@[Hypnothrill](/user/show/37386) You're my favorite writer on here so that comment really means a lot! The first story is largely completed but I need to sort out the flow and fix an early scene I've been struggling with for close to a year. The last story is actually done. It's part 1 of a 3 story arc but works well enough on it's own that I think i'm probably just going to post it on Friday or some time over the weekend.

@[Loxley](/user/show/75942) So I hope you don't mind, but I actually wrote a couple of different alternate endings to "Everything is Normal." They're both totally unauthorized, so you as author could eventually go in a totally different direction. ENDING ONE: As the voice, growing ever louder, whispered in his ear, Mark began slowly lurching towards the nearest house, his arms outstretched like a sleepwalker. He was nearly towards the door when he woke up for a second. As he suddenly realized he was on the threshold of becoming a mindless wanking drone, the jolt of fear and adrenaline brought Mark back to full consciousness. “I need to get to Rich’s house—now!” he thought, picking up the pace to a race-walk, forcing himself to ignore the pools of blue glow he saw in his peripheral vision every few hundred meters as he walked past another house. Danny—and that damned game—had done something to his mind. But he couldn’t think about that now, he couldn’t let his mind wander down that spiral again. He had to just focus on Rich—everything was normal where Rich was; he could get back to normal, if he just made it to Rich’s flat. He tried reciting times tables, World Cup winners, former Prime Ministers—anything to keep his mind off the blue glow and the spiral that called out to him. He’d just made it to Clement Attlee when he got to Rich’s flat and knocked on the door. “Come on in,” he heard Rich’s voice call out, so he opened the unlocked door and stepped into the flat. “You’ve got to help me, Rich! I’ve…” Mark’s voice trailed off as he walked into the main room and saw Rich’s lean, shaved, naked body illuminated by the eerie blue light of the television screen, which he stared at intensely as he idly stroked his hard cock. “But…but you said everything was normal…” Mark sputtered out, practically sobbing as his last bastion of hope suddenly gave way. “Everything IS normal,” Rich replied, his voice devoid of emotion. “It is normal to stare into the blue spiral. It is normal to fall into the blue spiral. It is normal to feel your cock grow hard. It is normal to free your hard cock and stroke it. It is normal to stroke and stroke as you stare into the blue spiral and become mindless. It is normal to absorb all your programming like a good drone. It is normal to surrender your individuality like a good drone. It is normal to ejaculate once you are fully assimilated.” He pointed to the trails of dried cum that caked his torso, as high as his collarbone. It was no use resisting now. Part of Mark wasn’t even sure if he wanted to. So as Rich insistently repeated “Everything is normal,” Mark found himself repeating along, nodding as he agreed with the indisputable truth of the words. “It is normal to stare into the blue spiral,” Rich murmured, and then Mark softly repeated his words. As he stared into the beautiful blue spiral on the television set, it was like returning into an old lover’s embrace. “It is normal to fall deep into the blue spiral,” Rich and Mark said in unison, and Mark could feel his mind fall deeper as he stared slack-jawed into the spiral. But that was okay; if he fell deeper, then the spiral would just catch him tighter. “It was normal to feel your cock grow hard,” the two men recited. That was good, Mark thought, because he was so hard already. Ever since he started looking at the spiral, his erection had been straining at the fly of his jeans, begging to be let out. “It is normal to free your hard cock and stroke it.” Mark let out a sigh of relief as he pulled down his zipper and his hard-on sprung up. Then a grunt of pleasure as he began stroking to the rhythm of the spiral’s pulsations, the same rhythm Rich was using to stroke his hard cock beside him. “It is normal to stroke and stroke as you stare into the blue spiral and become mindless.” As Mark continued to stroke his hard-on to the spiral’s rhythm, he felt his thoughts grow fuzzy, like his brain was slowing down. That was good. It felt good to become mindless. “It is normal to absorb all your programming like a good drone.” Mark (Drone) didn’t have to think anymore. He could just stroke his cock and absorb his programming. “It is normal to surrender your individuality like a good drone.” Inside Drone’s brain, the name Mark, his personality, memories, likes and dislikes were compressed into a tiny file that would only be accessed when interacting with non-drones. Until every man had been assimilated—at which point that data would be deleted to leave more processing capacity for the spiral’s instructions. “It is normal to ejaculate once you are fully assimilated.” Just before the sun began to rise, Drone (Mark) flatly repeated this last instruction, then shot the biggest load of his life all over his chest. He then headed into Rich’s bathroom in order to shave off all of his body hair from the waist down. Once that task had been completed, Drone (Mark) sat next to Drone (Rich) on the sofa and began masturbating again, regaining his erection as soon as he stared into the heart of the spiral. They would stay there until they received their next instructions. And then the drones’ real work would begin…

@[Hypnothrill](/user/show/37386) ENDING TWO: A faint smile formed on Mark’s face as he abandoned his futile quest to resist the spiral. He was already halfway assimilated; Danny had seen to that. Now he just needed to complete his journey down the spiral, his journey to becoming a fully mindless drone. Part of him wanted to walk into the nearest house and begin wanking beside the other men who were becoming drones. Or walk all the way back to Danny’s house and experience the pleasure of his friend’s warm mouth sucking him dry as the spiral sucked him in. But no. Those were selfish thoughts. Individual thoughts. And Mark may have only been a pre-drone, but he knew that he needed to put the needs of the collective first. And the collective needed all men to be assimilated. Including Rich. Mark walked quickly down the street, no longer distracted by the blue glows coming from the windows. He could stare into the spiral later. For now, he was on a mission for the spiral. He knocked on the door to Rich’s flat: “It’s me.” Rich opened the door with a concerned look on his face, “Now what’s all this about Danny trying to attack you? Were you two fighting over a girl or summat?” Mark tried to act out an emotion he no longer felt. “No… he… he… tried to rape me.” “If that’s some kind of joke, it’s not a funny one. What the fuck are you on about—he tried to rape you?” “No, it’s… haven’t you seen the news… it’s happening all over the country!” “No, I’ve just been listening to my records all night,” Rich pointed to his turntable. “What the fuck does that mean—happening all over the country?” “Let me show you,” Mark said, his dick already so hard it threatened to pull down his zipper as he picked up Rich’s remote and pressed the numbers for the Special Channel. “That’s not a news report! It’s just a spi…rallll….” Rich’s voice trailed off as he watched the screen. He didn’t even have time to notice that his friend already had his hard dick out and was wanking it beside him. And soon both young men had their pants around their ankles as they stood in front of the TV screen and stroked and watched, jerking to the same rhythm with the pulse of the spiral. Occasionally one of them would murmur something like “Feels good to fall into the spiral” or “Gotta give in and become mindless” or “Obedience is pleasure” or “All men must be assimilated.” It didn’t matter which man was speaking; they both thought the same things. When they finally shot what little remained of their free will out of their hard dicks, Drone (Mark) and Drone (Rich) went to the shower to wash off the remanents of their last orgasms as individuals, then shave off all their body hair below the neck. They then returned to the living room, slowly stroking their hard cocks to the spiral as they awaited new instructions. At 6:00 am sharp, they received them and, five minutes later, headed out the door of Rich’s flat, naked and hard, then joined a parade of similarly naked, freshly-shaven drones marching down the streets of Dowcaster. There were still some men in town that had not seen the spiral, that had not been assimilated. By 8:00 am, that would not be the case.

@[Hypnothrill](/user/show/37386) I don’t mind at all and both of these are absolutely great. In fact, bits of them may have helped me crack a scene with Danny early on in the story that's been bugging me for ages. Not to give the game away too much but the ending I have drafted does follow your first ending really very closely, even down to having marching lines of assimilated men.

@[Larry](/user/show/494946) If that's my superpower then I wish I had the ability to pace myself better too! :D And, yes, I'm also looking forward to placing Farsight firmly in The Subduer's clutches! You also touch on something that stands out to me, but you'll have to wait and see what THAT means,...

@[Blazargus](/user/show/10012784) Ahh so excited! I also forgot to mention that I really appreciate you name dropping a couple other heroes. Helps with the fantasy to imagine the downfall of all these heroes

@[Larry](/user/show/494946) :thumbsup: