Voice Assistant

Zara pummelled the button for the eighth floor until the doors finally closed and she felt the elevator begin to move. With her phone between her teeth, she curled her long brunette hair up into a bun, teasing errant strands until she could get a hair tie around all of it to hold it in place. By the time she was done, the elevator pinged to announce her arrival and the doors opened.

Zara darted out into the lobby area, tucking her fresh, white blouse into the waist of her skirt, scanning the area for observers. The clock told her she was fifteen minutes late, again. She pushed open the front door to the office she worked in, a media relations firm, and hoped that her boss was running late too; she wasn't.

Alena looked up from her desk as Zara stumbled into the office, an eyebrow raised.

"Sorry," Zara blurted, "The bus was late."

"Was the other bus late?" her boss replied smoothly.

"Um, which one?"

"The one that leaves three minutes before that one. Or indeed, the one that leaves three minutes before that? I hear they're quite regular."

Zara came to a halt in front of her boss's desk, looking down at her hands.

"It could be that the issue is you not being there to get on them when they depart."

She could feel Alena looking at her. She braced herself for what was coming next.

"You remember we talked about this, don't you? I need an assistant who's here when I arrive, not here at some indeterminate point in time afterwards."

"Sorry Alena. I'll get up earlier."

"I thought you already did that?"

Zara shrugged, studying her shoes. "I'll get up earlier than that."

She heard her boss get up from her chair and looked up. Alena circled the desk and sat down on the front, her long legs crossed, tugging her dark, sleek pencil skirt to avoid wrinkles. She was in her late forties, slim, tall, blonde and attractive. Alena had a personal trainer who kept her in excellent condition, toned and supple, and charged fees in keeping with the results. Zara knew, she'd had to handle the expenses.

"I think we'll try something else. Here."

Alena held out a business card.

"Well, take it."

Zara took the card and read the name.

"Doctor Samson?"

"Yes. He's a behavioural specialist. His focus is on, uh, how can I put this?" Alena waved a hand, "Lack of focus."

"Focus?"

"Yes. Your tardiness hasn't improved even though you're allegedly getting up earlier, so I have to conclude your time management skills rather than your bedtime are the issue here."

Zara turned the card over in her hands, feeling lost for words.

"Ok. Uh, when should I go see him?"

Alena smiled and looked over Zara's shoulder. "He's coming here."

Zara turned. Through the glass door of the office, she had a view of the elevators. The doors had just opened, allowing a nondescript middle-aged man in a jacket and pants to step out.

"He's directly on time, you'll notice. I called him when I saw you weren't at work yet. He was good enough to come straight over."

The man made his way to the glass door and Alena waved him in.

"Meeting room one is booked out for the both of you for the next two hours. Off you go."

---

Zara blinked, suddenly aware that she hadn't been paying attention. Doctor Samson was still sitting across the small meeting table from her, but now he was watching her intently. Zara felt her cheeks colour with embarrassment and hoped he wouldn't ask her to repeat what he'd been saying.

"How are you feeling?" he asked, his pronunciation careful, measured.

"Sorry," Zara began, "I'm fine. I think I might just need a break for a moment."

She blinked again, dispelling the fog in her brain.

"These meeting rooms get quite stuffy," she said, trying to cover her inattention.

He smiled, and said, "Of course. I believe we're done here anyway. Would you like to ask Alena to step in?"

Zara got up from the table and nodded, feeling a quiet dread that he had asked to see her boss.

"Oh," the man said, "Before you go, here. Take this."

She looked down at his hand, and saw he was holding a wireless earpiece. Embarrassed again, she took it and hastily slipped it into her ear.

"Thank you," she replied hurriedly, "I almost forgot it."

"Do you like wearing it?" the doctor asked.

Zara nodded, and replied, "Oh yes. It's a big help. I'd be lost without it."

He smiled and leaned back in his chair. Zara took this as her cue to leave.

She found Alena in the kitchen, making her own tea, much to Zara's chagrin.

"Sorry," she stammered, "You should have asked me to get you that."

Her boss took a sip, surveying her assistant.

"It's okay. I'm the one who scheduled you for the two-hour meeting. I knew I'd have to fend for myself for a while."

Zara frowned and checked her watch. Two hours? But she'd only been in the meeting room a few minutes.

"Um, Doctor Samson would like to speak to you in the meeting room," she mumbled.

Alena nodded, swishing past Zara in her figure-hugging pencil skirt. There was a strange smile on her boss's lips.

---

"What's your assessment?" Alena asked.

Samson shrugged. "One session, I don't know. But it went well for the first session."

"I noticed that she's wearing the earpiece already. When did that happen?"

"Ah, careful there. She's always worn one in the office, as far as she knows. Best not to raise conflicting world views."

Samson reached into his bag and produced a small squat dome trailing a power cable. He placed the dome on the table and hunted around for a power socket.

"These places are damnable. There's never one around... ah."

He ducked under the table and a little white light flashed on the top of the little dome. It made a pleasant chiming sound.

"Takes a few seconds to boot up and connect to the network."

The light disappeared.

"There."

Alena studied the device carefully.

"Now what?" she said.

In answer, Samson folded his arms and leaned towards the grey dome.

"Assistant," he said, enunciating each word clearly, "Action: Doctor Samson would like a glass of water."

"Really?"

Samson shrugged. "First session," he admitted, "But it's still fresh. Let's see."

Alena chuckled to herself. "I guess we will. I'll be very surprised if that girl produces anything, let alone a drink. She's not my best hire."

"That could be about to change."

"I wouldn't bank on it. She can't even get out of bed in the...."

Alena cut herself off as the door opened. Zara appeared, holding a tall glass of water.

"Thank you," Samson said, "Just put it down on the table would you."

Zara did as she was asked and turned to leave.

"Could you hold on a minute?" Samson asked her.

He looked Alena in the eye and said, "Assistant, what's the weather like in London today?"

There was a pause and then Zara replied, "The weather today in London, England is seventeen degrees centigrade and overcast, with rain in the late afternoon."

Samson sipped his water, watching Alena's eyes widen. Zara looked from him to her boss.

"Uh, is there anything else?"

"No Zara, that's fine. Thank you," Samson replied. "But close the door on your way out."

Once the door was closed, Alena let out a long low breath and stretched back in her chair.

"How did you do that in just the one session?"

"I have the process optimised, which helps, but there was also very little resistance from Zara herself. She was under before she knew what I was doing. If you wanted to continue this, I think you could have a model employee inside a month."

"How would it work though? Would you have to take her aside for two hours each morning?"

Samson shook his head. "Nothing of the sort. Once established, the system is self-maintaining. I put a little app on her phone that she has to tap the screen when asked. The assistant software will keep doing that periodically throughout the day."

"Why? What does that do?"

"It's a conditioning check. If she taps the screen within a certain amount of time then the system knows she's still fully under the control of the software."

"And if she doesn't?"

"It will shut her down and take her through another conditioning cycle. Given this is her first day, she may go through four or five of these today. They're about thirty minutes each time. As the conditioning progresses though, that should drop to maybe one as she first arrives and then one mid-afternoon."

"So, she'll just, um, do what?"

"Zara will go to sleep for half an hour, then wake up and carry on as if nothing happened. The more cycles she goes through, the more her mind will become used to being shut down and reprogrammed like that, until it's second nature for her to drop and, for want of a better word, to reboot."

Samson shrugged. "It's ironic, given the vast gulf in complexity between the human mind and a desktop computer, but the solution to a glitch is the same. When she malfunctions, you just turn her off and turn her back on again."

Alena looked down at the unassuming little grey dome on the desk. She couldn't bring herself to believe what Doctor Samson had done to Zara. The device was now plugged directly into the girl's subconscious mind via her earpiece.

"Would this work equally well on men as well as women?" she asked.

Samson considered the question for a moment before answering, "It depends."

"Depends based on what? The male mind not taking the conditioning quite so well?"

Samson smiled. "Not at all, a man would be equally as vulnerable to the process, providing he was prepared correctly. No, the issue is around the use of arousal for the reward and reinforcement feedback loops."

"How so?"

"Uh, how can I put this? You can stimulate a female and reward her pleasure centres without drawing undue attention. For males, the, um, physiology is different."

It was Alena's turn to smile. "You mean, they'd be walking around with erections all the time."

"Yes, that."

"But other than that issue, which I guess you could solve with some form of containment, there's no problem doing this to men?"

"In that case, no, there isn't. Did you have someone in mind?"

Alena laughed. "Just an idle thought, maybe you could condition my husband. I'd like him to be a little more attentive toward me, just enough to prioritise me above golf."

---

Alena ended the call and looked out of the window. She hadn't been paying enough attention to the meeting and felt a little guilty about it. Her client was having trouble with a customer service story that was beginning to gain traction on social media and Alena was supposed to somehow, magically, fix it. She'd given the standard advice regarding retractions and admissions of not doing good enough and promising to review processes and being more sensitive in future. Ugh, it was a grind. The little grey dome caught her eye, sitting inconspicuously on the corner of her desk. Maybe she needed one of those for people in general.

Alena looked over to Zara's desk. She was busy with a press release for another client, frowning at the screen. Alena checked her watch. Samson had told her that the conditioning checks happened every half hour, exactly on the hour and thirty minutes later, so that Alena could plan her assistant's time around potential interruptions of service while Zara received a booster session. Alena watched the seconds tick down towards two o'clock with a strange, nervous tingling in her stomach. She was fascinated to see what would happen; she wanted to see the unsuspecting girl in front of her drop into a mindless trance while the program reinforced her conditioning.

Two o'clock exactly. Alena looked across the office, but Zara was still typing, concentrating on her work. Alena felt a pang of disappointment, feeling foolish that she'd believed the good doctor, watching Zara carry on as normal. People weren't just programmable machines after all.

Zara's brow creased in irritation and without looking at it, she picked up her phone. Glancing quickly, she tapped the screen and put it down on her desk before resuming her work. Alena sighed. She'd have to call him up and discuss. Zara's eyes flicked across the screen, still reading the press release.

All at once, her eyes went blank and then her head dropped. Alena squirmed inside. Zara's hands stopped moving as her eyes drifted closed. In less than five seconds, her busy assistant had become a silent mannequin.

Alena rose quietly from her chair and crossed the floor. She stood by Zara's body, still upright in her chair, legs casually crossed at the ankles, her hands resting comfortably either side of her keyboard. The only outward sign of anything amiss was her bowed head and her slack expression. Alena leaned closer, looking for any sign, any tell-tale that her assistant was about to wake up and resume her activities. She had a powerful urge to touch the frozen woman, but held back, unsure of what that would do, whether it would interfere with Samson's programming.

Instead, she perched on the corner of Zara's desk, shuffling her trim bottom until she was comfortable, and settled down to watch. Something about her assistant's blank face, about Alena's ability to tap into her mind, fascinated her in a way that took her completely by surprise. Alena's business was all about changing people's minds, and she always got a little kick whenever she heard an idea she'd implanted come out of the mouth of another person, but this was different. She recrossed her legs, feeling a little slickness down below. Entirely unexpected.

After five minutes, Alena decided that there was nothing much more to see, and that she had a ton of stuff to be getting on with. Reluctantly, she left Zara in her trance and returned to her own desk, occasionally looking up to find her assistant still immobile in her chair. Alena wondered what the earpiece was telling her, what thoughts the little automated recording was placing inside her rapidly succumbing mind.

At half past two, Alena caught a movement out of the corner of her eye. Zara's head lifted and she blinked several times. Alena remained very still and quiet, hoping not to cause a distraction. After a moment, Zara's hands began to move and Alena could hear her fingers tapping on the keyboard, picking up from where she left off. Deep inside her core, Alena churned, feeling herself slickening again. Zara continued to prepare the press release as if nothing had happened.

Alena's eyes fell back to her desk. The little grey dome enticed her. She picked up her phone.

"I'm just going to make a call," she announced, and stepped into the meeting room, closing the door behind her. Scrolling through her contacts, she found Doctor Samson and tapped.

"Alena. Hi. I thought I might get a call," said the male voice on the other end of the line.

"Yeah. You got a moment?"

"Sure. Is everything okay?"

"Yes. It's all going very well, surprisingly well in fact."

"Good. She was a receptive subject. She dropped very easily. What can I help you with?"

Alena paused, trying to choose her words carefully. "I just had a few questions. Operational questions."

"No problem. Shoot."

Alena cleared her throat, suddenly aware of how dry her mouth had become. She felt the same strange tingling in her stomach.

"Okay, first. If she's being, uh, reset, is it dangerous to move her?"

There was a pause on the line, then, "No, not at all. She is completely unaware of anything around her. Think of it like this: her mind is placed inside a bubble, totally isolated from the outside world, and all its distractions. She has no alternative, other than focusing on the words going into her ear."

He paused again. "I should have mentioned that. I can see where you're coming from. If you wanted to wheel her into a meeting room or the storage closet while she's down, I guess that would make the office look a little less, um, odd."

Alena knew what she wanted to ask next. She was surprised to feel how aroused it made her, contemplating the question.

"And if I forgot, and she woke up in the closet, how could I, uh...?"

The voice on the other end of the line laughed softly. "Ah, yes. There is a cure for that. It might take several sessions before her brain is retrained enough to obey completely, but eventually you will be able to command her to erase her last set of memories. Not the entire day, but probably up to half an hour, just the limit of short-term memory. Enough to wheel her out of the closet and back to her desk without her getting all confused."

"Okay, that's good to know."

"One last thing. I'm going to send you a link to my app. It's basically a master interface. You can type commands into her directly and you can also use it to interrogate her status."

"What? Her status?"

"Like you would do, um, like a printer. You can see how she's feeling, whether she's hungry, or anything else for that matter. Ask her anything and she'll tell you."

"Anything? Really?"

"Pretty much, unless it's a deep dark secret. Her mind may still be able to defend against that sort of questioning due to the way the mind accepts commands while in trance. You can't get her to do something that goes against her nature."

Alena absorbed this new information for a moment, before replying, "You mean like catch a bus on time."

She heard the doctor laugh. "Yes, that's the trick," he said, "Changing her behaviour only works if she wants to do the things you're asking her to do."

"So how would I get her to do something she doesn't want to do?"

"You can't. Her mind will defend itself. However, this can be fixed, if you need a particular behaviour adjusted badly enough."

Alena waited for the doctor to continue, a strange excitement building in her.

"If you can show her that she will receive pleasure from doing something, you can make her eventually want to do practically anything."

The voice paused for a moment, to let his words sink in, then continued.

"That's how the conditioning works. Each time she completes a task, it brings her pleasure. Like I mentioned before, she's caught in a reinforcement feedback loop. The more tasks she completes, the more pleasure she is given."

"How? How does the earpiece give her pleasure?"

"There are a set of keywords implanted deep in her subconscious. Each triggers a different type of pleasure for her. The device chooses which trigger to use based on the magnitude of the task at hand. Very quickly, Zara's brain will learn that obeying her commands feels very gratifying, even arousing."

"Ah, hence your comment about use on males."

"Exactly. But let me give you a cautionary tale from one of the first installations: the customer had an office junior she wanted to, um, manage. He was a very receptive subject, just like Zara. His boss had him doing so many things that he spent most of his time walking around with an erection in his pants. He'd have to sneak off to the toilets a couple of times a day to relieve his tension. He had no idea where it was coming from. Most distracting and, to be honest, quite inefficient."

---

Alena pressed send on an email, closing off her last task for the day. It was nearly five o'clock, and she could see that Zara was watching the time tick down until she could leave. For some reason, Alena found this irritating.

"Assistant, what are the first ten digits of pi?" she said out loud.

A few seconds passed and then Zara recited, "Three point one four one five nine two six five three."

Alena looked up.

"Sorry," she called across the office, "Did you say something?"

Zara looked back at her boss, puzzled.

"Uh, no," she replied.

Alena smiled to herself. Taking out her phone, she opened the master interface and typed: 'Action: bring Alena a cup of tea'

Zara froze for a moment, eyes vacant and glassy, then she blinked and stood up smoothly. With the same bored expression, she rounded the desk and headed off into the kitchen. Alena went back to her work, looking up a few minutes later when her assistant placed a steaming cup of tea by her elbow. Zara turned without commenting and went back to her desk. Alena marvelled as her assistant simply sat back down and began to watch the clock again as if nothing had happened.