Chapter 2

Within the next day or two everything seemed to return to normal as far as Lynn could tell. Jack spent most of his time in his room working on a few "projects." It was all he would tell her, which wasn't unusual. Lynn's life was so much back into her normal routine she even forgot she had a collar around her neck most of the time.

Jack hadn't forgotten. In fact one of his "projects" involved the controller to Lynn's collar. True to his word he didn't touch it, other than to move it around in his room. He didn't touch it, but he certainly spent enough time intercepting and attempting to decode the transmissions it sent and received.

For twenty years Labor, Inc. made the claim that no one had ever been able to intercept and hijack one of its control collars. In fact they claimed it was for all practical purposes impossible given the high level encryption they employed. Jack hadn't believed them, but after a full forty-eight hours of trying he was willing to concede their system was pretty tough. However, Jack was nothing if not determined ― almost obsessive if the truth be known ― once he started something and this was no exception.

Breaking the code for his mother's controller was not necessary for the success of his primary mission of saving their house and livelihood. That was already underway and had been within half an hour of their bank acknowledging the receipt of the consortium's monies. No, this was a personal project, one that he was sure his mother definitely wouldn't approve of. While Jack was in most respects a good person, he had his darker side. It was almost as if there was only so much room in his soul and he had to pack both his intellect and scruples into the same space, and with a large intellect there just wasn't much room for a lot of conscience. He had no intention of actually hurting anyone, but he didn't even try to delude himself that what he was planning was ethical or moral, but interestingly enough, it was perfectly legal.

The other little project he had set for himself was absurdly simple. The consortium's representative, Mike Smithson, had really pissed him off. He hated to be lied to or cheated and Smithson's attempt infuriated him. Unfortunately ― or maybe fortunately ― he didn't have Mr. McDonald's contacts so he couldn't hire someone to break Smithson's legs. Besides, that wasn't the way he wanted to operate. Jack would rather slip the knife in from the back. The stabee didn't even have to know who it came from; that was unimportant. Jack just wanted revenge, not acknowledgement.

Jack decided during the meeting that his revenge would have something to do with Smithson's perscomp. It was simplicity itself to capture the frequency and data transmissions from Smithson's perscomp, and since he had been using industry standard encryption, another half an hour to break it. As long as Smithson's laptop was connected to the net, which it almost always was, Jack could take control of it at any time he wanted. It was already as open to him as a book although some of the files, mostly voice messages, were encrypted. Those took almost another half-hour to crack.

It was disappointing that there was very little in the way of incriminating evidence on Smithson's perscomp. Some gray-area dealings, some negotiation strategies that were of questionable honesty, but nothing really against the law. Jack was about to wipe Smithson's MSU (Main Storage Unit) and scramble the operating system when he stopped himself. For a reason he would be hard put to explain even to this day, he didn't. He was seconds away from executing the command when he suddenly decided he would rather have a peephole into the consortium's workings than enjoy the petty pleasure of causing Smithson a day or two of inconvenience. Instead he copied the MSU and installed a backdoor into the operating system. It was easy to set up a program that would filter everything that went through the perscomp and forward a copy to him of anything containing any one of a dozen or so keywords such as his or his mom's name, their account number, etc.

After that it was back to his other project: making his mother his lover.

+ + +

Jack reasoned there were basically two ways to make this happen. The first and easiest method would be to simply force her. He had her controller, the knowledge to use it, and even the legal right to use it. He could simply pick it up, walk downstairs, and force her to have sex with him. Heck, in thirty minutes or less he could be down there pounding away in her pussy! This is exactly where he wanted to be. But not like that.

He didn't just want her body. As much as the thought of it thrilled him he wanted more, he wanted her love, her willing and enthusiastic participation; he wanted her soul. With the amount of money he expected to make now that he had the capital he required, he could buy or rent a fuck toy anytime he wanted. Probably two or three of them if that was all he wanted. He wanted more, much more. He wanted the woman he loved to give herself to him, without qualms or reservations. He wanted to own her completely, not because of the collar around her neck, but because that's what she wanted to do.

This brought him to the second method. Behavior modification can take many forms. Adverse conditioning, using pain or other unpleasant stimuli to guide the subject towards the desired path, seemed to be the most popular method of training recalcitrant ISs during this enlightened age. Jack was struck by the fact the collar's manual devoted over one hundred pages on how to use the various different levels and types of pain stimuli available, but only ten on how to use the pleasure settings. Luckily there were many alternate sources of information. It turned out behavioral conditioning using pleasure induction was a popular subject for both doctoral dissertations and master's theses. In fact he found a few that were almost step-by-step instructions on how to do exactly what he wanted to do. Who said higher education was wasted?

Lynn had just finished cleaning the already immaculate family room when she heard Jack coming down the stairs. Turning she saw him enter the room and noticed he had a metal box the size of a shoe box under one arm and her collar control in the other hand.

"What're you doing, honey?" she asked.

"Bringing you this," he answered, holding out the controller. "Remember, I said you could have it. Well, here it is." He dropped the controller into her outstretched hand. "I also brought a lockbox you can use to keep it," he continued. "It has a thumb lock on it so all we have to do is set it up and you'll be perfectly safe."

"Honey, I was perfectly safe anyway," she said with a laugh.

"True, but this way you'll know you're safe," he grinned. "Besides, you don't want me to have it if you try to ground me or something. Or maybe I should keep it. You never know when I might want a snack at night. No snack, one zap." He faked pressing a button with his thumb.

"Right, you just try it, buster, and you'll see just what kind of snack you get," she said, trying to frown. "You zap me and it'll be fried worms for your main course."

"That's kind of what I figured," he said with a shake of the head. "So, to eliminate any temptation I thought you ought to keep it."

"Hmm ... Maybe it is best if we put this little puppy under lock and key, so to speak," she said with a nod. Quickly he showed her how to reset the lockbox to her thumbprint and afterwards showed her that it would open to her touch, but not his. Lynn happily stowed it away in the top of her closet and promptly forgot about it. She didn't even notice the collar anymore and it was easy to forget that anything had ever changed.

Unfortunately it wasn't so easy to ignore when she went outside the house. Although she personally had never paid much attention to ISs before this happened to her, it soon became clear that lots of others did. She had been getting a lot of different looks from the people she met since her change in status, generally speaking they weren't favorable. Sometimes it went even further than looks. She had always been used to the fact she got appraising looks from men, but with her collar on it seemed they now felt it perfectly acceptable to voice their opinions out loud. She blushed and shrugged off their comments about her tits and ass, and even the occasional pinch or caress. After all, what could she do about it? What really brought it home to her was the chance meeting with an old friend of hers at the grocery store checkout line.

She had known Liz Moreno since just after high school and while Lynn had lost contact with her over the past few years following her husband's death she still considered Liz to be one of her close friends. She hadn't thought of Liz for a while and was pleasantly surprised to recognize the petite form of her friend just ahead of her in the cart scanner line. The face was turned away from her but Lynn was sure it was Liz.

"Liz?" she asked almost reaching out to tap the woman on the shoulder. Liz turned around feigning surprise and tried to paste a smile on her lips. It didn't look very sincere.

"Why Lynn, isn't it?" Liz said, the tone was that of someone meeting a slight acquaintance after a long time. "How have you been? It's been just ages."

"Ah, fine, Liz," Lynn responded, taken back by the coolness in the tone. "I really meant to come see you and Bill, but after Troy's death..."