hangover? He would cross that bridge when he came to it. In the meantime, he would try and ride it out enjoyably.
“What is it you would like us to do?” the doctor asked him.
“I’m hallucinating, as is the lady who arrived with me. The hallucinations were triggered by an experiment using a form of cathode-ray radiation. It’s non-ionising and perfectly safe, but I would like you to take blood samples for analysis to see if there is any change in hormone levels. I would like you to monitor our breathing, heartbeat and blood pressure to ensure that we are in good physiological health.”
“If you’re hallucinating, we could draw a little fluid from the spine,” the doctor offered. “We could sample your neurochemistry. The brain lives in a finely balanced chemical soup, so it would be useful to take a sample now, then another when you’re at steady-state. You could compare cortisol, CRF, serotonin and the like to see what the neurochemical changes are.”
“That would be good,” Brian agreed.
“OK. That’s a little uncomfortable and best under a local anaesthetic. If you want to slip into this gown, I’ll get prepared.”
Brian undressed completely and fastened the gown around his neck. The room still swirled as he looked around and he found himself amused as his socks appeared to be talking to one another like cartoon worms. When the doctor returned he had with him a pretty nurse with blonde hair pulled to a short ponytail and dressed in green scrubs. In his mind he immediately imagined her ripped out of her clothes and strung from the ceiling like the girl on the Veraceo video shoot.
“If you want to get up onto the table,” the doctor said. “Face down.”
Brian obliged, climbing awkwardly onto the table and feeling the gown open to show his bare ass. The nurse placed a towel over his butt and began preparing a syringe. The moment he saw the syringe with its plunger he imagined the nurse sitting on a chair with her legs spread, ready for him to penetrate with a grotesquely large syringe. He imagined her moaning as he pressed the plunger, pulling it back and pumping again, pumping her pussy with a man-sized surgical plunger as she rocked her head back and squeezed her own breasts.
“I’m just going to administer a local,” the doctor said. “It might sting for a few seconds.”
It did sting. Right between the shoulder blades as the needle was pressed between the bones of his spine. It should be uncomfortable. It should be miserable. Yet all he could think of was seeing the nurse’s scrubs torn open to reveal her big swollen tits. He imagined her tied up with surgical rubber, he imagined latex tubing pushed in her asshole, a catheterised urethra and her vagina held open with a speculum.
What the hell was wrong with him?
This wasn’t right.
Where was this overloading of sexual stimulation coming from?
----- Chapter Three -----
“Veraceo-Two is more intense than the original, A lot more intense.” Barry had taken Brian to the King Edward Hotel to catch up. He was finding Brian more relaxed than he’d had seen him in a long time. He was placated. Whatever reservations he had about making pornography had been swept aside. “It’s amazing,” he said. “This is something really special.”
Barry smiled. “I’m looking forward to trying it.”
“I would wait until I have a chance to tame it,” Brian said. “It’s good but it’s unpleasant. In fact, it’s a real kick in the balls and it put me in hospital. There’s something about it, somehow the combination of sex with violence created an incredible mental and physical experience. It was as though I was physically living what I saw on screen. It was felt, physically and emotionally by us as viewers. What I learned is the strength of the signal needs to be dynamic. When the visuals are violent without the eroticism to balance it you feel the pain; when that happens the signal strength needs reducing. It’s strange, it’s the most uncomfortable sexual experience you’ll ever have. You could torture somebody with it if used for evil, you could actively push somebody into serious physical distress. But this now goes way beyond advertising or ways to shape the thinking of the viewer. This opens a whole new spectrum of opportunities. There are avenues of research in mental health, in neurological research and medicine in general.”
“So what’s next?”
"Control. I need to make the Veraceo-Two signal work the way we want, so it doesn’t hurt to watch. I need to find a way to raise or lower the intensity of the signal to match the content.” Brian held up his glass to the barman and raised a finger to order another drink. He slouched lower into the chair, grinning. He looked like he was glowing. Youthful and energised. “In Pittsburgh,” he continued, “the women are working with the psychologist on perfecting the content. They’re shooting variants and shipping me the test tapes. One of the interesting things we discovered so far is the signal works best when the image is made up from the colour orange through to deep red. The psychologist says they’ve done tests that prove orange is the most oppressive colour to prisoners. I guess it stimulates our brains in a fundamental way… It’s exciting… What I find thrilling is the very nature of how this extends the cathode ray tube. The image on a television screen isn’t really there. It is made up of electrons hitting the phosphor on the back of the tube to make those particles resonate. Television is a resonating form of experience; but what we have now has grown from resonance to neurological. It reaches out to us through the screen to directly stimulate the cortex of the viewer. This is a new form of television. This is the video-word made into a tangible experience.”
“Television as a drug,” Barry quipped.
“It’s more than just a drug. I believe that when properly harnessed, massive doses of Veraceo signal could be transformative to other fields. Education for example. Imagine if we could sit children in front of televisions that program their minds at a deeper level than can happen in a traditional classroom. Imagine if Veraceo could reprogram the minds of criminal offenders. This is special, Barry. Veraceo-Two is a game changer.”
----- X -----
A new cassette arrived from Pittsburgh along with a letter from Deborah, the S&M expert. The cassette was marked ‘Trial 12 - Double Interracial - CLEAN, NO VERACEO’. With it came a note that read, ‘Brian, we’ve learned a lot about what works and this is our most powerful tape yet. We watched it with Veraceo-2 set at ten percent, but even at that low level the impact was profound.’
He’d been giving some thought as to how to make the Veraceo-Two signal change in strength and devised an ingeniously simple solution. It began by connecting an audio test-tone generator to a reel-to-reel audio recorder. Ordinarily, this would record a single audio tone onto the tape; but if he kept one hand on the recording gain control, he could turn the knob one way and the volume of the recorded tone would rise. If he turned it the other way the volume of the tone would fall. The idea was he could watch the programme and make an audio recording of a tone that rises and falls in volume, then later use that recording as a control track to adjust the level of Veraceo.
He prepared playback of Double Interracial and set the Veraceo-Two signal generator to twenty percent.
The video began.
The theatrical plywood set had been replaced and now looked like real walls painted dark red. The Punisher figures had been updated too. Now they wore looser fitting oilskins with hoods that hid their eyes. The back wall was covered in a steel mesh connected to ominous electrical equipment. It looked like it could give electric shocks. The camera tilted down to a naked couple on the floor, a black man and a white woman. They were seated back to back and trapped within a tortuous double collar that contained some kind of choking mechanism; only one of them could breathe at a time. One had to slide their neck back which tightened the collar on the person behind them. The couple were carefully trying to pace their breathing between them.
One of the Punishers whipped the man making him jerk, the action in turn squeezing the woman’s throat. It gave a powerful and immediate reaction and Brian felt his hand almost involuntari
ly turn the audio gain lower to reduce the volume of the recording tone. The woman took her turn in breathing and the other punisher grabbed her breast in one hand and her hair in the other to make her shriek. It was erotic and Brian turned the volume louder.
For fifteen minutes they whipped the couple. The victims choking and crying, the woman’s face becoming bright red. All the while Brian adjusted the audio gain, the reels slowly rotating and the test tone recording at varying volumes.
When the film finished he breathed out heavily and went for a walk outside to calm down. It was exhausting but exhilarating in equal measure.
For the remainder of the afternoon he spent time building an electronic filter that could interpret the reel-to-reel audio and use it to adjust the Veraceo level. It was simple enough in theory but building the electronics took the best part of six hours.
Once finished he duplicated the Double Interracial tape whilst embedding the now dynamic Veraceo signal.
He would try it later, once any lingering effects from the day’s work had worn off.
----- X -----
As Brian drove home he had a vision of some kind. An extraordinary daytime dream in which he was seated on the stage of a hotel ballroom. Members of the public were asking him questions about