The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The four of them were laughing as they crossed threshold to the museum lobby. Zoe thought she was the one laughing the hardest; harder than her other three friends.

It wasn’t even that what Jessica had said was so funny. It was more that when the four of them all got together — herself, Jessica, Emily and Payton — they all enjoyed each other’s company so much that even frivolous comments could be transformed into the most hilarious statements of all time. Or even mundane observations could be transformed into the most brilliant insights ever shared.

There was really nothing Zoe loved so much as being with her friends; she knew the feeling was mutual between all four of them, but Zoe was a little more in-the-moment than the others.

She laughed harder at jokes, thought harder about information that came into her awareness, and savored her friends’ company maybe just a little more than the rest. It was just who she was. Life was more vivid for her.

This didn’t estrange her from her friends; it made her feel closer to them. To know that who she was was accepted by them, in the exact form which her identity took.

And because she so enjoyed spending time with her friends, and they with her, it meant that she always kept an eye out for things they could all do together. Like coming to this museum today.

It had only been open for a few weeks— ‘The Realignment Repository’— but it had gotten rave reviews in all the local lifestyle columns. Though the museum did seem to have a strange PR strategy. None of the lifestyle reviewers went into exact detail about what the museum actually contained. That is, nothing more than generalized descriptions that managed to be both intriguing and frustration. Enough to raise curiosity, but not satisfy it.

The museum staff had been similarly cagey when Zoe had called ahead to arrange their visit today ahead of time. The only thing Zoe had gotten out of them was an explanation that the museum was a museum of “experiences” meant to “broaden the horizons” of any who patronized it; and that they had many different exhibits which achieved this in different ways. Zoe had pressed for further information beyond this, but none had been given. In the end, there had been nothing to do but leave her curiosity for today— to be satisfied in the ‘experience’ of ‘experiencing’ the museum.

Whatever that experience was going to turn out to be.

As the four of them stepped further into the lobby their shared laughter faded to silence as each woman looked around her.

Zoe was sure the others were thinking what she was thinking. It was a beautiful space, with a tall domed ceiling way over head. It was a very high ceiling, too. The lobby was done sort of like a colonnade, and if you looked directly up, you could see past the next three floors, and then finally above that, you could see through the dome, out to the sky.

Zoe let her eyes fall back to the ground floor, from the dome, past the three floors and their column lined walkways in between dome and floor, and rest on the central desk of the lobby.

She and her friends came to a stop just in front of it.

The museum attendant looked up at them, wearing a bright smile. “Will you be paying your museum admission now?”

The three other women shared glances amongst each other, but Zoe spoke up. “No, I called ahead and arranged everything. We’re a party of four— I paid already. It should be under my name— Zoe.”

Sometimes her friends made grumbling noises when Zoe paid— she paid for a lot of the things that they did together, by her own desire. Their grumbling was mostly for show— Zoe knew they appreciated her paying for them. It was one of the ways she liked to show care to them, and they let her. But they did like to grumble, all the same, and tease her for her providing tendencies.

The museum attendant looked down to her computer stream, clearly searching through her database.

“Ah, there you are. Zoe and three others— we have you listed right here.”

The attendant smiled back up at them. “Let me give you each a hand stamp; just put your right hands out on the counter.”

The four friends obliged her, and she took the stamp up from the stamp pad next to the computer. She went along their four right hands, leaving a blue circular stamp on the back of each hand as she went.

When she was done, she replaced the stamp on the stamp pad, and each woman pulled her hand back from the counter.

“I’ll give you each a map of the museum too,” she added, reaching into a desk drawer to retrieve four maps. She fanned them out in her hands, so they were easy to grab.

Each friend took one. Then the woman withdrew a fifth, and took a marker up from off the counter. She opened her map up so each friend could see.

“This is the ground floor, obviously. You’re all here.” She made an ‘X’ over what was clearly the lobby.

“If you continue on to the left, you’ll find the planetarium.” The attendant drew an arrow from the ‘X,’ leftwards. “There’s a show there every thirty minutes, at interval. Your timing is good; the next one is in just five minutes. The attendance fee is covered by the price of admission, so you can go in and watch with no fuss. You can even go back multiple times, if you want.”

The woman raised the marker back to the ‘X.’

“If you continue on to the right, that’ll take you to the elevators. The second floor has all of our interactive exhibits, and the third floor is our nature display. The fourth floor is also an exhibition floor, but it’s currently closed, since it’s between exhibits.”

The woman recapped her marker, and looked back up to them, giving them all a smile.

“We hope you enjoy your visit to the museum, and that it might help realign some of your perceptions of reality. If you have any questions as you go along, or if you get lost or turned around, there are many guides stationed throughout the museum. Just ask one of them— they’ll all be wearing the same uniform as me.”

“Thank you,” the four women chorused in unison, and together, they turned from the front desk and stepped a few paces to the side.

“What sounds good to you guys?” Zoe asked, looking amongst her friends. “Where would you like to go first?”

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Jessica spoke up first. “But I’m really curious to see what kind of interactive exhibits they have, up on the second floor. What do you think?”

Zoe felt a pang. The museum attendant had said the planetarium show was starting in just five minutes; and that it wouldn’t recur after that for another thirty. Zoe loved planetarium shows, and she’d hoped the others would be interested in it, too.

She looked hopefully to Emily and Payton.

“Actually, I thought the nature exhibit on the third floor sounded the most interesting,” Emily volunteered, her voice semi-apologetic.

Payton nodded eagerly in time when Emily made her comment. “It sounded the most interesting to me too. Zoe, what sounded interesting to you?”

“The planetarium show,” Zoe admitted. “The attendant said it was starting in just five minutes. Probably less than that now,” she added, glancing down at her watch.

Her guess was made fact by observation— the minute hand had moved beneath her watch-face. There were only three minutes remaining until the start of the show, now.

“Well, if we’re all interested in different things, it would make the most sense for us to split up and meet back here later,” Payton suggested. “Emily and I can go up to the nature exhibit, Jessica can check out the interactive floor, and you can go to the planetarium show.”

“That sounds good,” Zoe granted.

“Sounds good to me too,” Jessica agreed.

Emily said nothing, but she was nodding along.

“Let’s see,” Payton said, thoughtfully. “If the planetarium show is every thirty minutes, then it’ll have to last thirty minutes or less; probably more like twenty-five.

“So Zoe can go to the show, Jessica can go check out the interactive floor, and Emily and I can go up to the nature floor. Then we can all meet back down here half an hour from now, and compare notes; then we can decide together if we want to revisit any of the things we’ve seen to show the others.”

“That’s a really good plan, Payton,” Emily remarked.

Zoe and Jessica nodded their agreement, too.

“Okay then,” Payton said. “We’ll all meet back here in the lobby in around thirty minutes. And break!”

Zoe made quick strides down the museum’s central hall as soon as the group broke. She had only two minutes now until the show started.

There was a crowd of people gathered just outside the doors to the planetarium, which were still closed, to Zoe’s relief. She caught up with them, and became a faceless member of their number.

Just as Zoe was slowing her pace to a halt, some of the people standing closer to the doors started moving. She looked ahead through the throng, and could see that the door had been opened. She let herself be swept along with the other museumgoers, until she had been carried into the room.

Inside, the house lights were on, so everything was clearly visible. It looked like other planetariums that Zoe had been to. This particular auditorium was built in a circular shape around a central, recessed stage at the ground level. The rows of seating ascended the risers up from that point in all directions, the flow of their circularity only interrupted by the occasional aisle, for access purposes.

The curved wall that ran along behind the top row of seats was black, but it was such a deep black that Zoe wondered if it was in fact some kind of screen, and not a wall at all.

And of course, like many other planetariums Zoe had seen, the ceiling above was a dome; but Zoe thought that it might be the same as the wall behind the upper row of seats. In fact, that wall seemed to flow up into the dome of the ceiling almost imperceptibly. She couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. It was like the dome was reaching its way down into the room, and circling it from the inside.

It was an impressive room, anyway. There was something dramatic about the way the seats fell in a circular pattern around the recessed stage, something dramatic about the way each row seemed to be actively climbing higher than the one that had come before it. And this drama was only amplified by the dome which seemed to descend into the room through the room’s surrounding circular wall, which it flowed down into.

Zoe followed the crowd that had swept her in, even as it began dispersing; it grew smaller as more and more of the individuals who had made it up splintered off to choose seats for themselves and take position in them.

Zoe’s turn came to do the same, and she chose an aisle seat on the end of a mid-level row, about halfway up. The view of the recessed stage, the overhead dome and even the enwrapping wall was ideal from her position. But then, given the design of the room, Zoe thought that the view from every single seat would probably work out to be equal. It was a well-designed auditorium; Zoe had to give it credit for that. Even if it was a touch on the overdramatic side.

The auditorium seating was quite comfortable, Zoe found, when she sat down. No hard-backed plastic chairs here, which meant no hard plastic seats digging into the backs of your legs. These chairs were cushioned, but with such cushions. They were regularly sized, but the softness with which the cushions set in them embraced Zoe made her feel like she had fallen backwards into a generous pile of pillows.

When every last person had found and taken a seat, the house lights of the planetarium dimmed. A single spotlight shone down on the central point of the circular stage.

Opposite the entry door to the lobby, and on the far side of the stage, there was a matching door. When the spotlight turned on, that door opened, and a woman (wearing the uniform Zoe remembered from the front desk) stepped through it.

These two parallel doors, the entrance and the inner staff door, were the only two points which broke the flow of the room’s circular design. It had clearly been done by necessity; but even so, Zoe thought it had been well-handled. You could only really see the break if you were looking for the doors. Otherwise, the way the walls and the rows and the chairs and the dome seemed to spin perfectly maintained the illusion of a perfect circle.

The female museum attendant walked forwards from the staff door she’d entered through, to take her place in the center of the spotlight.

“Hello everyone, and welcome to our planetarium show,” she spoke, loudly enough that her voice projected up through the room. She clearly had practice at doing this show, if she could project her voice like that. And it was more than that, as she spoke, the attendant seemed to find a very natural way of keeping herself moving. In one moment, she was looking to one section of the audience, but then flowed so easily into looking at the section opposite them.

Zoe could never seem to pinpoint the moment in which she turned. The attendant knew how to deftly navigate the problem of turning her back to one side of the room while facing another, and did it with the kind of ease that meant it had only come to her through the practice of doing it over and over again.

“The show will last for exactly twenty-five minutes,” the woman added, and Zoe thought faintly of Payton guessing that exact running time. Zoe could tell her she’d guessed right when they met up again after.

“This is a sight and smells program,” the woman was saying. “You’ll each be provided a mask through which the smells will be administered to you. They should be coming out for you, now,” she added.

She had timed her speaking parts perfectly, because as she reached her last sentence, the nose masks had started to appear among the audience.

Zoe hadn’t paid close attention to the floor beneath the seats. She could see now that the nose masks were rising up automatically from where they had been waiting out of sight beneath the seats; each one was connected to a tube which disappeared beneath the floor— through which the smells were clearly going to travel.

Each nose mask raised itself to a comfortable face height. Zoe reached for hers, to help guide it into place, but the thing did not stop its motion— now that it had settled at the right hide, it slotted itself in closer, until it had settled itself over her nose.

“Yes, don’t worry about positioning the masks yourself,” the woman onstage was saying. “This planetarium is state of the art, with all the latest technology; the nose masks are capable of attaching themselves for you. All you need to do is sit back and let them do their job.”

Zoe’s nose mask was already in place for her, but the suggestion still sounded good to her. She let her arms drape more comfortably over the armrests of her chair, and settled a little more deeply into its cushions.

“We’ll put a scent through now, just to make sure all of our tech is functioning as it should. If you cannot pick up the smell, please raise your hand, and we’ll send someone over to help you. The thing you should be smelling now is fresh strawberries.”

The woman had perfectly timed her speech again; just as she managed to keep up her constant motion around the stage. As she spoke the words, the distinct aroma of strawberries filled Zoe’s nose. It was so vivid that it shocked her; part of her was almost expecting to look down and see bunches of strawberries sitting in her lap.

“Just take it in; let’s all just take a moment to make sure everything is functioning. Remember, raise your hand if there has been any malfunction for your seat.”

There was a pointed pause, in which the attendant’s eyes scanned up through the crowd.

Not a single hand was raised.

“Good; we only keep that test in the program as a formality. We’ve never yet had a malfunction.” The woman’s voice had turned confessional. It was nonsensical, but Zoe really did feel that she was being confessed to. How it was possible for her to create that impression while she was addressing an audience of at least 50 people, Zoe had no clue, but the show’s director did manage it.

“Now that we’re all set up, we’ll get to the heart of our show. Let’s drop the spotlight, now.”

The room was plunged into complete darkness. But it only lasted for a second, because streaks of bright color erupted just that second later, intruding on it.

Zoe had thought right, when she’d first come in. It was a complete wrap-around screen behind the upper row of chairs, and that same screen lining the inside of the dome. And what was playing on it was a wash of strobing lights in all colors; as vivid as the smell of strawberries had been.

There was a chorus of “oohs” and “ahhs” as the colors filled the room. Zoe had thought earlier about the dome reaching down into the room, and the drama of it. This was more dramatic still. The colors were everywhere, and because all interior walls and ceilings were connected, the colors could dance around the room without limit, running after each other, running into each other, twisting and combining and becoming something new with each flash.

“Just relax,” Zoe heard the woman down on the stage say. We’re giving you something new to inhale, now.”

Zoe’s eyes were filled with the colors she took in through them. They filled her vision, took up all her focus; but all the same, she noticed the feeling of the new infusion filling her nose. This one had no odor, which seemed strange to her, if it was meant to be a sights and smells show.

But it was affecting her; it made her feel disoriented. It was like someone had opened up a door to the back of her mind that she hadn’t known was there, through which a strange new feeling was entering…

She had never felt it before, but it was coming to her so slowly she could only really notice its entry if she put her focus on it. It was filling her as slowly as the gas was filling her nose mask… an incremental infusion, but it was constant, and it was cumulative.

Zoe lost herself slowly inside the cool sensation that came in through her nose mask. It was making her feel peaceful and subdued. Dimly, she realized it was sedating her, and keeping her sedation levels even.

Under its influence, she was happy to let the spirals filling the room have all of her attention. She was not worrying about where her attention was, not trying to untangle the visual knots they were tempting her into, or try to retrace a way back out of them, so that maybe she could finally remember how to look away.

The spirals were enhanced by the sensation of the gas. It was a steady trickle in through back door in her mind— it was a patient climb up a hill, powered by perpetual forward motion that never stopped— it was ever present, a never-ending rise, an ongoing elevation.

But it never became overwhelming— it hung so low in the background that its presence was almost a comfort, becoming only more comforting as it hung there, the portal in her mind open and ready to let it pass through.

The drifting feeling it created in her… the feeling that she was lost inside herself… it raised her eyes and attention back to the screens in front of her, guided her to watch.

There were so many colors there. Zoe wanted to turn her head to watch where they went, and what they did when they moved beyond her line of sight. But with the nose mask still in place, she could not turn her head.

She wouldn’t have wanted to turn her head, anyway, if it meant any chance of disrupting the mask’s connection to her face. She was craving the sedation, now— it was imperative that it be allowed to continue.

Besides, there was more than enough in the line of her vision for Zoe to watch. But it did increase her feeling of smallness within the room.

There were so many colors surrounding her, and though they danced on the walls and up on the ceiling, they were bright enough to come off the walls and paint themselves over the audience, the floor, everything; the colors could not be contained, or kept flat against the wall. They kept stealing more dimension for themselves.

Somehow, they seemed even more vivid to her; the odor-less scent pumping in through her mask seemed to highlight their vibrancy, and tease the magic out from within them.

But the colors were changing, now; they had been loose, flowing lines before, racing each other and dancing together. They were forming into groups now, all in parallel and with equal spacing between each group. The new grouped lines were swirling themselves into circular forms— swirling themselves until each group had become an individual spiral of color.

Zoe’s eyes didn’t know where to look, and the gas was no longer inspiring her to direct her eyes one way or the other.

It might have been like looking at patterned wallpaper, if each spiral weren’t so large. But because each one was so spread out, the tail of one spiral overlapped with the tail of another.

Zoe found this meant her gaze was pulled in many directions. It would settle on one slowly spinning spiral, but if she watched that spiral spin long enough eventually her gaze would lose focus and follow the spiral down to its tail, which would lead her the tail of the next… and then that new spiral would pull her attention up to watch it spin for a while.

It was a very disorienting feeling, only enhanced by the drugging that was happening to her.

She had completely lost the ability to direct where she looked. The decision was being made for her; it belonged to the spirals on the wall, on the ceiling; the spirals that were waiting for her anywhere she looked; and the power they had to direct her originated with the gas, which was still seeping in through its tubing— making her weak, making her compliant, making her willing to let herself go with anything that wanted to lead her. No matter what direction it wanted to lead her in.

Somewhere under the confusion, Zoe felt a real sense of unease. This wasn’t right— this wasn’t what she’d thought the show was going to be.

The rest of the audience seemed to agree with her. There were sounds of alarm rising up from all around her, complaints and demands, though some of them sounded more lethargic than others. The other members of the audience had been undergoing the same drugging that she had.

From what Zoe could see out of her periphery, some of the audience members were trying to detach their nose masks from their faces, even with weak, slow hands and arms.

Zoe thought vaguely that it was a good idea, at least from a hypothetical perspective; but it would have meant getting her eyes back from where they were current lost, up being passed around amongst the spirals, and she didn’t know how to do that.

And it would have meant closing the door that had opened in her mind; would have meant giving up the drifting feeling; would have meant giving up the sensation of the incoming gas, and Zoe was certain she didn’t want to do that.

She reminded herself that this was wrong— very wrong. The museum had gotten her into this show under false pretenses; they had drugged her against her will, were still drugging her right now— and they were enacting some kind of visual conditioning on her, and the rest of the audience who’d come in with her.

That was wrong, it wasn’t okay, it wasn’t how things were supposed to happen in the real world. She had to do something about it, anything she could. She had to figure out how to get her eyes back from the colors… but she was so weak, and tired, all she wanted to do was stay sagged in place in her chair and watch…

But she couldn’t, she had to figure out how to look away, or if she couldn’t do that, then at least close her eyes; she couldn’t keep looking… she had to stop… they were doing something to her, and they were going to keep doing it the longer she looked, and as long as the drugs kept them highlighted this vividly… they were playing with her mind, and she had to stop them doing it…

Her thoughts came to nothing— it was all well and good for her to think about stopping herself from looking. In reality, she was completely powerless to make it happen, and becoming more powerless all the time, with the patient entrance of the gas into her system.

Her gaze cycled through one spiral and then a next, so she could never even tell where she was looking; she didn’t even know where her eyes were anymore. She was growing more tired… more docile, more relaxed… more content to just keep looking at the spirals, feeling more and more of the feeling that odor-less vapor had introduced her to; but which the spirals were now perpetuation.

“You’re all doing a very good job of watching,” the museum attendant applauded them. It made sense to Zoe; the sounds of alarm had long since stopped, and the entire planetarium was silent all through its audience; the silence of intent watching, and focus. It was quiet enough that the room might have been empty.

“Just go on watching… the spirals will teach you all the new things you need to know… they know how to do it… just let them… you already are…”

Zoe was, and she knew it— she was letting the spirals guide her mind where they wanted it to go, and it didn’t bother her anymore… she was enjoying it more and more the longer her conditioning went on. She was letting them, and she would keep letting them, because she couldn’t stop them.

The longer they went on turning, the more Zoe started to feel grateful for that fact.

Jessica went with Emily and Payton as far as the elevators, all three of them leaving Zoe behind together. They all got into the same elevator, but that was where their paths began to diverge. Jessica hit the button for the second floor, but Payton pressed the button for the third.

When the elevator reached the second floor, and came to a stop, Jessica waved her goodbyes to her two friends, and then stepped out onto the second floor. The elevator doors closed behind her, her friends continuing on without her up to their nature exhibit on the third floor.

Jessica took a quick look around; the second floor did not extend all the way to the museum’s exterior walls on all four sides. It was part balcony, overlooking the lobby of the museum below, and Jessica walked to the railing and looked down.

She thought she could make out Zoe standing in the crowd outside the planetarium— she was the only one wearing a shirt like the one she had on.

Jessica looked up, next; the third floor was part balcony, exactly like the second, but it ran perfectly parallel to it, so it wasn’t possible to see up onto it. The only thing visible was the underside of its overhang.

She looked ahead of her next; the balcony continued along the entire length of the second floor. The interior wall of the second floor that ran along with the balcony was dotted all the way down with open arches, and other museum goers passed in and out of them to move between exhibits, or to come back out onto the balcony to stand at the railing and look back down at the lobby.

Jessica turned towards the first arch, and the doors set within it. It was the one nearest the elevator’s exit, and nearest her. She wanted to go through and hit as many of the interactive exhibits on this floor as she could, so that at the end of her half hour she could give a full report to her friends when she met them again in the lobby.

With this plan in mind, Jessica passed through a set of double doors into the first exhibition room.

The room on the other side was very dark. Jessica could barely see a foot ahead of herself.

The only thing visible in it was a white, lit sign hanging on the wall which told her that this was the zero-gravity room.

No sooner had Jessica read the sign than the zero gravity in the room began to take effect on her. It slipped itself in around the form of her body, and gently eased her up off the ground to fall into the open air above her.

Jessica let herself go— there wasn’t really another option for her. The zero gravity already held her in its grasp, was already guiding her to float higher. She could not force her body to obey gravity’s dictums when it had no authority here.

The room seemed to respond to Jessica’s surrender. As soon as she gave up the idea of struggle, and let herself become limp, it sent a white orb out to her, which hovered only a few inches back from her face.

Jessica watched the orb with interest— it was such a beautiful white light; it illuminated the empty, dark room around it, and Jessica found that it was very eye-catching, and pleasing to watch.

But then, to Jessica’s surprise, the orb began to speak to her.

“Hello, museum visitor!” It spoke. “This is a sensory exhibit— we hope you are already enjoying the feeling of being weightless, and the feeling of floating. But this room also comes with as special game. Would you like to play?”

“What kind of game is it?” Jessica asked. As she floated along, the white orb kept itself parallel to her, centered in her line of sight.

“It’s a playing-tricks-on-your-mind game,” the orb answered. “It creates illusions for your enjoyment and delight. It’s very fun, or so our visit-feedback sheets indicate. Would you like to play?”

Jessica was intrigued by the description of the game, so she said, ‘yes.’

At the moment that she said it, she felt a change in the air around her. With the illumination of the white orb in front of her, she could see the ceiling above her and the places where it met the walls.

In the light of the orb, she could see the air-ducts that ran along the ceiling; and she could see that they had opened themselves. She could not see what was coming in through these new openings, but she could feel it— warm air was being sent into the room. And enough of it that she could feel it washing over her body.

The sense of gentle heat it brought was calming; it made her feel warm, and safe, like she could just curl up into a ball, right there in mid-air, and let herself take a nap as she drifted.

She was drifting higher now— higher, to drift along the air ducts. She was parallel to them, and her drifting motion kept her parallel. She watched them streak by with a peaceful sense of calm.

It was pleasant to be higher up— she could feel the warm air that entered even more starkly up there. She was getting the chance to experience it before it fully entered the room, and dispersed itself with the air that already filled the room, and was cold instead of warm.

The orb had followed her up, and was still ahead of her where she could see it. She found her eyes drawn back to it, away from the ducts passing her by.

Once her eyes had gone back to the white orb, they stayed there. It was bright enough to hold her attention; as she watched, it seemed to become brighter still.

The brightness of it seemed to be doing something to her, when combined with the sensation of warm air encircling her. The orb was making her even more drowsy the longer she looked at it.

A thought came to Jessica from across a great distance— she should stop looking at it. It wasn’t quite natural to become tired just from watching a bright light. In the back of her head, Jessica thought there might be a name for whatever was happening to her, whether it was natural or not. But it was too exhausting to dig it up from the recesses of her sleepy mind.

Still, something unnatural was happening her— she should stop it, interrupt the process so it couldn’t happen anymore.

But the air was so warm… caressing her skin inch by inch as it rolled over her… and the orb was so bright. Jessica knew that even if she closed her eyes, the light would still be perceptible through her eyelids, and it would tempt her into opening her eyes again.

It was at this moment that orb shifted. It had been a static white; now, it had transformed itself into a shimmer of rippling color. Jessica watched with even greater fascination. The colors were just so dynamic; constantly streaming in all directions across the surface of the orb.

They swirled in shifting patters— first circles, then lines, then tangles and knots. But no matter what shape they took, the colors never stopped moving. And the air kept coming into the room, in time with them; making Jessica feel even drowsy.

She was so tired now that she felt her mind was wide open. She was suggestible; the way she usually only got if she were operating on two or three hours of sleep or less. It was too much work to think… it was too much work to guard against anything that might want to influence her.

And if Jessica stared hard enough at the orb in front of her— if she stared very hard, and then looked to the side, in the corner of her eyes she could see an after-image. It changed each time she did it, but all the varying after-images looked like words to her.

The word “Sleep,” was there sometimes when Jessica checked— sometimes it was “Obey” instead. The orb and its marvelous dancing colors wanted her to sleep… wanted her to obey, and she was too tired to guard against it, as she already knew.

But really, why should she even want to guard against it? Everything in the room was drawing her to follow the orbs instructions… drawing her to obey. If obedience felt as warm and sleepy as this, why should she want to deprive herself. Why deprive herself at all, if obedience felt this good?

Jessica opened her eyes wider to stare with greater focus at the orb. She wanted to let it influence her, now… wanted to let it fill her head with commands and instructions. Doing that would mean obeying. It would mean giving the orb— giving the room exactly what it wanted.

That was all Jessica wanted to do; she wanted to give the orb and the room anything they wanted from her, because they had given her such beautiful feelings to feel that she wanted to repay them however she could.

She kept watching, the way the orb and its flashing colors told her to.

She was happy to do it.

Payton and Emily parted ways with Jessica when she got out on the second floor. Their elevator continued up to the third floor without her, and when it came to a stop up there, Payton was the first to step out, with Emily following behind her.

The view from right outside the elevator doors was of a long balcony extending to the opposite exterior wall, way down at the other end of the building. Payton guessed that if the two of them went over the balcony’s edge, they’d be able to look down and see the lobby all that way below them.

The only other thing visible from their vantage point was a pair of double doors which presumably led into the nature exhibit they’d come up for.

Payton pulled open the one door in the pair which was closer to her reach. “After you,” she told Emily, who walked ahead of her to step in to the exhibition space on the other side.

Payton joined her in there only a second later, and the door clicked shut behind the two of them.

The room was so full of plants that it looked like a greenhouse of some kind. But they were strange plants; there was no variety among them which Payton could recognize, let alone name.

The plants were all winding, vine-y things; or at least those were the ones which took up the most space, and which caught Payton’s attention first. There were so many of them, and all hanging so closely together that Payton felt as though she and Emily had stepped into a densely packed jungle.

“I wonder which way we should walk to find our way deeper into the exhibit,” Emily wondered out loud.

Payton did a quick sweep of the space; she tried looking past all the hanging vines. This time she noticed there were some thicker standing trunks; and around the trunks, there was further winding growth climbing up them. She let her eyes drop to the floor after that— there was hidden undergrowth at foot-level, interspersed with tiny buds.

Payton sent her eyes along the undergrowth, hoping for some semblance of a path there. There was a certain look about it, something that looked like it had at least originally been plotted out by someone, though the things that grew there now had clearly decided to diverge from that original plan to one degree or another.

“Let’s try walking along the underbrush, there,” Payton suggested, pointing down to the underbrush so Emily could see, too.

“Good idea,” Emily agreed. “It does look like it’s leading somewhere… it’s almost arrow-like.”

The two of them set off in that direction; as they walked through the room, both of them took in their surroundings as they went by. Payton watched the vines hanging around them, particularly. If she looked closely enough, she almost might have sworn that they were… shaking… vibrating from the inside out.

And if Payton really thought about it… there was something about the plants underfoot that felt the same way. Vibratory, like they were all holding back some great amount of suppressed energy; so much of it that it was causing them to shake violently. Violently enough that it became sensation; powerful enough that could be felt as waves in the air, in the case of the vines, or as tremors in the leaves beneath each step.

They followed the untrodden path through the vines further; far enough that it led them to a second pair of double doors. This time, Emily was the one to open the door for Payton, and Payton went through it at her prompting, thanking Emily as she passed her by.

The next room was more humid than the last. But it was more spacious; there were no vines, or trunks. Only many, many rows of flowers.

Payton let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. There had been something a little oppressive about the plants in the last room, especially with their strange shaking, or vibrating, or whatever it had been… it had felt like they were lying in wait, ready to pounce on any guests who were passing these through.

But the flowers in here were so pretty and still by contrast, that Payton felt immediately at ease.

“It should be easier to keep walking from here on,” Emily mused. “No vines to push through, or leaves and buds to step over.”

Payton agreed silently, but didn’t say so. Emily didn’t seem to mind. Both of them were enjoying the look of the flowers as they walked deeper into the room.

The double doors into the next room over were clearly visible, without vines hanging down in their way and blocking view. But it was a large room, and the rows of the flowers were so many— it would take time to come across.

“Hey, look,” Emily said, capturing Payton’s attention again. “It looks like the flowers are going to blossom!”

Payton looked down to see what Emily was talking about. Each flower was closed into a bud; she hadn’t noticed before; she’d been too struck by the colors of the closed petals to notice whether they were closed or open.

But they were clearly all opening now, and Payton let out an exclamation of surprise. They looked beautiful as they opened themselves up.

The sense of surprise was quickly replaced by alarm— as each flower opened, it released a clearly visible spray into the air.

The spray was a silvery color, and the droplets seemed to rise in the air… seemed to mix with the humidity which had already filled the room… Payton could feel it making her dizzy.

“We need… to leave…” Emily tried to say, but her words were getting tangled in her mouth and becoming slurred. She took an unsteady step forward, as if trying to make it to the double doors on the far side of the room— doors which were much too far away for either one of them to have any hope of reaching them.

The strange floral spray wasn’t only making Payton dizzy, she realized, as she tried in vain to keep herself upright. It was making her body overheat; it was igniting something inside her she’d never quite felt before. It was a hunger; it was similar to other arousal she’d felt in the past, but there was something about this time that was different…

The flowers were still spraying their spray; Payton was feeling dizzier and dizzier. She couldn’t keep herself standing any longer; her legs gave out, and she fell down among the flowers.

Emily had gone down too, and when she slipped and fell onto the ground, she let out a moan which… did something to Payton. That was what was different. What Payton was feeling was not abstract arousal, not just the craving for an orgasm. She didn’t want something— she wanted someone— she wanted Emily. Or maybe not only Emily; maybe any woman within proximity of her, but Emily was the woman who happened to be there, and she wanted her.

Even just realizing it had made her so, so wet.

Emily was still moaning, but she had rolled over among the flowers so she was on her back. The flowers were still spraying, and there was so much excess spray in the air that it hung like a cloud, low and close to the floor of the room, right at head-level height for

Payton’s mind was lost in the floral fog. She wanted women; all women, any woman— and especially the woman in front of her, lying spread out in the grass.

Emily was already fumbling with her clothes to get them stripped off her body; clearly thinking the same thing Payton was thinking; the same thing the flowers were making them both think, together.

Payton got out of her clothes at about the same time Emily, did, and she rolled herself forward to tangle her limbs with Emily’s, to press their naked bodies close together.

Still the spray circulated low to the ground, filling their minds, guiding their movements… directing them through, as their fingers found each other’s folds, and their mouths found each other’s mouths.

The humidity and the spray and their mutual lubrication all mixed together— driving their mutual arousal higher, and fogging their thoughts out with that same floral ecstasy.

Payton couldn’t remember a time before she’d entered the room; before she’d been with Emily in the flowers.

She didn’t want to.

When the museum closed that night, just as when it closed every night, there were fewer guests who left than who had entered throughout the day.

Once again, as it always did, it had cast a wide net, and caught many more new recruits than it wanted; some which it had no use for, some which, upon cross-reference, it would have been too difficult to make disappear, or which were otherwise unsuitable for its purposes.

But the rest, which were possible to keep, would be kept. And in the after-hours darkness, those recruits, all those beautiful young women were sent off in pairs to reinforce the new programming they’d been given; the new personalities each recruit would adopt, at the request of the museum or anyone else who wanted to ask.

That was the mainframe computer’s purpose, and it served it well. Said purpose came to it at the biding of the museum’s director. With her underworld connections, she was always keen for more recruits to send off into her network, for pay or for positive esteem. She had designed the ideal computer for her task, and it kept up with her demands with its never-ending parade of new recruits. It was all a finely tuned system, just the same way that the rest of museum ran along according to a finely tuned system.

With the central’s computer main task done for one more day, and with all of the new recruits off learning more important lessons which they would carry with them into their new lives, the computer went into review mode; checking its software for any necessary updates, and reviewing its files for any sign of malfunctioning.

It was insignificant to the computer that four among that day’s recruits were Zoe, Jessica, Payton and Emily, who had all be judged worthy of keeping. In a way, it was insignificant to each one of them, too. Their names had already been lost to them, and as they were off reinforcing the day’s programming, they were quickly becoming interchangeable with the other new recruits.

They did not remember that they had been Zoe, Jessica, Payton and Emily once; did not remember that they had been friends, did not remember that they had come to the museum for a fun visit that day; did not remember that they had ever been outside the museum, or that they had come from somewhere else. They did not remember anything but the pleasure of doing as they were told, no matter what that was. And they had become so obsessed by this pleasure that they no longer even wanted to.

Their new lives were all they wanted now; all they would ever want. And that was just fine with them.