The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Abigail had been working in tech companies for a long time, so it was easy for her to fall into the schedule they expected. After all, even if Lavinia were just a kid, and she seemed like one, she was taking her cues from Nate and as far as Abigail could tell, every work about Hux that was in print. Abigail wasn’t a breakfast eater, but she was still at work by eight, then rarely left until after dinner. Dinner at Motivos was catered. But she hadn’t ever had much of a personal life, so in a sense, work as a sort of Skinner box made intuitive sense.

She was thinking a lot about Skinner boxes. And patterns of reward. And the significance that lights and colors could have. From where Abigail was standing, Lavinia had really fucked things up by taking on casinos as a client. The only people who knew more about the research on these things than she and Jaiyana did worked for Vegas.

Bright side, if Motivos never did work out, Abigail was pretty sure a job in Vegas would be waiting for her. Or with a gaming company. Or with some other productivity tool looking to add a little bit of that Motivos secret sauce. But Motivos would have to fail first and Abigail was at least 50 percent sure she wasn’t rooting for that outcome. For now, Abigail was locked into a very tight non-disclosure agreement, which neatly kept her from going to the feds with how deep Lavinia’s bullshit was.

It was a good plan, though Abigail doubted anyone had planned it. Lavinia thought she had an idea. Nate had a hot young Stanford student ready to drop out and pursue her big idea. Lots of people were looking to get rich.

She stared up at the Motivos “ideal self” drawing that she’d picked for her own office. “Beatrice, 27, a medical student, wants to be a doctor more than anything. But sometimes she loses focus. Some of her classmates are taking stimulant medication, but with Motivos, Beatrice can deliver the best possible patient care without impacting her health.”

Motivos could do some good. Abigail never doubted it. And she thought that ultimately, the Motivos system she was working on would be better at helping the people who really needed it than making casinos even more stupidly addictive than they already were.

A chat message pinged up on her computer screen. Lavinia wanted to see her. Sigh.

“So, do you have a progress report for me?” Lavinia asked. She looked like she’d gotten some sun in Vegas. Maybe that would put her in a good mood.

“I’m thinking about gamification,” Abigail said.

“So making producitivity into a game?”

“With virtual rewards.”

Lavinia looked skeptical. “You’ve heard of Farmville, right?” Abigail pressed.

“It’s some kind of Facebook game.”

“A highly addictive online game. Did you hear about the woman in Florida? With the baby?”

“What?”

‘Damn it, Lavinia,’ she thought, ‘you’re supposed to be a CEO in the knowledge economy. Pick up a newspaper!’ “Last month, a woman in Florida was so focused on playing Farmville, she shook her baby to death when the baby interrupted her.”

Lavinia looked at Abigail for a long minute. “I’ve spent a lot of time evaluating productivity software. I’ve never even heard of any with a body count.”

“I knew that would make an impression,” Abigail said. “So tasks are divided into small chunks, either by the boss or the employee. If the employee does it, setting out their tasks alone and figuring out priority should help them get started. We can use an orientation video that induces a mild hypnotic state, then associates our task completion pictures and noises, or animations, whatever, with pleasure. The employees can watch a refresher video once a month, but people like to complete things, so on the whole, I think that might work?”

“If we’re talking about use in the workplace. That’s quite a pivot from what we’ve sold to Slim Support.”

“Well, new technologies sometimes pivot,” Abigail said, then felt stupid for stating the obvious. Lavinia herself pivoted like a ballet dancer under pressure. Abigail had heard stories. “Anyway, it’s where I’m starting. I can do weight loss too with a similar model, I think? As for casino games...” Abigail let that trail off.

“You’ll think of something.”

“I might not. I really don’t know how to make slot machines more addictive. Half of what I’m doing here I’m getting from slot machines in the first place, or at least I’m working with some of the same underlying principles.”

Lavinia gave a little pout. “Fine, then I’ll think of something. I can assure you that Jimmy Marks was very happy with our company when we got back on his jet.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Abigail said. “I know you don’t follow current events, but when he’s unhappy, people tend to die.”

When Abigail had left, Lavinia picked up the phone. Georgina’s number was the first one on her list.

“Lavinia! Hi!” Something about the enthusiasm in her voice made Lavinia feel a little tired.

“Are you working from home today?”

“Yes,” Georgina said, “would you like to come over for lunch?”

“And a foot rub, please.”

Georgina made a high girlish squeak. Lavinia smiled in spite of herself.

Georgina answered the door carefully to disguise that she was only wearing underwear. In Motivos pink, of course.

“Thank you for coming over,” she said. “I could use the break.”

“I could too,” said Lavinia. Georgina looked up at her sweetly. “I could use a favor.”

Lavinia set her bag down, looking quizzically at Georgina. Their relationship dynamic had long been established, and Georgina asking for favors that didn’t involve getting to lick Lavinia’s pussy, always a treat for special occasions, was unusual.

“Sure,” Lavinia said, taking off her shoes. “How can I help?”

Georgina led Lavinia to the couch and started working on her feet. “Rod and Buffy are some of my oldest friends, and I’d like to do them a favor. Well, I’d like you to do them a favor. They have a daughter, Grace, brilliant student. She’s been doing research psychology at NYU, but it’s just not a great fit. She needs a year to find herself. A year at Motivos might be just the thing for her resume. I mean, you don’t even have to pay her.”

When Motivos had gotten its first round of funding, Lavinia had snuck massage classes for Georgina into her discretionary budget. She never regretted that. She let out a little moan and the sound made Georgina quake.

“So does she have a masters?”

“Yes.”

“We can start her under Jaiyana. You think she can live here for 120k?”

Georgina gave Lavinia’s arch a grateful squeeze, “I’m sure.”

“I can negotiate fully with her.”

“Well, don’t negotiate entirely fully. She’s a board member’s daughter.”

“Fair enough.”

Lavinia leaned back, soaking in the sensation of the footrub. She’d known she was taking a chance with that Vegas deal. Jimmy Marks was no sucker. Georgina had just brought her a powerful politician’s kid to recruit, like a puppy bringing slippers.

And like a puppy, she deserved a treat.

“Georgina?”

“Yes.” The footrub had only been going on for a few minutes, and Georgina was already getting that glassy, silly look she got from pleasing Lavinia.

Lavinia made a mock pout. “Convince me to let you lick my pussy. You’re going to have to really beg for it.”

And like that, Georgina was on her knees.

Obvious

Attractive

Easy

Satisfying

People did what you wanted when you made what you wanted all of those things. Jaiyana’s memo had boiled down to that.

Abigail wrote those words on a pad and looked at them.

Obvious. Well, first of all, she was making an app. People loved to check apps. There would need to be some kind of notification system. Facebook had improved the app-checking rate by a ton when they’d made the little notification circle red. Now everyone did that, but that didn’t make it a bad idea.

Naturally, Motivos’ notification would be rose pink, though.

What would be really great would be if the first thing a user saw when they picked up their phone in the morning were Motivos. Making that level of control over the user’s smartphone native to the app would not go over well, Abigail suspected. But maybe it could be a setting? She needed something better. Abigail’s pen made four lines around the outside edge of her notebook.

She thought about the rose pink frame she’d put around the slot machine screen. No sane cell phone company would let Motivos put a pink frame around the smartphone’s screen. But she was sure her engineers had the programming chops to do it.

If your cell phone has a subtle pink frame around the entire screen, is checking the one that matches the frame more obvious?

It was the sort of question Jaiyana or Dr. Day could at best guess about. Maybe the cell phone frame was a small detail, if they made it thin enough only the most perceptive Motivos user would even see it, but it was the sort of subtle thing that Abigail prided herself on.

Attractive. Motivos pink was attractive and weirdly comforting the more you got used to it. Sometimes Abgail suspected that a large amount of what Dr. Day had written into research papers, Lavinia just knew intuitively.

Easy. Intuitive design would be straightforward enough. Getting people to break down tasks could maybe be made easier by libraries of tasks? “One file” could mean a lot of different simple tasks, for example, depending upon what someone was doing to the file. For a secretary assembling it, a medical notetaker updating it, an assistant proofreading it? It was a start. She kept flipping her pen around. By comparison, cleaning and exercising and eating right are at least standard across most people. They would be easier to pre-load into the app.

What if some of the initial conditioning actually took place during the app’s tutorial and setup? If setting the app up itself and customizing it were obvious, attractive, easy and satisfying, well, that would draw people into Motivos and set them up to find using it pleasurable and fulfilling.

Satisfying. Some of that could be user interface too. Lots of people don’t like clicking noises, but the people who like them love them. Abigail was writing faster now, and sketching.

She might just design an app yet.

Ed Washington had an email from Abigail, which was weird. After all her bullshit about her privacy and her need to be able to contact anyone in the company she wanted, total disrespect for security there, she’d mostly left him alone. He clicked with trepidation.

There was just a link. He double checked that the email was truly internal, you could never be too careful.

The new version of “Motivos Corporate Edition” started to download itself into his phone. Well, ok then. Lavinia liked them to always have the latest edition on their phones. They could put their schedules and task lists into it and report bugs. There were always a billion bugs. Lavinia said that all startups had buggy software and it no longer occurred to Ed to question that kind of thing.

He checked his email. Lavinia had sent him five emails overnight. She wanted him to check their arrival time, exits, web history and email traffic. One of the names on the list was his intern Isaac, who had been out all week. Lavinia must not have known that. Maybe she’d noticed Isaac wasn’t around much.

Ed had an appointment to present his weekly report to Lavinia, so he would prepare that, too.

Another day in the Salt Mines. At least he’d end it on his knees in Lavinia’s office.

He popped open Motivos.

GOOD MORNING, ED. YOU HAVE SIXTEEN THINGS TO DO TODAY.

He gave a little jump. This was a big upgrade in software. He was used to there being boxes to tick on a to-do list. This was like Motivos was texting him. In all-caps, but texting him. He smiled. He knew that all caps should look like yelling, but somehow, he didn’t mind. Looking at the screen made him feel warmer somehow.

The cursor blinked as if it were mildly impatient for him to respond.

“What do I have to do?” he texted.

“1. DAVOS, MARTIN TIME IN TIME OUT

2. DAVOS, MARTIN WEB ACTIVITY

3. DAVOS, MARTIN EMAIL SCAN

4. GREDINGER, ELIZABETH TIME IN TIME OUT

5. GREDINGER, ELIZABETH WEB ACTIVITY

6. GREDINGER, ELIZATETH EMAIL SCAN

7. LIN, JESSICA TIME IN TIME OUT

8. LIN, JESSICA WEB ACTIVITY

9. LIN, JESSICA EMAIL SCAN

10. SCOTT, RANDALL TIME IN TIME OUT

11. SCOTT, RANDALL WEB ACTIVITY

12. SCOTT, RANDALL EMAIL SCAN

13. WODE, ISAAC TIME IN TIME OUT

14. WODE, ISAAC WEBB ACTIVITY

15. WODE, ISAAC EMAIL SCAN

16. PREPARE WEEKLY PRESENTATION TO MS. RAMSEY

It was a wall of tasks, the same boring and possibly morally questionable snooping that Lavinia had been making him do for years. It wasn’t like it was even elegantly stated.

Also, had Motivos read those from his email and calendar? He almost wanted to be disturbed, but he couldn’t be. He looked for another long moment at the to-do list, then typed.

“Wode, Isaac has been on vacation this week. Remove items 13, 14, 15 from my to do list.”

ITEMS 13 14 15 COMPLETE. GOOD JOB.

The screen flashed Motivos pink for a moment.

Ed was shot through with pleasure, his body flailing like a whip.

What the fuck was that?

He leaned back away from his phone for a minute, catching his breath.

THIRTEEN ITEMS REMAIN ON YOUR TO DO LIST.

Well, this was going to be an interesting day.

For all the trust Lavinia had in him, Ed was weirdly bad at his job, Abigail thought, watching him on his webcam. Also, he might not be the best test subject. He was a little too close to Lavinia. Motivos tasks were supposed to be satisfying. To Ed, they were orgasmic?

She needed more testing.