The Danger of Logical Fallacies
Synopsis: Lawrence is a petty and perverted man who comes into control of a device that temporarily inhibits its victims ability to recognize fallacies in logic. Using the device and some false logic, Lawrence proceeds to take revenge on anyone and everyone he’s ever felt has wronged him.
What is a Pavlov’s Lost Tale—Any of my stories that have a Pavlov’s Lost Tale Preface are stories I wrote previously (perhaps even many years ago), didn’t care for, and thus either didn’t finish, didn’t edit, or just generally abandoned. These are “stories” of suspect quality but are being released because of a combination of my own hope that at least one reader out there will enjoy some small part of them, and do to the request of some very kind members of this community. Releasing stories, especially ones as poorly written as these are, is extremely stressful to me, and the ONLY payment I get are the kind words (if any) I receive via emails from readers, so if you enjoyed even a single line of this story, it would mean the world to me if you could let me know. You can reach me at PavlovsBelle@outlook.com
Pavlov’s Lost Tale’s Prefeace: I’ll skip appologizing for yet another delayed release, beyond saying I had yet more computer issues and various unexpected outside issues and get right to the story itself. Simply put... I don’t remember much about this story. I wrote it a long LOnG time ago, infact, it was so near the bottom of my pile of stories there’s a good chance it was written as part of my initial batch, back in 2005/2006. Needless to say, it has a similarly dark vibe to those older stories, if not more so (not that any of my stories are really heart warming), and I want to say the main goal was to make a humilitian focused story, while some of my other stories had some elements of humilitian, the MC was either a victim themselves, trying to “sexify” the world, or trying to get into the victims pants, but for this story I believe I didn’t want a mind controller whose actions could even remotely be considered as positive in intention, but rather were the actions of some pissed off jerk with no morals, going around humiliating people in sexual ways because he unrightfully felt they had wronged him. Why did I want to right such a story... cause apparently I’m as twisted as a lot of my hate mail responders tell me I am. I blaim CactusJuggler, one of my all time favorite authors, who at the time was writing a lot of stories with heavy humiliation elements that I still re-read to this day. Seriously, if you like humiliation mind control, especially from the perspective of the victim, and you haven’t read CactusJugglers stories, read his first and come back to mine only when you’ve got the time. But anyway, I mention this up front because if a humiliation heavy story sounds awful to you, this probably isn’t the story for you and you’re likely just going to send me a lot of hate mail.
Anyway, as for why this was never release, aside from being just kind of poorly written in general, I suspect the reason it was never released was because of the amount of hate mail I’d gotten at the time over the dark direction of my other stories of the time, so rather then edit or improve this one, I just sort of pushed it aside, to be forgotten for years. This release only includes the first two chapters, there are actually two more written, but I figured I’d gauge the interest on the initial chapters first before submitting any more of my shame to the world. If people like these chapters, and want to see more, and most importantly, email me and let me know of their desire to see more, I will see if I can’t draw up the courage to release the other two chapters as well, if not, I’ll know I made the right choice in only releasing the first two.
Lastly, as with all Pavlov’s Lost Tales, a huge thanks goes out to all those who shared kind words and feed back on my previously released Lost Tales, you guys are THE reason this story is being released out into the wild instead of continuing to collect dust in my collection. I can never thank you all enough for the encouragment I’ve been given.
Chapter 1 — Belle Gets a Cell Phone
“So its basically mind control?” asked a tall man in a business suit that was staring at Belle with extreme revulsion.
“No no, well, I mean, kind of, in a way, but you can’t just tell some one something and they believe it, the voice modulator effects a persons ability to perceive logical fallacies so you have to have a basis to work with. For example, we have a potential customer who loves soda but doesn’t like our Diet Mrs. Pep. If we have a commercial where we used the voice modulator to say ‘You love Diet Mrs. Pep’ it would have no effect. If, however, we said to them ‘You love soda, and Diet Mrs. Pep is soda, therefore you love Diet Mrs. Pep’ it would basically have the same effect of making them believe they love Diet Mrs. Pep. There mind is unable to argue with the logic, however flawed, and thus simply accepts our conclusion,” explained Belle.
“I’m sorry, but this is just too... sinister sounding. I know we hired you to find ways to make our commercials more effective, but this seems like its crossing a line that should not be crossed,” responded a nearly equally tall woman in a business suit.
“Further, as all the work you’ve done on this project so far is considered company property and I think we’re in agreement that we do not wish this company to be connected to this work, I must request that you destroy all your equipment and documentation immediately,” said another man next to the woman.
Belle sighed. So much hard work, so much time and effort, and such an amazing break through, and just like that it had been all for nothing.
As the meeting adjourned Belle made her way back to her lab with her head hung low. In the end she had to agree, she’d been so blinded by the possibilities of her discovery that she’d really never thought about the ethical dilemmas it presented. Currently their ads already put the idea “have a refreshing Diet Mrs. Pep” into people’s heads, but this really was going beyond that, and in the wrong hands it could be immensely dangerous. Indeed, as much as it pained her, destroying her work was the correct course of action.
Just as Belle had begun to format her hard drive, Lawrence, one of the suits from the meeting, entered her lab and gave Belle a consoling look.
“Sorry about that, I know you put your heart and soul into this project, your brilliance and dedication is why we hired you, but you have to admit, this was a bit too much,” said Lawrence.
“Yeah...” acknowledged Belle.
“Well it could have been worse, right? You could have already spent time developing a working prototype, but you were still just at the theory stage, right?” semi-consoled, semi-questioned Lawrence.
“Actually I already had a working prototype...” said Belle, looking even more dejected while pointing to a small cell phone looking device on one of her tables. “Destroying the data’s bad enough, but destroying the prototype is going to be heart crushing, you have no idea how many hours I put into that little thing.”
“Ouch, that really is unfortunate. It is truly impressive too, I mean look at the size of this thing,” said Lawrence picking up the device. Immediately Belle raised her hand to object to his handling of the device, however, upon remembering it was about to be destroyed anyway, she reluctantly let him look at it all he wanted. Besides, she reasoned, it gave her an excuse to put off destroying it till last.
“And these little nubs here are to put in your ears to protect yourself from the effects?” asked Lawrence as he put them in his ears. Belle nodded.
“Yeah, I’m actually pretty proud of them too, despite looking like ear plugs they actually allow normal sound to still enter your ears, the only thing they block is the voice modulator’s effects.”
“So let me guess, to work it you’d just press the button here, right,” said Lawrence pointing at the activation button. Belle nodded. “Then you’d just say something like—This looks like a cell phone. Lawrence owns a cell phone. Therefore this must be Lawrence’s cell phone.—and if this had actually been your device and not just my cell phone you would have believed it was my cell phone anyway because of the effect,” continued Lawrence, having hit the button while giving his logical argument.
“Yeah, that’s basically how it worked. Hey, where did the prototype go, weren’t you just holding it?” asked Belle confused. “Wait, is that it in your hand, or your cell phone?”
“Actually as you can see,” said Lawrence pulling his actual cell phone from his left pocket, “—This object in my left hand looks like a cell phone, your prototype looks like a cell phone, therefore this object in my left hand must be your prototype.—”
“Ha ha, very funny, I had a bad day today, no need to make fun of me,” said Belle as she got up and took Lawrence’s cell phone from his left hand, now believing it to be the prototype. “Now if you don’t mind, I have a lot more stuff to destroy including this prototype so I’d appreciate if you’d leave me be.”
“As you wish,” said Lawrence, pocketing the true prototype. “Oh, do you mind if I keep the ear plugs, once the rest of the data is destroyed they’ll be effectively worthless anyway, but they could prove a useful gag for tricking people into thinking I can’t hear them when I really can.”
“Sure, fine, whatever,” replied Belle, failing to notice the devilish smile on Lawrence’s face as he left the lab.