The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

System Corrupt

(mc, ma, ex, hu, mf)

Part 1

Laurie found herself with a bit of free time between softball practice and work. She was home, freshly showered, and smelling of jasmine. Her blonde-as-straw, blue-velvet-tipped curly hair was done up neatly. A glance at her phone told her she had about forty minutes to kill.

Her email was calling. She sat at her dusty, slightly-sticky desk, an Ikean relic of white plastic and aluminum wedged into the corner of her small bedroom. There was barely enough room between it and the foot of her bed for her second-hand office chair.

Her inbox was mostly junk, of course. Scams that scammed no one in their right mind and dick-growth ads that competed fiercely with other dick-growth ads for what had to be a very small demographic (in more ways than one). Then there were the subscriptions she’d long since regretted subscribing and the litany of MyBook notifications she’d deal with later or when she was dead.

Ah, but down near the bottom of the stack was an email from an old friend. Laurie smiled. Jean was fond of writing long letters to her friends, sometimes through email and sometimes through actual mail. She was still at the university, bless her heart, studying comparative literature. She had a knack for her literary pursuits that was evident in her clever missives, which seemed to ramble but always came masterfully full circle, telling stories of her life with the charming and funny voice only Jean could put to print.

Which was why this particular message was a tad disappointing. It was shorter than usual—just three paragraphs detailing one funny but irrelevant story about her encounter with a supposed “covert operative” who was actually a limo driver, last Tuesday. Yes, it carried Jean’s typical effortless charm, but a few clumsy sentences and glaring typos belied her usual attention to detail.

Laurie chided herself for being so critical. Just because she put in some time as resident book critic at her work didn’t mean she had to pick apart personal letters from friends. And besides, the story wasn’t all there was to the email. There was a post-script and an attachment. The post-script read:

P.S. two kittens playing the banjo = ♥

which was odd. Even from Jean. But the attachment was named banjokittens.htm, so there was probably a pretty good explanation.

“Warning: you are about to run a file from an untrusted publisher. Do you wish to continue?”

Laurie clicked “Yes” without the slightest bit of concern, upon which java began booting up, which she found odd. An instant later, though, a new browser window opened and she was confronted with the spectacle of two adorable kittens playing with each other on the neck of a fallen banjo, running up and down over the strings and making a general ruckus.

“Aww...” she crooned. Laurie watched the clip again before composing a reply. She kept it short and flattering, tactfully failing to mention her prior nitpicks and promising to send a longer email when she got around to it.

So that killed ten minutes. Laurie decided against picking up her current book; it was never very satisfying to get into a novel for less than an hour at a time—or preferably two to five hours at a time. Laurie preferred reading on weeknights when she could change into warm, soft PJ’s and make a kettle of green tea, then settle into a pool of blankets and pillows and slip into the novel until the early morning.

Anyway, so reading was out. Laurie got onto MyBook instead.

After a couple minutes of sorting through irrelevant and/or amusing status updates and debating which events to “maybe” for the weekend, Laurie’s computer started acting up. The screen took on a steady flicker, and no amount of bashing the side of her monitor with her open hand could make it stop. It was similar to (but not quite as annoying as) the buzz-and-flicker of an unsynchronized fluorescent bulb. The steady dimming came at a rhythm just slow enough to catch the eye, like a strobe light in a club, but gentler—almost soothing. Distracting, though, and if it was the sort of problem Laurie normally had with her computer, it would only get worse with time.

“Come on, Stegs,” she muttered to the machine she couldn’t help calling by name, “What is it now?”

She checked a few connections and bashed the monitor a few more times, but it just blinked away, oblivious.

Laurie sat back in her chair and sighed, staring at the blinking screen in dismay. It held an odd sort of lilting beat, like if it were a bit slower she could tap along to it with her fingers. It reminded her of a ticking timer, a sort of beat and counter beat, tic and toc, tic and toc, maybe five times in a second...

Laurie snapped out of her reverie when an icon appeared on her desktop. It looked like a system file, with a name that included a lot of numbers and special characters. It vanished as quickly as it appeared though, and before Laurie could be properly alarmed, her screen dimmed into the background and a message appeared from her OS’s Security Center:

Your permission is needed to continue:
If you started this action, continue.
ActivX blah blah blah...

Laurie groaned. “Oh Jean, you bitch! You gave me a virus!” Not that she was actually angry at Jean, of course. It wasn’t as if she’d done it on purpose. How could she have known that kittens on a banjo could represent such a threat?

Besides, if Laurie had had more than token freeware virus protection, Stegs probably would have caught the virus before it could infect her. As it was, Laurie would probably end up dealing with this problem for a few hours.

Hours which she didn’t have right now. She needed to leave for work in twenty minutes... But at least she could make a start of it.

Laurie finally addressed the warning box. The mouse drifted under her hand, almost as if of its own accord, to the button marked ‘continue’. But Laurie caught herself on time, cussing under her breath, “Head in the game, girl,” and she canceled instead.

Laurie burned time checking through her running processes, updating her virus software, running a quickscan, and finally googling Stegs’s symptoms.

virus “flickering screen” ActivX |

It took a bit of refining keywords and downward scrolling to find a relevant result, but when she found a message board that seemed to address her specific problem, she laughed.

Then she checked the clock and cussed again. Fighting viruses was a real time sink, and she was already ten minutes late leaving for work. After a moment’s hesitation, she unplugged her computer’s ethernet cable (to prevent, hopefully, any viral shenanigans while she was out) and rushed out the door.

The message board read as follows:

hypnovirus! If you have it, turn off your computer IMMEDIATELY!

Turn it off and bring it in for professional repairs. This is no joke, people! If your screen is flickering and your computer is running slowly, you may have a hypnovirus! DO NOT look at your screen, or you will go into a trance! No one seems to know what it does, but a friend of mine had this and she blacked out for...

The rest of the post followed a jump that Laurie didn’t have the time to click through. She made her way out the door with an amused smile on her face.

“’Hypnovirus.’ What will the internet come up with next?” she said out loud to no one in particular. She shook her head and climbed onto her bicycle.

Work was... well, work was what it always was. Laurie liked her job, but it was a job all the same. She worked at a local book store—stocking, checking, making recommendations, reviewing a few of the high-profile releases and some of her personal favorites for the store blog. It was a relaxed place and almost everyone who worked there was really cool. She liked reading, and she liked talking to people, so it was a pretty good fit for her...even if it was a little monotonous. Laurie just didn’t have the necessary focus for long, repetitive tasks. A few hours into a shift spent stocking or organizing shelves, and she would wind up slacking off and distracting coworkers instead. So she’d never be employee of the month or anything, but her coworkers liked her anyway, and her bosses put up with her well enough. At least her book reviews were normally on time.

The other problem with working at a book store was that it was a dead-end, career wise. Laurie was in denial about things like “careers” and “the future” though, so that didn’t bother her overly much. Her parents gave her a hard time about it when she talked to them, but Laurie was happy for now.

Happy, except for the little problem of poor broken-down old Stegs—short for Stegosaurus, because it was big, and it was ancient. But it had served her well all through college and her last year of high school, and it was still chugging along just fine in spite of a few hiccups. This latest issue with the (and she couldn’t help snickering when she thought of it) “hypnovirus” was just one more.

Not as serious as a hard drive malfunction or something, Laurie reassured herself. It was something she could fix herself, hopefully with just a deep virus scan, or with a little research. Because she sure wasn’t taking it into a store, no matter what gullible people on the internet spouted off about. Even if the virus were trying to take over her brain (and hey, it might have been; people tried dumber shit than that on the internet—didn’t mean it would work, of course), she just couldn’t afford more repairs. If it came down to it, she would just restore her computer from its last restore point.

Laurie got off at 10 pm and made it home by 10:25. Exhausted as she was at the end of a 7-and-one-half hour shift, she couldn’t resist the urge to sit down and sort out her computer before bed. As much as she would have rather crawled into bed with her book, she knew she wouldn’t have peace until Stegs had a clean bill of health.

Laurie’s roommate left out some spinach-avocado sandwiches for her, which was sweet, except that the avocado had all turned brown in the hour or two since it was sliced. Laurie accepted the proffered snack gratefully and called through her roommate’s door, “Thanks for cooking, Sweetums.” It was their custom to refer to each other with sardonic pet names.

Mikaela opened her door and peered out at Laurie, taking in her plate of little triangular sandwiches. She was dressed in sweatpants and a comfortable t-shirt, ready for bed. Her long brown hair was still neatly brushed, though, so Laurie assumed she hadn’t been asleep. Mikaela said, “Thought you’d be home earlier or I would have put it in the fridge for you.”

“That’s alright,” said Laurie. “Still good.”

Mikaela smiled and said, “Goodnight, Pookie.”

“Goodnight, Honey-cheeks.”

Mikaela winced. “’Honey-cheeks?’ That’s terrible.”

Laurie grinned. “Goodnight, Honey-bunches-of-oats.”

Mikaela laughed. “Goodnight, Blueberry Morning.” And she shut her door before Laurie could think of another breakfast cereal.

Laurie shouted through the door, “Goodnight... Fruity Pebbles!” and retired to her room.

There was Stegs, flickering away. It was back to the welcome screen, which told Laurie it had rebooted in her absence. The virus at work, no doubt. She sat down, settled her little sandwiches down by the computer, and set to work.

First she ran another quick scan, to make sure it hadn’t missed anything. She checked through her active processes again and still couldn’t point out anything clearly out-of-place. But the virus was definitely still laboring away, doing devil-knows-what to her vulnerable old machine. Gazing into the soft flicker of her bright screen in her dark room, it was easy to believe that it was trying to hypnotize her. It had an oddly soothing quality to it, a quality Laurie almost wouldn’t mind if it weren’t so distracting. It had a way of calling her full attention, so she had to summon her full focus to go about her task.

She laughed again, feeling a little giddy. It was the illusion of danger, like she was daring fate just by looking at her infected computer. A test of wills—hers versus the infection. And what would it do if it won? Make her dance like a chicken? Make her fill out a form with all her credit information and social security number? If hypnosis could do that, people would be getting duped left and right. No, that was all just dumb fiction. Laurie rolled her eyes and checked the results of her quick scan.

Nothing. She let out a sigh of resignation and cued up the deep scan. Her definitions were all up-to-date. This would probably catch it. Or maybe she should’ve just done the system restore? …

Laurie watched as the scan trolled through folder after folder in her registry. The monotonous, never-ending progression of files coming up negative, the relentless blinking of the screen, dimming and shining, back and forth, wearing heavily on her tired eyes...

Laurie was startled when she realized she’d been spacing out.

Hah! Maybe this thing has a bit of juice in it after all! she thought. Her heartbeat quickened, and she grinned, feeling foolishly like a daredevil. Or more likely I’m just tired after a long day of softball and working.

Laurie decided to do a couple more things before turning in for the night and letting the scan run as she slept. She would google the virus again and look for any file names the virus might use, and she’d check in on her MyBook page real quick.

But it was tough to focus on any of that when the screen just kept steadily blinking at her, assaulting her senses with unending pulses of light like waves of an ocean crashing eternally against the shore, and now she could hear a little soft static that kept time with the flashing...

Laurie woke to the droning of her alarm clock and a cool draft on her skin. She stirred, disoriented, and slapped the snooze button on her clock. As her awareness grew, she wondered why she didn’t feel her blanket on her, and she opened her eyes to discover herself lying on top of her blankets, which were disheveled but still made, and she was naked. A corner of her sheet had been pulled loose and tucked over her shoulder, but otherwise she was exposed, and her blanket was damp with what she could only imagine to be sweat.

First she thought she’d had some fever in the night and kicked away her pajamas and blankets in her sleep, but no, because clearly she had never been under her blanket in the first place. Her pajamas were not to be seen, though her work clothes were scattered about the room, and her sandwiches from the night before lay spoiled on her desk, just a few bites taken out of one. And strangest of all, her computer screen, which was still on but no longer pulsing, displayed in a window a view of her own room, and her own naked form sitting flabbergasted on her bed. Her hair was a mess of tangled yellow curls laced with dyed streaks of Mediterranean blue, some plastered to her temples with dry sweat. Her soulful, round brown eyes narrowed in confusion, her slender legs splayed obscenely, and her breasts, perky, smallish and topped with slightly upward-pointing pink nipples, stiffened apparently by the cool air.

“Wha...” she muttered, and it’s strange that the next thought that crossed her mind was that she wasn’t looking as good as she could be, that she should put more time in at the gym (what gym, she didn’t know, having never been to one). This idea, of course, was quickly vanquished beneath tides of “What the hell”’s and “What the fuck”’s.

Attached to the right side of the webcam window was a wide margin of blank white, reading at the top in bold plain letters, “Session is closed.”

What did I do last night? Laurie reflected, and came up with disjointed impressions of a conversation—or maybe it was an interrogation, or an interview, held in a low monotone, with someone trustworthy but unfamiliar, and possibly a face looking out at her from her computer... but this impression seemed unreal and untenable, disconnected from any of the actual events of the prior night or day, and she dismissed it as a dream, probably brought on by her stress over her infected computer.

Right! So she’d been running a deep scan and...

Laurie butted her forehead with the base of her palm and let out an exasperated “Mother fucker!” And she dashed out of bed and unplugged the webcam from her computer.

Her face, neck, and exposed breasts flushed red with embarrassment. “Can’t believe it actually worked on me,” she muttered. The gulf in her memory spoke volumes. The asinine program had actually hypnotized her, played her for a fool. Humiliating. The webcam bit was especially concerning. No doubt, some perv somewhere got himself a private strip show out of the scam.

A trickle of fear ran down her spine as Laurie contemplated what else she may have been induced to do, but she mostly dismissed it. Whatever sideshow pranks hypnosis might have been good for, certainly it couldn’t convince a person to do more complex things, things requiring more thought, right? To be safe, Laurie resolved to check her bank account and change her pin numbers and passwords as soon as possible. The blinking was gone from her computer now, which made her hope the prank was over, thus the virus dormant. But of course she would run a system restore as soon as she got back from work, and she’d run another deep scan (what had happened to the one from last night?) to be sure. And if her computer started pulsing, she would turn it off immediately.

For now, though, she had to get ready to go, or she’d be late for work again.

In the shower, Laurie wondered if she was downplaying the significance of her situation. It had gotten to her, made her take off her clothes. That was some seriously disturbing shit. But... well, Laurie wasn’t a prude. It wasn’t the end of the world if some creep sneaked a peek. She’d like the opportunity to claw his eyes out, naturally, but life went on regardless. And Laurie truly doubted anything worse could have happened. Life went on.

Mikaela was dressed for a jog and sitting at the counter, which was the only table in the apartment. When Laurie came in she looked up from her oatmeal and said, “Morning, Kittie-pie.”

Laurie tried on a smile, saw that it fit, and replied, “Good morning, Seabiscuit. What are you doing today?”

And the unfortunate events of the preceding evening and morning fell into the background.