Wayne had been looking forward to hosting the next movie night since the end of the weekend following the last one, and the delay had been only because much of his weekend was occupied in picking out the right things to watch, deciding what suggestions he wanted to add to them, laying out an order and a plan to the suggestions and then editing them into place.

This had taken longer than he’d expected every time so far, partly because it was a complex task in its own right, but partly because he would repeatedly change his mind even during the edits on what should go where.

But as well as looking forward to the new suggestions he could load into her, Wayne was also looking forward to the first test of a suggestion implanted in the closing minutes of the previous movie night, a timed treat buried in her mental ‘software’ waiting to activate on the right stimulus.

It wasn’t even a test, really. He kept reminding himself that yes, technically, there was a possibility it would misfire. But he didn’t believe that it would.

So when there came the knock at his door, he was excited to answer. He opened the door and was surprised to see a loose T-shirt under an open shirt rather than the baggy sweater; Wayne was still processing Chantal’s change of fashion when, closing the door behind her, she briefly lost all expression, the light in her eyes blinking out, as she straightened to attention and intoned “I am ready to be programmed.”

Wayne was still collecting his thoughts after the rush of delight when Chantal blinked and dropped back out of attention into her usual stance, upright and straight enough but far more graceful and less rigid. “Hi,” she said. “I think I’m a few minutes early, is that OK?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling. “No problem. Take a seat.”

It had just been saying the polite thing you say, with no extra intent. But he watched her stiffen very slightly, then turn and walk to the sofa - no, not walk; the word for the way she was moving was march - turn to face the screen while in front of it, then sit in one smooth, almost mechanical descent.

Wayne stood very still for a moment after watching that movement, processing what he’d just seen, even as Chantal looked back up to him. “How’ve you been?” she asked, and he couldn’t read in her expression any indication that what she’d done was unusual or odd.

Which meant…

Well, after a couple more moments’ thought, he realised that it might mean she’d interpreted one of his suggestions differently than he’d intended it, but had still taken it to heart. That was… interesting. Actually, more than interesting; he found himself liking the idea even more than he’d enjoyed his own plans.

She was waiting for an answer, he suddenly realised. “Uh… good!” he said. “Very good.” He made his way over to sit beside her.

“Yeah? How’s your project?”

“She’s - uh, it’s coming along great.” He didn’t meet her eye.

“She?” Chantal smiled. “That’s cute. Your computer’s your girl, huh?”

“Something like that.” He couldn’t help but smirk.

“Don’t you ever think about getting a real girl?”

“They take effort,” he said without thinking. Chantal swatted his arm with the back of her hand again.

“It’s worth it,” she assured him.

“Chantal, you’re single at the moment too,” he pointed out. “How worth it is it, really?”

She gave him a mock-pout, but her eyes were still sparkling in exactly the way they didn’t during programming. It jolted him, seeing the difference, to realise just how much he preferred them empty and open. “It’s still worth it,” she said. “I get my fun from the boys. And at some point I’ll find a man who I want to settle down with.”

She nudged him with an elbow. “You’re talented,” she said. “If you were less interested in being lazy at work, you could be much better paid than you are. Put a little more pride in your appearance, stop looking at women who aren’t as nerdy as you are, and you could be a real catch for someone who’d be as excited as you are for all the new reboots of everything we watched as kids.”

“You like those shows too,” he pointed out.

“Of course I do. But not as much as you,” she said. “Just like you’re not interested in the gym and workout culture or anything else I like.” She was looking at him more seriously. “We’d be awful together, Wayne. You only think about it because I’m the woman who’s been a fixture in your life since childhood. But you never ask yourself whether it would work.” A soft smile, intended to take the edge off her words. “What we have is pretty great, when you think about it. So look to someone else for your something more, but look.”

Wayne forced a smile of his own. “I’m still not convinced it’s worth the effort,” he said. “You have to keep that effort up, for the rest of the relationship.”

“That’s life.” Chantal picked up her glass. “There’s no way to get out of that. But you already knew that.” She turned back to the screen, sinking back into the sofa. “So what are we watching?”

For answer, he picked up the remote and toggled the screen on, frozen on the thumbnail of the file Wayne had doctored, which was a still from a random moment in the film. Chantal frowned for a moment, querying her own memory, as she tried to place it. “Starship Troopers?” she asked.

“Right.”

“The only things I remember about this are Doogie Howser and the shower scene.” There was a certain amount of distaste in her voice on the later point.

Wayne grinned. “Honestly I picked this after something you said last time,” he said. “You could say I’m programming specifically for you.”

“I need to be programmed,” she replied instantly, her eyes briefly dull, her tone an empty monotone. It took a little longer than previously for the animation in her features to return, her eyelids fluttering for a few moments before it did. “Well,” she continued, unaware it wasn’t her first word on the matter, “I’m flattered by that. I think.”

“You think?”

“I’ll know how flattered I am when we’ve revisited this.”

Wayne pressed Play, and within a few seconds Chantal’s expression was slackening again. This time, he’d included the stimulus in his voice, not just text, and the way she responded made him think it was more impactful for her. Hearing it played back was probably the first time he hadn’t disliked the sound of his recorded voice on instinct, and that included all the time he’d spent listening to it as he edited.

“Your brain is hardware,” his recorded voice said. “Your mind is software.”

“My brain is hardware. My mind is software,” Chantal droned in monotone.

“Your mind will be improved by programming.”

“My mind will be improved by programming.”

“Enter programming mode.”

There was no sweater this time, but she lifted her tee aside so her hand could find her breast. Her other hand delved into the baggy waistband of her sweatpants. She was masturbating again by the time his recorded voice next spoke; it was the other essential part of programming mode, alongside a deep trance state.

“My voice is your password.”

“Your voice is my password.”

Wayne grinned. That one in particular he’d been very proud of, when he came up with it; he’d then had to sit on it for the best part of a month waiting until he was confident his voice coming from the TV wouldn’t jolt her out of her trance.

“My voice is your password.”

“Your voice is my password.”

He reached out as he had the last time, groping her tit through her tee and bra. Much better than through that sweater, the thick, baggy fabric of which had made his first hands-on claiming of her less than it should have been - though not too much less.

“Your mind can be edited.”

“My mind can be edited.”

“You are a living doll.”

“I am a living doll.”

“Your mind can be edited. You are a living doll.”

“My mind can be edited. I am a living doll.”

He watched her. More, he listened to her, listened to the way her voice stayed flat and unaffected even as her breathing fell into a needy, ragged horniness beneath it. Listened to the way she followed his words, was led by them, without any sign at all that she was pushing back.

Wayne wondered if there had been a tipping point, somewhere along the way, that he’d had to break through, or whether this had been an inevitability from the point he started to make proper use of her old hypnotic trigger. Better yet was the possibility that a true tipping point existed but hadn’t yet been reached.

“Your mind will be edited.”

“My mind will be edited.”

“You are a fetishist.”

“I am a fetishist.”

Was there a slight stumble over the word there? Did the flatness of her tone wobble, just slightly, over the end of the sentence, where a raised tone might have sounded a question? He wasn’t sure. Knowing that the next recorded words he’d queued up introduced a new concept rather than reinforcing this one, Wayne leaned hastily closer and whispered “You are a fetishist.”

“I am a fetishist,” she answered. Wayne thought the words might have come out flatter the second time, but he was very aware he could be convincing himself instead. Still, it shouldn’t take long to find out.

“Being a doll is your fetish.”

“Being a doll is my fetish.”

He was confident this time that he neither heard nor imagined a stumble.

“You are a living doll. Being a doll is your fetish.”

“I am a living doll. Being a doll is my fetish.”

“You have always had this fetish.”

“I have always had this fetish.”

“You have always been a doll.”

“I have always been a doll.”

Wayne realised he had been holding his breath and let it out in one long exhale. That was, he was confident, a big milestone in her progress, and so far as he could tell Chantal had accepted it perfectly. If she believed those key building blocks, everything else would follow - much more easily if she took the next one on board, too.

“Being brainwashed is your fetish.”

“Being brainwashed is my fetish.”

“The idea of being programmed excites you.”

“The idea of being programmed excites me.”

“You love to be told what to do.”

“I love to be told what to do.”

Her fingers were getting frantic, but she wouldn’t cum yet, Wayne knew. The final release would be after the last cycle of the film.

“You have always fetishised brainwashing.”

“I have always fetishised brainwashing.”

“You are a brainwashed doll with a programmable mind.”

“I am a brainwashed doll with a programmable mind.”

Wayne was grinning giddily as Chantal blinked and swallowed, then blinked several more times, eyelids fluttering, as she slowly rose back to consciousness when the cycle ended.

“So far,” she said, taking a sip of her wine, “this isn’t impressing me any more this time than last time.”

“But you’re going to watch it and smile,” Wayne returned, “because you love to be told what to do.” And he grinned as if this was a longstanding private joke between the two of them.

Chantal looked at him for a long moment, lips parted. Wayne could see her trying to decide on her reaction.

After a few moments she smiled and turned her attention back to the screen. “Don’t tell anyone,” she said.

“I’ll edit it from my mind,” Wayne told her.

Her eyes briefly glassy, she responded “My mind can be edited,” before her eyelids fluttered again and the spark returned to her eyes. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s OK you knowing. I don’t want it public knowledge.

“Why is it OK that I know?” he asked, curious to see what explanation she’d have invented for herself. She was silent for a long moment.

“It just is,” she said. “Shut up.” There was an edge of annoyance in her tone that Wayne figured was probably more about the fact she couldn’t answer his question. But she was still smiling as she looked at the screen.

Just as she’d been told to do.

*

At the end of the film, Wayne smiled. “Tell me you liked that movie,” he said. Chantal opened her mouth to reply, looked sideways at him, and pouted. He just looked back at her steadily, waiting.

“I liked the movie,” she said grudgingly, as she had been told to. “I didn’t, you know.”

He smiled. “But if you tell yourself you do often enough, you’ll program yourself to believe it.”

This time her eyes rolled up into her head as her features went slack. “I need to be programmed,” she droned - there really was no other word for it now. It was a monotone, flat affect with an unbroken cadence, as easy to imagine generated by software as emerging from her lips.

Truth be told, Wayne was enjoying those more and more. And the fact that, once her eyes rolled back down and the rapid flurry of blinking was done and her consciousness reasserted itself, she clearly had no idea there’d even been an interruption in service was just as good.

Never mind programming her to have a brainwashing fetish; he was discovering one of his own, from the other angle.

“I don’t believe that’s how that works,” she told him. Wayne let it slide; she didn’t need to believe it to be affected by it.

“Before we do the next one?” he asked, and when she was looking directly at him he quoted, “ ‘A little entertainment, please.’ ”

Chantal’s features were slackening, her eyes glazing over, as she rose from the sofa and stepped out around the coffee table into the open space in front of the screen.

She stopped for a moment, standing there with an empty expression and mild confusion in her body language, before she put her thumbs into the waistband of her sweatpants and pulled them down, stepping out of them as best she could before standing on them with her trainers to help remove them.

Without looking, she nudged them to one side with a sweep of a foot, her hands already lifting the T-shirt free over her head to be similarly discarded.

Wayne had actually seen her wearing less; the bra and panties concealed by her top were undecorative, doubtless comfortable, and not small. Bikini modelling photos had given away a lot more, and he’d enjoyed them, but he found he enjoyed this view a lot more, because he had caused it.

He had decided he wanted it to happen. He had included it into the hypnotic suggestions edited into the film. He had programmed her - yes, indeed he had programmed her - with the suggestion, and he had used the trigger at the first opportunity.

In trainers, socks, panties and bra, Chantal turned to face the door into his kitchen and began, not to walk, but to strut, one hand on her hip, the other swinging free, just exactly as if she was working a catwalk gig.

When she reached the doorway she stopped. Cocking her hip to one side, stretching out the long leg on the other to its best advantage, she reached both hands up to the doorframe and arched her back, holding that pose for several seconds before taking one hand from the doorframe and half-turning toward him at the hip, looking over her shoulder at him from below her hair. The expression on her face was sultry and seductive, but the lack of light in her eyes revealed that there was no intentionality to that; it was just what a model would do.

She held this pose in turn too, another several seconds, before turning on her heel. She made her way back toward Wayne sashaying, moving with a sexuality that was far more potent than he’d seen in the photos she’d posted before. Perhaps it was the motion. Perhaps it was control that made the difference.

Perhaps it was that this wasn’t really Chantal. This was a doll. A programmable toy. A model in a completely different sense. And Wayne already had many ways to play with her; seeing the proof was exhilarating.

He had almost been so engrossed in her performance to forget to get out his phone and start recording the results.

She walked the shortened catwalk another two times before stopping just in front of the coffee table on her latest return, where she looked glassily down the lens of his phone camera, correctly interpreting him as the photographer for this hypnotically-suggested modelling session.

For the next five minutes, she moved fluidly from pose to pose, holding each one for long enough that he could drink it all in, her eyes only ever losing contact with the camera lens briefly. She wore the same smile she’d had when he told her to smile as she watched the film, a warm-looking smile that he could now distinguish all the same as her professional default. Even then, the sparkle of intelligence was completely absent from her eyes.

Wayne eventually realised she would model until there were no more photos being taken, and as he still had another film’s worth of programming he wanted to plant in her, he put his phone away.

Chantal stood motionless for a few moments, the smile diffusing into her slack empty expression, before another bout of rapid blinking woke her back up.

*

Chantal straightened up, looking thoughtfully around her. She couldn’t remember why she’d got up at all. Wayne had said something, hadn’t he? Something about entertainment before the movie?

The details escaped her and for a moment she was almost worried about that, before a stray glance confirmed that her sweatpants and tee shirt were lying by the table.

She must have got up so she could take them off.

That made perfect sense. Her thought process acknowledged this undeniable fact and stopped there, before she could ask herself how it made sense, or why she’d think that, or even why she wouldn’t remember doing it.

She smiled as she took her seat again. “You know,” she said, “I think I’m enjoying movie night more than I expected when you broke that out.”

“I’m doing my part,” Wayne answered with a smirk.

He was never going to get a girl if he kept smirking like that, she thought. But there was only so much criticism you could give a man at once, or he stopped listening to any of it. And dolls weren’t meant to be downers.

Wayne had put his hand on her bare thigh. She looked at it for a few moments, surprised. This was the first time he’d done that, but it felt…

…There was no good word for it, no logical way of thinking about it. It felt unquestionable.

She didn’t say anything about it, but she realised she was smiling. “What’s next?” she asked. “Another surprise?”

“Well… kind of.”

He queued up the next file with an app on his phone, his other hand never leaving her thigh. It was warm, and a part of her that recognised she was a living doll was glad that someone was playing with her, even in so basic and minor a way.

The black screen was accompanied by the soft static of an amateur recording that hasn’t had proper sound levelling. After a few moments a pink silhouette of a female figure appeared at the centre of the screen, tiny at first but growing toward the camera and coming to a halt with about two inches of black screen above and another two below.

The buttocks were prominent, the breasts perky, and Chantal was already giving Wayne sideeye before the company name faded in above it:

Mindteaser XXX Productions

“Triple X?” she asked. “You’re showing me a porno?”

“Believe it or not,” Wayne told her, “I think you’re going to enjoy it.”

She tutted audibly, but did turn back to the screen, her arms crossed. Not, Wayne knew, that they’d stay crossed for long; but perhaps she enjoyed having the illusion that they would.

The film was relatively new to him, let alone to Chantal, but he’d stumbled on it while he was trying to research hypnotic command structure and orders of operations for brainwashing processes. Most of what Google provided was fantasy, whether it be mind control porn or mind control conspiracy.

The video was only about thirty minutes long, so Wayne had decided on one long single cycle, a breather, and then one last burst just before it ended. So it wasn’t much longer before Chantal was once again wearing that empty expression that showed how vacant her mind could get, staring glassily at the screen, one hand on her breasts, the other beneath her panties, fingering herself hungrily as the porno began to unfold.

While he’d primed the subliminals to kick in and get her ripe as quickly as possible, it took a matter of two or three minutes before any programming reached her.

Wayne had chosen this particular video - Mindteasers Presents the Deviant Dollmaker III - because after watching it, he had written some priming cycles that almost exactly resembled the patter used by the controller in it

Then he’d had a better idea.

At the point in the video where the actor playing the Dollmaker pulled out his phone and thrust it into the face of the starlet playing his victim, Wayne had edited the file into a vertical splitscreen, with half of the screen displaying a looping spiral gif he’d found online. The starlet’s eyes widened and seemed somehow to tighten in their focus.

Wayne looked across to Chantal, and he wasn’t sure but he felt there may have been a similar reaction in her, too. Of course, she did have a brainwashing fetish; she now knew she always had done. And while he doubted she’d spent as much time investigating it as a fantasy as he had, the past few weeks, something like this was an obvious moment for it to key in, even if there wasn’t anything going on in her head you could clearly distinguish as thought.

The Dollmaker opened his mouth, but on this version of the file it was Wayne’s voice that emerged. “Look deep into the Spiral,” he said. “That’s right. Deeper and deeper. Feel it capture you.

“You can’t look away from the Spiral.”

When Chantal next spoke, she did so in unison with the victim in the video, a connection that Wayne thoroughly enjoyed. “I can’t look away from the Spiral.”

“That’s right, you can’t.” Alongside the spiral on screen, the actress proceeded to struggle to look away, making whimpering sounds as her eyes always reverted to the centre of the screen. “The Spiral makes you helpless.”

“The Spiral makes me helpless,” Chantal answered, her drone slower than the actress, but as she was neither struggling nor trying to represent a struggle, she finished the sentence first.

“Your will is weak.”

“My will is weak.” Chantal again responded more readily and with deeper acceptance than the actress, but Wayne was enjoying both of them by now.

“You are going to be programmed.”

“I am going to be programmed.” Which Chantal had not needed to be told, but it was in the script; and besides, Wayne didn’t think it would hurt to give her another nudge.

“You’re going to be overwritten.”

“I am going to be overwritten.” Wayne noted the lack of contraction in Chantal’s version. As she got deeper, her speech seemed to become more correct. He hadn’t decided whether she was reverting to what she’d been taught under the influence of deepening hypnosis or whether it was a side effect of having used somewhat mechanical or computerised word choices; maybe Chantal was starting to think in a more automated fashion too.

If so, so much the better; Wayne would be very happy to know he’d had those results.

“You can’t fight it.”

“I cannot fight it.” She’d definitely said can’t earlier. He was pretty sure this had to link to depth of trance somehow.

“You can’t resist.”

“I cannot resist.”

“You will not resist.”

“I will not resist.” Beside the spiral on the screen, the Dollmaker was groping his victim’s chest as she stood, arms limp by her side, swaying slightly, clearly incapable of moving or responding for herself.

“You can’t think.”

“I cannot think.” The actress was still using contractions, but her struggle to keep herself was gone from her voice. Alongside the spiral the camera was close in on her empty expression, but Wayne, who by now was copying the Dollmaker by groping his target’s tit, could definitely tell the difference in levels of awareness.

“You will not think.”

“I will not think.”

“You don’t think.”

“I do not think.” Close to her ear Wayne purred “You follow programming,” but Chantall did not have a chance to respond before his recorded voice spoke.

“You must obey me.”

“I follow programming. I must -”

“You are helpless.”

“- obey you. I am helpless.” His other hand was on her inner thigh now, and would likely have crept higher still if it weren’t that her own hand was busy there, following its own orders.

“You are powerless.”

“I am powerless.”

“You are mindless.”

“I am mindless.”

“You will dress how I choose for you to dress.”

“I will dress how you choose for me to dress.” It was amazing how much extra weight this echo seemed to have for Wayne. She had a body built for cosplay, a body that would look amazing dressed up like one of his favourite characters, teasing him or toying with him or riding his cock or bent over his desk.

Her personality wasn’t needed for something like that.

But his doll wouldn’t see any issue with that, Wayne promised himself. Not once she was ready.

“You will look how I choose for you to look.”

“I will look how you choose for me to look.”

“You will speak how I choose for you to speak.”

“I will speak how you choose for me to speak.”

“My programming replaces your thoughts.”

“Your programming replaces my thoughts.”

“You are in my power.”

“I am in your power.”

“You are under my control.”

“I am under your control.”

“You are my doll.”

“I am your doll.”

“Your mind belongs to me.”

“My mind belongs to you.”

“Your mouth belongs to me.”

“My mouth belongs to you.”

“Your tits belong to me.”

“My tits belong to you.”

“Your ass belongs to me.”

“My ass belongs to you.”

“Your cunt belongs to me.”

“My cunt belongs to you.”

“Your body belongs to me.”

“My body belongs to you.”

“Your sensuality belongs to me.”

“My sensuality belongs to you.”

“Your full erotic potential belongs to me.”

“My full erotic potential belongs to you.”

Your body is mine to use.”

“My body is yours to use.”

“You’re mine.”

“I am yours.”

“You’re going to address me as Master.”

“I am going to address you as Master.”

“You think of me as your Master.”

“I think of you as my Master.”

“You are my doll, and I am your Master.”

“I am your doll, and you are my Master.”

The Dollmaker put his spiral away, and Wayne’s edit finished, leaving the porn full-screen again just as the first long programming cycle ended.

Chantal’s rapid blinking went on for a lot longer this time, but even with the light back in her eyes, she continued to grope herself, continued to hump her own fingers. If Wayne had got his suggestions right beforehand, she didn’t even notice. Noticing wasn’t necessary during movie night.

“I told you you’d enjoy this,” he remarked. It wasn’t true, but he was confident her mind would no longer know that.

“Yes,” she said, as the doll stripped for the Dollmaker before her eyes. “You did.”

“And was I right?”

Chantal was quiet for a long while, although her eyes didn’t leave the scene, drinking it in as the Dollmaker, standing in front of his victim, produced his cock and started stroking his erection, his doll standing motionless, staring blankly off at a spot just to one side of the camera view.

She licked her lips, watching it all play out. “She’s brainwashed,” she said. It was a deflection, of course, but Wayne knew as well as she did what that comment meant to her.

“I think she’s prettier that way,” he said. Chantal was silent for a long while again, so he decided to prompt her as, on screen, the doll knelt to suck the Dollmaker’s cock. “Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Chantal said, though she said it with a certain abruptness, almost as if her admission had been startled out of her.

Wayne smiled, and watched his friend helplessly finger herself to the porn which had already begun to brainwash and indoctrinate her, much to his own satisfaction.

The blowjob progressed to fucking, and toward the very end of the film it cut away and showed instead the Dollmaker leading his doll (now dressed in a very revealing nurse’s costume) along a corridor and stopping by a door. Chantal’s expression was blank and absent again, with the second and final programming cycle of the clip active.

“You love to watch porn with me,” Wayne said in voiceover.

“I love to watch porn with you,” Chantal droned helplessly. On the screen, the Dollmaker opened the door, revealing the interior to be a small built-in closet. He gestured inside, and the Doll stepped in.

“You want me to tell you what to do,” the voiceover continued.

“I want you to tell me what to do.”

“You will always do what I tell you to do.”

Chantal hesitated for a few moments.

“I will always do what you tell me to do,” she said.

“You are my doll,” Wayne said. “You model so you can be told what to do and what to wear.”

“I am your doll. I model so I can be told what to do and what to wear.”

“It’s better when I tell you what to do and what to wear.”

“It is better when you tell me what to do and what to wear.”

Having zoomed in on the doll’s face, the camera recorded increasing darkness as the door was shut on them both. The credits began to play and, blinking rapidly, Chantal woke up.