"Huh?" The confusion lasted only a moment--Sylvia was a little too used to this sort of thing happening to her. She wasn't alone, either--millions of people had let a finger slip take them to "amazom.com", or tried to visit Yahooo. Usually, all she ever got when she made those little mistakes was a 'Site Not Found' error. Heck, sometimes she didn't even get those; companies tended to buy the most common misspellings of their website and turn them into redirect sites, taking her to her planned destination. For which she was profoundly grateful--she knew just how bad a typist she was, and when you're on dial-up, the time it takes for the wrong site to load can be a real frustration. (Especially considering how graphics-intensive most sites tended to be these days.)
But it looked like this was one of those other times. She knew she'd planned to visit eBay, hoping to maybe find a cheap used scanner, but somewhere between brain and fingers, "www.ebay.com" had turned into...she checked the URL field for recently-visited sites. Oh, yeah, here it was. "www.ebey.com". And someone who wasn't eBay had bought that domain name and turned it into a redirect, leading her to...
"Welcome to oBey?" Sylvia muttered. "Cute." Someone's parody site, from the looks of it. The logo looked similar to eBay's traditional quirky lettering (once it finally finished loading), but it was placed in front of an animated spiral. The categories listed things like 'Brainwashing Chairs', 'Portable Devices', 'Mind-Control Satellites', 'Magical Artifacts', 'Nanites', 'Chemicals', 'Instructional Equipment', and one entry that just said, 'Slaves'. Sylvia smirked. "Buy your sex slaves gently-used and save!" she quipped to herself.
Sylvia opened one of the categories (in a new tab--working with an old, creaky computer and a slow, creaky connection meant that she wanted to avoid hitting the back button.) She was a little surprised to see dozens of auctions in progress for 'Brainwashing Chairs'; whoever had made this site had really spent some time on it. They'd even mimicked the description style of eBay for each auction: "Synaptic Recalibration Device Mint Condition Complete With Nuclear Power Source!" "Have Any Girl You Want With Inhibition Inhibitor Guaranteed!" "Ferro-Silicon Infusion Chair Turns Any Girl Into Sexy Programmable Robot!" "Serial Recruitment Laboratory Includes Seven Slave Girls!" Amazing gag, Sylvia thought. Right down to the auction countdowns and the prices...2.1 million dollars certainly seemed like a fair price for "Captured Alien Technology Implants Will-Deadening Slug! 100% Escape Proof!"
She couldn't help herself; professional pride made Sylvia click on one of the links. (Well, amateur pride...as much as she loved playing around with Photoshop, Sylvia had no idea how to parlay her skills into actual money.) She just wanted to see the "photos" demonstrating each auction's wares, and see if the person who made the site had done as good a job with their photo-manipulation as they had with the concept of the site. This was the kind of thing that really made Sylvia want to upgrade to broadband--it would make uploading her pictures a lot less time-consuming. She'd already finished a full sequence of "vampires among us", and she was really proud of...of...
She stared at the picture of the girl for a long moment. Then she leaned right up to the screen, getting as close as possible. This was that "ferro-silicon infusion chair" thing, and sure enough, there was the girl sitting in the chair, her body caught mid-transformation as she shifted into a robot, but...
Sylvia shivered. She had to be mistaken. It just had to be a really, really expert photo-manip, that was all. Something that had been done really well, so well that even another photoshopper couldn't spot how it was done. Whoever had made this, they'd just managed to capture the shadows, the reflections, the tinting all perfectly, right down to...fucking hell, you could see the reflection of the photographer in the gleaming chrome of the woman's breasts.
Sylvia checked out another link. The photo was slightly blurred--this person was clearly a worse photographer than the other one. But somehow that made the effect even more chillingly real. The slimy, dull orange slug burrowing its way into the back of the girl's neck was just as blurred as the rest of the shot, the illusion of it actually digging into the flesh was perfect and precise and...no. Sylvia shook her head. This was bullshit, it had to be. If a site like this existed, it'd have to be illegal (but if someone could really do this, if they could control people's minds, they'd never be afraid of cops or judges...) You'd hear about it in the paper (unless they didn't want you to...was the site doing something to her mind, locking her brain down and preventing her from telling anyone?)
Sylvia didn't care if it was. Once the idea got into her head, it seemed to tantalize her with endless possibilities. She could finally quit that dead-end job at the bar--a girl with a mind-control ray could get all the money she needed. She could get even with ex-girlfriends, have every straight girl she'd ever wanted get down on their knees and lick her pussy, make some Congressmen write a few new laws about gay marriage, have Kelly Ripa strip naked and fondle her tits in front of fifteen million housewives...
Of course, that all assumed this wasn't just a joke or a scam. Then again, scams generally tended to aim a little lower. There wasn't a single entry in the 'Brainwashing Chairs' that cost less than a million dollars, and most cost more than ten times that. Certainly more than a waitress earned in a night of tips. Or a lifetime, for that matter.
Sylvia checked some of the other categories, but they all seemed pretty much the same. Love potions sold for a hundred thousand dollars an ounce, hypnotic amulets traded for billions of dollars, and even the cheapest mind-control ray sold for the price of a four-bedroom house. Sylvia shrugged. It made sense, really; if this stuff was all real, the people who made it had to look at these dollar amounts like they were paying with Monopoly money. A girl barely scraping above the poverty line didn't stand a chance of ever picking up a 'Hyptronic Inducer' or a 'Synaptic Recalibrator'.
Still, Sylvia decided, it was fun to window shop. She clicked on the 'Slaves' category, then on the 'Female' sub-category. Even the thought of owning her own girl, one who would cook and clean and do all her shopping (and who would fuck and suck and lick and do every kinky thing she ever wanted to try without even whimpering...) Sylvia's hand drifted down to the crotch of her panties, pressing rhythmically against the damp fabric as she thought of all sorts of new kinky ideas while reading descriptions like, "Hypnotized Girl Associates Whipping With Pleasure!" and "Totally Brainwashed To Obey Guaranteed!" and "Brand New Eighteen Year Old Virgin With Full Fetish Triggers Installed!"
That was when she spotted it. Not the description--there was nothing in particular that made "Girl Of Your Choice Turned Into Your Sex Slave!" stand out among the other entries. But Sylvia's eyes practically popped out of their sockets when she saw that number, seeming somehow tiny next to the fields full of zeroes above and below it. Twenty dollars. Twenty dollars for the girl of her choice, and a 'Buy It Now!' button right next to it. It didn't seem possible, not really.
She was amazed at how quickly she clicked the link. "I'm holding another of My 'Good Samaritan' auctions," she read. "Just email me a name, and that girl is yours, mind, body and soul. For as long as you want her. For whatever you want to do with her. Risk free. For just twenty dollars. Not a bad deal, right?"
