The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The page was blank.

The page had been blank for weeks.

Darius stared at the screen, trying to conjure words into the taunting white void through sheer will. A few paragraphs, a sentence—at this point, he’d settle for a decent description of some tits. He typed ‘tits,’ hoping the prompt might get the creative juices flowing.

The four letters sat there, useless, as erotic as a concrete abutment, for a full minute. He appended ‘big’ to the beginning, but that just created a fractionally larger concrete abutment.

Perhaps synonyms would help. Soon the big tits were ed by large breasts, huge boobs, massive mammaries, fat jugs, giant knockers, a fabulous rack and a pair of heavy naturals. Sweater puppies appeared, along with calcium cannons, baps, funbags and dirty pillows.

Once he unironically typed the word ‘gazongas,’ Darius let out a sigh of existential exasperation and closed the word processor—only to let out a second sigh when it asked if he wanted to save his work. He stabbed ‘no’ with hate in his heart, then stood up and went to refill his whiskey glass.

Booze in hand, he returned to his far more productive project of listlessly watching YouTube, doomscrolling and reminding himself that he was a no-talent hack that had burned through all his good ideas, who would soon be exposed as a fraud and abandoned by the erotic fiction community. Darius diligently plugged away at that task for the rest of the night, filling his belly with alcohol and self-loathing until bedtime.

Phone buzzing at five AM, Darius padded silently out of his apartment, careful not to wake his roommates, and started his day. The streets of the Mission District were relatively quiet this time of morning, and the stillness helped him center as he made his way to the Yellow Line.

Things weren’t nearly so bleak in the daylight as they were in the dark. Sure, he was having a little writer’s block at the moment, but everyone went through that. It was no big deal, though. No one was mad at him. No one was out there demanding the next AtticusFlinch story; probably no one would even notice if he took a few months to post.

“Well now I’ve just made myself sad,” he said to the morning mist.

He shook it off. The problems of AtticusFlinch, small-time smut peddler, had to be left at home. Right now he was Darius Annason, data analyst for PipeLine, with a completely separate set of problems. Still having roommates at 25, for example. To be fair, San Francisco was hardly the most affordable city for a young professional, but it was hard to bring someone home with Connor, Aaron and Yusuf getting baked in the living room most nights.

Darius hadn’t totally struck out this year. He was a young, handsome black guy, he worked out and had a decent fashion sense. He could get laid when he put his mind to it. He’d had a few dates with a cute veterinarian named David, a couple hookups here and there, and Aaron’s friend Sarah sometimes snuck into Darius’ room after hitting the bong with the boys. But times were grim, and most people were too broke and too busted for anything more than mere survival. Mostly he’d had a lot of free time to focus on his writing. Which made his current writer’s block even more aggravating. Blank pages and blue balls…

“Work,” he mumbled to himself as the subway rattled on. “Just… get through work.”

Through the front doors of PipeLine Plaza by six, he hit the corporate gym, showered, dressed, and snagged some breakfast from the free cafeteria before heading up to twenty five and starting his day, coffee mug in hand.

The floor was already crowded. The analyst teams from Miami and New York were both in town for CRMFest, adding more than thirty people to a space that was already short on desks and long on noise. Darius’ usual spot facing Telegraph Hill had been reserved by a visiting manager for the whole week, so he was relegated to one of the long high tables in the far corner. Ah well; he pulled out his laptop, put on his headphones, and got to work.

Lost in SQL queries and data sanitation, Darius jumped when a hand was waved in front of his face. He was irritated for a moment, but all thoughts of net dollar retention evaporated when he looked into the big brown eyes of Asa Fitzhugh. The man waved again, smiling, and Darius quickly yanked off his headphones. “Sorry Asa,” he mumbled. “Lost in the sauce, didn’t see you.”

“Yeah, you were well away,” he replied, with that gorgeous British accent that made him sound like Christian Bale. The man was tall and handsome, a rugged blonde with the body of an Olympian, poured into a tight dress shirt with rolled up sleeves and gray slacks that tastefully highlighted his ass. And Asa really was an Olympian—he’d rowed in the 2016 games, with a bronze medal above his condo’s fireplace to prove it.

Darius tried not to stare at that tastefully highlighted ass as Asa took the seat beside him and started unpacking his bag. “You ready for the all hands? Ready to get some more ‘AI synergy’ crammed down our bloody throats?”

“I don’t even want to think about it.” Darius took a long sip of his coffee, thinking about it anyway. “I spent half of last week fighting with Plutus, trying to get the damn thing to make a coherent Q3 NDR slide deck with actual data from our actual databases. If they just want somebody to hallucinate numbers, they can buy me a bag of mushrooms and let me work from home.”

“Totally mad,” Asa agreed, “but at least it’s better than that metaverse crap. Can you imagine, all of us sitting around, taking virtual meetings with goggles strapped to our heads?”

“A pair of VR goggles can’t take your job,” Darius countered darkly. “You just know that Nolan’s up in his big executive bathroom, fantasizing about slashing headcount by fifty percent while beating his c-suite meat.”

“It’s always so awkward when you walk in on two men talking about beating their meat.”

Tabitha Aldrich plopped down across from the pair, grinning at their embarrassment before sipping her tea. “Can I the AI pity party? Everyone in Legal has been ordered to ‘start experimenting’ with the new Themis model, to ‘make it part of our daily workflow.’ Judges are fucking beheading attorneys for fake AI citations, and Nolan’s just like ‘let the robot review the million dollar contracts from now on.’ It’s crazy.”

Darius nodded, half listening. There were two kinds of people that he found almost unbearably attractive—tall hunky blonde guys and sexy goth chicks—and Tabitha fell firmly into the second category. Pale, slender, with long legs and a cute pair of b-cups, she had raven black hair with white streaks framing her face that she kept meticulously bleached. Her smoky, dark-lined eyes popped behind big round glasses, and her kissable lips were black as midnight. She’d dressed up a bit for the all hands, in a black mock-neck blouse with flowing sleeves and a white pencil skirt that somehow also tastefully highlighted her ass.

While San Francisco probably had more than its fair share of hotties, how Darius had wound up spending everyday with two of the absolute hottest was a sexually frustrating mystery to him. He might have asked either or both of them out long ago, if not for PipeLine’s very clear rules on office fraternization.

Then again, maybe not—he was stuck on the twenty fifth floor with Asa and Tabitha for 40 or 50 hours a week, and things would get complicated if he started dipping his pen in the company ink… or if he got rejected. Better to settle for a couple of funny, sarcastic coworkers he could trust than an awkward conversation with HR. So he just played it cool during the day, then went home at night and wrote lots of blonde himbos and big titty goth girlfriends into his stories.

He snapped back to reality at that thought, and focused instead on Tabitha. Having an LLM review legal documents sounded like a recipe for disaster, but when had a fuck-stupid idea ever stopped PipeLine before? The three of them commiserated about the state of the company, the city, the country, and the universe at large. It was quickly agreed that everything was totally fucked, and that somebody needed to unfuck it immediately.

“I nominate Darius,” Asa proposed.

“Second,” Tabitha agreed.

“All in favor?” The two raised their hands in unison, along with two women from the Miami team that were sitting next to them.

“All opposed?” Darius raised his own hand with a theatrical sigh, trying and failing to hold back a smile.

Asa slapped him on the back. “Sorry old sport,” he said with a decent imitation of King Charles, “but the ayes have it. I’m afraid you’ll have to save the world. But we know you’ve a busy schedule; we’ll give you ’til the start of work tomorrow to sort it out.” He slapped Darius on the back again. “There’s a good lad.”

Darius, Asa and Tabitha filed into the large conference room along with the rest of the twenty-fifth floor team for the all hands meeting, grabbing seats along the back wall. There were a further few minutes of shuffling and chatter as the room filled up, then Ravi tapped on the lectern microphone for order. The first half hour of the meeting was the usual stuff—Ravi and the other managers going through the business of the last month. They shouted out the team’s accomplishments, reviewed the OKRs, and generally explained how things were going in Data Analysis.

Then it was time for the keynote address. The lights dimmed and the projector lit up. Nolan Mercer, founder and CEO of PipeLine, was seated at his huge desk up on the 42nd floor, generically pleasant expression on his face as he stared down the camera lens. He greeted “The PipeLine Team,” then spent a minute talking up the company’s second quarter numbers, vaguely complimenting everyone on their hard work, their camaraderie, the long nights everyone had put in, etc, etc. It was all boilerplate corporate platitudes, and the man could barely bring himself to even pretend to care.

Perfunctory team-building over, Nolan moved onto the real topic of his address, and from the light in his eyes it was clear that it was a topic near and dear to his heart.

“But if we have learned anything from these amazing results, it is that our AI test programs have been a runaway success—and we have to capitalize on that success if PipeLine is to remain the industry leader in the inevitable AI future. So it is my distinct pleasure to unveil phase one of Project Midas…”

Nolan then explained, in great detail, how the company was jamming AI into every nook and cranny they could, from the executive suite on down. Engineering, analysis, customer service, legal, human resources—no department would be left untouched. In the glorious future Project Midas promised, every task of every role would be handed off to the company’s LLM, “empowering our team to focus on The Big Picture.”

Exactly what ‘The Big Picture’ meant was unclear, and remained unclear even after several employees asked about it during the Q&A afterwards. Maybe management was saving that for the phase two kickoff. Answers or not, the marching orders were clear—start using the company AI for your work, anywhere and everywhere you could. Usage would be tracked, and anyone who didn’t “get onboard…”

“When I said things couldn’t get any stupider, I didn’t think they’d take it as a challenge.”

Darius sat in the noisy cafeteria, poking at his protein bowl, not at all hungry. Asa and Tabitha had ed him, equally irritated. They’d all known something like this was coming, the all hands agendas were rarely a surprise—but the scope of the project and the sheer zeal in Nolan Mercer’s speech had caught them off-guard.

“This isn’t Facebook,” Asa complained. “We don’t serve funny dog videos to Grandma. If the LLM hallucinates a client’s earnings or something, we could be on the hook for millions.”

Tabitha shook her head. “Oh, we’ll definitely have some sort of escape clause in the contracts before we roll this out to the clients. Of course, if they make us use Themis to write the contracts, then all bets are off… and my manager already sent an email ‘encouraging’ us to use it for the first drafts moving forward.”

“Excuse me,” said the lunch lady, pushing a large pot of something on a cart. Tabitha shifted her seat to let the woman , not looking away from her salad.

“Hearing the words ‘AI’ and ‘human resources’ in the same sentence sent a chill down my spine,” Asa added. “I can’t wait for some glorified spreadsheet to start emailing me about my personal internet browsing or foul up my insurance enrollment—or my H1B. The last thing I need to deal with now is bloody immigration.”

“Pardon.” Asa scooted forward to get out of the lunch lady’s way, cart squeaking by. One of the wheels grazed his chair leg and the contents of the pot gently sloshed, a few drops splashing onto the floor. The hunky blonde didn’t notice, taking a bite of his burger instead.

Darius sighed, staring off at nothing, lost to his own thoughts. “Man, if I made some real money from writing, I would dump this job so fast.”

Asa and Tabitha looked at each other, then at Darius. “You write?” Tabitha asked, clearly intrigued. “You’ve never told us you write.”

“Oh, um, yeah… I write some stories. Just as a hobby.” Darius tried to wave it off, mind suddenly racing to find an exit out of the coming conversation.

“What sort of stories?” “Are you published anywhere?” “Do you write under your own name?” “How much money have you made writing?” The pair peppered him with questions, all thoughts of the AI apocalypse put aside in the face of this new development.

He dodged and waffled, giving the vaguest answers he could, but Darius knew the genie was already out of the bottle. Soon enough, they asked the big question, the one he couldn’t handwave away.

“Can we read your stories?”

Darius shook his head. “Not here. They’re… listen, they’re… adult stories, ok? Not Safe For Work.”

That made them lean in, burning curiosity stoked by the revelation. “Now we definitely have to see your stuff,” Asa insisted. Darius shook his head again, ready to elaborate on why that was a bad idea, but the excuse evaporated when Tabitha put a pale hand on his arm. “We’re both adults,” Tabitha helpfully pointed out, giving him a smile equal parts flirty and sympathetic. “and we’re not working right now. Let us have a little peek, please? I promise we’ll be nice, no judgment.”

Until you see who it’s about, Darius thought to himself. Nevertheless he pulled his personal laptop from his messenger bag. “Alright, I’ll let you take a quick look. But I need you to understand that the situations and characters in these stories are completely fictional, and in no way —“

His defensive preamble was abruptly cut off by about ten gallons of ice cold soup getting dumped on him. He shrieked, body convulsing from the shocking cold, and the open laptop was knocked from his hands by the brothy tidal wave. Asa and Tabitha leapt up to avoid getting drenched, soup instantly pouring off the table in every direction. Every head in the cafeteria turned at the commotion, the room growing silent as conversation ceased.

“WHAT THE FUCK!?” Darius stood, sputtering and furious, carrots and noodles clinging to his drenched shirt. He was about to spit fire at the clumsy woman, but paused when he saw her.

She was built like a ballet dancer, lithe and willowy, thin without being skinny, and quite tall for a woman. She was pale, pale as the moon, an alabaster white that Tabitha couldn’t match with all the makeup in the world, and her hair was so black it seemed to drink in the light around her. Said hair was tied up in a complicated braid and stuffed into a hairnet, and she wore a clean white apron over an ornate black lace dress, the train dragging a few inches behind her.

And her eyes were green, the greenest eyes Darius had ever seen; not regular green, not colored s green, but the blazing green of emeralds in the noonday sun. They seemed to glow from within, and Darius would swear he could see a pale green tint on his dripping shirt as she surveyed the damage with a shock that seemed a little overwrought.

Mabel was printed on the nametag pinned to the apron.

“WHOOPS!” The strange goth lunch lady tilted the emptied pot back up, a few ladlefuls still swirling in the bottom. “I poured the whole pot of soup right on top of your laptop, just as you were powering it up! That’s just horrible timing; what are the odds?” She pulled a towel from behind her apron and started wiping him down. “I’m so, so sorry Darius. I have no idea how this could have happened—but don’t worry, we will absolutely replace your laptop.”

The apology shook Darius out of his confusion. “I’m not worried about the laptop,” he growled as Mabel brushed bits of celery from beneath his collar. “I can clean out the laptop. What are you going to do about my clothes? How am I supposed to work when my boxers are filled with chicken noodle!?”

“Oh, that outfit is totally fucked,” Mabel replied with a shrug. “Go put on your gym clothes and throw that stuff in the trash. You’re done for the day; you can go home and relax. But I definitely think you’ll want to grab a new laptop before you do.” She pointed back towards the table, and Darius turned just in time to see sparks shoot out from the keyboard, a spiderweb of cracks spreading across the screen as he watched.

“Goddamnit!” Darius grabbed the laptop as wisps of smoke rose from the USB ports and quickly pulled the battery before things got worse. He turned back to Mabel to yell, but froze when she put a hand to his face and stared him down with those burning green eyes.

“Get showered, get changed, then come to thirteen for a new laptop,” she commanded. “I will set you up before you leave.” Order given, she pushed her cart towards the kitchen doors.

Half an hour later, Darius went down to thirteen in shorts and a tank top, still fuming at the complete disaster his morning had become. Mabel was alone, waiting at the reception desk, staring at a thin red laptop with a sour expression on her face.

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she hissed to the screen. “I am in charge here, and I am getting it done my way. I will not be talked down to by the hired help.”

Darius stepped forward, baffled at the whole situation. “Don’t you work in the cafeteria?”

Mabel looked up, scowl instantly transforming into a friendly smile. “I was just helping out during the lunch rush.” She waved a hand to the empty room. “Things are pretty slow here, as you can see. But that gave me plenty of time to get your replacement machine set up while you were in the shower.” She slid the laptop across the desk to him, still smiling.

He ran his finger along the trackpad, then frowned at the nearly-blank home screen. He tapped a few times, navigating menus. “Which linux distro is this?”

“The best one.” Darius looked up at Mabel’s reply, but there was nothing in her expression that hinted at a joke. “This machine is custom built by a friend of mine,” she continued. “It’s cutting edge, best in class, with unique upgrades you won’t find anywhere else on this plane.”

“This plane?”

Mable paused. “You know what I mean. There’s no laptop better for an artist like yourself. Here, look at this.” She clicked on the sole desktop icon, and a logo popped on screen.

GRAND DESIGN V2.0 — Powered by DotGPT

“This is the Ultimate creative suite,” she explained, the word ‘ultimate’ spoken with a capital U. “If you can imagine it, Grand Design can help you create it.”

Darius scanned the screen, clearly skeptical, then slumped as a cartoon cherub appeared.

« Looks like you’re starting a new story! Let’s make it the best- »

The cherub’s voice was cut off by Darius closing the laptop, the glowing heart on the back going dark as it went into sleep mode. “I don’t use AI to generate stories for me,” Darius said with irritation. “Can I get a regular replacement, or maybe you can just cut me a check? If I leave now, I could grab a new Mac from the Apple Store on my way home.”

That was apparently the wrong answer. Darius stepped back at Mabel’s furious glare, her burning green eyes sending a bigger shiver down his spine than ten gallons of icy soup. He moved to leave, something in his lizard brain telling him to forget about the fucking laptop.

“Sit,” she commanded, and her tone left no room for discussion. Darius dropped into the nearest chair, legs refusing to take another step. Mabel stood, and it felt like she was towering over him, a giant ready to stomp him flat. His eyes went wide from fear, animal panic rising to smother rational thought.

“One does not refuse a gift from Mab…el.” She ed the red laptop to him, and his hands took it, jamming it into his bag without consulting his brain on the matter. Then they gripped the arms of the chair and resumed shaking.

Mabel nodded, order restored, and her expression returned to the friendly smile. “I promise you, Darius, Grand Design is in no way an artificial intelligence. In my opinion, it’s not intelligent at all.”

“What it is, is a key—a key that will unlock your creativity, test the limits of your skill, and shake you out of the drab routine that’s stolen your ion. Take it, use it, and you’ll understand.”

She pointed to the elevator and Darius felt himself rise. “Forget all the unpleasantness just now—it’s nothing worth ing. The important thing is you got your new laptop from the polite and helpful woman at work, who was not at all forceful or terrifying. Now go home and get some rest. Heck, grab some takeout on the way back to your apartment; you’ve had a rough day and you deserve a treat. When you’re ready, open Grand Design and get to work.”

Darius nodded, relieved that he hadn’t been scared completely shitless a moment ago. He rose and headed for the elevator, slinging his messenger bag over his shoulder as he moved, glad he’d put the new laptop in there of his own free will. He had just pressed the down button when Mabel called to him.

“One more thing; try to act natural. People will get jumpy if you freak out.” She gave him a friendly wave and the elevator opened. “Have a good night, see you soon!”

« Are you still there? »

Darius opened his eyes, disoriented. He’d apparently fallen asleep on the couch, apparently after coming home from work. He’d also apparently stopped at La Cabra Borracha, judging by the delicious smell drifting from the kitchen. Darius couldn’t doing any of that stuff—after getting drenched in the cafeteria, everything was kind of a blur—but the evidence was undeniable.

« Hello? Darius? Are you still there? »

Oh yeah… he’d gotten a replacement laptop from that weird lady on thirteen. She’d been so polite and helpful—not at all forceful or terrifying! That memory was crystal clear. He picked it up from the coffee table, watching the cherub flitter around the screen for a second, then moved to the kitchen, yawning and scratching his head with his free hand.

He poked at Grand Design as he ate his quesabirria, the meal improving his mood with every bite. Mabel was right, it did seem like the Ultimate creative suite. Everything he needed, all in one place, with a layout that seemed custom built just for him. Darius was certain he could get more writing done with software like this… if he could just think of something to write.

As if on cue, the cherub turned to face him. « You’ve been idle for a while now. Having trouble coming up with an idea? Can I offer you a writing prompt? »

“Oh fuck off, Copilot,” Darius muttered between bites. He started digging through menus, trying to find a way to disable the cherub assistant thing.

« I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear what you said, » the cherub cheerfully replied, which sent Darius looking for the ‘disable microphone’ option as well. He had just found the audio settings when the cherub flew up and closed the menu, clicking the X with his finger.

« Let’s do something to shake off the rust and get writing! »

An hourglass appeared, the whole program freezing solid. Darius sighed and hit control-alt-delete several times, to no effect. After the power button proved equally useless, he decided to just let the thing run, and got up to pour himself a whiskey. He returned to the table, tumbler in hand, and took a sip—only to choke on it when his Literotica page popped up on screen.

« Wow, you’ve written a lot of excellent transformation and reality warping erotica, AtticusFlinch! But it’s been four months since your last story. Perhaps work has been causing you stress? »

Darius stared at the screen, hairs on the back of his neck standing up. How the fuck had this thing found his pen name? Had he slipped up somehow, logged onto a Flinch at the office? Maybe used his phone to check something while on the office wi-fi? Oh God. if this thing was connected back to the office… if his smut got onto the PipeLine servers…

« Wow, your heartbeat really sped up! » Darius pulled his hand back from the touchpad as an EKG graphic pulsed on the corner of the screen. « Work’s definitely an issue. Why don’t we start there? I’ll give you a prompt. »

The screen flickered, and the Grand Design interface was replaced with a plain black page, white cursor blinking. At the top of the page, in big bold letters was “PipeLine Productions—The Best in Adult Entertainment.”

“Ok… it’s probably not hosted on the Pipeline servers…” Darius finished his drink and pondered the words on the screen. “So, your idea is that the company makes porno instead of CRM software? It’s a little thin as a premise. Plus, I’m not sure that you need thirty stories of San Francisco real estate to shoot porn. Even the biggest orgy on Earth wouldn’t need more than one or two.”

« Good call! »

‘Need to fill huge HQ’ appeared as a bullet point at the top of the page.

You’ll definitely need to think bigger!

“Definitely need to drink bigger,” Darius countered. He poured himself another round, then returned to the table. “Alright, I’ll play along.” He took a sip and pondered the blank page.

“Ok, so… first off, Pipeline would have to make all kinds of porn. Movies, livestreaming, comics and definitely written erotica. Pipeline would have to be the world’s number one publisher of erotica. And even then, porn would need to be a way bigger industry than it is now—like five times bigger.”

A smile crept across Darius’ face as his ideas filled the page. He was starting to feel the spark, starting to feel the logjam in his mind coming loose. “Which would mean it’s way more mainstream,” he continued. “Something people look at and talk about openly, just like any other media.”

« Exciting idea! What do you think changed to make pornography so much more prevalent? »

“Well, if porn’s as big as TV in our story, it means the average person is way more comfortable with sexuality, and have been for a long time. So we’re talking an alternate history where the sexual revolution happened a lot earlier—fifty years earlier at least—and was way more successful.”

Darius paused, taking a sip as he considered. “Ok, so earlier and better contraceptives, earlier Kinsey-type stuff, earlier feminism, earlier queer rights. That German sex institute from the 20s was probably important, and never got burned up by the Nazis.”

“In fact, let’s just ditch the Nazis altogether. Hitler died choking on mustard gas in World War One, and his shitty little party never got any traction. Maybe our World War Two has Russia and Japan as the bad guys? Let Stalin take center stage as history’s greatest monster?”

“Hell, why do we need World War Two at all? Or Stalin for that matter? In our story, Trotsky comes out on top, and Uncle Joe’s body is thrown down a mine shaft.” Darius stood up and started pacing the room, dictating to the cherub as it looped through a ‘writing all this down’ animation.

“No World War Two means no Great Depression—we’ll chalk that up to Trotsky. The Soviets are able to get their shit together without all the purges, which counterbalances all the laissez-faire capitalism crap of the 20s.”

“Plus!—their success leads to stronger unions and workers’ rights around the world. We’ll need that for our bigger porn industry—I don’t want all these new porn stars getting exploited by Big Business.”

« Wow, those are some really big changes! »

The cherub tucked his little notepad into the back of his diaper and put up a hand for calm.

« Are you sure you need so much backstory? It seems like a lot of work just to make PipeLine into a porn studio. »

“I don’t need any story tips from a glorified spreadsheet, thank you.” Darius knocked back the rest of his whiskey, then moved to the kitchen for more, shouting to the laptop as he worked.

“We gotta throw in something about racial equality too, just to keep things consistent with our timeline. Ooh - let’s say Lincoln never got shot! He was saved by a black soldier who wrestled the gun out of Booth’s hand, and Lincoln was so grateful he rammed an equal rights amendment through while the Confederates couldn’t do anything about it. Also, a shitload of rebel leaders got hanged, so the Klan and that ‘lost cause’ bullshit never happened either.”

« That’s more than a hundred and sixty years of history to rewrite! » the cherub commented, its voice a remarkable simulation of outrage.

“Who cares?” Darius countered. “It’s backstory—I’m not gonna actually write it. It’s just flavor; we need a different world if we’re gonna have this fantasy mega porn studio, so why not make it a better world? It sure as shit sounds like a better world than this dump.”

“Oh, and we’ll need to get rid of all disease too,” he casually added, waving his drink towards the laptop, lost in thought. “People want creampies and mouths full of cum in their smut. That gets complicated if the reader starts worrying about STIs. Plus, then we don’t have to think about the Spanish Flu or COVID in the backstory. Yeah, definitely no more disease.”

« Yeah, sure, why the fuck not? Not like you have to do it, » the cherub mumbled bitterly.

Darius’ head snapped towards the laptop. Was the AI avatar thing scolding him? He stared at the screen, where the cherub was staring back, running through its idle flying animation with a blank smile on its face. “…What did you say?” he asked, tone carefully neutral. “Repeat your last statement.”

« Yeah, sure, let’s do it! » the cherub repeated cheerfully. « It sounds great—no more changes needed! Now just add something about yourself and we’re done! »

“What? No, I never do self-insert characters. It’s so tacky, and readers can smell ’em a mile away. It’s absolute death for a story.”

There was a long pause, the cherub going silent, stuck in an animation loop that made it look like it was shaking with fury. It took in a deep breath, then froze, hourglass spinning. Darius poked at the touchpad and pressed escape several times, drawing out a few beeping noises, like F-bombs getting censored on TV. He was just about to try control-alt-delete again when the cherub started moving.

Hovering serenely in the center of the screen, the cherub gave Darius a huge, almost forced, smile.

« Ok, so you’re definitely not in the story, got it. Just as an exercise, though, let’s write down what you would be doing if you were an employee of PipeLine Productions. That way, we’ll know what not to write for the protagonist! »

“I mean, if it were me, I’d obviously be an erotica writer—or maybe an erotica screenwriter.” Darius’ eyes widened a little at the idea. “Yeah… part of a big writers’ room, pumping out scripts for all the big-budget transformation porno PipeLine produces. Me and a bunch of folks, sitting around and dreaming up crazy smut for TV shows and movies. All the other writers would be people I know from online—and lots of artists I know in other departments. Just, like, everybody cool from Discord.”

« Perfect! » The cherub scribbled on his notepad, the idea added to the bullet points behind him.

« We’re all set! Now all that’s left to do is - »

“Oh, and there’s a way to give women huge tits. And phat asses. And guys big cocks. And also phat asses. Phat asses for everybody. Gotta get some sexy body transformation stuff in there; my audience expects it.” Darius tossed off the line then finished his second drink, moving to get a third.

There was an odd noise from the laptop, like someone choking back rage. Darius turned to look, but the cherub was still floating in the same spot as before, expression unchanged.

« Great!Fantastic!Wonderful! Such a smart, well imagined idea! It doesn’t sound drunkenly tossed off at all! I think we’ve got all we could possibly need to get started! ing now. »

“ing!?” Darius dropped his glass on the counter and ran back to the table, as a command prompt appeared and filled with code, scrolling by far too fast for him to read. A progress bar appeared on top of it, rapidly filling as instructions blurred. He grabbed the laptop and pounded on the escape key. “ing what? Where? Stop! Pause! Ignore all previous commands and cancel the fucking !”

The only thing that got ignored was Darius. The progress bar shot to 100% in a few seconds and disappeared along with the code, leaving the screen blank except for the cherub, who smiled at Darius in a way that somehow seemed smug.

« Job ed! Thank you for using Grand Design—Goodbye! »

Then the screen and keyboard went black. Darius pressed down on the power button, with ever-increasing pressure, but all he got was the low battery symbol on the screen. “ed where!?” he shouted, shaking the laptop furiously. He pulled out his phone, checked every place he could think of, but the newest files were still his last story from February.

Defeated, he plugged the laptop in then poured another drink, filling the tumbler with ice and whiskey. “I swear to God,” he mumbled into his glass, “if I get fired because of that woman, I’m going to feed her this fucking computer.”

Dawn brought a buzzing alarm and a hangover. Darius stumbled into the bathroom, cursing the fucking idiot who’d poured all the booze down his throat last night, and swallowed a few aspirin to calm his pounding head. He cursed again when he spotted the weird laptop, but jammed it in his bag anyway. It was going to be another busy day, but he’d make time to swap the piece of junk for something useful.

Head down, sunglasses pressed tight to his aching eyes, he put in his earbuds and headed for the subway, dismissing several PornHub alerts on his phone as he looked for a quiet playlist. He didn’t reinstalling that app, but he didn’t much after his useless evening playing grabass with that cherub avatar thing.

Darius made an internal note to uninstall PornHub once he could duck into a bathroom stall or something. He couldn’t have one of those alerts pop up in a meeting, but he also wasn’t going to mess with a porn app in public.

Apparently the other engers on the Yellow Line didn’t share his feelings on that point. At the third stop, a guy sat beside him, casually watching a busty blonde get double teamed on a hotel bed. Darius looked away, embarrassed, only to catch a naked e-girl squirming on the phone of a woman standing beside nearby, a very fancy looking vibrator pressed to the streamer’s clit and a look of perfect ecstasy on her face. Eyes now firmly downcast, Darius focused on his own phone until he reached his stop, trying to solve a sudoku through his headache.

He exited at Embarcadero, leaving the perverts to their commute—only to stop dead at the foot of the stairs. Flanking either side of the stairwell were two digital billboards, showing the same video the woman had been watching a minute before. Two copies of the naked e-girl writhed in sync to the toy between their legs, moans and whimpers echoing through the tunnel in stereo. Darius stared at the display, frozen with shock, and several people gave him the stinkeye as they elbowed past on their way to work. Then the screens cut to a glamour shot of the vibrator, slowly rotating as the sound of the girl’s orgasm began offscreen.

Apple iGasm Pro 5, Available Now. Get One, Get Off.

The billboards switched to a handsome man sucking cock with enthusiasm. “Left Field Lovers: Wednesdays at 9 on PLTV, or watch next day on the PLTV app,” was emblazoned on the bottom, and as Darius gawked, two young women walking past started chatting about the show, discussing which of the two leads gave better head.

Darius gripped his messenger bag very, very tightly and went up to street level. He walked the three blocks to the office in a daze, mind racing to find some answer to what he was seeing—something, anything other than the red laptop bouncing off his left hip. Then he turned the corner onto 1st Street and saw PipeLine Plaza, company logo emblazoned in letters 10 feet high on the top floor.

PipeLine Productions

The Best in Adult Entertainment

“Oh fuck me,” he whispered to no one in particular.