Dreams of Darkness. Part 1 — All in the Mind.
By Writer345
3. The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The following week, life went back to normal, more or less, at least it was until Angie handed me another computer disc, that is. Surprise, surprise! This one was labelled ‘Psychology Department 14#2’. I shrugged and decided to use it as it as part of a phoney workstation up-grade the following day.
“But it was working okay!” Emily Morton had remarked as I fiddled with her computer.
I shrugged, that was a gesture that I was using more and more these days, and then said, “I’m surprised that it hasn’t kept crashing.”
She giggled. “Oh, I don’t know anything about computers. Even my own is a mystery to me.”
I bristled inside. People who seemed to take pride in their inability to understand, technical, scientific and mathematical ideas annoyed me. Ignorance was nothing to be proud of. Instead I bit back an acid remark and just smiled at her: she was the love of my bff’s life after all and I thought that I had better be nice to her.
“Oh, if your own computer gives you any trouble or you get stuck trying to install something, just bring it in and I’ll take a look at it for you. There’s no use paying shop prices for repairs or upgrades.”
I was rewarded with a dazzling smile. “Thanks, I might take you up on that, Ms O’Rourke.”
“Siobhan, please!” I might as well be on first name terms with the girl; chances were that I would be seeing much more of her sometime in the near future.
As I made my way back to my own office, I couldn’t get that smile out of my mind. It had been like looking into a mirror. I stopped dead in the corridor. If I had walked into a wall, it wouldn’t have stopped me any more suddenly. I hadn’t realised it, but Emily looked a lot like me—she could have been my kid sister! I chuckled to myself. So that’s why my bff is smitten with the girl!
I tackled Angie about the discs that evening and she assured me that they were only designed to make Emily see her in ‘a more favourable light’.
“But you’re a gold-star lesbian and she’s as straight as a laser beam,” I said, sounding slightly exasperated.
Her eyes seemed to blaze as she answered my metaphor with one of her own. “Even a laser beam can be refracted!”
Her cryptic remark stopped me dead and succeeded in putting my back up slightly. “Are you trying to brainwash her and turn her into a dyke? Is that what those discs are supposed to do?”
I must have looked and sounded incredulous for she laughed. “Well it was your idea, if you remember.”
I stared at her and felt a little foolish. Durr! Me an’ my runaway mouth!
She laughed at my expression before trying to calm my worries. “Oh, Shiv, that’s impossible!!! You can’t use a computer to re-program someone’s sexuality, it’s not that simple. Trust me, I’m a psychologist! No, those discs that you installed on her computer do make use of subliminal messages, but they’re all about me, not her. Besides, I think that she’s already at least bi- and it scares her so she’s in denial and that’s why she’s homophobic. If I can cure her of that, aren’t I doing her a favour?”
“Yes, well...” The sentence sort of faded away mainly because I wasn’t convinced by her version of logic.
She hugged me. “Oh, Shiv, you are my best friend, thank you for helping make my dreams come true.”
I returned the hug and she nuzzled my hair. If only we weren’t both dommes...
The week seemed to go from mad to surreal. I knew that Angie had taken a few days leave and when I got home the next evening I received another surprise when she led me down into the cellar. We’d had it renovated and turned into a modern basement a few years before, but hadn’t used it for anything other than storage. There were four largish rooms down there; like I said, it was a large Victorian house. Imagine my surprise when I saw that she’d sorted through the junk, discarded most of it and stacked the rest neatly in the smallest of the rooms. The largest, however wasn’t empty, it now held three large black recliner chairs and quite a few large cardboard boxes.
“What you up to?” I asked, probably sounding as intrigued and mystified as I felt.
She smiled. “They’re relaxation couches, or will be when all of the kit has been assembled. I’m planning on starting my own practice as a therapist. Well, I’ve got the training and you know that I’m not really happy as a personnel manager: ‘Human Resources’ just isn’t my thing.”
I nodded, my curiosity piqued. “This is computer equipment,” I said, recognising the boxes, “I’m guessing that you’d like me to assemble your network and install the software.”
She looked surprised, almost as if it hadn’t even crossed her mind. “Oh, would you please, Shiv? I was going to pay someone...”
I cut my friend short. “No need to waste your money. Amongst other things, I’m a network tech; I know what we charge by the hour, so I’ll be glad to install everything for you.” Me and my big mouth!
It turned out that Wendy Dryden was the one advising her on her career change and was providing the software that would run the relaxation couches.
“It’s cutting-edge stuff,” Angie enthused while we worked in the basement. She was doing the labouring, arranging the stuff and assembling the Ikea cabinets while I installed the computers and put the network together.
“What does it all do?” I asked, and got a whole load of psychology back for my trouble. The gist of it was that the patient, or client or whoever, would lie on the couch and be subjected to soothing and relaxing sounds and images while the system monitored their vital signs and brainwaves. Apparently it was designed to reduce stress and help them control anxiety and depression as well as making a large hole in their bank account.
“Think of it as an AI ‘electronic psychologist cum stress councillor’,” she said. “Wendy’s got a team at Uni who are developing it. The software’s as experimental as hell and she’s giving us access to it providing we give her feedback.”
“So we’re ‘beta-testers’?” I asked.
“Yes, I think that about sums it up. They’ve tried it and it worked well enough for them to carry on evolving new versions. Wendy will supply us with the latest version and it will update via the internet whenever our system is logged on to theirs.” She rattled on quite happily.
I had looked up from the cables that I was connecting. “Gets rid of stress, you say?”
“Oh, absolutely!” she gushed.
“Ideal! When can I try it?” I chuckled.
There was real intensity in her expression as she smiled at me. “Oh you’ll be one of the first, Shiv, that’s a promise. It will be your reward for setting the whole thing up!”
I smiled as I returned to setting up the network. So I was helping Angie convert our basement into a clinic for stress counselling. Well, good luck to her. I knew that she wasn’t very happy working as a psychologist in industry, so if she could make a go of this then she had my full support just like she always did. Angie was the nearest thing to a sister that I had and I know that she regarded me in the same light; we loved each other and had been inseparable for over thirty years. Our only regret being that we could not make a success of it if we tried to become an item: two dommes can never make a go of it and believe you me, we were far too much alike. Oh we’d tried, as I think I’ve already said but both times led to bickering and unhappiness. Still being bff’s was almost as good as fucking each other like bunnies. Almost!
It took me a fortnight, working evenings and weekends because Angie had had to buy extra equipment. Extra stuff for the network, things that she didn’t know were necessary. This slowed everything up quite a bit while we waited for it to be delivered, but by the end of the second week everything was ready.
Wendy Dryden had brought a load of DVD ROMs around and I had had the pleasure of installing the software into the server and then running a string of diagnostics. Amazingly, there were no software compatibility problems, which indicated to me that not only was the whole lot of it tried and tested but everything must be in regular use somewhere else. So much for the claim that it was all new and experimental: clearly it wasn’t. Okay, the discs were unmarked, other than being numbered but they didn’t seem to have been pirated. I checked the software as I installed it and there were no trade marks or end-user agreements anywhere, yet the routines ran together too smoothly for it to be experimental or even amateur. I shrugged and wondered why Wendy wanted Angie to believe that they were.
The other mystery was that there seemed to be a hell of a lot of code just for the simple five item menu that controlled the routines for treating stress and anxiety. What I did find was a screen that asked me for my access code. When I asked Angie about this it was her turn to shrug. “That’s for accessing confidential client data, Wendy hasn’t given it to me yet. Besides, there’s nothing in those databases yet, so there’s nothing for you to check.”
I went back to running diagnostics. Still, there did seem to be a lot of software just for the tasks on the menu.
All things considered, the set-up looked fantastic. The room was a clinical white, for a start, even the row of kitchen-unit-type cupboards along the wall, the control desk and the cabinet that housed the server were all gleaming white. In fact the only things in the room that weren’t white were the three recliner chairs and us!
Angie had told me that the décor was designed so that everything blended in and there was nothing to catch the subject’s eye and distract them.
I frowned. “Subject?”
She smiled. “You know, the thingy.” She hesitated, “the client, the patient,” she said, clearly stuck for words.
“Victim?” I suggested.
She chuckled. “Yes, well, that’s not quite how I would put it.”
I stepped back and took a good look at what we had created. Each chair, although they looked more like contoured reclining couches, had a monitor screen suspended at what would be the subject’s eye level. Subject... Damn, Angie, you’ve got me at it now.
At the side of the couch—let’s call it that—was a cupboard containing a computer in the bottom compartment, as well as the ancillary equipment in the divided-up drawer above it. I’d helped put it all in but the only thing that I recognised was a head set. What on Earth the circlet with its mesh cap, the silver sausages and the collection of little silver cups were for, I had no idea. Each of them had a long USB computer lead attached, so they were clearly part of the set-up.
Angie said that they were monitoring equipment, for measuring heart beat and brainwaves and the like.
“Ah, the circlet must go around the head?” I guessed and when she smiled and nodded, I felt proud of myself.
Yes, it was Friday evening at the end of the second week but we were up and running and ready to go; all we needed were the patients, or subjects or whatever the hell they were called! Not that I was bothered, clients were Angie’s department. I was there just to look after the kit. Or so I thought...
“Come on, Shiv, time to go and collect Emily!” Angie said with a quiet forcefulness that I’d rarely heard before. One thing must have led to another because suddenly we were sitting in my van outside Emily Morton’s house at half past three on a Saturday morning.