think I have to warn you what could happen if one of us were to lose her esteem.”

“That’s an elegant way of putting it. You’re scared of her.”

“Yes. And you are, too. It might not be right that we’re oth afraid of someone we happen to care about, too, but lfe is messy and complicated. We can be attracted to one another and never do anything about it. And that’s what I intend to do. Nothing.”

“Is that why you brought me coffee? To shut me down?” There was no anger in Annie at the discovery. Diane was straightforward, and sos he would meet the directness fully.

“That’s not how I would put it. I would say that I am preventing a future problem. And I also wanted toc heck on you. You had to deal with a lot these past weeks. Are you okay? Really okay?”

Annie did look away now. She didn’t like thinking of how big Seiver seemed in that apartment, a slavering giant bending over her. She didn’t want to think about Greta, wondering where both her boss and her new stylist had gone, and what might become of her without Seiver’s protection over her. It was a great big messy world, Annie decided.

“I’m hanging in there,” Annie admitted. If there was going to be truth between her and Diane, let it be all the truth. “It helps that Seiver is down there in that bed, I think. Knowing he’ll never do I again. But now I know what that feels like, being afraid of a man like that. I think I understand Doctor Benson more, now. That rage at what men do because they can.”

“Don’t let it make you cold, honey,” Diane said. She rose and kissed the top of Annie’s head. Annie laid her fingers on Diane’s arm for the duration, and then Diane’s arm slipped away. “And get some rest. I’ll be here if you need me.”

When she was gone, Annie cried, and wasn’t sure exactly why. All of it, she supposed. When the tears were gone, she turned her attention back to Seiver and imagined the woman he would become.

The door to the attached bathroom in the presumed hospital room was left ajar, and Seiver could see himself in the corner of the mirror. Only his face was visible, and only the top half of his head. It gave him a view of the smooth scalp that not so long ago sported raven lock of hair. He’d been blessed with a good hairline and still hadn’t needed to augment it. Now it was gone, probably tossed in some trash can. Hair that cost him hundreds to style, hair which had known the fingers of countless beautiful women, disposed of without any regard for its value. Seriver new the transitory nature of existence. He counted on it. When his father would begin his drunken screeds about the leeches of the world, Malcolm quietly listened and willed the world to turn faster and deliver him from such ramblings. 

What all that wishing taught him was that time does not bend to the will. It only measures it. And so Malcolm Seiver learned time was an ally, a friend that assured him no matter how bad the present might be, it would change. Perhaps for better, perhaps for worse, but this moment would not, could not last. And now he looked at the top of his skull and imagined the day when his hair was grown back, when this madwoman was behind bars, when he once again stood astride the world, now a hero who had suffered much in addition to the master of media. SNN would be bigger than ever. Even now, while time marked him in this hospital room, ratings at SNN were likely booming, thanks to the disappearance of their charismatic leader. 

He pictured one of the new anchors listing off the talking points handed down from editorial, he couldn’t quite remember her name. She was blonde, naturally, and had a great rack. Tits not so big as to be droopy pendulums, but nice and perky. Probably fake as hell, but what did he care? They looked great on camera. Felt nice, too. He hadn’t gone all the way with that one, yet, but he showed her the score in his office not long after she started. He kissed her and took one of those overripe tits in hand when he did it. Even now the thought of it was enough to arouse him. That was his act of defiance. He’d show the lady doctor his hard cock. It might not change her mind, but it had closed a few deals for him in his dealings with women.

Only it wasn’t a doctor who entered. It was some kind of fetish doll, a woman he thought, given the shape, now circling his bed to attach a new bag to the IV pump. 

“Who the hell are you?” he asked. “What the fuck is that? Where’s the doctor? I want to talk to her.” 

The latex-clad figure finished its task and turned in a sharp motion and left the room, unaware of or unconcerned with his presence. His arm was tingling now, more of the sedative, he expected. Only he didn’t go to sleep. Even when the tingling spread to all his limbs and he felt like he was floating just over the bed he was strapped to. It was hard to focus, and he thought he must look crazy, his eyes rolling around in his skull like those googly eyes you can stick on pencils or Matchbox cars. He remembered some friends from school decorating their lunch box with those eyes. All over. It was funny, but kind of unsettling too. The memory washed over him, and Seiver giggled like a madman, like one of those loons from the old movies. 

More of the fetish dolls were in the room now, unstrapping him.

“I’m gonna make a break for it,” he told them, and giggled all over again. He was in stitches alright, here in this mysterious hospital. There were a pair of hooded figures now, their masks bulging out in a featureless curve, disguising even their most rudimentary features. 

They lifted him with little effort, placing him in a chair. Being upright was dizzying, not to mention whatever they had him on. He had to admit, it felt pretty good. He was never a drug guy, not even in college. He had a minor surgery on his knee after college, an injury he chalked up to a football injury publicly, but the reality was more mundane. A clumsy fall out of the sports car he father bought him for graduation. He’d torn a tendon and even during that procedure, he found a distaste for the pain meds that followed. The soupy thinking didn’t suit him. He was sharp and savvy. He liked being the sharpest man in the room and you couldn’t do that if you were on drugs or too lubed up on good bourbon. 

They were moving through the door now and he was bathed in a bright, harsh light. Seiver got the sense of open space and then there was a bump and it was dark again. The hooded figures were gone, and it was the lady doctor who looked down at him now. She had a thin face, and she was a little older than Seiver liked, but she was pretty. Professional pretty, he thought of it as. Not the kind of woman who was drop dead gorgeous, not someone you wore on your arm to garner envy. No, this was the kind of woman you could bring home to mother. Smart and accomplished. He’d tried a few like her and found he didn’t much care for the competition.

“Welcome to your birthplace, Monique.”

He laughed at that. She was going through with this crazy girl talk. Fine. The second hand would keep ticking. He could endure his father’s nonsense, he could endure this woman’s, too. It was easy to tune out, to let the world slowly turn away from the now to some better future.

“The easy part of my job is that I don’t have to convince you of anything. You can struggle, or not struggle. You can fight, or don’t. Either way, when you leave here, you will be exactly what I have decided you will be, Monique. And you will thank me. Even without the drugs, the techniques are tried and true. The hypnotic effects of the serum you were given is only a bonus.”

She paced when she spoke, moving around his chair. The way her voice faded in and out and changed positions was disorienting. 

“I can even tell you how it works and there’s nothing you can do about it. See, we present you with visuals…”

Benson pressed a button on the device in her pocket. Suddenly, the curved walls of the room spun with photographs. Pictures of birthdays and recitals and selfies with friends and memorials of special occasions and the ordinary. In all, a dark-haired girl with beauty pageant looks smiled back at Benson and Seiver. She smiled as a girl does when she is used to being in pictures, a familiar expression in many, more practiced as the girl in the pictures grew up.

“You, Monique,” Benson announced. “But not yet. Visuals alone will not break a mind. Now, let us introduce some aural stimulation.”

Another button and now the slow carousel of photographs was acommpanied by a low bass, not exactly music, but there was something pulsing in the sound Seiver was sure he heard voices, but couldn’t quite make them out. 

“And this is where I leave you for a while, Monique. I know you don’t understand this yet, but this is for you own good.”

“You are on crazy bitch,” he laughed before she was gone. Whens he did, Seiver closed his eyes and blocked everything out but the sound. He couldn’t make his hands work consistently enough to stuff his ears with his fingers, so he couldn’t keep everything out, but he didn’t look at the girl in the pictures. That was his victory for the day.

He was unconscious when they took him from the training room. Annie followed the drones into the surgical arena. She scrubbed up and allowed the drones to finish dressing her for surgery. She stared at Seiver on the table, now still after another round of sedation. She made a mental note to drop some laxatives into the prescriptions being filled for Seiver, under a false name of course. Fortunately, as the psychological training took over, there would be less need for sedation. The surgeries would require more, naturally, but there wouldn’t be another for a week. For now, it was a little fine work, the things that would have been done after in ordinary circumstances. This time, it would be part of the training itself. 

Finished disinfecting, Annie approached the operating table and began following the lines traced on Seiver’s cheeks, forehead, and throat. There was more work that was less traditional. Cutting edge technology used to effectively shrink his bones. The modern age brought machine sof all shapes and sizes, all waiting to be given purpose, so that’s just what Anne did. While Seiver slept, he would be remade from within, physically and chemically. And those, Benson wagered, would inform his psychic changes. She had never been wrong before.