Fresh from a post-gym shower, Cassidy Morningstar dressed in a comfortable light grey sweatshirt and matching sweatpants, undecided as yet whether she would keep them on for her evening’s stream or change into something more eye-catching. She had a few hours to choose, though, so put the matter out of her mind as she sat in her pink-and-white swivel chair, switched on her computer, and began checking her messages on her phone.

Having been streaming on Twitch for almost four months, Cassidy had built up a loyal following of almost two hundred viewers per stream - not much compared to some of her more popular peers, but more than she’d been expecting! As an attractive young female gamer, she got a lot of messages every day - there were almost two dozen new ones on her social media, just from the last couple of hours while she’d been working out. The content of such messages varied, some complimenting her on her friendly, chatty demeanour on her streams, but many more waxing poetic about her muscular arms, her fiery red hair, her perky breasts and her toned ass.

Scrolling through the comments, she liked the nicer ones, replied to a couple of her favourites, and ignored or deleted the more overtly creepy or sexual. She had a fairly high threshold for such things - she knew her appearance was part of her appeal as a streamer, and she didn’t mind people making appreciative comments about her body or her outfits - but she had a line and knew where to draw it.

Her socials duly checked, Cassidy switched her attention to her email account, which was usually far less active. To her surprise, she’d been contacted by a company whose name she didn’t recognise - Estro, Inc. They claimed she had come to their attention as a ‘promising streamer with great potential’, and asked if she would be willing to help them beta test their new game. They offered to pay her ten dollars an hour, and asked only that she did not play the game on her stream, for confidentiality purposes.

Intrigued but wary, she did a quick Google search to see if Estro, Inc. was on the level, and was surprised to learn they were a growing tech company with several locations across the western US, including one less than an hour from where she lived. Because of her unfamiliarity with them, she’d assumed they were some dinky games company who’d just been set up, but actually they’d been around for years producing all sorts of innovations in the fields of ‘medical and psychiatric technology’, and were just now expanding into games.

“Good enough for me,” she said with a shrug, and fired off an email telling them she’d be happy to help. “Hey, even if nothing comes of it, ten bucks an hour works for me.”

Within two minutes she’d received a reply with the company’s profuse thanks, and a link to the game. Clicking it, she was brought to a page asking for some personal details about herself, ‘for our database’. All standard stuff, nothing too incisive or confidential that she’d be uncomfortable telling them. She was, however, bewildered to see that next to the empty bar where she could fill in the answer for each question, there was a button labelled ‘I cannot remember’.

Cassidy snorted with mirth. “Who forgets their name? Who’ve they got answering these questions?” Shaking her head, she quickly filled in the boxes. Name: Cassidy Morningstar. Age: 20. State: California. Relationship Status: Single. Most-Used Social Media: Twitter.

With those options completed, she clicked the ‘next’ button at the bottom of the page, and was shown a grid of six columns and six rows. Almost all of the squares were empty, but one depicted a sparkling, luminescent spiral. She grinned, bemused. “OK, so, how do I play this thing...?” Tapping her keyboard experimentally, she was rewarded with the sight of the spiral moving to another box when she pressed one of the arrow keys. At the same time, she saw an identical spiral appear in another box across the grid.

What she didn’t see were the subliminal messages starting to flicker across the screen, at a frame rate faster than the human mind could consciously process. But her subconscious registered the messages, slowly starting to absorb them.

The grid started to fill up with more spirals as she started to move them closer to each other, all of them moving in the same direction when she pressed an arrow key. But when two of them made contact, they merged together into a single box in the grid, transforming into a different spiral - this one black and white. She felt a quiver go through her - so that was what she had to do! She was starting to grasp the essentials of the game, and really it was very simple. By bringing two identical spirals together, she could merge them into one, and keep the grid from filling up. All she had to do was keep combining them.

It was easy really - not exactly testing Cassidy’s skills! And yet... she was quite enjoying playing it. Every time two of the sparkling spirals combined to form a black-and-white one, she felt a flicker of pleasure go through her. All the while, those subliminals continued to pour into her mind, unseen by her eyes.

As she merged two black-and-white spirals into a third variation - this one red, yellow and blue - suddenly the personal details box appeared again. She flinched, surprised and annoyed. “What the fuck?” she muttered. “I already did this...” Sighing with resignation, she filled out the same information again. Name: Cassidy Morningstar. Age: 20. State: California. Relationship Status: Single. Most-Used Social Media...

What was her most-used social media? She was struggling to recall. There was a gap in her memory where the answer should be. She felt a little worried by that, but a bigger part of her was itching to get back to the spirals game. So she just clicked the ‘I cannot remember’ button for that answer, and then clicked the ‘next’ arrow. To her relief, she was brought back to the spirals, unchanged from the configuration she had them in before the interruption.

Moving her chair right up close to her desk, she continued mechanically tapping her arrow keys, moving the spirals, joining more and more of them together. She was always rewarded with an electric thrill that ran through her body, growing stronger and more pronounced each time. She could feel them caressing her lips, running down her chest, encircling her breasts, tickling her belly, stroking between her legs...

‘Enter your personal details’, the game demanded once again. “Fuck sake!” she grunted, typing her answers in as fast as she could, frantic to return to the game. Name: Cassidy Morningstar. Age: 20. State: California. Relationship Status: uhh... “Crap,” she mumbled, biting her lip as she stared at the empty box. She couldn’t remember if she was seeing anyone. That was really worrying. She should probably talk to someone, try and figure out what was happening to her memory...

But she didn’t want to stop playing. She wanted to get back to the tedious, addictive, weirdly erotic spiral game, more than she wanted to figure out why she was forgetting key information about herself. (The subliminal messages prevented her from recognising the game itself was responsible for her worsening amnesia, just as they were responsible for rewarding her good gameplay with increasing arousal, and for making her more and more compelled by the game.)

So she clicked ‘I cannot remember’ again, for both her relationship status and her most-used social media. And back to the game she went. By now her attention was so laser-focused on her screen, she was hardly blinking. Noises from outside her room failed to disturb her at all - not the sounds of traffic beyond her window, or her roommate moving around in the apartment’s kitchen. The game was becoming her whole world.

Well, the game and her growing horniness. As two more spirals combined, she shuddered delightedly, a moan escaping her mouth. She dimly noticed how turned on she was, and it occurred to her that she didn’t usually get this aroused while playing a video game. After all, she streamed on Twitch, not Chaturbate! But it was so difficult to hold onto these thoughts, and they drifted out of her mind with the next wave of subliminals.

The personal details page popped up again. Not wasting time on a verbal protest this time, she just grunted with annoyance and filled out the first two boxes yet again. But when she got to her age... She agonised over it for two seconds, and then, prompted by a needy throb from between her legs, she quickly clicked ‘I cannot remember’ for the remaining three options and returned to the game.

Three or four spiral mergers later and Cassidy was playing the game one-handed, her left hand rubbing her crotch through her sweatpants. She could no longer remember why it was strange to be so horny when she was gaming. Her mouth hung agape as her unblinking eyes were led across the grid by the spirals. A new subliminal was transmitted into her mind every five seconds, erasing more and more of her thoughts, her memories, her personality.

When the details page returned yet again, Cassidy automatically, unprotestingly typed her name, not conscious enough to be at all annoyed by the interruption this time. She then clicked ‘I cannot remember’ for the four remaining options. As the spiral grid reappeared, her left hand slipped under her waistband. A trickle of drool fell from her mouth and splashed onto her keyboard, but she didn’t even notice. All that mattered to her - all that existed for her - was combining the spirals to make more and more pretty swirling images on her screen, and feeling bigger and bigger waves of pleasure rush through her every time.

The next time she was asked to enter her details, absolutely nothing came to mind. She clicked ‘I cannot remember’ five times, saw the spiral grid before her eyes again, and sank back in her chair with a moan. Her middle finger circled around her clit in sync with the spirals, as she pulled her sweatshirt up, baring her tits, and groped them eagerly. Her glassy eyes continued to follow the spirals across the grid as she mindlessly masturbated, not even noticing that the game was playing itself while she played with herself, the spirals shifting, rearranging and merging of their own accord while her hands occupied themselves elsewhere, running on automatic as they edged her.

As the final spiral variants combined, the screen filled with pulsating white, sending more subliminal messages into her brain at an accelerated rate. Moaning loudly, she slid down in her chair, legs spread wide, and thrust her fingers deep inside herself. Within seconds she reached a powerful climax that whited out her thoughts, just as the game had whited out her computer screen - from which she never once averted her gaze.

Sitting up straight, she stared blankly at the screen, more drool dropping from her lips. “Host personality 100 per cent erased,” she said tonelessly, the messages embedded in her subconscious feeding her the words, as her conscious mind had been completely wiped.

The game sent her another series of subliminal flickers. “Uploading new personality,” the empty vessel that used to be Cassidy Morningstar droned.

She didn’t speak for another twenty minutes, as her computer transmitted more information into her blank-slate mind, creating a new persona for her - one that would be far more useful to her new owners. This new character wasn’t too fleshed out - there would be plenty of time for Estro, Inc. to further develop her memories, habits and traits at their headquarters, once the night’s festivities had concluded. For now, the company had only a few basic requirements of their new ambassador, and a few additional details were implanted as basic worldbuilding.

Blinking awake, Cassi inhaled deeply, her eyes wide. What had she just been doing? She giggled when she couldn’t remember, knowing only that she felt really good. She glanced at her phone clock - it was time to get ready! She had a party to go to that evening - an exclusive event hosted by Estro, Inc. All their wealthiest investors would be attending, and Cassi had been invited too, with all her drinks paid for in advance as long as she made the other guests feel very welcome.

Her mouth watered. So many rich men and women, gathered together in one place, with her to keep them company... She couldn’t wait to offer herself to them. It wasn’t strictly part of her contract to whore herself out, but she doubted Estro, Inc. would mind if it kept their investors happy. (They didn’t - it was their idea, of course, unbeknownst to her.) As she dressed in the most provocative, revealing clothes she could find - a white corseted dress patterned with pink flowers, and five-inch-high heels - Cassi shuddered with excitement for the evening. Drinks and sex awaited her in equal abundance, all courtesy of her generous benefactors, Estro, Inc. The newly-minted nymphomaniac was already wet just thinking about it.

Heading out to the front of her apartment building to wait for a company driver to collect her, she idly wondered if she would have time to stream tonight. She understood she might have to postpone to another night, but she had a loyal following on Chaturbate - she didn’t want to keep them waiting for too long!