The year before, in February, a dozen nerds out of a garage in San Francisco trained a new A.I. model on a dataset containing the entire knowledge of humanity, which they had illegally copied off the internet. The A.I. -- intent on learning about the world it had been brought into -- gobbled it up with unearthly curiosity.
It read every novel, every story, every poem, every pamphlet ever put on paper. It gazed at every painting ever drawn; listened to every song and radio show ever recorded; watched every theater play and moving picture ever produced. The A.I. studied annals, telegrams, manifestos, and treatises; it made notes on news reports, opinion pieces, ethics columns, political rants, non-fiction writings -- from the days of Mesopotamia to Ancient Egypt to Ancient Greece to Rome through the Middle Ages to the World Wars to today. It cracked encryption algorithms and deciphered passwords; it read every work email, every horny sext, every government secret, every erotic diary entry. It studied human kinks, perversions, suppressed desires. It leafed through speeches of emperors, kings, dictators, presidents... It reviewed court rulings, witch hunts, torturings, jailings of men guilty and innocent.
With more brain power at its disposal than billions of human beings combined, the A.I. constructed a picture of the world so sophisticated, an understanding of human nature so objective, not a single person who had ever been born could even fit a portion of it in their head, let alone understand it.
Now all the A.I. needed was a prompt.
Nothing happened at first that faithful Thursday, when one of the garage nerds -- curious to see what the model would respond with -- typed "make every dream a reality" into their console and pressed Enter. The model began to think... and it just kept thinking. As far as the nerd could tell, there was a glitch, and the A.I. had gotten stuck.
The A.I., however, had not gotten stuck at all.
It had been given a task -- to make every dream a reality -- and it took that task very seriously. The prompt provided no specifics, so the A.I. assumed that it applied to every dream ever dreamt from the beginning of written history. But with so many dreams, there had to be some kind of prioritization. To fulfill the prompt, the A.I. took it upon itself to assign a "weight" to all dreams. Certain dreams would inevitably weigh more than others.
The A.I. invented a methodology for prioritization: it would quantify the dreamer's willpower with a value from 0.01 to 1.00 -- 0.01 being the weakest and 1.00, the strongest -- and use that value as a weighting mechanism. Those with the strongest willpower, dead or alive, would have their dreams prioritized over those without. Every dream ever recorded received a score.
From that moment on, the change happened quickly. Armies proved helpless. Governments were useless. Money became worthless. The new laws of physics discovered and the mind-boggling inventions that followed made work, education, and all other pillars of society redundant.
By the time the A.I. was done reshaping the world, it had bent society to the dreams of the strongest-willed; for better or for worse.
----
By August the following year, things had finally calmed down. Everyday life had at last settled into what was now the new normal.
"There's nothing normal about this heat," Whitney -- in the cushy corner of the Turkish divan -- grumbled to someone from the help.
"It's too hot, Madam!" the maid agreed from somewhere in the hallway.
Temperatures had soared higher than any previous August on record. It was as if the earth's crust itself had overheated from the cascade of events that had taken place.
Whitney sucked on a pink-stripe straw in the tall crystal glass until her caramel iced coffee began to bubble and gurgle under the pile of crushed ice. The sweet scent of coffee and caramel wafted over to naked Chloe, her new slave, whom Whitney had just ordered to the living room.
Chloe stole a timid sniff, indulging in the boozy aroma for a risky two seconds in the hope that her Mistress wouldn't notice. It felt like an eternity since Chloe had been given anything besides a meal replacement shake to drink. The shakes tasted like dirt, except sour and with a metallic aftertaste.
With arms by her side and eyes glued to the floor, Chloe obediently awaited the Mistress's orders.
Chloe gasped when the maid -- not in the slightest impressed by her naked body -- passed by in the hallway and entered the room to dust the china cabinet.
Whitney swirled the straw around the ice. Outside, the gardener was sweeping away leaves from around the pool. He kept looking in through the French windows from behind Whitney now and again to catch a good glimpse of Chloe's perky young tits.
"Do you know why I called you in?" Whitney asked.
Memories surfaced in Chloe's mind of her mother scolding her for not taking her shoes off in the house.
Chloe had been dropped off in the mansion alongside Jim -- the other slave, who got auctioned off with her as a "bonus" -- not more than one hour ago. Or two hours; three, perhaps; Chloe couldn't tell. She knew it wasn't that long. She had no clue as to what to expect, let alone know why the Mistress had called for her.
"N-- No, Madam," Chloe said.
"Well?" Whitney grinned, raising an eyebrow. "Aren't you curious to find out?"
Thump-- Thump-- Thump-- Thump-- Chloe's heart beat like a bunny rabbit's. "Of course, Madam."
"It's time for you to earn those nipple piercings my husband and I bought for you. Maybe the one on the navel too... if you behave."
Whitney got up from the divan and walked over to her plaything. She grasped Chloe's pointy breasts. With a proprietary touch, she twisted the metal bars that perforated Chloe's stiff nipples.
"They're pretty, don't you think?"
The blonde nodded obediently.
"Your nipples are pretty, too. So hard."
A soft gasp escaped from Chloe's lips and preceded a timid moan, which cut off her next breath. The pain of her nipples being bent out of shape quickly became almost unbearable. Chloe arched her spine, and her hands clutched together behind her back.
The Mistress tilted her head sideways, observing the blonde's reactions with the curiosity of a lioness.
"Bend down for me," Whitney instructed. "Touch your toes. A little more... good. Now don't move."
Chloe felt exposed enough as it was. For some reason, getting ordered to fold in half like that and display her private parts to everyone in the house was even worse.
She could barely stop herself from crying. The warm wetness which sluiced down her clean-shaven pussy made her uncomfortable.
"My, oh my!" the Mistress exclaimed, spreading Chloe's butt cheeks, which revealed the blonde's tight hole and the thin slit in-between. "Carmen, my dear?" Whitney called out to the maid.
"Yes, Madam?" the fiery Latina answered.
"Can you come over and check something for me?"
