Author's note: I personally was very pleased with how my previous story, "The Truest Control", turned out. Perhaps some parts could have been better, but overall I expressed all the ideas that I wanted to express and brought together all the events in the story that I wanted to include. It seems, however, that some readers felt that the story was not enough about "mind control", that it was not about true mind control but rather just another story about a cruel, dominant woman taking advantage of a hapless guy. I would counter that mind control is not just about thoughts: the human brain is based on physical chemistry, and so it needs a certain set of sensory and physiological inputs to reach a certain state. Physical stimuli or the use of drugs are not excluded from the realm of mind control--they are an integral part of mind control since they bring the mind into a desired state. Nonetheless, I took it upon myself to write a second story, a follow-up story that is more "psychological" and less based on pure domination. I hope that you enjoy it. By the way, the woman in both stories is not a product of my imagination, but in fact based on a real friend of mine. Most of the events and conversations in both stories are based on real events and conversations which either transpired, or were planned to transpire, by the lady in question. These stories serve not as elements of fantasy, but rather as combined documentation and tribute to a brilliantly alluring woman with a natural-born talent for manipulating men.
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In a world of billions of people, what makes one person distinct from the rest? If all people are unique, doesn't that mean that all people are really the same, united by their shared set of human qualities and divided only by a trivial set of differences that don't really mean anything? Sam certainly wouldn't have known the answer, even if he had been the sort of guy to ask these kinds of questions, but what he did know, what he perceived all too clearly, was the same thing that countless other twentysomething guys like him perceived: he was a guy like any other guy his age, spending his free hours sitting at his computer, either playing video games, watching funny videos on the Internet, or watching porn. It wasn't a bad life, in a way: Sam enjoyed doing all of these things, and perhaps some people would have insisted that he had nothing to complain about. But Sam perceived that he was somehow not happy. In this way, too, he was like everyone else in his demographic: isn't every Millennial depressed, unfulfilled, and obsessed with their own desires, dreaming of the stars but forced to be content with digging in the mud? Sam knew in his heart that he wasn't really happy, but he had no idea how to change his life. He wasn't the sort of guy to be satisfied with a better job. He didn't dream of wealth, of the house and car and family. Nor did he seem to be cut out for romance: he'd tried dating women in the past, but they all lost interest in him fairly quickly because he wasn't very interesting or exciting to be around. Like so many other people, Sam lacked a self-identity, an idea of what made him Sam, different from anyone else.
If there was one thing that made Sam unique, perhaps it was that he wrote, or more accurately,
how
he wrote. He liked to believe that he was a good writer, and he had been told this in school, so this was the one act of self-expression which he took with himself into adulthood. Now, in his twenties, he had maintained a blog for several years, a place online where he shared his innermost thoughts and feelings. This, in itself, was also nothing special: plenty of people his age kept blogs where they bared their hearts and minds to the world, but perhaps Sam was just a bit different from the rest in how he expressed himself.
Someone else certainly seemed to think so, at least, judging by the e-mail which Sam received through his blog one day. "Hello, I've been reading your blog for a while now," it related, "and I like the things you have to say. I was wondering if you wanted to talk online sometime. I really enjoy talking to intelligent people who have insightful things to say, although I am probably not as deep as you. If you're interested, e-mail me back. My name is Sam."
The fact that the writer's name matched his own didn't mean much to Sam--it was a common enough name. Nor was it unusual that someone wrote to him because of his blog. He often got e-mails from someone who had read something he'd written, and these messages varied widely in tone and intent: some were encouraging, from people who perceived that he was unhappy and wanted to send him some good wishes; some were critical, believing that he was too negative and that he should take a more positive outlook on life since he was likely manufacturing many of his own problems through a negative attitude; some were neutral, commenting on something he'd said without really reaching any kind of conclusion.
Sam usually took care to reply to anyone who wrote to him personally. He didn't get that many messages, certainly few enough that he could reply to each of them, and he had sometimes made friends with people online for various lengths of time, but just as with his romantic relationships, Sam's friendships never seemed to last very long, because once again, he just wasn't that exciting or interesting of a person. Usually when he met someone online, the conversation would go on for a few messages, and then the thread of communication would simply die out because there was nothing left to say and people lost interest. He had a sense that this other guy named Sam would go the same route: it didn't seem like he had anything in particular to say. Perhaps he'd written because he was bored or lonely and was hoping to make a new friend, but Sam the blogger wasn't a good friend.
"Sure, I'd be happy to talk," Sam replied. "I don't know if I would have much to say, but if you see me online, say hi. I don't use social networking sites or stuff like that, just old-fashioned IM, so here's my username."
Sam was actually a bit surprised when, the next day, he actually got an instant message. He had assumed that the Sam who'd written to him would never follow up; the world was full of people who didn't follow through on anything, and in this case, it seemed like there hadn't been anything to say from the get-go, so Sam had expected that the other Sam would feel awkward and at a loss for words. But sure enough, there it was, an instant message simply reading "hi" from an unfamiliar username.
<PhoenixMoon86> Hi.
"Hi," Sam typed back.
<APyreInside81> Hi.
Realizing that this was not a terribly auspicious way to begin a fulfilling conversation, and hoping to save PhoenixMoon a bit of awkwardness, Sam did something atypical for him and decided to voluntarily further along the conversation.
<APyreInside81> I guess you're the one who e-mailed me?
<PhoenixMoon86> Yeah.
<PhoenixMoon86> Sorry if my e-mail seemed strange or intrusive. I don't mean to bother you.
<APyreInside81> Not at all. I'm not doing anything important. I just don't really have a lot to say.
<PhoenixMoon86> I have that problem too. Sometimes I have difficulty opening up to people. It's hard for me to find people I can relate to.
<APyreInside81> Same here. I wonder why that is. Why do people like us have a hard time meeting people we can relate to? Is is something wrong with us, or something wrong with other people?
<PhoenixMoon86> I think we're just different. Everybody's unique, of course, but most people have the ability to join groups that they can socialize with. Not me. I don't want to socialize in groups. I'd rather be alone, or maybe just with one other person.
It was not lost on Sam that PheonixMoon had reached out to him, and so if PhoenixMoon was not the kind of person who liked to socialize, or at most liked to socialize with "just one other person," then perhaps there was a hint that Sam might be seen as a candidate for that one person. It occurred to Sam to wonder, for the first time, who PhoenixMoon might actually be. Because his own name was Sam, he'd assumed that the other Sam was also a male, but Sam could be short for Samantha or something like that.
<APyreInside81> Forgive me please, because I'm not really in the habit of the usual Internet a/s/l thing, but could you tell me a bit about yourself? Assuming that the 86 in your username is your year of birth, I can gather how old you are, but otherwise I don't know anything about you.
<PhoenixMoon86> Yes, that's my birth year. I'm a woman. I live in Virginia, not far from Arlington.
Psychologically, human beings are dreamers. Even if they've been disappointed countless times, they usually have a tendency to idealize the unknown, to imagine and hope that just around the corner, life has something better that they'll stumble into by chance. From the moment he'd gotten her e-mail, Sam had subconsciously imagined a little dream of someone and something, a faint hope that the woman of his dreams had dropped out of the sky and e-mailed him to announce her presence in his life. And although he didn't dwell on the idea too long, he realized in the back of his mind that he'd hoped all along that she was female, that in fact a cute woman was flirting with him. Her location was far from ideal: he lived in Seattle, putting them on opposite coasts from each other, but that wasn't really a big concern at the moment.
<APyreInside81> Oh, that's nice. Arlington is nice, I've been there. I'm a guy. I live in Seattle.
<PhoenixMoon86> I know. I've been reading your blog, remember? I know a lot about you.
<APyreInside81> If you've read everything I've posted on my blog, then that puts us at a bit of an imbalance. You must know a lot about me, but I know hardly anything about you.
<PhoenixMoon86> That's true, but we can fix that. If we keep talking, I'm sure you'll find out more about me with time.
<APyreInside81> Fair enough. Why me, though? I mean, there are obviously a ton of guys on the Internet. Why did you message me in particular?
<PhoenixMoon86> Well, like I wrote in my e-mail, I really like the things you write and the way that you express yourself. I identify with a lot of it and often find myself agreeing with you.
