Sometimes Illuminati puppet masters make their move slowly and indirectly

You’re on CHYOA, looking to see if any of the stories you read have been updated, but you’re out of luck today. No notifications and nothing on the front page that catches your fancy. You consider moving on to another site, maybe some video porn, but you were really more in the mood to read erotica. Instead you click through to some old favorites.

You eventually find yourself looking at the last chapter you wrote. That was four months ago. You’ve gone from expecting an update, to disappointed not to have one, to a little angry for... For what? For being led on to reveal something of yourself by some random anonymous stranger on the internet maybe? Which made you feel a little angry and stupid. And now? Pretty indifferent. But there’s still some good porn elsewhere in the story, and you’re feeling that old Illuminati horny.

Suddenly your phone starts ringing and you jump a little in surprise. Partially because the sudden unexpected noise startles you (it doesn’t ring that often). But also because you have an entirely irrational fear that the person on the other end of the call will somehow know that you’re reading porn. You scramble for your phone and find it under a takeout carton. Which doesn’t make sense because you had the phone earlier today but the takeout yesterday.

You look at the screen and see that it’s a call from Jess. Which is weird. Is there even a just plain Jess in your phone’s… The screen flickers, breaking your concentration, as the phone vibrates and rings urgently in your hand. {{Memory overwrite: Jess is the name of your high school best friend. Jess has always been the name of your high school best friend.}} The text on the screen seems to jump about a bit and for a moment you think you see extra characters, even words, but they’re gone before your conscious mind can register them.

Fuck! It’s Jess ringing you.

You haven’t exactly lost touch with your best friend from high school, but since you moved state you don’t speak nearly as often. And this year you haven’t spoken since you dropped the tentative revelation that you were maybe interested in being more than friends if she was. Your heart goes into high gear as you relive the tension and anticipation attached to that.

You take a deep breath, swipe to pick up, and put the phone to your ear.

“Hello?”

You listen but there’s no sound coming out of the phone. No, maybe there is, just at the edge of hearing. You feel there are words there if you strain hard enough to hear. There’s a kind of pleasant tingling as you try to make out the words. You try slowing your breathing to see if that will help you hear them. It doesn’t, but it makes you feel more relaxed. {{Memory overwrite: The next woman you see is your friend Jess. Jess has always had that appearance. Jess’s breasts are smaller than yours. Programming directive: You want to fuck Jess, but you’re still barely in denial.}} The thought drifts into your mind that if the Illuminati had sinister mind control technology there’d be no more perfect way of targeting someone than just ringing them up and filling their ears with subliminals.

You pull the phone from your ear and look at it puzzled. Has Jess butt dialed or something? How long should you wait before hanging up? But before you can decide, the call suddenly shifts to video.

The screen shows you part of a bedroom with sky blue walls and a big double-bed. You're looking down the length of the bed. Piled up against the headboard at the other end is a messy jumble of pillows and soft toys. And sitting back down on her haunches, after switching her phone camera on, is the woman who might still count as your best friend even after all these years.

Jess’s face is round and pale as the moon, framed by a messy halo of short brown curly hair. Her lips are thin, but their corners are tilted up in a permanent gentle smile. You know that at full power Jess’s infectious smile can light up a room, and often does, somehow managing to be both innocent and mischievous. Between her neat straight eyebrows and little nose are a huge pair of nerd glasses. If you looked up “adorkable” in the dictionary there’s a good chance this is what you’d see.

Jess is leaning forward, hands on her knees, in a loose lotus position. She’s wearing a short pale orange skirt, and a far too big purple t-shirt with a big biohazard symbol in white and the words “Plague Inc” on it. Given the state of the world it seems in poor taste, but it also stirs an uneasy memory in you, like it’s a reference you ought to get.

“Hi Leah,” Jess says in a happy but dreamy and lethargic voice.

She waves at you in that distinct way of hers, hand close to her chest, fingers moving back and forth and curling and uncurling a little at the same time. But like her voice her wave is slow and lethargic.

“Hi Jess,” you reply, “What’s up? Are you--”

But Jess cuts your greeting off mid-sentence.

“I can’t hear you ‘cause of the headphones, Leah, but you should keep watching…”

Her voice trails off as if the effort to finish the sentence is simply too much. A finger points at the headphones but it drifts quickly down as if that effort was too much too.

Jess’s headphones are big silver hemispheres that completely swallow each of her ears; retro-futuristic beasts with an antenna sticking out from each silver half. They look excessive and expensive, and make Jess look like she’s cosplaying a fembot from some cheesy ‘50s B-movie. You’re not surprised she can’t hear you, though you wonder what she’s listening to if she’s not synched them with her phone. And why she’s not listening to her phone since she’s the one who rang you!

Jess’s eyes are half-closed, as if she’s drifting on the edge of sleep. The way she’s acting, the way she’s talking, makes your mouth dry and your nipples stiff. She’s acting like she’s hypnotized, like one of the women in your frequently viewed "hypnosis"/"brainwashing" porn category.

“Leah, I’ve been hypnotized,” she confirms. “Leah, I’ve been mind-fucked.”

Jess drawls the words out slowly. Then a second or two after she says “fucked”, just too long to be natural, just too soon for there to be any other reason, Jess’s eyes flutter and she gives a gentle sigh of pure sexual pleasure.