Reading her daughter’s journal, Tori Madison decided, had been more than justified. It had taken her a lot to psych herself up to it. She’d been worrying about Charlie now for weeks; just a few months ago, she’d been a model daughter, one who just needed to save up a little more money before she’d be ready to move out on her own. True, she’d never gone on to college, but Tori didn’t think that was necessary; hard work could open doors just as well for most jobs, if not better, and it didn’t come with a huge loan package to repay.

Somehow, though, since then her behaviour had become less and less satisfactory over time. Tori couldn’t put her finger on what had changed, couldn’t cite specific shifts in what she was doing. Nonetheless, she seemed less a model daughter each day. Tori was eventually forced to conclude that Charlie had never been as good as she’d thought, and it had simply taken the tension of the last couple months - everything involved in selling their business and in transitioning to the methods and materials favoured by others - for her to stop giving her good-for-nothing daughter the benefit of the doubt.

And then there was the journal. Charlie had only started keeping it in the last month, so there wasn’t much data, but she was making all kinds of observations, recording her own thoughts under specific situations. To say the least, her daughter’s opinions didn’t make Tori happy to read.

Anyone who’d ever worked retail knew that a slight customer service mask was necessary (although Tori had been finding it much less so, lately, and had attributed this to Mandatum’s influence making the town a better, happier place) but Charlie seemed to really dislike some of their customers.

Tilly Roth, for example, who’d come by most mornings for the past year and a half with her own order, and who now came by some mornings to collect Benton Allen’s order (when Hedy Monroe wasn’t doing it - leave it to an Allen, Tori thought admiringly, to show off that wealth can be in the people who want to please you, not just in your bank balance), came in for a huge amount of criticism from Charlie, who was calling her a ‘brainwashed slut’.

This, Tori considered, went beyond the pale even when you took into account that her daughter was a liberal teen, and would therefore consider a lot of consumerist behaviour a sign of brainwashing-by-media. But Charlie wasn’t much more complimentary about just about anyone else in town, except for three individuals who she bothered to hide the identities of somewhat; B, M, and N.

Tori hadn’t realised that Charlie had a clique like that, and most annoyingly, the girls she was used to thinking of as her daughter’s closest friends, the group she’d been part of when she graduated from high school a year ago, didn’t match; Ginny Darling, Venus Hawkins, Sharon Oxford, Abby Winder… none were a fit.

These three seemed to be supporting Charlie in her antisocial, unbranded attitudes; perhaps they were even ultimately responsible for Charlie thinking that way.

Tori wasn’t happy about that. Unfortunately, she’d only been able to identify one of the three - Beatrice Barthel - and the reason she could work that out was the same reason her daughter was having difficulty finding her; the woman just spent most of her time up in the mountains, off the beaten path, getting close to nature.

Which meant Tori didn’t rate her chances of running into her before her daughter could so that she could sort the problem out. At least Charlie wasn’t pushing it on her grounding; Tori was sending her frequent ads to her phone, and they were getting watched, if occasionally late. It should be going well.

*

“Sorry for calling direct, but I needed to talk to you.”

“That’s okay. Hey - just a quick thing - what’s your name?”

“Charlotte. Yours?”

“Nicole.”

“Okay, good.” Charlotte paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, but the absurdity of the exchange they’d just shared struck her and she had to vent. “Do you feel as dumb doing that as I do?”

“Yeah.” She could hear Nicole’s sigh down the line. “But the name is the change everyone seems to stick to. I called my mom Tamara last week - it wasn’t even deliberate, I just slipped - and I don’t remember the next two hours. So it’s the best test we’ve got.”

“Yeah. So, listen. I can’t make our next meeting, whenever it is.”

“What? What happened?”

“I’m grounded.”

“Charlotte, you turn twenty next month.”

“Her house, her rules, Mom said. But that’s not the big question anyway.”

“It’s not?”

“The big question is, why did she ground me?”

“Oh, shit. Go on.”

“She found my journal.”

Charlotte waited as several seconds of silence ticked by. “How much did it say?”

“Quite a lot, but not really in specifics,” she said. “I didn’t name anyone. But, obviously, whether or not my opinion of you three has changed, that’s one of the things I have to keep an eye on, right?”

“Yeah.” She could hear Nicole’s sigh down the line, and had to fight down a surge of unwarranted anger about it.

“Look, we both thought written down was more secure than the notes app on this thing, right?”

Which was ultimately also why they called when they had to discuss things digitally. Messaging was easier and more convenient but not only did it leave a paper trail but it was all too easy to imagine that Mandatum could run search on all the text that came in and our of the machines. Doing that over the voice chat programs that boasted digital security seemed less likely.

“Yeah, I know,” Nicole acknowledged. “It just means I need to change my timetable, that’s all.”

“Timetable? What?”

“Well, I was going to tell you about this in a couple days when we met next,” Nicole said. “Although, honestly, that might not have been safe to do for much longer anyway. Mom definitely thinks I’m dawdling on the clock, and she takes that as a personal insult.”

“Shit.” Charlotte’s anger was forgotten. “You’ve got to watch out for yourself.”

“Yeah. But hopefully not much longer. Listen - you know we were wondering if our moms were deliberately trying to mess with us, sending us all these ads?”

“Right.”

“I can’t speak for yours, but mine definitely is.” Charlotte’s mouth opened as Nicole continued. “Because I overheard Benton Allen giving her phone privileges over mine.”

“Oh, thank God.”

This remark threw Nicole entirely. “What?”

“Oh. Uh. Nothing, really. Only the ads I’ve been getting, I was beginning to wonder about your search history.”

“...I really don’t want to know. Are you noticing any effect?” she asked curiously. “I’ve been getting a lot less about the importance of punctuality and customer service since we swapped phones and honestly I think what I’m seeing has been less impactful.”

“I dread to ask,” Charlotte said. “But no, not really. I’m not feeling any more part of a team with my family than I did last time we spoke. Although,” she added conscientiously, “I guess the whole being grounded thing might just be counteracting it.”

“Yeah. Anyway, the point is, if I can get to his phone and I can get it unlocked, I can send the alert.”

“Oh! Shit!” Charlotte laughed with surprise. “And I just talked all over that - I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Just - hang in there, okay? We might not have to make it much longer.”

“God, I hope so.” Charlotte thought about it wistfully for a while. “What are you going to do?”

“I think… I hate to say it, but I think I’m going to have to give Benton what he wants.” Nicole considered. “At least make him feel like it. He’s into my mom, I told you that, right?”

“Right, but it’s no surprise. Most all the straight guys and half the lesbians.” Which had, once, been the punchline to a joke they’d shared.

It didn’t feel so funny anymore. Charlotte had given romance little time, not because she wasn’t interested but because it would be much more satisfying once she had a place of her own. Even so, she’d found herself looking at the men working for Mandatum differently in the past couple of months, and it turned out that knowing her attraction to someone was driven by covert brainwashing didn’t mean her libido got the memo.

Like Nicole, she’d taken to wearing somewhat more revealing garb over time, though Charlotte was still holding out against bringing any blue into her wardrobe. And laughing at Tamara was harder now that she felt a little jealousy about the older woman’s body and confidence - and about Nicole’s body, not that her friend had the same kind of confidence as her mom.

“Anyway, he’s got his hands on her a couple times, turns out.” The distaste in Nicole’s voice came in clear down the line. “If he thinks I’m up for grabs, too, I reckon he’ll let his guard down.”

“And then you pounce.”

“Exactly. I don’t like it, but…”

“Right. Listen, I gotta go, I can hear Mom moving around downstairs, and I’ve been on my own long enough she’ll be coming up to ‘check on me’ any moment,” Charlotte said. It was true - Tori had decided that her adult daughter needed near-constant supervision, or more accurately, near-constant ads.

“I get you. Good luck.”

“Same to you. Bye.”

“See you.”

Charlotte hung up the phone and sat there a while longer. She was trying to keep her hope contained.

Hope, it seemed to her, was a fragile shield. Once your hope cracked, you could lose it all at once. Let herself rely on it, and she feared it would crumble.

She heard her mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs, and braced herself. Every time, she wondered how close they were getting to her tipping point, the point where resistance would be irrelevant, where her own internal changes would carry her forward faster.

She wondered if she would even notice, when the time came.

*

Tammy had happily noted improvements in her daughter’s behaviour over the past several days, but that shift, it was particularly noteworthy. It felt like she’d finally decided to stop protesting and concentrate.

Once they’d closed down for the night, Tammy locked the door behind the last of them and seized her daughter in a tight hug. “That’s my girl,” she exclaimed.

She really hadn’t expected maintaining the boss-not-mom line would be as much of a challenge for her as it had been. On the other hand, it had been working well.

Nicole had gone stiff in her embrace, which probably underlined how much impact she’d had. “Uh, thanks, mom,” she said quietly.

“I think if you keep this up, graduation’s guaranteed,” Tammy told her. “And if so, there’ll be a place for you in Tammy’s as it grows. I can’t tell you how much I’d like that.” After a moment’s pause, she added, “But if you do well and you want to go somewhere else, honey, I’ll support you. Are you still thinking about R&D for Mandatum?”

“I - uh - not really,” Nicole said. “I was thinking about something in their business division.” There was surprise in her tone, which Tammy took to be for her own praise. “I’ve enjoyed this more than I thought I would, though. I guess I always thought that part of you didn’t come across to me.” Wistfully, she finished “I guess I was wrong.”

“I was talking to Jan Carter last night,” Tammy told her daughter. “What Benton said, about us in matching outfits… I think we should try it. Let’s go over to MaxiMart tomorrow, before the shift starts.”

After a quiet moment, Nicole said “Sure, Mom. I’d… I’d like that.”

*

This wasn’t supposed to be so hard, Nicole told herself, sat on her bed as the clock ticked closer to noon. She was staring at the bag sat on her bedroom chair.

The hard bit was meant to be tolerating Benton long enough to get his phone away from him. The hard bit was meant to be faking her way through another day at work downstairs, in the bar.

Reminding herself that what she had to do was important wasn’t meant to be hard. It shouldn’t even be necessary; she knew. It was just that she kept being distracted, and when she did, she…

She sort of forgot to hate her brainwashing for a while. Sort of forgot that she wasn’t attracted to Benton.

From the conversations they’d had, Charlotte had a very different experience with it, although that might be that she’d been surrounded by the signs from much earlier, and she was the sort of person who put off things she knew she’d enjoy anyway, so that they could come as a treat later. That wasn’t who Nicole was.

She was enjoying working alongside her mom. She was enjoying the attentions of the men in the bar, even; enjoying flirting with them. Tammy thought of it as business but Nicole found herself viewing it as a game, and one she played to win. One she was surprised to be good at, even though she’d had object lessons in how to do it daily for most of her life.

She’d started really questioning whether she wanted to go off to college. It had been her idea - when she dug deep enough into her memories, she could remember insisting on it to her mom, more than five years ago, when she’d first set her heart on it. She was almost sure the reason she didn’t want to go anymore was the brainwashing.

Almost.

With an audible sigh, she stood up and opened the bag. It was from MaxiMart Fashion and the contents were not a gift from her mom, Tammy had made that quite clear. They were an investment in her future in the business.

*

Following up on a conversation with Tammy, Benton had decided to get his lunch at Tammy’s rather than the canteen on Maple Street, which had quietly become a very good eatery since Sheri Agniello went to work there. He wasn’t waiting at the door when they opened - it never did to look too eager, after all - but he walked in fairly early.

As he’d suggested, Tammy and Nikki were in matching outfits; tight Mandatum-blue leggings with transparent panels running from hip to ankle on each side, and crop tops which were just as tight - but then, Benton realised, they needed to be; there were no bras below that taut fabric, so all the support came from the fact there wasn’t enough fabric for their chests not to be held high and perky. Both had swept their long hair back and wore it in bunches tied with ribbons of white and blue.

He appreciated the dedication; their discomfort was a sacrifice to his own enjoyment of their figures.

Benton took his place at the bar and was not surprised when, in short order, Tammy drifted over to him, a wicked grin on her face. To see Nikki converge on him from the other direction was more of a surprise, but he hoped it was a pleasant one.

“Ladies,” he said with a smile. “What a beautiful presentation.”

“We’re trialling a potential new Tammy’s uniform,” Tammy told him.

“It does mean we’ll have to make sure the staff are well fed, of course,” Nikki added. She giggled and looked away bashfully. Benton raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, I do hope I haven’t overstepped,” Nikki said with a purr. She rested one hand lightly on his arm. “I don’t have Mom’s eye for the right amount just yet.”

“But she’s learning,” Tammy put in, and Nikki blushed. Benton smiled. “Is that right?” he asked.

“I’d be happy to show you,” Nikki assured him. She slid onto the stool next to his, sitting so close that her hip was warm against his. “If you don’t mind, that is, boss.” This last directed to Tammy, who smiled back against her.

“I’ll hold down the fort,” she said.

Benton looked from one to the other, savouring it. The delighted anticipation in Tammy’s eyes. The not-quite-innocent-lamb expression Nikki wore.

How different her face looked when she was applying makeup to attract, he thought. He’d noticed it before, while she’d been on the placement, but only at one remove. Women could do such remarkable things with makeup that if you were used to a face without it, you could misread their expressions once it was applied.

Nikki nodded her head toward the back office door and raised her eyebrows. The invitation was clear even if the face was unreadable. Benton smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s get some privacy.”

But she led him through the office and into the back part of the bar, where a connecting doorway led to a staircase that ascended up into one storeroom and the Delaney residence proper.

Nikki’s bedroom had been redecorated, he had to presume, a year or two earlier. It was tasteful, whites with deep grey accents, and boasted no art, no posters, just a mirror and a pinboard by the desk. She must, he thought, have been painfully earnest.

She had paused just in front of him, where she reached up to the back of her neck, where the strap of her top could be unfastened. She did so, letting the top fall away from her tits, before turning back to him. She placed her hand, fingers spread, on his chest. “I think I owe you an apology,” she purred, “sir.”

“Oh, yes?”

“When you first came here, and you offered me attentions.” Her voice was low. She took another step forward and her bare tits pressed against his shirt around her spread hand. “I was very rude.

“I’m happy to say I know better now.”

Benton stopped her protests with a kiss, silencing her with his mouth on hers - or not quite silencing her; there was an oddly satisfied moan that escaped. It was in his power, as her superior, to be magnanimous.

Especially when he was winning. “You’ve taken me most of the way,” he said, once they’d both come up for air. “Let me take you to bed.” He said it firmly. There was no question that it was an order.

Nikki giggled. “Yes, sir.”

*

Men got vague in the afterglow, when they didn’t fall asleep entirely. Nikki had known that as an article of faith for years, had even made it part of her plan - there would be no better opportunity to do what needed to be done, so she’d made the sacrifice.

Except that it hadn’t turned out to be a sacrifice, really. She’d enjoyed it; enjoyed him, enjoyed the way he knew what to do, even felt a shuddering thrill at the smirk he wore throughout. And, as much as she wanted to tell herself that thrill was because she knew she was actually about to triumph, while he thought he had, she knew it wasn’t. It was coming from in her head.

It wouldn’t have been there without the M-Phones and the brainwashing they’d made possible. But it was there nonetheless. Coaxing Benton Allen to orgasm had felt like both a pleasure and a privilege.

She reminded herself lazily that it had been, in fact, a pleasure and a necessity, and on the happy thought of her upcoming success she sat up and reached for his clothes, where she sorted through his pockets and triumphantly fished out his phone.

He was dozing lightly, so using his thumbprint to bypass the biometrics wasn’t even a challenge. She turned the screen back to face her so she could find the app she needed-

Her mom was staring out at her, eyes glassy, mouth slack. A kaleidoscope built around Mandatum blue and greens swirled in the background behind her.

“Nikki’s not as smart as she thinks,” Tammy recited, her voice an echoey drone. “Nikki’s not as smart as she thinks.”

She had been filmed from the waist up, and was either topless or fully naked. As vacant as she appeared, she was certainly happy.

“Nikki’s not as smart as she thinks.”

Nicole found herself suddenly still. She should be alarmed, she thought. Should be panicking. Adrenalin should be surging through her body.

“Nikki’s not as smart as she thinks.”

It was not.

“Surprise,” Benton said. There was still a yawning quality to his voice, but evidently he hadn’t been as dead to the world as she’d believed. He sat up next to her, slipped his arm around her shoulders. In the background, her mom was still droning on.

“Charlie told us,” he said softly, almost gently, his head close to Nicole’s ear. “She cracked, in the end. Her mom did a fine job for us, wearing down her resistance until it got just too thin.

“She told us what your plan was going to be. Told us about Miriam, too - of course we’ve got her already - and Beatrice, who I grant you is going to be a problem we need to solve.

“So I spoke to your mother - more than she realised, as you can see. But the rest of her wasn’t happy about it, either. She’s actually the one who cooked up this plan.”

Into the silence Nicole’s mom’s voice spoke again. “Nikki’s not as smart as she thinks.”

“Of course,” Benton picked up smoothly, “you’re still pretty smart. We knew that. It’s one of the things we’re going to make use of, actually. Once we find out where you’re supposed to be. Your mom thinks you’re supposed to be here, but, well…” He shrugged. “If not, we’ll figure something out anyway, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

He chuckled. “I wanted to make this very clear. Your resistance… honestly, it’s admirable. It just also presented us with a problem. And you and Charlie, you’ve come up with some interesting ideas. We’re already looking for ways to fix them before our next big rollout.

“Of course, the swapped phones was the easiest part. Did you notice that your ads seemed to be targeted at you again this week?”

“Yes,” Nikki answered. She had been asked a question, so giving an answer was the right thing to do.

It felt so natural now. Like whatever part of her had disapproved had finally surrendered. Had given up.

Nikki was fairly sure that was what had happened.

“Well, before I put myself in your line of attack again,” he said, “I wanted to make sure you were right on the edge. It’s like anything else; you put enough strain on something, when you hit it it breaks clean and easy. And you feel like that’s happened, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Nikki said again. Benton chuckled.

“See, I think if you’d held out, you wouldn’t be able to fake the way you sound,” he said. “I think I won this one. But the fact you apologised before I told you to?” He chuckled. “That’s just icing on the cake.” A pause. “Am I going to have any more trouble with you, Nikki?”

“No,” Nikki said.

“Then we don’t need this anymore.” Plucking his phone from her hands, he ended the clip. “You and Charlie have some things to do for me,” he said. “Including performing for the Board. They’ll want to see you’re a company woman. An asset.” His hand found her buttock. “You are, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He snapped his fingers and lay back. “Then show me.”

Nicole turned and climbed back onto the bed, then straddled him.

She was happy. She felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

*

Beatrice saw them approaching through the trees perhaps two hundred yards out. For a moment she tensed, wondering whether she should run, which way to flee if she did, how safe it would be. Signs of unexpected human activity had become something that unsettled her.

Something about them, though, wasn’t what she had expected. It took her a moment to realise.

They weren’t wearing any blue.

She hesitated, waiting there for a little longer to see more.

The two figures approaching grew closer, and she recognised them.

Her friends Nicole and Charlotte had come out looking for her. Beatrice sagged with relief and hurried over to meet them.

*

“Go on,” Benton said cheerfully. “Give her a kiss.”

Nikki was only too glad to have the opportunity. She turned to face Bibi Barthel, who was sitting next to her on the sofa, and leaned into the kiss. Their lips parted hungrily, and in no time Bibi had one arm slipped around the back of Nikki’s neck while Nikki’s hand pawed at her breast below her lycra Mandatum tee.

“Wouldn’t think they were straight, would you?” Nikki heard Benton ask, to the general amusement of the menfolk in the room. “Alright, girls,” he resumed. “Take a breather.”

The kiss broke up as instructed, their lips parting, their heads staying close.

“Bibi, tell Nikki you’re sorry you were so hard to find.”

“I’m sorry,” Bibi said at once, and she sounded so honest that if you hadn’t heard her be told what to say you’d be sure it was of her own accord. “I led you astray.”

“Nikki,” Benton went on, “tell Bibi you’re not sorry you turned her in.”

“I’m not sorry I turned you in,” Nikki told her, and it was in any case nothing but the truth. Mandatum deserved better from its assets than they’d received while the four held out as rebels.

“That’s very good,” Benton continued. “Now Charlie, tell Nikki the same thing.”

“I’m not sorry I turned you in,” Charlie responded, turning her head to look up at the sofa from her position kneeling on the floor, her mouth wrapped around Derek Pymon’s cock.

“Charlie, tell Mimi she should live up to your example,” Benton pushed on.

Her mouth slipped easily off Pymon’s erection with an audible pop, and as Charlie said “You should live up to my example,” Nikki was staring at Derek’s cock. It was a Mandatum cock. It was for making new Mandatum assets. It was for Mandatum assets to pleasure.

She accepted that now. Her place was not a low one - it was a privilege, in fact - but she knew it.

Charlie was getting the praise, Nikki knew, because when she’d broken she had happily told her mom, and then Benton, not just about the new plan but everyone else who had known about the failed attempt.

For Miriam they’d simply phoned her mom, and Liv had been ever so happy to add a tranquiliser into that night’s dinner, and then to open the door to Maggie and Jenny when they arrived.

Bibi had been a trickier problem. As Nikki understood it, Bibi wasn’t entirely clear on who she really was yet. She was in another cubicle nearby, while what had been done to Liv Nystrom was being done to her. That had confused Nikki at first, but Benton had explained that it wasn’t any fault in the process for Liv; she’d just guessed wrong, not knowing that the Board was so interested in her as a case study.

She was looking forward to meeting Bibi. Once they’d been sent out to find her, she and Charlie had done a lot of speculating about what their friend would be like once she was a proper asset. Their guesses differed widely, and Nikki half thought it would turn out that neither of them had guessed right.

Nikki’s opinion on Benton had gradually shifted. It had been easy for them to think of him as a insecure nepo baby. That was still how Nikki felt about his father (though she would never dream of hurting his feelings by allowing him even to suspect that) but like the executives she had seen a corporate ruthlessness to him that she was sure would come to be respected. When he came to breed the next generation of his branch of Allens, they would have the capacity to make the most of the opportunity they were handed.

She had decided not to go on to college. Her mom was going to train her up as a Tammy’s manager, and when Benton was given a wider remit, she was sure she’d convince him to take her along when he moved.

*

“We need to balance them all out,” Derek Pymon told his staff later. “Get this place tightened up properly. Then once the phones are rolling out nationwide, most of us will be moving on to the next project. Dan, Bob, Ricky, you’ll be staying here to keep support rolling, but a new town’s been selected.”

“I hadn’t heard anything about this,” Frank Boone said. “You mean we’re going to have to move again? Why don’t these three?”

“Because it only takes three to maintain this system once it’s up and running, and they’ve already made friends with one of the local assets,” Pymon said. “New project will get announced in a week or so, but in the meantime I don’t mind if you guys get a march on things. Start property shopping in Stepford, Connecticut.”