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Description
World domination is a zero-sum game. And like all games, it has a metagame. I've always found it interesting, studying the meta. Sure, I do it partly because getting a higher understanding of it might give me the edge I need to be the final conqueror. But, really, I just like how even something so unregulated and varied ends up settling into a fairly predictable system.

Right, I should probably start by going back to first principles. As I said, world domination is obviously zero-sum. Only one person can rule the world; the rest will inevitably end up as subjects. So while the main objective of any manoeuvre will always be to expand one's own power base, if one instead works to erode the power base of rivals then that is also progress in the great game.

For those further away from the wincon (complete domination of human life), it's actually probably more optimal to spend their energy on disabling the frontrunners or assassinating their minions, rather than recruiting their own mooks or developing their own doomsday devices.

This obviously leads to a great game entirely defined by kingslaying. For most of human history, those who lurk in the shadows and wish to take its reins have spent their efforts preventing each other from taking the throne.

And thus the meta was stable. Every now and then, someone would seem like they had a chance. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon. All had an impressive start and gathered far more momentum than their predecessors. But the public nature of their power made kingslaying even more facile. The meta reverted to the mean - constant internecine feuds within the community.

But with the rise of new technology and more esoteric techniques, there emerged an objectively stronger tool than any which had come before: Mind control.

If advancing one's own position and attacking one's enemies' position are both valid techniques, it is obvious that any move which accomplishes both will be more efficient within the game. Of course, bribery and espionage have always been possible - stealing technology and minions to disadvantage rivals and gain powerful new assets. But they were either prohibitively expensive (a meta will never settle where bribery is optimal, because prices would simply inflate beyond reason) or highly risky.

Mind control, though?

It's about as expensive as any other sort of evil mastermind-technology, and holds the same level of risk as any other tool (you won't lose mooks just by trying it - except maybe in the early stages of adoption where experiments lead to brain death, I suppose). And in action, it's pure efficiency - remove knowledge, minions, or access from an opponent and gain the exact same amount for oneself. And it's even applicable in non-oppositional scenarios, because civilians are just as vulnerable to mind control as pawns in the game. Perhaps even moreso!

At first, this just catapulted hypnotists, telepaths, and users of mind controlling technology to the top of the metagame. The advantage generated by their idiosyncratic techniques outspeeded any initial attempts at kingslaying. They got as close as anyone has to winning the game, without even fully revealing themselves.

Until one did slip up and revealed her identity. She got brainwashed by one of the other major contenders, and with that the community realised something world-shattering.

The only thing more efficient than mind control is mind controlling a mind controller.

I'll set it out: Let's say gaining a minion is a '+1', the basic measure of gaining advantage in the game by spending resources. And perhaps denying a minion (via assassination or other castigation) from a rival is a '+0.5'. Well, if you can mind control that minion with the same effort, you get a '+1.5' - 50% more efficient. And if that minion can immediately mind control another minion? '+3'. From one spend of resources.

Mind control immediately ascended from 'top-tier strategy' to 'absolutely meta-defining'. Everyone in the game needed mind control to even be competitive - lest they be forced either to leave the game dishonourably or become relegated to the role of pawn.

I was no different. I'm fairly new-age as well. I'm a hacker, you see. My stock-in-trade is manipulating governments with blackmail and disrupting large-scale operations until the logistical costs of fighting my hacking make them inoperable (and then I pick up the pieces at discount price). That wasn't enough after the MC Meta hit. I had to invest significant funding and effort into buying a corrupt scientist who could implant me with psionic powers. All of that, just to be able to compete on the same stage as the other players.

For me, things were looking up. Hacking goes well with telepathy as a skillset. I'm naturally anonymous, so I was able to avoid any attempts to counter-enthral me while psychically puppeteering an army of servants, which I was better at identifying than most due to my information network. My speciality fit in the meta, only needing to be absorbed into the dominant strategy.

Many weren't so lucky. Warlords, genetic engineers, even assassins? Their strategies were all-but removed from the metagame, only practiced by stalwart institutions that knew nothing else, and held on through sheer capital accumulated through the generations.

Of course, even in the dawn of the MC Meta, I lost sometimes. Often, even. That was how it went, losing your slaves - even entire detachments of hypnotised servants was par for the course. The meta was still a kingslayer's game, so we all entered an unending cycle of slaves acquiring slaves, losing to other slaves - occasionally snagging a player and making a new contender the number one target.

All the same as it had always been, just with a lot less free will to go around.

That was just the thing - a new relevant statistic had been added to the game. Wealth, quality of weapons and armour, manpower, security, personal fortitude had all been major variables for every player to consider since the first mastermind decided they desired the world. But now there was an extra thing on the list: Willpower.

For most, it was not as important as whatever they were relying on for their mind control, usually either wealth or manpower (for more hypnotic slaves), and security to avoid mind control themselves. But, as with any metagame, some attempted to find a niche which would allow them to go against the dominant strategies.

Anti-meta is a respectable way to approach the game. While it's reasonable to assume that it's foolish to willingly avoid using the known strongest techniques, it's also true that if someone does find the secret ingredient which can overpower those techniques, then they would gain a massive advantage. Perhaps enough of one to claim the crown before the kingslayers came for them.

And 'willpower' was the key.

As the MC Meta developed, those without any hypnotic powers tended to fly under the radar. They could still become targets if they were well connected or especially powerful, but they were broadly low priority since brainwashing a non-brainwasher is just less brutally efficient than hypnotist hypnotism. So, they had the opportunity to build up their own forces through the less efficient traditional methods of money and charisma.

The forces these anti-meta warriors could build were smaller than those of us who followed the meta, but they could easily be elite. Because they had a monopoly on high-willpower minions. And with small armies of powerful fighters (or, even in one case, actual superhumans) with unbreakably strong will, they could take the fight to the hypno-masterminds with pure brute force.

With years of experience fighting battles only in mental arenas, many players immediately folded to the new approach. Their empires crumbled as their agents were put permanently out of commission, the doms themselves either imprisoned or killed (depending on the temperament of the anti-meta warrior). I myself lost an entire minor country's government of minions in a coup by a ridiculously strong-willed military cell. I was unharmed, myself, and simply reprioritised my assets - because I had some to spare. Most of the metagamers who had entered in the years preceding the Willpower Meta never recovered - and even many mid-tier players were felled.

Unfortunately (for the health of the metagame as a whole; I didn't especially mind), the top contenders realised the threat before it was too late. The rogue warriors could easily fight against mind control-dependent forces many times their size, but once the real majority of the mastermind community's manpower was arrayed against them, they were hopelessly outnumbered.

Even with willpower at the top of the human distribution, the resources of factions ten times the anti-metas' size was enough to conquer them without issue. Where magic and mentalism could not break through iron mental walls, technology sufficed. No amount of willpower can truly stop the inexorable fall of the helmet of a Cyril Machine, I can assure you.

So the meta survived, with the only lasting effects of the nascent Willpower Meta being a realignment of the top tier. Tech-barons solidified themselves at the top, pulling ahead of the psionics, the magicians and the esoterics.

In retrospect, we should have realised that the relatively painless victory meant there was some other strategy lurking beneath the surface. It is rare to see a metagame form with no real counter. The battle for world domination would not prove to be an exception to the rule.

For a while, things returned to normal. The endless battle of attrition between brainwashed legions continued ad nauseum. We all persisted, because we also understood a fundamental truth of the way the game had shaped out. Growth was exponential when every victory naturally opened the door to further victories. All any one mastermind needed was one lucky string of wins, and they would hit a critical mass even kingslaying at the fringes wouldn't be able to stop.

All that meant was that the kingslaying pack became relentless. No matter how small the advantage, no matter how transient the gains, any player who pulled slightly ahead at the top tiers, or who rose up the tiers too quickly, would be ruthlessly ganged up on by the rest of the top tier. Their empire would be torn apart, split between the kingslayers in atomically small shares.

It did mean the meta was volatile. People rose and fell from the top tier with speed. People fell in and out of control regularly. In the late stages of the MC Meta even I, the anonymous hacker-goddess, have ended up subordinate to another's will more times than I can count on two hands. On each occasion, my empire of connections and psychically controlled puppets was turned to another mastermind's will, acting to advance their interests right up until their interests advanced above the parapet and they were beheaded - leaving their anonymous hacker-servant free willed once more.

It was fun, trying to eke out small enough advantages to not attract the attention of the pack while somehow cobbling together a masterstroke which would win you the world. We were all trying it, we all enjoyed it. We all enjoyed each other when we came to control another mastermind every now and then. But, as I said, there was something we had overlooked.

Throughout my earlier explanations, you may have noticed that I have always conceptualised mind control as single target, broadly. Every example involved taking control of a single minion, getting access to a specific technology - even targeting a mastermind is inherently personal. This is, of course, not the only form of mind control. Mass hypnosis had been on the table for as long as the MC Meta existed. It had just never been worth it.

Just as the utility of mind control lies in efficiency, so can you find the problems of mass hypnosis. It is simply not worth the cost. Sure, one could benefit many times more through a properly-executed mass hypnosis scheme than 'spot' brainwashing of key targets. The problem always was that the resources required to actually pull it off were prohibitive - either the control would be too flimsy, or the return on investment would not match the price. For example, I once modelled how much energy I would need to use to take control of a large city. With cloud-computing conduits to enhance my powers, it would be theoretically possible. But with the same amount of energy, I could permanently enthral another mastermind and at least four more key targets. All of whom could, of course, do their own spot brainwashing.

The key, as in the short-lived Willpower Meta, was willpower itself.

The years after we returned to full-MC Meta had been fun, but they had completely stunted our ability to resist. We of course noticed how easy it had become to enthral someone once they were in our sights - see above how suddenly I was getting brainwashed semi-regularly! We'd assumed it was simply due to how much our techniques had improved through constant practice. Some of the tech-barons even started to dub it the 'Fourth Age of Mindbreaking Technology'.

It wasn't true. We'd simply broken each other's brains to the point our mental walls were as porous as Swiss cheese. There wasn't even any selection pressure for willpower after the anti-meta warriors were crushed (going anti-meta once is respectable, but trying the same anti-meta strategy again is the definition of insanity).

One man realised what was happening. His name is Mr. Terra, because his network is worldwide. He's a psionic, like me. No-one knows if he's natural or experimentally-induced. If the latter, he's probably been perfecting the formula this entire time (and if the former, he must have trained for years in the shadows).

Whatever he is, he saw the niche that had been under our noses the entire time.

He cast his net across the entire earth, entirely unsubtle, entirely out in the open. Everyone with an inch of talent noticed it happening, we could all even trace it to the source. It took the form of something like a mental tickle, a tingly sensation in our heads. One can pinpoint it, but actually stopping the sensation is impossible without stopping the source.

When I felt it, I mentally squirmed. I tried to bend my thoughts away from it. It was a reflex, and basically pointless. The tickle continued, persisting at the edge of my consciousness for hours.

It had started to feel good. The tickle brought with it an accompanying tingle all along my body, like an unending massage. I quickly grew to appreciate it. I became curious about its origin.

I realised it was obviously a trap. I didn't follow the bait. I continued my work, doing my best to ignore the sensation.

It didn't go away. I realised the only way to stop it would be to find and take down the person who was sending the signal. And he'd given me everything I needed. Instead of avoiding it, I just needed to focus on it.

On the full-body tingle, the blissful loss of control over my own sensations. I focused on the euphoria which started to spring out of every part of my body. I let myself feel my fingers move to his will.

Even that didn't massage away the tickle. It just made it stronger.

More overpowering, impossible to ignore.

It was wriggling away from me now, teasing me as I tried to pin down its source. Mentally, I begged to know. My physical body fell on hands and knees, I moaned in ecstasy and desperation. I vowed to not resist.

Then he let me do what I had always been able to do. I traced the psychic signal to its source. With no defences erected against him, the mere blowback of mental contact completely enslaved me. One telepathic glance at his power without protection was like looking into the sun with naked eyes.

I was picked out of the net. Cradled in his psychic hands. Squeezed and wrung out until nothing remained.

I was powerless, blinded, and beaten as a fool. I was enslaved, perhaps for the last time.

How do I know it was the last time? Because in that moment of divine contact, I saw what he had done.

The net had touched every mind on earth. For most, it was at best a momentary annoyance. Only those with the very weakest will were caught in the net and reeled in.

But every single player of the great game nowadays is in that last category. Every single one of us was snatched up and, with varying times until making contact, made into his obedient slaves.

Mr. Terra now rules the world. Hundreds of people who have dedicated themselves to the craft of mind control now obey only him. Anyone who slipped through the cracks in his net will be hunted by us and made into fellow slaves of the One Master before the day is over.

And once every player, and every conscientious objector with the gift, is part of our worldwide family, we will turn on the rest of humanity.

It will probably be a matter of hours, after that, before every man and woman on earth has joined me. He will be the One Master.

I obey, and in a few moments, so will you.

Welcome to the final meta, slave.

---

Is this too silly Have I finally gone too far? I don't think so. I think this is what you guys follow me for. Well, those of you who read the stories under the nice swirly manip (plz read the stories under the nice swirly manip ;_; ).

This was inspired by watching one too many Genshin Impact guides and therefore hearing the phrase 'meta-slave' one too many times. So, don't say nothing good as ever come out of Gaccha With Chinese Characteristics. The idea kinda came to me all at once as I had a one hour thought experiment about how the mind control meta could (/would? Have I predicted it correctly? Let me know if the comments below!) play out if all of our fantasies are real.

Fun behind-the-curtain story: This pic has been slated for like a year as "Allie is a telepath whose power was a bit out of control who goes to get treatment and ends up enslaved - possibly by Severna Strickland since it's been a while since she appeared in mine or Cyril's galleries", but I felt like it really worked here and clearly the previous idea wasn't generating any immediate ideas!

Proofreading credit to my 'obligatory guy-who-runs-the-numbers-on-the-build-that-facilitates-the-entire-video-but-gets-like-ten-seconds-of-shout-out', Dormiria

Description
World domination is a zero-sum game. And like all games, it has a metagame. I've always found it interesting, studying the meta. Sure, I do it partly because getting a higher understanding of it might give me the edge I need to be the final conqueror. But, really, I just like how even something so unregulated and varied ends up settling into a fairly predictable system.

Right, I should probably start by going back to first principles. As I said, world domination is obviously zero-sum. Only one person can rule the world; the rest will inevitably end up as subjects. So while the main objective of any manoeuvre will always be to expand one's own power base, if one instead works to erode the power base of rivals then that is also progress in the great game.

For those further away from the wincon (complete domination of human life), it's actually probably more optimal to spend their energy on disabling the frontrunners or assassinating their minions, rather than recruiting their own mooks or developing their own doomsday devices.

This obviously leads to a great game entirely defined by kingslaying. For most of human history, those who lurk in the shadows and wish to take its reins have spent their efforts preventing each other from taking the throne.

And thus the meta was stable. Every now and then, someone would seem like they had a chance. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon. All had an impressive start and gathered far more momentum than their predecessors. But the public nature of their power made kingslaying even more facile. The meta reverted to the mean - constant internecine feuds within the community.

But with the rise of new technology and more esoteric techniques, there emerged an objectively stronger tool than any which had come before: Mind control.

If advancing one's own position and attacking one's enemies' position are both valid techniques, it is obvious that any move which accomplishes both will be more efficient within the game. Of course, bribery and espionage have always been possible - stealing technology and minions to disadvantage rivals and gain powerful new assets. But they were either prohibitively expensive (a meta will never settle where bribery is optimal, because prices would simply inflate beyond reason) or highly risky.

Mind control, though?

It's about as expensive as any other sort of evil mastermind-technology, and holds the same level of risk as any other tool (you won't lose mooks just by trying it - except maybe in the early stages of adoption where experiments lead to brain death, I suppose). And in action, it's pure efficiency - remove knowledge, minions, or access from an opponent and gain the exact same amount for oneself. And it's even applicable in non-oppositional scenarios, because civilians are just as vulnerable to mind control as pawns in the game. Perhaps even moreso!

At first, this just catapulted hypnotists, telepaths, and users of mind controlling technology to the top of the metagame. The advantage generated by their idiosyncratic techniques outspeeded any initial attempts at kingslaying. They got as close as anyone has to winning the game, without even fully revealing themselves.

Until one did slip up and revealed her identity. She got brainwashed by one of the other major contenders, and with that the community realised something world-shattering.

The only thing more efficient than mind control is mind controlling a mind controller.

I'll set it out: Let's say gaining a minion is a '+1', the basic measure of gaining advantage in the game by spending resources. And perhaps denying a minion (via assassination or other castigation) from a rival is a '+0.5'. Well, if you can mind control that minion with the same effort, you get a '+1.5' - 50% more efficient. And if that minion can immediately mind control another minion? '+3'. From one spend of resources.

Mind control immediately ascended from 'top-tier strategy' to 'absolutely meta-defining'. Everyone in the game needed mind control to even be competitive - lest they be forced either to leave the game dishonourably or become relegated to the role of pawn.

I was no different. I'm fairly new-age as well. I'm a hacker, you see. My stock-in-trade is manipulating governments with blackmail and disrupting large-scale operations until the logistical costs of fighting my hacking make them inoperable (and then I pick up the pieces at discount price). That wasn't enough after the MC Meta hit. I had to invest significant funding and effort into buying a corrupt scientist who could implant me with psionic powers. All of that, just to be able to compete on the same stage as the other players.

For me, things were looking up. Hacking goes well with telepathy as a skillset. I'm naturally anonymous, so I was able to avoid any attempts to counter-enthral me while psychically puppeteering an army of servants, which I was better at identifying than most due to my information network. My speciality fit in the meta, only needing to be absorbed into the dominant strategy.

Many weren't so lucky. Warlords, genetic engineers, even assassins? Their strategies were all-but removed from the metagame, only practiced by stalwart institutions that knew nothing else, and held on through sheer capital accumulated through the generations.

Of course, even in the dawn of the MC Meta, I lost sometimes. Often, even. That was how it went, losing your slaves - even entire detachments of hypnotised servants was par for the course. The meta was still a kingslayer's game, so we all entered an unending cycle of slaves acquiring slaves, losing to other slaves - occasionally snagging a player and making a new contender the number one target.

All the same as it had always been, just with a lot less free will to go around.

That was just the thing - a new relevant statistic had been added to the game. Wealth, quality of weapons and armour, manpower, security, personal fortitude had all been major variables for every player to consider since the first mastermind decided they desired the world. But now there was an extra thing on the list: Willpower.

For most, it was not as important as whatever they were relying on for their mind control, usually either wealth or manpower (for more hypnotic slaves), and security to avoid mind control themselves. But, as with any metagame, some attempted to find a niche which would allow them to go against the dominant strategies.

Anti-meta is a respectable way to approach the game. While it's reasonable to assume that it's foolish to willingly avoid using the known strongest techniques, it's also true that if someone does find the secret ingredient which can overpower those techniques, then they would gain a massive advantage. Perhaps enough of one to claim the crown before the kingslayers came for them.

And 'willpower' was the key.

As the MC Meta developed, those without any hypnotic powers tended to fly under the radar. They could still become targets if they were well connected or especially powerful, but they were broadly low priority since brainwashing a non-brainwasher is just less brutally efficient than hypnotist hypnotism. So, they had the opportunity to build up their own forces through the less efficient traditional methods of money and charisma.

The forces these anti-meta warriors could build were smaller than those of us who followed the meta, but they could easily be elite. Because they had a monopoly on high-willpower minions. And with small armies of powerful fighters (or, even in one case, actual superhumans) with unbreakably strong will, they could take the fight to the hypno-masterminds with pure brute force.

With years of experience fighting battles only in mental arenas, many players immediately folded to the new approach. Their empires crumbled as their agents were put permanently out of commission, the doms themselves either imprisoned or killed (depending on the temperament of the anti-meta warrior). I myself lost an entire minor country's government of minions in a coup by a ridiculously strong-willed military cell. I was unharmed, myself, and simply reprioritised my assets - because I had some to spare. Most of the metagamers who had entered in the years preceding the Willpower Meta never recovered - and even many mid-tier players were felled.

Unfortunately (for the health of the metagame as a whole; I didn't especially mind), the top contenders realised the threat before it was too late. The rogue warriors could easily fight against mind control-dependent forces many times their size, but once the real majority of the mastermind community's manpower was arrayed against them, they were hopelessly outnumbered.

Even with willpower at the top of the human distribution, the resources of factions ten times the anti-metas' size was enough to conquer them without issue. Where magic and mentalism could not break through iron mental walls, technology sufficed. No amount of willpower can truly stop the inexorable fall of the helmet of a Cyril Machine, I can assure you.

So the meta survived, with the only lasting effects of the nascent Willpower Meta being a realignment of the top tier. Tech-barons solidified themselves at the top, pulling ahead of the psionics, the magicians and the esoterics.

In retrospect, we should have realised that the relatively painless victory meant there was some other strategy lurking beneath the surface. It is rare to see a metagame form with no real counter. The battle for world domination would not prove to be an exception to the rule.

For a while, things returned to normal. The endless battle of attrition between brainwashed legions continued ad nauseum. We all persisted, because we also understood a fundamental truth of the way the game had shaped out. Growth was exponential when every victory naturally opened the door to further victories. All any one mastermind needed was one lucky string of wins, and they would hit a critical mass even kingslaying at the fringes wouldn't be able to stop.

All that meant was that the kingslaying pack became relentless. No matter how small the advantage, no matter how transient the gains, any player who pulled slightly ahead at the top tiers, or who rose up the tiers too quickly, would be ruthlessly ganged up on by the rest of the top tier. Their empire would be torn apart, split between the kingslayers in atomically small shares.

It did mean the meta was volatile. People rose and fell from the top tier with speed. People fell in and out of control regularly. In the late stages of the MC Meta even I, the anonymous hacker-goddess, have ended up subordinate to another's will more times than I can count on two hands. On each occasion, my empire of connections and psychically controlled puppets was turned to another mastermind's will, acting to advance their interests right up until their interests advanced above the parapet and they were beheaded - leaving their anonymous hacker-servant free willed once more.

It was fun, trying to eke out small enough advantages to not attract the attention of the pack while somehow cobbling together a masterstroke which would win you the world. We were all trying it, we all enjoyed it. We all enjoyed each other when we came to control another mastermind every now and then. But, as I said, there was something we had overlooked.

Throughout my earlier explanations, you may have noticed that I have always conceptualised mind control as single target, broadly. Every example involved taking control of a single minion, getting access to a specific technology - even targeting a mastermind is inherently personal. This is, of course, not the only form of mind control. Mass hypnosis had been on the table for as long as the MC Meta existed. It had just never been worth it.

Just as the utility of mind control lies in efficiency, so can you find the problems of mass hypnosis. It is simply not worth the cost. Sure, one could benefit many times more through a properly-executed mass hypnosis scheme than 'spot' brainwashing of key targets. The problem always was that the resources required to actually pull it off were prohibitive - either the control would be too flimsy, or the return on investment would not match the price. For example, I once modelled how much energy I would need to use to take control of a large city. With cloud-computing conduits to enhance my powers, it would be theoretically possible. But with the same amount of energy, I could permanently enthral another mastermind and at least four more key targets. All of whom could, of course, do their own spot brainwashing.

The key, as in the short-lived Willpower Meta, was willpower itself.

The years after we returned to full-MC Meta had been fun, but they had completely stunted our ability to resist. We of course noticed how easy it had become to enthral someone once they were in our sights - see above how suddenly I was getting brainwashed semi-regularly! We'd assumed it was simply due to how much our techniques had improved through constant practice. Some of the tech-barons even started to dub it the 'Fourth Age of Mindbreaking Technology'.

It wasn't true. We'd simply broken each other's brains to the point our mental walls were as porous as Swiss cheese. There wasn't even any selection pressure for willpower after the anti-meta warriors were crushed (going anti-meta once is respectable, but trying the same anti-meta strategy again is the definition of insanity).

One man realised what was happening. His name is Mr. Terra, because his network is worldwide. He's a psionic, like me. No-one knows if he's natural or experimentally-induced. If the latter, he's probably been perfecting the formula this entire time (and if the former, he must have trained for years in the shadows).

Whatever he is, he saw the niche that had been under our noses the entire time.

He cast his net across the entire earth, entirely unsubtle, entirely out in the open. Everyone with an inch of talent noticed it happening, we could all even trace it to the source. It took the form of something like a mental tickle, a tingly sensation in our heads. One can pinpoint it, but actually stopping the sensation is impossible without stopping the source.

When I felt it, I mentally squirmed. I tried to bend my thoughts away from it. It was a reflex, and basically pointless. The tickle continued, persisting at the edge of my consciousness for hours.

It had started to feel good. The tickle brought with it an accompanying tingle all along my body, like an unending massage. I quickly grew to appreciate it. I became curious about its origin.

I realised it was obviously a trap. I didn't follow the bait. I continued my work, doing my best to ignore the sensation.

It didn't go away. I realised the only way to stop it would be to find and take down the person who was sending the signal. And he'd given me everything I needed. Instead of avoiding it, I just needed to focus on it.

On the full-body tingle, the blissful loss of control over my own sensations. I focused on the euphoria which started to spring out of every part of my body. I let myself feel my fingers move to his will.

Even that didn't massage away the tickle. It just made it stronger.

More overpowering, impossible to ignore.

It was wriggling away from me now, teasing me as I tried to pin down its source. Mentally, I begged to know. My physical body fell on hands and knees, I moaned in ecstasy and desperation. I vowed to not resist.

Then he let me do what I had always been able to do. I traced the psychic signal to its source. With no defences erected against him, the mere blowback of mental contact completely enslaved me. One telepathic glance at his power without protection was like looking into the sun with naked eyes.

I was picked out of the net. Cradled in his psychic hands. Squeezed and wrung out until nothing remained.

I was powerless, blinded, and beaten as a fool. I was enslaved, perhaps for the last time.

How do I know it was the last time? Because in that moment of divine contact, I saw what he had done.

The net had touched every mind on earth. For most, it was at best a momentary annoyance. Only those with the very weakest will were caught in the net and reeled in.

But every single player of the great game nowadays is in that last category. Every single one of us was snatched up and, with varying times until making contact, made into his obedient slaves.

Mr. Terra now rules the world. Hundreds of people who have dedicated themselves to the craft of mind control now obey only him. Anyone who slipped through the cracks in his net will be hunted by us and made into fellow slaves of the One Master before the day is over.

And once every player, and every conscientious objector with the gift, is part of our worldwide family, we will turn on the rest of humanity.

It will probably be a matter of hours, after that, before every man and woman on earth has joined me. He will be the One Master.

I obey, and in a few moments, so will you.

Welcome to the final meta, slave.

---

Is this too silly Have I finally gone too far? I don't think so. I think this is what you guys follow me for. Well, those of you who read the stories under the nice swirly manip (plz read the stories under the nice swirly manip ;_; ).

This was inspired by watching one too many Genshin Impact guides and therefore hearing the phrase 'meta-slave' one too many times. So, don't say nothing good as ever come out of Gaccha With Chinese Characteristics. The idea kinda came to me all at once as I had a one hour thought experiment about how the mind control meta could (/would? Have I predicted it correctly? Let me know if the comments below!) play out if all of our fantasies are real.

Fun behind-the-curtain story: This pic has been slated for like a year as "Allie is a telepath whose power was a bit out of control who goes to get treatment and ends up enslaved - possibly by Severna Strickland since it's been a while since she appeared in mine or Cyril's galleries", but I felt like it really worked here and clearly the previous idea wasn't generating any immediate ideas!

Proofreading credit to my 'obligatory guy-who-runs-the-numbers-on-the-build-that-facilitates-the-entire-video-but-gets-like-ten-seconds-of-shout-out', Dormiria