The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Yes, I think, as I walk back home through the sculpture garden, clever Richard knows it’s not all about brute force; there are deals to be struck, strange new transactions; subtle and binding bargains to be made. But the subliminals are where the real power will lie. Things are clicking into place, a new and strange machinery.

It will be a world of flickering gods and hummingbird subliminals, dealing out unfathomable urges that cannot be fought.

There will be those who will fearfully or willingly accept the favours of their own half-glimpsed household gods, without really knowing why, and they’ll subserviently worship them in return. I wonder how many will acquiesce to the attentions of the quick so willingly.

I stop, look around at the street. Everything is getting slower, or faster, depending on your point of view. People seem paused, in odd positions. I could whisper to them here, and they’d never know.

As for the stronger, the less willing, how long will it take for them to become subliminally conditioned to this new reality?

A petite woman is chatting on her cellphone, pushing a stroller, preparing to cross the road. She’s looking the wrong way; I see the frozen scene, the car approaching, the mouth of the driver open in panic. In two clock-seconds the buggy will be in the road, and the car will hit it. I carefully take the buggy from the woman’s hands, gently prising her fingers off the handle, and wheel it back onto the sidewalk. I pick up the mother, as gently as I can, and place her back by the buggy, facing away from the street now. I whisper in her ear: pay attention, dammit; and always look both ways when crossing the road.

I hang around for the subjective ten minutes it takes to watch the car crawl past the spot where it would have hit the stroller, and see the mother begin to open her mouth in confusion.

As I approach a corner, I see two teenagers—children, really—fighting. The taller, dark haired young man has hold of the other’s shirt, his face contorted with anger, and his fist is raised to strike. The other, smaller, teen’s eyes are wide in fear. I slip the knife out of the teenager’s pocket and put it in my own. I whisper in the dark-haired lad’s ear: you don’t want to hurt him, you don’t want to hurt him, and hope it will do some good. I don’t stop to find out.

I stop for a rest outside a coffee shop. Still nobody notices me. If I sit here really still for a while, and pretend I’m playing Grandmother’s Footsteps, surely they will become aware of me after a while.

At the next table, two young lovers are embracing. The way they’re sitting, the way her face turns up to his, her arms around his neck; with perfect serendipity, the scene reminds me of Rodin’s Kiss. I watch them for a while, and I’m stung by unreasonable jealousy.

I want to whisper in her innocent young ear: don’t get attached, he’ll let you down, they all have feet of clay; love isn’t worth anything now. I wonder what effect such a subliminal would have. Fear of commitment, perhaps? Suspicion, isolation, bitterness…?

The thought is unworthy of me. I shake my head. I feel ashamed, voyeuristic; I get up and walk on, remembering, thinking.

In the park, Richard enumerated all the ways he could think of to use the normal people, the slowcoaches, ticking them off on his fingers. Yes, he said, of course there is sex, there is always sex. But there is so much more, so many wonderful possibilities; all the things you could do.

Why not set them to work, making things, doing simple menial jobs? Why not just toy with them, have good clean fun, just like he toyed with the suddenly-naked woman in the street? Set them impossible tasks, and watch them sweat? Subliminally get them doing pointless things, for no reason or purpose whatsoever, over and over again?

We are bringing back magic, he said; making the trickster gods real again. There is so much entertainment to be had, and isn’t that better than taking on the burden of responsibility?

I am struggling with empathy. Part of me knows the horror of the situation; rationally, I perceive the wrongness of it. Part of me feels cool, detached, contemptuous of these people, these slowcoaches.

Richard’s excited by the possibilities, waving his hands as he talks. “And Lela, life’s so random. Just look at us. So what if we subliminally got Jenny doing like random things, totally random? How cool would that be? Say every time she heard the word ‘coffee’, anywhere at all, she had an overwhelming urge to strip off and start dancing, and show everyone my pretty pictures?”

He cackles at the thought. “We could get her off our plate completely; subliminally turn her into a game. Got it. Dice-girl. Here’s how it works. It would only take a few basic subliminals. Okay, hear me out; she’s got two dice. So first thing in the morning, she must roll the dice. She can’t help it. Whatever number that is—let’s just say it’s a nine—she needs to go up to that person, the ninth person she sees when she goes out. Better make that the ninth adult, just in case. And then she says to them, ‘hi, I’m dice-girl, would you like to play with me?’ and she hands them the dice.”

“I read a book a bit like that, once,” I tell him.

He seems slightly crestfallen, but recovers quickly. “Nothing new under the sun, they say. Anyway, this person gets to tell her what to do. But first they’ve got to roll the dice, and whatever number comes up, there’s a type of action against it. The subliminals say so; she wants to do this, and she tells them what category they’ve got.

“‘Sex’ would need to be a category, obviously. The other person could tell her to go suck someone off, play lesbian, strip right there, whatever. Or maybe the dice comes up as ‘actions’. What would you make her do? Stand on her head, go for a swim, get herself a new outfit, gorge herself on cake, get on a train to New York, or, or, or! Whatever comes to mind!”

He almost giggles with delight. “See how simple it is? No notes, no tortuous instructions, no constant whispered orders. Just a basic program, a few simple subliminal rules. Roll dice. Meet person. Give person dice, roll dice. Tell them the category. Do what they say. Machine code.”

He thinks for a second. “And when she’s finished doing that, whatever that is, the final rule is she rolls the dice again, and goes looking for the next player, and then the next, and so on. Subliminally compelled, a nice little self-contained loop, and all totally random. She’ll never know what’s coming, never know where she’ll end up from one day to the next, or with who, over and over, ad infinitum. We wouldn’t even have to worry about thinking up stuff for her to do, we’d just send her out into the world with her dice, and that’ll be that. A random walk, just like real life.“

He pauses, frowning. “Just like everybody’s life,” he snarls, with a savage and unexpected bitterness. “Totally, intolerably, fucking random and pointless. Just like this. Just like us. Just like me.” He suddenly seems on the edge of tears.

I wonder what life Richard has lost; where his pain lies, so deep in the quick. I keep my counsel.

He says Raskeste, the quickest, has ideas about taking over government, infrastructure, but Richard isn’t buying into that. He thinks it’s short-sighted, pointless, and a waste of time. By all means go whisper in their ears, use the subliminals; but let the slowcoaches do the work, he says, while the quick play. What else is there to do?

Distantly I recognise this should make me angry, but somehow I am not. I think of all the wars that would not take place, all the social ills that could be righted, all the lives that could be saved, with just a few subliminal words in the ears of the right people.

Then I think of Raskeste, and I think again.

Richard has decided he needs a nickname. He’s bored with plain ‘Richard’, and he’s drawn to something more chaotic, more mysterious, more reflective of his philosophy. What do I think? I tell him I can see his logic, that ‘Loki’ suits him, and that he should start using it before somebody else does.

I know I should detest amoral Richard, but somehow I can’t help liking him. He’s the only real human being I’ve spoken to in what seems like forever.