The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Yes, Alex! Oh, God, baby, I’m going to cum!”

Lani bucked back hard, slapping her tanned ass loudly into my crotch. I had my hands on her hips, watching my cock driving in and out of her wet channel—her young, tight, hairless channel. And it hadn’t even been my idea; she had wanted to shave for years, but Amata had forbidden it. Her smooth pussy, combined with the copious moisture she produced whenever she was turned on, made for a very slick ride.

Even with the abundant lubrication, her stretched teen hole gripped me so tightly, sliding up and down my swollen shaft, that I was on the verge as well. I started driving my hips, taking over the lead from her. I clamped down on her waist to hold her in place as I sawed in and out. Her head dropped between her arms, spilling her long dark hair onto the mattress.

I drove harder now, listening to Lani’s cries rise in volume with each stroke.

“Oh, God…” she said one last time, and went rigid.

Her whole body tensed in her climax, including her tight, nearly-virgin pussy. I managed half a dozen more thrusts before I joined her, driving as deep as I could in her constricting hole, and pumping my cum into her for the second…no, third…time today.

“Nnnnggggaaahhhhh,” she finally managed to moan out, once her breathing resumed. Her upper body flopped down onto the bed, leaving her ass in the air; her pussy still plugged with my shrinking cock. I held her there, flexing my dick, pushing all of my cum into her accepting hole.

Eventually, I pulled back, and out. Pearly white fluid started running out of her opening, until her hand reached up and cupped her mound to limit the mess. She sank forward to lie flat on the bed. I ducked under the low ceiling beam and joined her. With one hand still covering her crotch, she snuggled up to me, and I wrapped her in my arms and gave her a kiss.

Survivor hit a swell, and we nearly bounced out of the bed. I laughed as Lani gave a little shriek of fright. Once the ride leveled off, she got up, and still trying to contain the mess, waddled to the head.

When Lani and I had finally opened the vault door five days ago, it had been around 9:00 Friday morning. We emerged from the government building into an overcast and humid day, dragging the cargo carrier with all of our supplies. Everything seemed fine on the island; trees were blowing in the mild sea breeze, birds were chirping, and the surf was breaking against the sand. I hadn’t expected any different, since this was the sixth time the Blues had pulsed the planet, and there hadn’t been any visible effect from the first five. Unless you count the people, of course.

Heading down the ring road, we saw Amata out in front of her house, hanging laundry. Lani wanted to talk to her, and pick up some more things from her room, so she ran across the grass toward her house. I waved to her mother and continued down the road.

Survivor was exactly how I left her. I noticed that the decks were looking a little dirty, and put that on my list of future chores. Or maybe on Lani’s list of chores, I thought. Smiling to myself, I realized that I was already thinking like a…well, technically a slave owner, but that sounded really ugly. I’d just consider myself a manager, delegating all the menial tasks in my future to my eight billion minions.

I dumped the cargo carrier on the deck, not even worried about unpacking. I needed to see what my instruments had picked up. While I was gathering everything that I’d left hooked up to the bridge, I heard a noise from below. It was garbled, and sounded something like two people talking over each other. I cursed at myself, for forgetting that Lani had turned on the vid screen and the satradio before we left. My earplugs should prevent the sound signals getting through, but I didn’t have any protection against the visuals.

I had planned to just send Lani in to turn everything off, but with her newfound freedom from alien control, I couldn’t risk her becoming reprogrammed. I could also fumble through the cabin with my eyes closed, looking for the remotes, but that sounded too haphazard, and potentially dangerous. The simplest way was to employ one of my new minions to solve the problem. Leaving everything where it was, I headed down the ramp for the short walk back to Lani’s house.

When I got there, she was standing outside with her mother. Amata was as still as a statue, while Lani was waving her arms around in frustration. I heard her voice carrying all the way to the road.

I whistled loudly to get her attention. She turned, saw me across the field, and ran to meet me. When she got close, I saw that she was crying. She threw her arms around me and sobbed into my shoulder.

“Oh, God, Alex. It’s so awful. I can’t talk to her at all. She doesn’t remember anything I’ve said, and then she starts going on about her ‘normal behavior,’ and needing to talk to an orbiter or something.” She leaned back and looked up at me with such sadness. I guess if you were close to your family like she was, seeing them in their mind-controlled state would be a shock.

“It’s OK, Lani. We talked about this, remember? About the aliens and what they’ve done to everyone? And how you and I are the only ones who aren’t controlled? Remember?” She nodded glumly.

“Lani, look at me,” I said. I cupped her head in my hands to make sure she was looking directly into my eyes. “From now on, dealing with your family won’t cause you any distress. You recognize that they are under the aliens’ influence, so they don’t act like the people you knew. You’ll deal with them like you’ll have to deal with any other controlled person you meet, logically, and within the bounds of their allowed behavior. OK?”

While I was speaking, I could feel the tension leaving her body as my commands took hold. By the time I was done, she’d stopped crying, and was looking up at me with a completely different expression.

“Thank you, Alex,” she said. She stood up on her toes to give me a quick kiss. “That’s why I love you so much. You always know what say to me.” She flashed me one of her patented sunny grins.

The whole idea that she was madly in love with me after knowing me for only four days, was something that I let pass for now, but would need to address in the future. I let her go and took her hand, leading her toward the house. “We need your mother to come to the boat with us, to do something that we can’t do,” I said. “Grab your bag, and I’ll talk to her.” She ran off to retrieve her duffel.

“Welcome, Harmonious Brother Alex,” Amata said as I approached.

“Hello, Amata,” I said. “Answer my questions.”

She dropped her hands to her sides and faced me with a blank stare.

“Were you talking with Lulani before I arrived?”

“Yes.”

“What effect did the conversation have on you?”

“She has presented several conflicts that I cannot resolve. I was considering whether to call an Arbiter for resolution.”

Yup, that’s what I’d been afraid of when I’d heard Lani say “orbiter.” I couldn’t have her calling the aliens, and maybe telling them about me. “OK, Amata, I am commanding you to forget the conversation that you just had with Lulani. There is no longer any need to call an Arbiter. Say yes if you understand.”

“Yes,” she said.

Lani was standing beside me again. She was looking at her mother, but not showing any signs of distress.

“Amata, come with me. I have a job for you,” I said. I turned and started walking back to the boat. Amata immediately followed me. Lani was taken by surprise at our sudden departure, and hurried to catch up.

When we got back to Survivor, I held Lani back on he dock, and gave Amata her instructions. She disappeared into the cabin, and emerged a minute later.

“All of your equipment has been turned off,” she reported.

“Return home and continue your normal behavior, Amata,” I said. She marched off the dock toward home. I realized that I’d become so integrated into this reality, that I no longer bothered saying “thank you” to drones who followed my orders. That was kind of sad; I wondered if all human civility was going to disappear with me. I had a feeling that a lot of basic human traits would disappear if I didn’t succeed against the aliens.

For now though, I had my instruments to check, and Lani’s activities to organize. I sent her below with the cargo carrier to unpack and start on breakfast, since we hadn’t eaten earlier in the shelter. We hadn’t slept much either, I remembered with a smile; Lani had been determined to show me how much she loved me, even past the point where I was completely spent, and I knew she must be sore.

By the time I disconnected my handhelds and lugged them all downstairs to hook up to the main console, I saw that Lani already had something on the stove, and was unloading food from the cooler. It was nice to see her multi-task, instead of simply following one order at a time. She looked up and flashed me a smile too, which was a huge improvement over the zombie stares I’d seen from her in the past.

I set up some new directories in the onboard to organize the data from the pulse event, then downloaded everything. The radar feed, the vid recording, and the satradio recording I got through the boat’s network. The voltmeter and the other devices I plugged in, one by one, and dumped their memory. I lined up all the timecodes and displayed every file side by side. Sure enough, there was the pulse, at 4:04:27pm local time.

The first thing I noticed was how much raw energy the alien grid had released. Theoretically, it should have fried all of my electronics, but instead, as the state of the planet showed, it only fried people’s brains.

The second thing I saw was that it wasn’t one pulse, but three separate ones, about eleven nanoseconds apart. Each one was at a different range of frequencies, and lasted different lengths of time. So, that meant what? Three different instructions to the human brain, loaded in sequence? I set the console to comparing the three pulses to each other, and to the audio and video instructions, looking for commonalities.

Lani called out that breakfast was ready, and I dragged myself away. Back at my workshop, or at my former office at Rollins-Chiu, a problem like this would have sent me on a days-long binge of research and experiments. But at that time in my life, I’d had a support system of friends and co-workers to keep me from disappearing down the rabbit hole. Now, I had to exercise that restraint on my own, or risk hurting myself—or worse yet, getting sloppy and getting caught.

After breakfast, I was anxious to get back to the alien data. I was staring at the screen when I heard Lani behind me in the main cabin.

“Alex, is it OK if I turn on the vid?”

“No!” I screamed, clapping my hands over my ears and closing my eyes. I couldn’t tell if she’d actually turned it on, or not. A few seconds later I called out, “Lani, if you’ve turned on the vid, turn it off immediately. Then come over here to me.”

When I felt her touch my arm, I opened my eyes cautiously, and uncovered my ears. She was standing in front of me with the remote in her hand, but the vid screen was still rolled up into the ceiling.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her lip quivering a bit.

I took the remote out of her hands. “It’s fine, Lani. But listen to me, don’t ever watch, or listen to a broadcast signal without being absolutely sure it’s clear. Or else if you have your sight and hearing protected. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Good,” I said. I squeezed her to me. “Give me a second to set up the parameters, then you can watch anything you want from Survivor’s library, OK?” She nodded again. “Just no outside signals, remember. You don’t want to go back to acting like your mother do you?”

She got a very worried look on her face, and shook her head, “Oh God no.” I set up a filter on the media libraries to check for the alien patterns, and quarantine anything that even hinted at a foreign signal. Then I handed the remote back to Lani.

“I should warn you,” I said. “I’ve got old guy tastes when it comes to entertainment. You might not find anything you like.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said, reverting back to her cheerful self. “Papa raised us on old vids.” She headed toward the couch and I went back to my signal comparisons. I refused to dwell on the fact that Papa and I were around the same age.

Some hours later, she placed a sandwich and a Coke in front of me. I looked up to see her leaning against the bulkhead, totally naked.

“Can we…?” She raised an eyebrow.

“No, Lani,” I chuckled. “Sorry, baby, but that will have to wait.”

She pouted, but walked back to the couch.

When I finally came back to the real world, it was approaching 8:00 at night. I looked around, and Lani was curled up on the cushions, dressed this time, watching a vid. I got up and stretched, then walked over to her. She drew her feet up so I could sit down, and then immediately stretched back out, draping her legs over my thighs. I ran my hands up and down her bare calf, watching her watching the vid screen.

“Lani,” I said.

She put the vid on pause and looked at me.

“We need to get ready to leave. I’ve got to get back to a real city if I’m going to solve this problem.” Her face stayed neutral, but I could almost hear her concerns about leaving her family, and going somewhere far away from what she knew.

“The best thing for your family, is to leave them here to continue their lives in peace. Where you and I are going, there’s no guarantee that we’ll be safe. I know it’s not fair to ask you to come, but I need your help.”

“Alex, don’t talk like that,” she said. “I’m going wherever you go. Always. I don’t want you to ever leave me behind. Sure, I’ll be a little sad to leave my family, but I’m really, really ready to get off this island.” She gave me a smile to show me she wasn’t upset.. “So when do we leave?” she asked.

“As soon as we can.”

I was up on deck, checking the nav screen for the tenth time today. Nothing was visible on the horizon; we were surrounded by empty ocean. At least the weather had held, with calm seas, and plenty of sunshine to fuel the inboard. I had opened her flat out, but we were fighting against the equatorial currents, which all ran east to west.

On paper, it wouldn’t be that tight a race, but I knew from all my work with scheduling large projects, that nothing ever went without a hitch, and the first thing that gets screwed up is the timetable. If everything stayed true, we’d arrive at my Sausalito berth in about ten hours; around 2:00 am California time.

Then the real race would begin. I would have about thirty hours to locate a Faraday cage that could screen out the aliens’ EM signal. That would be after I had docked my boat, learned the extent of all alien activities in the Bay Area, found transportation that wouldn’t be noticed, got to the South Bay, and inspected, one by one, my list of possible sights.

I knew that Rollins-Chiu had clean rooms that were based on Faraday technology, as did most of the other hardware research facilities. Hospitals also used them in MRI suites to block outside interference with the machine. The trick was going to be finding one that could screen the three different wave frequencies that the Blues used in their pulse

From what I’d read in my library about EM waves, the shelter on Kili must have been built with a Faraday cage embedded in the concrete; nothing less than that would have protected us against the strength of the aliens’ blast. It hadn’t been the thickness of the walls, like I originally thought, and I sent another silent thanks to the Seabees who had built it so long ago, in that paranoid age of nuclear threat.

Now though, I knew the signal’s wavelengths, and knew that I could find or modify an existing cage to protect us—if I had the time. Faraday cages had been around for hundreds of years, and their principle hadn’t changed: a conductive mesh takes the electrical charge and channels it around the hollow center, protecting the contents from being affected. The amount of signal that got into the cage depended on the conductive material, the mesh density, and several other factors. I would need to find someone who knew more than me once we landed.

In fact, one of the things that I was really looking forward to when we got to land, was the wealth of knowledge that I could tap into in Silicon Valley. There were thousands and thousands of tech workers there who would obey my every command. All I had to do was stay under the aliens’ radar while I commandeered my own private technology workforce.

While I was musing, Lani came up on deck. She was wearing her only pair of sweat pants, a red t-shirt, and one of my winter jackets. She had rolled up the sleeves but was still swimming in the large garment. At least she was warm. She would have to get used to much cooler temperatures once we hit the foggy Bay Area.

She was hovering in the wheelhouse door, instead of coming inside where it was warmer. “What’s up?” I asked.

“Alex,” she said, “can I ask you a question?”

“You can always ask questions, Lani,” I answered. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted you out of the aliens’ control.”

She smiled. “I know, baby, but this is a different kind of question…”

I spun the captain’s chair to face her head on. “OK, shoot,” I said.

She looked down at the deck for a second, and when she looked up, she was biting her lower lip. I couldn’t figure out what was making her so nervous.

“When you’ve…ah…had sex with other girls, did you ever, like…do it, you know…in their butt?” She looked back down, and her dusky cheeks got a reddish hue from her blush.

I wanted to laugh, but then I saw how nervous she was. Technically, I knew that I could laugh at her all I wanted, or yell at her, or make rude noises at her, and I would still never disappoint her; never lessen the adoration that had somehow manifested during her time in a coma. But that didn’t stop me from putting on a somber expression, to show that I was taking her seriously.

I was constantly discovering new facets of the changes that had occurred in Lani. It turned out that her new “freedom” came with some caveats. She was free to think on her own, and to consider a future outside her normal behavior, but for some reason, she was absolutely devoted to me. That meant that any thoughts of the future only involved me, and making me happy. I’d had to give her a couple commands already to tone down some behavior that had seemed more like idol worship.

The other thing that complicated our relationship—if that’s what we were calling it—was that she could never say no to me. I shouldn’t say never, because it wasn’t a black and white thing, but it seemed that the alien ban on conflict was still in place, and saying an outright “no” was a conflict in her mind. She could banter with me, and she slapped me playfully when I teased her, but when it came to doing what I told her, she would never refuse.

Before the changes in the shelter, when I asked her to do something, she had been a robot executing a program. Now, she was back to being a thinking human, but she would still do anything I asked without protest. Not being an outright sadist, I had to consider that each command I gave her from now on could cause her unwanted emotional or physical pain, but she wouldn’t be able to complain, or refuse. So when she stood there, nervously asking me about anal sex, I laughed at her question on the inside, but seemed to ponder it thoughtfully on the outside.

“Yes,” I said, “I’ve done it before. Why do you ask?”

“Because, after the last time we did it, I got my…you know…my monthly…thing. So now I need a new way for us to have sex.”

“Lani,” I said, “it’s fine. You don’t have to worry about that.” Now I did laugh, to lighten the mood.

“But,” she said, looking back up at me, “I always want to be available for you Alex, and if I can’t do it, you know…the regular way, then I know that we can do it that other way. I haven’t before, but I will if you want to.”

Still smiling I got out of the chair and gave my island girl a hug. I sometimes forgot how young and sheltered she really was.

“Don’t worry,” I said again. “We’ll figure something out.”

She looked up at me, and her nervous expression was gone.

“Well,” I said, trying to change the topic, “at least we know you’re not pregnant.”

“Would that be so bad?” she asked. Not getting an answer from me, she continued, “Mama put me on PrevCon the minute I started playing with Papa’s dick, so don’t worry, Alex, you’re safe until I get it cancelled.” She turned in my arms and looked at the nav screen. “Are we going to make it in time?” she asked.

“We’ll see,” I said. “It depends on how things go when we land.”

“I don’t want to go back like before, Alex.” She looked worried.

“We won’t Lani, I promise,” I said. I had never been one for extreme measures, but I could see taking my own life, and Lani’s, if it was the only alternative to being controlled.

I sat back down. “How much do you remember, from before?” I asked.

“Well, I remember everything I did, but I don’t remember why I was doing it.” She smiled at me. “Except for you. I knew right away why I was doing things for you.”

“Really?” I said. “And why was that?”

She slapped me on the shoulder. “Because I love you, idiot.”

“Really? You sure it wasn’t because I was commanding you to?”

“Well, of course it was that, too. But I love it when you give me commands, because I love you. It…makes me feel warm.” She clutched herself and shivered. “Not like now. Is San Francisco really this cold?”

“Worse than this, at least until September,” I said. “So it makes you warm, huh…doing what I say?”

She sat down in my lap, in the captain’s chair, and put her arms around my neck. ”No, baby,” she said. She kissed my cheek. “It makes me hot.” She pasted her lips to mine, and held me tight for several seconds, before pulling away and giving me another smile. She was obviously pleased with her little pun.

“Hmmm…” I said, “since you’re so cold, if I were to command you to, say, kneel down here and give me a blow job, would that warm you up?” Before I’d finished speaking she was out of my lap, and kneeling on the deck. Her hands attacked my belt buckle, while I took a moment to check the nav screen for the eleventh time today…

It was nice to see that my berth at the Sausalito Harbor Club was still there. Survivor eased into her permanent home among the yachts and pleasure boats, with the ease of long familiarity. We were still on schedule, even after the delays with Customs.

Earlier, as we’d entered the bay, I’d run up the electronically tagged “Q” flag—known as the quarantine flag—identifying us as a vessel entering from another country. With my alien-cancelling earbuds firmly in place, I manned the satradio waiting for the Coast Guard to call. Since San Francisco was a designated Point of Entry into the U.S. we could take care of all of our immigration details on the water. I wanted to do everything strictly by the book to avoid notice.

Lani was on deck, staring up at the Golden Gate Bridge, when I got the call, and a couple minutes later, a red and white two-man CG skimmer pulled up alongside. I cut the engines and lowered a ladder to the smaller craft. While the Coast Guard chief stayed at his post, a small man in a U.S. Customs windbreaker came on board. Before I knew it, I was greeting my first mind controlled American drone.

“Greetings, Harmonious Brother and Sister,” said the ICE official. I noticed that the ritual used a different phrase here; back on Kili, they said, “Welcome.” It was probably just a translation difference based on the speaker’s native language.

“Greetings Harmonious Brother. We need to enter the United States in order to continue our normal behavior,” I said, keeping my face neutral, and hoping I used all the right keywords.

Once we’d entered the comfort zone of his own normal behavior, the agent’s demeanor changed completely. He politely asked us for our passports, and our customs declarations, and within minutes I was officially back home, and Lani was a guest under my sponsorship. With that task accomplished, we headed for Sausalito.

I pointed out features to Lani as we entered San Francisco Bay. In the dark, it was hard to see a lot, but the lights of The City were beautiful sparkling over the water. Once we cleared the Gate, and rounded Point Cavallo, I headed north. It was less than four kilometers to Harbor Club.

Sausalito is a small bayside town just across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. Along with a quaint downtown shopping district, it’s known for its large concentration of residential houseboats; hundreds of families paid outrageous sums to bob their lives away in floating homes.

Preferring a little more room than houseboats had to offer, I had a real house, on land. It was up on a hill overlooking the harbor. I tried to find it to show Lani, but I couldn’t pick it out in the darkness.

At 2:07 am, I cut the engines, and Lani threw the bow mooring rope to the dockside attendant. Club rules said that we weren’t supposed to dock after 10:00 at night, but a lot of the wealthy yacht owners routinely ignored the restriction. Hopefully, the attendant’s normal behavior included tying up boats after hours.

I left the wheelhouse to grab the aft rope, and hopped over the rail to the dock. As I was tying up, I looked forward and saw that Cal was the attendant on duty tonight. For the first time, I was meeting the mind-controlled version of someone I actually knew before the invasion. I realized that there would be a lot more firsts to come in the next few days, but this one hit me for some reason.

Cal had worked for the Sausalito Harbor Club for over forty years. His brown, leathered face showed how much time he spent outside, sailing or working on the docks. He was married to…April?...and had two sons and three or four grandchildren. And now he was a machine, running an alien program that kept him alive, but wouldn’t allow him to enjoy any part of the life that he had built.

Even though he was a friend, I had to treat him as the enemy for now, so he wouldn’t call down any unnecessary notice. “Greetings…Cal,” I said, taking a chance. I wasn’t sure if the “Harmonious Brother” tag was used if the two parties knew each other, but it seemed logical to just use the person’s name.

“Greetings Alex,” Cal said in return. He finished tying up the bow at about the same time that I finished the stern. We came together at the gate in the rail. Lani opened it, and hit the control to extend the ramp.

As she walked down the gangway, she was trying carefully to keep her face neutral. I’d instructed her on how to act, and she knew that her freedom could depend on her performance, but she was a young, inexperienced girl, just arrived in a strange country under the strangest of circumstances. I held my own face neutral to help her stay in character.

“This is Lani Matusa,” I said to Cal. “Her normal behavior is to visit California at this time of year.” I hoped that the lie would keep me from having to give Cal any commands. I could tell him to add our presence to his normal behavior, but I had no idea if that would conflict with anything else in his programming.

Seeming to take me at my word, Cal turned to Lani. “Greetings, Lani Matusa,” he said.

“Greetings Cal,” she replied. Her voice shook a little, but it was loud enough, and she didn’t stumble over the greeting.

“Lani and I are going to my house,” I said. “I’m going to take off some of my gear. Can you get the control for my car from the auto stand, Cal? Please?”

“Absolutely,” he said, slipping into his normal behavior after the formal greetings were over. “I’ll bring it right down. You need a cart?”

“That would be great, Cal. Thanks,” I said. I was trying to remember exactly how the two of us used to interact, so I didn’t say the wrong thing.

“You bet,” he said, a smile splitting his weatherworn face. He headed off toward the main building.

The minute he left, I wrapped Lani in a hug. She was shaking against me, but not crying. “That was great,” I told her. “Just remember to keep acting like that around anyone but me, OK?” She smiled a bit, and gave me a nod.

Cal returned with a motorized cargo carrier, and the small fob that controlled my car. I loaded up the grey storage crate and two duffel bags that I’d staged on deck. I didn’t know when I would return to Survivor, so I brought everything I thought we would need. I gave my boat a pat on the hull as I left, silently thanking her for performing flawlessly through all of this craziness.

Cal preceded us along the dock, and up the ramp to dry land. I was home again, and it took a little acting on my part to not let my face show my joy. When we reached the parking lot, Cal took a left turn and headed toward the main building. When I turned right to head to my car, Cal stopped.

“Alex,” he said, “aren’t you going to wait for the Arbiters?”

My stomach flip-flopped at the mention of the mysterious Arbiters. I had no idea who or what they were. I knew that they were the force that decided what action should be taken if two normal behaviors had a conflict. Other than that, I couldn’t tell if they were alien or human, or even how they were contacted.

“Cal,” I said, “did you call the Arbiters?”

“Nope,” he replied. “Henry, the assistant manager did.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the Club building.

I didn’t know any Henry who worked at the Club. “When did Henry start working here Cal?”

“Sometime around May, I figure,” said Cal. “He came up from San Diego to replace Chris. You know, Chris Gilroy? He retired. Well anyway, Henry took over for him.”

“And does Henry call the Arbiters for every boat that comes in?” I asked.

“Well, ’course not. But you’re not in his normal behavior, so he needs to get things straightened out.” He turned back up the path and started walking. “You coming?” he said over his shoulder.

Lani looked worried, and cold, shivering in her oversized jacket. I grabbed her hand and led her up the path after Cal.

We entered the Club’s main building through a side door, and walked down a paneled hallway lined with paintings of old sailing ships. At the end was a wooden door marked “Authorized Personnel Only,” with a light shining under it. I heard voices inside, and hoped it was just Cal and this Henry fellow.

I stepped into the club office, and saw Cal talking with a short, roundish guy dressed like a cliché of a yacht captain from fifty years ago: blue blazer, white pants, white shoes, and a captain’s hat. Assuming this was Henry, I stepped inside. “Greetings Henry,” I said.

Henry looked at me through thick glasses. He eyed me up and down, judging if I was worthy of his Club. “Greetings, Alex,” he said finally.

Great, I thought, a drone whose normal behavior is being a stuck up prick. I pulled Lani further into the room. “This is Lani,” I said.

This time, his eyes barely lingered over the lovely figure of Lani. I could imagine what he saw: the faded sweat pants, borrowed jacket, and lack of any makeup or jewelry.

I was waiting for him to sneer at her appearance, but it never happened. I finally realized what was going on, and started laughing loudly into the quiet room. The sour-faced douche couldn’t sneer, couldn’t snarl, couldn’t be snarky…because the aliens wouldn’t let him! Attitude like that probably qualified as conflict, and conflict was outlawed by alien decree. It didn’t stop him from acting his part up to a point, but he couldn’t actually take the extra step into nastiness.

“Greetings, Lani,” the plump little man finally said, trying to project his voice over my laughter.

With the introductions over, I had to decide what to do. I couldn’t wait for the Arbiters to arrive, because I was sure we wouldn’t pass muster as members of the human doll brigade. I also didn’t know what kind of creature an Arbiter was— human or alien. Or how they enforced the rules—with alien technology, or maybe by force. However I sliced it, I needed to avoid any meeting with the Arbiters.

That meant controlling the situation here before the Arbiters arrived.

I stood up straight and puffed my chest out to look imposing, for all the good that would do on a couple of drones. “Cal and Henry,” I said, loudly and firmly, “I have the power of command. You will listen to, and obey my commands. Say yes if you understand.”

Cal immediately said yes. Henry took a little longer, but he finally agreed.

“Henry, answer my questions honestly and completely. When will the Arbiter arrive?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said. “The Arbiter never says when. We’re required to wait until he or she arrives.”

He or she? “So the Arbiter is human?”

“Yes,” Henry said.

“Do they come by themselves, or with others?” I asked.

“For a question of normal behavior, the Arbiter travels with one Sentinel. For a body removal crew, there is an Arbiter, a Sentinel, and two workers. I don’t know of any other group types.”

Body removal crew?This was getting interesting, but time was short. “How do you contact the Arbiter,” I asked.

“Call zero on any phone,” Henry said.

“Can you cancel a call to the Arbiter?”

“If a compromise of normal behavior is reached before the Arbiter arrives, one of us is supposed to call the Arbiter again. A satisfactory explanation of the compromise is required to cancel the arbiter’s visit.” he said.

OK, enough data, time for action. “Henry, listen to me. Your normal behavior is to believe that I am a regular member of the Club. Lani’s or my presence does not require a call to the Arbiter. Moving my boat, the Sole Survivor, in and out of my slip does not require a call to the Arbiter. If you ever need to call the Arbiter for any reason that involves Lani or myself, you will tell me first. Say yes if you understand.” I crossed my fingers.

“Yes,” Henry said.

“OK, Henry, now listen to me again. Call the Arbiters, and tell them that we were able to resolve our difference of normal behaviors, and we no longer require an Arbiter. Tell them that a third person, Cal MacClain, joined the discussion, and was able to clarify the point that led you to call in the first place. Make the call now, Henry.”

I hugged Lani from behind as we watched Henry make the call on his satphone. Cal was standing quietly, still in drone mode, since none of this matched a normal behavior in his index.

Henry explained our situation in the same tone that all controlled people used when out of their normal behavior mode. He was clipped and to the point, and didn’t use any titles or names for the party on the other end of the call. Eventually, he disconnected and put down his phone.

“Henry,” I said, “what was the result of the call? Answer honestly and completely.”

“She accepted my explanation,” he said. “The Arbiter has been cancelled.” Lani relaxed in my embrace, and I breathed a little easier after his comment.

“Will there be any other contact because you called the Arbiters?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’ve never cancelled an Arbiter call before,” he replied.

I spent the next few minutes building a completely inane lie in Henry’s memory about the non-event that supposedly happened tonight. If anyone came by to follow up on the call, they would hopefully believe his story and not come looking for me to corroborate. I repeated the process for Cal, then released both men back to their normal behavior.

Feeling like I’d dodged a bullet, I worried about all of the scenarios that could lead to someone calling the Arbiters. It seemed to me that after eight weeks of alien rule, most of the major conflicts had been worked out. All that was left would be those situations that had a longer repeat cycle.

If a salesman came through the Bay Area only once every quarter, or a truck full of seasonal merchandise needed to make a delivery once at the beginning of fall, it might lead to a new conflict with the locals, and a call to the Arbiters. Or, if a boat like Survivor finally arrived in port after a long voyage, and the harbor master didn’t know the people on it…

Each call to the aliens’ police force was like a ripple in a pond, showing where the new fish were. I needed to make sure that Lani and I didn’t cause any ripples. That meant pre-empting each possible call with a command from me to ignore the situation. I would have to be very careful whom I met in the Bay Area.

Reclaiming the cart with our things, I led Lani through the parked cars until I found my BMW. A touch of my thumb on the control opened the tailgate of the shiny, gunmetal blue X11C Sportwagon. I loaded my cargo, and then opened the passenger door for Lani. I got in the driver’s side, and leaned over to give her a kiss, before I pressed the control fob into the indentation on the dash, and the car came to life.

I took full control of the car for the short drive. The one-way glass allowed Lani to gawk to her heart’s content at the surroundings. I obeyed all of the rules and stuck exactly to the speed limit through town. The streets were empty, and all of the buildings were dark. I turned up the road to my house, and the electric motor shifted to a lower gear to make the climb. As we gained elevation, the view of the bay opened up, allowing me to point out nearby Angel Island, distant Treasure Island, and the lights of Berkeley and Oakland to a fascinated Lani.

As we turned off Cloud View Road, into the private drive that served my house and four others, Lani shifted her focus back to the front. “Which one?” she asked excitedly.

“Second on the right,” I told her.

As we got closer, my brown and green, three storey, twentieth-century Modern came into view. Only the top two floors were visible from the front, since the bottom floor was down the hillside, facing the bay. The front landscaping was a hodge-podge of low water and low maintenance native plants, since gardening wasn’t my thing. The driveway led to the three-car detached garage on the right side of the main house, with a grey flagstone stone path leading to the front door.

I had just turned into the drive when I suddenly stomped on the brakes. Something was wrong. The lights were on in my house, and there was a strange Mercedes parked in front of the garage.

“What’s happening?” Lani said.

I took the car out of gear and set the brake.

“Lani,” I said, turning to look at her. “Stay here in the car until I get back. That’s a command, OK?”

She nodded her understanding.

I got out, and walked up to the front door. My thumb let me in. Inside the foyer, I saw a red woman’s coat hanging on a hook. Lights were on in the kitchen, the living room, and the stairwell. Looking around, I didn’t hear or see anything on this floor. I had a choice to go up or down; considering the late hour, I chose up, and climbed the stairs to the top floor. At the landing, I went left, down the hall, to find my bedroom door open, and a faint, flickering light shining out.

I clenched my fists as I crept down the hallway. I didn’t have a weapon with me, and I didn’t keep one in the house. I shouldn’t need one, because as far as I knew, everyone in the world was now a pacifist. Still, that didn’t mean that another unconverted person like me couldn’t be waiting in there with a gun. Or it could be the aliens, setting a trap for me because they figured out I still had free will. In fact, they were probably standing right inside the door with their EM rayguns to zap me as I entered. I silently cursed at myself for being paranoid.

I heard something that sounded like laughter, and realized I was hearing the vid, probably showing a comedy. Who would watch the vid while trying to set an ambush? My earpieces could block out the sound, but I needed to avoid the visual signal. I didn’t want to confront whoever was in there while the vid was still playing, so I needed to kill it at the source.

I crept back down the stairs, and then down again to the bottom floor. In the utility closet, I located the vid feed, and the sat receiver, and killed the power to both of them.

Feeling safer, I climbed back to the third floor. There was no noise any more, and the light was bright and steady from the white screen of a disconnected vid. Quietly and cautiously entering my bedroom, I saw the blankets on the bed in disarray, and a lump under the covers on one side. This didn’t look like an ambush any more, it looked like I had a squatter. Not feeling nearly as terrified, I crept forward and grabbed a corner of the blanket. As quick and as hard as I could, I whipped the blanket off the bed.

“Ha!” I screamed.

The blonde woman in the bed sat up suddenly, woken by the noise and the sudden loss of her covering. She tossed her blonde hair back, setting up a lively bounce in her very large, pink-nippled tits.

“Alex!” she cried out, seeing me standing there.

“Hello, Amber.” I said, looking at my former girlfriend in all of her naked glory.