Note #1: While it features no ‘on-screen’ sexual activity or explicit adult situations, this hypnofetish story does contain examples of fictional characters doing illegal, immoral and/or impossible things to other fictional characters. If you are under the age of consent in your community, are disturbed by such concepts, or want sex in your pornography, then for gosh sakes stop reading now!
Permission granted to re-post for free to any electronic medium, as long as no one's being charged to view it, and this disclaimer and e-mail address (HYPNOVOYER@HOTMAIL.COM) are not removed. It would also be nice if you told me you were posting it.
Copyright Voyer, 2000.
Doctor Fang strode purposefully through the endless corridors, past the storehouses and laboratories that made up the eastern side of the complex. From every corner loudspeakers squawked hurried orders and counter-orders, while those remaining underlings whom he still encountered scattered before him, pausing only to bow before fleeing from his sight. He only noticed them with a corner of his mind before dismissing them with the disdain that they deserved. They saw only the defeat of the great plan, worried only about becoming the target of his supposed anger. They, like the vast bulk of humanity, were merely sheep to be driven to their tasks.
Anger. Yes, when Commander Amazing and his wretched metallic tag-a-long had foiled the Y2K glitch, snatching victory from his talons at literally the last second... Doctor Fang had plumbed depths of rage he had not visited in many, many years.
But only for a second. Only between two blinks of an eye. Then he was glacially calm again, as he must be. An individual who allowed his emotions to rule him was not worthy of the destiny that Doctor Fang had set out for himself.
And even as the rage flickered away, he began to plan how he could still salvage something out of this debacle. He had ordered the immediate evacuation of this base, and would be departing himself in a very short time. And he would leave behind him only a smoldering hole in the ground.
No. It would not be merely a smoldering hole. If all went as planned, it would be Commander Amazing’s funeral pyre, even if the Commander’s body was not actually in it as it burned. That order had been his first action. His second...
He arrived at the proper door. It looked like all the other doors in the complex, a rectangle of gray handleless metal with only a terse black string of numbers slashed across it: 427123. It opened noiselessly at his approach and slid shut behind him, cutting off every sound of the evacuation like Mr. Jinn’s sword slicing through someone’s neck. He did not even break stride.
The room was dim and warm and low-ceilinged. He did not have full facilities for the task at hand, since Madam Li was able to do a much more thorough job in her own American headquarters, but he had of course possessed the foresight to have ordered the construction of something which would suffice for the immediate situation.
There were three women in the room, all dressed in the usual pale gray garments which left their arms and legs bare. Two of them stood behind the third, who was sitting cross-legged on a thick cushion, her arms held out at her sides, each of her hands holding something. They were gently rubbing her neck and shoulders, and whispering in her ears.
The two ceased this activity and turned as he approached, kneeling in perfect unison and touching their foreheads to the thickly-carpeted floor. The dark-haired woman on the cushion did not react to any of this, but continued to stare straight ahead, at the thing that stood before her. Fang glided to a halt and spoke.
“Is she prepared?”
The two women rose up and settled on their haunches, their hands sliding into place. The Asian woman spoke, her voice calm and clinical. The blonde woman sat silent and still, her wide blue eyes never leaving the face of her master.
“Yes, Doctor Fang. She is where she needs to be.”
He nodded, and flicked the glittering fingertips of one hand.
“Leave us. Await my arrival.”
They bowed again, silently, rose and left the room.
He moved forward so he was standing behind Hildegard Johanson, his hands once again tucked away out of sight in his wide sleeves. The only movement from her vicinity was the thick white smoke that rose in sluggish twin columns from the wide silver and black bowls that she held, one in each hand. The resulting cloud hung around her in a haze.
In front of her was a glass tube, thick and wide and running floor to ceiling. It was filled with plasma-like streamers of green and blue and purple, all glowing vibrantly, and all twirling slowly around and around and around each other, breaking apart, reforming, never quite mixing together, never quite pulling apart. The strings of their lights dripped and ran across every surface in the room.
It was not a coincidence that the object looked like a lava lamp. After he and his scientists had invented it, Doctor Fang had allowed a crude form of the technology involved to ‘escape’ into general public production. The subsequent sale of lava lamps, in addition to bolstering his coffers with royalties, acted as a better mental pre-programming device than anything he had yet found. A normal lava lamp was of course not overtly hypnotic, but any individual exposed to one for any length of time had certain crucial pathways smoothed and widened in her brain. And if she was ever brought into this room, or the far more elaborate and sophisticated one in Madam Li’s ‘academy,’ this fact gave quicker access to her mind. It was clear that Miss Johanson had been exposed, presumably during her time at journalism school, American colleges being the pools of hedonism and self-indulgence that they are. (She had stayed in a dorm on the campus the first two years of her higher education. Fang knew this, as he knew much about her life. He made a habit of studying his enemies’ pasts down to the minutest detail. The fact that his most bothersome and persistent enemy of all appeared to have no past was deeply... annoying.)
Pushing this final thought aside, Fang allowed himself a moment to enjoy the scene before him, to watch the ripple of colors flow across Hildegard Johanson’s expressionless face, soak into her empty eyes. Then his hands came out of his sleeves once again, and he curled them around her head, ever so gently, two pale spiders resting the tips of their long thin legs against her skull. He spoke.
“Thank you... sir.”
Even as she spoke the words, Hildy tried to shake her head. Not to refute Horace Black’s treasured and all-too-rare words of praise, but to clear her mind. Her head would not move. Her mind remained foggy, her memories whited out. She could only stare at her editor as he sat in his usual place at his desk, a black smudgy outline in front of the wide windows. The blue and the green and the purple flowed behind him, endless intertwined strands reaching up into the sky.
She couldn’t understand. There was nothing holding her head. Why couldn’t she move it? She sat unconfined in her usual place, cross-legged on the soft cushion on the floor.
Cushion?
“You were telling me, Hildy, after Commander Amazing rescued you, Doctor Fang escaped from his headquarters and disappeared without a trace. Is that correct?”
“Yes?” Hildy frowned. Obviously that was true, if she was back here in the Times building, but... She tried to remember the details of her rescue and Fang’s escape, but everything was dim and hazy, both inside her head and out. Black must have been smoking more of those disgusting cigars of his.
But the thick smoke that currently surrounded her was sweet and aromatic and deeply intoxicating, making her blood sparkle and buzz. It reminded Hildy vaguely of the incense that her goofball sister Ursula was always burning.
Or was it Penelope who burned the incense? Yes. Ursula was the surgeon. Penelope...
“That is why I summoned you here, Hildy.”
“Sir?” She snapped back to attention. She found it easy to focus on Black’s words when he was actually speaking. But every time the stopped, the swirling whiteness came roaring back in and threatened to swamp her, wash her thoughts away. She wished he would keep talking and never stop.
“We have come into possession of disturbing information about Doctor Fang, and felt that you were the best individual to deal with it.”
Hildy thought it must be serious; she’d never heard Black talk like this.
“Me? What? What’s... happened?”
“It would be best if you heard it from...” a deliberate sort of pause... “the source.”
“Source? Who?” Black’s form was wavering oddly now. It broke apart, reformed, as the voice spoke its next words.
“Jimmy is here to see you, Hildy. Jimmy Johanson. Your brother. He is right here in front of you.”
“Jimmy?” She stared at the new shape. “Is that you?”
“Yes, Hildy. Commander Amazing and I need your help.”
“You need my help?”
“Yes.” As he spoke, Jimmy’s form and facial features seemed to become clearer, almost as if she was shaping them out of clay in her own mind. The circular lens of his mechanical eye caught and reflected the colors behind him, the wonderful colors that pulled her down and down and down... “Commander Amazing and I have just discovered Doctor Fang’s latest... scheme. He has created an evil clone of the Commander, and even as we speak he has sent it out to impersonate the Commander.”
She tried to think of something to say to this, but her thoughts were just getting more and more muddled. The mists grew thicker and thicker, and Jimmy’s face started fading away again, merging with the colors...
“A... clone?” Simply finding a definition for the word ‘clone’ had become almost impossibly difficult. Just focus on the voice. The voice stayed sharp and strong.
“Yes. We are trying to track its movements, but it has been elusive. We have reason to believe that it will attempt to contact you and deceive you into thinking that it is the real Commander Amazing. It should come to you very soon. In fact, the very next time you see Commander Amazing, it won’t be him at all.”
“It won’t be him... at all.”
“It will be an evil soulless clone, bent on destroying everything that the Commander stands for. Do you understand?”
“I...”
“Do you understand, Hildegard Johanson?”
“I understand.” Jimmy, the desk, all of it was gone now. There were only the colors and the voice, both compelling, demanding, bottomless.
“The instant you see this creature, you will recognize it for what it truly is. And you will not rest until you destroy it.”
“I will not rest until I destroy it.” Her voice was flat and hard now.
“Yes. Good. Very good. But remember, you must be careful. I have already given you the weapon with which you can strike the impostor down, but the creature is cunning and deadly. You must act as if nothing is amiss. Wait for the perfect opportunity to present itself before you strike. Reveal nothing of what you know. Not even to your closest colleagues. Not to anyone. You must go... deep undercover.”
“I must go deep undercover.”
“Yes. Deeper than you have ever gone before. You must not only convince the clone, you must convince yourself. Even the slightest mistake could be fatal, fatal for everyone. Go deep undercover, Hildegard, and I will give your cover story...”
The colors swirled.
Of course, as strong as she was, he could send Miss Johanson to Madame Li’s academy, and in two or three weeks he would have received back another Gretchen Hollister, a fully programmable robot made of flesh and bone, a shapely creature that truly lived only to please him and obey his orders. Madame Li had grown quite proficient at her work.
And it was to the Madame that Miss Johanson would be sent, after the immediate problem had been solved. She would make an extremely useful addition to his organization, in one capacity or another; perhaps she would even continue her job as a reporter...
But that immediate problem was still here. He did not have two or three weeks, as had been the case with Miss Hollister. He had at most a few hours. So he had turned the reporter’s own strength and dedication to duty against her. A common and time-tested technique, perhaps, but it was these things because it was effective. Now, when the time was ripe, the dagger would appear in her hand, and she would strike without hesitation or qualm...
He shifted the tips of his fingers, and implanted her cover story.
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