Teenage angst had always gotten the better of me, for both good and bad. I had always been a curious person, trying to push the boundaries of what my world was and what people wanted me to be. Sure, it got me in a lot of trouble but it left me with some stories to tell.
My earliest memories seemed mundane enough compared to what other people have described growing up. I do not recall being exceptionally gifted at anything and was not more of a precocious child than most. This all changed when my father brought home two things, a home computer and an AOL free trial compact disk.
At first, I didn't understand the point of it, after all my Nintendo could play games and I saw zero value in this thing called "Excel" but that quickly changed. Immediately after the soon to be banal phrase "You've got mail" rang through the speakers my curiosity was peaked.
What I discovered was unfathomable in my pre-adolescent mind. The entire world opened up to me and I could explore every thought, concept, and idea in detail at my own pace. The concept of communicating instantly with multiple people was especially a breakthrough. While I spoke over the phone before, it had always been to people I knew outside the digital realm. Now I could communicate with people from all walks of life at any point of time.
Needless to say, I was on the computer all the time. My parents were concerned at first until they started noticing changes in my school work and work ethic. So much so that my parents actually installed another phoneline for exclusive use of internet, it was the 90s after all. I quickly rose to the top of my class and things seemed to be going well in their minds, at least until puberty started.
At the age of 13 I began to become interested in girls with full force. While internet porn was available and I knew how to circumvent my parents' restrictions on the computer, my primary focus was girls my own age, girls I actually knew and could interact with. This led to near constant use of AIM and while my school work did not suffer, I started engaging in undesirable behavior like sneaking out at night and lying about where I would be going.
These teenage infractions eventually did cut into school though but not the quality of my work. I began to occasionally make plans with a sweet heart or two after those school bells rang to go off-site in more excluded areas, away from the prying eyes of adults. I simply got the assignments from my friends, filled it out, and continued with my business. A few days here and a few days there was no big deal but as I reached my senior year of high school the senioritis really set in. In the second semester, which had 90 days to it, I missed 45. I even made honor roll for both quarters but that mattered very little when the principal called my parents and I to inform me that due to my absences I would not graduate and had to be held back.
This was by far the worst moment I had yet to experience up to this of time. I had gotten accepted to a few top-notch schools but I was unable to defer my admission when the reason for my deferment was discovered. To make things worse, I was now on everyone's radar and could not galivant around like I had once done. My parents also were not at all too happy about having my future derailed over such a stupid situation. They gave me a list of things I would have to do to remain living with them and for them to continue supporting me through this and college. I had to work summer job and when school started again I had to join clubs to guaranteed that my hands were always busy.
Man, mowing lawns every day in the summer heat was brutal but it did give me surprising time to think. I had to think of any way to get out of the situation, or at the very least adapt the current situation to become more tolerable. This led me to the source of all my knowledge and cleverness, the internet.
We had, at this point, switched to broadband and a wide variety of options opened up to me but I wasn't quite sure how to best capitalize on it. I eventually found a better part time job selling CDs via catalogues. These were mostly "books on tapes", educational CDs, language learning CDs, and self-help CDs. While these were sold elsewhere, my commission derived from the money that the company would have spent on advertising.
Things were going better. I found a niche selling CDs, mostly to my neighbors and family friends, I was making slightly more money (but nothing absurd), and I got to enjoy a lot more of the A/C. Everything was pretty much the boring summer days until I decided one day out of the blue I read an article online. It was discussing the placebo effect on stop smoking CDs and how the whole thing was a waste. There was nothing unusual about this in itself but I had recently sold a set of CDs to my mother's friend/coworker, Karen, that was meant to help you control your cravings through relaxation therapy.
I also knew that Karen had been quite vocal about how she was able to stop smoking in a relatively small amount of time, and attributed her success to her daily listening of the CDs. My curiosity was piqued and I decided to investigate whether this was true or not.
After ordering the CDs myself I did what any self-respecting millennial with a computer would do, I ripped it onto my computer. I did listen to it but didn't really seem to be anything especially special. Upon further dissecting of the audio I found something rather odd. Embedded within the wavs was a track that I had not noticed before. After tinkering around with it I found that it was voice in the extremely low registers repeating itself throughout the entire CD saying, "You do not need to smoke, you feel great when you are not smoking and listening to this CD, you want to continue listening to this CD and not smoke". It just kept repeating itself over and over until the last track of the last CD where the voice repeatedly said, "to continue not smoking you need to buy the next CD".
I was baffled. I heard of hypnosis before but never really thought much about it. I looked over the other tracks on the CD and found that it was all created to set a person in a relaxed, suggestive state and then implant those suggestions. It became so obvious why Karen would have gone from smoking $20 dollars a week in cigarettes to spending $50 bi-weekly on these CDs. I looked into some of the other CDs I sold and found similar messages hidden away. At first, I wasn't entirely sure what to do with this knowledge but a light bulb clicked on and I knew. If all these CDs were doing was implanting ideas into the person's head, why don't I cut out the middle man, make the CDs, and sell them myself.
Karen was my first guinea pig, I simply told her I did not get the new catalogue yet but knew a way to get the next edition of CDs, Napster. The Mp3 I took from the internet was indeed a relaxation recording but I had implanted the same message that Karen was listening to before, save for one detail. I added into the repeated phrases, "and you can always trust Malcolm" (my name by the way). I burnt the disk, gave to her and only charged her $40 for them.
A couple of weeks later, Karen came back looking for the next edition. She still hadn't smoked but I still did not know if that was my doing or the original CDs'. I decided that I would see if she did indeed trust me. I asked her, "how long have you been nicotine free?" She said that it had almost 6 weeks. I told her I am sure she wouldn't need any more CDs and she had been cured of her smoking habit. She was clearly thinking about it but her head was nodding and her mind quickly agreed with her body. I still wanted more proof so I devised a test that would prove whether my recording worked or not.
I burned a CD with a list of dub-step fresh out of London and told her, "You're going to love this music, trust me." I didn't want to push my luck any further and honestly the CD did not contain any other hidden message in it, at least not any I placed there or was aware of. She gave me some money for the CD and I didn't think much of it until one day at dinner my mom was complaining about the god-awful music Karen was listening to at her house. She couldn't make out why there were all these weird rhythms and unusual skipping of sounds. She was clearly describing dub-step though she did not know the term for it.
I felt like I had won the lottery but had to act like nothing had happen. After diner I did the happy dance in my room and set myself to freeing myself from busy work for low pay. I already had a small but steady flow of customers seeking a variety of CDs, a near infinite access to any sort of recordings, and knowledge on how to connect the two together in a way that would be to my benefit.
I was able to repeat my success with several other people and soon was able to give up the CD catalogue entirely. I never really deviated too far from the suggestions I'd given to Karen but each was tailor-made for the customer. Thanks to having the trust of my customers always, I was able to add a few more suggestions such as suggesting that, "you listen to the recording in private or with headphones" and that "Malcolm was a great guy." I never tried to take financial advantage of anyone and did make sure I provided the product the person actually asked for. This eventually required me to hide my IP address and use a variety of file-sharing platforms. In fact, I always charged less for the CDs than the catalogues ever did.
Eventually my parents asked me to make a CD for them, one of their favorite oldies' mixes. I did as I was asked but couldn't help myself and saw an opportunity to make my life a little easier. I had wanted to go out to some of the end of the year parties going on before all my friends went off to college but was stuck with a 10:00 pm curfew. I added the suggestions that they could trust me and then explicitly stated that I was old enough to not have a curfew. A few weeks passed and then I had an opportunity to act. On the 4th of July, one of my buddies was having a kegger at his house, conveniently while the rest of his family was visiting relatives in the next state over. Given all that had happened with school my parents would never allow me to enjoy myself so thoroughly.
I approached my mom, the stricter of my two parents, and asked her if I could go out just this one time. To even my surprised she said "yes," and didn't bat an eye about it. Needless to say, I had a great time, at least as much of it I can remember. I woke up and drove home expecting a "talk" when I arrived for not coming home at all that night. There was a talk, just not what I was expecting. My parents sat me down and told me that they thought they had been overly harsh in my punishment and that I shouldn't have a curfew anymore, just as long as I took care of my responsibilities and did not abuse their trust.
It was undeniable now; my recordings had worked and were able to suggest things that went against their own will, rather than something they want and needed help with. Several angels and demons instantly appeared on my shoulder at this point but one was just a little louder than the rest. You see, before the whole school truancy issue came to light I had a rather busy social agenda. I was no virgin by my senior year and had had a steady string of dates. The girl I was talking to just before everything went down the drain was a fellow senior named Katya Petrov. She was a gorgeous first-generation Russian living in my neighborhood whose parents just happened to strongly disapprove of me. They were over protective of her, never allowing her much free time or a social life. The truancy issue gave them all the reason to forbid contact and Katya, being somewhat submissive in personality, was not in a position to go against their wishes.
