The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Danny

“Of course I was careful. What, you think I’m a moron? I take knocks to the head with blunt objects very seriously these days. Fuck. What if I killed him?”

My eyes woke up slower than my ears, but faster than my brain.

“Calm down, Mike,” said another voice.

“Shit! I hit a guy, Terry. I feel sick. I’ve been on the receiving end of that a few too many times. We’re Gods over a hundred mile radius, and I had to hit a guy because you and Suzy won’t stop fucking around.”

“Hey, he caught you editing the cheerleaders.”

“And he wouldn’t have if you hadn’t made him curious.”

“If you’re gods, can you do something about my headache?” I asked carefully.

“Yeah. Sure,” said Mike. “Sorry about that, man. I didn’t mean—”

“Whoa, Mike. Be careful.”

“Terry, sometimes you’re just too damn chicken. Watch.” The soft clicking of keys roughly followed Mike’s sing-song. “Mr. Grant’s headache is gone. He was only lightly concussed and suffered no permenent effects. He will be fine by tomorrow.”

“Second ‘e’ in permanent should be an ‘a’.”

“I would have caught that.”

“Yeah, when it didn’t work the first time.”

“Terry! St—“

“Stop bitching. Got you.”

Pain faded and my eyes finished clearing up. They had me in the old drama room, damned if I knew how I knew that, tied into a chair with … pieces of rebar.

“Before you erase my brain,” I said. “Again. Would you at least tell me what the hell is going on?”

“How the hell should I know?” answered Mike. “You’ve seen what it does. It’s a program called Master PC. It violates pretty much every natural law and makes a total mockery of high school science. Heck, Stephen Hawking would shit himself if he saw what it can do. And five minutes after that, he’d be going for a walk or screwing his nurse. Maybe less. He’s pretty smart.”

“What, you didn’t make that thing?”

“Wish I did. We’d be colonizing Mars next Tuesday and Alpha Centauri the week after that.”

“What?”

“Mike means that if we invented it, we wouldn’t have limited it to a 100 mile radius.”

“I found MPC up on a torrent site while searching for a vampire movie. Someone renamed it and disguised it to look like a Kelly Adams flick. Heh. I can see you like her too.”

That was the truth, but now Kelly Jacobs made a lot more sense; the poor lady had just spend up to a month right beside a piece of rogue reality-altering software. She was lucky to have come out as normal as she did, and it was Mike and Terry’s fault. Bastards! I held my tongue because anything I said probably would have been used against me.

Mike blabbed on. “She’s probably the hottest thing this side of the sun, but anyways, I played a little game with Marian—”

You deluded asshole! I couldn’t stop myself from responding to that. “Little game? Dude, you raped her!”

“Fuck that. I made sure she’d love it. She loved it too much, I think.”

“That doesn’t matter, you idiot! Would she have slept with you if you hadn’t made her do it? No! And that’s rape!”

“I gave her the best time of her life and taught her a lesson: Nerds aren’t useless—but she went right back to the old school line and had one of her thugs beat the shit out of me ’cause she couldn’t wrap her head around the idea that she just might like fucking a nerd.”

Terry looked dour. “Guys. Don’t argue this one. It just depresses me. Suzy and I’ve been using the program more or less consensually for the past month. It can be done.”

“More or less?” I asked, exasperated. “How do you get more or less? When you turn the cheerleaders into brainless sex toys? Did they give consent for that?”

“I didn’t do that,” said Mike, pausing angrily between each word. “That was Suzy’s stupid little rumour game.”

“That’s not what it looked like to me.”

“OK. I did some stuff, but they all looked the same, Danny. They were fucked up even more before I started on them. I liked the job with the boobs, but come on! Even I like some variety. Go and talk to them. Not only will you find that they like how they look, but you’ll probably get a date or two. Maybe even a blowjob. They’ve been having one non-stop party for the past month, from what I’ve been hearing.”

I shook my head in disgust. “Mike, I’m going to be honest with you. If I had a brain, I’d have taken a page from Doug MacKay’s book and beaten the stuffing out of you with a baseball bat while you weren’t looking, but I’m not that kind of guy. I see myself as being a reasonable man, and now I have to count on you to be reasonable in return.

“I know damn well you can just erase my memory, and I think that’s part of why I know things I shouldn’t, but I’m counting on you to have more decency than you’ve demonstrated with the cheerleaders.

“Them I can understand. Anybody who’s wanted to get down with a cheerleader can understand, but what you’re doing, Terry, I can’t. I can’t wrap my head around it. It’s pure chaos, and as much as I may hate Mike’s misogynistic sex slave garbage, randomly messing with people for no reason just plain makes me sick.”

“It’s just a bit of fun,” Terry protested. “It’s not hurting anyone!”

Mike, of course, argued from his own alternate reality. “No slaves. Don’t need ’em, don’t want ’em. What would I do with a sex slave, let alone a dozen of them? I’d get bored, that’s what.”

“What about Lindsay?” I prompted, unsure of which of the two was more delusional. “Or Nicole?”

“You see either around here? Lindsay’s off with some of her friends having fun— Don’t look at me like that, Danny. Girl fun, not lesbian orgy fun. She’s at the mall or something.”

I shook my head, glad that the headache was gone. At least Terry had the sense to look embarrassed, so I focussed on him.

“I take it this is the same as what’s in your locker, Terry?”

Terry was about to respond when Mike jumped back in with, “Fucking rumours.”

Rumours. Right. What’s a rumour, other than the obvious? Easiest way to get an answer is to ask the question, so I did.

“How much do you already know?” he asked suspiciously.

“Since I came to this school, weird things have been happening. Sometimes they’re hard to spot, but others—like Dee suddenly having a rack worthy of her name—aren’t, and for some reason, it always seems to happen around your lockers. You weren’t here, so that left Terry.”

“Try Suzy.”

Terry shook his head emphatically. “Mike, get off that kick.”

“Terry, don’t take this the wrong way,” said Mike, “but you’re too much of a pussy to have done this on your own.”

“I’d have put it more politely,” I interjected, “but Mike’s right.”

Terry shook his head. “OK. Maybe it was our idea. Me and Suzy, and Matt helped out with some of the coding.”

“What, like there being three of you involved makes it right?” I shouted. “Three’s too small a sample to be socially significant, Terry. Three people can’t decide for everyone. Neither can one person, Mike, so don’t look so smug. This program of yours is dangerous.”

“It is dangerous,” agreed Terry, “but—”

“Of course it is,” yelled Mike, stomping all over Terry’s justification with his own. “So’s fire or a chainsaw. Any useful tool will kill you if you fuck up. Hell, I barely survived, so I’m lucky. Probably the only two lucky things to happen in my whole pathetic life was finding MPC and surviving Doug. I wouldn’t even have done that without Terry. He’s the best friend I’ve got, but Suzy’s more like a warden. She’s watching me like a hawk. She won’t let me or Terry have any fun. You want to talk sex slaves, you look at his sorry ass. ‘Suzy can I go out with my friends? Suzy, can I help you with your homework? Suzy can I lick your pussy for you?’”

“Shut the fuck up, Mike,” said Terry.

“Listen to me for a change, man! She’s always been jealous. The stuff she studies her ass off over, you and I can ace without hardly trying. You always hung out with me, but now she’s an awesome babe and you’re wrapped around her finger. Danny here’s right. You are a slave, man.”

“What? I can’t spend time with my girlfriend? Talk about jealousy, Mike! Spend some real, non-fucking time with Lindsay, see what it’s like, and then maybe you’ll have a right to bitch at me.”

“Lindsay was just to get you off my back yesterday … and it turns out that I kinda like her. She’s like Marian-lite. All the babe, none of the bitch. I date her, take her to the prom, buy her some nice stuff to wear, give her some fun nights in the sack to remember, and then move on. Or maybe not.

“I dunno.” He shrugged. “She’s turned out pretty well so who knows? Marian and Nicole, though, they are fantasy women. They live on and for the fantasy. They want guys with hard dicks drooling on them all day, every day. They want slaves. You have to see these two in action to really get it. They are parasites, preying on people, using their looks and social connections to screw with the minds of guys like us.

“Yeah, they’re hotter than hell, and I’d fuck’em in an instant without any hesitation, but either I’m a realist or a romantic. I wouldn’t dream of settling down with either of them. That didn’t stop me from being dumb enough to do Marian’s homework for half of grade eight before she ground me up and spit me out.”

“You were …? Shit!” blurted Terry. “That’s what that fight in grade eight was all about? Why didn’t you tell anybody?”

“Because I was fucking embarrassed, Terry! Besides, no one ever believes the nerd. You know that.

“You thought she flipped out because I kissed her? No! She flipped out because I wasn’t cool enough to kiss her in public. At her house when I was doing all her work for her, then it was OK. But I get the idea that we’re about something more than her just being a whore, and I get kicked in the nuts and suspended. Thanks a fuck of a lot, Mr. Grant!

“I was playing with Nicole because it’s more than just a night’s fun; it’s business. She and Marian went out of their way to tease me and Terry for years. I want her to see what it feels like to want someone so bad that you can’t think straight.”

“Funny,” said Terry. “I never really thought of her as trying to tease me. She’s just hot.”

“And now she thinks I’m hot. She’s getting a taste of her own medicine. She can’t stop thinking about me!”

And now we were back to my problem with all this. “You want to turn her into a sex slave.”

“Fuck, Danny, what is it with you?” asked Mike. “Slaves are bullshit. They’re just more mouths to feed.” He stopped for a moment to calm down and wipe off some of the spittle his rant had sent flying. “That’s fine if you have some massive secret society or giant corporation backing you, but I deliver pizzas.”

“Why not just use the program to make a few billion dollars, or can’t it do that?”

“Can’t. It’s built for changing people. You need to name things you change, and the names have to be original, mean something, and as far as I can tell, be unique within a hundred miles or weird shit like the Monica/Monica starts happening. I could make a dollar bill named George into a hundred bucks, but then what? Break it into more ones, name them all, hold onto them long enough for the name to sink in, and change them? I haven’t come up with a good way to do it. I thought it’d be easier, but naming all this shit’s a serious pain in the ass.

“My car got stolen this morning and the name’s not in effect anymore, so maybe all I really have to do is pass the things around, but it’d still be slow. And messing with bigger bills will just attract too much attention. It’s too much work—really boring work—and I’d probably get busted for counterfeiting, with my luck.”

“Make it so you pick the winning lotto number.”

“That’s only good if you know in advance that no one else would win; otherwise, it’s stealing from the person who would have won, man. I hate thieves.”

“Whatever. You’ll think up something sooner or later.”

“Already have. In a few months, my ones to hundreds scam means I’ll have walking money for the rest of my life. I don’t need anything more than that, and I still want to graduate, get a degree, and get a good job doing something I like to do.”

“Sounds OK, but then I remember the girls in the gym.”

Mike sighed. “The eternal battle is not with evil, Danny, it’s with boredom. When I get bored, I do stupid things—like Marian. I should have planned out the perfect seduction, and left her a horny, drooling wreck, but nooooo. I rushed it at the last minute, just like my homework, and then Suzy wandered in at the wrong moment and ruined everything. Planning’s boring, but I’m not getting jumped by a gorilla again.”

“I can imagine.”

“No. You can’t. Nothing but pain and boredom for a month, and now that I’m back I find that Suzy’s wrecking things—”

“Suzy’s not … ’scuse me for a couple minutes. I’m going to call her. She needs in on this.”

“—Wrecking things with Master PC,” Mike said, picking up where he’d left off. “I found the damn thing, but Suzy’s taken it over. Terry and I were supposed to be having fun with this stuff, but she’s ruining him.”

“Just like you’re doing with your sex slave, Nicole.”

“Now I know you’re just trying to piss me off. If you want a slave so much, you can have Nicole when I’m done. She’ll even let you call her Nikki, but you’re still better off without her because she’s a materialistic bitch. Stick to Dee. You make a cute couple.

“Yeah. That’s what everybody says, but I’ve got my sights set higher.”

“What? You gonna bang Kelly Adams?”

“You have no idea how close you are. Now what about me? Who am I?”

“Lets just say you were a way better at the job than The Vampire is.”

“What?”

Terry

So Mike and I were watching over our, his, captive, the former vice principle D.F. (Der Fuhrer) Grant. And even at a tender age of sixteen, Mr. Grant looked pretty pissed off.

“You … assholes!” He even sounded a lot like his old vice principal self, other than the profanity, that is. “Now what? You just flush my brain and dump me in a ditch to cover uhhh?”

The door cracked open and the silhouette of a goddess was framed in the light. Mike blinked and it wasn’t just because of the sudden infusion of brightness. Danny, blinded by the ray of light in his eyes, barely noticed her, so she must have left the cloaking field up.

“Oh hardly,” said Suzy. “And why is he tied up? I really doubt he can run the hundred miles needed to get away before we can bring him back.”

“What if he does something stupid,” asked Mike, “like trash the computers?”

“Well, you better think of something, fast. The spring musical tryouts start in, oh, ten minutes? Think I would make a good …. What are they performing this year, anyway, Terry?”

“What a waste,” Mike whined a few minutes later as the last twisted, metal rod dropped to the floor. “Do you have any idea how much effort went into doing that up so that I didn’t crush you to death? You can’t just wrap sign posts around people like in the comics. It doesn’t bend right.”

“You know,” Danny said, stretching out, “if I could make myself strong enough to bend steel, I’d probably save myself the trouble and stay that way.”

“What? Are you kidding?” said Mike, staring at Danny like he was an idiot. “Ever read ‘Man Of Steel, Woman Of Kleenex?’ I want to make love to girls, not tear them apart.”

“You could—”

“I could, but that gets back to your argument against making girls like sex, only worse. One wrong parameter and splut. Dead babe.”

I shrugged. “It’s not that bad. With Master PC you just have to do the prep work and be careful.”

“Careful? Terry? What if some idiot wanders past your locker and says, ‘Terry? Ah, he’s a fag.’ Here’s a good one, ‘Terry’s a dead man.’ You and me, we’re protected, but how about ‘I wish the fuckin’ school would burn down?’”

“I’ve got a whole bunch of controls to keep that from happening.”

“Yeah? They sure did Danny-boy here a whole lot of good.”

“What he said,” added Danny, watching Mike turn his strength back down to something human. The ex-vice watched everything. Even resigned to the fact that we had to get him out of the way somehow, he didn’t miss a thing. “What’s the deal with all that stuff in the corner. Do you use all that?”

“Nah, said Mike. “All those icons are just a cheap hack I came up with to scare my mom and sister off of my computer. I have this script that runs at start-up and packs all of this crap into the systray.”

I stared at him. “Is that what those are? What they hell are they for?”

“I just told you: It scares the shit out of my mom and sister so they leave it alone. Callie spilled coffee all over it once when she was looking up lesbo porn.”

“Les …! Are you serious?” I looked at Mike and then Suzy. She had a big wet smile plastered to her face. Sometimes I think she took the whole bisexual thing a bit too far.

“Nah. She was looking for used cars. I knew that would get you. Didn’t expect it to get Suzy, though.”

“I told you I accidentally made myself bi.”

“Then why don’t you change yourself back?” asked Mike, dripping sarcasm.

“I told you that, too: I like myself better this way. Terry likes it. Don’t feel as trapped do you, what with me bringing other girls home.”

Here we go again. “Come on, Suzy, You know I’m perfectly happy with just you.”

I caught the grimace on Mike’s face. “Jesus, Mike, grow up. We graduate this year. It’s OK to settle down.”

“Does Suzy look like she wants to settle down?”

A flash of the old Suzy surfaced and she jabbed Mike with her index finger. “Are you calling me a slut?”

“You went after Nicole harder than I did, so don’t complain about my habits. I know you’ve got me on a short leash somehow, and I’m not happy about it. Have I fucked up that badly in the past?” He paused as Suzy began to laugh and then added, “Have I hurt anyone other than me?”

She started counting on her fingers. “MacKay wouldn’t be in trouble, Marian would still be going to school here … I wouldn’t be bi.”

“Yeah, but you like being bi, remember? MacKay was a dumb ass, he would have screwed someone up sooner or later, and Marian’s a bitch. We’re better off without them.”

“But you’re not the guy who gets to make that call, Mike,” said Danny.

“Who does then? God?”

“They do,” Danny said plainly.

“All right. How about this: I promise not to use Master PC against MacKay or Marian. Other than that, you can be the judges. If I go overboard, you’ve got my password, Suzy. Zap me.”

“Good luck on that,” said Suzy with a smirk. “Like you haven’t already changed the password. OK, then. I’m all in. You versus me, Mike, but this time there are no stupid teachers or marking keys getting in the way. Brains vs. Brains.”

“Suzy, sometimes I really don’t like you. You’re on. Let the best brain win. No using MPC to heighten your intellect, though.”

“Is that a truce?” I asked.

“No,” said Mike, “but it sounds like a fun challenge.”

“I can live with that. What about you Danny?”

“I want my life back and I want that program out of my school. No more rumours. No more bimbo cheerleaders.”

“No.” said Suzy. “Don’t you dare. I like the cheerleaders exactly the way they are. I can finally talk to them.”

“You’re kidding me,” I said.

“Funny, huh? I have more in common with them now that I’m beautiful and they’re braindead than I did when they were half-wits and I was ugly.”

“You weren’t ugly, Suzy.”

“No, just tall and skinny and flat and horse-faced, but definitely not ugly. I totally wanted to be a cheerleader, in body at least, and now I have them beat on both fronts, hands down.”

“Guys,” Danny said, probably trying to get a word in edgewise before things got out of hand. “Lose the program. Erase it and walk away. Go back to living normal lives.”

“No way,” said Suzy. “I’ve done normal. Normal’s garbage. If there’s one thing that Mike and I agree on, it’s Marian got what she deserved. She’s a psychotic little bitch, and I hope she rots in hell. You think she treated Mike like shit? Mike got off lucky! You’ve never been the ugly girl in the change room.”

“Oh come on, Suzy—”

“Terry, you’re oblivious sometimes. She hassled Mike because it got her your attention. It got your attention. She did it because she thought it was funny. She thought it was funny, so everybody else thought it was funny. So much for free will, eh, Danny? The school is full of sheep. Their only will was to laugh along and not attract her attention in case she attacked them next.

“So I point this out one day and find this huge, lacy bra in my locker the next. ‘Look everybody! Suzy wants to be a D-cup!’” she yelled, her voice high and squeaky. “I’d buy a better lock, she’d cut it off and hide all my stuff or dump it in the guy’s washroom. I go to the office and I can’t prove who did it so nothing ever gets done. No one ever sees her doing this shit because they’re all in on the joke.

“But then Suzy takes a shot at Marian and spends the next three days at home. Ha ha ha. Great joke. Thanks a fuck of a lot, Mr. Grant!

“My few friends start to walk because it’s easier than getting in the crossfire or drawing attention. Mike at least had you, Terry. The closest support I ever had was Molly, and no one takes her seriously, including these guys.” She cocked a thumb at me and Mike. “Especially these guys.”

“Meanwhile Marian keeps coming onto Mike and pushing him away, and in the back of your hormone-fuelled male minds you’re thinking, ‘I could handle her. She wouldn’t do that to me.’ You were all so dazzled by her tits and ass that I needed to be Marian Squared to get anything other than a decent chess game out of Terry. Thing is, she’s really not all that pretty. It’s all glamour and shit because she’s rich.”

“You’re nuts, Suzy,” said Mike, grinning.

Suzy didn’t see it as a joke. “Shut up, Mike. See? Free will’s all just a nice fantasy, Danny. Who really gets to choose what they want to do? It’s always pick side A or B and usually neither are much fun. What about being allowed to take side me?

“You can give people all the free will they could ever want and it’ll be wasted because, you know what? They’ll never use it because they are sheep. Free will gave us bitches like Marian or the cheerleaders stomping on us all the time. Gave us creeps like MacKay thinking that it’s OK to use a baseball bat on Mike because nothing bad ever happens to Doug MacKay. He’s the football hero! Everybody always backs his side of the story.”

“No,” proclaimed Danny. “Suzy, most people don’t know what they want, but we owe it to them to let them look around and try to find out. That’s what free will is all about, and it’s alright to turn it down. That’s a valid choice, too. A stupid choice, but it is their choice.

“Marshal MacLuhan once wrote that people today were more interested in finding roles than finding goals. He’s probably right, and by extension, so are you. That’s a shame, but we have to give that choice, that freedom to rise up and be what we can be.”

Suzy gave her exasperated snort. “I can’t believe you’re bringing McLuhan into this. What’s next? Master PC is the message?”

“McLuhan?” interrupted Mike, sounding just about as lost as me. Mind you, he’d never seen Suzy’s bookshelves. Odds are this McLuhan guy was in there somewhere.

“What about those people who choose to go after goals that don’t fit into what other people see as roles?” demanded Suzy, ignoring Mike. “What about social justice for the people who always get walked on? Master PC’s like a gun. It gives us regular people a chance.”

“I’m all for defending yourself, but this is a power issue. That program is ultimate power. It will be abused.”

“Everything gets abused. Guns, cars, drugs, politics, you name it.”

“That’s an empty argument and you know it. Essentially you’re saying it’s OK for me because other people have done worse. That saying evil isn’t evil simply because someone else was eviler.”

“I’m saying, Danny, that it’s a tool. Fire to fight fire. What am I supposed to do with Marians and MacKays? Lie down and take it or fight back?”

“You fight. But you fight smart and clean. Raw violence won’t solve a problem. It only makes it worse.”

“Now you’re quoting a teaching pamphlet. Here’s another quote for you: Heinlein said, ‘Violence has settled more issues in history than anything else, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at best,’ or something like that. I’d probably have to pull a book out the get the whole thing right.”

Danny shook his head again. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one Suzy.”

“No. We don’t. If I was evil, I could just change your mind. It’s easy. Just type, Danny Grant thinks mind control is a viable solution to problems, hit enter, and that’s that. You could have your own harem of bimbo sex slaves inside a week.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“Because this much we agree on: Doing it would be evil. We’re quibbling over a line. You, me, and Terry are all standing on the same side of it.”

Mike cleared his throat.

“Him too,” amended Suzy. “The thing is we’re not giving it up. What we’re going to do is have a vote.”

“On what? Changing me back? If you aren’t evil, then that should be my call, right?”

“Why would you want that?” I asked him. “You always seemed so miserable.”

“Yeah,” said Suzy. “You’re sixteen again. You can start all over and do a better job. Start your rock band, maybe get on American Idol, have lots of torrid sex with Dee ….”

“No. I need to get back to my job. Billy’s going to run this place into the ground. My job, my life, is this school and the students.”

“Billy?” asked Suzy.

Danny shrugged. “Mr. Blaskó.”

“Fuck ’em,” said Mike, exhibiting his usual abnormally high level of empathy. “Fuck the school. The Vampire’s good enough for crowd control, and without you, he’s been running this place for years. Hell. Yeah, he’s an idiot, but we don’t need him.

“Yesterday you said you wanted to be a teacher or a rock star. We need teachers more than we need vice principals, man. Given what they’re like lately, we need half-way sane rock stars more than principals. Sometimes I feel like I’m going to school with morons. They sit around all day listening to crappy music—”

“Right. Like your taste’s any better?” chided Suzy.

“Hey, James Horner is amazing.”

“I meant all of the Weird Al.”

“Hey!” I protested. Girls just didn’t get Weird Al. “Mike’s got a point.”

Danny laughed. “You just don’t want me hanging around ruining things for you. You can run roughshod over Blaskó. Me, even after you make me forget all this, I’ll still be after you. I’ll figure you out again and again, and sooner or later I’ll get lucky.”

“So what?” I asked “Why not just stay out of our way?”

“Not gonna happen,” Danny promised.

“You want to teach, teach! Teach and leave us alone! It doesn’t have to be the same old boring school stuff; you could be more like Miss Jacobs and try new things out.”

“I dunno,” said Suzy, looking deadpan. “He’d look awful silly in one of her miniskirts. ’Specially with a dick that big. The girls in your classes would never pass. They’d probably keep failing on purpose.”

I cast her a challenging glance and she smiled sweetly back.

“I need to think about this,” said Danny, “but I’m watching you guys. No more funny stuff like the classroom orgies.”

“I missed all of the orgies,” mumbled Mike.

“No you didn’t,” I reassured him. “Sex is best with two.”

“Three at the most,” amended Suzy. “I like you Danny. Not like I like Terry, but you’d be a good second place.

“That cock makes up for a lot, y’know,” she whispered loudly, covering her mouth in a show of mock-secrecy. She winked at me, paused, and then looked at her watch. “This is about to get too public. Time to move.”

We settled into Miss Jacobs’ room because it was close to everybody’s lockers, and I sat with Mike’s computer in front of me. Me because Danny didn’t quite trust Mike or Suzy. The command window read, Danny Grant can remember his life as an adult, and that seemed safe enough so I clicked OK.

Danny winced. “Oh man. I really dropped the ball.”

“Still want to go through with this? Fast forward to fifty five?”

“No. Mike’s right, almost. Roll back the clock again, but not as far. Go for twenty-eight. Right after I left college and got my first teaching job. Before things started to go downhill and I started selling out.”

“Twenty-eight?” asked Mike. “You went to college for, like, eleven years?”

“Nine and a half. I kicked around with a rock band for a while before I got serious.”

“Still!”

“What can I say? I got PhD in music and a double in education. Not much you can do outside of teaching with a doctorate in music unless your band hits the big-time. It was only supposed to be a fall-back, teaching, but then I had to beat out Billy Blaskó for a promotion because the guy was a knob.”

“A what?”

“An arrogant little prick. I threw my life away and wound up living his.”

“Why twenty-eight, though?” I asked. “Why not stay a teen, put a band together, and take another shot at the top. What about Dee?”

“I like Dee. I like her a lot, but, to paraphrase Suzy, she’s second place. At twenty-eight, I’m not washed up yet and I can take a shot at getting Kelly.”

“Who?”

“Kelly Adams?” said Mike, looking all googly-eyed. “Holy fucking shit! That is aiming high!”

“Kelly Jacobs,” explained Suzy, rolling her eyes. “She, like, teaches English and … other, uh, stuff.”

“I don’t want to know,” said Danny, quickly.

“Ooooh yes you do,” said Suzy with a wink. “And I swear you’ll love it. You know … we could make her—”

“No. I want to win her myself, if I can. I don’t want to know anything about this program. You don’t realize what it’ll do to you. If everything comes easy, you’ll run out of challenges. You’ll have nothing to do. If you can have everything you ever want, what’s the point? You’ll get bored, right, Mike?

“You’ve always gotta have something to work for. You’ve gotta want more. It was easier for me to give up and become an administrator than teach, and easier to teach than keep fighting with the band. I sold out my dreams for a steady paycheck because it was easy to do. I’m not doing it again this time. Just make me forget. Make me twenty eight again and let me teach. And I want my guitar . Even with my memory back, I have no idea where it’s gone.”

“Yeah, well we’ve got to fix some of that memory back thing.”

“Go ahead,” Danny challenged. “I figured you guys out once; I can do it again, and I’ll keep on doing it until it finally sinks into your thick skulls or I can destroy that computer. I only have to get lucky once.”

Mike and Suzy both looked like they had a reply to that, but to be honest, I was tired of the debate. Between Suzy’s “power to the people” riff and Danny’s “good will win out,” I was just getting depressed. Maybe I should just turn off the Mill. For Suzy to be right, we had to use Master PC sparingly and only when necessary, but the Rumour Mill made a mockery of that. Danny’s view was nice, but that sort of thinking let World War Two happen.

So I started to type. Danny Grant is 28 years old and a teacher at Hübsches-Mädchen High, was as far as I’d gotten before the door clicked open and I panicked, slapping enter.

“Danny—

“Mr. Grant,” said Kelly Jacobs after an odd double take as the changed reality caught up with her. She paused in the doorway, a quirky, surprised smile spreading across her face. Her whole posture changed and she began radiating an exceptional amount of sex appeal, even for her. “What brings you—and some of my favourite students—here?”

Behind her in the hall some guy and one of the cheerleaders—I had no idea who, but she was no longer just another generic busty blonde so maybe Mike’s recent playing around did some good after all—stood waiting. The guy looked kind of shell shocked. The cheerleader looked … kind of like Suzy whenever I brought up dancing or a study break.

“Just needed some private space for a discussion on ethics,” said Danny, er, Mr. Grant. “I’m sorry if we’re interrupting.”

The teacher slid into the room. Her hips swayed and her legs scissored with measured, graceful strides, but otherwise she didn’t seem to move, she just drifted closer. “No, just some after hours math tutoring. I know I know,” she said, holding her arms up in a gesture of surrender that made her breasts stand out all the more—as if they needed the extra help on top of the cleavage peeking though the neckline of her blouse. “I’m an English teacher, but I’ve been trying something new, pairing off some of the girls with boys who are, well, better influences, academically. So far it looks like it’s working, but I’ve only been at it a few days.”

The two nameless students had paired up, alright. The cheerleader had her tutor pressed up against the front wall and was showing him a thing or two.

Mr. Grant buried his face in his palms. “That’s not what I meant.”

“Mister Grant,” the English teacher commanded, “Don’t mumble!” She drifted unprofessionally close to his seat, and I closed up the computer to go. I’d clean up the rough work later, but I figured he like it best the first time if he had some clue as to why it happened. And it’d be better for him if he knew we didn’t have anything to do with Miss Jacobs coming onto him.

On our way out the door, Mike tapped the cheerleader on the shoulder and said, “Laura, you and uh … whoever, better come along, too. Hey, is practice over?”

“Yeah,” the bimbo chirped. “Nicole was looking all over for you! Come on, Chester. You’re gonna make me cum and cum and then all really super smart just like teacher wants! I wanna learn everything!”

I felt the laptop whir under my arm and remembered something. The Rumour Mill’s still on in my locker. Chester’s sure in for a fun night.

I took a look at skinny, star-struck Chester and then at the walking wet-dream clinging to his arm.

Huh. Actually, it’s Laura who’s getting the good deal. Chester was already going to have a great time.

Mike took off, running for the Gym, Laura and Chester probably just went looking for a quiet corner, and Suzy and I next saw Mr Grant and Miss Jacobs in the parking lot hurrying to her car. According to Tommy, the car was only the beginning for Miss Jacobs. Some nights they hadn’t even gotten out of her car.

Hmmm. I made a mental note to remember to set Tommy up with a new girlfriend since it looked like we’d just cost him his old one.

“Caught you staring,” said Suzy. “Like older women? Or is she just more attractive now that she’s not available?”

“Come on, Suzy, you know I’m all yours.”

“I dunno about that. What about Jaimie?”

“She’s a brunette.”

“And blondes have all the fun huh?”

“I have the most fun with a blonde.”

“And if I died my hair red?”

“I’d be madly in love with a redhead.”

“OK, what if I went nuts, shaved my head, and went into rehab?”

“What?”

“OK. That’s a bit far fetched. What if I got an after school job stripping?”

“Uhhh,” I dithered, alternating between trying not to imagine her dancing half naked and enjoying the thought immensely. “Right. I think I could live with that.”