Project THC: Intro
The conference room sat at the top of the building—fiftieth floor, windows blacked out, curtains sealed, lights dimmed to a corporate haze. The room was long and unusually casual, plush coaches set around circular tables carved from some endangered hardwood varnished into extinction. Twelve men sat around it, each one the kind of billionaire whose biography was always described with the phrase “controversial but effective.” Their suits were tailored, their ties crisp, and their souls collectively accrued from several centuries of monopolies, exploited workforces, and very well-hidden offshore accounts.
At the head sat Grayson Stone, founder of half the world’s largest logistics chains and owner of the other half. Thick-fingered, gray-haired, and somehow always sipping a drink that was never empty. He tapped on said glass.
“Gentlemen. Let’s begin.”
The room settled. A few of the men checked their phones. A few adjusted their watches. All of them carried the same bored, heavy certainty that nothing in the world could possibly surprise them anymore.
Slate cleared his throat.
“As you all know, the world is—pardon my language—fucked.”
Several men nodded solemnly, while others smiled in amusement.
“Economically, geopolitically, socially, ethically… pick a category. We have a crisis in every one.” Slate gestured lazily to the curtained windows. “Revolutions, pandemics, wars, the dissolution of attention spans, the collapse of traditional family structures, the rise of freelancing—” he shuddered “—and don’t get me started on democratic participation.”
A ripple of disgust moved across the table.
“Society has reached uncharted levels of ‘freedom,” added Elliot Brand, the tech mogul who’d cornered the cloud computing market. “People don’t want to follow rules. They want their own opinions. Their own facts.” He sighed heavily. “And they argue. All the time.”
“They think,” muttered Holmes Price, the pharmaceutical giant’s CEO, as if naming an unspeakable sin. “Even when we tell them not to.”
“And worst of all,” chimed in Bruce Dallow, owner of the largest construction conglomerate on the planet, “they die.”
Everyone turned to him.
“Mortality,” he explained. “Makes them unpredictable. Scared. Panicked. They do stupid things. They riot. They vote incorrectly. They write think-pieces.”
The table collectively winced at that last one.
Slate leaned back, folding his hands. “Exactly. People are too complicated. Too varied. Too… human.”
The word hung in the air like an uncomfortable truth rather than an obvious fact.
“And men,” Slate continued, “are… well…” He made a vague motion, a half-hearted shrug. “Improvement is needed. But you know.” Another shrug. “We can work with that.”
Several of the men snorted. One of them whispered “Better than dealing with women,” and the whole table chuckled with the casual, oblivious cruelty of men who had never once been told no.
“But!” Slate lifted a finger. “We don’t have to tolerate complexity. We don’t have to tolerate intelligence. We don’t have to tolerate personalities that aren’t immediately useful.” His voice gained momentum, the tone of a man revealing the twist to a plan he’d been crafting for years. “We can fix all of this.”
Elliot leaned forward. “With what? Psychological conditioning? Behavioral nudges? Targeted propaganda? We’ve tried and tired, it hasn’t worked since the late 90s”
Slate smiled. “More… direct methods.”
A silence swept across the table. Then: “What, exactly, are you proposing?” Holmes demanded.
Slate pressed a button beneath the table.
The lights dimmed. A projector hummed to life. On the screen behind him, a massive slide appeared in stark white letters:
THP: THE HOMOGENIZATION PROJECT
Several of the men squinted. A few adjusted glasses. One or two nodded in premature approval, as if the name alone had sold them. Slate clasped his hands behind his back.
“Gentlemen… society has failed. Democracy has failed. Education has failed. The market,” he cast a look at Elliot, “has not entirely failed, but the customers have.”
Elliot nodded gravely.
“The problem is that people think too much, feel too much, disagree too much. They innovate incorrectly. They aspire incorrectly. They vote incorrectly. They form relationships incorrectly.”
He raised a finger.
“And some of them,” he added, “are women.”
(Nods. Several satisfied sighs. Somebody muttered: “Finally someone says it.”)
Slate continued.
“We need a society that is simple. Predictable. Obedient. Unburdened by high cognition, existential dread, or excessive personality traits.”
He clicked to the next slide:
PHASE 1: UNIVERSAL TRANSFORMATION
“And the solution,” Slate said, pacing slowly, “is to remake the world’s population into something more manageable. To eradicate variance. To standardize humanity.and to do this we must transform them.”
The room buzzed with various reactions of shock, amusement, and lots of confusion. Holmes Price gave a suspicious glance at Grayson, waiting to see where he was going with this.
“We will transform every person, across all nations, all ages, all identities, into a narrow demographic range: approximately sixteen to thirty-seven, all male, all engineered with predetermined personalities that are simple, agreeable, predictable, and entirely loyal to the new world order.”
A complete silence. Then someone asked:
“…Like… like NPCs?”
“Better,” Slate said cheerfully. “Like influencers. But stupider.”
The room erupted in impressed murmurs.
“And what,” Holmes asked, “will these… men… act like?”
“Whatever we tell them to,” Slate replied. “They are perfectly content doing what they are told. To be quite crude they’ll be dumb, the kind of dumb that will maximize our profits.”
Bruce let out a low whistle. “That’s beautiful,” he murmured.
Holmes leaned forward. “And how do you propose we accomplish this?”
“Transformation technology,” Slate said casually, like it was the kind of thing one might pick up at Target. “I’ve partnered with some specialists. Ancient biotech. Experimental materials. Nanostructural behavioral rewriting. A little alchemy. The details don’t matter.”
“So they don’t get a choice in the matter, I assume,” Holmes asked, at a confirming nod from Stone. He leapt to his feet, going off at the CEO. “This is completely unethical, Grayson. I don’t understand what’s happened to you. I don’t know about the rest of these men, but it will have no part in this.” He left out the conference room door in a huff.
Garyson tapped his foot. He said something into his ear piece. All of a sudden a scream could be heard, echoing throughout the conference room. The distinct sound of Holmes muffled curses gave the men lounging around the room a vivid picture of what had just happened in the hall. The room grew tense as Stone gave the rigid room a big grin.
“What matters,” he continued brightly, “is distribution.”
And suddenly the screen shifted again:
PHASE 2: PRODUCT-BASED DELIVERY
Elliot’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re going to transform people with… consumer goods?”
Slate nodded. He gestured to a large screen set into the wall.
“Observe.”
File Name: SF-CR-Jeep
Manufacturing details: produced by Jeep then customized by Graystone detailing
Key transformation components: Saltwater Infusion - Vehicle’s metal frame pressure-washed internally with Pacific seawater containing dissolved surfer archetype energy signatures.
Leather Treatment - Interior leather soaked in Sex Wax–derived conditioning compounds, optimized for inducing neurological chill-out responses and cognitive downgrades.
Cabin Vapor System - Emits micro-mists of sunscreen, ocean breeze chemicals, and “perpetual vacation” pheromones.
Drive-Cycle Activation - Transformation accelerates with vehicle movement; vibration synced to mimic wave motion, inducing identity regression and brain reprogramming.
Testing: an oversized, aggressive, slate-gray Jeep—wheels raised, surfboard rack attached, smelling faintly of saltwater was parked on the side of the road.
An intern stepped towards it, you could tell he was an intern based on the way he carried himself, with meek manners and a sense of humility about him, his small body shoved in an ill fitting pair of pants and oversized blazer.
Obviously confused, rummaging around himself only to find keys that matched the unknown car in his pants pocket. Clearly exhausted, he shrugged and got in the car. As he drove, something started to happen.
The wind tossed his hair as it became sun bleached. His clothing tightened around growing muscles, before reforming entirely into a bright T-shirt and shorts. He grinned in a dopey sort of way as he cruised down a coastal highway.
“Brooo,” he said, voice cracking with surfer slang, “life is literally vibes, man.”
He didn’t even know what an accountant is anymore. Totally carefree surfer dude. His brain just… washed clean. All he cares about now is waves, suntan oil, and saying ‘heyyy brahh.’
The Jeep horn beeped with a jaunty little rhythm.
File Name: (F)JOK-SE-Football
Manufacturing details: manufactured entirely by Graystone Labs: THP division
Key transformation components: Injected Youth Hormones - Leather panels infused with proprietary AdoLEssence™ hormonal cocktail engineered to induce teenage-body regression.
Paint Mixture -
1/3 standard field paint
1/3 “biological extract” from retired NFL donors
1/3 stabilized adolescent athletic pheromonee
Contact-Triggered Hormonal Aerosolization - Heat from handling releases micro-particles targeting muscle density, aggression, and ego inflation.
Second Testing: Holmes Price sat on the metal bleachers, very angry at being forced against his will to come to such a place. The sixty-year-old CEO stood with arms folded defensively.
A football was tossed at him. He caught it reflexively, turning it over in his hands. It looked like a standard-looking varsity football. Except it wasn’t: The leather pulsed faintly, like it had a heartbeat.
Instantly, his wrinkles began fading. His shoulders broadened. Hair thickened, then fell into the perfect teenage-quarterback flop that was quickly covered by a hat. His suit vanished into thin air. His brain rewriting itself in real time.
He blinked, confused. “Coach?? Practice already?? I didn’t—uh—I didn’t hear the whistle, dude.”
He jogged onto the field, shouting “LET’S GO, BABYYYY!” Not a single thought to his old life.
File Name: PR-EB-Gray Goose vodka
Manufacturing details: sponsored by Gray Goose liquor and developed in partnership
Key transformation components: Posh Chemical Additives - Infusion of investor approved synthetic preppy pheromones.
Youth Hormones - Same AdoLEssence™ base as [REDACTED], reformulated for oral absorption.
Bottle Composition - Glass blended with micro-shards from upscale Vineyard Vines store displays, containing residual “country-club brainwave patterns.”
Blood Alcohol Delivery - Alcohol carries identity-lowering compounds that target verbal processing and color preference centers through bloodstream.
Testing: The glaring, ice-filled wine chiller caught her eye. She was in her forties,a mid-level marketing executive, at a company party that she was NOT enjoying, but something on the drink cart had kept her from leaving. Inside the chiller sat a single glass bottle of vodka.
It fizzed faintly, even unopened. The woman opened the bottle and took a sip from it directly. Her eyes widened, it was delicious. She quickly moved to mix it around with some fruit juices on the bar cart.
As he did so, her hair shortened, then turned sandy-blond, then popped upward into the perfectly obnoxious swoop favored by boys named Chase. Her frame sharpened into lean teenage athleticism, her face youthful beauty Her blouse rewove itself into a colored polo layered over an expensive jacket.
His voice cracked as she stared at the party of people he no longer recognized. “Bro… what the heck… it’s time for lacrosse practice??”
He left the party in a rush. Now a dense preppy teenage boy. The kind to grow up in a private school and never be told no. Sweater-over-shoulders energy. A bit clueless but completely harmless.
Slate walked between the presenters, hands clasped behind his back.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is only the beginning. If we can transform individuals through cars, sports equipment, beverages—imagine what we can do when we distribute these globally.”
He clicked to the final slide:
PHASE 3: MASS ADOPTION — FULL WORLD CONVERSION IN 18 MONTHS
“Automobiles. Footwear. Sodas. Toys. Gym equipment. Household appliances. Toiletries. We partner with every major manufacturer. We embed transformation catalysts into the supply chain.”
He paused.
“We don’t need to force anyone. They’ll transform themselves.”
The men around the table began whispering excitedly, the overlapping hum of eleven egos seeing their legacy written across the next century and the fear of ending up like Holmes if they declined.
Someone asked, “What about resistance?”
Slate shrugged. “They’ll be too stupid to resist.”
Elliot asked, “What about government interference?”
“Governments won’t be able to function now,” Slate said dryly. “Imagine how easy they’ll be to manage when every world leader is a twenty-year-old dude named Kyle.”
Laughter rippled, cold and certain. The businessmen leaned back, satisfied. Every one of them imagined a world shaped like a beer commercial, run by the least threatening demographic imaginable.
A world of bros. A world they could finally, perfectly control. Slate raised his glass.
“All I need from you is your funding.”
Eventually, a full scratching of pens filled the room, as every single businessman signed a contract, giving Greystone industries full access to their funding and resources. Yet as the last lines were signed, something began to happen.
Their faces began to get smoother, their appearances more youthful. A couple tried to sound the alarm, but their panicked shouts quickly turned into mindless grins. Their suits transformed into tiny shorts showing off massive legs. Their jackets becoming an assorted mix of tops: tank tops, t-shirts, one’s button down shirt melted away completely leaving behind a bare chest, showing off thick muscles.
Stone watched all this with a grin, he already had their money, he had no need for these men now. He poured himself more whisky, as he watched his old friend Elliot complete his transformation. Elliot’s gained muscle quickly becoming a sun darkened tan, his hair gaining a touch of the sun as well with streaks of blonde running through it. He lifted his tie dye shirt and grinned up at Grayson flirtatiously but without recognition. Stone looked over the rest of the men as they finished as well. Their hair styled in various trendy dos, some covered by baseball caps. Some glanced at him with dull, glazed over eyes.
He gave them all a final glance as he left the room. Knowing that his transportation department would teleport the room and the boys inside to a frat house in a coastal town. There had been many discussions on what would be the best to transform the investors to, options ranging from boy band to hockey team had been discussed before landing on the idea of a frat house. An addition that would be unnoticed wherever they relocated them, but soon people would notice the growing number of young men. Things were about to change, and Grayson Stone had many many many plans.
(New series, so excited!! wanted to do like short stories to help get my creativity pumping. This is an introduction so it’s more cohesive, but I will have more anthology kind of stuff in this series. Will probably continue this whenever I kind of just feel like making little one shots. Obviously this story is inspired by dumb and jocked’s the businessmen, all credit to them with the original idea. )