When Olivia gets back from her morning classes, she finds Alison sipping a cup of tea in their kitchen.

“You were right about the headache,” she tells her with a sigh.

“Superpower confirmed?”

Alison shrugs. “I won’t know for sure unless I try to use it again. That’s something I wanted to ask you about. Unless I want to try courting more late-night harassment or dress up in a costume to yell at muggers, I need a willing test subject.”

“Oh.” Ever since they broke up, Olivia’s kept herself to a strict set of rules to avoid doing anything that isn’t unambiguously platonic. She knows Alison wouldn’t see it as something intimate, but she still doesn’t trust herself not to make things weird if she lets her friend play around with her brain.

“No pressure if you’re not comfortable. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I thought you’d want to be involved. For science.”

Olivia’s love of science outweighs her reluctance. “Yeah, of course I want to experiment with you – um, that came out wrong,” she says with a nervous laugh. “Just promise me that you’ll undo whatever suggestions you put into my head.”

“For sure. How about I just tell you to do something silly, and we see if you can choose not to.”

Olivia leans back against the kitchen counter and nods. “Okay, ready when you are.”

“Right. Hmmm, stand on one leg.”

“Nope,” Olivia answers. She has no trouble choosing to ignore the instruction, and both her feet remain firmly on the floor.

“Ugh how does this work?” Alison makes eye contact, focusing her attention on Olivia. “It was like… Stand on one leg.”

Olivia takes a step forward, picks up one foot, and goes “aaaa” as she swings her arms around to avoid losing her balance. “That wasn’t me.” She’s a little freaked out, and she knows she’d feel way more scared if it was anybody else reaching into her head.

Alison’s eyes are wide. “Wow. I’m starting to get this… feeling, or intuition, for how this power works. I don’t think it’s just making someone do something. I think I could also change someone’s feelings or perceptions.”

“That sounds kind of terrifying,” says the part of Olivia that doesn’t think it sounds kind of sexy. “Any idea how to test that safely, without messing with my head too much?”

“Yeah, I think so. You have the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap, right?”

“I do. You think you can make it taste different?”

“Worth a try,” she says as she grabs a rarely-used bottle out of the spice rack and hands it over. “You like the taste of cilantro.”

“If you say so…” Olivia sprinkles a few of the little leaves into her hand and eats them. “Oh, that’s bizarre. It still tastes like soap, but it’s really good, delicious soap. What the hell.”

“Should I undo that one?”

“You can leave it, I guess. It’s not a bad preference to have, just weird.”

“Okay, so we know what I can do. The next question is, how do I use that to make the world better?”

“Declare yourself empress of the world, of course,” Olivia says with a cheeky grin. “You could create a shining utopia where there’s no war or violence.”

“That’s villain shit, Liv!”

“Okay, okay,” she relents. Alison would be a great empress of the world, but her unwillingness to be seduced to the dark side is probably for the best. “What about stopping war and violence, though? If you just tell all the supervillains to cut it out, that would be a good start.”

“That could work. We’ll need to test whether it works over a recording or broadcast, but if it does then I could send a message to the whole world.”

“Would you have to record a bunch of messages in every language to reach everyone?”

“递给我一把勺子,” Alison tells her. Olivia doesn’t speak a word of Mandarin, but she feels the same pressure on her mind. She finds herself opening a drawer and handing a spoon over to Alison.

“This keeps getting weirder. I know what you said even though I don’t know what any of the individual words mean.”

“Cool,” Alison says, handing the spoon back with a self-satisfied look. Her confidence is beautiful. “One sec, I need to see if this would actually work at scale,” she says, walking off and closing the door to her room. A few seconds later, Olivia’s phone rings. “Jump up and down,” Alison tells her, but over the phone her voice doesn’t have that eerie quality.

“Nope, doesn’t work.”

Alison hangs up and opens the door. “Damn, I was kinda hoping this would be easy. It’s good that no one can just trivially take over the world through a broadcast, but I was hoping I could use this power to make the world better.”

“You definitely still can. Maybe just not all at once.”

Alison tilts her head the way she does when she’s trying to solve a puzzle. “I’m not sure. If my power only works up close, it’s no good for stopping supervillains. I’d be an easy target as soon as anyone realized what I can do. I could work behind the scenes, making sure captured villains don’t hurt anyone again? No, that feels gross. I can justify using my powers against someone’s will if they’re an active threat to people, but not against prisoners. I could go into politics or activism, tell all the racist and transphobic politicians to change their minds, but even if it’s for a good cause that still sounds like villain shit.”

“What if you only used your power on people who consent? I mean, people go to hypnotherapy to get help. You could do the same thing, but way more effectively.”

“Good point. I don’t really want to go to med school, but it would be a good way to use my power to help people.”

“I don’t think you have to be a doctor to be a hypnotherapist. At least in some states? IDK, just something I remember reading somewhere…” Olivia trails off, not wanting to explain that she’s getting all her information about hypnotherapy from kink erotica.

“I’ll look into that. For now, though, I want to be careful and make sure this stays secret. I really don’t want to attract attention at this point.”

“For sure. Your secret is safe with me.”

“Thanks, Liv. I’m glad you’re not being weird about all this.”