Tabula Rasa

"Do you know what your name is?" The same question again, for the fourth time in as many hours. At least this one sounded concerned; the first person who asked her had just sounded bored, then angry. The second one made it seem like some kind of threat or something, like she was going to get in trouble if she didn't give him the answer he wanted. He kept telling her she had it wrong, but how could she not know her own name?

"Tabby," she replied, the same answer she gave to all the others. "It's short for 'Tabula'." She beamed brightly at the African-American woman in the sober burgundy pantsuit, but got only a sad, soulful look in return. Tabby wanted to lean in and give her a big hug, but for some reason everyone around here got really weird about physical affection. It was kind of sad, really.

"I see," the woman said. She had a name tag clipped to her pocket that said 'Dandridge, Ella', and Tabby wondered if they kept asking her what her name was because they needed help learning how to remember theirs. "And does the name 'Candace Bartlett' mean anything to you, Tabby? I want you to think as hard as you can and try to see if you've heard it before." She sounded so serious, like she was talking to someone who needed, like... all the hugs. All the hugs in the whole wide world.

Tabby giggled. "Sure!" she replied, her head bobbing eagerly up and down in excitement. "That was the name the man said earlier. The 'Eliot Goldstein' man. He said my fingers were named Candace!" She laughed even harder just thinking about it-everyone seemed so confused about names here! They all needed special tags on their pockets to remember theirs, and they thought that people's fingers had names all their own that you found out by smearing them with ink. It was a very silly place... but they seemed to think she was the silly one.

Judging by Ella's reaction, she definitely agreed with all the others. She let out a long, slow, deep breath that she was clearly trying very hard not to make sound like an angry sigh, and said, "But you're sure you don't know that name from anywhere else, Tabby. You haven't maybe heard someone call you that before today, or used it as a name yourself at some point?" She sounded like she was fishing for a 'yes', and Tabby almost wanted to give her one just to make her happy... but a good girl always told the truth, and Tabby was a very good girl.

So she shook her head and said, "No, 'Ella Dandridge'. My name is Tabula Rasa, and that's the only name I've ever had as long as I can remember." She tried to give Ella her best sincere look, the same expression she used when Teacher asked her questions and she had to admit that she didn't know the answers. It always seemed to make Teacher happy, and she was hoping it would have the same effect on Ella.

It didn't. "Tabby," the older woman asked, steepling her fingers together in concentration, "how far back is that?" Again that same sad, careful tone in her voice, like she expected Tabby to burst into tears the second she heard the question. Just like Eliot Goldstein toward the end-he started out really angry, but every single thing she said just seemed to make him more and more worried until he told her to sit down and watch cartoons for a little bit while he found someone else for her to talk to.

Which was all just the silliest, as far as Tabby was concerned. Even sillier than having names for their fingers, even sillier than having reminders for their names. Why would they think Tabby was sad? She couldn't remember a time when she was anything other than the happiest, most cheerful girl in the whole wide world. "Four years," she said, beaming with pride. "Ever since Teacher put me in the machine."

That seemed to make Ella really sad. Not just sad but mad-Tabby reflexively flinched away from the older woman's narrowed eyes and hunched, angry shoulders. But instead of punishing Tabby for getting it wrong, Ella only said in deceptively calm tones, "This Teacher of yours... is that Doctor Kent Habicht?" She still sounded like she was trying to put Tabby at her ease, but it felt even more forced now than ever.

Tabby had to physically make herself smile in response. "Teacher is... Teacher," she said, struggling to remain cheerful and upbeat even though she couldn't hide her nervous bewilderment at the question. "He, he made the machine that emptied all the clutter and mess out of my brain and helped me learn how to be a good girl." A thought struck her, surfacing out of the disorientation and constant confounded expectations of the last several hours of questioning. "Is... is he okay? Can I see him?"

Ella sighed heavily, like Teacher sometimes did when she asked a question too complicated to explain to her good-girl brain. "Doctor Habicht is... he's safe, Tabby." The word 'safe' felt like a piece of cloth covering up a big, unpleasant mess, but Tabby's mind was used to steering around messes like that after four years of Teacher's instruction. "But he won't be able to see you for a while. He asked us to take care of you until then."

Tabby relaxed again, tension unwinding from her muscles as she leaned back in her chair. It never even occurred to her that Ella might be anything less than honest-Teacher never lied to her in her whole life that she could recall, so why would Ella? "Okay," she said brightly, her pink cheeks once again crinkling in a cheerful grin. "Did he tell you to put clothes on me? Because I think I should take them off if he didn't tell you to tell me to put them on."

Ella's face froze in a plastic, insincere smile. "Um, yes," she said, her voice sounding artificially bright and cheerful in Tabby's ears. "He told us you need to wear clothes from now on, and that you can't, um..." Ella squirmed slightly in her seat, unable to meet Tabby's gaze. "You can't... offer yourself to anyone anymore. At least not until we've figured out what's going on with you, and what the machine did to Candace."

Tabby looked around, perplexed all over again. "The machine did something to Candace?" she asked. "Is that why you keep asking me about her? Because I don't know where she is, I promise. And I've been inside the machine every day since Teacher found me. If she was in there, I would have seen her, honest." She hoped she was making Ella happy with her answers-since they told Tabby that she couldn't do anything sexual without permission, she felt like she was deprived of her best method of pleasing people. It made her feel a little bit anxious.

Ella furrowed her brow in consternation. "You were in the machine every day? Can you tell me... what it did? What it felt like, maybe? I think It'll really help me understand what happened to you if you can explain to me what the machine was for." She sounded patient, even comforting, but Tabby couldn't help hearing that edge of frustration underneath it all. It made Tabby nervous all over again; she could remember Teacher talking to her in that same tone of voice just before a punishment, and Tabby didn't like being punished. She really wanted to be a good girl and do the right thing instead.

But she didn't know what the right thing was. Teacher told her not to talk to strangers, Teacher told her never to tell anyone about the machine... but Ella and Mister Goldstein already knew. And they said that Teacher said it was okay. And nobody ever lied to Tabby; she knew that because Teacher told her that she could believe anything he told her and she would remember if he ever broke a promise. It had to be safe to tell them about the machine. It had to.

"The machine helps keep my brain, um, organized," she said brightly, squeezing her thighs together lightly like she'd been trained as she spoke. "Like, the way Teacher explained it to me was that everyone has extra... stuff in their head. You know, thoughts, memories. Stuff like that. And sometimes that stuff gets in the way of the correct way of thinking. Like, sometimes you learned something wrong as a kid, and you can never get it out of your brain so that you can learn it the right way, y'know? Even if you're really really smart like me."

Tabby wriggled in her chair, feeling better and better as her pussy lips rubbed against each other and her brain settled into the correct thoughts Teacher had given her. "But the machine can get it out. It, um... it does something, I don't know. Teacher never told me how it works. But it empties out all the wrong thoughts so that only the right ones are left behind. And because there's nothing else to get in the way, they're so easy to find! I can always remember Teacher's correct thoughts. All the time. Without even trying."

Tabby wished she could take the loose-fitting orange jumpsuit off and show Ella her wet pussy, but she didn't want to break the new good-girl rules so soon after learning them. It would have been easier if they could have erased the rules they didn't want in her brain, but it sounded like they didn't really understand what the machine could do. That meant that it was even more important for Tabby to explain it to them, then. So that they could correct Tabby properly.

Ella didn't look like she wanted to correct Tabby, though. She looked at Tabby like she was mad and sad and kind of disgusted all at the same time, like she had so many big feelings inside her that if she let them out she'd explode. Her voice was low and quiet and thick with unreadable emotion as she said, "Do you remember anything at all from before, Tabby? From before your first time inside the machine?"

Tabby shook her head sadly. "No, 'Ella Dandridge'. I... Teacher explained it all to me. He told me that the person I was before had been filled with too many wrong thoughts to ever be properly trained like a good girl. She was too broken to be fixed." Tabby still felt a little sad sometimes, thinking about all the messed-up things she must have been taught by all those awful people that made it necessary for Teacher to wipe the slate clean and start over with an empty, blank brain in an empty, blank body. But she knew that good girls didn't think about the past. Not unless it helped them become better girls.

"I had to start over," she said placidly, her eyes urging Ella to understand why Teacher had to do what he did. "So I could learn it all right this time." Her body rewarded her for her correct thought with a slow, drifting orgasm, but Tabby was so used to cumming that she barely even whimpered anymore.

Ella watched every moment of Tabby's climax. Then she very quietly tensed every muscle in her body as hard as she could and sat in her chair for a long moment, taking slow, careful breaths. It almost looked like she was squeezing all of her emotions into a tiny little ball in the center of her chest to keep them from exploding out like shrapnel all over the room. Tabby tried to tell herself that she hadn't done anything wrong, that whatever Ella was mad about it wasn't because Tabby was being naughty... but it was hard not to apologize. It was hard not to feel like she was a bad girl and she needed to go into the machine to erase the flawed thoughts once and for all.

"Okay, Tabby," Ella said at last. "Thank you for being a very helpful girl. You've made me very happy." She didn't look happy, though. She looked like the words left a bad taste in her mouth. "I'm going to take you back to your room now, and you can watch cartoons and cuddle your plushie until it's bedtime, okay? And tomorrow I'm going to tell you who Candace was, and why it's important. I promise." Tabby nodded. Truth be told, she'd already forgotten about 'Candace Bartlett'; the name was just one of many she'd learned today, and nobody had told her yet that she had to make Candace happy. But maybe it would make more sense once Tabby learned more about her.

For now, she let herself be led out of the room and back down the hallway, smiling cheerfully at the two guards who helped show her the way. Ella watched her leave, making sure that Tabby got all the way back to her quarters and behind closed doors. Then she walked back into the interrogation room, calmly and methodically turned her padded chair around to face her, and pictured Doctor Habicht's face on the cushions while she punched it until her knuckles throbbed.

It didn't help as much as she hoped. But it would get her through to tomorrow.

THE END