The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

I.

It had been two months in the making, but today was finally the day.

As the days had grown shorter, the nights cooler, and the children were making their way back to school, so too had there been many changes at Amatory Place. New security cameras now covered every inch of the building, both down in the sex club as well as on the nine residential floors above. Along with each new camera, there was a highly sensitive heat and motion sensor that would immediately sound the alarm if anything—or anyone—was where it shouldn’t be.

Thanks to the help of Stephanie Twooley and her inventive creativity, many of the building’s regular maintenance requirements were now automated, as well. Robotic floor cleaners scurried around the building keeping the carpets clean and the floors shiny. Toilet, tubs, sinks and showers seemed to magically clean themselves—the technique of the trick something Steph had teasingly refused to share with anyone.

Stephanie herself had changed quite a bit in the two months since she had first moved into the building. Under the careful supervision of Darla Keegan, she had made good use of the StareWare programs that were held under lock and key in the new fifth floor security headquarters. Darla, quietly one of the world’s leading experts in human and electronic interfacing, had made great strides in reducing potentially harmful side effects of StareWare usage. True, it had taken longer to do than it might have, but that was to be expected of someone who was experiencing those aforementioned side effects and had a fairly heavy addiction to Lucid-Z.

Though it had been quite tempting, Stephanie had decided not to use any of the sexual programming that most of the other girls had used in their own StareWare regimens. She had always had a pretty healthy sex drive, anyway. With the freedom to be able to act upon that drive after splitting with her husband Richard, she didn’t really need any software to help her out. The anti-aging affects of the StareWare had brought her body back to something physiologically close to her sexual prime, as well—so there was definitely no problem with her “hardware.”

While those who knew her might have described Stephanie as a closet nymphomaniac, she regarded it as more of a very healthy sex drive that had been locked up for two decades by an overbearing and abusive husband. Could anyone fault her for wanting to act upon her newfound freedom? Of course not.

“These things are fucking awesome, Steph!” exclaimed Kathryn Becker, the owner of the Amatory Place building and the adult nightclub on the first floor.

Kat was standing beside Stephanie and regarding the six lifeless androids standing on the platform along the wall. Virtually identical, Stephanie’s FemBots were a near perfect blend of function and beauty. With figures in the shape of a supermodel, the bodies were comprised primarily of a polished metal that was as smooth and reflective as a mirror. The ‘girly bits’ were much softer, though. Breasts, vaginal areas, lower facial features and buttocks were made of a soft, pliable material that both looked and felt very much like human flesh. Several non-sexual parts such as the small of the back, a bit of inner thigh, and the belly button regions were also made of the softer material for added visual and sensual impact.

“They’re hot and all,” said Marti Velasquez, Kathryn’s business partner and one of the group’s founding members. “But I tend to like my tits a little bigger than the standard cover model size.”

Stephanie grinned and punched a few buttons on the testing remote control. The FemBot in front of Marti made a soft mechanical sound as the soft pliable breasts first doubled, then tripled in size. Once they had finished their little growth spurt, Steph punched another button that caused both nipples to swell and stick out about a centimeter.

Marti’s eyes grew wide at the effect.

“Big enough for you?” Steph grinned.

Throughout her life, Stephanie had always been into machines and gadgetry. If she hadn’t been married to a man whose primary mantra was “no wife of mine is going to have a job!” she might have been a well known inventor by now. As it was though, Stephanie had worked quietly and in secret in a makeshift workshop in her attic. Over the years, she had created all sorts of nifty little inventions like the automatic floor cleaners and electrostatic dusters that were now a part of the Amatory Place building. She had even invested a considerable amount of energy on creating a fairly comprehensive collection of secret sex toys to fill the void her unsatisfying marriage had created.

Finally free of her bonds, Stephanie could truly express herself and these remote controlled FemBots were examples of her creative expression. True, two months ago, she would never had possessed the knowledge nor skill to create such wonderful masterpieces, but her StareWare Learning Series and various cognitive and logic entrainment programs had helped her greatly. These days, she possessed the mental capacity to fully realize the ideas born of her impressive, and sometimes kinky, creative vision.

“How much more do you have to do before we flick the switch?” asked Marti with a glance at Kathryn and a slight uncomfortable shift in her stance.

“I still want to do one more full sweep of the building,” Stephanie said. “Probably an hour or two.”

Kat and Marti were looking at each other as if they had somewhere else to be. Stephanie smiled and understood.

Most of the other StareWare users in the building had added a sexuality enhancement set of routines into their programming battery. One of the side effects of this was a sort of uncontrollable sexual arousal at regular intervals. Even though Darla had worked out a remedy for this, none of the girls had bothered to fix it. It was a nice thrill to be just a little out of control from time to time—a bigger thrill to be a lot out of control quite a bit of the time.

Stephanie wasn’t influenced by this programming, though. She did, maybe once a week or so, take a few whiffs of the Lucid-Z sex drug and lend a hand in getting someone past their period of frenzied arousal. In the past, Stephanie had never really had any lesbian inklings at all, but with all of the visual stimuli and general air of sex going around, it was sometimes nice to just forget about that and have a good time. Still, deep in her heart, sex with another person (male or female) was an act of love—so she didn’t really join in the sex games with the others as often as she might.

It was far better, as far as Stephanie was concerned, to use one of her many sexual gadgets to satisfy her urges. There was no real emotional attachment to a hunk of steel or rubber and she could also be selfish and worry only about her own sexual satisfaction. Another of her occassional pastimes in the sexual arena was to give one of her toys to one or two of the gals who needed a bit of release. She would then watch them from across the room. It was unbelievably hot to watch someone else derive immense pleasure from a cool, efficient device she had created with her own hands.

So, even though she wasn’t really ‘one of them’ in a sexual sense, they treated her like one and never cast judgment. Stephanie returned the favor by bearing no judgments of her own—and by keeping a steady supply of new and interesting toys for everyone to use.

“You two go ahead and do what you need to do,” Stephanie grinned. “I’ll hollar when I’m ready to go.”

II

Jiggy’s used to be a “Gentleman’s Club” which was little more than a less seedy sounding term for “Strip Joint”. In recent months, though, the place had evolved into a more generalized “Adult Playground”—a more upscale term for “Underground Sex Club”. During the recent transformation, the man to woman ratio had actually changed to the point where it favored the females. The place was so popular that it had recently undergone an expansion to a second story. Since the floor above the club was full of apartments, they had expanded down into the basement which served nicely to create a massive expansion with the ever popular High-Tech Sex Dungeon motif.

The popularity surge was due, in no small part, to Lucid-Z, a new recreational sex drug which had Jiggy’s as it’s sole distribution point. When ingested by inhaling its vapors, the drug would create an intense feeling of euphoria and remarkable levels of sexual arousal. So staggering were the effects of the stuff that it was very difficult to refrain from jumping the proverbial bones of whomever happened to be standing next to you.

It sounded pretty complicated and exotic, but Lucid-Z wasn’t all that complex at all. It was really nothing more than a mix of chemicals that the human brain produces during normal sexual arousal and activity—Noripenephrine, Oxytocin, Epinephrine, Dopamine and things like that. By inhaling the vapors of the stuff—or even by ingesting it directly with no small amount of danger involved—it would sort of sling-shot the user from a state of normal being into the state that a person is in shortly before they experience an orgasm. Because it took about 20 minutes for the stuff to work its way through the system, it would keep you at the physical and emotional crest of an orgasm for a good third of an hour.

Though it was common knowledge that Jiggy’s was the place to be if you wanted a Lucid-Z fix, most people would be surprised to learn that it was actually produced right there, too. Even more surprising would be to learn that it was made right in front of everyone’s eyes.

As a means of additional camouflage for their little drug factory, they had created a Living Sex Art Gallery down on the lower level of the club. (One month previous, the machine was housed on the main center stage of the club, believe it or not!) The gallery consisted of several fetish displays with living people incorporated into them.

One of the more popular exhibits was “The Mermaid” which consisted of a ceiling-to-floor cylinder filled with oxygenated perfluorocarbons—a liquid that living things can actually breathe in. Trixie Prozanno, having studied fashion design, had created a very realistic mermaid costume. Stephanie had completed it with a working mechanical tail. Guests of the place would marvel at the large busted woman who floated in the “water” and would play with her tits and flirt through the glass walls of her fishtank.

As Stephanie made her way through the gallery, she didn’t have any current interest in the mermaid display other than to wave at the floating girl inside. She headed straight for the centerpiece exhibit which was simply entitled, “Synergy.”

A two foot high, six foot diameter pedestal rotated slowly on the floor. Atop that, two large springs along the outer perimeter stood straight up about four feet like a pair of wobbling towers. Attached to each spring was the black and purple rubber clad form of a woman. Each one was standing with legs slightly bent and being impaled by a machine that moved rather large rubber dildos in and out of their pussies at alternating intervals. The outfits were, thanks to Trixie’s rubber fashion sense, works of art, themselves. with corseted midriffs, and leather straps to complete that I-Am-A-Bondage-Slut look. The women, bent forward at the waist, hung off the taut springs that curved slightly at the force of their weight. With their faces just inches apart and their lips the only bit of exposed flesh on either of them, Kristy and Allie could often be seen kissing and letting their tongues dance together as the machinery did its work. With their arms free to roam, they would frequently embrace and caress each other, as well.

The functional part of the whole thing only served to add to the effect of the art. A multitude of tubes and hoses were attached to various parts of the outfits. These would pulse as if they were alive every time the vacuum mechanism cycled. The largest hoses were clear and attached to each of the four breasts which dangled and bounced from the spring suspended women. If one looked close enough, they could actually see the liquid flowing as it was milked from the breasts and piped off to some tanks in a different part of the basement. Thanks to another StareWare program, Kristy and Allie were actually producing the Lucid-Z drug within their own bodies and expressing it through the milk in their breasts.

As she always seemed to do, Stephanie shivered at the sight of the wonderful machine that she and Trixie had built. Spinning slowly around, the girls bounced upon the bent springs while the mechanical cocks worked in and out of their pussies. The mass of rubber hosing gave the whole thing the look of a couple of flies caught in a spider web on a windy afternoon.

Pushing some hoses aside, Stephanie stepped in into the mass and knelt down to examine a device mounted on the pedestal floor. Her head was near the heads of the quietly whimpering and moaning women and they seemed to sense her presence through their sexual daze. The moans got a little louder and Steph felt rubber clad hands starting to gently caress her shoulders and back. One hand worked its way around and started rubbing over her breast.

“Easy girls,” Steph chuckled. “It’s me, Steph. And I’ve got lots of stuff I need to get done today.”

The hands didn’t stop, but they didn’t increase their levels of brazen affections, so Stephanie didn’t do anything else to dissuade them. She’d always had a machine or robot fetish and, in a way, these hands that were gently roaming over her body were little more than extensions of one of her more impressive sexual machines.

Since the new Lucid-Z machine had been completed, Stephanie had often fantasized about taking one of the girls places on the thing and just spending the rest of her life in a constant state of mechanical orgasmic bliss. It was quite a tempting thought, but Steph had something far more interesting than that in mind.

“Well, this seems to be working,” she said, despite the fact that neither of the girls could probably even hear her through their ecstatic dazes. “Hopefully, I’ll be back to visit a little later on tonight.”

With that, she gave each of the girls a friendly kiss on the cheek and worked her way out of the maze of tubing.

III

It had taken one hour and nineteen minutes to go over all of the equipment in the building. Now back in the Security HQ on the fifth floor, Stephanie was performing the very final checks on the system.

The security headquarters itself was a fairly impressive area. The fifth floor had been chosen because of the high risk of police raids or other invasions that might occur when a group of people decides to corner the market on a popular drug. Whether the invasion came from the roof or the ground level, the fifth floor put a fair amount of distance between either entry point. The apartment had been converted to a sort of giant vault with eight inch thick steel walls and a door that was about as tough to crack as the main safe at First Megopolitan Bank.

The walls of the main room were lined with computers and equipment that looked like a computer lab from the 1970’s with bank after bank of hard drives and processors. Back then, the vast amounts of hardware were needed in order to perform even some of the most basic mathematical combinations. Today, with the advancements in miniaturization and overall computing power, this amount of equipment was quite staggering. To illustrate: many home PC’s don’t have the capacity to even calculate the actual number of megabytes of RAM that this machine had.

“Are you done for the day?” asked Stephanie as Lindy strode into the main security room.

“Not yet,” Lindy said without any sign of emotion. “I need a quick recharge, though.”

Of all the people who inhabited the building, Lindy was probably the one to whom Stephanie felt closest. This was, of course, despite the fact that Lindy was also the one who was the difficult to figure out. The poor girl had lived a horrible life and had been on her own since she was a young teenager. Out of desperation, Lindy had come into this place asking only to be freed of the need to make her own life decisions and to have to fend for herself. In return for having someone else do all of her thinking and decision making, Lindy would act as a mindless slave and take care of all routine maintenance and cleaning. It was obvious that the “mindless slave” end of the bargain was just as appealing to her as being freed of the need to fend for herself.

What Stephanie couldn’t quite figure out was how Lindy acted in her role as slave to the Amatory Girls. She had become a virtual automaton, despite the fact that none of the StareWare programming should have that sort of effect. She rarely showed any emotion whatsoever and would often, unless told to do otherwise, go into “shut down” mode and just stand in a corner perfectly still for hours on end. Given a command she would repair a leaky sink with the same solemn and emotionless dedication as she would when commanded to strap on a rubber dick and fuck one of the other girls like a dog. It was all the same to Lindy.

Sure, Stephanie understood the whole robot fetish thing, but she couldn’t quite fathom how Lindy found it possible to live as one—despite the evidence to the opposite. She had, of course, found the whole thing with Lindy to be interesting and even a bit erotic in her own mind. Lindy had the same sexual response programming as the other girls, so even she fell victim to the regular periods of uncontrollable lust. In the early days, Stephanie found it fascinating to watch as Lindy would find a secluded place and get herself off without so much as a whimper or a smile. It was a turn-on to consider that even though her outer body acted with exacting precision, her mind was most assuredly turning itself inside out with massive orgasmic pleasure.

Stephanie had also made a few physical things for Lindy to indulge both of their mechanical fantasies. The first of which was an optical piece that was permanently attached over Lindy’s left eye and temple. Being PinkLink enabled, it could communicate with Lindy’s BioLink unit, something which translated electronic signals into something that could be used by the brain. Using the ocular unit, Lindy could do all sorts of things like measure distances down to 1/1000 of a millimeter or use the infrared function to see people and other warm bodies even through walls. The unit could have been installed anywhere on her body, but Stephanie thought it would be hot to give Lindy a sort of Star Trek Borg kind of look.

Another of the devices Steph had created for young Lindy was a sort of exoskeletal glove. It had no fabric, but strong metal “bones” ran along the back of her hand and fingers and were fused to her own bone with a technique that Darla had devised. The glove not only gave Lindy about five or six times a normal human’s hand strength, but with a signal from her BioLink, she could perform delicate manual procedures without any chance of error. If someone tried to play the game “Operation” against Lindy, she could use a set of tweezers twice as thick as the standard ones and never light up the nose even once.

The “recharging station” that Lindy was headed for now actually had very little functionality in the grand scheme of things. It, too, was modeled after a Borg contraption and was a half cylinder looking thing that Lindy would step into and (supposedly) recharge.

“Are you nervous about today?” Lindy asked the question in a way that suggested that she didn’t actually care about the answer. Stephanie knew that deep inside, though, Lindy was just as excited as she was.

“A little,” Stephanie smiled as the girl leaned back into the half-tube. The metal brackets closed around Lindy’s legs, waist, arms, and neck. “What about you?”

Lindy let herself go slack inside the unit and allowed the metal bands to support her weight. “Of course I’m not nervous,” she said as a mechanical dildo came out of the floor and found it’s way up her skirt and into her pussy. “On the inside, I must confess, I do find myself a little excited about it.”

Without any outward sign of excitement about the day’s upcoming events nor about the massive rubber dildo in her cunt, Lindy closed her eyes and started to recharge.

IV

“Turn on the TV! Turn on the TV!” Zarah Wilder raced into the security room in a panic.

Stephanie, who was most familiar with all the controls in the room, was first to BioLink into the plasma screen TV and turn it on. She looked on with Kathryn and Marti who had returned from their own ‘recharging’ session about a ten minutes earlier.

“...and while we have yet to find the cure for cancer, NanTech is proud to announce it’s first in a line of personal health and wellness devices,” Jenna Carlisle said from behind the larger than life podium on the big screen television.

Jenna, along with Marti and Kristy, had been one of the original StareWare users who had set everything in motion. As a scientist at NanTech, Jenna had been particularly keen on using the resources there to improve and further develop the StareWare concept of self-help and harnessing the healing powers of the mind. Unfortunately, her plan had also included using the sex stimulation routines on every application in an effort to rid the entire world of any and all sexual inhibitions.

Several months back, Jenna had suddenly announced that she and her research assistant Drew McGreggor were going to get an apartment together right next to the NanTech labs so that they could better focus their energies on the research. It had seemed strange, but Jenna had called every few days with an “I’m fine and I’ll see you soon!” message.

Not once during those two months had Jenna come back to see anyone, though.

“By using our new NanEyes,” Jenna explained to the press corps before her while holding up what appeared to be a bulky pair of sunglasses with headphones, “and by installing one or more of our NanSoft programs, a whole new world of health opens up to us. The power of our minds to heal ourselves and to achieve our own betterment has been just out of our grasp for years. Today, our first line of products can greatly help with curing clinical depression, post traumatic stress disorder, and drug addiction.”

“Isn’t this dangerous like that StareWare stuff that they pulled off the market a few months back?” asked a reporter from the crowd.

Jenna chuckled and her eyes gleamed. “It works on the same principles, but ours only allow for settings adjustments by trained NanTech doctors and, of course, we actually tested our product before bringing it to market.”

Kat saw something and stepped in close to the machine. Her hand reached up to the screen and she traced a finger over Jenna’s oversized green eye. “Do you see that? Green, yellow, green, yellow.”

Everyone looked closer and, sure enough, Jenna’s eyes were glimmering and blinking ever so slightly with the familiar pulse of the StareWare. The fact that Jenna was using the StareWare came as no surprise, but the fact that she could be under its hypnotic spell during a press conference was quite disturbing.

Combined with the fact that this press conference was held without Jenna even hinting that they were close to going to market confirmed to everyone that it was official: Jenna’s agenda had undeniably broken off from the rest of the girls’ plans. They had no idea how it had happened, but it had.

“Holy shit,” said Trixie Prozanno who had come into the room just moments earlier.

“You’re telling me,” said Kat.

“No, look!” Trixie walked up to the screen and pointed to the upper left corner at one of the people standing behind Jenna. To someone who didn’t know better, they would surely have assumed that the person in the image was none other than Trixie herself. To those who knew, the truth was plainly clear.

The person standing behind Jenna was none other than Trixie’s identical twin sister Trish!

V

Normally, the shocking news that this once happy group of friends had been harshly ripped into two factions would have put an end to whatever might have been planned for the rest of the day. In this case though, the disturbing piece of news actually increased the speed with which they worked toward completion.

“Preliminary operations checks are complete,” Lindy said as she punched at a keyboard. “All systems report Status : Green.”

“Run it one more time,” said Kathryn as she worked on untangling a set of wires that hung down from the ceiling in a sectioned off corner of the room. “We can’t afford any mistakes with this.”

Stephanie stood inside the adjoining bathroom and regarded her naked body in the full length mirror on the back of the door. Despite her 40-something years, she had appeared as a girl in her mid twenties for the past few months thanks to the StareWare. Her flat tummy cascaded down over perfectly rounded hips and her ample bosom hung proudly with no signs of sagging. She would have been the vision of every man’s sexual fantasy if she weren’t shaved completely bald.

“Well, you’ve done me well—especially in the past few months,” she smiled at her reflection. “But I’m afraid it’s time to say goodbye.”

She opened the door and walked out into the room still completely nude.

“Are you sure you won’t let me just have one little go with that new bod before we do this?” asked Kathryn as Stephanie approached. “Seems such a waste—you haven’t even really broken it in, yet.”

Steph blushed. “Sorry, and no jumping in the pool and taking advantage of me while I’m out!” she said playfully.

“You shouldn’t put ideas in my head, dear.”

“Once again, preliminary operations checks are complete,” said Lindy from her terminal. “All systems report Status : Green.”

Stephanie took a deep breath, her breasts rising to Kathryn’s unabashed delight. Darla, from her position beside Lindy seemed moved by the action, as well.

“Let’s do this,” Steph said.

Kathryn took hold of the metal helmet that hung from the wires dangling from the ceiling. It fit Stephanie’s shaved head perfectly, it’s inner sensors and connection plates pressed firmly against her smooth scalp. After tightening the chin strap, Kathryn moved around and grabbed a flexible bundle of wires that ended in a plug. With a slight tug, she got the slack she needed and plugged the whole mass of wires into the modified BioLink unit at the base of Stephanie’s skull. With a quick jiggle to ensure that the seal was tight, everything was hooked up and ready to go.

As Stephanie stood naked in the corner of the room in her helmet with all the wires, everyone but Lindy came up and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“You’re still going to help me with my new art creations in the basement, aren’t you?” asked Trixie as she wiped a tear from her eye.

Steph smiled, both thrilled and terrified all at the same time. “You won’t even know I’m gone, Trix.”

After the goodbyes had been said, Stephanie looked across the room at Lindy who was keeping a careful eye on the monitor in front of her.

“How are we doing, Lindy?” asked the naked woman with wires streaming out of her head..

“Vital signs are within the limits,” she said with her eyes locked on the reading for Stephanie’s pulse. Lindy looked up and met Stephanie’s gaze and she smiled. It was a miniscule one that most people wouldn’t have noticed. But it was a smile, nonetheless. “I know,” she said to Stephanie. “I’m excited, too. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Alright. Let’s do it.”

Darla turned and pressed the first button on the wall behind her. Stephanie grabbed onto her helmet with both hands as the floor lowered about an inch and slide out from under her. Dangling by the wires and cabling, Stephanie hung in the air as a glass cylinder began to rise up from a walled of section on the floor below. Slowly and steadily the liquid filled tube continued to rise. The oxygenated perfluorocarbons tingled slightly as the cylinder rose up over Stephanie’s dangling feet and legs.

“See all the fun shit you can do if you have a big budget supported by the sale of sexual services and drugs?” said Kathryn to no one in particular.

Within thirty seconds, the cylinder had risen up above Stephanie’s hips. The stuff was a more dense than water and she was already starting to feel buoyancy. Her mind was racing and bouncing between excitement about what the future might bring and sheer terror at the complete and utter insanity of this plan.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” said Darla as the tube crested over Stephanie’s floating breasts and the liquid came up to touch her chin.

Even though it wasn’t necessary, Stephanie took a big breath of air just before the liquid came up over her mouth and nose. They had practiced this part of it several times, but there was still that bit of instinctual panic as she exhaled and took in her first lungful of heavy fluid.

Totally submerged now, Stephanie let go of her helmet and just sort of hovered in the center of the thick glass cylinder. The slight initial discomfort of breathing liquid instead of air had already subsided and it presented a warm, floating feeling that Stephanie imagined to be like the sensation of being inside a mother’s womb.

Opening her eyes for the first time, Stephanie looked out at the people in the room. Through the curved glass, everyone looked a little wider than normal and the huge distorted smile on Kathryn’s face was a bit disconcerting.

As the cylinder reached the ceiling, the whirring stopped. Darla pushed another button and the resulting hiss confirmed that Stephanie was successfully sealed within her new physical home. After a final check with Lindy to make sure that everything was still working properly, it was time to perform the final step.

Inside the cylinder, Stephanie watched and wondered what was taking so long. Finally, though, Darla’s hand made a quick series of gestures that translated to: “Are you ready to do this?”

Stephanie’s whole being felt a thrill. She never really understood the source of her once secret fetish, but she had also never been able to deny it. Even as a young girl she had fantasized about being turned into a machine. As she grew older, those fantasies expanded to include things of a sexual nature. And for years—in secret and away from her husband Richard’s eyes—she had created various little gadgets to make ever so tiny little elements of her dreams come true.

What she was doing today, though... This was a whole new world. It was as different from making an automatic vacuum or the occasional pneumatic dildo as playing on a swing set was different from piloting a spaceship to Pluto.

She took in a deep breath of the cool liquid and then held out her fist with her thumb extended upward. It was time to do it.

Darla punched the third, and last, button on the wall behind her. Lindy pressed a few buttons on her keyboard. Stephanie’s body tensed for a moment as all eyes fell upon her.

Nothing.

Stephanie hung there in her cylinder looking limp and lifeless like a tenth grade biology class’s pig fetus in a jar of formaldehyde.

“Did it work?” asked Marti who was moving her gaze from face to face in the room. She was frantically searching for someone who might let her know that everything was okay.

A little green light started to blink in the corner of Lindy’s monitor and she smiled—a real smile, at that.