At first thought, you wouldn't have imagined there would be much call for inventing a gas which can make people lose their inhibitions. Where would be the value in that? That's what Wendy had thought when she first came to work on the project, mixing the right cocktail of hallucinogens, relaxants, anaesthetics and other esoteric substances, trying to get the correct mix that would provide a temporary alteration to a person's behaviour without sending them into a trance, a trip, or a coma.
But then you start to think; what about the people who might need it? What about the people too afraid of social repercussions to do even the most everyday tasks? Could it not have therapeutic value for them to be able to breathe in a wonder substance that would help them achieve things their neuroses would not allow? What about couples in dire straits because they simply couldn't lose their inhibitions and open up to one another emotionally - or sexually? Wouldn't it benefit them? Or imagine a performer, a gifted singer or dancer or orator, suddenly crippled by stage fright? They too could be helped by this product, perhaps.
It was Dr Avery Bennett, the project lead, who raised the idea of more revolutionary applications. The chemist had a photograph pinned up behind his desk. It was apparently a piece of graffiti written on a wall during the riotous Paris uprising in 1967.
The graffiti read, in English: "THERE IS A POLICEMAN INSIDE ALL OF OUR HEADS. HE MUST BE DESTROYED."
"What is it that holds society together?" the doctor had asked his team one day. "Certainly authority, police, law, but what gives these things license? The civilian population of any country far outnumbers the army or law enforcement. They do not have to be obedient, yet for the most part they are. Why is this?
"The threat of punishment is enough for some, but for the majority, it is the
social contract
. The unspoken agreement between people;
this
we can do,
this
we cannot.
This
is acceptable,
that
is taboo. The thing within humans that holds us to the centre line. The policeman in our head.
"What if we could make it so that people could no longer hear the policeman any more, only their own id? What if we could make it that there was suddenly for them no 'cannot' - only want and don't want? Would a society hold together without the social contract, without personal inhibition?
"Imagine, we could reduce an invading army to anarchy, destabilise a brutal regime, liberate an oppressed country, all without firing a single bullet..."
That was why, in an effort to try and secure more funding, they had begun to showcase the potential of the gas to the sort of people who bought technology for the military. Dr Bennett had chosen Wendy to assist him on many of these trips to meet powerful people in suits and uniforms; in part because she was one of his most capable scientists, but also because they'd been having an affair for some time and they liked to use their overnight stays to carry this on untroubled by the risk of discovery by Dr Bennett's wife.
On this trip, as she had done many times before, despite it not really being advisable, Wendy had removed the samples of gas from the laboratory the night before, so she would not have to make a detour back to the facility on the way to the railway station early the next morning. Avery Bennet was energetic for a man almost twice her twenty-five years, and she always felt better if she had a good night's rest before one of their little sojourns, as it was unlikely she would be having much sleep while she was away.
Her head full of plans for tonight's liaison, and the spicy red lingerie she planned to wear under her sensible twinset, it was perhaps understandable that she didn't notice that one of the three small canisters of the gas - which the scientists had informally christened Uninhibitol - was not in her bag, not until they were well on their way.
Even then, she had registered only a mild sense of annoyance that they would have only two canisters to show - but she wasn't terribly concerned about the whereabouts of the third. It had doubtless rolled under the coffee table in the living room, or perhaps under the stairs of the house she shared with her two roommates, and she would find and return it to the lab on her return.
Which would have been fine, if it had been one of the canisters that
wasn't
faulty.
--
The problem with Uninhibitol, the kink they were trying to work out, the research they needed extra funding for, was that it didn't work. At least, for quite a while, it didn't. And then, all of a sudden, it did - test subjects would register as completely unchanged, and then suddenly their behaviour would alter. That in itself wasn't a particularly major problem, but they had only a brief window of 'perfect' working. After that, the longer the exposure to the gas, the more extreme the reaction. People went from being simply relaxed and uninhibited to being completely at the mercy of wants and desires they had kept repressed. And then, even after the gas was no longer in use, quite a long time would pass before the subject would return to normal - often with little memory of what had transpired.
The right level of exposure was fine. All that it would mean was that you would find the way to have that difficult conversation, sing that solo aria, dress up in latex for your wife. But random, unpredictable, even crazy effects would ensue - including a high degree of suggestibility - if the subject went for a long period exposed to the gas.
A long period, like spending several hours in a house that was slowly filling with compressed, odourless, flavourless, invisible Uninhibitol leaking from a lost, faulty canister.
--
Izzy heard her roommate leave her bedroom and clomp off down the stairs. She looked blearily at the clock on her phone, wondering in her half-asleep state what Wendy was doing going out at such an early hour. Then she remembered she had one of those work trips she was always taking with her boss, and that she'd be heading out to catch an early train. Izzy, who, like their other roommate Faye was a year or so younger than Wendy and still studying for her PhD, thanked her lucky stars that so far nothing in her life required her to get up so damn early, snuggled down into her bed covers and drifted back off to sleep.
Several hours later, daylight now streaming through the curtains to stir her from her slumber, she grudgingly accepted it was probably time to get up.
Eyes gummy, she wandered across the hall from her bedroom to the bathroom. Removing her panties she sat on the toilet and emptied her bladder, then she turned on the shower, discarded the t-shirt she'd slept in, and stepped under the warm and refreshing spray.
A short while later, now comfortably awake and wonderfully clean all over, she wound herself in a large and fluffy towel and made her way back to the bedroom. The towel hit the floor, and Izzy sat on her bed and began to blow dry her long, dusky-blonde hair.
Hair dried and a soothing layer of delightfully-scented moisturiser applied to her skin - perfect to calm down her freshly-shaved legs - Izzy stood and regarded herself in her bedroom's full-length mirror. It was a familiar ritual, and one she always carried out with satisfaction. Izzy liked her body, and enjoyed how she looked naked - her skin golden, her large breasts bouncy and perky, her waist slim, her legs long, and her hips and ass round and tight. She was lucky, she knew, to look as good as she did, and sometimes when others were around her she grew self-conscious of it, the way guys eyes wandered over her figure, mentally undressing her. She knew they weren't doing that to every girl (although among her roommates Wendy was almost her body-double, while the willowy, strawberry-blonde and freckled Faye certainly had no shortage of her own admirers) and although she wanted to feel flattered by the attention, there was something inside her that told her that she should act with modesty, and so she shied away from revealing clothing in favour of more conservative attire which her social conditioning told her was more becoming in a young and career-minded scientist.
Today, though, she found herself wandering through a train of thought that was at once both unfamiliar and also surprisingly logical. She had a body that she herself enjoyed, and nudity was a state she felt personally comfortable with in private - so why restrict said nudity to privacy alone? She had no plans for the day beyond some study at home, and so it seemed a shame to cover herself up with clothes. Of course, Faye was around - but she was her friend, and a fellow woman - surely she would have no reason to object? And even if she did, what of it?
Smiling to herself, and completely unaware of the slight pinkish haze at the very edge of her peripheral vision, Izzy left her room naked and walked downstairs.
--
Faye sat on the couch, feet tucked up under her, in her customary about home outfit of yoga pants and a crop top. She'd been up and about a little while, having had breakfast and done her morning yoga routine, and now she was idly sat scrolling through apps on her phone, checking out her friends' Instagram stories and basically killing time until she felt ready to break out the books. She felt a little strange; light-headed - but it didn't necessarily feel unpleasant, so she put it down to a positive effect of her workout and good breathing technique. Everything felt very relaxed and calm.
