Author's Note: Part 2, the previous installment, was kind of an interlude. If there is a main plot, Part 3 is the real continuation. But Kim and Sarah just keep demanding to have major roles in this series, and I indulge them.
The mind control aspect has been kind of in the background except as a contextual establishing element for a few installments. That is no longer the case.
Where We Left Off: A new competitor to the Evil Corporationβ’ that Garrett Morley works for has arisen in the Los Angeles area. Their success seems to be entirely due to their rapidly rising new CTO, Gayle "Steel" Wheeler. Garrett engineers an opportunity to meet his rival at a party, using the lovely Sarah Perkins (a previous participant in Garrett's mind control protocol) as a distraction. At this party, to Garrett's surprise, the younger Wheeler seduces him and uses him for sex. Putting the pieces together later, Garrett determines that he is now facing another mind controller.
All characters are at least eighteen years of age. In fact, all are at least twenty-one years of age. And many are over 40.
PERKINS RESIDENCE, MALIBU - JULY 7, 10:45 AM PACIFIC TIME
After a restless night, Garrett spent the morning in his home office in the Perkins bungalow.
Garrett hadn't yet found his center after his behavior during the encounter at the party the previous night. But he had something to focus on now.
"Steel" Wheeler's rise to prominence was no accident, and not (well, not entirely) due to her business acumen. She was using mind control to aid her personal ambitions. Garrett himself could potentially have done that, but too many highly-placed people within ProTekOmega already knew about MYG. Gayle apparently had no such compunctions or limitations. She'd certainly come out of nowhere, fully formed.
There was little in Garrett's files on Wheeler from before her surprise appointment as CTO of OnlyConnect. Just clips from local media and a few of OnlyConnect's own surveillance photos and videos that Garrett's industrial espionage team had been able to exfiltrate.
He wasn't going to find Wheeler's secret from that.
As Garrett watched archival MSNBC and Bloomberg stories on Gayle's ascension to CTO and her early successes at moving OnlyConnect into new markets, he mused on his own experiences with her.
Whatever Wheeler was doing, it was different in principle from the MYG protocol. Her kung fu worked quicker - even instantaneously - and didn't seem to require the extensive preparation that MYG did. But it was more limited. Last night, Garrett had still completely been himself and - at least as far as he could remember - his thoughts had been his own. He'd just been unable to refuse anything Gayle asked of him.
Asked.
Had "Steel" Wheeler found a way to make people follow her commands - by the sound?
It was something to go on, at least.
So Garrett mentally threw everything else out and started again, reviewing the dossier from the beginning. This time looking for evidence that Gayle was controlling people with her voice.
After a while, a pattern started emerging. In the older clips, at the times that Gayle accomplished her most successful presentations or negotiations, she had the same black tote bag with her in the room. But in the newer videos, the tote was gone - and she had added an ornate necklace that never appeared even once before two months after her accession to CTO of OnlyConnect.
A necklace that Garrett had seen up close last night, right at the top of the fragrant cleavage between Gayle Wheeler's grapefruit titties.
"What are you?" Garrett mused, staring at a frozen image of the necklace as it sat on the pale skin at Gayle Wheeler's collarbone. "Are you really a magic microphone that makes people suggestible?" But, outlandish as it sounded, that hypothesis fit all the facts of the case, including what Garrett had personally experienced.
As a theory, it was tenuous, but his technical people had done more with less in the past.
Decisively, Garrett moved to his laptop, opened a Zoom session, and brought Angela Davies in. As Garrett explained what he needed, he and Angela began inviting - non-optionally - ProTekOmega's technical people into the conference bridge.
First they reached out to the local LA people, then as the discussion became more involved, they branched out to bring in Garrett's team from headquarters. Then, based on what they found after the brain trust achieved critical mass, Garrett and Ms. Davies started to wake people up worldwide.
As the California sun rose to its zenith, the team continued to work diligently on the problem.
They analyzed all the hard data they had on OnlyConnect and Gayle Wheeler. They scanned operational research papers in sonic dynamics.βThey accessed FOIA documents on US Government research into sonic weaponry. They used their knowledge of the MYG protocol to analyze potential suggestibility vectors that the OnlyConnect device might be taking advantage of.
Garrett himself understood less than half of the details, but he was confident that the boffins were taking it in stride.