Chapter 11: Six Months

I had been a toilet slave to these five women for so long that I had stopped counting the weeks. I had a vague recollection that I had asked Laurie to take another vote six months later, but I had no sense of how much time had gone by. I might have been there for just a couple of months, or I might have been there a year already.

I no longer yearned to return to the corporate world of programming, and dealing with tyrannical bosses, nitpicking project leaders, office politics, political correctness, and the constant threat of layoffs. That world was as alien to me now as being a toilet slave had been to me back then.

And truth be told, I had become content and complacent. I had developed the strength and lung capacity to hold my breath for extended lengths of time--long enough, even, to satisfy Leiko.

"Jenny," Erica said, "you've been here six months, and like we promised, we took another vote."

"Oh?"

"Here's what we decided. We wish you would stay, but you may leave. But just so you know, if you decide to stay, we will never again hold another vote on whether you may leave."

"I've already made my decision, Mistress Erica."

"Yes, Jenny?"

Jeremy! No!

Hush, Julie!

"I choose to stay."

Jeremy, why?

Julie, we may be two independent minds inside my head, but we share a single memory. So you know why.

Yes, I suppose I do.

Erica smiled down at me. "Somehow, we all thought you might. Now open up, I need to take a shit."

We could have made something of ourselves, Jeremy, what with two minds working together in one body.

Hush, Julie! I'm hungry.