THE OBJECTIVE’S OBJECTION
CHAPTER ONE: PRELUDE TO POWERMONGERING
“Hey there, roomie” said Stephanie as Bonnie entered their dorm room. A gorgeous History major whose red hair nearly reached her hips, Stephanie had always put great effort in her looks – and it showed. She had freely admitted to Bonnie that her plans for the future mostly involved marrying rich.
“Hey.” Bonnie’s terse reply matched her none-too-happy expression. A raven-haired psychology/neurology double major, Bonnie didn’t come close to matching her roommate’s beauty – while she was far from unattractive, she didn’t really put much effort into looking good. Or most social tasks, really. Stephanie had commented more than once on the irony of someone with so little interest in human interaction being a student of human psychology.
But while Bonnie wasn’t very sociable, she was nevertheless pleasant and polite most of the time. Her bad mood that evening was far from the norm. “You all right?” asked Stephanie. “You seem pretty down.”
“I guess I am.”
While they weren’t really close, after several months of rooming together, the girls did consider themselves kinda-sorta friends. “What’s the problem? Bad grade? Someone being a jerk? Family trouble? Boy trouble?” The last one seemed unlikely. As far as Stephanie knew, Bonnie’s last date was over a year ago. The girl’s focus on her studies was...impressive.
“Thesis trouble, actually. I think I might have completely wasted all my work since I’ve started working on it.”
That...was a considerably long time.
“Wasted? What do you mean, ‘wasted’?”
“Even if it works, it’s pretty much unpublishable. I’ve actually suspected that for a while, I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. It’s...” Bonnie paused.
“Yes...?”
“I...never mind. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ll sleep on the whole thing and see what to do about it later.”
By this point, however, Stephanie’s curiosity had been piqued. Bonnie loved to talk about her research. Most of which completely went over Stephanie’s head, but she remembered it involving the human brain, ultrasonics, and some recent test subject. Bonnie’s hesitation seemed odd, though – she had clearly wanted to talk about it, and then stopped herself. That alone made it a secret – a forbidden fruit that Stephanie now craved.
But she had to be subtle about it. If Bonnie wanted to keep it a secret for whichever reason, insisting that she tell her would only put her off. She needed...other methods of persuasion.
“No can do, roomie!” the redhead exclaimed. “You’re down in the dumps, your work is in jeopardy, and your evening looks bleak. This isn’t something you sleep on. This is something that, in the proud tradition of college students everywhere, you go drown in booze at the nearest bar!” She was already grabbing her coat. “Come, I know a place that’s perfect for this.”
“Er, Steph...I don’t drink, remember?”
“Humor me. I promise I’ll make it up to you.” All the while, she kept flashing her best winning smile, handing Bonnie her coat, and opening the door as if the discussion had already been settled.
Sure enough, Bonnie followed. Realizing that people often wanted to avoid conflict had been a revelation to Stephanie all those years ago, and it was doubly true for Bonnie – she wasn’t a sheep, but she wasn’t fond of arguing, and often just went with the flow in the company of other people. Perhaps that was one of the reasons she liked being alone.
Bonnie didn’t refrain from alcohol due to religious convictions or any particularly strong belief – she just considered the mind to be a terrible thing to waste, and avoided pretty much all “psychotropes”, as she would call them. Except chocolate. Stephanie, on the other hand, showed up at the bar about as often as the average grad student; as such, after a few drinks, she was still less tipsy than her roommate, and had little difficulty guiding the conversation where she wanted:
“So...Remind me, what was your thesis about anyway? I remember it involved ultrasound...”
“Kinda complicated. Shome time ago, there waj thish ekshperiment...They shanjed the shynapshej in mishej’ brainj, made ‘em abjorb informashion better, learn fashter. ‘k?”
“Yes...”
“Well, I dishcovered thish shpeshial ultrashound that tempo...temporarily stimulates some areas of the brain,” Bonnie went on, apparently getting a better grip on herself now that she was talking about her work. “In fact, it stimulates the areas that deal with our hearing.”
“So...it’s a sound that makes us hear better?”
“No...it makes our brain pay better attention to it. Thing is, it doesn’t affect the way we consciously react to sound...It’s only our subconscious that really starts listening. That means we become receptive to subliminal messages.”
“Subliminal messages? Didn’t they use them in advertisements, to better sell stuff in movie theaters?”
“Feh, that’s bunk. But with my invention, they actually start working. Our test subject? She was really affected. We actually managed to change some of her tastes in food.”
“That...that sounds like a huge discovery!” said Stephanie, actually meaning it. “How is that a bad thing?”
“Shteph, think! If something like that became public, it would be misused faster than you can say “Brave New World”. If you know what you’re doing, you can potentially brainwash people in no time. I can’t unleash something like this...”
This had Stephanie floored. The subliminals could actually be used to fully brainwash people? She blamed the alcohol for not thinking about it sooner herself. More surprising was the fact that Bonnie was apparently willing to give up on all her hard work because she was worried about its potential misuse. Bonnie had been spending so much time and effort on this...She’d known the girl was a goody-two-shoes for a while, but damn.
“Eh...” the brunette seemed to have trouble with her balance; “you...must not tell anyone about this. Fine?”
Stephanie looked her roommate in the eyes. “My lips are sealed.”