Won't Get Fooled Again

Grace stopped dead just moments after entering the lab, her feet rooted to the spot with shock. Behind her, she scarcely even registered the closing of the door other than to lean forward a little to make sure her long red hair didn't get caught in the gap. She was too intent on the vast, complex array of electronic equipment in front of her.

"You told me you were dismantling that thing, Russell!" she said indignantly to the man in the lab coat who was in the midst of adjusting the controls. "You asked me to come over and help you take it apart!"

He looked at her mildly, his pale blue eyes only showing the faintest traces of concern. "I did say that, Grace," he replied, finishing his adjustments and stepping out from behind the bank of instruments to head in her direction, "but I'm afraid it was something of a necessary deception. It's time for the next test, and I kind of suspected you wouldn't come if I asked."

"Of course I wouldn't have come!" Grace snapped back. "I don't want to ever get near that thing again, not after...after..." She struggled to remember the exact details of what had happened the last time she was in this lab; but somehow everything seemed vague, like someone had bored a hole in her mind and the memory had fallen into it. She couldn't really remember what the machine had done to her; she couldn't even remember exactly what it was for, even. But something in the back of her mind was warning her about it, and that was enough for Grace. "You did something to me," she hissed out, her green eyes flashing with anger. "I don't know what, but you did."

Russell patted her on the shoulder. "You don't remember, do you?" he said in soothing tones. Grace shook her head, still annoyed with Russell. "I'm not surprised. You suggested that paranoia and memory loss could be a side effect of the initial treatment. That was why you told me to lie to you, if I had to, in order to get you back in here." But only slightly annoyed. It was hard to stay mad at Russell; he had such a winsome, charming face, and a sort of adorable scruffiness to him. His hair always seemed to grow out faster than he could dye it blond, his stubble always seemed to grow a little faster than he could shave it, and his clothes always seemed to wrinkle right after he put them on...the net result was a man who looked like he'd just been through a tumble dryer. It was awfully hard not to find that cute.

Grace frowned, the impact of his words only just now making themselves clear to her. "I suggested?" she said. "No, that doesn't sound right. I wouldn't have said that, I know it. You showed me in here, and you...you..." She blinked, trying to gather her thoughts. She'd been having so much trouble concentrating, lately. She felt like she'd been awake for three days straight. Her mind was constantly sidetracked. Whole trains of thought just dead-ended into a vacant stare, never to be found again. She just felt so muzzy, ever since...since...she couldn't remember. Probably more of the memory loss that was a side effect of the machine.

"And I showed you the design of the machine," Russell prompted her. "And you said it looked fascinating, and asked me to test it out on you. We agreed that I would need to make very sure you came back for the second treatment, because the side effects of the first treatment might make you reluctant to come back and reverse the effects. Doesn't any of this ring a bell, Grace?"

"It...um...kind of," Grace said, suddenly blushing. She actually didn't remember any of it; instead, a surprisingly vivid mental image came to mind of her, stripping out of her lab coat and kneeling on the floor in front of him. She was rubbing and fondling her own tits, flicking the nipples with her thumbs as she begged to be allowed to suck her new master's thick, hard cock. Her pussy was dripping wet, her smile was vacant and dreamy as all her thoughts just vanished into the hole at the bottom of her mind except for blissful obedience, and all she wanted to do was suck and fuck Russell like the slut she knew she was. And then he unzipped his pants and pulled his dick out, and she couldn't help herself. She had to deep-throat it, the need overwhelmed her and she licked and slurped all the way up and down the shaft before plunging her whole mouth onto his hard cock.

As soon as the thought arrived, it was gone again. Grace shivered, caught between embarrassment and arousal. She'd been having these distracting sexual fantasies a lot the last couple of days. Every time she was around another man, or even a woman for that matter, she'd find herself lost in long, vivid fantasies of submitting to them sexually, letting her mind go completely blank and becoming nothing but a human sex toy for their pleasure. Even when she was alone, her pussy throbbed with need, making it difficult to think about anything else sometimes. She'd masturbated quite often, just to take the edge off so that she could try to get something productive done, but it hadn't really helped.

Russell had featured in a lot of those masturbation fantasies, and looking at him now, Grace felt a sudden, irrational fear that he knew it. "I...I should go," she said, acutely aware of the heat between her thighs. "I have work to do." She actually planned to slip off to the restroom and finger her pussy for a few minutes so that she could think straight about what Russell was saying, but he didn't need to hear that.

"Grace, we really do need to get you back into the machine for another treatment," Russell said, gently steering her away from the door and towards the machinery. "You'll understand perfectly once you go through the process again. None of this will worry you anymore, I promise."

Something about the way he said those words just seemed to latch itself into Grace's mind, deep down. She felt so confused, now, and Russell sounded so certain. If only she could think clearly about all this, just for a moment. But her mind was a muddle of vanished memories, lust, and scattered thoughts. It felt like days since she'd been able to think straight, ever since...

She stopped dead, looking at Russell with suspicion in her eyes. "Why don't you try the machine this time?" she said, her voice deceptively mild.

Russell chuckled, but it somehow sounded forced. "Because you need the treatment, Grace. It's very important that you let me use the machine on you, right now. Trust me."

"But I don't," she said, pulling her arm away. "I don't remember why, I don't remember what we did--" The mental image of Russell thrusting his cock into her mouth, then bending her against a server rack so he could fuck her from behind came back stronger than ever. The fantasies were so vivid that she could actually feel the sensations of his dick inside her, pumping in and out and in and out as she groaned out, "Please, Master, please fuck me, oh, oh fuck feels so good cumming so hard." She could feel the orgasm that overtook her, blanking her mind even further and making it feel even better to be used by her new owner. She could feel the cool metal pressing into the flesh of her tits as he pounded her cunt until he came inside her. It all seemed so real...

She pushed it away as best she could. She couldn't let random sexual fantasies distract her from trying to piece together the memories of her time in Russell's lab. "I just know I can't trust you. I think you did something to me with that machine, something that made it hard for me to remember things, and now you're lying to me to do it to me again." She felt so proud of herself for figuring it out. It was probably the most coherent thought she'd had in days.

"But you want to trust me, don't you?" Russell said. His voice was so totally reasonable that it practically made Grace's hindbrain quiver with the urge to listen. But underneath that, another voice, almost totally muted but insistent, whispered that she couldn't let herself do it. It whispered that the other voice was something Russell had put there to make her more pliant and docile and easy to control, and that if he put her through the treatment again, it would get even stronger. But Russell had said that paranoia was a side effect...but maybe he'd lied about that, too...

"I want to," Grace said, gripping her own head tightly and pulling on her hair so hard it hurt in an effort to focus her mind, "but I don't trust that either." She turned back towards the door. Would he have locked it? Even if he had, he'd have to let her out sooner or later. He wouldn't use force to get her into the machine...would he?

"Alright, Grace," he said. She clenched her hands against her ears, trying to shut out his arguments, knowing that she couldn't think fast enough to refute them, needing to just block them out so that she could--

"What?" she asked, turning back towards him.

"You win," Russell said. "If this is what it takes to get you to trust me, I'll go ahead and let you use the machine on me. But you have to promise to use it on me again, to reverse the effects, just like I'm going to do to you. Can you do that, Grace?"

Grace looked over at the machine. It suddenly seemed intimidatingly complex. It was as if all her mechanical knowledge had deserted her, leaving the giant array of equipment a bewildering mish-mash of dials and switches. Grace wasn't even sure of the principles behind it, not anymore. "I...I think so," she said nonetheless, forcing a bravado she didn't feel. "If you show me how to work it."

Russell nodded. "Of course," he said. "Come over here." He took her hand again, and led her towards the machine. "First, we set the pattern inhibitors," he told her, reaching towards a bank of switches.

"Ah-ah-ah!" she said, slapping his hand away. "I still don't trust you, remember?" She reached over. "I'll do it myself." She flicked the switches one by one.

"Then, we lock in the neural scatter beacon," he said, pointing to a slider on another bank of controls. "All the way to the top, Grace."

She glared at him suspiciously, but his expression showed nothing. "You do it this time," she said. She was onto him, now. He was trying to trick her again, somehow. Even though she couldn't think straight, she knew it. But she wasn't going to fall for it.

"Sure," Russell said, adjusting the slider. "Like so. Following all this, Grace?" he asked her, a look of concern on his face.

Grace grimaced with the effort of concentrating. "Pattern inhibitors..." she said, her voice tight with strain. "Neural scatter beacon. Got it."

"Good," Russell said. "Then this dial here is the cerebellum signal enforcer. We're turning that up to maximum. Remember that, Grace, up to maximum." It did stir a memory in her mind, but not a recent one--it was one of her professors, explaining that the cerebellum was the seat of the instincts, like hunger, sleep, arousal...

Grace blinked it away, focusing her mind on the here and now. "Maximum," she said. She wanted to show Russell that she could follow his instructions perfectly. That seemed suddenly important to her. She just barely managed to remember that she didn't trust him in time to reach in and twist the dial herself before he could. "All the way to the left."

"Good. Now, you bring the projector arrays to power," he continued, pulling a long lever all the way across from left to right as she nodded firmly. She wasn't about to touch that lever, not if it was what he was telling her to do. "Now, I need to get into the shielded control chamber there," he said, pointing to an egg-shaped enclosure in the middle of the room, "and you'll pull the final switch here to activate the machine."

"Oh, no you don't!" Grace said. "You're the one undergoing the treatment, remember. If one of us is going to be in that control chamber, it should be me." She smiled smugly. He wasn't catching her in some sort of sneaky trick, not this time.

"Alright," he said, a touch of resignation in his voice. "But you do remember how to do all this, right, Grace?"

Grace nodded. "Final switch," she said, walking over to the chamber. "I think I got it, Russell." In actual fact, she'd already lost track of what order to do things in--it was something about pattern inhibitors, and an arousal at maximum, but...she closed the chamber door, trying to reconstruct things in her mind. She needed to remember, it was very important, but something was distracting her. Something important kept intruding on her mind.

"Russell," she said, hoping he could hear her through the glass observation port, "how do I let myself back out?"

"You don't," he said, pressing the final switch. In the eternal instant before her mind went blissfully, obediently blank, Grace remembered the sensation with a shiver of deja vu.

How many times have I...

she thought. Then she settled into mindless submission, and thought nothing else at all.

THE END