The device was strangely beautiful.

Lily watched it curiously from her seat in the middle of the small room. On a table next to her sat the Within, nestled in a sheet of foam inside its open case.  It was unexpectedly delicate-looking, a silver U-shaped arc with fine wires branching from its body.  The warm-toned overhead light reflected on the small metallic contacts that tipped the wires.  The research associate who had led her here, a clean-cut man named John who had left briefly to check something outside the room, should probably not have left it within her reach like this. Maybe he knew she'd be too shy to touch, despite all her curiosity. Better not to break the thing on the first day.  She wasn't sure how much it was worth, but its value surely exceeded her life savings multiple times over.

The young woman shifted nervously in her seat.  The ambiance in the room was pretty nice, for what was essentially a science experiment bunker.  John had explained that for the device's neuromodulatory effects to work properly, it needed to be used in an electromagnetically-shielded room situated in the second basement of the building that housed the Laboratories. He had gone on a bit with his explanation, something about electrical noise and Faraday cages, but Lily hadn't caught most of it. She wasn't a scientist, and what's more, she was nervous. Or, well, perpetually anxious. It was why she was seeking this treatment, actually. Aside from having largely forgotten what an unclenched jaw could feel like, she couldn't focus on anything for too long these days, before her buzzing mind jumped onto whatever next scary topic was on the menu du jour.  Medication, therapy, sick leave, none of it had helped.

The Within, John had told her, was both able to record what was going on in her brain, and impact its activity. It couldn't cause anything to happen on its own, only influence it in a given direction, so its action was called modulation.  According to their studies, modulation was all that was really needed to treat people like her; her brain wasn't unable to do the things she struggled with, just rigid and set in its ways. Ways that had likely served a purpose, at some point - John had used the word "maladaptive" to describe this functioning.

She remembered vividly how his eyes got wide with excitement as he described the Within protocol as an exercise program for her mind - "The device will help stretch, metaphorically, your neurons into being able to do certain things more easily," he had said, beaming.

If he seemed sold on the concept, Lily wasn't quite yet, but at this point she was willing to try anything if it meant sleeping full nights again. Besides, if the machine wasn't controlling her brain, only influencing it, what damage could it really do? The protocol lasted twelve weeks, and even John admitted that most patients so far had only reported noticeable improvements starting at week three. She had some time to decide if this was the treatment for her.

She tried to bring her attention back to the room, trying to center herself in the present, as her therapist had so often asked of her. She willed her jaw to relax even just a bit, wedged the edges of her tongue between the top and bottom molars to keep them from closing tightly again. The air was ever so slightly chilly, and the floor, walls and ceiling were lined with carpet. It made the room, which was only big enough to fit two people comfortably, kind of dead acoustically, like a movie theatre as the lights dim, just before the movie starts. Lily briefly thought that it would be a nice place to take a nap, this tiny little box in the depths of the Earth. Small, clean, quiet, safe...

The door opened. John popped his head in, his excited expression completed by a perfectly white smile. "Are we ready to begin?" His smooth tenor voice had a rehearsed warmth to it.

She attempted to smile back, slightly, but the outcome was likely closer to a grimace. "I think so," she answered.

"Excellent." He walked up to stand behind her. "Please look ahead and down."

She obliged, staring down at her hands. She could feel him carefully lay the device over her head, and was surprised to find it feeling significantly heavier than its delicate construction had suggested. She felt him adjust the contacts to ensure the device was solidly placed, then heard a click as he connected it to a wire that ran off the back of her chair and into an electronic console in the wall behind her. The entire process was quick, taking a couple minutes at most.

John let her know the session could start and left the room. The lights dimmed as he closed the door behind him, and Lily was once again by herself, this time in almost-darkness.

It was so quiet she immediately became aware of the sound of her own breathing. Lily wondered how she must look wearing the strange metal contraption. She tilted her head slightly to the left, then to the right, getting used to the weight of the Within. She could feel the contacts at first, but that sensation faded quickly. They initially felt slightly cool against her scalp, but after a minute or so, they had warmed to her body temperature. She gingerly felt for the device with her fingertips. The middle part of the U rested on the back of her head, with the branches curving up towards her temples, ever so slightly hugging the sides of her skull.  It felt foreign, perhaps a bit odd, but she couldn't say it was uncomfortable.

"Welcome to Within Protocol, session one," a recording of a female voice startled Lily. She could not identify the location of the loudspeakers - it seemed to come from everywhere at once, yet it was not overly loud.

"Block one will begin shortly. The duration of the block is five minutes. Please sit quietly with your eyes closed."

She shifted in her seat, attempting to make herself comfortable. The chair was ergonomic, made to accommodate the natural curve of her spine and keep her body in the most optimal position to sit through an hour of treatment in ease. But the discomfort she felt was emotional, rather than physical. Try as she might to remind herself that she was safe, radio doom and gloom went on 24/7 as usual inside her mind, pointing out how unusual this situation was, how weird it was to have this…thing on her head, and what had she gotten herself into?

Her ears searched for a sound to lock onto, but aside from the faintest white noise of the ventilation, there was nothing. She could feel the tight throb of her heart at the base of her throat, her pulse picking up in a mixture of anticipation and dread. She willed herself to swallow, and the act of focusing consciously on such an automatic action made it suddenly so difficult she only succeeded after about a ten second delay. The silence dragged on…and on... Try as she might to chase the tension from her body, she only succeeded in displacing it.  From her shoulders, to her stomach, to her jaw, back again to her shoulders, then to her hands gripping the arms of the chair…

"Block two will begin imminently," the voice startled her out of her anxious fugue.

"The duration of the block is fourteen to twenty-six minutes. It will end when the system achieves target coherence level. Please close your eyes and listen to the audio narrative."

Coherence. John had mentioned that term when they were going over the consent forms together, but she could not recall what it meant. She opened her eyes at that, but by now the overhead lights had turned off and the room was pitch black. Were it not for the sensation of the top eyelids meeting the bottom ones as she blinked, she wouldn't have been able to tell they were even open. Her palms felt around for the edges of her seat, her feet pressing into the ground.  The situation was becoming disorienting.

"Please close your eyes," the voice repeated, sounding slightly more insistent.  Lily froze, mildly shocked that the voice knew her eyes were open - then she remembered the device positioned on her head. It could probably tell through her brainwaves, or… something. She sighed, resigned to see the session through, if only so she could leave and never come back. So far, this treatment felt like a massive waste of time. She straightened up and closed her eyes, and the voice started again.

"Compliance is an important aspect of any course of treatment. A therapeutic cannot have the intended effects if the appropriate regimen is not followed.  To follow the regimen is to play an active role in one's own healing. In all interventions, individuals who comply are the ones who obtain the best results. A lack of compliance is the main cause of unsuccessful mental health treatment."

As she listened to the instructions, Lily decided the voice was firmly in uncanny valley territory, with strange pauses and intonations that made it sound not-quite-human. And yet, it sounded like a person enough that it could have been a recording. Perhaps the words had been recorded separately, then stitched together? It was hard to tell.

Observing the quirks of whatever weird text-to-speech they had used wasn't entertaining enough, though. Lily curled and uncurled her toes inside her shoes. She inhaled sharply, but held the sigh at the base of her throat, slowing her exhale to keep it quiet and gentle. She was afraid if she got too outwardly restless, the voice would remark upon it. She placed her attention back on the narrative, hoping it would help the time pass more quickly.

"Compliance is simple. You are asked to take an action, and you cooperate. In certain disregulated states, compliance is harder to achieve. Within's technology remedies this by influencing brain states to become more responsive."

She was only half paying attention to the ludicrously tedious audio description, at this point. She feared if she devoted her entire attention to it, she might erupt in a fit of enraged frustration at how mind-numbing it all was. Instead, she tried again to make a game out of examining the bizarre inflections the voice would take. Recorded or synthesized, surely it would be predictable enough - that's what made it so uncanny and unnatural, right?

To her surprise, the weirdness was not so easy to anticipate. It seemed like the oddities never occurred on the same words, or in the same parts of the sentences. What's more, instead of becoming easier to pick out as she listened more closely, it felt as though the anomalies were getting more and more subtle.

"To comply is to feel better. There is enjoyment in compliance. There is ease in compliance. Through Within, compliance becomes accessible again. You are instructed to relax your shoulders, and the muscles in your upper back release. You are asked to ease your breaths, and the air flows into your lungs like water lapping the shore. You are told to blink three times and it occurs, simply, without effort."

Blink. Blink. Blink.

A stunned sigh escaped her nostrils. She hadn't been following what was being said too closely for the past few minutes, but clearly part of her mind still was. She tuned in to the rest of her body to find the tension she'd been chasing since the start of the session was…gone. Her shoulders had relaxed from her ears. The tightness in her throat had loosened. The temperature of the room seemed to have warmed up, her body finally yielding fully to the chair, which now held it perfectly.

What's more, the voice sounded...different. Less robotic. In this short span of time, it had become strangely familiar, even. Like an old friend.

"Block two is complete. Session one of Within protocol is complete. Please wait for the research associate to assist you. We look forward to seeing you again soon."

Lily's eyes fluttered open to find the lights had been turned back on.  She stretched her arms and shoulders, feeling energized as though she had awakened from a restful nap. There was another feeling there, too, a sense of oneness with her body that was too new and intangible to be described in words. She looked up at John as he entered the room.

"First session down! How are we feeling?"

"Quite strange. But good. Really good.  I was skeptical at first."  The softness in her voice, the audible faint upturn in the corners of her mouth, surprised her.

"Understandable. We get a lot of patients who are nervous," he said,  carefully easing each tiny contact from her scalp. "But you seem to have adjusted to the experience quite well. And…we are done here."

He lifted the device off of her head and placed it gingerly in the case on the table next to her seat. Lily stood, deliberately taking her time to do so. Part of her feared that she was feeling so buoyant she'd end up falling over if she went too fast. And yet, a veil of placidity seemed to coat her every movement. She was not clear how accessible "getting up too fast" even was at this point.

He placed a palm lightly on her upper back, guiding her out of the booth. The warmth, even felt through her sweater, was unexpectedly delicious; she felt a blush creep on her cheeks.

"It's time for me to escort you out of the building. Shall we schedule session two?" he asked.

"I do believe we shall," she replied.

In her memories of that day, she could not describe her exit as anything less than floating out the door.