Conference Buddies
by Adam Smith
“So what’d you think of that last talk?”
Jane and Alan were sitting in the hotel coffee shop. It was the third day of the conference, and all of the panels and sessions that had seemed interesting to either of them were over. They’d decided to try the “lightning talks” panel, but they ranged from bad to terrible, with the last a new-agey spiel about how hypnosis was the latest business trend.
Alan looked at his co-worker over his latte. Jane was attractive, a blonde with a lush body and a cute face, and while she always dressed professionally (and acted that way, too), he still had a mild crush on her that he might have acted on if they weren’t colleagues.
“I thought it was the silliest thing I’ve ever seen at this conference,” he replied.
“Well, that says a lot,” she said, raising her eyebrows. She was wearing a subtle eyeshadow with some glitter, but you had to be looking at her for a while to notice it. Alan did like staring at her, though.
“I mean, I guess I’m also just a little annoyed at the scheduling. After all the changes they made, there’s literally nothing worthwhile left on the agenda, and we could probably have headed home a day early. And then to waste our time on that session just felt like adding insult to injury.”
Jane smiled. Her reaction wasn’t dissimilar. The speaker really had known nothing, and while she liked business travel, she also hated wasting her time.
“Yeah, that’s true.” She paused, in thought for a second. “Do you think all hypnosis is bunk, or just the stuff he was talking about?”
Alan also paused before answering. One of the things he liked about working and travelling with Jane was that she made him think. This was the fifth conference they’d attended together in the last year, and he really enjoyed being conference buddies with her.
“I’ve actually gone down a few wikipedia rabbit holes on the topic,” he said. “And yeah, it can work for some things, like making people better able to focus. Or helping people with goals like dieting or working out that they’re already committed to. But that takes time and a few sessions to even start to have an impact, and the subject has to be actively involved.”
“Right,” she said. “And this was guy was basically saying managers could just sit an employee down and ‘mesmerize’ them into improving. That’s just bullshit.”
“Exactly! And even then, hypnosis doesn’t make talent appear out of nowhere. You might convince someone to work harder, but they’re not going to be better at analyzing data.”
“What about long-term subliminals?”
“You mean like hidden phrases in commercials?” Alan was a little confused. “I thought that was debunked?”
“Not quite,” Jane replied. “There are conflicting studies, but the ones that show subliminals work also require a lengthy number of sessions. So two or three sessions wouldn’t have much effect, but someone listening to subliminal messages for six months would be very suggestible. And that could then be combined with hypnosis to increase the suggestion.”
“Ooh,” Alan said, catching on to how powerful this could be, “so you could use subliminals to make someone more interested or willing to be hypnotized?”
“Sure. And the subliminals and the hypnosis sessions could keep playing off each other like spirals.”
They both laughed, since the guy who’d just given the terrible presentation was REALLY a fan of spirals as a way of hypnotizing people.
“But there’s still the other limitations, right? So people can’t be made to hurt themselves or something?” Alan realized that this conversation had somehow shifted from Jane asking him for information, to her now being the one who knew more.
“Sure. But there’s all that gray area stuff that, things that someone might not ever do on their own volition, but aren’t opposed to. Like the stage hypnotists making people cluck like a chicken. Most people don’t want to do it, but they’re not really offended at the idea, so it’s a suggestion that might work. Make sense?”
“I think so,” Alan replied.
“Or,” Jane continued, “it’s like the whole erotic hypnosis thing.”
“Sure,” Alan agreed, before realizing what he’d heard. “Wait, what?”
“You know, the idea of woman enslaving a man and making him do whatever she wants.” Jane was making very good eye contact with Alan, and he was starting to feel a little unsure of this conversation now as her green eyes bore into him.
“But if a guy’s already attracted to a woman, that probably doesn’t take much, right?”
“Well, to an extent.” Jane paused, thinking for a moment. “Look, this is way personal, but am I correct in thinking that you’re pretty vanilla in your tastes?”
Alan blushed, but also couldn’t look away from her eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”
“I thought so.” Jane smiled. “But while you might be happy to be vanilla, deep down, you’re not really opposed to most kinky stuff. Most folks are neutral on most things that don’t involve serious pain.”
Alan didn’t know what to say. He’d never really thought about kinky stuff, and was content to just have “regular” sex.
“Anyway, the point is that, with enough work, someone like you or most guys could be conditioned to be the sex slave to someone, to do all sorts of nasty things your conscience mind thinks are appalling, and to love it.”
“Right,” Alan said, finding his breath running a little ragged. “But it would take a lot of work.”
“Oh, sure,” Jane laughed, “it’s not something really practical. I mean, unless someone really had a way to get targeted subliminals to you, it wouldn’t work. They’d have to do something extreme, like probably hack your work computer and run a program that adds subliminals to all your MP3s. And maybe another one that flashes some quick visual ones periodically.”
Alan laughed too, nervously. He was one of the few folks in the office who still loaded a huge iTunes library onto his machine, instead of using a streaming service, but he assumed Jane was just kidding around because of that.
“And even then,” Jane said, “it would take a few hypnosis sessions to really get things to stick. So almost certainly not something that could happen.”
“Exactly,” Alan agreed.
Jane pulled out her phone and started fiddling with it. “Of course, I said, ‘almost.’”
Alan’s phone buzzed, and he saw that it was a picture from Jane. A picture of him, wearing panties, stockings, and a garter belt, with the words “Jane’s toy” written on his chest in what appeared to be lipstick.
“Jane, what —” he started to ask, before she cut him off.
“There’s more.”
The next photo showed his face, tongue out, licking a black patent leather boot. The look on his face in the photo was ecstatic; the one on his face now was horrified.
The next item was a video. It showed a close-up of a woman sitting on a toilet, peeing, but his face was right up at her crotch, lapping the stream of pee and any drops that caught in the pubic hair.
Alan was appalled. He assumed Jane was the person in these pictures with him, but surely she couldn’t really have twisted his mind enough to make him do this and forget it! And if what she had him do was so horrifying, why was he also hard after seeing these files?
Alan looked up and Jane. “I don’t remember any of this. Jane, what the hell did you do to me?”
Jane raised a red-tipped finger in the air, stopping Alan from ranting any more. She paused for a second, then said, softly, “Alan is Jane’s toy.”
He froze.
“Like I said, it took a lot of conditioning. And we’ve had a lot of time at these conferences we’ve been going to. The most important step was getting those trigger phrases into you. The one I just used is the one I use to make you my slave. You want to do what I ask now, don’t you, Alan?”
“Yes, Goddess Jane,” Alan replied.
“Good. You remembered the right term. Now, to finish what I was saying, it took a lot of work. I had to use those subliminals, and then seduce you into playing that ‘hypnosis’ game with me last year. You don’t remember that, of course. You’ll only remember what I want you to. But yes, there are very few things you’re not willing to do for me, and since we have the whole rest of the afternoon and evening free, I’m going to see what else I can get you to do.”
Jane grabbed Alan’s hand and they walked toward the elevator. “Tell me, Alan,” Jane said, as they rode the empty car up to her room, “do you want to wear slutty heels and let me take you from behind with my strap-on?”
“Yes, Goddess Jane.”
Jane smiled. “I thought so. It’s really so nice having you along as my conference buddy, Alan.”