Lao San looked sadly at the ragged men sitting among the whirring machinery. He did not know the function of the machines around him; they seemed to be enormous prayer wheels turning at incredibly fast speeds, to where they were a blur too fast for the eye to follow. Here and there other things moved about as if alive or as if carried along on invisibly small servants, or were they moving themselves? No matter, the men called for his attention.

There were perhaps forty of them sitting around the machinery, some lying on pieces of cloth, some sleeping, some sitting and talking quietly. The air of hopelessness and degradation was palpable in the air, as was the stench of unwashed bodies and the filth in which they lived. In all the centuries he was told had come between his time and this one, Lao San thought, still prisoners looked and acted the same. He had seen much the same once, when he had visited a prison in his own time long before.

One group of eight men caught his attention, clustered around a group of possessions. Big men, tough men, mean men, this was his first reaction to them. As in any prison, a gang of toughs had joined together to rule the miniature kingdom within these walls. The rest of these men would then be their targets, their victims, and their playthings.

Unlike the rest of the men in the room, these eight men looked well-fed; their clothing was in better shape; their movements were strong and self-confident. Like bandits of his own time, they walked like they owned the universe and it was their toy to be used and tormented as they wished. The way to survive among such men was to not draw their attention. Lao San kept his cloak of invisibility about him still, and he watched as a young man came up to the group.

A hand reached out to stop the youth from approaching closer. "Where are you going, punk?" challenged the man, a burly hulk with dark hair, a round, cruel face and a hairy pot-belly peering beneath his inadequate t-shirt.

"I want to speak with Hanson." said the young man, no older than Lao San, thin, lanky and blond-haired, with a somewhat prominent nose and chin. "Come on, Clyde, let me through."

"He can hear you from right where you are, Adam." Clyde said. "Talk away."

"My dad needs food. And medicine if you got it." Adam said. "He's getting weaker."

"What you got for trade?" Clyde retorted.

Adam's chin quivered. "We're all out of stuff. You got it all already. Please."

"Please, is it?" Clyde seemed to find this amusing. "Please?"

"You guys got everything." Adam said, seeming to get braver, or angrier. "We've got nothing. The invaders give you enough for all of us. Can't you share some of it with us?"

"We need it for ourselves." Clyde said. "Man has to watch out for himself these days, you know. You can always call an invader over and earn some for yourself. Or let it cut you up and become one of them. None of the invader's men are starving. Why don't you do that instead?"

"I can't do that." Adam said. "Come on, guys, I'm begging you. I'll do anything you want me to. Just give me some food for my dad."

"Well, if you can't give any of the invaders a load off your dick, then you aren't much of a man, are you?" Clyde said. "Me, I can juice them up anytime I feel like it. One reason I'm doing okay these days. Bet a scrawny kid like you couldn't even get his dick hard."

"I can, too!" Adam was definitely angry. "But you guys won't let us at them!"

"You can get a dick hard?" Clyde acted surprised. "Hanson, you hear that? This little punk has a hard dick?"

"Get him over here and milk him for us." was the bored response from the man atop the pile of goods. Lao San had him pegged as the bandit leader, a heavily muscled lout with a scraggly beard and deep-set, dark eyes in deep brown skin.

"Only if I can get food for my dad." Adam said.

"Hey, we weren't offering you a choice." Clyde said. "Come on, Ferret, help me with this kid."

Another man as broad-shouldered as Clyde and bearing no physical appearance to the animal whose name he bore as a nickname, with a brawny, chunky body, the sort of man who would work and live in Lao San's time by hauling the freight wagons by the sheer force of his own body, a human draft-animal, these two brutes grabbed the young boy and hauled him up to one of the machines. Lao San watched as a tube snaked out as they approached.

"No, let me go!" Adam struggled as the tube aimed for him.

Clyde chuckled. "What are you complaining about, boy? Your daddy did it all the time until he got sick on you. It ain't like you're a babe in arms or nothing. Time for you to feel the pleasures of life, kid! Help me get his pants down, Ferret."

Ferret said nothing, seemed to be mute, he and Clyde manhandled Adam's lower clothing off (it wasn't organized enough to be called pants or loincloth or gown), leaving him bare below the waist, only a ragged wisp of clothing on his shoulders keeping him from being completely bare.

Still Lao San watched. Action was useless until you had understanding. So his teachers had taught him and their lessons had served him well until this time. He watched as the tube snaked over to obviously (Adam's back was to Lao San) latch onto his groin.

Adam moaned after a short time and Clyde chuckled. "See, kid? It's great, ain't it? I think they use some sort of electrical current or maybe a drug in those tubes to make you hornier. But they sure give you a good suck-off with them."

Lao San watched, moving closer to the group as the combination of his flickering shape and the moving machines camouflaged him utterly. Only one man seemed to be watching him, one of the men outside the group, lying idly on a pallet, but he didn't say anything and Lao San trusted he would not help their tormentors.

Adam was groaning in Clyde's and Ferret's clutch, not struggling any more. Lao San looked at the tube which bulged with Adam's ample cock ensconced in the tube, as it worked him, Adam partially suspended in the two men's hold, his feet touching only by their toes to the floor, his entire body an arc whose furthest forward point was his crotch connected to the machine, his mouth open and his eyes glazed, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he panted.

"Come on, boy, get off." Clyde said. "We ain't got all day. Shoot that load. Give it a good one and Hanson may give you some stuff after all."

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