Matt's job was a boring one, especially with the cold war long since over. Officially, he was a cataloguer of intelligence, but in reality that meant that he sorted through a bunch of 40-year-old propaganda, labeled it as propaganda, and tried to resist being indoctrinated into the benefits of the Soviet Union. Truthfully, his measely paycheck at the end of the week was a better argument against capitalism than any that the dead Soviet Union could produce. Government jobs had stability, but not the best paychecks.
During the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West (read: CIA) had collected intelligence from hundreds of abandoned posts throughout the dissolving Union--too many to adequately catalogue it all. Now, with computer technology, it was left to analysts like Matt to document it, log it into a searchable database, and try to figure out how tank positions from forty years ago could be useful today.
Today, Matt was running a text recognition script on documents pulled from a captured laboratory. The program identified some keywords, some of which Matt scrapped, and then he gave the document a quick pass through. He had learned Russian in school, never knowing that it would qualify him for a thankless job later. To be honest, his Russian wasn't great, but it was infinitely better than most Americans.
Every now and then, Matt came across something funny. Today happened to be one of those days. This was a walkthrough of the attempted mind control operations of the Soviet Union from this specific lab. This type of thing came up every now and then, with some off-the-wall bad-science-fiction idea getting funding because it might have been the silver bullet to defeat the West.
Matt read through it, marked a few keywords, and then paused. Something sounded familiar about this. Why?
Matt ran a search on the database for "Mind Control" and found a couple other articles that he had classified at some point or another. They were from different years and different places. Each claimed to have marginal success, but that was expected. If you weren't successful, you didn't get funding. There were definitely some feet on the scales when it came to reporting results.
But there were a few elements of one older document that aligned to the one he had open now. They indicated a pattern of lights, overlaid with commands. They even described the same pattern, with a few minor differences. That was weird. The later paper probably borrowed from the former, but they were written very differently and the latter seemed to imply no reference to the prior. Interesting.
Matt pulled a few other documents. They each appeared to be from different countries and reporting up to different officials. Was it possible that similar works were commissioned at different times, but lost in the various branches of bureaucracy? But that would imply that there was some merit to this, given that they arrived at similar results.
Matt found one passage that talked about the limitations of the method. Apparently, the method was impactful if you could synchronize the flashes to a person's blinking--effectively hijacking their inputs every time they attempted to refresh what they were seeing. But people were aware that something was wrong, so they would blink rapidly or at off beats to break the pattern.
"Huh," Matt muttered, looking down at the computer screen. That was a problem they could actually account for now. That was weird.
Technically, of course, this was all classified. But someone up the line had done a pass through of files to remove anything with nuclear secrets, weapons technology, or political fallout potential. By definition, what he was getting was the "everything else" that might someday be useful. And the screenshotting capabilities of his computer had been disabled.
That being said, he was in the archive room alone this afternoon and he had his cellphone. Matt perused the files, took pictures with his phone, then returned to work. Technically, it was illegal, but nobody ever checked his phone and nobody seemed to care about these. He was supposed to flag anything notable with a supervisor, but he wasn't about to show them a bunch of documents on mind control and let them know he was crazy.
So Matt went back to work, filing away and establishing keywords. He did, however, nudge a few of the documents keywords to make them a little harder to find. "Mind control" became "Personality Training", for example. If confronted, he could say it was the literal translation or he made an honest mistake. But until he experimented some, he didn't want anyone else coming across these.
---
It was stupid, of course, but sort of a fun science project. He read the files over at night, transferring them to his computer for better visual. He wrote a couple basic computer scripts to recreate the colors and shades that were supposed to trigger a "state of increasing susceptibility". There were varying theories about why this worked, Matt's favorite of which was that humans were "evolutionarily intended to be subject to a state in service of its people", but Matt really didn't care. It wasn't going to work, it was just fun.
Matt programmed in a command to test it. He always hated broccoli, but knew it was good for him. So he programmed in "You like broccoli" to be the receiving words.
Then, he sat in front of his computer and activated his script. The screen lit up with red, then instantly shifted to blue, then green, yellow, blue, green, re... yel... no blue! It shifted rapidly. Oddly, Matt felt the word begin to gray away. It was like he was experiencing g-forces, but he was sitting still. He blinked rapidly, trying to look away but finding it difficult. He tried to shut his eyes, but found that it was difficult to think straight enough to command himself to do so. He instinctively blinked in rapid succession, breaking the chain of colors. His vision began to clear just slightly, so that he was able to look away. It took a few minutes after looking away to get a clear ahead again.
Without looking at the screen, he reached over and pressed the keys to exit the script.
Then, and only then, he looked at the screen. "What... the... fuck..." Matt muttered softly. He asked himself if he liked broccoli. He found himself not entirely detesting it. That was enough to keep experimenting.
---
The Soviets didn't have facial recognition. Matt did. Within that, he could tell if someone's eyes were closed or not. It wasn't hard to hold the light pattern until the next time the light was on. He also built in a timer so that after 60 seconds, the script would shut itself off. He didn't want to be trapped or something here until he died of thirst.
He tested it while not looking at the screen, just to ensure that the 60-second cutoff would work. Then, once that was done, Matt set up his phone to record himself and pressed record. Finally, he sat in front of the screen and activated the script.
Without the ability to interrupt the blinking, the intensity quickly grew. The flashing lights of the screen were baking right into his skull. With it, they carried the words that flashed in the midst of them. "You" "Like" "Broccoli". Matt fought it instinctively for about ten seconds, then grew calmer. It was intense, but manageable. He was getting used to it.
He didn't know how long he was sitting there, but he suddenly became aware that the program was over. He was sitting in the chair looking at a computer screen that was not flashing colors anymore. He blinked a few times, finding his eyes were dry. Then he reached for his phone and stopped the recording. He looked at it and found that it was six minutes long. He had been sitting here for about five minutes after the script had ended.
"Woah," Matt muttered. Had it worked? Matt asked himself if he liked Broccoli. He wasn't sure. He couldn't quite pull the taste from his mind. He frowned, then decided he had to be sure.
What followed was a quick trip to the grocery store, a short cooking time, and one of the most delicious meals of his life.
Then, Matt sat back in amazement. Had he just discovered mind control?
