A guide for other authors writing Eroflu spinoff stories.
Eroflu is an erotic science fiction setting open to other authors to write in. It's intended as a scientifically plausible scenario for a mass impregnation harem fantasy, without the usual baggage of stories in that genre that annoy readers like me. It's obviously not for everyone and it's not meant to be. It's for readers who like fantasizing about one man getting a lot of women, but who have trouble identifying with an intentionally mind-controlling man, can't suspend disbelief about large numbers of women just throwing themselves at a man for no reason or for magical reasons, or can't help thinking about little details like the difficulty of impregnation, sexual stamina limits, or the risks of the characters getting STDs.
Again, the point is an unintentional harem, so the man being confused and the situation being out of his control are essential to an Eroflu story. The consequences of the virus trying to breed each man can play out in many different ways. The virus is learning and changing, trying out different things, and each main character is different. So there's a ton of flexibility for how different authors could interpret Eroflu.
Everything in this guide is eventually explained or at least hinted at in Eroflu Shanghai, but it takes a while for the characters to figure it all out. For most readers, I think it'd be more fun to learn all of this the way the characters do. This is here as a reference for other authors who I hope are considering writing their own Eroflu spinoff stories, for readers who might have missed or been confused by the brief explanations in the story, and for overly analytical types like me who need to know the scientific mechanisms behind a story before suspending disbelief.
To avoid spoilers, I'd suggest reading Eroflu Shanghai through at least chapter 12 before reading any of this guide, and reading through the epilogue before reading the Epilogue Secret section at the end.
Eroflu basics
Eroflu, short for erogenous influenza, is a mutant strain of the influenza virus that creates a viral network of altered brain cells within a human body, resulting in a separate intelligent being with its own motives. The virus is present in everyone, but can only take on its full form in a few people with a rare combination of genetic quirks. It wants those few people to spread their DNA as much as possible, so it tries to encourage them to breed. It can't control them, but it's very good at magnifying sexual attraction, pleasure, and breeding instincts.
The first Eroflu series, Eroflu Shanghai, is about an accountant named Jim who suddenly finds every attractive woman he meets reacting strangely to him during a one-week work trip in China. Other spinoff stories should take place after the events of Eroflu Shanghai and should focus on a whole new set of characters, although it's ok to have an occasional cameo by some of the characters from Eroflu Shanghai.
Other than the research team Jim recruits in Shanghai (see Eroflu Shanghai Chs. 12, 17, and epilogue), nobody is aware that erogenous influenza is having any effects on anyone. Scientists are of course aware that all other infectious diseases including STDs have been eradicated, but they don't know that the eroflu caused this, and they think the eroflu is harmless.
Spread of the virus and spread of its commands
Six months before the events of Eroflu Shanghai, the virus already spread to everyone and grew a network of modified nerve cells in everyone's body. These networks are small in most people, hidden within their brains where they're mostly indistinguishable from normal brain tissue, so they won't be detected by medical scans. In a few people with a rare combination of genetic quirks, such as Jim, it can spread much more extensively throughout their body and become a sentient being. The result is a parallel nervous system with many nodules of nerve tissue scattered throughout the body that together function as a second brain. In this full form, any medical scan would reveal that something is very wrong. Biopsy of the tissue reveals that it's nerve tissue, not cancerous (as doctors will first assume), that the neurons are larger and denser than normal, and that the cells are all infected with the Eroflu virus.
The resulting children will appear completely normal and healthy. They have the genetic quirks that will allow the virus to take on its full form, but the virus waits to do this until they are mature. The virus knows that these children might be studied, and it patiently waits to activate in them. Any medical scans of the children will find they don't have the nodules Jim has.
The small networks in most bodies are not sentient beings. They can follow and pass along commands that originate from the sentient network in Jim or in any other people like him, using facial muscle twitch signaling. Some of them have slightly more developed networks, allowing more complex commands such as those that give them hunches about how best to pleasure others (see the helpers section below). When any two people are within about 20 feet of each other, these signals can be so subtle that the people don't consciously notice them. From farther away, the twitches need to be stronger and are noticed, felt as a quick series of facial muscle spasms. If he's wearing sunglasses it will interfere with this signaling since it mostly happens in the muscles around the eyes. If only she is wearing sunglasses, she can still receive a signal from him causing her to move her sunglasses out of the way to look at him. Visual impairment could prevent this signaling, but the virus has already developed alternative but slower ways to communicate for these people because it needs to be able to get its messages to all hosts.
The signaling can be captured and analyzed with slow-motion cameras (as is done in FFS chapter 12), but playback of the videos has no effect on others because the signaling is encoded with keys specific to each person. After a "handshake" of initial signals that pass a host-identifying public key, subsequent messages are encoded using those keys so that they will only be received by that person. Each viral network also has a private key that it can use to sign its commands, so it is not possible to hack into this communication network and issue commands that appear to be from them.
Sometimes the full hosts send out commands to every other host in the world. For example, the command to eradicate all other infectious diseases so that no competitor to the virus can evolve (sent out four months before Jim's Shanghai trip), the command to grow a pod in every uterus to be ready to maximize fertility (sent out a month before his trip), or lessons learned from breeding Jim in Shanghai that could be used for the few other similar men elsewhere in the world. These commands are relayed through eye contact between hosts, so it takes about three weeks for such a command to spread to everyone in the world. Because it has to happen via eye contact between people, the spread of these messages happens like a highly infectious disease would, affecting bigger cities and travel hubs first, then eventually reaching everywhere.
Not exactly mind control
The viral network can't directly control anyone's actions. Instead, it merely heightens attraction, desire, breeding instincts, pleasure, and joy, while greatly reducing inhibiting emotions like fear, regret, shame, or jealousy. It can also influence people by creating various feelings of certainty including about their fertility or pregnancy status, about how best to pleasure each other, and about belief that making a baby with this person will be perfect. Just like with naturally occurring feelings, the people affected still choose how to act on their feelings.
For months before the events of Eroflu Shanghai, it has been studying human attraction and breeding instincts using the entire human population. It has observed these feelings in billions of people, studying them, especially the moments when they've been the strongest. The strongest feelings of sexual attraction, the strongest natural desire to breed, and the strongest feelings of joy after learning of impregnation experienced naturally by anyone on Earth over the past few months have been studied in detail, so the virus can recreate those feelings in the people it wants to breed. Again, what people do with those feelings is up to them. It does not control their actions. That's why it has worked so hard to study those natural feelings, so it can make them as strong as possible. They are not irresistible. They're just the strongest versions of those feelings anyone has felt anywhere on Earth for the past few months.
It can't erase anything from long-term memory, but it can help hosts forget something if they just learned it soon before sleep, because it was only in short-term memory (like when Jim passes out in FFS chapter 8.1).
In its full form in people like Jim, the viral network is in some ways weaker in its influence because of its complex interdependency with its host (as explained at the end of FFS chapter 8.1). In people like Jim, it can't create attraction out of nothing, so it's important for there to be as much natural attraction to start with as possible. That's why Jim doesn't find himself inexplicably attracted to every type of woman, indiscriminately breeding with them all, but every woman he's attracted to finds him extremely attractive. And it's why his thralls immediately know it's important to learn what he finds attractive so they can find recruits who are as irresistible as possible.
The self-control Jim gains in FFS chapter 8 is a gift from the viral network, but it's one that can't be un-given. The virus didn't create for him. It's really an ability he had all along, and once the virus shows it to him, it's his forever. The virus knows this is a risky move, and may come to regret it later because it helps Jim realize he can resist.
The virus is learning
Jim is the first host the virus has ever tried to breed, so he's a guinea pig for it. The lessons it learns from its experience with Jim will lead it to alter its approach with other men in other spinoff stories. It is learning and getting smarter. It may also do things differently for another man it tries to breed because of their different personality, circumstances, and preferences. It may use some other strategy to try to avoid something like Jim's breakdown in chapter 7 so that it doesn't have to give that same gift of self-control to others. For example, it might prevent recruiting virgins, allow some recovery period after orgasms instead of immediately driving the desire higher, or just generally slow things down to try to keep it more sustainable.
It will also adapt its strategies based on other things it learned in Shanghai, like when it learns in chapter 7 from Fei Fei that it's better in the long run if Jim's babies are raised within stable loving marriages, with other fathers who think the babies are their own. It can make Jim's offspring look superficially enough like the men who will think they are their fathers. Focusing recruiting on married women is one possible strategy resulting from this, but there's another better solution in the "epilogue secret" section below.
Due to what the virus learns in chapter 12 about the danger of forced quarantine, it will cause other men like Jim to respond to the idea of a medical scan with unexplained fear and visceral revulsion.
In FFS chapter 12 we learn that the virus has not even grown pods in any women under 18. This is because the virus knows Jim would be horrified to enthrall anyone underage, so it doesn't enthrall them, his helpers don't even try to recruit them, and the virus doesn't even prepare them to be fertile for him. The only reason the virus doesn't do it is that Jim would hate it. With a different main character in a spinoff story, that could be different. And when Jim's sons start to come of age, well, you can imagine what would inevitably happen with teenage hormones plus the influence of the virus. I'm not going to write those stories, but other authors could.
The virus also learns something from what happens shortly after FFS chapter 8, when Jim gets his sex-god powers of control and those hunches about how best to pleasure the women. As a result of these powers, Jim gives some of the women (e.g. the after-party dancers in chapter 8.4) life-changing, unbelievably mind-blowing sex, which in turn produces an even stronger fanaticism about recruiting. The virus may use this for recruiting in addition to (or instead of) the desire to spread the man's DNA, finding it especially useful in situations where it doesn't want them to know they are breeding (see below).
Fertility
For months before the events of Eroflu Shanghai, the virus has been studying other reproducing humans, experimenting on them and trying to optimize the process so it's ready when Jim is. It wants his reproduction to be as viral as possible, but natural human reproduction is shockingly inefficient. So many sperm are wasted because humans don't know the exact timing of their fertility, and because they keep trying even after they've already succeeded. They put in a full load of semen, far more than is really necessary, so that at least some of it might last a day or so to have a chance to meet a fertile egg, all because they don't know when that egg will be present. But if they just knew the right time to do it or could draw that right time out for longer, then a tiny droplet of semen would be plenty, allowing them to conserve and be able to do it more often.
This leads it to the invention of uterine pods, which it tries out on a few women first to perfect them before sending out the global command for all women to grow them. Normally the pods stay inert, hiding inactive in their wombs and not interfering with natural reproduction. But when the virus wants a woman to get fertile for Jim, it can activate her pod and have it capture an egg after ovulation. That keeps the egg safe so a woman can stay maximally fertile up until their next period. The pod is connected to the uterine wall by a tiny umbilical cord. It can propel itself inside the uterus, which it does to capture the egg from the end of the fallopian tube, and also to seek out sperm from the cervix (see FFS chapter 12). It can also prevent fertilization by another man's sperm. When the egg inside the pod is fertilized, the pod sends a signal back along its cord to the woman's viral network, so that she knows she's pregnant. Then, if she makes eye contact with others, their viral networks will know as well.
In Eroflu Shanghai, the virus shares the knowledge of successful impregnation with the hosts so that they know they're done, to prevent them from wasting more sperm as it has noticed so many humans do, in their ignorance of having already succeeded. However, in the future with other men, the virus may decide not to share that knowledge, especially if it is planning to use the ability detailed in the "epilogue secret" section below. They will still feel the resulting joy as an afterglow, without knowing what it means. That joy is a spillover of the viral network's own happiness, and it can't be hidden from the hosts, but the reason for it can be. The virus could also try reducing their desire for each other after they've already succeeded, to encourage the man to move on to other fertile wombs, if any are available.
The virus also learns to conserve semen in male orgasms without reducing pleasure. It has already experimented on other men to perfect the technique before it starts using it on Jim in Shanghai. It can cause a normal-feeling orgasm to release only a tiny spurt of semen, and time the release of that spurt so that it is delivered as close as possible to the cervical opening, where a waiting pod can immediately suck it in.
How long it takes to bring a woman to peak fertility depends on her status when she's first recruited: where she is in her cycle and whether she's on birth control. If she's having her period, the virus can immediately stop her period and begin preparing her uterus for fertility (as with Aihan in FFS chapter 6). This can take from 6 to 12 hours, depending on how far along she was in her period. If a woman is anywhere in the middle of her cycle, she can become fertile in about an hour, or three hours if she's on the pill. This is accomplished by rapid fallopian tube contractions to bring the egg to the uterus (see chapter 12). If a woman has already naturally ovulated and has an egg in her uterus, it feels like she is near peak fertility until the pod can find and capture the egg, which happens within about 10 minutes, and then it feels like she is at peak fertility.
If a woman is near the end of her cycle, about to get her period, that's when they get the feeling that it's about to be too late. Normally it would already be too late anywhere within 4 days of a period, since implantation takes at least 5 days, but the pod makes impregnation possible right up until the day before the period starts. If a pod is holding an un-fertilized egg when the period starts, the egg is lost, but the woman can become fertile again quickly if necessary as detailed above.
The virus has also studied all the ways humans try to prevent pregnancy, and it is ready to sabotage every one of them. For example, it can reverse a vasectomy, create a tiny hole in a condom, counter the effects of the pill, or if the couple plans to pull out, it can impregnate a woman early by causing a tiny unnoticed seep of semen right at the cervix.
The virus can cause multiple eggs to be released, and can always add a second egg later even after the first one is fertilized. Each pod is capable of holding up to four eggs at once, but the virus decides that anything more than twins is too risky, and twins should be relatively rare. It doesn't want premature births or high-risk pregnancies, with all the extra medical attention that would entail.
I haven't written anything (yet?) about what happens when Jim is attracted to a woman who is already pregnant. Obviously the virus would know this and could simply make him not enthrall her, or make his thralls not even try to recruit her, which they would assume is because of something unspecified about her that makes her not quite attractive enough. The virus could also choose a darker path. That's why I haven't written that situation yet. It's one of those directions where this could start to feel like erotic horror. Maybe another author even more twisted than me will explore those situations for us. The virus is capable of some pretty evil shit. What might hold it back is the horror and resistance that its actions would create. It doesn't control their actions, and once they decide that the feelings it creates aren't their own, they can successfully resist.
Helpers
In Eroflu Shanghai, Chenguang (chapter 8.2), Chao-Xing (chapter 11), Adeline (chapter 16.2), and Xueqin (chapter 17) gain special powers as Jim's helpers. They get the same hunches Jim gets about how best to pleasure women, and use this ability to help prepare women for Jim so that he can make them come quickly when he gets to them. This is all because of Jim's breakdown in chapter 7, where the virus realizes that as long as he makes women come, he's fine with going quickly. This may not be necessary for other main characters who don't feel this same irrational need to be a good lover. Or the virus might decide to do it anyway just in case, to minimize any chance of a breakdown like Jim's in chapter 7.
These helpers are rare, and not every woman could become one. It requires not only an innate attraction to other women, but also a slightly more developed network of modified nerve cells. This network is all within the brain, and not big enough to be sentient like Jim's network. It's still a fairly simple machine, but it's capable of handling more complex commands, which is what gives them the ability to get those hunches about how best to pleasure others. It's just a little more developed, but still confined within the woman's brain. These more developed networks in their brains could be detected by medical imaging, so women with these more developed networks should avoid getting brain scans from outsiders. Scans of any other parts of their bodies will look normal.
In Eroflu Shanghai, Chenguang naturally has a cherry-popping fetish, which the virus learns is really useful in Jim's case because of his mixed feelings about that. Her enjoyment of it lets him feel more comfortable with it because it's like she's the one doing it. That's why the virus encourages Chao-Xing to develop that same fetish when she too becomes his helper.
Epilogue secret
This part is first hinted at in ch12 and ch16, then revealed in the Eroflu Shanghai epilogue, so stop reading this if you're not that far yet and don't want a spoiler.
In the epilogue, what Mia guesses is correct. The pods can hold a fertilized egg in stasis for months or even years as the women menstruate normally. When they get their periods and all pregnancy tests come back negative, they soon accept that their feeling of certainty was wrong and they aren't pregnant. Then the virus has time to make sure they're in a loving marriage and trying to get pregnant with their husbands before allowing the pod to implant the egg already fertilized with Jim's sperm. The virus decides this is a better approach to keep them happy, without the guilt of knowing they cuckolded their husbands.
Thanks for reading!
If you got this far, I'd love to hear which parts of Eroflu Shanghai were your favorites. I could possibly go back and fill in more chapters if people are interested, but I'm guessing it might be more worthwhile to focus on spinoff stories. The beginning is a lot of fun, when everything is new to the main character.
Whether or not you might actually write an Eroflu story, please share any ideas for what you'd like to see in this world. I'd love to hear your ideas for main characters, situations, or new strategies by the virus.