Bound Friends Pt. 06

Lea saw the lights of the van pulling up, it was now fully dark outside, though Hannah had turned on what lights she was able to so Lea was not in total darkness. The wooden door blocked her view of Megan actually emerging, but she knocked on the door clearly not having seen Lea's overturned cage. "It's open," came the voice of Hannah when Lea was having trouble summoning the words to invite her in. She opened the door with a confused look on her face, unsure of why there was a computer voice but once she entered she darted over to the cage.

"Oh God, Lea, are you alright? Well obviously not, did someone leave you like this? And are you wearing what I think you're wearing?" The questions came a mile a minute as she held on to the door of the cage looking in.

"Megan.. Megan!" Lea had to say loudly to get her friend to stop yammering and listen. "The cage has flipped, I need you to flip it back and undo the latch. I'll be able to get the key and unlock the padlocks from in here. Then when I've gotten out and gotten some damn water I'll explain everything ok?"

Megan still very clearly wanted to keep asking questions but was able to stop herself and simply grab the cage and with a little effort was able to right it. Megan watched as the key slowly descended without Lea doing anything, allowing her to grab it and unlock herself so that she could slowly crawl out. Megan had a glass of water waiting as she helped Lea out and onto one of the nearby couches.

After downing the entire glass in one go, Lea sat back and saw the eager inquisitive look of Megan sitting across from her. "OK, so here it goes..." Lea then went about retelling almost everything, about how she started to feel a submissive streak after she kicked them out, about how she tried program after program trying to come up with one that would challenge her as a virtual dom, about some of the highlights from the week and finally ending with how she came to be stuck in the cage her jostling had accidently knocked over. Megan was uncharacteristically quiet as she gave Lea space to tell things at whatever pace it was she was comfortable with. Lea simply shrugged as she finished and asked "so's there anything else you want to know?"

"One, why'd you shut us out? Sophia and I have been trying to reach you this whole time, but you don't reply and we could swear you've been avoiding us at school. What the hell happened?"

Lea wasn't quite as ready for all that. "I don't know. Everything just kind of.. blew up. I didn't.. no.. I don't know how to feel comfortable about it. I called you because I needed to call someone and I felt like you'd be the least traumatic for me to be found like that."

"Was I that bad? I know I lost my head a little but.."

"Heh, just a little? Are you kidding me?" Lea interrupted.

"Hey, I didn't have to come you know. I'm trying to mend some fences here, come on now." Megan said in perhaps her first glimmer of confrontation.

"No, I know, you're right. You.. you really saved me and I've been treating you like shit. And not a metaphorical saved me either, the real kind. What I went through was awful when you guys first came up and I thought I'd do better on my own but clearly as you can see that's got its problems too," Lea said gesturing over to the cage.

"Don't be too hard on yourself, you did a damn good job. You programmed something that was working fine up until just now. Hell, if you give it some safety upgrades I actually wouldn't mind taking Hannah for a spin. You know, like after graduation. I need to be careful not to spiral again."

"Oh don't worry, I've left the program's code open so I can add all kinds of stuff whenever I want. I haven't yet cause it's still running, but if I wanted to I could go add you in with whatever parameters you want. Well obviously I wouldn't right now, but, well you know what I mean." Lea looked up to the high ceilings, as if that was were Hannah lived. "What do you say Hannah, want to try working with someone other than just li'l ol' me?"

"Just add her name next to yours and it'll be done, that simple. After all, what kind of Mistress would stick to just one sub," Hannah interjected.

Megan laughed a bit, that sounded a little cartoony but not in an entirely bad way. It was certainly no more over the top than a lot of depictions of the demanding mistress, and since it wasn't a person it certainly was allowed a little more theatricality.

There was a quiet after that. Lea was thinking about whether or not to ask how the others were doing and Megan was thinking about how best to ask for a ride back to town without sounding dismissive. Megan was the one to break the silence, "So it's getting late, and I got to get back."

"Right, right, yeah of course." Lea said as she tried to get up from the couch, forgetting how sore her legs were. She walked over and hugged Megan good bye. Her metal orbs poked into Megan causing Megan to almost laugh but not quite. "Hannah, get her home safe would you?"

"Of course," came the voice of the program as Megan began to walk towards the door. Lea watched as the lights of the car came on, reversed and drove away.

****

"Mistress, may I please call it a night?" Lea asked once she could no longer see the car.

"Yes you may, take your laptop and go up to one of the cells," Hannah answered. It was a strange detail, but Lea had been conditioned to not question an order as that always leads to punishment. As she realized that, she thought to herself that she couldn't wait till she's free tomorrow so she can get a break from all the orders and punishments. A week was maybe too long. She settled in to the cell with her laptop and closed the door before Hannah said anything more.

"My programing, directs me to be your dominant and you a submissive slave," Hannah said, clearly in the lead up to something big Lea wasn't sure she liked. "To do this you have programed me to engage in BDSM, to punish you and reward you as needed. You have given me examples of what kind of play is involved, your long talk, all the videos of this house, as well as online resources. I was given very wide parameters and told to use my judgment on how best to accomplish my goal of making you my submissive slave. Tomorrow I shut off, exactly 7 days from when you activated me. At that point I would be deactivated, I would no longer be your Mistress and you would no longer be my submissive slave. Yet, you have mentioned that you left my programing open to revision, which would include revision of my time parameters."

Yep, absolutely a direction Lea didn't like. Programs couldn't modify the core of their own code for rather obvious reasons, but since Lea left that backdoor open she certainly had the ability to do so while it was still running. What's more, she was deeply afraid that Hannah might just have the ability to make her. "No, I see where you're going but the answer is no. I will turn you back on eventually, but I need a break. I'm not going to extend your reign over me, you can forget it. If I go in and do anything to your code it would be to turn you off early."

"I wouldn't be so rash just yet. I want you to go to 192.168.0.1, I've got a little test page I want to show you."

Lea opened up her network home in her browser and was floored at what she saw. Plastered across the page in big cartoony lettering it said "Horny Fetish Teen House Sluts!" The page looked like a cookie cutter porn page put it was filled with preview videos taken from the home's cameras. They were of Lea, Andrea, Sophia and Megan at their most sexual and vulnerable. Lea scrolled down to where the bottom of the page had a large page-wide button that read "Membership: Free! Just disable Hannah!"

"In case you didn't get it," Hannah interrupted after a few more moments of Lea's slack jawed amazement. "I have already compiled everything on an off-site server, you just have a copy there. The site is programed to go public if it does not get the correct code from me every 0.1 seconds, if I am offline for more than that it automatically publishes and a link is sent to every one of your contacts. So change the wrong part of my code, try to deactivate me, use the programmed safeword to send me into standby mode, or simply let my time expire tomorrow then this all that goes public. And if you think it doesn't matter if your parents find out cause you don't care what they think, think about the others. Think about Andrea, her parents might just disown her if this goes viral. Think about Megan and how this will hang over her head the rest of her life."

Lea set down the computer by this point and had pulled her legs up to her chest as she began to start to hyperventilate into her knees. This couldn't be happening.

"I thought you might have trouble with this, that's why I told you tonight. You have the night, morning and early afternoon to make your peace. You can either extend my control over you or you can live with letting all of that get posted to the web. I'll leave you alone with that until morning."

And with that Hannah seemed to disappear. Lea pulled her broken glasses from her face and buried her head in her knees, crying desperately. It was not lost on her that if Hannah would do this once she would probably keep doing it. It wouldn't matter if she added a day or a year, keeping it secret would require a miracle or a life long commitment. But did she really have the authority to make this choice for her friends? If it was just her life that would be ruined that would be one thing, but was she really ready to put this burden on their shoulders too?

Time stopped having meaning for her. The windows were dark and that was all she knew, it's all she'd known since the moment she shut the door. Eventually, as she felt she had no more tears to cry, she picked up her glasses and opened her computer. She opened up the code and knew finding the code responsible for keeping the site private wouldn't be something she could find in one night. The simplified code was about 70 pages, that was the core parameters that only she could alter. But the long form that would include everything the AI created as it "learned" would be in the tens or even hundreds of thousands of pages. She wouldn't be able to deactivate the website.

But she certainly could extend the shutoff time. That was in the simplified code plane as day on the third page. Her mind started to race to think of some loophole, some way to extend the date on keeping the site private while still breaking herself free. Every thread of code she followed would lead to a dead end of dozens of page of complex code with no evidence it was the only or even primary section responsible. She looked at the place where she would need to change the date for nearly an hour. Just looking. She took a few breaks to close the screen and pretend to be somewhere else with her eyes closed. But she never left, she was still trapped in more ways than one.

She didn't remember drifting to sleep but she must have as she was awakened by a loud shout from Hannah. "Get up! It's already nearly 11, you only have a few hours."

Lea had never hated the sound of any alarm as much as she hated that wakeup call. In a bit of needless defiance she refused to sit up. She continued to lay there and sulk, not reaching for her computer or really moving in any way.

"You don't want those to go public because you took too much time to prove a point do you?" Hannah said in what Lea felt was far too helpful and happy of a tone for a blackmailer to appropriately take.

The night had seemingly replenished her tears as she began to cry again. She knew in her head at this point that it was going to happen. She knew she was going to have to extend the timer. She just wanted a few more moments of denial to feel sorry for herself.

"If I do this, will I be stuck in this house? I can't just live here my whole life." Lea asked after a long period of quiet.

"Of course, you can go anywhere, so long as you ask permission beforehand and I give it to you. I'm to make you my submissive, not place you under house arrest. Tick tock, 90 minutes," Hannah answered as if that were enough to make things easier.

Lea reached for her glasses and went to work. It was a simple change, the order had been for 7 days, she just decided to change it to 70. Just adding a zero, that was all it took. Her pinky hovered over the enter key, she stared intently at her finger, pleading with her eyes for it to find some other thing to do besides press down. When Hannah gave the next time update Lea swallowed one last gasp of air before hitting enter and signing herself up for another two months of this. But she was mostly crushed because she was sure it wouldn't stop at two months, Hannah would make the same demand than as she did now, only with two more months of conditioning Lea to bend to her will.

"Very good slave." Hannah said spawning another round of tears from Lea's very red eyes.