"...and that was Pattern Number Five," the man with the clipboard said, clicking his little hand-held counter to signal to Carly that it was time to look away. "Would you say that was easier than Pattern Number Four to stop staring at, or more difficult?" His pen was poised against the piece of paper to record her answer, and Carly stared muzzily at it with a sense of mounting pressure to respond. It felt so hard to remember Pattern Four after a solid minute of staring vacantly into the swirling colors of Pattern Five, though, and Carly couldn't help the lengthy pause that overtook her while she struggled to first recall and then compare the two experiences. Her dark brown eyes glazed over, and her lips parted in thoughtless distraction for a long moment before she finally pushed herself to answer.
"Um, uhhh... easier," she finally hazarded, feeling a quiet buzz of happiness as the man with the clipboard recorded her answer. They weren't paying her a whole lot of money to take this survey, maybe a little more than she could have made in an afternoon of donating plasma, but that didn't mean Carly wasn't going to take it seriously and try to give useful answers. This information was important to somebody, and she wanted to be... useful. Helpful. That kind of, um, thing. Carly blinked heavily, wishing the captivating displays of light and color weren't quite so effective at their intended purpose. She was going to need a long nap after this.
"Thank you," the man with the clipboard replied, giving her a thin-lipped smile. "And let's move on to Pattern Number Six, please?" He gestured expectantly to the viewer, and Carly placidly put her face against the cushioned eyerests and waited patiently in the artificial darkness for the next sequence of lights and colors to begin. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, but she forced herself to keep them open--it would probably contaminate the results or something if she fell asleep and missed one of the data points. However tempting that sounded right now.
Then the screen lit up with another blaze of swirling light, and Carly forgot all about going to sleep as her gaze was dragged with an almost physical intensity to the center of the twisting, turning spiral in front of her. Her breath went out in a long, whooshing sigh of relaxation, and she felt her shoulders slump in captivated lethargy as she followed the rainbow trails around and down until they vanished into nothing. Carly didn't know who came up with all these patterns, but they really did their work well--despite knowing that each one only lasted a minute, she found herself losing track of time faster and faster with every mesmerizing session. The man with the clipboard could have left her like this for hours and she wouldn't have noticed.
He didn't, though. Carly heard the clicking sound of the counter and she lifted her drowsy head from the viewer, noting with some chagrin that she'd left a few droplets of drool behind on the table. "That was Pattern Number Six," the man with the clipboard said, politely pretending not to notice as Carly mopped away the saliva with the corner of her skirt. "Would you say you had an easier time reading the accompanying text than with Pattern Number Two, or more difficult?" Carly's eyes went wide in startled confusion--she didn't remember seeing any text at all, not in any of the patterns. There wasn't anything but the smoothly flowing colors, numbing her brain into sleepy bliss.
No wait. That--that wasn't quite right, was it? Carly couldn't exactly remember Pattern Two in detail, they all kind of jumbled together in her brain and after a while she kind of got lost in the warm fuzzy memories of staring and sinking into deep hypnosis, but... but she had kind of noticed some words in the first couple of patterns, hadn't she? The specifics were already fading, but they were there and she noticed them out of the corner of her eye and she asked the man, she, she asked him... she asked him what they said, or, or no, she asked him why they told her to, to, umm, umm, ummmm... "H-harder?" she finally guessed, befuddlement turning the answer into a question all its own.
"I see, thank you," the man replied, ticking a box on the sheet of paper. Carly's face felt hot as another wave of pleasure washed over her, this one almost sexual in its intensity. She was so glad she was helping provide so much useful data on the effectiveness of these hypnotic patterns; whatever her initial reservations were about the survey, she was just happy now to be of... of service. That still didn't sound right, but given how many times Carly had dropped into trance in the last ten minutes or so, it shouldn't surprise her to discover that she was feeling a little bit punchy. God, she wanted to sleep so fucking bad.
"And now Pattern Number Seven," the man with the clipboard continued, gesturing back to the viewer. Carly put her face against the eyerests, and this time she had almost no time to wait before the screen flared into life--it caught her a little bit off-guard, in fact, and her eyes locked onto the heart of the spiral before she had any chance to steel herself against the pattern's captivating effects. It kind of reminded her of the first one the man showed her, the one he said was a... a... Carly's brow furrowed in confusion for a moment as she struggled to remember exactly what he did tell her she'd be looking at for that initial session, but then it popped into her head and she allowed herself a drowsy smile of relief.
Of course he'd told her she was going to be hypnotized. Carly couldn't understand why she'd ever thought anything differently, even for a moment. He told her exactly what was going to happen, and Carly gave him her informed and enthusiastic consent because she believed in the purpose of this survey and everything it was trying to accomplish. She didn't have any reservations at all. She only thought she did because hypnosis was so powerful and irresistible that she knew how easily an unethical experimenter could brainwash her with spirals like this. But she didn't have to worry about that with these people and she could relax completely.
