Complementing Morgan Pt. 01

Morgan did as her cell-mate suggested. She stared at the blank pages and gathered her thoughts. She wanted to perfectly convey the powerful lust that flowed through her, and yet she couldn't get into the mindset that eloquence required. A single thought over-rode her higher brain function, one phrase that seemed to sum up what her existence had become.

She only wrote one sentence, over and over, filling up the pages. It became her mantra, a single, simple point that focused her attention. One sentence, over and over. Rogers was right. It was, in a way, cathartic. She poured all her emotion into etching those words into the paper. She didn't need to be eloquent. The sheer volume of the words, the repetition, was eloquent in and of itself.

"Dinner."

She looked up to see Rogers and another woman, a short brunette, waiting at the cell door. Morgan hadn't even heard the other woman come in.

She got up to follow them, and paused. "Any chance I could borrow a stamp and an envelope?" she asked Rogers. "I'll pay you back, I promise."

Rogers snorted. "You got something to say to someone special, I get it. Good luck with that. But you know what? You haven't made a peep 'till now. Just so long as you promise to keep your yap shut tonight, you've got a deal."

She reached under her bed and pulled out a stamped envelope. "Just so we're absolutely clear, this is a loan, not a gift. I don't do charity."

"I'll pay you back. Thank you." Morgan took the envelope.

Derek would probably ignore a polite letter and he would almost certainly ignore an angry letter. But this? This wasn't a letter, it was a statement. In fact, it was quite literally a single statement. It did a better job communicating how she felt than any carefully worded letter ever could, no matter how well written. If this didn't get through to him, nothing would.

The mail slot turned out to be on the way to dinner, which was convenient. As in the county jail, the letter went into the envelope, and the envelope was left unsealed so that the censors that worked for the prison could look it over before it went out. The mail drones ensured fast delivery for letters going somewhere close, though she had no idea if the censors would take any more time here than at the county jail.

Before, the letters must have gone out within an hour or two of when they were posted, as the timing of Derek's responses suggested they were delivered in less than a day. She suspected the censors just scanned them into a database and sent them out immediately, provided the computers didn't identify any problematic keywords. Hopefully it was the same here, and the letter would go out tonight and be delivered by the following morning.

At dinner she sat with Rogers and her other cell-mate whose name was Carmichael. Morgan looked around for Amato, not sure if she wanted to say hello after their previous fallout. It seemed the decent thing to do,though. Circumstances had changed, and she was the only person Morgan had known before she got here.

Amato, however, was not there.

"Does everyone eat at the same time?" Morgan asked.

"Yes," her two cell-mates said, in almost perfect unison.

"There was another inmate who came in at the same time as me, and I don't see her." Morgan explained.

"Straitjacket," Carmichael said.

"Huh?"

"Screamers that can't keep it together get a straitjacket in solitary for twenty-four hours," said Rogers. "Then they get to try again. Rinse, repeat as necessary. Don't know personally, but unless some little green men showed up and whisked her away, that's where your friend is."

"You mean they send you to solitary if you start, you know, touching, at all?"

"Only when you start and can't stop," Rogers said. "It's, like, addictive. You know. If you start, it feels amazing, but it's not enough and you keep going, and you don't stop, and you need to stop because it gets so intense, but stopping is even more intense so you keep going, and— Shit. Shit, sorry."

Carmichael was giving her a dirty look, as were a few others in their vicinity.

"Like I said, you don't talk about it," Rogers said. "Just don't. Gossip, bitch about the food, bitch about your lawyer and no one cares. But you don't bitch about that."

That night Morgan struggled to keep her word. In the dark, trying to sleep, there were no distractions. Eventually she slept, in spite of her circumstances, but there was no relief there. Her dreams were filled with frustration too.

She was back on the gyno table with Harold standing over her. He ran his hand over her body, and then laughed. "Why would I want you when I could have her?"

Then the blonde nurse was there, and he was fucking her, right in front of Morgan. Angela was teasing her clit as Morgan was forced to watch Harold and the other nurse, who was screaming out in the ecstasy of orgasm.

But she wasn't the other nurse. She didn't just look like Lorelei, she was Lorelei.

"With you, Morgan, I never have to wait long." Lorelei told her. "But you're going to be waiting a very long time, aren't you?"

Then it wasn't Harold, it was Derek. Lorelei was fucking Derek right in front of her. They ignored her. Morgan's restraints immobilized her, forced her to watch.

Angela was still standing over her, running her fingers over her, teasing her. "We know what will make you happy," said Angela. "This is for your own good."

"So good!" Lorelei moaned as Derek thrust into her, his back to Morgan.

"Derek," Morgan cried out. "Please, Derek. . ."

Then she was awake, covered in sweat. The air smelled of oranges.

It was dark, but both Rogers and Carmichael were sitting up in bed.

"What?" She hissed into the darkness.

"You were yelling," Rogers whispered back. "You promised not to do that, remember?"

"I was dreaming," Morgan said.

"Derek isn't here." This time the whisper came from Carmichael's bunk. "Go back to sleep."

Morgan tried, but never fully fell asleep again that night. She tossed and turned. She pressed her thighs together, felt the wonderfully erotic stimulation which only made her want more. Her hands tightly gripped the bedsheets as she tried and failed to find a position that would lessen the tension within her. She was unable to sleep, but managed to resist the urge to reach under the covers until the lights came on and it was time for morning role-call.

She bumbled through role-call, her shower and breakfast. As she began her day, she was very aware of how the sensation of every touch, of every movement had become intensely sensual. Even the feeling of her muscles moving, stretching within her as she walked was incredibly erotic and called to mind other ways she might stretch those same muscles.

To her horror, she found herself unconsciously swaying her hips in reaction to the sensations as she walked. She was moving her hips the same as the Comped inmates back in the county jail, the same as all the inmates here. Back then she had been suspicious that the women that moved that way were overdoing it deliberately, calling attention to themselves and their predicament. No. It was the body's natural reaction to what the Complements did, and she was no different than anyone else.

Somehow that little detail brought home the reality and the severity of her situation. She didn't even walk the same way as before.

At breakfast, the pancakes could have been made from cardboard but the banana they served was good. Same as it always was in county, breakfast was evidently going to be a banana and something disgusting. As delicious as it was, the phallic shape of the fruit seemed to mock her.

In spite of her lack of sleep and her other unfulfilled needs, she did notice that Amato was still absent. If it was going to be twenty-four hours like Rogers said, then Amato would probably show up at dinner.

The domes turned out to be actual domes. Morgan had been wondering about that — whether it would just be the same company running things here or whether they had actually setup their iconic dome-shaped buildings as part of the prison. They had.

Three large, hemispherical structures were connected to the main bulk of the prison. The process for constructing a dome must have been refined to the point where it was more efficient to simply build a few more rather than try to put the necessary equipment in a more traditional structure.

Geodesic Enterprises Inc. made a big point of advertising that the dome was one of the most energy efficient building shapes, and that their company prided itself for promoting efficiency in all that they did. The fact that the word "dome" sounded similar to "drone" was probably a factor in that design decision as well.

When she told the guard at the entrance she was new, the officer grunted and escorted her to a seat in front of a computer monitor and a joystick. Row upon row of identical terminals were setup within the dome, and the seats were rapidly filling up with other inmates.

"Next time, sit anywhere. Used to be they used your fingerprint to log you in. Now, you just sit down. There's a sensor in your chair and your Comp is your id. You'll get the training vids, then the exercises. Sit down, put the headphones on and follow instructions."

As soon as she sat down the monitor came alive, and sound came through her headphones.

"Welcome, Morgan Heller, to your first experience with the Geodesic Drone Control Console!" The computer-generated pronunciation of her name was distinct from the rest of the pre-recorded speech.

"The Geodesic Corporation is proud to partner with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections to offer relevant vocational training to all Ohio Inmates. We are proud to have sponsored the construction of your current accommodations at the Ohio Women's Correctional Facility or OWCF. In addition to the new dome facilities, this expansion facilitated the conversion of the old Ohio Reformatory for Women to better serve the special needs of elderly women in state custody. Our partnership with the state of Ohio guarantees you modern accommodations and state-of-the-art job training."

The narrator gave Angela a run for her money in the bullshit department. Translation: We built a new prison for the state of Ohio and in return we get to monopolize the dirt-cheap labor of convicts.

"In this age of automation, Geodesic Enterprises provides real meaningful work, for real, meaningful people. While the laundry and kitchens in your facility have been fully automated, there are many tasks which can't be automated quite so easily. We specialize in leveraging human skill-sets to pilot the large variety of drones responsible for all modern construction and service work. A computer can do many things well, but nothing is better than human eyes and a human mind. Our drones serve to amplify human abilities to maximize human efficiency!"

The monitor shifted from the introduction screen to an aerial photograph of a city's harbor.

"Today you will begin your journey as a drone pilot. You have been assigned to the Cammermeyer Seawall Project. Next up, you will learn about this exciting undertaking. Following that, you will perform some training exercises in the drone model you are assigned before getting started with a live drone. Good luck!"

The Cammermeyer Seawall was the one being built in the Northeast, off the coast of Boston. Morgan tuned out the details of the construction project, everyone had heard about the damn things endlessly on the news. Climate change, blah, blah, imminent flooding blah, blah, giant walls to keep out rising ocean levels, larger than the Great Wall of China and largely underwater, yadda yadda yadda. . .

She seemed to remember that the Great Wall of China was built with slave labor too.

Her job turned out to be piloting a "sweeper" drone, which was basically a bulldozer that operated underwater. The goal was to smooth the ocean floor as much as possible before other drones moved in to dig a trench and then lay down the first level of the wall. It took a human pilot to visually inspect the underwater landscape, push away the small obstacles, and then "tag" any obstacles that could not be moved by the drone, so that other specialized drones could move in and take them out.

Visual inspection was the key. Automated systems still had trouble interpreting visual data. Sure, the sonar could produce a three dimensional map of the sea floor, but what was the tip of a boulder embedded in the seabed and what was seaweed or an easily movable log? It was simple for a human to discern the difference with a glance, but difficult, or at least not economically viable, to program a fully automated drone to do the same. There were thousands of similar tasks involved in various construction projects, and that's where Geodesic Enterprises made their money.

Hagen had been right, anyone with an IQ above that of a turnip could do this job. The work was boring as hell. Additionally, the underwater scene before her was murky, grainy and ugly. This was no tropical reef. Her view consisted of greenish-gray water and sand dimly illuminated by the drone's floodlights.

The boring work gave Morgan's mind time to wander. She found herself constantly shifting in her chair, trying unsuccessfully to find a position that would minimize the aching pleasure that filled the lower half of her torso. She willed herself to focus on the joystick and her drone.

Move the drone to the next grid cell with the joystick. Sweep this patch of seabed. Tag the rock that wouldn't move by pressing the button on the left. Move the drone to the next grid cell with the joystick. Repeat. Repeat. Wriggle in her seat, trying and failing once more to find a more comfortable position. Repeat.

It made sense that these were the drones they gave to convicts. They operated underwater, far away from upstanding citizens, and didn't offer any way to screw up anything important. Other pilots would double check the work, so anything she missed would be identified. If she did miss something, her pay, which amounted to less than thirty cents an hour and was redeemable only at the commissary, would be docked. Repeated or willful mistakes would result in "punitive action at the discretion of senior corrections officers."

As she worked, she kept remembering her dream from the previous night. The exact details of the dream eluded her, but what she did remember vividly was Derek and Lorelei, together. That was just paranoia, right? That wasn't real, that was her over-active imagination and her Complement conspiring against her.

But was it?

Derek was pissed at her, and he said he wanted to know more about her. What if he tracked down her sister, asked her to grab a cup of coffee? Then they might get to talking, gossiping about her behind her back. What would Lorelei say? What wouldn't she say?

Under normal circumstances Lorelei would never go for a guy like Derek, but these weren't normal circumstances. Her sister would see it as "slumming it" with the delivery guy, and if she were being honest that's how she had seen it too. On the other hand, he was hot, and more importantly he was Morgan's. She wouldn't necessarily put it past her sister to sleep with him.

Last Thanksgiving, Lorelei hadn't brought anyone to dinner at their aunt's house, so she probably wasn't in a serious relationship. This was Lorelei. She just might do it.

Fuck, she would totally do it.

Was Morgan being paranoid? She couldn't be sure. She needed to talk to Derek, even if he hated her, she needed to know he wasn't with Lorelei. The thought ate at her like acid.

She could call him, couldn't she? Weren't there phones here? That would be harder to ignore than a letter. Maybe she should wait until he got the letter from last night, wait for a response? Well, he probably already had it, even though she wouldn't get a response yet.

As she sat in front of a monitor displaying the dingy ocean bed, hour after hour, the idea grew on her. She would call Derek. There was no reason to wait, she needed to talk to him now. Really, she needed to fuck him now, but the best she could do was use the phone.

She would be polite, as polite as she could be. It wouldn't be a repeat of their meeting in the county jail. She would bend over backwards to be respectful, but she wanted to know what her situation was.

When they finally let her break for lunch, she asked one of the corrections officers, the same one who had escorted her to her seat in the dome, if she was permitted to use the phone on her lunch break.

The guard nodded, "So long as your ass is back in your seat here in thirty minutes, no one's going to stop you if you want to make a call instead of eat. The phone bank is one door down from the cafeteria. The person you're calling is on your list, right?"

"Wait, what, ma'am? List?"

"Approved list. You obviously can't go calling anyone you want."

Morgan's face must have reflected her anguish and frustration, as the guard's expression softened a bit. This one seemed a bit less of a hard-ass than some of the others.

"Is it your S.O.? So you know, they automatically put your S.O. on the list."

"Thank you ma'am." Morgan breathed a sigh of relief. She might get through to Derek after all.

She rushed to the phones. For once luck was with her, there was no line — probably because most inmates opted to have lunch rather than make a phone call.

When she picked up the phone she was greeted by a mechanical voice. "Hello, Morgan Heller. There are two names on your approved contact list. To contact Derek Simon press one. To contact Lorelei Heller press two."

Lorelei was also on her approved list? Morgan reflected that she had probably filled out some next-of-kin form at one point. She pressed one.

"The charges for this call will come to eight dollars per minute," the automated voice informed her. "Your account balance is currently eighty four cents. You do not have adequate funds to proceed unless you wish to make a collect call. To proceed with a collect call press one, to dial a different number press two."

Eight dollars a minute, what the fuck? That was robbery. Would Derek accept a call at that rate? Would he be even more pissed than he already was? The smart move would be to just walk away and go eat lunch.

The memory of her dream came back to her. She felt a twinge in her groin. She needed to know now. It was stupid, she knew she was being stupid, but she still pressed one.

It was ringing. Please pick up, Morgan thought. Please, please, please. . .

Derek picked up. "Hello?"

The automated phone system cut in. "Hello. Morgan Heller, an inmate at the Ohio Women's Correctional Facility, is attempting to place a collect call to Derek Simon. The charge for this call will come to eight dollars per minute. Press one to accept these charges. Press two or hang up to decline this call."

Morgan held her breath, expecting him to hang up, hoping desperately that he wouldn't.

"Derek Simon has accepted your call," The mechanical voice of the phone system informed her.

"Hello, Derek?" She said. She was live, on the phone with Derek. A surge of adrenaline flooded her.

"Morgan? This is, well, I wasn't expecting your call. It's good to hear from you. How are you? Did you get my letter?"

How was she? She was in fucking prison, she felt like she was being eaten alive with sexual need, they had taken away her orgasms and it was only her first day, that's how she was. She instinctively wanted to point out the stupidity of the question, but she bit her tongue. He was speaking to her, he was paying out the nose to speak with her, and she needed him. She had to be civil.