by Bobwhite
This is the beginning of a revision. If MC stories can possibly be called implausible, the first version of ORF was. In order to make mind-controlling, body-altering, and object-altering more plausible, I decided to change the mechanics of the ORF universe. It's also compatible with other stories now, from mild hypnosis-type stories to the out-there, reality-controlling stories. During the revision, I'm keeping similar characters and situations wherever possible. I hope you like it. If you do, email me. I like feedback, even bad feedback.
Even with all the power we can wield, sometimes, not often but sometimes, a story breaks on the local news. No story has gone past that level, but that's to be expected; and, it's still too far. I'm sure there's at least a few besides us who remember such stories—stories of people suddenly disappearing only to re-appear, changed forever. They're found miles away from their homes, usually; there are a few times they're found right under their friends' and families' noses, though. Their behavior is markedly different from what is remembered of them in most cases. Sometimes, their looks are also different. Television calls it amnesia. Or, fugue, if you please: they just left one life behind for no apparent reason and started a new one.
While I'm sure there are a couple of actual cases out there, most of the time, it's because of the plague-like blessing of a group of people known as "controllers." I'm one, and undoubtedly, some of you reading this are, too. We can alter the normal personality patterns of a person (or a group of them!), with varying degrees of ability and success. Some, with precious little power that they are quite often not even aware they posses, can place a person in a trance-like state and do anything from have the person's body obey commands like a dog to create alternate personalities available and switchable via external stimuli to permanently (or so they think) alter a person's core personality. Moving up in talent you have the type who can control people at their whim... as long as that whim is expressed verbally. Next are the general telepaths, who can think at a person and they will perform, and sometimes even think, the way they are "told" to.
Then, there are the bigger fish, and they can do more than the average, run-of-the-mill telepath can do. They can change a person's body. Talents in this area are diverse, as some can alter looks on a more or less cosmetic level, others have the ability to actually change how a body functions—even adding or removing various parts of the body and sometimes affecting DNA. Some, but no all, of this group, understand why it all works: life is only partially real. While some philosophers will claim that the individual is real and everything else may be an illusion, it's actually people and life that are the illusions.
You and I and every living thing we know of are, for lack of a better word, auras shaping matter. That matter is our body and anything with which we have intimate contact. Sure, protein and DNA are the blocks and blueprints, but the essence of a person is his or her aura. And, no, not the aura that some healers can see—although that talent does exist in them, to a degree: when you look into a mirror, you're staring into how your aura, made up of your feelings and experiences, has shaped the matter making up your body. Every time you have direct or even indirect contact with someone or something, part of your aura rubs off on that person or object, as well.
Knowing this allows us to change not just people's bodies, but their memories, motives, though patterns, direct thoughts, possessions—their very reality. To illustrate this, let me choose a popular example: if I force a woman's breasts to grow to a size that I like, I can choose to just arbitrarily change them, leaving her confused as to how to explain the change and in need of new clothes. Or, I can make it so that she, and everyone she knows or who has ever seen her, believes that it is natural for her to posses those assets, as if they grew during puberty. I can even affect her aura so that while she notices the sudden change, she unknowingly sends a signal that tells everyone else that it's normal and they've always been that way. Cool, huh? Knowing this allows me (and those of my Order) to change even the most mundane non-living things, because at some point, life had to intervene—and life can be altered.
Our Order is the Order of Reality Fixers. I know, bad name, but it doesn't have to be good. We have to be good, because there's too much work for even us to handle. Want an example? Ever wonder deep inside how a porn star can do what he or she does? Sometimes, it's voluntary. 98% of the time (an actual statistic), it's not; they're picked up off the street (or wherever) and turned into what they become. Thankfully, most folks involved in this alteration pattern don't have enough power to change bodies, which is why fake tits prevail. And, we don't stop it most of the time because it's relatively harmless and fun. Sorry, involuntary porn stars.
It's not that all our time is devoted to sexual-themed adventures and investigations; in fact, the truth is far from it. Most of the time, we're busy keeping the next Hitler from taking over. It happens more often than you think. But, the sexual mind-crimes are the most personal to most ORF members who I know. That blindingly beautiful teacher who was turned into a stripper who turns tricks for her patrons for $10? That is someone's daughter, or mother, or wife; most changes of this type are done for humiliation—in itself, a harmless thing to temporarily do to a normal, but when the changes become permanent or destructive, someone's got to step in.
The woman who walks out on her family at the local mall and becomes the devoted love slave of a beautiful woman with four other live-in girlfriends—and who is then paraded in front of her family and friends to explain why she is leaving them to be the cunt-slave of a woman she didn't even meet in the mall—well, if it weren't for us, she would never find her true home. That teenager who can't even go to school because she has a powerful orgasm every time she hears the word "come" cannot lead any kind of life outside an institution, unless we intervene. Imagine trying to raise children in the mess created by everyday mind controllers left unchecked!
Thankfully, most controllers are sloppy and make mistakes, and are even mistaken about their own powers. The most famous examples are "permanent" alterations. Nothing is permanent; all you can do is add to or hide from an aura's center (a mind, in other words); no matter how complete memory eras ion, for example, it can be undone completely or partially.
That's not to say that we don't have our fun sometimes. In the following chapters, you'll hear stories ripped from our mental database—some are adventures in debauchery (that is why you're reading this), some are handy-man fix-it jobs. Just remember not to try any of this at home. We'll probably find out.
© 2002, 2004, bobwhite, emc.bobwhite@gmail.com. All rights reserved.