Beyond Rubies Annotations

[jwik01]

Part 1: That Seems Almost Creepy (issues 1-2 and Catherine's Story)


Issue 1: October 2010
Cover: Ruby reflected in Julie's eye
1-2 Andrea presses her friend Julie into wearing a ruby, assuring her of its health benefits. Julie notices Andrea's breasts have grown, but despite her wariness dons the ruby.
2 Julie tells her husband Nick about the encounter, commenting on Andrea's breasts. Then she exhibits an uncharacteristic flash of horniness and suggests sex.
3 A week later, Julie meets friends Katie and Catherine. She assures them the ruby is great, she wears it all the time. They make reference to a rough patch between Julie and Nick as being over, and Julie enthuses about a better sex life.
4 As soon she hears her husband’s voice when he arrives home from work, Julie is suddenly aroused. She greets Nick by stripping and kneeling before him, initiating sex and asking to be topped.
5-6 Julie tells Andrea about the encounter, and her increasing libido and lack of control over it. Andrea assures her it's a good thing. Andrea's breasts are even larger, while Julie's breasts have grown to the size Andrea's were initially.  Julie remains concerned until Andrea speaks to her in a commanding voice, triggering a trance state in Julie.
7 Andrea's instructions to Julie in 'voice-over,' telling her to relax, accept, and enjoy the changes, over Julie primping and fantasizing about sex.
8 Julie sees Katie in the street. Both are dressed much more provocatively, with larger breasts. Julie has a sudden fantasy of watching Katie give Nick a blowjob.
9 Julie tells Nick about her encounter with Katie while they fuck, with Julie giving explicitly submissive dirty-talk.
10 As Nick leaves for work, Julie whispers to him that she wants to try 'that thing' Nick wanted, presumably anal.  While primping, Julie admires herself in the mirror, nude but for the ruby, and has a sudden fantasy of watching Nick fuck Andrea.  She dresses and leaves the apartment.
11 Out on the street Julie calls Andrea but gets her voicemail. Julie tells the voicemail that she's concerned about her intrusive fantasies, and that she can't remove the choker.  It's unclear whether she means the clasp can't be undone or that she can't bring herself to remove it.  Julie sees Catherine in the street, wearing a ruby and changed the same way Julie and Katie have been. She has another overwhelming fantasy about seeing Nick with Catherine, and panics.
12 Julie rushes home and finds Nick fucking Andrea in their bed. She stands there in a horny stupor, passive and confused.

Andrea (1), Julie (2), Katie (3), and Cathrine (4) are the initial four ruby victims.  Andrea got her ruby first, then Julie, then Katie and Catherine, and it appears that Andrea is a little ahead of the other three women but on the same development track: big breasts, heightened sex drive, and enthusiasm for both.  It's not clear whether Julie's visions of Andrea, Katie, and Catherine having sex with Nick are intrusive fantasies or memories of events she witnessed while in a trance state, but after reading the whole series I’m fairly confident that they’re meant to be fantasies.

Issue 2: March 2011
Cover: Julie’s (?) ruby-enhanced cleavage
1 Julie submissively serves Nick breakfast and gives him a blowjob. She tells him about a dream she had, that she came home and saw Nick and Andrea fucking and joined in. Nick suggests a threesome with Andrea, and Julie agrees to the idea.
2 As Nick leaves, Julie tells him she'll be seeing Miri at lunch. Nick gives her a ruby to pass to Miri, and Julie realizes that Nick is the source of Andrea's, Katie's, and Catherine's rubies, too, and that Nick had Andrea give Julie's to her.  Julie is concerned, until Nick speaks commandingly to her (much like 1:7), and she passively accepts the instructions.
3 After the lunch, Julie puts a ruby on Miri, who leaves. Julie examines herself in the mirror and, concerned, goes to Andrea's. She accuses Andrea of sleeping with Nick.
4 Andrea strips and confirms that she is sleeping with Nick. Andrea's breasts have grown again. Julie protests feebly, but Andrea speaks to her commandingly and declares that Julie saw them together the night before. Overwhelmed and submissive, Julie asks Andrea for sex.
5 Julie and Andrea have sex and buy new, larger bras together.
6 Nick enters his apartment and finds Andrea there, wearing a harem-girl costume that Julie fantasized about in issue one, page 12.  Nick and Andrea have a short conversation about how Katie is 'almost ready' and spent lunch with Nick talking about sex, and Catherine made a dinner date with Nick for the next week.  Andrea shows Nick a surprise…
7 The surprise is Julie, nude and with breasts almost as big as Andrea's.  Julie offers Nick a martini and kneels before him for a blowjob. She indicates that she's now fully aware of, and supportive of, Nick's relationship with Andrea.
8 Over the course of the next week or more, Andrea moves in with Nick and Julie and they have several threesomes. Meanwhile, Miri goes through the same changes that Julie did in issue 1.
9 Nick goes to Catherine's for dinner while Julie goes to Katie's (uninvited). Meanwhile Miri comes to some kind of decision.
10 Catherine, whose breasts are now as large as Andrea's were at the end of issue 1, welcomes Nick and starts to proposition him. Julie accuses Katie of fucking Nick, which Katie half-heartedly denies. Julie suggests that Katie should be fucking Nick. Meanwhile Miri dolls herself up.
11 As Catherine finishes propositioning Nick, Julie comes onto Katie hard. Katie protests until Julie speaks to her commandingly, and then relents. Katie's breasts might grow slightly, then and there.
12 Catherine submissively offers herself to Nick while Julie fingers an overwhelmed barely-aware, hot with arousal Katie. Both Catherine and Katie agree they will “do anything [Nick] want(s).” Meanwhile Andrea answers the door to find Miri there, dolled up and looking for Julie.

Julie seems to have caught up with Andrea in terms of ruby-catalyzed changes: her breasts are enormous and she's completely on board with the seduction of Katie, Catherine, and now Miri.  Meanwhile Katie and Catherine are progressing as well, on the cusp of becoming consciously aware of and supportive of the ruby's alterations to their libidos and personalities.  It’s unclear in the text but I think that Katie has been having the same intrusive fantasies and dreams that Julie (and Catherine, vide infra) has experienced.
Miri (5) is the only new addition to the roster of victims in this issue, and seems to be following along the path set by Julie and Andrea, though only in its initial stages.  Given what we later see of the ruby's possible effects, it's unclear whether Miri's compulsion to seek out Julie is purely due to Miri's desire for information about what the ruby is doing to her, or because the ruby has programmed her to seek out her controller (one could ask the same question about Julie's seeking advice from Andrea, though we don't see Katie or Catherine 'reporting' to anyone in quite the same way).

Special Issue: Catherine’s Story (January 2015)
Catherine’s Story was released much later but is set concurrent with the first two issues of the series.
1 An enlarged panel from page six, of a nude Catherine confronting Andrea.
2 Sometime between 1:4 and 1:12, Andrea gives Catherine a ruby to wear. Catherine is hesitant and seems ambivalent about the breast-enlargement she and Andrea both presume will occur.  As Andrea leaves, Catherine remains motionless in her chair, passively experiencing her new ruby.
3 Around 2:20 in the morning, Catherine sleeps in her ruby and experiences intense erotic creams about sex with Nick while Julie watches. She masturbates in her sleep, and says aloud “I’m yours, Nick.”
4 Catherine, on the phone with Katie, enthusiastically describes her ballooning body.  As Catherine walks out on the street she imagines other large-breasted rubies women and multiple copies of Nick, not noticing Julie. The scene from 1:12 is shown again, and it’s revealed that Catherine had an intrusive fantasy about a bigger-boomed version of herself and a bigger-boobed version of Julie simultaneous with Julie’s fantasy about Catherine. Catherine is dripping wet as she walks on.
5 Catherine, breasts substantially larger, seems again to be masturbating in her sleep while she mutters submissively about Nick (“Yes, Nick. Oh, fuck. Don’t stop. I’m yours. Anything.”) But in fact Andrea has snuck into Catherine’s apartment and is going down on her while she sleeps! Andrea comments approvingly that Catherine is “almost ready.”  As is later established, the more orgasms a rubied woman has the more completely her ruby controls and alters her. Here Andrea is speeding the process along for Catherine.
6 With Catherine seemingly asleep, Andrea puts on her coat to leave. As she does, however, she’s confronted by an awake Catherine, who declares that she’s known what Andrea has been doing to her, and commands her to “finish [her].”
7 Later, Catherine dons fancy lingerie and lipstick, strews rose petals across her apartment’s floor, and opens the door to admit Nick for their dinner, as shown in 2:11.

The special “Catherine’s story” is just a mostly-plotless porny examination of Catherine’s experiences over the course of issues 1 and 2, in case the reader for some reason wanted more details about a woman surrendering to overwhelming lust and willingly surrendering personal agency in favor of becoming a large-breasted sex-pet.  Frankly I would have liked seeing more of these.  Julie, Andrea, Gabby, Laura et al have their stories fully explored by the main text, and “Katie’s Story” would probably just be a rehash of Catherine’s, but “Miri’s Story” could delve into her adoption of a slave mentality, “Janice’s Story” could show her corruption between issues 3 and 9, “Charlotte’s Story” could show a pre-issue 3 Charlotte who once had priorities beyond being the best possible cocksucker, et cetera, et cetera.

The second issue ends 'to be continued?' and indeed this is a reasonable stopping place.  Nick has (somehow) obtained at least five apparently-magical rubies that gradually make the women wearing them hornier and chestier, and which put them into a submissive trance state whenever they are spoken to sufficiently commandingly (and sexily?).  Either through the effects of the ruby directly, or via commands given while in trance, the women wearing the rubies gradually become more overtly sexual and accepting/enthusiastic about becoming Nick's big-breasted sluts.  Up to this point, Beyond Rubies is following the template laid out by Found Objects, Free Cable, By the Book, and countless other porny stories about women coming to love their mind-control degradation.  However, things are about to take a turn.

[jwik01]

Part 2: Do They Even Make Bras That Big? (issues 3-5)

Issue 3: December 2011
Cover: Julie, mostly naked and seen from behind, holding a ruby choker drawn to suggest a ball gag.
1 The dramatic shift to a single panel (and not porn!) indicates a sea change.  Emily, George’s secretary, greets Laura Rampling outside George’s office at Quine HQ.
2 The ruby at Emily’s throat is just barely visible in the drawing. Laura proceeds into George’s office and declares that five rubies have been stolen.  Suddenly we have new information about the rubies: they're artifacts of cutting-edge science, they’re prototypes developed by a large tech company called Quine, they’re connected via cellular to a home server, they can detect and interact with each other at close range, and they're development has been overseen by an executive who casually watches porn on his work computer. George gives Laura a ruby and tells her to wear it to assist her search for the stolen rubies.
3 George reassures Laura that the rubies are harmless, identifies her as a VP at Quine, and fiddles with settings on his computer that indicate a ruby's effects can be customized regarding the physical changes they make in their users/victims.  Laura reluctantly acquiesces, and complains about a sting when donning the ruby (something Julie also noted back in issue 1). She departs, leaving George to examine the file of a woman named Janice, and to enjoy the blowjob he's been secretly receiving from a submissive and mostly-naked rubied woman named Charlotte, who was hiding under his desk.  Ostensibly the blowjob is part of testing the ruby.
4 A single-panel page, but this one is porn, so it's less surprising.  Nick fucks Catherine doggy-style, while she discusses his taking her ass later.
5 Catherine recaps the changes that the ruby has made in her — both the obvious physical changes, and the more subtle mental changes that make her enthusiastic about the physical changes.
6 Third single-panel page of the issue, with Julie and Katie scissoring.  There's some kind of red lightning between their two rubies, which is probably a visual indicator of the 'pinging' that George described.  Katie's chest is noticeably smaller than Julie's or Catherine's.  Katie's hair is getting longer, too.
7 Katie rouses from the submissive trance state long enough to express anxiety about the ruby's effects, but Julie reassures her and distracts her with sex. As Katie orgasms, there's a massive red flare from her ruby and her breasts grow another size category, into the Julie/Catherine/Andrea range. Julie, despite her sanguine attitude, is surprised at the dramatic effects.
8 Fourth single-panel page: Andrea sitting with Miri at home.  Miri's chest is definitely larger than when she first appeared.
9 Miri frets about her physical changes. Andrea begins speaking to her commandingly, and there's another visible flare from Miri's ruby as she goes into an obedient trance state and strips.
10 Catherine offers to give Nick control of the apartment building she owns, turning it into a mansion full of Nick's sex slaves, and calls him 'Master' apparently spontaneously.  Meanwhile, Julie marvels at Katie's larger chest and enthusiasm for her new sexuality.
11 Andrea continues to command Miri, whose resistance collapses as Andrea becomes more dominating.  Andrea comments on Miri's facial features subtly changing (which isn't really clear in the art) and commands her to lick Andrea's pussy.  Miri obeys, calling Andrea 'Mistress' spontaneously.
12 Back at Quine, Laura discusses the missing rubies with Janice, her ruby-wearing assistant.  Laura expresses frustration at the impossible task of finding the rubies. Janice hacks into Quine's HR department's records and quickly discovers that Nick (a Quine employee) has taken 'six sick days in a row, after two years of never taking one,'  Laura sees Nick is moving into Catherine's apartment building, from the HR records, and deduces that something is up because he shouldn't be able to afford that.  Laura declares she will find Nick, though she isn't sure exactly what she'll do when she finds him.
(The pacing suggests that the final scene with Laura and Janice takes place roughly simultaneous with all the sex, but it was only two pages ago that Catherine came up with the idea of Nick moving his harem into her building, so it seems unlikely that Nick would have already informed his employers.  The precise timeline in 'Beyond Rubies' is pretty murky generally: sometimes events in an issue seem to be spread out over days or weeks, sometimes only a few minutes, etc.  The answer to any continuity gaffes is no doubt that it’s a porny story and we don’t need to fret about it.)

This issue introduces Emily (6), Laura (7), Charlotte (Cool and Janice (9) to the roster of ruby victims.  As of the end of this issue, however, only Charlotte shows any effects from her ruby — she seems to have evolved into the same kind of big-breasted submissive slut that Katie and Catherine (et al) have become.
Andrea's domination of Miri seems weeks ahead of schedule compared to what happened to Julie, Katie, and Catherine.  Here and later, I get the sense that Miri has abruptly ceased to exist as a person, which is unlike the other women's' reactions to being entranced and commanded. However it's certainly possible that Miri is conscious of what she's doing and is merely playing the role of the silent geisha.  Individual women respond differently to the ruby’s stimulation, and this is how Miri gets off.

Issue 4: February 2012
Cover: Julie admires herself in the reflection of Catherine’s ruby.
1 Laura and Janice stake out Catherine's apartment building, looking for signs of Nick and/or the rubies.  They talk about how the rubies they wear have had physical effects, then study the snapshot they have of Julie taken at a Quine company Christmas party. Julie in the snapshot looks much as she did at the start of the first issue.
2 Julie and Katie, walking hand-in-hand and turning heads with their enormous breasts and provocative clothing.  Laura, watching them,  frets that the ruby's effects must be greater than they had been told.  Janice's laptop shows a display indicating four active rubies and one inactive ruby, identified by prototype number.  I'm not sure if the four active rubies are a subset of Julie, Andrea, Katie, Catherine, and Miri, or if the four active rubies are Julie, Katie, Laura, and Janice (who are all within a hundred feet or so of the laptop). In either case, what does the grayed-out ruby mean?
Laura tells Janice she must tell George, but notes that he's unavailable until the afternoon.  Suddenly their rubies activate, and Janice and Laura a) are much more sedate as they decide to return to the office and b) have visibly hard nipples.  Their rubies are somehow working to calm their concern over the physical changes, replacing it with arousal. The same effect was shown on Julie, Catherine, and Katie in earlier issues.
3 In the apartment building, Julie, Katie, and Andrea admire Miri, whom Andrea has carefully dolled up. Miri says nothing, content to be a living art object and sex toy.
4 The women discuss the fact that Nick has finally gone back in to work, and begin to make out to amuse themselves. There's a single panel of Nick kissing Catherine good-bye.  Katie starts to undress Miri, who passively does not resist, but Andrea tells her she's 'saving her for Nick.' Andrea then orders Miri to fetch drinks, which Miri accepts with a docile 'yes, Mistress.'
5 Nick arrives at Quine. The security guard he waves at as he passes by is Marina. She’ll show up more later. At his cubicle Nick has porn of Catherine, Julie, and Andrea at least, plus a 'before' image of Miri.  There's also a display similar to the one on Janice's laptop on page 3, but instead of labelling the rubies with numbers, they're identified by name (Julie, Andrea, Katie, Catherine, Miri).  Nick chats with Gabby, his coworker, who is wearing a ruby (like the other six female Quine employees on this page).  Some of the Quine women are noticeably chesty, others (Gabby included) not. Gabby is distracted at the sight of a passing coworker with breasts the size of Andrea's circa the end of issue 1, and her ruby glows (indicating that Gabby is turned on by the sight).  As Nick settles in at his cubicle, mysterious activity first grays out Julie's ruby, then removes it from the roster on Nick's computer.
Given what happens shortly to Julie, presumably this is Quine (George in particular) exerting control over her or at least removing access to that control from Nick.
6 Laura chats with Emily on her way into George’s office. Laura flirts with Emily, and asks her out for a drink. Emily is hesitant, then becomes spacey and aroused as she submissively agrees.  Meanwhile, we see Laura is not wearing panties.
7 Laura, in George’s office, informs him that Nick stole the rubies. She suggests remotely deactivating the stolen rubies, but George tells her not to.  Then Charlotte, dripping with arousal, rises nude from where she'd been blowing George under his desk. George treats it as entirely casual that Charlotte would be there while he talks to Laura, but Laura is nonplussed and, thanks to her ruby, turned on.  George dismisses both Charlotte and the stunned Laura.
8 Janice, in a bookstore, gets a call from Laura on her cell.  Janice gets dirty looks from nearby women as she responds to Laura (who is apparently informing her about the meeting with George,  and Charlotte).  Janice explains she just got her hair done (she looks good) and tells Laura she's headed back into the office… right after she buys some new underwear.
9 Nick's harem (minus Catherine) is still sitting around, nude, licking one another. Miri kneels nearby with drinks.  The landline rings and Julie answers. George, on the other end, confirms that it's her then gives her instructions.  Julie drifts into a receptive trance state while receiving the instructions.  It’s not clear to me whether George is simultaneously activating Julie’s ruby remotely, or just taking advantage of the fact that Julie will obey any orders she's given in a suitably authoritative tone.
10 Back at Quine, Nick sees Janice in the hallway, but she ducks him as she goes into Laura's office.  Laura and Janice admire one another's ruby-changed bodies and chat a bit about Laura's meeting with George on page 8.  Though at the time she seemed stunned, now Laura has decided that Charlotte sucking cock during business hours is a wonderful and appropriate thing (“the best new company policy I've heard in a long time,” she says). Janice and Laura decide to have sex, then and there.
11 Janice and Laura have lesbian sex while chatting.  They're both excited about the changes to their bodies and hopeful that their breasts will continue to grow, to the size of Julie's or bigger.  Laura then reveals that though she was a lesbian, she now wants sex with a man — needs it, she says — and she wants Janice there to help. Janice readily agrees.
12 Emily, chestier than before and wearing an outfit that highlights that, welcomes Julie to George’s office.  Julie enters, confused as to why she has come. She takes off her jacket, revealing that she's naked underneath.  George tells her that she belongs to Quine and commands her to kneel.  Julie tries to resist, pointing out she's a married woman, but is helpless before George’s commands. Entranced, she agrees to obey him.

Emily, Laura, and Janice being free from the ruby's taint didn't last long — though Emily still seems to be in the earliest stages.  Laura and Janice have gone from nervous about the rubies to eager to be changed.  And of course this is the point at which things go south for Nick: Julie is suborned by Quine, and his whole house of cards collapsing.
Catherine is absent in this issue, probably because she's getting ready for her date with George in the next issue.

Issue 5: May 2012
Cover: Katie admires the paint she has just applied to Miri's body.
1 At the apartment, Andrea and Katie play with Miri by lubing her up and fingering her ass.  Miri docilely accepts this treatment with her usual 'yes, mistress.'  The ruby flares as Miri orgasms.
2 At Quine, Laura and Janice dress after their sex and flirt.  (Janice's hair is disheveled which I think is a step down.) George calls, and Janice answers in her capacity as Laura's assistant.  George instructs Laura to escort Nick to his office.  Janice looks forward to hearing about Nick's punishment, and Laura speculates that Nick has probably already run for it.  But then they open Laura's office door, and Nick is standing right there.
3 Nick and Laura go up to George’s office, where Emily ushers them in.  Before they enter, Laura flirts with Emily.  As they enter, Julie (back in her jacket) leaves the office by another door.  Entranced, she tells Emily that George said to put her on his regular schedule.
4 In George’s office, Nick stammers to defend his theft of the rubies as field testing. George is forgiving, however. He's got the display from Nick's computer on 4:5 open, with the menu options showing Nick's five women's names. Laura expects Nick to be fired, but instead he's merely reprimanded. Laura is disappointed. George stops Laura from leaving by briefly entrancing her as he calls Emily into his office.
5 At the apartment, Katie and Andrea put the finishing touches on an ever-more-made-up, ever-more-mannikin-like Miri, whose breasts are now the same size as theirs after her treatment on page 2.  Katie and Andrea trail off as all three of the women's rubies flare.
6 Immediately entranced by the mere approach of Julie, the three women stand quietly as she enters and informs them that they all 'need to go somewhere now.'  On the way back from Quine, Julie changed into a red evening gown that shows off her massive chest. Her hair has also changed into what we’ll call the Quine-approved updo.
7 In his office, George informs Emily and Laura that he's decided Emily will become Laura's assistant, and Janice his.  Both Emily and Laura try to protest — Laura more effectively — but he shuts them down by commanding Emily to go down on Laura.  Laura fights the trance far more than is usually seen, though she’s ineffective.
8 As Emily goes down on Laura, both orgasm, triggering breast enlargement for each of them — Emily to Laura's previous size, Laura to the size of Nick's women.  George gloats that Quine owns their bodies, and tells Laura that he has a job for her and Janice while he's at the opera.
9 At the opera, George meets Catherine, who is dressed in a very slutty version of a high-end gown.  The crowd includes at least three other rubied women and one irritated-by-slutiness dowager with opera glasses. A gray-haired man with George comments on Catherine's breasts as she approaches, then steps back to whisper a magic word to another woman in an unexpected crossover Easter egg.  Catherine greets George and reminds him that she 'has a boyfriend now.' He says he knew that already, explaining that Nick is his employee.  Catherine is flirty and not at all upset by the revelation.  The implication is that Catherine has been George's mistress for a while, though she never considered him her 'boyfriend' the way she now sees Nick.
10 In the opera box, Catherine meets Charlotte, wearing another slutty gown.  Catherine is fine with Charlotte sharing the box with them, but is dismayed to learn that Charlotte's role in the evening is to suck George’s cock while they watch Rigoletto. (Side note: Rigoletto is kind of an odd choice, given how many operas there are about sex and men dominating women, from the Magic Flute to the Elixir of Love. Tales of Hoffman has interchangeable robot women, even!) Catherine is remarkably upset at this vulgarity, acting like a normal woman however briefly.  George taunts her with the revelation that he's had Julie suck his cock, too.  Catherine starts to go into trance as George talks.  Charlotte, for her part, is completely okay with being called a 'brainless little cocksucker' and doesn't need to be tranced to eagerly obey her master’s whims.
11 Catherine fights off the trance state and starts to storm out, but George plays with an app on his smartphone, trancing her.  Her rebellion of the last page was, it seems, only possible at George’s whim.  Once he’s reestablished control, George makes Catherine strip and join Charlotte at his cock. Charlotte watches and smiles as George verbally degrades Catherine.
12 Back at Nick's apartment, he's come home to find Julie, Andrea, Katie, and Miri gone, with a note saying they've gone to 'Q.'  Then Laura and Janice stroll in, hair done up and looking slightly uncomfortable in bustiers and hooker outfits.

Something subtle I didn’t notice until it was pointed out: Laura, Charlotte, and Julie all have near-identical updo hairstyles.  All the women George controls have a version of this hairstyle. Catherine’s is pretty nonstandard, but George only took full control of her on 5:11. In contrast, the women Nick controls have their hair down, and free women have their hair any-which-way.  Catherine's attempt to fight off the trace state on page 11 is pretty remarkable and unmatched among the rubied women, even if unsuccessful.

[jwik01]

Part 3: All the Men Are With Him (issues 6-11)

Issue 6: September 2012
Cover: Elaine and Gabby in a different version of the scene on page 9.
1 In a Quine medical lab, Marina the security guard undergoes a fairly quick medical exam and answers a few questions about how the ruby has affected her.  We can see that it hasn't, much — by her breast size, she's still in the early stages.  She undresses for the exam, down to nothing but her ruby.  Before she puts her clothes back on, Marina learns there's going to be more.
2 Katie and Andrea, nude but for nitrile exam gloves and rubies, appear.  Katie and Andrea are now in updos, signaling that they’ve fallen under Quine’s control.  As a smoothly-operating team, the pair pull a hesitant Marina down onto the bed and begin licking and masturbating her. Marina puts up a token struggle as her ruby flares.
3 At Nick's apartment, Laura and Janice confidently and casually explain to Nick that while Julie is no longer (exclusively) his, he's now free to enjoy the two of them as well.  Nick doesn’t like the situation. Laura reveals that, as had been previously established, she has never had sex with a man and Nick will be her first.
4 Nick still expresses reluctance, even with Laura kneeling before him, his cock in her mouth. Janice reprimands him, pointing out that refusing to use Laura and Janice won't affect Julie (et al) in any way.  As she slides onto his cock, Janice notes that Julie told Quine how Nick wanted to fuck a virgin.  Nick relents.
5 Meanwhile, Julie (clad in the same slutty red gown she had on when she collected Andrea, Katie, and Miri) steps out onto a catwalk, surrounded by dozens or hundreds of men who applaud as as 'before' and 'after' pictures flash on the screens above.  This is some sort of product demo.  The 'before' picture is the same one from a company party that Laura and Janice we using back in issue 4, and the 'after' picture has George’s name on it, in case anyone doubted who Julie belongs to.  Two nameless men note that George is not present, and call it his typical arrogance.
The 'after' picture was apparently very recently taken, as Julie's hair is the same as her current style.  What I took at first to be some kind of body jewelry gold chain connecting Julie's hand to her pussy is more likely a strand of liquid.
6 Back at the apartment, Laura has been positioned for Nick to climb on top of her.  As he does so, she begins to write and moan, as does Janet.  Electricity arcs between their two rubies as Nick fucks Laura, suggesting that Janice is joining in on the orgasm thanks to the two rubies “pinging off each other” as was established back in issue 3.
7 Marina writhes and moans, too, as Katie and Andrea pleasure her.  She orgasms, and her breasts visibly swell.
8 She was seen briefly in issue 4, but now she shows up for realists! It’s he first appearance of somebody in a role that usually goes unfilled in erotic mind-control stories: the heroine!  Gabby is some kind of tech worker, and Elaine her coworker/sidekick.  The first team of a brainy glasses-wearing woman and her lighter-haired coworker, Janice and Laura, have utterly failed to resist Quine, so a new pair takes the field.
Gabby and Elaine are working late at Quine, and about to go home when Gabby learns that management wants a new field added to the ruby database, specifically as part of the data on the women wearing the rubies: 'owner.'  Both Gabby and Elaine are wearing rubies but appear to be in the earliest stages of change.  On the other hand, Elaine’s wearing a very short skirt that is clearly riding up in panel four.
9 Back at the apartment, Nick fucks Janice and Laura, interrupted by Janice informing him that George wants to meet with him the next morning.  Nick complains about Janice prioritizing Quine business over sex, and Laura and Janice explain that while they're available for Nick to fuck, it's Quine that owns them.  Nick doesn't like this reminder that he's no longer in charge of the women.
10 Katie and Andrea continue to pleasure Marina, whose orgasms continue to expand her chest.
11 Gabby and Elaine review the ruby database and discover that George has claimed ownership over a large number of women, though Miri now belongs to the CFO.  They marvel at a picture of the new and improved Julie, and notice that all the owned women have some element of programming in their rubies that doesn't match Gabby and Elaine's expectations.  As Gabby and Elaine start to fret about Quine's plans, their rubies flare and they begin to make out, which I connect back with Laura and Janice's behavior modification in 4:3. When a ruby-wearer thinks about the changes the ruby makes in a body — not necessarily her body, any body — the ruby triggers a burst of distracting arousal.
12 Katie and Andrea dress and leave as Marina stumbles back into the medical lab, naked, with breasts as large as we've seen to this point.  She's disoriented and confused, which the technician tells her is the result of a 'new release of the pers mod.' Pers presumably stands for personality, as she suddenly screeches in pain and then abruptly becomes an agreeable submissive slut very like Katie or Charlotte — though unlike either of them, she professes to have forgotten her own name in the transition.  In the background on a laptop we see that Gabby has an appointment to have the 'pers erase mod' installed in her ruby first thing tomorrow morning.

If the appearance of the Quine building at the start of issue 3 signaled the end of the first act of Beyond Rubies and the beginning of the second, the appearance of Gabby and Elaine on the cover of issue 6, and their appearance as seeming investigators set to uncover the ruby conspiracy, signals the end of the second act and the beginning of the third.  What had seemed to be a simple power fantasy about collecting a harem of chesty women has turned into a tale of sinister corporate executives and women being converted into puppets who love their chains (and whose breasts very quickly grow very large).


Issue 7: September 2013
Cover: Gabby wired up to four different rubies.
1 There's a lot to unpack here.  George wraps up a presentation on the rubies to three women — Alice, Beverly, and Claire, who are all high-ranking Quine employees.  George is assisted by a silent woman wearing a ruby (but not transformed), and backed up by two men, Jan (blond, red glasses) and an unnamed man with reddish hair and a blue suit.  Alice is the VP of Global Operations, Beverly is in Accounting, and Claire is described by HMB as a board member.  (Corporate governance note: this is probably not a meeting of the board of directors.)  Beverly asks about the FDA, and George explains that they won't be making health claims with the ruby, making FDA approval unnecessary.  Alice notes that the "beta 3" project, ie the rubies, is significantly over budget but she's assured by Jan that this isn't a problem (specifically, Jan is in email contact with Craig, the CFO, who last issue we learned had claimed Miri.  Now we see on Jan’s smartphone that Craig has taken Miri to New York for the week).
2 Claire here refers to "us in Compliance," suggesting she's a Quine attorney in their Compliance department.  George waves away Claire's familiar-sounding concerns (they don't know what the rubies do, it's all hush-hush, the effects aren’t clear), calling the ruby a simple health monitor (though he just declared that they wouldn't be marketing it as a health aid). George then pushes rubies onto Alice, Beverly, and Claire, and unveils something we haven't seen before — a version of the ruby that's wrist-mounted, instead of worn on a choker.
3 Gabby hacks into the ruby database to take her ruby and Elaine's offline.  Since the rubies respond to concern about the rubies by inducing distracting horniness, Elaine is going down on Gabby while she does so.
4 Elaine is disappointed to learn that her ruby isn't coming off, tugging at the collar, which answers the lingering question of whether the difficult with ruby removal is simply that women can’t bring themselves to do it.  Gabby asserts that removing the ruby would be possible only with a new version of the firmware.  Elaine also complains about her swelled chest, which Gabby says is probably permanent.   Gabby also says that the version of the firmware in their rubies is now one update out of date, and Elaine speculates that they're better off without whatever is in the latest version.  Gabby leads Elaine out of Quine (past a security guard who wears a ruby but probably isn't Marina, judging by her merely sizable chest), saying they need to get back to her apartment and figure out how to obtain the signing key for their firmware and thus remove the rubies.  As they go, Elaine notices Catherine entering Quine, and asks who would have access to the signing key. 
5 Cut to, in a classic bit of editing, Julie saying Nick's name as she comes home.  She's now wearing a blue gown instead of a red one but looks otherwise unchanged.  Nick is flabbergasted — he'd simply assumed he wasn't going to see her again.  Julie embraces Nick and tries to reassure him: she's still Julie, she's just a Julie who's loyal to Quine over Nick and whose job is to service George.  Nick tries to ask her about that, but she blows him off, and tries to impress him with reservations at an extremely high-end restaurant (obtained for her by Emily). She warns Nick to dress quickly or they'll be late. 
Which is kind of interesting: issues 4, 5, and 6 appeared to take place largely over the course of one long day.  It's reasonable to assume that this is the next morning, and that Julie has simply been out all night, but since they're on their way to dinner, who can say? Does this scene take place the night before the first four pages of this issue?  The answer is that Beyond Rubies is porn and doesn’t need to be bound to your tight continuity, man. It’s been a year since the last issue was released, cut them some slack!
6 Nick asks how they can afford the meal, and Julie assures him that her new job of 'Quine Exec Admin' pays very well.  (Second timeline note: Julie has had the job for, what, a day? That’s a short pay period!) When Nick presses her about her work, Julie turns defensive, reminding him that he has access to women like Laura and Janice, that he's remade Julie into the person he wanted her to be (sex-obsessed, huge tits, fine with him stepping out on her), and that he shouldn't complain.  The money is good: they can afford the finer things and get a better apartment.  (Didn't they just move into a luxury apartment in Catherine's building?)  Nick apologizes, and Julie invites him to join her and Andrea at a production of Pygmalion on 'Saturday,' whenever that is.
7 The next morning, Emily admits Nick into George's office and pours them tea while George compliments Nick for his 'adaptability,' ie his willingness to accept George stealing Julie's loyalty.  George speaks grandiosely: the ruby is going to change society and, it's implied, relegate women to permanent subordinate status.  In between panels of Nick and George talking, there are panels of Julie and Nick fucking (the night before, presumably).
8 The cutting between Nick and Julie, and Nick and George, continues. Nick ejaculates on Julie’s oiled tits.  George offers Nick a promotion to director of 'platform security for Beyond Rubies,' with a couple of dozen subordinates and a substantial raise. Emily shows Nick the compensation package, and points out that as director, Nick would have an 'exec admin' of his own; would he like Andrea?
9 Catherine finds Katie at a gallery opening, specifically her one-woman show at Liam Geoghegan Galleries.  They embrace, Catherine congratulates Katie, and they chat in a way that makes it clear Katie is sleeping with the gallery owner.  The crowd at the gallery includes three or so other rubied women besides Catherine and Katie.
10 The gallery owner, Liam, turns out to be the same guy who was admiring Catherine at the opera with George, in issue 10. Catherine greets him warmly, and compliments him on Katie's appearance, literally calling her an object (Katie blushes, flattered).  Liam and Catherine flirt, with the clear subtext that after the gallery opening ends, Liam will take Catherine and Katie back to his home and fuck them both.  Catherine gives Liam a very slight amount of pushback, which is apparently enough to trigger her ruby into giving her a burst of compliance-inducing arousal.
11 Nick walks home at the end of the (a?) day.  He checks his phone — his latest text is from Andrea, congratulating him on his promotion and acquisition of her (amusingly, Nick's last text to Andrea before that was simply 'lets fuck').  Suddenly Gabby and Elaine grab him and haul him into a bar, where they explain their need to get rid of their rubies.  Nick claims he can't help them, but Gabby is still on Quine's email and knows about his new promotion.
12 Gabby and Elaine pressure Nick to use his new position to get the signing keys for the firmware.  Nick is fearful, but Elaine and Gabby make it clear that the stakes are too high: the rubies are 'slave-collars' that turn women into toys.  Elaine suggests Nick use the key to install a custom firmware on Julie's ruby, enabling him to remove it, and Nick seems receptive. Meanwhile, Marina is apparently still blowing that one lab tech, some number of days later.  The lab tech notices that Gabby's appointment for personality erasure has been automatically cancelled, because her ruby is offline.

Issue 8: April 2014
Cover: close-up on Beverly's face as she and Oliver screw
1 In Beverly's office at Quine, she reviews the costs of "this rubies thing" with her assistant Oliver. Beverly isn't happy with the expenditures (though, Oliver points out, the company as a whole remains profitable).  Tired, she decides she's done for the day (despite her new ruby's supposed energy-boosting effects). As Beverly and Oliver take an elevator down, Oliver invites Beverly out for a drink. When she turns him down, he persists, and thanks to the ruby, she relents.
2 At Gabby's apartment (she's got a whole eclectic-nerd thing going on, it's pretty nice actually) Gabby and Elaine block their rubies' wireless connections with tin foil and fret about their limited options: they're stuck waiting for Nick to help them.  Unable to come up with a reason to resist their ruby-increased urges, they start to make out.
3 Nick, in his new office at Quine, hears his new fucktoy/admin Andrea knock.  It's Laura, she says, and Nick tells her to let her in.  In prelude of things to come, Laura and Andrea are dressed similarly and have very similar hairstyles — Quine-approved updos.  Nick starts to rise, used to thinking of Laura as his supervisor, but she reminds him that since his promotion, they're at equal levels on the org chart.  She came to tell him that Gabby's ruby is offline and she hasn't shown up for work, and she missed 'an appointment in QA' (which was for personality erasure).  Nick responds by activating Laura's ruby, entrancing her. It’s not obvious, but in fact Nick is exerting mastery over Laura, claiming her from Quine the same way George claimed Julie away from him.
4 At Liam's home, Catherine demonstrates how she's trained Katie to give better head. Much as Charlotte enjoyed watching George degrade Catherine back in issue 5, Catherine enjoys degrading Katie now, calling her 'art-whore' and reminding her that this, serving men, is now Katie's purpose in life. Katie stammers, as her ruby transforms any concerns over the treatment into lust.
5 George, in his office, allows Charlotte and Julie to make out in the corner while he calls Craig the CFO in New York.  We get a brief glimpse of Miri in NYC (our first sight of her in a while) getting titfucked by Craig.  George tells Craig he wants to increase the number of women in the next round of beta testing (which is kind of odd, that they're still doing beta testing this close to shipping). As the phone call ends, Charlotte and Julie transition to worshipping George's cock, and George tells Julie to call Nick after.
6 At Beverly's apartment, Oliver enjoys a drink while Beverly undresses.  They chat — Beverly is single, Oliver is married (and he's texted his wife saying he's working late).  Beverly thinks this affair that they're embarking on is a bad idea, but can't resist it.
7 Beverly, now in stockings and a silk robe, starts to undress Oliver. He suggests moving to the bedroom, but Beverly says she doesn't like him that much — she hasn't yet surrendered all autonomy.  However, once Oliver is on the couch with his cock out, she kneels before him, eager to get the cock in her mouth.
8 At Gabby's apartment (which still looks cool in a nerdy way), now in the bedroom, Gabby and Elaine have sex.  Their rubies, though blocked from the cellular connection, still enhance their libidos.  We can see them flaring through the tinfoil.
9 Afterwards they discover that their breasts have grown again. Gabby won't fit into her renfair garb any more!  They aren’t especially concerned about their transforming bodies, of course.  Also their lusts aren't really sated — Gabby admits to knowing several men she might call up for casual sex, and Elaine encourages her to get them some guys.
10 Claire, going home for the day, passes a ruby-enhanced security guard on her way out of Quine. Waiting for the elevator, her ruby flares and she finds herself going up, not down.
11 Nick, in his office, fucks Laura so hard her hair goes from a Quine-approved updo to something more flowing.  Which is to say, Nick has asserted control over Laura. She readily tells Nick everything she knows.  Nick learns that George has been fucking both Laura and Janice. He ejaculates onto Laura's tits, in a show of defiance of George's trying to control who Nick can fuck and when. Then Andrea sticks her head in — she just got a call (from Julie, probably) saying that George wants to see him.
12 Oliver and Beverly have moved to the bedroom, where Oliver starts fucking Beverly doggy-style. As he fucks her, her tits grow, and she gradually begins to make the transition from free woman to transformed fucktoy slave.

The scene on 8:3 was the original impetus for this project.  I remember reading this for the first time and being baffled as to which woman was which and why Nick was a VP and wha’ happen?  At this point I’m pretty sure I have it all down, though.

[jwik01]

Part 3 (Continued)

Issue 9: September 2014
Cover: Elaine petting Gabby as their rubies flare.
1 Nick finds Julie on his way in to George's office.  Julie is dressed like Elvira.  They canoodle briefly on Emily's desk, as Julie suggests they stay in together that night (she has a surprise, she says).  Julie tells Nick to go on in to George, and says they can take a long lunch together after.  Inside, George is all business for once, telling Nick to sit down, because two rubies are missing.
2 Outside Gabby's apartment, two of her polyamory/nerd/renfair friends, Alifeurd and Simon, catch up. They've both been called in by Gabby for some fun.  Meanwhile, Gabby and Elaine doll themselves up for that fun.
3 Elaine and Gabby, dressed like porny renfair figures, in chainmail bikinis etc, and still wearing foil on their rubies, greet the two guys in a big pin-up panel. Elaine now has hair like Elsa from Frozen, which is not a Quine-approved updo.
4 In Beverly's bedroom, Oliver has moved on to going down on her, and begins to assert ownership over Beverly, which she readily accepts, calling him Master readily. Beverly's breasts continue to grow.
5 In George's office, Nick tries to cover for Gabby, saying that maybe she took the rubies to a bad reception area, or took the rubies offline for authorized QA testing. George is dubious, but trusts Nick to investigate and resolve the situation. As George dismisses Nick (and Charlotte, who had been sitting quietly in the corner, rises to move to her usual place between George's legs) he tells Nick that he might have Julie work late that night, which can't be good for Nick to hear (either the reminder that George comes before Nick in Julie's priorities, or the idea that George's whim might disrupt Julie's desire to surprise Nick that evening).
6 Nick storms out of George's office, blowing past Julie. He takes the elevator back towards his office. As he enters the elevator, Claire leaves it, headed for the C-suite.  Nick texts Gabby, telling her to put the rubies online immediately and call him, but Gabby's too busy with sex to notice the text.
7 Claire cautiously enters the C-suite office of Schwegman (maybe this is the blue-suited guy from 7:1 or maybe Jan's last name is Schwegman?).  There's a folding chair with a vibrator sitting on it — Schwegman, in the dark, orders Claire to sit.  When she refuses, her ruby flares and she finds herself obeying.
8 Meanwhile, in Alice's office, Janice appears with some budget documents.  Alice eyes Janice's remarkable cleavage. Janice goes into the predatory mode we've seen Laura and (way back in the day) Andrea adopt, and presses her tits into the face of a barely-resisting Alice.
9 Andrea, nude, massages Nick's shoulders in his office while Nick tries, futilely, to unlock Julie's ruby with his laptop.  As Nick grumbles, Andrea reminds him that Julie's relationship with George is just a job. She suggests that if Nick resolves the Gabby situation quickly, George might reward him by letting Julie go home with him early.  Nick guesses that Gabby pulled the rubies's batteries, but Andrea points out that isn't possible.  Andrea further entices Nick, or tries to distract him from Julie, by suggesting that after Nick retrieves Gabby and Elaine, George will let Nick claim them as his fucktoys.  So Nick wouldn't have Julie (or Catherine, or Katie, or Miri) but he would have Andrea, Gabby, and Elaine in his harem.
It’s worth noting that Andrea is not only nude, she has her hair down — the implication is that Nick has been editing her ruby’s programming and asserted his control over her the same way he did to Laura in 8:3.
10 Back at Gabby's, their orgy continues as Elaine moves into position for both of the guys to fuck her at once.
11 Gabby positions Elaine and the guys for one of them to fuck Elaine's pussy and the other her ass, and then the DP starts.  Elaine enjoys it immensely.
12 So immensely, it turns out, that her ruby melts the tinfoil and her breasts swell up to their maximum size.  In Nick's office, his computer pings as Elaine's ruby rejoins the network.  Andrea is pleased, on Nick's behalf.

Issue 10: January 2015
Cover: Gabby and Elaine, glassy-eyed and in slavegirl garb, with exposed rubies and massive breasts
1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11  Four women — Siri, pornstar Paris Kennedy, Eva, and Zoey all acquire and are changed by rubies.  Zoey has the choker, while the others wear wrist bracelets (amusingly, Zoey complains that she'd rather have the bracelet).  Though Zoey is depicted as resisting the ruby's changes somewhat more than the other women — trying first to refuse sex, and then to refuse to leave the house dressed in something like a stripper's schoolgirl costume but skimpier — her tits end up among the smallest of the four women’s, belying the theory that greater resistance results in larger tits.  The other three women are more sanguine, only rebelling in the next-to-last series of panels, but their breast sizes end up all over the map, with Siri’s nearly as large as Gabby's, and Eva’s about as small as Zoey's.  Paris ends up somewhere in the middle, on par with Julie or Charlotte.
2, 6, 9, 12 Gabby tries to repair the tinfoil on Elaine's ruby, but it's too late: the damage has been done, Elaine has been compromised.  She waits until Gabby is in the throes of a massive orgasm (one that moves Gabby's breast expansion to the largest of all the victims seen so far, perhaps because Gabby is so resistant to the changes or perhaps simply because different women respond differently to the rubies) to rip the foil off of her ruby.  Once the foil is removed, Gabby feels new compulsions enter her via the ruby — go back to Quine, surrender, and so on — but the overwhelming compulsion is for submissive sex.  This compulsion they satisfy by dressing up in ersatz harem slavegirl costumes and begging Gabby's two fuckbuddies to dominate them.

Issue 11: April 2015
Cover: Janice closing the door to Alice's office
1 In Nick's office, Andrea coos over him while Nick adjusts the settings on Gabby's and Elaine's rubies, allowing them to finish their orgy before summoning them back to Quine. Andrea compliments Nick for cleverly keeping the compulsion subtle, and reminds him that as soon as Gabby and Elaine return to Quine, Nick can erase their personalities and make them fucktoys like her. Nick seems into it. 
2 Meanwhile, in Schwegman's office in the dark, Claire reluctantly masturbates, protesting as Schwegman tells her that she's merely a cunt for fucking. Gradually, Claire becomes unable to dispute this. Conveniently, her hair is already in a Quine-approved updo.
3 In Beverly's apartment, Beverly and Oliver are still fucking. Beverly is coherent enough to wonder aloud what is happening to her, and Oliver explains: the ruby is turning her into his servile 'exec admin' Quine fucktoy. No longer his boss, she will be his servant. 
4 In Alice's office, Janice, tits out, masturbates a nude Alice.  She explains, using language not unlike Catherine's instructions to Katie in 8:4, that George has 'won' and this is the new status quo: women serving and obeying men. Refusal to accept this new paradigm, Janice says as she watches Alice's breasts grow, will only lead to heartache and instead Alice should be doing her best to earn favorable treatment by their masters.
5 In a big single panel, Janice triggers Alice's transformation to her final form.  I like Janice's expression of sadistic glee. Beyond Rubies could have used more Janice.
6 In another big single panel, Gabby's impromptu orgy is finally over as her guys are all fucked out.  Gabby and Elaine, but especially Gabby, have undergone further breast growth and reached their final stage forms, too.
7 Gabby and Elaine kick the guys out of Gabby's apartment. They can't resist the siren call of reporting to Quine any longer, but they have a problem, in that all their clothes are way to small for their expanded chests.  Gabby, who is apparently into crafts on top of everything else, starts to toss together coverings.
8 As Gabby and Elaine finish their tit-covering togas, there are a couple of panels of Nick working on his computer. What is he doing?
9 Gabby and Elaine make their way to Quine, attracting stares, and claiming that they're on their way to a costume party to explain their ridiculous looks.
10 And finally they arrive at Quine.  NB that of the four women they pass on their way to Quine — in Gabby's apartment's stairwell, on the subway, and outside the Quine building — three wear neck rubies, and the fourth might be wearing a wrist ruby for all we know.  Heck, the fourth (the tattooed woman in Gabby's building) might be Paris from issue 10, still in the early stages of her development.
11 Unable to restrain themselves, Gabby and Elaine start to make out in the elevator, but they report to Nick as ordered.  Then he presses a key on his computer, and erases their personalities.  Andrea, nude behind them, compliments Nick on his work.
12 Julie gives George a blowjob up in George's office while Nick checks in with George on the phone. As Andrea predicted, George is pleased, and gives Gabby and Elaine to Nick, then sends Julie down to meet him, letting her go home after all.  Down in Nick's office, Andrea watches, pleased, as Nick commands Gabby and Elaine to blow him.  Seeing Andrea, Elaine, and Gabby in the same panel, it's clear that Elaine's and Andrea's tits are about the same size, and Gabby's tits are substantially larger.

[jwik01]

Part 4: FLY MY PRETTIES FLY! (Issues 12-17)

Issue 12: July 2015
Cover: Julie feels Gabby up while Gabby works on a desktop computer. Marina stares blankly in the background, her ruby wired to some machine.
1 In George’s office, Julie fixes her makeup. George dismisses her, and as Julie leaves, Laura and Andrea enter. Andrea confirms to George that Nick has control of Gabby and Elaine, as George starts fucking Laura without preamble.  Andrea questions George’s ability to satisfy a half-dozen nymphomaniacs and it’s revealed that George is wearing a wrist-mounted ruby, which gives him the necessary sexual stamina.
Andrea and Laura have their hair in basically identical non-updos, which is a signal that Nick controls them both (Laura since 8:3, Andrea some time before 9:9) but George doesn’t notice.  Laura has been pressed into the service that George had been planning on taking from Julie, before he dismissed her as a reward to Nick.
2 Down in the lab, a new servile fucktoy, Shanti, receives permission to masturbate from the two lab techs examining her. Her ruby is wired up to a work station.
3 One lab tech expresses an interest in fucking Shanti, since she’s assigned to them (ie they’re the names in her ruby’s “owner” field) but the other tech warns him against it, as she’s only theirs for the time she’s getting examined in the lab. The first tech makes a reference to the idiom of the cobbler’s children lacking shoes, and they dismiss Shanti — who, rather than dress and leave, decides to masturbate quietly in the corner some more.  Nick enters, distracting the techs from Shanti’s attempt to proposition them, and he sends the techs out.
4 Julie, Elaine, and Gabby enter the lab as the techs leave.  Elaine and Gabby are Nick’s naked slaves, while Julie still wears her Elvira-but-somehow-sluttier gown.   Julie follows Nick’s instructions to take Shanti’s place on the examination table, but questions whether this was cleared by George. Nick assures her it was.  Gabby, at Nick’s orders, starts working at the computer. Nick declares he’s given Gabby “write permission” to “all the rubies.”  Shanti masturbates out of frame, murmuring submissive nothings.
5 Gabby does something to Julie’s ruby, which causes Julie to orgasm and her hair to shift from a Quine-approved updo to the rockabilly style that she wore in issue 2.  Julie is stunned, as though she’s clear-headed for the first time in weeks.
6 Julie begs Nick for forgiveness, which is an irrational enough response that I think it’s evidence that Julie hasn’t really had all her mental influences removed, she’s just lost the compulsion to be more loyal to Quine than to Nick. Nick was able to alter Laura and Andera’s programming through the computer in his office, but editing Julie requires this specialized equipment.  There are several possible reasons for this — altering a ruby with a wired connection might not trigger flags George might notice, for one.  Julie might have been secured against Nick’s casual rewriting of her loyalties, for another.
Julie expresses at most extremely mild irritation at Nick for brainwashing her and turning her into a submissive fucktoy, which conversation is immediately derailed by Shanti sitting up and distracting Nick and Julie.  Nick orders Shanti back into the chair.
7 A bit later, Gabby and Elaine are more or less freed from the ruby’s enslaving influence.  Gabby manages to display actual pique at having been turned into Nick’s fuck-toy, which is more than Elaine can muster.  Meanwhile Shanti is going down on Julie. Gabby asserts that their rubies will look active to the system, but can no longer be accessed via the cellular connection.
8 Gabby and Nick brainstorm how to thwart George.  Elaine has little to add and starts playing with Nick’s cock through his pants. Julie, meanwhile, continues to enjoy Shanti, who has been reprogrammed as Julie’s submissive pet.  The fact that Gabby and Elaine don’t object to turning Shanti into Julie’s plaything was priority action item further suggests that they aren’t as free as they think they are…  Anyway, Gabby starts to come up with the idea of using building security somehow, just as Marina wanders in as part of her security patrol.  Good for her, she’s apparently recalled her name.  Gabby sends Marina to the chair.
9 At Beverly’s apartment, she uses her hands and final-form-sized tits to massage Oliver. The apartment door buzzes, and Oliver sends her to answer it.  When she does, she meets Helena, Oliver’s wife.  Helena wears a ruby but is in the early stages of physical transformation, and seems more sorrowful than angry that her husband is cheating on her.
10 Marina’s up on the table now. Gabby, with the approval of Nick and Elaine, activates something on the desktop, and Marina has an experience similar to Julie back on page 5. Her hair shifts out of the Quine-approved updo, and she accepts that Nick has the power to order her around.
11  Claire, now at the middle stage of physical transformation, stands nude and submissive while someone off panel calls her a cunt.  Alice, her hair shifted into a Quine-approved updo, tells Janice that she needs cock, and Janice agrees that all women must serve cock.  Katie sucks Liam’s cock. Catherine masturbates in bed, on the phone with George. Craig in New York fucks Miri’s ass (Miri still looks stoned out of her gourd). Gabby works at the computer.
12 Gabby declares that she’s successfully deleted the latest, most overtly mind-controlling version of the firmware. There’s backups, but it’s something. Julie wonders whether Marina will ever have free will again, and Gabby says that she will (unlike some women). Marina, now loaded up with Gabby’s custom control firmware on her ruby, excuses herself. She needs to go to George’s office, even though she doesn’t know why.

Issue 13: December 2015
Cover: Julie, Gabby, and Elaine lying together on the floor of the lab, hair all askew.
1 George watches a video of a masturbating woman on his computer. This woman is named Elizabeth. In addition to orgasm taking her all the way from no physical effects to final-form (or nearly), note that she goes from being an unhealthy level of skinny to nicely plush, and her hair grows and organizes itself into a Quine-approved updo.  That her hair does that is basically magic, sure, but man, it looks nice.
2 George has been  fucking Laura and Andrea.  The women dress as George declares that what they saw is the final version of the firmware — no more subtle corruption or gradual changes, it’ll be straight from free woman to enslaved fucktoy.  25 000 rubies will soon be in the hands of consumers.  As Laura, Andrea, and George leave, Marina enters.
3 While Julie and Nick make out and Shanti goes down on her new owner’s husband, Gabby and Elaine work at the desktop. Elaine notices that the two of them can push a new update to all the rubies, which Gabby is thrilled to hear.  Maybe they can reverse (some of) the mental changes? Gabby asks Nick to lock the door.
4 In Beverly’s apartment, Bev sucks Oliver’s cock while he gloats to Helena. Helena sits meekly on the couch next to him. It’s not clear what causes Helena to become a final-form brainless service cunt, maybe Beverly has an orgasm from sucking Oliver’s cock and Helena’s got the new firmware that makes orgasms contagious and also mind-erasing?
5 Marina is at Emily’s desk, which is located in George’s outer office. Gabby can perceive everything Marina can, through the ruby and computer, and sees when Marina’s keycard is insufficient to let her into George’s office.  Marina struggles with the overwhelming compulsion to go to George’s office, planted in her mind by Gabby.
6 Estella discovers Marina, and apologizes for disturbing her.  Estella, a janitor, has a ruby and big tits, but her hair is down so she’s not fully enslaved yet.  Estella’s keycard lets her and Marina into George’s office, while Estella mentions her husband (Jorge) enjoying the changes the ruby has made in her.
7 In the Quine front lobby George checks with security, determining that Nick hasn’t left the building. Pleased that Nick is working late, George sends Andrea to serve him. Laura asks if she’s dismissed, but George tells her to go with him to Catherine.  She tries to demur, but complies, thanks to her ruby.  It’s been a while since we last saw that red-tinted speech bubble. Presumably the ruby kicked on and enforced obedience either because a rubied woman is fundamentally incapable of refusing a threesome, because obeying George is hard-coded into Laura’s ruby and Nick couldn’t remove it, or because Nick programmed Laura to obey George so that George wouldn’t notice Laura is under Nick’s control.
Andrea and Laura both lack Quine-approved updos because both belong to Nick — Andrea was assigned to him, and he claimed Laura in issue 8. Laura resists leaving with George because while on the clock she serves George (just as she and Janice served Nick back in issue 6) she wants to be with Nick, her owner.
8 Julie has managed to tear herself away from fucking Shanti, that’s how important Marina’s mission is!  Gabby monitors Marina’s progress. Meanwhile, Marina and Estella start to turn each other on (cf Gabby and Elaine in 11:10: leave two rubied women alone together and they’ll start to make out).
9 Gabby can detect this behavior but is powerless to prevent it.
10 Beverly’s stimulation advanced Helena only now to her final-form transformation, because unlike Elizabeth on page 2 she doesn’t have the final firmware and needs multiple orgasms to be transformed.
11 Estella advances to the next stage, too, scissoring with Marina. She's presumably had plenty of hot sex with Jorge before this but the presence of Marina's ruby triggers further development during her orgasm.
12 Laura and Catherine suck George’s cock while he’s on a group call with his co-conspirators. Laura looks thoughtful because she wants to turn the information she’s getting her to Nick’s advantage, if she can.  Miri is as blank as ever, and Claire is utterly glassy-eyed.  George’s smartphone tells him that the door to his office has been open long enough to trigger an automatic warning, which has happened because Marina distracted Estella from cleaning the office (presumably this normally takes Estella less than 22 minutes).

Issue 14: May 2016
Cover: Marina and Estella screwing on George’s desk per 13:11 or so
1 George and Laura return from Catherine’s in a limo.  George calls Quine building security, instructs the rubied woman there (Lizzy) to disable the elevator to his office, and masturbates Laura. Laura’s glowing ruby signals her arousal.
George probably thought it was really clever of him (or whoever, in his conspiracy, made the choice)  to make building security all-female so they could be easily controlled.  Also, I don’t think George really understands how the rubies work, since he hasn’t realized that Laura’s loyalty has been stolen from him by Nick, he just sees her futilely resisting him and is amused by it.
2 Marina and Estella recover from their lovemaking. Estella talks about her husband a bit, and invites Marina for a threesome.  As they start to resume their makeout, Gabby regains control over Marina and establishes it over Estella.  (Why Gabby couldn’t do this on 13:9 is unclear.)
3 Their dialogue makes it clear: Gabby is the mastermind behind this scheme, Elaine merely her assistant.  While George walks Laura to the elevator (her ass, tits, and pussy all hanging out because it amuses George to demean her) Marina takes George’s USB drive.
4 George has Lizzy turn his elevator back on, then calls Andrea, who is still trying to obey the command he gave her on 13:7, and report to Nick.  She’s deduced he’s in the lab because she’s spent a fair bit of time looking for him elsewhere — since 13:7, George and Laura have taken a car to Catherine’s, engaged in sex with her, then turned around and gone back to Quine.
5 Marina and Estella resume their duties — Estella turns to her janitorial cart, and Marina checks in on her security patrol.  Marina knows she must take the USB drive back to the lab but doesn’t know why.  George is amused to find that the security alert on his phone was tripped by a janitor and a guard having sex. Laura is uncomfortable because she still wants to get away from George and return to Nick, her master, now that the work day is done, not because she’s mostly naked.
6 Andrea walks in on Gabby and Elaine working while Nick receives a blowjob in the corner and is understandably confused. Julie ambushes her and takes revenge for Andrea’s manipulation of her in issue 1 and the affair Andrea had with Nick before the story began.  It’s kind of funny, since if Nick ordered Andrea up onto the table for reprogramming, Andrea would simply nod and comply.
7 George revels in his power over Marina, Estella, and Laura.  He commands Marina and Estella to strip, ostensibly to confirm they haven’t stolen anything from his office, but mostly just because he’s an asshole. 
8 Julie and Gabby are alarmed by the change Julie’s reckless activation of the machine caused in Andrea — turned her into a motionless, Miri-like mannikin, with breasts even larger than what been the previously established maximum size.  Elaine and Nick both think it’s a positive change. 
Gabby is able to see on her computer what George is making Marina and Estella do, but can’t stop it without giving away the game.
9 Thinking very quickly, Gabby commands Marina to stuff the drive in her pussy, then tell George she’s on her period, correctly guessing that George won’t want to fuck a menstruating woman.  He told her to turn around so he could fuck her from behind, and puts them on their knees to suck his cock instead.
10 Gabby has Nick send Laura a text message with instructions.  Laura is very happy to hear from Nick.
11 Laura pretends to be aroused enough by the sight of Marina and Estella submitting to George that she wants to join in.  If George was paying attention and knew how the rubies worked, this might be another sign that Laura’s motivations aren’t what he assumes them to be.
12 The group in the lab hits on the plan of sending Julie, Andrea, and Nick up to retrieve the USB drive from Laura, while supposedly responding to George’s summons.  It’s confirmed that Andrea has been reduced to the state of a will-less sex doll, her personality erased, but Gabby theorizes that George is very unlikely to notice this.

[Daphne]

I just want to say that I am in awe of this magisterial work.

[jwik01]

Part 4 Continued


Issue 15: December 2016
Cover: the Andrea-doll riding an elevator.
1 Gabby and Elaine recap the situation as Nick and Julie take the Andrea-doll to George’s outer office. That’s Shanti still playing with herself.
2 Julie calls George to get buzzed in from Emily’s desk to his inner office. George has no reason to be suspicious so it’s just him being a dick when Julie needs to call him. Marina and Estella are dressed again. Laura covers up and stands where George will hopefully forget she’s there.
3 Estella, Marina, and George all react to the sight of the Andrea-doll. George’s acceptance of Nick’s dodging answer to his question just goes to show that George is not as smart as he clearly thinks he is. Nick and George start to discuss the long-term plans of George’s conspiracy.
4 George shows Nick another video on his computer, of a woman changing under her ruby’s effects.  “The wife of the Minister of the Interior” looks to be well over forty, at least in her initial appearance. Like Alice back in 7:1, she’s depicted as substantially older than most of the rubied women we see. Her apparent youthening over the course of the page explains why all the rubied women seem to be no older than maybe mid-30s: as we might have guessed, it's a cosmetic effect from the ruby process.
5 George shows Nick more pictures of women. Except for Catherine we haven’t seen any of these women before.  “The wife of the Minister of Culture” is, presumably, also over 40, but you wouldn’t know it except for the kicky gray streak in her hair.
6 George confirms what we saw back on 12:1, that a male version of the ruby exists, supposedly to grant sexual stamina.  Nick’s hesitance comes from the obvious implication that George could turn him into a slave the same way they’ve done to all the rubied women.
7 Nick comes up with a way to both convince George that Nick isn’t a threat but rather is on board with the conspiracy, and also retrieve Marina’s USB stick from Laura. It requires Laura to intuit what Nick wants and comply, but that doesn’t seem to worry Nick.
8 Gabby and Elaine reaffirm the stakes of the situation for us, and let us know that Nick’s donning of a ruby isn’t what it seems.
9 As Nick dons the ruby (which Gabby saw happen already on the previous panel, continuity isn’t the tightest here) we see he slipped something small and blue between his wrist and the device, which is apparently enough to block the signal. Julie and the Andrea-doll play the part of Nick’s devoted slaves as Laura adopts the stance of a wholly subjugated fucktoy.
10 Laura slips Nick the precious thumbdrive under the pretense of handling his cock. George shifts from sitting in his chair, watching Nick fuck Laura to on his knees fucking the Andrea-doll. Nick pulls Julie’s hair to sell the con, which Julie doesn’t seem to mind.
11 Gabby and Elaine watch, Gabby interpreting the data coming in through the rubies to determine that the Andrea-doll and Laura are having sex again — though it’s unclear whether she means that after Nick and George fucked them, they started in on one another, or that the doll is having sex with George and Laura sex with Nick.  It doesn’t really matter. To win control over the ruby network, Gabby needs to block George. George has the system locked down with a passcode that’s stored on Marina’s thumbdrive.  With that passcode, Gabby can do almost anything to the rubies, but without it she’s limited to her direct control over Marina and the other women whose rubies have been physically hooked up to her machine, and monitoring the data being sent by other rubies.
Gabby recalls that Shanti exists, and discovers that she’s a facilities worker with power over the elevators.
12 Nick gratuitously degrades Laura, presumably for George’s benefit, and then he leaves with the Andrea-doll, Laura, and Julie.  Laura isn’t informed about the situation but is able to keep up with Nick and play along.  George decides to double-cross Nick and exert some kind of control over him via the ruby he thinks Nick just donned, and finally notices that Nick’s ruby didn’t actually come on line.

Issue 16: June 2017
Cover Gabby plays with her massive tits and gives herself an orgasm.
1 George understands that Nick has betrayed him, but lacks any details. He calls building security in hopes of cutting Nick off.  Lizzy obeys without questioning George’s bizarre commands.  We see that Nick, Laura, and Julie left the Andrea-doll upstairs.
2 Gabby sent Elaine and Shanti down to the basement to disable George’s elevator. Shanti knows how but is no longer capable of paying attention enough to understand what’s needed of her without constant stimulation (compare with 7:3, when Elaine did something similar to permit Gabby to keep thinking clearly).  Nick’s elevator arrives at the lab, and he walks more slowly while Julie and Laura sprint towards Gabby with the thumb drive. George finds the Andrea-doll waiting outside his office and tells her to follow him without noticing she’s become a mindless sexual drone.
3 Once George is between floors, Gabby has Shanti stop his elevator.  Julie and Laura reach the lab. Nick remains outside to serve as a decoy — building security might have been alerted by George to find him, but they aren’t looking for Gabby and will stop when they see him. 
4 Trish and Meg, two security guards, intercept Nick outside the lab. Did Trish and Meg win a guest-star-in-Beyond-Rubies contest or something? Gabby comments the drive is still warm, because it’s spent time in Marina’s pussy.  Nick distracts security, as he planned to.
5 Security goes to investigate the stopped elevator and the two women are surprised to find Elaine and Shanti there.
6 Meg and Trish escort Nick to Lizzy, then leave. George is still in the elevator with Andrea-bot.  Gabby saves everyone by using the passcode from the thumb drive to alter the programming of selected rubies: the ones belonging to women who are in proximity of George and his co-conspirators, and the ones on building security.
7 We see the effects of Gabby saving everyone: the security guards and the Andrea-doll all react, but so do Beverly and Helena (last seen in 13:10) and Claire (last seen in 13:12).  Beverly, Helena, and Claire are freed from the controlling influence. Is Miri also, I wonder? Gabby from her catbird seat at the computer can see apparently enough data to know what all the rubied women are doing.
8 Elaine and Shanti are pleasantly surprised when the two security guards start an impromptu orgy.
9 Outside Lizzy’s security station, Trish and Meg rips their clothes off and make out, while Lizzy jumps Nick’s bones.
10 Everybody screws (Nick and Lizzy, the four women in the basement, Trish and Meg outside Lizzy’s office) while Andrea-bot easily overwhelms George.  George’s ruby starts to sizzle.
11 While Gabby set the women in Quine HQ to “mindless sex beast” mode, she instead deactivated the mind-control effects on at least some of the rubies outside Quine. Beverley, Helena, and Claire murder Oliver and Schwegman.  Miri isn’t shown, but I choose to assume she murders the guy who’d been fucking her ass, and that any other co-conspirators get murdered her as well.
Does Claire suddenly become free, too? Does Janice?  For a while I was hoping that the final issue of Beyond Rubies would feature Janice swooping in and making sure that women remain on their knees sucking men’s cocks. She was established as having hacking ability way back in 3:12 when she was introduced, and her last substantial appearance in 11:4 was her spouting a lot of misogynist claptrap.
12 The elevator spits out Andrea and George. Laura and Julie respond to the sight of George the same way Julie, Gabby, and Elaine responded to the sight of the Andrea-doll on 14:8.

Issue 17: July 2019
Cover Julie either takes her ruby off, or puts it on. Either way, she displaces an ability that all rubied women had been robbed of, ever since issue 1.
2 Beverly is now CEO of Quine, with Janice her assistant.  It’s been something like six months since the events of last issue.  Quine is selling rubies and making money hand over fist. Beverly seems to have avoided getting arrested for murder, and Janice is now submissive to female Quine execs instead of declaring that Beverly, Alice, and Claire all need to get with the cock-worshipping program.
3 Laura is now CTO of Quine, with Julie as her assistant. After Julie brings Laura to orgasm (apparently a standard part of her work routine) they talk about a ballet that night. Julie’s reference to a growing family is about Shanti and Andrea, not about Julie being pregnant.  Babies don’t exist in the world of Beyond Rubies.
4 Catherine poses for a portrait being painted by Katie, because Catherine needs a portrait to be admitted to the Order of Merit, which is some kind of high-end Commonwealth thing doled out by the Queen of England. Catherine implies that she has some kind of power over Charlotte. I guess Catherine’s blue sash is her Order of Merit.
This one seems kind of a curve ball.  Why is Catherine getting the Order of Merit? Why is that occasion marked with a portrait Catherine has to supply, and also a ballet? Why does Catherine promise sexual favors from Charlotte to Katie?
5 Charlotte has become Nick’s assistant. Nick’s job title is unclear, but Laura is nominally his supervisor. Charlotte predicts Laura will give Nick a blowjob during their afternoon meeting, which implies that Laura’s actual authority over Nick is, at best, limited. Charlotte and Nick discuss Gabby and Elaine’s upcoming wedding.
6 Gabby and Elaine are trying on their wedding dresses.  It’s a big fake-out implying that Gabby and Elaine are marrying one another. Elaine comments that the dresses work only “as long as the boobs are stable,” implying that uncontrolled breast expansion is a ruby-related hazard that Gabby has solved.  Gabby’s chest had been the size of a washing machine and now it’s no larger than those of other rubied women.
7 The truth is revealed: they’re forming a group marriage with the two polyamorous guys from 9:2 to 11:7, Alifeurd and Simon.  Marriage laws have recently been changed, probably because many influential women want legally-protected threesomes now.  Elaine’s tits swell in the last panel thanks to her orgasm, which is probably reversible.
8 Julie comes home to a fancy new house.  Andrea never got her personality back, and Nick removed what was left of Shanti’s to make them both service fucktoy drones for him and Julie.
9 Jorge is Estella’s husband mentioned on 13:6. Marina and Estella have maintained their relationship, with Jorge a participant.  Jorge has some kind of gig-economy tuxedo-delivery thing going on, which can’t pay very well.
10 The reception preceding the ballet.   Left to right: Helena, Miri, unknown, Claire, Nick, Julie, unknown, Catherine, Alice(?), unknown. (Anybody able to clarify? The brunette in the foreground examining place cards looks like I ought to recognize her. 
11 Nick and Catherine walk around the party a bit. Given HMB’s assertions in the thread for this issue, the redhead is probably the unnamed minister’s wife from 10:4, who is apparently now a notorious enough slut that Catherine makes a joke about it. Daffyd wandered in with Nicki from the Hidden Knowledge in the third panel. If any of the other background figures are cameos, let me know.
12 Gabby’s tits in the first panel are distinctly larger than they were on page 6, and we see her remove, then restore her ruby, which suggests that she’s able to alter her own chest size with it and otherwise exhibit more control over the ruby’s effects than we’ve previously seen.  Also, neither of Gabby’s men wear male rubies, and if anyone in the world was going to, it’d be them, so Nick must have put the kibosh on that whole arm of the project.
13 Staffers for the reception discuss the eight fuck toys who stand waiting for the closed-door after-party.  It seems unlikely that there are only eight service fucktoys still extant — these six plus Nick and Julie’s two dolls, Shanti and Andrea.  The one next to the white-haired one with the huge tits is Emily, George’s former assistant.
14 Either Nick and Gabby wiped George’s personality after the gender-swapping transformation, or else it was a side effect.  The way the staff discuss the fucktoys implies that in the last six months fucktoys haven’t become ubiquitous, but there are no doubt rumors.
15 Marina has dinner with Jorge and Estella, as promised on 17:9.  They’re in a much more downscale, relaxed, informal place than the ballet reception.  That’s Canadian money, of course. It was heavily implied before that Beyond Rubies is set in Canada.
16 Marina and Estella entice Jorge to bed for a threesome, back at Estella and Jorge’s home.  Jorge’s office has a little Catholic shrine area, presumably Estella’s.
Marina sure got more white as this series went on. In her first appearance (6:1) her skin is noticeably darker than the pale lab tech on the same page.
17 Sex happens!! Marina took something home from the Quine lab for Jorge to examine, and he’s working on an off-brand copy of the rubies with the intention of spreading the technology among everybody, not just the upper class.

[jwik01]

reserved

[jwik01]

I just want to say that I am in awe of this magisterial work.

Hey, I'm sure you know better than anyone that Beyond Rubies has way more plot than pretty much any other story on this site.  That said, there are a few points of clarification I wouldn't mind getting answers to -- what are the names of the women who aren't Zoey and Paris in issue 10, for instance?

[GodWilling]

.

[HarryManBack]

I just want to say that I am in awe of this magisterial work.

Seconded!

Hey, I'm sure you know better than anyone that Beyond Rubies has way more plot than pretty much any other story on this site.  That said, there are a few points of clarification I wouldn't mind getting answers to -- what are the names of the women who aren't Zoey and Paris in issue 10, for instance?

Siri is the blond and Eva is the other.

[jwik01]

Beyond Rubies has way more plot than pretty much any other story on this site.

I await the SJI plot summary with interest, when you've got a minute.

SJI would probably really benefit from summaries, as I've always found it impenetrable.  BR you can at worst scan the thumbnails for the dirty bits.

[GodWilling]

.

[jwik01]

The contents of this post are obsolete and have been removed.

[jwik01]

The contents of this post are obsolete and have been removed.