VR Room 1: Princess Samus

You make your way down to the back of the hall where you had the immersive VR rooms set up. Putting a patient inside of a virtual simulation was a brainwashing technique that was very energy intensive and experimental. From talking to others in the field you know some considered it to be more trouble than it was worth, but you found that it was very effective for certain requests that would take a lot more time and effort using traditional means. For example, a complete backstory rewrite like what you were doing in VR Room 1.

You enter said room, which is rather tight and cramped compared to a lot of the other rooms, mostly due to such space being unnecessary for a character that would be spending all their time here in a simulation anyway. A good amount of the space was taken up by the large computer banks that were lining the back walls, which were responsible for creating and running the simulated world. Wires run from the bottoms of these banks across the floor, up the back of a chair in the center of the room, and into the back of a thick metal helmet that covered the entire top half of the room's occupant: one Samus Aran from Metroid.

Her arms and legs are held by metal restraints to the chair, but in her current state they aren't necessary. The bulky VR helmet blocks the view of her eyes and ears, isolating her senses from the outside world, but her mouth was still visible, hanging open with a slight trickle of drool dripping down her chin. The only movement from her was the steady rise and fall of her chest as she breathes, and the occasional twitch of one or two of her fingers.

You look over her curvy form wrapped up in her skintight Zero Suit, appreciating her beauty for a few moments. But then you get down to business, saying loudly, "EDI, do you have a moment to chat?"

"For you, Sir? Always," the feminine voice of the AI projects from the speakers in the room, "I assume you are here for a status report on Princess Aran?"

"Right you are," you say with a smirk, "How's she progressing?"

"She's still insisting to others that she is actually a bounty hunter, but she has finally given up on not wearing dresses," EDI explains, "She has grown attached to her mother and father however, and I believe exploiting that connection will be key to getting her to accept her new history. With your approval, I would like to experiment with putting more emphasis on the two of them in future iterations of the simulation. Specifically, I believe we can get her to accept cooking as a passion if it is her mother that teaches her rather than the character of Royal Chef Calazonni"

"I approve. Excellent idea, EDI," you say with a smile. When it came to setting up the VR systems, buying an instance of the emergent AI from Mass Effect to run it was the smartest decision you made. One of the biggest problems with using VR simulations for brainwashing is that there are not many practical ways to pull it off. Without completely constructing and controlling the simulation manually the whole time, the simulation would have an uncanny valley effect that would break the immersion and make the gaslighting process less effective. But with the inability to use virtual time dilation due to human reaction times, the process would take as many if not more real life years as virtual years needed to get the subject to believe their new reality if controlled manually. However, a sentient artificial intelligence with enough knowledge of human social interactions running things allows for the best of both worlds: the AI manually controlling everything allows for on-the-fly adjustments and a realistic environment, and their digital minds are able to keep up with the accelerated speed of virtual time within the simulation. Thus, EDI could run five separate VR headsets through two dozen ultra-realistic virtual lifetimes a day, with that number going up if some of the rooms were empty and allowing her to focus more processing power on certain individuals.

Which is great for you since you have a pretty tight deadline on this particular project.

"Do you think she will be ready by Friday?" you ask. While as a rule you never give a customer a guarantee their character will be ready by a certain date, the manager of the local Pizza Princess is willing to pay extra if you manage to pull this off.

"I am 99.33% sure that I will have her fully believing the reality of the simulation before then," EDI answers, "Would you like to see how she is progressing for yourself?"

"That's why I'm here," you tell her, "Reduce virtual time dilation to real time and bring down the viewscreen."

"Right away, Sir."

A large plasma screen comes down from its mount on the ceiling and turns on to show you what Samus is currently experiencing within the simulation.

Samus Aran frowns into the mirror as her handmaiden helps straighten and smooth the back of her sky blue dress for her. It was a sight that she had become intimately familiar with since getting trapped in this place... wherever it is. She vaguely remembers being strapped to a chair by a man and being given a sedative, but that was so long ago... so many lifetimes ago. By now she has probably woken up more times in this opulent bedroom straight out of a little girl's storybook fantasy than in the cramped sleeping quarters of her ship. But she knew which one was reality.

"Something the matter, Princess? I'm not tugging too hard, am I?"

"No Ellen, you're doing fine. It's just..." Samus sighed.

"You're having those bounty hunter dreams again, aren't you?"

"They aren't dreams!" Samus snaps, "They're memories of my life, my real life! Not this... this fairy tale phooey!"

Samus is sure she meant to say something more vulgar than 'phooey', like 'crap' or 'bullsheet' (which still sounds wrong in her head). But like any other time she tried to swear, the word that came out of her mouth was much tamer and more childish than she intended to say. She doesn't know how it keeps happening, but Samus has long since given up trying to correct herself, and sometimes wonders if she even tries to say the right word in the first place anymore.

"Princess, I know dreams can be really vivid at times, but they aren't real," Ellen says, "You're the princess of the planet Kaytoole, not some armored gun-for-hire."

"The way you say it makes it sound like I'm just a mercenary," Samus says, "It's more complicated than that."

"My point is, you need to focus on your duties as a princess."

"What duties?" Samus says, turning to face the brunette handmaiden, "All I ever seem to do is have tea parties, go to balls, and ride around in parades around the kingdom! The rest of the time I just walk around the castle looking pretty."

"That's not true," Ellen says with a pout, "What about your diplomatic trip to Zebes? The Chozo liked you so much they gave you that pretty orange dress! I heard the fabric is supposed to be practically indestructible, like a suit of armor. Maybe that's where the orange suit in your dream came from."

"They do that every time I go there!" Samus shouts, "I told you before I left that they would, and it happened just as I said!"

"No, you told me they would give you the dress because you helped them negotiate a peace treaty with the Grekellian Empire. But they have never been at war with each other! It was the afloraltite trade deal you proposed that got them to agree to become our allies and trade partners. Though really, it was the pizza you made that really got them to adore you so much."

Samus groans and rubs her forehead. This is probably the most frustrating part of this princess prison she's trapped in. She had lived through several loops, from early childhood going all the way up to her mid-twenties before it reset, but every loop had enough details change that she can never convince anyone of the truth. Not that it was easy to remember everything that happened twenty plus years ago from her perspective, but with how many times she had gone through it already she should have better accuracy than she did.

"Look, maybe you should talk to Dr. Malkovich again. He seems to do a pretty good job helping you get your head back on straight."

"No, I don't need to see a psychiatrist!" Samus yells, "He's... he's just going to try and convince me I'm crazy again. I'm not crazy..."

"Of course you aren't, Princess," Ellen says with a hurried bow, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have implied you were. It wasn't my place."

"It's not your fault," Samus groans dejectedly, "You aren't real. Or if you are, you aren't supposed to be alive..."

Ellen takes the silk gloved hand of Samus and says, "Princess, I know the space pirate attack when you were little was scary, but we fought them off without suffering any casualties. Stop saying we were all supposed to die. You sound like one of those nut- er, people holding up signs saying the end is nigh."

Samus looks out the window at the city beneath her castle. It looks like some weird blend of a medieval European town and a futuristic city, with brick houses and castle grounds interposed with flying cars and holodisplays. And the sky with two large moons overhead played perfectly into both the fantasy and space opera feel of this world Samus found herself on.

"It should all be gone," Samus mutters to herself, "It was all destroyed by the pirates... and my parents..."

"...are alive and well," Ellen finishes from behind her, "King Rodney and Queen Virginia worry when you say things like that. They love you more than anything in the galaxy."

"I know, and I love them too. But they're not real. My parents died at the hand of... of..."

Samus furrows her brow. No, no it couldn't be.

"Of the pirates?" Ellen asks.

"Yes, but their leader. He killed them. But I... fudgesicles, I can't remember his name. How can I not remember his name?"

"Because it was a dream," Ellen says, "This person doesn't exist-"

"He's not a person!" Samus yells, "He's a monster! Big and purple and... reptilian? Yes, reptilian! His name was..." Samus hits her hand with her gloved palm, "Come on, what was it? Diddy? Charlie? Barney?"

Ellen blinks, "Wait... a big, purple reptile named Barney?" She snorts, then starts to laugh, "Princess, you're thinking of the old children's show Barney the Dinosaur!"

"What?" Samus shakes her head, "No, no that can't be right..."

"Your mother says you used to watch it all the time when you were little!" Ellen says, "You must just be remembering that and mixing it up with your memories of the space pirate attack to create these nightmares about the space pirates winning and killing everyone!"

"I..." Samus looks back out at the city beneath her, the still standing city with still living people in it. Could that really be true? Could she have made the whole thing up? ...No, it had to be real.

But... did she want it to be? The other Kaytoole was destroyed, burned to ashes, but this one was still alive. Did she really want to go back to a world without her parents? Her home planet? This place may not be real... but it was better than her old life.

No... no, this had to be a trap. Something set up by... what's his name, to make her forget, and not want to fight him anymore. She had to find a way out. She had to get back to reality.

But she had no idea how to do that right now. So for now, she simply sighs and says, "You're right, Ellen. I must have been imagining it."

"There you go, Princess!" Ellen says, "Now come on! You need to get down to the kitchen if you want to help Chef Calazonni make his special Metroid Meat Lover pizza for the entire royal court!"

"Yes, you're right, we should get going," Samus says with a nod. She did find it weird that a princess was expected to make pizzas, but apparently it's a Kaytoolian royal custom. She had some vague nagging feeling that it was related to her imprisonment here somehow, but she couldn't figure out why someone would trap her in some weird fantasy version of her life to make pizza. Besides, the people of this planet make really good pizza. She and her family ate it almost every day, and never got sick of it... which also seems weird, come to think of it. Maybe it really was-

Her thoughts are interrupted by a woman's voice saying, "Samus dear, I thought you would be in the kitchen by now."

Looking towards the door, Samus sees her mother, in a beautiful blue dress and wearing a golden crown on her head. She knew the woman in the doorway should be dead, but at the same time it was such a comforting sight to see her mom every day that she couldn't help but smile.

"I know Mom," she says, "I was just... thinking about things. I'm heading down there now."

"Good to hear," the older woman says, before adding, "You know, I think I'll come too. It's been a while since I've tossed the dough, but I think it'd be fun to do it with my daughter, don't you?"

Samus beams, "I'd love nothing more."

She waves to Ellen, then walks over to her mother. Sometimes it disturbs her how easily she can move around now in a large poofy princess dress now, but right now Samus doesn't care. It feels so natural to wear that she barely notices it, and doesn't think twice about grabbing her own princess crown from her vanity and putting it on her head before leaving to follow her mom down the hall to the kitchen. At this point she'd feel weird if she didn't wear it.

"I think I get the idea," you tell EDI, "If she's already forgetting who Ridley is, I doubt it's going to be much longer now. Rooting out that deep seated trauma to such a degree means we're close to the tipping point where she starts believing her new history is real."

"Yes," EDI says, "And your suggestion to alter her sense of taste in the simulation to always respond positively to pizza worked better than I predicted it would."

"I told you, humans love their food," you tell her, "Especially as a coping mechanism for stressful situations. Making pizza her ultimate comfort food in there will turn it into an addiction out here."

You idly wonder if the manager will get a mod to keep Samus thin, since otherwise he may have to get some much bigger dresses before long. But he's the one that wanted her to love making and eating pizza, so that's exactly what he's gonna get. As long as you successfully do your job and get paid for it, what the customer does with their character afterwards isn't your concern.

"Anyways, keep me updated on her progress," you tell EDI, "And let me know when she's completely bought into the simulation so I can do the trimming." That was what you called the final step of your VR brainwashing process, where you pull them out of the simulation and put them through a hypnotherapy procedure to delete their memories of everything preceding the final loop, ensuring they only remember the exact life you want them to believe they have lived.

"Affirmative, Sir," EDI says to you, and you leave the room to attend to other business.