A is for App
by Pan
Chapter 2
The original deal offered by his mother was a generous one, and Finn was sure that even in a vacuum, it would’ve had some impact on his schoolwork.
But it was nothing compared to his desire to learn what the mysterious app did. For the rest of the week, Finn barely slept, spending every waking hour studying, doing practice exams, and—for the first time all year—actually listening in class.
And it paid off. At the end of the week, there was a Chemistry pop quiz (one of the courses he’d been failing). While he didn’t get top of the grade (or anywhere near), he got a respectable C+ on the test.
When he took it home, his mother nodded curtly.
“Better,” she said, handing over her credit card. It was all Finn could do not to snatch it out of her hand; he entered his mother’s credit card details into his phone, and went to the in-app purchases page for Control.
To his surprise, there was only one option—“Level One”. He poked around, trying to find an ‘unlock all’ option, but none seemed to exist.
Holding his breath, Finn tapped “purchase”, releasing the air in his lungs only when the confirmation screen popped up. The payment had gone through.
Just as before, a timer started ticking down. Twelve hours, this time—Finn cursed himself for not activating it in the morning, when he could have made full use of the reward.
Level One.
Unlike the free sample, the screen showed more than just the timer. Below it, there were two new options:
- Hairstyle
- Clothing
Finn narrowed his eyes and hit the top button. “Okay,” he muttered. “Let’s see what this does… ”
To his surprise, a 3D image of his mother’s face appeared, rotating slowly like the character customization screen on one of his favorite games, Gunslinger Island. Below it were a few sliders, describing the hair’s color, its volume, and a greyed-out slider labelled Length. Below that, a dropdown menu offered several styles.
As the timer ticked down, he played with the settings, seeing what his mother would look like with a (short) mohawk or a bob cut. He normally skipped past character creation (he was more interested in the mechanics of the game itself), but there was something surprisingly compelling about watching the digital representation of his mother’s hair transform from red to black to blue.
Finn found himself tweaking the sliders for almost half an hour before ing he was on a tight timeline. Returning to the main menu, he clicked through to the “Clothing” option.
This time, the model of his mother was a full-body one, showing her in the clothing he knew she was currently wearing in the kitchen. It kept the latest hair-style he’d given her, a short pixie cut. He’d kept her red hair; it was impossible to deny how well it suited her.
This page had a number of options: top, pants, skirt, dress, shoes, accessories. Below that, greyed out, was a ‘lingerie’ option. Finn stared at it for a moment, suddenly wishing that he’d chosen Ashley or Jenny to use the app on.
Putting that thought out of his mind, Finn spent another twenty minutes playing around with the settings, experimenting with various combinations of clothes. He amused himself by dressing his mother as a nun, then a doctor, and finally a maid.
The sight of his mother’s slowly-rotating body, wearing a maid’s outfit (complete with apron, white gloves, and a tiny, black hat) made him chuckle… and caused slightly uncomfortable thoughts. His mother’s obsessive personality extended beyond her work; she spent several hours a week in the gym, and the outfit she’d assembled showed off her legs.
Putting his phone in his pocket, he decided to stop playing around with the strange wardrobe simulator and take advantage of the obedient state the app put his mother in.
As Finn entered the kitchen, his mother was sitting at the table sipping her coffee (he’d never been able to understand how she could drink coffee at night—perhaps that was the secret to how she got so much done: she never slept).
He stopped in the doorway and gawked. His mother—his serious, professional, businesswoman of a mother—was dressed as a maid.
And her hair—normally curly and up in a bun—was now a short pixie-cut, exactly as he’d set it in the app.
His mother looked up and frowned.
“Don’t you have homework to do?”
Finn didn’t say anything in response, just gawked. The free sample had told him that the app was powerful, but this… this was something else.
His eyes ran up his mother’s body. Black, tight-fitting dress. Black, high-heeled shoes. White apron. When it had just been an image on the screen, he hadn’t really considered how short the dress was, or how much skin it showed off. It was just a model, right?
In real life, the outfit had an entirely different impact. It showed off his mother’s legs, her curves… and her chest. Finn’s mother was flat-chested (something which he’d never particularly thought about before), but apparently the maid’s outfit came with a push-up bra— and until now, seeing in the flesh, he hadn’t realized how much cleavage was displayed by the top he’d chosen.
Finn felt his cock twitch in his pants as he stared at his mother’s chest; if the dress had been cut any lower, he was sure that he’d be able to see her nipples.
His mother’s nipples.
“Y-you should change,” he squeaked, a blush spreading over his face. As his phone vibrated in Finn’s pocket, his mother looked down at her outfit, confused.
When he’d chosen the costume, he hadn’t noticed that he was essentially dressing his mother in a porn parody of a maid’s outfit. He’d just thought it would be funny to dress his domineering mother as a servant.
“Okay,” she said, standing up. The teenager swallowed hard, trying desperately not to look at his mother’s chest—or legs—as she left the room.
As soon as he was alone, he pulled out his phone. The notification was exactly what he’d expected—a simple Request granted. He swiped it away and looked at the clothing page.
In it, his mother was dressed exactly as he’d set her, arms raised in a T shape, slowly rotating to give a full view of her body. He could hear her enter her bedroom upstairs, and—as though entranced—Finn stared at the screen.
He didn’t want to see his mother’s naked body, of course. She was his mother. He just… wanted to see what the app was capable of.
To his disappointment (and great relief), when the dress faded away, it was replaced by the blurring censorship bars that video games always included when a character undressed. A few minutes later, the bars disappeared, showing his mother’s new outfit: a black pair of pants, her standard around-the-house shoes, and a simple white top.
A white top that still showed more cleavage than Finn was comfortable with. Had his mother always dressed like this? How had he never noticed before?
How could he go back to not noticing?
By the time his mother reed him in the kitchen, Finn had calmed down. The app told him that he still had ten and a half hours of Level One remaining, and he was determined to make the most of it.
“Mom,” he said, “Make me Mega Breakfast.”
“At night?” she asked, her eyebrows shooting up at his request, but she was already moving towards the stove to prepare the pancakes.
Finn’s phone vibrated in his pocket, and he smiled.
As his mother began frying bacon in one pan and flipping flapjacks in another, Finn continued playing with the new settings of Level One. He watched, fascinated, as his mother’s hair magically transformed in front of him—from a red pixie cut, to a short bob, to a blunt-cut, almost shaved look.
Her clothes morphed and transformed, too—an eerie, surreal sight. Finn was entranced, experimenting with various combinations as his mother cooked. As his mother’s outfits morphed from one to another, breaking every law of physics, he never saw her bare skin. Her new clothing was always in place before the old had completely faded away.
Finn had learned his lesson from the maid’s outfit, and he made sure to keep his mother in unrevealing outfits. He’d never had any interest in fashion—especially women’s fashion—but as he switched her from look to look, he felt like he was starting to understand the basics; which clothing complemented his mother’s body, what outfit went with which haircut.
Finn spent nearly an hour experimenting with his mother’s appearance as she cooked his favorite meal, before deciding on the look he wanted to see her in—the “white queen” outfit from the end of The Queen’s Gambit: a wintery look, with a cute white hat. His mother’s hair was her natural red, and he’d experimented with styles until he’d managed to make it as long as he could… though still substantially shorter than Beth Harmon’s locks.
Finally, the food was done. Finn smiled as his mother placed it in front of him: pancakes, bacon, eggs, hash browns, French toast, sausage, juice, and milk. Usually saved for a special occasion.
Although, as his mother sat opposite him, dressed for a Russian chess trip, it felt like a pretty special occasion.
“Thanks, Mom,” he said, taking a bite of pancake.
As he ate, his mother resumed work, her eyes occasionally flicking over to him to make sure he was enjoying the food.
“Why are you wearing that?” he asked, leaning back and resting his hands on his extremely full stomach. He was less than halfway through the meal, and suddenly ed why it was typically used to break a fast.
“You told me to change,” she answered shortly, tapping away at her keyboard. Finn was overcome with the urge to lengthen her nails—an option he’d seen in the app earlier— just to see how it would affect her typing.
“But why did you choose that?“
His mother’s hand patted the side of her hat defensively. “It’s comfortable,” she said.
Finn pulled out his phone, reopening the clothing tab. A few taps later, his mother sat in front of him wearing high black boots, tight black leather pants, a form-fitting black turtleneck, and a black cloak.
“Tell me what you’re wearing,” he ordered. The app buzzed Request granted in his hand as his mother replied.
“This is my black outfit,” she replied, as though he’d just asked her to explain what a chair was.
“Have you worn it before?”
“Of course,” she said.
A few more taps, and his mother was dressed like a clown—a colorful top, baggy pants, and a top hat. She was missing only a rainbow wig and a red nose.
“Why do you call it your black outfit?” he asked, and she looked at him like he was an idiot.
“I don’t, Finnegan,” she said slowly, the patronizing note in her voice that he’d heard all too many times before. “This is what I wear when I want to dress more colorfully.”
Finn spent the next half-hour switching out his mother’s clothing and haircut, quizzing her about it all the while. He listened as she gave calm, rational explanations as to why she’d decided to dye her hair blonde, before treating him like an idiot for not ing that she’d shaved her head to cancer. At one point, her explanation changed mid-sentence as he transformed her outfit from pink pajamas to a set of overalls.
No matter what he did, nothing seemed to shake her. In one breath, she was comfortably explaining to him why she was dressed as an Egyptian queen; in the next, she was earnestly describing her childhood dream of having a bright green mohawk.
As the night grew long, her responses got more irate. After a while, Finn stopped asking and just ordered her to explain her change of clothes, his phone buzzing each time she obeyed.
“Isn’t it time for bed?” she eventually asked, and Finn shook his head. He still had more than nine hours left of Level One, and didn’t want to sleep them away.
“Let me stay up as long as I like,” he ordered, changing his mother’s clothes again, this time into a plain white shirt and jeans, and was surprised when she shook her head, and Request denied popped up on his phone.
Hitting the circled i, he was met with the same message as last time: Error: Request conflicts with chosen goal.
Apparently, the app had decided that staying up late wasn’t conducive to improving his grades.
Finn’s favorite kind of game was sandbox games; anything that gave him a playground, and let him run loose. It was almost like getting to design a game within a game.
This reality-bending app wasn’t a game, but it had a similar sandboxy kind of feel.
And just like when he was playing sandbox games, now that he’d come up against a limit, he was determined to explore its parameters. He’d spent almost ten minutes cycling through hairstyles, seeing how long he could make his mother’s hair without access to the ’length’ option.
Now, he wanted to see exactly what the constraints on his mother’s obedience were.
“How long will you let me stay up?” he asked. “Answer my question honestly.”
His phone buzzed as his mother thought. “Another half-hour,” she said. “More, if you were studying.”
Finn had no idea whether that stipulation was coming from his mother or the app, but he supposed it didn’t make a difference.
“I want you to write my essay for me,” he ordered, and was unsurprised when his mother narrowed her eyes and shook her head. He clicked the small i. Again: Request conflicts with chosen goal.
He was fairly sure that his mother would do a pretty good job of writing an essay for him, which would—hypothetically— increase his grade, but it seemed the app required him to do it the “right” way.
Or perhaps it had tapped into his mother’s intentions for him. After all, she was the one holding the purse strings.
Any nervousness Finn had about angering his mother had disappeared as she’d replied to question after question about her clothing. Perhaps she’d be mad once the app’s influence wore off, but as long as she was under, it seemed anything went.
“Drive me to school tomorrow,” he ordered.
“What, are you allergic to buses all of a sudden?”
To Finn’s surprise, the error message was a new one. Request outside parameters. What parameters? Driving?
Or perhaps…
“Make me Mega Breakfast tomorrow night as well,” he ordered. Buzz.
“You haven’t even finished this one,” his mother pointed out dryly. Sure enough, same message: Request outside parameters. Apparently, he couldn’t set up future orders. What a waste—he was going to sleep through the rest of Level One, and he couldn’t even bank orders for the future.
“Pack the rest of it up,” he commanded. Buzz. “I’ll have it tomorrow.”
“I’m not a waitress,” his mother muttered contrarily, even as she closed her laptop to obey. With a grin, her son tapped his screen a few times.
“Then why are you dressed like one?” he asked when he was done, and his mother rolled her eyes.
“You know I enjoy the aesthetic,” she explained. “Blue looks good on me, and I like the way the dress shows off my legs.”
Finn tried to stop his eyes from flicking down to his mother’s legs, but he couldn’t. As her black shoes tap-tap-tapped against the kitchen floor, he hastily changed her out of the blue dress and white apron and into something that covered much more skin.
He used the next half-hour to try to find his mother’s limits. He was surprised by how much she’d agree to— he watched as she did star-jumps, grumbling all the while about how she’d already had her workout that day. She took a bite out of a bar of butter while whining that would definitely take her above her calorie limit. And he tried to ignore the feelings that ed through him as he watched his mother crawl across the kitchen floor towards him, lamenting how long it had been since she’d last mopped.
Just as he was starting to think that the only limits to the app were future commands and anything to do with improving his grades, he discovered a third error message.
“Dance on the table,” he ordered (his mother had already blushingly performed the Macarena, much to his amusement).
“I don’t think so. That’s enough for tonight,” she said. “Time for bed, kiddo.”
Finn felt his phone vibrate, but it wasn’t until he was lying in bed that he thought to check the error message and see exactly what had made his mother resist the command.
Request denied, it read. Level restriction reached.
The young man’s eyes narrowed. He could only imagine what that meant. And as he drifted off to sleep that night, his dreams were filled with images of his mother; crawling towards him on the floor, dressed as a French maid, begging him to look at her long legs, pleading with him to pay attention to her cleavage…and the app on his phone, open at Level Two.
* * *