Have you ever wanted something you couldn't have?
I don't mean the 'forbidden fruit' angle, although that's probably part of it. I'm talking something that's actually unobtainable, something that you obsess about with every fiber of your being, but it's completely and totally out of reach. Like a baseball card collector wanting a Honus Wagner card, even though he works as a security guard and the thing costs two million bucks. We've all got something like that, I think. A sort of Holy Grail in our lives, something we'd do anything to get. Sometimes we do crazy things to get it. I mention that only because it'll help to explain a lot of what I'm about to tell you.
For me, it was Lydia. She worked with me at the technology firm I used to work for. She was in Human Resources, I was in R&D, but it was a small company in a small building, so we saw each other a lot. Lydia was a girl you'd definitely call "unobtainable". She wasn't gay, or anything. She just was one of those women who, for whatever reason, wasn't into romance. Sex, love, men, women, she just didn't care about it. Some of the guys at work called her "frigid", but I always thought that sounded kind of cruel. I always thought of her as "asexual." I remember she told me once that she'd never even masturbated before she met me...
But I'm getting ahead of myself. When I first met her, as a 22-year old engineer fresh out of college and happy to land a job, Lydia was still asexual. Very prudish, totally uninterested in romance, just got along with her job and her life and didn't seem to even know sex existed. Which is a shame, because...look, not to be mean, but when I describe a woman like that, you have a mental image of her in your head, right? Either skinny as a rail and mousy, or else about fifty pounds overweight and wearing a cardigan. But that wasn't Lydia. No, sir. Lydia was gorgeous. Drop-dead gorgeous. Skin like milk; long, lustrous black hair (she kept it in a bun, but if you ever saw it down, you'd never forget it); perfectly-toned body, with long, beautiful legs that she always kept covered up in dull, sensible skirts; and breasts that...well, she always wore bulky, unflattering outfits, so it wasn't like we got a look at them or anything, but when I finally did, they were perfect. Absolutely perfect. She had a body that would not quit. In fact, it wouldn't even punch in.
I fell in love with her the second I saw her. She shot me down cold. "Sorry," she said, "but as we have a professional relationship, it'd be a serious conflict of interest for us to fraternize in that fashion." It's cold enough just to hear the phrasing, but she put a spin on it that made it pretty obvious that I could win the lottery and quit my job, and she'd still find a reason for us not to date. I tried not to let on, but I took it pretty hard. Later, I found out that was practically a rite of passage at the company.
For the rest of the guys at work (and a few of the gals), that was it. Plenty of fish in the sea. But me, well...like I said. Unobtainable, but it didn't stop me from wanting. I got kind of nuts about it, but not at first. Work kind of kept me busy. The company was a cybernetics research firm, real cutting-edge stuff, and I was involved in some of the other end of it. After all, if you wanted to make machines that interfaced with human brains, you had to know how the brain worked as a machine. We were breaking down human thought all day, every day, reducing the brain to a two-pound computer made out of water and fatty tissues and trying to figure out how to program it. To be honest, I shouldn't even be talking to you about it, technically; some of our funding came from the government, and I think the CIA was more interested in my department than in the others. Between you and me, I think they were a lot more interested in finding ways to program the human brain like a machine than in finding ways to get the brain to program machines.
And so there I am, working on ways to reprogram the human brain, and there's Lydia, who makes my cock rock-hard just to think about her, and I'd be lying to you if I said I didn't make that connection pretty damn quick. That kept me up a few nights, giving myself the old firm handshake, if you know what I mean. Thinking about reprogramming her brain, making her more the person I wanted her to be...I'm not trying to justify it, or even apologize for it. It's not my fault temptation got put in my way, and I don't think there are many people out there who could have resisted doing what I did. Because she was the one thing I wanted that I thought I could never have.
She had something like that too, as it turned out. That was where all this started, the whole big mess I'm trying to explain to you. See, Lydia was into Dis--sorry, I better not say it. You'll understand why by the time I finish. She was into kid's cartoons, in specific a certain very large company that you're probably very familiar with, wink wink. Yeah, that's the one. Sorry, I'd say it if I could, but...you'll see. I don't want to get ahead of myself, like I said.
She loved that stuff. Everyone at work knew it. Lydia was in charge of writing the "desk decoration" policy, and she made sure that she was allowed to display the little figurines, and pictures, and all the collectible stuff she was into. And we talked--she shot me down that first day, sure, but like I said, I didn't let on how bad it bugged me, and I got to the point where we were on a first-name basis. She talked about those animated movies, and I listened, because I just liked hearing her talk, and I dunno, maybe she thought I was a fan too, or maybe she just thought I was a good listener. But she told me all about 'Peter Pan' and 'Alice in Wonderland' and all those old cartoons, and she mentioned once or twice how there was one in particular she wanted that she was never going to get. Seems it was kind of, um..."old-fashioned", let's say, about race. So it was never coming out on DVD, or video, or even back into theaters. It was the one movie she was never going to get to see, no matter how much she wanted to. Unobtainable, like I was saying.
That was my in with her. This was a couple years after I'd first met her, and we'd gotten pretty comfortable with each other--especially since I hadn't even tried putting the moves on her since that first day. So when I walked over to her cubicle, and showed her a DVD case, and said, "Guess what this is?", she was pretty cool.
Until I told her, "It's a bootleg copy of..." Um, I better not mention that either. Sorry, I swear it'll all make sense to you soon enough. But I told her the title of the movie, and she practically squealed. I invited her to my house to watch it with me, and she sort of gave me a "no funny business, OK?" look, but let's face it, I was practically holding the Holy Grail in my hand, as far as she was concerned, so that made it impossible to say anything but yes.
I'm probably not going to shock you when I say it wasn't a real bootleg copy of the movie. It was a disc based on the research I'd been doing at work, a sort of "hypnosis-by-video" DVD. I'd packed it with all sorts of suggestions, triggers, behavior modification stuff...sorry, is that your "How could you do that?" look, or your "I'm not buying this shit" look? I've gotten both. Believe me or don't, but it works. It was totally real. All I needed to do was get her to watch it, and by telling her it was really 'Song of--' By telling her it was really this movie, I could do it.
The only tricky bit was getting out of the room when it started. I told her I was making popcorn. By the time I got back, the induction part was over, and she was...she was prettier than I'd ever seen anyone, ever. She had this sort of intent look on her face, like she was absolutely rapt in concentration, her mouth was open just a little, but her eyes...they were just staring straight ahead, glassy and unfocused, drinking in all the stuff I'd put on the disc. God, she looked sexy. It took all the self-control I had not to play with her body right then and there, but I was worried that she'd wake up or something. I just watched her watching it.
When it was over, she gave me a huge hug, told me it was just like she'd imagined it (well, it would be, wouldn't it? She never actually saw the movie, she just followed the instructions on the disc that told her to remember watching it.) She even kissed me, which was more affection than she'd ever shown anyone ever in the two years I'd known her. I wanted to try the triggers right then and there, but I also knew that she should probably see the movie a few more times, just to deepen the instructions. She'd already been programmed to want to see the movie again, whenever she had free time. So I suggested she stop by tomorrow, and she said sure, and then I went to the bathroom, and when I got out, she was gone and she'd taken the disc with her. Hey, I figured, this could work out even better. She'll probably have watched it a few more times by the time I see her at work next. I really didn't expect things to turn out the way they did.
The next day at work, she was really apologetic about taking the disc, but I told her that it was OK, that she could keep it as a gift if she wanted. Hindsight being what it is, I probably shouldn't have said that, but what can I say, I was so horny right then I couldn't even think straight. I found an excuse to get her alone, and I said...well, I said something from the movie. That was the thing, all of the important words from the movie became triggers for certain behaviors. Only when she heard them in my voice, I mean it wasn't like she'd be watching TV and suddenly strip naked while watching kiddie shows or anything, but pretty much everything from the film--the title, the people who made it, the characters, the songs, they all made her do different things. So I said one of them, and suddenly she just got this look in her eyes like every single year since puberty had all hit her at once. She took my hand and dragged me off to the supply closet, and once we were inside, she pushed me up against the door, dropped to her knees, pulled down my pants, and started sucking on my cock like it was a lollipop.
To be honest, it probably wasn't the best blowjob I've ever gotten. In fact, I'd say it wasn't even in the top ten. She'd never seen a cock before in her life, she sure as hell wasn't going to turn into a professional cocksucker in one day, no matter what I'd put in her brain. But that didn't matter. It wasn't that I was getting a good blowjob, it was that I was getting a blowjob from Lydia. That was all it took. I shot my load down her throat after about three minutes.
We spent about an hour in the supply closet that day, before going back to work; that particular trigger made her forget afterwards, so I didn't have her wondering why she suddenly felt so fucking horny. I just had to have her right away, just to take the edge off. After that, I could afford to go a little slower. I used one of the other triggers on her a lot--it was the name of the company, it made her feel just a little surge of unconscious love and lust and happiness whenever I said it. Nothing much, really tiny, almost unnoticeable, but when you're around someone all the time, and they're always talking, and you keep feeling little surges of love and lust and happiness, you start to feel like maybe this person is doing something for you.
That's how it was with me and Lydia. It was nice. Within about a month, she'd kind of relaxed that "no fraternization" rule, and she and I were going out...after a couple of months, she felt comfortable enough to introduce me to one of her friends, and that was when things got a little crazy for a while.
This other woman, Darla, she was a lot like Lydia used to be, before all those triggers sort of softened up her brain and loosened her inhibitions a little. Only she didn't have a body like Lydia's, you understand. She was a little chunky, kinda had bad skin--she wasn't Quasimodo, or anything, but you could understand how she didn't have a guy in her life. But she was nice enough, and we were talking, and I kept using the Dis--the trigger I was telling you about, because I never got tired of making Lydia feel happy to be around me...understand, I really loved Lydia. Still do. I loved making her happy. I sometimes feel bad about having to cheat at it, but when I look at her body lying next to mine in the mornings, when we wake up...I don't have any regrets. I don't think she does either.
But I'm getting off-topic. The point is, I was triggering Lydia, and I noticed that Darla was kind of getting a weird expression on her face. Sort of getting all doe-eyed. Then I remembered that Lydia had taken that disc, all those months ago, and it had never even occurred to me what she'd been doing with it. I just figured she'd watched it every night, reinforcing all those triggers. But I looked over at Darla, and I got this sinking feeling in my gut.
"Honey," I said to Lydia, "did you lend Darla that movie I found for you?"
Lydia shook her head. "I made a copy for her," she said. "Actually, I made a bunch of copies for my friends; I know so many people who've been looking for it over the years, I just had to share the wealth!"
And oh, boy, did that mess with my head. Because it wasn't like it was tailored especially to Lydia; that was the whole point of the job I was doing. It was designed to work on anyone. I just didn't think anyone but Lydia would see it. But now there were god-knows-how-many copies out there, floating around among all these fans, and I just knew that some of them would make copies, and I thought about all those people watching that disc, and getting brainwashed, and getting brainwashed into loving the movie, and then maybe they'd tell their friends about it, and then their friends would want to see it, and then their friends would want copies of their own, and...
I kinda freaked. I mean, not right then and there. Right then and there I tested some of the triggers on Darla to see if they worked, and then the three of us...I mean, she wasn't hot, but what guy wouldn't want to do a threesome? At the time, I thought it might be my only chance ever. Boy, was I wrong.
Because that was right around when the whole thing went critical. See, the company that made the movie, they're a little lawsuit-happy, and so when they heard about all these bootlegs circulating, they decided to have their own little crackdown on the party. Their lawyers got ahold of a copy...and then they watched it, and suddenly they were advising their bosses to go ahead and release my bootleg in mass production. And their bosses thought they were crazy, until they watched the disc, and...yeah, that's why they finally put it out on DVD. All down to me. Not that they put the real movie out. They put out my bootleg. Decided it was better than their edition.
And of course, every review was positive. The NAACP praised it as a watershed moment in culture and race relations. They couldn't sell the thing fast enough. Everybody loved it. Everyone's got a copy at home.
For a while, I was totally freaked. Absolutely paranoid that someone would see through it and trace it back to me, or that everyone would become zombies and I'd just ended the human race or something, but y'know what? It's been about six years now since then, and nothing's happened. All the triggers are keyed to my voice anyway, so unless I happen to say something, it's just a really good movie. It's done the company a lot of good--I'm glad I bought stock in it when the whole thing started--but on the whole, I don't think it's had any real effect at all.
Except on me, of course. Because I know the truth about it all. I know that just about everyone I talk to, every single person I meet, has all these triggers in their heads. That I can just say a word or a phrase, and suddenly that person will go into a trance, or fall asleep, or freeze in place, or become my best friend, or just suddenly want to have wild, passionate sex with me. It's kind of weird. Because, you know how I was saying about that desire for "unobtainable" things making you act a little crazy from time to time? Imagine how it makes you act if there isn't anything at all that's unobtainable. If you could have anything you want, just by saying a single word. Imagine how I feel, looking at a pretty girl like you and knowing that I could get you in the sack just by saying..."zip-a-dee-doo-dah".
Yeah. It feels a lot like that.