his own office at Rice University. That he’d gotten on his own, without mind-hacking anyone. He wasn’t dumb. He just wasn’t… very sexy.
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
And what about the girls? They were basically slaves, happy slaves to be sure, but what if he, ah, “unhacked” their minds? Would they love him still? Or would they hate him? Would they want revenge? Would they… Ohhh, my God! Oh, that feels soooo…
“Ooo ly thah, Mathah?” asked Brownie, her mouth sliding up and down his rigid, purple-veined cock.
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
“Oh yeah. Like it very much,” he said dreamily.
Happy had crept up to his pillow and begun to tickle his ear with her tongue. God! Who would have thought the inside of your ear was an erogenous zone? “Do you like that, Master?” asked Happy.
“Uh-huh, keep it—”
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
Woody’s eyes opened. Knocking? Who’s knocking? Had he dozed off? No, just lost in a fantasy. He wasn’t in the Master’s Bedroom surrounded by love slaves. He was sitting in his home office, door shut, reading. Reading what? He glanced down at the book in his lap.
The sad truth is that evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. Eichmann was not a monster in the conventional sense; he was a monster in the
Oh, yeah. The Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt. No wonder his mind had wandered.
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK!
“Come in,” he called.
It was Daisy, stark naked except for her collar and a cute frilly apron. “Master?” she said. Woody detected something in her voice, something close to annoyance. Strange.
“What is it, Daisy?”
“Master, I can’t fix supper and mind Berta at the same time.”
Woody kept from rolling his eyes. Is that all? The problem with mind slaves is they couldn’t solve simple problems on their own. “Tell Brownie to mind her.”
“Brownie is busy.”
“Doing what?”
“Doing laundry.” Something in Daisy’s voice told him this was a chore not to be interrupted.
“Then tell Happy to mind her.”
“Happy’s gone to the store to buy toothpaste and toilet paper.”
“Oh. Well, tell Berta to watch TV.”
“I did. She says she’s bored with TV.”
Woody sighed. “All right. I’ll mind her.”
“Thank you, Master,” said Daisy. She didn't sound especially grateful. She sounded like this was something he should have been doing all along. Well, maybe he should have. Berta was his newest sex toy—lots of fun—but she’d also turned out to be something of a handful.
He put the Hannah Arendt book on his desk. “Daisy?”
“Yes, Master?”
“Do you think I’m evil?”
“Pardon, Master?”
“Evil. Do you think I’m evil?”
She looked baffled. “Evil, Master? You?”
“Never mind. Go back to fixing supper. I’ll look after Berta.” He followed Daisy out of the room. It shouldn’t be hard to keep a kid entertained for an hour or so.
B erta slammed down a pair of fours. “I win! I win! You’re the Old Maid!”
“So I am,” said Woody tiredly. He gathered the cards while Berta chanted “Old Maid, Old Maid” over and over. He looked at the clock. They’d been playing cards since 6:30. How long did it take to fix supper anyway?
Woody shuffled the cards. At first he’d lost on purpose but Berta was such a loud, obnoxious winner that he’d decided to take her down a peg. That was five games ago. She might look like a little girl but at the card table she was Bret Maverick.
Of course, Berta didn’t really look like a little girl. She looked like a grown woman pretending to be little girl. Cute and definitely a turn-on but it was all just a game and after a while he got tired of the game. But not Berta—Roberta, rather—she loved being a little girl, absolutely lost in make-believe.
Was that healthy? Who knows? She was the psychiatrist. She should know if this was just harmless fantasy or some psychological trap. And who was it a trap for? What about him? What did it say about Woody