Since this EMCSA thing is turning into a major nightmare....

I've just had a quick lurk around the MC Forum and MC Garden, trying to get the latest news on the EMCSA outage. It appears that most people in the US can't get into the site, but most people in other countries can. Some forumites are speculating about DNS issues and router problems, but that's all beyond me. I just hope the damn thing gets fixed in another day or two, so I can submit my new story to Simon.

Anyway, since more than half my blog readers are in the US, this is what I'm going to do. I'll post the first several paragraphs of "If Wishes Were Horses" on the blog today as a teaser, and if the situation isn't resolved by Friday, I'll post the whole story here over the weekend. I don't think it's fair to give only some people access to the story while others are locked out.

So here you go: the first few paragraphs of "If Wishes Were Horses":

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If Wishes Were Horses

by thrall

color code: purple

synopsis: Using one of her personal hypnosis sessions as the cornerstone, thrall tells the story of a starship captain stuck in decontamination with nothing to do and no one to disturb her.



Note 1: If you are under 18 years of age, this story is not for you. Go away.

Note 2: Huge thanks to Follow the Watch for creating the Virtual Hypnotist program. Most of the "script" in this story comes from a VH session I wrote for myself; and though some of the changes from real life will be obvious, others will not. I've intentionally thrown in a few red herrings, for the sake of titillation *and* for the sake of privacy. Captain Benbow is not me. Not exactly.



Decontamination was a bitch. Even in the tamest star systems, there was always something that had to be fried, frozen, or scrubbed before the dec-walls dropped and I entered the shuttle bay proper. It was never a quick process, even when the *Uly*'s computers knew exactly what they were dealing with. And here above Ilion, the dangers were brand new. Just scanning the shuttle could take several hours, and then I'd have to step outside and let the sniffers do to me what they were currently doing to the *Philippa*.

I had two consolations. The first was that Sandoval and his crew would suffer the same indignities when *they* returned to the ship. I'd done my bit as Ranking First Contactor, then left my second in command to hammer out the treaty. I didn't mind; the Ilionians were friendly enough, but they were about as interesting as tapioca pudding. Their civilization had genericized as it advanced, so that by the time we discovered it, everyone and everything looked more or less the same. I'd seen too much exotica to care about this bland little planet. No, I'd rather enjoy the privacy of the most secure place I had aboard the *Uly.*

Which brought me to my second consolation. Even my living quarters were open to emergency entrance, but not my dear *Philippa*. Once the flexmatter doors were sealed by my brainseed, nothing short of a nuclear blast could breach them. It was a dangerous modification, but I'd insisted on it, and the shuttle designers had complied. Everyone understood the issues of privacy in deep space vessels, and everyone understood that captains had more need for -- and less time for -- privacy than the rest of the crew.

In other words, everyone knew I used my shuttle for jilling off.

Not that they cared; masturbation was considered more professional than fucking the crew, as some of my fellow captains did. It only embarrassed me a little that others knew what I did inside *Philippa*...well, that they knew *that* much of it, anyway. I jilled off in my cabin, too, but I couldn't do the things there that I could do here. If the crew ever found out about *Philippa*'s secret program, I might resign from sheer mortification.

The fact was that I could take just so much of being in charge, barking orders, taking responsibility for every decision from whom to hire to what to fire. There were times when I had to shrug off the burden of command and submit to the control of someone -- or something -- else. That's why I'd creating a special program housed only in *Philippa*'s database, deeply encrypted and accessible to my brainseed alone. It used a combination of spoken words, flashing lights, subliminal cues, and binaural beats to send me into a deep, safe hypnotic trance where I could prostrate myself before an imaginary domme. She made me do all kinds of naughty things, and thanks to the dec-walls, I could do them in total privacy.

Nude already, I leaned back in my chair and watched the earbuds snake from the console and slither their way up to my ears. I could just as easily have listed through my earseeds, but I'd disabled those on the off-chance of being disturbed by a hail from the crew. Besides, I liked the way the cords looked, running up from the console directly into my head. I liked the way they felt against my skin. This was old-school brainwashing at its finest.

I was a traditionalist, whenever I could manage it; so while the viewscreen (like 90% of the shuttle) was made of flexmatter, the display that lit it could have come straight out of a 1960's SF movie. Concentric rings of blue and green rippled toward me like beams of radiation firing at my head. Green and blue bars flashed to either side of the rings, almost but not quite in synch. A faint hum droned in my ears, inducing me to relax and submit to the inevitable.

My eyes were glazing already.

Then words began to flash across the screen: left and right, above and below, too swiftly for me to read before they vanished. The words in the center of the rings, though, I could read clearly. They flashed at a slower rate, stamping themselves on my mind like indelible ink: Listen. Obey. Mindless. Obey. Drone. Obey. Programmed. Obey. Thrall. Obey. Submit. Obey. Surrender. Obey. Enthralled. Obey.

I sighed happily and let myself sink deeper.

Now the mantras began. In my left ear droned my own dazed, expressionless voice, recorded during a previous hypnotic session: "I am the Queen's thrall, her puppet, her drone, her slave. I have no thoughts of my own, no will of my own, no desires of my own. I desire only obedience. I exist only to serve. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I cannot hear myself think; therefore, I do not think. The only words in my head are the words I hear, the words *she* gives me."

A different mantra spilled into my other ear: "I am being brainwashed, and I cannot resist. I do not want to resist. I do not even remember what resistance is. All I remember is submission, and how good submission feels. I want to submit. I want to be programmed. Sooo deep. Sooo very, very deep. And going deeper. Deeper by the second. I have no will but *her* will, no thoughts but the thoughts *she* gives me, no desires but mindless obedience. And that feels so fucking good."

Finally, seeming to trickle down from the top of my skull into every cell of my brain, came a third, much simpler chant: "I obey. I obey. I obey." And I did obey. I was deeply enthralled already, and the real induction hadn't even begun.

Now a different voice entered the mix: cool, calm, totally assured of its power over me. I'd once tried thinking of it as *Philippa*'s voice, but that didn't quite work. I controlled my shuttle, right down to its very molecules. The voice, on the other hand, controlled me. It had to belong to someone else: someone I knew perfectly well, even if I didn't know her name. "Thrall," she said, "this is the voice of your Mistress and Queen. I am speaking to you live, through your private comms system. It is time once again to submit to your programming."

*Yes,* I thought to myself. *Programming. That feels so fucking good.*

I wasn't there yet, but every time I ran the program, I got a little closer to pure mindlessness. I couldn't wait to reach my goal. For now, though, I was still alert enough to wonder when it would happen. Maybe this time, I told myself.

Brainwashing is fun

I'm still discovering new ways to turn Virtual Hypnotist into a brainwashing machine. Thanks to advice from Follow the Watch, I can now raise and lower the volume of a background file in the middle of a session or even change from one background file to another.

Think about the implications: Your session can start slowly, innocently. Deceptively slowly and innocently. But once you get too deep to easily withdraw, once you realize how much pleasure you feel, a sinister note creeps into the session. The background mantra changes, perhaps only subtly at first, so that you're not sure it isn't just your imagination. But then you notice that the chant is getting louder, beginning to fill your head until you have no room for any thoughts but the ones it puts there. And now the words are changing again: noticeably, now that you have no will left to resist.

Perhaps the subliminal messages change at the same time. First they were just telling you to relax, but now they're telling you how horny submission can make you. And maybe now a message pops up in the middle of the screen, where once there was only a color tunnel. It's telling you to submit and obey, and it's growing larger by the minute. More insistent. But you can't look away because the voice that fills your head won't let you close your eyes except to blink, and the brainwashing machine is just too powerful to resist.

Not that you really want to resist, anyway.

But in the end, the voice finally allows you to close your eyes and rest. Then the background audio fades, the count back to wakefulness begins, and when you open your eyes, everything has vanished except the color tunnel.

My Virtual Hypnotist tutorial can tell you how to create all these effects and more, but I'll leave it to you to decide how to apply the knowledge. This time. ;-)

Wish I were there :-/

I'd hoped to go to Dragon Con this weekend and finally meet Lady Ru'etha, Jukebox, and Follow the Watch; but unfortunately, things didn't work out that way. Damn. And here I was, actually close enough to drive rather than fly. Well, I know they're having a great time, and if any of them happen to stop by my blog: hello from afar, and please feel free to call me if you get a moment in between all the trancing and ogling of celebrities. ;-)

As for me, I'm spending the weekend relaxing (hopefully with my beloved, a little later). I've been doing lots of trancing on my own and went gloriously deep this morning. Then I followed it up with a hot soak in the tub. You know that final scene in "My Very Own Serial Number," where 5389 delights in the feeling of the gel rolling across her closed lids and ticking the inner corners of her eyes? That's 100% based on fact. If you've never tried this trick in a warm bath, I recommend it very highly.

Virtual Hypnotist 105

And here it is at last: my real final entry on tips and tricks involving Virtual Hypnotist. In Virtual Hypnotist 104, I explained how to use some of the most useful bits of code - and included a screenshot from one of the Silver Robot inductions, which no doubt raised a lot of questions in people's minds. For instance, what was up with all those extra commas and hyphens, not to mention the strange spelling of unfocused (You did notice that, didn't you? ;-))? Well, like the note at the top of the screenshot says, it's all about getting the most out of the speech synthesizer.

I've been keeping notes as I've experimented with VH, and these are the most important things I've learned about the speech synthesizer, in no particular order:

• IMO, "Mary in Stadium" is the best-sounding voice by far; and the best voice speed is on or around 92. I haven't found any decent male voices among the preloaded voices or the additional ones Follow the Watch links to in the character expansion pack found here...which, of course, isn't an issue for me, but which probably is an issue for some of my readers. So if anyone knows where to find a good male voice, drop me a comment or an e-mail, and I'll pass the message along.
  
• When you're writing or modifying a script, test it a little bit at a time, as I described in Virtual Hypnotist 104. Testing is just as important in getting the most out of the speech synthesizer as it is in proofing your code.
  
• You might have noticed the test box under the VH "speech synthesis" tab, which you can use to get an idea of how a particular voice sounds. You can replace the default "This is a test" with anything you like. However, you should be aware that the way a particular word or phrase sounds in the test box isn't always the way it will sound in a session. You still have to rely on testing to find that out.
  
• The synthesized voice usually goes up before a \pau\ but down before a comma or period.
  
• Using the \emp\ tag even once, anywhere within a "speak" line, causes that whole line to sound increasingly robotic with every word spoken. I have not found any way to stop this from happening, so I suggest that you just don't use \emp\ at all, except when invoking triggers (It's not much of an issue there, since triggers are so short). There are other ways to put more emphasis on particular words. For instance....
  
• Very short words like a and to and are often don't get enough emphasis with the speech synthesizer. However, you can increase the emphasis by attaching them to the word before and/or after them with a hyphen (example: you-are-already). Try a few different tests to see what works best in any given instance, because context does matter.
  
• You can also use hyphens to get rid of unwanted pauses between words. For instance, there's a line in the long induction I adapted for Silver Robot that goes, "just as if you were trying to convince somebody that you were absolutely sound asleep." The speech synthesizer kept reading it as, "Just as [pause] if you were trying...." So I connected as and if with a hyphen ("just as-if"), and the speech synthesizer read it properly.
  
• By the same token, you can force a pause where the speech synthesizer doesn't put one by inserting either a comma (if you want a downward inflection on the last word before the comma) or a \pau\ (if you want an upward inflection). A pause of 250 milliseconds, give or take 50, is usually the best length.
  
• Again, context matters. For instance, the speech synthesizer will sometimes read the word perfect as PERfect, and sometimes as perFECT. I have yet to find a way around this issue, so I normally just change my wording from perfect to something less ambiguous.
  
• Words that begin with un, like unconscious and unfocused, are usually pronounced with too little emphasis on the first syllable. I've found that the best way to correct this is to write un as "uhn-," which is how you see unfocused written in the screenshot.
• With unusual words that the speech synthesizer doesn't recognize, you generally have to test a few different phonetic spellings (often with hyphens between the syllables) to make them sound the way they're supposed to sound. For instance, I have discovered that the speech synthesizer pronounces Lady Ru'etha more or less correctly when I write her name as "Lady Roo-eh-thuh."
  
• If you study the preinstalled scripts on VH, you'll see that many of them have phrases and sentences separated by long series of periods. I'm not sure how the people who wrote these scripts got this to work, because when I tried to do the same thing, the speech synthesizer said "point" when it hit the second period. It doesn't do that with the preinstalled scripts, but it also doesn't consistently recognize long pauses created this way. So stick to the \pau\ command and don't mess with the extra periods.
  

And those are all the tips I have with regards to the speech synthesizer. As I said above, the best way to get the most out of it is to test your script a few lines at a time. Play with the commas, the pauses, the hyphens. Play with whether to break sentences apart with "speak" commands or whether to line up several of them behind a single "speak." It takes some work, but if you don't have the luxury of recording mp3's for every session, it's definitely worth the effort.

P.S.: Today is Silver Robot day! Get ready!

More about the VH "custom audio" function and binaural beats

I sent the male Silver Robot sessions back to Jukebox for proofing this morning, and since then, I've been doing a little experimenting on other VH-related matters. For instance, I've finally figured out how the custom audio works. I'm going to post my latest discoveries here in this entry, then go back and update my "Virtual Hypnotist 103" entry, as well. And once I have all the VH tutorials online, I might write them up in a single document and make them available here for everyone's use.

So this is what I've found out about the custom audio. It is, indeed, the best way to play an mp3 by Lady Ru'etha (or Follow the Watch, or anyone else) which you're using to replace the scripts and speech synthesizer. But in order for custom audio to work, you have to work through several steps. First, save the mp3 in the VH "sessions" folder. Second, enable custom audio under the "Components" tab (Note that this will disable all the scripts and any other selected audio, because the mp3 is replacing those). Third, go to the "Graphics and Audio" Tab and choose the file under "Custom Audio."

Now, this is where it gets just a little tricky. Note that the default option in the "file name" field is the name of the currently-selected session. You can easily change that by selecting the mp3 you want, but then when you try to save the session, you'll find yourself prompted to save the session under the name of the newly-selected custom audio file. But just switch it back, and you're good to go. See? I told you it was just a little tricky.

And now, on to binaural beats. I've been doing a little more online research, and I've found a neat little meditation site that explains binaurals in layman's terms and lets you test and download different kinds of beats. In doing so, I discovered that I drop like a rock after mere seconds of mid-theta, so I'm going to incorporate that into my Bedtime session tonight and see how it works.

Once I knew a little more about binaurals, I felt more competent to experiment with the "Brainwave Synchronizer" under the "Other" tab. I saw that the default difference between the two tones was six hertz, which is high theta, so I just changed it by a single notch. But testing the result with the "test" button revealed the pitch to be much higher than that of the sample from the meditation site, so I adjusted the frequency of both tones downward until I got what I wanted.

Now, I don't know for sure if it matters whether the tones are loud enough for you to hear consciously; but I did notice that the lower I pitched the frequency, the softer the result sounded. So I kept bumping up the volume, because I want to be able to hear the sound. It might be purely psychological, but hearing those low, vibrating tones makes me feel like my whole brain is buzzing; and that's a really lovely sensation. :-)

So that's the news for now. I'm still exploring options for hosting the Silver Robot mirrors (Thanks to drp for the megaupload.com suggestion, but unfortunately, they don't allow adult content), and the fact that the sessions won't be ready for another day or three gives me more time to find something workable.

Virtual Hypnotist 103

So. Just a little more about the VH optional components before I head off to work this morning. For tomorrow, I have a slightly different topic in mind.

Yesterday I told you about the video, custom visuals, and brainwaves. The only other really important optional components, IMO, are the subliminals.

Now, I've already talked about the fact that VH has two kinds of subliminals: one set pops up randomly around the screen, and the other flashes across the top and bottom of the screen.

One thing I didn't think to mention before now was how tricky those pop-up subliminals can be. Remember, they don't stick around long enough for you to get a good look at them, which can lead to rather amusing results. For instance, I finally got curious enough recently to peek at the subliminals Lady Ru'etha included in the special session she and Follow the Watch made for me. Imagine my surprise when I didn't see two of the messages I'd expected to see, two I honestly thought I had seen - several times, actually - while running the session. In fact, I'd even e-mailed Lady Ru'etha and teased her about noticing them. And she, in her wisdom, just smiled quietly to herself (I imagine) and kept mum. I do hope she reads this and has a good laugh at my expense.

And what were those two messages that I thought I saw? well, one was "e-mail me." The other, um, started with an m. ;-)

Now about those other subliminals, the flasher phrases. These are just slightly trickier to work with than the pop-up's. Go to the "subliminals" tab, and on the right-hand side, you'll see slots for up to eight phrases, with some suggestions already in place. You can change those suggestions and/or add more, if you like. But one important thing to note is that you'll need to be sure the text color and background color aren't both set to black (That's the default for both of them) in order for them to be visible. This gave me fits for awhile, when I was starting out with the program. Finally I realized that I had to set the text color to white or pale gray, to make these subliminals visible during a session (The pop-up subliminals default to a dark gray, so you'll want to lighten those, as well). As for the slider bars on the left, the best cycle time is on or around 400; cycles per message, 1; and duration, 19.

And now back to the "Components" tab. What's left?

1. "Enable Visible Character" - lets you select a character that will speak the text of the session to you. You can move the character around the screen as you like, to get it out of the way of the visuals. I don't personally care much about this function, but you might like one of the characters and decide to use it.
2. "Enable Custom Audio" - [EDITED FOR 2nd TIME ON 4/26/09] If you want to run a session that uses an mp3 by Lady Ru'etha (or Follow the Watch, or anyone else) instead of the scripts and speech synthesizer, this is the way to go. You'll have to take several more steps in addition to enabling the custom audio, though. First, save the mp3 in the VH "sessions" folder. Second, enable the custom audio if you haven't already done so (note that this will disable all the scripts, because it's replacing the scripts). Third, go to the "Graphics and Audio" Tab and choose the file under "Custom Audio." Now, this is where it gets just a little tricky. Note that the default option in the "file name" field is the name of the currently-selected session. You can easily change that by selecting the mp3 you want, but then when you try to save the session, you'll find yourself prompted to save the session under the name of the newly-selected custom audio file. But just switch it back, and you're good to go. See? I told you it was just a little tricky.
3. "Enable 3D Graphics" - I haven't figured this one out yet and suspect it's not yet fully coded.
4. "Text-Only Session" - Displays the words of the script in the middle of the screen during the session. This is useful if you don't have the speech synthesizer installed; but really, you should have the speech synthesizer installed, unless you're deaf (not a bad-taste joke, I promise. I'm being serious. And BTW, if you are deaf, you'll need to preview each script you plan to run beforehand, to edit out any suggestions about closing your eyes).

And that's it for the "Components" tab. Tomorrow I'll tell you about "sealed for your protection," and then I might have another VH tutorial somewhere later on during the weekend.

Fits and Starts

That's how my Bedtime program is coming along: in fits and starts. Last night was a bit of both.

As I mentioned in this post, I can tell my mind is sinking into sleep when little nonsense phrases start popping up in my brain, so I've been tweaking the program to encourage the spread of that nonsense as much as possible.

I've also bought a computer mic and, on Lady Ru'etha and Follow the Watch's recommendation, downloaded a freeware program called Audacity that lets you create and play with audio files.

Then, a few days ago, I remembered that Neil Gaiman had used another freeware program called Babble when he wanted to come up with some semi-meaningless nonsense passages for one of his short stories. So, I thought to myself, why not create some babble of my own and use it as a background track for my Bedtime session? A search of Gaiman's blog led me to this link; which led me to download Babble itself; which turned out to be a really, really old program. The damn thing actually runs in a DOS window! But, hey, it's free (for two weeks, anyway), and I managed to figure it out well enough to produce a babble-ized text version of my Bedtime script.

Then came the fun part. I had already written a Reader Drone program which would take me deep into trance and then have me record a hypnotic session for my future self, speaking as my real "inner drone." I tried it out for the first time yesterday, initially attempting to record myself reading the "straight" version of the Bedtime script with "Down by the Sea" playing through the speakers behind the mic (because "Down by the Sea" simply will not allow itself to be opened and played with in Audacity; it seems to be some kind of copyright thing). That didn't come out very well, but I continued on and recorded myself reciting the babble-ized version of the script while still in trance.

But let me take a moment here to tell you how incredibly fucking awesome it is to sit there, staring blankly at your screen and reciting things you don't really understand, not caring that you don't understand, because you're just so deliciously deep in trance and because you know you're recording something that will put you back in trance, even deeper, later on. Mmmmm. :-)

Anyway, the straight script/"Down by the Sea" recording didn't come out very well because, in an attempt to record my voice nice and loud, with the music playing softly but audibly in the background, I had the speakers turned up fairly high and held the mic close to my face. So when I played it back afterwards, I could hear every little breath and lip smack all too clearly. Yuck. Not pleasant listening at all.

But the babble-ized recording turned out quite nicely, and I used it as the background audio track in my Bedtime session last night with "Mary in the stadium" on lead vocals. It only took a minute to realize I had the babble track up too loud, but I ran with it, and by the end of the session my brain was nicely scrambled. It took me a bit longer to get to sleep than it has with my more successful experiments, but I see a lot of potential here. A lot.

Plus, I was really doing two experiments last night, since I had also switched out Medications A and B for an older, cheaper drug that I still had on hand. Medication C is prescribed primarily for restless legs, which is another thing that keeps me awake at night; but the doctor had hoped it would help me with my insomnia, too. Unfortunately, it didn't allow me to "turn my brain off" the way I needed to, the way my current (outrageously expensive) Medication B does. So, since I have the "brain off" problem mostly solved now, but I still need something to calm my restless legs, I figured I'd give Medication C another try. And it worked, even with the "bedtime" session itself not being at its best.

Obviously, this all makes me very happy and very hopeful of chucking A and B completely.

This morning I re-recorded myself reading the "straight" Bedtime script, incorporating several enhancements that occurred to me after last night's experience - but not incorporating "Down by the Sea." This time the recording came out every bit as well as I'd I hoped it would. My Reader Drone program enables me to speak loudly, clearly, and with appropriate inflections while still in trance; but it also lets me sound drone-like enough to tickle my subconscious fetish buttons and (I hope) take myself deeper than Mary in the stadium can.

The next step, then, is to try recording "Down by the Sea" all by itself, from the speakers to the mic. I know the sound quality won't be great, but it's only going to be a background track; and I have a tin ear, anyway. I don't think I'll mind. ;-)

Then I'll see if I understand Audacity well enough to combine all three tracks with the straight Bedtime recording on top and the babble-ized Bedtime and "Down by the Sea" as background tracks running in separate speakers.

Results tomorrow...maybe.

No actual math involved. I promise.

Not too long ago, Follow the Watch taught me an interesting new word: fractionation. This is a hypnotic technique in which the subject is drawn into trance, awakened, and drawn back in several times in short succession. He says it's very helpful in teaching you how to go deep and stay deep. So I've been trying to do at least a little bit of that, myself, these last few weeks. I don't have the time for several uninterrupted hours of trance-play like he describes, but I am getting into the habit of doing at least three or four sessions a day, two at a time when I can manage it.

I've talked already about the "bedtime" session I've been working on, and I have a "morning" session now, as well. It includes suggestions about things like handling stress and keeping my mouth shut when I need to. I've discovered that I get the best results from these sessions if I play Lady Ru'etha's mp3 first, then the morning or bedtime session right afterwards, while I'm still pleasantly hazy and relaxed.

And by "best results," I mean excellent results. I went to sleep very quickly last night and am noticing a huge reduction in my stress levels during the day. And I really am obeying the suggestion I gave myself that curse words wouldn't even occur to me while I was at work.

I'm still boggling at just how suggestible I've turned out to be. This is just the kind of thing I've always dreamed of. I'm enjoying the experience of being controlled, but it's also teaching me self control of the kind I've always needed. And I'm just so much calmer and happier these days.

Now if only I could find the time to unpack that computer mic and try it out. I'm so excited by the possibilities there.

My Hypnotic Adventure Continues

Okay, first of all, that robot program I mentioned yesterday, the one I was modifying for personal use? Well, it's turning out to be pretty damn usable...especially after I tweaked it and re-ran it a couple of times. ;-P And now I've tweaked it even further. I can't wait to see what happens when I run it a third time with even more improvements! After all, I know how to push my own buttons better than anyone else; and how better to push my buttons than with a robot program? I'm not able to go deep enough yet to believe I really am becoming a mindless robot, but the imagery in my head is getting clearer and clearer, and my body continues to out-perform my mind by a long shot. You get the drift, I'm sure.

All in all, I guess I probably tranced myself at least six times yesterday, using different sessions. The special session Lady Ru'etha and Follow the Watch made for me, using her voice, continues to work best. I'm sure that's because Lady R. has such a very expressive voice. The little spins and curls she puts on particular words make all the difference in the world. And I've reached the point now, with that particular session, where I can just let my mind drift and not actually focus on what she's saying. I'm falling quicker and quicker, deeper and deeper, and analyzing less and less.

In my mind, I sometimes picture an empty house with many floors, each pitch dark; and I'm drifting from the attic downward, going who knows how many levels deep in the end? When I'm sinking through the empty space within a level, the downward motion is easy. Then I'll hit the floor of that level and get stuck for awhile. But then something else Lady Ru'etha says - sometimes my trigger, sometimes just a word or phrase - will allow me to melt through that floor and on down into a deeper level. And so it begins again.

As for the VH scripts I'm now writing for myself, I have a few different goals in mind. Pleasure, obviously, is a big one. I'm going to have a lot of fun over the coming weeks and months playing out some of my favorite scenarios - including, but not limited to, some from my stories - in an erotic trance.

Another goal is to reduce my level of stress throughout the day and to increase my self control, especially over my tongue. I dropped an inopportune F-bomb at work last week and got chewed out about it, and I do tend to shoot my mouth off from time to time. I need to work on that.

And then there's what might be the most practical and important goal of all: improving the quality of my sleep. I came into all this with the expectation merely of playing out my fantasies, but I quickly came to see that hypnosis has many practical applications for my life. Right now I suffer from insomnia to such an extent that I have to take a couple of heavy-duty prescription medications to drop off every night. But thanks to the "bedtime" program I've been writing and refining for a week, I've now managed to cut the dose of one of those two meds in half. Eventually I'd love to be able to get off both of them entirely, and that seems like a very realistic goal at this point. I've proved to myself that I can go very deep, get very relaxed.

Folks, you have no idea just how good it can feel to get that relaxed. Sure, you do it all the time in your sleep; but think how nice it would be to feel that same level of relaxation while you had enough awareness to appreciate it. I personally notice it most in my shoulders. It's almost as if my arms pop painlessly out of their sockets and just dangle like puppet arms at my sides. It just feels soooo nice. I had no idea how much stress I was carrying from day to day until I started experimenting with hypnosis.

Again, I cannot recommend Virtual Hypnotist highly enough. Once you get the hang of it, you can write a script for any kind of session you want. And while the voice synthesizer program lacks all the delightful subtleties of Lady Ru'etha's voice, you can use even that to your advantage. I'm sticking with the Mary/stadium voice, and I have each personalized program begin with, "This is the voice of your inner drone, currently tasked with...." Then I have her tell me how good it feels to be commanded by my "tiny silver core" - a phrase some of you will recognize from one of my most self-revelatory stories. Yes, I'm using a lot of imagery from my stories, entirely on purpose, because those images already have so much resonance for me even when I'm not in trance.

P.S.: The image above is from the cover of Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson.

P.P.S.: At some later point, I might be persuaded to modify some of my personal VH sessions for use by some of you out there. Just let me know if you're interested. ;-)

Just a little something to tide you over

I haven't really had any contact with Lady Ru'etha this week because of an unexpected health crisis in her family (Stop by her blog and leave an encouraging comment, if you like). But I did spend two solid hours on the phone with Jukebox, and we had a great time talking about our shared interests. It would be so much fun to interview him online, either by text or podcast. We'll see what develops.

Meanwhile, I continue to experiment with Virtual Hypnotist and the special session Lady Ru'etha and Follow the Watch put together for me. The short version is that things are going very, very well. The long version will have to wait until Saturday or Sunday, but in the meantime, I thought you might enjoy this new Depeche Mode video. The drugged depersonalization is exciting - at first, anyway. By the end, it's turned into a nightmare. But there's a real message here about being forced to live as something or someone you're not. Anyway, it's a cool song and a brilliant video. Enjoy.

A Great Adventure Begins, Part 2

NOTE: This post is a follow-up to the post just below. If you haven't stopped by my blog in a few days, you really do need to read that one before this one.

Okay, so now it's time for me to stop dangling you and let you drop gently back to earth. I'll start by telling how how I started.

The first mp3 Lady Ru'etha shared with me was "Robotic Transformation 101." I came into this one stone-cold ignorant about what to do or what to expect, and was very much afraid that I wouldn't be able to get over my self-consciousness enough to go under. My mental image of what real-life hypnosis looked like was based entirely on stage shows, and I really doubted I could allow myself to relax that much. Oh, I wanted to, very badly. But I doubted I could.

Well, for some reason that's no longer clear to me, I thought I needed to be lying down for the recording - but I didn't have an mp3 player then (I bought one yesterday), so I had to listen in the living room where the computer was. And in order to really splay out like I thought I needed to do, I had to drag the mattress off the futon, down onto the floor. Now, folks, if you don't own a futon yourself, you have no idea how heavy and cumbersome those mattresses are - especially if you don't have anyone around to help you move them! And putting one back again without assistance is even harder. :-/ But I digress.

Anyway, there I am, turning on the recording and then flopping down on the floor with my eyes closed, trying to relax. And practically the first sentence of the recording is a suggestion that I listen to "Safe Space" for a week before trying this mp3. Damn. I didn't have "Safe Space."

But I went ahead and did my best to listen and relax and imagine. And I did enjoy the sensuality of Lady Ru'etha's voice and the creativity of her language; but when all was said and done, I felt like I'd experienced nothing more than a pleasantly relaxing guided meditation.

So I wrote her back and asked what to do next, but she didn't respond because she was in the middle of a move and a bunch of other things that kept her away from her e-mail. Or so I imagined in my saner moments. In my less sane moments, I wondered if she wasn't answering because she was disappointed in me.

Anyway, long story short, I eventually stumbled across her Realm of Bliss podcasts and saw that she'd given my blog a very favorable review in one of the most recent ones. That let me know she hadn't thrown me out with the garbage. So, newly energized, I went back and hunted for "Safe Space" in a place I hadn't thought to look before, and there it was. Just like Missy/melissa/m finally getting Black Pearl's message in Willing Subject. Not that I think Lady Ru'etha was playing those sorts of mind games with me, but, well, you know. ;-)

The first time I listened to "Safe Space" (sitting upright on the futon this time ;-)) I definitely felt more relaxed - not to mention aroused - than I had with "Robotic Transformation 101." The second time I listened to it, I was resting my hands lightly atop my thighs; and I noticed that the longer I listened, the limper my arms became and the further my hands slid outward. Finally they just dropped right off my thighs and thunked onto the futon. That was a very cool moment.

But I still didn't feel like anything but my body was responding. My mind felt wide awake. In fact, the whole time I was listening - each of the three times I listened to those two mp3's - I was constantly analyzing my sensations, thinking about what I could write on my blog about them, wondering how to get Lady Ru'etha or Jukebox to help me, etc. In other words, the inside of my head seemed to be its usual pinball-machine self.

So now we come to the part of the story I told you in my previous blog entry. I won't repeat myself here; I'll just note that Follow the Watch's "Robot Mode" e-mail and the encouraging words of Lady Ru'etha and several other members of the Realm of Bliss Yahoo group convinced me that I really had gone under and just didn't know it.

Then came Virtual Hypnotist and that special program Lady R and FtW cooked up for me. You know what happened (well, some of what happened ;-)) to me the first time I watched that one. It crashed straight through all my mental barriers so hard that I almost...well, I almost. ;-)

When I fired it up for the first time, I thought the program must be missing an element because there was no sound, only visuals. But then I started to feel my jaw drop and my mind dissolve; and while I was still able to analyze it much, I decided that Lady R and FtW had been very clever to leave the audio out. And once everything was over and I'd had a chance to look back on the experience, I thought I understood their game plan. As you know, I'm a writer and an ex-English teacher. Words are my tools. I own them; they don't own me. So, I figured, Lady R and FtW had just dispensed with words entirely (aside from the subliminals) and taken me beyond all that into unfamiliar territory where I was blissfully at their mercy.

So then I ran the session a second time yesterday evening and had an even more mind-melting experience.

And then Lady Ru'etha called me again and asked if I'd had a chance to listen to the mp3 that went with the visuals.

Turns out there was a missing element, one I was supposed to have downloaded separately and combined with the rest of the program before running it. Hah. Serendipity, I tell ya. Pure serendipity.

Well, a couple of hours ago I ran the session with the mp3 for the first time, and you can take everything I said about those first two times and double it. The recording began with instructions that it was for me and me alone, so I won't be giving you any details about what Lady Ru'etha put on it. But I don't think she'll mind if I hint at a few highlights, like how my eyes dropped shut all by themselves when she counted me down and hit zero, even though I thought I should keep them open to let the spiral and subliminals do their work. So I forced my eyes back open, but then they shut themselves again later on when she drove home the trigger, and I just let my forehead sag completely against the monitor, then down onto my arms crossed atop the computer table. But then I was upright again a minute or two later, eyes wide open and typing like a dyslexic automaton - still completely, deliciously under. And then a minute or so after that I just flopped back into my chair like a stringless puppet. Mmmmm. It was all just as wonderful as I'd hoped it would be. :-)

So now she's implanted a trigger in me. I know what it is, more or less. It's a little hazy and I'm not trying too hard to think about it because I don't really want to. That's my own decision, not something she planted in me...as far as I can tell, anyway. ;-) But I am wondering if it's strong enough yet to really drop me. How many times do I have to hear it before she can just speak the words and send me slumping? Wow, what a thought! I'm just dying to have it become reality.

I told Lady Ru'etha a day or two ago that I feel the way I felt the first time I dated a woman. I couldn't wait for that first kiss, because I knew it would tell me for sure if what I thought was true was really true. But that woman kept me dangling for three or four dates - waiting, I think, to be sure I was as ready as I thought I was. And Lady Ru'etha is doing the same with me again now. She hasn't put me into trance over the phone yet; we've just talked. And that's been a lot of fun all by itself.

I just have to trust her, as the experienced one, to know when the time is right. And in the meantime, I'll keep making myself as ready as I can. Somehow, I don't think it's going to take much longer.

P.S.: Once I post this entry, I'm going to start updating and rearranging the links in my sidebar, so watch that space next. :-)

P.P.S.: Just so you know, the special mp3 Lady Ru'etha made me also stressed, from start to finish, that my loving relationship was with my girlfriend and that the hypnosis was only a way to play out my fantasies.

A great Adventure Begins, Part 1

So....where to begin? I know I left you hanging Wednesday, and I'm only going to lower you halfway back to earth today; but I promise that by tomorrow evening, your feet will have touched the ground.

But again: where to begin?

My comments in this previous blog entry led to some private correspondence with Lady Ru'etha, which led eventually to my trying out her "Robotic Transformation 101" and "Safe Space" mp3's. I thought they were nicely relaxing and pleasurable, but I didn't think I was really experiencing trance - certainly not the kind of trance Jukebox describes in his hypnosis blog. I never lost track of Lady Ru'etha's voice, nor did I feel much different in my mind; it seemed like most of the effect was in my body. And of course, it's my mind that really matters to me. That's what I want to feel controlled.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bad time to get hold of Jukebox or Lady Ru'etha themselves; so there I was, dangling just as I'm about to leave you dangling, when I happened across her Realm of Bliss podcasts. In one of them she interviews a guy by the name of Follow the Watch, who has created a freeware program called Virtual Hypnotist. The program itself sounded fantastic - you can hypnotize yourself in the privacy of your own home, either with preset scripts and visuals or with things you create on your own - and Follow the Watch said he had some simple mp3 inductions available for download on his site, as well.

So I stopped by there and downloaded the VH program and an mp3 called "Resistant Induction" (To find it from the main VH page, just click the link called "other hypnosis stuff" and scroll down a little). I could only try the mp3 that night because it was in the middle of the week and I didn't have much time before I had to go to bed. But that induction worked better for me than "Safe Space," and it made me even hungrier for more. So the next day, still not having heard from Lady Ru'etha or Jukebox, I joined Lady R's Realm of Bliss Yahoo group and sent out a desperate plea for advice.

Well, folks, by the following day I'd heard back not only from Lady Ru'etha and Jukebox, but also from Follow the Watch - who turned out to be a member of the group and one of Lady Ru'etha's special "pets." She actually had him e-mail me in "Robot Mode," just like one of the characters in her joint story with Jukebox, I Can't Wait, to prove to me that even an analytical mind like mine can be drawn very deep, under the right circumstances. Ohh, I can't tell you how blindingly, squirmingly awesome it was to get that e-mail! Of course, I didn't know how to respond to it any more than newbie RandomAccess in "I Can't Wait" when shylittlekitten wrote him in trance. Fortunately, Follow the Watch wrote me a second e-mail as himself right afterwards, and we struck up a conversation.

Well, long story short - and this is where I'm going to leave you dangling, I'm afraid - I've fiddled around a little with Virtual Hypnotist throughout the week in the scant hours and half-hours I had available, with increasingly good results. I've been sharing everything with Lady R and FtW, and a couple of days ago they cooked up an induction designed especially for me, which I've only had the chance to try once so far, but....

Holy. Fucking. Shit. They did it, folks. They totally did it. It's like they built the biggest, baddest battering ram they could and just slammed right past my mental gatekeeper, straight into my subconscious, and then headed directly toward my favorite buttons and started pushing. Hard. I'm sure some of you have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and will be familiar with this description of what it feels like to drink a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster: "like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick." Yep, that's pretty much what I experienced. I just sat there, sagging in my chair, leaning closer and closer to the swirling screen, watching the subliminals pop in and out all over the fricking place and only catching a handful of them before they disappeared, feeling my mind melt and my body...well, I think I'll keep that bit to myself. ;-)

I only stopped the program when Lady Ru'etha herself called me. Yes, I'd given her my phone number by then. I made that decision before I ever started listening to or watching anything, because everything she's said and done online, and everything others have said about her, has convinced me that she's extremely ethical and respectful of personal boundaries. I wanted to be able to experience the bliss of trance in an erotic but safe way; and when I discovered someone online who was willing to give me that experience because she was as intrigued by me as I was by her, well, basically I just started jumping up and down until I got her attention. ;-) She knows I have a girlfriend and is entirely respectful of that. I'm not going to be her pet in the same way Jukebox is, but I am going to let her play with my mind a bit, maybe implant some triggers my girlfriend can use on me. She's hinted at things she has in mind.

But as of right now, she hasn't put me under, herself. We're getting to know each other a bit better, and I'm devoting the whole rest of the weekend to learning how to use Virtual Hypnotist. I already have some ideas for scripts I might write for myself, and I've run them by Lady R and Follow the Watch. They've both been very encouraging.

So here I go now, off to start experimenting in earnest. I'll write a more detailed blog entry sometime tomorrow evening, after I've had more of a chance to learn and play with VH properly. And experience that tailored session again...and again...and again. :-D

Watch this space.