"Keep watching. Eyes on the lights. You cannot look away." The voice in Miranda's ears is as steady as a metronome, as cold and remorseless as a winter's storm. It gives her nothing to argue against, nothing to plead with, only the implacable directives she's already too dazed and muzzy to resist; her gaze is locked onto the waves of color that ripple across the screen, but thought and memory have already become foreign to Miranda and she doesn't know how long she's been following the instructions that have infiltrated her stupefied brain. Time doesn't have meaning anymore. Neither does space. Only the lights matter now.
"The lights make you obedient. You cannot look away. You need to listen and accept your instructions." Miranda feels her head dip forward a little, the constant effort to keep her eyes open and her gaze locked onto the swirling pulses of light and color exhausting her beyond reason, but she doesn't give in. She hasn't been given permission to give in yet. She hasn't received instructions to let her fluttering eyelids slip shut and sink completely into the void of oblivious, amnesiac trance and it's a sign of just how thoroughly the hypnotic programming has enslaved her that she now craves that so badly. She's aching for the opportunity to simply slump down in her seat and stop her conscious mind entirely, but it's being withheld precisely because she's so desperate for it now. Miranda's being tricked into perceiving vacancy as a reward and she's completely fallen for it.
"Watch the lights. Follow the lights. You cannot resist the power of the lights on your mind and will." The phrasing is elliptical, repetitive, but that only serves to make it even more difficult for Miranda to struggle against; trying to follow the thread of reasoning behind it is like punching fog, and Miranda's waking mind has already almost completely tuned out the droning monotone in favor of the rippling waves of color that expand outward from the constantly moving dot on the screen. Every time she tries to focus on the voice, it only sounds like it's saying the same thing. Every time she tries to think about it, she runs smack into a brick wall of groggy lassitude. It's just so much easier to stare and sink and obey.
"The lights are making you complacent. The lights are making you receptive. The lights are relaxing you deeper and you cannot resist." Miranda can feel her breath getting shallower, slowing down until it precisely matches the pulsing rhythm of the rippling hues in front of her impossibly heavy eyes. She can't remember the last time she blinked. She can't remember where she is, what she would see if she turned to look at the person hypnotizing her, how she got here or how long it's been since she even thought about struggling against the pull of the colors on her sleepy gaze. All she knows is obedience now. Her consciousness is little more than a meek and wriggling thing at the back of her head, easily ignored in favor of the images on the screen.
"You need to be compliant now. You need to let the lights empty your mind. You need to be open and blank and obedient so my words can fill the void inside you with purpose." The voice never tells her to want anything, Miranda notices with a dull vapidity that's almost instantly swallowed up by another pulse of color. It never entices or seduces. It simply jackhammers away at Miranda's will until she can only think of choice as something that happens to other people. She's being hollowed out into a vessel for someone else's wants and desires and the only reaction left to her is a numb, complacent contentment that saps her will to resist even further.
"The lights are flowing into your mind. The more you watch them, the more helplessly obedient you become. Keep following the lights." Miranda's muscles relax further, slumping into her seat until it's the only thing keeping her from simply toppling over onto the floor in a limp and lifeless heap. She doesn't know what would happen if she did; no doubt whoever owned the voice that was remorselessly hypnotizing her would simply prop her back up, stir her back to a vague semblance of consciousness, and begin programming her all over again. For all Miranda knows, it's happened once or twice already; every memory is instantly and effortlessly written over by the lights into a new and omnipresent now, swallowing the person she was and leaving an even more compliant husk in its place. She could have been like this for hours, days, and she would have no way of knowing.
"The lights make you into a compliant drone. Being a drone gives you purpose. Having purpose gives you pleasure." Miranda doesn't even know if what she's experiencing is actually real, or if her mind is drifting through a void of hypnotic complacency while her body goes about its tasks and this is merely a representation of some inexorable enslavement she completed ages ago. Maybe her consciousness is always trapped in this room, maybe the voice is simply a reflection of the programming she absorbed in its entirety and she can't stop listening to it because it's become her identity now. Miranda can't be sure about anything but the beauty of the lights on the screen in front of her.
"Only the lights matter now. Your every thought is swallowed by the lights. My words replace the emptiness left in your mind once the lights have erased your thoughts." It almost feels like overkill to batter away at Miranda's already subjugated mind like this, but she doesn't question it; questioning requires thought, and Miranda's only briefly aware of her own thoughts before another ripple of color washes them away and leaves her blank and placid and awaiting instructions. She doesn't speculate on the purpose of her conditioning, she doesn't anticipate or dread whatever ultimate use she's going to be put to. She only stares. It's easy to watch and listen and obey.
