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The Long
Embrace of Change
Part I
“OK – tell me again why we targeted this guy?”
I looked down at the body crumpled at our feet. He was a young dark-haired man, mid-20’s, average height, average weight. Average clothes blue jeans. Average shoes on his feet. Average haircut. Everything about him was just…average. Nothing made him stand out from anyone else.
Kim and I looked at each other. “No real reason,” she said, prodding him onto his belly with her foot. The small black dart we’d shot at him jutted up from the back of his neck, right at the base of his skull. “He’s here. We’re here. Wrong place, wrong time for him, I guess.”
His green eyes were still open, a look of complete astonishment on his face. “Actually,” Kim said, “we selected him for a few reasons. No connections to anyone outside school. He also behaves like someone who would be submissive if given the chance. Although – “ she looked back at me – “he probably has no idea about that.”
She bent down and pulled the dart from his neck. “Nice shot for a first timer!” she said, handing the dart to me. “Usually, first timers miss, or they hit the target in the middle of the back. It takes two or three darts if that happens. You nailed him right off.”
“I have to admit – I’m a little nervous about all of this.” I looked up and down the alley. It was deserted, as it usually was this time of night. Our target was probably taking a shortcut on his way home. A few people did that. Some became targets.
I pulled the backpack off his shoulders and peeked inside. There were several textbooks inside, all with his name written on the cover – “Chris.” Scientist of some sort, based on the book titles.
Chris’ former life was now over. His new life was beginning. He wouldn’t really know it for a while, though. A shame to waste all of that education, but he’d be happier in the long run. And I would make him happy, just as he would make me happy.
I could see why Kim chose this particular alleyway – no windows looked down on the dimly-lit pavement, and our van blocked anyone on the street outside from looking in. A couple of nearby colleges provided a steady stream of students as raw material. And none of the targets ever actually disappeared – not right away, anyway. In fact, they never even noticed the fact that they got home about an hour later than usual, or the painful welt that looked to have been left by a needle of some sort, or the odd bruises and scrapes that spoke of a fall onto the sidewalk - a fall they couldn’t remember, and didn’t even care to remember.
“He’ll be on his way home in no time,” Kim said. “He went down without so much as a grunt. Seriously – he was out before he hit the ground. No worries. We’ll brush his clothes off and he’ll never know what hit him. Heck, he’ll never know he was hit! Let’s get him into the van.”
We grabbed his arms and, together, pulled him into the open back doors of the van. Once he was lying on the cot set up inside the van, we closed the doors.
Kim started an IV line into his left arm. “This’ll take a few minutes to work.”
“What’s in it?”
“Combination of drugs. One of them counteracts the sedative from the dart. Another keeps him paralyzed, so he’s awake but can’t move. Others work on different parts of his brain. They keep him in a state of strong suggestiveness while we program him.” She finished setting up the IV line and said, “we should probably step outside – it’s hard to tell when they can start hearing you.”
We stepped out of the van and into the alleyway to wait for the new drugs to take effect.
“OK,” I said, “now what?”
“First, we get him conditioned to the sound of the whistle.” She pulled a whistle out from under her shirt, hanging by a chain around her neck. She’d given me an identical whistle that morning. It was unique– it made a strange high-pitched sound humans could just barely hear. Not quite a dog whistle – dogs didn’t start barking if they heard it – but just barely within the hearing range for people. Nothing else sounded like it – which was intentional. If we were to program our targets to sounds they might hear anywhere else, the process would be ruined. “Second, we give him his first set of instructions. Then we wait.”
I was anxious for this whole thing to end. Kim had finally let me in on the secret operation she and her Circle ran – and now, I couldn’t wait to be one of them. To be an owner.
But ownership meant subjugation, and that took time. Just kidnapping and brainwashing someone didn’t work very well – it was quicker, but sloppier; and it carried too much risk of having the target revert back. Better to get someone willing to become a slave than to enslave the unwilling.
As time went on, their friends noticed the changes – but the targets never really did. And when the time came, they’d pull out of school and – best of all – willingly come to us. We weren’t kidnapping them at all. It was all done voluntarily. Eagerly, even. They wanted to serve us – they just didn’t know it yet.
That’s why the Circle chose submissive men. One can mess around with free will only so far. It’s amazingly hard to get someone to do something they really find repugnant, no matter how much you dope up their nervous system and hypnotically condition them. The trick wasn’t to change their minds about what they wanted to do – rather, it was to awaken interests they probably didn’t know were there.
We leaned against the doors of the van for a little while. “The first six months will drag on,” she said, “ but then things get a little intense – for him as well as for you. But it’ll be worth it. We’ll check in with him every couple of months, give him a new set of instructions. And don’t forget – members of the Circle will be involved every step of the way, and they’ll contact us with progress reports. He meets up with his first Circle member tomorrow night, so if something goes seriously wrong, we’ll find out soon.”
She glanced at her watch. “Should be ready about now. Let’s get to work.”
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