It was the middle of an ostensibly bright and sunny day and yet it was dark in the room. The windows were shut and the blinds were drawn. Nary a single beam of sunlight shone through.

The only illumination came from a set of six polyglass screens in an array two high and three across. Together, they cast a dim, pallid light across the unkempt room.

Dirty laundry was piled in a loose heap in the corner. A few notable articles, mostly crusty underwear, were strewn haphazardly across the floor. Little wonder, then, that the air reeked of stale cum.

The bed was in disarray. The thick blanket hung halfway off the edge of the mattress. The sheets were bunched up and rumpled, and the pillows were haphazardly bunched up against the headboard.

To look at the state of the room, one could be forgiven for thinking it belonged to a randy teenager. Such an assumption, however, could not have been further from the truth.

The room’s sole occupant was none other than Cecil Slater. He was a graduate from Selene City’s prestigious Central Academy and one of the most prominent, at that.

Thanks to Cecil’s skills as a software engineer, he was already better off than most of his peers. He owed his wealth to sales of Kryptex, one of the most popular mobile games available in the Commonwealth. Suffice to say, on such credentials alone, there was no reason he couldn’t afford to keep his room neat.

The truth about Cecil’s identity made the state of his domicile even more baffling. Though he was a skilled software developer by day, by night he was one of Selene City’s most esteemed of heroes.

Cecil Slater was the alter ego of Cypher, one of the Hall of Heroes’ few technopaths. His unique ability rendered him capable of transmitting himself into the digital world, making him a necessary part of the Commonwealth’s cyber-security infrastructure.

One would think that with his obvious prestige, Cecil would be more considerate of his living situation but such was not the case. It wasn’t so much that he didn’t care his room was so messy, it was that part of him liked it that way.

There was something sort of primal and animalistic about being surrounded by the smell of musk and sex all day. Cecil couldn’t get enough of it despite knowing people would judge him harshly if they knew what he was into. Perhaps even because he knew that.

It was the forbidden-ness of it that made it hot. To Cecil’s mind, anyway. There was something titillating about the risk of getting exposed. Of getting all his darkest, filthiest secrets laid bare to the world.

It wasn’t the sort of thing Cecil would actively work toward but. A hero’s image was one of his most important possessions. Being a hero was a job, and an expensive one, at that. No one would want to sponsor a morally bankrupt hero.

Even so, Cecil couldn’t resist the idea. He had a sterling reputation but the notion of sullying it with his own hands, never failed to make him rock hard.

It was a terrible fantasy, one that he hoped would never come true whenever he was lucid and sober. It was another matter entirely when he was horny. When his cock was hard and his blood was pumping in his veins, he wanted nothing more than to be exposed for the pervert he was.

Cecil was a successful young man with limitless potential and a bright future ahead of him. When he was horny, though, he wanted nothing more than to lose all of it. To waste all his talent, skill, and resources. Nothing made him more aroused than the idea of throwing away all his lifelong accomplishments to live the rest of his existence as little more than a porn-addicted penis-pumping loser.

It was what Cecil loved to do. Whenever he knew he had a sizable chunk of free time, he didn’t dedicate it to more productive endeavors. He hadn’t, for a few years now. Not since he discovered what gooning was.

Cecil loved it. He loved pumping his dong and edging to a deluge of porn like the desperate little gooner he so badly wanted to be. He loved huffing poppers and smothering his brilliant brain with cotton until he was stoopid on porn and cock.

A dumb chuckle drifted through the quiet room. Six different porn videos were playing on the six screens of Cecil’s bate station but not a single peep could be heard through the heavy-duty noise-canceling headphones perched on Cecil’s head.

The lewd, wet sounds of Cecil’s hand flying up and down the shaft of his greased-up dong filled the air. His low grunts and groans, as he pumped his swollen penis and slipped deeper into a mindless goon trance, were the perfect accompaniment.

The exquisite symphony of six porn videos blasting full-volume from Cecil’s headset pounded straight into his ears and turned his brain to mush. A background track with a heavy bass rhythm made the blood in his veins thrum, drowning out any sound from the outside.

Cecil was is in his own little world of lust and perversion. Nothing short of a nuclear explosion going off right outside his window would have dislodged him.

Pump. Pump. Pump. Up and down. Up and down. Penis. Penis. Penis. It felt so good. It felt so good. Edge. Edge. Edge. Don’t cum. Edge. Edge. Don’t cum. Penis. Penis. Penis.

Complex thought was rendered impossible. Simple thoughts about cock were rewarded with pleasure. Every stroke, every pump, every minute wasted gooning to an endless, overwhelming stream of porn was nothing but bliss to Cecil.

Little by little, Cecil was rewiring his otherwise brilliant brain. He was learning to think less with his head and more with his cock.

It was the best thing in the world, as far as Cecil was concerned. Nothing quite compared to the sublime sensation of slipping into true stoopid gooner trance.

There weren’t words to describe it. Not fully, anyway. The closest Cecil could come to characterizing what he felt was that it was like becoming one with his cock.

It was like, when Cecil hit that rapturous moment of losing his mind to the goon, he ceased becoming human at all. All of his wealth, talent, accomplishments, and morals fell away. He was just a cock. His cock.

Forget about being a moral creature with thoughts and ambitions. When he was lost in the goon, Cecil devolved into nothing more than a sexual beast. It was like regressing to a more primitive sort of existence, one solely preoccupied with the pursuit of pleasure.

Cecil had already been at it for hours. His cock ached. His mouth hung open and his tongue lolled out. Drool dribbled onto his chest, face contorting into an array of idiotic expressions, as he desperately fisted his cock and grunted and groaned like an ape.

Pumping. Jerking. Intelligent as he was, Cecil couldn’t help but stroke himself dumb. Up and down. Up and down. It felt so fucking good.

Cecil was teetering precariously on the edge of orgasm. The slightest provocation would send him tumbling over. The sweet release of blowing his load all over his wiry frame was within his reach.

One quick stroke too many was all it would take. One tight squeeze of his cock and Cecil would come. He craved it. His body writhed for it. There was nothing he wanted more. At the same time, there was nothing he wanted less.

Cecil didn’t deserve to come. How could he? He was just a perverted loser, wasting his days and his talent bating away to perfect porn ass. Only real men deserved to come. Cecil was many things. A real man wasn’t one of them.

Cocks were meant to fuck. To breed. To dominate. Real men used their cocks the way nature intended. Real men fucked real people. They had normal lives. Normal relationships. Normal sex.

Cecil did none of those things. His cock wasn’t for fucking. It was for stroking. Rubbing. Fucking his hand. Sex toys. Rubber sleeves.

Cecil didn’t have sex with real people. He crammed his cock into artificial holes and stroked himself off to perfect, overly-produced porn bodies. How could he say that he deserved to come like a real man? He didn’t.

Besides, coming meant ending the goon. Cecil didn’t want that. He wanted to spend every day wallowing in perversion and playing with his dong. Even if he had to get up and leave his bate cave to do responsible adult things, as long as he didn’t come, he would at least keep one foot in the goon trance.

With a huff from the small brown bottle on his desk, Cecil felt a bolt of pleasure shoot straight through his brain. His cock felt good. So good. If he could have, he would have spent all day playing with it.

All things came to an end eventually, though. A ping from his computer startled Cecil out of his trance. He groaned as he reluctantly pulled his hand off his cock and glared at the reminder he’d set for himself.

It was evening already; the bright sun outside Cecil’s window had long since set. Not that he would have noticed, otherwise, but it always felt great to bate through the night.

Unfortunately, Cecil had other obligations. Being a hero was hard work and it was just about time for him to step into the digital world. Thanks to the top-notch work of his fellow technopaths, the Commonwealth’s cyber-security systems were more robust than ever but he still had to hop into the network infrastructure to make sure the defense mechanisms weren’t missing anything.

As industrious and intelligent as Cecil’s colleagues might have been, they weren’t omniscient. Neither was he, of course, but an extra set of eyes close to the metal never hurt.

Without bothering to so much as clean the bate grease off his dong, Cecil sat up in his chair and held his hands out in front of him. With a flick of his wrist and a few deft gestures with his fingers, he dispersed the windows that had been playing porn for the better part of the day.

With another quick wave of his fingers, Cecil brought up the tools he needed to conduct a high-level sweep of the network. He doubted any sophisticated attacker would show up on such a sweep, but it was always worth checking.

Satisfied that there weren’t any obvious attacks on the network—other than the expected ones, anyway—Cecil dismissed those windows and cracked his neck. His cock was still hard and demanded attention but sadly, he couldn’t quite live out the pornosexual lifestyle he craved just yet.

Stretching a little before settling back into his chair, Cecil turned his attention to the screens. It took a bit of concentration to get his powers to work and right after an hours-long goon session was not the best time for that.

Even with the distraction of his insistently throbbing cock, Cecil had dived into the digital world enough times that the necessary focus easily came to him. Before long, he felt the world around him tremble as the line separating the real world and the one on the other side of the screen began to blur.

Cecil’s body began to dissolve into a stream of zeroes and ones that flew toward the center of his main monitor. He never could figure out whether it was just a way for his mind to process what was happening to his body or whether the magic that allowed him to hop into the digital world genuinely dissolved him into a string of binary code.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling. It was as natural for Cecil as breathing though he could imagine it would have been unsettling to witness for anyone on the outside.

Cecil’s head was the last part of him to be sucked into the digital world. Just as his face was being pulled by some invisible force toward his monitor he noticed something flicker onto the screen.

A brief moment of trepidation seized Cecil as he saw the window pop up right in the middle of the screen. He was being sucked right into the window, which was concerning. Unfortunately, he didn’t have enough time to see what the window contained, as a heartbeat later his vision went black and he was pulled fully into the digital world.

---

When Cecil came to, he immediately realized something was wrong. For one thing, he wasn’t where he expected to be.

Normally, when Cecil entered the digital world, he stepped into a digital facsimile of Selene City. Again, he didn’t know if it was the way the digital world actually looked, or if it was a construct created by his mind to help him process things.

Furthermore, whenever he departed on one of his dives, Cecil would arrive in the digital world wearing his Cypher uniform. If the suit would be damaged at any point while fighting off viruses or villainous technopaths, he could restore it with a single thought. Such wasn’t the case right now.

For the time being, at least until Cecil figured a way out of the pickle he was in, he seemed to be in a rather well-appointed house. It had the look of a property in a more affluent neighborhood, not unlike one of the homes Cecil had been looking at during the peak of his success—before he got into gooning his life away.

At the moment, Cecil was wearing an outfit that bordered on slutty. A form-fitting tank-top hung on his lean, slender frame, while a tight pair of booty shorts cupped his shapely butt.

The shorts were so skimpy that Cecil could feel the bottom of his ass cheeks hanging out the back. Since he felt the cool air on his ass, Cecil first thought that he was wearing nothing under the shorts but quickly realized that instead, he was wearing a jockstrap.

Under normal circumstances, Cecil had some modicum of control over his environment in the digital world. With a single thought, he should have been able to swap out of the slutty outfit into his superhero uniform but that wasn’t happening.

Even worse, as Cecil quickly realized, he wasn’t actually in control of his own body. He was holding a laundry basket in his arms and however much he willed himself to set it down, he couldn’t.

The sensation was highly unpleasant. Cecil felt like a prisoner in his own body. Despite his best efforts, he could not influence his surroundings one whit. He was powerless to do anything but watch as his body called out "Hey step-bro! It looks like the dryer’s done! I’m gonna pull your load out, okay?"

"Sure, thanks!" called a voice from upstairs. Ostensibly, it was the "step-bro" in question. Cecil’s body giggled at the acknowledgment and turned to go toward what he could only assume was the laundry-room.

Halfway through taking a step, however, Cecil’s consciousness seemed to lapse. It was the strangest sensation. One moment he was walking toward the laundry room and the next he was in front of the dryer already.

Cecil’s body set the empty laundry basket down next to the dryer and pulled the door open. He started pulling his "step-bro’s" clothes out of the barrel of the machine. It did not escape his notice that most of it was tight tank tops and basketball shorts.

Left inside the barrel of the dryer was a jockstrap. It was an old-fashioned cotton one strangely pinned against the far end of the barrel. Cecil felt his body lean down and reach into the dryer for it.

Yet again, time seemed to skip. There was no break in Cecil’s consciousness. It was just that one moment he was reaching for the jockstrap and the next he had crawled halfway into the barrel of the dryer.

There was no reason Cecil couldn’t reach the jockstrap stuck to the back of the dryer. His arms were plenty long enough to reach it from outside. His body, on the other hand, seemed to have had other ideas.

Firmly wedged as he was into the dryer, Cecil grabbed the jockstrap off the back of the machine. He pulled it to his face and sniffed it. Despite having ostensibly been washed well there was an unmistakable trace of musk that still lingered on the cotton pouch.

Cecil moaned involuntarily. This time, he wasn’t sure if it was the strange force controlling his body that was to blame, or if it was his own reaction to sniffing the jockstrap. Either way, the scent made his cock twitch in his shorts.

Having retrieved the jockstrap from the dryer, Cecil’s body tried to pull itself out of the barrel. He quickly realized he was stuck.

Well, that wasn’t quite right. There was more than enough space for Cecil to pull himself out of the dryer. Had he been in control of his body, he would have been able to. Unfortunately for him, his body seemed intent on pretending, unconvincingly to be stuck.

"Oh no!" Cecil said, the words leaping unbidden to his lips. "Help! Somebody help!"

Time seemed to skip again, though this time nothing had particularly changed about Cecil’s circumstances. He was still "stuck" in the dryer. The only reason he even realized there had been a time skip was that he felt like he’d been stuck in the dryer for a while.

"Bro what the fuck are you doing?" said a voice from nearby.

Just like that, it clicked. Cecil realized where he was and just what he had gotten himself into. Even though his mind was in "responsible adult" mode, he couldn’t help but get insanely turned on by the prospect.

Cecil was in a porn ad. The window that had popped up when he was transferring himself into the digital world had been a porn ad. The "time skips" he’d experienced weren’t time skips or lapses in consciousness at all. They had been cuts in the ad.

None of this explained why Cecil was stuck in the ad with no way out but it at least went a ways toward explaining the outfit and the weird scenario. Under normal circumstances, Cecil would have used the new information to try and figure out a way to get himself out of the predicament but the idea of being stuck in a porn ad made him so fucking hard he could scarcely think straight.

"Step-bro!" Cecil called out. This time, he didn’t even try to resist. He still had no control over the scene but he could go along with it. "Step-bro, I’m stuck! Can you help me?" he whined.

"Sure bro," said the guy in question. He sounded like such a dumb jock. He spoke in a low drawl that seemed utterly devoid of intelligence. It was fucking hot.

Cecil barely noticed yet another "cut," as he felt his "step-bro" come up behind him. He had no idea what the guy’s name actually was but he sounded like a Chad so Cecil started thinking of him by that name.

"Yo! You been working out a bit, little bro?" said Chad.

Cecil felt his cheeks warm. "W-what are you doing, step-bro?" he squeaked. His body launched into an over-dramatic flinch as Chad’s broad hands landed on his hips.

"I’m helping you, little bro," said Chad.

If Cecil had needed any more proof that he was stuck in a porn ad, he would have found it in the cheesy dialog going on. "Oh my god! Thank you so much, step-bro! I’ve been stuck in here for so long. It’s so hard to get out!"

Chad chuckled. "I bet it was," he said, rubbing circles over the top of Cecil’s ass through his shorts. "Don’t worry, little bro. Big bro’s here now. I’m gonna get you nice and loose,"

There was another brief skip in time as Chad grabbed the waistband of Cecil’s shorts and yanked them down. Cecil’s body squeaked. Words, unbidden by his own mind, spilled out of his lips. "M-my shorts!" he stammered.

Cecil’s consciousness lapsed for yet another moment. The next thing he knew, Chad’s hard cock was rubbing up against his bare ass. He could feel the solid girth of it sliding up and down the cleft of his ass cheeks, separated from his flesh only by the thin fabric of what seemed to be a pair of boxer shorts.

"Oh my, step-bro!" Cecil exclaimed. He wiggled his ass, shaking it back into Chad’s cock. "What is that and why is it so big?"

"Don’t worry about it, little bro," said Chad, letting out a dimwitted chuckle that made Cecil so unbelievably horny. Not just because Cecil had a thing for jocks but because the sole thought in his mind was about how fucking hot that dumb voice would be on a gooner.

"It’s just a little something I’m gonna use to work you loose," said Chad. He smacked Cecil’s bubble butt, making the fat round mound ripple.

Cecil barely noticed the next "cut" in the ad. It was just that one moment, Chad was dry-humping him through his boxer shorts, and the next there was a hot wet tongue swirling around and around his asshole.

A low moan spilled out of Cecil as his body inched his legs apart to invite Chad’s tongue even deeper into the crack of his ass. He still didn’t have control over his body but at this point, Cecil wasn’t sure he would have done anything differently.

Chad’s left hand rested on Cecil’s left ass cheek while he ate him out but the other one was slowly sliding down Cecil’s thigh. It slipped between his legs and cupped the pouch of his jockstrap, which was straining to contain his rock-hard cock.

Cecil groaned as Chad’s fingers slipped under the taut cotton and pulled it aside. His cock sprang free, the sensitive head tapping against the metal housing of the dryer. He couldn’t help but moan again as Chad grabbed his hardness, pulling it back between his legs to stroke it while eating him out.

Another time skip came and went. All of a sudden Chad’s tongue was replaced by his fingers. Two of them, the pointer and the middle finger, sawed easily in and out of his hole, working him open little by little until the next time skip hit.

Cecil whined. His hole felt supple and loose but also horribly empty. He bucked his ass into the empty air, desperate to entice Chad to keep playing with him. "Why did you stop, step-bro?" he mewled.

Another cut.

Cecil’s eyes went comically wide and his mouth opened in an exaggerated expression of surprise as the fat head of Chad’s cock pressed up against his hole and pushed in. "Oh, fuck, step-bro! You’re so big!" he cried out as Chad’s slick hardness slid into him, inch by throbbing inch, with ease.

Hardly a moment had passed for Cecil to enjoy the sensation of Chad’s thick cock sliding into his guts before yet another "cut" in the ad hit. Cecil’s mind went blank as pure pleasure exploded across his body.

A low cry escaped Cecil as Chad’s fingers tightened on the tender flesh of his hips. The dryer shook with the force of every thrust. Cecil felt as though his guts were being rearranged every time Chad’s pelvis slapped against his ass cheeks, driving that big fat jock meat deep inside of him.

Cecil got to enjoy the railing for a good few seconds before the scene skipped yet again. When he came to, Chad had already pulled him out of the dryer. He was on the floor, on his knees in front of his stepbrother on top of a pile of laundry that would probably have to be washed again.

One of Chad’s meaty hands was on the back of Cecil’s head. He was pushing down with a considerable amount of strength, cramming his fat dick down Cecil’s gullet.

Had Cecil been in control of his body, he would likely have gagged around Chad’s considerable girth but it seemed that the character he had assumed in this porn ad was very good at choking down cock. It seemed that Cecil’s character was completely devoid of a gag reflex, judging by how he felt not even the slightest hint of discomfort as Chad fucked his throat with gusto.

Again, Cecil only had a few seconds to enjoy the sensations of getting skull-fucked before the scene shifted. Chad was pulling him up onto his feet while tugging his shirt off.

The tank-top was unceremoniously tossed aside as Cecil got up onto his feet. Chad wrapped an arm around Cecil’s waist when it was done and leaned down to kiss him.

Their lips met and it was the single hottest thing Cecil had experienced in his sad solo-sexual sex life. He felt like every neuron in his brain was firing off like a bunch of fireworks. His whole body tingled from the intensity of the sensation and all he could do was moan into Chad’s mouth.

The feeling only got better as Cecil felt Chad’s free hand slide down the small of his back. Chad’s fingers slipped into the crack of his ass and rubbed against his eager, quivering hole.

Cecil was so swept up in the arousal he felt that he’d completely forgotten about breaking free of the pickle he’d found himself in. The thought of trying to resist never once crossed his mind.

The scene shifted again and this time Cecil found himself on top of the dryer with his legs in the air and his ass hanging off the edge. Chad was standing between his legs, cock buried deep inside his ass as he and the machine underneath him rocked back and forth to the rhythm of Chad’s powerful thrusts.

In and out. In and out. It felt so goddamn good, Cecil couldn’t help but lose himself in the sensations.

To make matters worse, Chad was jerking him off. If there was anything Cecil was weak to, it was the feeling of fingers sliding up and down his straining cock. He had no idea how much longer he could take it.

This wasn’t the sort of thing that Cecil deserved. He was a pathetic, porn-addicted masturbator. The only sex he had was with his hand or with rubber toys that could only ever be pale imitations of the real thing.

Chad’s cock felt so good, though, that Cecil could hardly complain. If he’d known that real sex could feel this good he would have pursued it instead of staying at home all day gooning to the fantasy of porn.

"Oh god," Cecil thought to himself. He still had no control. Not over himself, not over the scene. He didn’t mind. He didn’t care.

The pleasure was nigh-overwhelming. Just a little more and Cecil would come. He was close. So goddamn close. He’d been here, at the precipice of orgasm, so many times but never had it felt so fucking good before.

At the very last moment, just as Cecil was about to blow his load, the world around him seemed to freeze. He screamed impotently in frustration, imprisoned in a cage of his own flesh. If only he could exert a modicum of the control he usually had over the digital world, he could reach his release but he was trapped and powerless.

After a few seconds passed and the imminent orgasm subsided, the artificial world around Cecil dissolved back into data. As the walls of the suburban household he’d hopped into melted away, they revealed the more familiar dark, wireframe aesthetic of the digital world as Cecil knew it.

The appearance of the digital world was rather reminiscent of the look of an old film about a hero with powers very similar to Cecil’s. It made him wonder whether the creator of the film had somehow known about the digital world long before supers and their powers came into existence.

Either way, Cecil felt a deep frustration as his erection subsided and his naked form was enveloped by his Cypher uniform. The thin, form-fitting suit crept over his body and made his skin tingle. His cock twitched as the fabric cupped his junk, pulling it tight against his crotch. He also couldn’t help but gasp as the suit surged up along his backside, brushing over his asshole.

The fabric of Cecil’s suit continued along his shoulders and up the back of his neck. It grew to envelop his head—except for his face—as the mask that was used to hide his identity swept across his eyes.

The mask marked the end of the transformation. Cecil had finally shifted back into the default outfit he wore whenever he dove into the digital world. It was a good sign.

Without the sensations of the suit crawling across his skin to distract him, Cecil turned his attention elsewhere. For the first time since finding himself trapped in the porn ad, he had an opportunity to get a good look at the guy he’d called "Chad."

Cecil had to admit, Chad was quite handsome. He had bright blue eyes and cropped blond hair. He had a sharp, masculine cut to his jaw and his body was lean and muscular.

Chad had the stereotypical jock look, which Cecil supposed was the point of his get-up, but he carried it rather well. That said, it wasn’t the rock-hard abs or the thick biceps that made him so attractive. If Cecil had to choose, it was the faint rosy flush frozen on his cheeks that made Chad goddamn hot.

It was just unfortunate that Chad wasn’t a real human. The fact that he’d frozen at the end of the scene gave away that he was an Exo.

The term was one that Cecil had coined, himself. It was an abbreviation of "Executable Organism" and referred to the native denizens of the digital world. Though they could appear to be human—and indeed, they often did—they were little more than walking bundles of code that could not deviate from their programming.

As Cecil was mulling over how such handsome looks were wasted on a program, the Exo in question underwent a change of his own. The healthy, light-pink of his skin gave way to the characteristic faintly-blue pallor of an Exo.

Chad’s tank-top and basketball shorts flowed like liquid across his body, reforming into a tight form-fitting bodysuit not unlike what Cecil wore. The difference was that Chad’s suit had glowing cyan lines laid out in a pattern reminiscent of circuitry.

The bright blue of Chad’s eyes gave way to the bright cyan so common to the Exos that Cecil had encountered in his trips through the digital world. The expression that Chad had been wearing—that of a man frozen on the cusp of orgasm—smoothed out into a vacant, robotic stare.

Cecil had been so taken by Chad that he hardly noticed that he wasn’t out of danger just yet. He’d assumed that he had regained control now that he was at liberty in the digital world again but he couldn’t have been further from the truth.

The only thing Cecil could control was his head. He couldn’t move his body an inch and he hadn’t even noticed. The most he could manage was look around, blink, and talk to himself but that was about it.

To make matters worse, a small rectangular portal in the shape of a doorway appeared nearby. It rose smoothly from the glossy black ground that formed the bedrock of the digital world.

Once the doorway had fully emerged, the space it outlined flashed bubblegum pink. The scattered bits of data from which the porn ad had been constructed rustled across the ground as they were sucked into the doorway.

Cecil’s body, which remained beyond his control, hopped off the block of data that had been the dryer. Less than a heartbeat later, it dissolved into countless tiny fragments that joined the stream of data getting vacuumed into the doorway.

One by one, the rest of the set pieces and props around Cecil and Chad met similar fates. The trickle of data that had been streaming into the doorway turned into a torrent.

For a moment, Cecil was afraid that he’d get dragged along in the raging flow. Fortunately, it appeared that whatever force was sucking the data in either did not affect him or was not strong enough to move him against his will.

The relief Cecil felt was short-lived, however. Once the dregs of the porn ad had been sucked in by the door, Chad promptly turned on his heel and walked into the glowing pink portal. Cecil tried to resist but his own body betrayed him and his feet carried him inexorably toward the threshold of the doorway.

Purely out of instinct and apprehension, Cecil turned his head away and squeezed his eyes shut. He braced himself for the worst as his legs carried him through the thin sheet of rippling pink light in the doorway.