Stealth Control

“Test Number One, beginning!”

The voice came out of a small loudspeaker on the wall across from me. I didn’t know exactly what was being tested, but I figured it had something to do with the injection they’d given me when I first arrived.

My name is Gemma, and I’m just broke enough that getting paid $500 to be a subject in a ‘Temporary Human Neuroengineering Trial’ was pretty damn appealing.

I’d followed a listing on the student board all the way to this dingy room in the back of the nanotech building, where some excited postgraduates had made me sign a consent form and explained that they couldn’t explain anything before the experiment started. Then they stabbed me in the arm with a needle and left. Really helpful.

I deduced it had something to do with the new nanobots the faculty had been working on. These microscopic machines could be put into a syringe and injected into mice, where their nervous system could be stimulated directly by a human wearing an EEG or something. I’d seen videos on instagram of the mice being made to run around mazes and do things they couldn’t have figured out so quickly on their own.

I found that stuff super fascinating. Were they going to get me to control a mouse with my own set of nanobots? Or would they try to get my arm to jerk under somebody else's control, like that BrainNet/TMS experiment back in 2019? That would be kinda hot. I shivered and felt myself get a little bit aroused.

I looked down and briefly cupped my boobs with my hands, a little gasp coming out of my mouth. Then I snapped my head up and stared at the wall across from me, throwing my hands down to the sides. Had anybody seen that?

I glanced at a camera on the wall above me. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I smiled and shrugged at it anyway. It would be super embarrassing if somebody caught me fondling myself in the waiting room, I guess I felt like I needed to apologise.

I got up, feeling a little bit clumsy and awkward, and walked over to a whiteboard on the other side of the room. I stumbled in my heels on the way and twisted my ankle a little bit. Ouch. Normally I was pretty good at walking in heels.

I went and picked up a blue pen and began to write some numbers on the board. 3, 6, 8, 1… I was just scribbling, wasting time while I waited for the experimenters to get back. I noticed I was slouching uncharacteristically as I wrote, so I thought about straightening my back. Kinda odd that I “thought” about it, instead of just doing it, but you know. I decided I was too engrossed in the drawing to muck up my positioning, so I just stayed slouched.

Maybe that was better, anyway, because my nipples were really hard. Like, eraser hard. I wanted to look down to check if they were poking through my dress, but didn’t think I could risk it. Instead I just gave one a subtle little rub as I drew on the board.

Ooooh, yes, they were hard. A huge wave of pleasure shot through me as I touched my nipple… I don’t know what’s gotten into me! I gave myself a shake and muttered to myself in embarrassment. “They should have gotten a girl to do this test.”

I’d written a few silly words like “Red” and “Pineapple” on the board, and drawn an ugly picture of a cat. Satisfied, I walked back to my seat and sat down. I shivered a little bit. It was kind of cold in here.

Thankfully, one of the researchers chose that moment to walk back into my little waiting room. He smiled at me. Yung? Was that his name? I gave him a small smile back.

“Is the experiment going to start soon? I’m getting bored just waiting here.”

“Sure, just a few questions first. Is that alright?”

He was going to follow some rigid formula for questions, I knew it. Didn’t they teach these guys how to socialise? That sort of formalism isn’t necessary in normal conversations!

“Firstly, did you notice anything strange while you were waiting here?”

Noooo, what did he mean? I wasn’t exactly going to tell him about getting horny out of the blue!

“Nope, nothing unusual. I was just waiting, nothing happened.”

“And did you write this on the board?”

“Yeah, who else would have?”

His smile grew deeper. “No, that’s great. Could you tell me why you wrote these numbers?”

“They just came into my head, is all.” I shrugged. “If I’d written a different number you would have asked why I chose that one. It’s just random.”

“Very good. And this picture of a cat, why did you draw that?”

“I just like cats.”

“You didn’t feel any unusual urge to draw a cat?” Yung asked, peering at me curiously.

“No…? I didn’t even realise it was going to be a cat until I was halfway through doodling.”

What was this guy getting at? Why was he so interested in my ugly scrawling on the wall? Funnily enough, I usually had really nice handwriting.

“Very good! Okay Gemma, we’re about ready to go to the second test, and good news! I get to explain what’s going on now!”

Yung sat down opposite me and grinned. He was really excited.

“We’re testing the first high fidelity brain-to-brain interface!”

I frowned at him. “What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means you get to be the receiver, while somebody else in the other room gets to send instructions to your brain.”

Now that was super cool. Groundbreaking, even! I wondered what it would feel like to have some technology “write” to my brain. I know it would be super crude, but still, it was going to be a hell of an experience.

“The injection you had earlier contained a solution with two trillion nano-scale neurostimulators. Another subject received a similar injection of neuro-readers, and we’ve successfully connected the two of you!”

“Wait, so, you mean you’ve already connected our brains? When does the experiment start?”

Yung laughed. “It’s already started!”

“Like, you’ve been observing our brains and now part two is to try and make my hand twitch, or something?”

“No, no, no!” Yung looked at me cheerily. “I mean we’ve already controlled you!”

“I- what? How?”

I hadn’t felt any weird jolts or muscle twitches. Except for when I stumbled in my heels, perhaps, but I think that was just me being clumsy.

“Everything you wrote on the board, Gemma, that wasn’t you. That was the other subject -- we asked him to do exactly that.”

I stared at him. Was this just some psychological test to see if you believed anything a researcher told you?

“I... think you’ve made a mistake, I was just doodling.”

“No, see, we didn’t really know how your brain would process it. Would it feel like your limbs were out of your control? Would you black out? It looks like it’s much simpler -- your brain just pretends that it was the one that made those decisions!”

“I’m not pretending! I really did decide to do all that!” I gestured at the board, frustrated. I was getting a bit loud, but Yung wasn’t listening to me at all! I think I would know if some guy with a brain interface had controlled me.

“It’s like a split brain patient, Gemma. If you cut the corpus callosum and ask one hemisphere of the brain to do something, the other half will pretend that it was it’s idea all along -- and it will make up nonsense justification. That is essentially what you’re doing now!”

This didn’t make any sense. I had decided to get up, hadn’t I? I’d… gotten horny all of a sudden. That wasn’t like me. But I’d had hot flashes before. I was still the one controlling myself, right? Come to think of it, I had acted a bit odd. I’d said “They should have gotten a girl to do this test.” out loud. Why had I said that? Why had I gotten up? Could Yung be telling the truth?

“The next test is to see if the effect remains now that you’re aware of it. I’m going to leave the room again, just sit there and do whatever comes naturally. I’ll be back to check on you in a bit.”

“Umm… okay then.”

This couldn’t be real, could it?