Karen: The Pod - an Homage to MonsterP63

Karen: The Pod - an Homage to MonsterP63

Chapter I

Karen closed the door of the lawyer’s office and walked quietly to the elevator, clutching the sheaf of papers tightly so that her knuckles were white from the tension. Once the door had closed, she loosened her grip of the documents, and her emotions.

“Fuck,” She said, quietly, so that nobody would hear. Experimentally, she tried a little louder.

“Fuck!” It felt good. So good that she tried again, at the top of her voice.

“FUCK!” She screamed, at the exact point the doors opened onto the lobby. Her face flushed crimson as she saw dozens of heads turn to see who had screamed, and she ran out of the building and into the fall chill as fast as she could before anyone had a chance to say anything. Her bus was pulling up to the stop as she arrived, and she was glad to see her seat was free.

She got comfortable, firstly cleaning the condensation from her glasses before fishing the headphones out of her satchel. She pulled her tattered hoodie down over her face and closed her eyes. As the music started, she began to decompress and take stock of the last hour.

“It’s all yours, Miss Karen,” the lawyer said. “You are their only living relative, and they left no will. It’s taken us twenty years and quite some expense to find you, but rest assured-” He handed her a list of the estate’s assets, “-it hasn’t materially affected you new financial situation.”

Karen’s eyes grew wide as she tried to make sense of the figures on the paper. “You’re a very wealthy woman as of now - you have real estate interests in four states, a stock portfolio generating a very healthy dividend income, and quite substantial reserves in cash. We have already transferred the deeds to your name, and the office here will send you all of the details, as well as the keys to the properties. I know this must be a very strange time, especially since you didn’t know the deceased. I’m available if you need to talk, any time.” He handed Karen his card.

“A very wealthy woman.” The words turned around in her head as the bus worked its way through downtown. Tens of millions of dollars. She shifted her toes around in her sneakers, feeling how the sock had sucked up water from a puddle that she’d stepped in, forgetting about the hole in the bottom of her left shoe in her haste to get onto the bus. She’d never have to worry about holes in her shoes again. She smiled when she realized that she never had to worry about the bus again either.

Her phone buzzed. Fishing it out of her bag she saw that it was her best friend Lynda, asking if she wanted to go for a drink. She’d known Lynda since Kindergarten but Lynda was some big-shot business person now, and she dreaded turning up at high-class cocktail bars and having to drop half a day’s wage on a single martini. She could probably buy the bar now without a thought, but she still fired off her usual excuses. She had a lot of things to think about.

A week later, and sat in the back of a taxi, Karen was impatient with excitement. The chartered plane had gotten her most of the way up into the mountains but the last stretch had already taken the best part of two hours. The taxi driver had the radio tuned to some right-wing talkshow, and what Karen guessed were pink-faced old men had been shouting at each other for most of her ride about the first strike doctrine, whatever that was.

She was glad when they arrived and she was left by the side of a rural road the car sped away from her. She picked up her brand new rucksack and put it over her shoulders, clipping on the additional straps across her chest and waist. The house itself was several miles up away from the road, up into the backcountry a ways. So far as she knew, nobody had been up here since her aunt and uncle had died, so she’d come well prepared, with a rucksack full of camping equipment and a week’s worth of camping rations. Her new rig seemed a little excessive, but she’d been assured it was the best that money could buy.

Her outfit was the same - the very best in moisture wicking compression thermals next to her skin, and highly technical outer layers that would keep her warm and dry without making her look too much like the Michelin man. She had to keep reminding herself that she could easily afford it. Even though it was barely 40 degrees and threatening some snow she felt comfortably warm.

Just inside the gate to the property was a timber framed barn. As it had said in the documents the lawyer had given her there was a pickup truck parked inside that her relatives had used to drive up to the main house. She guessed they would have had a car for the road too, but that would have been left at the airport when they took their last flight. It was exactly where they had left it all those years ago, and the keys dropped out from the sun visor when she flipped it down. The battery was completely flat, as she’d expected; she would have to get a tow truck out at some point but that could wait.

She checked the GPS on her phone one more time and set off up the track to the house. Two hours later, and with a snowstorm beginning to blow, the house came into view through a break in the trees. Karen recognized that it owed a lot to Frank Lloyd Wright, with a series of blocks conforming closely to an outcropping of rock so that it almost cascaded down to the path. Karen ran the last few yards to find shelter from the wind, and soon found herself in front of the massive main door. She pulled off her mittens and the liner gloves underneath so she could turn the key in the lock, and was surprised to find that the door swung open easily, especially since it seemed to be several inches thick and made out of steel.

Karen pulled the door closed behind her and heard the sound of a complicated latching mechanism bolting into the frame in multiple places. More in hope than expectation she flicked the nearest light switch and was surprised to find that the power still worked. As the lights flickered on she felt a slight vibration through her feet, and then shortly afterwards the breath of warm air from a floor mounted vent. Karen dropped the rucksack onto the floor and took off the outermost layers of clothing, stripping off the down jacket, ski pants and boots to leave her padding around in base layers and socks. The house was already comfortably warm from the air blowing out of the vents.

The house was empty. Not because the house hadn’t been lived in for years; it didn’t look as if anyone had ever lived there. Room after room of bare concrete, unshaded bulbs, and empty spaces. Karen could hear the wind and snow whipping at the building outside, but it was heavily muffled by the thick walls. One thing she was surprised by was how small the windows were; each room seemed to have only a narrow slit window, never more than a yard long by a foot wide. She saw the light fading into the early winter night through the meager pane.

Before long she had found a room with a small en-suite bathroom attached, which she guessed was supposed to be a bedroom. She hauled all of her gear into the room from the front hall and unpacked her kit, flattening out her bedroll and sleeping bag on the bare concrete floor. Karen continued to explore the house, taking time to check every room for anything left by her relatives. It looked as though it was just about ready to move into, with all the bathrooms and kitchens fully fitted out, just without any furniture or decoration. Almost no decoration, anyway. Karen was surprised to see a large painting of the house on one wall - strange, given the emptiness of the rest of the house.

After a while Karen yawned; it had been a long day of traveling and she was about ready to drop. She returned to the bedroom and snuggled down into her thick sleeping bag, using her down jacket as a pillow. With the lights off the only illumination was the screen of her phone. She was surprised but glad to see she still got service all the way up in the hills, and quickly scrolled through her notifications like she usually did before going to sleep. There were a few people using #WW3, which confused her. She opened a news app to find the headlines full of a new deployment of troops to the middle east, but Karen figured that was nothing special.

She put the phone down and laid still for a moment, eyes closed. In the perfect silence of the house she could hear herself breathing. She could feel herself breathing, constrained a little by the stretchy spandex of her underwear and thermals. It was a world away from the saggy panties and distressed bras she was used to. Karen went to stretch her arms, and grazed her arm across her chest. The sensation of that touch jolted her to full alertness. Karen brought an experimental finger to her nipple, and circled the areola slowly. Immediately it stiffened and pushed against the compressive fabric.

She gasped loudly, pushing back against the instinct to stifle her reaction in case her roommate heard it. Quickly Karen pulled her other hand to her chest, mirroring the motion. She gasped again, this time with an element of vocalization. She was a little surprised by her arousal, and retreated. That wasn’t her thing, she thought. She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

Chapter II

The next morning Karen set an alarm on her phone to make sure she left early enough to get to town before the stores closed. She pulled a folder out of her bag and removed from it the documents she’d received from the lawyer. The biggest of them was a plan of the house. She unfolded it and spread it on the bare floor. There was the hall, then the room she was sitting in. She counted off all of the rooms one by one, but quickly realized there was a further space in the middle of the house - not much bigger than a walk-in closet, but there all the same and completely sealed, as far as she could tell.

She circled through the rooms that surrounded the void, but there was no obvious door. It was small - less than ten feet square - but after checking the basement Karen found that the void continued down through the house. Back on the main floor she walked through the rooms once more, and came to the painting she had seen the day before. It looked almost the same perspective as she had first seen the house when she arrived, but as she looked at it more closely she saw that the building was painted while it was still under construction. Some of the walls were missing, exposing the internal walls.

She turned around to look through the small exterior window. As she thought, the picture had been painted looking exactly towards the location of the painting. Looking back to the painting Karen saw that there was an opening in the wall hidden behind the painting. Karen smiled as she realized that she had worked out the answer to the puzzle. She grasped the frame and pulled, but it didn’t move. The frame was too big for her to reach across easily, but stretching as far as she could she grabbed the two sides of the picture and heaved with all of her might. It stayed exactly where it was.

Karen huffed in frustration, but as her grip released and her right hand slid down the side of the frame it found a switch. She froze for a second, wondering what might be inside the void. Curiosity then got the better of her and she pressed the switch. The panel moved smoothly to the left, revealing a narrow metal staircase that descended through the void in the center of the house. As the painting settled in its new position a series of lights illuminated the stairwell. Karen leaned forward and stared downwards into the space. The stairs continued down much further than the basement of the house, and she could see that the walls were cut directly into the rock rather than formed from concrete once they passed that level.

She began down the steps, slowly, gingerly. Halfway down the first flight she stopped and turned around, wondering whether she should return to the house. She thought better of it. She counted the steps as she went down, and after a while counted the flights of steps instead. It was twenty-five flights from the surface before she reached the base of the shaft. Karen looked up to see a pin-prick of light where she had entered earlier, and her heart sank when she realized she’d have to go back up that way.

The bottom of the staircase opened into a room slightly larger than the stairwell. The only thing of note in the chamber was a door set into the wall. It looked like it had come from a submarine, with a single small porthole in the center and a large rotary locking mechanism. Karen looked through the window but couldn’t see anything in the gloom on the other side. She turned the mechanism’s handle and heard a number of large bolts retreating into the door. Turning the handle further caused the door to be propelled out of its aperture slightly, in much the same way as the door on an airliner is brought inside the fuselage, allowing the pressurized cabin to ensure a tight seal in flight.

It swung clear and Karen stepped inside. Fluorescent tubes flickered to life and revealed what looked like some kind of…storage room? Dormitory? She wasn’t sure. Most of the space was taken up with racking, which was filled with tin cans and other supplies. There was a set of military style beds in the corner, next to a doorway that led to a shower room and toilet. Pipes and cables clung to the ceiling and walls, and although their paths seemed to be random they looked to lead `towards a single point at the far end of the room. Karen picked through the supplies as she followed the pipes, noting that there was both food and water stored, and perhaps enough to last someone for the better part of a decade.

At that end of the room was another door, similar to the first. Without hesitating she turned the locking mechanism and watched the door unlatch and swing smoothly away on the complex hinges. The room beyond was lit by dim red bulbs, just like an old-time photo darkroom, meaning that she couldn’t make out much. As she stepped through the doorway the lights in the storage room extinguished automatically, and after a minute or so her eyes began to adjust to the darkness.

The room was dominated by a pillar in its center, which was connected to a computer console by a number of thick pipes and cables. The pillar’s surface appeared to be polished black, but on closer inspection it was glass, and it looked as though there was…something inside. Karen pulled out her phone and turned on the torch. She pointed it at the pillar and screamed when the light illuminated the inside. Out of the shadows a figure emerged, with a bulbous head and slick skin that looked as though it was pinned like a dissected frog, with cables pulling the limbs and head taut.

Karen leaped backwards, and retreated to the safety of the doorway. Peeking out from behind the frame she stared at the pillar, looking for any sign of life. After a while, and having seen no movement, her fear ebbed a little and she crept back into the room. avoiding the pillar, she looked at the computer console next to it. A power button was dimly illuminated. With a little bit of trepidation, she prodded the button, and took a step back as the console began to whir as a cooling fan started up. The screen attached to the console flickered into life, displaying a company logo and some text.

“SECURODYNE APPLIED CONCEPTS INC.” It said. Her relatives’ company. “Project GG-3”. A menu appeared on the screen with a number of options, but the one that intrigued her the most was at the bottom of the list. She tapped “Open Pod” with her finger. Immediately the interior of the pod was illuminated, allowing her to see that the figure was a sort of iridescent dark green rather than black as she’d assumed, but it was quickly obscured by a panel swinging open on the pillar with a hiss. “Let’s see what’s inside this “pod”, then,” she said to nobody in particular.

Now she could get a good look at it, her fear evaporated. The ‘figure’ was nothing of the sort. She could now see that the skin was some sort of stretchy material, looking a little like latex, and where it was pulled taut by the cables there couldn’t possibly be anything inside. It was some kind of a suit she thought, but she couldn’t understand why it would be sealed in the basement like this.

It was hung suspended from a number of cables, two attached at the waist, one at each wrist and foot, one at each shoulder, and another at the head. Although it didn’t appear to be supporting the suit a further connection was made at the crotch - this seemed to be a bundle of pipes and cables - with a further series of connections coming from the top of the chamber towards the head. She now saw that the head of the suit was some sort of helmet with a mask attached to the front of it. The combination of the mask and the helmet’s attached dark visor meant that the “face” was completely covered. The pipes and cables for the head all joined at the mask, just where the mouth would be.

Looking further down the suit Karen saw more cables connected to the chest area, and what looked to be thick panelling across the lower torso. The legs of the outfit were finished with a pair of boots with no heels that would hold the feet on tiptoes Karen wondered how anyone could walk in them. She reached out to touch the suit’s gloved hand. It was cool and slippery. She pushed at it and marvelled at how far the fabric gave, considering how stretched out it already was.

Karen went back to the computer console to look at some of the other options available on screen. She tapped “Help” and scanned through the information. Her eyes opened wide as data flashed up on the screen, showing all of the features of the suit and the pod it was fitted into. It was designed to protect the user in the event of a “nuclear incident” by completely sealing off the pod from the outside, and then sealing off the suit inside the pod itself.

Designed to sustain the person inside for extended periods, the suit could feed, water and clean the inhabitant, and through a combination of resistance, electrical muscle stimulation, and active atmosphere management the strength and cardiovascular health of the person inside the pod would be preserved, and even enhanced. “Beats going to the gym”, Karen murmured. She kept flicking through the specs but was losing interest as her attention returned to the pod.

The helmet was designed to separate from the suit according to the information she had read, so she undid the various clasps and straps that sealed it to the rest of the suit and lifted it clear. She held it in her two hands, facing the blank visor, and wondered. Wondered how it would feel to wear the suit, how it would feel to be…sealed away. Her phone beeped, and Karen shook herself out of her thoughts. It was the alarm she had set earlier, and it was time to head back into town. She took one last look at the suit before heading back to the staircase.

The hike back to the road was easier with a half-unloaded pack, and the tow truck arrived within a half hour to haul the stranded pickup truck to the shop. Sat in the hotel room she’d booked for the night she was idly flicking through TV channels, but her mind was elsewhere. The pod, the suit inside it, her inside the suit, the material stretched across her body. Karen closed her eyes and laid back on the bed. The feel of her clothes again began to steal her attention, feeling the constriction from the band of her bra as she breathed in, and out, the slight grazing of fabric across her body with each movement.

She pulled her left leg up towards her chest, pulling the leggings taut against her cleft. She inhaled sharply, again surprised by her arousal from the compressive fabric. But instead of recoiling, her hand slipped between her fabric-covered thighs and began to tease herself, pushing the stretchy material deep inside and sliding the seam across her clitoris. She quickly felt the moistness of her sex through the material.

She played like that for a while, not really trying to climax, just exploring how her body reacted to the sensations. All the while the TV was talking to itself in the background. She’d left it on a news channel, and her attention drifted back to the screen and the newcaster talking about the escalating crisis. She sat up and listened for a while trying to understand exactly what was going on. She’d only been out of the loop for a couple of days but things definitely seemed to be getting a lot more serious. After a while she dozed off while the TV played, still with her hand between her legs.

Chapter III

After breakfast Karen picked up the repaired truck and drove back out of town towards the house, loaded up with supplies and some furniture for the bedroom. After twenty minutes or so of bumping along the forest track she arrived at the house, and began to move everything she’d bought inside. It took a couple of hours to get everything to the right place, and by that point Karen was feeling pretty tired. She wanted to take a nap but she hadn’t yet built up the bed she had purchased.

She looked to where her bedroll and sleeping bag were still on the bedroom floor. “I bet the cots down in the bunker are more comfortable than the floor,” she rationalized. With the sleeping bag under her arm she made her way down to the heavy door that sealed the bunker, which was still open as she had left it. Karen laid the sleeping bag down on one of the beds, kicked off her trail boots, and slipped inside. With her head propped on the pillow she could see through the second door and into the pod where the suit still hung empty.

When she woke up, she checked her phone to see that it was two AM. She sighed with exasperation, and turned to look at the staircase. “I should fix up the rest of the furniture.” she said to herself. “I really need to get that bed built.” Karen put her feet down on the floor and stood up. She took one step towards the stairs, but then turned around. “I don’t want to wake the neighbors with all the banging.” she thought, with a smile.

Her hand grazed across the torso of suit as she walked past the pod. The slight friction between her fingers and the material made her heart leap a little. At the computer console she activated the screen again, and had another look at the manual. She flicked through the screens until she arrived at the instructions for putting on the suit. Karen thought back a couple of nights to when she had recoiled even from the feeling of her stretchy clothes, and now she was…no. It wasn’t her. She should just get it thrown out and use the place as a wine cellar.

But then, it seemed a shame to throw it out, especially with everything going on in the world. And if she was ever going to need to use it, she’d better make sure she knew how, before it was urgent, surely? The details on how to remove the suit from the pod seemed straightforward, so she decided to see how that worked. She pressed the relevant button on the main menu, and watched as the tension was released from the cables holding the suit, leaving it to hang limp from the connections at the shoulder.

She grasped the suit and unclipped the cables - one at each foot, wrist, the two at the waist and then finally the two shoulders - leaving it just connected at the crotch by the connections there. She went back to check the instructions, and found that it was a simple push fit to connect but there were a couple of latches that needed to be pressed on either side to release it again. With a little bit of tugging the pipes were disconnected and she pulled the suit free of the pod.

For a moment she was surprised by the weight of it, until she realized that the cables didn’t all end at the connection points at the extremities of the suit - on the the torso the two cables that attached at the waist split into a complex web of steel strands, and it took Karen a moment to realize that it would function as a corset when the cables were under tension.

She also noticed that the back side of the suit had a set of rubber hoses running along each limb, with loops of the suit around them. She recognized it as the same sort of equipment used on high altitude flight suits - the pipes would be inflated by high pressure air which stretched the suit even tighter while simultaneously stiffening the wearer’s arms and legs so that they would be almost unable to move.

Karen examined the suit, looking for a zip or some other way to put it on. After checking several times she established that the only hole anywhere in the suit was the aperture for her face in the attached hood. She frowned, and then thrust both arms through into the neck of the suit before trying to spread her arms. To Karen’s surprise the fabric of the suit stretched wide - wide enough for her to wiggle her hips through, at least.

She pulled her arms out and the suit returned to its original size. She carried it back to the bed and sat down, holding it out in front of her. What was she getting into? She could feel a heat growing inside her, but Karen took a deep breath and tried to think clearly. One step at a time. “I can just try the suit on and leave it at that, no harm done,” she thought.

Following the instructions from the console she stripped all of her clothes and left them on the bed next to her. In the open air her nipples stood proud, partially from the cold. “Here goes nothing.” She said, again to nobody in particular. With the suit on the floor she fed her feet through the face opening and did her best to bunch the suit up to get her own feet into the heeled feet of the suit. The inside of the suit seemed much slicker than the outside and it proved to be much easier than she had imagined to work her way in.

Taking care to smooth any wrinkles out as she went, she wriggled the suit up towards her waist, when she suddenly stopped. Something inside the suit was nuzzling against her crotch. Karen stuck her hand down between her legs and found the object - a long, curved pipe, open at the end, with a rounded lip. With her other hand she checked behind her and found a similar but slightly smaller device. Karen pulled the suit back down a little and stopped to think again. She’d had her fair share of toys but this was a whole other level, especially in her rear. She waddled over to the console with the suit hanging around her thighs and tried to find something about the intruders in the system.

She went back to the general information which she had read when she initially found the pod. As she read further, her eyes opened wide. While the two devices were designed to facilitate hygiene by regularly flushing sterile fluid in and then draining it, they served a dual purpose. Karen had not really thought about it, but it seemed obvious after seeing it written down - being sealed away in the pod for extended periods would almost certainly cause severe mental issues. The computer displayed science paper after science paper outlining the possible approaches - sensory deprivation caused insanity in a matter of days, drugging the user into a coma resulted in organ failure in months, and even providing an almost unlimited library of music, TV shows and books to be read on a digital screen inside the visor resulted in unacceptable levels of stress after a while.

The only approach that appeared to offer some merit was to find some way of occupying the user’s conscious to such an extent that the passage of time lost all meaning, and without resulting to the administration of narcotics. The scrolling text on screen gave way to a video. On screen was a pod which looked similar to the one she was stood next to, although it looked like it wasn’t quite finished. From the left of the screen a figure walked into view. Karen inhaled sharply when she realized the woman was wearing a suit just like the one she was half wearing. Karen thought she looked amazing, with the suit emphasizing her curves and forcing her to walk in an exaggerated posture, covering her from head to food with only her face uncovered.

From the other side of the screen a labcoat-wearing man came into view and started to speak. “Test 5. After verifying full system functionality we will now place the test subject within the device without revealing period of enclosure. Once the period is complete we will ask the subject to estimate her perception of the length of the enclosure period.”

The woman stepped into the pod and began to connect herself to it. Karen made a mental note of the order - starting with the shoulder cables, then the feet, then the waist. With her arms still free, the woman grasped the bundle of pipes and cables that would connect at her crotch. Karen saw her swallow hard before attaching it, and then saw her eyes roll back in her head for a moment before continuing. Karen wondered what that might have been about, but the woman on screen continued. Next was the helmet. With the mask hanging loose, she placed the helmet over her head and began to attach it to the suit. with all of the seals and clasps in place and firmly attached to the torso of the suit, the woman’s head was immobile, her eyes now invisible through the dark glass of the visor.

With another hesitation the woman placed the mask over her mouth and nose and secured it to the rest of the helmet. Almost immediately her body began to convulse, which shocked Karen a little. After a moment the woman calmed, and made the ’thumbs up’ sign to the man in the lab coat. She then connected the cables at her wrists - first the right, and then with a little difficulty due to the cable tension the left. The woman was now attached completely to the pod. A set of numbers appeared on the left of the screen, reading “Stimulation 30, Conditioning 30, duration 28 hours”. She saw the woman push her ass back towards the rear of the pod, and immediately the process of sealing began. Karen paused the video and looked inside the pod. In the back wall there was a large button, which she assumed was used to start the process.

She restarted the video and watched as the pod began to function. As the cables tautened she caught a glimpse of the woman inside’s waist beginning to compress and Karen gasped. Moments later the pod had sealed completely. An elapsed time counter began to count up from one second. Immediately the video cut to showing the elapsed time as 27 hours, 59 minutes and 55 seconds, although nothing else had visibly changed. As the timer hit 28 hours the pod hissed and began to open.

Once the cables had slackened the man in the lab coat came back into view. He stepped in front of the camera and zoomed it in on the woman’s head before attending to her. He began to disconnect the mask from the helmet, and when it released the woman gasped once before breathing normally. He pushed the visor up, revealing her eyes, which almost looked glassy. A small trail of drool slipped from her slack jaw. Karen leaned forwards to get a closer look.

The elapsed time leapt to 28 hours and thirty minutes. The helmet had been removed now, and the hood pushed back to reveal a cleanly shaven head. She looked more lucid now, but still a little out of it. The man in the lab coat zoomed the camera back out again and stepped back over to the pod. “Based on your estimation,” he asked, while scribbling something onto a clipboard, “How long were you enclosed?” The woman appeared to think about it, before responding. “I…um…maybe one hour? I don’t know.”. The video faded to black before returning to a page of text.

“Direct stimulation of primary and secondary sexual organs proved to produce the required breakdown in awareness of the passage of time. By keeping the subject in or close to a state of orgasm all subjects underestimated the enclosure time, and did so with estimates that bore no relationship to the actual length of exposure. The major flaw in this approach is that it only works with female subjects. Further work will be required to find a solution for male users.”

Chapter IV

Karen leaned against the console. She was breathing heavily, and was struggling to not think of herself in the woman’s place. She wanted it. She wanted the suit, and the pod, and whatever it did to put the woman in that kind of state. She pushed her hands between her legs and guided the first tube into her vagina. It was as big as she had ever taken, but she was so aroused that it slid in smoothly. The tube to her rear was less easy. Without any experience Karen didn’t know how hard she could push, but after a few deep breaths and some gentle pressure the bulbous end of the tube pushed past her anus and the rest of the pipe followed simply enough.

the lower part of the torso of the suit slid up easily, and Karen put her left, and then right arm into the suit, surprised at how much it stretched to accommodate her. As the shrugged her shoulders to work the material back into the right place it suddenly popped into position, grabbing her neck tightly while simultaneously forcing itself against her breasts. The suit was flat fronted, so even her modest chest pushed hard against it. She adjusted the suit so that the small cups for her nipples sat in the correct place and then attended to the hood.

She wasn’t sure what to do with her hair. slid down the back of the suit was uncomfortable, so she piled it up into a messy knot at the back of her head. She then took off her glasses, and pulled the hood over her head. The hood stretched easily to fit, but she realised then that it would fit a cropped or shaven head much better, which explained the woman in the video. Once it had snapped into position the hood covered her whole head right down to cover her eyebrows, and came part way up her chin, presumably to make sure the seal was as good as possible. She pushed her glasses back on, forcing the arms underneath the rubbery material.

With that, she was in. Karen stood up on the strange, heelless boots and tried a few steps. She nearly fell over, but realized that if she used a very small stride and went slowly she could keep her balance. Even without a connection to the pod the suit was hugging her all over, orders of magnitude more than the clothes she had left on the bed. One gloved hand moved to her face where the caressed her cheek, while the other fell to her sex. That hand found nothing but a multi-point industrial connector. She looked around for a mirror, but unable to find one grabbed her phone and tried to take a selfie. Unable to unlock the screen with her gloved hand she had to type the passcode in with her nose, which was faintly ludicrous.

“Wow.” was the only word she could think of. The face was still her, but everything else was amazing, just like the woman in the video. She’d never felt this way about her body before, never imagined anyone - not least Karen herself - would be so turned on by it. She checked the time on her phone, and seeing it was just after 3 in the morning, she knew what she had to do. Karen tottered over to the console, and searched through the screens until she found the “Enclosure Settings” screen. She set Stimulation and Conditioning for 30, just as in the video, but set the time period for six hours. She hit enter, and received a “Conditions accepted” message. Inside the pod a ring around the large button in the back wall began to glow red. She removed her glasses, folded up the arms, and placed them carefully on top of the console.

Karen walked towards the pod, feeling the tubes inside her, feeling the pressure against every part of her body. She needed this, needed it right now. She stepped into the pod and turned to face out towards the room. Deep breath. Deep breath. Shoulders first. Karen connected the two cables for each side. Bending her knees slightly she found that her whole weight could now be taken by them. She felt a tiny extra push of the two pipes inside her but her weight was very evenly distributed. Next were the two cables for her feet, which had plenty of slack in them when she pulled them, allowing her to connect them with ease. She then connected the waist cables. These had much less slack in them, and once they were both connected she could feel them both tugging at her. The suit became tight around her lower torso and she found it impossible to bend at her waist any more.

The next part was the connector at her crotch. She had seen this have an effect on the woman in the video but she didn’t know why. Regardless, she clicked it into place. Immediately a tube slipped out of the connector and slid directly into Karen’s urethra. The unexpected feeling made her scream and she immediately tried to remove it, but before she remembered how the device could be removed the insertion was complete. She felt her bladder empty through the tube, completely out of her control. Immediately afterwards she felt further movement as the connector gently inflated and pushed the material of the suit against her genitals, enveloping her labia and clitoris in a soft embrace. It took Karen a few minutes to calm down and regain her resolve, as she hadn’t expected such an invasive process.

Next was the helmet. Karen pulled it down onto her head, forcing it past the bulge of her hair. It was tight but not uncomfortably so. She pushed up the visor so she could see how to join the helmet to the suit, and slowly worked around the various fittings, each one sealing the helmet more tightly to the suit and fixing her neck ever more stiffly. Once she was finished she realised her head was pointing slightly upwards. From the video she assumed that the mask would seal against the lowered visor, so she practiced attaching and disconnecting the last two cables to her wrists a few times before pushing the visor down.

The darkened glass of the visor made it difficult to see much apart from points of light from the bulbs in the room, and the only sound she could hear was the quickened beat of her heart. She felt for the mask and placed it over her mouth and nose, securing the straps tightly. She waited, wondering what had made the other woman convulse. Suddenly a large pipe emerged inside the mask and pushed towards her mouth, pressing on her lips and teeth. two smaller pipes attempted to invade her nostrils. She ripped the mask off and slid up the visor in time to see the tubes retract back into the mask. Karen breathed hard, almost hyperventilating. This was too much. After she had calmed down a little, she pressed the button behind her. A buzzer sounded and the red reflection of the ring flickered momentarily. “All or nothing,” she thought, “And I haven’t come this far for nothing.”

She slid the visor down, and allowed the cables to take her weight. For a few minutes she tried to center herself, slow her heart, cool herself down. She then grabbed the mask and attempted to steady her shaking hand as she placed it against her face. Karen fitted one strap, but then hesitated at the second for a moment before securing it. Once fixed against her face the pipe again pushed against her mouth, but this time she opened as wide as the restriction of the suit and helmet would allow.

The pipe pressed into her throat and dived for her windpipe. Karen gagged, her body creasing as it tried to force the pipe out, but it kept pushing until it had reached its destination. At the same time the two smaller pipes invaded her nostrils and made for her stomach. After a minute or so the gag reflex began to subside. Shortly afterwards Karen felt two plugs pushing into her nostrils, using the tubes as a guide. She tried to breathe through her nose but found it completely blocked. A similar but larger plug pushed into Karen’s mouth. Although panicked, she accepted it and allowed it to fill her, jaws spread slightly apart. The mask then seemed to suck itself onto Karen’s mouth, almost as if it was under vaccum.

She allowed herself a minute to settle afterwards. The process had been unpleasant, although she could see why it was all necessary if the pod was intended for long term use. She hoped she was over the worst of it now as she attached the two final cables to each wrist. After a slight pause, she pushed her ass into the button in the rear of the pod.

Instantly the pod began its program. The front casing of the pod began to slide into the closed position, placing another seal between Karen and the world. The darkened glass panel in combination with the visor in her helmet completely blocked out all light. Once the casing was in position she heard it lock and seal into position. Karen realized she was now the alien figure in the pod that she had run away from just a couple of days earlier.

All nine cables started to retract, lifting her off her feet and contracting the suit around her waist. She felt the rubber hoses along her limbs inflate, further tightening the suit around her. Karen tried to bend her arms and legs, but couldn’t. her whole body was immobile, and the suit was still getting tighter. She tried to press the button again, to make it stop, but she knew there was no chance of reaching it. As the suit continued to constrict she found it harder to breathe, and she had to take quick shallow breaths. Eventually the tightening stopped, and for a moment everything was still.

Karen then felt something. A very gentle pulse of vibration in her crotch so brief she couldn’t place it immediately. Then a slight tweak of a nipple. A slightly longer pulse clearly from her ass. The program was quickly ramping up her arousal. A flick to her clit, as though by a tongue. Vibration fussed at her labia. Nipples again, almost a pair of fingers circling. She was breathing as heavily as the corset would let her. More insistent vibration at her crotch now, cycling through the various devices. She clenched and unclenched her fists, the only movement available to her.

More stimulation, more manipulation. The suit forced itself against her sex, pulsating, vibrating, kneading, teasing. She tried to scream but the pipe in her throat had silenced her. The pod was trying new things, learning which of its tricks created the best response, and relentlessly building her towards a climax. Karen could feel it coming harder and faster than she could ever remember. No building to a plateau, no anticipation, no fantasy to bring it on, the orgasm built further and further. At the moment of climax she opened her eyes to the blackness of the visor, and suddenly saw everything in the nothingness.

Karen expected some respite, a lull of some kind, but the pod was relentless. As she came for a second time her vagina walls spasmed against the unyeilding tube within her, the vibrations from it strengthening with each passing second. The third crashed over her moments afterwards, and she was beginning to lose all control, barely noticing the twitching in her muscles as the pod electrically stimulated them. The climaxes kept coming like rolling thunder and she quickly lost count, lost the ability to count, lost all sense of anything apart from the pleasure that the pod was delivering

Her next awareness was of a dull ache across her whole body. She realized that the cables had slackened allowing her to release her hands and escape from the enclosure. From there she removed the clasps on the mask; the bungs and tubes retracted from her throat and nostrils, almost causing her to retch as they did so. Karen wondered whether she would ever get used to the feeling, without even considering whether she might not use the pod again.

She slid the visor up and blinked as her eyes readjusted to the dim lights of the room. Everything was still and seemingly unchanged. As she removed the connector at her crotch the catheter retracted, making her cry out for a moment before the discomfort eased. Helmet off, and all the cables disconnected save for the two at her shoulders, she gingerly placed her feet on the floor and experimentally took her weight again. Once she was confident she’d be able to stand she reached up and removed her final connection to the pod.

Karen stepped out of the pod and stood next to the console, holding onto it for stability. She pulled the hood off her head and teased her hair out, where it hung in a lank and knotted mess. “Well, that won’t do.” She said to herself. She put her glasses back on and tottered across to the bed where she had left her phone. The time read 9:25, so it had been six hours since she had hit the button to start the pod’s program. Six hours she had no memory of; just the build-up to the first orgasm and then an oblivion of ecstasy.

“Fuck.” she whispered, unable to think of anything else to say.

Chapter V

A month later and just after the worst of winter, Karen was sat in a high-class cocktail lounge with a martini in front of her, meeting up with Lynda for drinks that she had delayed since the day she got the inheritance. She’d been in this bar many times before but she’d always tried to hide away. Tonight Karen had arrived half an hour early just to soak up all of the attention. From her seat she could see the door, and spotted Lynda as soon as she came in. Lynda looked around the room, searching for Karen, but didn’t recognize her friend. Lynda sat down at the bar and ordered a martini, but kept stealing glances at Karen.

“Is she checking me out?” Karen thought. Lynda looked across again and Karen stared straight back at her. Lynda looked away, blushing immediately. “She is checking me out!” Karen said to herself, “Best to give her a show.” Karen finished her drink, and stood up. Lynda was now straight-up staring at her, but she didn’t care. She strode directly across the room to Lynda and kissed her square on the lips. Lynda’s jaw was slack with astonishment. “You know, I’ve always wondered what it would take to stop you talking. I could hardly get a word in even in Kindergarten.”

The penny finally dropped for Lynda.“Karen? Jesus Christ! You look…you…wow.” Karen checked herself out in the mirror over the counter. After her first time in the pod she’d immediately taken a pair of scissors to her hair and hacked it into a sort of bob thing which fitted into the suit more comfortably, but she knew it had been a bit of a mess. She was really happy with the job the salon had done with it - dyed platinum white, whipped up into a tall quiff, but shaved right to the skin at the sides and back.

She wore a black dress which would have been demure - high neck, knee length, long sleeved - except it was a size too small for her new figure. Since the first time in the pod she’d spent more and more time inside, ramping up the settings each time she did so. It didn’t take long for her to start noticing results from the conditioning feature, as she went from being just skinny to lean and toned within a couple of days. A week after that Karen looked in a mirror and realized that the leanness was starting to give way to muscle mass, with defined abs, broader shoulders, and firmer arms and legs. She loved the way people looked at her, and she loved the strength she had gained too.

Lynda was still agape. “Tell me EVERYTHING.”

Karen smiled, and proceeded to tell Lynda…something. The inheritance, the house, and then some made-up stuff about a secret celebrity personal trainer. She seemed to believe it, or didn’t care. Lynda was leaning into her, stroking her biceps, “accidentally” playing footsie. Karen hadn’t seen her like this since that quarterback in high school, and never with a girl before. They drank, and drank, and drank, until they were the last two in the bar. Lynda had kicked off her shoes a while back, her stockinged foot playing further and further up Karen’s thigh, and Karen had done nothing to stop her. They got up to leave and Lynda stumbled into Karen, who caught her and hauled her upright. “Nightcap?” Lynda giggled. Karen shook her head after realizing how drunk Lynda was. “I can’t, I’m…I’m…leaving for Europe early tomorrow.”

“Europe?” Lynda asked. “Yeah, a big tour of all the sights.” Karen lied. It might have been fun to stay but she was going straight back to the pod. Her pod. The private plane was waiting for her at the airport right now, the taxi already booked, the house lying empty for her to arrive. She’d break her own record this next time and go for two whole weeks being attended to by the pod. “Well, you have a great time. Be careful though, the situation with these nukes is getting pretty scary. Make sure to register with the embassies when you arrive, OK?”

“I promise.” Karen said. “now, let’s get you into a taxi, and get you home.”

The locking mechanism on the front door finished its complex process and Karen was back home again, out of the storm that was raging. On the floor was a pile of post she’d collected from the mailbox at the road. She looked through the parcels and envelopes until she found one she was looking for, and carried it with her to the bathroom. She opened the box and took the hair clippers out. The buzzing noise reverberated around the room. Karen took a deep breath, and shaved a stripe through the middle of her scalp. “No going back now.”, she said to herself. She quickly removed all of the hair on top of her head, as well as running over the sides and back to get them as closely shaved as possible. She ran her spare hand through the short fuzz that was left.

She ran the faucet and quickly washed and then lathered what was left of her hair. Picking up the razor she normally used for her legs she shaved her head until it was completely hairless. She looked at her head in the mirror. It looked purposeful, and she knew it would make the suit fit so much better. She kept looking at her face and remembered how the suit had felt last time, how the hood hadn’t quite sat properly on her forehead, slipping on her…eyebrows. Before she’d even finished saying the word she was scraping the razor across her brow, quickly stripping all of the hair. She looked in the mirror again at her hairless face, ran her hands across the completely smooth skin. The pod was calling her.

Karen took the stairs two at a time all the way down into the bunker. The suit was laying on the bed where she had left it, and in moments she was sliding her legs in through the neck. She was used to all of the tricks that it had to offer now, and quickly arranged the tubes between her legs, slid her arms in, and allowed the elastic fabric to slip across onto her shoulders. In spite of her new figure the suit stretched easily to fit her. Karen slid the hood over her head and gasped at the sensation. Finally denuded of hair the hood fitted exactly as it was supposed to. She switched off her phone to save the battery and left it on the bed.

Karen strode across to the console and readjusted the settings. Last time she’d set it for 80% stimulation and conditioning, and 5 days duration, and there had been no issue, but she wanted more. She needed more. Every time she let the settings plateau for a while she began to become somewhat aware of the passage of time, which wasn’t ideal. She set it for 90%, and two weeks. It was a big jump but she had grown confident of the capabilities of the pod. She hopped inside and quickly hooked herself up, barely wincing as the catheter made its way into her urethra. She pulled the helmet down and closed the visor before grabbing the mask. She hesitated for a moment before fixing it to her face, still apprehensive about the next part, but in a moment the mask was on, and within a few seconds the pipes had settled. Karen’s gag reflex had lessened greatly but she still suffered the occasional retch.

She hooked up her hands and then savored the moment, silent and still, before hitting the button behind her. As before the slack in the cables was taken up and the pod closed around her, the corset around her waist shrinking even tighter despite the resistance of her abdominal muscles.

At the higher levels of stimulation the pod made no pretense of foreplay, and the vibrations seemed stronger than ever. Jolts of electricity spasmed muscles across her body, and as her heart quickened she could feel the oxygen in the air she was breathing begin to thin as the pod made her work even harder than before. Her whole body shuddered from the sensations but the pod kept building her higher. She exploded, and instantly was blasted into nothingness.

She awoke suspended in the pod as she had done previously, and began to extract herself from it. Karen unclipped the mask and the hoses retracted, again disturbing her reflex, although she had it under control. As she lifted the visor the first thing she saw was the size of her forearm. Looking down at the rest of her body she could see that the pod had again increased her muscle mass. Karen finished extracting herself from the pod and sat down on the bed. She switched her phone back on, and while it was starting she slid the hood from her head. Her scalp was still as smooth as it was when she had entered the pod, where she had been expecting a good growth of stubble.

Karen didn’t feel like removing the suit before making her way to the staircase. She was spending so much time in the pod that it seemed like a chore to change into normal clothes. Even outside of the pod the tubes which reached inside her were still doing useful work, and she enjoyed the long climb to the surface. She was about 5 flights from the top when her phone finally got a signal and began to update, buzzing with alerts and messages in quick succession.

She walked through the house to the front door and opened it to walk outside. The first thing she noticed was the warmth of the sun on her face, followed by the sight of the leaves on the trees. Karen sat down on the steps in front of the door, still wearing the suit. The season had turned while she had been inside the pod, and she had missed it. What else had she missed? She had enough money to do whatever she liked, whenever she wanted, and all she was doing was getting jacked off by a machine.

She felt a little angry with herself for becoming so enamored with the machine, and thought back to the night in the bar with Lynda. She should have stayed with her, found out where it would have taken them. She should call Lynda as soon as her eyebrows had grown back, she thought. Karen had hooked her arm under the neck of the suit to began extracting herself when her phone began buzzing insistently in a way she’d never heard before. She picked it up to look at the screen, where a message was being displayed.

EMERGENCY ALERT

BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO CONTINENTAL UNITED STATES. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

In the far distance she could make out the sound of warning sirens in the nearest town. Karen looked up to see dozens of what looked like shooting stars moving across the sky.

“Fuck”. She ran back into the house and slammed the door shut.

“FUCK!” she screamed, as she ran to the staircase. Once inside she pulled the painting back across the entrance, sealing it.

Karen ran down the stairs as fast as she could. Just as she reached the bottom she felt a shudder through the ground that made her unsteady on her feet. She dashed for the bunker, closing the first airtight door behind her. She felt another tremor through the ground, and then another, stronger this time. Karen tried to block out any thoughts of what the shaking ground meant for everyone she’d ever known. Tried not to think about Lynda, but failed. As she moved through the storeroom to the second chamber she pulled that door shut behind her and sealed it too.

When she arrived at the pod she saw that the console display looked completely different. No options were available, no settings to change. Just the presidential crest and a “Start” button. She pressed it and an audio recording started.

“My fellow Americans. If you are listening to this message then Washington DC has been destroyed, as have the majority of population centers throughout the country. Our armed forces will be retaliating against our foes but in truth this battle is already lost. However, we will win the war. All of you who stand before these enclosure devices, all across the country, have been chosen as the best and the brightest of their generation, and will be preserved from the ravages of the nuclear winter. It may be many years before you will emerge, but the device will ensure that the time will pass easily, and will leave you in fine health. I wish each of you the very best of luck. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.” The audio stopped and the siren began again.

The idea that there could be other women, in other bunkers, taking a deep breath before sealing themselves away gave Karen a little comfort, but the tremors continued. She pulled the hood over her head, allowing it to settle in her brow. Another deep breath. This was it then. Plug herself in, and then the pod would be in control for as long as it liked, free to do whatever it liked. She could always try and wait it out without it - the supplies in the bunker might last six months, a year - but then what? Starve? Slowly fall into madness after staring at the blank walls?

No. She stood in the pod. It all seemed so familiar, but it wasn’t a game any more. A shock, much closer this time, dislodged some dust from the ceiling. Karen hooked herself onto the shoulder cables and allowed them to take her weight, followed by the cables for her feet. The connections at her waist were next, and as Karen swayed gently against them she could feel the suit’s integral corset tugging at her slightly from side to side. She plugged in the connector at her crotch next, and felt the invasion of her urinary tract with no more than a grimace.

She settled the helmet down over her head and pulled down the visor. The siren was muffled by the helmet and her vision was restricted, providing a little distance from the situation at hand which seemed to help. In the darkness and quiet Karen focused on the moments she could recall just before the pod had stopped time for her. The moments where she felt every nerve in her body alive with electricity, when she opened her eyes to the blackness but saw every color she could imagine, when her consciousness itself was subsumed by continuous waves of pleasure. She’d wanted it half an hour ago, and nothing had changed that.

Karen closed the mask over her face, accepting the snaking hoses as they found and then sealed their respective holes. The slightly cool air entered her lungs, providing her with proof that she was now under the pod’s protection. With two swift moves she attached her wrists to their cables. Karen felt another tremor, which swung her around on the cables a little. A tear fell onto her cheek, but she had no way of wiping it away.

Karen pressed her ass into the button behind her, and the pod closed around her. Within seconds it had sealed, blocking out all light and sound from outside. She knew now that it would only be a matter of moments before it began. She felt the slack being taken out of the cables, her arms and legs pulled straight, the air hoses inflating to add resistance, the corset tightening. And tightening. It was going far beyond what she had experienced before and she began to panic, until she became aware of a new sensation from the pipe at her throat, which was now actively pumping air through her lungs rather than merely metering it. The pod was now breathing for her. She realized that for the first time air hoses along the fingers of the suit’s gloves had inflated, making it impossible to even move her fingers.

At that point she began to feel the pod pleasuring her. She was surprised by the gentle nature of the touching given the circumstances, but her arousal quickly began to build. She could feel it, rising within her, more, more, and then a jolt as the suit applied electrical stimulation that set her back. The suit built her up again and again, closer and closer, but every time the jolts of electricity pulled her down as her body spasmed from the shock. Karen could feel herself edging closer to the edge each time, the jolts coming at closer and closer intervals as her arousal built and built.

Eventually the electrical stimulation became constant, and mixed in with the vibrations and pulsations of the suit. She was hanging over the edge of the precipice, her inner voice screaming for release. And then she felt something new. Amid the chaos she was sure the tube in her vagina had shifted, almost imperceptibly, pushing slightly on her before releasing the pressure. And then again, definite movement this time, perhaps a quarter inch in and out. The stroke continued to lengthen, perhaps to as much as an inch of smooth, even stroke, regular as clockwork. The new sensation pushed her over the edge into her climax, and as he had done the first time using the pod she opened her eyes, the only thing she could still control, and stared into the abyss once more.