Master / Disciple
Chapter 2
“Well, if you’re scared of proving me right…” and that was a question with a hook on it. It wasn’t even a baited hook, just a really obvious hook that any fish with half a brain wouldn’t think of going near. Will was swinging his grandfather’s pocket watch on the end of its chain, and somehow the conversation had turned to whether hypnosis is as powerful in reality as his stage show would suggest. Tom hadn’t intended to provoke his friend into a bet about what he could be made to do, but now there didn’t seem to be an easy way to back off.
“I didn’t say that,” he couldn’t stop himself blurting out, “I just don’t know why you’d want to pick… something you know doesn’t work.”
“You should let me worry about that,” Will carried on showing the enigmatic smile, as if the whole conversation was a joke Tom just hadn’t got yet. It was worse than a poker face: you couldn’t know what he was thinking, but you found yourself constantly waiting for the punch line, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I know I mentioned this before, but how much exactly did I tell you about the pendulum technique? Did I say why it doesn’t work?”
“Umm…” Tom was sure he knew more, but it had only been a casual conversation, before he’d realised just how much of a showman Will was. “It’s like a placebo, right? Everybody’s seen a hypnotist swinging a watch around in those old B-movies you love, so they expect it to work, and end up doing what you say just because they think resistance is futile.”
“Pretty good,” Will replied, and Tom felt a momentary glow of pride. It was like he was back at school, craving the teacher’s praise for every little detail he managed to remember. He’d often been the teacher’s pet, though at the time he’d never realised there was any other option. This was different, though, because convincing girls that every word he said was entirely reasonable would have a lot more real-world utility than finding the angle of a hypotenuse.
“That’s not all the problem, but it’s the big part of it,” Will leaned back against the wall, watch swinging in front of him again as he started to lecture, “You see, the big thing about hypnosis in most of its useful forms is focus. Focusing your mind on one thing makes it easier to accept instructions, but splitting your focus makes it harder for you to notice what you’re absorbing. Both are useful, in different circumstances.”
Tom nodded, filing this away in his memory. It was all trivia for now, but he was sure there was going to be something more practical if he just kept on listening.
“The thing with the watch is that it can be used both ways, though it isn’t particularly effective for either. It’s fascinating, mesmerising. You watch the clockwork, visible through the glass back, and you find yourself waiting for the next tick, anticipating the mechanism. That can capture your focus, but focusing on the watch doesn’t actually help you. What your classic stage hypnotist, mister black moustache from all those B-movies, he’s hoping that you’ll split your focus between following the watch and listening to his voice. You can’t give his voice your full attention because you’re thinking about the watch, on some subconscious level keeping one eye on the tick, following the swing. The swinging is deceptively complex, it takes more attention than you would realise to predict it and keep your eyes on it, so as you’re focusing, you aren’t analysing the guy’s words as much, and accept some things you’d normally have a problem with, until unthinking acceptance becomes a habit.”
Tom nodded, he could imagine how that would feel quite easily. The watch was ornate and complex. It spun as it swung, so sometimes he could see the mechanism through the back, or a few gears behind the hands through decorative cutouts in the watch face. Or he might be looking at the crest, rather than the watch through the little window in the centre, his focus caught by light glinting off the embossed lines as it spun, or he might notice his own face reflected in the back glass when it reached exactly the right angle, surprising him every time he met his own gaze. But that’s easy to avoid, he thought, Splitting your attention makes you vulnerable to some tricks, but closing your eyes to avoid staring at the watch would be cheating. But if I know how it works, I can just ignore the friend talking to me and keep looking at the watch.
“I figure you’ve already noticed why that doesn’t work so well,” Will doled out another tiny dose of veiled praise, “You can just ignore the words, because they’re not nearly so fascinating as the swinging watch. Focusing on the watch too much leaves you thinking you’ve been in a trance, because it’s an altered state of consciousness, almost meditative, but a relatively low proportion of subjects hit just the right focus split for the technique to work. But because even the people who don’t actually end up in trance feel like it’s happened, it’s very good for convincing people that hypnosis works. That’s why everyone knows it, and these days your expectations help it to work in a lot of cases.” He was starting to sound a little irritated now, talking about the technique he disliked so much. Tom could understand that now: his friend was a master of so many complex tricks, but the public image of his art was reduced to something that was pretty much a trick.
“The weird thing is that I have to keep reminding you of how you can’t help staring at the watch,” Will continued, his voice slowly slipping down a note into a sing-song monotone, “How it catches your attention and you keep on thinking you’ll watch it for just another swing any time you consider looking away, but if you actually focus as much as I suggest, you wouldn’t be affected so effectively by my words, because you wouldn’t take them in. You could just keep on watching the watch as it swings, and ignore me completely. If you’d managed to realise before your attention got hooked on trying to analyse my words, you could have just kept your mind on the watch and you wouldn’t sink into trance as long as you keep staring.”
If you’d managed to, Tom spotted the trick in that deceptive little statement right away. His friend had gone from talking about techniques to actually trying to hypnotise him without a break, which he had to admit was pretty sly. Tom was smart, though, and could never resist a challenge. In spite of all the misdirection, the hypnotist had told him before that a swinging watch couldn’t keep you entranced as long as you kept on looking at it. All he had to do was focus on the watch, tracing the spinning gears and shifting reflections as it swung, and not pay attention to the deceptive words Will was spinning into a net to ensnare his mind. He caught a few words, but tried to give them no attention. He could always think about them later, but right now the important thing was just to follow the watch. As long as he thought about the watch and nothing else, he could win this bet.
“As long as you are looking at the watch, you won’t have to obey, but…” he caught the words because they were just telling him what he already knew. But he was too smart to get distracted by the rest of the sentence, focusing his attention on that mesmerising pendulum and its chain again. He could even make out a sliver of his own reflection in miniature in every single link of the chain. A slightly different image on each one, and he knew he could distract himself all day by comparing the different images presented by the slightly different angles of each link as the watch’s weight swung and spun at the end of the chain.
He didn’t even d to listen to most of Will’s words. Half of it was so obvious, or things he already knew, and he knew what his friend was talking about just from a couple of words. He could imagine how it must feel to slip into trance easily enough. It could be like floating, or feeling detatched, but he knew that he wouldn’t feel that as long as he kept his eyes on the shining metal, and traced the steady tick-tick-tick of the mechanism. He was getting so used to it now that as the watch turned to show him the glass side with its myriad gears, he knew before it came into view which position the jagged escapement spring would be in. It swung, hanging in the air when the chain went loose for just a second at the highest point, then twisted back as it returned. Tom could predict every movement in his mind’s eye, even knowing the time that it would be showing to the second. With that much focus on the watch, his mind would stay his own.
“You’ll feel a moment of dizziness,” Will continued to try in vain, “and in that moment you will know just how deeply you’re about to start obeying. The feeling of falling will be the reminder that tells you that you’ve lost the bet, and the moment you know you’ve lost, it will be so easy to stop fighting and just let it happen.” Well, Tom knew he didn’t need to fight. Just keep watching every twist and turn of the silver disc before him. He was feeling a little unusual, but that was just the meditative effect of such deep focus. He wasn’t feeling even remotely dizzy as his head moved predictably to follow the regular, rhythmic swings of–
Will yanked just a little too hard on the chain, and the watch moved suddenly quicker, up above the comedian’s hands. Tom didn’t need to think, he’d been putting his entire concentration into keeping his eyes fixed on the watch for about ten minutes now, and he could propject its trajectory without even needing to think about it. He straightened up as the watch left Will’s hand and soared into the air, and rolled his head back as the valuable heirloom sailed overhead, not quite touching the ceiling. He didn’t even think to try and catch it, save it from a potentially disastrous landing on the hardwood floor. That wasn’t what he’d been thinking about.
Tom only lost sight of the watch as it tumbled down behind him. He stopped his movement just in time to prevent him tumbling over backwards. He was lost for a moment. He’d been focusing on the watch so intently, for so long, that ’Look at the watch’ was literally the only thought in his head, and without the watch he was lost. It even took him a moment to remember why he’d been looking at it, but then the words came back to him: ”If you keep looking at the watch, you won’t…”
Will was as nimble as he had been on stage, darting forward to catch the chain before it hit the ground. Tom was still recovering his balance, a momentary wave of dizziness from twitching his head back so fast. It wasn’t the best time to try to remember what he was doing. It should have been simple, all he needed to think about was
“Relax!” a firm commanding voice, giving simple instructions that cut right through the dizziness and confusion. He was glad his friend was there, with a hand behind his shoulders to catch him as he fell, and a simple instruction “Obey!” as he couldn’t recall what else to do. He’d never expected looking up to cause such a moment of dizziness, ”and in that moment you will know just how deeply…” his eyes closed, and it was so easy to surrender to what he knew was inevitable, letting Will’s words reassure him as the bigger man caught him as he fell, lifted him in his arms and carried him in the direction of his room.
He didn’t need to worry at all.