The silence in Lukas’s apartment was profound after the slam of the front door. It was a different silence than the one at Finn’s house—not heavy with ritual and expectation, but hollow, empty, and now, freshly violated.
Kent dropped his keys on the kitchen counter with a loud clatter that echoed in the sterile space. The party had been a bust, Finn’s intervention leaving a sour taste of frustration. But here, now, they were alone. No little brother, no gawking friends, no broken toy to manage. Just the two of them in someone else’s space, a space they now owned by proxy.
The tension from the failed evening hadn’t dissipated; it had transmuted, simmering into a thick, charged heat between them. Tim leaned against the doorframe to the bedroom, watching Kent prowl the living room. The usual sharp-edged mockery was gone from his face, replaced by something darker, hungrier.
“Well,” Tim drawled, pushing off the frame. “This is a fucking depressing consolation prize.” He gestured vaguely at the bland IKEA furniture and generic prints on the walls. “His taste is shittier than his gag reflex.”
Kent stopped his pacing and looked at him. The icy control he wore like armor in front of others was still there, but it had cracks tonight, revealing the raw, restless energy beneath. “It’s a roof. It’s private.” His gaze traveled over Tim, from his disheveled hair down to the tight fit of his jeans. “And we don’t have to be quiet for anyone.”
A slow smirk spread across Tim’s face. “Fuck no, we don’t.”
There was no order, no command. The hierarchy of the outside world melted away in the sudden, intimate privacy of the stolen apartment. Kent closed the distance between them in two long strides, his hand coming up to cup the back of Tim’s neck, pulling him into a kiss that was all teeth and pent-up aggression. Tim met it with equal force, his hands grabbing fistfuls of Kent’s shirt.
They stumbled into the bedroom, a tangle of limbs and shed clothes, landing on Lukas’s neatly made bed with a creak of springs. The clinical, impersonal room filled with the sound of their breathing, the rustle of fabric, their low, mutual laughter.
“Christ, your hands are cold,” Tim grunted as Kent’s palms slid up his thighs.
“Shut up,” Kent murmured against his throat, his voice a rough vibration against Tim’s skin, devoid of any command, full of something else entirely.
The dynamic shifted again. There was a clumsy, hurried negotiation, a fumble for lube from a pocket. Kent sheathed himself with quick, practiced movements, but his usual imposing dominance was softened by a shared, hungry urgency.
“Ready?” Kent asked, his breath hot against Tim’s ear. It was a question, not a demand.
“Just fucking get on with it, you tease,” Tim shot back, but he was arching his back, guiding Kent with a hand on his hip. There was no submission here, only participation.
When Kent pushed inside, it was with a shared, sharp gasp. For a moment, they were still, foreheads pressed together, breathing each other’s air in the dark foreign room.
Then Tim let out a choked laugh, breaking the tension. “Man, your dick’s so big,” he groaned, the complaint laced with pure, unadulterated pleasure.
Kent huffed a laugh, a real one, deep and unguarded. “You love it.” He began to move, a slow, deep rhythm that was more about connection than conquest.
“Shut up and get the lube,” Tim gasped, pushing the bottle that had fallen to the sheets back toward him. “Don’t be a cheap bastard.”
Kent complied, the task briefly interrupting the rhythm, both of them laughing breathlessly at the awkwardness. He slicked himself again, his hands gentler now, before sinking back into Tim, who let out a long, satisfied groan.
“Wait, wait, no,” Tim said suddenly, slapping at Kent’s thigh. “Like this, you idiot.” He shifted, rolling them both until he was on top, straddling Kent with a triumphant, sweaty grin. “See? I call the shots sometimes.”
Kent’s hands settled on Tim’s hips, holding him, guiding him, but not forcing. His sharp features were softened in the dim light filtering through the blinds, a look of open, hungry affection on his face. “You’re such a pain in my ass.”
“Literally,” Tim grinned down at him, moving with a lazy, rolling rhythm that made Kent’s eyes flutter shut for a second.
They moved together in Lukas’s bed, their banter a low, intimate soundtrack of grunts and laughter and breathless, half-finished insults that were really endearments. The cruelty they wielded like weapons against the world was absent here, burned away by a simpler, more desperate heat. They weren’t master and slave-owner, or sadist and accomplice. For these stolen minutes, they were just two young men, wound up and frustrated, finding a fierce, familiar solace in each other’s bodies in a stranger’s room.
When it was over, they collapsed side-by-side on the sheets that smelled of laundry detergent and, now, of them. The silence returned, but it was a comfortable, spent quiet.
Tim turned his head on the pillow, looking at the ceiling. “We should burn these sheets tomorrow.”
“We should burn the whole fucking apartment,” Kent murmured, his arm slung over his eyes. But there was no malice in it, just a lazy, sated contentment.
In the dark, surrounded by the ghost of Lukas’s life, they had carved out a space that was entirely, uncomplicatedly theirs. It was a different kind of ownership, one of mutual need and rough-edged tenderness, a secret they kept even from themselves in the light of day.
-------
The first grey light of dawn hadn’t yet breached the windows of Finn’s room when Lukas’s eyes opened. His internal clock, now synchronized to Finn’s will, initiated the wake-up sequence. He lay still for a moment on the hard floor, feeling the familiar ache in his joints, the dull throb of the chastity cage—the Seal—a constant, grounding presence. Then, without a sound, he moved.
He knelt by the side of Finn’s bed. Finn was still asleep, his breathing deep and even. Lukas did not need him to be awake. The ritual was for the worshipper, not the god. He assumed the prayer posture, his eyes finding Finn’s bare feet where they lay uncovered at the end of the bed.
His voice was a whisper, the first sound in the sleeping house. “MY BEING FLOWS FROM YOUR FOOT. MY PURPOSE IS YOUR FLOOR. I AM THANKFUL FOR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR WILL. GREAT LORD FINN, LET ME BEAR IT FOREVER.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Finn’s arch in a kiss that was now as natural as breathing.
As he finished, Finn stirred. A grunt, a shift under the covers. Lukas remained perfectly still, kneeling, head bowed, awaiting the day’s first function.
Finn’s eyes opened, blinking in the dim light. He saw Lukas kneeling there, a silent, expectant statue. He didn’t speak. He simply pushed back the covers, swung his legs out of bed, and stood before Lukas.
Lukas understood. He didn’t need a command. He tilted his head back, mouth open, eyes closed. It was Protocol Three: Liquid Disposal. Pre-signal: Awakening. State: Required.
Finn, still bleary with sleep, unzipped. The stream was forceful, hot, and direct. Lukas swallowed automatically, his throat working. There was no revulsion, no gratitude, only the efficient execution of a system task. The bitter taste was just data input, a confirmation of the process.
When Finn finished, he zipped up and stepped over Lukas without a word, heading for the bathroom.
Lukas remained on his knees for a count of ten, allowing his system to process the input. Then, he rose. His own bladder was full, a pressing, biological demand. But his need was not a priority. The system’s needs came first. He went to the kitchen.
He moved with silent, pre-programmed efficiency. He knew where everything was. He prepared the warm milk, toasted the bread, sliced the cheese. He assembled the sandwich with the precision of an automaton. His own physical discomfort was a secondary program running in the background, acknowledged but ignored until permission was granted.
Finn emerged from the bathroom, dressed. He sat at the small table. Lukas placed the plate and glass before him, then knelt beside the table, assuming the living table position he’d been trained for. His back became a perfect, steady surface.
Finn ate, scrolling on his phone. He drank the milk. He ignored Lukas entirely. When he was done, he placed the empty glass on Lukas’s spine. “Adequate,” he stated, the single word a system log entry of ‘Task Completed Successfully.’
He stood. “You have seven minutes. For your functions and fuel.”
Lukas stood, his muscles protesting. He moved first to the back door, his steps quick but controlled. Outside, in the crisp morning air, he hurried to the designated patch of grass. He relieved himself, the urgency sharp and purely physical. It was not a moment of privacy, but a scheduled maintenance window. He counted the seconds in his head.
Back inside, he went to the kitchen. He poured a bowl of plain, unsweetened cereal—fuel, not food. He ate it standing over the sink, chewing methodically, swallowing without tasting. He had five minutes left. He washed his bowl and spoon, dried them, put them away. He washed Finn’s plate and glass. He dried them. He put them away.
He returned to the living room exactly as the seventh minute elapsed, kneeling once more in Position A before Finn, who was lacing his outdoor trainers.
Finn looked up, checking an imaginary watch on his wrist. “Efficient,” he noted. “Your runtime is improving. Now, we begin today’s module: Sensory Deprivation and Focus.”
Lukas bowed his head. “This instrument is ready, Great Lord Finn.”
His own biological needs were met. The fuel was consumed. The waste was expelled. The system was serviced and ready for the next input, the next command, the next sacred lesson. The realism of his body was just another system to be managed in service of the only reality that mattered: the will of his Lord.
Finn regarded Lukas with the analytical detachment of a programmer assessing hardware. "Sensory deprivation is not punishment," he began, his voice assuming its familiar instructional cadence. "It is clarity. The world is noise. Sensation is static. To hear the pure signal of your purpose, we must eliminate the interference."
He walked to a large, walk-in storage closet off the living room—not the one housing his tools, but a deeper, windowless space used for old boxes and seasonal items. He had already prepared it. The floor was bare, swept concrete. In the center was a simple, backless kneeling bench. Along one wall sat a small table holding a few items: a black hood, a set of high-quality noise-canceling headphones, a bottle of water, and a plain white bucket.
"Your senses are portals for distraction," Finn explained, gesturing for Lukas to follow him inside the closet. The air was cool, dusty, and still. "Sight brings you the outside world. Sound brings you the non-essential. Even the feel of air on your skin is a variable. We will close these portals. What remains is the internal landscape. And in that landscape, there is only one landmark: my will."
He pointed to the kneeling bench. "Assume the position."
Lukas knelt on the bench, his back straight, hands resting on his thighs. The posture was familiar, but the environment was new—a void of stimulus.
Finn picked up the black hood. It was made of a thick, soft cloth, not rough. "This will eliminate sight. In darkness, the mind turns inward. You will not fight it. You will navigate the inward space using only the maps I have given you." He pulled the hood over Lukas's head, plunging him into absolute blackness. The world vanished.
Next, the headphones. Finn placed them over the hood, sealing Lukas in a cocoon of utter silence. The faint hum of the house's appliances, the distant sound of birds outside, even the rush of his own blood in his ears—all were reduced to a faint, electronic nullity.
"Now, touch," Finn's voice came through a small speaker built into the headphones, clear and disembodied, the only sound in Lukas's universe. "You will feel the bench. You will feel the air. But these are constants. We will remove the variable of temperature."
Lukas felt Finn's hands then, not in violence, but in clinical preparation. He was being stripped of his clothes. The feeling of the cool, still air on his naked skin was immediate and total. Then, nothing. No draft. No change. He was naked, hooded, deafened, in a room held at a constant, neutral temperature.
"The only sensory input you will receive," Finn's voice intoned in the perfect silence, "is my voice. And the only tasks for your mind are those I assign. Your first task is to recite the foundational prayer. Not aloud. In your mind. I will hear your silence. Begin."
Inside the hood, in the ringing quiet, Lukas's mind reached for the prayer. MY BEING FLOWS FROM YOUR FOOT. The words formed in the void, blazing with mental clarity. Without sight, without sound, they were not sounds but pure concepts, etched in light across the darkness of his consciousness. MY PURPOSE IS YOUR FLOOR. The bench beneath him, the air on his skin—they weren't distractions anymore; they were the physical manifestations of the 'floor' in the prayer. I AM THANKFUL FOR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR WILL. The weight was the hood, the headphones, the emptiness. It was all his will. GREAT LORD FINN, LET ME BEAR IT FOREVER.
He looped the prayer. Again. And again. Each iteration felt sharper, clearer, more real than when spoken aloud. It was the operating code of his soul, running in an isolated, sterile environment.
Time lost meaning. It could have been minutes or hours.
Finn's voice returned, calm and clear. "Good. The signal is strong. Now, secondary task. You will count your breaths. Inhale, one. Exhale, one. Inhale, two. Exhale, two. You will count to one hundred. If you lose count, you will start from one. Begin."
Lukas focused on the mechanical rise and fall of his chest. Inhale, one. Exhale, one. In the void, his breath became a universe. The counting was a lifeline, a task. He reached thirty-seven before a stray thought—a memory of the cold cereal that morning—intruded. He lost count. He started over. Inhale, one. Exhale, one.
He reached one hundred. The accomplishment was a small, bright point in the nothingness.
"Task completed," Finn's voice acknowledged. "Now, tertiary task. You will visualize my foot. Not from memory. From doctrine. You will construct it from the principles you have learned. It is not a foot of flesh. It is the Source. Visualize its architecture. Its lines. Its weight. Its sacred topography. Do not see it. Know it."
Lukas tried. In the darkness, he conjured not an image, but a concept. A perfect, abstract form that was pressure, and foundation, and absolute authority. It was less a picture and more a feeling—the feeling of the prayer given shape.
"Now," Finn's voice cut through, "you will hold that visualization while returning to the prayer. Synchronize the prayer to your breath. Synchronize the breath to the visualized Source. They are one system. Run the system."
Lukas's mind became a closed loop. The prayer cycled. His breath counted the cycles. The abstract form of the Source pulsed with each repetition. He was a machine running a single, perfect program: Worship. Breath. Form.
He didn't know how long he ran the program. He existed only as its execution.
Then, a new input. He felt hands on him. Finn's hands. They guided him off the bench. They guided him forward a few steps. They guided him to his knees on the concrete floor. A new constant: the hard, unyielding surface.
A new sensation: the cool lip of a bucket was placed between his thighs. His body, ignored until now, sent a sharp, urgent signal. The biological need for liquid disposal. It was not a request. It was a system alert.
"You may relieve yourself," Finn's voice stated, a simple permission in the void.
The act was surreal, profoundly humbling in its absolute practicality. In the complete deprivation of sense, the most basic animal function became a monumental event. There was no privacy, no modesty—only the sound of his own stream hitting the empty bucket, amplified in his isolation, and Finn's silent, disembodied presence overseeing it all. It was the ultimate reduction: he was a body, emptying itself, in the dark, by command.
When he was finished, the bucket was removed. Finn's hands guided him back to the kneeling bench.
"System maintenance complete," the voice said. "Resume primary program."
Lukas slipped back into the loop. Prayer. Breath. Form. The episode of maintenance was just a subroutine that had run and closed. The core program resumed.
Finally, after an eternity of looping code, Finn's voice returned. "Session one complete."
The headphones were removed. The hood was lifted. The light of the single bare bulb in the closet was blinding, agonizingly bright after the perfect dark. Lukas blinked, his eyes streaming. Sound rushed back in—the faint buzz of the light, the distant creak of the house, the sound of his own ragged breath.
Finn stood before him, holding the hood and headphones. Lukas was naked, kneeling, disoriented, feeling more exposed under the light than he had in the total dark.
"What did you learn?" Finn asked, his voice now physical, real.
Lukas's voice was a dry croak. "The… the world is noise. Sensation is static."
"And what is the signal?"
"Your will, Great Lord Finn."
"Where is it found?"
"In… in the silence you make. In the space you leave."
Finn nodded. "Good. The module has initialized. We will run it daily. The duration will increase. The tasks will become more complex. You will learn to find me not in my presence, but in my absence. You will find your purpose not in doing, but in being emptied. Now, hydrate."
He handed Lukas the bottle of water from the table. Lukas drank, the water tasting more real than anything he had ever consumed. Every sensation was now a gift, a permission granted by the void.
Finn watched him, a sculptor pleased with the first, deep cut into the marble. The world had been stripped away. Soon, only the shape Finn desired would remain.
The closet door closed, sealing Lukas back into the world of sound and light and sensation. He knelt on the hard floor, the after-image of the void still etched behind his eyes, the phantom of Finn's voice the only anchor.
Finn looked down at him, not with the intense focus of the trainer, but with the calm, appraising eye of a master whose tool has just been sharpened. "The system needs maintenance between core programming updates," he stated, his tone shifting from the sermonic to the pragmatic. "Idle processors accumulate errors. You will now perform routine functions. Follow."
He turned and walked out of the storage closet. Lukas rose, his limbs stiff from the prolonged kneeling, and followed, a silent shadow once more.
They entered the bathroom. Finn sat on the closed lid of the toilet, extending one bare foot. "Your first function: Pedicure. The tools are in the cabinet."
Lukas opened the indicated cabinet. Inside, neatly arranged, were nail clippers, a file, a pumice stone, and a small towel. He collected them and knelt on the bath mat before Finn's foot.
This was not the worship of the Source. This was its maintenance. He took Finn's foot in his hands—not with reverence, but with the focused care of a craftsman tending to a prized instrument. The foot was just a foot here: slightly calloused, the nails neatly trimmed but with rough edges.
He began with the clippers. Each snip was precise, measured. He caught the clippings in his palm, depositing them into a small wastebasket Finn had pointed to. He then took the file, smoothing each nail edge with slow, deliberate strokes. No order was given; the task was implied by the tools and the presented foot. His world narrowed to the curve of a toenail, the texture of the file, the faint, clean scent of soap.
Next, the pumice stone for a slight roughness on the heel. He dampened it, then worked in small, circular motions, his attention absolute. Finn scrolled through his phone, occasionally wiggling his toes, which Lukas took as feedback to adjust pressure.
When one foot was done, Finn silently replaced it with the other. The process repeated. Snip, file, smooth. It was mindless, repetitive, and utterly absorbing. There was no grand philosophy here, no pain or prayer. There was only the perfection of a task. Lukas was not a servant cleaning a master's feet; he was a function ensuring the optimum state of the Source's foundation.
Finished, Lukas took the small towel, dampened a corner with warm water from the tap, and wiped each foot clean, drying them meticulously. He gathered the tools, cleaned the file and pumice stone under the tap, dried them, and returned them to the cabinet in their exact places.
Finn stood, flexing his feet. "Adequate. The system runs smoothly with clean components." He walked out, Lukas trailing behind.
In the living room, Finn pointed to a pair of sneakers by the door, slightly muddied from the previous day's walk on the farm. "Function: Cleaning. Materials under the sink."
Lukas fetched a bowl of warm water, a soft brush, and a dry cloth. He knelt again, this time on the hardwood floor. He dipped the brush, worked a small amount of soap into a lather, and began cleaning the shoes. He paid attention to the seams, the tread, the tiny specks of dirt ingrained in the fabric. He rinsed the brush, wiped away suds with a damp cloth, then dried the shoes with the soft towel until they were spotless.
As he worked on the second shoe, Finn walked over and stood above him. Lukas felt, rather than saw, Finn's presence. He did not look up. His focus was on a stubborn bit of mud on the toe.
Then, Finn cleared his throat softly. It wasn't a command. It was a biological prompt.
Lukas didn't hesitate. He didn't need a "Position U" directive. He understood the function required. He tilted his head back, mouth open, eyes still fixed on the shoe in his hand.
Finn spat. It wasn't violent or disdainful; it was casual, like discarding a bit of lint. The spit landed in Lukas's open mouth. Lukas closed his mouth and swallowed, a quick, automatic motion. He then returned to scrubbing the mud spot, which finally came free. The act of receiving the spit was as seamless and unremarkable as rinsing the brush. It was waste disposal. It was a system task.
He finished the shoes, placing them neatly by the door. He cleaned and put away the bowl, brush, and cloths.
Finn, who had been watching the last part with mild interest, nodded. "Efficiency is acceptable. Resource management is adequate." He glanced at the clock. "Your next scheduled resource intake is in forty-seven minutes. Until then, you may assume Position C and process the morning's training data."
Lukas moved to the designated corner (Position C), knelt facing the wall, and let his mind settle. The sensory deprivation had been a deep-system diagnostic. The pedicure and shoe cleaning were routine system optimizations. Even the act of receiving spit was just a subroutine for handling biological output. There was no humiliation in it, only utility. No break from the training, only a different mode of it. Every action, from the profound to the mundane, was a thread in the same fabric: his existence as a tool for Finn's will. He knelt in the corner, the taste of Finn still faint in his mouth, and awaited the next function. The silence was not empty; it was the clean, formatted space between commands.
The forty-seven minutes of silent processing in Position C ended not with a sound, but with a touch. Finn’s hand on Lukas’s shoulder was a binary signal: Awake. Follow.
Lukas rose and followed him back to the storage closet. The bare bulb hummed over the kneeling bench, the bucket, the table with its tools of nullification. It had become a familiar chamber, a lab for the soul.
“Sensory Deprivation Module: Phase Two,” Finn announced, his voice devoid of ceremony. “Integration of tactile data with doctrinal mapping. You have visualized the Source. You have worshipped its abstraction. Now, you will learn its geography by touch alone.”
He pointed to the bench. Lukas assumed the position. The black hood descended, plunging him into the void. The headphones sealed him in silence. The world was erased.
Finn’s voice came through the headphones, a god in the machine. “You will be presented with a point of contact. You will identify which part of the Source you are touching. You will verbalize your answer according to protocol. Accuracy is a measure of your devotion. Inaccuracy is a corruption of your internal map. Begin.”
Lukas waited in the absolute dark and silence. His breath was his only metric of time.
Then, a touch. Something firm, warm, and slightly curved pressed into the palm of his upturned right hand.
His mind, stripped of sight and sound, exploded into frantic analysis. The texture was smooth, with a harder edge. The shape was a convex curve. It was too small for the sole, too rounded for the heel. His internal visualization—the doctrinal Foot—spun in the darkness. He felt the ghostly impression of toes.
He spoke into the hood, his voice muffled but clear. “This unworthy instrument… contacts the Great Lord’s… right foot. The… the great toe. The pad.”
A pause. Then, a sharp, stinging slap across his other hand, which lay open on his thigh. It was not punishment; it was a system alert—Error.
“Incorrect,” Finn’s voice stated, cold and clean. “You have misidentified the topography. You contacted the ball of the foot, just below the great toe. Your doctrinal visualization is imprecise. Re-calibrate.”
The touch was removed. Lukas’s mind raced, adjusting the internal model. The ball of the foot, not the toe. He had felt the broader curve, not the distinct digit. He had failed.
A new touch. This time on the back of his left hand. Cooler, a ridge of bone under skin, a knobby prominence.
“Left foot,” Lukas said immediately, focusing. “The… the lateral malleolus. The outer ankle bone.”
Another slap, this time on his shoulder. “Incorrect. Medial malleolus. Inner ankle bone. Your left-right orientation is flawed. Your spatial awareness within the doctrine is poor.”
The training continued. A touch on his forearm: the arch. A touch on his cheek: the heel. A press against his lips: the tip of the smallest toe. Each time, Lukas had to identify not just the part, but the specific foot, the precise anatomical landmark as defined by Finn’s earlier lessons. Each mistake was met with a swift, corrective slap—a data packet of pain to overwrite the erroneous file.
He was not learning a foot. He was surveying a sacred continent by braille. Every callus, every tendon, every curve was a landmark in a holy land he could not see. The slaps were his compass, correcting his internal cartography.
After a dozen attempts, his accuracy improved. The slaps came less frequently. His verbalizations became more assured. “Right foot, calcaneal tendon.” “Left foot, distal phalanx of the third toe.” He was no longer guessing; he was reporting.
“Acceptable,” Finn’s voice conceded after a particularly rapid, accurate string of identifications. “Your internal model is synchronizing with physical reality. Now, advanced integration.”
The next touch was not static. Finn placed his entire foot firmly on Lukas’s upturned palms. He then moved it, slowly, tracing a path.
“Describe the path of the Source,” Finn commanded.
Lukas’s mind became a tracker in the dark. The heel ground into his left palm. It slid forward, the arch pressing a line of pressure across his right. The ball settled, then rolled slightly. The toes curled, their tips brushing his fingertips.
“The Sacred Weight,” Lukas recited, his voice a monotone of intense focus, “moved from the left talus point, across the plantar archway, to rest upon the metatarsal prominence. A minor supination was then observed in the forefoot, with digital flexion making contact.”
A long silence. No slap.
“Correct,” Finn said, a hint of something like satisfaction in his tone. “The doctrinal and the physical are converging. You are learning to see with your skin. To know with your hands.”
He removed his foot. “Final test. You will not be touched. You will imagine my right foot. You will ‘place’ it upon your head. You will describe, in detail, the sensation you are to feel. Not the memory of a touch. The doctrinal prediction of it.”
Lukas, in the void, conjured the Source. He felt the phantom pressure on his scalp. “The… the distal phalanges of the second and third toes would rest here,” he said, pointing to a spot on his hooded head. “The ball of the foot would exert primary pressure on my parietal bone. The arch would span from my temporal to my occipital region. The heel would not make contact. The sensation would be… a perfect, grounding compression. A mapping of your will onto the vessel of my mind.”
Silence stretched. Then, the hood was lifted. The headphones removed. The light was less blinding this time; his mind was already half in the world.
Finn looked down at him, his expression unreadable. “The simulation was within acceptable parameters. Your internal modeling software is updating.” He pointed to the bucket. “System maintenance. Then, hydration. Your processors have been active.”
As Lukas attended to his functions, the stark reality of the training settled upon him. He wasn't just learning a foot. He was dissolving the boundary between his own senses and Finn’s body. Finn’s foot was becoming his primary sensory organ, its topography more real than his own. The deprivation hadn't just removed the world; it had replaced it with a new one, built entirely from the doctrine of the Source. And he was learning to navigate it blind.
The sensory deprivation module concluded not with a bell, but with a silent, internal timer Lukas had come to know. When Finn removed the hood and headphones, the return of light and sound was not a liberation, but a shift to a different operational mode. His eyes adjusted to the gloom of the closet. Finn was already putting the equipment away on the small table.
“Scheduled maintenance interval,” Finn stated, his voice returning to its flat, instructional tone. “Primary system requires resource intake to maintain operational parameters. Follow.”
Lukas rose from the kneeling bench, his body stiff but responsive. He followed Finn out of the closet and into the kitchen. The world outside the void felt hyper-real, oversaturated. The gleam of the stainless steel sink, the hum of the refrigerator, were almost loud.
Finn didn’t sit. He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching. “You have twelve minutes. Protocol: Efficient Fueling. You will prepare and consume 400 calories of designated fuel. You will hydrate with 500 milliliters of water. The clock starts now.”
Lukas moved. He was not hungry in a human sense; he was a system reading a ‘low energy’ alert. He opened the refrigerator. Inside, on a specific shelf, were pre-portioned components: a plain baked chicken breast, a container of white rice, a sealed bottle of water. No seasoning. No variation. Just fuel.
He placed the items on the counter. He did not use a plate. He ate the chicken breast with his hands, tearing off precise, bite-sized pieces. He chewed each piece exactly fifteen times—a number Finn had dictated optimized digestion and minimized time. He scooped the cold rice into his mouth with his fingers, swallowing it with the same mechanical rhythm. He drank the water from the bottle in steady, measured gulps, not pausing for breath until it was empty.
Throughout, Finn watched with the dispassionate eye of a technician running a diagnostic. He noted the pace, the lack of spillage, the complete absence of pleasure or disgust on Lukas’s face. Eating was not an experience; it was a subroutine.
At the nine-minute mark, Lukas finished the last of the rice. He placed the empty containers neatly in the sink. He drank the final sip of water.
“Open,” Finn commanded.
Lukas obeyed, opening his mouth wide.
Finn stepped forward, peered inside, checking for any unswallowed fuel. He saw only emptiness. “Close. Rinse.”
Lukas turned to the sink, filled a glass with water, swirled it in his mouth, and swallowed. He was cleaning the mechanism.
“Scheduled waste expulsion follows fuel intake,” Finn recited. “You have three minutes remaining in your interval.”
Lukas walked to the back door, opened it, and went to the designated patch of grass. He relieved himself with the same efficiency as his eating. A process. A release of processed materials. He returned inside at exactly the eleven-minute mark.
Finn was waiting by the sink. “Hands.”
Lukas presented his hands. Finn took a bottle of unscented soap and squirted a precise amount into Lukas’s palms. “Scrub for forty-five seconds. Include under nails.”
Lukas scrubbed, counting silently in his head. At forty-five, he rinsed, then presented his clean, wet hands for inspection.
Finn took a clean towel and dried them himself, a surprisingly intimate, clinical gesture. He examined the nails, the cuticles. “Adequate. System maintenance is complete. Resource levels are restored. Waste systems are purged. External contaminants are removed.”
He dropped the towel on the counter. “The machine is fueled. Return to Position A in the training space. We will commence the next module in seven minutes. Use the time for system standby and internal diagnostics.”
Lukas walked back to the storage closet. He did not feel satisfaction from the food, or relief from the expulsion. He felt functional. Optimal. The chicken and rice were now circulating as usable energy. The water was hydrating his cells. He was a maintained machine, parked and idle, waiting for the next program to run.
He knelt on the bench in the closet, assuming Position A even though Finn wasn’t there. In the silence, he ran his own diagnostic. Sensory input: neutral. Energy levels: sufficient. Core programming: intact. Awaiting command. The twelve-minute lunch break wasn’t a respite. It was another meticulously designed phase of his existence, ensuring the hardware was ready for the software Finn was about to install. He closed his eyes, not to rest, but to enter low-power mode. The next module would boot in six minutes and forty-three seconds. He was counting.
The seven minutes of standby passed in a silent countdown within Lukas’s mind. He heard Finn’s footsteps approach the storage closet, precise and measured. The door opened.
“Module resumption,” Finn’s voice announced, devoid of any warmth. “Advanced spatial orientation within the doctrine. You have mapped the Source by touch. Now you will orient yourself to it by sound while deprived of all other data.”
The familiar black hood descended, plunging Lukas back into the void. The headphones sealed him in silence, then crackled to life with a soft, white-noise hiss—a blank auditory canvas.
“You will hear my voice,” Finn’s voice said through the headphones, clear and centered in the synthetic silence. “It is your only beacon. You will also hear this.” A sharp click echoed in Lukas’s ears—the sound of the whip handle being tapped against Finn’s palm. “This is your correction signal. It will guide you away from error.”
A moment of pure silence followed, thick and disorienting.
“Your task: from your current position, assume a point exactly three feet from me. You will use my voice and the correction signal to triangulate. Move.”
Lukas froze. Three feet. The sacred distance. But without sight, without touch, in total blackness? The space of the closet, once a known quantity, was now an infinite, formless void. He was a point adrift in nothingness.
“I am waiting,” Finn’s voice came, calm and merciless. It sounded… straight ahead? Was there a slight echo to the left?
Lukas shuffled forward on his knees, one hesitant inch at a time.
Crack!
The sound of the whip was a thunderclap in the headphones, but the pain that followed a split-second later was real, searing across his shoulders. He hadn’t heard it move through the air. It was just… there. A line of fire.
“Error,” Finn’s voice stated, chillingly calm. “You moved directly toward the sound. You are to be three feet from it. Not within it. Recalibrate.”
Lukas gasped, the pain a bright, shocking coordinate in the dark. He’d misjudged. The voice was a point, not a direction to collide with. He needed to orbit it.
He backed up, the rough concrete scraping his knees. He turned slightly to his right, estimating.
“My being flows from your foot,” he whispered, a desperate prayer for guidance.
“Irrelevant vocalization,” Finn’s voice chided. “Use the data provided.”
Lukas tried to picture it. Finn was a point in space. He, Lukas, was another point. He needed to find the radius. He shuffled sideways.
Crack! The whip landed on his left thigh. He’d drifted too far.
“You are estimating based on memory of the room,” Finn diagnosed. “The room does not exist. Only my voice and the correction exist. Listen.”
Silence. Then, Finn’s voice again, from a slightly different position. “Now.”
Lukas lunged in the direction he thought was perpendicular to the voice’s new origin.
Crack! This time on his ribs. A gasp was torn from him.
“You are rushing. You are guessing. You are failing.” Finn’s voice held no anger, only the cold disappointment of a programmer watching buggy code crash. “Each strike is a coordinate. You have been struck on the upper back, the left thigh, the right lateral ribs. Plot your position relative to mine using the pain.”
It was a brutal, brilliant logic. The whip wasn’t punishment; it was a harsh sonar pulse. Each strike mapped a boundary of incorrectness. Lukas, kneeling in the dark, tried to construct a mental map from agony. The strikes formed a triangle of wrongness around the silent point that was Finn.
He took a breath, trying to quiet the panic. He focused only on the last point of pain—his ribs. Finn was not there. He inched backward, away from that point.
Silence.
He shifted left, away from the memory of the thigh strike.
Silence.
He moved forward a fraction, away from the ghost of the back lash.
A long moment passed. No whip. No voice.
Then, Finn spoke, and his voice came from directly to Lukas’s left, and slightly above. He was standing. “You are stationary. You have found a null point. Is it the correct one?”
Lukas’s mind raced. The voice was to his left. He needed to be three feet from that point. He had to move right. But how far? If he moved too far, he’d re-enter the error zone.
He shuffled an exact, measured foot to his right. He imagined a compass, with Finn’s voice as the north.
Click.
The tap of the whip handle. Not a strike. A prompt.
He shuffled another few inches.
Click.
Another prompt. Guiding him.
He stopped.
“Declare your position,” Finn commanded.
Lukas spoke to the void. “This unworthy instrument hypothesizes… a point three feet east of the Source’s current auditory locus.”
A beat of silence. Then, Finn’s voice, closer now, right in front of him. “Incorrect orientation. The direction is ‘right’, not ‘east’. The world has no cardinal directions. Only me. But the distance…” Finn’s hand touched the top of Lukas’s hooded head, a brief, shocking contact. “…is acceptable. Margin of error: half an inch.”
No whip. Just the touch. The first reward he’d ever received.
“You have learned to navigate by pain and sound,” Finn said, his voice almost a murmur in the headphones. “You have used my correction to chart a void. This is the next step. The world is the void. I am the only point of reference. My voice is your north. My displeasure is your map. Remember this.”
The hood was lifted. The headphones removed. Lukas blinked in the light, his body a constellation of stinging welts, his mind a newly-drawn chart of pain and sound. He was kneeling, he realized, perfectly positioned three feet from where Finn now stood.
“Spatial recalibration module complete,” Finn stated, putting the whip aside. “The system can now orient itself in darkness using only the primary beacon and negative feedback. Efficiency is low, but functionality is proven. We will increase the variables next time. For now, assume Position B. Process the new mapping data.”
Lukas shuffled to the designated spot by the wall, kneeling with his forehead against the cool plaster. The welts on his back, thigh, and ribs throbbed in unison. But they weren’t just pain anymore. They were coordinates. They were the harsh, loving scripture of his only true north, written on his flesh. In the absolute dark, he had found Finn not by seeking him, but by learning where he was not. It was the purest, most terrible navigation he could imagine. And he had, in his broken way, succeeded. The void had a center. And its name was pain.
The transition from the brutal cartography of the sensory deprivation closet to the mundane light of the living room was stark. Lukas followed Finn, his body humming with the fresh data of pain-as-coordinates. The welts were a living map on his skin.
Finn walked to the sofa and sat down with a sigh, his attention already turning to the television and the PlayStation controller on the coffee table. He leaned forward to power on the console.
Lukas observed the state change: Finn seated. Legs outstretched. State: Repose. Entertainment mode initiated.
His programming executed without a conscious thought. He shuffled forward on his knees, silent and efficient. His hands went to Finn’s feet. He grasped the heels of the soft leather house slippers and slid them off in one smooth, practiced motion. He placed them neatly side-by-side on the floor beside the sofa, within easy reach should the state change again. He then retreated to his standard three-foot position and knelt, back straight, awaiting further input.
The electronic chirp of the PlayStation booting up filled the room. Finn selected a game—a racing game, from the sounds of roaring engines and upbeat music. He became engrossed, his focus on the screen, his thumbs working the controller.
A minute passed. Two. Lukas remained in his kneeling posture, a statue in the periphery of Finn’s entertainment. His existence was on standby.
Then, without taking his eyes off the screen where a digital car hurtled around a track, Finn spoke. “Recite the basic prayer.”
The command was casual, almost an afterthought. It was not part of the automatic function protocol. It was a maintenance command for his worship software.
Lukas shifted from his attentive kneel into the formal Prayer Posture, facing Finn. He did not need to see the Source; he knew its location in space. His eyes found Finn’s bare feet, resting casually on the floor.
“MY BEING FLOWS FROM YOUR FOOT,” he began, his voice clear and steady, cutting through the game’s soundtrack. “MY PURPOSE IS YOUR FLOOR. I AM THANKFUL FOR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR WILL. GREAT LORD FINN, LET ME BEAR IT FOREVER.”
He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Finn’s arch in a practiced, reverent kiss.
Finn’s character on screen crashed into a barrier. “Shit,” he muttered, his concentration broken for a second. He glanced down at Lukas as if remembering he was there. “Good. Now assume Position A. I’m trying to concentrate.”
“Yes, Great Lord Finn,” Lukas whispered. He flowed from the Prayer Posture back to the standard kneeling Position A—back straight, hands on thighs, gaze lowered to a point on the floor three feet ahead. He became part of the room’s furniture again, a living ornament.
Finn refocused on the game, restarting the race. The engine sounds, the electronic music, the clicking of the controller resumed.
Lukas knelt, perfectly still. The prayer had been a brief spike in system activity, a ritual ping to check the devotion module was still running. Now he was back in low-power mode, a background process while his lord played. His world had narrowed to the sound of the game, the faint scent of Finn in the air, and the constant, low-grade ache of the welts and the cage—a symphony of his own operational status. He was maintaining Position A, ready for any command, but currently non-essential. He was a tool on a shelf, a machine in sleep mode, waiting for the hand that would pick him up and use him again.
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