The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Neural Stimulators

They invented neural stimulators when I was a little girl. Like many new technologies, early prototypes proved impractical. The first designs cost fortunes to make, more to maintain and operate, filled entire rooms, and generally only existed at big universities, laboratories, or government research facilities.

I did not even hear about neurostimulation until I grew older, beginning high school. When I did, it immediately hooked my curiosity and interest. Wanting to learn all about neural stimulators, specifically what they felt like to use. I wrote a big essay my sophomore year all about the technology behind stimulators.

They work by stimulating brain activity through projected, low-energy, fractally oscillating, and pseudo-harmonic waves. The energy level and frequency of these beams ranges extremely mild, so no brain damage results. But certain brain cells definitely, measurably, get stimulated into activity. Several areas, or clusters, scattered throughout the brain, mostly the limbic system, react susceptible. Including the nucleus accumbens, septum pellucidium, anterior cingulate cortex, and many others.

That sounds all rather technical. The important part is the end result; Practical applications count potentially numerous.

Early tests indicated the device acts like a powerful anti-depressant, potentially curing many mood disorders including depression and bipolar disorder. In some cases it appeared to numb or reduce pain. One early study seemed to show neural stimulators may induce docility in chronically violent patients. Plus the machine can reduce the frequency and severity of migraines, among many other minor, positive effects.

What neural stimulators really do, their biggest effect, is they create a pleasurable sort of psychological high within the subject’s mind. Like being high on drugs.

Indeed, studies revealed how subject’s bodies release natural drugs or hormones within their brain, during treatment with a stimulator. For instance, researchers demonstrated early on how the device triggers massive release of epinephrine, endorphins, enkephalins, and dopamine, among others. The subjective effect causing a feeling of happiness, or euphoria.

Supposedly it feels a bit like the pleasure associated with orgasm, except that one does not necessarily orgasm. Usually no physical response or muscle activity happens, only brain activity.

Upon learning this, I immediately wondered what it felt like. Deeply curious, I often thought about it through my early teenage years. My developing body then full of hormones—puberty and all that. When I discovered masturbation, my fantasies regularly centered on these sort of thoughts, imagining what it might feel like to use a neural stimulator, to drift in that state of induced orgasmic bliss or euphoria.

Neural stimulators remained commercially unavailable back then. Still too big, clunky, expensive, and impractical. But their use started spreading.

The scientists who invented the device immediately went public with their discovery—hoping for fame, recognition, or perhaps scientific awards and money donations for further research. Publication of their discovery created a stir of excitement within scientific and medical communities, worldwide. Many said the technology heralded the possible abolition of human suffering.

As a result, many enthusiastic fans of the technology, from around the globe, raised funding and started developing their own versions. They worked out new and better ways to induce the euphoric effect and perfected smaller, cheaper designs of the machine using less energy to achieve the same, or stronger, end result. Many of them in turn published their findings. Breakthroughs leading to more new breakthroughs, and so forth. Getting cheaper, the technology spread even faster.

After a few years, neural stimulators shrank down to around the size of an automobile, and then to the size of a refrigerator or large oven. They still demanded huge amounts of energy to operate, and priced awfully expensive, but cheap enough that most big hospitals could afford one.

A subject laid upon a table and slid their head into a hole in the device. Switch it on to bombard their brain with carefully computer-calculated, oscillating, low-range, waves of energy. Then hopefully the subject achieved the desired state of mind. Usually they did, but not always.

See, neural stimulators do not work equally for all people. Everyone possesses unique wiring inside their brain. For some people neural stimulators work more effective than for others.

Each person experiences an individual and unique responsiveness to neurostimulation that falls somewhere on a scale from non-responsive or immune at one end all the way to exceptionally susceptible at the other.

Studies show that when measuring how a given individual responds to the device, on a scale of zero to ten, they may score anywhere in that range, and attain the same response index almost every time they use the machine. But it proves near impossible to predict in advance where someone will score. Subjective susceptibility stays unknowable until the subject uses the machine and their responsiveness gets measured.

Some scientists theorize it depends on how the subject’s brain cells folded during development, back when they were a fetus inside the womb. This folding follows essentially a random process determined by all sorts of variables related to cell division, genetics, luck, and who knows what else. Anyway, by adulthood these brain-folds are cemented into place, and a person’s responsiveness index long ago locked in at whatever number. But nobody figured out a way to predict it just by looking at a person.

Age, race, IQ score, preexisting conditions, general health, nothing seemed connected to the effect. Except one trait. For whatever reason, the responsiveness differential is gender-based. Women tend to respond to neural stimulators more than men. Though even at that, results vary. There exist a few highly-responsive men, and a few non-responsive women. Rare, but they exist.

Plotting the distribution, or responsiveness curve of the population, say on a bar chart, spitting results by gender, one notices that about 19% of males measure zero, or totally non-responsive to the device. Whereas only 2%, or one in fifty females, measure zero. At the other end, 23% of women rate a nine or higher, but only 3% of men do.

Statistically, on average, men react to the effect at an intensity level of two to three, usually. But women average around a six to eight.

I wondered where I would score on the scale. Being female, I may expect at least a 75% chance of responding five or higher! But I had yet to find out. Even by my late teenage years, I still lacked the opportunity to try.

Time marched on, neural stimulators kept shrinking smaller and cheaper. During my senior year of high school, they already shrank to about the size of a standard microwave oven. Several companies manufactured them, with better versions every few months. By that time most hospitals owned a few stimulators for specialized treatments.

The biggest breakout commercial application for these machines turned out their adoption by the sexual service industry.

Sex shops started buying stimulators for their clientele to rent. After all, using a neural stimulator ranks safer than sex with a prostitute. No chance of disease, or physical abuse, or other ugly issues. For many people, especially women, the effect feels more pleasurable than sex anyway.

Intensely curious, I fantasized about it often. Though I never did sneak into any of these places to try out a neural stimulator. My strongly-opinionated parents spoke against that sort of thing and I did not want to disappoint them if they should find out.

At first, availability of renting one of these machines seemed mostly limited to seedy, underground, dirty-seeming establishments. Places in bad neighborhoods. Porn shops, strip clubs, and similar. However as their popularity swelled, stimulator rentals gradually became more accepted socially, until every moderately-sized city supported at least one neural lounge.

Neural lounges became the hot new type of business. Typically clean, well-managed, legitimate service providers. Customers enter, rent a certain amount of time with a machine, most often in a private room, and use it for what they euphemistically termed “mood enhancement.” Some people just called it floating or getting high.

While using a stimulator, customers might perform various other activities. Since the device does not engage the body, and induces no muscles spasms or other physical reactions, it is possible to multitask and do something productive while the machine operates. Like say knitting. Or any other idle activity involving your hands.

Some people read magazines, newspapers, or books while they stimulate. Stimulator waves stay low-energy and extremely short range, thus the machines when running do not interfere with other electronic devices. So customers at neural lounges sometimes use their laptop to browse the internet, or check email. Many people text or talk on the phone while stimulating. Entirely possible to hold a conversation while under the effect, though you may feel distracted, spacey, aroused, or silly-happy.

Naturally, many people masturbate while under the effect, since the feeling so closely ties into the pleasure center of the brain. Neural stimulators typically make users feel aroused and horny, and sometimes that urge can grow extremely powerful. Also, they say masturbating at the same time as using a stimulator seems to make the euphoric effect more powerful. So while customers stimulated themselves, the owners of neural lounges usually looked the other way, allowing them their privacy.

Many people develop an addiction to sessions with neural stimulators, much like a substance habit, for in a way it works like a drug. They become addicted to the drugs released by their own body in reaction to the energy waves from the machine.

People already prone to that sort of behavior, those with addictive personalities, seem particularly vulnerable. At least neural stimulation ranks a comparatively safe sort of addiction, with no harmful side effects commonly seen in other drugs.

In fact, since safer than taking chemical substances, neural stimulators started to replace recreational drug use. Why mess around with white powders, needles, hallucinations, bad trips, hangovers, lung cancer, and such, when you can safely and easily get high with a stimulator, and the effect feels better anyway.

Use of a neural stimulator is a naturally habit-forming activity, according to the principle of pleasure conditioning or reward reinforcement. Support groups formed, just like with all other addictions from gambling to alcoholism. In proportion to the natural gender differential of the effect, these support groups usually contained a 9-to-1 ratio of women to men.

Neural lounges necessarily benefited from the addictive property of their service, making huge profits on repeat business. Owning, running, and visiting these establishments always remained legal, from the beginning. Though a few times the continued legality of this business model seemed in serious doubt.

Many concerned groups—like churches and self-proclaimed morality police—attacked neural lounges, calling them unethical and immoral. They brought complaints to the courts trying to get such establishments banned, made illegal, or at least regulated. And they won some battles.

Regulations—such as minimum age limits for customers—quickly passed and fell upon the booming new industry. Still, despite all the attacks and moral criticism, neural stimulators and the lounges that rent them out, remain legal.

The regulations did frustrate me though. For just when I graduated high school, moving out of my parent’s house to attend college, now finally free of their rules, an adult capable of making my own decisions, now the law prevented me from experimenting with neural stimulators since I was not yet old enough. Most lounges strictly enforce the law too, carding and ID’ing everyone closely, because of steep fines for infraction. I resigned to wait out the three years until I turned twenty-one.

Over time miniaturization improvements kept making the devices smaller, cheaper, and less energy-hungry. Manufacturers came out with personal versions suitable for individual use within the home. Just plug them into a wall outlet for electricity.

No longer does cost limit stimulators to hospitals, therapist’s offices, and neural lounges. Anybody can afford one. Though regulations and licensing restrictions still applied. Back then you needed a permit to buy one.

As neural stimulators grew in popularity they also grew more socially acceptable. Slowly becoming more and more mainstream. Soon, owning one seemed no different or worse than owning a sex toy or stocking beer in the fridge. In some ways stimulators actually rank more socially acceptable than those things.

Then manufacturers cracked the big barrier. They figured out how to reduce the extremely-high energy demands until battery power became sufficient for most short-term operation.

I avidly follow technical and marketing journals covering neural stimulator technology, so I knew about the breakthroughs as soon as anyone. Companies planned to release portable versions. At the time nineteen years old, I felt extremely excited.

Early portable designs resembled headgear. Goofy-looking helmets covered in circuitry. During focus group testing these proved ungainly, unattractive, and unpopular. So manufacturers tried other options.

The complex harmonic waves degrade quickly with distance and thus dissipate over rather short range. However, provided a device stays within a few inches of your head, you feel the effect. So they disguised second-generation portable designs to look like jewelry such as large earrings or ear clips, in a variety of styles or product lines.

But the earring designs also proved ungainly and still goofy-looking, just a little too big to look like proper earrings. Also they proved unreliable since hanging jewelry tends to swing with body movement and relative motion compared to the user’s head could interrupt or disrupt the signal. Makers ended up scrapping those product lines too.

Then they finally hit it right. Marketing geniuses tried a different type of jewelry item: necklaces. Such jewelry does not dangle or swing. A stimulator-wave device embedded within a short necklace such as a choker, stays close enough to the wearer’s brain for the field range to affect them. The first designs small enough to not look goofy or ungainly. At the time, chokers and collars happened to trend fashionable, in style and growing popular. All the elements of the equation lined up for a smash hit, and sales skyrocketed.

Now you can take your stimulator with you anywhere. Find a moment of privacy—like say waiting alone in the elevator, or in the bathroom, or even just a discrete spot out of sight around a corner—and switch it on for a quick high. Batteries did not last long though, and needed frequent recharging.

Because these devices grew so popular with so many people wearing and using them all over the place, it soon became acceptable to use them in plain sight or openly in public. No worse than lighting up a cigarette. More acceptable in a way, because smoking remains prohibited inside most buildings whereas stimulating is allowed.

Since the stimulator effect commonly induces an urge to masturbate, gradually it became sort of socially tolerable for people to casually touch themselves sexually in public, provided you act at least moderately discrete.

More than once I came around a corner in a deserted hallway or stairwell at school and stumbled across some older classmate getting high with her collar. Visible signs sometimes included glazed or unfocused eyes. Perhaps she squeezed a breast through her blouse, or even casually slipped a hand under the waistband of her skirt. Those incidents always made me flush with empathic arousal. Oh how desperately I wanted to know what they felt!

Most users say masturbating with an active collar makes the effect feel even better. They say if you reach orgasm with your collar on then the pleasures combine or multiply each other for an incredible high feeling supposedly out of this world!

Eventually, because stimulators grew so popular and demand so high, manufacturers along with politically active users and supporters successfully lobbied congress to lift permit regulations. Now anyone can buy one. Once potential customers did not need to muck around with the bureaucracy of applying for a permit, sales increased even faster.

The age limit still applies though. Those under twenty-one are not supposed to use stimulators and not allowed to buy them. However lots of people break the law and acquire one when younger, usually by getting an older friend to purchase it for them. I know a lot of people, girlfriends and acquaintances, who did that. Though tempted, I never risked it myself.

Nowadays policy makers talk about reducing the age limit, at least down to eighteen. Probably it will happen, since popular opinion now strongly supports such a change. Back in those days that policy discussion was not yet on the table. So, I continued waiting to turn twenty-one.

Meanwhile scientists figured out several ways to further reduce energy consumption. Combined with improvements to battery life, this meant users could turn on their collar and leave it on for prolonged periods of time. Most users began doing so.

Under the effect you may walk around, go to your job, and otherwise function in society. More or less. You remain aware of your surroundings, can talk and move normally, and so forth. You just feel horny, often dazed, accepting, uninhibited, euphoric, almost floating, and high on endorphins, the body’s natural pleasure drug. With practice, many users learn how to deal with these symptoms, becoming accustomed to them, so they may function relatively normally in daily life while stimulating.

Although many find self-motivation difficult while under the effect. So at first users tended to make unproductive workers. Though soon they discovered external motivation works splendidly. Users can and do follow instructions just fine, and thus can get work done when under supervision and direction from their boss or others. Regular, day to day, long-term use of stimulators continued to grow more and more common.

Social implications followed. Almost immediately it became illegal to operate heavy machinery or drive while under the effect. Many users, especially the more susceptible women, act too spacey, distractedly aroused, horny, euphoric, or happy-dopey, when high on neural stimulation. Therefore lawmakers deemed it unsafe to drive and wear a collar at the same time, a sensible restriction.

Some people complained about the regulations. But many do not care since they just ride public transit. I do myself. A trend developed where more people started to utilize public transportation methods. To meet this demand, most cities invested heavily in transit infrastructure. The availability of cheap, ubiquitous, public transit in every major city provides a much-welcomed convenience.

I knew that once I finally get a collar, I can stimulate all the time if desired, even when travelling somewhere—picturing myself, like many women these days, discretely stimulating while sitting in a seat of the public transport system—and I look forward to it with much excited anticipation.

Eventually, manufacturers figured out how to reduce the power requirements further, so much that stimulators hardly consume any energy at all to operate. Collars recharge kinetically, just by the wearer’s body movements, or even by their body heat. Like those new wearable electronics that do not need batteries and never wind down, they just keep running forever as long as you wear them.

Before long the typical collar design did not even include an on/off switch. Collars just stay on all the time while worn, by default.

Neural stimulator usage by that time had grown widespread everywhere. Walk down a typical street to see almost half of women, and sometimes a few men, wearing a collar stimulator. Users always smile in a good mood. Some of them appear visibly euphoric, dilated pupils, flushed, acting horny, docile, dazed, or other symptoms of flying high.

Many users by then wore active collars for long periods of time, often around the clock. It became a sort of lifestyle choice for many women. After a few months of this, long-term exposure effects started to become apparent.

It turns out that after long enough continuous exposure time, a user’s responsiveness index slowly increases. Someone who first responded to the waves at say a level four, will over time rise to a five, and then to a six, and so on. Neurologists say it happens due to the user’s brain learning how to better receive the signals.

Early studies of this phenomenon disagreed on the rate of change, but all unanimously agreed it happened. After a while someone did work out the formula—a radical function with exponent barely less than 1. Said plainly: diminishing returns. Each gained level takes longer than the one before.

Non-responsive people seem to remain forever immune, regardless of exposure time. Those poor, unfortunate souls, never to know what they are missing. All other people increase in response, relatively quickly at first, then more slowly, until after a few months they seem to settle in at three—then later eventually four—levels above their initial response score.

Around that time somebody, a psychologist professor at some big university, discovered the interaction between the stimulator effect and hypnosis. People under the effect become more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion. They reach deeper levels of trance.

Measuring a user’s hypnotic suggestibility, say on a standard hypnotic susceptibility scale, or ‘hss’, a strong correlation shows between their hss-score and their responsiveness rating to the stimulator effect.

When that professor published his results, some called it an interesting and harmless side effect of stimulation. But when researchers around the world repeated and verified his experiments, they quickly discovered even more.

They found user suggestibility not necessarily limited to hypnosis. People actively stimulating become suggestible whether or not hypnotized. Said in technical terms, those under the effect of neural stimulation become easily extrinsically motivated, or follow the motivation and direction of others, rather than their own will. Collar users become open-minded, weak-willed, submissive, or display increased tendency to obedience while absorbing stimulator waves. Their degree of obedience proportional to their responsiveness to the effect.

Like with any scientific discovery, there came conflicting opinions. Some people deny the theory entirely, calling it fake news. Or they claim the effect not particularly strong, nothing worse than say the loss of inhibitions you experience while drunk. Nothing to get concerned about. Each side of the debate seemed to present convincing evidence.

Other conflicting viewpoints argue that while the effect proves genuine and powerful, it seemed difficult to demonstrate reliably. Because apparently directions given to a stimulating person need to be spoken properly in order to be followed. Supposedly users only accept suggestions given in a certain sort of firm tone of voice, the voice of authority, which few people speak correctly. So they claim the suggestibility effect rarely manifests in normal conversation, and thus it is not all that big a deal.

Conspiracy theorists argued the suggestibility side-effect is totally real, and indeed must have already been known, years ago. How could the early developers, in all their studies of the machines, have missed it? Chances seemed high, they ranted, that somebody somewhere did know but kept quiet about it.

I find conspiracy stuff interesting, even if I know it untrue. But most people do not care about, believe, or even pay attention to any ranting conspiracy theorists.

By this time, long-term users had risen four full notches in their responsiveness index, and this brought some people to all new record highs, or higher responsiveness than measured in the early days of the technology—above a ten or eleven. Especially common in women, who tend to start at level seven on average.

Somebody discovered, or claimed, that once a user reaches a responsiveness rating above ten, they become totally obedient to firm suggestions and commands from others. Certainly users at slightly lower levels—like eight or nine—behave docile and suggestible while stimulating, thus quite likely to obey commands, especially firmly-given, authoritative ones.

The device seemingly acts like a sort of ego suppressant. Users who respond strongly to the effect supposedly follow any sort of command no matter how humiliating.

I read of studies showing how these highly-responsive users seem aware of embarrassing consequences when following humiliating orders, but act too weak-willed to resist or maybe just too happy-dopey and euphoric to care. Counter-claims called the studies bogus or invalid, clouding the issue. I felt unsure who to believe.

Meanwhile usage grew so common, so widespread, that most women—and even one in a dozen men—wear a stimulator. In many places, market penetration reaches so complete that nine out of ten women wear stimulator collars regularly, with response indexes typically level nine or higher.

Once the theory of increased suggestibility became public, there followed immediate abuses. Like boys on the sidewalk telling passing college girls to flash them. Inevitable, human nature.

Some perverts just look for a quick profit or thrill. Other abusers seek more long-term goals, such as control or power. Either way, anyone looking for susceptible victims does not need to look far. Collar users live everywhere, walking the streets, going to their jobs, continuously living the so called collar lifestyle. And unscrupulous people take advantage of them.

However, many people deny the reliability of abuse allegations. They call those stories exaggerated, or claim the effects not actually to blame on stimulator collars. Deniers say that these events are merely normal crimes and nutty conspiracy theorists just try to lay blame by spreading false rumors.

I wondered, unsure, was all this for real? Or just some smear campaign, possibly by the morality police groups, trying to shut down the neural stimulator industry? The latter seems plausible, and indeed most people think such. Still, abuses seem to keep happening more and more often.

After hearing about possible side effects a few users stopped wearing their collar, at least out in public. But most never heard about it right away or at all. Even if they did, so many are addicted to constantly wearing their collars such that they struggle, usually unsuccessfully, to break the habit.

Most women habitually keep wearing their collars all the time, even outside, during daily life to their jobs and classes and shopping and everywhere else. A collar-wearing woman walking alone, unescorted in a public place, makes an easy target for a smooth-talking con-artist or philanderer looking to take advantage of her. So exploitation kept occurring.

Some habitual users try to show caution by banding together in safety groups—usually three or four mutual girlfriends, but sometimes more numerous—called ‘flocks’, to watch out for each other according to the principle of safety in numbers. Due to natural responsiveness statistics, nearly all members are women, just like stimulator-addiction support groups. Some collar-flocks even naturally grew or evolved from already-existing support sessions.

The theory being that a group of collar-wearing women can look out for their most susceptible members, or take turns protecting each other, and thus reduce the risks of falling for some confidence trick. However, this tactic does not work. Because when every member wears a collar then they all fall for a scam together simultaneously, which only multiplies the gains for the con-man.

So these collar circles started employing a non-user member, sometimes called a ‘guardian’. The best guardians measure non-responsive, thus typically a male, to resist any suggestibility trick even if their entire flock falls for it. Guarding his girls, keeping them safe from outside persuasion, with assistance from local law enforcement if necessary. Some law agencies started zealously promoting that sort of deal in their local communities, even to the point now of encouraging group members to sign binding contracts with their guardian.

Such covenants carry other advantages. Certain guardians, the good ones apparently, develop a bit of a reputation. Confidence artists seem to know better than to mess with those guards. So this kind of group protection arrangement continued to grow in popularity. And everything seemed okay, for a while.

However, any guardian can be tempted to start taking advantage of his girls. Small liberties at first then gradually pushing further and further. Often unnoticed because of the principle of creeping normality. Sliding the slippery slope into full-blown corruption, all under the guise of benevolent protection. Rumors circulated about this sort of thing happening more and more often, usually with an air of harmless innocence to it.

Then too, some clever perverts probably intentionally setup themselves as guardians in order to easily take advantage of more victims, now also with sanction and support from law enforcement agencies. Streetside exploits continued happening too.

Though soon nobody seemed to call it ‘exploitation’ anymore. The politically-correct terms shifted to ‘persuasion’, ‘influence’, or ‘control’. A form of personality expression. Persuasive types get referred to as ‘controllers’, ‘dominators’ or sometimes ‘governors’. As if calling it a politically-correct, nicer-sounding word makes exploiting helplessly-suggestible victims more acceptable.

It bothered me how rarely people seemed concerned about these rumors. The worst thing about all the abuses was how even the government does not seem interested in doing anything about it. No new regulations or laws created to prevent that sort of thing.

Whispers in conspiracy circles even claimed that politicians started seriously discussing using the suggestibility effect as a handy tool for civil control. Citizens are less likely to revolt or commit crime if given proper suggestions, say through television broadcasts, while wearing their collar. I even heard people defending or supporting this concept! Supporters argue that such policies, if feasible, result in a happier, more stable, strongly-knit society. In the end, most countries around the world eventually did adopt some or all of those policies.

I started to hear stories about how a few persuasive types began collecting whole groups of obedient, submissive thralls, like harems. Corrupt guardians recruit stray women, building their flocks. I remain unsure whether these stories hold true, or how common it happens, but in any case, the government does nothing to discourage them. The authorities just tolerate such activities. Like apparently it is fine to do that sort of thing.

Actually, before long government agencies, and big corporations, the school boards, every leadership role or position of power everywhere, seemed primarily staffed by dominant-type personalities—many of whom are the ones committing the abuses, or who at least permit them.

These influential types are typically those who do not wear collars themselves, usually because they measure immune to the effect. Statistically that means dominators are ten times more likely to be men. Occasionally you hear about women dommes though.

As a result, corporate executive jobs and government leadership positions, political offices, lawmakers and the like, all eventually became overwhelmingly dominant-male-filled positions with only a few women, dominatrix-types, scattered among them. This change began gradually though, and nobody seemed to notice.

Most people probably got distracted by other, more obvious, social changes happening at the time. For instance, there was then a trend toward growing acceptance of public nudity. Many cities changed or removed laws regarding public indecency. Sending broadcasts all over the news. Sometimes it seemed that was all the television figures talked about, how now it is okay to go undressed in public. They covered it on all the channels.

Immediately after that, in warm weather or inside buildings, people started walking around without clothes. Some in only lingerie, some topless girls, and even some people wearing nothing besides their collar! Showing typical signs of active collar usage. The men often sported erections. Women displayed stiff, erect nipples and swollen, wet labia. Sometimes I caught them casually touching themselves, a quick rub for extra bliss, before resuming their normal activities.

Seeing people doing that always turns me on—It looks so naughty and exciting! Part of me wishes for the courage and confidence, like those other women, to go naked in public. I started to wonder what it might feel like, perhaps to be forced into such a situation with no free choice so lack of courage does not matter. How humiliating, but sexy too!

Gradually, public nudity became completely socially accepted and increasingly common. Now I see so many people walking around—working their jobs, shopping, or attending classes—without clothes, that it seems difficult to remember a time when it was taboo. Other displays and fetishes became more common too.

Dominants began going out in public with their subs, sometimes with the slave kept on a leash to indicate ownership. A few vanilla-type people called that sort of thing bizarre, at least initially, but quickly it grew more and more commonplace and accepted.

Besides leashes one saw special tattoos, dubbed brands. Supposedly used by dominators to mark their property. Custom collars, displaying these brand emblems, became popular. Apparently an unspoken rule in the fetish community required they respect each other’s property when claimed and marked this way. Guardians started branding flocks to label their women under protection.

I heard about some masters even occasionally making their slaves do embarrassing or humiliating things in public. Like public masturbation, or openly having sex. It took several months before I witnessed such fetish acts firsthand though. I felt shocked, but then later in the privacy of my dorm room I masturbated thinking about it. What a turn on!

In any case, society changed, becoming more tolerant of open fetish displays. All these acceptable cultural changes got covered by big stories in the news, occupying many time slots.

Less often did the news cover topics such as theoretical neural stimulator side-effects like the suggestibility phenomenon, especially since experts disagreed whether it verifiably existed. I only found out through my social network, and needed to hunt for more info in obscure technical journals.

At the time I was twenty years old, a handful of months from turning twenty-one and legally allowed to use a neural stimulator. I had waited half my life for that day, and even started shopping around for a stylish collar to buy myself for my birthday, when news of the obedience phenomenon went viral through the collar-tech-enthusiast forums to which I subscribed.

Now I face a horrible dilemma. I waited a long time for the chance to experiment with neurostimulation. But now if I start using, becoming addicted to the effect, habitually using it more and more, perhaps all the time, even outside in public, then prolonged exposure will raise my susceptibility and responsiveness to the effect. And if the suggestibility phenomenon is for real, then the damn thing will make me completely suggestible and obedient. Then I will end up as a submissive thrall to whomever gets me first.

Part of me actually feels excited by that idea. On some level that sort of thing seems extremely sexy. Yet also scary. I do not want to turn into a helplessly obedient sexslave, not really. At least I do not think so. Though in the last couple months before my birthday, I started to fantasize about it when masturbating. My desires and fears tangled, wavering and uncertain, all conflicted and confused inside.

During that time, manufacturers came out with more designs of collars. They released new models in a variety of attractive styles which looked really sleek and elegant, and even utilize new features.

New collar designs use improved clasps, to keep them from accidentally unfastening or possibly falling off. Many models now actually lock into place around the neck. A convenient feature to prevent accidental unfastening.

Rapid proliferation in variety of new designs means more attractive styles from which to choose. Lots of people bought new collars for themselves, upgrading to the newest, most stylish versions.

Due to rising popularity and incredible sales of these new designs, old ones started to phase out, taken off shelves. Soon old styles became impossible to find. Occasionally you could still get some of the better, more stylish old models second-hand or via custom-order from smaller retailers. Thankfully, many manufacturers did re-release some of the better old styles with modern collar batteries, clasps, and other new features.

So many varieties, with so many different options and styles available, it often feels overwhelming. Difficult to tell all the different manufacturers, designs, models, features, and versions apart. Practically whatever style you might imagine, you can buy. And people did. Sales climbed to remarkable levels.

In particular, sales climbed for models with a firm-latching, or auto-locking clasp. This trend driven by dominators who purchase such collars to put on their early thralls. The locked clasp makes the thrall incapable of removing her collar in the rare case she suffers a fit of resistance. A practice supposedly most common with dominators just starting to recruit.

Apparently some thrall recruiters use these collars as innocent-seeming giveaways that look just like other models—tricking new users into unknowingly becoming permanently and inescapably under the effect—to ensure prolonged exposure and eventual, inevitable rise in susceptibility up to obedience levels. How scary. I did not hear many rumors about this though, so maybe it rarely happens.

Nobody seemed bothered by these trends. Well, a few people complained, but they got derided as cranks and conspiracy nuts. Society now fully accepts continuous usage of neural stimulators, apparently even involuntarily, as a totally acceptable activity.

However I felt a bit scared by it all. Partly because I know more than the average person. As an avid enthusiast of the technology, I stay up to date on technical journals and learn far more about collars than the typical news media consumer. Most people still had not heard about the prolonged exposure effects, or the theories about suggestibility.

My girlfriends in particular struck me as blissfully, almost willfully, ignorant of the implications. Most of them already constantly wear a collar. A few of my friends, the early adopters, were affected for long enough to rise quite high in their responsiveness.

A couple of my friends even recently joined into a special relationship—what sounded to me like a harem—with one of the dominant guys on campus. I felt suspicious at first. But when I talked to them about him, they said I acted silly. Lots of people live in relationships like that these days.

“Nothing sinister is going on,” they reassured me, “it is totally normal. He watches out for us and protects us.”

I just did not have the proper tone of concern to convince them, I guess. Not wanting to act stubbornly argumentative, I dropped the issue. Probably they spoke correct anyway. Anyway, who cares what sort of guy my girlfriends hang with—it is their choice to make.

Besides, the way they talked about this guy made him sound nice. My friends proudly showed off the stylish, new, solid-metallic collars he generously bought for them and latched around their necks, etched with an elegant, artistic emblem. I admit their collars look beautiful. A girl’s got to appreciate pretty jewelry.

This same guy came with them to my birthday party. He looked cute. And rich, I heard. His father owns a big company that he stood to inherit. But he seemed a bit imperious to me at first, or something.

He hung back, not joining in much at my party, just watching my friends and I goof off as we acted silly and cracked jokes. My friends are the happy, giggly sort. But I suppose most people are these days.

While cutting my cake, I glanced in his direction and happened to notice him looking me up and down, checking me out. Did he find me attractive? I quickly looked away, suddenly feeling shy, but secretly liking the attention of a cute guy.

Later came the gift-giving and unwrapping. He brought a present for me. When I opened it, I saw inside the box a brand new, shiny metallic collar, etched with an emblem matching the ones my friends wore. It looked beautiful and more expensive than I could ever hope to afford if I bought a collar for myself.

My heart skipped a beat. Unable to take my eyes off the collar. It represented both my greatest, life-long fantasy dream, and also a scary conspiracy-theorist’s nightmare.

One of my friends, sitting on the couch, said that since I am now twenty-one, I deserve to experience the new coming-of-age ritual that replaced alcohol on almost every campus: neurostimulation. “It feels wonderful,” she told me, “You should try it!”

Sitting there on the couch, she idly touched herself. A hand casually inside her unbuttoned blouse, cupping her braless breasts, lightly grasping and tugging hard nipples. Self-stimulation is nothing socially unacceptable these days. Actually, my friends do that sort of thing a lot, nowadays. Whenever I see them at it, I always wonder what it feels like, idly touching themselves while wearing their collars. And I always need to look away or those thoughts make me too horny.

I turned away, forcing myself not to watch my friend openly and casually play with her breasts. My eyes fell upon the gift, still in its box before me. Picking up the collar my hands trembled slightly.

Are my concerns about these things true? Or is collar wearing more like most people say; just a harmless, pleasurable, recreational activity like smoking pot or something? How could I know for certain without trying it? I swallowed a lump in my throat, nervous and unsure what to do.

The gift’s owner still stood in front of me, staring intently. He caught my eye and firmly said, “Go ahead. Put it on. Get high. It feels great. Just try it. You’ll love it.” His voice sounded so confident and authoritative, it made my tummy flip flop and my heart beat faster.

I moved the open collar a little closer to my neck, then paused. Putting on the collar carried with it no small risk. What if the rumors turned out true? And what if I have a naturally high responsiveness to the neural stimulator effect? But that will feel incredibly good, and I want that, right?

Still I hesitated, not knowing what to do, or what I truly wanted.

What if I put on the collar and it makes me weak-willed? What if he tells me do things? Like take off my clothes. Or masturbate. Or give him a blowjob! Or sex!? Would I be able to resist those suggestions? Did I want to? They say sex while wearing a collar feels so awesome it is mind-blowing. But what if he makes me participate in some sort of fetish act, like maybe an orgy with my friends? The thought of that made me flush and my nipples harden. Did I really want that? I felt confused.

A big part of me still finds the effect of neural stimulators incredibly fascinating and I want to experience it, to find out just what it truly feels like. If I do not enjoy it, or if he does anything out of line, I guess I can always take it off, stop using it, throw it away, or whatever.

Maybe I am one of those rare, one-in-fifty girls, who does not respond at all? That may come as a relief I suppose, in a way, but also a big letdown. Perhaps I am one of those equally rare females who responds, but mildly. And then maybe, just maybe, I am like most girls, and respond very strongly to the effect. Only one way to find out.

“Are you going to put it on?” my friends asked, impatiently. “Come on, try it.” He urged and they echoed him. My friends all pressured, telling me, “Everybody does it.”

What the heck, I summoned the courage and put the stylish metal collar around my neck, pushing the sturdy clasp closed, hearing it latch into place with a secure, almost motorized, grind.

The powerful effect hit me immediately, and felt incredibly wonderful. At long last, I truly understand how it feels and I love it! Whatever happens from now on is worth it.