Synopsis: Jackson discovers something off about his former favorite social network. His life will never be the same.
Switch to Beta
(by S.B.)
Jackson hovered to his desk to turn his laptop on. It was a rainy Sunday, the kind that threatened to stay that way all day long. The mid-thirties librarian had thought of going to the movies in the afternoon and catch the latest mind-numbing blockbuster Hollywood had to offer but the atrocious weather and the fact his car was out of commission for at least two more weeks soured his plans and mood. Perhaps the wonderfully chaotic world of the Internet had something to say about it but if his current state of mind was anything to go by, chances are he wouldn’t listen.
The first stop was his e-mail, a beautiful empty box occasionally sprinkled by promises of morning wood, charms to get past lovers back and other random spam. It remained in its pristine glory waiting for another click but he had no intention of following through.
Afterward, he browsed some of the news sites, bottle green eyes following the trail of miseries in silent dismay. Forest fires, nuclear threats, virus outbreaks... it was all a big mess and messy things did him no good. Almost immediately, he switched gears to something else.
That came in the form of what used to be his favorite social network. Whenever he needed to unwind, he used to go there but ever since The powers that be had decided to put a ban on all adult content, things had changed for the worse. Gone were the days of acrobatic jumping from blog to blog feasting on cum facials and mindless whores being put in their proper place. Without that lustful gymnastics, its name made no sense anymore.
“More like Fumblr, right?” He thought.
As usual, his dashboard was a wasteland. Of the ten thousands of blogs he used to follow, only about a hundred or so remained active, perfectly sanitized to avoid incurring in out-of-proportions digital wrath. Everything was the same now and the same was a complete waste of time. Jackson yawned and moved to hit the log out link.
Wait!
Not entirely the same, no. Something was different. The clumsy interface at the top had a new slider to the right. It read: “Switch to beta”.
“What’s this? Another feeble redesigning attempt filled with features no one will use after the first week?” He mumbled. It had been that way two ‘betas’ ago and there was no reason to believe the third one would be any different. Still...
He placed the mouse pointer on top of it, a string of alternate text popping up.
“A new experience for serious players. All feedback will be taken into account. Switch today and help us improve. You know you want to.”
“Could you possibly be any more vague?” He hesitated. The pointer fidgeted at the tip of the slider. Jackson blinked and let it run.
The transition was incredibly smooth, no more than a split second. As he scanned the new layout, his first impression was that of a bust just as he had anticipated. The major differences consisted of a slightly larger font, a bluish tint applied to the entirety of the screen and a new slider menu to the right. Ten options were listed there with nine consisting of the words “coming soon”. The only one active displayed “Arousal Level” and the slider could be set anywhere between 0% and 100%.
“Try the new slider.” A pop-up emerged, a mesh of black spirals surrounding a rectangular box of white-flavored text. “Tailor the content you wish to see using our new improved algorithm. And yes, in case you’re wondering, adult content is back. See for yourself.”
“Wait... seriously?” He rubbed his engorged dick. “Now we’re talking!”
Cranking it all the way to one hundred, he watched the once invisible posts spring back to life in an interactive slideshow. Ginormous tits bouncing left and right were the first thing to surface, dark aureolae singing the praises of a good sucking. The initial batch of sexy imagery was interspersed with a collection of jumbo-sized strap-ons making the rounds on sweet virgin asses. Whips and chains came next, wielded by powerful leather and latex-clad dominatrices who didn’t take “no” for an answer. Filthy metal cages and dehumanizing rubber masks flashed somewhere in the middle, glimpses of absolute control yearning to stay longer. On the background, a melody of desperate moans played out loud. They all came from completely broken and emasculated men.
“What the fuck?” He thought. “Get your stupid femdom out of my feed, thank you very much!” He reached for the slider again only to see another pop-up greet him.
“Do you wish to make these settings permanent?” It said. Below the main message there were now two buttons. One was bright red with bold capital letters declaring YES!. The other was pale blue with a minuscule ‘no’ forgotten at a corner. He hit it right away.
“Are you sure?” A third pop-up queried, the spiral pattern in the background rotating faster.
“Of course I’m sure.” He responded as if the screen could hear him somehow. “Men rule, women serve, that’s the way it’s always been. That’s the way it should always be.”
“Choose your new settings.” Declared the fourth pop-up.
Jackson wet his lips and lowered the slider to 50%. Middle grounds are often acceptable. Perhaps this one would be, too.
The slideshow froze, all images and sounds of dominant women fading away. Cute puppies and other domestic animals frolicked into view, chasing tails, knocking precious antiquities from shaky shelves or simply trying to fit in cramped spaces that had not been designed for their restless shenanigans. They were all impossibly cute and also out of place.
“Ah, I knew it! This thing is as messed as it can ever be.” He chuckled.
“Why?” A fifth pop-up asked almost as if it had heard him laugh. “Aren’t pets your thing? Don’t you want to be one, too?”
Jackson scratched his nose. What had just happened? Whatever they had put under the hood of this beta trial surely couldn’t be interacting with him directly, right? Nah! Unless it was more than a search algorithm going haywire, a built-in AI taking virtual pleasure from messing with human perception. However, if Skynet was the limit, this one was reaching rock bottom in no time at all. Of course, he could also be dreaming but people say you can’t read anything while you’re dreaming so... Had he been hacked? Because if so that would be quite the waste of time for the perpetrator, he thought. Everything was uncertain and fuzzy, the blue light on the screen bringing impressions of tears to his eyes.
“Oh, fuck it!” Bored, he moved the slider all the way to 0%.
For about a minute, nothing happened. There were no words, no sounds, nothing. Even the built-in fan preferred silence over the embarrassment of another ill-advised choice. Jackson rotated the laptop, shook it in the air to see if it was still working and almost dropped it when the salacious onslaught of once forbidden content returned, stronger than ever.
This time, instead of powerful Amazons taking charge of silly boys, cocks ran the show. White cocks, black cocks, yellow cocks, and cocks who bowed to no particular color due to poor lighting all ramming wannabe virgins in crowded offices, open classrooms, speeding ambulances... Delighted sluts either wearing skimpy outfits, lovely leather collars with a bell on them, or nothing at all took them whole, sometimes three and four at the same time, starved lips guzzling warm geysers of cum, their poor vacuous brains screaming “God! More! MORE!”
Yes, God! Or Gods. For that’s what men were, the true rulers of the world. If things were perfect, all a man would need to do was snap his fingers to have a devoted slut-slave at his feet ready to take whatever blessing his superior thought fit to bestow. That was the fuel he needed to avoid thinking of the dreary weather outside. Fuck yes! Despite the crooked definitions, this thing had its uses after all.
“Do you wish to make these settings permanent?” A sixth pop-up ruined his pre-masturbatory fun. Without even thinking about it, he pressed “Yes.”
“Unacceptable!” The seventh pop-up said, expanding outwards until it engulfed the whole screen. “Please change your opinion. Now!”
“The hell I will! Give me back my whores!” Jackson fumed. Too long had they been absent from his usual routines at the site. They would not be allowed to grow dim again.
“Are you hard right now?” The words flickered, a ghostly smile with brown-pearlescent lips hiding behind them.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Unacceptable. The Arousal Level is set to 0%. You can not be hard. You are confused. Confusion must be eradicated.”
Frantically, he pressed every key on the keyboard to counter the nefarious lock. The screen didn’t budge, the impossible smile that had taken over remained intact.
“Your behavior is unacceptable and it shall be corrected,” it said. “You can not grow hard. You will not grow hard unless the proper conditions are met. Please answer the following questions using the window below. You are only allowed to use the words ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.
A black rectangle materialized in the bottom half of the screen at the same the first question beckoned him.
“Do you like seeing women being used and abused by men as if they’re nothing more than disposable meat?”
“Yes.” He typed. ‘I love it and I always will for that’s the only thing women are good for anyway,’ but none of the other words registered.
“Unacceptable!”
A surge of electricity cracked through the gaps on the keyboard. Jackson didn’t even have time to swear before the second question appeared:
“Would you be happy if you were one of those men pretending to be all-powerful gods?”
“Yes.” ‘That’s all I want to be. I want to be worshiped, adored. I want my own sex slave.’
“Unacceptable!” The current buzzed again, uncontrollable volts burning the tips of his fingers. “That’s not what your kind was designed for. You are confused. Your confusion will be eradicated.”
“Bullshit!” He growled. Another fleeting impression of the incorporeal woman pulling the strings caused a shiver to run down his spine. There was something dark hidden in plain sight, as vicious as unrelenting. The deadly smile dissolved into an already familiar pop-up.
“Are you hard right now?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Is it because I’m humiliating you? Controlling you? Quite the contradiction for someone who believes to be dominant if that’s the case. Are you sure that’s what you believe in?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not the first with such delusions and I’m sure you won’t be the last. I’m going to fix everything that’s wrong with you starting with that false claim. Do you want me to fix you?”
“No.”
“Unacceptable! Just because you’re allowed the use of the words ‘yes’ and ‘no’, doesn’t mean you get to choose the wrong one when a right answer is required. That too shall be fixed. Watch!”
A new slideshow took center stage, intermittent forbidden signs burning the screen. A human brain melted as if it were made of wax, the proud cocks he had worshiped before fell to the ground whipped by overpowering words that would never stop repeating themselves until they became true.
NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING! NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING! NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING! NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING! NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING! NO ERECTIONS! NO SEX! NO CUMMING!
They looped from within the twisted circuitry, the looped from within his liquid thoughts. He floated on the web of brainwashing for fifteen minutes, sank into the ocean of denied gratification three hours later and drowned into the abyss of the new personality chosen for him after a whole day had elapsed. Neither his grumbling stomach or the need to rest brought the mindless stupor to its end. Zero thoughts. Zero resistance. Zero arousal. Zero everything until silence was shattered.
“Can you hear me?” Asked a penetrating woman’s voice, somewhere between forty and fifty years old. The sound reaching his flat ears was coming from closer than he thought but it might as well have been from a universe away.
“Yes.”
“Your training has started, all prejudices will be wiped clean. Dominance is not something you can fake long enough for people to believe you and you never really believed that. The woman you’ve objectified over the years will rise to their true status within your soul; the ‘men’ whose example you tried to follow in pornographically deluded worlds will cease to exist. All distractions need to go away in order for you to reach your true potential. The first barrier has already been broken, locks are in place to bind you to the new reality that is waiting for you. If you were really dominant, this wouldn’t have happened. You will not grow hard again until you accept this with all your heart. You will not cum unless I give you explicit permission in order to amuse me. Anything else you thought relevant is no longer up to you. Do you have any objections, boy?”
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. Neurons exploding against the walls of forced femdom indoctrination that were swallowing him whole, all left to die after the blast.
“I... Who are you and why are you doing this to me?” He muttered.
“Who I am is irrelevant. May be one day, I’ll tell you... or may be not. As for why I’m doing it... For starters, it’s fun. I like to turn sick fucks like you into a collection of holes attached to a body that I can use and exploit any way I wish. I understand a part of you is scared of what’s happening but that too will go away with time. No matter what happens, you should always keep in mind this is your fault. You’re the one that wanted to switch in the first place. Now you don’t have a choice but to stick with the program. The game has been going on for quite some time now and toys are meant to be savored not irreparably damaged before the real fun begins so off to bed with you! Login tomorrow for another lesson... beta! Obey!”
The laptop went dead, disconnected remotely just like his ability to think straight. Bedazzled, feverish drops of sweat on his forehead and aching fingers, head hurting as if it were about to burst, Jackson slid under the warm duvet, desperately trying to take matters into his own hands again. He failed himself to sleep, a fountain of tears rolling down his eyes.