”Where is Brenda?” Brooke asked her classmate as they filed out of their last class of the day. An intensive seminar on interview techniques it was meant to teach them to be able to get people to admit things they didn’t want to once the students became reporters. It was the only course taught by a non-journalist as one of the members of the school’s psychology department was in charge.
“Dropped out I think,” Mark shrugged, “I guess she didn’t do well on her one on one with Professor Stenson.”
The one on one interview was notorious. Professor Stenson had declared it a pass or fail part of the course and each person had to do it on their own. It was known to be combative and difficult and given that the course was an elective part of the larger program many students ended up dropping the class because of it. Better to get an N/A on your transcript than an F.
Brooke had both been dreading it and anticipating it. She had been a champion debater in high school and loved the flow of a back and forth argument.
At the start of the first class Professor Stenson has declared that he had a secret and anyone who could find out what it was via the one on one interview got an A+. In four years of the course he had never given out anything higher than a B-.
“Yours is tomorrow?” Mark asked.
“Yup,” Brooke grinned, “and I’m ready. That secret is mine. I’ve been looking into him. I’ll get it out and get my A+.”
Mark laughed, “You’re too confident for your own good. Good luck.”
The next day Brooke wore a sensible blouse, with a skirt that went just passed her knees. She wanted to balance looking professional with being an attractive woman in her early twenties. Having Professor Stenson distracted by her looks wasn’t quite the most fair way of getting to the bottom of his secret but she was willing to try anything for a that coveted A+.
Professor Michael Stenson was in his late thirties or early forties. Older than any of the students in the journalism program, Brooke knew that he had once been a fairly big deal in psychology circles and had been doing some cutting edge research that had government funding before coming to their college to teach. Perhaps what had happened to that funding, and why someone who had once had a promising psychology career was now at a small mid-western liberal arts college was his dark secret.
Wanting to go into the interview prepared she had spent the past week researching him, even reading few the few published papers he had available online. She had also spoken with students from the psychology department to find out what they thought of him and if any of them knew what his dark secret was.
None of them were any help and his published papers were all theoretical about being able to influence a subject’s perception and thought processes. However it seemed that he had stopped publishing years ago, at least in anything that she could get her hands on.
The Professor held these interviews at his house, since he said that reporters often had to conduct interviews in a setting that was the subject’s domain and not their own. His office on campus, he argued, was too familiar to students to properly simulate the experience.
Parking her car in the driveway Brooke rang the doorbell, and waited on his front step arms folded across her chest as she waited. It took nearly five minutes then the door opened. The piercing bright blue eyes of Professor Stenson studied her and then he stepped aside, “Come in.”
Brooke smiled, “Thank you.”
“First off your body language is defensive. You want to get me to open up to you, and you won’t manage that if you looked closed off yourself,” the professor said, “try relaxing more. And don’t worry, no more advice from me.”
Brooke nodded, relaxing and opening up her posture a bit. As he lead her two two chairs facing each other she decided to press her first gambit, “Well thank you Doctor. However I still don’t quite understand the point of this. I mean normally when we interview someone we have an idea of what we want to find out from them. You have a secret, but it could be anything from you killed your twin in the womb to your have a third nipple. That makes it hard to drill down on.”
“Well that is a good point Brooke, but that’s why success is rewarded so highly. If you get to it, you could skip the rest of my classes, never hand in a paper and still be the only A+ in all my years of doing this,” he said.
“Is it appropriate to call me Brooke?” she asked.
“Not all your interview subjects will call you by your last name. If you want to push back on that you can, but from now on you have to both keep me answering questions and keep me wanting to work with you. If you annoy me with minor complaints about your name, I may end the interview,” he said.
“You could end the interview if I get too close to your secret,” Brooke said, turning the recorder on her phone on to record the conversation.
The professor chuckled, “Well let’s see if you actually manage that.”
Sitting down in a comfortable chair facing the professor Brooke opened up her notebook. From it she withdrew a pen and clicked its top and made a note, mostly for show, at the top of her page. “So Mike, you stopped publishing peer reviewed papers years ago. This after you’ve been working closely with the government, why did you stop? More importantly why does the school allow you to continue teaching without a steady output of journal articles?”
He raised an eyebrow, shifting slightly. Brooke took that as a sign that if she had started off in an interesting area. So this probably wasn’t about a secret third nipple.
“Well my work was very innovative, but ultimately it was decided that it was in an area that myself and those who were funding me didn’t want to continue exploring. Rather than keep working on it they helped arrange a teaching position, while I find new avenues for research,” he explained.
Brooke nodded, making a note, “And what was that research?”
“It was very sensitive,” he said.
Leaning forward, to strategically give the Professor a momentary chance to look down her blouse, Brooke pressed, “Well what was the area, you can talk broadly if you like. Your last published paper was on something called subliminal direction.”
He blinked, then nodded, “Impressive. Yes, that was fairly elementary work. My thesis wasn’t that interesting, except maybe to advertisers. See, most people initiatively understand that we do things to influence people’s perception of us, and their actions all the time. You’re flirting with me slightly, hoping that I’ll be more open to talking to you. That’s a very primitive version of it, but one that’s timeless and effective.”
“What was elementary about it?” Brooke asked.
“Well it was mainly quantifying what we naturally assumed. Nothing new really, so pushing into new territory was a much more interesting area of study,” the professor said.
Brooke made another note, mostly for show, “And what areas are those?”
“Manipulating thought patterns and behaviour. Beyond just flirting with someone, actually being able to direct the actions of individuals,” the professor said.
“And you were financed by the government, so let me guess you got too close to something that looked like mind control and they pulled out, cut off your funding but rather than risk you go to the press they gave you a cushy job at a small school,” Brooke said, grinning.
The professor smiled, “Very good. Nobody has gotten there yet. I’ll admit, few even bother doing the research. But no, not quite. See my results were good, and nobody got squeamish. Instead we needed a study, a sample population to try this on. A small town, a small college. Both are perfect test cases.”
It was Brooke’s turn to blink in surprise, “So you’re saying that you’re conducting mind control experiments on students and townies?”
“Yes.”
Brooke set her pen down, “Holy shit that’s…”
“The secret. Congratulations you get the A+,” he said.
Brooke’s mind was already moving beyond the grade and straight to how she was about to win a Pulitzer Prize. This was unethical, and knowing that the government was conducting mind control experiments in a small town was going to launch her career.
“Of course,” he said as she celebrated in her own mind, “you haven’t gotten proof yet.”
Brooke held up her phone, “I have it all recorded.”
“Clever. I almost feel bad about what’s about to happen. Eggplant, tractor, penguin, jukebox, vessel,” he said.
Brooke felt a calmness sweeping over her, as her body went still and her mind went quiet. She sighed and said simply, “Ready to comply.”
“See, my classes are testing grounds. You’ve been indoctrinated so deeply that you’ll do anything for me. Brooke delete the recording from your phone and then undress completely.”
Brooke glanced down at her phone, hitting the trash icon next to the recording. Setting her phone down she began to undress, her movements slow and languid.
“I haven’t fucked you yet. One of the perks, by the way, but now that I’m so impressed with you that’s going to change. In fact I think you’re going to fall in love with me, I can write a whole paper on romantic control,” he said, adding, “And I have been advised to get a wife. Ruining a promising journalism career seems a shame, but then again you could be useful to me.”
Now naked Brooke stood still blank and mindless.
“Subject you now love me. More than you have loved anyone. I am the sexiest, most attractive person you have seen. You failed to find out my secret, so now you need to seduce me for a good grade. Now awaken,” he said.
Brooke blinked, smiling at the professor. Her mind adjusted to make sense of the fact that she was naked. She’d failed to find out his secret, so now she was going to try seducing him. It all made sense, why else was she kissing him, wet and aroused.
Why else…
Why…