Presumably something relaxing

Sam had been hypnotized, brainwashed, mesmerized, and every-other-synonym-for-mind-controlled so many times she had lost count. A danger of the profession really, though for her it was less a factor of the job and more so one of predilection at this point. The number of times she had been mind-controlled on the clock was really no more than what, ten, if she was guesstimating correctly. True, more than the average of zero for the general population, but only like twice what Alex and Clover had.

No, at this point it was more the times off the clock that contributed.

The visor in her hand could attest to such. It was a bulky black brick of a thing, with straps to the side and a black reflective screen on the inside. It wasn’t particularly elegant, it being a mash-up of confiscated tech and her own neophytic design, but it served its purpose.

In her other hand were a pair of custom-built headphones. They too were bulky, constructed in such a fashion to be completely noise-canceling. Normally she would have liked to spruce it up a bit, maybe give them a coat of her custom green, to match her catsuit, but the mere act of getting it up and running had taken it out of her.

Implements ready, she took a seat in her chair in front of her computer, plugging the visor and headphones into the appropriate ports. She placed her hands over her keyboard. She opened the terminal and navigated the file structure deep down to where she had hidden the program she was about to open.

She typed “./aut_ind.sh”.

She hesitated.

This was not the first time she had done this. In fact, she had been doing this for more than a year now. Practically old hat.

So why was she hesitating?

Sam ran her hands through her hair, twining them between the long red strands. It was still a bit wet from her post class workout shower. Normally doing some exercise helped settle some of the day’s tension, but today she felt more weary than usual.

Which was fine, of course, because she was about to relieve that particular problem. She placed the visor on her head, securing it via the straps with a tight buckle. The world went dark, the walls of her apartment replaced with a black void. A bit uncomfortable, but the key here was to let no stray light in and interfere with the visuals.

The next step was placing the headphones over her head. With a click of a button on the left side, the headphones suctioned to her ears. The world went silent, the usual background noise of the apartment building deafened. All she had left now was her thoughts, the feeling of the chair against her back, and her finger on the enter key.

*Click*

She pressed the button.

A dim light filled her view, the screen inside the visor booting up. It started out with a gentle glow before blooming into a bright white pane. Alongside it, some elevator music began to play. Sam had ripped it from the college’s own file system. It had a special sort of terribleness to it that refused any sort of structured interpretation. In other words, perfect.

A few seconds now, and then, ah.

“Hello, Sam. This is Sam speaking.” The sound of her own voice, an auditory mirror reflecting back her past self’s evocation.

“Hey, Sam.” She mouthed back. She couldn’t hear herself if she tried, so there wasn’t any use wasting effort.

“Tonight you will be undergoing the-” the voice became robotic, “v4.7.12,” and resumed its normal Sam intonation, “-auto-induction suite.”

Sam had tried many ways to hypnotize herself. This was the latest and most effective. Earlier versions had been retools of the various methods used against her on the job, and those had worked, but only for a bit. They were really only good for a few goes before her mind built up a resistance.

This however, ah, such satisfaction. Her own voice narrating the induction was the key to it all. Sure, the spirals that were slowly starting to fill the screen were a crucial part of it, but the penetrating nature of her own voice to which she had no defense, that was the key.

“Watch the spiral. Observe the bands circling ever inwards. Spiralling towards a point. Count the spirals as they disappear into that point. One. Two. Three…”

Sam counted in sync with her own voice. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. This was important, getting the voice to resound with her head, to lead her wayward mind away from idle thoughts about what to do for her next homework assignment, her friend’s upcoming birthday, her training session tomorrow at the headquarters. All of that nonsense which clouded her mind and slowly but steadily raised her stress levels to bursting. None of that was needed when she could just follow along with nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

“Think of nothing else but the spiral. Stare at it. When you blink, see it behind your eyelids, spinning constantly into that point. Black. Thirty. White. Thirty-one. Black. Thirty-two. White. Thirty-three.”

Sam counted along to the spirals. The music thrummed with every iteration of the pattern, extolling their virtue.

“Hear me. Listen to me. Think of nothing but my voice. Everything else is not here. Only the voice, the spiral.”

Sam counted without any instruction to keep doing so. Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four.

“Forty-five. Obey the voice. Obey the spiral. Nothing else matters but what the voice tells you, what the spiral shows you.”

The spiral spun ever inwards.

“Look deep into the spiral. Look past the black, past the white. See what lies beneath.”

Sam strained her eyes, peering into the screen. She looked and looked, and when the count reached sixty, she saw. There, underneath, a spiral spun there as well.

“And below that spiral is another spiral, and another. There are infinite spirals, spinning ever onwards and downwards into each other. There is nothing but the spirals, counting, seventy, seventy-one, seventy-two. Nod if you understand.”

Sam nodded.

“Good girl. Good girls know to listen to the voice, to the spiral. The spiral is in my words, each one spiralling into each other, joining into infinity. Eighty-three. Eighty-four. Eighty-five. Eighty-six.”

Sam nodded unprompted.

“Relax your conscious mind and sink deep into the spiral. Let it do the thinking for you while you rest. Deny thought. Obey.”

Sam counted and counted. She mouthed the numbers silently, but she couldn’t remember what she didn’t think. Even the sensation of moving her mouth to form the increment was lost to the spiralling void.

It was thus, after precisely three hours and twenty-two minutes had passed, exactly eight minutes short of the end of her induction, that she didn’t hear a knock on her front door. Nor the call of “Sam?” from Clover.

“Gurl, you better not have slept in. I really want to try out that new Thai place.” Clover knocked again on the door. The apartment building was one of those older, pre-earthquake models with a stairway on the outside and each door offshoot from that. More like a motel. “Sam?” She tried again.

Sam remained blissfully unaware.

“Okay gurl, you asked for it.” Clover reached into her pocketbook and picked out a hairpin. With a little artful fumbling, she managed an ad-hoc lockpick. The locks, by nature of their age, were not especially secure, and certainly not against the efforts of a trained spy. Not that they were meant to be, as their identities as civilians were a well-kept secret. And paranoia served no one. Normally. Now it served Clover’s mischief.

The woman carefully unlocked the door and stepped inside. The apartment was a one-bedroom, not too large, but spacious enough to have a living room. Nothing Clover hadn’t seen before when she’d been invited over. Just the regular stuff, a television, kitchen table, shelves with photos and knicknacks. The only oddities were the various devices strewn about. Nothing too untoward if it got in the wrong hands, in case a thief ever decided to steal from them (and it was strictly prohibited to experiment on Class Two tech or above outside of the Headquarters or approved workshops).

“I leave you alone for half a week, and you let the place turn into a pigsty. Sheesh. Now where are you? Sam?”

If there was one place Clover should look, it was her companion’s bedroom, or more precisely, the place that had the computer. Sam was glued to it lately. Truly, Clover worried for the woman. Too much time alone wasn’t healthy.

She stepped carefully around the debris and made her way over to the bedroom door. With a light knock, and no response, she opened the door to a very peculiar sight.

Sam, in a ratty t-shirt and jeans, rested in a melted heap against her chair. She had a visor of some sorts attached to her face, along with a pair of headphones. She was drooling, quite profusely by the looks of the puddle on her chest.

“You did fall asleep! Earth to Sam!” Clover was a bit irritated at this point. Sam had promised she wouldn’t forget their pseudo-dinner date. Sam didn’t wake up. “Sam?” Clover walked over and gave her friend a light shove on her shoulder. “Wake up. Enough dream VR for you.”

Still, Sam didn’t rouse. Clover was getting a little worried at this point. She reached for the headphones and lifted them off Sam’s head. She held them up to her ear.

“Obey the spiral. Count. Ten-thousand Four Hundred and Thirty-nine. Ten-thousand Four Hundred and Forty. Rest. Don’t think. Count.”

“Oh.” Clover removed the visor and saw what she expected. A spiraling pattern playing out inside the screen. “Sam.” On the computer screen, Clover saw an audio program with a waveform nearing completion. Five minutes left if she was reading it right. Clover took the mouse and skipped ahead to the end and listened to one of the speakers.

“You are now rested. You will wake up feeling rested not remembering anything that occurred within the past three and a half hours. Simply that the program helped you deal with your stress problems. This is Sam, ending auto induction v4.7.12.”

Clover looked at Sam, who was still drooling and mouthing numbers, lost in her trance without the cue to wake up. Clover put the headphones and visor back on Sam and moved the program back a couple of minutes. She quickly made her way out of the apartment.

Once outside and back in her car, she held a hand to her chest. She could feel her heart beating relentlessly.

“Oh Sam,” she repeated. “I’m sorry.” Her mouth turned upwards into a cat’s grin. “Sorry I can’t help myself :3” She knew the first thing she was going to do tomorrow after chiding Sam about her missed meeting. There were plenty of audio logs back at headquarters to pore over, and she had so little patience.