In this prequel to the popular Conditioned to Serve stories, Mia Hansen is a test subject in billionaire inventor Sean Fisher’s research: the Prototype Asynchronous Neural Interface Communication Chair. She soon finds out that the chair can program her, the way he programs it. [Warning: this 9500-word short story contains graphic scenes of brainwashing and sex acts from the victim’s POV.]
Excerpt: Friday morning was the same routine as ever: I did some chores around the house, then I hit the grocery store and got a few things I’d run out of during the week. The whole sequence was more than a little jarring. It was like if Alice took a time out from Wonderland to figure out what detergent to buy. Or, I reflected with amusement, if Debbie stopped doing Dallas just long enough to do the dishes. The most surreal part was how easy it was to pretend that life was still normal. I didn’t have any trouble making small talk with the cashier, like I always did. It made me wonder, as I looked around people bustling about their day, what secrets laid beneath the crushing mundanity around me. If I could be planning to go away for the weekend and play secret kinky sex games with my billionaire boss, what was everybody else hiding? Was the girl looking at summer sausage near the dairy section planning to eat them, or play with them? Did the pretty girl on TV trying to sell me a new long-distance plan know as much about three-ways as she did about three-way calls? It was maddening, and it was hard to shake, even though I managed to keep my mouth shut about it throughout the day. Packing my overnight bag didn’t help either. I had no idea where I was going. Was he planning illicit hotel sex, like in the movies? If he was, did I need more than a change of clothes? Surely we wouldn’t spend much time outside the room? Or maybe we were going to a beach for real. If we were, maybe I needed a swim suit. I considered just calling him, but I could just picture Sean in a meeting with some investors, getting a call asking if his test subject needed to bring her good panties for ‘research.’ In the end, I decided it was probably smarter to just pack two bags, and wait until he’d told me where we were going before I decided to get the heavy one out of my trunk. By the time I hit the lab, I was very glad the chair would turn my brain off a while.