The Aphrodite Project

Inside were rows of workstations and office chairs, about 20 in total arranged in a circle, like a war room, around an empty space at the centre. The building was deserted, but clean and in perfect working order. He stooped to stay hidden from the outside. The desks, sleek and grey, were laden with computers, but there was no sign of any paperwork. Nothing he could get his hands on; that was, until he had made his way to the other side of the dome. On one desk was a thick book of bound A4 sheets, that almost looked like it had been laid out for him.

"Aphrodite Project - 2025 handbook"

He sat on the floor, out of sight and skimmed through the introduction, frantically reading fragments of sentences at random like a kid trying too late to bone up for an exam.

"Leverage the inexhaustible resource of male desire by imposing limits..."

"...plant subjects in high-powered positions to perform a corporal function."

"...industrialised domesticity of the male sex..."

"...erode the foundations of the masculine order..."

"...end war and inequality."

The intro was followed by endless pages of technical language, formulas and arcane protocols that he had no hope of understanding in a few minutes. He needed to take it with him. While wondering how he could hide the book from the keepers, or whether they would notice it was missing, his eyes rested on a paragraph on the back-cover. It was an excerpt from an unlikely source:

"Men and Women differ in their reactions to love, and out of their differences often comes a partnership most satisfying to both. The man learns to be patient and tender with his wife, the wife learns to make her husband feel a king - and at the same time her delighted slave.

Woman Magazine, April 19 1958"

"Delighted Slave" was underlined.

This was followed by another quote:

"Margaret Sanger - Woman and the New Race, 1920

The first step is birth control. Through birth control woman will attain to voluntary motherhood. Having attained this, the basic freedom of her sex, she will cease to enslave herself and the mass of humanity. Then, through the understanding of the intuitive forward urge within her, she will not stop at patching up the world; she will remake it."

Jon was dizzy. He couldn't take it in. Reality snapped back, and he hurdled the desk cross the empty space in the middle of the dome and make a beeline for the door. He was halted by a whir, and after a loud click two segments of the floor began to part. As it did it revealed a cavity a metre wide, and an underground stairway came into view, illuminated at once by blue fibre-optic strips on the wall and ceiling.

He descended, and the stairway bottomed out into a cool passage that extended for a distance, at least a couple of hundred metres. He gripped the wristwatch, rolled up manual to his chest and obeyed his piqued sense of wonder and curiosity. His steps made a metallic clunk on the floor, which echoed along the tunnel. Goosebumps formed on Jon's ghostly blue arms.

At last he reached the other end and climbed the steps into darkness, before another automatic hatch opened around him and he stepped, blinking, through the floor of Olwen's empty office. The hatch closed, and he found himself on the very spot where he had been subjected to her orders and taunts. Confused, overwhelmed by trepidation and excitement, Jon looked around for moment and trod silently to the kitchen. Also empty. But he heard a faint voice on the lawn to the front of the house.

The kitchen exit was on the west side of the property, and the alternate dome was buried in woodland across the grounds to the east. This tunnel traversed almost the width of the grounds. He made his way round to the lawn, and instantly recalled the red rain of his dream.

Olwen, Lauren and Jennifer were sitting primly on a picnic blanket around a large carbon fibre briefcase. Wyatt was kneeling a short distance away from them, side-on and head bowed. The woman noticed Jon, but didn't look up. He held the manual behind his back, in a distracted attempt to hide it. He approached, said a meek "hello" and took a seat quietly on the grass.

Lauren was the first to acknowledge Jon. "Could you give me the watch please?" Jon felt like running, but reasoned with himself that he had done nothing wrong. He had nothing to fear. He handed over the watch, Wyatt turned and shot an accusing glance.

"Good, and you can give us that, too." She pointed at the book he was doing a poor job of concealing. Jon felt like a child who had been up to no good. "If you got a chance to read it properly you'll understand what we're about to do with Wyatt here. You were never supposed to go where you went today, but it's extremely promising that you haven't run away now, given what you know."

"Of course, you can walk away at any time, Jon. But once you see the program through to the end, you have a duty to us. We'll give you exactly what you need in three short weeks, and you'll give something to us in return; loyalty."

"He is our one failure. Ten years ago Wyatt did well on the course. Not quite as well as you, but we had no reason to believe he'd try to hurt us. What we didn't realise at the time, because our preselection profiling was suboptimal, was that Wyatt is a misogynist. Something in his fundament was damaged at an early age, and corrupted against women. He wants to hurt us in a way we could never challenge, so we have to work out how to keep him in check. We've tried to give him some kind of life here."

"You still have a week to go. And you'll become intimate with all the ways we tried to keep him loyal, but every few months he would rebel. He tried to slander us in the media, he tried to involve the police and refused to answer our calls. We've spent years trying to get through to him."

"Today he's finally come to the end of the road."

Olwen lifted her chin and smirked at Jon. Jennifer opened the briefcase. Wyatt was motionless.

In the case were face masks connected to bottles of compressed gas. Olwen picked one up and sauntered over to Wyatt, skipping playfully in front of him before kneeling behind his back.

Lauren started talking, "For decades people wondered about a theoretical aphrodisiac that could stop whole armies in their tracks. It's a beautiful idea; the triumph of love over war. We had been lobbying for it secretly for decades, scratching funding together where we could find it. Today with nanorobotics we have achieved it. This gas is made up of billions of nanomachines, created to target receptors in the body. Wyatt's going to be exposed to the most potent version, manufactured to attack for a week - just the substance that will lead to huge manifestations of physical love across the world. And in their wake, the unconquerable spread of Love Allure, and woman worship."

Lauren turned to Jon, "But we know that we can subjugate just about anyone with force, and fear will be the response. We don't want to hold the world beneath our heel, but we want to rule it with love; so what we really need are annexed allies, Jon. Men like you."

Jon was desperate to know why Wyatt wasn't running. Although he was glad that he wasn't in trouble he still sympathised with this strange man who seemed so resigned to his fate, whatever that would prove to be. Was Wyatt wrestling the same emotions as Jon; that powerful sense of fear kept in check by excitement?

The mask was strapped to Wyatt's face and Olwen took a few cocky steps back before tapping something into her phone. There was a faint hiss, and Wyatt shuddered then toppled forward, his fall broken by his arms. They quivered, before finally giving way and he came to a rest at Olwen's feet.

Lauren gestured to him in the way a scientist might refer to a guinea pig in a lab. "He'll be awake soon, but the next day may not be enjoyable for him. He'll be in a state of constant, mounting arousal, with no hope for relief. He may hate us, but like you he has come through the Aphrodite Program and cannot orgasm by himself. All that loathing, and no outlet; no wonder he tried to hurt us. But starting soon he'll feel the first portending waves of an orgasm. Over the following hours it will build, and then some time this evening he will reach a climax that will never end."

Lauren pitied the unconscious man as she said, "He will not make it through the night. After three minutes on the cusp of orgasm he will lose consciousness, but the climax will continue without him. His body will push on to an insurmountable peak until there's nothing left."

"This is not how it should be. In an ideal world we would hand him over to the police, or impose some kind of gagging order against him. But we can't afford this. We've made too much progress. Too many lives have been saved. Nevertheless, Wyatt is a victim, and we will mourn him."

"Not least because he did such great work around the place, cleaning, mowing the lawn, carrying stuff around." Olwen chimed in glibly. The women nodded grimly in unison. "We'll have to bring in some extra trainees over the weekend."

Jon was frozen in horror and incredulity, at the stark banality of a man's bizarre death. If this was all some ruse he didn't want to put it to the test. He wanted to run. He wanted to get home to normality and hold Kathy in his arms, but when he gazed over at his three captors something inside melted and then solidified in his cock, the iron bar that was always on the edge of his thoughts.

Jennifer approached, wearing that same look of lobotomised cheeriness. "You have just seven days left, Jon. You're so close." She gestured at the condemned man." This isn't your fate. You'll understand why this had to be."

"Do you want to stay on?" Lauren asked, with a confident air.

"Yes!" Jon was shocked that he hadn't even paused to consider the question, but when he answered a jolt of excitement rippled through his body. These women, all women, seemed elusively powerful at that moment. They were all that mattered to him. If he knelt down and prayed at Lauren's feet he could remain there forever and all would be well in the end.

10

There was no point in observing the usual routine that evening. As the sky darkened Jon took a seat on the remnants of a marble column in a remote part of the grounds and wondered. Would he be an accessory to a murder? What was Wyatt's story? Nervously he ran a finger under his wristband, trying to work it loose and get some fresh air to the clammy skin beneath. In recent days it had started to prickle, like a skin test for allergies.

There was rustling in the foliage behind. Jon dreaded the thought of seeing Wyatt again, knowing what was to come, and as his head swivelled he was ready to run like prey. But it was Alice. She had been absent that afternoon, but the serious look on her face suggested that she knew what had happened.

"How did you know where to find me?"

Alice sympathised with his ignorance. "Oh Jon, you've been wearing that wristband for two weeks now. Didn't you wonder what it was for? It's tells us a lot of things about you, and one of them is your location on the property. Didn't you ever wonder how smoothly things happen around here? It's all for you."

She let the idea sink in, and gestured towards the foundations around Jon. "This was an orangery once. It burned down long ago when several of Lauren's ancestors were killed. Tragedy is entwined with her family history."

"Just tell me about Wyatt, Alice."

"Like you he joined the program willingly. But what you need to know is that during the process we access and retune emotions that are rooted at the very heart of a person and his makeup. Wyatt went back out into the world, but all was not well. Our suspicion grew, so we visited his flat six months after he left and found an arsenal of guns and knives."

"What we didn't know is that before we recruited him he had a history of domestic violence that had never been reported. We found him too late, when he was in his 30s, and after completing the course he became deeply conflicted. He loved and hated women at the same time. It made him more dangerous than he had ever been. We managed to nullify his threat, but today he made a last attempt to finish our organisation for good."

"But why do you have to kill him?"

"He has tried to hurt us many times, but each time was foiled by our subliminal conditioning. It was just a matter of time before he succeeded. We don't take this lightly, but what we're doing for men like you is going to save millions of lives. Think of it; a world without exploitation or war. We have to weigh that quest against his life. If people find out about Aphrodite Project won't survive. We're growing, but our future is always in the balance"

Jon was not satisfied. "OK, OK, so why does he have to die like this."

That sympathy returned to Alice's tone, and she knelt on the grass next to him. "Jon, the gas won't work on any old person. For the average person it will generate an arousal that they will need to relieve over and over again. But for a man who has undergone Aphrodite conditioning the arousal will only continue culminate without the prospect of release. Unless."

"Unless what?"

"Um, Jon, unless we say so."

"It's a soft warning to you too. This is a taste of what we can do. Wyatt's fate what happens when you provoke the natural instinct of a mother defending her young."

Jon knew he was being threatened, but his fear and sexual desire were coming from the same place.

"You won't be like him, because you're a good person. We researched you, and you'll be surprised how much we know. We know what you like." She cast her eye down, deliberately at her dress, and ran a hand up her midriff and over her breasts.

"Wyatt wanted to show you something that you weren't ready to see. You are still free to go, and you could have taken the manual with you. You could have ended everything."

Jon was only interested in the notion that they controlled his release. He was desperate to come. All his credulity and all the madness would just drain away if he could clear his head with a waking orgasm.

"Can you 'say so' now?"

Alice was evidently delighted at where Jon's train of thought had taken him. "No. Not yet, but we'll get there very soon. Things are about to get fun. You will learn the power of womankind, and bask in its love for the rest of your life. You will evangelise it, and your voice will be powerful."

She was seducing him, and she moved in painfully close. Jon could caught her scent and could feel her hair against his cheek. She puckered her Russian red lips and planted a kiss on his forehead. Jon longed to wrap his arms around her, pull her in and feel her breasts against his chest, but it was as if he could only appreciate at a distance, like a painting or artefact. He could feel her breath on his skin, but his perception had been convinced or fooled into believing that she wasn't really there.

When he returned to the dome he could hear Lauren's voice loud and clear filling the structure. A few days before he had sensed it in half-sleep and asked himself it was real. But now it was perfectly audible. Lauren was entreating him to relax and submit. In short, endlessly repeated sentences, she was telling him to fall in love with her, with all womankind. As he imbibed his dinner, the words meant nothing to him. But time passed and Jon began to switch off.

Time passed and he sat absently at the table and began to drone in time with Lauren's mantras.

"I submit to feminine love."

"I develop myself to honour this power."

"The stronger I get the harder I serve."

"The harder I serve the better I feel."

"The better I feel the longer I wait."

Jon wasn't really there. As he hadn't been the hundreds of times he had repeated these lines over the previous two weeks. Meanwhile, out in the blackness Wyatt's brain had turned to pulp. The heels of his boots had dug in, and his hands had ripped handfuls of soil from the cool ground. His mind was being invaded and overwhelmed by a titillating fantasy that kept regenerating intelligently, blasting past the limits of his imagination, dragging him to a peak that kept moving away. He had been inhaling for three minutes, and the life was about to be wrung from every wire-tight fibre of his body.

11

When Jennifer arrived the next morning she wasn't alone. Jon sensed the commotion long before they entered. He was told that for the final week all of his activities would be accompanied by a group of trainee keepers. All women in their 20s and 30s, they would sit in, observe and participate without saying a word. Their faces were inscrutable, beyond half-smiles and blushes, and they followed the keepers in unison like a shoal of fish. Jon might not have paid them a second glance, but the final week had brought with it another change of colour for the keeper's uniform.

They wore only black. But it was worse than that, because the outfits were lewd. Before he'd have described his company as sexy, or slightly inappropriate, but now they were unapologetically alluring. Jennifer's leotard invaded her contours, and was worn by the rest of her cohort. It cut off at the very limit of their nipples, but as Jennifer cavorted he was teased by the idea of seeing her areolae as her breasts danced, but improbably they were held in place.

Jon no longer had the energy to conceal his arousal. It defined him now, and was not just accepted, but encouraged. They were proud of that they had driven him to this state. And he knew it when they inspected from time to time. His build was now athletic, and his erection was an unmissable mound against the black material of his bodysuit.

When he exercised that morning he felt the many pairs of impassive and curious eyes on his body and no longer felt abashed. He was thrilled by the scrutiny, and wanted to do his best. As he complied with Jennifer's commands, mindful of the thrashing she'd handed him recently, his own spikes of excitement and arousal appeared to charge the new recruits. He'd hear a gasp, notice a lip-bite, or see a hand dive involuntarily between shiny spandex thighs.

He soon returned to the familiar feeling of cruising through the day, brought on by the sense that he had no control, and with no prospect of being able to change anything he let himself switch off, like a backseat passenger on a long drive. He observed what happened to him with detachment, like someone watching the landscape through the car window.

Clean, dry and refreshed, he made his way to Olwen's office. The trainees were scattered around the property, busying themselves in flower beds or filing in and out of the main entrance to the mansion with decorative items and pieces of furniture.

He caught Olwen on playful form again. As he entered the kitchen he could hear her directing the recruits briskly, stressing that they only "had a few days to get it ready". Jon had to dodge two women carrying a large tube of rolled-up material towards the ballroom. He had become fond of her brusqueness. It had crept up on him unawares, but familiarity with Olwen hadn't allowed Jon to drop his guard. Now he knew her, he knew to be ready for anything.

And so it was that his meek arrival that day, not long before the end of the program, met with a question that knocked him sideways.

Olwen rose from her desk. "Jon, are you ashamed of leering at us all the time?"

"...I don't know. Honestly, I was but I can't help it any more."

"So you're impossibly aroused. When was the last time you saw a woman naked?"

He thought hard. It didn't surprise him that he wasn't shocked by the question. Two weeks back there was the night out with Kathy when they had plans to be intimate, but she got accosted. It felt like a lifetime ago. But before that only exams, and the tension of that time made it difficult to think about sex.