Brains are the most complex and amazing systems in the universe. Brains are also full of surprising and weird shortcuts.

I’ve been fascinated by brains all my life. That’s how I ended up in graduate school studying lizard brains. I’m really interested in human brains, but human brains are too complex to easily study. Also, Institutional Review Boards forbid the more instructive experiments on living human brains. The good news is that you can learn a lot about human brains by studying lizard brains. Lizard brains are not as complex, making them easier to study. More importantly, lizards don’t start lawsuits.

I liked learning about brains, but I found the real-world process of scientific experimentation to be exceedingly dull. One day with an awesome discovery would be balanced by months of mind-numbingly boring work. I liked discovering new insights. I didn’t like the slow pace.

I had considering quitting a year ago, but I hadn’t quit. The main reason was my advisor. His formal name was Dr. Sapant. Everyone, including me, called him “Dr. Sapient.” He was in his late sixties and head of the university’s brain studies department. He had long dedicated himself to lizard brain studies. He was a world-renowned expert in the unsurprisingly small community of people who deeply cared about lizard brains.

My parents had died when I was in sixth grade. I’d been bounced between foster families afterwards. I got into college through grit and scholarships. Dr. Sapient had taken me under his wing. Over the past few years he’d become my father figure. He treated me like a son, too. Dr. Sapient had no wife or children. He had no siblings. His parents died years ago. We spent many meals together, kibitzing about everything. I would often end up at his house for one reason or another. I loved all those times.

Under Dr. Sapient’s guidance I had grown as a researcher. I had gotten quicker at the boring work. My new scientific discoveries, though minor, had become more frequent. I had grown to appreciate his quiet tutelage. He had guided me through the hardest parts. I could see that I would eventually be able to make the kinds of scientific discoveries he had made. He believed in me, too. He blurred the line of mentor and father in a way that made me glad I’d stuck with it.

I did hope he would eventually teach me his other skill. He had a knack for finding beautiful girls in their twenties and gathering them into his harem. He didn’t use the word harem, but I couldn’t think of a better word. Several times over the last three years a pretty girl had started in his department. She would take on some minor role and do well. She would next inexplicably quit the university. Six months and two days after quitting, she would show up on his arm and in his bed. If you’re guessing that the university’s required cool down period for sexual contact between faculty and a former student is six months, you’d be right.

I did not understand this skill. Dr. Sapient was brilliant, true. Yet I couldn’t see how his knowledge about lizard brains had turned him into a lady-killer. It certainly hadn’t worked for me. He did have a clever dry sense of humor. I enjoyed his sense of humor, but I couldn’t see how that was enough to attract so many beautiful women to him. He wasn’t poor, thanks to some savings, but he wasn’t rich either. In addition, Dr. Sapient was not a looker. His paunch, his wrinkly face, and his age made it hard to explain why pretty girls in their twenties competed with each other to earn an evening in his bed. Not all of his conquests were from the university, but they were all in their twenties, gorgeous, and inexplicably eager to please him.

I wasn’t the only one who was suspicious of his womanizing ways. Dr. Sapient had been repeatedly investigated by the university. Every investigation had failed to find anything illegal. Those investigators had repeatedly interviewed me. Those long meetings with me were a waste of everyone’s time. I didn’t have a secret to share with them. His repeated successes with beautiful women were a mystery to me, too.

I remember Dr. Sapient asking me to come to his house because “he had important information to share.” I’d been to his house many times. This time was different. When I arrived, he demanded that I leave my smartphone upstairs. We went to his basement. He closed the door and turned on a device that made sounds of static. He went to his small built-in bar and made us both drinks. Once done, he sat down and sighed.

“William,” he said, “I need to tell you some important things. First, I’ve been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. It’s aggressive, and it’s been verified. Chemo, radiation, and surgery won’t help much. I’ll be dead in a month or two.”

“I’m so sorry! Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you.”

“I wish there was something you could do to help me. There’s nothing. You’ve become a son to me in all but name. So while you can’t help me, I can help you.”

I gave him a confused look. He continued, “I have no children. No close family. I have many female admirers, whose bodies I thoroughly enjoy, but I don’t care deeply about any of them. So I’ve changed my will. Other than a few small donations, you will receive all of my property. I’m not wealthy, but you’ll end up owning this house and some money.”

My eyes grew wet. “Thank you. That’s so generous. I’d rather you stuck around.”

“Me too,” he grinned. “I hope you’ll stay in the field, but it’s not fair for me to ask that of you. I do ask, though, that you try to teach someone else what you’ve learned from me. I’d like to think I have a legacy.”

“Absolutely! I was thinking of quitting last year, but you helped me over those hard times. I’d rather continue working with you, but I intend to continue with what you’ve taught me.”

He nodded. “I also have a secret. My lizard brain studies have revealed a weakness in lizard brains that is also exploitable in humans. Certain sequences of light can cause the brain to enter a suggestible state. Think of it as a kind of hypnosis, triggered in seconds and with a more powerful effect. I’ve created a little disk that generates these sequences with polarized light. If you wear polarized contacts you won’t be affected while others who see it will be.”

“Is that how you’ve created your harem?”

“It’s not my youth, good looks, or extreme wealth,” he said as he chuckled. “It won’t give you instantaneous control over others. It can’t change what’s most fundamentally important to them. It simply puts others into a suggestible state. In that state they’ll answer your questions truthfully and they’ll accept many suggestions as their own ideas and feelings. In practice you’ll need to learn about them and guide them over time. If you make incremental suggestions, and repeatedly apply those suggestions over many weeks, the disk is extraordinarily powerful. I could have done many things with this power, I supposed. I’m satisfied with my money and work, so instead the disk has enabled me to enjoy more… carnal desires. It’s ironic that I will die not so long after discovering this great power. I can die happy knowing I’m bestowing this great power to my adoptive son.”

Dr. Sapient pulled out a black disk about the size of his hand. “Here it is. I’ll share with you the technical details of how it works. You’ll soon be able to repair it or make another. Obviously, it’s important to keep this a secret. I trust you as a son. Will you keep it secret?”

“Of course!,” I said. I meant it.

I moved into his house at his insistence. This made our secret conversations easier. I had always liked him. Now, knowing these were his last days, we grew closer. I wanted to savor the few days we had left with my adoptive father figure. He died 57 days after our initial secret conversation.

The pre-arranged funeral was a somber affair. Fourteen beautiful women in their twenties wept, distraught he would no longer bed them. All of his property immediately became mine. I was living at his house, and everything had been prepared, so the transition was oddly smooth. I wasn’t overwhelmingly rich, but my days of poverty were over.

I suppose I could have immediately schemed to become a powerful political leader. I would eventually like to become fabulously wealthy.

Power and money were not my first goals. I’d been a sex-starved college student for years. What I wanted was a harem of beautiful women like Dr. Sapient’s. I had decided I wouldn’t try to “take over” his harem. It would be challenging to take it over, especially if I tried to do it all at once. It might also be too suspicious if I “inherited” his paramours.

I instead planned to carefully apply this tool to acquire one woman to start. I suspected I would be more likely to succeed if I focused on one woman at a time. Caution also seemed wise. The disk’s limitations were not entirely clear to me. Once I learned more, I could repeatedly apply my knowledge to build a harem of my choosing.

I hadn’t had much luck with the ladies before. My nickname “lizardman in training,” plus my near-poverty, had not helped me woo women. At least I was no longer dirt poor. More importantly, I had an ace up my sleeve. No, not merely an ace. I had a secret royal flush.

I knew who I wanted first. Sarah, a gorgeous chemistry student, was my heart’s desire. She was the most beautiful girl I knew. She had full kissable lips, blue eyes you could get lost in, and lightly-tanned luscious skin that cried out to be caressed. Her symmetrical pretty face could have easily gained her entry into beauty pageants. Her long blonde hair effortlessly flowed and curled to halfway down her back. Her body was perfection, too. Her tight jeans made her lovely tight ass obvious. Her T-shirts couldn’t hide her exquisite perky D-cup breasts. She exercised enough to keep herself in shape without looking muscled. She turned the heads of most males, and some females, wherever she went. She wasn’t merely a 10. She was an 11 out of 10. The only thing average about her was her height.

She had many male admirers in the university. I couldn’t blame them. She had certainly starred in many of my sexual fantasies. I was grateful to some of those other admirers. They’d managed to secretly capture some delightful images of her. These morsels were shared in darker corners of the web. Several pictures and video clips featured her stunning body in a bikini. One surreptitious video had captured her unhurriedly changing out of her swimsuit and taking a shower in a locker room. The video proved her nude body was eye-poppingly perfect. Her perky bare breasts, tight ass, and perfect curves all confirmed her body’s status as a priceless work of art.

She worked in a lab next to ours. She was nice and polite to everyone I knew. Her reputation was as squeaky-clean as you could get. We were both graduate students. Neither of us oversaw the other, so I didn’t need to worry about cool down periods. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend Eric, too. The timing seemed perfect. My goal: convincing her to get into my bed as my first sexual conquest.

I did need to keep investigative teams away from me. For now I would focus on getting a single beauty into my bed. A college student bedding another college student would not, by itself, raise any red flags in the university administration.

A week after the funeral I was in the lab, working into the night. I saw Sarah was working alone on some experiment. Perfect. I put the contacts in and walked into her lab.

“Hi, Sarah!”

“Hi, William,” she replied, distractedly. She finished fiddling with something and looked up. When she did, I pressed the button on the disk.

Her eyes glazed over and her mouth dropped. She was still standing but no one was home.

“Sarah, you like me a lot. You want to be romantically involved with me.”

She nodded, ever so slightly, to acknowledge she’d heard me. I repeated the statement many times with variations. I planned to do this every day. After many repetitions she should start to believe it.

It was also time to learn more about Sarah. What was important to her? What made her really tick? If I was going to change her thoughts through suggestion, I needed to know what was most important to her. My tool couldn’t change that.

“What kind of person do you want to be? What’s most important to you about yourself?”

She said, in a quiet drone, “I want to be a good girl. My mom always told me to be a good girl.”

Huh. I should have guessed this. She had a reputation for being an impossibly nice person. I was horny for her body. I had all sorts of sexual adventures in mind.

As I asked her further questions, I realized that what I had in mind would not fit her idea of being a “good girl.” She wanted nothing more than chaste kisses until she wore a wedding band. Her previous boyfriend Eric had wanted more physical action in their relationship without a piece of paper. As a result, they didn’t have a relationship any more.

I asked more questions to try to learn lessons from her previous relationship. Sarah and her boyfriend Eric been together for a while. I was surprised how long he’d put up with her ridiculous sexual boundaries. Her rocking body did provide a clear explanation of why he’d stayed. She seemed to have no idea how much she’d exploited her pretty privilege. She believed her boyfriends should endlessly wait in sexual frustration until she was ready for a ring. I realized her sexual boundaries would not be easy to move. Those boundaries seemed to be tied into her notion of being a good girl.

This was annoying. I have a superpower! Yet my first choice is a girl who will resist what I have in mind. I wouldn’t be able to convince her to stop being a good girl. I was pretty sure the device couldn’t do that. I wondered if I needed to move on. This wasn’t what I’d expected.

No, wait, I decided. I’m cleverer than this. I probably can’t change her desire to be a good girl. Maybe I didn’t need to. Instead, I could try to change her idea of what a good girl is. It wouldn’t be easy, but there was joy in the challenge of the hunt.

My first step would be to establish a romantic relationship. It would be easier to repeatedly subject her to the disk once we were in a romantic relationship. I said, “You really like me. You want me as your boyfriend. You need to be my girlfriend.”

She nodded, ever so slightly, to acknowledge she’d heard me. She didn’t immediately reject the idea. After all, a good girl could have a boyfriend. She started to think that I might be a suitable boyfriend. That didn’t conflict with any of her core beliefs. I repeated the idea, rephrasing it several ways. She didn’t reject the thought out of hand. She seemed to decide this might be acceptable. It was fine to have a boyfriend. She didn’t know of a reason I would be completely unacceptable as a boyfriend. She would continue to be a good girl.

There was something she didn’t know. I had no intention of being a good boy.