The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Everyone knew Brian was a brain. He was president of the university’s Honor Society, held a perfect grade average. Brian had long ago recognized that he would never be voted Most Popular anything, would never be one of the school’s elite, those jocks whose rankings at the top of the college social hierarchy were determined by how likely their sport was to get them killed. He had wide shoulders and a lean physique, but no one would ever mistake him in his fresh-daily white shirts for a member of one of the sports teams he hero-worshipped or one of the athletes showing off their prowess and muscular bodies around campus. The closest he would ever get was tutoring several of the jocks in subjects like mathematics or computer science so they could keep their scholarships; he liked basking in their masculine presences, lusting for them from across the table, so he volunteered to do a lot of tutoring for the Athletics Department when various players needed an academic boost.

On this Saturday, nearing midday, Brian was headed for the library as usual to study. Not many people still used the actual library building, and since the football team had a game scheduled for that afternoon, people who wanted to see the game live instead of piped in virtually through their implants were already milling toward the stadium—which meant the library would be almost deserted. Perfect!

A pair of shirtless male joggers in tandem across the road caught his attention, and he wondered for a moment whether they were boyfriends, and which of them he preferred, before indulging in a fantasy of taking them both back to his dorm room for an energetic three-way. Which of them would be the bottom? Were they both versatile? Maybe Brian would fuck one, then the other, and then Brian and the one on the left would roll into a cock-slobbering sixty-nine, while the one on the right fucked Brian’s ass.

That fantasy gave Brian the start of an erection, and he blushed, tried to think of un-sexy things so his sizable rod would go down before someone spotted it. Darn it, his cock was too big to stay unnoticed if he threw a full erection in public! So humiliating!

He passed the private new athletics dorm that had just opened at the start of the school year, built by a wealthy philanthropist who had bought up several crumbling old buildings across the road from the main campus, razed them, constructed the large complex, and donated it to the university. Rumors claimed the college athletes were allowed to live there rent-free, that it had an indoor pool, workout rooms, everything an athlete could want, further evidence of their elevated status on campus. To Brian, it looked more like a fancy hotel than a jock dorm. All the guys he tutored lived there, but since he did his tutoring at the library building, he had never been inside. Another rumor claimed the dorm was off-limits to anyone not on one of the university sports teams; non-athletes were never permitted to pass through its doors.

At the library, nearly deserted as expected, Brian headed to the reference section. He angled his head so the scanner could read his identity from the neural connection port where the back of his neck met the base of his skull, and waited; the scanner buzzed him inside immediately. This he always considered the e-librarian’s acknowledgement that he was a brain and thus worthy of entering its domain. He strolled the length of the room and took his usual place at the last study table. He settled in the curved-back chair and felt his implant auto-link up to the communication port built into the chair. The user interface appeared in his mind, and the ancient physical monitor in front of him also obligingly activated, awaiting his instructions in case he wanted to access older reference materials that had not yet been translated for transfer through the neural link.

Mario came in, and slouched into the chair alongside Brian at the table. Mario was Latino, tall and muscular, always smiling, a wrestling letterman—a jock among jocks—and his burr-cut hair framed strong, rugged features. He wore a pair of denim shorts, vintage sneakers that looked expensive. His snug T-shirt outlined his wide, powerful shoulders and broad, thick chest.

Mario nodded and grinned, which always seemed like some secret language spoken only by the campus athletes, the way jocks sometimes seemed to communicate with each other with just their nods and facial expressions. Brian always felt a little jealous of their unspoken rapport. He decided that sort of familiarity probably came in handy during competitions.

Mario paused a moment, as if needing a second to remember this was Brian and not one of his jock buddies, a language barrier. Then, aloud but not too loud, “How’s it goin’, Brain?” he grinned casually.

“Okay.” Brian grinned, a little shy in front of one of his idols. He mentally paused the link and reached up to push a lock of hair from his forehead. He tried to calm himself. What was Mario doing here?—He was not the library-going sort, probably never entered the library except for tutoring sessions, and he had no session scheduled today. Stay cool; keep it light, Brian scolded himself, not wanting to embarrass himself. “Uh, how about you?“

Of all the jocks he tutored, Mario was the one Brian found most lust-worthy, the one who starred in the majority of his sex daydreams. Brian had a powerful crush on the athlete, which he feared he had not been doing a good job at keeping secret. Mario surely must have guessed, after the way Brian practically stared and drooled during their last couple of tutoring sessions—and after that special private thing they did together two weeks ago. They had been in a private study carrel. Mario had sidetracked their conversation into talking about sex and how horny he was, and he had started getting an obvious erection, which gave Brian an erection too. Mario had taken his own cock out and stroked it, had somehow talked Brian into taking his out too, and they jacked off together. While Mario’s cock was average-long and sleek, Brian’s was really big, and Mario seemed impressed by its size, had been about to maybe reach for it, when overheated Brian suddenly orgasmed. After that, in their next tutoring session last week, Brian had put a stop to any talk of sex, since Mario was his tutee and Brian needed to stay professional, focus on the academics, which seemed to disappoint Mario, though he shrugged and tried to stick to the lesson. But so far, aside from that one jack-off session, Mario seemed cool about Brian’s obvious crush, which made the tutor thankful. He knew Mario was probably accustomed to people worshipping him, maybe even expected it, since he was the star of the wrestling team. Maybe Mario just took people’s infatuations in stride.

“Ugh. I been better.” Mario rolled his eyes, which Brian found endearingly cute. “I got a fuckin’ history exam next week.” The e-librarian pinged, reminding them of the rule for silence, and the wrestler lowered his voice, hissing, “I don’t got a photographic memory like you. I’ll never remember all that useless shit!”

Brian smirked. “It’s called an eidetic memory.”

Eyes rolled theatrically. “What-the fuck-ever, Brain.”

“I wish you’d stop calling me ‘Brain.’”

“But that’s your name.”

“My name is Brian.“

“Same thing. ‘Brian’ is just ‘Brain’ spelled sideways.”

Brian was unsure whether Mario had just made a really clever joke or a really dumb one. Confused, he stammered, “Uh—I don’t think that’s—”

Mario rolled his eyes again. “You know what I meant. You’re too smart for your own good. I wish I could just download all that eih-det-ick shit from your brain into mine for the exam.“

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” Brian said, sounding a little more sarcastic than he intended, so he quickly added, “But you know neural implants don’t work like that. You’ll just have to learn the material the hard way. Need me to help you study? I still remember the material and all the professor’s exam questions.”

“Shit, I ain’t no brain like you.” He slumped in his chair. “Hell, just thinkin’ about that fuckin’ exam has me so wound-up I’m about to scream. If you was a real buddy, Brain, you’d help me out. You know—help me relax.” His hand dropped between their chairs, settling on Brian’s thigh.

Brian’s body froze, and his thoughts seemed to short-circuit: Mario’s hand—his thigh—What the heck?

He felt Mario’s hand squeeze, gently but firmly, into his thigh-muscle. Mario’s little finger teased near Brian’s crotch, leaving no doubt—

“Hey!” Brian hiss-whispered as he recovered a little, felt himself blushing hot through the tingle of arousal that ricocheted inside his balls and made his cock start to stiffen. “Cut it out!”

“Somethin’ wrong?” Mario had done that before, half-smiling, pretending a casual innocence as he worked his grip on Brian’s thigh, squeezing, releasing, kneading. “I’m just restin’ my hand.”

Crap, Brian swore at himself, he definitely knows I’m crushing on him. He’s teasing me—and in public too! “Cut it out,” Brian repeated, glancing about nervously. “Somebody’ll see what you’re—“

“Nah. There’s practically no one around. No one’s payin’ us any damn attention. Everyone but us is jacked in and off in their own head space.”

The sharp ping ordered silence from the e-librarian station, and Brian pretended to concentrate on the still-blank screen in front of him, too jarred to reconnect his neural link just now. Nearly a minute passed with Mario’s hand on Brian’s thigh, and he had to acknowledge that Mario was right—none of the few other people were close enough to see, and no one was watching. Maybe Mario knew about his crush, but the wrestler had not done anything to embarrass him about it, other than—than—

The next gentle squeeze came the tiniest bit higher on his thigh.

Darn, that feels so good! Brian admitted; his long cock now was almost painfully stiff, bent nearly double in his pants as Mario continued kneading, and Brian finally let his gaze shift down from the varnished tabletop and glowing monitor to Mario’s thick-knuckled fingers and ham-like hand clasping his thigh, up Mario’s muscular forearm, his swollen biceps, then to the burly physique marked beneath the taut T-shirt, the nipples clearly outlined through the cloth. Another gentle squeeze. Feels so ... Brian knew if he looked higher, Mario would be flashing him that cocky grin and knowing stare, and then he felt the renewed pressure as two of Mario’s fingers rubbed against his crotch. How the heck was such a small physical pleasure nearly able to override his caution and his rational mind? Brian flashed back to that time they were in the study carrel. Was the athlete going to unzip his pants and pull out his cock right there in the library? “Darn it, Mario, stop!“

“Somethin’ wrong, Brain?” Mario’s voice oozed fake innocence and barely concealed amusement.

“How am I supposed to study when you’re ... well, doing that?” Brian pushed Mario’s hand away, but Mario returned it immediately. Brian knew from experience how persistent Mario could be when he wanted something, remembered how easily Mario had charmed him into taking down his pants that time in the carrel and pulling out his cock and pleasuring himself until ... No, that was not going to happen again, and definitely was not going to happen here in public, in the library, Brian’s special realm. But the sensations sure felt good! He dropped his head, frowning at the strong hand now half-cupping the arch of his pants-trapped erection between his legs. In spite of himself, Brian enjoyed the feel of the wrestler’s strong grip, and he unconsciously spread his thighs to give Mario better access. Still, he felt as though he needed to protest: “Stop it! You’re giving me a—you know”—Brian’s voice dropped to barely a whisper—“an erection.“

“A hard-on?” Mario teased conspiratorily, his expression miming surprise. “Thought you was too busy usin’ your brain to use your balls.“

“Well, you’re wrong.” Brian continued to stare down at that hand on his full-mounded crotch. “I get just as horny as any guy.”

Mario smirked. “Yeah, I know. I learned that from that tutorin’ session, remember, when we—” With his free hand, he made the one-handed sign for jerking off, winked, and grinned. Another squeeze-grope, and then suddenly Mario pulled back, stood up. “C’mon—I know someplace we can go. Follow me.“

“Wait a minute.” Brian sat up straighter. He looked over at the wide-shouldered athlete, grinned sheepishly, and he pointed down at his crotch. “I’ve, uh, got to let my penis cool down a little first.”

“’Penis’?” Mario snickered. “You’re too damn smart for your own good, Brain. And you sure throw one hell of a big rod. You got the biggest dick I ever seen—you know that?” He studied Brian for a moment, then leaned close over him, grinned, and shrugged. “Hell, if you’re so smart, you’d know what to do when you’re hard-up.”

“I’m not going to masturbate here in the library!” Brian blurted out, scandalized, then felt himself blush.

The e-librarian pinged for silence.

“Not here, dumbass. Someplace private, like I said. Follow me.” Mario stepped back, casually tugged the front of his shorts, which were showing plenty of evidence of the athlete’s own erection in the crotch, and stretched. “C’mon, Brain.” With a lazy, athletic gait, Mario started for the door.

Brian waited almost a minute before he stood up, enough time for his erection to fade, mostly; then he hustled to catch up with the wrestler. The corridor outside was clear of other people. Everyone was settled into their studies or maybe was on their way to the football game, Brian remembered, and he passed through golden shafts of sunlight that slanted through the tall windowpanes over the stairway to the lower floors of the building. He followed the sound of Mario’s steps on the ancient linoleum tiles, and Brian moved in beside him as they reached the last stairs.

“I’m not joking, Mario—it really bothers me when you mess around like that.”

“What? Makin’ you throw a rod?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Shit.” Mario loped down the final steps. “I get hard all the damn time, and it sure don’t bother me. Getting’ hard sure feels real good, let me tell you. I just whip off a load and forget it.”

“Can’t ‘whip off a load’ in the middle of the library. Besides”—Brian sighed—“sometimes beating my meat doesn’t help much.” He blinked as they passed through the main exit and into the sunlight. “Where’re we going?”

“Someplace private, like I told you. You’ll see.”

Someplace private turned out to be the imposing new private athletic dorm. Mario leaned so the scanner could read his I.D. from his implant, and the door pinged and swung open. “Uh—,” Brian began, remembering the rumored no non-athletes policy.

“It’s okay,” Mario grinned, winked. “You’re with me.”

Brian followed the wrestler inside.

They had entered a cavernous great room, larger than most hotel lobbies Brian had ever seen. Everything was obviously new and expensive. A group of three of Mario’s jock-buddies were walking toward them, bullshitting and joking with one another, probably on their way out the door. Brian knew and had tutored two of them, had not met the third.

Mario waved to them, and they waved back. One of them was in a T-shirt and shorts, the other two wore jeans and, bare-chested, in the process of pulling on their shirts. They flashed Mario a grin, and he grinned back, and one of them nodded, as if asking some unspoken question. During those few seconds, Brian felt himself blush and made himself look away quickly, not wanting to be caught staring at their exposed skin and muscular bodies.

“Hey, Brian,” one of the guys he had tutored greeted him. “We’re off to the game. Catch you guys later.” Mario and the guys nodded to each other again, the all-purpose jock greeting doubling as a farewell.

“Hey,” Mario said, and Brian wondered whether the wrestler had caught him ogling his departing buddies. But Mario, apparently oblivious, just continued, “Told ya it’s okay ’cause you’re with me,” then veered toward a door on the opposite side of the great room. “C’mon. I wanna show you somethin’.”

Through that door, a flight of stairs, and they descended to a basement level, brightly lit, then through another door to a dark area. An overhead light activated as they entered. Brian found himself in a small locker room. “Hey,” he murmured, “what goes on down here?”

“Gym,” Mario said, pointing at a side door. “None of us use this locker room much—we don’t have to ’cause we live here. This room’s mostly for guests if they need a place to change, I guess. C’mon—get out of your street duds, and let’s work out a little before we—you know.” He was already halfway out of his T-shirt.

“What’re you doing?” Brian asked.

“Takin’ off my shirt; what’s it look like? Don’t want to get it all messed up.”

“Oh. Uh, okay—Good idea, I guess.”

“You too, Brain. Get changed.”

Brian protested, “Uh, I don’t have any workout clothes with me.”

Mario, bare-chested now and tossing his shirt into one of the many open-doored empty lockers, grinned. “Got you covered.” From a shelf, he passed Brian a white wifebeater shirt and a pair of shorts—both looked new. “The dorm keeps these around for guests, I guess. You’ve been helpin’ me study, so I’m gonna help you learn to work out, build you up some. You’re a good-lookin’ guy, for a brain. Put some more muscle on you, and you’ll get laid plenty.”

“I get laid plenty already,” Brian objected, which was not quite a fib but maybe also not objectively true, so he qualified his statement by allowing, “just, uh, not as much as a jock like you.” Brian did not mention that he already knew his way around the basics of a gym, having already taken the health and phys-ed prerequisites years before. Trying not to stare at Mario’s pecs as the wrestler kicked off his shoes, Brian began unbuttoning his shirt and instead squinted at the surroundings, the mirrors along the wall opposite the lockers. This was all so confusing, and he wondered whether this was some sort of jock foreplay, Mario’s attempt at another seduction, or whether the wrestler was just teasing him, stringing him along to get tutoring help. Either way, Brian decided, he was willing to go along and at least enjoy being near the handsome athlete.

Brian began to pull his unbuttoned crisp-starched shirt off his shoulders. He stripped to the waist, paused to fold his shirt carefully. The wall of mirrors showed him how his shoulders and lean physique tapered to his slim waist, slick and smooth; he did have the makings of a good body, just not as developed as—

When Brian turned back to face Mario again, the hunky wrestler had taken off his denim shorts and was stretching his arms and shoulders; his torso was lined with solid muscles, the full arcs of his chest dusted with trimmed fuzz.

“Dang it,” Brian admired, “I wish I was built like you, Mario.”

“We’ll get you started liftin’ weights and workin’ out. Once we get you to enjoy workin’ out, you’ll see plenty of results.”

“All right,” Brian said, not sure what he was agreeing to. What did enjoying workouts, an idea that seemed unfathomable to him, have to do with anything? He glimpsed the smoothness of Mario’s taut belly, the tangle of crotch hair, the cock that appeared maybe a bit inflated, bulging testicles, the powerful thighs, and then he realized what he was seeing. “You don’t wear underwear.”

“None of the guys on the teams do. Feels good to go commando all the time, except when we’re competin’ and need to protect the family jewels or somethin’.” Naked and unconcerned, Mario tossed his shorts, shoes, and socks into the locker alongside his discarded shirt.

Brian placed his own shirt in the locker next to Mario’s. “You said not many guys use this locker room?” Brian wondered thoughtfully.

“Yeah. It’s real private.”

Then suddenly the wrestler’s hands were on Brian’s shoulders, spinning him around. “Mario!” exclaimed Brian; he felt himself pinned back against the chilly metal lockers, and he gulped for breath as he felt the naked athlete’s skin—bare chest, body warmth—pressed against his, then the fingers groping at his crotch. “What the heck?” Brian sputtered. “What’re you doing?”

“Checkin’ what level you’re at,” Mario snickered, fingers dancing light as spider legs around the outline of Brian’s fast-swelling prick. “That’s your joystick, huh?”

“No fair!” Brian struggled, trapped, and then felt his pants being unfastened. “No, wait—!” he yelped as he felt his zippered fly being opened.

“Man!” Mario pawed the bulging pouch of Brian’s briefs through the open fly of his pants, marking his trapped erection, and then Mario wiggled his hand to pull the elastic waistband away from Brian’s skin and thrust his fingers inside to probe downward over the youth’s flattened belly, through the rough pubic hair, all the way down to grasp the swollen cock and drag it out and free.

Brian squirmed against the rugged athlete, putting up a half-hearted struggle, knowing he would be no match for the star wrestler’s strength. Besides, Mario’s firm grip around his potent dick was causing a steady stream of sensations to jam Brian’s thought processes. “Awww ...,” Brian moaned, too loud, then quieter, “Aw, Mario ... Yeah!”

“Well, look at you! Got more muscle on you than I expected, Brain. You’re swingin’ one hell of a big piece of meat between your legs too, buddy, but I already knew about that.”

“Take it easy, Mario. I’m so horny I’ll cum if—”

“I figured!” Chuckling, Mario moved his bare hips, offering his own rigid tool. “Want to check my joystick?” He eased off on his grip that still held Brian pinned to the lockers and pushed his own hips forward.

“Holy shit!” Brian had dreamed of seeing Mario hard again, of maybe seeing him fully naked someday. And now, more than seeing, he was being given permission to do to Mario what the wrestler had just done to him. Brian took a deep anticipatory breath. He eased one hand into the space between their bodies to grip the burly athlete’s exposed rod, and he swallowed fast. “You ... You’ve got a big dick too,” Brian said, because he felt he should, though Mario’s cock looked closer to average size; still, this was Mario, his handsome, macho jock-crush, and flattering him a little cost Brian nothing, might earn him everything. Brian swallowed hard again, slid his fingers along the wrestler’s erection. “Shit, Mario, you’re as horny as I am!”

“We better do somethin’ about that, huh?”

“Huh? You mean masturbate? Here?” Brian looked about with sudden shyness. “What if somebody comes in?”

“Told you, it’s real private in here. Nobody comes in here or uses the gym except me and the other jocks, and none of them are gonna give a shit if we have a little fun.” Mario eased back, grinning. “But if you’re scared, we can work out in the gym first, then go to someplace where it’s just us, where no one will bother us for a good long while. You ain’t got nowhere to be, have you?”

“Uh, no.”

Mario pulled away, reaching for something on the same shelf that had produced Brian’s shorts and T-shirt. “If it makes you feel better, I’ll wear a jock-strap while we work out.”

Now Brian was confused. Mario was acting like nothing had just happened, ignoring his hard-on, starting to step into the supporter. What had just happened? One moment they had been pressed together, both of them aroused and needy, touching each other’s rods, and now Mario did not seem horny at all. Brian watched him tug his strap into place, Mario’s cock still semi-hard and making an obscene ridge in the jock-strap pouch.

“Better get dressed, buddy,” Mario said.

Had Brian done something wrong? Was this some secret language known only to jocks and Brian had mistranslated the message?

“C’mon, buddy—get a move on,” Mario prompted him.

Brian snapped out of his confusion. While Mario seemed content to wear nothing but a jock, Brian was more modest. He quickly pulled his underwear back into position, shucked his pants the rest of the way, pulled on the shorts Mario had given him, the T-shirt too. His sneakers would be okay to work out in, Brian decided. He tucked the last of his clothes in the locker.

“C’mon, buddy,” Mario called to him, and before Brian could turn around, the athlete was already striding toward the far door.

Brian suddenly felt crazy and confused. Mario, the pinnacle of his athlete-heroes, had brought him here to the jocks’ residence hall and now had called him buddy. Brian had been on casually friendly-ish terms with all of the athletes he tutored, but none had ever brought him to their private enclave and he had never thought they would want to consider him their real buddy. He was their tutor, not their real friend, but here he was, and Mario had called him buddy—multiple times! Somehow that one word had made Brian feel a giddy euphoria, and he had to struggle to appear nonchalant and cool. Dang it, things were sure simpler in the library, where he could just jack his neural connection into the network and get lost in the information stream! Here in the locker room was a completely different environment, and Brian felt exposed and lost. He slam-closed the door of his locker and rushed to follow Mario down the aisle, out of the locker room, and into the gym area.

The gym beyond was sharply lit: white walls, plenty of mirrors, a large, open space filled with shiny new, state-of-the-art equipment, all metal angles and curves. The machines and weights intimidated Brian, since his phys-ed prerequisite had given him only a basic understanding of how common gym equipment was used, and some of the items here looked unfamiliar and exotic. “What’s the play, Mario?” Brian joked, still nervous at the thought of actually being this close to the mostly naked letterman athlete. “Think we should pass or punt?”

“Shit, you sound like the fuckin’ coaches!” Mario snickered. “Except I don’t play football. I’m a wrestler, buddy, and don’t you forget it. Now, come on.”

Brian hurried to keep up with Mario, who was heading directly for the chest and bench press equipment.

Mario proceeded to work Brian hard, getting in sets himself at Brian’s weight levels. At first Brian was unsure whether Mario was teasing him by doing so, but the sight of the nearly naked athlete, his swelling muscles, and his outlined cock in the pouch of that supporter convinced Brian that the scenery was worth the potential embarrassment of being ridiculed.

Aside from Mario, Brian, and one other guy doing hanging leg raises in the far corner, the gym was empty. Brian had seen the other guy, a handsome Asian wearing nothing but a pair of white sweatpants, around campus but had never tutored him, did not know his name. The guy seemed to be checking them out now and then, perhaps wondering why Brian, a non-jock, was working out in the jocks’ private domain? Brian seemed to remember vaguely that this guy was on the baseball team—or maybe the swim team? He wished he was jacked into the library’s information feed; he could check the Athletics Department’s registry and pull up that guy’s name and history.

The other guy, finished with his workout, walked toward the machine where Mario was running Brian through a thigh-exhausting leg exercise. Mario and the other guy exchanged greeting head-nods that seemed to linger a second too long, as though some silent communication was being exchanged, and then the other guy nodded at Brian too and was gone.

“That was Hikaru,” Mario said, as Brian finished his latest set and they swapped places. “He throws a big dick too, but not as big as yours.”

“Oh.” Brian’s brain scurried to process this new information. He blinked, and he gazed down at Mario, feeling embarrassed, then inexplicably hurt, and then accusing. Why? He had no justification for feeling jealous, but the idea of Mario knowing what Hikaru’s dick looked like when hard shook him. Brian felt uncomfortably out of his element, as if his emotions were running two steps ahead of the rest of him into uncertain territory filled with traps and hazards. “You’ve, uh ... done sexual things before?—with him?” Ugh! Brian thought, cringing at his own awkwardness. Of course a stud like Mario had done sexual things before! And if Mario had done them with his jock-buddies, that was none of Brian’s concern.

“Sure have, but not like this, not like you and me,” Mario said easily, leaving Brian to suffer another brain lock-up as he struggled to decode what like you and me might mean. Not seeming to notice Brian’s confusion, Mario continued: “Shit, buddy—jocks like me, we get horny as hell. There’s always a few cock-suckers waitin’ around after practice or a match; ain’t no big deal if a jock lets one’a them go down on him. Or sometimes when it’s just me and a buddy, we help each other out, right?” He mimed the universal hand-gesture for dick-stroking. “That’s what buddies do for each other. But that jackin’—off crap is just kid stuff, nothin’ like what I’m gonna do to you when I get you someplace private, just like I promised!“

Brian’s brain could not decipher this. What was Mario going to do to him? The connotation seemed definitely sexual. Was Mario teasing him?—Leading him on? Brian cautioned himself not to overthink what the wrestler said, but his brain felt as if it were about to melt from trying to process that statement—and, well, everything else that was happening—and his cock kept threatening to spring into full hardness from anticipation, not to mention from the proximity of the near-naked muscular athlete. Brian told himself this must be some private way jocks spoke to each other, but he also hoped maybe it meant more.

“C’mon, Brain. That’s enough for today. Let’s stretch a little, then hit the showers.”

A short while later, in the locker room area, Brian started to undress, hoping his cock stayed soft. Mario, already naked since he had only been wearing a jock-strap, sat on a bench and watched, which frustrated Brian: how was he supposed to figure out what was going on, and keep his cock soft, and be ready just in case he was right, and what would happen if he was wrong? The equation seemed too complex, too many variables.

Mario eyed Brian’s chest. “You’re a good guy, Brain. How come I never see you hangin’ out with your buddies?”

“I ... I guess I don’t make a lot of friends easily.”

“You datin’ anyone?”

“No.” Brian, half-mesmerized by Mario’s exposed and sweaty pecs, needed to shift the conversation away from himself. “I bet you’ve got your pick of anyone on campus.”

“Hell, I get off plenty but I don’t have time for that datin’ crap, not when I’m in trainin’ or durin’ wrestlin’ season.” He dropped one hand into the shadows between his spread bare legs. “Wrestlin’s too important.”

“You really love wrestling, huh?”

“Yeah,” Mario murmured intimately. “Bein a jock, bein’ on the team, wrestlin’. It all gets me in the nuts, know what I mean? And I’m not the only one, believe me.” His hand grazed over his relaxed cock-shaft lazily. “You oughta see the action in the showers after practice or a match. One of the guys’ll throw a rod, and then—well, it’s cum-shootin’ time for everybody.”

“Oh.” Brian felt himself blush hot as he tried to hide the excitement pounding through him. There he was, standing by the locker room bench next to Mario, his hero and new buddy, and Mario seemed to be saying that the whole team jerked off in the showers! Wow! Brian imagined the wrestling team buck-naked and crowded together in a post-practice shower, Mario in the middle. Would Mario be the one to get the first hard-on, or would one of the others? Brian imagined erections spreading quick as wildfire. His imagination built the sight of Mario’s nude body in front of him into a shower fantasy, and he pictured what Mario looked like, bare-assed and wet and lathered with soap and pumping his full-hard cock alongside his wrestling buddies. Mario, wet and lathered and hard-cocked and stroking and throwing back his head as he got ready to ... Wow! And Brian and Mario were about to shower together? Maybe that fantasy would soon come true! He swallowed hard. “Uh, I guess that’s really something, huh?“

Naked Mario gave him a wink, then stood up and tossed a folded towel at Brian. “Hurry up. Let’s hit the showers, buddy.” He stalked off toward the tiled shower zone.

When Brian joined him in the communal area, he carefully turned on the showerhead opposite Mario, adjusted the temperature, and stepped under the spray, feeling a little self-conscious under the athlete’s gaze. Brian turned away. A wall dispenser mounted next to the shower controls had three unlabeled compartments. Brian decided one was shampoo, and one must be a body wash—but what was the third? “Hey, Mario,” Brian called over his shoulder, “what’s in the dispensers?”

“Soap, shampoo, and lube. You know, in case somethin’ comes up.” The jacking-off motion grinning Mario made with his hand left no uncertainty about what he meant. “But none of us jocks gotta jack off that much. We sure get laid plenty, and sometimes lube comes in real handy.“

Brian blinked. Lube? He had not anticipated that. Why did the Athletics Department provide lube? Because they knew some of their jocks probably jacked off in the showers? That seemed, what?—And was Mario hinting that more than just jacking happened in the showers?—Brian was unsure how to interpret the information.

The athlete was turning himself under his own shower, mostly with his back to Brian. “Shit,” Mario laughed, what-the-hell casually, “I get a hard-on real easy, buddy. Bet you do, too.” A pause. “I’m gettin’ one right now. Wanna see?”

Then Mario turned to face Brian, and the wrestler’s erection stood out from his full-naked body, angled up. Average-sized, but it was attached to Mario, and that made it the most beautiful cock Brian had ever witnessed, attached to the most beautiful body.

Mario’s tone deepened, turned husky with arousal: “Wanna touch it? Go ahead—touch it.”

Brian gasped. Mario stood directly before him. Brian had been staring so intently at the cock that he had not realized Mario was crossing the space between their showers and now stood dangerously close.

Before Brian could answer, Mario grabbed him by one wrist, and then Brian’s palm was being pressed into the athlete’s crotch. Brian’s fingers automatically wrapped around the columned stiffness and he squeezed it gingerly, inquisitively. “Crap, Mario—”

“How about you, buddy?” Mario reached for Brian’s crotch, finding the rising erection that Brian had not yet registered he himself was sporting. “Horny?”

“Darn it, Mario,” Brian muttered sheepishly, not quite pulling away, squirming at the tantalizing pressure on his genitals. “I’m ... I’m not nearly as built,” he muttered. “Not like you.” Immediately he blushed, embarrassed. What a stupid thing to say!—And while he had Mario’s hero-cock in his hand and Mario was palming Brian’s too! Brian’s fantasies were in the process of coming true—if he could just shut up and stop saying embarrassing stuff!

“Yeah,” Mario shrugged, “but you’re smooth, tight as a wire, damn sexy for a brain. All you need is a little more muscle on you, and then you’ll look like one of us jocks. Yeah, you’ll fit right in.” Mario leaned closer and gave Brian’s cock-shaft a delicious twisting stroke that nearly made Brian’s thoughts lock up. “Dunno about you, but I need to pump out a load right now!”

“Hey!” Brian yelped, suddenly remembering where they were. “What if someone sees us?”

“Fuck ’em.” Mario grinned at the startled youth. “C’mon, buddy. You’re as horny as me; I can tell.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Brian realized he had not let go of Mario’s cock. The potent rod throbbed with the athlete’s strength, and Brian gripped it tighter, matching Mario stroke for stroke.

“Feels damn good, huh?” Mario whispered through the spray. “There’s nothin’ like a couple of buddies workin’ off a load together. Man, I bet you shoot as much as I do. I had a feelin’ you’d like helpin’ out a buddy if you just let yourself get with the program. Your big dick looks hot as hell!”

Strangely, Brian was not surprised that Mario’s hand felt so good on his cock. Only a few guys had touched Brian down there, usually rushing through hand-jobs or blow-jobs, and the risk of being caught here in the showers still worried him but also excited him. He decided everything was worth the risk because this was Mario and Mario was his idol, his buddy. Brian moved his own hand back and forth over Mario’s cock without question, enjoying the special feeling of his hero’s hard-on in his fingers. His fading fear of being caught was being overruled by the desire to go along with anything Mario said or did. Yeah, Mario was his buddy! They both were cock-hot, and Brian was going to help out his buddy, just like Mario said his athlete-buddies did. But—Oh, no!—

“Careful, Mario!” Brian gasped. “I’m going to—”

Shit!” Mario hissed, pulling away, letting go of Brian’s cock just before he would have reached the point of no return. “Better cool off some, buddy. No use rushin’ it.”

“Uh ...?”

“I wanna do this right! You with me?”

“Okay, uh, I guess so?” Brian mumbled, fretting.

“You’ll love this, I bet!” Mario answered with a pleased chuckle, and he moved in to lock one arm about Brian’s neck, drawing him close. Brian’s heart pounded, and he squirmed against the naked man hungrily, his breath rasping in his throat. Heck, nothing else mattered—nothing except that he and Mario were buddies, naked buddies pressed together! He felt Mario’s erection trapped upright and pulsing against his belly while his own hard-on speared forward along the athlete’s hip.

“Hell, Brain, jackin’ off’s for kids. With a big dick like you got—” Mario reached down and fingertip-brushed Brian’s swollen rod. “What do you like to do besides jerk?”

“What do you mean?” Brian raised his hands and let his fingers gaze over Mario’s solid-muscled torso. “I’ve read about stuff, seen some videos too—about things guys can do. Fellatio. Sodomy. Stuff like that.”

Mario snickered. “Damn, Brain! You sound like some textbook feed on a data link. Bein’ a buddy ain’t somethin’ you learn by readin’ or watchin’ videos.”

Brian protested, “But I’ve done some stuff too—”

A squeeze of that arm around Brian’s neck brought Mario’s mouth to the side of his head. “Do me a favor, buddy,” Mario purred in Brian’s ear. “Get it wet for me.”

The words made no sense. Too aroused to think, Brian half-moaned, “But ... we’re in the shower ...” Surely Mario’s cock was already wet?

Mario grinned. “You know, with your tongue.”

Brian suddenly realized—”Oh!”—what Mario meant.

When Mario put his hands on Brian’s shoulders and exerted a gentle downward pressure, Brian hesitated but did not resist for long. He knelt on the hard tile floor and bent forward to touch his lips to Mario’s swollen cock-head. Stickiness oozed from the deep-marked slit; Brian licked it clean, swallowing the unfamiliar taste. He heard Mario’s pleased sigh, and Brian worked his lips and tongue over the crown and smooth-columned shaft. He had done this only a few times before, and he wanted to give Mario a great blow. “Okay?” Brian asked, pulling back.

Mario, an intense stare and a gently coaxing tone, murmured barely above the sound of the shower: “Put it in your mouth, Brain. Go ahead, buddy—make my dick feel real good.”

Kneeling, Brian was ready to do, submit to, anything his hero-buddy wanted, and the danger of someone maybe walking in and catching them doing more than just jerking was somehow even more thrilling. He gripped the base of the potent erection and swung its tip toward his face, drawing it flange-deep between his lips. He started to gag and fought the sensation, had to pull back. Crap, of all the times to mess up!—He could absolutely not screw up and make a fool of himself in front of Mario!—No way! He’d have to try again, try harder. Then he felt the athlete’s hands on his shoulders urging him forward, and he opened his mouth and throat, an effort to swallow more of the flesh-rod.

“Damn, that feels good!” Mario whispered, and Brian looked up along that water-speckled physique to see Mario staring at him with eyes heavy-lidded from arousal. “Suck a little more, buddy! Yeah, that’s the way! Careful—Watch them teeth!”

Mario was hip-thrusting a little, but Brian kept his hand around the base of the wrestler’s cock, preventing too deep a push, preventing another choking episode. He was trying his best to give Mario a great suck-job, hoping his enthusiasm would disguise his lack of expertise.

“Oh, yeah—that’s it,” Mario sighed, then he grunted, “Ow—watch the teeth. Yeah, that’s better. Just keep doin’ it like that. Yeah. Ow! Teeth, dammit ... Yeah, that’s the way. That feels great.” And just as Brian was solving the physics of sucking that cock, Mario declared: “Fuck, yeah, I’m gettin’ there, buddy! Yeah! Now! Oh, fuck!”

Brian could not pull back because Mario’s strong hands locked him in place. The blood-hot cock convulsed in Brian’s lips, and then a spurt of thick, creamy liquid squirted across his tongue. Mario’s cum! Brian tasted and swallowed, and there was more and more of the belching sperm pouring into his mouth and throat. Brian swallowed and loved Mario’s hoarse groans of satisfaction, proof that he had made his jock-buddy feel this ecstasy.

At last, the climactic flow ended, and when Mario’s body and grip began to relax, Brian spilled back on his ass on the tile floor, swallowing a last time and gasping to catch his breath. Grinning, Mario offered a hand, and Brian took it; Mario hauled him to his feet.

“That was pretty good—you just need a little more experience, is all,” Mario said, patting Brian’s shoulder. Brian felt himself flush with embarrassment that Mario had guessed he had never done much sucking before. “You’re sure a buddy for doin’ that, believe me!” Mario ran his hand down over Brian’s muscle-tight abdomen, stopping just above his steel-stiff prick. “You made me cum pretty damn good.”

“You sure popped!” Brian agreed. “You shot off like a firehose.”

“Must be ’cause we’re buddies, huh? It’s always better with a buddy. A couple more times, and maybe you’ll learn how to take my meat all the way down.”

“I started to choke,” Brian admitted.

“Suckin’s like liftin’ weights or wrestlin’. You gotta practice.”

Brian gripped the athlete’s wrist, pressing it downward. “Get me off, Mario. I need to cum too. Please?”

“Sure—in a minute.” Mario smiled and pulled away. “Hey, I’ve got an idea! What say I ask the coach to give you a job workin’ with the teams? That way, you could hang out with us jocks all the time. You already know a lot of them from your tutorin’, and they all like you well enough. Then you and them can get to be buddies too.”

“Yeah?” Brian had been disappointed when Mario pulled back, away from his still-needy big erection, but at the suggestion Brian felt his enthusiasm return—then he sobered. “Wait, I don’t know anything about wrestling or the other sports.”

“I was thinkin’ ’bout you bein’ the equipment manager.” Mario grinned widely as he shut off the water. “If you learn to handle the other guys’ equipment real good, you’ll be the most popular stud on the whole fuckin’ campus in no time!”

“Wow!” Brian snickered and reached for Mario’s dick, which was mostly limp now. “Maybe I’d better get some more practice! And you’ll need to help me with working out. I want to put on muscles like you’ve got. Then the guys won’t make fun of me for being a brain.”

“Hell, none of the guys on the teams make fun of you.” The wrestler ran his palms over Brian’s taut, wiry torso. “Sometimes brains are useful, and sometimes guys like a body like yours. You’re real slick and smooth, and they’re gonna appreciate how much you like suckin’ cock, once you learn how pretty good, right?” Mario chuckled and turned, striding back toward the locker room itself. He paused to toss a towel to Brian. “Come on, Brain. Dry off. It’s time for us to go to that real private place I told you about.”

They dried themselves quickly, though Brian’s cock remained frustrated, refused to sink below half-mast. Mario slung his used towel into a bin and, not seeming to care about his nakedness, started for a side door. “C’mon, Brain. Get a move on. I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Wait! What about our clothes?”

Mario gave no answer, and Brian fast-wrapped his towel modestly around his waist, then rushed to follow.

The door led to a hallway, white like the rest of the athletic complex, but not as brightly lit. Maybe a service corridor, Brian guessed, or some other access route; possibly a shortcut to Mario’s room?

“Here,” Mario announced, stopping at a nondescript door. “Here’s what I want to show you.”

The door bore no number, no placard announcing its purpose, no security scanner; it appeared to be simply a door—perhaps to a storage room? Brian raised an eyebrow at Mario, who instead of replying simply opened the door with a flourish and gestured Brian inside.

The overhead light was off, but a bank of computer equipment was running, and the indicators and old-style screens gave off a low glow that illuminated what looked like a medical examination recliner.

“What the—!” Brian exclaimed. No way was that chair and control panel what it looked like. “That can’t be!” he started. “Is that a—”

“Yep. It’s a programmin’ chair—one of them real old models, before they put in all them fancy safety protocols. Guy who built this place for the Athletics Department donated it, said it’s capable of unlockin’ everythin’ a neural implant can do.”

“Gosh, this thing’s practically an antique,” Brian gushed, running his hand over the seat and headrest, which seemed to have new upholstery. He examined the clunky helmet, archaically large by today’s standards. An actual touchscreen control panel?—How quaint! He had heard about these old units but never thought he would ever see one. Modern models were used for people who needed psychological adjustments; they replaced old-style “therapies” by giving the patient’s mind better patterns for expressing itself, making the treatment outcomes faster and more predictable. But old units like this—they could dig deeper into the psyche, make longer-lasting changes, maybe even permanent. Surely they had all been scrapped, replaced by more modern units that had better safety systems to prevent the accidents and unethical experiments Brian had seen hinted at in the history texts!

“None of us,” a new voice said, “can figure out much about it except the basics.” Hikaru, the Asian in white sweatpants from earlier in the gym, came forward from the shadows. Brian, absorbed in examining the control screen and the cryptic hieroglyphs of its user interface, briefly acknowledged his presence before turning back to the chair and its semi-attached control console. The other jock was still shirtless, seemed not to care that Brian was gripping a towel closed around his waist or that Mario was naked—maybe this sort of casual skin display was common around the jock dorm, Brian decided. “The donor said it’s modified to reprogram our neural links so they can connect up when we’re near each other.”

“Huh?” That last comment caught Brian’s attention, and he started tapping some of the onscreen control icons, digging down through the user interface. “No way can it do that—everyone knows neurals don’t have remote connection capacity ...”

“But they do. It’s just turned off,” Hikaru said. “About the only thing we figured out with this chair is how to turn it back on and use some of the other presets.”

From Mario: “You prob’ly seen how me and the other jocks always seem to know what each other’s thinkin’? That’s somethin’ this chair did. Reprogrammed our links so they don’t just accept connections when somethin’s up next to them anymore. With the safeties off, they can connect to any other modified implant in range. If we’re close by, us jocks can talk to each other with our thoughts.”

“No way—there’s no way ...”

“It’s true,” Hikaru said. “Comes in real handy when we’re competing or one of the coaches needs to give us instructions from the sidelines.”

“Uh ... What the—?” Brian peered at the screen, then took a moment to tighten the knot holding the towel around his slim waist so that he could free both hands to tap the controls. “Dang! You’re right.” He turned to Hikaru. “But that’s—” Impossible? Illegal? Precisely what safety protocols were supposed to prevent?

Hikaru added, “It has some preset packages for modifications, but somebody smart enough could do a whole lot more with it, maybe develop new packages tailored for athletics and sports.”

What the heck was Hikaru talking about? Brian turned back to the screen and dug deeper. “Uh, guys, if I’m reading this correctly, he’s right—the chair does more than just turn your links on. The chair can use these ‘packages’ to get in through your implants and change parts of your psyche, like reprogramming a computer app and—uh—”

“See? Told ya he’d figure it out in no time,” Mario said to Hikaru.

“—I’m not exactly sure what the pre-fab packets of behavior modifications do, not without a translation key, but ... uhm ... looks like they’ve been used recently. And this group over here?—That’s a set of modification packets all queued up and ready to use.”

“See?” Mario chuckled to Hikaru. “Told ya he’s too smart for his own good.”

Brian straightened up, frantically turned to the two jocks. “We have to tell someone. We have to tell the coaches, or the deans, or—”

“Just listen a second,” Hikaru said. “Here’s why we brought you here. It’s kind of like a test. Next week’s the big football game with State. We need you to help us win it.”

“Huh?” Brian asked, confused. State was their arch-rival, always the biggest football game of the season. And State was having a great year—everyone knew that; they’d be tough to beat, so looking for an edge made sense. But what did they expect Brian to do? He was no athlete, had not even fully studied the rules or strategies of football. And what did that inter-school rivalry have to do with bringing Brian here to this archaic programming chair?

“State’s players access their playbook when they’re linked to their system through their implants, right?” Hikaru explained.

“Yeah? So? Don’t all teams do that now?”

Hikaru nodded. “Sure, but ... what if we fuck with their playbook? Scramble things around so the last time they download their playbook right before the game, the content gets scrambled and every player gets the plays with different numbers or different information on what to do? The coach calls out the play number, and suddenly all the players are doing different stuff and stumbling around out of position, because they’ve all got different instructions. It’ll be complete chaos. We’ll kick their asses—an easy win.”

“Maybe, but ... uh ... how are you gonna get to their playbook? They must have something like a hundred security blocks just to get into their system, and then you have to find the playbook files ...”

Hikaru grinned. “That’s where you come in—you and the chair. Mario says you’re good with computers and security stuff. We’ll hook you up to the chair, you’ll show it how to hack through their security, and the chair will do all the uploading and the rest. It’ll set everything to scramble the playbook information right before they do their last pre-game connections.”

“No! No way—I’m not getting in that chair. That thing’s dangerous. Who knows what it could do to my head!”

“Oh, come on. You want to help out the team, right? We could really use your help. All you have to do is hack into State’s system, right? Mario says it’ll be easy for you.”

“Breaking into their system probably wouldn’t be much of a problem, but—”

“Cool. Then all you have to do is get us in, and the chair will take over from there. Easy, right? If you’re worried about doing something illegal or unethical, all you’re doing is showing the chair what to do for the access part, kind of like tutoring it. The chair will handle everything else, so it’ll be like the chair’s responsible for it. It’ll look like a corrupted file, and State won’t even know we messed with their playbook. Since they won’t think it’s even possible, they probably won’t think to look.”

“No! Even if I get into their network, they must have a zillion security protections to prevent stuff like this.”

From behind, Brian heard Mario say, “See? Told you he won’t go for it the easy way. Time to do it my way.”

Suddenly Brian felt himself jerked backward—Mario’s arm around his neck, like in the showers earlier but harder, muscles iron-taut. “Hey!” He felt his back collide with Mario’s chest, and normally being skin-to-skin with the naked jock would have thrilled him, but Brian was too surprised to think about that just then. The solid arm around his neck pulled in tighter, too tight; Mario’s other hand clamped on the back of Brian’s head, and that hand was pushing his neck firmly into that constricting arm. Choke hold! Sleeper hold! Brian realized, as Mario locked him in with powerful muscles, and Brian’s memory began spewing out facts: Danger! Cuts off blood flow to the brain! Suffocate! Unconscious in seconds!

Brian tried tapping Mario’s forearm, the classic wrestling sign of submission to end a bout, but the arm didn’t budge. Brian struggled to gasp in a breath. His gym-exhausted muscles couldn’t muster enough strength to pry at Mario’s much-stronger grip. “Leggo! Can’t—” Brian forced out, but the squeeze constricted tighter.

“Shh,” Mario murmured soothing-smooth at Brian’s ear as he swaggered their bodies closer to the chair. “I know you wanna fight, but trust me. We’re buddies, right?”

Brian felt the towel around his waist come loose and fall aside, leaving him naked too, soft cock flopping as he struggled against Mario.

“Damn!"—from Hikaru—“He’s really hung! Look at that piece of meat!”

Mario’s murmur continued: “I was scared shitless too, first time Coach told me to get in the chair, but—”

Rather than embarrassed, Brian felt angry. Okay, he told himself, don’t be stupid, stay calm, think this through. Maybe he could stomp Mario’s foot, or reach back to grab Mario’s naked balls and squeeze, or kick back and whack them. That would make him let go for sure! As if expecting an attack, pressure from Mario’s hip in Brian’s back kept him off-balance, limited his leverage—Well, of course, Brian thought, he’s on the wrestling team—and prevented him from reaching any of Mario’s vulnerable parts.

Mario: “—I’ll be right here with you, buddy. So stop strugglin’ and get with the program. Okay?”

An elbow to the stomach? No, no room to draw back his arm enough to do more than just poke. Brian’s head was going light, and his memory kept screaming out facts: Oxygen starvation! Loss of consciousness! He needed to do something fast and flailed his arms and legs, trying to hit anything, or maybe twist out of that grip. Dang it, Mario!—I thought we were buddies!

Mario responded with stronger pressure on the back of Brian’s head, forcing more compression around his throat. “Nuh-uh. Stop it, buddy.”

Brian’s world was turning red-gray. No!—This can’t be happening!—Am I losing consciousness—?

“Be over real quick. Then you’ll understand.” Tighter still.

Losing consc—

Losing—

Loo—

Brian tried to speak again but only a voiceless rasp came out. His hands would no longer do what he told them. The room was already dark, getting darker—

Brian drifted back to awareness. He could not see anything. He was on his back. His arms and legs could not move—something held them securely in place. Some kind of bands or straps—restraints? He was naked, judging from the slight passage of air over his skin.

Something covered his head like a helmet, metal and plastic; helmets like these were sensory-blocking, preventing sight or sound or smell getting in from outside. Something pinged for connection to his neural port, and before Brian could block his implant, that something had forced its access and a small virtual user interface display appeared in the corner of his awareness, showing an interlocking grid pattern of little dots. No, not dots—tiny geometric icons, oval in overall shape. No labels. Brian was unsure what they meant, and the connection ignored his attempts to disengage.

But he realized with a start where he was: strapped down in the chair of the programming machine!

No!—Let me out! Brian tried to yell. But the heavy breathing mask built into the helmet over his mouth and nose muffled the sound into, “Nuh!—Mupff urff!“

“Yep, he’s awake,” one of the voices, Hikaru’s, said around Brian’s ears, tinny as if piped in through cheap physical-world speakers instead of coming through his neural link.

A hand pressed firmly onto the center of Brian’s bare chest. Mario’s piped-in voice said, “Easy there, Brain. I’m right here, buddy, just like I said I’d be.”

“Okay, Brian,” Hikaru’s voice came, “just relax. You’re connected and ready to go.”

Brian jerked at his restraints, tried to twist his head and knock away the helmet. The air mix being fed through his breathing mask smelled slightly oxygen-rich, making him a little giddy. A full-head sensory helmet and cheap speakers!—Just how outdated was the tech in this chair?—And how dangerous?

Hikaru: “Hey, hey, calm down. You’ll be okay. Just do your thing on their security. If you need anything that’s connected to your school account, all you have to do is think about it, and the system will bring it up.”

Brian was beginning to figure out what he saw. So these icon patterns were an old-tech visual representation of the rival school’s security walls and widgets?—This looked like an odd icon-based mix of database tables crossbred with a jigsaw puzzle. Brian had sort-of thought of security thusly so maybe the chair’s user interface was using visual metaphors, adjusting what it encountered in the other system to Brian’s way of conceptualizing it? That seemed kind of advanced for something so old-tech. Anyway, worry about that later.

Now that he understood what he was looking at, he began to find a path. He felt something at his implant, like a presence awaiting attention—odd, he had never perceived a connection in that demanding manner before—but this must be the chair’s user interface, its way of indicating it was waiting for instructions. Okay. Well, to start, Brian would need some tools—

More metaphors—A pocket of icons opened to one side: a link to his account. The tools he’d thought about came through as icon strings, bits of operating code. Wow, the chair has known what he was thinking before he fully finished the thought, which seemed kind of impressive. He would have to investigate that later. For now, the sooner he got this bridge hack built, the sooner they would have to let him out of this contraption—and the sooner they would see their upload plans just would not work. Dumb jocks!

Brian could hear the other two talking, a distant muhrr-muhrr in the speakers that he could not make out, so he ignored them as he untangled the puzzle before him and built the bridge into the other system. The trick to hacking was to attack in ways the target system was not designed to anticipate. Rotate this. Use this tool. Reroute that. Create a gap here. The user interface seemed to use a tunneling metaphor, and Brian could work with that. The first layer fell away. He was good at what he did, a real brain with a knack for this. Still, the breaking-in seemed surprisingly easy—had the other school not updated its protocols recently? Idiots! Already he had built a hole into the second layer, with enough buffering and bypasses to prevent the other school’s status checkers from ever finding the tunnel he was making. This was going faster than he expected, and he chuckled maybe a little too long. That damned oxygen mix was messing with his state of mind. No matter. Stay calm, stay focused, stay on top of what he was doing. Be over soon enough, and then he would be out of this chair.

There! The tunnel was made, and the security icons, most of them, resolved themselves into a swirling circle, like a maw or a whirlpool, around the edge of it, and the few that were not part of the circle were safely pushed aside and redirected for now. The chair’s interface quickly began feeding blocks of data through the connection, including something that looked like an application ...? He had not expected the chair to have something that complex ready to upload—Wow, maybe this would work, depending on what that mystery app could do?

Brian felt himself suddenly pushed back and away, as the chair’s interface cut his access to his account and tools. That was sure rude, even for an artificial intelligence, Brian decided, feeling rankled, but at least he could monitor what was happening, maybe learn—

Then the user interface displayed a lockout grid between Brian and the tunnel itself, another indignity. Now he was unable to do anything in this virtual mind-space, so he watched as the upload sucked in more modules, what must have been the mess-with-the-playbooks code, sending it deep into the other network.

Surely the uploads could handle themselves from here on, but the chair was not disengaging from him. It seemed to be holding him in a side environment, like data stored in a buffer and awaiting further processing? Brian tried to say, Guys, I’m done, but the breathing mask muffled that into “Urrhz, Nh’m durnn.“

He could hear their voices. Hikaru was saying, “—faster than I thought. The playbook stuff is just about done now. And this part over here shows it’s nearly finished with the mind-mapping and reprogramming his implant, too. Bet he didn’t ever know that was happening.“

What? No!

“Yeah, big deal,” Mario’s voice groused, and Brian imagined that familiar eye roll. “I got that history exam coming up. All I wanna know is: Is he gonna be ready in time?”

“Sure. The b-mod work is gonna be extensive, but once it’s done, he just has to be nearby, like in the hall outside your exam room, and you’ll be able to connect to his implant and you’ll know everything he does. You’ll ace the exam for sure. Hell, all our grades will improve once we have his brain working for us!“

Wait!—What reprogramming had the chair done to his implant?—And did b-mod stand for behavior modification? Shit! Brian did not like the sound of that. They were going to use the chair on him? He had seen the behavioral icons queued up and ready to use, had no idea what they would do. He needed to get out of this contraption right now. He tried thrashing against his bonds to show his displeasure, but the bindings held him tightly.

That hand pushed down on his bare chest again, solid pressure. Mario’s voice oozed reassurance through the tinny speaker: “Settle down, buddy. Gonna be okay. You’ll feel great when it’s over; you’ll see.”

Being reprogrammed did not sound okay. He had to stop this. If he could not free his body, he would have to try to access the main controls from within the internal user interface and shut the chair down. The system had cut access to his account, but he still had most of his tools active in this virtual environment; and if he needed something else, he would just have to find a way to do it himself.

Hikaru said, “Maybe he’s just nervous about what it’s gonna be like. You remember anything from your first time in the chair?”

“No, nothin’.”

“Me neither. Sometimes the readings I see, first time a guy’s in the chair, look kind of hairy. Maybe it’s just as well we don’t remember.”

That hand on Brian’s chest soft-patted twice, probably intended as comfort. Refusing to be gentled, Brian focused on the lockout grid in front of him.

The chair had already closed the access link to his account, and Brian had no way to reopen it. No matter; he would not need his tools for this. All these old user interfaces had a failsafe or a back-door mechanism for situations in which the external controls locked up, right? All he had to do was find—

Ah! There. A hidden icon. It activated a new menu system in the lower corner that looked promising. Probably one of these contained the command set to shut down the chair, but which one? Find the right icon, shut down the chair. Then Mario would have to let him out. Brian reached for one icon to open it and see what kind of instructions it contained.

Suddenly the user interface displayed a new five-by-five grid of icons. Now what?—A distraction? No, another lock-out screen, a new security puzzle. The menu system was forcing him to solve this grid in order to get access to the new icons. Brian huffed his annoyance. The dots were oblong, maybe meant to be rotated into position to form a pattern. But what pattern?

As Brian touched and rotated the first icon-dot, Hikaru was saying, “It’ll start reprogramming him soon. Coach said to make him an equipment manager, give him a great excuse for hanging around the teams. But there’s no reason we can’t make him a real one. He won’t be much good if he doesn’t know what to do. See here?—I’m got four stacks of sports knowledge uploaded into the programming queue. Coach wanted at least two, so I figured four would be better. Got five levels of submissive obedience loaded for him too. Once that’s part of him, he’ll do whatever he’s told and he won’t bat an eye.“

What? No! Brian tried to scream, but nothing came out of his open mouth.

There! Brian had figured out how the icons moved, and now as the second moved into alignment alongside the first, Brian felt a tiny jolt, just a brief zing of pleasure that ran along his thoughts, like a memory of physical pleasure without his body actually being involved. That was unexpected!—And felt disturbingly good, quite distracting. He experimented with the third and fourth dots, seeing if they had an orientation that they would click into. And with each dot, zing again—a random tingle of pleasure answered in his mind—yeah, definitely something Brian would have liked to experiment with, if not for the urgency of stopping the reprogramming. He felt his cock waking up, stiffening up, in response to the perceived sensations. Surely, outside of that darned helmet, Hikaru and Mario could see his cock growing, hardening—so embarrassing! Multi-layer distractions, Brian decided. The pleasure zings, his erection, those were intended to divert him from his task. No time for shame or mortification. He would worry about that later, Brian decided, because shutting down the danger of this chair needed to remain his highest priority. Everything seemed urgent; he probably had little time remaining before whatever next steps started. That did not sound good, not at all.

Mario’s voice: “What about sex? He can’t suck cock worth shit.”

Hikaru chuckled. “That part’s already covered. See here? Five units of cock-sucking skills. He’ll give super-advanced expert head, and he’ll be practically addicted to having a guy’s meat in his mouth. And I’ve got him set for five levels of horniness—”

“Five? You loaded me and the other guys with only three. He’ll wear us out!”

“—Four of bottoming. He’ll be a super-slut with the skills to match!”

Mario’s familiar snicker. “We always need more horny bottoms and hungry cock-suckers around here.”

Hikaru: “With a cock like that”—Brian felt something brush the side of his nearly stiff penis, felt his rod pulse toward full hardness—“it’d be a real shame if he didn’t want to fuck some ass at least once in a while too. I’d better add two units of topping skills, maybe make him a vers-bottom.”

Dang it all! Brian disliked how they were discussing him like a piece of meat. This was his mind they were talking about, his personality, his Brian-ness! He concentrated on the puzzle, tried to shut out interruptions, as the icons behind the pattern shifted, more items entering the queue. Still, he was aware that the frissons were adding up, accumulating, becoming still more distracting. To Brian, his full-rigid cock felt distant, as though that erection belonged to someone else. He heard Hikaru’s voice say, “Shit, look at that dick! It’s fucking huge.“

From Mario, “Told ya he’s hung real big.”

Hikaru again: “Man, I gotta try some of that! Watch the controls for me. The chair’s probably got him going down some rabbit hole while it finishes the preliminaries so it should be okay. I’m gonna try out his dick for size while we wait.”

Rabbit hole? Focus! Brian felt fingers on his cock, lifting, steering it, then warmth and wetness surrounded it. A mouth? Focus! Blow-job sensations. Dang, he’s good! Brian had to shut out this diversion. Choking sounds. A mouth on his cock-head and the first half of his shaft, a gripping hand stroking the remaining root half. So good! Dang it, how was Brian supposed to concentrate on the icon grid with that throat around his erection? After Mario’s taunting fingers in the library earlier, and sucking Mario’s cock in the showers—Brian was just so horny! The restraints prevented him from moving his hips to pump up into the mouth, and he was forced to let the mouth come to him, sliding up, then slowly halfway down, then up again. The hand—Mario’s?—on Brian’s chest pressed firmer, as if steadying—or preventing escape—which was needless, but felt good too. The tongue moved and teased. The throat gripped and loosened. Brian felt his body twitching. What could be more important than ...

Wait. What had Hikaru said about a rabbit hole? Ignore the blow-job sensations. Was the chair putting up this puzzle-grid to detour him? That made sense. Real security protocols were seldom straightforward, so something that sent him on the wrong path sounded right. Brian looked for something else, something subtle. There!—Another hidden icon!

Activating it dismissed the puzzle, which indeed must have been a stall tactic, and now Brian could access the stacks of icons that represented some sort of batch jobs, sets of instructions waiting to be processed. The behavior modification modules? He selected the first one. Ignore the blow-job. Focus. How did the module open? He still had some of his tools active in this environment, and a little trial-and-error resulted in an open menu. Much of the code made no sense—sets of coordinates, perhaps?—maybe for targeting something, and instructions that probably triggered various functions; this likely would have made sense to someone who knew the chair’s archaic operating language or had its user documentation handy. Dang that tongue was so good! No, stay focused! He went through the code quickly. These sure looked like targeting instructions. Hypersonics, perhaps? He had read somewhere that hypersonics could be focused; at higher intensities, they could be used for surgical procedures, but at lower levels they could be used to disorient or stun the mind, maybe even induce a deep and pervasive unconsciousness. If that were coupled with some sort of enhanced input function from the implants, permanent changes to the psyche might indeed be possible, potentially to the level of reprogramming the mind like Mario and Hikura had been discussing. Unethical! Illegal! But historically, that was exactly why safety protocols and limits had been added to current versions of the tech. Safeties and limits which this old chair lacked.

At least while he held this icon at the start of the line open, the queue itself was paused. That would give Brian time to figure out how to stop this. Dang, that blow-job—so distracting! Now that he was past the security protocols, through his implant he felt the chair not just as a familiar available link-up, but as a glowing presence at the back of his head, glowing and widening. Like what’s-his-name had said. Wait, what had he said? Brian’s memory is eidetic, so why was he forgetting? Keeping his thoughts connected to each other seemed so hard. Why was he having trouble remembering what he had just been thinking about seconds ago? He must be more disoriented than he realized. That blow-job? No, something else. What was he losing?—And what had he already lost? Would be so easy to follow the chair down into ... what ... and try to find what was lost. Wait, follow it down into what?

He could no longer hear Mario or Hikaru—in fact, could not hear anything. The helmet must have shifted to a full sensory cancelling mode, locking him in a depravation state where no outside stimulus got in. Well, Brian could still feel—the chair under him, the restraints holding him tightly, Mario’s hand, the wet slide of Hikaru’s mouth.

The pleasure from that mouth along his cock seemed more important, his last link to the outside. Now the chair’s glowing presence seemed important too, oddly comforting for something so dangerous. What about the code? Aw, heck, that tongue felt good flicking just under his cock-head! Everything was messing with his concentration. He needed to be careful but quick. He had to hurry if he was going to solve this, get access to the command system, and stop the chair.

But—oh, heck, everything just felt so good. Surely he could pause a moment and just feel—just enjoy the suck-job and the physical sensations happening to him. Just indulge for a while. He could catch up easily in a moment; surely he could spare a few moments. Feeling good felt, well, really good—and why should he stop himself from feeling good?

No! he scolded himself and shuddered against his restraints. No temptation. Stick with the plan. Find a way to take the chair offline. Don’t be seduced—stop letting the pleasure be a distraction. Surely he only had a few steps to go? Hikaru had said he would not remember what happened when he woke up, which seemed ... what? He seemed to be forgetting ... something?—The pattern? That danged chair!

Everything was adding up—the frissons of pleasure made by the slide of Hikaru’s mouth along his cock, the firm and comforting pressure of Mario’s palm on his chest, someone’s fingers stroking his scrotum, someone teasing one of Brian’s nipples, the chair’s little interferences in his head—becoming too much. Wait, wait, wait—That familiar electric feeling in his dick and balls? Too much! Brian gasped.

And began to orgasm.

He felt his body arch against the restraints, trying to push his erection deeper into that sucking throat, and he felt his cum shoot up from his balls and through his meat-tube—and he soared and soared into his igniting climax—thinking nothing but fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck—thrown into the moment when the universe spun and reeled as never before—muscles tight and pressure-squirting his pent-up cum, squirting—howling into the helmet ... then slowly fading back from that summit, tightly held by the restraints and Mario’s pressing hand on his chest, feeling secure, slumping in exhaustion, feeling Hikaru’s mouth release his weary and softening cock, one last lick around the sensitive head ...

Ahh ... Maybe now that his orgasm was out of the way, he could focus—spent, satisfied, fewer distractions. What had he been doing before? Oh, right, holding open one of the icon code-bundles to stop the queue from advancing so he could ...

Wait. What was he trying to do? Oh, yeah. Examine the icons’ code. He had forgotten. How had he forgotten? His thoughts had seemed to lock up there for a moment. Was the chair messing with his mind already? Had to be. Where was the icon he had been holding open? Had it and some of the others already moved forward in the stack, advanced into processing?—Had the chair done something to him already? He had to stop the rest of them before the next one was initiated. Did another icon just disappear into the ... wherever they went for action? Brian felt groggy, had trouble keeping his thoughts going in the same direction. He could feel parts of himself and his memories, still there, not gone, just not accessible, as though they had been numbed, or frozen, or both, put someplace for storage, while he was paying attention to something else. He had to stop this chair from doing that to more of him.

His implant was a glowing thing in the back his mind. Before, it had always just been sort of there; he had never felt it like a demanding presence before. Brian tried to shut it off but was unable to remember how. Something, information, instructions, seemed to be streaming in through it. That could not be good, could it?

Brian worried over the icons again. Maybe he could stop the queue. He managed to get the next one open; the contents looked like a series of instructions for hammering at—

Wait, he knew what some of this meant. He remembered it from that course on human brain structures and artificial intelligences. These were instructions for hammering at the higher consciousness centers. With what?—The hypersonics from before?—No?—Something else? If he was interpreting the information correctly, this targeting seemed intended to hit in ways that would mimic the effects of certain drugs on the brain—he had read a data feed once on old bludgeon drugs like barbiturates, Thorazine, the profound unconsciousness of ketamine. If he was understanding this right, the chair would hammer him into unconsciousness—

Like Mario’s choke hold earlier—

Brian felt groggy, tired, like after a long, hard sports practice. Wait, why had he thought that? I’m not a jock, he corrected himself; I don’t do sports practices; I’m a brain. Something was messing with his thinking, some bleed-through of instructions meant for programming the athletes?

Suddenly the user interface displayed another lock-out puzzle, more complex, more rows and columns and layers. This was bad, very bad, because the new puzzle prevented him from reaching the icons now. He likely had little time left. How had he gotten past the last one? Why could he not remember how? And why was he so tired? Exhausted. So darned tired, like after a hard practice when the coach worked him and his brother jocks hard and left him almost too spent to ... Was the chair starting to hammer him? I gotta stop this, and soon. He slapped at one of the icons in clumsy frustration.

The user interface flickered out. Had he shut it down? No—it had changed to something new. Advanced? Brian found himself in a blank space. A cave? A room with no light? Not really black, but just somehow blank.

He heard something calling his name, not a tinny voice piped in through the speakers but there inside his head with him. That voice had sounded like Mario’s, calling his name over and over again—brian brian brian—to get his attention, and Brian found his thoughts focusing on the perceived sound. A vague outline of a familiar face and body in the dark. A dream, perhaps? Or a hallucination? Or was there even a difference here?

You’re not Mario. He never calls me ‘Brian’—always calls me ‘Brain.’ You’re an avatar. You’re the chair pretending to be him, using someone I’d trust to—

nothing to fear; trust us buddy; comply; trust us buddy; it’s okay; you’re with us—

Brian felt a vague sensation, as though in this blank place Mario had put a comforting arm around his shoulders, and Brian found himself leaning into that shadowy touch, wanting the reassurance; the guidance. Mario would know what to do. Mario was strong, a jock among jocks, would protect him; he just needed to let Mario take control and call the play, follow Mario’s lead, trust him to ...

Wait! No! No, I don’t trust—

Somehow the vague sense of Mario’s presence became more intense, more emphatically there. This felt convincingly like the wrestler’s presence too, and Brian struggled to remember this was the chair and not the athlete talking. The Mario voice in Brian’s head seemed louder.

it’s okay; did well; tried hard as you could; can stop fighting now; no fear buddy; trust us trust us trust us—

I don’t—

trust trust trust trust—

Brian felt his resolve waver. Was the chair hammering at him? Yes, and he was faltering from just that small amount. In spite of everything he knew, he did feel himself starting to trust this Mario—no, the chair—which made refusing it even more difficult. Would he be able to resist if the chair made a concerted attack at his mind again? Just letting go and letting the chair take over already felt so tempting.

yes trust us—

Trust?—

Brian felt something happening, as though the edges of his mind were starting to fray or unravel.

What are you doing? Why do I feel so—

so tired—

But I’m not that tired—

practiced hard; played hard; so tired; winning strategy; best play now to step back and let—

Brian felt a profound exhaustion creeping into his mind. This blankness ... He could rest here; he could let someone else, his teammate Mario, take over ... take care of ...

No!—Not playing—Not a jock—Not tired!—Stop messing with my mind!—Cancel; shutdown—

tired tired tired—

Brian felt too bone-weary to struggle, his thoughts continued to unravel, but he needed to stay focused, keep trying to resist. The blankness was a metaphor, Brian realized, but not a cave or a room; it was a womb, a metaphorical place where he would be made anew. Brian felt as if he were coming apart faster, dissolving, and he realized he had been wrong: the behavior modification packets were not going to be bolted onto his psyche like a filter or a governor the way newer chairs would have done; he was being unmade, and the packets would be fitted into him, become part of him, fundamental parts when the chair rebuilt him and put him back together around the changes. This was not behavior modification but behavior reconstruction. He could barely manage the will to resist, but he had to! That one spark of resistance was the only part that was truly him, the only way to tell his thoughts from what the chair was making him think and feel. If the chair hammered at him again ...

No!—Stop!—Cancel!—Shutdown!—Stop!—

tired; relax; make you better; no more you; us now—

But I don’t want—

no I; us now; buddies; never alone again; father coaches and brother jocks always with us; one team—

but I—

hush now; quiet; stop useless fighting; inevitable; we take care of everything—

no, don’t don’t don’t want that; stop; cancel; shutdown—

so tired; time for sleep—

yes tired mario no wait not mario don’t no no no don’t want—

sleep to get stronger, better, always peak performance; us now; sleep now—

don’t don’t—

sleep now; wake up better; no more i; only us; one team; only us; sleep; we tried hard; tried our best; so tired; now we sleep—

we we—

now we sleep—

mario—

sleep now; sleep; sleep; sleepsleepsleepsleepsleepsleepslee

“And he’s out,” Hikaru declared, watching the shifting status displays. “Chair’s got its hooks in him real good now. For a minute, I thought for sure he was going to fight it, but he went down a lot faster’n I expected.”

“Must be ’cause he’s a brain; prob’ly soaks up all that brain stuff faster’n jocks like us.” Mario paused, listening. “Coaches want an update on how long it’ll take.”

“Dunno—several hours at least, maybe even a day. We’ll be pumping a lot into his head, but he seems like an eager one—he’ll take it in quickly and it’ll go faster. Tell the coaches not to worry; it’s under control and I’ll take good care of him while he’s out.” Hikaru looked down at the dick he’d just sucked. “He’s getting hard again. Happens a lot, on and off, while the chair works on them.”

“He’s real horny for a brain. Gonna suck it again?”

“Not yet. He’s got a big one, cums a lot. He’s gonna be real popular with the guys.

“Can’t suck cock worth shit, though.”

“That’ll change, once the chair finishes with him. He’ll be the best cock-sucker out of all of us.”

Mario listened to something unheard for a moment. “Coaches want to see you. They’re ticked off again, ’cause you’re not connectin’ up with the rest of us.”

Mario’s voice changed, because now the speaker was someone else. “You know better than this, Hikaru. If you were connected, we wouldn’t have to ask to get your status report on Brian.”

“Sorry, Coach.” Hikaru shifted, trying to hide his nervousness. “You know I gotta stay separate when I’m working with the chair. I need to pay attention to the readings.”

“And you know the chain mostly runs itself. You’re second-string here, just a backup.“

“Sure, but somebody’s gotta monitor it, in case something goes wrong, right? This is a little more delicate than just an assembly line or just some play on the field. That’s what you said, wasn’t it? Brian here won’t be much good to us if something goes wrong and the chair fucks up his brain, right?”

“Come meet us at the showers. We want a full update in person.” Not-Mario’s eyes narrowed. “And open your damn implant too. You stay far too separate, far too often. Once Brian learns how, we’re going to have him take over running the chair.”

They stood watching each other for several seconds. Hikaru could feel Mario’s implant trying to make contact through his own, trying to connect, the unceasing call to join-join-join, share their thoughts, lose himself, a blending that Hikaru both craved thanks to his programming and hated because of the worrying dissipation of self he experienced. So far the coaches had allowed him a measure of free will. What if someday he plugged in and stayed lost, like the rest of the jocks, unable to conceive of himself as someone separate from his team? What if someday the coaches told him to have a seat in that chair and, when he got out, he was no longer himself? Seemed like someday would be arriving soon.

Hikaru broke the stare. Mario blinked and shifted, as if back to being himself again, or as much himself as being merged with the other players’ collective consciousnesses allowed. Hikaru shifted nervously. “I’d ... better go see what the coaches want. Watch the panel for me?”

Mario, maybe still miffed that his attempts at connection had been refused, said flatly, “Already told them we would.”

“If anything turns yellow or red—”

“Yeah, we know,” Mario nodded as he tapped the back of his neck beside his implant as if taunting. “We’ll call you ... if your implant is on.”

Was that a dig, Hikaru wondered, decided probably not. Mario was not smart enough. But Mario was not just Mario right then.

Since he could find no reason to delay further, Hikaru shrugged and went to find the coaches.

He knew someday would come and he would be replaced. They all knew the chair could do so much more, but none of them had figured out how. None of them, not even Hikaru, had been smart enough to use the chair to its full capacities. He had managed to learn more than the others, but he was still simply installing behavior packets developed by some previous expert. They needed a brain. They needed a Brian, and now they were in the process of getting one. Someday would not be long away now—Brian’s reprogramming would be complete, and he would be loyal, obedient, a happy drone, all that brainpower ready to do anything for the teams.

Ever since the coaches told him about the plan to bring in Brian, Hikaru had been thinking about how his own last moments of free will would happen. Obedience?—Maybe the coaches would order him to have a seat in the chair, and Hikaru’s last act of his own volition would be to sit in it himself, as Brian fitted the helmet over his head. Or rebellion?—If he tried to resist, his fellow jocks would surround him, their join-join demands overwhelming him and forcing his implant to connect, and he would get lost in their collective thinking and their collective mind would put him in that chair. Either way, he would be made to surrender the small spark of separateness he had been allowed to retain.

The chair would be finished with Brian in a day at most, probably a lot sooner. A brain like Brian would learn how to run the chair quickly; and figuring out how to improve the packets or even develop new ones would take him just a couple of days. The coaches wanted the connection range increased, a matter of tweaking the inputs and their sensitivity perhaps, and wanted the packets improved to enhance team unity further, at the expense of individuality. The coaches had plans. How far would Brian be able to take their plans and the athletes? Probably Hikaru would be the first test subject Brian’s improved packets were tried on.

Sure, he considered dumbing Brian down; a few mis-set controls might scramble Brian’s brains. No, if he did that, the coaches would know he had done it intentionally the moment they force-linked up with him. They wanted Brian with his smarts intact. Hikaru had no desire to find out how the coaches would punish him if he fucked with their new Brain. Those same mis-settings would scramble Hikaru’s brains just as easily.

At first, the coaches had not wanted a full drone running the chair; drones like Mario only followed orders and the coaches needed someone who could make decisions about the pre-built packets, someone who could figure out a solution if something happened during a processing. But other than the Big Change, nothing unexpected had ever come up during a processing, and Hikaru had never been quite smart enough to figure out how to modify the packets or build new ones. A guy with a better expertise for programming could do that, and if that smarter guy was a drone, the coaches would never have to tolerate independence—would no longer have to tolerate Hikaru’s independence.

The Big Change was not Hikaru’s fault, not really. The coaches had never blamed him for it. While he supervised a few of his teammates getting athletic mindset refresher sessions in the chair, Hikaru had been puttering around in the library of instruction packets—that was what he was supposed to do, right? By accident he happened upon a hidden folder left by a previous expert, from before the chair was installed in the new jock dorm. These were not on the list of packets the donor had recommended using. Hikaru was unsure whether the donor had even known the hidden folder was there. He used the editor to open some of the packets; a lot of them seemed to be aimed at programming man-on-man sexual behaviors—which was, well, kind of weird. Hmm. He thought maybe he could slip a couple of them into the programming refresher queue for one of his teammates for a laugh, just to see what happened—an experiment to see if the packets really made the guy into a hungry cock-sucker. Hikaru figured he would have a laugh at the guy’s expense, maybe get his cock sucked, and then he could undo then change later, right? And this other hidden packet about bonding with your teammate-buddies seemed stronger than the standard one they had so far been using, which might be useful; that stronger team unity bond might come in handy, and the results would please the coaches, so he substituted it into the queue.

Sure, Hikaru had seen the instructions, but he had not fully understood them. The coaches could not blame him for not being a brain. He had not understood that the bond with instructions in that hidden packet indeed had a strong emotional-sexual angle. And Hikaru had not anticipated how, once introduced into a teammate’s mind, the effect of those new packets would influence the minds of all the others who were communal-linked to the programee. Hikaru had been horny, had only wanted to see whether he could make his teammate suck his cock as a joke. But when his teammate climbed out of the chair and his new programming spread into the four linked fellow athletes waiting in line for their refreshers, Hikaru had found himself pulled in an impromptu sucking orgy. And afterward, he had been so shaken by the results that he forgot to take the hidden packets out of the queue for the other jocks’ refreshers ...

Since he had not remembered to remove the hidden packets from the standard queue used for refreshers, soon the rest of the athletes, Hikaru himself, and the coaches were affected too by the Big Change. The coaches seemed to like how the new stronger bonding enhanced team morale, so they had not been angry when the cause was discovered, decided Hikaru had stumbled on a good idea. If anything, the Big Change proved to them the chair could do so much more. Having the athletes look to each other for sexual release cut down on the curfew-breaking, drinking, rebelliousness, and general troublemaking the jocks got into in pursuit of outside tail. Yes, the coaches saw a definite benefit in the Big Change. And over time, Hikaru had gotten more adventurous, had added more of the unauthorized hidden packets to the queue, until his teammates had almost no inhibitions left—and sexual repertoires that would make a whore blush. But those changes had still only reused packets built by someone else. The coaches had plans that needed tailor-made instructions—and someone smart enough to learn the chair’s obscure programming language and incorporate them. They needed a brain, and soon they would have one whose sole desire was to serve the teams.

Soon Brian would take over, and then Hikaru would find himself being ordered into the chair; he would not be able to fight, not if the connections overrode his will. He would sit in the chair, the helmet would go over his head, and he would come out of it a happy, horny drone player who lived only for his sport, his workouts, his team, and sex. Which maybe would not be all bad. At least he would be happy. The drones, Mario, his teammates, all of them, seemed so very happy. And they got laid a lot. So did Hikaru when he let himself go, let himself connect into their collective and lost himself for a short while. But this would be long-term.

Hikaru found one of the coaches standing just outside the showers and watching something inside. Not his coach—this one oversaw some other sport. But the coaches were all linked through their implants, so finding one was as good as finding the right one. And for all he knew, this might have been the one who summoned him. The come meet us order Mario relayed had not been specific. Hikaru felt the insistent touch of the coach’s implant at his own, demanding connection. Hikaru hesitated, pretending distraction by looking into the shower area at what the coach had been watching.

Inside the tiled space, under the steam and spray of hot water, were ten bodies, maybe more, a roiling knot of arms and legs, mouths and asses and stiff cocks, sucking, fucking; the sounds of their moans and gasps echoing off the hard tiles. Hikaru felt their edge-of-range connections drag at his implant like an undertow, felt their relentless arousal in waves that made his cock thicken in his sweatpants. Maybe coming directly here without jacking off first had been a mistake. He was still horny from sucking Brian off earlier without cumming himself. Hikaru struggled to keep the hard vacuum radiating off the orgy of athletes from sucking him in, overwhelming him. If he were any closer, he would have been—

“Well?” the coach barked, and Hikaru snapped his eyes away from the bodies to look at the man: naked except for a jock-strap and whistle on a lanyard around his neck, fit, forty-ish.

“Uh, you’ll have your ‘equipment manager’ on schedule. Mario brought him in, easy as pie, and Brian didn’t suspect a thing. He’s in the chair now. He’s smart as hell, plenty smart enough for what we need him for. Figured out that ‘hack the other school’s security’ test in, like, just a couple of minutes, almost before the chair finished its mapping work. From the monitor readings, he even came damn close to finding a way to take the chair offline before the programming started, but once it did he went down smooth as can be. He barely fought it at all—seemed kind of eager for it, soaking it all up like a sponge. The time-to-complete estimate shows he might even finish early. Once the chair’s done with him, he’ll figure out the controls real quick.” Hikaru paused, then added, “Mario says he can’t suck cock worth shit, but I got plenty of modules lined up to fix that.”

The coach eyed him, a displeased expression. “If you didn’t keep closing off your implant, we wouldn’t have to ask for these reports. We shouldn’t have to ask.” Hikaru felt the coach’s demand for connection rapping at his implant for emphasis, scolding. “And you know the rules.“

Hikaru looked down at himself. In the private areas, the athletes were supposed to be naked—only the coaches could wear clothes, if they so desired—but Hikaru was wearing sweatpants. “Brian always seemed so tightly wound,” he tried, “I thought wearing pants would make him feel less nervous, at least ’til we got him in the chair. Sorry, sir.” He bent forward to push his sweats down.

The coach’s hand shot out, grabbed Hikaru’s neck, hauled him in, a hard grip, almost painful. Off-balance and hobbled by the sweats bunched around his calves, Hikaru stumbled, went to his knees. The coach’s proximity overwhelmed him, and he gasped as he felt the connection force its way through his implant, felt the coaches’ collective presences rush into his mind and topple his resistance.

This coach’s jock-strap pouch was an inch from Hikaru’s face. Suck, the coaches’ presence commanded. Hikaru reached up and freed the coach’s stiff, veiny cock from the pouch. He steered the man’s dick-head toward his lips. Flicked his tongue around the red dome. Lapped around the corona. Eased the thing inside his mouth. Began a slow, steady up-and-down stroke action on the coach’s hard dick. Hikaru felt his own meat, having been freed from his sweatpants, twitch in the air between his thighs.

The coaches’ voices in Hikaru’s head: Gonna polish down that rebellious streak of yours real soon, have you joining your teammates like you should. Yeah, lick our dick. Yeah, just as soon as Brian learns enough, we’re gonna buff out those rough edges we let you hold on to far too long.

The nearby orgy, the coaches’ horny presence—overwhelmed, Hikaru felt his awareness reduce to two things: this coach’s cock sliding across his tongue, and his own dick pulsing. His rod had grown to its maximum hardness. It felt full. Full and needing release.

The coaches’ presence in his head was a blaze of demand. Hikaru felt himself urged and he sucked hard at the man’s dick-shaft. He took the thing deep into his mouth, as deep as he could, unable to hold back on it. Up and down, up and down. He worked his mouth on this coach’s manhood in a slow, steady rhythm.

The rhythm was building.

Though the link, he felt the coaches’ arousal; the yes-yes-yes going through Hikaru’s head was impossible to distinguish—the coaches’ thoughts, or his own, or both.

“That’s it,” the man above him growled. “Yeah ... Yeah!”

Their thoughts, mostly unified, were fully committed to sucking this coach’s cock. They reached down and hand-wrapped Hikaru’s dick too, stroking it in rhythm to their mouth-slides on the coach’ meat. Everything felt full to them, bulging, ready to burst. The coach’s balls rode up taut and the cock in their mouth seemed to get thicker.

Suddenly Hikaru’s body was cumming. The coach’s body was cumming. They were cumming in unison. They tasted the coach’s cum in Hikaru’s mouth, as Hikaru’s own squirted out onto the floor between their knees.

Stand up came through the link, and Hikaru stood, naked except for the sweatpants still bunched around one ankle. He was still orgasm-rocked and unsteady, trying to regain some equilibrium and separateness. This coach patted his cheek twice, but he was not the only one speaking to Hikaru. “You’re a decent cock-sucker when you let yourself go. Maybe we’ll have Brian add another unit of cock-sucking to your next session, make you even better, more eager for it.” The patting hand turned into an irresistible grip on Hikaru’s neck. “Now get in there.“

The grip became a shove, pushing Hikaru into the shower area, where he stumbled closer to the mass of grunting and moaning bodies, too close. From this distance, the multiple join-join-join connections pouring through his implant overwhelmed him, and Hikaru’s thoughts were sucked into the jumble of horniness and became lost.

A hand reached out, then another, and Hikaru’s body joined them.