Chapter 8: The Slaver Helps a Dancer

Immediately after the jury retired to deliberate Stephanie's case, the SlendaBond attorney and I retired to the VIP club in the courthouse to await the verdict. We discussed the fact that the longer the jury was out the better our chances of achieving at least a partial enslavement of Stephanie. If the jurors were having trouble reaching a verdict they would probably settle on a compromise verdict where at least we would have Stephanie under an indenture for 5 or 10 years. That might satisfy the client and give us something to celebrate!

I really wanted to win this victory over Stephanie. Something in her nature and bearing challenged me to beat her. At least the sexual part of my being wanted this victory even if the intellectual side had doubts about the justice of our case. After three hours the judge called us back and adjourned proceedings for the day. As it was a Friday, proceedings would resume Monday morning.

The next day, Saturday, I was a featured speaker at a symposium called The Kinder and Gentler Slavery of Today and Tomorrow. I continued to be just as much interested in the theoretical and legal aspects of slavery as I had always been in the practical end of it. This conference reminded me of that earlier gathering I had attended many years ago, with my friend George, when we were both college students. That was the one where the very idea that slavery could be made "kinder and gentler" was first publicly proposed and became the basis for a concerted campaign to persuade the public.

The speaker before me had gone on at great length about all the legislation that had been passed to implement the concept. Slave owners today had accepted that they were responsible for life long medical care for the slave and to provide for his or her retirement years. Those owners who tried to duck such responsibilities were subject to criminal prosecution. While the slave herself, of course, had no legal standing to bring a legal action to secure these benefits, there were slave advocacy organizations that investigated abuses and could bring a lawsuit on her behalf or alert public authorities to prosecute where appropriate. As the public saw all of this being successfully implemented, opposition to slavery as such greatly declined. This was, of course, the major purpose for the whole concept.

The title for my own talk was "Putting Equity into the Enslavement Process". I had been introduced to this group as one of the most successful slavers in the business, having enslaved, for debt, over 1000 men and women, over the last ten years, through the legal processes. Therefore I had some credibility with this audience. Most of those in attendance cared more about expanding the supply of slaves than they cared about justice or equity. But they would listen to someone of my background.

I began by pointing out that we were losing some potential slaves because juries often were still sympathetic to those in the dock. There was a public perception that quite a few people had been indentured or enslaved who did not deserve such a fate. Many citizens of Capitallia seemed to feel that slavery for debt was a punishment and should only be imposed where there was some fault or wrongful conduct by the debtor. Many felt that it was wrong to enslave someone simply because they had a run of bad luck and could not pay their debts. As I said these things I remembered that I had felt and expressed much the same to Professor Petersen as a young college student. I had always felt it morally, but knew I would have to sell it to this audience on some more 'practical' basis.

I then gave example after example of cases wherein I thought there had been some injustice. I naturally changed the names and places. I also gave examples where juries had refused to enslave even in cases where I thought we had a solid case and the debtor well deserved the punishment we were seeking. It was the need for unanimous verdicts, and the feeling on the part of some of the citizenry that the system was not just that led to these defeats, I pointed out. If we would introduce some reforms we might improve the reputation of the system with the citizenry to where we could be successful with 95% of all attempted enslavements, instead of succeeding with just 75% of them, which was about all we had been able to achieve up to this time. That idea resonated with my audience. There were shouts of "here, here!"

But there was another point I wished to make with this audience. I had become aware of many cases where slaves who were highly skilled in a profession or in the arts were having such talents wasted. Their owners could make quite a bit of money by just hiring them out as sex slaves and did not always see it in their interest to allow a slave to carry on with his or her profession. Allowing a slave to pursue a career, I said, need not conflict with sexual usage of that slave, either by the owner or others. Further I pointed out the potential added pleasure an owner might have in owning a slave who was highly accomplished as a result of many years of training and dedication to a skill or craft. I heard some murmuring and nodding of heads in response. The audience was clearly intrigued though their response was more muted than when I was talking about how to increase the numbers of enslavements!

As I was saying all this I happened to notice a slim and very attractive woman who looked vaguely familiar cleaning and shining the brass sculptures that decorated alcoves and niches in the hall in which we were meeting. She was quite some distance from me but I could just see that she was apparently a slave as she was scantily clad and had an iron collar with rings about her neck. She cast frequent glances at me as though hoping to make eye contact but not quite daring to do so. I was puzzled if I knew this woman or not, but had to put her out of my mind for now.

I wrapped up my talk by proposing that we all go forth through our various professional societies and press for changes in the laws so that, in future, it would be necessary to prove debtor wrongdoing as well as a creditor's need for restitution in order to support an enslavement proceeding, even at the stage of the preliminary hearing. Cases in which there had been no wrong doing should not even reach a jury, except perhaps where the only remedy sought was a short indenture of two or three years to provide at least some restitution to the creditor.

After the symposium ended I headed back to my office. I decided to check in with the two skip trace agents I had hired to keep an eye on Stephanie. I almost always hired such agents when a case reached this stage. After investing all this work I did not want to lose a potential slave who decided to make a run for it. It would be very deflating to my ego and my penis if a girl I nearly had in my grasp were to slip my noose at the last minute!

The agents had bad news for me. They had lost her. They had been watching her home, but she had managed to get out unobserved. One of them waited at her home all night to see if she would return. She did not. The other agent was able to link into the GPS signals emanating from her ankle bracelet. He quickly went downtown and homed in on the moving signal. He was dismayed to find the ankle bracelet attached to a dog and not to a girl! Then the agents knew she had definitely flown the coop. They began working their contacts in the law enforcement community to see if they could get some RFID tag information that would help them follow her to whatever place she had flown.

They told me they were sorry not to have better news, but that was where things stood. They felt it was probably only a matter of time until they would get a break, but nobody could be sure when or if. The elation that I had felt at the end of the trial the day before had pretty well faded on this news.

I had been working there for perhaps another half an hour after that disappointing conversation when I heard a very tentative soft knocking on my locked outer office door. As my secretary had left for the day I went to unlock the door. There I saw a vision that stiffened my penis! A beautiful woman stood there, naked but for high heels, with the posture and bearing of a dancer. She was the same woman I had seen at a distance polishing the brass earlier that afternoon in the lecture auditorium. She still wore the iron collar, and also a coin purse and a note from her owner hanging about her neck. She was slender as a reed and delicate in her upper body, yet the musculature of her hips and legs was well developed. She had the typical physique of a ballerina. Suddenly I knew who she was. It all came back to me. I had enslaved this woman some two years earlier! She had been one of perhaps a thousand debtors I had taken down in court over the last ten years. Sometimes it was hard to remember them all.