Hanna Liu was exhausted. Another impossibly long day of Zoom University was killing her. It wasn't exactly the final year she had had in mind. This was supposed to be a time of amazing experiences, good times with old friends, final adventures. Instead, she spent all day staring at her computer, and all evening staring at computer.
She should probably get outside, go exercise, read a book, or really do anything else. But she was tired, and the only thing she really felt like doing was spending the evening scrolling aimlessly through Reddit. It was a massive waste of time, but each new meme or insane story gave her just enough dopamine to want to continue on.
10 minutes in, as she was laying in bed and staring at her phone, she scrolled past a gif that caught her eye for a moment. She scrolled back up, intrigued. It was a spiral, moving in the most peculiar fashion and transitioning through a breathtaking array of colours. Hanna was having difficulty making sense of what she was seeing, but with each passing moment, she was drawn further and further in.
The more she studied the slowly rotating shapes, the more detail she noticed. Every second, a new shape or colour would appear, demanding more of her attention. She barely noticed that 10 minutes had passed before she looked at the title of the post:
"Check out my subreddit for more."
Intrigued, she clicked the link. The subreddit was full of posts, starting from #1 and continuing for several pages. Hanna reasoned she should check out #1.
Her phone opened a new tab, which loaded an unlisted Youtube video titled "Trance I". Before she could react, a high pitched whine filled her headphones, drowning out the music she had been playing in the background. It had a rhythm to it that Hanna couldn't decipher. It was distracting, alluring, and she couldn't help but try to listen more carefully. Every time she tried, her mind went fuzzy and lost focus. Hanna moved to close the video, but the sound shifted and her attention went with it.
She hadn't even noticed the counter-rotating spirals filling the screen in front of her eyes. She tried to follow them, but her eyes kept losing focus as they traced the movement in opposite directions. Two words flashed on the screen:
FULL SCREEN
Without thinking, Hanna filled her phone's screen with the video. Her whole body was relaxing, the noise in her headphones was starting to pulse in time with the spirals. She thought she heard a voice in the noise, but she still couldn't focus on it. She was having difficulty focusing at all. What was this? She should close the video.
Her hand moved a milimeter, but at that moment the spirals increased in speed. Hanna's whole body relaxed, her hand barely holding onto the phone. She forgot about closing the video. Then she forgot about everything else. The only thing that mattered was watching the spirals. Faster and faster they went. Her conscious self began to fall deeper into her mind. She felt... vacant. Her last thought was that this was an odd feeling, before the spirals became a blur and her conscious mind fell down a deep hole.
She had no sense of self, no sense of time, no awareness of anything other than the screen infront of her. If she had, she would have known that she had been staring at the video for 30minutes before a final instruction flashed on the screen:
CLOSE ME AND PLAY #2
The command flashed across the screen. Hanna mindlessly exited the video, returning to the subreddit and finding #2. Spirals, different from before, filled the screen in front of her. These were moving slowly, changing colours as they rotated lazily on the screen. Hanna's headphones were filled with a low buzzing, which whirred in time with the slow movement of the spirals. Hanna didn't notice, but the spirals were slowly increasing in rotation.
RELAX
OBEY
HORNY
