(Based on Teaching Her a Lesson by Ice Bear/Svarbardling. Written with the original author's permission. All characters are over 18.)
Five months later.
I woke up at seven in the morning on a Friday to an empty bed, school starting in an hour. I fumbled at the alarm on my phone for the snooze button, then roused myself just enough to turn it off completely.
An hour and a half later, I was back up but still feeling the lack of sleep. A hot shower and an energy drink was enough to get to 'awake but tired', but as I browsed through the local news in the paper, I saw the date and remembered: it was a Friday. I loved Fridays.
It was a two mile commute to the school, and for the sake of my health these days, I took up walking. Besides, a local diner was along the way and they made the best fried hash browns and scrambled eggs I'd ever tasted.
By the time I arrived, it was close to 10:30. Everyone was busy at work in their classes, and I didn't cross any paths except for a janitor in his blue jumpsuit on my way.
He had his back to me, and with the earbuds he was wearing, and was dragging a wet mob in lazy swipes across the floor. As I got closer, it sounded like a book on tap rather than an album, or maybe a podcast. He didn't know I was there until I gave him a tap on the shoulder.
"Morning, Greg." I said, as I stopped to shoot the breeze. "You look like you're in a good mood today."
He whirled around, pulling out the earbuds and taking the time to pause the playback from his phone. "Well, morning there, Mr. Cannon. I might not have a free range of all the hot tail running around the school, sure, but yeah. Things are pretty good." He laughed at the little joke, shaking his head; all the teachers and faculty in the building were in on it. All of the students, too. And yet, I could trust all of them to take that secret with them to their graves. Mind control was a wonderful thing. "You telling those kids to pick up after themselves and not leave their candy wrappers lying around, I got to say, I really appreciate it, Sir. It makes my job almost too easy. All this free time, well, can only get the floors so gleaming."
"Well, I've just done what I can. This whole Serenex nonsense, someone had to put an end to the abuse going on. And since that stuff can't be reversed, well, only thing left to do is give people something more positive to focus on." You'd think that after a few dozen times, I'd get tired of acting humble, waiving off the universal praise of my colleagues. I probably would eventually, but classes had only started up for a bit over a week and the novelty had yet to wear off.
Greg nodded along. "Yeah. You sure do know what's best, and the rest of us just need to follow along."
It was a line I heard plenty of times throughout the day.
"Oh. And I heard about the wedding. Congratulations. Robbing the cradle though, aren't you?" 'Robbing the cradle' had been a bit of a running joke at GHS. None of the faculty had the authority that I had, but someone needed to take care of that fucked up graduating class from last year, so why not share the good fortune around?
All the students this year had received the same commands, but with the caveat that they wouldn't follow along with most of them until they turned eighteen.
Even though I could do whatever I wanted to, even I had lines I wouldn't cross. The freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and some of the seniors were all quarantined off on their own section of the school. But just as soon as those girls turned eighteen, they were fair game for me.
"Well, you take care, Mr. Cannon. Don't want to keep you." Greg said as he went back to mopping, popping back in his earbuds to fill the silence back in.
"Sure, sure." I'd really come out of my shell the past few months. Why had I ever thought it was so hard to talk to people? I continued on my stroll towards one particular classroom, and when I let myself inside, I saw that everyone was busy at work.
It was the largest classroom in the building, formerly belonging to the science teacher Mrs. Hoffman, but she'd been more than happy to switch with me. The whole room had been repurposed, looking more like an office space than a classroom, each of the ten rectangular blacktop tables had been modified by the shop teacher Mr. Black with an extra two feet and equipped by the IT technician Miss Takezawa with a powerful desktop PC and three monitors.
After all, if I was going to have a research team, I wanted them to be properly equipped.
All of them were hard at work, completely focused on their work. Right now, they were focused on high school level courses still, but I expected them to move on to college level work before the end of the semester, and get started on graduate level work by next year.
After a bit of my own experimenting on the male members of the school, I'd learned a few things about this special mix of Serenex, looking for its limits.
I'd told one boy that he had a photographic memory and could recall everything he saw with perfect clarity. He improved his performance in an online memory quiz with flashing number sequences dramatically, going from the 60% percentile to the 88% percentile. But he still made mistakes. And when he did, he'd been convinced "Well, the website must not be working right." or "I must have made a misclick." It was impossible to convince him that his photographic memory wasn't really accurate.
Commands about being smart or talented or even hardworking ran into limits as well, only giving the students the illusion of competence rather than the real deal. What did work well were commands based around values and motivation. Serenex couldn't turn a dunce into a genius, but it could give a person a near infinite well of willpower to draw upon, letting them single-mindedly work towards a goal until their body collapsed.
From those basic tests, I'd given ten of the hottest girls of the incoming seniors the following extra commands:
* Your number one priority is being useful to Nao Cannon.
* Your number two priority is keeping yourself healthy, safe, fit, and beautiful.
* Learning new things gives you addictive pleasure, better than an orgasm.