Sub Routine [FF, MC] (part 2/3)

—-

Whenever you want someone to go to bed, they always take the longest time doing so. I tried to get the ball rolling by announcing that I was going to bed early, but Lily said that she was going to stay up and watch television. So I had to go to bed anyways, and of course I didn’t—couldn’t—go to sleep.

And of course she stayed up far later than she normally did. Didn’t she have to work tomorrow?

But finally she went to bed. Brushed her teeth, washed her face, and closed the door of her bedroom.

More waiting, then, of course.

I needed to install some cameras. As it was, I was reduced to leaving my door open a crack and watching as Lily got ready for bed. Now I was staring out into the hall, breathlessly waiting for the soft slap of bare feet on the hardwood floor.

I didn’t have to wait long.

Half an hour after she went to bed, I heard her door open. I stayed put, staring out through the crack. Maybe she was just getting up for a glass of water.

Then I saw her, and knew that she belonged to the virus.

She was sleepwalking. Arms at her sides, taking slow steps. Her eyes were open, but dull. The light from the hall nightlight glittered on them.

If I emerged, would she see me? Would she wake up? I could come up with an excuse for being up—would she? Was she programmed with one? And would she believe it? Or would it surprise her to find herself in the hallway?

She passed my bedroom, and gingerly, I slipped out after her, dressed, like Lily, only in panties and a shirt.

Of course, she went straight to my office. I’d left the lights on the way I usually did. I kept the clean room locked, but the key-card was in the top drawer of my desk, and she removed it with no flicker of awareness ever showing in her glassy eyes.

As she turned to the desk, I realized that I had been too hasty. She could see me, standing in the office doorway. I froze, as her dull eyes swept across me.

There was no pause in her slow, smooth movement, as she carried the key-card to the clean room door. Either she hadn’t seen me, or she had seen me, and simply ignored me. Wasn’t programmed to react to a witness.

Did the virus take spectators into account?

Lily was in the clean room now, and seating herself at the computer. It took only a moment to boot up. I sat on the floor outside, trusting in the glass to keep me safe from the virus’ subliminals.

Lily tapped at the keyboard, and I realized that from the floor I couldn’t see what she’d entered. But the swirls began, points of green twisting slowly open, until the entire screen was covered in them.

Lily sagged a bit in the chair, visibly relaxing.

The virus was in the driver’s seat now.

I had a watch, and a notepad. I had to see how it was working on her. How long it deepened her, when it went into different stages. This was science. I was taking notes.

Of course, that only took one hand.

I’d also brought out a little flasher—I knew that the spirals on the screen could hypnotize me if I let them, even though the glass interfered with the subliminals, and the little blinking LED at the end of my pen helped keep that from happening.

The virus didn’t spend long deepening Lily’s trance. After only a few minutes, her hands were moving, smoothly typing. Giving feedback. Communicating progress. Helping to customize the shackles being built around her mind.

It was quite a contrast, Lily’s slack face and glassy eyes, and the smoothly moving fingers, informing the virus of her status.

Then she stopped. My heart skipped a beat as she turned in the chair, and stood up.

She was different, now—not a sleeping wanderer, but taut, at attention. Standing stiffly erect as she stared at the screen, completely ready to do whatever the virus instructed her to. Her wide open eyes still stared blankly ahead, but her entire stance spoke of purpose.

Of obedience.

Then she turned towards me, and I squeaked as I jerked my hand from my panties and scuttled backwards. Her glassy eyes were fixed on a point above me on the wall as she walked to the clean room door. Rigidly, she pushed it open, then stepped into the office.

I held my breath. She could see me, but did she know I was here? And if so, what was she going to do?

She pivoted, then walked to a shelf. She picked up a pair of headphones. Then, to my surprise, she took some other gear, including a box I realized I hadn’t seen before. Had she bought it? When?

Lily pivoted in place, carrying her acquisitions.

She stepped back to the door, which she had not closed. She was just fetching her Master’s tools.

But at the threshold, she stopped.

Like in a dream, I watched her head turn, until she was staring right at me.

Her eyes were glassy, and beautiful.

Not breathing, I waited.

Then her head rotated back, and she walked into the clean room. The door was still open, but I couldn’t move.

She did not sit down again, but placed the headphones on, and then plugged them into the sound port. The other equipment she placed on the table, and her fingers smoothly tapped at the keyboard again.

She waited, staring blankly at the slowly swirling screen. Her fingers typed more, then she stopped. More typing, then silence. With the door open, I could hear the soft keystrokes.

Was she telling it about me? Did it even have parameters for what to do if it was observed while it had a subject in trance? I was awestruck. Maybe it did.

Who wrote this thing?

Lily typed again, then stopped again. In my mind, she was telling her Master about me, and He was deciding what to do with me. Would he have her drag me before Him, force the earphones into my ears, and seat me at His display until my will was as hers, only a reflection of what He wanted? Would it send her after me?

Did I want it to?

I could picture Lily’s firm hands on either side of my head, corralling it as my struggles slowed, then ceased. Holding it in place until my own fingers began to stroke the keyboard at the virus’ prompting. As two slaves received their programming where only one had before.

Something blinked at the corner of my eye, and I realized it was my pen. I shook my head—I had been staring at the screen, trying to decipher what instructions it was giving Lily, and it had snared me, pushed me off into dreamland. I wonder what got through to me while I drifted. I hadn’t been gone long, nor really in trance. Just daydreaming, my hand back in my panties.

I didn’t think that my fantasy was anything other than my own.

Lily was working, now, assembling components from those she had taken off my office shelf. I stared, the hand on my pussy falling still.

She was making an EEG reader.

Her eyes were wide, focused on the equipment in her hand. The instructions must be reaching her through the headphones, telling her what to assemble, how, and in what order.

She was such a perfect slave device. Anything the virus wanted, Lily-bot would fetch it, or make it.

She was making it hardware.

Should I stop her? No, I decided. The dangling mobile taking shape under her hands looked like just a reader. A monitoring device, that the virus could use to more exactly program her.

And that’s what I was interested in having it do.

She was finished quickly. Robots don’t make mistakes. A brief pause while standing, a quick stroke of the keyboard, and she was draping the thing over her head. Her fingers took the cord around the back of the box, and plugged it in. She sat down without her eyes ever leaving the screen.

Her body relaxed as she stared into the screen, unconscious and obedient as it used its new device to read her mind in a new way. Then her fingers began to move again.

And she began to speak.

I had forgotten the door was open. I looked at it, determining to close it, when I understood what she was saying.

“Obey! Obey! Obey!”

She was repeating it, softly, over and over. I moaned, and sat back. My fingers began stroking, plucking at my clit almost against my will as I helplessly reclined and watched her slack face mouth the words. Her eyes glittered in the reflection of the program, and her fingers tapped gently at the keys, then stilled.

“Obey! Obey! Obey!”

I moaned again as I saw Lily was joining me, a hand sliding into her own lacy panties and beginning the familiar dance. The virus was learning her pleasure responses, instructing her to masturbate and monitoring what blossomed in her mind. And it was binding that pleasure to obedience, to the mantra slipping from Lily’s open mouth.

“Obey! Obey! Obey!”

It was the only sound in the room.

I came.

—-

At some point, I had to leave her there. Every time I looked at her eyes, glittering and wide, I wanted to stay, but I had to get some sleep. I couldn’t deny my own fatigue. To stay would be to fall asleep staring at those spirals, and leave my mind totally open to their message. Already, whenever I looked at them I could feel my eyelids droop. I needed to go to bed.

Then I would look at Lily, staring at the screen with rapt attention, hand working in her crotch, and I’d want to stay.

But my good sense won out. I went to my room for some real sleep.

Once there, I realized I didn’t have a lock on my door.

Of course, anything the virus had wanted Lily to do to my sleeping form it could have already have had done. But then, it was only tonight that she had built the EEG monitor. Maybe its control hadn’t been that great before. Maybe it was only now teaching Lily-bot to perform complex tasks. I didn’t want to wake up tied to a chair.

No, I didn’t.

So I slid my dresser in front of the door. No way she was getting in past that without waking me. I took off my wet undies and my t-shirt, and slipped naked into bed. If I had another wet dream, I’d just let the sheets deal with it. I was running low on clean panties.

To my surprise, I fell asleep almost immediately.

—-

The alarm beeped at me until I slapped it. I almost rolled over again—us work-at-home types can set our own hours—but then I realized what was going on.

It was almost morning. Lily was almost done for the night.

I groaned, and rolled out of bed. The dresser was still exactly where I had left it.

So was Lily.

It was as though no time had passed at all. She sat at the computer, staring into the writhing green spirals, mouthing her obedience.

No, I realized, rubbing my eyes, there were differences. The screen was flickering. It was bursting subliminals at her, feeding her mind at an incredible rate of speed. It had dispensed entirely with subtlety; it was now programming its slave the most efficient way possible. The door was still open; I tried not to look at the screen.

And the chair was glistening wet underneath her.

Then her mouth stopped, and the room fell silent.

I had time to wonder where she’d hide the EEG reader before she spoke again.

“Forget.”

“Forget. Forget. Forget.” she repeated, echoing the instructions that would suppress the night’s lessons in her conscious mind. Lily would go to bed and wake up totally unaware of her nocturnal thralldom. Probably unable to be aware of it. If I told her, she’d simply forget an instant later.

“Forget. Forget. Forget.” she whispered.

“Forget,” I whispered back, then shivered.

A minute later, I realized that I was completely naked.

Of course, that’s when she stood up.

It didn’t matter, I told myself as she removed the headset. She wasn’t really going to see me. No, I should get a shirt on anyways. But I had to see her… see her what—return to her room? Put some clothes on.

She was walking towards me.

I was still naked.

Her wide open eyes took me all in, then glossed over me as though I were furniture. She walked to the shelf, put the headset back. I snuck a look at the computer and saw that she had already turned it off.

She passed me again, and closed the clean room door. Her free hand removed the key-card, and took it to the desk. Her blank eyes crossed my naked body again.

A drop of wetness began to trickle down my leg.

Lily closed the drawer, then stood standing at the desk, staring at me.

She knew I was here. Of course she knew. She was just staring at me. I felt my knees trembling, and the tingling in my slit made my hips twitch.

Then she left. Walked out of the office.

I dropped to my knees, my hands moving irresistibly to my slit. At the first touch I was coming, hips bucking and dropping me to the floor. I moaned, whined, and touched myself again.

An hour later, Lily cheerfully wished me Good Morning.

—-

On Thursday, I had to go in to work.

The campus was on the other side of town, but the Metro system was only a ten minute walk from the apartment, and stopped right within the University grounds. It took about an hour from the time I left my door until I was in my office. Not, thankfully, depending on traffic.

So once again, I fought my battle with the alarm clock, and won. Though leaving the warmth of my early-morning bed didn’t feel much like victory.

Yawning, I took my shower. Yawning, I got dressed. Yawning, I had breakfast. Yawning, I brushed my teeth.

I hadn’t been getting much sleep.

Lily emerged from her room—which she had only returned to an hour ago—just as I was finishing gathering my work materials. I could hear her door open, and her bare feet on the kitchen tiles.

I dropped a few folders into my case, slid the memory sticks into their padded compartments, and looked up to find Lily leaning on the door-frame. She looked far too awake for someone getting no more sleep than I.

If her conscious mind was aware of what was happening at night—and aware that I was watching—she had certainly been giving no signs of it.

“Good morning,” she said.

She was in her nightshirt, filmy cotton that barely reached her thighs. I could see her white panties under it, and the dark nipples on her high breasts.

Had the virus been giving her an exhibitionist streak? I didn’t recall her running around the house in so little before.

“Morning,” I yawned again.

“Late night?”

I stifled a snort. “Yeah. Having trouble sleeping.”

She looked concerned. “That’s not good. Anything bothering you?”

“No, I’ll be fine.”

“Well, okay.” She flipped at her hair. “So you’re off to the office today?”

“Yup.”

“Anything you need from the store?”

I blinked. “Well, there’s the list on the fridge… why? Aren’t you going to work?”

“Nope, taking the day off.”

“Oh? Why?”

She shrugged. “I just felt like it.”

That put a worrisome spin on things. Lily wasn’t the sort to just skip work on a whim. As far as I knew, she’d never done so. She even went to work when she was sick.

The only explanation was that virus had programmed her to stay home today.

And do… what?

Now she was staring absently into the clean room.

“Oh, uh, okay,” I managed. What could I do? Lock the office? She was going to have the run of the house. And unmonitored access to her Master.

Thinking about it like that, I felt a shiver of pleasure below my waist.

I had no excuse to suddenly change my plans. I was just going to have to let her do what she wanted—what it wanted—while I was out.

Luckily, I had an ace up my sleeve.

I’d put in the hidden camera two days ago. My thought had been simply to record the progression of the virus as it enslaved Lily. But now, I was going to have to use the footage for my own protection.

I hadn’t anticipated Lily having the run of the place unsupervised. But I had no valid excuse for not going to work. I was all dressed for it.

Lily was speaking to me.

“Er, What?”

“I asked, what are you doing in there?” she said, pointing into the clean room.

“Uh, trying to decipher a virus,” I replied.

“A new one?”

“Yep.”

“Is it dangerous?”

In that moment she looked so innocent, so trusting, that I almost told her.

Almost.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s very dangerous. It’s a mind-cracker. It has a whole battery of hypnotic tools and tricks.”

“Wow,” she said, still staring into the room. “It sounds risky, working on something like that. Sophia told me that that’s what you worked on, but I didn’t know you brought them… home.” She licked her lips unconsciously. The computer, safely turned off, seemed to fascinate her.

“Well, don’t go in there,” I said. “It’s dangerous.” There was an air of the ridiculous to my warning, but Lily seemed to take it seriously, turning to look at me with wide eyes.

“Do you ever,” she asked quietly, “ever find it…”

I waited, but she didn’t continue. “Ever find it what?” I asked.

The red tip of her tongue darted out again, and glistened her soft pink lips. “Exciting,” she breathed.

I exhaled. “Sometimes,” I admitted.

“It would excite me,” she said, and looked back into the room. “To be playing with something dangerous. Something that wanted my mind. Was trying to get in. And if I dropped my guard for just a second…”

Again, she didn’t continue.

“Well,” I said, “it takes a bit longer than a second.”

She looked back at me, then smiled.

“Just thinking,” she said. “I won’t go near it, promise.”

“Great,” I said, picking up my case. She stepped back, and I passed her into the hall. “See you tonight.”

“See you,” she said.
* * *

Carl Deergrove was my boss. Head of the Computing Sciences department. A generally nice guy, Carl managed to get things done because people liked him, rather than by cracking the whip.

Frankly, a firmer whip hand would have done Carl some good, but that’s okay. Like the rest of us, I liked him.

“So,” he was asking, “how goes the work on this new virus of yours?”

“Slowly,” I replied. Papers littered my desk—although I no longer had to teach undergraduate courses, I was the advisor for a number of grad students, and had spent almost all day looking at their work. Only when Carl came in, with his briefcase in hand, did I realize it was after five.

“The Feds have given it a name, you know.”

“They have?”

“Yup. Virus ESX20-5. Catchy, eh?”

I sighed. “They used to get better ones.”

“Does this one deserve it?”

I nodded. “If any virus does.” I gave him a level stare. “This thing is brilliant, Carl. Honestly brilliant. It has more features and options than a word processor, and it’s clever. So very clever.” I shook my head. “I’m a third of the way through the code, and I still don’t understand how it does what it does. It’s like it was put together by a team. A very good, professional team.”

“Huh,” he said. “Well, I’d urge you to hurry up, but I know better. Anyway, Melanie Rouk over at the NSF has just let me know she’s willing to fund your work on this thing.”

“Really?”

“Yep. So go ahead and take your time, and produce a stellar report. This could really look good on your resume.”

I smiled. That’s why we all liked Carl. He honestly wanted you to succeed. Especially if it made the department look good.

“Well, I should have a better grasp of the whole thing next week,” I said. “Now that I’ve got the encryption mostly beat, things are moving a lot faster.”

“Sounds good,” he said, stepping back into the hall. “But don’t burn yourself out. You look really tired.”

I snorted ruefully as I waved good-bye.

I bet I did. I hadn’t slept more than eight hours total so far that week.

And, I admitted, I didn’t plan to tonight.

—-

It was almost eight o’clock when I got home. Lily was in the living room, watching teevee. I exchanged pleasantries with her, then went straight to my office.

It looked just like it had when I left. Both computers, the infected one in the clean room as well as mine on my desk, were turned off. But I knew, somehow, that that was deceptive.

The camera was up in the corner, behind my desk, on a shelf full of notes. No way she would have noticed it. And, sure enough, it was where I’d left it. I pulled the memory stick from its slim black side.

Uh-oh. My hand went to my forehead, and I grimaced.

Stupid, stupid. I’d gone cheap, and gotten a record-only camera. No playback.

I’d have to watch it on my computer.

Which was undoubtedly infected.

What to do. Could I get away with watching it on the computer? Since I knew that the machine was infected, I would be significantly more resistant. And I could fast forward through the footage. Any sort of real behavioral modification, or post-hypnotic suggestion, should take hours. Well, at least one. And I could get up and leave, watch teevee or something, every ten minutes or so.

I should be all right.

And I had to know.

So I turned on the machine, and slid in the memory stick. The video program came up.

I started at the beginning.

This stick had been recording since Tuesday evening. I fast forwarded until Lily came in, the night after my discovery. Sleepwalking, she took the key to the clean room, and opened the door. Then she sat at the infected machine—the infected girl at the infected machine—and turned it on.

Then there I was, in the doorway.

I skipped ahead. Just watching the scene was exciting me, but I had to find out what she’d done today before what she must have done managed to get to me.

Suddenly, my finger released. There I was again. Naked. Standing buck naked in the door to the office. Lily was looking at me.

I looked good.

I rewound.

I was back on the floor, clothes on, but masturbating frantically. My slit tingled in sympathetic memory as I watched my hand working furiously inside my panties, the other hand kneading and pulling at my breasts. I hadn’t even remembered doing that.

Growing more aroused, I watched myself watching Lily and jilling off. When Lily started her own masturbation, my breath caught. My hand started down towards my pussy.

I almost rewound and watched it again.

No. This was bad—whatever Lily had done to the computer, I was exposing myself to it, right now. I had to find out what danger I was in, first.

So forward. There. Lily and I, that morning. Me, leaving. The room sitting empty.

Fifteen minutes later, Lily walked back in. She sat right down at my desk computer.

She started a game of solitaire.

Amusement mingled with anger. I had asked her not to use my computer, to stay out of my office, and the instant I leave, she’s in here playing games. But then, she was just playing games.

No, wait.

Lily’s head was drooping. It stopped, resting on her chest.

Then it lifted again, and her posture stiffened. Lily stood up, the game forgotten.

No, not Lily.

Lily-bot.

She took the key-card, and opened the clean room. Started the computer.

Fetched an external memory card port.

Oh no. It was exactly what I’d feared. The virus was on my computer, right now.

I kept watching.

The infected machine was on, now, and Lily sat in front of it and started the virus. Her fingers danced across the keys as she communicated with it.

From the camera, I couldn’t see the screen, but that was probably as well. The sluggish green spirals glittered in Lily’s glassy eyes.

She fetched the headphones, plugged them in, and sat down. Stared into the monitor.

After a minute, I started to fast forward again.

It was two hours before she moved. Then, suddenly, she was typing, then standing up. She attached the external port, and returned to my office. She rifled through my drawer of memory sticks, pulling out several, but then putting them all back.

She began to search my desk. Her movements were smooth, natural, almost as though she weren’t simply asleep, her body obeying instructions her mind knew nothing about.

A moment later, she pulled out the box of infected memory sticks. The virii I kept around for reference, or further study.

Now I was confused as well as worried.

She chose one. Frustratingly, I couldn’t tell which one it was.

Then she was back in the clean room, seating herself, interfacing with the virus. Receiving more instructions. More programming.

Her pretty eyes were open wide. Her lips were full and lush, and relaxed into a slight frown.

She was so beautiful like that, mindless, relaxed and yet taut, ready to obey instantly whatever instruction was fed into her sleeping mind.

Boy, did she look hot.

Then she rose, and came over to my computer. The computer I was working on right now.

The computer I had been staring into for an hour.

She inserted the stick with the virus.

A moment later, and it was done. The machine I was on right now was infected.

But it wasn’t the 20-5. It was some other one, one that I’d already examined.

Then, as I watched Lily walk mindlessly back to the clean room, I knew which one she’d used.

Because her ass looked so good, I wanted to suck on it.

My finger stabbed at the fast forward key.

Lily spent the rest of the day in the clean room, staring at the screen. Typing in response. Staring. Listening to whatever the headphones were pouring into her ears. For hours.

Finally, I couldn’t help it. My hand slid downward, and I started to touch myself. My slit was already soaking wet, and the first graze of my fingers sent electricity right up my spine.

On the screen, Lily’s mouth started to move, rhythmically. In and out. In and out.

I knew what she was saying.

“Obey!”

Over and over again.

For hours.

Then, at five, she shivered, and began to move again. She shut down the computer. Replaced the headphones. Turned off my office computer, and slid the memory stick back into its box. Relocked the box. Sat down in front of the forgotten solitaire game, while that other virus secretly pulsed away behind it.

Her head drooped gently to her chest. And just as gently, rose again.

She resumed playing.

I stopped the video. I was confused. The virus hadn’t tried to escape. It had had all day, and made no moves to get out. Lily could have so easily copied it onto a memory stick and taken it out into the world. Or loaded it onto my computer, for it to take me over.

Of course, Lily-bot knew that I knew about it, and her. But then, she was just a drone. She couldn’t make decisions. So did the virus know? Could it know? She would undoubtedly tell it, if it was capable of dealing with interlopers.

It had to know. It had instructed her to plant the other virus on my system. But why? Why not itself?

I started my virus detection system, but I already knew what the other virus was.

The Hart Worm.

So, I had to assume that the 20-5 knew. And it had instructed its slave to infect my system with the Hart Worm. Why? It had to realize that I’d find it immediately. Didn’t it?

How much credit could I give this damn thing?

“Hey, what’s up?”

I almost jumped out of the chair. Lily was in the doorway, looking at me.

Suddenly, desperately, I wanted to leap from my chair and fuck her brains out.

“Ah,” I managed. “What?”

“What are you doing? Have you had dinner?”

She was in her robe, the little minx. I could see the upper slopes of her breasts between the terrycloth folds. Her mouth looked so good.

Oh, it was powerful. Because the Hart Worm had gotten me before. I already had the memories it wanted me to have, and it had only had to wake them up.

And I’d been staring right into it for almost two hours.

“I, uh, I, uh… yeah. Yes, I have.”

“Oh, okay. Well, I’m going to bed,” she said. “Is there anything you want?”

Had she paused before saying ‘anything’? A large part of me hungrily hoped so.

“Anything?” she repeated.

“No,” I almost gasped. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.”

She turned, and walked away, and I wanted to crawl after her and lick her calves. Instead, I looked back at the computer.

There it was. “Virii active: Hart Worm v 4.7”

I knew that I ought to delete it right now. What I wanted to do, was stare into it longer, and wait for a tranced and beautiful Lily to return to me. And fuck her for hours, and hours ….

What I did was, I turned off the computer.

I had to think.

—-

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/hl9gee/sub_routine_ff_mc_part_23