With Friends Lie These

This story takes place in Gamblinluck's Slave Camp universe. It was originally a small idea I had for my "Sherry's Sanctuary" series but did not fit with that story. The idea of the location discussed near the end of the story was neat, but it just didn't go well with the tone of my series. I couldn't get the idea out of my head, though, so I made it into a one-shot story so I wouldn't be so distracted while trying to continue my series. It takes place in the same world as "Sherry's Sanctuary", but that's where the connections end. I don't get into much of the world building of Gamblinluck's universe in this story, so please see his stories "Slave Camp", "Gotta Pay the Piper", and "My Mom Owns Me", or even my series if you want a much more detailed description of how slavery works in this universe. I go into a pretty detailed explanation on how the world works in chapter 3 of "Sherry's Sanctuary".

This is my first time trying a story the "Loving Wife" category. As always, thanks go out to Gamblinluck for allowing me to play in the world he has created. And a big thank-you to CurrentParameter for all his help in proofing and improving this story.

With Friends Like These...

Part 1

I was a stupid idiot, and it got me enslaved. What did I do that was so stupid? Simple, I trusted a conniving bitch. I also trusted who I thought was my best friend. And I was too blind to see I was being set up the entire time. But I'm getting ahead of myself. To understand the whole story, I need to go back to the beginning. For me, that was my first day of college.

I went off to college to study computer programming. I was good at it, too. I had designed a lot of different programs in high school. Nothing major, but more than silly little apps. What I was most proud of, and what got me the scholarship for college, was the skeleton for game engine. It was raw at the time. I mean really raw. But it showed potential and the professors were impressed with the low resource demands needed to run the engine.

A good friend of mine, Cindy Perkins, was accepted to the same college, but she was studying graphic art. She loved to design computer images, especially game characters. We had played around with doing a game in high school, my engine, her graphics, but we just couldn't come up with a story or even decide what type of game it would be. We worked well together, though, so we became friends. It was only natural we kind of latched onto each other when we went to college. Nothing romantic, it was just nice to have friend to share the fear of being surrounded by a few thousand people you didn't know.

My freshman roommate and I quickly became best friends. Jim Robinson was studying creative writing and had a way of developing stories out of the most bizarre concepts. He would take totally unbelievable premises and make them seem perfectly rational. He had published a few short stories in various magazines and received pretty strong praise for them. He was also everything I wasn't. Handsome, popular, and an absolute master at seducing women.

I guess I should introduce myself. Sorry, should have done that from the start. My name is Matt Peterson. I'm the idiot you heard about in the first paragraph. I'm shy, awkward, and have absolutely no game with the ladies whatsoever. If I hadn't met Jim, I probably would never have left my dorm room except to eat, go to class, and hang out with Cindy every now and then. I lived on my computer. The real world didn't interest me. Until Jim showed me what I was missing.

The last character in our little drama was Cassandra Robinson, or Cassie. She was Jim's stepsister and Jim finally introduced me to her about two months into our first semester. She was a finance major, and she was gorgeous. Honestly, she was the type of woman I only believed existed in the movies. Tall, blonde, and a body most porn stars would kill for, she was everything in a woman I felt I would never have. I was in love with her from the second I saw her. And for some bizarre reason, she seemed to like me.

Against all odds, she agreed when I asked her on a date. Even more amazingly, she agreed to a second date. I may not have been the smartest man when it came to women, but I sure as hell wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I had a chance with Cassie, and I wasn't going to blow it. We started dating more and more, and eventually we were an item. I lost my virginity to this goddess, and never looked back. She taught me more about sex than I ever knew was possible. Positions that would make the authors of the Karma Sutra blush, kinks that were probably illegal in most civilized countries, and orgasmic pleasures that bordered on divine experiences. Yeah, I was completely head over heels for her.

The four of us started to hang out more and more through college. Jim usually had a different girl with him each week, and Cindy really didn't seem interested in dating. Cassie and I tried not to flaunt our love for each other in front of them, but they didn't seem to mind how bad our attempts at discretion were. Still, the four of us made a good team. We were four completely different people, with completely different personalities, but for some reason we meshed well together. It probably helped that we were each becoming very successful in our chosen majors.

By the end of our sophomore year, Cindy had already put on a few shows of her artwork and was doing a little freelance character design for a small startup game company. Jim was steadily publishing short stories, mostly in various sci-fi and fantasy magazines. Cassie was some kind of financial wizard that had already paid off the next two years of college through some shrewd investments. She seemed to have a knack for taking money and making it grow substantially. We all started having her invest what little money we could scrape together and were ecstatic when we saw the returns. As for me, I was still plugging along developing different programs I hoped would one day pay off for me. That day came during finals of my sophomore spring semester.

I had been working on my final project, trying to increase the compression rates for music and video files, while preventing the loss of quality. I had hit roadblock after roadblock in trying to get it to work. Every time I increased the compression rates by a noticeable margin, quality dropped. Every time I preserved the quality, the increase in compression rate was so minimal as to not be worth it. I knew there was a solution, but I couldn't find it. To get my mind off the problem, I started to play with the game engine I had started in high school. I hadn't thought much about it since I started college, too many other distractions. But I remembered how at peace working on the engine had made me feel back then. So, I loaded up an old version and started to tinker with it again.

That's when I saw it. The code I had written back then was designed to maximize the power of the engine, while minimizing the resource requirements. This was basically the same thing I was trying to achieve with my final project. Only instead of compression rates versus quality loss, I was dealing with power versus resources. With a little adapting and rewriting of the code, and forgoing sleep for two days, I was able to convert part of my old engine into a workable compression program.

The results were greater than I ever imagined they could be. I increased the compression rates tenfold with almost no loss of quality in audio or video. I ran the tests and simulations five times before I allowed myself to believe I had done it. It was still early when I ran to my professor's office, thumb drive in hand, to see if he agreed with my findings. And when I say early, I mean I sat outside his office for two hours waiting for him to arrive at school. I finally had to put the thumb drive into my pocket because I was afraid I would snap it in half from how hard I was gripping it. When Dr. Burke ultimately arrived at his office, I was a nervous wreck. I saw him roll his eyes at me.

"Mr. Peterson, I hope you are not here to ask for an extension on your project. I thought I had made myself clear to the class, there will be no extensions," he said in robotic like voice.

"No sir. I was hoping I could meet with you to double check my project. I believe I've cracked it but would like a second set of eyes to make sure I didn't miss something."

Dr. Burke raised his eyebrow and looked me over skeptically.

"Are you trying to tell me you have developed a better compression program than what is out there? By yourself?"

I tried to smile through the heat rising to my face and just replied, "That's what I'm hoping you can tell me."

Shaking his head he motioned me to follow him into his office. I handed him the thumb drive, feeling a little scared to let it out of my grasp. Sure, I had it backed up on my laptop, as well as on an external drive and the Cloud, but still, handing it over to another person was intimidating. But this was my final project, and this man literally had the power to decide if I continued in college or not.

Taking the drive from me, he booted up his computer. I kept staring at the drive sitting on his desk, impatiently waiting for him to run his tests. I knew he was taking the time to ensure he was running an isolated operating system and was disconnected from all Wi-Fi and hard line connections. He didn't want to risk infecting anything if my program went apeshit. Once he had his computer isolated, he plugged the drive in. He brought up the source code for my program and started to review it. It definitely wasn't my cleanest work, and I could tell by his face that he was seeing a lot of redundancies in code. I knew, however, once I was sure the rates and quality were confirmed, I could go back and clean up the code.

"All right, Mr. Peterson, it's a little sloppy, but you're trying some interesting things here. Let's see how the rates compare to the quality. I'm have a meeting soon, so let's go right to the hard tests and see what we have. I'm going to use a 4K test. Let's see how much your little program can condense the size."

He ran the test, and then sat upright when the results came in. Looking back at me, he shut down all programs and reloaded mine. He ran the test again, and then sat back.

"This isn't possible. Let me play the compressed version and run a quality check."

He ran the quality check at least three times, before he picked up his phone and called his secretary.

"Jean, I need you to cancel my meetings for today and see if Adam can cover my classes. I am not to be disturbed for any reason. If it's an emergency, text me. Thank you." Then he turned to me. "Matt, I need you to be very honest with me right now. How many copies of this program do you have, and have you shown it to anyone else?"

I told him there were three other copies, and after I ran my test this morning I came straight here.

"Good. Do you have a lawyer?"

That scared me. Why would I need a lawyer? What the fuck was going on?

"Sir, why do I need a lawyer?"

Dr. Peterson looked at me shocked.

"Matt, do you realize what you have just handed me?"

I shook my head.

"The tests I just ran show you have compressed a 4K video down to the size we expect for a video running at 720p. Even more amazing is that the tests are showing a quality loss of less than 1%. You have in essence found a way to stream Ultra High Definition at speeds that surpass what we see on YouTube videos. In other words, every streaming outlet in the world is going to want to use this, even in its sloppy state. If you clean up the code, you may even be able to tweak a higher performance.

"You got your A for this class, don't worry about that. What you need to worry about is getting this getting this copyrighted and if possible patented as soon as possible. You also need a lawyer so the university doesn't try and claim ownership. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

I did understand. This wasn't just some little project for a class. This could be life changing. And it was. I ran back to my room and called Cassie. She set me up with a friend of the family who was a lawyer and the next thing I knew I was rich. We were able to patent the program, and soon I was licensing it to all the major streaming services. I had cleaned up the code and they were banging down my door to license it. The monthly checks came rolling in. By the time we all graduated, I had more money than I knew what to do with.

I really didn't have to work too hard my last two years of college. It's hard to fail a someone who wrote the program used by multi-billion-dollar companies. Instead, I devoted most of my efforts to perfecting my game engine. And right before graduation, I had.

I also had come to the realization that I had everything I needed to start my own game company. I had the money, and I had the engine. Cindy was able to provide all the graphic work, Jim's imagination was perfect for developing the genre and story for the game, and Cassie, well her business sense took care of all the bullshit parts I hated. I offered them an even split, four ways, in the new company and would front the start-up money. I had it, why not use it.

We worked on our first game for fourteen months, and when it was finished, we searched for a publisher. Physical media was dying by this time, so it only made sense to distribute digitally. So, we forwent the big publishers, self-published the game and it took off.

Morrigan's Trials

was an instant hit. Jim had outdone himself on the story. It basically involved bringing the Celtic goddess to life in modern day California with the mission to protect a poor Irish girl, destined to save the world, from various Greek, Norse, and Egyptian gods seeking to end mankind. Trust me, it was a lot better than I am making it sound.

Cindy was praised across the gaming community for her realistic graphic work, especially the lead character Morrigan. One of the gaming magazines hailed her as the artist who finally broke the uncanny valley. And through it all, Cassie continued to work deal after deal. By our second year they were all multi-millionaires. By far I was the richest because I licensed out the engine to other software developers and had another steady influx of royalty and license checks coming in from the compression program licenses. Between my share of the gaming company and the license checks, I thought I would never need money again. We expanded our company, hired new staff, and were enjoying life. And then I made the stupidest decision of my life. I proposed to Cassie.

============

She immediately accepted and we were married within two months. Even though we were both independently wealthy, Cassie insisted on a pre-nup agreement. She told me she wanted there to be no doubt that she was marrying me for love, not money. I had one of the company's lawyers review it and he told me everything looked kosher. He even pointed out the slavery clause. Basically, if either of us was enslaved, which would immediately annul our marriage, the other would automatically get half of the combined accumulated wealth we will have made starting on our wedding date. The only part she would not be entitled to would be the income from the licensing of the compression software and the game engine if I was the one enslaved. Because that would be considered wages, whoever was my owner would be entitled to the money from that for the length of my enslavement. I had no desire or intention of being enslaved, so everything looked great to me.

It was great. Over the next year the company grew, we produced three more games that sold like hotcakes, and everyone was happy. Cassie and I built a large house, bought fancy cars, and had Jim and Cindy over constantly. Jim was loving his new life. He had almost complete artistic freedom in his writing and he loved the challenge of writing non-linear story lines. Cindy, who was so much like me, dove into her work and soon had seventeen other graphic artists working under her. Cassie and I spent our days working, and our nights discovering new ways to please each other sexually. I couldn't think of a better life than this.

Then, on that fateful Thursday morning, two large men in suits and sunglasses came into my office. They asked me to come with them to the police station to answer some questions. I immediately called the company lawyer and followed them. Once at the station, my life ended. They let me know I was being placed under arrest for embezzlement and fraud. They produced all sorts of documents that seemed to show I had been stealing money from the company and diverting it to offshore accounts. I had no idea what they were talking about. Like I said previously, I had too much money already, why would I steal from my wife and two closest friends? It made no sense. My lawyer was caught completely unprepared and quickly got Cassie, Cindy and Jim down to the station. While Cassie was looking over the documents, Jim and Cindy were trying to get their minds around the fact that I could have been screwing them over for the last three years.

When Cassie came back, she looked like she had been punched in the gut. She sat us all down and said the evidence was solid. It had been well hidden, but there was no doubt that over twenty million dollars had been diverted to offshore accounts, and everything pointed to me doing it. Cindy was devastated and refused to believe I would do this. Cassie kept asking me why I would do something so stupid. And Jim, well, he was just pissed. He stormed out of the room and we all just sat there.

My lawyer dropped another bomb on me then. Because he was technically counsel for the company, it would be a conflict of interest for him to represent me. Cassie hired another lawyer, but with the short turnarounds for court cases now, he really didn't have time to prepare much of a defense. I refused to take a plea deal, I knew I was innocent and I couldn't find it within me to admit to a crime I didn't commit. In hindsight, I wonder how things would be different today if I had.

With the amount of documentation showing I had embezzled the money, and no real defense except my word that I hadn't, I was convicted in short order. I was sentenced to eight years enslavement and fined fifteen million dollars, five each to be paid to Cassie, Cindy, and Jim. I was also awarded to them as my owners. After going through the process of being collared, I was escorted nude from the induction center to my new life as a slave. Cassie was there to pick me up and we drove back to the house in silence.

When we entered our home, I was expecting to see Cindy and Jim there, but it was only us. Cassie sat me down on the couch and explained what was going on.

"Matt, I want to believe you didn't do this, but it's hard. Everything points to you. Still, you're my husband, well, ex-husband, but I wanted to make sure you were protected. I've bought out Cindy and Jim's share of you, so I am your sole owner. I want us to try to get past this, but it's going to take some time. For now, I think it would be best if you slept in one of the guest rooms. I've taken the next week off, so we can try to see where to go from here."

"Cass, I didn't do it, I swear. Why would I steal from the company? Why would I steal from the three of you? I set up the company for you guys. I don't need the money, I never have. I pull in twenty million every few months from the licensing alone, none of this makes sense," I pleaded with her.

"God, I really want to believe you. Just give me a little bit. Let me take the time to figure things out."

With that she got up and left the room. With nothing else to do, I took the first shower I'd had in three days and lied down on the bed. This was a nightmare. Someone had set me up, but I couldn't figure out who, how or why. I laid there wallowing in self-pity, trying to figure out how everything had gone to shit so quickly. My best friend wouldn't talk to me, my childhood friend felt betrayed by me, and my wife, or ex-wife now, wasn't sure she could ever believe me again. And I hadn't done anything. All I wanted to do was convince the three closest people to me that I had not fucked them over. I could survive the slavery if only I could have the reassurance that they believed me. I fell asleep doing something I had not done since I was a child. I cried.