Zero Percent

Stasia slides the gems on the screen around with her fingers automatically, intuitively recognizing potential matches faster than her conscious mind can process them. The gems vanish with a chime, but more constantly drop down to fill the empty space they left behind. There's always another match to be made, always another gem to slide into position for a chain reaction that briefly turns the screen into a captivating dazzle of bursting, sparkling lights, and even though Stasia knows she needs to stop soon, she can't quite convince herself that this is the moment to do it. Not when she's near the end of the level. Not when she's this close to topping her high score. She can't resist going just a little bit longer.

Well, of course she can't. She's down to seven percent willpower.

It's the stranger's fault, really. When he sat down next to Stasia, she was at thirty percent, and already she was kicking herself for leaving her phone charger on the bedside table at home when she went to visit her boyfriend. She didn't think it was going to be anything more than an irritation; Chris would be texting her any minute to tell her that he was waiting outside the bus station, and she could always pick up a spare on the way back to his place. She just needed to be mindful of her battery use, that was all. She had just resolved to stop playing once she got down to twenty percent when the stranger glanced over at her phone and said, "Oh, man, that's a gamer trance if I ever saw one. It's so addictive, isn't it?"

Stasia gave a non-committal murmur, the kind of acknowledgement that you gave a stranger when you didn't want to be rude but you also didn't want to prolong the conversation. She wasn't really interested in striking up a friendship with a random person at a bus station, especially not when she expected Chris to send her a text any second. She kept her head down, her eyes fixed on the screen, and hoped that whoever he was, he would take the hint.

He didn't. "I can't believe how often I completely lose track of time, just sitting there and matching gem after gem after gem until suddenly it's way past my bedtime and my phone is almost out of battery. Gamer trance, am I right?" he chuckled, as though sharing an inside joke with her. Stasia gave a vague smile, staring intently at her phone as if to wall out any distractions by focusing on the gems.

That might have been a mistake. He's still next to her, but Stasia's finding that she's gotten almost too good at shutting him out. His voice is nothing more than a comfortable drone in her ears now, speaking to her in soft words that her conscious mind just can't catch. Every time Stasia tells herself that she really needs to pay closer attention to what he's saying, that he's draining her will away more and more with each murmured suggestion, she spots another gem combo and another and another, and before she knows it she's at six percent willpower.

Stasia struggles to remind herself that it's not willpower the little icon in the corner of the screen is displaying, but she can't seem to make her conviction stick. Probably because she's at six percent willpower.

She can still remember when he insinuated the metaphor into her brain. When she was down to twenty-five percent, hoping for Chris to come and text her soon so that she could really get her vacation started, the stranger said, "Whoa, getting a little low, there. You might want to plug in pretty soon, there, or you'll be stuck without a way to call your ride."

Stasia tried to bite back a touch of acid irritation in her voice as she muttered a perfunctory, "Can't. Left my charger at home." She didn't really want to talk to him, or to anyone who wasn't Chris telling her he was on his way to pick her up, but it was too much effort to shut him out completely. She'd had a long bus ride, she was tired, and all she wanted to do was go back to her boyfriend's place and take a nap.

(And okay, maybe try some of the kinky shit they'd been doing online for months. But a nap was definitely happening soon. And a hot meal. And a shower.)

"Oh man," the stranger said, his voice full of sympathy. "That sucks. I hate when that happens. It's like, you know you should get off your phone to conserve battery, but at the same time, there's always another level or another post in your feed or another time sink just waiting for you, telling you that it won't hurt to wait a little bit longer before you put it away. It's like your phone is hypnotizing you or something, y'know?" Stasia nodded absently, hoping that non-committal responses would end the conversation quickest.

"And the more that percentage dips down, and down, and down, the more you feel like you should be giving up on whatever you're doing and putting your phone away... but paradoxically, it's almost the opposite. It's like the meter isn't showing the battery's power, it's showing your willpower instead. And it just keeps getting weaker and weaker the more you give in to the compulsion to lose yourself in your game." His voice took on a strange timbre as he spoke, becoming gentle and soothing. Something about it sent shivers down Stasia's spine...

And then the game froze as a little warning notice popped up saying that she was down to twenty percent battery. She dismissed it with a grunt of irritation, somewhat unsettled at the way her resolution had crept up on her without her really noticing it. Stasia knew she needed to put the phone away, or at least stop playing a battery-intensive game while she waited for Chris to text her... but if she turned off the phone, she'd have no excuses for ignoring the man sitting next to her. Even if he wasn't being actively rude or hitting on her, she really wanted to have something else to concentrate on. She unpaused the game and continued her tile matching, promising herself that she would keep a more careful eye on the willp-the battery icon.

She's watching it right now, in fact. It's down to four percent, and her eyelids are drooping with exhaustion as she struggles to keep her mind from wandering. Stasia tries to tell herself that she's just sleepy from the cross-country bus trip and the late night she spent anticipating her visit, but she has the strangest feeling that these are just excuses her mind is feeding itself to make everything seem nice and normal and reasonable. Of course she's drowsy. Of course she's relaxed. Of course she's focusing on the screen and letting her thoughts scatter into pleasant, mellow lethargy as she lets the voice in her ears guide her. It's all so normal, and she doesn't need to concern herself with it at all.

Because that's what the stranger is telling her, and Stasia only has four percent of her willpower left to resist him.

Three percent now.

As her mind wanders, aimlessly drifting from one thought to the next without any real ability to follow them, Stasia finds herself remembering the way the stranger spoke to her as she continued to play. "That's exactly what I'm talking about," he said, as her finger tapped the pause button and resumed her continuous, methodical motion. "You've probably come up with some perfectly normal, perfectly natural excuse to keep going, something you think is all your idea, but you can't escape the fact that you're still playing. All that energy, all that will is draining away, slowly but surely, and the game is sucking you in."

Stasia really wished he would take the hint-she would stop playing just as soon as she stopped needing an excuse to avoid socializing-but he just kept droning on and on at her while the percentage in the upper right-hand corner of the screen slowly dwindled. "It's so easy to convince yourself that it's not a compulsion, that you could stop any time you wanted to... but then you tell yourself that you don't really want to stop just yet. You want to lose yourself a little bit more in the captivating lights, in the motion of the gems under your fingertips. The more your willpower drains away, the harder it is to think about anything but the game. Isn't that right?"

Stasia nodded automatically, not really paying attention to anything more than the general thrust of his conversation but unwilling to expend the energy to openly contradict him. She was too tired to have an argument with a total stranger in a bus station, especially when she was already down to eighteen percent. He could say whatever he wanted about willpower and gamer trance and, and... Stasia let the train of thought sputter and stall as she transformed five gems into a massive board-clearing bomb. The level cleared, and she felt a dizzying sensation of vertigo as the screen dissolved into a tunnel of light that sucked her along with it to the next stage.

"It's really impossible to stop when the game flows so smoothly and effortlessly like that," the stranger said, his voice seeming to echo strangely in Stasia's head. "It doesn't feel like a compulsion, but that tantalizing pull just tugs you along, deeper and deeper into the gamer trance. Always promising, 'Just one more level. Just one more clear. Just one more score.' And by the time you've realized that you've done more than you intended, by the time you realize that you just lost another stretch of time smoothly and easily in the warm complacency of the game... there's a new milestone just waiting for you. And you're always so close, aren't you?"

Stasia let out an affirmative grunt, her eyes briefly flickering up to the icon in the corner-sixteen percent now-before sinking back down to the center of the screen. The gems seemed to line up easier and easier now as her mind felt free to drift and focus on the board; she was in the zone, and the man who wouldn't leave her alone was barely even a distraction anymore. She felt like she could keep playing forever, like her eyes were locked onto the phone and her mind was locked onto the game and it only seemed to get easier the longer she played.

She still feels that way, even though her willpower is ticking down from two percent to one. She knows, on some level, that it doesn't make sense at all; once that last little tick of power fades away, her phone is simply going to shut down, the screen fading into darkness as everything goes still and silent and she has nothing to keep her drowsy brain going anymore. But she can't make herself turn that understanding into action. She can't stop her fingers from sliding from one gem to the next, constantly clearing one board after another, nodding and smiling vacantly as the stranger whispers in her ear with the warmth of a lover.

Stasia blinks heavily, her eyes burning like it's the first time she's closed them in several minutes. Her eyelids tremble with the effort of keeping them open, and she somehow knows with the certainty of fact that once they close again she won't be able to open them. It's only that last tiny sliver of willpower that's keeping her from drifting completely into deep, mindless slumber, and once it's gone... once it's gone...

She can picture it in her head, more real than the bus station around her. The screen will go black. Her mind will go dark right along with it, drained down to zero percent and wide open to be programmed. The stranger will take her by the hand and lead her away, her empty and hypnotized brain accepting his suggestion to follow him with perfect, blissful compliance. She doesn't even know who he is, but she knows it won't matter. Not when he captures all her will. Not when she can't resist him at all anymore.

He's going to take her somewhere, fill her malleable mind with his instructions until she forgets what resistance means anymore. She's going to give in to him completely, offer her body to him for his pleasure until he's fucked her utterly mindless with dreamy, drowsy ecstasy. She knows she won't be able to fight him. She knows she's going to belong to him soon. She knows that she knows all this because he's been telling her, describing everything he's going to do to her while she drifted in her gamer trance like a good girl and let her willpower slowly ebb away. And she knows that knowing doesn't help her stop it from happening.

Because she's down to one percent willpower. One percent isn't enough to resist anything.

"That's right, good girl," the stranger says. Stasia didn't realize she said it out loud until she hears him reply. "You can't resist. You don't want to resist. You want to keep going. You want to keep right on drifting into my will and obey me completely, don't you?" Stasia nods. Or at least, she tries to. As her head slowly dips down, she sees the screen in front of her wink out into utter darkness, and suddenly she can't remember how to lift it again. Her chin sinks onto her chest, and the phone slips from her loose and lazy fingers to tumble onto the seat between her legs.

"It's okay, I've got it," the stranger says smoothly. She feels him reaching down between her thighs, and her pulse quickens with anticipation for a moment before he withdraws. "Let's go, good girl. I've been waiting a long time to play with that pretty body along with that pretty mind, and I don't want to wait anymore." He takes Stasia's hand in his, slinging her bag over his shoulder. Smiling, Stasia floats up to her feet and allows herself to be guided to the exit.

THE END