#I was getting my mic set up for playing shadowrun remotely

[machineofreality]

[I made a podcast that you can listen to if you’re into that sort of thing. The feed should be turning up around the place over the next couple of weeks. Here is the full text of the podcast episode.]

Welcome to the first episode of The World Cycle, a serial audiobook podcast.

This story is from a prompt by writing-prompt-s, on tumblr. The prompt is:

The Villain tries to mindwipe slash brainwash you, but they fail, and don’t realize. You pretend to have fallen under their spell to go along with their plan, while secretly planning to sabotage it.

The story goes:

You saw an ad, that was how you got here, you struggle to keep that in mind. About three months ago you saw an ad online while looking for some way to make money since you lost your job and apparently jobs stopped existing for people over 16.

The ad was looking for volunteers for a test of a prototype, portable brain scanning device. It appealed to you because the offered pay was two hundred dollars per test, for three tests. The uni lab where it was being tested wasn’t even that hard to get to.

A surprisingly bulky man dressed very like a doctor asked you to sit in what looked a lot like a dentist’s chair and promised that this wouldn’t hurt, but the electrodes would be a little uncomfortable. He attached the electrodes, very gently, and it didn’t hurt but you really wanted to scratch at them immediately.

He pressed a button on what he had explained was essentially the remote control, and it didn’t hurt. It was like all of the little patches on your scalp tightened for a moment and your teeth hurt. And then: it was over.

He got you to stay still for a moment while he checked a readout, then he removed the electrodes and you left. The next two times, once a week, were the same. He was nice, if blunt, the process was uncomfortable but not actually painful, and at the end of it you had six hundred dollars and could just about afford rent with the tiny amount of money your dad was willing to give you while you looked for work.

A week later you got a text, inviting you to a talk at the university about the progress of the tests. You honestly wouldn’t have gone except that it promised free dinner and refreshments. You weren’t even that disappointed when it turned out that none of the refreshments were alcohol.

The presentation was in a relatively small room that had clearly been repurposed from a tutorial room, and you were one of about sixty people who had been involved in the tests.

For about an hour, people milled about, the doctor included, chatting and eating the mediocre catering. Then there was a short break in case people needed the toilet or a smoke before the actual presentation, during which time some assistants, and yourself and several of the people who had not taken advantage of the break, rearranged the furniture to be more of a lecture room.

You all sat down and there was a palpable air of excitement as the doctor took his place behind the rickety lectern and fumbled with a powerpoint for a minute or so. You wondered why people were excited, most of the people you’d talked to had done the study for the same reason you had.

The speech opened with: “Minions.”

It turned out that you were in a room full of people on whom a mind-control device had been used. It seemed like you were the only one there who had not been affected by it.

It was just your luck to be mind-controlled by some kind of supervillain.

He called himself Doctor Mind, and informed the room that his plans were to destroy the government and to take over for himself. He promised that he would make the country better, that he would be able to heal the people and even the planet. You wondered, briefly, if maybe he wouldn’t be a better option than what was already there.

He insisted that you – and everyone in the room – would be his loyal soldiers and would work around the clock to put his plans in motion. Someone put their hand up and asked if there would be a pay check, or somewhere to live, or anything like that and several people in the room seconded the question. You probably would have asked it too, but in the moment you were far too worried about not standing out.

It turned out that there would be a place for you all to stay, and a wage, and you’d have enough time off that it wouldn’t seem as if you’d disappeared. You would even get a new phone that you could use to keep up with people, though it would stop you from telling anyone what was going on.

You resolved to text someone what was going on, but that would have been too obvious. Then you resolved to call someone when you left, but the assistants who you’d helped to rearrange the room took everyone’s phones. You weren’t concerned or rich enough to have more than one phone.

The next few weeks were odd: you moved out of your share house, having given enough time to find a new tenant and paid your last month of rent; you told your parents that you had a new job and you wouldn’t need the extra money for the moment; you moved into an apartment building that seemed to be entirely full of Doctor Mind’s minions – you weren’t a fan of being called a minion, but you figured at least it was more gender neutral than henchman.

You got a one-room apartment to yourself, your new comrades even helped you move all your furniture in. You had enough money for shopping, and more than enough free time. It was like being in a really relaxed kind of boot-camp.

During the day you went through training courses in the inevitable underground lair. You got taught some basic self defence and martial arts. Some people didn’t stick with it, or weren’t doing the training from the start. A couple of people were too old to stick with the regiment, a few people weren’t able-bodied enough to do it, and they all got other things to do.

The only real complaints that anyone seemed to have was about a half-dozen smokers who were having to quit. But it wasn’t even forceful, they tapered off and the Doc provided them with patches and gum for the cravings.

It all seemed very nice, and you were getting no closer to working out what Doctor Mind’s plans, or intentions, actually were. You tried asking some of the people who weren’t in training if they knew more, and they didn’t seem to.

And then, a month in, the Doc gathered everyone into the canteen and gave a little speech to the effect that it was about time to get things started.

Things started weirdly, or at least not how you expected. It started with going to rallies and protests for any and all left-leaning causes. Then it was joining in with the Extinction Rebellion disruptions. It seemed to be about creating a background for Doctor Mind as some kind of activist organiser.

People who weren’t on the training started talking about social media presence and you were getting really, very confused. You weren’t some kind of dickhead, you hadn’t been able to afford both rent and food just two months ago, so you weren’t exactly against all these protests. Even when you got into confrontations with police at Extinction Rebellion disruptions, you didn’t mind and you weren’t scared of them – you worked for a supervillain after all.

And then, some two and a half months in, something illegal was being planned. You weren’t in on it from the start, but you heard rumblings about some kind of attack being planned. There were still only about sixty of you, so you couldn’t imagine anything serious, especially when it wasn’t like you had been training with guns.

And then training with guns started, which seemed like an eminently bad sign. You started having to think about how to get some kind of word out, get some kind of warning out. You could only assume that the phones really wouldn’t work to get a message out so you needed another option.

Maybe at a rally you could slip away and talk to someone, but you didn’t have any idea what was going on. You weren’t sure if you could wait to find out what was going on. And what if you really were the only one who hadn’t been mind-controlled? What if there was no one left in the group able to keep an eye out?

You had no idea what to do, so you waited. And you continued to get along with everyone, you continued to live the most comfortable stretch of your life you had ever lived. You continued to think that going to the rallies and disruptions was ultimately good.

And then you found out what the plan was: you were going to occupy the parliament building. With sixty armed and very combat inexperienced people you were going to be part of an armed occupation of the state parliament and that seemed like quite a bad idea to you.

But it was too late, you only found out about the plan the day you were going to do it. It was a non-sitting day and the plan was to go in at night, after it had closed. You were going to occupy the house and Doctor Mind was going to give some kind of speech to the people and the government.

There was no way to get out and warn people, not way to prevent the occupation. And when you actually stopped to think about it, how sure were you that you even wanted to stop it? Doctor Mind hadn’t gotten the group to do anything you disagreed with so far, aside from training with guns.

You still had no idea what to do, so you had to wait again. You had to wait for Doctor Mind to make his announcement to Victoria, had to wait to find out what you were really a part of.

Taking over the parliament building was not difficult.

No one was killed, no one was even hurt.

Doctor Mind made a speech from the floor of the Victorian Parliament and someone took a video of it. You watched the speech from the seats, so that the video could make it look like the parliament was full of people. You watched Doctor Mind announce the occupation, watched him lay out his grievances.

And you agreed with him.

You agreed that society should take care of people, should take care of the poor and disabled and infirm and marginalised. You did not know that you were only one cell of a country-wide network.

You did not know that all the state parliaments were taken on the same night, that even the federal parliament had been occupied. You should have guessed that you would be expected to fight when the government came to take them all back.

You don’t mind fighting, though. None of you mind fighting, though. Even without the mind-control. 

If you like my work, you can find my writing at worldcycle.tumblr.com. If you really want to, you can follow me on twitter at the world cycle, you can find my interactive fiction at worldcycle.itch.io. This podcast is made possible by Anchor, you can go to anchor.fm/worldcycle and it should be on most podcast apps. If you want to support my work, you can go to ko-fi.com/worldcycle. Thank you for listening to [and/or reading along with] the first episode of the World Cycle Podcast.

Good bye.