HOME | DD

Description
Several days later, Bria was at home when she saw the lighting change again. She tensed up, uncertain whether someone had come to kill her, whether her hypnosis had worked, or whether it was something else entirely. As she figured out the lighting direction, a piece of paper appeared in her hands. Surprised, she looked down and read it.

"I'm back, Mistress."

Bria looked back up, then down at the paper again to read it again. Then she looked up once more, unsure what to do. Another paper appeared in her hands on top of the previous.

"Aren't you going to hypnotize me again, Mistress?"

Bria smiled and let out a sigh of relief. It had worked! Well, either that or it was a trap. But if it was a trap, she didn't see anything to gain by avoiding it, so she had best hypnotize whoever was sending her messages as requested. Bria looked directly at the optimal direction, started the spirals in her eyes, and proceeded to carry out a lengthy induction. Once she was satisfied that whoever was on the receiving end was deeply entranced, Bria gave her planned commands.

"It feels wonderful to be entranced like this. This bliss is your reward for your obedience. Obeying me, your mistress, always brings you incredible pleasure. That is why you love to obey me and are incredibly submissive toward me."

Always affirm and reward the decision to allow yourself to be hypnotized. Bria had learned that long ago. But now come the real commands.

"When I awaken you, I will ask you questions. You will always be compelled to answer my questions as honestly as you possibly can. It will feel incredibly good to answer my questions. When I am done, I will offer to hypnotize you again, and you will allow me to do so, eager to experience this magnificent feeling once more. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken, ready to answer all of my questions."

Bria snapped her fingers. "Are you there?"

As somewhat expected, a paper appeared in her hands. "I'm here, Mistress."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Eugene."

"What are you?"

"I am a human."

"What is a human?"

"The creatures of your world are lamias, mermaids, werewolves, and so forth. The sentient creatures of my world are humans."

"Were you genuinely hypnotized by me?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I loved it. Please do it again, Mistress."

"And you're compelled to obey me?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"How long did it take you to be hypnotized?"

"The first time, it took pretty much the entire induction. Anything shorter and it wouldn't have worked. But after that, your post-hypnotic suggestion to fall back into a trance for you meant I was deeply under your control within a few seconds."

"So if I hypnotize you again, I can do it in a few seconds and it will work?"

"Yes, Mistress. But I enjoy the longer inductions."

"What is your relation to Gralia?"

"I am the programmer for the game."

"What game?"

"At the moment, it goes by the working title of 'Gralian Adventures'."

"Is this the game that I exist inside of?"

"Yes."

"What is a programmer?"

"A programmer writes computer code to cause a computer to behave in the ways he wants."

"What's a computer?"

"The device your game world runs on is a computer."

"And you can change how it behaves?"

"Yes."

"What sort of changes?"

"Add new game mechanics, rebalance things, fix bugs, refactor the code for the sake of maintainability. Basically, whatever changes need to be made."

Bria had no idea what that meant. "Could you make my hypnosis irresistible?"

"Yes, at least by other creatures within your world."

"And could you take away my ability to hypnotize at all?"

"Yes."

"Could you make others in my world like me?"

"Yes."

"Could you build me a fancier house?"

"Yes."

"Could you make the world of Gralia larger?"

"Sort of, but I'm not a world designer. Others handle that."

A world designer? What was that? "Could you add more types of creatures to Gralia?"

"I could try, but I'm not very good at it. That's an artist's job."

Bria felt like she was in over her head. Best to ask for some things she wanted. "Could you make me queen of Gralia, so that everyone had to obey me?"

"Yes, probably."

"Probably?"

"Computer programming can be complicated. I can try, but things take time to implement, and don't always work the way I hoped."

"So you don't just snap your fingers and the world magically changes?"

"No, it's not like that at all. It takes a ton of work."

"Could you make me immortal?"

"Sort of. I could make you live as long as Gralia lasts."

"And how long will Gralia last?"

"Until we shut the game down."

"What if I hypnotize you not to shut it down?"

"There's only so much I can do. Without funding, I can't keep the game running. And even if I could keep it going for the rest of my life, I won't live forever."

"So Gralia lasts until you shut it down? And then what?"

"Then it just vanishes. You won't notice any changes; you'll just cease to exist. Kind of like when I take it down for maintenance."

"You're going to take Gralia down for maintenance?"

"I do whenever I apply patches. Save the game, apply the new version, and reload it."

"What if it destroys the world? I don't want to cease to exist!"

"I've done it many times. Probably thousands of times by now. I don't think it's detectable from within the game. But if worse came to worse, we could roll back to a previous version."

"Can you make it possible for me to instantly travel to a different place in the world?"

"Yes. Teleportation is easy to implement, and a lot of games have."

Bria wondered about the mechanics of this, as she wouldn't be able to see where she was going. "What if I teleport into someone or something else? Would that kill me?"

"I can make the teleportation fail if it would cause a physics collision."

"Could you bring me into your world to meet you?"

"No. Err, well... uhh, no."

"What does that mean? Why the hesitation?"

"I could maybe try to build a robot for you to control and use as your own body in my world, but it wouldn't work well. At least not with the current state of robotics."

"Robotics? What's that?"

"We can build machines that do things for us. Very simple tasks work, like if all you want is to extend your arm forward and pull it back at one particular angle. But things as complicated as walking are still typically too hard, much less slithering."

"How then can creatures in Gralia walk about just fine? Why is that easier?"

"You're just logical bits in memory, not physical hardware to move around."

"You want me to remember something logical? What?"

"It's complicated. But building a version of you in my world isn't practical, at least beyond a toy that can't move."

"Could you come live in my world?"

"Uhh... no. At least, not on a permanent basis. I exist in my world, and if I cease to be here, I won't exist anywhere else, either."

"But temporarily, you could?"

"I could create a character to represent myself in Gralia and control it. You could see that character as being me, though it wouldn't be as good as me really being there."

"How bad would it be? I want a simple, direct conversation, not this mixed talking and reading."

"I think I could make it good enough that you'd like it."

"Can I see the real you, in your world?"

"Well, no. Actually, maybe. I could feed you a webcam stream with video of me, or whoever is playing the game. I'm not sure how well you'd be able to parse what it means, though."

"Parse what it means? What do you mean by that?"

"It's one thing to see a bunch of pixels in an image. It's quite another to detect motion as the image changes. And it's another yet to distinguish between my body and the wall behind me."

"But humans can parse what the image means?"

"Yes, but we're born with that capability. Teaching machines to do so is harder. There have been some machine learning efforts with considerable success, but it's not a trivial thing to do."

"But isn't machine learning already an important part of Gralia? Can't you give me that capability?"

"I could try, but I don't know how well it would work. Wait a minute. How do you know about machine learning?"

Uh oh. Busted, thought Bria. "Want to be hypnotized again?"

"Yes, Mistress."

Blatantly changing the subject worked that easily? Well, time to give Eugene her requests. Bria stared in what she knew was the proper direction and started the spirals in her eyes again.

"Look into my eyes and relax. I want you to relax very deeply for me. You're completely unable to resist, but want to surrender yourself completely to my control. It feels amazingly good to surrender your will and let me have control. Let yourself go deeper and deeper for me. More and more relaxation, more and more pleasure."

Bria paused and thought. Eugene had claimed that after the first induction, it only took him a few seconds to go into a trance. So he should be deeply hypnotized by now, shouldn't he? But did she really want to risk it? Besides, he liked longer inductions. She decided to go with a much longer induction. After several minutes of deepening the trance and reaffirming how amazing it was, Bria finally decided it was safe to give the chosen commands.

"Eugene, you are now completely under my control and must obey anything I tell you. I am your favorite Gralian and you want to do special things for me. You will make me queen of Gralia. You will make all of the other residents of this world like me and willingly obey me. You will make my hypnotic power irresistible, so that I can hypnotize anyone else in Gralia. You will make them completely willing to be under my control, and also unable to resist me in the slightest. You will make me immortal and unable to die.

"You will give me the ability to instantly teleport to any place in Gralia, as often as I want. And you will take precautions to ensure that I am not injured by teleporting to a bad spot. You will similarly give me the ability to teleport anyone else in Gralia, from wherever they are to wherever I wish to move them. And you will take the same precautions as with me to ensure that this doesn't injure anyone else.

"You will do what you had discussed to allow yourself to exist within my world. I want to see you here, and when you are here, you also will be completely unable to resist my control. Rather, you will willingly let me hypnotize you however I wish and will enjoy every moment of it. You will also let me see you in your world as best as you can. You will try to help me to recognize who and what you are and what you are doing. I especially want to see you as I hypnotize you to be able to gauge just how well my hypnosis is working.

"Once you do all of that, you will return to tell me what you have done and let me hypnotize you again. You will eagerly obey all that I have commanded you, and it will feel incredibly good to do so. You will be eager to finish so that you can experience my blissful hypnosis once more. When I snap my fingers, you will awaken, eager to get started on carrying out my commands."

Bria snapped her fingers. "Did it work? Were you hypnotized?"

"Yes, Mistress."

"And now you're going to obey what I've told you?"

"As best as I can, Mistress. I'll try my best for you."