The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

‘Lens’

(mc, f/f, sf, nc)

DISCLAIMER: This material is for adults only; it contains explicit sexual imagery and non-consensual relationships. If you are offended by this type of material or you are under legal age in your area, do NOT continue.

SYNOPSIS:

A patrol of barbarian hunters encounters a slave caravan which has blundered into an ancient threat.

WARNING:

Story contains squicky things! If poking through someone’s skull into their brain disturbs you, this story may not be for you.

* * *

‘Lens’

Part Seven

* * *

“Come in, Senator,” the man holding the door open said.

Senator Sheila Trudeau nodded and walked into the room. The lights were slightly dimmed; an LCD projection of a State Security logo was being projected upon one of the walls. A dozen chairs, all around the same side of the large conference table, faced that wall. She looked around the room briefly, then came further in, her companion following behind.

“Okay,” Senator Trudeau said, seating herself in one of the chairs, “What am I looking at?”

A man with short hair, grayer than his face would suggest, turned to face her and leaned onto the table. “How much of the dossier were you able to read?”

“All of it,” she replied. “Doctor Eleanor Salem-South. Bioengineering. Telekinesis.” Trudeau brushed a strand of hair back from her face. “And you say it works.”

“Worse than that,” the man said. “More than that.”

“The problem,” said the man who had held open the door, “is that she has not simply developed a working method of telekinesis. Oh no. That would be disruptive enough.” He touched a black panel next to the now-closed door, and three red lights illuminated next to his finger. “No, Doctor Salem-South has unlocked the whole Pandora’s box, and I’m not sure there’s any hope at the bottom.” The man seated himself at the end of the table.

“Senator, this is Doctor Fuller,” the short-haired man said. “Closest thing to an expert we could find.”

“There are no experts,” Fuller said, “because the field did not exist until now. Telekinesis. Poppycock. Mental telepathy. Rubbish. I’ve studied the biomechanics of the human brain for thirty-seven years and until last month I would have told you that the brain simply does not work that way.”

“But now you say it does,” Senator Trudeau said.

Fuller frowned. “Not unaided, no. But Dr. Salem-South has found that aid. And it terrifies me, and it should terrify you, too.”

Trudeau turned in her chair. The woman who had accompanied her and was now sitting in the next chair over wore rimless glasses and had her hair pinned up above a midnight blue bespoke suit. She said nothing but nodded at Trudeau. Trudeau turned back to the men.

“Let’s begin, then.”

The man with the close-cropped hair gestured and an aide standing at the back wall tapped a keyboard. The StaSec logo disappeared, replaced by video of a medium-large conference room. A dozen men and women were seated at a semi-circular table; a rectangular table faced them. At the rectangular table were seated two women in white blouses, one middle-aged, one slightly younger.

“If you would then, Doctor,” said an older man at one end of the semi-circular table, “please proceed.”

“Gladly,” said the middle-aged woman. She rose from her seat. “You’ve all read my abstract, at least. I expect skepticism—indeed I welcome it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I am here today to provide that evidence.”

Her audience said nothing. One of them sipped from a glass of water.

Salem-South lifted a white cloth off of a round box resting atop her table. The box underneath was clear, and inside it sat a glistening mottled gray lump.

“This is the octopus?” one of the seated women asked.

“Cuttlefish,” Salem-South replied. “Although this organism has as much in common with a cuttlefish as a high-performance automobile does with a hopper car of iron ore. The cuttlefish was merely the starting point, the organic body that has become the biological platform to keep the enhancement matrix alive.”

Salem-South paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and then reached up and took off her hair.

Among the spectators at the table there were raised eyebrows but no exclamations of surprise. Salem-South set her wig aside and sat down. Her companion then rose and picked up a thin, glittering silver cloth, which she carefully began to arrange atop Salem-South’s shaven head.

“This fabric apparatus is an interface,” Salem-South said. “It allows the enhancement matrix to connect with my mind—and vice versa. The connection is unfortunately rather crude but this is an area where you should expect rapid improvement... if funding is forthcoming.”

None of the onlookers responded.

After a moment of careful smoothing and arranging, Salem-South’s assistant appeared satisfied with the arrangement of the silver cloth. Then she turned and carefully removed the clear lid of the round box, which she set aside. She reached into the box and carefully took hold of the greyish mass of flesh.

The video audience watched intently. So did Senator Trudeau.

The cuttlefish, or former cuttlefish, did not move as Salem-South’s assistant raised it out of the box, turned, and lowered it onto Salem-South’s head.

For a moment it just sat there—but then it began to expand, flattening itself along the top of her head, sagging down over her forehead and back over her occipital bone, sort of like it was melting. After expanding for a few moments, and a few inches, it stopped.

Salem-South looked somewhat silly, her eyebrows barely visible beneath the overhang of the greyish flesh.

“I shall now begin the demonstration,” she said.

The room was perfectly still. Salem-South seemed to be staring straight ahead past the semi-circular table, her eyes focused on nothing in particular.

A pitcher of water rose into the air.

There were surprised inhalations.

Pens lifted off from the semi-circular table. They hung, bouncing slightly, in the air.

“As you can... see,” Salem-South said, her voice strained, “I can move objects with just... the use... of my thoughts. I do lack... fine motor control. I could... not pour, that pitcher. Although I could... dump it... on Doctor Alberti’s head.”

There were some chuckles.

“The precise... limits... of this ability,” Salem-South went on, “are really... unknown. So far the... heaviest item I have... been able to lift... weighed fifty kilograms.”

The pitcher lowered itself to the surface of the table. A splash of water sloshed over the side.

“Pick... anything you like...” Salem-South said, “and I will... move it.”

“This book,” a man said, holding up a textbook. Immediately, it wobbled and rose into the air.

“Can you lift the tablecloth?” said the woman next to him. All along the front of the semi-circular table, the cloth rose, then fell back down.

“Alan,” someone said, and there were chuckles.

“I suppose... he can’t weigh... much more... than fifty kilos...” Salem-South said.

“Now hang on, I- woah!”

A middle-aged man—who clearly weighed a lot more than fifty kilos—was slowly rising, still seated on his chair, into the air.

Slowly, two meters or so from the floor, he rotated in the air.

“I hope... that should be... a sufficient demonstration,” Salem-South said, and all of the levitating objects slowly lowered themselves back to a flat surface, including the man on the chair, who looked obviously relieved.

Salem-South’s assistant quickly stood up and gently worked her fingers under the edges of the cuttle-thing, then lifted it away. The neural interface cloth clung to it; the assistant worked that free, then put the slimy gray mass back into the clear box.

She took out a spray bottle and misted it as Salem-South spoke to the panel.

“I trust you are satisfied?” she asked, turning to face all of the people in the room. “With additional funding... the sky may not even be the limit.”

A man at the end of the table slowly rose to his feet. He brought his hands together once, twice, and slowly began to applaud.

They all did.

The video froze.

“So,” Senator Trudeau said. “She can do it.”

“Oh yes,” the short-haired man replied. “And more. What Doctor Salem-South did not know—and what none of the people in that room knew—is that StaSec had actually set this whole meeting up. Everyone in there thinks they are performing a review of her funding. In actuality, the room was a very special room. StaSec spent quite a lot of money turning it into a giant brain scanner. EEG, MEG, fNIR, fMRI... shit, everything we know how to do and several things we don’t are built into the walls and floor of that room.”

“Some of those technologies are of course not very worthwhile at range,” Fuller interjected. “But we have applied methods to compensate. What I’d really like to show you now, though, are the Markland readings.”

“Markland. That’s a way to measure decision making?”

He nodded. “Precisely.” On the wall, the image of the room full of people disappeared, replaced by a list of eighteen names next to eighteen charts, looking rather like audio spectrum bars. “This technology is actually used by marketing firms. Ask an individual their opinion of some product. Expose them to some marketing. Then ask again. Generally speaking, changes in their Markland readings indicate shifts in opinion.”

“Yes, we used them in my campaign,” Trudeau observed.

“Very well then. What you see here are the Markland readings of the men and women in that room when Salem-South first mentions ‘if funding is forthcoming’. I will observe at this point that we had, entirely without the knowledge of the participants, selected the individuals who were the least skeptical and most likely to support her project.”

“The most likely? Not the least?”

“We were aiming for a baseline of minimum change. Had they been opposed, and then seen this demonstration, we would expect significant changes in their Markland readings. But as these individuals were already enthused about Salem-South’s work, we would expect minimal changes in their attitudes.”

“Ah.”

“Okay,” the short-haired man said. “Roll it.”

The video leapt back to the start of the presentation and resumed playing again, this time surrounded by the eighteen Markland bars. They watched as the cuttle-thing was placed on Salem-South’s head, as she picked up the pitcher, as she lifted the pens. The Markland charts fluctuated a little, random noise as the spectators watched the demonstration. Perhaps some of the bars were higher after the levitations began.

“Now,” Fuller said quietly, “watch the bars.”

Senator Trudeau looked at the bars. Suddenly, the one labeled “S. Singh” bent, the left third of the reading rising smoothly almost to the top of the meter.

A moment later, the one labeled “T. Lopez” did the same. Then the one labeled “F. Chao”. Then another. Then another.

By the time that “G. Brown” was slowly rotating around in the air, every single one of the Markland charts was bent almost to the top in its left third.

The video stopped.

“Afterwards,” the short-haired man said, “every individual who had been in that room demanded that Salem-South receive the maximum amount of additional funding. In some cases even more, laughable amounts, about which they were dead serious.”

Senator Trudeau’s mouth was slightly open, staring at the screen.

“Mental telepathy, Senator Trudeau,” the short-haired man said. “One by one, she made them support her project.”

“Mind control,” the senator whispered.

“Precisely,” Fuller said.

She blinked, and looked around. “So what do we do?”

The short-haired man shrugged. “That’s for your people to decide. We’ve briefed the president, and he wanted your committee in on this.”

Trudeau turned and looked at the spectacled woman next to her. “What do you think?”

The woman frowned. “Lock her away,” she said. “Impound all of her equipment, lock her away, and throw away the key.”

* * *

Vincenzo Maffeo looked up at the tank and frowned.

It was one of a dozen tanks which ringed the room. Two were empty, lids open, containing only air. Two more were filled with fluid, mostly salt water but with additives giving the liquid a greenish hue.

The other eight were occupied. Floating in the center of each were fleshy blobs, rounded on top with short thick psuedopods dangling downward, looking rather like jellyfish sans their tentacles. They were various mottled shades of gray, tinted green by the solution they were floating in.

Vincenzo inspected the one in the tank in front of him, then looked down at the tank itself. Each tank rested on a complex mechanical stand, with the rounded glass tank set at just above head height. The thing in the tank was very much alive—it would move occasionally, the skin rippling or flexing for a moment, then lapsing back into quiescence.

“So now you’ve met my babies,” came a voice from behind him.

He turned around. “Eleanor.”

Eleanor Salem-South smiled widely and spread her arms. “Vinnie,” she replied, and they embraced, Vincenzo kissing her cheeks thrice.

“It’s good to see you, Vinnie,” she said.

“And you,” he replied. He looked around the lab. “This... is something.”

“Isn’t it? It works, Vinnie, I’ve done it. Telekinesis, telepathy, the whole shooting match.”

He nodded. “I am exceedingly surprised that it works but not at all surprised that it was you who have done it, Eleanor. You always were the best of us.”

“Pish,” she said, looking away with a smile. “Just the craziest.”

“Crazy, genius, the difference is very fine,” he replied with a wave of his hand. “So where do you stand?”

She beamed. “Fully funded. Twenty-five million. I can build a new facility, state of the art, and move out of this concrete subbasement.”

He whistled. “Twenty-five? What strings?”

“None.” She looked smug. “I have complete discretion.”

Vincenzo raised an eyebrow and looked around. “No minders? No goals, contractual obligations? And this is the government you are dealing with?”

“I have to provide bi-annual reports. That’s it.”

“Liberating.”

“It works, Vinnie,” she said. “All I had to do was pick up the committee chairman and fly him around the room a little, and they were eating from the palm of my hand.”

“I’ll bet. They weren’t frightened?”

“Of what? No, they loved it. What’s there to be scared of?”

“Well, the telepathy. This are the authorities you are working with, they tend to shy away from anything that could pry into their secrets. Your government is the same as mine.”

“Ah.” She looked away. “Well, I kind of... downplayed that aspect of it.”

Vinnie frowned at her. “You mean you didn’t tell them that you could read their minds.”

“I couldn’t! So I didn’t. But... well, yes. I only mentioned the telekinesis. I didn’t... I didn’t mention the telepathy.”

He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. “You know what you’re getting into. I am of course the soul of discretion.” He looked around the room at the tanks, the racks of equipment. So,” he said spreading his arms, “what’s next?”

Salem-South walked across the room and picked up what looked like a silver handkerchief. “The biggest problem I’m facing,” she said, “is the interface. Alicia did a fantastic job of designing the wearable interface, but really using it is like trying to look through a painted-over window. All the power of the enhancement matrix is right there,” she said, holding up the metallic cloth of the interface, “but I can’t use ninety percent of it because the interface is so inexact.”

“So,” Vincenzo said, taking the cloth from her hands and holding it up to look at it, “a better interface?”

“Exactly. A better interface. A biological interface.”

He raised an eyebrow again. “Wait, another creature, to help you communicate with the creature you have already created?”

She shook her head. “It’s not a creature, Vinnie, it’s an enhancement matrix. It has no drives, it can’t reproduce, it doesn’t even have a mouth, all its nourishment is fed into the circulatory system. It’s a lump of living cells, not a creature. Anyway—no, not another creature, that would be silly. A better creature.”

“An enhanced enhancement matrix?”

She laughed. “Yes, exactly.” She gestured at one of the tanks, in which floated yet another greyish blob. “For the last year, actually, I’ve been working on this problem, and I’m very close to having it solved. You see on that matrix, that phallus-like piece there on the bottom?”

“If you think that’s a phallus, Eleanor, you need to get out more often.”

She laughed again. “Thank you for your concern about my social life. That is hopefully the very last precursor to my goal: a direct cerebral interface.”

Vincenzo’s smile evaporated. “Wait. You want to connect one of these things directly to someone’s brain?”

Salem-South nodded enthusiastically. “Precisely. Take out the interface entirely; the enhancement matrix will simply be part of the brain, will respond—”

“I think this is a bad idea, Eleanor.”

She had been walking towards the tank, gesturing; at the tone of his voice she dropped her arms and turned around. “What?”

“It’s too soon. I know you have been working on these... matrices, for years, Eleanor, but it’s too soon. You’re thinking like a technician, not a biologist.” He gestured with an arm. “You have tamed this creature, grown it from nothing, turned it into your tool—but it is not a hammer, nor a computer, nor even an airplane. You have not built it from inert matter. You have taken biology and turned it to your ends—but it can, no it will, surprise you yet. No, do not connect these things to someone’s brain.”

She frowned. “Vinnie, that’s almost insulting. I have designed and built these from the cellular level. There are no surprises.”

“With life, there are always surprises. Once this was a cuttlefish, Eleanor. Some of that still remains. It cannot feed itself, it cannot reproduce, it just sits there—but what does it want? Make no mistake, life wants.”

He clapped a fist into a hand. “Communications goes two ways, Eleanor. If a brain connects directly to this thing, this thing will connect directly to that brain.”

Salem-South waved a hand dismissively. “No, that’s rubbish. I thought better of you, Vinnie. ‘Life wants’. What poppycock.”

“Eleanor, I have worked on modifying foods my entire career. That is... peanuts, compared to this. Yet do you know the problems we have found? The unanticipated behaviors? And we test so thoroughly... No. I tell you, as a colleague and as a friend, that any sort of interface where the matrix can connect to the biology of the user, is a bad idea.”

She looked at him, frowning. Then she shrugged. “Fine. I respect you, Vinnie, and I will take your opinion under advisement.”

“Meaning you will disregard it entirely,” he said.

She chuckled. “No. Not this time. I think you may be right, it may be too... what was that?”

There was a loud bang, which came from the room at the top of the stairs.

The scientists shared a look. “But there’s nothing electrical—” Salem-South began, then stopped as a figure appeared at the top of the stairs.

It was a woman in a dark suit, brunette hair cropped short, wearing squared-off glasses. She took in the large basement laboratory at a glance. Then, as the two individuals in the lab watched, she descended the stairs and began to speak.

“Kirkwald, get the samples into evac vessels. Lawrence, I want all the conduit identified and closed. Gomez, I want sequential shutdowns as soon as Kirkwald is finished. Start right there and go clockwise, we’ll call that one, two, three...” More figures in similar dark suits appeared behind her and trailed down the stairs in her wake.

The shock passed and Salem-South’s countenance darkened with anger. “What the hell do you think you are doing?” she demanded as the woman reached the laboratory floor. “Who the hell are you?”

“Doctor Salem-South,” the woman said, and it was not a question. “I am taking you into custody. Doctor Maffeo, I’m afraid I will have to ask you to come as well. If either of you resist, we will use force, so I advise you not to take that option.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Salem-South demanded again. “Who are you? You don’t have the right—”

The woman in the suit reached for Salem-South’s shoulder; the scientist reflexively pulled it away. In a flash the suited woman changed speed and angle and grabbed Salem-South hard, turning her one hundred eighty degrees, pinning her arms behind her back, and slapping a pair of handcuffs on her.

“I did advise you,” she said, as Salem-South’s mouth gaped in shock. “We are taking you into custody. Further resistance and you will be tased and carried out.”

The woman looked at Vincenzo, who shrugged and held his wrists together. “Force will be unnecessary,” he said. “But are you not going to read us our rights? I thought you people did that.”

“We’re not the police,” the woman said, then frowned at something behind him. “What—”

STOP

DO NOT MOVE

The words were unsaid, inaudible—they rang directly inside the brain, so loud they seemed to vibrate.

Everyone stopped moving. The half-dozen suited figures moving around the tanks, the woman with the glasses, both of the scientists, everyone.

Light spilled across the floor as a door at the back of the lab swung fully open.

Alicia Knox, graduate student, stepped out of the interface development lab, a gray blob of flesh draped across the top of her head.

LIE DOWN

At once, everyone in the lab—in fact, everyone within a four hundred meter radius—lay down on the floor.

DO NOT MOVE

No one moved. Except for Alicia Knox, who walked quickly across the laboratory floor.

Salem-South stared wordlessly up at her as she knelt down.

“I’m so sorry, Eleanor, I can’t get the control any finer...” The slim brunette bent down onto one knee and focused on her mentor. “Listen to me, Eleanor Salem-South, and do as I say: you may move as you like.”

Salem-South shivered, then raised her hand. Knox took it and pulled, and together they stood up.

“No worries, Alicia,” Salem-South said, shaking a little. “You did just the right thing. I’m... grateful.”

“We need to get out of here,” Knox said. “We have to go.”

“Yes, I... yes,” Salem-South replied. “Just... I have to know what’s going on. Have her—” she indicated the spectacled woman on the floor “—answer my questions.”

Knox knelt down next to the other woman and focused her attention on her. “You. Agent. You are calm and relaxed. You are not worried. You will answer Doctor Salem-South’s questions quietly and truthfully. Other than that, you will not move or speak.”

The woman’s eyes seemed to dilate as Knox spoke to her, and her mouth twitched.

“Okay,” Knox said, rising. “But hurry, Eleanor, please.”

Salem-South stood over the woman. “Tell me, briefly, what’s going on.”

“We’re arresting you,” the woman said in a strange, detached tone. “And shutting down your lab.”

“Why?”

“You’re dangerous. You’ve invented mind control. You have to be stopped.”

Salem-South frowned. “Who sent you? Who are you with?”

“State Security sent us.”

“Are there more of you waiting outside? How many of you are there? Will we be able to get away?”

“There aren’t more outside, we didn’t expect trouble. My team is sixteen. You can probably get away from here, but there’s no point. We’ll hunt you down. You have to be stopped—it’s priority at the highest-highest...”

The woman’s head nodded drunkenly, and then her eyes rolled up. A trickle of blood ran out of her left nostril.

“Sorry,” Knox said. “She was really fighting it.”

“No matter.” Salem-South looked around. “We have to get out of here. Get... get specimens eighteen and twenty-five, pack them up, I’ll get the computers, and... and...” She shook her head.

Knox looked at her. “What are we going to do, Eleanor?” she asked in a quiet voice.

Salem-South turned and looked back with a distant expression. “I don’t know. I hadn’t... if they know, if they have to shut us down, I don’t know...” she raised her hands. “I don’t see, long-term... what we can do.”

She took a step forward and put her hands on her assistant’s shoulders. “Alicia. It’s me they want. You can stay, cut a deal with them. They have no idea—”

Knox shook her head violently. “No. I won’t leave you. It wouldn’t matter, anyway. They want us both put in a hole from which we won’t return. There is nowhere for me to go either—except with you.”

For a long moment, Salem-South looked into her eyes. Then she nodded. “Right. Okay. Well, if long-term is... out, we’ll just have to proceed a single step at a time. I’ll pack the computers, you get the specimens and the cell cultures. Ten minutes. We’ll leave in the van; I’ll switch the plates with—”

She stopped, and looked at Vincenzo Maffeo, looking up at her from the floor.

Salem-South frowned. “Vinnie. I’m so sorry about this.” She looked over at her assistant. “Alicia, tell him that he can move again.”

“Vincenzo Maffeo, you can move as you like.”

Maffeo groaned and rolled to his side.

The women raced around the room, packing equipment into cases and dragging them up the stairs. The suited figures on the floor remained immobile, save for an occasional groan.

A few moments later, Knox disappeared upstairs with the second creature in a miniature version of a tank, green fluid and all. For a moment the room was still. Then Salem-South came back alone out of the upper room and looked down the stairs.

“Good bye, Vinnie,” she said. “I... I’ve got to go.”

He was on his knees. He looked up at her, the light from the doorway turning her form into a silhouette.

He waved a hand, and whether it was a benediction or a dismissal was impossible to tell.

* * *

The young woman closed the trunk of the car and took the grocery bags in her hands. She walked to the outdoor staircase and ascended to the motel’s second story, then walked along the external corridor to room 216. After setting the bags down, she looked around, scanning the parking lot, the highway, the treeline of the woods the motel nestled in.

Satisfied, she slipped the keycard into the lock. The light flickered green and she pushed the door open, holding it ajar with a foot as she retrieved the bags.

It was dark inside, so she flipped the lightswitch with an elbow. The room’s occupant groaned.

“I picked up some snacks,” the arrival said, putting the bags down on the table next to the window. She carefully closed the door and flipped the deadbolt. “Some of those shrimp chips that you like.”

“Gng,” the other woman said in a gravelly voice, sitting up in the bed. “Thnks.” Her hands rose to rub at her temples, which were bandaged—her entire head above the eyebrows was wrapped in beige gauze.

“How are you feeling?” the younger woman asked, crossing to the bed. The dark roots of her hair were just beginning to show beneath the bright yellow of the dye. She leaned onto the bed and handed the other woman a bottle of orange juice.

The woman in bed took it and drank gratefully. She stretched her face, eyes blinking blearily. “Like hell,” she said. “But only perhaps the third or fourth circle. Not down in the ice any more.”

The other woman nodded, and sat in a chair. “Well, that’s good.”

The room was quiet for a moment.

“That was the last of the cash,” the younger woman said.

“Then I guess it’s time,” the woman in the bed said.

“What? You’re not even beginning to heal up,” the other woman objected. “You need more time.”

The woman in the bed shook her head, and turned around to put her feet on the floor. “Twenty-five won’t survive much longer,” she said. “And when it dies... that’s it. Unless we do this now, we have no way of defending ourselves, or getting adequate lab facilities—or even getting any more money. If we wait longer they’ll find us and we’ll be defenseless.”

“It’s too risky,” Knox said. “If you get infected...”

Salem-South laughed. “I think that’s the least of our worries. If we do this and I’m wrong and twenty-five dies and I get an infection, you can take me to a hospital. If we do this and I’m wrong and twenty-five doesn’t die, I’ll probably wind up a vegetable, if I don’t simply die immediately.”

Knox frowned. “Don’t be so flippant.”

Salem-South rose from the bed, putting out a hand to steady herself against the wall. “I’m sorry, Alicia. But this is what we have to do. If we don’t, we might as well have given up a month ago. This is the next step—the only step. We need a Lens Mentis to keep going. Eighteen is already dead. It has to be now.”

“I know. I just...” Knox sighed. “It is the next step. But... it frightens me.”

Salem-South walked across the room and put her hand on Knox’s shoulder. “Alicia. It will be all right. I designed it. We designed it. Everything will be the way we expect it to.”

Knox looked up at her, started to reply, then stopped and gave a curt nod.

Salem-South nodded back. “Okay. Then get it. No time like the present.”

Knox stood up and went to the bathroom.

With a sigh, the other woman sat down on a chair, facing the room’s mirror. She began to unwrap the bandages around her head.

In the mirror, her shaven head began to appear, the gauze pulling away to reveal a large cloth dressing stained with blood. Wincing, she peeled the fabric away.

The edges of the hole in her head were still a scabby crust.

Knox reappeared from the bathroom with the jar of fluid containing number twenty-five. She winced as she saw the circular hole that she had cut in her mentor’s head, but drew near and set the jar down atop the desk.

“So what’s this ‘Lens Mentis’ business,” she asked as she unscrewed the top of the jar. “When that happen?”

“Do you like it? It came to me in a dream,” Salem-South replied. “More romantic than ‘enhancement matrix’, don’t you think?”

“I guess. You know that ‘lens’ is Latin for ‘lentil’, right? So what I’ve got here in this jar is a... ‘mental lentil’? A ‘mind bean’?”

Salem-South blinked, then snorted. It turned into a chuckle and then something more, something ragged, and Knox joined her and they laughed crazily until tears rolled down their eyes.

The blob in the jar rippled.

Salem-South wiped her cheek, and gasped in a breath. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’m ready. Bring on the mental lentil.”

Knox nodded, serious again. She tore open a package of latex gloves and pulled them on. Then, gingerly, she reached into the jar.

Twenty-five looked much like the other creatures had, mottled gray flesh similar in shape to a jellyfish; only, like a jellyfish, twenty-five had a collection of short, fleshy tendrils dangling from a beneath its center.

Knox lifted it out and watched as the greenish fluid dripped off its body.

“Alicia—” Salem-South suddenly said.

“Yes?”

Salem-South had been looking away, staring at the curtains, but now she looked back over her shoulder at her assistant. “I don’t... It’s been an honor, Alicia. A lot has happened and a lot of it is... stuff that I would not have wanted. But I really only... regret... one thing.”

Knox’s vision blurred.

“I regret not having the time... not spending the time to give you the love that you deserve,” Eleanor Salem-South said.

Knox inhaled through her nose.

“Whatever happens,” Salem-South said, looking away again, “Know this. I know you love me. And I.. I think I could, I do, love you. And I’m sorry it’s taken this for me to realize that I should have said so long ago. That I should have... taken the time for it, for you, long ago. I’m sorry, Alicia.”

The cuttlefish dripped.

Salem-South’s head drooped. “Do it,” she said quietly.

Knox gently brought the Lens Mentis into position above the crusted hole in Salem-South’s skull; within, she could see the wet shine of Salem-South’s dura mater. Slowly, carefully, so that the tendrils all dangled down into the hole, she lowered the fleshy thing onto Salem-South’s head.

“That feels... remarkably strange,” Salem-South breathed.

A moment later, and the fleshy body of the creature rested on Salem-South’s skull. She seemed calm save for her breathing, which raced through her nostrils, and her hands, which gripped the armrests with white knuckles.

“Are you okay?” Knox asked.

“Frightened,” her mentor replied. “I know intellectually that this will work but emotionally I’m not sure this was... was... oh. I can feel something.” She looked up at Knox. “Maybe I should have been sedated for this?”

“Do you want to be? I think I’ve got some—”

“No. No, I... I need to, oh—that’s strange...”

Salem-Smith suddenly lurched to the side, and Knox had to lunge to catch her and keep her from toppling the chair.

“Alicia, I think...” Salem-South closed her eyes. “I think you need to tape me to the chair.”

Knox fetched the roll of duck tape from the grocery bags. Salem-South sat quietly, breathing deliberately, as she returned.

“You sure?” Knox asked.

Salem-South nodded fractionally. “Yes.”

Knox pried up the end of the tape and began to loop it around Salem-South and the chair. Her mentor sat quietly as she was tied down, her torso strapped to the chair back, her arms bound to the arms of the chair. When Knox finished with the tape she dragged the chair over between the room’s two beds, to prevent it from tipping sideways.

“Mental Lentil,” Salem-South chuckled softly, then cried out.

“Eleanor!” Knox darted around to her front, knelt to look up into her face.

“You’ll need to,” Salem-South rasped, “gag me. Can’t have the neighbors- oh, that’s- uhhhh-can’t have the neighbors, neighbors...” She looked at Knox and her eyes were hugely dilated. “Gag me, Alicia. Use the tape.”

Frowning, Alicia tore off a strip of duct tape and pressed it over Salem-South’s mouth.

Salem-South let her head droop again. Then her arms flexed, fighting against the tape lashing them to the chair’s arms, and she moaned into the tape.

With her mouth taped shut, she couldn’t reassure Knox that they had simulated this two hundred times, that the theory was sound, that the bioengineered creature now burrowing into her brain would behave exactly as it was designed to. That there wouldn’t be any surprises, and that everything would be fine.

Alicia tried to tell herself these things, but it didn’t work.

* * *

Sleeping was out of the question. Salem-South would sit quietly for an hour, then would suddenly thrash and cry out, her muscles straining against the tape holding her. Her eyes were wild, crazy. What was harder on Knox, sometimes they filled with tears.

Eventually, sitting in the room’s other chair facing her mentor, Knox slipped into an uncomfortable doze.

She woke with bright sunlight on her face.

Frowning, squinting, she turned her head to look at the open curtains—open curtains! Shocked awake, she looked at Eleanor’s chair.

It was empty. The ruptured duck tape hung like a limp miasma around it.

Knox looked around in panic. The door was closed, their purses undisturbed... who had opened the curtains? If StaSec had found them, they wouldn’t have just taken Eleanor...

As she stood up, she had a vague memory. Had she been hearing something? A noise, a soft crashing... the shower.

She turned to look at the bathroom just as Salem-South came walking out: totally nude, a towel in her hand.

Almost totally nude. Around her eyes there was a strip of black fabric, tied like a blindfold. On the top of her head, the gray flesh of the Lens glistened wetly.

Salem-South smiled. “Ah good, you’re awake.”

Knox shot to her feet. “Are you okay?”

The naked woman laughed, casting the towel to the side. “Am I okay? A fair question. No, my dear Alicia, I am not okay. I am better than that.”

She walked forward slowly, placing one foot in front of the other as though she were striding a catwalk. “I am not okay. I am improved, I am perfected. I am one with the Lens and all its power is at my mental fingertips. It worked, Alicia, it worked perfectly.”

Knox watched Salem-South’s approach with an odd feeling. “What’s—is something wrong with your eyes?”

Salem-South shook her head. “No. Nothing is wrong with them. But I’m sensing the world through the Lens, now, it’s giving me so much more information, and it’s feeding that information to my brain through my visual cortex. If I also use my eyes... it gets confusing.”

Still stark naked, Salem-South stopped an arms length away from her assistant. “Oh, Alicia, this is truly wonderful. The Lens has bonded to me and I to it. We are one organism now, and all of its power is only a thought away.”

She raised her hand, and the curtains closed. Then, one of the beds rose, and slowly began to rotate in the air.

“It’s... trivial, Alicia. These parlor tricks. They take no effort at all. And the telepathy... I can see the minds of everyone in this motel, I can slip into their minds at will and... and do as I wish with them. Erase, change, insert new thoughts, new beliefs... I understand so much, Alicia. More than I had ever anticipated. It’s... it’s wonderful.”

“And can you read my mind?” Knox asked.

Salem-South smiled and stepped right into her, her nipples pressing against the front of Knox’s shirt, her breath stirring Knox’s hair.

“You’re not them, Alicia, not one of those mouth-breathing idiots who pump our gas or hunt us with tasers. You’re mine, my love, and as soon as possible you will know the bliss that I know. You will join me in power and understanding.”

Knox’s mouth felt dry.

“I know, Alicia,” Salem-South continued, her voice low and husky, “what we must do. I understand. The Lens has shown me our purpose.”

Knox’ shirt began to unbutton itself.

“Purpose?” Knox whispered.

“Why yes,” Salem-South husked, leaning over to breathe on Knox’s ear. “Our purpose. The Lens and I are one organism now; what I want, it wants. And what it wants... I want. And what we want is quite simple, quite pure.”

Eleanor licked Knox’s ear.

“To reproduce.”

Knox felt dizzy, horny and confused. Her shirt was gone, her bra had opened itself and slithered off her arms. Now her pants were sliding down her legs. “Reproduce..?”

Salem-South began to slip downward, her tongue tracing patterns across Alicia’s chest. “Oh yes. We need to make improvements, of course, that’s where we must start. We need to design better Lenses, much better, more powerful, more independent... and with those Lenses, we will create better humans. There’s so much to be done, Alicia, so much to improve, a whole world to make right.”

Down on her knees, Salem-South looked up at Knox with blindfolded eyes. Her mouth wore a crooked smile.

“Is that a program you can commit to?”

Alicia paused, then slowly nodded.

Eleanor grinned, and put her mouth on Knox’s pussy.

* * *

“We’ve spent fifteen billion and it’s still non-functional?”

Colonel Nissir nodded.

On the viewscreen, the Premier frowned. “Fifteen billion and... no matter. Shut it down, Nissir. I want that facility mothballed by the end of this month. We’re done pouring money down that particular rat hole.”

“Yes, Premier.”

A thousand miles away, the leader of the country scratched the side of his nose. “Okay then. Anything else?”

“No, Premier.”

“Then see to it.”

The viewscreen went dark.

“Sir?”

Colonel Nissir looked to his side to find a man in a white lab coat looking back at him.

He felt dizzy. Detached.

“Sir? What now?”

Nissir shook his head and tried to focus. “Well, Mr. Lee, as you saw, the Premier has instructed us to shut down the project.”

“And?”

Nissir turned away from the viewscreen. He began to walk.

“And... I think we have to assume that the Premier has been taken over by the squids.”

The scientist almost missed a step. “Sir?”

Nissir kept walking. He approached the elevator at the back of the room and punched the button to summon it.

“But if they’ve gotten to the Premier...” Lee tailed off.

The elevator arrived and the colonel and the scientist stepped inside. From within his jacket, the colonel removed an access card and a small metal key. He held the access card against a reader, then slipped the key into a red-lacquered hole and turned it. The doors closed.

“Then there are no major nations that remain free,” Nissir said as the elevator began to descend.

Forty years. Forty years since the squids had appeared, parasitic shrouds on the heads of their victims, capable of telekinetic feats and almost instant, irresistible mind control.

Forty years for them to take over the world.

The elevator descended, and descended.

“What do we do?” asked Lee.

The colonel looked at him. “Is Labrys ready?”

Lee nodded. “Yes, sir. It’s ready. But...”

“But?”

“To use it, sir. It would kill...” Lee trailed off.

The elevator stopped.

The door opened.

The room beyond the door was massive, fifty meters across and easily twenty meters high at the center of the domed ceiling. It was filled with computer equipment; a dozen technicians stood at various monitors and consoles.

The technicians had all turned to look at the open elevator.

The colonel walked out, Lee following alongside.

He walked toward the center of the room; a railing encircled the twenty meters at the center of the room, providing an overlook at the room’s sunken core.

Nissir walked to the railing and looked down at the massive lump of flesh and metal that pulsed below.

“Fully operational,” he said.

“Yes sir,” Lee replied. “Of course, we’ve never run a live test...”

“But it should work.”

“Yes sir. But...”

Nissir turned to look at Lee. “Would any of us survive?”

Lee shook his head. “No, sir. Certainly not. Not this close.”

“But it would get all of them. Worldwide.”

Lee nodded. “Yes, sir. The satellites are in position, and the Lenses should act as repeaters. It should... well, with their abilities they will all hear it. All around the world. But....”

“But the collateral damage would include... almost everyone else.”

Lee was sweating. “Yes, sir. Like I said, the Lenses would act as repeaters, and... well... we really don’t know...”

Nissir looked down into the pit. Twenty tons of flesh, based on the biology of the Lenses themselves. Twenty tons, covered in sensors and monitors and structural enhancements... all so that it could say—so that it could think—one single word.

Nissir felt dizzy again as he realized.

This was it.

Either... either he used Labrys, or the squids took over the world.

Nissir thought of his wife, and son. They were a thousand miles away and deep in a bunker; perhaps he had known the choice might come to him.

Would it be deep enough? Would it be far enough?

Could he do this?

Sweat was running down Lee’s face, now. Every technician in the room had drawn near to where they stood and was watching.

“Sir? What do we do, sir?”

Suddenly, Nissir walked across the room. He took out another small metal key and used it to open a titanium panel. Inside, there was a small screen, next to a keypad.

Nissir looked at the assembled technicians.

Billions of lives.

But billions was just a number. His son was a person.

“Gentlemen,” the colonel said.

“For freedom.”

He tapped six numbers into the keypad.

Down in the pit, the flesh lurched, goaded into action and then into thought, a single pre-programmed thought which it absorbed and then suddenly broadcast with all of the unbelievable power it had been designed and built to unleash.

DIE.

* * *

End

Part Seven