"...and that was Pattern Number Five," the man with the clipboard said, clicking his little hand-held counter to signal to Carly that it was time to look away. "Would you say that was easier than Pattern Number Four to stop staring at, or more difficult?" His pen was poised against the piece of paper to record her answer, and Carly stared muzzily at it with a sense of mounting pressure to respond. It felt so hard to remember Pattern Four after a solid minute of staring vacantly into the swirling colors of Pattern Five, though, and Carly couldn't help the lengthy pause that overtook her while she struggled to first recall and then compare the two experiences. Her dark brown eyes glazed over, and her lips parted in thoughtless distraction for a long moment before she finally pushed herself to answer.

"Um, uhhh... easier," she finally hazarded, feeling a quiet buzz of happiness as the man with the clipboard recorded her answer. They weren't paying her a whole lot of money to take this survey, maybe a little more than she could have made in an afternoon of donating plasma, but that didn't mean Carly wasn't going to take it seriously and try to give useful answers. This information was important to somebody, and she wanted to be... useful. Helpful. That kind of, um, thing. Carly blinked heavily, wishing the captivating displays of light and color weren't quite so effective at their intended purpose. She was going to need a long nap after this.

"Thank you," the man with the clipboard replied, giving her a thin-lipped smile. "And let's move on to Pattern Number Six, please?" He gestured expectantly to the viewer, and Carly placidly put her face against the cushioned eyerests and waited patiently in the artificial darkness for the next sequence of lights and colors to begin. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, but she forced herself to keep them open--it would probably contaminate the results or something if she fell asleep and missed one of the data points. However tempting that sounded right now.

Then the screen lit up with another blaze of swirling light, and Carly forgot all about going to sleep as her gaze was dragged with an almost physical intensity to the center of the twisting, turning spiral in front of her. Her breath went out in a long, whooshing sigh of relaxation, and she felt her shoulders slump in captivated lethargy as she followed the rainbow trails around and down until they vanished into nothing. Carly didn't know who came up with all these patterns, but they really did their work well--despite knowing that each one only lasted a minute, she found herself losing track of time faster and faster with every mesmerizing session. The man with the clipboard could have left her like this for hours and she wouldn't have noticed.

He didn't, though. Carly heard the clicking sound of the counter and she lifted her drowsy head from the viewer, noting with some chagrin that she'd left a few droplets of drool behind on the table. "That was Pattern Number Six," the man with the clipboard said, politely pretending not to notice as Carly mopped away the saliva with the corner of her skirt. "Would you say you had an easier time reading the accompanying text than with Pattern Number Two, or more difficult?" Carly's eyes went wide in startled confusion--she didn't remember seeing any text at all, not in any of the patterns. There wasn't anything but the smoothly flowing colors, numbing her brain into sleepy bliss.

No wait. That--that wasn't quite right, was it? Carly couldn't exactly remember Pattern Two in detail, they all kind of jumbled together in her brain and after a while she kind of got lost in the warm fuzzy memories of staring and sinking into deep hypnosis, but... but she had kind of noticed some words in the first couple of patterns, hadn't she? The specifics were already fading, but they were there and she noticed them out of the corner of her eye and she asked the man, she, she asked him... she asked him what they said, or, or no, she asked him why they told her to, to, umm, umm, ummmm.... "H-harder?" she finally guessed, befuddlement turning the answer into a question all its own.

"I see, thank you," the man replied, ticking a box on the sheet of paper. Carly's face felt hot as another wave of pleasure washed over her, this one almost sexual in its intensity. She was so glad she was helping provide so much useful data on the effectiveness of these hypnotic patterns; whatever her initial reservations were about the survey, she was just happy now to be of... of service. That still didn't sound right, but given how many times Carly had dropped into trance in the last ten minutes or so, it shouldn't surprise her to discover that she was feeling a little bit punchy. God, she wanted to sleep so fucking bad.

"And now Pattern Number Seven," the man with the clipboard continued, gesturing back to the viewer. Carly put her face against the eyerests, and this time she had almost no time to wait before the screen flared into life--it caught her a little bit off-guard, in fact, and her eyes locked onto the heart of the spiral before she had any chance to steel herself against the pattern's captivating effects. It kind of reminded her of the first one the man showed her, the one he said was a... a.... Carly's brow furrowed in confusion for a moment as she struggled to remember exactly what he did tell her she'd be looking at for that initial session, but then it popped into her head and she allowed herself a drowsy smile of relief.

Of course he'd told her she was going to be hypnotized. Carly couldn't understand why she'd ever thought anything differently, even for a moment. He told her exactly what was going to happen, and Carly gave him her informed and enthusiastic consent because she believed in the purpose of this survey and everything it was trying to accomplish. She didn't have any reservations at all. She only thought she did because hypnosis was so powerful and irresistible that she knew how easily an unethical experimenter could brainwash her with spirals like this. But she didn't have to worry about that with these people and she could relax completely.

The clicking sound almost didn't register at first, and Carly raised her head to stare numbly at the man with the clipboard without really knowing why. "And that was Pattern Number Seven," he said, his smooth and even tone grounding Carly back in reality as she refocused her glassy eyes on him and levered herself out of trance. There was another puddle of drool on the table, larger than the last one, and Carly once again used her skirt to mop it up. The fabric was very damp, she realized sluggishly. Her mouth was really watering for some reason.

The man's voice cut into Carly's distracted reverie. "Would you say it made you want to masturbate more, or less than Pattern Number Six?" he asked, and for a brief instant Carly's lethargy was shocked away by a cold-water splash of dismayed astonishment. It was such a personal question, nothing like the previous information he'd requested of her, and Carly had a hard time wrapping her head around it. Not that she was a prude, or anything, she liked jilling off as much as the next horny college student, but... but it felt kind of intrusive. Didn't it?

But then she looked at the pen, poised once again over the clipboard in anticipation of Carly's inevitable answer, and she began to second-guess herself. She wasn't a, a scientist or a researcher or a, a, a whatever the man with the clipboard was. She didn't know what purpose this data was being used for. She... ummmm... she couldn't even remember what building she was in, or how she'd gotten here, or why exactly she agreed to participate in this survey. It was clear that someone with a brain as confused and muzzy as hers shouldn't argue with someone who looked so smart and confident and collected as this man. "M-more," she mumbled, squeezing her thighs together as she watched him record his answer and felt her cunt leak with excitement.

"Thank you," the man with the clipboard said, gesturing back to the viewer. "And now Pattern Number Eight." Carly looked back at the viewer, and found herself strangely reluctant to put her head down to stare at the next set of swirling lights and colors. She felt like things were slipping past her distracted mind, like she really should be questioning some of those thoughts and memories that seemed so comfortable and natural to her, but... but she was so tired. And the sooner she got this over with, the sooner she could sleep. And she wanted to serve her purpose so badly. Before she could even fully realize it, Carly slumped into the eyerests and let herself stare.

Pattern Eight was even more beautiful than the others, locking her into such deep and helpless captivation that she almost lost track of her own body. It didn't feel like she was slumping over a viewpiece anymore, it felt like she was floating further and further into an endless tunnel of light that made her whole mind vibrate with more and more perfect ecstasy the more she dove down and let her mind dissolve into the hypnotic colors. Carly heard herself grunt in loud release, a sound she was familiar with from her own masturbation sessions back in the dormitory, but this didn't feel like orgasm. This felt like perpetual, unrelenting bliss that made her eager to soak up all the words in the spiral she then instantly forgot. If this was a minute, it was the longest and best minute of her life.

The clicking sound prompted her to look away, and Carly instinctively reached for her skirt to wipe away drool before realizing that she wasn't wearing it anymore. She was completely naked from the waist down, her left hand pressed tightly over her throbbing clit, and the man with the clipboard was looking directly at her cunt with another one of those thin-lipped smiles of his. "And that was Pattern Number Eight," he said, his perfectly controlled tones belied by his glittering, hungry blue eyes. "Would you say it eroded more of your willpower than Pattern Number Seven? On a scale of one to ten, how strong is your ability to resist right now?"

"Uhh, umm, uhhh...." mumbled Carly, her lust-drunk brain having difficulty with holding two questions in her head at the same time. She felt like each trance was magnifying the effects of the previous one, driving her down deeper and giving her less and less time to recover her sluggish wits before she plummeted into hypnotic bliss once again, and it took her almost a full second to remember that she was still masturbating in front of a total stranger and she didn't seem to be able to stop. "S-sorry, I, uhhh, whuhhh?" She sounded so foolish right now, Carly realized. She sounded like the most vapid, ignorant slut right now and for some reason that only made her pussy leak even harder.

"Did Pattern Number Eight take away more of your will than Pattern Number Seven," the man with the clipboard intoned, pausing to allow Carly to give him a stupefied nod, "and on a scale of one to ten, how strong is your ability to resist right now?" She almost nodded again, so happy to agree and be compliant that her brain almost carried her along on a tide of vacuous amiability right into blissful acceptance, but then she remembered that he was asking for a number. No sooner did the thought arrive than Carly's mathematical mind scattered to the four winds and took just about every number in her head with it.

"One?" she burbled, unable to think of anything higher but knowing that was almost certainly the right answer anyway. Resistance seemed like an alien concept to her right now, something she could consider in the abstract if she worked her feeble mind to its very limits but that had no real application to her everyday existence. Other people resisted, maybe, people who hadn't seen so many patterns, but Carly didn't want to and she didn't know how. She only wanted to turn back to the viewer and watch the pretty lights some more.

And the man with the clipboard was happy to oblige her. "Very good, good girl," he cooed, recording her answers and sending another gush of orgasmic pleasure down to Carly's pussy, "and now let's look at Pattern Number Nine." Carly instantly and unthinkingly lowered her head to the viewer, her eyelids slowly closing as the effort of holding them open became too much.

It didn't matter. The lights swirled and spun so brightly now that Carly could see them through her closed eyelids, each twisting burst of light annihilating another one of her own thoughts and leaving behind only rapture in its place. She couldn't see any words in the spirals, not with her eyes tightly shut like this, but the man with the clipboard was talking to her while she sank and drifted and Carly found his voice effortlessly merging with her thoughts until they were one and the same. He'd been talking to her this entire time, she realized. He'd been programming her vacant mind while she stared at the beautiful patterns and she'd forgotten just as easily as she was forgetting right now. God, that was hot. Carly was so glad she was masturbating to all this.

Another click, and the man with the clipboard was asking her, "Was that easier to stop staring at than Pattern Number Eight, or harder?" Even the sound of his voice felt like a stroke on Carly's clit now, making her shudder with desperate arousal, and she stripped out of her shirt and bra with an enthusiasm that seemed to come not from her own mind but from some other source entirely. She didn't care, though. It felt good whatever its source, and she loved the way the man kept talking straight to her tits instead of to her. It made her so wet. It made her so... so....

Oh. Right. Question. "H-harder, much harder," she babbled, grinding her fingers against her clit as another climax slammed into her. She didn't feel like she'd ever stopped, not really; even though Carly could see the man with the clipboard, and the room around her, it felt like the spirals of Pattern Nine overlaid everything with swirling, spinning colors that lulled her mind into blank and reverent ecstasy for her Master. She only barely notice she called him that before his pen dipped down to the paper and she came again. God, she loved being... being a good girl? That still wasn't right, there was a word for it that continued to elude her, but Carly felt too dumb and dopey to properly consider it.

"Pattern Ten," her Master said, his tones now clipped and commanding, and Carly helplessly rested her head on the viewer and let everything else fade away. She could feel the programming settling in now, locked into her brain by this last and most perfect pattern of all, and her cunt spasmed and throbbed at the realization that she was fully brainwashed by the pretty lights. She was being turned into a good girl, made blank and thoughtless and submissive by the colors on the screen, and the knowledge that this was the ultimate purpose of everything she'd been through in this room only made her cum all the harder. She wanted to be conditioned. She wanted to surrender. She wanted to... oh, oh fuck, she almost had it....

But then she heard the clicker, and of course she couldn't resist it. She sat up, then slid off the chair and onto her knees as her gaze focused on her Master's erect penis jutting out from his open fly. "And on a scale of one to ten," he asked her, still sounding every bit as calm and neutral as if he was discussing the weather, "how badly do you want to suck my cock right now?" Carly's eyes went wide in meek, helpless confusion. She didn't know the big numbers. She didn't know how to tell him she was aching to wrap her lips around his perfect shaft.

Then the answer hit her, and she crawled over to slurp and suck and nuzzle her Master's cock. Carly didn't understand what this proved, about psychology or hypnosis or anything else she imagined the purpose of the survey to be, but then again she didn't need to understand. She could just bob her head up and down on Master's stiff prick, and that would serve him exactly the way he wanted to be served. Carly liked that so much. She liked being... being... being....

Obedient. The word locked into her head with a titanic explosion of bliss as the last of her strength crumbled, and Carly's eyes glazed over as she finally accepted the new purpose of her existence.

THE END