This is a Master PC story based in JR Parz's original universe, so credit for this idea must go to him. It also draws heavily on Varun1987's Master Program series, which I highly recommend. I haven't seen any gay fiction in this area, so I thought I'd take a shot. All characters are over 18. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. If you don't like stories featuring men who have sex with men, I'd suggest this isn't for you.
This chapter contains limited amounts of sex, but it does establish some of the characters and their backstories.
*****
Ethan was bored, it was late afternoon and the sun was streaming in through the library windows and was serving as a rather pointed reminder that he was trapped in the stifling heat until he could get this paper finished. He'd been there all morning, making
real
headway on it... meaning, of course, that he'd written the title and managed to pick a nice-looking font. What little productivity he'd managed to scrape together had just about managed to drag his ass out of bed and into the library and little else. He groaned, staring at the blank page.
Perhaps I might be able to focus if I take a bit of a break,
he thought. Ethan pushed back his chair, wincing as the scraping noise attracted glares from the harried students feverishly trying to complete end-of-term papers.
Strolling through the shelves, he wandered aimlessly, looking with disconnected interest at the titles of the older looking books, "Annals of Parliament, Charles I"
I wonder whether James will ever actually notice that I exist
, he mused.
"Manufacturing Output of the Industrial North in the 20
th
Century"
James was perhaps the single most attractive human Ethan had ever seen, a body like a Greek God, the perfect amount of stubble, a deep voice like melted caramel. And from how he looked in the pool, his package must have been enormous.
"The Holy Bible, a Modern Look at the Ancient Aramaic"
Of course, the biggest problem with James was that he was probably straight. He'd had a string of fairly high publicity affairs with the girls on the cheerleading team, and his latest girlfriend was a model. Sure, there'd been a few rumours around campus that he might have fooled around with some of the guys on the swim team, but those were most likely just made up by some jealous ex.
"The Master Program; a Study"
Ethan sighed, there was really no point moping about a guy who had precisely no chance of ever liking him, especially not with his work piling up around him. It'd be different if there'd been anything like a single spark, a smile, a wink,
anything
, but in truth Ethan hadn't had the courage to say a word to him all semester. Not that there'd been anyone queuing up to have any kind of interaction with him really, aside from a few casual acquaintances on his course, Ethan barely spoke to anyone most days. His flatmates were by turns aggravating and reclusive, either making a mess of the kitchen or vanishing for days on end, and he'd somehow made it to second year without even finding a consistent lab partner. He was, by pretty much every definition, a loser.
Ethan sighed again, suddenly acutely aware that he hadn't said a word aloud to another human in the last two days. He turned to head back to his desk to try and force words onto the page again before remembering that the desk was a little wobbly. He grabbed a slim volume from the shelf at random to stuff under the table leg, and shuffled silently back to his desk. As he slumped heavily back into his chair (attracting yet more furious glares for daring to make an audible sound) he glanced at the title of the book. It was a strange title, "The Master Program", and faintly intrigued he opened it at a random page.
"-seems to be able to run on any hardware of any kind perfectly, regardless of the computing power available. Its abilities to control the material world seem largely independent of restrictions, and the number of women I have successfully seduced with it grows daily"
Ethan snorted quietly, some whack-job no doubt, he flicked to the front of the book to see if there was any publishing information, and instead merely found a fixed URL. He glanced back at the page open on his computer, accusingly blank, and his apathy towards work overcame his derision at the book. The URL merely opened a new tab, started a download, and closed itself. He cursed silently,
I can't have any viruses, not now!
The download took just a couple of seconds, then his computer screen went black. Suddenly the words "Master Program" appeared in green old-fashioned monospaced type in the centre of the screen and a loading bar quickly progressed.
- ENTER USER
He thought for a second before entering his usual pseudonym for online accounts "EthexOne".
-YOU ARE ETHAN SUMMERS, SELECT USER?
He gulped, the program was clearly a virus if it had managed to get that kind of information off his hard drive so quickly. He clicked the button marked "Yes" on a whim. Suddenly the screen showed a 3D model of himself, wearing the same clothes as he was wearing and held in the exact same pose as he was sat in at that precise moment. He was freaked out, as he raised one hand the model on screen did exactly the same. It was live and accurate down to the tiniest detail.
He looked around the screen at the various sliders and metrics surrounding the 3D model. They seemed to be organised into little tabs and categories, Physical Attributes, Personality Traits, Health... He clicked on the model and it started to rotate slowly, before he clicked on the Physical Attributes tab. His eyes flicked down the list and saw weight. It was accurate, which was a little embarrassing. Ethan wasn't the trimmest of guys, and his weight had always been a bit of a sore point. He clicked on the weight icon and a few sub-menus dropped down, "Core Weight", "Visceral Weight", "Body Fat percentage". Not really knowing what most of those actually meant he clicked on the body fat icon and saw a slider. Twenty-five percent. That was somewhat embarrassing. He dragged the value all the way to the left and an alert flashed up on screen;
"VALUE BELOW 8% IS NOT MEDICALLY SAFE, RECOMMEND MINIMUM OF 8%"