Wayne’s doctored Ghost in the Shell was just as packed with subliminals, but the style of them was different. Wayne still wasn’t looking to push her boundaries - he had no idea what reaction that would get, but it definitely felt risky - but he had some thoughts on the kind of groundwork he could lay.

He refreshed the nachos before starting it up, too, which he didn’t often do. Wayne figured Chantal could use every distraction he could put together for this evening. Possibly even another movie night or two; actually, if he was honest with himself, it could be well more than a month before he tried to push forward without trickery.

Or it might come more quickly. The point was that he didn’t know, so he had to play his cards carefully.

He had set the first subliminal cycle to begin just after the opening credits, for the simple reason that he’d known that if he had positive enough response to move on from the first film to the second he would be jittery and impatient to start seeing results.

True to form, just as he was thinking it was due to begin he saw a shift in Chantal’s whole posture; not that she had really moved in any meaningful way, but there was a relaxation through her limbs that went with the slackness of her expression, the absence of light in her eyes.

It was as if there was no personality in there to animate the body. Wayne imagined her sitting upright, turning to him and disrobing, all with precise motions that started and stopped at predefined points, so exact you could imagine them being the same every time. Like an android just brought online, running pleasure unit software.

Instinctively he moved again to cover his own arousal, positioning the hand with his glass to block a view of it. He strongly suspected the evidence would still be there after the subliminal cycle was done.

Somewhere down the line he’d have to extend the cycle. Maybe one week it could be several episodes of a cartoon, and he might load an entire cartoon with subliminals. He had to test for the limits of what Chantal wouldn’t notice, after all.

“Programming is good for me,” Chantal said, and if he hadn’t been waiting for it, he probably would have jumped. Her voice had been uncertain, not quite stumbling over the words but still they sounded as if they had passed through her mouth only uncomfortably.

She was silent for exactly five seconds before speaking again. “Programming is good for me.”

Wayne wasn’t paying any attention to the film now, focused entirely on her. She had seemed less uncomfortable with the words then, but it could easily be his imagination.

He was very conscious of his own heartbeat as he waited.

“Programming is good for me.” There was still a slight tremor to the syllables, but she was speaking less softly. Wayne smiled.

“Programming is good for me.” Firmer again, and a little louder. Certainly the loudest he could remember her being under hypnotic suggestion.

“Programming is good for me,” she said again. She wasn’t blinking, Wayne realised, just staring ahead, drinking in everything.

Maybe longer cycles could work until he’d figured out audio subliminals.

“Programming is good for me.” There was no tremor at all now. Her voice was perfectly steady.

It was also curiously flat.

“Programming is good for me.”

She sounded so detached, but her voice was full and clear. Wayne was sure it was starting to sink in.

He turned his face back to the screen, but closed his eyes to enjoy listening.

“Programming is good for me.”

*

The cycles of subliminals wore on, and Wayne watched her reaction to each of them until, halfway through the film, the next big test was waiting.

“Programming is good for me,” Chantal said, once again. “I need to be programmed.” Which had been the second part of the mantra that Wayne had decided on, at least for the first stage.

Her eyes, this time, were not so much empty as like glass fogged over, any sense of a person within more or less gone. It had only barely returned between cycles the most recent time, which Wayne took as a really positive sign.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed,” she monotoned. Simultaneously, she sat upright, back ramrod-straight, no longer resting against the couch, and set down her glass. This was the first new instruction of this cycle, and it was in preparation for the second new instruction. The most important of them.

“Programming is good for me,” she said again, her hands rising to cup her breasts through her loose sweatshirt. “I need to be programmed.”

She was sitting too far forward for Wayne to have a good view. He got up and moved to the door to the kitchen, standing by the fridge, so that he’d have a plausible excuse for his angle of view when the cycle ended.

Chantal began to squeeze, stroke, and tease her breasts through the fabric and, presumably, through the bra cups below. “Programming is good for me,” she droned. “I need to be programmed.”

Wayne stood and watched, staring, barely even daring to smile in case somehow she was more aware than she seemed to be. He was almost certain she couldn’t be.

Almost.

“Programming is good for me,” she said again, staring at the screen unblinking, hands moving slowly, uncertainty, but - to judge by the tremor that re-entered her voice - very effectively. “I need to be programmed.” Yes, her voice was definitely wobbling now, her own groping definitely arousing her in spite of her conscious mind’s suspension.

Wayne figured that arousal and pleasure were two of the best ways to anchor something in someone’s mind, and easier to produce without waking them from trance than pain would be. This, he supposed, would be a real test of it.

“Programming is g-good for me,” Chantal stuttered. “I n-need to be programmed.” Were the words she had stumbled over difficult for her? Important to her? Was he reading too much into it?

Doing anything for the first time was always fraught with uncertainty. Wayne kept watching and wondering, but he was smiling now. He didn’t know everything, he might not be fine-tuning anything yet, but he was going to be in position to soon.

As the cycle ended Chantal seemed to shudder for a few moments, her fingers squeezing her breasts tighter. Slowly, she sagged back against the couch and her hands fell away. Wayne started walking back toward the sofa as Chantal’s vision cleared and the life returned to her eyes.

She smiled up toward him. “I didn’t even notice you’d got up,” she said.

“Lost in the film?” he asked with a grin.

Chantal shook her head. “Honestly I keep losing track of it,” she said.

Wayne sat down beside her and topped up their glasses. “I guess maybe your focus is shot tonight. Rough week?”

“No…” she said, her voice absent. Then, as if she was thinking about it more deeply, she added “Maybe. I don’t usually have difficulty keeping track of the story even when we’re talking. But tonight it’s felt a lot like I’ve missed chunks of what’s going on. And these aren’t complicated films.”

Wayne laughed. “Guess not,” he said. “So what’s the issue, you think?”

She shrugged. “Nothing jumps out at me. Nonspecific melancholy I guess.”

“That’s usually me.”

Chantal laughed. “You got that right,” she said, picking up her wine again. “You seem more on the ball this time actually. Although maybe that’s just how distracted I am.”

He saw an opportunity. “Maybe you need to adjust your melancholy settings,” he said. “Your programming might need updating.”

Chantal laughed, dismissing his slightly reaching statement as a flight of fancy. A few moments later, her eyes back on the screen, she droned “Programming is good for me.”

Wayne tried not to react too much. She’d have no idea why and it might raise questions he didn’t have a fake answer for yet. But he was studying her very closely a few moments later, after he’d recovered his composure, when he said “Huh?”

Chantal shrugged. “Maybe I’m just distracted, is all,” she said.

So, Wayne concluded, she hadn’t noticed herself reciting the first part of her mantra.

It was hard to stop himself showing how excited that had made him.

When he showed her to the door that night he said “Have a good night, and let me know when you get back.”

“Won’t you be asleep by then?” Chantal asked.

“Oh, probably not,” Wayne said. “I had some ideas while we were watching. “I’m going to be up late tonight doing some programming.” He waited expectantly.

Chantal’s eyes emptied for just a moment, long enough for her to recite “Programming is good for me.” Then she blinked, and smiled, and turned back toward the waiting Uber.

*

On the drive home that night Chantal wondered about the evening. It had been an odd one, between her focus being shot to a level she never normally had to deal with and Wayne acting weirdly tense at points. She hadn’t liked to ask, since he hadn’t opened up about anything unpleasant when she asked how things were.

Let him keep his secrets a while, she thought. He’d open up about them once he had a handle on the situation, whatever it was. He always did.

She glanced out of the car’s window, and her eyes were drawn to her own reflection against the darkness.

There was an orange dustiness on her sweater, right around where…

Chantal frowned. She’d definitely not been thinking too deeply about anything at any point during all that, but she was pretty sure she’d have noticed if her old friend had groped one of her tits.

And besides, she’d eaten as many nachos as he had. It made more sense that she’d wiped her hand on herself at some point, even though she usually made a point to use a napkin, and even if she couldn’t remember that either.

That was probably it, she told herself, and dismissed the sudden thought.

There was always a logical explanation for things.

She messaged him once she was home, as she’d asked, and got a thumbs-up response. And then, to her surprise, he sent another message.

I know you’re hosting next time, but I’ve got some ideas for follow-ups. I’d like to pick what we watch.

Sure, she sent idly, and went to bed. Leave the night to Wayne and his programming, she thought. Programming was good for her. The second thought slipped by automatically without her taking notice of it.

*

When Wayne showed up for the next movie night, she was surprised to see him carrying a thin cardboard envelope with two home-burned DVDs in it. “I can probably stream just about anything,” she told him.

“Well, maybe.”

“I’m not sure this DVD player will run home-made ones,” she said as well. But she decided to indulge him, even if he did linger over her calendar again - he definitely thought he was being subtle about it, she decided, and wondered again whether she had a friend she could set him up with. He’d probably relax a lot if he was getting laid.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he said, and he’d sounded genuinely worried about that. Which was definitely odd. Still, the first disc he handed across loaded fine when she slid it into the slot on her smart TV, so the point was moot.

“So,” she said as she walked back to the sofa, where she tucked one foot under her rear automatically as she sat down. “What are we watching?”

Wayne already had the remote in hand, and as she leaned forward to pick up her glass, he hit Play. Chantal looked up at the screen as it flared into life -

- Her cheeks were warm. In fact, now she came to notice, there was a heat building all through her. Arousal was not usually her response to the start of an episode of Cowboy Bebop, even if she had nursed a crush on Spike Siegel for some time. But what was in front of her eyes was definitely some Cowboy Bebop.

Somehow she’d lost track of a few moments, just like she had done a couple of weeks prior at the previous movie night. And in that few moments, one of her hands had come to rest on her breast, thankfully above the sweater…

However warm her cheeks had been before, they were warmer now as she blushed crimson. She slipped her hand back toward her lap, then changed her mind and course-corrected, leaning forward to grab a handful of popcorn to camouflage the intent of her movement. Best not to draw too much attention, she thought, in case Wayne hadn’t already noticed. No reason to highlight it for him.

She glanced sideways but he didn’t seem to have noticed; his eyes were focused on the screen. He was smiling, too, and not his usual nervous half-smile. It looked a lot closer to the smile he’d had as a younger man, when he still believed in his own capacity for success.

She didn’t see how watching a favourite anime with a friend would make that change, so something had changed in him. And that seemed like a much more productive use of her time than trying to catch up on the episode she’d evidently zoned out of right from the start.

“So, what’s new?” she said. “You seem cheerful. Things going well at work?”

He seemed startled. “Eh - well. Kind of?” Wayne sat there for a few moments, gears visibly turning in his head. “I’ve definitely got a big project on.”

“Ah.” Chantal nodded. “Something fun?”

“Kind of. It’s like… like building an AI.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks seemed hot again for some reason. “Does that involve… programming?”

She’d felt her breath catch over the word, had all but stuttered it out. It wasn’t even an embarrassing topic, just somehow it felt like it.

“It does, as it happens,” he said, and the smile was more confident, but it was also more knowing, in that snide way that turns a smile into a smirk. Chantal didn’t like the way Wayne looked with a smirk, and never had.

“Programming is good for me,” she told him, not really thinking about what she was saying. She paused. She’d lost the thread of the conversation somehow.

To cover herself, she took another sip of her drink and went back to watching the show.

*

Wayne settled back with his glass of wine and watched, smiling. Hearing Chantal bring up programming as what was clearly her subconscious’ means to recite her trigger again had been delightful, but he didn’t feel the need to hide the tent in his jeans anymore. Quite the opposite - he needed to have an erection in her presence to test whether the new programming that would have her ignore it had sunk in correctly.

It certainly seemed like it, although there was the possibility she just hadn’t glanced at his crotch for other reasons. On the other hand, she was certainly getting friskier; groping herself through the sweater had been much more enthusiastic even on the first subliminal cycle of the evening this time.

It was fun (and funny) to watch her try and hide what her hands had been doing after she came out of it, too. It was almost a shame he was going to be erasing that level of shame over the next few cycles, but he needed it for his next steps.

“So why Cowboy Bebop?” she asked, and because his thoughts were on the next set of suggestions, not on policing his opinions, he answered:

“Well, I didn’t think you’d be willing to sit through Dirty Pair.”

Again she fetched him a backhand to his arm, a little less playfully than the previous time but still without the kind of impact that would have shown she was particularly serious. “First of all, ew,” she said. “But second of all, I might have.”

To Wayne this was obviously a contradiction. He looked at her quietly, and got the confirmation he wanted - she didn’t see anything wrong with what she’d said. Which meant the goalposts in her head were starting to move, and that she hadn’t noticed yet…

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Well, I-” She didn’t fall silent so much as she ceased making a sound as the next cycle began on-screen. “Programming is good for me,” she said instead, three seconds later. “I need to be programmed.” Her hands were already moving.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed.”

The one holding the stem of her wineglass gathered the waistband of her sweater in and lifted it up; the other slipped inside, where he watched its progress up the fabric of her top to her chest. She started to grope herself once again.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed.”

Her voice was full of the heat that the first cycle and this one had built up in her without satisfying, a heat she doubtless couldn’t account for while conscious. But her expression was blank, empty, a Chantal-mask made in a factory and not yet in use.

Tentative but curious, Wayne reached out to cup her other tit from outside the sweater. He heard her voice creak with surprise and lust, but there was no other response; most importantly she didn’t wake herself, shout at him, or twist away.

“Programming is good for me,” she said. “I need to be programmed.” Wayne licked his lips, studying her closely. He trailed his hand down her stomach to the rise of her crotch and cupped it, for a moment, through the loose sweatpants she habitually wore while not working, pressing his palm against her mound.

Her flesh quivered beneath him, and as he rolled his thumb, driving the ball of his thumb into her, he felt the wetness starting to seep through her fabric.

She was further gone than he’d thought.

He ground the ball of his thumb into her again, and her mantra came out as a moan. Wayne grinned, but he released his grip, sitting back so she’d have no reason to suspect once she came out of it.

Furtively he raised his hand to sniff at his palm, and then he remembered that she was lost to the cycle for a short while yet, and that even when she wasn’t, she’d have no way to put the two together. She was only aware of one of them.

“Programming is good for me,” she said, unknowingly echoing his own conclusions. “I need to be programmed.”

*

After a series of anime episodes, Wayne followed up with Weird Science. It wasn’t a movie she’d liked when they’d caught it in reruns on TV as kids, but he’d loved it, and as he’d spent time that week doctoring it for her, it had occurred to him that perhaps his current project (as he was now referring to Chantal’s brainwashing, at least in conversation with her) was inspired by it.

He was curious to see what her reaction would be this time, although it would be fair to say that he’d stacked the deck in favour of the response he wanted.

He was also very excited to hear her shift mantra, and it had been a compromise between the two urges that had placed the first cycle after a minute of runtime - enough time for her to potentially remember the film and express her unaltered opinion - instead of right at the start as he had with the anime episodes earlier.

He didn’t think she remembered it clearly, but her brow and her nose were both wrinkling with suspicion when the first cycle began, at which point both immediately smoothed out into that same placid mask he’d seen before.

“My brain is hardware. My mind is software.”

Again her sweater was lifted up, and again her hand found its way inside to paw at and grope her own breasts. This time, though, the other hand didn’t stop with the waistband of the sweater, but instead found the waistband of her sweatpants.

“My brain is hardware. My mind is software.”

Wayne watched with bated breath. What was going on was, technically, hidden from him, but he found that didn’t matter at all; he had seen enough photos of Chantal in skintight Lycra from years of modelling sessions to picture her body with what he assumed was reasonable accuracy.

“My brain is hardware,” she recited, and he could picture the hand under her sweatpants finding its way under her panties. The moving shape under the fabric slid just a little lower. “My mind is software,” came out as modulations on one long exhalation, a sentence as a gasp, and Wayne was sure that one of her fingers had just slipped into the welcoming wetness of her pussy.

He licked his lips as he watched, not willing to make a sound in case he somehow broke the spell, even though he knew the spell had survived his own hand over her tits not long ago. Every new step was a moment of nervousness, followed by a moment of relaxation as it succeeded. It was much easier for him to feel calm about it all when between the cycles, as he was thinking them through. And watching her like this, helplessly masturbating, her eyes fixed glassily on the screen, drinking in all the lessons he’d scripted for her as she recited “My brain is hardware. My mind is software,” well, that made everything worthwhile…

*

Chantal waved goodbye to Wayne from her door before closing it and locking everything up for the night. Her blush had only spread over the course of the evening; she could feel the heat all the way up to the tips of her ears and was hoping that would dwindle somewhat now that she was on her own.

She’d found herself groping her own tit over and over through the movie, every single time after she’d lost focus and drifted off away again. Something about Weird Science had provoked a very different reaction in her this time, evidently.

Chantal was at a loss to explain what or why, although - as she finished clearing away the detritus of the evening before settling back down on the sofa to unwind a little - the thought struck her that it might be due to the robot woman.

She hadn’t thought about… well, anything like that… as part of sexuality. She knew some weebs were into that kind of thing, but it had never even occur to her to wonder if she was. And just a couple of weeks previously, she’d been watching Ghost in the Shell with Wayne, with Major Kusanagi, and she hadn’t had that response…

…although, she admitted nervously to herself, she’d had a kind of response all the same, hadn’t she? Because that movie night she’d been stroking her chest through her sweater.

Maybe this was something she was interested in, she told herself. It would explain how wet she’d got - well, it wouldn’t, she’d got very wet - and all she’d have to explain was why the interest had never occurred to her before. Why she’d never noticed.

It couldn’t just be that she didn’t see robots presented as women, because the more she thought about this now, the more examples came to mind, from Major Kusanagi through the Austin Powers fembots. Was this just a trope she hadn’t recognised?

She lifted her glass to her lips, draining the last of its contents, and set it back down on the table before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she paused, frowning, and replayed the last few moments mentally.

Something had shocked its way across her awareness; she knew she’d noticed something but it had been so out of left field that her brain hadn’t immediately told her what it was.

After a few moments, she brought her hand back up and sniffed at her fingers, recognising her own scent on them.

Chantal’s eyes opened wide in disbelief and she sat bolt upright on the sofa. There was no question of what she smelled, and certainly she’d clearly been excited enough to be wet, but she would surely have remembered if she’d done anything else. She hadn’t even touched herself…

She went to bed thoughtful and puzzled. As she lay under the covers she picked up her phone and fiddled with it absently for a few moments, then slipped it under her pillow and turned out the lights.

Chantal had expected that she’d lie there in the darkness for some time trying to understand what had happened that day, but in fact her eyes closed almost immediately she hit the pillow and she slept not long after.

At three am her phone vibrated under her pillow, the alarm active if mute, and Chantal opened her eyes, though she did not wake. She reached under her pillow and silenced her phone, then transferred it onto the bedside table.

Her other hand found her pussy as her thighs parted in welcome. She began to toy with herself, staring up at the ceiling.

“Programming is good for me,” she intoned. “I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software. My mind is easy to program.”

She was already wet, her body in a state of high arousal triggered by her phone alarm, as if a switch had been flipped or a programming toggle reset.

“Programming is good for me,” she repeated. “I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software. My mind is easy to program.”

Her voice stayed steady, her eyes remained glassily fixed on the same spot on the ceiling, even as her hand worked feverishly, her hips beginning to buck against it. She did not quite stick to the same rhythm throughout, humping the air faster and faster as she neared the point of orgasm, but was much closer to doing so than she ever had been in conscious sex before.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software. My mind is easy to program.”

Chantal was not thinking. Nothing passed through her mind except the messages from her pleasure centres and the words she was, over and over, reciting. These were not thoughts. They were programming. They were rules that her head followed.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software. My mind is easy to program.”

Inside her mind she imagined a certain level of arousal that her fingers were striving for. As values go, it could be considered arbitrary, or a value derived from the hardware in which the software that was her mind resided. But everything her hardware was doing was pushing her towards it.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software. My mind is easy to program.”

She was so close, so easily, so quickly. It was in her next recitation that she reached her climax setting. Secondary code required that she not cum until the recitation completed.

“Programming is good for me. I need to be programmed. My brain is hardware. My mind is software.” She cried out as the orgasm rocked through her, the last of her recitation erupting in her cries. “My mind is ready to program!”

*

The drive into a local studio the following morning was one of the most cheerful and upbeat drives Chantal had enjoyed in some years. She’d been a little confused to be woken up by her phone alarm on the vibrate setting, but she nonetheless had woken up feeling rested and at peace.

The usual self-doubt, body image issues, and other stresses of the morning were absent to the point she didn’t even notice their absence, as that would have involved thinking about them.

It wasn’t often that Chantal agreed to shoot on a Saturday, if only because having been able to make modelling her career she liked to try to have time free when her friends did. But this one called for three athletic models, a gymnast like herself, a runner, and a powerlifter, and the others weren’t available on weekdays.

She knew Priya, the powerlifter, quite well; they’d occasionally worked on the same product launches, modelling different parts of the range, and they used the same gym. Teresa, the runner, was new to Chantal. She made her introductions before the ad agency rep clapped his hands for their attention.

Chantal turned to face him, her back straightening, her head coming up, eyes shining brightly. She was vaguely aware that Priya and Teresa hadn’t responded nearly so quickly. Of course, they probably weren’t in the throes of a shining moment of self-discovery.

She’d never been one for being told what to do. The whole process of a shoot had always been, to Chantal, an opportunity for collaboration, and most photographers she worked with often were ones who welcomed her suggestions and her own eye for what would look good for the product.

But this time, Chantal knew somehow she wouldn’t be doing that. She’d simply accept any instruction she was given, and she would do so just as well as she possibly could..

That would be best.

She smiled privately to herself. She would treat the shoot as if she was a programmable fembot, just as she’d been dreaming about the night before. It would be a good test of how seriously she should take the thoughts she’d been having since Wayne had left, and the others didn’t have to know what she was thinking, how much she was enjoying herself…

Had it really taken her this long to recognise and accept something fundamental about herself? Or was this nothing but a passing flight of fancy?

She was a squirming wet mess as she drove back that night, a broad smile on her lips. Her sweater sat abandoned on the passenger seat, her upper half clad in a tight sports bra that covered just about enough to be acceptable.

Chantal wasn’t sure why but she felt better without the sweater now, especially after a full day of being dressed up pretty and on display, moving to someone else’s instructions, a robot doll.