Austin’s first move after Bonnie left his room was to dig out his laptop and change the instruction running through the app. Think better of Austin. There; that was pretty basic, pretty simple, and had no issues he could easily see. Plus it wouldn’t cause him any problems if he sat in the living room with his wife and his - it turned out - absolute cougar of a mother-in-law.

He lay there for a while, thankful he’d now solved the problem - or at least set it aside - trying to get everything back into place. Then he shook his head. He didn’t have enough information yet. And it was definitely time he started looking for more - but very, very carefully.

He went downstairs and sat down beside Sharon. She - and Bonnie - flashed him warm, affectionate smiles. So they were taking in the latest instruction; that was good. He was pretty sure they’d internalised their previous actions, too, and created explanations for them; all the same, he was quite surprised neither of them had asked anything about the other one’s activity.

Still… that wasn’t a hornet’s nest to stir up with both of them there. He fell silent and joined them in watching TV. After an hour or two he was feeling pretty good; he had this. He knew what he was doing, and he was going to be able to handle any issues that might come up. No question whatsoever. “So,” he said to Sharon, “You’re OK with Mae sucking my cock?”

“What?” Bonnie blurted, wide-eyed with surprise.

Sharon rolled her eyes at Austin and tutted. She shifted in her seat and turned a little away from him to face his mother. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I decided earlier that I needed to suck Austin’s cock, and when I went to find him Mae already was. So I joined in.” She glanced back at her husband. “Don’t think you’re getting that again, though,” she said. “It was just a weird coincidence.” She blinked and seemed to be thinking about it a little further. “And if I catch her with your dick in her mouth again, you’d better hope and pray I’m in the same mood I was this afternoon. Because otherwise I’ll make hell for you. Just because I did it once doesn’t mean anything.”

Austin was quiet, but he could feel his heart hammering in his chest, far too excited. Not from Sharon’s strange self-justification for what she’d done under the app’s influence, but from the strange expression on her mother’s face. When Sharon mentioned herself and Mae getting busy on his dick, her mother had looked startled - and then nodded vigorously at the idea it was a coincidence.

Whatever the app was doing, it didn’t just let people explain away their own behaviour. He was seized with the sudden impulse to change the instructions back, lock the door, and enjoy both skilled mouths; after all, once he’d done that, they’d have something else to mentally explain away. They might push their own mental rules a little further.

Was that what the app designers counted on? Did enough small changes add up to a permanent change?

If it hadn’t been so late, he’d have made the change there and then to test it, confident in his ability to handle whatever happened as a result. It wasn’t until he and Sharon went upstairs to bed and he lay out of reach of the app that he realised that confidence might be born of the app.

He could very easily make himself so sure of his own success that he’d let his guard down and get himself into trouble.

So much for spending the evening safely in the same room as the app.

*

Sundays were busy days at the best of times, and Austin found himself doing more of the chores than usual - Bonnie and Sharon were leaving the living room as little as they could, and he wasn’t quite prepared to send chore lists through the app in case he told someone to do something they literally couldn’t and they started to catch on.

Something was sure to break the app, after all. Someone was going to realise. He was almost sure of that.

He set the question of what to do next aside until the evening, when he excused himself from the usual TV and headed upstairs to get his laptop. When he logged back on to his control app, he found, as well as the behavioural prompt command line, there was a phone number displayed.

That hadn’t been there before.

He looked at his phone thoughtfully. It was pretty obvious that this was reaching out to him. The question was, did he want to be reached out to?

He’d stumbled onto this. He’d taken advantage. And it had been simple enough, for someone with his background, that he’d had no issues finding it. He realised now that he’d been assuming this was the designers’ intent, at least somewhat. Now he was wondering if he’d pissed off someone. Someone with the technology to manipulate minds.

Was calling them back going to be a good idea? Would they be friendly or antagonistic?

Austin decided that for the time being he’d leave the number untouched. If he could figure out answers to his various concerns without involving them, he might impress them, even if they were biased against him. Buoyed up by his own most recent conditioning, he was absolutely confident in his own abilities, and he knew he’d be able to solve this problem when it got real.

Until then he’d be more than happy to leave it be. He’d been thinking, in the meantime. Into the behavioural prompt window he typed Women should leave a flower outside Bonnie’s house.

He’d have to keep an eye on the count. There were a lot of people in the cul-de-sac, and a little over half were women; the lesbian couple tipped the balance slightly, as did the fact there were two women to one man in his own house. If the number of flowers left was around fifteen, he could be confident that instructions could be segregated by gender. If it was somewhere nearer twenty-five or thirty, he couldn’t target just one section of the population.

The ideal would be for fifteen flowers and for no sign that the men not following the instruction had registered how odd it was.

…Come to that, had any of them thought about the urges some had surely had to suck his cock the day before? Had they found some explanation or were they grappling with unexplained desires which had come and gone so quickly?

Not for the first time he wished that Luke liked him. The weekly poker game was the stuff of local legend, and it’d also give him a great chance to test for odd reactions firsthand.

But Luke didn’t like you if he didn’t respect you, and he didn’t respect you if your business had failed or you couldn’t easily lay your hands on thirty thousand dollars without ruining your savings or your month. That made Austin doubly unimpressive.

He wondered if he could get Bonnie to enquire without questioning it. Didn’t seem likely…

Well, he was a smart guy. He was confident in his own abilities. He needed to think better of himself, and he’d find a way to solve this.

Only after following that chain of thought to its end did it occur to him that he could just go downstairs and see if he felt an urge to leave a flower outside if he wanted to test the gender issue.

Austin flushed with embarrassment. Missing the obvious idea reminded him that his own current high self-appraisal was just the last program the app had loaded into his head.

*

By lunchtime Monday there were seventeen flowers scattered on the lawn outside Bonnie’s house, which both confirmed for him that there was some level of targeting available, and also told him that the grumpy teenager with the weird haircut and the baggy hoodie living halfway down the other side of the street was a woman. He’d not been at all sure how to ask, and from the way some of the neighbours pursed their lips when talking about her, he got the distinct impression not everyone would have given him a correct answer anyway.

Austin shut himself back inside the house - God, but he hated early shifts - and walked past the living room where Bonnie sat, turning over all his options for testing suggestions further. Knowing there were a dozen or more of these devices up and down the street - that everyone in range could be influenced so easily - had him wondering what he could get away with. He wanted something that would confirm the men of the street had either ignored or internalised and explained away his suggestion to the women.

But without actually asking one of the men - and promoting suspicion if they’d noticed - he could only know they wouldn’t follow the compulsion. He couldn’t know they’d explain it away. He wasn’t a good test for that; he knew too much.

Still pondering what he could do to test this clearly, Austin loaded the command app almost on reflex.

When he saw the command line was now greyed out, the phone number still in place, he had a moment of panic - but, he reminded himself, it could be somewhat worse. This could have been locked to the cocksucking suggestion from just two days earlier, and he’d be effectively trapped in the house.

Whoever was trying to make contact with him had just made that contact into his priority, too.

He knew Bonnie would be sat in the living room, well out of earshot of his bedroom; paranoia drove him to check anyway.

He crossed back to the bedroom window and stood looking out over their street as he dialled the number. After four rings, he heard the click of a desk phone being activated at the other end and a deep voice, heavy with the sound of chewing something, said “H’lo?”

“Hi,” Austin answered. “Who, uh… who is this?”

“I could ask you the same question,” the voice answered. There was a pop that sounded like someone smacking their gum, then his voice became suddenly clear. “I’m not going to, though. I’m going to go out on a limb and say you weren’t being real generous to someone else, so I’m going to guess you’re Austin. Right?”

Austin’s blood went cold. He’d thought of the app as transmitting only to the devices, and the fact one command replaced the next had made him confident there was no real record. But hearing whoever this was speak his name made it clear he’d been a damn fool.

This wasn’t the first time he’d realised too late that his assumptions weren’t just wrong but dangerously wrong. His business had fallen, too, because he’d been more confident than his situation deserved.

After a few more moments without Austin saying anything, the voice laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“OK,” Austin said. “Listen, whoever you are, if I’ve done anything that’s messing with your plans, I’m sorry. I-”

“Couldn’t resist the opportunity after you tested it out and figured out what you had?”

“…Yeah. Exactly that.” Austin replayed the other man’s comment through his head. The breezy amusement in his voice… “You were hoping for that, weren’t you?” he asked.

“We figured someone would notice. Whether or not they’d take advantage… well, we hoped.”

We. So there was more than one of these people. Maybe quite a few. It seemed like a pretty well-polished operation, except it was being sold door to door, and he couldn’t imagine that scaled well - so how many people could it sustain? And how many could keep the secret?

“Why?”

“You know what a money mule is, Austin?”

“No…” he said slowly. “But a drug mule carries drugs for a bigger group.”

“Right. So. We’ve got ourselves a real money maker here. I’m sure you can see a few dozen ways we can make money with this.”

“Oh, for sure.”

“Problem is, as you’ve also seen, it’s not perfect. We can only inject one command at a time, and we’re not going to get much feedback operating with a big group. But the money is in the big groups. At least until we launch a version for corporate officers, but they’ll expect to see testimonials and safety certificates. With me so far?”

“I think so,” Austin said. Then enlightenment dawned. “Wait - do you need people like me because we can give you the feedback?”

The voice at the other end of the line laughed. “Nope. We need people like you to take the heat.”

Austin swallowed. “What’s in it for me?”

“I was waiting for this. You want the carrot or the stick first?”

“What?”

“If you don’t understand what I mean it’s got to be the stick first. Check your little app.”

Austin broke away from studying the movement of his neighbours in the street below and scurried back across to his laptop. The command line was still greyed out, but there was an instruction there all the same, one which had been loaded into place and which he couldn’t change.

Nobody gets Austin off.

“Oh,” Austin said, and his voice was so faint it could barely be heard. “Shit.”

The man he’d called started laughing. “You got that one right, buddy.” He left Austin to contemplate a sexless future for a while before speaking up again. “That’s the stick. But the carrot is a cut of the money, plus once we’ve got it, we leave the system running. If you can outrun your consequences, you can get back to where you thought you were before you took my call.”

“You mean-”

“We’ll unlock the system. Matter of fact, we’ll unlock it while you’re working for us. Just be aware it can all go wrong. You can’t get rid of every one of ‘em in your area.”

Austin sighed. Took a deep breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“It’s all about money, Austin,” the man said. “You pull five hundred thousand out of your buddies’ bank accounts, you keep two per cent and I don’t meddle with your little gadget anymore. But the point is, they know - or anyone who goes nosing around their accounts gets pointed at - you. So what comes through to us is clean as a whistle. It’s you who has to deal with the fallout.”

“And the alternative…”

“Is your friends there never, ever get you off. And they don’t let you get away either, if you decide to run.”

“One of them’s my wife,” Austin retorted, stung. The man on the other end of the call let out a gleeful cackle.

“Didn’t stop you getting everyone queuing up to suck your cock, did it?” he asked. “And I bet she just sat there and took it, didn’t she?”

Austin was embarrassed that his first impulse was to brag, not to be angry. The fact of the matter was, he had been all too eager to get the benefits of this once he’d discovered it.

And, as much as his stomach twisted with dismay, he was having difficulty not admitting to himself that he was going to go right back to abusing the system once he could get this guy off his back.

“So you’re just bringing me in to make sure you’ve got a fall guy?” he asked.

“Yes, I saw you change the topic,” the caller retorted. “But no. You’ve got other advantages for us. Like, you know what the people around you can afford. And trhat’s the big reason we need you.

“There’s another version of this where we haven’t thought this through and everyone just has a compulsion to withdraw a shitload of cash, wrap it in clingfilm and then tinfoil, and mail it through the post. But if we take everyone’s life savings, that’s more than even we’re comfortable doing. And if we set a number value for everyone to withdraw, anyone who literally can’t will notice how weird the thought is, and our tests tell us they can snap to understanding off that.”

“…ah.” Austin nodded slowly.

“Right. So you’re getting us five hundred thousand less your two per cent, and it’s on you to work out who can afford what. That way, everything stays in place. And if you’re smart enough, you should be able to get out without any trouble.” He paused. “Well, without too much.”

“There’s got to be a better way to make money off this thing,” Austin said, getting interested in the problem despite himself.

“We thought of influencing juries,” the man said. “One activation, in the jury room, while they’re deliberating, and your man goes free. But you need a high profile to pick up those opportunities. Too many ways it can go wrong.” He clucked his tongue, sounding amused. “Anyway. This is the one we’re going with, Austin.

“Figure yourself out a plan, and get to it.”

The call disconnected and Austin sat for a few moments in silence, drumming his fingers against his lips. He was interested in spite of himself… even if he didn’t have the other motivation to drive him.

*

As much as Austin was tempted just to have Bonnie write a cheque so he could keep the entire issue in-house, he wasn’t sure she could liquidate half a million without raising questions from people who might interfere or tip off the police. And avoiding the police was his top priority in planning - so long as the anger was all on the street, he figured he had at least a half-decent opportunity to keep things under control.

He definitely needed to make sure the consequences weren’t seen by anyone beyond the reach of the app…

If Sharon wasn’t completely ignoring his advances, and if there wasn’t blackmail hanging over his head, he might have admitted to being quite intrigued by the whole thing.

As it stood…

Monday had passed more or less in a stupor. He’d seen the depth of his problems, but he’d had no inspiration to conquer them. It wasn’t until he was stood at his workstation on Tuesday morning, yawning his way through phone call tech support with a customer, that he suddenly realised what had been staring him in the face.

It was the obvious plan, wasn’t it? And it would reassure him, too, that he could still be the one with the upper hand in the situation.

He was being blackmailed to produce money, and the threat he was facing was not exposure but blue balls. He could definitely pass that along.

*

Back at his computer that afternoon, he decided to start with something simple. Something that would establish the groundwork he needed.

Women only fuck if Austin is involved.

He was quite proud of the phrasing. It should mean he’d have a pretty good chance to play around if he wanted to, but it was also going to declare these women off-limit to their husbands.

That should give most of the people here plenty of motivation to make him a payment, he noted; he’d give it a few days before he actually raised the issue with anyone.

By Thursday, Austin got home to find his mother in law eyeing him speculatively. She wasn’t even in the living room; instead, as he fixed his lunch in the kitchen, she mooched around from counter to counter behind him, her eyes always on his body. It took Austin a little while to notice, and a few moments afterwards to realise what was happening.

He was… gratified? But also now that he was seeing the hunger in her eyes, he suddenly realised that he was, once again, skirting the balance between in control and losing control.

Bonnie licked her lips and moved closer, head half-bowed, looking up at him like he was an appetiser on a tasting menu. He remembered the amused but intense attention she’d given him at the weekend while sucking his cock; there had been a hint there of a deeply sexualised woman that he’d never realised remained. His latest adjustment had made her an essential part, it seemed, of getting her rocks off. Austin suddenly realised that there was a knock-on to many, many other lives up and down the street. If, like Bonnie, they’d extended fucking even to masturbation, then it wasn’t just the men developing blue balls; the women couldn’t satisfy themselves either.

He remembered the lesbian couple, too, and wondered which might give out first if he tried to sate them all; his stamina or his conscience.

“Austin?” Bonnie asked quietly. “You remember the other day?”

“Which one?”

“The one where I paid a call on you in your room,” she said, “and sucked your cock?”

He swallowed. There was every reason to believe that was still going to be behaviour she’d mentally explained away and accepted. He was just still nervous. There was too much to the system, he knew now, that he didn’t understand. “Ye-es?”

Bonnie took another step closer, reached out with one hand. Ran her fingernail down the centre of his chest, digging in just firmly enough to make the trail of her scratch tingle through his polo shirt. “I liked that day,” she said, and there was a smoulder to his tone that turned the tingle into a delighted shiver. “Did you?”

“Uh huh,” he breathed, barely willing to make a sound in case it broke the spell, almost a kid again in the nerves he had for this experienced woman.

“Right,” Bonnie said. She stepped back and pulled her sweater off, dropping it casually onto one of the kitchen counters.

She wasn’t wearing a bra. And while gravity and time had made her breasts heavy, she was still a stunning thing to see topless. He went from half-hard to hard in no more than three heartbeats. “So I think we should have another good day,” she said, hands on hips, waist cocked, showing herself off to what she clearly knew was her best effect. “I’m going up to my room, Austin. And when you’ve finished your lunch, you can join me there.”

She looked him dead in the eye. “And you will, because otherwise you’ll be explaining to your wife why her dear mother is unsatisfied.”

Confident she had him now with carrot and stick alike, she wheeled on the spot and strutted upstairs. Austin watched her go, his mouth open, his bacon forgotten. That wasn’t how he’d expected this to work. She assumed her daughter would be on her side - and as the thought formed in his head, he realised why.

The programming manifested as facts in their heads. Logical, easy to understand, natural facts. The kind you were taught as a kid and never forgot. Rules for life.

And that meant his plan to blackmail the street was… not going to work.

He sat down and ate his sandwich slowly, eyes on Bonnie’s discarded top, and even thinking about the body awaiting him - because he certainly didn’t want Sharon angry at him for failing to satisfy her mother; and besides, he was going to enjoy it - didn’t help.

His attitude as he made his way upstairs was almost mournful, but he brightened up the moment he crossed the threshold. Bonnie had stripped down the rest of the way and was now lying back on the bed - and what a bed; it was perhaps the biggest he’d seen, Bonnie had not skimped on her house. His eye was caught for a moment by the wand resting on the bedside table, evidently discarded now she knew he was required; but it couldn’t be long before his eye was caught again by his mother-in-law.

He resolved firmly that once he had the control of the app back to himself, Sharon would be taught her mother’s fitness and beauty regimen. Bonnie’s body was toned, smooth, and her skin still looked as soft and warm to the touch as Sharon’s. It would be a shame to ever lose that. Just looking at the woman’s parted thighs, her knees raised, feet resting above the quilt as Bonnie reclined against her pillows, he felt his mouth go dry. As if every drop of liquid in him was now filling his rock-hard cock, ready and eager for release.

Bonnie smiled in welcome. “You ate up quickly,” she purred. Austin flushed for a moment, but pressed forward all the same. He fumbled at his belt. “Not yet,” Bonnie said, her voice soft but husky, carrying easily. “I sucked your cock. You eat my pussy. Deal?”

He hesitated, then nodded fractionally. She looked so good; it would be a shame not to see how she tasted. And it was only fair, besides.

He stepped up to the edge of the bed and was preparing to crawl across it to reach her when a better idea hit.

This was Bonnie’s home. She was used to being in charge. Yet Austin had already decided that wasn’t to be allowed to continue. So why was he allowing her to call the shots here?

“No,” he said simply. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Better?”

He nodded to the bedside table, where Bonnie’s phone rested beside the wand. “Unlock your phone,” he said. Bonnie gave him a suspicious look, but picked up the phone and pressed her thumb against the scanner. Austin held out his hand for it wordlessly. Bonnie’s expression was still doubtful but she handed it over, squirming a little as she did. “Are you going to take pictures now?” she asked, and there was a shiver in her voice that said she wasn’t sure if she was scared or excited by that.

“…I am now,” he said, and grinned. But he was already in the phone directory, scrolling through to the Ms. He found the number he wanted and dialled. Mae.

As he put the phone to his ear he held up a finger to forestall any comment from Bonnie, and as Mae answered, Austin suddenly realised he’d been looking at his other problem completely wrong too.

The mistake was treating the app as something imposed from outside. It was, but to those affected, it seemed completely internal. So you had to treat it as naturally as they did.

“Mae,” he said, his voice suddenly bright and cheerful. “It’s Austin borrowing Bonnie’s phone. Hope you’re well?”

There was a moment of startled silence and then “I am,” she said, curious but cautious. “What can I do for you, Austin?”

“I was actually hoping I could do something for you, Mae,” he said with a smile. “Anything you want me for?” He paused. “Anything you need me for?”

“Oh,” Mae said faintly. “I… yes.”

“Come on round,” Austin said with a grin. “I think I can arrange something to satisfy us both.” He hung up and grinned at Bonnie. “A new experience for you both,” he said. “It’ll bring you closer.”

“But-”

“I did tell you the other day,” he said. “Sharon and Mae have sucked my cock together.” He could almost see the recalculation in Bonnie’s eyes. That this was something he wanted. That it was a thing to do to get what she wanted. Bonnie smiled tentatively.

“Do you have a second wand?” he asked, smirking slightly. Bonnie blinked. “Let me show you the toybox,” she said after a moment.

*

Mae and Bonnie weren’t entirely comfortable being nude together at the beginning, but both felt the need the app had created. Gingerly, they worked side by side, allowing his hands to roam over them both, kissing back where he kissed them, welcoming his tongue, fingers, his cock, or any of Bonnie’s toys as he chose to use them.

The state of desire they were unknowingly programmed with grew and grew, with Austin guiding them through each sudden impulse, each new desire, until Bonnie lay back on Mae’s chest, head cushioned by her plump breasts, one hand pinned down by one of Austin’s, writhing and whimpering on his cock; and below, Mae’s own thighs clamped down around the wand Bonnie would otherwise have reserved for herself, her own needy, breathy squeals adding to the atmosphere as Austin and Bonnie each used one hand to keep the wand in place.

“I’m pretty sure,” Austin would say later, recovering his breath after collapsing, spent, onto the cougar pile, “that you’re both interested in a repeat performance. Say ‘Yes, Austin’.”

The two older women looked at each other, and Mae half-rolled her eyes but nonetheless joined in the chorus. “Yes, Austin,” they parotted together, and after a moment, each of them realised that here in the afterglow, they meant it.

Austin got up and walked out of the room, pausing at the door to say without looking at them “I’ll leave you ladies to clean up. But tomorrow, Mae, I expect you to be waiting for me when I get back for lunch, and I expect you both dressed up for a show.” Still looking away, he added “What do you say?”

“Yes, Austin,” they chorused, squirming side by side on the bed, enjoying the sensation of their own juices slathered over their needy thighs.

*

The door opened in front of him, and Austin put on his best smile. “Luke,” he said. “Hope you don’t mind me dropping round.”

“What do you want?”

“Well…” Austin made a big show of glancing up and down the street for eavesdroppers. “I think I’ve got a solution to a problem you’re having.”

Luke frowned at him, but after a moment Austin saw what he was hoping for; a moment where he seemed to realise what Austin was driving at. An acknowledgement that one of the fundamental rules of his and his wife’s life was getting in the way.

“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Maybe. You’d better come inside.”

Austin followed with a smile.

“So,” he said. “Let me see if I can take a guess. You’re the third stop I’ve had today.” He decided to gloss over his earlier visits, especially as one of them had involved Simone and Tara, keen to find a way to make their lesbian lifestyle work while still needing the presence of a specific man to make love. It had been… educational. For him possibly most of all. “Your marriage has been maybe a little less satisfying the past couple of weeks?”

“Right.”

“And the problem is that Valerie just can’t… you know.” Weird. He could type it easily. He could say it when swearing. And he’d had no problem at all telling Sharon he was going out to visit Simone and Tara so they could fuck. But saying it in this way, like they were discussing business, the word still held a taboo for him.

Luke sighed and looked away, no more comfortable with this than Austin. “Yeah.”

“I think I can fix that,” Austin said slowly. “I think I can get that changed. But. Um. Well.” This had been the only stumbling point in each visit so far. And even then, it had been something he could handle. “It’s going to cost some money.”

“How do you mean? What is it?”

“Therapy,” Austin said. “Sort of.” Which was a lie, but one he felt was near enough to the truth. At the end of all this, Valerie’s headset would be back in a much better space for matrimony. “What would you pay to have life back to normal?”

The negotiations were a tough part of all this. He kept things vague not just to avoid explaining the inexplicable, but also to hint this might not be entirely legal. That Austin could get something Luke wanted, but the price would be high.

Half a million wasn’t an easy goal to reach, but desperate men would pay anything in their power, and there weren’t many people in the street who weren’t rich - the list might just be Austin and Sharon. His tiny cut of the app designers’ profits probably wasn’t going to help change that for him. But even one instruction at a time, even with past instructions vanishing on each new one, leaving only whatever level of explanation they’d had to make for themselves…

Yes, once this was all over, there was the possibility of doing a lot more. As he left Luke’s house, he pulled out his phone, dialled the number he’d called on that fateful Monday.

“It’s Austin,” he said on answering. “First off, I’m going to have your money ready soon. And second…” He smiled.

“I think you and me can do some business of our own.”

*

ENTER BEHAVIORAL PROMPT

Women can fuck anyone they want

There, Austin thought. That should keep everyone happy, and still leave half the beds on the street open to him with the right prompting.

He smiled as he hit Enter.