Mind Control Madness

I had been up all night, scouring the internet. Yet I found nothing new, nothing of interest. All the social networking, news, comics, porn, and other minutia bored me. I kept refreshing google, over and over in one of my browser's tabs. That's when, quite by accident, I spied an interesting ad in the bottom right corner of a web page I sometimes pretended to read. 'LEARN MIND CONTROL FREE' it said, in big, bold, black, letters. I clicked on it, and was surprised to see simple black text against a white background. A lot of black text. Thousands and thousands of words. But the all-caps notice at the top assured me, "You can learn the secret of mind control. All you have to do is read through this story, which will open the wave patterns in your brain."

With nothing else to do, I began to read the story of a boy who lost his balloon to a renegade octopus. To regain his price, he crossed his country's mountains with an ox and a monkey for companions. When I finished, I noticed a smaller text underneath the whole thing. It read, "You now have the ability to change and control thoughts. Enjoy!"

That can't be true, I thought. But, well, it was worth a try. I just had to figure out how to test out my abilities?