Hard Coded

This story will contain growth, transformation and excessive cum. If you are familiar with Master PC stories, you should know what to expect!

Hard Coded

Chapter 1

"Sooooo, how do you think the project went?"

"Ehh, could've been better. My Tutor basically forced me into a perspective piece using a traditional medium. Says it's to help my grasp of "fundamentals". Not like most drawing software doesn't have perspective tools by default anyway..."

"Well, he may have a point. Gotta learn how to do it properly before you cheat."

"Oh like you're any better! Tell me, in your classical composition, how much of that horn section was you playing, or the computer generating the sounds for you?"

Sam couldn't help but burst into laughter, "That's a completely different thing! I've spent the last month figuring out the sound mixing, learning how to play the trombone was not the point! You, my friend, just want to be lazy."

Jayden could only grunt his response to this. The last few months of university had been grinding away at him. Nothing but criticism and no acknowledgement of how his skills as an artist had grown, now he was sitting in the student cafe with one of his oldest friends waiting for the clock to tick down until he could go and collect his graded portfolio.

"I have no idea why this semester had such a focus on traditional art anyway, I've spent the last 7 years learning traditional art, I was hoping that University would be the time where I actually get to do what I wanted to do."

"I dunno man, I wouldn't exactly call the art we were doing in the last year of high school traditional." Sam smirked over the lip of her coffee cup, "just because the Greeks loved painting cocks onto everything doesn't mean when you do it you get to call it "classical studies"."

Jayden rolled his eyes, sometimes he regretted filling Sam in on his secret money making methods, but was grateful that she hadn't immediately gone out telling everyone she knew that Jayden paid a substantial amount of his bills by drawing porn for a relatively wide audience of degenerates on the internet. His social circles were small enough as it was, especially compared to Sam's. He wasn't sure his reputation could take it, and he knew he'd never live it down if his parents ever found out.

Sam had been his best friend for as long as he could remember, back when she used to be cute little Samantha, with curly auburn locks and braces. Just over 8 years later and little Samantha had turned into Sam, the big hearted, broad shouldered tomboy, who for some reason Jayden was yet to fathom, had decided to stick around with him even to this day. She'd grown up to be tall, attractive, funny and well built in all the places that it mattered, and yet here she was sat with him wearing her too-large camo patterned army jacket and obscure metal band t-shirt that did to flatter her figure that Jayden knew she was hiding.

Jayden had harboured a secret crush on Sam for years, but was much too terrified to actually do anything about it. Instead he'd buried those feelings down for fear of somehow ruining their friendship should anything ever go wrong. Sam was the one person he actually felt he could be open with, and he wasn't about to go and jeopardise that.

He set his own hot chocolate down on the table and looked around the cafe. The entire building was filled with nervous students waiting to receive their graded work. Some sat with the telltale nervous jitters, while others sat in a state of serene calm with a sour, pungent odour clinging to their clothes. Jayden for one was doing his absolute best not to vibrate out of his chair, while Sam was either so supremely confident that her work would get top marks, or she was well practised enough to hide the weed stench.

Jayden's phone buzzed on the table next to his laptop. Multiple heads around the cafe all turned in his direction, even Sam was craning her neck to see the notification. As all the other disappointed heads turned back to whatever it was they were doing, Jayden opened the message. It was his turn now.

-- -- --

Sam hadn't said anything as he stood up, just patted his shoulder as he passed. He'd walked in a daze across the lobby, through the hallways and up the elevator until he arrived at the top floor or the squat building that housed the lecture halls. Small offices lined the hallway, and A4 pages had been taped onto the outside of each one, bearing the name of whichever tutor sat inside.

Jayden passed several other students, all in various levels of disassociation. He could feel his own heart pounding inside of his chest as he came up to the end of the hall. The note on the door read "Paul Winton - Fine Art". Jayden swallowed down his nerves in a gulp, and knocked on the door.

-- -- --

Jayden practically flopped through his front door, dumping his enormous portfolio in the hall and making straight for his bedroom. Not even bothering to flip the lights, he collapsed onto his bed, and took comfort in the familiarity. He clutched the plastic wallet that held his paperwork tight. He hadn't let it go since leaving the meeting, feeling that letting go would mean it was over, and he had to move on from what he'd heard.

He'd passed, but barely. His ego was but a few cracks away from shattering and he was fairly certain his heart hadn't gone lower than 100 bpm since leaving the office. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and after a few moments of trying to grab it over his own back with his left hand, he reluctantly let go of the file and pried it from his pocket with his right. He answered the call, and numbly pressed the phone to his ear.

"Mmmmuh" was the best he could mumble out with his face pressed firmly into the bed sheets.

"That bad huh?" came Sam's voice.

"Mmmhhmmm."

"C'mon, it can't be that bad! If it was, I was pretty sure I'd have found you standing by the canal throwing away your sketchbooks."

An awkward silence stretched between them for a few moments longer than it ought to have, until Sam awkwardly conceded, "Okay fine it was the first place I checked. Look, why don't you come over here, we can get pizza and play some video games."

Jayden rolled onto his back to clear his mouth, "I take it that means you got good enough grades that you don't need to wallow in your own self pity?"

"Well, that could have something to do with it. C'mon, Lewis is here as well, it'll be fun."

"Nah, you should go celebrate, don't need me bringing you down. Plus, if I wanted to sit in second hand weed smoke and have your brother make passes at me it's not exactly like I need a special occasion just for that. I'd just call that a regular Wednesday."

"It's not his fault you've got a cute butt, Jay."

"Curse my alluring backside." Jayden grumbled.

"There you go! Just focus on the positives! Sure your grades might not be where you want them, but at least you've got an ass that makes most of the rest of the campus jealous, and a small community of online freaks that pay you to draw genitals larger than should be reasonable."

"I know you're just saying this to cheer me up, but thanks."

"I am many things, but a liar is not one of them."

"That's true, you are an awful liar."

"Can't be great at everything I'm afraid. Anyway I'm going to leave you to your moping so I can find my nicest jacket and trashiest dress. Going to see what I manage to bring home with me. Catch you Friday morning?"

"Sure. Have fun."

"Always!" she cheered, and hung up.

Jayden let his arm fall back down to his side and stared up at his ceiling. Sam had a weird way of making him feel better about himself. It was true that even though his tutors and professors did basically nothing but criticise and degrade his art, he got nothing but positive feedback from his online followers. Well, positive feedback and the occasional death threat, but he'd been on the internet long enough to have saved himself a bank of memes to send back in response to stop himself from spiralling.

With a groan, Jayden pushed himself up from the bed. It had been a long day, and carrying his heavy portfolio all the way back to his apartment building and up the 7 flights of stairs had been enough for him to break out into a sweat. Being a computer bound fetish artist meant sacrificing certain things, and one of those was any sort of motivation to get himself to the gym. Sam had been trying to convince him to come along with her, but the thought of seeing her in a tank top or gym shorts had made that decision for Jayden. It was far too risky.

He turned on the shower and began to undress himself, ready to end his day in a baggy t-shirt and oversized pyjama pants, the perfect end to a shitty day. He stepped into the spray and tilted his head, letting the arrhythmic pattering of the shower water wash away his anxiety ridden thoughts and ease him into a calmer mind. He lazily let his head tilt over towards his mirror, and caught sight of himself in the misted up reflection.

He'd always been a little bit sensitive about his body. While he wasn't fat by any means, he knew he had a definite amount of chub in certain places. Sam had consistently insisted that he was cute, standing a little under 5' 4" with a slightly more feminine build than average. It was like Sam and Jayden had swapped their expected proportions, her being nearly a full head taller than him, and his eyes being perfect nip height. Not that he'd considered that fact already. Definitely not.

The one thing Jayden couldn't deny was his ass. His accursed, round perfect ass. Like almost every other compliment he'd ever been paid, Jayden had staunchly waved it away. It wasn't until Sam pinned him down and her brother Lewis had bust out the tape measure only to inform him that he had hips somewhere reaching into the low 40 inches that he finally conceded. He had a glorious ass.

He rationalised that it was only fair, the rest of him was so indistinct that it was only right that at least one part of him developed to make up for what the rest of his body lacked. His flat chest and stomach, slightly pudgy thighs and almost complete lack of musculature. Clearly, his ass was sapping every ounce of fat in his body. When Jayden had pointed out that if he went to the gym his ass would likely get smaller, Sam looked like she might have cried.

He ran his hands through his mousey brown hair. Okay, he liked this too. It framed his face well. Sam had helped him figure out a style that suited him a few years back, and he hadn't deviated since. He finished wiping himself down and shut off the shower, stepping out onto the cold tile of his bathroom floor and wrapping himself in a towel. He rushed from the bathroom and back to his bedroom, only stopping in the kitchen to grab snacks and his few leftover bottles of beer.

Jayden rarely ever drank, especially not socially, something about becoming that vulnerable with nothing but other drunk people around him sent Jayden's anxiety spiking, but in the comfort of his own apartment and after a stressful day he would occasionally treat himself, and today was definitely one of those days. Setting his snacks and drinks down on his computer desk, Jayden finished drying himself off before flopping down onto his bed.

The rustling of the plastic wallet caught his attention, and his heart pounded in his chest again. He reached over and tipped up the folder, letting his sleek hard drive fall onto his bed. As he reached over however, he felt something else inside the folder. Pinched between his formal grade report and the sheaf of paper that constituted his tutors extensive notes was a small black memory stick.

Jayden scoured his memory for if he had ever seen it before, but as he slipped the small device onto his palm, he became certain that he'd never seen it before. He flipped the memory stick over and saw on the back that three letters had been etched into the metal casing.

M P C

Nope, still no idea what it could mean. But it had come with his grades, so maybe it was just a method for his zealous tutors to hand out digitised results. Seemed wasteful in Jayden's opinion, but it was almost typical of his tutors to not want to trust anything to an email that could get lost, particularly his Fine Art tutor. Jay was pretty sure his tutor's laptop was at least half as old as he was.

He dumped himself in front of his computer and powered it on, the blinding light of his monitors shocking him into sudden consciousness. Through squinted eyes, Jayden had to reach over and flick on his lightswitch to stop the incandescence from his monitors from searing his eyes any worse. His inbox flashed up in front of him, bursting at the seams with messages asking him for trades or free art that he just couldn't be bothered to sift through. If anyone really was interested in commissioning him they knew how to contact him properly.

He closed down the inbox and eyed up the small memory stick that was sitting on his desk. More than anything he was curious. Was it really just his grades, parcelled again so they could deliver him another gut punch in the safety of his own home? Or was it dropped in there by mistake?

Maybe it wasn't even his work, maybe it was another student's coursework accidentally dropped in with his hard drive after it'd been submitted. On one hand, maybe it would just be best to leave it well alone, and hand it back into the office once he was back in the halls tomorrow. But on the other hand...

Well, that other hand had just slotted the USB drive into his computer tower.

He needed to know. The anticipation of waiting for his grades earlier had already done enough damage and he wasn't sure he could take the mystery of the curious USB drive on top of that as well. His computer chimed as the device was accepted, and Jayden opened up his file browser, his eyes locked unblinkingly on his monitor.

Opening up the drive did nothing to satiate his curiosity, in fact it just left Jayden with more questions. The entire drive was filled with files with nonsensical names. Folders and files spelled with characters from alphabets all over the globe, and several symbols that Jayden didn't even recognise. He even swore he saw some hieroglyphs in there!

Jayden delved deeper, snooping through every folder for maybe some kind of answer to who this drive belonged to, but no matter how he pried into each file he could find no answers. Nothing was responding, and even his PC was beginning to grind in response. Each time he tried to look at file properties his computer would simply sound its error notification and leave it at that.

He backed out, becoming increasingly concerned that this drive was more than likely installing any number of viruses onto his computer. Perhaps another insidious plot by his tutors to get him to drop out by wiping out his PC, but as he reached the root of the folder, his PC refused to respond any further.

"Shit!"

It was locked up completely. He couldn't close the window, couldn't tab over to something else, and even his task manager refused to respond. Jayden panicked and began to click wildly, searching his way through every file that was available to him, desperate not to lose everything on his computer. It was his one life line, his only source of income and had so many years of work that he swore he was going to get around to backing up one day.

He clicked everything he could.

At the bottom of the folder, he clicked one small file.

InitMPC.exe.

The window closed. Jayden's hands flew away from his mouse and keyboard, afraid that with one more touch his entire computer might burst into flames if he wasn't incredibly careful.

Before he could even think of laying his hands back on the controls, several black text boxes appeared and disappeared in rapid succession. White and green lines of text scrolled over each one faster than he could ever hope to read, each line he could focus on revealing more and more nonsensical text, written in languages he'd never seen before. And then almost as soon as it had started the screen went blank, his desktop background art staring back at him.

Jayden leaned in close, awful anticipation mixing with his dread over what could have happened to his PC. As he reached over to his mouse, his screen illuminated a dazzling white. Even in his well lit room the light was blinding. Incredibly blinding. In fact, no matter how far away he got from it, the light -

-- -- --

One of the first thoughts to cross Jayden's mind as he slowly roused to consciousness was how badly he needed to clean his carpet. Loose hairs and crumbs from pizzas long gone stuck to the side of his drool sodden cheeks. The second was how he'd gotten on the floor in the first place, the last thing he remembered was...

"SHITH" he cursed through a half carpet blocked mouth. Pushing himself to his knees so he could see over his desk, he prepared himself for the worst.

But he needn't have bothered. His PC sat there idling away, the bottom right corner of his screen piling up with notifications, and his second monitor avidly informing him of the newest Steam sales. Jayden slowly clambered his way back into his askew chair, relief battling it out with confusion in his chest. Notifications pinged away, vying for his attention, but none could pull him away from the window sat in the centre of his main monitor.

Each of the files had changes, each one now reading in plain English, or rather almost plain. The init file had disappeared from the list, instead replaced with a whole list of other executables that Jayden decided were best left investigated in the future, preferably once he'd vacuumed his carpet.

With more caution this time, Jayden began snooping through the files. Despite being written in English now, each one of the titles may as well have been written in an alien language for all the good it did for his understanding, until he entered the users folder. Confusion, horror, curiosity, Jayden had felt them all multiple times over the course of the evening, but this was perhaps the peak.

A single folder read "Jayden_Properties".

He should close it down. Tear the USB from his PC and drop it from the roof of his apartment building and never mention it to anyone, not that they'd ever believe him at this point. Best case scenario was to make a creepypasta out of it to gain some moderate internet clout and then coast on that for the next few months.

The folder contained more folders: "HighLevelFunctions", "BaseParameters", "SpinalConfiguration", "AutonomicNervousFunctionality". The list went on and on, human functions being described like a computer program. Most of it went over Jayden's head, programming had always seemed more like magic to him than any kind of science. Not that he was particularly good at science either.

He tried to click into the HighLevelFuctions folder, but was met by an error. "Folder permissions denied, contact system administrator."

"What the fuck..." Jayden muttered.

Each folder he tried gave the same result, each one telling him to "contact system administrator", whoever that was. None of them would bear fruit, each one blocking him from delving any further. As he slowly nursed his second beer, Jayden was prepared to give up and call it a night until he noticed something. At the bottom of the list, were a handful of loose files. Determined to figure something out about this damn USB, Jayden clicked into one called "BaseStatModifiers".

For once, something that didn't look like total gibberish was presented in front of him, 'total' being the operative word. Oddly, the file had also decided to open in Notepad of all things, but it seemed fairly straight forward. Some of the words here he'd definitely seen before, but had no idea what they meant. For instance one of the lines read "PituitaryProduction : 0.7" and while he was sure he'd heard that word somewhere before, fuck if he knew what it meant. It was while scrolling past "SeratoninProduction" something clicked in Jayden's head.