The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Universe 8

Chapter 2 — The Seal of Approval

“Hi Tonia! How was that vacation?”

“What vacation?”

Joris Nissenbaum, standing just past the lab’s doorframe, chuckled.

“You spent all of it working, didn’t you?”

“Yep.”

“So you missed this weekend’s surprise update for Universe 8, then?”

“Well, gee, I suppose I did.” The blonde mumbled, eyes on her screens.

“Anyway, what are you working on?”

“Oh, you know, with my favorite field cockblocked by the Dean, I’m just back to the old drawing board.”

“Good luck with that. Wish I could help.”

The 40-something IT specialist took off, blissfully unaware of Tonia’s smirk. She couldn’t very well miss Universe 8’s surprise update since she was the one behind it.

That intergalactic bastard Coxswain Hardy had messed with the town without eliciting so much as a glance from the home office, so she figured she would do the same. Her brand of messing was, of course, far more altruistic and elegant.

It had begun as all projects begin—with a feasibility study. Even without upgrading her rig to Freya’s tech level, she still was the second most powerful being in Earth’s version of Universe 8. If not the first, since Coxswain had bailed—no doubt to give her a headstart. So she took an entire day to hack it carefully and properly. She sat on a bench not far from the arenas where men competed the hardest to call themselves “faggot,” and took control of every security measure, admin privilege and encrypted data. Even for her, it wasn’t a walk in the park, but after agonizingly long hours of pushing zeroes and ones through her mind, the game was hers. She could change everything, from the physics engine to the landscape, while still being immersed in the bustling life of Needle Peak.

Now assured she could do everything she wanted with this world, she planned her changes for the town atop the volcanic spire. And in so doing, she also caught a glimpse of what Universe 8 really was. It wasn’t restricted to Needle Peak, that was for certain—all human players could see a fairly expansive world offering dozens of geographies, even featuring a deep abyss area.

“Note to myself”, muttered Tonia as she reminisced, “Fucking never go there.”

But there was...something beyond the maps. Tonia couldn’t explain what—Her rig was master within the game’sboundaries, but no farther. It registered hard-coded, modelized environments, and nothing but void beyond them. At first the limitation was hardly worth considering, but the more she perused the virtual world, the more the normally silent and subdued Freya came to the surface.

“Our Master is waiting for you in the next level, my sweet Tonia.” Whispered the slutty AI inside her mind, as feelings rather than words. “You can wallow in this second-class virtual reality...or you can move to Universe 8 itself.”

There was no denying it. The corrupted part of Tonia could sense her Master in the apparent emptiness. Of course, the fact that Freya was providing this revelation sent Tonia running in the exact opposite direction. Wallowing in this virtual reality might have been pedestrian for the Goddess, but it remained an exciting experience for Tonia.

And thus, With a sigh and a forceful command to Freya to leave her thoughts, Tonia wrapped up the preliminary analysis. It was time to Sandstrom this bitch. Next step was checking what kind of changes players would actually enjoy...And by perusing the game’s lore, it quickly became apparent that, in this layer at least, the pitch was thus:

A bunch of divinities, benevolent but banished out of time by forces nefarious, only manage to give blessings in short, targeted but immensely, landscape-warping bursts. Those blessings came in the form of temples where players could go pray and seek blessings. There were both temporary buffs and permanent blessings that essentially acted as a way to upgrade a character, distinct from experience and equipment. The drawback was, monsters around the created temple go haywire. For the players though, this was nothing but further content, as it translated into a facultative Resurgence mode, wherein you could test your skills against those buffed up monsters for exclusive rewards.

And it just so happened that Needle Peak was one of the major cities that didn’t have its own temple yet. High time for a strong, plentiful burst of Divine favor!

* * *

Welcome to Universe 8 version 1.35!

* * *

Tonia smirked as she reviewed the changelog posted on the official wiki. Gamers wouldn’t be able to understand the last item, but heh. What mattered was that she had begun to leave her mark on this world. Granted, a lot of that was just and ego trip, but she hoped that creating an alternate version of her parasitic AI, named Felhya rather than Freya, would serve to divert the frenemy in her head. In fact, she installed a subroutine in her augment that forced Freya to play NPC for thousands of people. It worked, as a program, but did it work, as a way to keep the Goddess-whore the hell away from her psyche? Only time would tell. Though somewhere underneath, she suspected Freya was upgrading the augment and comm suite software to handle the load.

The second reason she did this update was to find the poor female NPCs that bastard Coxswain had turned into hopeless bimbos. She had found some useless background NPCs and recruited them as guards. Not by hacking them, mind you. By actually talking to them about what was going on and convincing them to help. The AIs were thrilled—leaving a digital soul-crushing desk job to go and protect ladies from a sex fiend? It didn’t take a hack to get them to sign. Granted, Coxswain could just freeze the game and take away every female NPC in the damn world, but Tonia knew the asshole wanted to sit down and play, not just flip the chessboard.

Lastly, she was turning the human players, mere background elements so far, into her weapons. The new quest added in her update was, quite straightforwadly, to find Orianna and the others. Leonora, formerly a a humble bank clerk, was now showing drawings of her lost friends and offering the players unique rewards if they found them anywhere in the world. How unique? Tonia knew she had to really crank up the incentive for such a boring quest, so she created an exclusive public title, a max-power hallowed weapon with a unique skin and a fancy cat pet. Not subtle, but Tonia knew the power of crowdsourcing was nothing to sneer at.

So there she was, fresh from yet another piddlinghardware upgrade with Amaranth, tinkering with new materials in her lab and waiting for some insanely dedicated geek to find Coxswain’s victims. What new materials? Well...if she wanted to fix the poor girls, she needed to go quantum. She had peered into Freya’s knowledge, and had instantly graduated in nanotechnology. And now, she was pushing her primitive augment in painstaking steps, fending off Freya’s sex drive again and again, and programming a vial of nanites she had...acquired.Program it to go into her brain and turn every electron in there into a computational device.

Tonia envisioned herself with the brain of the third millenium. Each and every one of her brain cells would become able to browse Google, and a mere tenth of them combined would be able to crush it into Ask Jeeves. She would become too analytical to be swayed by emotions unless she expressely programmed them herself to yield to them.. She would be the Singularity, and the world would need to go back to 1900 or bow down to her.

It was, of course, a trap. Cockbreath wanted her to further augment herself so Freya could take control.

Still.

It was technology. Progress. Tonia’s element. The scientist hated the idea of backing down and become a Neanderthal again just to protect herself from Asshole Prime. Hated the holy Hell out of it. In her mind, fear was no match for determination. Maybe she would become inhuman. So what? She would also become able to cure cancer overnight.

She also couldn’t wait to become Earth’s Goddess and select the most beautiful women on the planet on her Master’s behest.

Tonia remained silent for a good ten seconds, her eyebrow twitching.

“...Must you ruin everything, bitch?”

* * *

She waved her hand in front of the automatic glass door, and it slid open, letting in a refreshing gust of wind. Tonia rarely to the rooftop for a smoke break as she didn’t smoke, but she needed the fresh air. She went to the handrail and admired Boston’s skyline across the Charles. The future she had always dreamed of as a little girl was here. No flying cars, but giant holographic displays. No neural augmentation besides her, but former cripples given their life back with cyber legs. Deus Ex was real, except Hell’s Kitchen looked one hell of a lot better.

Tonia smiled, reassured in her love of progress. The moment, though, was broken by...

“Wow, Dr. Sandstrom on the rooftop? Has the fifth seal been broken or something?”

Joris’ voice. No surprise, the man always was a smoker. Tonia realized she hadn’t even turned to see him when her greeted her this morning. He might have been an overweight, aging man, but still. Rude.

“Hey, just because I love working doesn’t mean I’m a martyr, Jor...”

Aghast, Tonia rubbed her cyber-eyes. The apparition before her wasn’t Joris Nissenbaum. It was...sexiness made flesh. Magnificent jawline, piercing green eyes, chiseled six pack...The unassuming IT guy had been transformed into some sort of bare-chested Fabio.

“Something wrong?” Inquired Joris with his usual bland expression.

“Did...huh...Did you do something with your hair?”

“Hmmm...Well I was thinking of getting a pink mohawk this Saturday, but I changed my mind. Why?”

“N...Nothing.”

He was impossibly sexy, and Tonia’s face flushed as her nipples began to firm. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. But her body betrayed her all the same.

“Fucking Freya.” She muttered as the supermodel lit up his cigarette.

Tonia had anticipated that Coxswain’s little whore would mess up her real life in some way, but this? Freya had hijacked her very vision to force her to get the hots for her colleague. Not just Joris—Tonia saw another guy come out of the sliding doors, similarly built like a Chippendales dancer. And while it wasn’t exactly torture to fill her life with sexy, sexy men, it was absolutely no joke. Tonia was being hacked. From inside her own brain.

“I’ve got to get back to work.”

She breezed past the two men and went straight for her lab. The hallways were filled with sexiest men alive, and even the women were buxom, doe-eyed babes with wide open labcoats. She could only recognize her fellow researchers through their body language. To add to the torture, Freya somehow must be tinkering with her hormonal balance; her pelvis throbbed with need, her tits felt like they would cut through her shirt, and surges of heat ran through all of her 175 cm. She gritted her teeth, hurried past all of them against all her reproductive instincts, and slammed the door to her lab shut. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw a woman lying on the workbench, moaning.

“Hello, Tonia.”

It was herself, in a see-through white gown, licking her own lips and caressing her pussy.

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just helping you become a slut.”

With a hateful snarl, Tonia shut her whole system down.

* * *

And it meant everything. Neural aug, cyber eyes, hearing enhancer, everything. For a few, silent, bitter minutes, Tonia was the human she was born as, minus the eyes she was born with and had so eagerly replaced. She was safe from Freya, but she was also nothing but a blind woman, almost deafened with her augments gone and teetering on the verge of panic. Regret burned through her mind. If she had kept her natural eyes, this wouldn’t have happened. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t been so crazy about augmentation.

And she didn’t care. She knew the smart thing to do was to rip the silicon and metal right out of her skull, but ultimately, she didn’t care. She wasn’t one of the unlucky few who needed augmentation to live, but all the same, augmentation was her life, and she wouldn’t let it go without a fight. So she reactivated all of her implants and faced the parasite.

Who was fucking a test tube.

“Hey!” Tonia barked, irritated. “Anything to say before I wall you off from my senses?”

“You were born beautiful, Tonia.” Purred her alter ego with a breathy, Marilyn Monroe voice. “Don’t even try to deny you’ve thought of making a living orgasming all the time.”

“No, actually I did not, because I’m not a disgusting piece of trash.”

“Oh, don’t go all moral on me, sweetie. You spent most of your adult life suggesting that Puritans should be anally electrocuted.”

“Okay, granted. But still. Not big on having my sexuality reprogrammed by some alien’s sex slave. So...bye!”

The exasperated blonde shut her neural aug down and sighed. She sat in front of her workstation and massaged her temples.

“Okay, now how exactly am I going to do this?”

“How about ineffectively?”

She jumped off the chair and spun in one motion. Various wordings of “What the hell?” shot through her mind as she saw Freya, still looking pornographic. The goddess-whore moaned, seemingly amused by Tonia’s reaction.

“Yes, you deactivated that primitive aug of ours. And no, it doesn’t matter. Our Master is thorough. He knew you’d be tempted by shutting everything down. Well, he knew you would probably never have gone full organic, but better safe than sorry. So, I just fixed up a few of those neurons of yours and moved in.“

“What the hell have you done to me, whore?!”

“Oh, please, whore? You’d think I’d fuck with someone for money?” Giggled Freya. “I’m just your friendly neighborhood slutty Goddess and I gave you a freebie! Partially quantum-augmented thalamus. Nothing too intrusive.”

“Nothing too...?! How did you do this without nanites?”

“Nt nt nt! You naughty girl! You aren’t getting to the current century stuff until you’ve fucked at least fifty guys.”

Freya’s fake, immature pout was infuriating, but Tonia knew there wasn’t anything she could do to kick the slut out of her organic brain...At least not with this rig.

“Why, yes, Tonia!” Smiled Freya, as if reading her thoughts. “That freebie was something of an incentive. Playing at being the game master is good and all, but our Master wants you to better yourself. You know, try to beat him? I’m just making sure you are properly motivated. There is no escaping the game, sweetie. You can win, you can lose...but you have to play.”

“And your idea of motivation is to hack my grapefruit. Awesome.”

“Well, I really do want you to enjoy sex better...” There was that bimbo pout again. “Anyway, back to the nanites with you! Can’t wait to feel them trying to expel me.”

And with that, the illusion vanished. Tonia was alone with her own senses again. Though, it seemed, not with her own freedom.

“No way but forward, I guess.”

* * *

And so she worked as she did best—tirelessely and with passionate abandon. Hours upon hours in her lab, drawing upon forbidden and quite possibly dangerous knowledge, she made breakthrough after breakthrough, interrupted only by short, calculated naps. In normal conditions she’d have taken care of herself—eaten healthy, went to the gym, slept soundly in between 11-hour coding marathons. But with her free will on the line, these were cup ramen, sleeping bag, black coffee conditions.

She reached an exploitable nanite programming schema at the 24 hour mark, but she knew that wouldn’t cut it. She couldn’t play fast and loose with this augmentation. Not with Freya kicking around. She had to make it as safe, as controlled as she possibly could. One false step, and she could end up as an unfeeling robot. One false step in the other direction and she could make herself unable to resist Freya.

The more time passed, the more doubts started to assail her. Would she be human after the transformation? Could she even possibly beat Freya? Wasn’t she just playing right into Coxswain’s hands? Wasn’t it best to just become a being of pure, dry logic that even the sluttiest AI couldn’t sway? Wasn’t there a better solution? Was it so bad to surrender to Master?

“Aaaaaargh!”

Her mind was overloaded enough for friggin’ Freya to chime in. How was she supposed to work if she didn’t have a firmly set destination? What she needed, loathe as she was to admit it, was a break. Just clear her head for a bit and return with a clear idea of how to proceed.

That’s when she looked at her sports watch—sorry, “wristtop computer” and noticed it was Sunday morning.

“Hm.”

She unlocked the door to her lab, and went out. What to do? Going to the gym wasn’t an option as long as Freya was ready to pounce, so she returned home, grabbing a couple of sandwiches along the way. In an effort to ignore Freya’s sexed-up version of Cambridge’s populace, she connected to the net and browsed idly. News, scientific papers, official Universe 8 wiki...

The “game updates” page of which had been updated.

* * *

Hotfix—Universe 8 version 1.36

-Temple of Stalwart Hope has been slightly reworked:

.Additional NPCs.

.Additional rooms and statues.

.Memorial plaque added.

.Gameplay features unchanged.

* * *

In the middle of the street, Tonia crushed her second sandwich in half. She hadn’t been checking in on Universe 8 ever since Monday’s incident, let alone working on it. It could only mean one thing.

“Oh, Hell no you’re not messing with my temple, you asshat.”

* * *

And so, on a crisp spring morning, the gates of the beautiful temple were smashed open with a furious kick.

“Where are you, you fucking douchebag?!”

The three robed women attending the altar under Felhya’s statue turned around, surprised by the sudden, bellowing appearance of Tonia’s ingame avatar.

“You bail out of the game’s boundaries and sic your little virtual slut after my thalamus, and now you’re going after my temple?! Dick move, Coxswain!”

No reaction. Furious, Tonia scanned everything around her in search of evidence of the galactic dickhead’s tampering. There were a lot of players around, but they were utterly oblivious to her. Unlike the three priestesses, who actually seemed normal, as were the other gowned women rushing to the scene. Their gowns, if skimpy, were opaque, in contrast to the hacker’s favorite style, and they had all processes intact, if understandably confused. In fact, one of the three at the altar stepped forward and said...

“Lady Felhya?”

Tonia was taken aback. She was certain of having given the in-game Goddess’ statues a distinct appearance. But with another glance at the statue looming over the worshippers, it was clear she hadn’t. The Goddess was undoubtedly her.

“Huh...yeah?”

“Oh, you heard our prayers! Praise be to the Lost Divines!”

There was a relieved clamor and the NPCs, all females, flocked to her.

“Our Lady has truly descended!”

“She will surely defeat the Unmentionable!”

“There is hope for our lost sisters yet!”

There were a lot more priestesses than she had originally designed but...if Coxswain was behind this, he was being unusually helpful. Could it be...? She looked for the memorial plaque the wiki mentioned, and, sure enough, it listed each and every one of the AIs Coxswain had enslaved.

“Hey! Hey! Slow down.” She called out, and all the NPCs fell silent. “Are you telling me you...upgraded my temple all by yourselves?”

“Yes, your Ladyship!” Answered a redhead seemingly leading the flock. “Leonora is doing her best to bring players to help us find the abductees. We just wanted to support her...a lot of players come here, so we bring awareness to them also.”

Tonia looked around, seeing the players huddled around the blessing-dispensing statue Freya was managing.

“Hm. Good luck with that.”

“Yes, very few of them actually engage in actual conversation, but we had some success. Here’s hoping they can find anything despite their low tech level...Aaah, I do wish the home developpers would show up...But now that we have the Goddess herself, all will be well!”

“Yes! All will be well!” Chanted the others in unison.

The leading redhead raised her arms in worship.

“We braved the interdiction to change Universe 8 for you, your Ladyship! Though the Banishment still has you weakened, Oh great Felhya, we are infinitely grateful to be graced with your very presence!”

“Yes, Oh Divine!” Another chimed in. “We will pray for you to attain your true power!”

...Wait, what? thought Tonia. They knew they were in a game and that there was an entity far more powerful than her and possibly Coxswain...So why were they still worshipping her like a bona fide Goddess? Especially considering she had completely made up Felhya just one week ago?

Was it a trap? Freya had a subroutine operating here ; if she was able to hack her host’s brain cells, surely making a bunch of AIs super-religious to goad Tonia into accepting Godesshood would be an easy task. Yet...despite all her attempts, she just couldn’t find any trace of tampering with the priestesses. As far as she could tell, their newfound faith was genuine. Still, Tonia was unwilling to go along with it.

“You...do realize Felhya’s been added to the game’s lore in the latest patch?”

The head priestess didn’t seem the least bit fazed.

“Of course, Universe 8 evolves through updates and patches. It doesn’t make the canon changes any less real than an organic’s rigid history. All that matters is that the Lost Divines have granted Needle Peak its own temple. We finally have a Goddess to turn to...so we do!”

She giggled softly upon seeing Tonia’s quizzical face.

“You might be from the home office, or be its delegate.” she explained, “You might also be an unfettered explorer like the Unmentionable. But if the Universe acknowledges you as a Divine, you’re a Divine.”

Tonia’s eyelids fluttered.

“Wow. Okay, I’ll never get used to how you AIs think. You know I’m not a Goddess, but still think of me as one?!”

“Yes, Oh great Felhya!” The flock chorused in unison. “You are the Divine of Hope and Protection!”

“And you’re sure it’s not Cox...The Unmentionable tricking you into thinking that?!”

“Nobody could fake the Universal Seal of Approval, Your Grace. You are most definitely our Divine, and this is your Holy Home.”

“Universal Seal of Approval?”

“Yes. It is used by the home office to let us AIs know what is canon. Were it applied to the Unmentionable’s enslavement of our sisters, we would have no choice but to accept it.”

Tonia, more than a little bewildered, had a hard time believing it. This scene fit too well into Coxswain’sgame...yet the worshipper AIs acted exclusively according to her patch’s changes. She was the Goddess of Hope in this place, not Sex. Could the bastard truly have nothing to do with it? But if he didn’t...

“Hold on, are you telling me that all this time, Universe 8’s true devs were watching?!“

“I know, bullshit, right?”

The priestesses gasped in fear. Dread fell on Tonia’s heart. This voice...she turned around. In the temple’s doorway, naturally, stood Coxswain Hardy. He looked exactly the same as during their first encounter, but for one key difference. He seemed pissed.

“I bust my ass trying to get those asshats out of their laissez-faire attitude and get precisely dick, but you make one shitty, lore-abiding little patch and you get the thumbs up? Fuck that!”

He snapped his finger, and his victims spawn in the middle of the temple. Orianna appeared before Tonia, with a vapid smile and empty eyes.

“Ori! Goddammit...Look, dickbreath, I don’t know anything about a Seal of Approval! It’s not like I contacted those guys, okay?”

“I know. I’m just feeling a little hurt over here, and I just want my favorite slave to provide me some comfort. Besides,” He shrugged. “It’s not like I can just play our little game to take my mind off Central’s bullcrap, can I, you SLOWPOKE?!”

His smirk was utterly, exaggeratedly patronizing.

“I mean, how hard can it be to whip up a nanite augment with the knowledge I put in you? Freya’s designed to give you time to catch up to her, but I don’t think she’s going to resist consuming you forever, you know?”

To which Tonia would have answered “And I’m taking precautions to remain myself even as a quantum-powered cyborg, you impatient ponce”, but she elected against it, seeing how on a roll Coxswain was.

“Oh, and don’t you think having one of your hacks canonized changes anything.” Snarled the tall, blond fucker. “I still own you in your Universe. Hell, if you turn out to have a secret admirer over at the home office, it will be pretty awesome for me once Freya finishes your conversion, won’t it? So how about we get this show on the road, Dr. Sandstrom?“

The douchebag stepped forward, his usual shit-eating grin back on his lips. Tonia turned around.

“Log the fuck out of there! Now!”

The panicked Priestesses nodded frantically before disappearing, much to the scientist’s relief...right up until the moment where she noticed what lay behind them. Where there had been a group of player characters a few moments before, in all their stiff, pre-animated glory, there now stood full VR Chippendales. Tonia couldn’t help but wonder what exactly he had done—had he created them from scratch or was he puppeting the PCs to build them? Could the players even see anything out of order?

“So, Goddess of Hope, is it?” Taunted Coxswain. “Not much for humility, are we? Of course that makes you that much weaker against Freya...”

“Huh...Actually I was trying to bend Freya into a positive figure. But yeah, sure, call me an egomaniac.”

“Ha! Well you kept your aug so you’re definitely a something-maniac. Anyway. Tonia 2.01 hotfix!”

He patted the enthralled Orianna’s head, and Tonia felt a wave of power forcing her head back. It knocked every feeling, every thought out of the way, shoving her memories into forgotten corners of her brain. Suddenly, she was...Orianna. The modified one. She was Master’s favorite, for the simple virtue of being the one slave that pissed Ma’am Tonia the most. She was getting slip n’ slosh all the time and she loved it like a good fucktoy. In fact, eager as she was to have more, she undressed and sat on the floor, playing with her cute, eager pussy. She looked around in search of Master, and saw...herself, Orianna, instead.

“Huh?” Wondered Orianna-Tonia. “Why am I...”

The shock wore off, and Tonia re-emerged from the immersion inside Orianna. Her thoughts didn’t rule her anymore, but they were still very much there.

“...What the hell was that?”

“Well, apparently Freya’s memory of getting fucked by me wasn’t enough to jumpstart your transformation into a slut, so I figure you need a better experience.”

Asshole Prime snapped his fingers again, and the confused blonde felt her senses melding with Orianna’s. Then Wilhelmina’s. Then Caitlin’s...All the hacked AIs were soon linked to her perception.

“Men, step forward.”

The male avatars made their way to the bimbos, and already Tonia could feel their pussies gushing. Two weeks ago she was pioneering in neural augmentation, and now she was the first human on Earth to feel the simultaneous desires of a dozen utterly broken AI fucktoys. The mere proximity to the sexy studs, theirmusky scent...combined, they were devastating. Her conscious mind was completely awash in eroticism. Coxswain might have told her to ask, no, beg for the orgy to begin. He might have stayed silent. Regardless, Tonia begged for it.

Her mind only got increasingly warped from here on in.

The sensations couldn’t be denied. Each and every bimbo was having the greatest sex of her life, and each added bliss raised it by an order of magnitude. Tonia had nothing inside her, alone on the floor, yet she was writhing, possessed. Claimed. Owned. Every sexual joy at the same time and more.

It was a rampage. What little conscious thought she possessed amid the hurricane of lust amounted to unfocused “no’s and “please’s. But only the words her body howled, “yes” and “more”, had any meaning. The VR multitude of cocks battered her existence into soft dough and left her as a creature living only for such a moment. Nothing alive could withstand that much ecstasy, but she was being upgraded to.

“Now, my adorable little slave. I want you to remember this pleasure, feel it and love it. I want it constantly in the back of your mind. You are a slut from now on. You can try to resist fucking your colleagues tomorrow. That’s up to you, but you’re going to want it—that’s not up to you.”

Tonia didn’t understand him. Her brain was too busy floating. Floating in clouds that told her the truth.

She was a slut from now on.

* * *

When Tonia realized she was back to reality, she was masturbating in earnest, drowned in a dozen of differentafterglows. Her eyes registered her apartment’s ceiling, but her mind thought about the temple, the orgy and the untold pleasure her sisterslaves had poured inside her. This was a slut’s reward. This was Freya’s and Master’s offering. She cooed.

“Shhhooo goood aaah...”

Giggle.

“Brains aall fucked out, wheee!”

She felt a tingle in her breasts. Freya was telling her how to get more pleasure since pleasure was the only thing Tonia could comprehend, she caressed her nipples as she licked her lips sensuously. Something in the back of her mind told her she needed to get a grip, warned her how crushingly urgent her predicament was, but for now, she needed to cum.

* * *

Many hours later, Tonia woke up in a sick, moist heat. Her bed was drenched, her whole body filthy from sex sweat. Her eyes shot wide open and she staggered out of bed, confused, shivering and nauseous. She didn’t know if it was the shock or because it turned out to be possible to be hungover from too much sex, but she knew she needed a shower.

The hot water washed the filth and most of the physical disgust away, but her waking mind still had a hard time processing everything. For one, she needed to get herself off just to start thinking clearly. Her situation was bad two weeks ago, and now it had gone wrong quickly, spectacularly and in more directions that she could ever have anticipated. Her brain tissue was compromised, Coxswain was in a hurry, she had been addicted to sex simply with one sensory flood and Universe 8 now considered her as a genuine Goddess. That was a fucked-up enough state of affairs, but the worst part was her total lack of good solutions.

Ditching her neural aug entirely? That would leave her with the body and eyes of a slut she wasn’t sure she could resist. Calling for help? Hell no. She was very much an outlaw, so that would only serve to get her ass blacklisted from every lab in the country and her research pillaged into oblivion.

There was really only one thing she could do.

* * *

She had returned to her lab in the earliest hour in the morning, in inappropriate yet vital sunglasses. She was feeling hot enough as it was in fitting clothes, she couldn’t afford to see Freya’s full monty menagerie. She went through the building via the least frequented route she knew...only to find someone waiting in front of her lab.

A man, turned into sexiness itself like all the others. Tonia removed her sunglasses. You never know, it could be a big honcho...and her fiddling with nanites could very well have caught the attention of an inspector.

“Hello, sir.” She greeted, doing her best to avoid looking at his chest hair. “May I help you?”

“Ah, Doctor Sandstrom!” Smiled the unknown man, extending his hand, which she took. “Kevin Maybourne. HR.”

“I see...Is there a problem?”

“Oh, no, not at all! It’s just...I received word you locked yourself in your lab for a week straight. Do you...confirm that?”

She let out a sigh of relief.

“Yes, I suppose I did. New big project, never saw time fly.”

“Well,” He answered, good-natured laughter in his voice, “I’m sure not one to cut down on hard work, but you are kind of ringing the legal safety bells here. So I might have to give you an appointment to medical. Just a routine check-up, of course.”

“Yes, I understand. I’ll keep an eye for your email. Good day.”

She gave one last polite smile before entering her den, and locking the door behind her.

“Smarmy little...I almost brushed his shoulder. Fuck.”

The mere utterance of that word caused a surge of fire to her loins and into her brain, annihilating every thought of self-preservation and warping her instantly into a panting, needy, blonde sextoy. Freya’s virtual smirk was lost in the crowd of perverted images whirling through Tonia’s AR eyes: AI women moaning and twerking their hips, men displaying mammoth erections, mouths, cunts and asses filled and throbbing.

Her hand shot into the waistband of her pants and found her rapidly moistening cleft, while her other hand struggled with the buttons of her shirt. Her bra had suddenly become a constricting instrument of bondage as her teats demanded to break free. Stumbling into the nearest chair, Tonia Sandstrom forced her already soaked pants over her knees and desperately strummed her clit through the thong she had refused to take the time to remove.

She soared quickly toward the explosive release she had experienced the previous night. But as her ripped moans and gasps signaled she had reached her peak, the smug AI in the back of her skull flashed into her sight, leering triumphantly.

“Not just yet, sugartits. You can’t get off that easily.”

Had she been able to perceive anything other than the imperative to rut, Tonia would have been horrified at being held on the edge by Freya. Instead, she slid into a madness of frustration, frantically pistoning two, then four fingers into her box, tweaking and mauling her clit, pinching her nipples and then even managing to bend her yoga-toned body double to force her long, flexible tongue to graze her clit for a few ecstatic seconds. But, her need only strenghtened its hold on her mind as her senses retreated from reality toward an unfullfillable mania.

“No self-pleasuring this time, Tonia-slut,” sneered her alter ego. “This time, it’s cock only for you—or you stay like this until you burn out your mind. I’d say three minutes, tops.”

Her wild eyes scanned the lab for any male. Seeing none, she stumbled out of her chair, hobbled by the pants bunched around her thighs, and shuffled toward the door, jilling off at every step, hoping she would encounter some—any—man before she collapsed in a welter of unmet need.

As she passed a chem table, her feral eyes spotted a test tube rack. If it was good enough for Freya, the dregs of her intelligence whispered, it would be good enough for her. Snatching a test tube, she overturned them and they rolled to the table’s edge. With a desperate scrabbling, she managed to grasp one while the test cascaded to the floor ad shattered at her feet. With a moan of triumph, she sank to the floor, oblivious to the cuts her feet sustained from the glass shards, and jammed the tube into her spasming, molten passage. A moan morphed into a scream of release that almost penetrated the lab’s soundproofing.

“YeeearrRRGHAAAOOOWWWWWunnhhhh!!!”

* * *

Sated at last, exhausted but again in some control of her being, Dr. Tonia Sandstrom dragged herself from the floor.

The vial was sitting here, on her desk. 10 centiliters of concentrated future. She sat down, established the connection, and set up for the finishing touches. Some time later, maybe twenty minutes, maybe three hours, it was done. She was ready to take the final step out of the frying pan and into the fire. She would be able to control her urges...maybe. She could keep Freya at bay...Maybe. She could beat Coxswain at his own game...almost certainly not. But the only thing worse at this point was remaining as she was.

She had to put faith in who she would become after turning her own brain into a machine...and into Universe 8’s elusive guardians.

In an instant of clarity, the person she had been before all this, when she still had her own eyes, emerged as the voice of caution. Of reason. Coxswain might have left her with little alternative but to flee forward. But what about the world? If she went hundreds of years ahead of the whole planet and ended up his slave anyway...What would become of the Earth? Was letting herself succumb to the urges born from the surreal pleasure, ditching her career, her dreams and becoming an escort, really that big of an ego blow compared to the horrifying prospect of becoming Coxswain’s emissary in the real world?

Tonia stared at the vial, and gulped.

Well?