Christina weathered the stare and marched right up to her boss’s desk. “I want to know why my investigation of the XTC Doll Company has been shut down!” she exclaimed. 

Lydia Dunn arched her eyebrows. “I was prepared to tell you during our normal staff meeting this afternoon. I saw no point in continuing this fishing expedition of yours. I would also comment that being my second-in-command does not give you the right to barge in here without even knocking.” 

Christina planted her fists on the desk and said, “My hunches have proved right so far, that’s what got me promoted to your executive officer. And my hunch is that this company is up to something.” 

Lydia Dunn leaned back in her chair and idly picked up a sheaf of papers from her orderly desk. “I’ve read your report. This XTC Doll Company manufactures synthetic love-dolls. That’s not illegal. It’s even encouraged, after the last AIDS epidemic forced the full outlawing of all illicit sex business.” 

Cristina shook her head before Lydia Dunn had even finished speaking, the younger woman’s unkempt short black hair ruffling with the movement. That impatient arrogance, together with Christina’s insistence on wearing what she damn well pleased and doing what she damn well liked, made Lydia Dunn’s knuckles whiten even as she held the report.  The fact was, this independent little upstart really got on her nerves.  Lydia Dunn chose tailored business outfits and wore a carefully selected perfume. Christina not only crossed the line on office demeanour; she stomped all over it. If only she wasn’t so good at her work. 

Christina said, “I hacked into their financial computers. This company is making tons of money. I suspect the lovedoll business is just a cover for a high-class prostitution network.” 

“Oh, come now,” said Lydia Dunn. “Prostitution is strictly prohibited,” said Lydia Dunn. “Life imprisonment—medical quarantine—for everybody involved. The owners of this company wouldn’t be that stupid. And I would know about it through other channels if there was the slightest chance. Besides, have you ever taken the trouble to inspect one of their love-dolls? Supposed to be state-of-the-art, very expensive. That would account for the revenue.” 

Christina put her hands on her hips, “In the first place, I think that whole business of love-dolls is sick, and I don’t care if they’re sanctioned by the government as a sex-partner substitute—the owners of this business are creeps, as far as I’m concerned. In the second place, we both know that the rich and famous can always get what they want, if they willing to pay the price. And finally, I’ve got evidence that this company might be paying bribes to government officials in high places to keep their business secret.” 

A chill entered Lydia Dunn’s voice. “Are you accusing me of taking bribes?” she asked. 

Christina backed off. “No, of course not. I’m just suggesting your normal channels of investigation might be thwarted. That’s 
why we need to send in an agent. Namely, me.” 

“Hmm. Dressed as you are now, Christina, you might very well pass as a recruit for a prostitution ring.” Lydia Dunn’s eye ran disapprovingly over the girl’s provocative dress. Tight-fitting leather pants, a white silk blouse whose contours betrayed the absence of any kind of a bra and just enough make-up to emphasize her natural beauty. Lydia Dunn had heard how the men in her path to promotion had been distracted by her sensuality, and how Christina had played them for what they were worth and marched over their bodies in her three-inch heels as soon as they had served their purpose. “If I send anybody, it ought to be a male agent, posing as a customer.” 

“I can run circles around any male agent on your staff, Miss Dunn. Besides, from what I hear, you’re not exactly partial to men anyway.” Lydia Dunn resisted the impulse to strangle this impertinent little snit right then and there. True, Lydia acknowledged that Christina was young and smart and oh-so-attractive. But Lydia’s pristine and well-coifed exterior hid the ruthless instincts of an administrative in-fighter who had clawed her own way to the top. She wasn’t about to be toppled by some pedigreed street hustler. She leaned back in her executive chair and said casually “Office rumors say you’re after my job as Chief, Christina, that you have your little heart set at working at this desk.” You scheming little slut, she thought. 

“Only if I deserve it—like, if I prove the existence of a world-wide prostitution ring masquerading as a maker of toy love-dolls, right under the nose of our Commission on Sex Crimes,” replied Christina sweetly to the older woman. You over-the-hill bitch dyke, she thought. 

Christina checked her make-up one last time before entering the offices of XTC Doll Company. The address took her by surprise; she had expected some dingy office-warehouse. But the corporate office had an address in one of the finer sections of the city. When she entered through the doors and marched up to the receptionist, Christina was struck by the fine decor of the office. The oil paintings on the wall, the plush embroidered couch, even the fresh real flowers displayed in the vase on the Chippendale table—all seemed to have been selected with exquisite taste. Christina had dressed the part of a hooker looking for a new gig, and felt very out of place in these elegant surroundings. 
“I called about a job,” she said, after signing in under her fictitious work name. 

“Someone will be out to see you in a moment,” said the receptionist.  When Christina tried a few probing questions, the receptionist offered a bland and impersonal smile, nothing more. Her face, though pretty, was expressionless. For a mad moment, Christina wondered if there wasn’t something, well. Synthetic about her. Don’t get paranoid so soon, Christina chided herself. But the receptionist’s eyes—blank and soulless—bothered her. 

Christina noticed a hologram display booth in the lobby and walked over to check it out. OUR LATEST LOVE-DOLL! Announced the display. She pressed an indicated button, and an image about a foot tall flickered into life. The display flashed specifications and features of the so-described “Ultimate Love-Doll”, as the image of the mannequin postured herself invitingly. The doll’s body conformed to the ideal voluptuous shape, with perfect make-up and glossy skin. Christina was impressed in spite of herself—the doll was extraordinarily life-like, and if even half the warranties were true, the doll could be quite a novelty. It would be just like men to go for some toy with full hair, large breasts, and a “precision-engineered love channel”, as the display boasted. Pity that all that ingenuity was devoted to such degenerate purpose, thought Christina, her nose wrinkled in disgust. 

Presently another woman came out and called for her. She, too, was pretty and well mannered and totally unresponsive to Christina’s questions. Instead, she motioned Christina to a chair in a cubicle with what looked like some kind of eye-examination device. 

“We have a security system here that codes off retina scans,” she explained. “This will let you pass through the various checkpoints into our recruiting department for your interview. Please look into the eye guards so we can register your imprint.” 
Christina gave what she hoped was a silly-prostitute smile, and tried to hide her wariness. She looked into the eyepieces, much like having her eyes examined. “We need to hold your head steady,” said the voice beside her, as a strap secured the eyepiece tightly to over the bridge of her nose. Christina found herself watching a pulsing light inside a slowly revolving spiral, on a field of total blackness. The sparkling light blinked on and off at a steady rate . . . then the rhythm increased, the light flashing at a faster pace. Faster and faster, brighter and brighter, her mind now totally focused to the very centre of the spiral.  Suddenly she realized what was happening: the pulses had quickened to thirty times a second, precisely calibrated to the brain’s ocular-neuron rate. The strobe effect—a classic device for inducing a state resembling an epileptic fit! Chistina twisted her head frantically to one side, but the eyepieces remained strapped securing over her eyes, the vision in front of her remained stationary—compelling, irresistible. She heard a buzzing in her ears as she began to lose consciousness. She tried one last desperate attempt to heave herself out of the chair, tear herself way from the iron grip of the hands that held her down. But her mind was already paralysed. She sank back in the chair, the flashes now exploding in her very brain, everything swirling around her.... 

Christine opened her eyes. Blurred vision, her mind fighting for orientation. Now she was on her stomach, still on a gurney or table. Her face was framed by a padded ring, so she looked down on the floor, seeing surgical shoes on white tile. Her whole scalp felt cool, as if she had just stuck her head in a freezer. A soft moan escaped her parched lips, and she struggled feebly to raise herself. “Christ, she’s coming around,” said a voice. 
“Give her twenty milligrams of Demerol. No, make it forty,” spoke a voice with a vaguely European accent. A pair of green surgical shoes step into her line of downward vision, joining the first pair. Her arm twitched—must be an intravenous hook-up, there—and once more her consciousness dissolved into grey nothingness. But not before she heard the metallic clink of surgical instruments brought to bear. 

Dreams! Nightmarish episodes of getting roused from slumber, voices telling her what to do, how to stand. Blue background, blue everywhere, except the bright lights in front. Hands helping her, positioning her, faces in front of her like indistinct balloons. Kaleidoscopic flashes of looking down, seeing her body in different outfits—will the real Christina please stand up? I can’t, thought Christina plaintively, I’m so tired. Just let me lie down and go to sleep. But the voices urged her on, kept prompting her like an actress forgetting her lines. Maybe she got the job, she thought. But which job? She couldn’t remember, but she seemed the centre of attention of the people around her, which is how she liked it. She smiled for the cameras in the audience. But Commissioner Lydia Dunn wouldn’t let her have her moment of attention, the bitch! If only she wasn’t so sleepy, then she could really put on a show. But her eyelids grew heavy, and the voices grew quiet and the lights turned dim. And in her dream, she felt herself slipping into sleep again. 

At last Christina gained consciousness for real. She felt her training and self discipline kick in like faithful allies: Waking up was a matter of ascending through layers of fog, you just had to wait for your mind to clear sufficiently for you to act rationally. Be patient. Gather your strength. 

She felt straps against her arms, waist, and legs. She cracked an eyelid and saw how she was restrained in something like a dentist-chair.  Looking down over the swell of her breasts, she saw how the body suit followed the contours of her curves to perfection. She felt some kind of phallic device intruding deep inside her pussy, but could see nothing between her legs except a few wires leading off table. When she tried to move her head to look around the room, she felt a tightened band around her forehead that prevented her. Even that slight effort made her wince at the stab of a headache. A residual effect of the mind-inducer, she wondered, or did she injure herself during her capture? A particular ache throbbed just behind her right ear. Then Christina remembered the surgical surroundings earlier, and had to fight down her panic. She kept her eyes closed. 

“I know you are awake, Miss Hilshire.” The voice was cultured and vaguely European She opened her eyes and studied her captor. About forty years old, she judged. His physique was solid, but not over muscular.  His business suit had a cut that suggested a London tailor, but other than that, his type could be found in any corporate boardroom. Grey eyes, with irises flecked with black. And rimless glasses—you looked at the eyes behind those no-nonsense glasses and kept your distance.  Christina loathed him immediately. And they apparently knew her real name! Christina hated the idea of being out-manoeuvred by a man. He said calmly, “Are you feeling all right, Miss Hilshire? Can we get you something to drink, some cold water perhaps?” 

“I’ll tell you want I want,” said Christina, her voice edged with venom, “I want you get let me go. Right now. Otherwise, you and your creepy little outfit will find yourselves in more trouble than you could even conceive.” 

“Oh? And what were you doing here, may I ask?” 

“I was applying for a job.” 

The man said in mock surprise, “Truly? I was not aware that agents of the Sex Crimes Commission needed a second job to make ends meet. They really ought to do something about the pay scales of your agency.” 

Christina said nothing, her cover blown already. “So I was right, then wasn’t I? This whole love-doll business is just a front for something illegal. What do you got going here, a nice little kidnap-and-prostitution ring?” She sensed other people behind her, and could barely see out of the corner of her eye some kind of computer set up off to the side. 

The man, who had been sitting next to her, rose and walked to the foot of Christina’s restraining table. He smiled at her question. “Oh, but for the golden days of white slavery! Damsels in distress chained to sweat-soaked mattresses, held in the holds of tramp steamers bound for the fleshpots of the Orient!” He smiled and shook his head. “No, the XTC Doll Company really is in the business of making and selling love-dolls.  The finest imaginable, Miss Hilshire. We have come out with a new line, called the Ultimate Love-Doll’, which has become quite popular among our customers. As you will soon see.” He began to pace. Christina followed him with her eyes. 

He said, “There is some truth to what you say: a market for sexual adventure does in fact exist. It’s mostly male, but not entirely. Many of our clients live and work outside the United States—bored with their home lives, frustrated with the taboos that prevent them from exploring their interests more openly. Generals, bankers, nobility—powerful men in their own societies. Much like your Senators and CEO’s.” 

“Don’t be naive,” snapped Christine. “Senators and CEO’s don’t have women kidnapped or drugged or whatever as sexual playthings!” 

“Oh?” the man said with a chilling smile. “And tell me who is being naive, here, Christina? Surely it is not me. I might add that such men need security and discretion—demand it, in fact. The sex-registration laws that followed the last outbreak of AIDS plague are constrictive enough. Mistresses and call-girls can turn the tables, threaten to go to the tabloids and talk-shows. This can be a most trying situation for these gentlemen, you understand.” 

“My heart bleeds for em,” muttered Christine, wincing as a spasm of pain seemed to ricochet through her cranium. Max studied her intently. “Your head, it hurts?” he asked. 

“Yeah, it hurts. And my scalp feels cold.” 

“Yes, we shaved your head.” 

“You what?!” 

“Yes, you will understand why quite shortly. Here, I will show you.” The man stepped out of her vision, but quickly returned, rolling a full-length mirror to a stop at the foot of Christina’s chair. She saw herself totally trussed in the chair. And her hair had indeed been totally shaven off , leaving her head now as smooth as a billiard ball.  The bastards! Although she flaunted her refusal to follow conventional fashions, Christina had always been secretly quite impressed with her own looks. This was too much!

“ People around here call me Max’, by the way,” the man was saying. “I’m one of the directors of the company. And don’t worry about your hair, it will grow back by the time we finish your training.” 

“I’ve got other names for you, MAX!” she shouted. When she ran out of obscenities to call him and was left breathing hard, her eyes glaring like twin embers of hostility, Max motioned to somebody behind her. 

“While you were in the care of our clinic,” said Max, “we installed a neuro-transmitter at the base of your skull, right next to your cerebellum. We can connect to that transmitter through a jack installed behind your ear—a process we call jacking in’, by the way.” 

Christina didn’t know which was more terrifying—what he was saying, or the methodical academic way he was saying it. I’ve got to get out of here, she thought. These people are crazy! She tried to keep the initiative. “So you want to interrogate me about what the Commission knows of your outfit, do you? What’s it to be, then?” she asked defiantly. “Bamboo shoots under my fingernails? Rubber hoses?  Electrodes?” 

Max shook his head. “Miss Hilshire, we surely do not want to injure you in any way. We have other uses for you. As an undercover agent yourself, I expect your training included techniques at mental control, and the ways to resist them. In the old days, they called it brainwashing’. The techniques vary, but usually involve sleep deprivation, isolation, threats, psychological pressures—very crude methods indeed, wouldn’t you say? And not much left over of the subject, when they finished.” He gave a small shake of his head, as if to show his professional dissatisfaction. “We’ve come up with something far more effective. The ideas aren’t new,” he added modestly, “but the application is, we think, unique. You know who Pavlov is, don’t you? He was a Russian scientist, who did tests of ringing a bell when he fed his dogs; after a while, the dogs would salivate at the mere sound of the bell. Rather discouraging for the dogs, no? And then the marvellous work of your own B.F. Skinner, who taught us that by controlling the rewards and punishments, you can shape behaviour. It becomes a matter of reinforcement, you see.” 

This patient instruction was not what Christina expected, and she fought down another wave of panic. Stay cool, she shouted to herself silently.  Wait for them to make a mistake. But already she had the unnerving suspicion that this Max was not the type of man to make mistakes. Max said, “But how to put theory into practice, eh?” His eyes glinted behind his rimless glasses. “The neuro-transmitter was the key. I remember when we first formed the company, the moment at the clinic when we realized it could be done. We’ll show you.” 

Christina’s eyes grew wide as a latex-gloved hand pressed something against the base of her skull, right behind her ear. She felt more than heard something click in. A tiny tremor of some kind of electrical charge tickled her brain. For some reason the phallic device pressing deep inside her pussy also seemed to quiver with some kind of charge.  Then somebody pulled over her head some kind of hood. There were perfectly formed holes for her nostrils, mouth and eyes—but Christina wondered how long they would remain open. Max’s voice carried through the earplugs in the hood just like headphones, and seemed to resonate deep in her own head, with no sense of direction. “The purpose of that head covering,” said the voice, “is to deprive you of any kind of sensation except for what we allow. Did your training at the Commission include anything on neurology, Miss Hilshire?” 

“Just enough to recognize a nutcase when I see one. Like you, Max.” Her voice sounded thick and unnatural with her ears plugged. 

“I’ll reserve comment on that. We connected the neuro-transmitter in your skull directly to your primary visual cortex, bypassing the optic nerve. We’re able to upload whole sequences of visual images directly into your brain—much like you see when you dream. “Now, let’s see some images that we’re going to be working with, shall we?” He stepped behind a rostrum with computer keyboard, and his fingers tapped a few strokes.  Christina’s eyes widened at the thought that her very brain was somehow now linked to their infernal computer. And Max controlled the keyboard! 

“Close your eyes now, Christina, or you will see double,” said Max, as if this was being done for her own good. His fingers danced over the keyboard. Christina something like a power surge flash through her mind.  A picture in fact was forming in her mind, superimposed on her view of the clinic! She found the double image disorienting, so she let her eyelids drop shut. And she saw—herself! 

Only it was a picture of herself that could never have existed. A dungeon scene. She was naked save for a metal collar, and chained to a wooden post, kneeling in a bed of straw, head downcast in a submissive posture. This picture flickered out, and a new image flashed before her eyes in the same dream-like wavering clarity. She was now dressed in an fetishistic maid outfit: an apron trimmed in white lace over a frilly maid’s dress, glossy high-heeled pumps and fishnet stockings. She was bending over at the waist to dust off a bookshelf, displaying her derriere as if in open invitation. Christina blinked and tried to shake her immobile head to rid her mind of these disturbing pictures, but they filled her vision no matter what she did with her eyes. The final scene showed her dressed like a slut, her body barely covered in the flimsiest lingerie possible, literally crawling to the feet of a sitting man. The man’s features remained blurred in the vision, but her expression, as she halted on hands and knees between his legs and looked up, radiated nothing short of animal lust. The man’s hand reached down, grabbed a hank of her hair, and drew her face toward his thighs—

The vision flickered and went out. Christina found herself looking again at Max still standing at his computer keyboard. 
“Enjoy the show?” he asked. “We have a databank full of them. We shot the raw footage when you were drugged into a compliant state, when you were first here as a guest. It was not easy; let me tell you—something like positioning a ragdoll at times. But we got the basic images. The background comes from computer imagery superimposed on your figure. It is quite amazing, don’t you think? And you, Miss Hilshire, look positively fantastic. Considering your past relationships with men, seeing yourself in a submissive role might be a refreshing change for you, no?” 

“What do you know about my relationships, you scumbag?” demanded Christina. 

Max smiled without humour, and flipped through a file on the table next to him. “Quite a lot, actually. Of course we had you checked out, when we found you were checking us out. We even interviewed some of your former lovers, without them quite realizing it, by posing as tabloid reporters. They were only too glad to tell us how you used romance as a weapon. Some of them felt like just another notch on your lipstick case, to coin a phrase. Used’ was frequent verb, by the way.” 

Christina said, “Well, men have their uses. A few of them. Most of them are children, interested in either sex or their toys. If they can’t stay up with me, that’s their problem,” she said haughtily. 

“You American girls!” protested Max. “Always so independent! Don’t you realize that you could control your men so much better with deference and charm?” 

Christina bared her teeth in a shark-like smile. “Step a little closer, you creep, and I’ll show you some charm,” she said.” 
Max closed the file with a shrug. “So what’s going on here?” demanded Christina. “Are you kidnapping women to make pictures like that? Does your precious Equinox Company have a world-wide market for bootleg pornography?” 

Max shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. “I would say these images were made at great expense and trouble for an audience of one—namely you.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Christina, now making no effort to hide her confusion. 

“You will soon enough,” assured Max. He pointed to the computer to the side of his restrained captive. “As you saw from that sample of images, we have concocted many scenes of you in a compliant state of mind. We intend to play those scenes over and over again; going from the computer memory drives directly into your visual cortex. Each scene will be reinforced by a pleasurable stimuli. Or rather,” he corrected himself, “a combination of stimuli. The neurotransmitter implanted in your brain has a biochemical stimulator to your pituitary gland. At a mere tap on our keyboard, we can prompt a surge of oestrogen, endorphins and other hormones directly into your brain’s limbic system, the very seat of your emotions. Oestrogen fires up your sexual drive, of course. Endorphins induce a sense of euphoria, a definite high’, I believe you call it. You have no doubt noticed we’ve installed a penetrating phallic stimulator in the bodysuit. That will provide another source of pleasurable stimuli. We have found in our research that sexual pleasure in particular is a very effective reinforcing force.” 

“And what do you hope to gain by all this mad-scientist nonsense?” demanded Christina, but deep in the pit of her stomach she felt she already knew. 

“Oh, our scientists are not mad’ at all, Miss Hilshire, if you mean to imply they have taken leave of their senses. They are quite dedicated to their work. As for what we intend to gain, we have it in our power to amplify your sexual cravings to any level we want to. I suppose the term bitch in heat’ would best describe it, crude though it may be.” Max removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses from a handkerchief drawn from his pocket. “You see the advantages, of course. We control your emotions. We control what you see and hear. I would suggest to you, Miss Hilshire, that we control your very brain! So why drag you through the conditioning experience in real life, when we can simulate them much more efficiently in your own mind? In fact, my dear, we’ve programmed over 100,000 repetitions of the simulations for you to experience by the time we are finished. And each one will be reinforced with a sensation of sublime pleasure.” He stopped polishing and resettled the glasses on the bridge of his nose, and continued with a sterner tone. “Of course, you will try to resist. The neuro-transmitter we installed will detect those thoughts before you even think them. The neuron patterns of rejection can be easily recognized; the synapses light up whole sections of your brain like a Christmas tree. I am sorry to say such activity will be discouraged by negative conditioning. That is to say, Miss Hilshire, that such thoughts will immediately trigger a sensation of, well, let us just say exceeding unpleasantness.” 

As Christina heard Max’s last comment, her anger—simmering ever since she found herself helpless—boiled over into defiance. “If you expect me to cooperate,” she flared, “you can go screw yourself.” 

“Ah, Miss Hilshire, that’s just the point: I don’t want you to cooperate.”  Christina stared at him, her rage turning to confusion. 

“You see” he continued, “When you don’t cooperate, the computer recognizes the brain patterns signals, and automatically sends a jolt of negative conditioning. The whole point of this exercise is to remove your conscious will as a factor in your behaviour. So by all means, fight back!” His lips broke into confident smile that Christina found so aggravating. “Well, enough repartee. We need to close up the hood, Miss Hilshire, to assure full dominion over your sensory output. When we next see each other, you will find yourself a different person.” 

Christina opened her mouth to shriek curses at him, but just then a gloved hand slipped a mouthpiece gag between her teeth. Her jaw was forcibly closed by a brawny arm, and she felt a strap being cinched under her chin. Then another hand came within her field of vision, holding some kind of eyepads. Christina uttered a muffled protest as the blindfold slipped over her eyes, snapping over clasps around her brow and cheeks. The agent found herself in total darkness, her chest pressing in ragged rhythm against the constricting straps with every panting breath. Blood roared in her ears and she fought for self-control. Then she heard Max’s voice filling her head. “By the way, Christina, we also synthesized your voice to give you a little encouragement in our little exercise. You might as well sit back and enjoy yourself.” 

She felt a tingling in the connection behind her ear. Then a scene flashed before her eyes, a full version of one of the scenes sampled earlier. Christina saw herself chained to a stout wooden post. The image was so real, she almost felt the steel cuffs biting into her wrists crossed above her head, the rough scratchings of the straw on her knees and thighs. Suddenly she felt a wave of pleasure course through her body, so intense that she found herself trembling. 

The endorphins! She thought. They’re using my own hormones to make me want this. She tried to close her eyes to stop watching—but her eyes were already closed! The scene was playing on the backdrop of the very brain itself. The figure on the screen writhed sinuously. She watched as the Christina-image brushed a bare breast with a forearm, and another mind-bending flood of chemical pleasure pulsed through her brain. They even have it synchronized with what the image is doing, she realized, with a combination of horror and fascination. 

Christina steeled her mind. Think of other things, she commanded herself. She forced her mind to replace the submissive scene with another image, of her as Chief of the Commission, sitting at Lydia Dunn’s desk, leading the extermination of this horrible XTC Doll Company. The two images fought for primacy in her mind. But just as she was on the verge of ordering the execution of Max, without the benefit of clergy, the computer detected the resisting thought patterns. And responded immediately. 
Something like an electric jolt zapped through Christina’s whole brain.  It wasn’t pain; it was the bedrock sensation of awfulness without the related physical pain. It was enough to send Christina practically bolting out of her chair, if such a feat were at all possible. And then, before she had even known what had hit her, the dungeon scene was playing again before her eyes. Her own daydreams were obliterated. As she took her first gasp, she recalled Max’s description of the computer’s negative training device: “Exceeding unpleasantness,” he had called it. The man has a gift for understatement, she thought. 

Before she could reassemble her defences, she heard a voice in her mind—her own synthesized voice! “I want to do what I’m told,” whispered her voice. “I want to be a good girl. I want to pay attention . . .” The sound of her own voice confused Christina, she could not tell her own thoughts from the relentless persuasion. For a few seconds, Christina watched the screen as the Christina-image drew her hands over body, luxuriating in her bondage. Another wave of pleasure—the endorphins splashing over her brain again . . .except this time Christina allowed herself to float away on it. . .just for a few seconds. . .tremors of amplified pleasure raced through her loins. . . 

No! Christina caught herself just in time. What to do? She remembered from her training the oriental technique of resisting torture by dividing time into infinite segments. All right, then--- The computer pounced again. The second jolt was worse than the first.  Christina’s scream was totally muffled by the mouthpiece and gag. The neuro-transmitter had once again spotted the flickering synapses that betrayed her mental resistance. The endless loop began all over again—the image, the voice, the endorphins flowing into her brain to send her soaring in spirals of euphoria. 

Still reeling from the last shock, Christina once again succumbed to the onslaught against her free will. After a few seconds of passive acceptance, her body was rewarded by the phallus lodged deep inside her. It hummed to life. Slowly, in cadence to the scenes of the Christina-image caressing herself, the phallus throbbed and matched the stirrings of Christina’s own sexual response. Before she knew what she was doing, Christina found herself writhing to the beat of the mechanical lover thrust inside her. The voice in her ears urged her on, seductively whispering: “Oh, yesss, I love that feeling...I want to be played with...I’ll do anything I’m told...” 

As if through a fog, Christina dimly realized what was happening. Even though she tried to will herself to put up some fight, her mind and body did not obey her. It took all her will power to desperately summon up a mental block from this new seductive persuasion. The punishing shock obliterated the resistance before it had even formed in her mind. When her mind cleared the submissive Christina-image returned. Only now she was dressed in a leather fetish outfit, her waist cinched with laced corset, her legs clad in thigh-high boots. But her voice remained the same, still whispering submissive inducement deep in her mind. . . 

Max stayed at the keyboard for over an hour of her programming. He followed every mental shift and dodge his captive attempted, watched with satisfaction as her episodes of resistance grew shorter and less frequent. Although he had witnessed hundreds of such scenes, he savoured watching this particular subject reduced into conditioned compliance. As he watched Christina writhe in the restraining chair, he knew that her total universe consisted of alternating pleasure and instruction on one hand, and punishment for negative thinking on the other hand. He marvelled at how long she was able to resist, trying to shore up her crumbling mental defences. But slowly, inexorably, her brain learned its lessons of obedience. 

An assistant tapped him on the shoulder. “Miami is on the line, sir.” Max left the clinic and returned to his own office, followed by the assistant. Max picked up the telephone receiver, listened a few moments, and then nodded. “Yes, I think we can accommodate that.” He hung up the telephone, and flipped through the status reports of his love-doll production line. “Demand is picking up,” he said to the assistant. He dug into his work, with occasional glances along a bank of monitors that had closed-circuit television views of each of his clinic rooms. That way he followed Christina’s progress, as well as the other captives undergoing programming. The very thought of what was happening to Christina in particular added some zest to his work. Beneath the visual image, the screen displayed various measurements of brain-waves, heart-rate and sexual arousal from the body suit that was packed with sensors. By degrees, her mind was being conditioned into submissiveness, and her sexual cravings were being stoked and amplified until satisfying that craving became her overriding fixation. Nice change of attitude, he thought to himself. 

He watched the silent writhing and undulation of the figure strapped in the chair, the aristocratic high cheekbones smoothed over but still apparent under the precisely-fitted hood, as the relentless procession of submissive images impressed themselves on the girl’s mind. And his trained eye could spot the pressing of her stiffening nipples against the contoured fabric of her skin-tight bodysuit. The programming was going well. Max expected the training to go even better.