The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Kenny’s Kenneyville Diner, Thursday

“So, do you want to hear something kind of ironic?”

The brunette raised her arms and rested her interlaced hands on top of her head. She leaned back against the overstuffed naugahyde booth, bemused. “Maaaaayyyybe?”

Paul took that as a ‘yes,’ and continued. “When I was sixteen, I won this essay-writing contest my town put on every year. The theme was ‘What would you do if you had just one day left on Earth?’”

“That seems pretty heavy for a bunch of sixteen-year-olds.”

“I guess. You know what I didn’t write about, though?”

She smiled. A beautiful, sincere smile. “Eating your own weight in hash browns in a greasy diner that hasn’t been updated since 1974?”

“Bingo!”

“Well.” Nicole pulled some paper napkins from a slightly dented chrome box, handing half the stack to Paul. “That probably would have won you a prize too, just saying. What did you actually write about?”

“That I wouldn’t do anything different at all. That I would just go about my day like any other day. Because there’s no point in trying to make your last day a thousand times better than the ones that came before it. It’s impossible, right? But if you try to live your best day every single day, then when that last day finally comes, you don’t have to work hard at making it special, because it already is.”

“That’s beautiful, Paul.” Nicole leaned forward across the sparkly Formica table and took his hand into hers. “I love it. I’m glad you won, too.”

He tugged on her hand just a bit, just enough to get her to look up and into his eyes. “The ironic part, though?”

“Yeah?”

“Spending the day with you makes it a thousand times better.”

She kissed him.

Somewhere on campus, Thursday

“Hey! It’s Becky. Why are you calling me? Send me a text.”

Because I’ve texted you fifty fucking times already, Jenny fumed. She waited for the stupid automated message about pressing 5 to leave a callback number to end.

“Hey Bec! Haven’t heard from you! You’re not answering your texts. It’s Jen. Um…”

hang up now hang up now hang up now

No! I have to ask! “Um, so this is gonna sound stupid, but… are we supposed to do something together tonight? It’s driving me crazy and I keep thinking I’m going to stand you up. Anyway, text me, kay? Kay, bye.”

She scrolled through her texts, hoping to catch a message from a friend she’d somehow overlooked. But no one had made plans with Jenny. Not her friends, not her sister down in Illinois, not her classmates. And now Becky had picked the worst possible time to join the Mrs. Brown Club for Runaways.

“What’s up, babe?” Colin plopped his chin on her left shoulder. She fought a sudden and strong urge to swat at it.

“I’m losing my fucking mind, that’s what.”

“Don’t sweat it.” He leaned into her, his head sliding forward until his lips could reach her cheek. He kissed it, sharp and quick, making the most adorable smick sound. She gave up on swatting him.

“Are you still going to love me when I’m sitting in the corner drooling on myself and calling you Fred? Cuz that’s where I’m headed at this rate. Who the fuck… I know know know I’m supposed to do something later. With someone.”

Smick. “I wish you’d spend later with me. Spend it with me! Fuck that other person. Just wait until they text you, instead of texting everyone on campus.”

“I’m not—”

“You texted your dad. In Ohio.”

Her eyes widened. “Nicole! Why didn’t I think of her before? It’s gotta be Nicole, she… she…”

“Can do better than Charlie? Yeah, totally. My buddy Aiden likes her. We should get them together.”

Obey. “No, she’s really busy right now. I shouldn’t bother her.”

“That’s what I said.”

“I’m not bothering people!”

Colin pushed away from her and got up from the bed, still naked, giving Jenny a nice long look at his firm, athletic body. She focused on it now, transfixed, thoughts of that body and what it was capable of making her feel momentarily crowding out any worries about Becky or Nicole who is very busy right now, or her plans for the evening. There was just Colin, his pink eyes, his glowing pink body, the pretty pink glow washing over them both as his magnificent dick entered her, filling her with-

“I said, I’m gonna take a shower. Do you wanna join me?”

His eyes were no longer pink, just their usual Colin Blue, but they were still gorgeous. She fell into them, and considered the offer. Whatever she was losing in brain power seemed to be showing up in her sex drive instead. Hours of fucking, and here she was thinking about a few hours more.

It was crazy. She was going crazy.

“I’m gonna go,” she said, in spite of herself and her traitorous, needy cunt. She hopped off the bed and went directly to her clothes, piled on Colin’s desk chair, suddenly eager to get dressed. If she had clothes on, she couldn’t surrender to the temptation of a shower. “Maybe if I go for a walk back to my dorm I’ll remember? Or, God forbid, Becky might text back?”

“Don’t freak out, Jen.” He laid his towel on top of her jacket before she could pull it from the chair, and took her into his arms. “It’s not like the world is gonna end if you can’t remember one little thing.”

She wanted very badly to believe him.

Kenny’s Kenneyville Diner, Thursday

Nicole wasn’t much of a watch person.

She had three, all gifts from aunts and uncles who lived under the shared delusion that college students still depended on them to tell time, as if no one carried tiny supercomputers in their pockets these days. She would have met them halfway on a smart watch, but none of them had the budget for one.

Paul had a watch, though, and she liked it. It fit his persona well. It made him look prepared, not in a Boy Scout way, but more rugged, like a firefighter or a soldier.

So when they swung by Hebron Hall again, at Nicole’s insistence (“I’m not going out in public wearing clothes I threw on under hypnosis, Paul”), she thought of the rugged watch, reached deep into a rarely-used drawer, and fished out one of her own. It was hardly rugged, being as thin and silver and pretentious as Aunt Becca herself, but it felt comforting to wear. She placed the other wrist accessory into the same box, and stuck it in the drawer.

Her eyes fell on that watch now, driven by impatience. They were still waiting on food, two coffee refills later.

“They’re taking a while to… oh, shit. Fuck, Paul, it’s already noon!” Her face soured, and she looked at her watch as if it had just betrayed her. “It’s gonna be dark before we know it.”

Paul shrugged. It was a shrug born from kindness, rather than indifference. It took him a moment to respond. “If we sit here counting down like it’s New Year’s Eve we’re just going to scare ourselves into doing nothing.”

“Sorry. I keep flipping back and forth between having an amazing time with you and freaking myself out about everything.”

“Me, too. But hey, when it gets dark, it gets dark. In the meantime… oh wow, that… that is a LOT of food. Holy cow!”

“We may have overdid it a little,” said Nicole, her eyes as wide as she could open them. “Holy cow is right.”

Overcharged on coffee and adrenaline, they’d ordered far more food than they could possibly eat. It arrived now in waves of chipped white plates that clinked and clanked against each other as they were shoved together. It was enough that their waitress had enlisted the other girl waiting tables to momentarily assist, four hands and arms gradually lightening themselves of a heavy load.

The waitress surveyed their haul. “You guys need anything else?”

“An ambulance?” Nicole began piling her plate with fries. “Thanks for bringing this all out. We’re… um, we were pretty hungry.”

“No worries. I gave up judging for Lent.” She was a few years older than them, cute enough to draw more than her fair share of tips, a hint of a smile lighting up her tired face. “Liked it so much, I decided to keep it going. You guys can pay up at the register… if you survive.”

She was, Paul supposed, a woman with a job and an apartment, with family and friends who loved her, with a car parked outside the diner that would take her back to them when her shift was over. She had no idea that there were aliens lurking in the woods a few miles down the road, aliens who would happily empty out her mind with their hypnotic rayguns before taking her away from everything that she’d ever had, or had ever known. Forever.

And Paul intended to make sure she would never have to worry about that happening to her, ever.

The field outside of town, Thursday

She was floating in the void.

A voice called to her. Watch, Laura, it said.

The voice came from the void. It may have even been part of the void, given that it seemed to come from every direction at once, as if she were surrounded by a chorus of identical, seductive voices, all asking her to watch the lights. Watch the beautiful lights.

“No,” she said. She wasn’t sure why. After all, the lights were very beautiful. The display ebbed and flowed, sucking a field of twinkling stars into its center like a black hole, then spitting them out again, letting them twinkle around the edges of her vision. Now and then little groups of dots would break off and form their own little spinning galaxies, flashing red and blue and green, before being sucked back into the black hole at the center. Ebb. Flow. In. Out. Relax, she whispered to herself. Go deeper. Sink deeper.

“That’s not my…” That wasn’t her voice at all. “In my head. You’re trying to…”

Ebb. Flow. Entire galaxies devoured in seconds, sucked away like dishwater down the drain.

“…trying to… you’re trying… to… wait…”

She was being sucked down the same drain. The void whispered to her, filled her ears, filled her mind, while the pretty lights kept her stunned and distracted. It was telling her to relax, to sleep, to watch the pretty stars and succumb to… something? To sleep, maybe. She was suddenly aware of feeling very, very tired.

Calm your mind. Quiet your thoughts. Relax your body. Listen carefully.

She could feel the void’s words on her skin, soothing, relaxing, every bit as effective as that resort spa in Mexico had been. The words merged with the stars to dance before her glazed, half-lidded eyes, so sleepy now, so deep, so relaxed. She watched the words get sucked into the black hole. They emerged a moment later completely rearranged, now saying something completely different.

That was her. That was what the words were doing to her. The words and lights and the void itself, changing her, bit by bit. Sucking her in and spitting her out, a different Laura each time. A better Laura. A happier Laura. A Laura who could float and watch the lights and-

Forget.

Yes, she could do that, too.

Open your eyes, Laura.

Hadn’t it just been telling her, over and over, to close them? Why couldn’t it make up its mind? She was too tired and sleepy for conflicting orders. “Okay,” she mumbled, the way she used to when her mom would wake her up before school. She was tempted to ask the void for another five minutes of rest.

Instead, she did as she was told, and opened her eyes. There was a screen in front of her now, having floated in from elsewhere in the void.

Relax. Forget. Obey, Laura.

Her knees reflexively knocked together, the way they always did when her ex would finger her. A soft moan escaped her lips. She followed up with a much louder one—she was all alone in this void, no one to hear her, why not let loose? Whatever was being done to her at the moment felt really, really fucking good. Hot sex with the hottest guys on campus good. It was as if the formless void had found a way to, well, form, in this case into a very specific shape that filled her in a very specific way.

Ebb. Flow. In. Out. This is what it feels like to obey, Laura. To obey. Obey.

“To obey.” More ins. More outs. She licked her lips, wondering why she’d let them get so dry. How long had she been floating in here?

You will obey.

“Yes.”

Watch. Remember. It is time to remember, and then to forget. Obey.

She was about to ask the void what the hell that meant, when the ‘screen’—it was just a star-free void within the void, really, blank and green like the ones used in TV studios—began to flash images at her. She studied them, curious. There was a busy party taking place on screen, like an old home movie. Maybe from one of her grandfather’s old VHS tapes? The screen filled with children dashing around and between groups of happy, chatting adults. Everyone who was of age had a beer in their hand. Music played in the near distance, the tinny sounds of “El Tucanazo” echoing through the void. Or was it echoing through her head? Was her head as empty as the void itself?

Forget, the void commanded. The music came to an immediate halt.

“That’s… that’s my quinceañera? How did you? What does it mean? What are you trying—”

Forget. Forget everything. Forget. Obey.

Laura had never had a quinceañera. She’d never turned fifteen years old. Had never been fifteen years old. No, improbably, impossibly, she’d gone straight from fourteen to sixteen in a single bound.

Without thinking, she looked at the screen again. Now it was showing her a parade of birthdays, all from the perspective of her own eyes. More parties, cakes, and piñatas. Uncles, aunts, and cousins. Her family’s first home in Kenneyville. The second one in Pittsburgh. The third, smaller than the others, when they moved back to town. Living rooms, family rooms, kitchens, back yards.

Forget it all, the void demanded of her, and she obeyed.

Laura had never had a birthday, ever. She was twenty years old. Had always been twenty years old. Would always be twenty years old.

“I… wait? What’s…”

Gone. Faded away. Faded away to nothing, Laura. Gone forever.

“Yes,” she sighed. The void entered her again, filled her, filled the space where her memories memories of what? had been. “Gone forever.”

Laura had never had any pets.

Her entire groin buzzed. She was dimly aware that she was bucking her hips, grinding against the void with all her might. “Ffffforget,” she moaned, barely able to get the word out in one piece. Another moan followed, this one louder and without any words at all.

Laura had never had any family.

She had also never been fucked this hard, or felt this aroused.

Relax. Watch. Forget.

She had never had a name, first or last.

Her hand found her clit and, to her amazement, she found that she could fondle herself and get fucked by the void at the same time. It was like discovering fire. Her moaning intensified tenfold.

Obey. Forget.

“Forget. Fuck yes, I must forget. Obey and forget. Obey and forget.”

Other things vanished from her mind, but she was too busy now to notice them.

You will learn now who you truly are. Who you will become.

“Yes.”

She always did as she was told.

Kenny’s Kenneyville Diner, Thursday afternoon

“What?” She turned up both hands, palms to the ceiling, fake outrage painted on her face. “Are you judging me, Paul Sorelli? Because that is a judge-y face if I ever saw one.”

“I’m not gonna judge your epic chili dog consumption,” he countered. He stuck his tongue out, not all the way, just enough to tease her. “But… I am impressed by it.”

“I can’t think of a better way to spend my last day on Earth. I’m going to eat ten of these. No, twenty! Let the aliens deal with me suddenly weighing eight hundred pounds.”

“One hundred or eight hundred, in space you’re weightless.”

“Okay, Mr. Science.” Nicole lined up two fingers and flicked a blob of red chili in Paul’s direction. “I’m gonna eat so many of these that we’ll be too heavy to even lift off. How’s that for a Plan C?”

The image of a wobbly UFO trying and failing to climb above tree line made Paul giggle, in spite of the butterflies and breakfast grease churning in his stomach. “I like it! Let’s make it Plan A!”

“See? This is why I like you. You like all of my ideas.” She pointed to an untouched bowl to her right. “Mmmph, can you try those, and see how spicy they are? The menu just said ‘Spicy Fries,’ no details.”

“Nicole.” He let the word hang in the air between them. I love you. I love you so much. This is crazy. We’re both crazy for thinking that we can pull this off. Shaking his head, he pressed on. “If we, you know, somehow pull this off?”

“When we pull this off, go on…”

He wanted to tell her everything. About how deeply he’d fallen for her. About building a long life together. About how badly he wanted to take her into his arms and make love to her, not just sex but making love, with the bracelet and the phone smashed to pieces at the foot of his bed.

But it was too much, too soon, and a greasy diner was hardly the place for that kind of conversation, anyway. He settled instead for a broad smile and “we’re both gonna be ashamed at just how many calories we inhaled just now.”

She smiled back. “I can think of a few creative ways we can burn off those calories, Paul.”

The spicy fries turned out to be mostly salt and pepper, with a hint of cumin thrown in as an afterthought, but Paul dedicated himself to finishing them. Minutes passed, and they both embraced the silence, looking up from their plates now and then to share a glance or a smile. It wasn’t until they were down to the chicken fingers and tater tots that Paul reluctantly allowed reality back into the room.

“So are we forgetting anything?”

It was Nicole’s turn to shrug. “You still have the list for the hardware store?”

“It’s not a long list, but yeah.”

“Then I’ll check out Gamma House while you’re at the store, and then we’ll debrief I guess? Oh! And I need to give you my old black iPhone case when we get back to the dorm. I’m pretty positive it will fit over the top of their control unit.”

“I’ll grab some electrical tape at the hardware store, too. If the case doesn’t fit, I’ll wrap it up with the tape.” He absently tapped his fork against his plate. “I just can’t stop thinking that we’re leaving something out. So much stuff can happen!”

“Well, on that note? I was thinking…” Nicole set her fork on her plate and folded her hands, her eyes settling on a spot just above Paul’s head. “It’s dumb, but…”

“You’re on a good streak with the planning so far.” He held up a chicken finger as evidence. “What?”

“Should I try calling Jenny? I’m just… I’m just worried. Not for you or me, because we know what we’re doing, but for her. I won’t have control over her and neither will you. She could get herself in real trouble. These assholes are killers.”

“We’ll keep her safe.” It felt like a lie to him, but there was no point in making Nicole more worried. “If you call her, she’s not going to remember any of this stuff. So she won’t understand the danger she’s in. She’ll just think you’re being weird.”

“I know, I know. But… I wish I could, maybe, trick her somehow? Make her think she has to drop everything and get in her car and drive back home to Ohio? Then I can show up at the field like ‘oh, hey, sorry! It’s just me for some reason!’ We could even skip the whole first part of the plan that way.”

“Well yeah, unless then they’re like ‘fuck it, let’s just take Nicole and go back to our home planet now.’ Which they might! Better to feed that greed of theirs, it’ll be their downfall.”

She snorted. “I fucking love that. Feed that greed.”

“What?”

“Feed that greed,” she said, throwing extra bass into her voice, trying to match Paul’s. “That was a total badass thing to say. You’re a total badass. A badass with a nice ass. And… the fucking fear’s bubbling up again, and I’m nervous and babbling and doing that thing where I can’t shut up and you think I’m a total idiot and… yeah! So! Tater tot?”

He held out his plate. “Fill me up.”

“Badass.”

Meanwhile

“Error K-662! What is an Error K-662?”

Q’nan reached for the brain-smoother’s manual, or rather, his hand fell where the manual was supposed to be. Had been, in fact, when he and B’nak had fitted Laura with its parts and plugged her into the alcove. Now, though… “B’nak, where did you put… ugh. Always something!” Above and to his left, a bank of yellow and red lights flashed angrily, the view screen beneath them repeating “ERROR K-662” over and over again in an unending scroll.

“Yes, I KNOW it’s an error! Stop telling me that it is and tell me what it is!” He swept a hand across the space desk, pushing aside various technological bits and pieces. “B’nak, why are you always so messy? I could—ah! Here! Finally!”

Manual in hand, Q’nan turned to the index. Behind him, the lights continued to blink. Under the brain-smoother’s helmet, Laura’s eyes began to flutter.

What are you?

By now, that answer was perfectly obvious. It was also obviously perfect, and she repeated it with pride. “Nothing. Nothing to remember. Nothing but pleasure.” Her sore, tingling, excited flesh was proof of that. “Nothing.”

You are Laura Alvarez.

“I’m what?” She tilted her head, confused. “I am nothing. I am pleasure. I am slave. I am obedience.” Yes, those are what I am. Not this… whatever a Laura Alvarez is? Unless I am to be a Laura Alvarez? She hadn’t considered that. The void didn’t encourage her to think of things on her own, but she was still technically capable of doing so, even if it made more sense to just relax and let the void do the thinking for her. She tried it now. It felt like moving a limb that had fallen asleep. “Am I Laura Alvarez?”

You are Laura Alvarez. You are Laura Alvarez.

The mental pins and needles began to subside. “I am Laura Alvarez,” she agreed. But that wouldn’t do. She needed to know more about what it meant to be Laura Alvarez. When she was pleasure, she felt nothing but waves and waves of it, fucking her senseless even as she begged the void to keep going. When she was obedience, she was blank and empty, patiently waiting for the void to give her a command before eagerly ensuring that it was carried out. Listen. Watch. Forget. Obey.

If she was also Laura Alvarez, she needed to be that as well.

“I need…” wait, did she need anything? That was ridiculous. When she was nothing, she needed nothing. She considered her options, and tried again. “I need to be told what a Laura Alvarez is. I will let my mind accept it as the complete and utter truth.” Yes, that made more sense. It was what she’d been doing for her entire existence. Letting the void create her. Shape her. Fill her.

“I am ready to obey,” she added, for good measure.

You are Laura Alvarez, said the void. You were born in Kenneyville. You live on campus. You live in Hebron Hall, Room 508.

She nodded, or at least it felt like nodding. In the void, physical movements were largely nothing more than hints and suggestions. “I was born in Kenneyville. I live on campus. I live in Hebron Hall, Room 508.”

None of those terms meant anything to her, either. But she knew she could solve that problem easily. “I must be told what Kenneyville is. I must be told what campus is. I must be told what Hebron Hall, Room 508 is. I must learn, and remember, and obey.”

The screen that wasn’t a screen reappeared, and began showing her new images.

Relax, said the void. It began to tell her everything she needed to know.

“Calm. Calm, Q’nan! You are as calm as the Great Ancestor. You are as wise as Emperor Q’gguth the Fourth. You are… YES I KNOW IT’S AN ERROR, YOU STUPID PIECE OF JUNK! SHUT UP SHUT UP!”

Like many Kzzrk spacelings, Q’nan developed in his youth the bad habit of chewing on his fingers when he was nervous. He did it now, for the first time in many, many frrs. He was so engrossed in solving the problem in front of him that he stood motionless before the brain-smoother, finger in mouth, for several minutes.

“Here.” He spat out his finger along with the word, and tried to squash the guilt building up inside of him. Guilt at resurrecting a childish habit. Guilt at screwing up something even B’nak had mastered without effort. Guilt at possibly ruining his best friend’s favorite mind-slave. If he didn’t do something quickly, the humanoid female’s brain would either be smoothed completely, or it would be cross-wired to the point where every command given to it would produce nothing more than a confused, vacant stare.

He could get B’nak’s help. The shorter alien was only a short distance away. The pretty red-haired mind-slave wouldn’t mind being interrupted. She would wait patiently for B’nak to return, even if it meant waiting an entire solar cycle without moving a muscle.

But he would never hear the end of it. Never. Never. When their two thralls returned with the new humanoid females from the Gamma Domicile, B’nak would be there to taunt him again and again. ”Watch carefully, Q’nan! You don’t want to miss a step! Don’t want you to get it wrong again!”

His grip on the manual tightened. He scanned down to the relevant entry, and read it aloud. “Error K-662. Insufficient preparation of the subject matrix can lead to errors in processing if the subject is exceptionally strong or weak-willed. Reset, and reprocess immediately to avoid permanent damage.” He scowled. So it wasn’this fault, after all. Insufficient preparation. B’nak! Again!

The reset button was easy enough to find. It was the largest button on the console, illuminated by a ring of little point lights. Q’nan guessed—correctly, it turned out—that its size and placement was not coincidental. Neither he nor B’nak were the first Kzzrks to bungle a brain-smooth.

“I will not,” he declared, “make the same mistake twice.”

He slammed his fist down, and watched the machine reset itself.

Meanwhile

B’nak could hardly contain himself. Then he realized that he didn’t have to. “This,” he shouted, “is the greatest moment of my life! Yes, humanoid female, yes! Continue to do that! Yes! Keep going!”

Becky continued to straddle him. Her empty eyes started more-or-less into his. “Yes, my benevolent master.”

“Say… oh yes! Wow, that’s… say that again, h-humanoid female!”

“Yes, my benevolent master.”

“Good! Now who’s never going to amount to anything, W’an’ack? Hmm? Not meeeee!! You, maybe, but not me! And not this beautiful mind-slave who is all mine! Mine!”

The beauty of turning the humanoid females into mind-slaves was that, once processed, they really could keep going ‘like that,’ forever if necessary. Once they were taught the basics of Kzzrk anatomy—and Q’nan, to Bnak’s delight, had already done an excellent job of that with Becky—they were capable of fucking their way across the home worlds nearly non-stop.

B’nak, on the other hand, was not nearly that capable. After a few minutes of additional bouncing and rolling, he reluctantly pushed her away. “Humanoid… mind slave, stop! Stop! I need a break. Go and, um, kiss my feet until I tell you to do otherwise.”

“Yes.” The redhead climbed off the space-bed and repositioned herself at the foot of it, and began her new task with the same mindless enthusiasm she brought to every order now.

“Oh! I didn’t think that would feel… oh, wow. If the others are anything like you, I’m going to have buyers lined up ten deep! And to think, Q’nan doubted me this whole entire…”

He paused, and took advantage of the silence in his chamber to try to spy on Q’nan down the corridor. His ship had been built long before soundproofing was the norm, and when the engines were off, a Kzzrk at one end could hear his companion clear over on the other. Strange, then, that he couldn’t hear much of anything. By now the second humanoid female should have been thoroughly brain-smoothed and loudly bouncing up and down on Q’nan’s space-bed.

“Q’nan!”

B’nak waited impatiently for a response. Hearing none, he scowled, and pulled himself into a sitting position. Becky followed him, using her hands to keep his feet from moving any further. Pinned below, but still free to move up top, he reached to his right and tapped the space-com. It crackled to life.

“Q’nan! What is going on out there?”

“Um, nothing! Everything is fine, B’nak! You do not need to worry!”

“Is the humanoid female prepared?”

“She is… being prepared? She is being prepared, B’nak.”

“Q’nan, you didn’t screw things up, did you? We can’t afford any errors! I left very thorough instructions!”

There was a brief pause, accompanied by static. “By ‘thorough,’ B’nak, you mean ‘scattered in three different locations.’ Do not worry! This one is just harder to brain-smooth because she’s wired just like your stupid ex-girlfriend. I had to reset the brain-smoother but she is fine now.”

The shorter alien was incredulous. “You reset the brain-smoother? I didn’t even know we could reset the brain-smoother.”

“That’s what the manual said to do, so that’s what I did. Thanks for telling me where the manual was, by the way.”

B’nak couldn’t see Q’nan, but he could feel the taller alien’s judgmental stare through the space-com. “I gave you instructions,” he protested. “Very good ones!”

“They were not terrible, let’s just say that. One of… oh! There is a blue light blinking. B’nak, what does the blue light mean?”

“There are lots of blue lights!”

“It’s the one in the upper right… oh, never mind! Go play with the mind-slave and I’ll figure it out!”

“But…”

The space-com filled with static until B’nak, now thoroughly annoyed, shut it off.

She was Laura Alvarez.

She was deeply hypnotized.

The void told her so, and she had no reason to claim otherwise.

Reset. Ebb. Flow. In. Out. Watch. Obey.

She did as she was told.

“Reset. Can you believe that? Reset!” B’nak looked into the empty, hooded eyes of his mind-slave, knowing full well that she neither would nor could argue back. Yet another reason she was preferable to the bracelet-controlled drones or, at this very moment, to Q’nan.

“First the X77, and now the brain-smoother. It’s one thing after another around here. You are lucky, humanoid female! You species will never know the hassle of having very expensive things break on you!”

“Yes, my benevolent master.”

“Stop that. Stop calling me your benevolent master. It was fun when I was exploring that body of yours, but I find it annoying now. So stop.”

“Yes.”

“Fifteen new slaves on the way. Do you know how long it’s going to take to turn them into copies of you? Even if it doesn’t break down mid-journey?”

“No.”

“Of course, you don’t. Now sit there looking pretty while I… where is the control unit?”

After a very brief but very anxious search around the space-bed and its environs, B’nak located the iridescent device, and cradled it tightly in his hand. A few heavy-fingered taps bought up its universal drzznkr, which indicated that the planet’s solar cycle was nearing its end at their location. He tried to recall whether he and Q’nan had ever settled on what the appropriate time was in the planet’s dark phase to activate their drones and send them on their mission. To his frustration, he grew increasingly certain that they hadn’t discussed it at all. Even worse was the nagging feeling that their failure to plan things out was entirely his own fault. It was just… it had been so exciting to finally have humanoid females in the brain-smoother, being turned into actual mind-slaves…

“Humanoid female,” he commanded. “At what hour does your species lay down to rest? Is it now?”

“I rest when I am told to rest,” Becky responded.

B’nak persisted. “Yes, but before. Before this solar cycle. Before we captured you. Think about that time. You would naturally become tired, and you would go to sleep. Was that around this current time? Later? Earlier?”

“I have always been nothing,” she said. “I will naturally become tired now.” She sagged against B’nak, eyes half-lidded. “Go to sleep. Must sleep.”

“No, no! You… humanoid mind slave, I command you to become wide awake!”

She did as she was told, bolting upright as if given an electric shock. “Yes.”

“Now answer my question truthfully without actually falling asleep. What point in your planet’s solar cycle did you normally enter a rest state? What about the other humanoid females?”

“I will rest when I am told to rest.”

“Fine. FINE. Thanks a lot, you’re even less helpful than Q’nan.”

“Yes.”

“Q’nan can keep you. At least the other mind-slave will have a brain, unless he breaks that, too.” He continued tapping away at the control unit. “You are lucky that you have that hair. It’s the only thing good about you.”

“Yes.”

“I will admit that the sexual encounter was also incredible. Are all humanoid females as talented as you are? Is it something your species is naturally good at? Or are you the exception to the rule?”

“I am nothing,” said Becky.

“Hmmph. I will ask the other humanoid females when they return. Which should be doing… tap, tap tap, tap very, very shortly!”

Becky had no response to that, not that B’nak wanted to hear it.

The Women’s Dorm, Room 14, Thursday evening

As she approached her room, Jenny found comfort in knowing that if she ever flunked out of school or ran out of money to pay tuition, she could always run away to join the circus as a professional juggler. If there was anything college really taught a girl, it was how to turn two arms into six, and how to carry three bulky textbooks, her purse, her room keys, and a greasy bag of take-out from Shenzhen Castle at the same time all the way across campus without fumbling any of it. When she reached her door, she pressed a knee against it, then balanced her books on the knee and placed the greasy bag on top of that. While her other leg wobbled under the load, she slid her keys into the lock. Come see The Amazing Jenny! She can carry twenty tons of shit in a single bound!

The door opened, and she staggered inside. “Colin? Are you here?”

The silence and the blackness confirmed that he wasn’t. She sighed, disappointed that her boyfriend wasn’t rushing over to help her unload her wares. She’d bought enough food for two.

“Books…” They slid out from under her arm onto a table she kept by the door for that very purpose. Her purse followed, taking up a spot next to the books. “Keys… oh! Shit!” They slipped from her hand and, before she could rescue them, sailed off into the gloom to crash-land, clattering, onto the floor.

So much for being a juggler. She set the take-out bag on the floor—that hadn’t been her plan, the floor wasn’t exactly the cleanest surface in the world—and rolled her eyes. She dropped to her knees, hands splayed out. “Christ on sale, this fucking day! Where the fuck did you end up, you little shits?”

The room was suddenly bathed in an eerie iridescent glow, illuminating the keys that were inches from her right hand, as well as the floor, her bed, and even the shared bath beyond. A jolt raced from her wrist up her arm and then through the rest of her body, like she’d just grabbed a live wire, only there was no pain involved. If anything, the jolt felt good. It settled around her lower body like a good meal and began to sweet talk her pussy. As sore as it was from all of the Colin-fucking, it seemed to enjoy the new attention, sending warm arousal back up into her body and her mind.

Her mind. The happy waves of pleasure seemed to be set on erasing it, submerging it under the nicest tsunami anyone had ever dreamed of, a localized disaster that took place in milliseconds but felt to Jenny like days.

You serve and obey the Kzzrk Empire.

“I serve… I… I s-serve…”

The island sank beneath the waves for good. She rose to her knees, and then to her feet.

“I serve and obey the Kzzrk Empire.”

She walked through the still-open door and headed straight for the field.