Video Entities - the Mix Up

[goodgulf]

Video Entities - the Mix Up

Note: this work was largely inspired by a role playing game called GURPS, more specifically a GURPS setting called Technomancer. All possible references to GURPS, the spells, and powers, are trademarks owned by Steve Jackson Games. Nothing in this story is in anyway a challenge to their trademarks, copyrights, or other IP.

And yes, this is the same world the story "The Reporter"

Quick intro:
Technomancer is a setting where, since the mid 40s, magic has existed on a version of our Earth. The timeline is the same until the A-bomb was tested there, and that made a hole in the space time thingie and let magic into the world. So it's basically the modern world, but with magic.

GURPS divides magic into subgroups called colleges. Those with the ability to use magic sometimes have that ability tied to specific colleges - so someone might only be able to cast Fire magic, or Sound magic, or Healing magic - you get the basic idea.

This is a story about one misuse of magic that was included in the sourcebook

The Mix Up


Eddy couldn't believe his eyes. Literally, he couldn't. Faced with an impossible sight, Eddy cast a spell that would allow him to see auras. Illusions didn't have auras, nor did any of the other ways he could imagine faking a scene like the one he was viewing.

The spell worked. Eddy knew the spell worked. Knowing that he had to believe the evidence of his own eyes. Not only were there auras, but he recognised both auras as ones he had seen before. There was Martha, the woman that Eddy was planning a life with, and there was Teddy Love, a porn star. Never had any charm spells or anything else influencing them - they were both doing what they were doing because they enjoyed it.

As the sight sank in, Eddy realised that the greater betrayal wasn't that Martha was having sex with another man, it was the type of sex they were having. Dirty, nasty stuff. Martha had been up in arms that one time he'd tried to finger her ass while he was in her, and she was letting Teddy Love slam her there. Then...

'Ass to mouth?' Eddy thought in shock. 'She'd let him do that?'

She didn't just let her porn star lover do it, Martha begged for it. Turning away, Eddy left before the couple noticed that he had been there.


Eddy had been a rising star in college, head hunted by countless firms. After Martha had talked him into working with her he'd taken a huge pay cut to work on her project. When they had started he hadn't seen it as working on her project so much as building a life together. Working out a new process that would make both of them rich. Suddenly the "pre-pre-nup" and the long engagement made sense. Martha had said it was to protect him, with all her assets invested in the project there was nothing that he could ever get from her and if things went wrong the agreement would shield him from her creditors.

It had seem like a generous act at the time, but now it was dawning on him that he'd wasted 200 enchanting days (practically a year of his life!) on a process that he didn't own. One that he had no claim to, and he had worked a drastically reduced salary.

He had worked for far less than he was worth. After all, you needed to be born with a talent for magic to work it and only one in a hundred people were born with it at the most basic level. There were three levels of magery and while the average enchanter (1 in 400) took in $375 a day (before taxes) the starting rate for someone with magery 3 (1 in 1000) was twice that. Eddy had turned down job offers in the $1000 - $1200 a day range to "build a future" with Martha and believed her bullshit about keeping costs down - accepting a five mid figure salary instead of a six figure one.

The scheme was a simple one - trying to make the 'video entity' spell work as a business model. The spell enchanted a DVD, film reel, CD-ROM, videotape (if you still used those old fashion things), or anything else along those line, so that when it was played to a certain point a person or animal on the screen came to life and stepped out of the screen becoming life sized in the processed. The "entity" had the same personality as the screen character and either followed the viewer's orders or the pre-set directives of the person casting the enchantment (of course that choice was made during the enchantment). Turning off the player or hitting "rewind" or "stop" destroyed the entity while "pause" had it in place and "fast forward" made it move faster. The enchantment was done in hour long blocks, and after it was viewed once the media was erased.

As a one shot magic item it was intriguing and entertaining. You could have Lassie doing tricks in your living room, you could have a smurf that played with your kids and give them a smurfing good time, you could have, well, anything that was in a movie come walking out of the screen. The problem was cost; using the standard guidelines for pricing enchanted items, the wholesale cost was $450 per hour of viewing. If you hired a wizard at a daily rate and told him make video entities, then (as long as he had access to a NEMA power line to draw on) he could enchant a two hour video entity every hour, bringing the price of the magic down to about $100 a video - but few enchanters would do something that boring day after day. Add in the cost of the video itself and you were talking a gross cost $130. Add in your markup, give a cut to your wholesaler and distributor, and you were looking at a price north of $250 - for an hour or two of entertainment.

Which was north of the affordability point for the average family.


Martha had plan that involved applying industrial enchanting techniques to something that was normally made through the quick and dirty method. If the process worked they could produce a pair of one hours videos per hour per workstation. The planned called for two lines, one with a "brute" servant (one who could easily carry 150 lbs and (in a pinch) walk around carrying over 500 lbs) and one for a "skilled" servant (one who had average strength but could do one thing well). If everything worked as planned the costs for the enchantment would be about $55. Toss it on a cheap porn movie, put it on a website, and you could sell in the $100 - $120 range while making it for around $80.

But a hundred bucks an hour was still a lot for an hour's entertainment, so Martha's target market was porn. Speciality videos were expensive. She was sure that people would pay $200 for an hour a fun time with a porn star.

"We won't be in the porn business." Martha always told him. "We're just selling video entities. Once we get the production line paid off we can expand into other things, better things. We just need the quick cash from the porn to get the business off the ground then we can go respectable."


Of course Martha needed contacts in the industry, just so she could sign contracts for the adult videos they would needed. And investing in their own production company only made sense; it let them keep their cost down and controlling expenditures was something that every fledging business needed to do. One line production wouldn't be enough for their website so while Eddy lead a team of five other mages while another mage (Lisa) headed a four person team. It burned a bit that Lisa had been paid more than Eddy. Heck, everyone on the job had grossed more than Eddy took in, but that hadn't mattered because they were building a future together. So while he slaved to get things going, Martha had been putting together a porn business. Now he could see that she was sampling the merchandise on a daily basis while they were getting together two times a week. At most twice a week; often their schedules just didn't click and they would go a week or more without having serious fun.

It was just occasional sex, if you could call it that. No anal, no oral, no much more than missionary position with him while Martha was doing nasty things with porn stars and getting Eddy to build up her business. And he had built it for her - he'd even rush home to tell her that they were finally finished with the production lines. That was when he walked in on them.


Back at the twin production lines, Eddy was debating what to do. He knew several spells that could be used to kill but using any of them would send him to prison. Martha wasn't worth spending the rest of his life in jail.

Eddy sat there in a daze as one process wound down and another started up. Lisa was already gone; so were most of the mages. Counting Eddy, only four of mages were left. Just enough to run production. The other three were the drags of the teams. One of them, Chuck, was a stoner; another, Turk, had a criminal record; and the third, Blake, had questionable taste in magic. A fourth mage would be showing up in a couple of weeks, but until her contract started Eddy was supposed to volunteer to get the line working. Ten days of work would give them 640 videos, 320 of each of type, which would serve as their initial inventory. Then Martha would be netting five grand a day, 25 to 30 grand a week of pure profit. She would be raking in an easy 1.3 to 1.5 million a year. Just as long as the videos sold and the marketing plan proved that they would.

And in two weeks, when the new hire showed, Eddy now suspected that Martha was planning to dump him.


"Are you listening to me?"

Eddy shook out of his daze to deal with the question. It was one of the actors from one of the first porn videos they were enchanting. Eddy supposed that the actor had a real name, but Eddy had only heard the guy being called "Little Marty". The guy was in his mid 20s, but played young for the cameras. His debut performance as a video entity was entitled "Little Marty Trades Lickings" where Little Marty got his hairless backside smacked by a woman then he licked her until she came. There wasn't much of a plot beyond Marty getting spanked and licking the woman, just enough to establish Marty as a rugged but submissive young man (maybe a teenager) who loved getting spanked and licking cunt.

"Sorry man, I was a million miles away." Eddy said with a smile.

"I was just asking, do I get more cash?" Little Marty asked. "I mean that's my ass they'll be smacking and my tongue licking their cunts so maybe I should get more cash, right?"

"Talk to the boss, I'm just the help." Eddy said, repeating what he said whenever the people connected to the porn operation asked a question. He just hadn't known the truth behind those word until today. Thinking of that discovery he added: "But once you're out there as the star then maybe that's the time to ask for money."

Little Marty blinked.

"Yeah, that's right." Little Marty smiled. "Wait until I have the power then use it. Thanks man." Then Little Marty lost his smile. "Um, we'll only be selling this to girls, right? Because I don't do gay."

"That's the target demos." Eddy assured him.

Not that it mattered. The programming for that video entity called for it to obey whatever orders it was given. Martha was just there to sell 64 videos a day and if a guy bought one of Little Marty's then that man would be giving the video entity orders.

Unless...

Eddy smiled. For the first time since walking in on Martha and Teddy Love, Eddy felt happy. Martha was going to have a little mistake in her production line. All it would take was switching the labels on the masters. No one would know - they wouldn't waste one of the video entities to make sure they were producing the right ones on the right lines. With Lisa gone Eddy was the only one who knew the codes. It would work.

The first thing was to switch the masters, then to change things so the video entity would be pre-programmed instead of controlled.


Eddy's prediction came true. The moment the fourth worker arrived was the moment that the engagement ended. Martha didn't even use the "it's not you, it's me" speech - she blamed it all on Eddy's insatiable need for sex. Eddy didn't bother with recriminations, he just got his stuff and moved out.

'Never get mad.' Eddy thought to himself. 'Just get even.'

And he had. She just didn't know it yet. Four more days of building inventory and day or two for shipping and then Martha's little empire would crumble.


Penny couldn't believe she was doing this. She wouldn't, not if she wasn't still half drunk from her birthday party. They had spent four hours at that bar as Penny opened joke gift after gag gift. Everyone had gotten her great ones (except for Jane who hadn't gotten an email and had arrived with a sweater) but Gloria's gift had topped them all.

"It's a video entity." Gloria had said as Penny unwrapped it. "And guess what kind of video?"

"Oh you didn't!" Penny had squealed.

"It's called 'Little Marty Trades Lickings'." Gloria had revealed. "The entity is a strong that can hug you as tight as you want."

"Oh god! Does that mean I lick it?" Penny had asked, looking at the guy on the cover. "I mean him?"

"No, the 'licking' he gets is a spanking." Gloria had said, pointing to another part of the cover. "But it, um, he will do everything you ask for. The website said it was very submissive."

"You could use that paddle for that." Mary had laughed drunkenly, indicating the paddle she had picked up for Penny's mock birthday spanking. "It might not be as useless as I thought. Sorry Penny."

"It's still better than my sweater." Jane had commented.

"Anyway, this means you'll be getting some." Gloria had joked.

The entire table, including Penny, had burst into laughter at that.


But that had been then, at the bar. Back when Penny's dry spell had been a shared joke. Now at home, alone, still having a fair amount of booze in her system, the length of time since she had steady boyfriend didn't seem quite as funny. A quick online check revealed just how Gloria had spent on the "gag gift". And Gloria must have paid for overnight shipping - the site had just gone live yesterday. Even without the overnight shipping the video was several times what the next most expensive gift had cost. That, and it was secret, guilt free sex. Much better than another night alone with old buzzy.

Penny turned on the TV and popped in the video. As it loaded up, Penny read the box and learned more about Little Marty and what he would do. There was a little booklet that explained what a video entity could do for her and how to control it. Looking at that, Penny missed the opening of the movie.

Suddenly there was a man standing in her apartment. A big, tall man. Someone who didn't look anything like Little Marty.

"Okay Little Missy, you've had this coming for a long time. And even if you didn't it's something that I've wanted since the day I met you."

The words came from his mouth in sync with the dialogue from the TV.

"Little Marty?" Penny asked in confusion.

Which wasn't the same line from the video. That was the first departure from the movie's dialogue, but not the last. The answer came quickly.

"No, I'm Ted. Big Ted. As in Big Ted Takes Charge." Big Ted answered.

On the screen the actress was saying that he couldn't and Big Ted was stalking over to her. Grabbing her by the arm. Yanking up her sundress to expose a skimpy thong.

"Um, 'sigma omega stand down'." Penny said, reciting the phrase given in the instructions.

Rather than stopping in place 'Big Ted' advanced on her.

"Um, quit it!" Penny said, backing up.

On the screen the actress was protesting and kicking, all to no avail. Looking at that image on the screen, Penny could see her future.

Big Ted lunged for her, grabbing her arm.

"No, stop!" Penny insisted.

But Big Ted wasn't listening. He dragged her to couch, pausing to snagged that paddle that Mary had bought her. At the bar it had been jokingly bounced off her bottom more than twenty times, but never hard enough to sting. She didn't think that would continue to be the case.

Penny fought with all her strength, but it was no use. Little Marty had been designed as a brute. Partly because Little Marty might be ordered to move furniture and partly because once the line was set up as a brute it could only produce brutes. Big Ted's video entity had been designated as skilful servant - a skilled cocksmith. In switching the videos Eddy had been forced to switch their skill sets as well.

With his strength there was no way Penny could escape him.

"You've been needing this." Big Ted told her.

"Stop!" Penny demanded.

Her dress wasn't a sundress but it wasn't hard for Big Ted to yank it up. Her pantyhose offered almost no protection but Big Ted yanked them down, ripping them as he got them to her thighs.

"Stop! You have to stop." Penny insisted.

"You've got this coming Missy." Big Ted said as he brought his palm down on her right cheek.

"OW! I'm not Missy! I'm Penny!"

"And I don't care what your name is." Big Ted said, spanking her right bottom cheek.

"But stop!" Penny begged. "It's my BIRTHday! You can't spank me on MYYY birthday."

Then Big Ted's hand stopped spanking and plunged low. Penny gasped as Big Ted fingered her; his hand was warm from slapping her bum and his fingers were insistent.

"What the hell?" Penny exclaimed, trying to squeeze her legs shut. "Take that out!"

"You want it." Big Ted said, withdrawing his hand and bringing it down hard on her sit spot. "You know you want it. It's been too long since your last spanking. You know it's been too long."

"Stop!" Penny screamed, wiggling as Big Ted kept up a rain of spanks. "It's not AHHHH too long! I've never been SPANKKKED before!"

"Never is too long." Big Ted said, plunging his fingers down again.

"Stop that! I don't want that." Penny insisted weakly.

"If you didn't then wouldn't have bought the video." Big Ted stated, then he moved his hand and landed a slap on her upper thigh.

"What?" Penny squealed.

Then it dawned on her. This was someone else's fantasy. It was a sex fantasy and she was trapped in it.

Several rounds of smacks and fingering later, maybe 20 or 25 spanks in total, he picked up the paddle and brought it down with a whack.

Penny screamed and tried to escape. And failed.

A solid paddling followed. Glancing to screen, Penny looked through her tear filled eyes and saw her future. On the screen Big Ted and the actress were rolling around on the couch. Big Ted was on top and riding that actress like a wild filly. Then her eyes were torn away from the screen as the paddle slammed down hard again.

Then Penny was off his lap and having her sore ass ground into the couch as Big Ted showed her another reason that the actor it was based on worked under the name of "Big Ted".

Twenty minutes later Penny crawled from the couch. Her backside ached and her front side... She would worry about how it felt later. Glancing at the screen Penny saw what the future held. They were on to the next scene; another spanking was already being set up, this time with the girl wearing shorts and Big Ted was wearing overalls. Obviously this new actress had an unspanked bottom. Penny knew that she didn't have one of those herself.

Grabbing for the remote, Penny hit pause. Big Ted froze. Both on the screen and in Penny's apartment.

"What the fuck was that?" Penny demanded of the world. "What the fuck?"

Then she staggered to the bathroom to stare at her throbbing bottom.


Penny wasn't the only one surprised that night. The website handling distribution was flooded with complaints. While those who mistakenly got the Big Ted video entity were upset those screaming the loudest where the ones who had ordered Big Ted and ended up with Little Marty.

"Yes. I know. Yes. No, I know you didn't spend two hundred dollars to spend an hour arguing over who gets the spanking. I see. Would a full refund... I see."


If the distributor was having a bad day, Martha's was even worse. Her attorney was filling her in on the consumer production laws.

"We have to refund them triple?" Martha asked incredulously. "But our mark-up was only... But we've already tapped our credit lines! The opening week's sales were supposed to pay down them down. We can't halt the sales and give refunds and keep up production!"


Eddy had spent days practising for a phone call or a visit from an investigator. He had worked out what he would say.

"Maybe Lisa screwed something up? If not her then there was the support staff. Chuck, I'm not saying that he has a bit of drug problem but I know the smell of weed when it's working beside me. Turk, well he had a bit of problem with his background check but we weren't doing anything dangerous. As for Blake, I think we hired him after he was turned down for doctoral grant in necromancy. No, I was just working for the company. Owner? No, I signed off all my rights to my ex. Yeah, talk to her about it."

After that statement he'd wing it, but he was sure that he would be pointing a finger at enough people to distract everyone from him.

But no one bothered to call him. There was no criminal investigation, only a series of civil complaints against Martha's company. Complaints that couldn't be resolved by identifying which employee had made the mistake.


Penny was conflicted. Arriving home after work, she found the Big Ted video entity frozen in the same spot it had been when she left it that morning. The place it had been standing ever since Penny had hit the pause button.

"This is crazy." Penny muttered to herself. "I'm crazy for even thinking about it."

Maybe it was just the fact that it had been so long since her last boyfriend or the skill of the porn actor it had been based on, or maybe it had been the spanking, or maybe it was the combination of the two, but she was tempted. Strongly tempted. Penny had never really played around with spanking before and she wasn't sure she liked it, at least not with Big "I'm Charge" Ted calling the shots.

But had been a long time... And last night had been interesting...


Penny changed into a T-shirt and shorts.

"I am crazy." Penny told herself.

Then she hit play.


Penny was crying when she hit paused. Looking at the time remaining on the video, Penny cried more.


Martha couldn't believe that things were happening so quickly. The distributor was withholding all of her funds, expecting to have to give full a refund for every sale they had processed in the one and half days the site had been live. Her payments might not be due until the end of the month but her creditors weren't stupid. They knew her income stream had disappeared and weren't waiting anymore. Her bank had called in all her loans, swooping down all of her assets. The twin lines, the inventory, even the porn studio!

"Don't worry honey." Teddy Love said soothingly, rubbing her shoulders. "Everything will all right."

"No it won't!" Martha snapped. "I might have to declare bankruptcy ."

"Don't worry." Teddy Love said, thinking about his next meal ticket. If Martha was out as studio head then he would have a new ass to kiss. And maybe caress, depending on what the new owner was into.

Not that he didn't have some feelings for Martha, but in the porn business a guy had to do who a guy had to do.

"They'll taking the line!" Martha protested. "I spent a year putting this together. An entire year! I sank all of my money into this! I developed this new process and someone else is going to profit from it. All my hard work, all that time pretending that I was into that idiot Eddy! All my time and work down the drain. I can't believe it. I could have had millions! Millions! I could have been rich! What the fuck went wrong? Why were those freaks so upset? There was spanking, right? They paid for spanking and there were spankings. Why did they get so upset?"

"Um, well..." Teddy Love searched for something to say. But he didn't bother searching for very long. Martha just wasn't worth the effort now. Not if her money was gone and she couldn't get him good parts anymore.

"It's their fault." Martha continued. "Not mine. They shouldn't be so picky. A spanking is a spanking. There were spankings involved."

"Um, not with the Little Marty ones." Teddy Love pointed out. "That's why they..."

"To fuck with them! They should have just accepted whatever the video entity and not complained." Martha raged. "The people who thought they were getting the Big Ted video were submissive, right? They should have been submissive enough to handle getting Little Marty instead of Big Ted."

"You've never heard of topping from the bottom?" Teddy Love asked, confused.

"Shut the fuck up." Martha raged. "My life is over. I'm broke. I'm going to have to start from scratch. Just keep rubbing my shoulders and don't talk."


Eventually Penny's time with Big Ted ran down. To her deep disappointment, it happened when Big Ted was inside her.

"Mother fucking god damn it." Penny swore, rubbing her sore ass. "Where the fuck did I put buzzy?"


A month later, Penny was online and searching furiously. Again. For the twentieth or thirtieth time. Hunting everywhere from the original website to eBay to Kijiji (with a stop at Craig's List on the way). Then she smiled - her search had finally come up with something. A batch of a hundred videos. All honestly labelled "Little Marty couldn't make it, so Big Ted took his place". In a large lot. A surprisingly large lot. Penny wasn't sure what she would do with a hundred videos, but before she could stop herself she maxed out her credit card by entering the buyout price. It was expensive, but at twenty dollars a piece they seemed like a steal. They were much lower than the price on the old website, but a hundred videos?

How could she ever use them all?

Then she thought back to how the Big Ted video entity had treated her. Blushing, Penny smiled and reached for old buzzy. It would hold her until the videos came.

Goodgulf