Prototype Ch. 04

Friday went by in a blur. Somehow I managed to make it through my normal shift at work. Ever had one of those drives where you arrive somewhere but can't remember most of the trip? It's like your body is on autopilot. Your mind disengages and is just somewhere else for that time while your body just goes through the motions. That's what the first two thirds of my day was like.

Except I wasn't asleep, or even zoning out in the "contemplating emptiness" type of way. Instead, I was thinking at an internal speed approximating mach two. I wish I could say I made a lot of progress, but unfortunately my mind wasn't traveling in a straight line for most of that time. It would make some progress but then twist back on itself, or veer off into some random tangent. Then, once I had fallen into that particular pit I had to explore how far the rabbit hole went.

The first order of business had been deciding what had happened with Rachel's training. I had moved pretty fast- maybe too fast. She had gotten within a razor's edge of the truth the night before. But she hadn't seemed that bothered by it.

It certainly bothered the hell out of me. It was a byproduct that I had failed to consider with respect to the machine. It took a little while, but eventually I was willing to admit to myself that I had become a little drunk off of the power I had so quickly developed. Absolute power, yadda yadda yadda and all that. I had been blind, or at least more than a little short sighted with my assumptions.

The fragments I had been using during her training had succeeded in pushing Rachel past a small handful of her personal boundaries. I had even left one or two of those boundaries fully functional just to test the reach of my other statements. She was obviously more attracted to me. She was way more personally motivated when she was with me in general- and especially while she was giving me head. She had gone so far as to declare me a special client that got everything for free. At least everything out of her otherwise limited selection. A limitation I still intended to remove soon, if not immediately.

What I hadn't given enough thought to was how her own mind would come to terms with the changes that I had forced upon her psyche. There had seemed to be so little internal conflict with the statements- at least at first. That observation had lulled me into the false belief that there wouldn't be any at all during the process.

Rachel had started questioning her recently developed behaviors. The biggest and most obvious change to her routine in the past week had been the multiple hours she had lost while helping me with my "project." That would be my first suspicion as well. Hell, you'd have to be an idiot, or just simply oblivious not to come to that possible conclusion.

My explanation had seemed to mollify her, but I had no reason to believe that it would stay that way. Especially as I tried to push the limits even further. So- what to do about it? By midafternoon I had come to two mutually exclusive options.

The most obvious would be to use the machine to train her to be oblivious to the changes. I could use phrases like "I don't question any changes in my feelings for Benjamin" and "My new feelings for Benjamin are perfectly natural". The two of those combined could lead her to ignore the changes at face value. Or, if any of them caused enough conflict to push past the first, they would run headlong into the second and be therefore ruled as normal and acceptable.

This seemed like the safest, and possibly the simplest route to take. But even so, something about it didn't really sit right with me, at least with respect to Rachel. It seemed functional, but didn't really push any of my buttons. Sure, it would serve to keep me and my prototype trainer safe from discovery while still allowing me to warp the minds of others around me. But it rubbed against the idea that no problem is ever solved through ignorance. Something else, something I'm still failing to consider, could still be lurking in the shadows of that ignorance. And in the end I most likely wouldn't see it coming because the conflict was perfectly natural. Why would the subject have any reason to warn me about it? The answer, of course, was that they wouldn't.

The second option was to give away the training, but in the process make the subject complicit in the act. This could be accomplished with phrases like "Benjamin is changing me. He is training me to be who he wants me to be" and "Benjamin can change me in any way he wants. I love giving him that power over me". These would make the subject aware of and a willing accomplice in her own training.

This method had some considerable benefits the more I considered it. With that knowledge they could answer questions about it, or possibly even make suggestions regarding it that I could incorporate if I wanted to. It would allow them to warn me if something wasn't working out the way I had intended. Especially if I properly worded a few extra fragments to make that something they wanted to do. It would decrease the chances that they would accidentally betray me or my machine to others out of ignorance as well.

Of course, it also came with a few drawbacks that I had to consider. The most obvious was if they knew about the training then there was the possibility that their interpretation of my commands could give them room to use it against me. This could be avoided with fragments that were specific and clear. "I will never use the machine to train Benjamin" would serve to protect myself and "I will never use the machine to train myself without Benjamin's permission" would keep a subject from re-training themselves to escape my control.

There were pro's and con's to both of these approaches. A large part of my wasted time that day was spent circling old arguments over and over to finding possible loopholes or flaws in my logic. I knew that there were things that these simple commands wouldn't prevent, but I didn't think it would be wise to spend hours and hours of training with a specific list of things that subjects couldn't do. That seemed like it was just inviting someone to find a way around the letter of the law just to escape control.

If I made the subject aware of the control, and like it- if not relish or desire it outright- that seemed to safest method to be able to find issues as they cropped up. It would also allow me to engineer ways to prevent those escape routes from being considered viable, if not prevent the subjects from going down those lines of thought in the first place.

And that last bit brought me right back to just using the ignorance is bliss approach from the beginning to stop the problems from ever happening. Which ran headlong into the argument that I can do more to prevent a problem I can see coming, than I can to prevent the one that hides until it is right in my face. Once that happens, there are usually considerably fewer options to handle it.

Round and round and round I went. I hope you can see why I wouldn't call the day particularly productive.

I still hadn't decided what to do when it came time for me to clock out and head home. I'd had two whole days ahead of me to get something done. That wasn't entirely true though. I had already booked another session with Rachel in the morning, and Maggie was expecting some time to "celebrate for realz" tomorrow night. Whatever I was going to do, I needed to decide one way or the other- and fast.

During the ride home another source of potentially helpful information floated up through the disheveled mess of my head space. Given the history of the device, surely I wasn't the first to run into this problem. And the answer to how that Doctor that had invented the machine in the first place had solved it was likely hidden in those password protected fragment files. Which I had no hope of cracking in the next few hours.

Unless... I could have kicked myself when I finally realized it. I had the source code to the training computer. At first I thought it would be as easy as altering the code to just skip the password verification step. But if that were the case then I could have viewed the fragment files in the editor by themselves. Which I couldn't- I'd already tried that the first night I had it working. That meant the files were encrypted. Without getting into the specifics, I eventually came up with at least two ways I could get around that problem.

By the time midnight rolled around I had it working. Only thing was I didn't really have the time to go over all the original files and still make whatever changes I planned to make to Rachel's fragments for the morning and still get any sleep. I did not want to pull another all-nighter. Tomorrow was just too important. I loaded up the "Progress" fragment file and ran down the list. There was no particular order to it so I had no way of knowing where the nefarious fragments were hidden- if they even existed at all. I was confident that they did though, and I knew I'd recognize them once I saw them.

Bingo. Someone had definitely been a very bad boy. And if the name popping up in the fragments was any indication the culprit had not been the Doctor in charge. I wasn't sure who the benefactor was. Maybe just some technician, or maybe it was someone from the company that had bankrolled her and they had used her machine for their own purposes. There were fragments to do whatever he wanted, crave his affection, and even just outright telling them they were in love with him. Add to that even more about always doing what he wanted and giving him everything they own.

The sudden revelation about how far the system could be used to push people left me a little stunned. But it also left me with a raging hardon when I considered that potential applied to my own circle of victims. I didn't really want Rachel to love me and treat me like a boyfriend- not like I did with Maggie. But even then, I didn't want to force Maggie to love me if she actually held such feelings for me in the first place.

Would it make a difference though? If she did already have feelings for me then training her to have them wouldn't make them less real, right? And if she didn't- I already knew I wasn't above using the machine to make her feel that way for me anyway. I didn't have time for questions like those at the moment though. I still needed to find out how the previous user had handled the problem of the user discovering their new behaviors.

A little more digging and I found my answer. He had gone with option #1: ignorance is bliss. And everything seemed to work out fine for him.

But did I really know that for sure? All I knew was that shortly after they had developed this machine they had left the university and I hadn't seen or heard anything about them again. A short google search told me that the original Doctor was now a member of the company's board, but that still didn't tell me anything about the success or failure of their choices. I tried digging for any arrest records or scandals that might have indicated something going horribly wrong. Only problem was big companies and universities weren't in the business of airing their dirty laundry if they could help it. If there was anything out there- I quickly realized I lacked the skills to find it. Could mean he got away with it and lived happily ever after. Could just mean he disappeared, nice and quiet.

So- the original fragment files and what little I knew about the Doctor hadn't been the boost I had hoped for, but they could still serve as a source of inspiration. In the end I decided to split the difference.

As the clock ticked past one in the morning I made my decisions. I wasn't willing to force Maggie until I knew how she felt, one way or the other. If she did have feelings for me, then I could lock those in and let the relationship develop. This meant that I couldn't let Maggie know about the machine's abilities. Not yet, at least. So for now the only option for Maggie was enforced ignorance. If I needed to, I could likely either overrule that later, or simply make her okay with the idea of me changing her "if I ever got around to it."

Rachel was already at the point of no return though. I didn't want her falling in love with me and acting like a girlfriend with the commensurate expectations. At least not until I had more time to direct it so I could control how she would express her "love" for me. The thought of turning Rachel into not just my personal whore, but also a willing accomplice in her own corruption was honestly just too much for me to resist. The thought that those same commands could easily be twisted to turn her into an assistant to recruit others as well sealed the deal. She was going to get the willing accomplice treatment.

I made the changes to both of their files, saved them, and then went straight to bed. Saturday was going to be a very big day and it was already getting pretty late.

"You sure you don't want me to suck your cock before we start?" Rachel asked me almost the moment I closed the door. "You know how much I love to wrap my lips around that hard shaft of yours." It was hard to say no to her.

She had arrived just before 9 that morning, as requested. This time she was dressed in a pair of tight fitting denim jeans and a long sleeved white shirt that left her midriff exposed and did everything necessary to show of her beautiful breasts. It completely hid her cleavage beneath a layer of fabric but if her visible nipples were a nice indication that she had forgone the need for a bra. She had on a pair of brown suede wedge ankle boots that added a good 4 inches to her legs. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but that only served to highlight her face and those luscious lips that were oh so good at sucking me off.

She hadn't really waited for me to say hello as I answered the door. Her arms had wrapped around me and pulled me into a deep kiss. The affection was somewhat surprising compared to how she usually arrived, but then again we were still working on developing what would become our "new normal". I couldn't really complain. She had me hard before we stopped to take a breath. And yet somehow I had managed to maneuver us around enough to get the door closed behind us.

"There will be more than enough time for that, I think- after the session. I do really need your help with this." I pushed directly on her previous training to help keep her in line.

It didn't stop her from pouting though. Which only made it harder to maintain my resolve. Something I was quite certain she was aware of. "Alright, fine," She said petulantly. "But I will get that cock in my mouth at some point today- mark my words."

"I, uhm... Look forward to it," I sort of stammered. I knew what I needed to do, but her look just seemed to ooze sex appeal like she was ready to drop all pretense and fuck me right then and there.

Instead, she turned and sashayed her way directly into my room. Each step crossed in front of the other as she went, with a hard knock on the floor as her boots landed. Her hips even seemed to cock left, and then right with the movement. She is really turning it on for me this morning, I thought ruefully. But I knew what was coming up. As hard as it was to pass up that sex appeal- it would be worth it in the long run.

"Are you coming or what?" Rachel called from my bedroom. I had been so transfixed by her strutting that I was still standing against the door. I had not made a single step to follow her.

"Right. Yes." I adjusted my cock so it would be more comfortable in my pants and then quickly joined her at the training station.

"This right?" She asked. She already had the wire-mesh helmet on over her hair with her ponytail pulled through one of the gaps in the back.

"You don't waste any time, do you?" I asked her with a smile as I double checked everything, adjusting a few electrodes that had been displaced with her effort.

"I aim to please, and you said you needed my help. So I'm... helping." She openly taunted me, reaching for my obvious hard-on in my pants.

I slapped her hand away, gently, and took my seat at the computer. "All work and no play..." She said, letting the reference speak for itself.

"Everything is just about ready," I said, pulling up her fragment file and double checking it for the third time that morning. It now included phrases to make her a willing accomplice to her training: "Benjamin is changing me. He is training me to be who he wants me to be" and "Benjamin can change me in any way he wants. I love giving him that power over me" along with another: "I accept Benjamin's changes as who I am now. I like what he is turning me into."

I had also added "I will never use the machine on Benjamin" and "I will never use the machine to train myself without Benjamin's permission" to make sure those protections were in place right away as well.

Next came the phrases I had chosen to push her past all of her remaining walls. "I love being Benjamin's personal whore and fuck-toy" to better direct our developing relationship. To turn her into an even more enthusiastic fuck anytime I wanted I added "I will fuck Benjamin anytime he wants, any way he wants" and "My pussy was made for Benjamin's cock. It feels so good inside me" in addition to "I enjoy using my body to bring Benjamin pleasure." And finally there was "I can't say no to Benjamin" to make sure she would be open to other suggestions I might have for her.

Everything was in order. I was about to hit enter on my end to load the program when I looked up to meet her face. My cock twitched in my pants as Rachel peered back at me with her pinky finger slowly reappearing rather suggestively from between her lips. The entire length of it glistened with moisture in the dim light of my room. How long had she been doing that? I wondered.

"What's gotten into you?" I heard myself asking her aloud.

"Hopefully you, soon." She said. "The sooner I finish this this session, the sooner I find out." Then her eyes seemed to develop an even more predatory glint as they roamed over what little of me they could find over the machine. "Hmm... Ever had your dick sucked by two women at once? I could make it happen."

I'm fairly sure I gulped, reflexively. I almost certainly blushed. Whatever it was I did, it made her smile broaden even more. I forced my eyes back to the monitor. Thoughts of fucking two women, let alone sucking my cock at the same time as they stared up at me in adoration were buzzing through my head. On impulse I added a couple more fragments to her file: "I want to help Benjamin to train other women like he is training me" and "Turning other women into playthings for Benjamin to use turns me on". I'm fairly sure there was no causal relationship between the two events. Almost certain, in fact.

I took the risk of looking up once more. Her eyes met mine immediately, still dark and sparkling with that hungry look to them. "Ready when you are." I said, summoning as much bravado as I could manage. She held my gaze a few moments longer, then her eyes turned to her own screen and I heard the audible click of a single keystroke.

It took her longer than usual to get focused and centered as her session got underway. For a short while I wondered if I had pushed her too fast again. I had no way of knowing how many sessions of history that original fragment file came from. Was that from just a single training? Or had that been the result of ten, or even twenty sessions slowly building up to those final ones to seal the deal.

In the end I had little to fear, it seemed. It may have taken nearly 25 minutes to get her blip hovering near the center, this time just to the right- but she got it there. By then her face had lost most, but not quite all, of her wanton desire and had taken on the more far away focused look I was getting used to. An hour later I even tested her, lifting her shirt up over her breasts so I could fondle them for a bit. It was then I discovered, much to my delight, that she had not gone without a bra after all. It was black lace, and little more than a shelf for lifting her breasts and enhancing their shape while leaving them completely free to rub against the fabric of her shirt. Or, as they were now, for me to gently twist the nipples between my fingers as I played with them.