22

  “Martina, darling,” said mommy, kindly. “Is it your plan that John should steal a human body from the rehab center, and bring it out to us, I mean to you?”

  “Yes, mommy. That’s the new plan I’ve got in my head. Entirely because I’ve seen the opportunity.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “For us, mommy.” Martina started becoming agitated. “I want the body for us. Please support us, mommy, everyone.”

  “Don’t worry about support,” said mommy, reassuringly. “You are one of us. John is one of us. We will always do whatever we can towards your happiness. It is our happiness to see you happy. But explain, that’s all. What will you do with a stolen body?”

  “Mommy, John is my boyfriend, the only one I have, and is the same boyfriend I have had for ages and ages. Months have passed, are passing. But I hope everyone can see that I am a human female with a body, and that I’m expected to have the need for a physical companion. Now, I find myself getting ideas, when I see John with an opportunity to score a body for us.

  “The background is quite sad, probably, of how those bodies have come into the hands of those evil people. But if we take one out, we’re probably doing it a favor, and maybe even doing the world a good deed.”

  “You want the body for your boyfriend to permanently possess?” asked Alice, grinning hugely, seemingly in the know. “I mean, do you plan to keep it out of there, and take it on as your physical companion, your lover body?”

  “Yes, yes,” said Martina, emphatically. “It’s perfectly legal, as it will have John inside it.”

  “John, show Martina all the bodies available,” ordered mommy. “Let her select. There are so many, and I’m sure new ones will keep coming in. And everyone here is to make a plan to get a body out for Martina and John.”

  Linda and Betts danced in excitement, and fell upon Martina, kissing her madly. “Yes, you must have a body for John,” exulted Betts. “We all need him outside, everyone for their own purposes.”

  There was general approval and actual enthusiasm for the idea, as Alice took out a bottle of red wine from her bag and placed it on the counter. “Jane and I already knew,” she admitted on the side. “We’ll open it after we’ve made the plan.”

  Postponement and delay were out of the question, and it was not as though Martina and the gang were the most impatient, because I was no less eager to get the project going. The very thought of being physically with Martina had begun driving me insane with desperation.

  The weekend holding staff at the rehab center started late on weekends and holidays, getting in extra sleep, and delaying feeding the breakfast glop until lunchtime, so the dormitory was still in sleep mode when I raced back to it, to put the cameras online for a group-viewing session.

  The dormitory has no windows to look out of, although it does have some at skylight level, letting in a good bit of sunlight shortly after dawn. As it was still reasonably early in the day, the room was quite bright.

  Our group had already seen the same bodies in the courtyard, but this was an inspection in which Martina would select the one to bring out. We knew we were many days away from any viable attempt at taking a body out of the rehab center, but, as one of the schoolgirls dryly observed, there was no harm in choosing and making ready.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Though it was a general view from a camera on the wall, I magnified the images to show the bodies one by one. Two bed spaces away from my mattress, Martina asked me to stop. “This one looks to be just a little over twenty, and I have had my eye on him in the courtyard.” She was going to let neither shame nor embarrassment play any role in choosing the male body, having already announced that she would be selecting only after seeing the body naked.

  “Take his clothes off, John,” she ordered.

  I got the T-shirt off, to show the reasonably well-proportioned body of a blond, six-foot tall, young man.

  “John, don’t be stupid,” said Martina, giggling. “Get the diapers off.”

  I did so, and it was a disaster! The unaware twosome in the body, original human and occupant bot, were lying with a poop in the diapers.

  “That’s disgusting,” shouted all the watchers.

  “Just my luck to choose a guy with a nappy full of shit,” said Martina, disgustedly. “I no longer have any interest in that one.”

  She chose another guy, further down the line, and he was similar to the first, tall and reasonably built, but dark-haired and un-pooped.

  Whichever body was selected, the escape venture, in which the chosen body would be taken out of the center, was so far away that there was no way to even get a timeframe for the kidnap. In fact, to ensure the safety of the chosen one, that body would not be taken on any of the dry-run practice walks I would be undertaking. Of course, for security and concealment reasons, it would not be my regular body either.

  After showing them all the remaining bodies, faces only, I returned to mommy’s, and we waited for nightfall to undertake the first walk outdoors in the rehab center.

  The impending activity was exciting, although everyone knew that after I took the body out of range of the camera, mounted over the door of the dormitory cottage, the broadcast view of the walk would end. It would anyway be a dim picture in the dark, showing mainly the white diapers and the T-shirt. The route that I had planned had no other camera to continue showing even that much, and the group would be limited to hearing my running commentary.

  I returned to the dormitory after dark, and picked up a body after inspecting the young man’s diapers, because nobody wants to be walking around with a nappy full of poop, threatening to leak out and run down the leg. This guy was okay, although wet with pee, but that was something I could not take into consideration for disqualification, as it was the default condition of all of us.

  As the dormitory room had no door leading directly to the outside, I had to walk into the short, narrow corridor, and go to the door at the end of it. Things were not kept locked, as the entire place was guarded against intrusion, it being presumed that there would be no form of attempt at exit.

  I opened the door and looked out at an unlit dirt path through an overgrown lawn. That was it, and with nothing else possible to be done, I had to consider every preparation made that could be made.

  Broadcasting the view for the watching gang, I stepped out and walked the twenty paces to where the path turned and went past a metal electrical distribution box, of the sort that is common in the front yards of private properties.

  And then, I was suddenly back in the computer, with no sense of the body I had been inside!

  I immediately knew what had happened, as this was something that could happen frequently in the regular day, when outside with Martina or anyone else. It happened whenever a telephone lost its signal.

  Now, in the rehab center, the microchip in the body had either been walked out of range of the signal from the dormitory, or else the metal distribution box had blocked that signal out. I had been disconnected from the microchip in the head, and the body now effectively had no controller inside it!

  I could no longer see the body, as it had fallen out of view of the camera over the door. I knew the body would have fallen flat on the dirt path, and hoped it had not gotten too badly injured in the fall. It would remain there until I was able to get back inside the head, through a signal from the phone of a passer-by, generally in short supply at night, in the interiors of the rehab center.

  There was absolutely nothing to be done, other than wait in a state of readiness. When a signal came by, I would get back into the microchip to get the body up and step it back into range of the signal from the dormitory.

  “Why didn’t we think of it?” railed Martina, in frustration. “We are absolutely familiar with the issue.”

  “We’ll have to find a permanent solution,” said Jane. “We must take this as a warning for the body-stealing attempt. Getting a body out will almost surely mean going through many areas without signal in the boonies. John will somehow have to get his own signal source to carry along.”

  After about an hour, a guard walked past on the main path, too far to see anything in the dormitory lawn. The signal from his phone showed me the microchip in the head, and I took control of the fallen young man. Moving fast, I walked it back into the dormitory, where inspection showed that the body had taken no injury, beyond a small cut and a bruise.

  The end result was an aborted snooping venture, and the return of the body to the dormitory, everything unsuccessful but still secret.