I’m not sure how I got to sleep that night. My mind raced all evening with memories of my first day. I’m not sure if the dreams I had were pleasurable or nightmares. I never even realize dreams are happening until after I’m awake, but even reflecting on them I wasn’t sure what to think.

With a night’s rest, I took stock of more than just that passionate encounter and realized something I should’ve been more concerned about. When I arrived to work I walked as straight as I could among the box maze to Dr. Fara’s office.

“Dr. Fara?” I poked my head into her office but it looked empty.

“C____! There you are!” Dr. Fara stepped out of the shadows and pulled me by the head into her office. I tensed in expectation of more kissing until I saw her rock-steady frown could weather a meteor impact. “I need you to understand something very impoooortant. Are you listening?”

“I am listening,” I said. I tried to not stare at her lips. I struggled to maintain focus on her eyes with how dark a void her pupils looked. Her aroma reminded me of a fresh rain shower, sterile compared to the musky scent of that snogging session.

“What transpired between us yesterday in my priiiivate office? Do not say a word of it to Alya. Not. one. woooord.”

“Oh, okay.” I assumed Dr. Fara didn’t want Alya to think she could enter such an amorous passion.

“The poor dear will get teeeerribly jealous otherwise,” Fara said. “She’ll start beeeegging for me to do much the same to her.” She looked aside. “Well, more than she usually does.”

“Okay?” I decided to stop making assumptions.

“Good. Glad we had this talk.” She shoved me away. I blinked and she was sitting at her desk. “Now get back to work.”

I stepped out of the office but turned back.

“Wait, what work? You haven’t given me more work yet.”

“Surrrre I have,” Dr. Fara said. “I’ve sent some documents to edit to your company email.”

I gave her a nod and thumbs-up. I stepped out of the office but turned back.

“Wait, I don’t remember ever getting a company email,” I said. “I never did any sort of orientation.” Dr. Fara waved me away.

“Oh, Alya will take care of that, just go find herrrr, I’m busy.”

I stepped out of the office but turned back.

“Wait a minute! I came here to ask you a question!” I planted a hand on her desk. She looked at me like I was a fly buzzing outside her window. “That video call you had yesterday—I was on camera! Alya was, but she’s not from this universe, so that doesn’t matter, but they know my face! They know who I am!” I deflated. “Am—Am I a terrorist now?”

Dr. Fara smiled.

“Oh, absolutely.”

I deflated further.

“But don’t woooorry,” Fara said, “I already took the liberty of erasing all your identification data from your government’s database. As far as they’re awaaaare, you do not exist.”

I deflated into a chair behind me.

“I feel like that’s going to cause me problems down the line.”

After Dr. Fara threw me out of her office like a plastic bag in the wind, I went searching for Alya. From the ever-present maze of boxes I assumed she didn’t move anything to storage despite Dr. Fara’s orders. I was tempted to open a box to see the contents but I expected them to be empty, if not dangerous.

I heard movement past a few rows of boxes. It took me a couple minutes to find a path around but I found Alya watching a computer.

“Hey, Alya!” I waved. Alya squealed and closed several windows on her computer. I was pretty sure I saw snake coils moving in at least one of them.

“Oh, C____, it’s you.” Alya’s wince eased into a dreamy smile, eyes hidden behind her sunglasses. “Ohhh, you’re just in time.” I ignored her purring bedroom voice.

“Dr. Fara said something about you taking care of orientation?” I tilted my head. “She said I’d have a company email with work to do, but I haven’t gotten any of that stuff. I’m not even sure where my desk actually is.”

“Oh, of course!” Alya slipped her skirt-bordered scaly blue rear out of her chair and curled close to me. Even though she pressed her face into my personal space I couldn’t see her eyes behind those opaque shades, but her eager smile looked transparent. My nose drowned in perfume thick enough to make a smoothie. “We have to get you properly oriented, and I’m the perfect poison for that.”

Wait, did she say person or poison? She stroked her soft fingers under my chin, but I nudged her hand away.

“Can we do it without getting handsy?” I asked. “I’d kind of like to just do my work.” I had a lot on my mind without Alya’s flirtations.

“Oh, of course,” she said, though her smile never wavered. She waved her fingers to come hither. “Follow me, please.”

I stepped forward but my leg snagged on something. A blue tail wrapped up my ankle. I furrowed my brow.

“Handsy or taily?” I said. Alya giggled.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, C____, my tail has a mind of its own sometimes.” She pulled her tail from around my leg and wagged a finger at it. “Now don’t be rude, tail. Apologize to C____.”

She swished her tail to me and curled it under my chin. I shivered from head to toe. To this point I hadn’t felt her tail on my skin, soft and cool as a pillow, scales stroking my face in a massaging scrape. Thoughts flashed through my head of her tail curling all around my body, wrapping me up, coils squeezing me tight as her gentle scales caressed every inch of my skin. I’d yearned for such otherworldly pleasure for so long, and I could just surrender to it now.

Alya’s tail swung a sapphire pendant before my eyes. I watched it until I clenched my face and shoved her tail away. I already felt confused enough about Dr. Fara’s advances, I didn’t need to add Alya to the mix. I just wanted to work. Editing was simple.

“How about we just go?” I said. Alya smiled and gestured forward.

“Right this way.”

I followed Alya through the maze of boxes in a far more winding path than I’d expected. I asked her what was in them, and she said she had no idea. She just knew they were heavy so she didn’t like moving them.

We reached a field of boxes like a hedge hiding a secret garden. It didn’t look like the area Dr. Fara had me work yesterday.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” I asked.

“Right through here.” Alya gestured into the circle of boxes. “This is where orientation begins.”

I slipped through the boxes. They didn’t wobble at all—they really must have been heavy. I cocked an eyebrow at the empty space they surrounded, no desk, no computer, no television for an orientation video.

“Are you playing a prank on me–?”

Alya’s tail curled around my shoulders and head like clutching a precious doll. She spun me to face her, sunglasses off and eyes pulsing in vivid blues. A ring deep as the sea and a ring bright as the sky flowed through her eyes, accompanied by a softer ring leaning violet like an overcast sunrise. My vision and thoughts slid to her eyes like magnets.

“Now, it’s time for your orientation, Cutie,” Alya said, grinning wildly.

“Wait, I, th—” The office was already fading under the colors shimmering out of Alya’s eyes. I could feel them reach through mine and sink into my head.

She caressed my pudgy face in her hands, nails grazing my skin as she kneaded me like dough, and I stopped trying to speak. Her tail curled around my arms, squeezing me in tight binds as she pulled me closer to her face, filling my vision with her hypnotic eyes. My body slackened, relaxing into her soft coils massaging my body and hypnotic spell massaging my mind.

“You’ve been eager for orientation, haven’t you, Cutie?” Alya giggled. “Let’s see what fun ways I can orient you, hmm?”

The world disappeared under her hypnotic mist, thickened by the scent of her perfume as my wide eyes flooded with her colors. My body grew heavy as Alya slithered more of her twisting tail around me like pillow ropes heavy as cement. I felt myself sinking, legs trembling under Alya’s weight, but the more she wrapped around me the lighter I felt. Staring into her eyes, I could forget all control of my body.

I wouldn’t have dared dream her eyes held this wonderful power, this hypnotic, mind-numbing power that made everything peaceful.

I didn’t want to fall. I didn’t know what would happen. Dr. Fara had work for me to do.

“I gotta, th’work . . .”

Alya shushed me. With her finger to my lips, my mouth fell open, all words tumbling away from my senses as her hypnotic spell squeezed my brain tighter.

“Don’t worry, I hid this little nook in the office so Emma wouldn’t find me playing on the clock.”

She squeezed my chin and pulled me closer. Her forked tongue tickled my lips. I swallowed and felt her tail caressing my throat, every breath pressed against her grip coiled around my chest, every sense wrapped up in her pliant body. My eyes stared, hooked to her own.

“You can stop pretending to worry about working. Let’s just ignore responsibility and have some fun. Let me show you a good time. I know you’ve been too shy to ask, silly Cutie.” She stroked her fingers through my hair. “We can get to know each other deeper, and Emma will be none the wiser.”

Alya’s eyes drowned out the office.

Wait, not quite.

When did we enter another room?

Alya shrieked, knocking most of her hypnotic colors out of my head and leaving my thoughts wading through pudding. Her tail whipped off me, twirling me into a seat and spilling the rest of her colors out. The room spun.

I jerked awake. I found myself in a flimsy office chair at a round table big enough to seat a dozen people. Alya sat next to me with a smile so neutral it looked drawn on her face. Across the table stood Dr. Fara, facing a flip chart stand.

“I need to interrupt the oriennnntation for an emergency meeting,” Dr. Fara said. “All staff on deck, that sort of thiiiing.”

I glanced around the room, empty but for the three of us. It seemed she really did only employ two people. Maybe she previously had enough to justify such a big table. The room itself looked much like the rest of the office, though along one wall stood potted plants that I swear grinned at me. Curtains covered one wall through which light flickered, and I wondered if it led outside the tower or to another universe entirely.

Dr. Fara stepped aside from the paper stand. The first page held one phrase in big, bold type: “BUDGET PROBLEMS”. She whacked the paper with a pointer stick.

“I’m afraid we’re having massive buuuudget problems, and I need some ideas to alleviate it.”

“Wait, what?” I raised a hand. “You just got a hundred million dollars. How can you have budget problems?”

“It takes a lot of mooooney to run a mad scientist operation. You have no idea.” Fara flipped the page over. The next read:

Food $1000
Data $500
Rent $0
Employees $1500
Slime $456,000,000,000
Utility $-37

“I’m hoping one of you is good at the economy,” said Dr. Fara, “because I need you to budget this. If it’s not budgeted soon someone will die.” She examined a dagger in her hand as if it were a mundane artifact. “By my hand, most likely.”

I stared at the budget paper.

“Spend less on slime?” I said. Dr. Fara smiled.

“No.”

“Spend more on slime!” Alya said, raising her fists. Dr. Fara stabbed her dagger on the table and grinned.

“I like the way you think!”

“I mean,” I said, “do you actually, strictly speaking, need all that slime?”

“Absoluuuutely. It is vital that I maintain a steady supply of slime resources for my work.”

“And there’s not a cheaper way to obtain it?” I asked.

“If you know of one, I’d like to hear it,” Dr. Fara said.

I slumped.

“I don’t even know how you get it now.”

“I’ll get your slime for you, Emma!” Alya grinned and smacked the table. “Just dump me somewhere with a lot of sexy slime folk and I promise you I’ll come back practically covered in slime!”

Despite myself I gave her a half-grin.

“I don’t doubt that.”

“You’ve got yourseeeelf a deal!” Dr. Fara pointed a remote control at Alya, and with the sound of rushing air Alya disappeared. Fara turned to me. “Besides, I’d prefer to keep you away from her for a bit. I have something I need you to look at.”

I decided not to argue that she’d said she had work for me to edit. I wouldn’t try very hard until I was sure I was getting paid. I glanced at the budget list.

“By the way, negative spending on utilities?”

“I take care of a lot of them myself,” Dr. Fara said. “I heeeeat the place with a miniature sun. I’ve also made a deal with a local municipality for some services like trash removal.”

“If it’s just a profit of thirty-seven dollars,” I said, “maybe you could offer that service to more places?” Fara twisted her face and looked away.

“I don’t know, that sounds aaaawfully close to a good deed.”

“Well, you could always make a superweapon from the trash.”

Dr. Fara looked at me. She giggled and grabbed my arm to pull me out of the room. I ran to keep up lest she pull my arm off.

I felt like I’d said something simultaneously wrong and right.

Dr. Fara dragged me to a room crowded by machines surrounding an examination table. She flipped a switch and the machines blinked to life, a low hum with lights twinkling like stars. All it needed to complete the Dr. Frankenstein vibe was a lightning rod. I started to worry just what she “needed me to look at”.

“So what did you want me to look at?” I asked, staring at the machines. Dr. Fara held out a cell phone.

“Just this.”

“That’s all?” I asked. “Did we have tooo goooo aaaallll thiiiisss waaaaa . . .” The phone screen spun, a black and white spiral spinning, spinning, spinning through my mind, my head swirling. My knees trembled as I stared, my gaze locked to the phone as the spiral cut through my thoughts and twisted my mind silent.

Dr. Fara chuckled and moved the phone. My head followed, slack as if pulled by strings, and my mouth hung open. My eyes grew heavy, body slumping as I forgot what I was saying, what I was doing, where I was.

“I said I needed you to looook at something,” Dr. Fara said. “I didn’t say what eeeelse I need you to do.”

“I-I d—” I tried to regroup my thoughts, force myself awake and out of the spiral’s grasp. A simple spiral on a screen shouldn’t be enough to drop me. “Do you,” I mumbled, “have to–” Dr. Fara gripped my chin and shushed me. The spiral illuminated my face.

“Don’t try to resist. It’ll be easier to get the data I need if you let your mind sliiiip under easily.”

“Wha?” I mumbled. “D-Da . . . aaah . . .” The spiral seemed to expand beyond the phone’s screen and swirl in the air, closer, all around me. I felt my arms and legs squeezed tight by thin wrappings. My legs buckled as something light propped me and wrapped around me. I thought Dr. Fara grabbed me with her hair again until I realized she’d stepped further into the room, still holding the phone towards me, the spiral growing despite the phone’s further distance. The spiral swirled out like a flowing fountain, gripping me and spinning through my eyes.

The receding bits of my mind that could still think outside the spiral realized it was wrapping around me, physically restraining me.

It felt thin as air, like light enveloping my body. I felt light as a feather as I rose into the air, as if the gravity of everything else fell away, but I couldn’t move and felt as if a heavier gravity tightened around my body. My head and limbs hung slack in the spiral’s hold.

I sank back against the padded table. Dr. Fara wedged the phone into a clamp above and the spiral poured over me, my gaze lost upwards, mind fuzzier, emptier, thoughts leaking out. Everything faded into a blur but the phone, the spiral on the screen, the spiral reaching out from the screen and binding me into mindless dormancy.

The world spun around me until the spiral filled my vision and my mind, drowning all other thoughts into silence. As the spiral physically wrapped around me it wrapped around my mind, smothering all other sensation, only the spiral spiraling through my spiraled mind.

My mouth hung open, and a low moan trickled out as my head grew hazy and empty. The spiral wrapped around my mouth and muffled my moan, silencing me into a bound spiral mummy.

Warm light locked my limbs as if frozen in time, my mind trapped in a single moment of spinning spiral. Every thought in my brain spiraled away and faded to mist, leaving me mindless.

My thighs squeezed together as the spiral bound me like a mummy, legs held tight. My arms squeezed against my sides. I squished like a rising loaf of bread, but the spiral wrapped me so tight I couldn’t rise. It pressed my shoulders down, my neck immobile, my face smothered. My vision fell dark as the spiral enveloped my head like a mummy of solid light, echoes of the spiral the only visual stimulation my brain understood.

Dr. Fara bound me helplessly in her spiral, wrapped up in her control mentally and physically, the pressure holding me immobile from head to toe to brain.

Only later did I learn the tightness on my head wasn’t the spiral but a helmet Dr. Fara strapped me into. A brain scanner—a bit odd, if her work focused on physics, but I supposed I dabbled outside of writing. She could dip her hand into other fields.

As far as I could tell, Dr. Fara didn’t change anything in my head. After I woke up I remembered who I was, I remained wary of her, I definitely still wanted to get paid, I loved to serve and venerate my esteemed, renowned, ravishing leader—

Wait, that last part was wrong. It didn’t stick, though. I was back to normal within the hour. I barely even noticed it.

I wasn’t sure why she did all that, other than for kicks, and quite frankly it was easy to assume as much. After everything she (and Alya) put me through over the coming months, I forgot the incident, just one in a long string of infringement on my boundaries.

Infringements I know they knew I enjoyed, much as I’d try to resist or deny it.