Trust Machines - Puzzled

Tom and Susan are back. And Susan is subject to one of Tom's overly cleaver venns, if I can say so myself.

“Hey, you can’t cut the line!” A man called out cutting through the background din of the mall.

“I’m by myself,” Pat said, he was pulling a hand truck behind him. “How could I be cutting the line by myself?”

“You look like you expect to use the machine.”

“That’s a look?”

“The hand cart is a clue.”

“I suppose.”

“Stop being annoying, Stan,” the woman standing on line with him said. “If you don’t I’ll venn with him and then you’ll be the guy cutting the line.”

“What?”

“I’m not here to use the machine. I’m helping a friend. Did you see the people who went inside before you?”

“Do you know them? It’s been like fifteen minutes. Guy, tallish, reddish blond hair, green eyes, square jaw, works out.”

“Maybe you should be dating him,” the woman said.

Ignoring her, the man continued, “The woman was also tall but shorter than him, dark, wavy hair, brown eyes, button nose, if she works out its mostly cardio. They were obviously a couple.”

“That’s true the kiss they exchanged before going in makes me want to rethink spending future evenings with Stan.”

“Honora!”

“That would be my friends. Tom asked me meet them here to help get Susan out of the machine.”

The bored looked dropped from her face. Honora rushed over to Pat and spun him around, staring him in the eyes. “Tom and Susan? The Tom and Susan?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘thee’ but yeah.”

“Venus spray paint Susan?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s them.”

“She did look familiar now that I think about it,” Stan said.

“Oh, god, can you introduce me to them?” Honora gushed. “I didn’t catch your name, I’m sorry.”

“Pat. Yeah I can introduce you to Tom. I have no idea if I can introduce you to Susan. Sometimes she comes out of the machine looking as she always does. And sometimes she totally isn’t.”

“Was she really spray cans?” Stan asked.

“Not at all. Tom handed her a box full of empty spray cans. She was strictly the spray paint.”

“Why aren’t you that cleaver?” Honora asked Stan.

“Hey, that wasn’t nice,” Pat said. “Tom is like six levels above everyone in this line at least, myself included.”

“Sorry, Stan.”

“Actually I must apologize for yelling at you. Do you think you could ask Tom to change Honora?”

“I couldn’t tell you if he would. What kind of change are you looking for?”

The venn machine cycled at that moment. Tom stepped out of the right side. Two people clapped and a woman shouted, “It’s him!”

Pat rubbed his ear that was right next to the woman, Honora. Tom approached Pat. “Fans?”

“Oh, god, you did the Venus painting.”

“Technically I commissioned it and supplied the paint. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I need to go retrieve my wife.”

“I got it,” Pat said. “They’re hoping they can enlist your aid with the machine.”

“Where’s Angela?”

“Bed rest. She’s going to give birth to a bowling ball.”

“I was surprised she let you come here.”

“She wants pics and details.”

“Okay, but let’s enlist their aid first. Help me and Pat, um…”

“Stan… and this is Honora. Sure what is your wife?”

“A big block of wood.”

The roughly four by four by eight area within the machine was nearly filled by a single block of wood, polished and lacquered in a tight parquet pattern of wood varying in color from whitish natural wood to a deep brown colored wood.

It took all four of them to get purchase on the edges. Once they did, the block slide out far enough to get the hand cart under it. There wasn’t much room to tip it back. With the wheels under one of the sides, it moved more easily and soon the block was clear of the vestibule, resting on the hand truck.

The door closed. The machine’s front panel hummed to life. Stan rushed around to the front. “Hey, you can’t cut the line!”

*****

By now, Susan would be more surprised if she could see, or hear, or speak, or smell, or move. As soon as she realized she couldn’t see, she knew all the other senses were off the table. Tom would venn her into either someone who looked mostly as she usually did or into something insensate. Rarely into anything in between.

She had no sense of motion, no idea what she might look like. She relaxed and hoped there was going to be more to the next three months than essentially being non-existent.

She had no idea how much time passed. At least she didn’t get hungry or thirty. Whatever she was wasn’t alive.

At first, she thought she was imagining it. There was a sensation. Her brain was telling her something was scratching her left shoulder. She knew that was highly inaccurate at best, whimsy from her brain at worst.

Even calling it scratching wasn’t correct. The feeling was unlike any she’d felt before. It happened once and then a short time passed and then it unhappened. It was like there was a switch attached to her like a room’s wall switch. One moment the switch was – she thought of it as – down. And the next moment it was up. Some time passed and it was down again.

After a few toggles, she noticed that when it moved ‘up’, a faint sensation appeared in her right middle toe. She lifted her toe. There wasn’t a toe to lift. But the thought she had and the thought she would use to move her toe were identical. When it moved, the same toggling of a switch seemed to happen. She could not move the shoulder switch while the toe was ‘raised’. She turned the toe switch off and then she could turn the shoulder switch off or on. But with the shoulder switch off, she couldn’t even sense the toe switch.

She turned both switches on and off in sequence a few times. With them both on, she could sense another ‘switch’ at her lower left eyelid.

*****

“Why aren’t you with your wife and little baby girl?” Tom said to Pat.

Angela had gone into labor as they were driving back to Tom’s and Susan’s apartment. Tom had had to get a few neighbors to help him get Susan out of the truck and on to the hand cart.

Pat was a little bleary-eyed.

“Angela sent me. She demands pictures.”

“Really?”

“And she could tell I wasn’t getting along with her mother. Her mother is great with the baby. She makes sure Angela stays off her feet. No complaints there. We just don’t get along. Never have. She still doesn’t think I’m good enough for her Angel.”

“At least you have help. Samantha is a pretty name.”

“What is she really?” Pat pointed at the block. “Have you ever considered doing something silly like this and there’s no trick at all.”

“Considered it. The only thing that would be worse than Susan hating it would be her obvious disappointment. I couldn’t let her down. And thus, she is currently a wooden puzzle box.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Unlike most puzzle boxes, this one can open itself because it’s alive, or at least able to think.”

“How do you come up with this shit?”

“I really don’t know.”

“So why hasn’t she opened?”

“She’s working on it. C’mere.” He took them around toward the back of the block. “Funny thing is, I think of this facing as the front. I’m hoping you can help me spin her around. It’ll make it easier for me to visualize her progress.”

“Sure. What are we looking at?”

“Oh, right. See that?”

There was a break in the herring bone pattern. A small, rectangular sliver of wood was pushed out past the edge of the box. Tom pointed out four other places where the box had been altered.

“What will happen when this sequence reaches the end?”

“There’s actually three paths forward from where she is. I think that’s why she hasn’t progressed in the last few hours….

*****

Left shoulder on, right middle toe on, lower left eyelid on, left back of knee on, right lower rib cage. She was stuck here. There were no additional sensations. She toggled the rib switch on and off rapidly and slowly. She did the knee and the rib switches quickly one after the other, slowly one after the other. Nothing. By random chance she tried the toe switch. Three new sensations were unlocked. She tried each one one at a time. Each cause two more sensations to trigger. The number of combinations were probably infinite, she thought. Tom did this on purpose, she thought. He knows I like to write things down!

She was surprised by the next sensation. (right lower rib cage on, right middle toe off, left nipple on, left corner of mouth on, right eyebrow on.) It was air on skin. The skin was her left nipple and she could feel it quickly getting hard. She let the fresh sensation play across her mind. This had been the first non-itch you can’t quite scratch feeling she’d had in she had no idea how long.

A finger played across the nipple. It felt amazing. Tom! She wanted to call out to him. The finger disappeared and she was anxious whatever opening had closed. She checked the switches.

She froze as a mouth sucked on her nipple. She wasn’t sure when it stopped or how long her nipple was sucked on. She’d lost count after forty-three sucks.

She was floating in bliss until she felt grounded again. No air reached her nipple. The right eyebrow switch was off. She’d forgotten Tom had shown her the switches by moving the left shoulder switch. She guessed he’d closed off her nipple as well. She opened the eyebrow switch but time passed and no fingers or mouths were there.

She hoped that was because Tom was asleep. But, she suspected it was because he wanted her to discover more of the switches.

*****

After exposing her nipple, she had to hide it again to progress. She found switch combinations that would expose parts of her limbs or torso.

After what she feeling she possessed a month, she licked her lips and realized she had a tongue. A tongue that was behind teeth and lips. “Tom?” She believed she said. Still no hearing. A moment passed and a finger ran along her lip. So sensual, she thought. He was kissing her. They kissed for a long time. When he broke the kiss, she said. “I didn’t like this at first. But, it’s fun. I wish I could hear you. Touch my upper lip for yes and lower lip for no. Did you hear that?”

Nothing happened. Then she felt his tongue licking her lower lip.

“You are so mean. You can’t say no to ‘did you hear that?’” She explained.

“Will I escape this box?”

He indicated no.

“You don’t have faith in me?”

He tapped her upper lip a lot.

“You better. I guess that means I’m not meant to escape. Have I found more than fifty percent of the openings?”

He pinched her lower lip.

“Ow, more than ten percent?”

He tapped her upper and lower lips quickly in succession.

“Only close to ten percent?”

He tapped yes.

“Have you seen Angela’s baby? Is it cute?”

He tapped yes twice.

“I have the feeling I’m very large and heavy right now.”

He tapped her upper lip a few times.

“Did you make me so big and bulky so I couldn’t ask you to end my venn early and go see the baby?”

His lips pressed against hers though he distinctly touched to her upper lip first.

*****

She felt air on her belly. She waited, hoping for some belly rubs. Some time passed and she forgot her belly was exposed.

When his hand ran over her belly button, it was so relaxing. She heard a click but was too relaxed to wonder what it meant. He caressed and massaged her stomach for a while. She felt like she might drift off to sleep until he yanked her back to full awareness.

His hand had slid down her abdomen, brushed her thighs and slipped into her labia. His fingers lightly played with her clitoris.

The pleasure was both heavenly and diabolical. She tried to flip the right armpit switch that had revealed her belly but it wouldn’t flip. She wondered if that click had been Tom locking the switches.

After a few moments of playful teasing by Tom, she didn’t care. He stopped for a moment and she felt something hard and ovoid push into her folds. She was shocked when she recognized her mini-egg shaped vibrator was now inside her. She heard a click and then felt the last two switches flip downward before she heard another click.

He belly was no longer exposed, the switches were still locked, and the egg vibrator was running.

*****

Oddly enough, she thought, while the vibrator essential prevented her from doing any more exploration of her puzzle prison. It provided her a sense of time. Based on her normal experience using the egg, she felt three days had passed. Tom had deactivated it, she was sure, since she had found it far too distracting to continue flipping the switches. She needed to be distraction free to notice the new switches discovered when a switch was toggled.

She had just flipped a newly discovered switch, next to last vertebrae on her tail bone when she was blinded by searing light. It took a few blinks to realized it wasn’t really searing, just overwhelming after weeks of blindness.

She was in the corner of the living room left of the television. Light was coming from the television but she was faced away from it. She didn’t think she had an entire head. Just a face poking from a flat surface. There was something at the edge of her periphery but she couldn’t make it out.

Tom entered the room with a plate in his hand. “Oh, look who came out to play.” He put the plate down: sandwiches, his best food making option. He held his phone in front of him.

“Looks like we get to have this conversation in reverse. Blink your left eye for yes, right eye for no. While that sinks in, here’s a few pics of Samantha.”

The baby pics were exactly what she was missing. He swiped through a dozen pics of the baby on a bed, on another bed, in Pat’s arms, in Angela’s mother’s arms, Tom holding her awkwardly, and finally in Angela’s arms.

The next pic he swiped to was a big block of wood wedged into a venn machine. Then the same block of wood in the living room.

He was laughing. No doubt in reaction to how wide her eyes had just been. “I assume this means you hadn’t guessed. Check this out.” The next series of pics were close ups of the wooden surface with various bits slid to one side or another.

After those photos were pics of her nipple poking out of the surface of the box, her mouth enclosed by the wooden box, her abdomen in an enclosure of the box. He stepped back and took a pic. This pic showed her eyes kind of flush with the surface and her ears weren’t far away, also flush with the surface. No other facial parts were visible.

“It’s been sixty-two days. Only about twenty to go. Still enjoying it?”

She squinted her left eye.

“That’s good. May I try something?”

She waited a bit before indicating yes.

“Feel this?” He slide a piece of the wood upward.

She felt the switch on her right middle toe move... sideways. Again, her eyes went wide comically.

“Most of them, not all, can do that. Or this.” She felt the left shoulder switch rotate.

She looked sad.

“I should have told you sooner?”

Her left eye twitched a few time, but she only closed her right eye.

“That’s the spirit. Since I gave you a hint, do I get a prize?”

She blinked her left eye rapidly once.

He smiled. He slide a few other sliders half of which she knew nothing about and then the last five switches were the path that exposed her mouth.

She felt air wash across and into her mouth. It was wide open. She had no jaw she could control. Typical.

“Permission?”

She winked yes twice. As much as she found his oral fascination tedious. She found it pleasurable too. She couldn’t see the spot where her mouth was, but it was at a convenient height she discovered. He came inside her twice. He stumbled back and lay on the couch. “Was it good for you?” He asked with a laugh.

She winked left, left, right, left.

“Three out of four ain’t bad,” he said before falling asleep.

*****

As she continued exploring the various ways the switches could move a couple weeks passed with various body parts exposed and pleasured by Tom. With less than a week to go, she finally restored her entire head and upper torso.

“I thought you said I couldn’t get out.”

“Not completely,” he said. He sat on a shelf that was part of the wooden block adjacent to the ledge her torso disappeared into the wood from. His eye level was even with hers as he sat on the slightly lower shelf. They were able to make out like this. “I don’t know if you noticed, but this isn’t your only head.”

“What?”

“Remember when you looked like this?” He showed her the pic of eyes and ears flush with the surface.

“Yes.”

“Look straight out from the wood block.” He turned and pointed behind him. “Is the view you have now the same as the view you had then?”

She couldn’t see the sofa from here. It had been right in front of her before. “You didn’t move me?”

“By myself? You weigh a ton. Or pretty close to a ton. Wood is heavy when it’s lacquered.”

“I have another pair of eyes around that way on the block?”

“Yep. And another pair not far away.” He looked at his phone. “I should go get you a bikini top.”

“I’m not going swimming.”

“I invited Pat and Angela over once you got yourself this free. You can finally hold the baby.”

“They shouldn’t be traveling with the baby. It’s not even three months old.”

“When Pat mentioned you had a head and arms, Angela was starting to pack to get over here. She’s missed you.”

“Well, if it’s just Angela and Pat, a bikini is fine if you can figure out how to tie it. I may have arms but they don’t bend behind my back which is still embedded in wood.”

“I’m sure you’ll talk me through it.”

*****

“What is this sorcery?” Pat’s mother-in-law asked.

Tom had known she was coming and had also draped a shawl over Susan. “Uh.. Wha..?”

She stood there with a stern expression. Her gray hair was tied in a tight pony tail. Her glasses were small and sat on the end of her nose. Her clothes screamed disapproving grandmother. Angela and her mother laughed. Pat tried not to snicker.

“Oh, the look on your face!” She said. She gave Tom a hug. “I’m sorry, Tom. Everyone sees me and expects me to be someone I’m not.” She looked at Pat. “Did you help set this up?”

“I may have implied you and I weren’t getting along.”

“Hah,” Angela said. “He and Mom gang up on me usually. If she hadn’t raised me I’d swear she was my mother-in-law.”

As she sat herself down on the shelf in the wooden block Tom had vacated, her mother said. “No offense, Pat. But, if you compare me to Harlow again, I’m packing up and going home.”

“No offense taken, June,” Pat said.

“Pssh,” was all Angela said to her mother. To Susan, she said, “Hey, you. What’s new?”

“Ha ha. I missed you. You were gone most of the prior nine months.”

“I know. Someone wants to say hello to you.”

“Hey, little Samantha,” Susan cooed as she was handed the baby. “It’s me. Aunt Blockhead. Aren’t you just a beautiful baby? Switched at the hospital, I suppose.”

“You ever hear from that couple?” Pat asked Tom.

*****

A few months ago, at the mall, the transformation took hold of the couple. The doors opened.

“Why am I a woman?”

“That must be Stan,” Pat said.

“It is. I’m Honora,” Honora said.

The couple looked identical. They also looked a lot like Susan, at least how Susan looks unvenned.

Tom approached. “This is a contest. Susan, whom you now resemble, experienced this exact venn. She even enjoyed it once it was ended.”

“Not that you can ask her about it,” Pat said, leaning against the block of wood.

“A contest?”

“A test of wills. You’ll compete against one another. Pat, give them their phones back. I’ll give you an email that I check frequently. Don’t abuse it.”

“We would never…”

Tom didn’t hide his eyeroll. “You are both female with a slight modification down below. There’s a hinged, clear plastic lid covering a glowing, big red button. Do not press it down flat. The first one of you that fails to resist temptation loses.”

“That sounds easy enough.” Stan said.

“That’s what Susan said.”

“Did she win?” Honora asked.

“Her contest was with herself. She just had to last till the end of a one month venn. I think she lasted thirteen days.”

“You aren’t telling us everything.”

“Of course not. That’s the fun part. Well, for me the fun part is watching Susan try to hide stuff from me. But, I’m sure you’ll have fun with this. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to figure out where a block of wood will best decorate my living room.”

“You are forgetting to tell them how they’ll know if the other person lost,” Pat said.

“Oh, right. The button right now glows a dull red. If it gets pressed the glow goes away. No real way to hide it from someone who can see the button. Let’s go, Pat.”

Pat lingered as Tom took hold of the hand cart. He whispered to the couple. “Rubbing the button without pressing it down is like the best sex ever. Assuming during the best sex ever you can keep yourself from accidentally pressing the button down. Don’t ever touch the button if you want to avoid temptation.”

“Don’t tell them everything, Pat,” Tom called out as he pushed the hand cart toward the mall entrance.

“Good luck.”

A few onlookers approached Stan and Honora. “What did Tom turn you into?”

“I have no idea,” Stan said.

Honora just looked at the onlooker, puzzled.