"Hey, good afternoon. Can you hear me okay?" Eric's voice played through her headset.
"I can hear you fine, but your video's off," Elaine replied, then took a moment to double-check whether her own webcam was uncovered and angled just right.
"I was having some internet issues earlier, and wanted to make sure I had a good connection for the call. Just a moment."
Elaine checked her face in the square labelled with her name on it in the ViewU window, making sure the full range of her tan skin tone could be visible, and the ViewU algorithm balancing the camera's brightness wasn't thrown off by her hair. She wasn't particularly strong about her appearance for an internal call with her colleague, but knew she'd have other video calls later that day, so she'd tied up her hair after lunch to show more of her button-up dress shirt. To balance out her efforts, she also took delight in the work-from-home luxury of wearing sweatpants.
Not long after, a meek-looking man about 5 years her senior, sporting rectangular glasses and a navy polo (nearly black on camera) appeared in the square labelled "Eric" alongside her in the ViewU window.
"There we go," he added. "So yeah, I wanted to chat with you after sending you my proposal to leadership last week. I'm planning on bringing it up towards the end of the all-hands meeting in a month, and I wanted to get your feedback. Did you get a chance to read it?"
"I did, let me pull up my notes..." Elaine knew she had to power through this. Eric never took constructive criticism well in team meetings. Any time an idea of his got shot down, or anyone interrupted him, he'd go silent for several minutes. While Elaine recognized that she practiced more patience with him, and he tended to show more maturity around her, she feared how well a private call focusing on criticism would go.
"For my key areas of concern, let's start with the goal. Our director recently brought up her goals for the 2030 initiative, and it's not mentioned anywhere in your proposal, so I think you should at least align your proposal with those goals."
Eric just quietly looked down, and perhaps it was a visual bug, but Elaine couldn't detect any semblance of defeat or resentment. She figured she may as well keep going while she could. "There were also a few errors with your graphs on pages 7 and 8. The first one didn't seem to have anything to do with your arguments, and the second one doesn't have its axes labelled. And if you want to go the extra mile, the whole proposal could use more cohesiveness, or relevance to the core issue you're addressing. That's my overall feedback.
A small, fast-moving, dark blur was dancing along the bottom of Eric's screen as they sat in silence. It occurred to Elaine: Eric was... taking notes? What's next, Elaine thought, was he going to start listening in team chats without interrupting?
"Thanks for that helpful feedback", he finally remarked. His head tilted back up, and his eyes darted to different corners of his screen. "Next, I'm just going to pull up something quick here and share my screen."
Elaine's ViewU window went black, buffering and preparing for the change. Then it changed to an overall dark gray page with white and yellow text, and a video prominently featured in the center-left, playing. Elaine gasped before she could even make out the full details of the completely topless woman sitting close to her camera in an office chair, both her hands caressing her nipples.
She froze, upon realizing that the woman's remarkably familiar skin tone, body shape, and B-cups unmistakably belonged to her. Completely stunned to even speak, Elaine stared at herself, on video, erotically pleasuring her tits. She noticed her video self's eyes had rolled up in absolute bliss, before tilting her head back and letting her mouth open wide.
Answers. Elaine needed answers. The title below the video ("GORGEOUS Coworker Masturbates Shamelessly on Webcam") and the promiscuous ads in the corner made it clear: this video was uploaded to a porn site. Which one, she couldn't tell - the site's name wasn't visible in the part of the page he was sharing, and bastard had the deleted the URL from the browser window.
"I... did you..." Elaine could finally squeak out. The swirling thoughts competing for her attention, until the thoughts turned to insults and accusations. Before they could turn into full-on threats, she asked "That can't be me, can it?", holding on for dear life to her certainty that she'd never act this way on a live camera. Before she could wait for an answer, she asked "So wait, are you planning on blackmailing me with this?"
"To your question about whether that's you, it certainly is." Eric's voice haunted her through her headset. His calm demeanor might as well have slapped her in the face. "To your question about whether this is blackmail, certainly not. I have far less underhanded ways of being... persuasive than this.
In the same calm cadence, he added "Elaine, drop now."
All at once, the strength in Elaine's body entirely gave out. Her head slumped down, as her glazed-over eyes trailed, trailing, trailing, until her eyelids finally closed. Every train of thought had completely ground to a halt, and even her steaming emotions completely evaporated. Like a stuck engine, no amount of remaining effort inside her could prompt her to begin a new thought or move a muscle. The longer she stayed like this - seemingly endlessly - all the lingering thoughts faded into nothingness.
"Elaine, eyes on me."
Like a ritual, her back and neck straightened, and her eyes opened and watched the monitor, landing exactly on his square on the screen. She watched him, and processed none of what she saw.
"Elaine, wake up."
How long was she just staring at the screen, Elaine wondered. She rubbed her eyes, and considered how many ViewU calls she already had today... and yikes, how many more later today. The only answers that the ViewU window provided were the two video feeds showing her and Eric.
Eric leaned back in his chair, grinning. "I have a special call planned for us this afternoon. Actually, I've had several special video calls scheduled for about... oh, 4 or 5 weeks now? In fact, the first suggestion I'd implanted was regarding your schedule. I've had a secret video call on your schedule every week that I've carefully instructed your subconscious to gloss over, through hypnotic suggestion."