Beth felt it begin as she was blowing out the candles during her sixth birthday party.
She wasn't really blowing out any candles, of course; she was in the chair. (Beth tried not to think of it as the Chair.) But the electrodes taped to her temples made her memories more vivid than the antiseptic white room around her, and anyway Beth preferred her memories to her present situation. That was why she fought so hard to keep them.
Right now, she was looking at her sixth birthday. Mom and Dad were there, of course, and so was Grandpa Richard. (Grandma Betty had died before she was born.) Her big brother Michael was sulking about something...no. Not something. Don't let it get away. He was sulking about...the cake! He'd wanted to lick the frosting off the knife, Mom hadn't let him, and it was really obvious to Beth now, looking back, that he was just upset about being ignored because it was her special day. And she had a friend, there, too, the girl from next door, Emily. Only five, but--
Then Beth felt it. Just like every other time. Her real body kicked and struggled against the restraints, but they held. Just like every other time. It was always the same. Whenever she went back--whenever the chair took her back to a memory, it wasn't to show it to her. That was just a side effect. It was trying to burn it out of her head.
She felt the...the program, the effect, the whatever-it-was, like wires burrowing into her brain. She gritted her teeth--real or imaginary, she couldn't tell--and focused on pushing them back, blocking them out. Not this one, she said inside her head. Maybe out of it, too. She didn't care what they saw of her, naked and strapped down and writhing. Beth no longer cared about trying to preserve the dignity of her body. She was too concerned about preserving the sanctity of her mind.
The effect got stronger. They must have turned up the juice. Beth didn't care. She pressed harder with her own mind. This was the last birthday before Grandpa Richard had died, she wasn't losing it. A tendril of blankness seeped around her defenses, consumed the name of the girl next door. Beth didn't let it distract her. She'd lost a whole month once, back near the beginning, by worrying about what she was forgetting instead of what she could still remember. There would be time enough to assess damages after the session was over.
Beth felt a tiny buzz on her clit as the girl's features joined her name in oblivion. She was just a vague figure now, indistinct in Beth's mind, and she felt the pleasure as the chair stimulated her body. Every time she forgot, every time she let it take another little piece of her mind away, the chair rewarded her with pleasure. Sometimes, she gave in and let it win just to feel the stimulation turn to masturbation and the masturbation turn to orgasm, but not this time, not this memory. The effect pressed at her for what seemed like an eternity, but Beth fought back just as hard.
Finally, it receded. For a moment, Beth became aware of herself in the chair, soaked in sweat, muscles aching. Then she was somewhere else again. Seventeen, on a vacation to Cape Cod. She recognized the boy she was with, Seth...she shrugged in the depths of her own mind. She could afford to lose Seth. She only had so much energy, and the chair always had more. Every day, it eroded a little more of her. All she could do was hold onto the important things.
She still fought some, though. She couldn't help herself. She kept the tendrils away from the scent of the sea air, the sight of a lighthouse in the fog. Not the most important details, but it was the principle. She never wanted them to think she'd given up. She remembered (really remembered, not like the demanding mental theater of the chair) their first day in the cells, remembered forcing the guards to drag her down the hall, fighting them every step of the way, almost slipping free of their black latex-gloved hands, spitting defiance even as they strapped her into the chair. "I won't ever stop fighting!" she'd shouted. "Not ever!"
The guard had looked at her. The blank, empty expression in her eyes had stilled Beth's tongue. "everybody fights," she'd said. "everybody loses." Beth had understood, then. The guards weren't her captors. They were captives who had been to the chair one too many times.
Almost as if on cue, she found herself in a blank white space. Proto-memory, memories waiting to be written. This was harder to fight. The tendrils came back, softer now. Like they were whispering in her ear, telling her things she'd forgotten, filling up the space they emptied with newer, more seductive ideas.
The touch of a woman is soft and sensual to you.
Beth let that one in, it wasn't anything she didn't already know.
You want to sexually please other women. Pleasing women gives you sexual pleasure.
These ones were particularly hard to fight. Missy would be a very happy girl tonight. Assuming that their captors kept letting them share a cell. It was Beth's secret fear, every time she was in the chair--not of losing her memories, but that when they took her back, that Missy wouldn't be there. She didn't know what she'd do if they took Missy away, or worse, if she was the guard...no. Better not to even think about it. They'd been there a week now, and nobody had split her and Missy up.
You like to do what you are told. It gives you sexual pleasure to follow the commands of Mistress Joy.
Beth managed to push that one away, but only barely. She'd already accumulated a few commands conditioning her to love Mistress Joy, to enjoy sexually servicing Mistress Joy, to enjoy being sexually submissive to Mistress Joy, and those made it harder to push aside the other commands. Beth hadn't ever seen Mistress Joy, but she knew exactly what she looked like from the conditioning. She could picture that dark brown hair, those cold gray eyes just as clearly as if the woman was standing right there.
