Diaspora Museum/Page7

Janices Long Day
Chapter 7

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Janice walked hand in hand with Octavius and Marcie as one link in a chain of life as they made their way to the exit. "The information desk would have to be right at the entrance of the museum wouldn't it?" Macie was moaning. "What if they think we're trying to escape huh? What'll happen to us then?" "But we aren't trying to escape," Janice shushed the girl. "Stop talking about doing so or they'll think we are!" Marcia hushed up with a glum look upon her face and followed the line. She was starting to realise the boy Octavius for all that he was the oldest child in the group (Apparently by four months) was actually a cheeky boy. The penitata were talking to each other a little and as Octavius led the group (Following the signs) through the rooms of the museum that stood between them and the information desk, he wasn't exactly taking a straight line.

"This, my little pennies is Nasty spank. You'll notice it has switches and paddles and if anybody sits in it they get all the implements at once!" he said out loud, stopping in front of one of the machines. "No it doesn't!" another boy piped up. "I bet he's right." April shivered. "Look all the displays are labelled. Somebody read it for real?" Feble - one of the 3yo boys stepped forwards straining to see as Decibel read the label. "Auto spank, the first fully automatic spanker. Set a severity level on the slide and punishments are determined at random according to a built in scale!" "That sounds foreboding. The operator could put whatever they want as the setting. And what does random mean. "One thousand spanks with a toothbrush!" Marcie put in, "That would be random!" A few of the children gave Marcia quizzical wtf style looks but Octavius wasn't stopping there.

"The next machine is the pervospank. It molests you as it spanks you!" he declared meanly. "It's from the days when black circle sentences were more common." Janice looked at the machine critically. "That's a thermometer you fool." she snickered. "Not a probe." "I suppose thermometers are a kinda probe though!" Decible laughed loudly at Sepi's retort, "Well, I know they use anal thermometers but I don't think it's intended that way." Janice nodded, "I rather suspect from those hands it's meant to do stuff, look beside them. There's little pots built into the frame! And a display!" Breaking from the line for a moment Janice stepped forward and looked at the machine critically before reading the instructions. "Medical Penni Handler: Takes temperature, records blood pressure, breathing, BMI. Can apply a range of immunisations and injections as well as apply swabs (All dangerous portions have been removed from this model) and applies spanking when done. Discontinued due to hygiene problems." she read. "That actually sounds interesting!" "No kidding, it's basically a fully automatic nurse. They probably built them for schools in areas where a school nurses weren't available. Machine does the work, just needs a teacher to watch and clean it." Janice nodded. "I'd like to see it in operation, I have a thing with machines!" she spots the look on Sepi's face.

"Before my sentence I was trying to get into Starfleet. I was always good at the machines!" The boy nodded. "I was a nurse. Sentenced for malpractice - I evaluated a bunch of patients as having that telievian flue that was going around when they'd come back from a group trip from a colony and had picked up a lethal contagion. 24 deaths before the picked up what it was, isolated and treated everyone!" Janice blinked then nodded. "Ouch, malpractice with a body count, but I can see why you'd be interested in a medical spanking machine though!" Octavious and Marcia were standing side by side patiently tapping their feet as the two pennies talked about the apparently marvellous machine. "If we tarry too long one of you will likely be in that machine anyhow!" Octavius interjected. "Yes please, can we move on now?" Janice and Sepi sighed in unison before rejoining their friends. "There's just one other thing I want to look at before we move on." Janice said firmly. "This is where the old Spankmaster is!" she points over to the machines in the corner.

Around the room there were indeed a number of other machines, most of them gutted or with sides removed for easy display. Like the early 'Auto spank' most of these machines had large "Do not use!" signs placed in front of them and were roped off in some fashion where the usable machines allowed people to go right up to them and operate them but like all the machines they had little plaques explaining the machine. "I know all about these from the history books!" Janice was saying to her companions. "The Autospank 2000 and the SpankMaster 2000. Both horribly failed machines that were never truly reliable and caused more harm then they did good." Octavius nodded, "Yeah I heard about them too. The Autospank was completely automatic. Put the child in the soundproof booth, set a severity level with the knob and hit the button. Only problem was there were virtually no safeties in the unit." "This one doesn't look exactly soundproofed." Janice looked down at Feble and chuckled. "Well they wouldn't would they, not now they knew the fault. Only way you knew the spanking was over before was that a light would light up. You had no idea what was going on inside. Based on the severity you set the machine was supposed to switch between helper paddle, Grade 1 through to grade 5 paddles, a bumblebee and three different levels of switches then would deliver a spanking of a random number between ten and 100." she explains. "Only it didn't" Octavius jumped in. "The machine would often get jammed and pick an implement and just keep spanking until somebody realised there was something wrong and stopped it. In the end the machine was deamed unsafe even for use on pennies." "I see."

Still holding hands Octavius led them to the next machine. "And this was their fabled Spankmaster. Designed for commercial spanking of pennies, step in, follow the instructions and the rest was done by data chip!" he explained. "They put in a data chip and it told the machine the Penni's data and recommended implements. The machine would then deliver a random spank count of each implement based on a range provided by corrections. It was meant to decrease the chance of sentences not being suitable for the penni that got in it!" "Only let me guess, it didn't work." This time it was Decibel who interrupted. "It sounds like these so called smart machines weren't very smart!"

"The Spankmasters fault was its reliance upon data. All the time Penitata would try to swap data chips, hide them, lose them, or worse the chips would become damaged somehow especially by the younger kids. The machine didn't know how to compensate and a LOT of pennies got punishments that made no sense for the age of the penni!" Octavius explained. "Whats worse!" Janice put in, "The machine had safeties but only to determine whether a penni was in no state to continue their punishment. The machine got decommissioned after a penni nearly died from an experience with a faulty machine!" "I heard it was sabotage!" someone else put in. "Somebody had fiddled with it; I know it happened more than once!" Janice had to shrug at that.

"Either way my little Pennitants!" Octavius put in. "These machines are the end of our tour. Once we find our parents we'll most likely be taken back to look at one or two in detail but now you know ahead of schedule what your in for!" He was grinning with amusement even though the other penitents in their little group were far from impressed. "I think we should get a move on now!" this was from Marcia. "Yes." "Probably for the best!" consensus ran through the little group as the line was reformed and Octavius led the march again. Out of the room, round the corner, down the stairs, er... Had there been stairs going upwards? None of the pennies could be sure but there were definitely stairs going down. And there in front of the Information desk... Parents.

The shock of seeing the adults there waiting for them caught the little line of fugitives off guard but it only took a moment for all the pennies to break line and go running for their respective parents, cries of 'Muum' and 'Daad' issuing from each child's mouth. Most of them got hugs but not all. Octavius' dad virtually snatched his boy out of mid-air twisted him around and landed three good strikes on the 5yo's rump, Marcia too was greeted with smacks instead of hugs and Julius walked directly into a twisted ear as certain parents started chiding "Why aren't you at the cafeteria young man?" and "Why did you take so long to get here Octavius, You were dawdling again weren't you?"

Janice got the treatment of both. Hugged initially, and then given a serious smack on the rump Altessa laid a hand by either side of her daughters face and looked at the child critically. "You should have stayed at the cafeteria and waited for me to come back!" she instructed her daughter, June had been right, as she was not attempting to explain to her mum. If June had her say she would dump everyone into it so Janice started defending herself. "We didn't know where any of you had gone, you all just kinda disappeared! You keep telling us we shouldn't wonder off - if we didn't know where you were then we didn't know if we'd done something wrong! That's why we came looking!" Altessa put a finger on her daughter's lips. "That pile of words sounds like a load of hogwash to me. Shall we put it straight?" Leaning down Altessa bent the three year old over her leg from a standing position, hoisted up Janice's skirt and analysed her nappied rump. It didn't look like she'd had any more accidents so for the time being the nappy went to one side as she began spanking the three year old very firmly.

"What happened here was - you didn't know where I was -" she explained in between strokes, "So you thought you could wonder around on your own." another set of strikes landed on the girls very tanned hide. "Your three years old, just because you can talk and act like an adult does not make you an adult. Even the five year olds in your group are not mature enough to be wondering around unmonitored." By about 20 strokes Janice was sobbing, her mum was right of course - she hadn't been thinking properly. They'd been left strapped into those tables for a reason. "You were left somewhere safe, under the eye of the canteen staff. We knew where you were and we weren't going to be gone long!" one of the fathers was saying to another penitata. "You had no right wondering off; let along leading the other children astray with you!" Most of the poor penitata were getting it so it seamed. Today was a special day and a few of the now bare rumps were already developing blisters from all the paddling they had been getting. Janice was no exception to this, even though none of the individual spankings were severe the accumulation had raised a crop blisters and as her mum hand spanked her some of those were starting to pop open.

Ten minutes later all of the penitata were wailing loudly as the guide fetched out the cloth line and attached all the children to it again in alphabetical order. Standing beside Marcy, bum exposed and dress pinned up the guide looked at the tearful faces and well spanked bottoms. You children at least I can say made things interesting for everyone!" some of the parents snickered. "Most of the rest of my tour group have finished their tour, that's what the lunch room was for. And I noticed you lot went and looked at the last of the machines too! There's only one set of machines left you need to worry about."

Looking at the parents the guide laughed light heartedly. "Follow me!"

Walking sedately back the way they had come the little pennies were paraded back through the canteen, some of the adults and children in there laughing at the small group but most of them paying no heed. "This way!" they took a side turn through a door they hadn't tried that led into a room in the exact middle of the Museum. It was a perfect circle with a desk in the middle and a collection of what looked like photo booths around the side, 12 in total. Everything was always done in twelves. The guide checked the room as they went in "It looks like the last group to go through here finished some time ago." she said, checking the screens on the side of the booths. Each machine had large Digital touch screen on it and as she tapped little buttons cameras came up showing the sparse interiors of the units.

"These are the last and latest machines you're going to encounter!" the guide was telling her pennies. "You can choose which one you want to go in but they're all identical. Going over to a terminal at the side of the room she tapped a button and some thin long data chips started coming out one at a time, each one with a name on it.

"Good the processing is done." she turns back to the pennies, "Pick a SmartSpank(tm) and lets get your final spanking for the day done!"