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Dorley...The Final Frontier

These are the voyages of Alan Malloy.

His continuing mission?

To expunge his toxic ways.

To seek out a new life and a new identity

To Boldy be Basemented like many men have been Basemented before…

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   “Steph, I won’t do that. That’s not how you should be handling this. At all.”

   Steph pinched her nose, and frowned at Christine’s image on her laptop screen. The older girl stared back; her arms crossed.

   “OK. Let’s break this down. Alan clearly has his issues with nerdy girls because of his experiences in school. The best way to demonstrate to him that he’s got the wrong idea is to show him that girls can be just as much of a sci-fi nerd as he is. All I’m asking is to teach me what you know about Star Trek so I can best help the boy I’m sponsoring.”

   “Steph, do you not see the problem here?” Christine said exasperatedly. “You said it yourself. He was hurt by someone who explicitly learned things about his favourite show to get close to him so she could manipulate him. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but are you not currently doing exactly the same thing right now???”

   Steph opened her mouth to reply, then closed it. “Oh.”

   “’Oh’ is an understatement, Steph. You'd be harming him further, not helping him. Look, I know you’re into other bits of sci-fi besides Star Trek. Why not use those?”

   “I was never that into sci-fi,” Steph replied, leaning back in her chair and squeezing her eyes shut. “Sure, I read a lot of sci-fi, but I'm neither a exclusive fan of the genre like he seems to be, and I wasn’t really into the television side of the genre. I've seen, like, six episodes of Star Trek and a handful of other shows I discovered through Netflix. Besides, I personally think that the best way to get through to him is through, well, the show in question. Which you're the expert about.”

   “OK. You know what? I’ll handle this. If you’re dead set on getting through to him via Star Trek, it’s best if I handle it. I still have remote access to the Dorley Consensus server. With your permission, I’ll handle the Trek stuff, and you can do whatever else you need to do to pull his levers. I can’t promise anything- I have a full time job after all- but I can do this in my spare time. Besides, I have unresolved business with the bastard.”

   “Christine, thank you so much,” Steph said, smiling. “You’re the best. Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

   “Simple. You make that boy the best damn girl you can make him.”

   “Trust me, that’s going to happen. Whether he likes it or not.”

   “Alright. You got this, Steph. I’ll call you back later.”

   Steph disconnected from the Zoom call, and turned to look at the photo on her desk. It was a group shot of her and the other girls from her intake, on the day they graduated from the third year. Bethany and Steph stood at the front of group, holding a big "Dorley 2022 Graduates". If they could change, those absolute fuckheads who became the girls she was proud to call her sisters…yeah, Alan was going to be fine. She'd help him change himself, even if he was determined to be a complete prat. Hell, who knows? He might even turn out to be another feral trans girl. She'd be free tommorrow, she could have a heart-to-heart with him then once he'd had a full day to settle in.

  She was just about to grab her stuff and head to class when the door clicked open, and Indira walked inside, looking troubled.

   “Indira, what’s up?” Steph asked, switching off her computer. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

   “I need to talk to you, Steph,” the senior sponsor said, walking over to Steph’s bed and sitting down on it. Steph swivelled her chair so she could face towards the other girl, and leaned forwards. "Can you spare a few minutes before heading to class?"

   “Sure?” she said quizzically. “Is this about the intakes?”

   “It is,” Indira said, and tossed a small USB stick across the room to Steph. “I want you to read these files, and tell me if my suspicions are correct.”

   “Indira, what’s going on?” Steph said, now very worried. She turned back around to her computer, and powered it on, slotting in the USB while the operating system booted. “Do we need to bring Maria or Auntie Bea into this?”

   “Not yet,” Indira replied, taking a deep breath. “But if I’m right, and my suspicions are more than wishful thinking, we'll need to have a talk with them. Read the files, then tell me what you see. I think we’re going to have a rather interesting year ahead of us.”

---

Stardate -363.375 – The Basement – Programme Day Two

   I woke up from a dreamless sleep, and groaned softly. I had hoped the last couple of days had been some sort of prolonged and inescapable nightmare. But, no, I was still very much in the bedroom that Steph had escorted me to yesterday after a day of sitting in front of a television watching an endless cycle of home improvement shows and banal lifestyle programs.

   The room was, at the very least, better furnished than the cell I had spent my first day in. The bed actually had sheets, which was very much appreciated. There was a dresser, filled with basic white briefs. The wardrobe was similarly filled with a small selection of basic, generically branded clothing. Mainly tracksuits, sweat clothes, and a couple of hoodies. The lack of nerd shirts…disturbed me. Hell, there was even a computer, although I had quickly discovered that it was both running a custom virtual machine with all of the admin functions locked down, was not configured for external network access, and even though it had what appeared to be Consensus, it was some sort of custom build that was restricted to communicating with authorised accounts only. And I didn’t know any of those accounts.

   There was also a large number of what appeared to be pirated television programs. I was initially excited for the entertainment, but swiftly discovered to my horror that there was no sci-fi among the selection. Well, technically there was one. And it was The Handmaid’s Tale. Which wasn’t even fucking sci-fi. But no, it was in a folder labelled “sci-fi”. Glaring at me. Mocking me with its presence. Dear god, this was sadistic. Did they miss the bit where dystopian works were not unilaterally science fiction? Or the big where Margeret Atwood was a fucking hack?

   Just as I was beginning to cave to my mounting sci-fi withdrawal, my Consensus app opened by itself, and launched into fullscreen with a chat open. To my shock, the name of the person messaging me was one I recognised.

Christine: Hello, Alan. Remember me?

Alan: You. You’re part of this? Is…is this some sort of twisted fucking revenge plot???

Christine: Oh, please, if I wanted revenge, I’d have used Ceti eels to trap you inside an asteroid for the rest of your days. Besides, I’m not that bothered about our little spat at the society. How are you doing? Enjoying your time in the programme?

Alan: You can’t play those mind games; I know what you’re doing with that Wrath of Khan reference. And don’t act all…friendly…or whatever. You’re trying to torture me into submission. This is some sort of ploy to get me to break and tell you what you want to hear! There are five lights! You can’t convince me otherwise! THERE ARE FIVE LIGHTS!!!

Christine: …really? You’re caving already? Man, Picard lasted three days. You’re on day two. Real mental fortitude there, Alan.

Christine sent an attachment: “Spock_Eyebrow.gif”

Alan: If you know that reference, you should know that was Picard being defiant! Not caving!

Christine: Yes, I’ll give you that. Your defiance in the face of people trying to help you stop being a massive shitlord is in the best traditions of Starfleet. Unfortunately, you got the line wrong, and accidentally did the opposite of Picard.

Alan: I’m sorry, what???

Christine: It was “There Are Four Lights”. Not five. The Cardassian torturer was trying to convince him there were five lights. You totally flubbed that.

Alan: Hah! You, Miss “I’m totally a real nerd” are wrong as hell! Picard said five lights! Gul Dukat wanted to convince Picard there were four!

Christine: OK…uh…first off? It wasn’t Dukat doing the torturing, he wasn’t even there. It was Gul Madred. Also, it was definitely four lights. Picard even says he had endured so much that he was beginning to see five, even when he knew there was four. Are you sure you’re the real Trekkie here? Because you’re not exactly making a good case right now.

Alan: Well, if you’re so sure, there’s a way to find out. Go watch the episode! You’ll see I’m right! Then who’ll be the fake, huh?

Christine: Are you absolutely sure you want to go there? You’re sure you want me to watch the episode?

Alan: Fucking try me, Fake Nerd. And, when you’re proven wrong, I’ll be the one laughing.

Christine: Well, you asked for it, Alan. Remember, you’re the one so sure that you know what the quote is. I’m the one with the actual quote ready to embed as a video clip.

Christine sent an attachment: “TNGS06E011_ThereAreFourLights_clip.mkv”

Alan: WHAT

Christine: You know, I didn’t actually expect to actually have to use this clip, but I am so glad I came prepared for this. So, who’s the fake nerd again?

Alan: I refuse to answer that question. You may have won this time, but I’m still onto your fiendish ploy. I…may have been wrong. It was one mistake, but I won’t make another one.

Christine: So, are you ready to concede this?

Alan: vaj teHbe' ghew.

Christine: So you concede, then?

Alan: …what? I said, “Bite me, asshole”. How does that translate to me conceding?

Christine: Alan, that’s not what vaj teHbe' ghew means. What you said was “That’s not untrue”. I don’t think there’s a way to say “Bite me, asshole” in Klingon. At least as far as my vocabulary goes. You’re being a bit of a Peta’Q, to be honest. Might want to lay off the bloodwine.

Alan: FUCK. YOU.

Christine sent an attachment: “Data_laugh.gif”

Christine: I’ll see you around, Alan. Say hi to Steph for me, huh?

Christine disconnected from the chat.

   I slammed my fist down on the desk and swore for the next ten minutes. In that moment, I wished more than anything in the world that I could just drop dead and be rid of my crippling embarrassment. I had been owned by a fucking girl. What the fuck was happening???

---

  Stardate -363.4375 – The Basement – Programme Day Two

 “Alan! How goes the morning? You skipped breakfast this morning, Ted and I thought you might have died in your sleep!”

   I frowned as I walked into the common room. Steph wasn’t here, but she had sent me a message after my conversation with Christine to tell me that she’d be in classes for most of the day, which seemed to imply that wherever we were, it was still in the vicinity of Saint Almsworth. Perhaps even on the campus somewhere. Pippa and Nessa sat nearby, keeping watch over us. It seemed that so long as we didn’t try anything, or go out of bounds, we had the run of the basement. All two corridors and three public spaces of it.

   Steph had shown me round the other day, which basically extended to showing me the shared bathroom on the other side of the rec room from the dining area, and telling me how the lock on my bedroom door worked. She had also explained that while my fingerprint would open my own bedroom, the rec room doors, and the bathroom, I wouldn’t be able to open the exit or access any of the other bedrooms unless the occupant let me in.

   As I walked past Nessa, I had a sudden thought. She…looked a lot like Ted. She could easily be his sister, or a close cousin. Ted was pretty average-looking though, and it wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen his and Nessa’s face type before. Something nagged at me at the back of my mind, but I couldn’t quite figure out what it was. I shook my head, and walked over to the couches, which seemed to be where our little band of inmates had set up shop.  

   The only two boys in here right now were Ewan and Ted. Ewan was still grinning at me, whereas Ted had his head buried in a book. I had no idea where he’d got a book from- it wasn’t like we had a library down here- but I assumed Nessa had given it to him or something. I was curious where the other boys were. As far as I knew, Arthur was still in his cell, and from what Maria had said before she and the other sponsors took the rest of us to our rooms, he would be in there for the next day at the very least. But Danny and Katsuro were free to move around, right?

   “I wasn’t hungry. I had…things on my mind. You seen Katsuro and Danny? They haven’t been dragged off to the re-education room, have they?”

   “They were at breakfast,” Ewan explained as I sat down across from him and Ted. “Katsuro and Indira went into his bedroom to talk about an hour ago, and haven’t come out since. Really can’t get why that guy’s here with us. I mean, yeah, he beat his girlfriend, but, like, he’s definitely not the same sort of fucked-up as we apparently are. Danny ate breakfast, got up, and immediately went back to his room. Didn’t say a word the whole time. Dude is going to crack if he doesn’t lighten up a bit.”

   “Figures, I said, attempting to read the cover of Ted’s novel. “Ted, what are you reading? Where did you get that?”

   Ted pointed to a row of cabinets against the back wall. When I had come in here yesterday, they had been locked, red lights indicated they couldn’t be opened. One of them was currently displaying a green light, and was slightly ajar. Huh. I guess there was more than just awful television and the occasional judo demonstration for entertainment around these parts. Who knew?

   “Nessa opened it for me and got this out. She thought I might like to read a book. I think she’s trying to feed me info on Ned. This book has some sort of message in it somewhere, I just need to figure out where it’s hidden.”

   “For a moment there, Ted,” I said, sighing deeply. “I was really beginning to think this was you being normal, not just another part of your conspiracy nut bit. I’m going to go see what they have. Who knows, might be something good in there.”

   I got up, and walked over to the cabinet. There was indeed a small library of books inside, about two small shelves of various novels. To my delight, there were a small number of sci-fi novels, including a copy of The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin. Great utopian sci-fi novel, and one I would happily read again. I carefully pulled it out from the shelves, and walked back to the couch. Sitting down, I opened up the book, and began to read.

   “Huh. Maybe I should join in on the impromptu book club,” mused Ewan, looking over at the cabinet. “From the way Pippa is looking at us, it seems that our captors approve of your desire to paw through clumps of pressed wood pulp, ink, and glue.”

   I looked up and stared at him. “Are you seriously telling me you don’t enjoy reading?”

   He chuckled. “Oh, no, I like reading, but paper is such an outdated medium. I can carry an entire library in my back pocket, whereas lugging around the equivalent number of hard copy would be prohibitively awkward. But, right now? I appear to have no access to an electronic library. Back to the paper age, I guess.”

   He stood up, and walked over to the cabinet. I watched him curiously as he poked through the small selection of books, before pulling out a book with a black and gold cover. The title read “Circe”.

   “This looks interesting. I was always fond of The Odyssey in school. Plus, you know, Jason and the Argonauts was a childhood favourite.”

   “Seriously? A fantasy novel?” I remarked, turning a page of my own novel. “Honestly, fantasy is lame as fuck. It’s all dragons and swords and silly wizards in hats.”

   “Hey, don’t take the piss about the hats,” Ewan responded, his voice dripping with mock affront. “I’m guessing this means you were never into D&D.”

   “Please. D&D is lame,” I replied, dog earing my page and closing my book. I looked up at Ewan, and smirked. “Dark Heresy is so much better.”

   “Ah, so you don’t just like the bright and cheery sort of sci-fi then,” Ewan replied, grinning at me. “I would have pegged you more as the sort to play Traveller or one of the Star Trek tabletop games though.”

   “Never had anyone to play with,” I replied. “Even Dark Heresy was something I played a few times before the group kicked me out. I wasn’t very popular with other nerds, even though I was the one protecting them from outsiders. Hell, if Steph was telling the truth, even the society I thought I was a valued member of was trying to get rid of me. Fucking sycophants.”

   “Have you considered,” Ewan said, frowning. “That maybe you were the problem, not the women?”

   “Have you considered that maybe using your computer skills to take pictures of college girls was more than a little bit perverted?” I snapped back, annoyed. “I mean, seriously, I don’t care if what I did is considered “toxic” or “problematic”. At least I wasn’t committing a literal crime.”

   “Ouch,” Ewan said, wincing. “Look, I’m not going to pretend that what I did wasn’t criminal. I don’t regret doing it- at least not when I’m sober- but I know that it was illegal. I…really can’t explain what motivated me to start doing it. I think I came back to my apartment one night after a long day fixing computers which idiot customers had managed to break in increasingly confounding ways, figured I might as well see if I could do it, and then just kept doing it. Eventually it became easy to justify, you know? If I could do it, and they didn’t know, it was fine, and I might as well hand out the pics. They’d go to waste otherwise. But I never, not for a moment, thought it wasn’t illegal. I just didn’t have a reason to stop.”

   “Damn, OK, I guess I’m sorry,” I said, mildly ashamed I had touched a nerve with Ewan. He may be some sort of pervert, but he was at least a decent enough human being. “To be fair, at least you weren’t dealing in the same shit as Ted. I can only assume it was the sort of images and other material that tend to get you put on a register if you’re caught with it. Why the fuck Ted would sell that shit is beyond…”

   “…I thought it was a market to exploit.”

   We both turned to look at Ted, who was still buried in his book. His voice was quiet, little more than a whisper. He continued to speak, seemingly not even reading what was on the page.

   “It was me who convinced Ned we could fund our tuition by selling the stuff we did. He thought it was wrong, but when I showed him how much some of the stuff we ended up selling could go for on the black market, he came around. We got it all from darkweb forums. The sort of places where you can access this stuff for free so long as you know where to find it. It was distasteful shit. You can probably guess what sort of stuff it was. Never looked at any of it myself, other than to verify it was indeed what it purported to be. Fifty pounds per gig, up to three terabytes if you were willing to pay a premium. We were making more than enough to pay for our degrees. We thought we were untouchable.”

   I heard a small sound from the sponsors, and looked over. Nessa was staring at Ted, looking…fuck, she was crying. The nagging thought in the back of my head began to take a more defined shape. Could it be that Nessa…no, there was no way that could be right. She was…well…Nessa. I dismissed my suspicion as Ted’s paranoia becoming infectious. I was going crazy, seeing things that weren’t there. I refocused on Ted, who was currently breathing in and out to calm himself down.

   “We had gotten a message from an interested party, who wanted to get their hands on some very specific material. Some particular sick shit, truth be told. They were offering to pay way more than our usual rates, and as far as we could tell, they’d been referred through the usual channels. We got what they wanted, and arranged a hand off. They picked a meeting spot, and we walked right into a trap. Ned got grabbed by someone, and someone else tried to shove me up against a wall and stick a needle in my neck. I managed to push them away, and run. When I looked back, Ned was being dragged off, and my attacker was in pursuit. I got off campus and hid. Then I went on the run. Made it as far as Worthing, and hid out there at a AirBnB that I paid for with cash. Gave a fake name, laid low for the next three and a half years, moving around the place. I made what cash I could working with a fake ID, but I was running out of options. Eventually, I needed to return and grab some of our surplus stock so I could set my operation back up. And the rest is history.”

   “Jesus, Ted. So…your brother…you think these people got him?” Ewan said, staring at Ted. “You’re not just an insane paranoid conspiracy nut? I thought you were just insane, making shit up.”

   “I don’t know what happened to Ned,” Ted replied, looking up at us. He looked scared. “And I don’t know what they have in store for us. I keep thinking about my theories- the brainwashing, the human trafficking, the organ harvesting, the alien experimentation- and none of them have anything I can back them up with. I know that Ned was here though. And I’m going to find out what happened to him.”

   With that, Ted placed his book down on the coffee table, pages open to the last page he was on, and the paper flat on the metal surface. He then walked out of the room, and out of sight. Ewan watched him leave.

   “You don’t think that Ted’s brother might be one of the washouts they keep talking about, do you?”

   I looked in the direction of the door Ted had left through, and then at Nessa. She was staring towards the entrance, back turned to us, but I could see she had heard everything. I don’t think I had been seeing things after all. She had been crying. She definitely knew something about Ted’s brother, even if it was impossible that she might be Ted’s brother like a corner of my brain kept shouting in the voice of Rodney McKay. I picked up the book, and looked at the pages Ted had been reading. It was generic romance novel stuff, but at the bottom of the page, written in near pencilled script was an annotation.

   I wish Ted was here. God, I wish my brother was here to help me know what I should do.

   I closed the book, and leaned back. What the fuck was going on in this godforsaken place?

---

Stardate -363.54167 – The Basement – Programme Day Two

   Lunch was at least slightly better than the breakfast from yesterday. It was also better than what they had served yesterday, which had apparently been some vegetarian dish called “goulash”. Today, it was vegetable curry and rice. It wasn’t quite the same a bowl of ramen, but at least it wasn’t some weird East European thing. At the very least, all of our little group, minus the aggressive blockhead stewing in his cell, were present for the meal, and Katsuro even seemed…cheerful? He was smiling, and not just because of Ewan’s comedy screwball routine.

   “And so she just started taking off her clothes while still chatting on the phone. Like, who gets undressed while having a phone call with your doctor about your bloody cervical exam?”

   …on second thought, ‘comedy’ was a generous description. And ‘screwball’ was a bit too mild.

   “Anyway,” said Ewan, ceasing his chuckling, which only Ted had joined in on- Danny and Katsuro clearly shared my opinion that the current discussion was significantly devoid of any sort of humorous content- and turned to Katsuro. “Katsuro! Buddy! What did your girlfriend want to discuss with you? She give you any info on what the things they put into our midsections are? We never managed to come to a conclusion on that the day before Captain Kirk over there showed up.”

   I suddenly realised my face was flushed with anger. Kirk was nothing like me. Fuck, he could have at least compared me to Picard, the asshole. Hell, I’d even have taken a comparison to Archer! At least Archer had a really cute dog. Fortunately, before my anger could boil over into an impassioned speech about how Kirk was near the bottom of my list of idols, Katsuro calmly responded to the query.

   “Unfortunately, she did not share any details. We talked about…many things. I would prefer not to discuss them with you. They were quite personal.”

   “I didn’t say much to Monica,” Danny mumbled, my head swivelling to stare at him. He had been silent for the last half hour we’d been in the dinner room. He looked up at us, and I could see the bags under his eyes. He was a fucking mess. “She wanted to know why I wasn’t sleeping well. I told her I didn’t know. She told me that her job was to help me, and that she had helped another person who had done something wrong and regretted it. She said I could move past my shame.”

   “Danny, you can’t be serious,” Ted said, staring at him in disbelief. “She’s trying to fuck with you, man! She wants to get in your head and turn you into a puppet or some shit. Nessa came into my room right before lunch, and she was asking some fucking weird-ass shit.”

   I thought about bringing up my insane theory about Nessa, but decided it was the wrong time. I didn’t have any evidence to suggest that for whatever reason, Ned had decided to grow a pair of tits and start calling himself Nessa. Not yet anyway. Besides, why would they put a former inmate in charge of the fucking prison? That’s not how that shit works.

   “Can’t be weirder than my morning,” I said, speaking up for the first time. “I got a message from the girl who I had an argument with at the sci-fi society right before I got kidnapped. She seems to be in on it. She tried to pull some sort of psy-op on me and convince me she was being serious about being a real nerd. Then Steph messages me as well, and-get this- mentioned she’d be absent today because she has classes.”

   “Whoopee, she’s a university student,” snarked Ewan, rolling his eyes. “So she’s a kidnapper and an academic. That’s an overlap I never saw coming.”

   “No, Alan’s onto something,” said Ted, excitedly. “Alan, she grabbed you at Saint Almsworths, right? So there’s a good chance we’re still at the uni, or somewhere close enough for her to make an easy commute!”

   “Exactly,” I said, smugly. “So we have at least one bit of info about where we are. Not that it helps us make an escape, but at least we’re not being held in Hull or something.”

   “It would make sense. All of us were grabbed from Almsworth, whether it was in the city or the university,” Katsuro pondered. “I was grabbed from outside the hospital, Ted was grabbed while retrieving his stash, Alan was grabbed on the uni as well, and…uh…Ewan, your apartment was in Almsworth, right?”

   “Yeah, over near the memorial park. About three blocks from the uni.”

   “Right,” Kazuto said, nodding. “Arthur didn’t say where his apartment was, but he did burn down a local bar. And Danny…uh…actually, I don’t think Danny has ever actually said how he got here. I assume they grabbed him in his sleep or something.”

   “Well, it was quite easy to escort a drunk guy out of the bar and into a car after he spent an hour sobbing into my shoulder about what he’d done. Even easier once I got back and got some of the girls to help carry him inside. Snored like a baby the entire time.”

   My first reaction was to look towards the door, but it was closed, and Monica had not spontaneously appeared. Her voice was coming from somewhere else. Our sponsors were sitting at the tables in the rec room, watching us. Monica was with them, and she was…speaking into her phone. Crap, they had the place wired for audio?

   “I think it’s about time I mentioned we can listen in on your conversations remotely, and we record audio from all of the rooms along with the camera footage. While I’m glad none of you have made any foolhardy plans to escape as of yet, I would like to ensure that if you do decide to do that, we can hear you, and we will therefore stop you. Now, if you’re done eating, I think it’s time to make a proper start to our programme.”

   “Bitch, everyone except Alan has been sitting here twiddling our thumbs for most of the last week,” Ewan yelled, glaring up at the ceiling. “You’ve given us barely anything, except that we’re here to “become better people” and to “get over our toxic masculinity”! Is part of this “programme” explaining who the fuck you are, what the fuck this place is, and what the hell you intend to do with us? Oh, and why you put something in our bellies?”

   “I can’t promise that you’ll get all the answers you want. But you are right, Ewan. It’s time we told you what you can expect from the programme. I'll repeat myself once. If you’re all done with your food, come out here, and sit down. We’re going to have a little presentation.”

   Well that didn't sound slightly ominous. I took one last mouthful of curry, stood up, and walked to the door. This whole experience had been a confusing mess so far. If I was stuck here, I wanted answers. And if I didn't hear the right ones, I needed to find a way out. And fast.

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