PART 2

You should read “3D Radio” before reading Part 2, in order to get the context.
Warning: This story starts slow, building the characters and plot (but it gets pretty hot later on).
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Robert slept soundly beside me as I considered my many options. I was definitely not going to post my discovery on the Internet or anywhere else. I was going to hide it. I would simply continue my research as if I had made no discovery. If I later discovered frequency pairs that were useful only for lie-detection, I would report those. If I found any other frequency pairs that provided truth-coercion or hyper-suggestibility, I would add those to my private records. Testing hyper-suggestibility should be fun to test, especially with my husband, and I began to ponder what could I give him as a post-hypnotic suggestion. I’d try to make him do something he’s morally opposed to, and have him enjoy it. Of course, I didn’t expect it to work, any more than it would with regular hypnosis, but that was part of what made science interesting: Trying new things. I finally fell asleep thinking of things to try to make Robert do.

I woke up before Robert, as usual, and I made sure my transmitter was handy. My problem with a very good test of post-hypnotic suggestion was finding something Robert was morally opposed to that wouldn’t get him in trouble if he actually did it. I finally settled on an idea that had potential to get him in trouble, but I calculated was unlikely to. And it would allow me to test another idea: memory-control. Memory is a notoriously fickle thing, and this would be another interesting test.

I switched on the transmitter and shook Robert. No response.

“Robert, open your eyes.” He did.

“Robert, when your alarm goes off, you’re going to get up and go outside in your underwear to check the mailbox. You have always gone outside in your underwear to check the mailbox every morning, in case something was delivered overnight. Nothing has ever been delivered overnight in our mailbox before, but you’re convinced that someday something will be, and you feel compelled to check to be sure nothing came. I know you do this, and we both consider it normal.”

I turned off the transmitter and started getting ready for work. As I was finishing a bagel and coffee, Robert went through the living room and out the front door. He came back a minute later and reported, “Nothing last night.”

I was quite surprised that the suggestion had worked, and apparently, the memory-shaping had also.

“Mm,” I acknowledged. “Did you remember to check yesterday morning, dear?”

“Of course, honey,” he said as he disappeared to the back of the house again, and I head him getting ready for work.

I left for work, but parked my car around the corner to ensure that Robert left on time. He did, and I went on to my office.

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“Well, Dr. Wright, how are your experiments progressing?” my boss asked in the hallway.

“Right on schedule, Dr. Conner.”

He looked skeptical. “Come into my office, please.”

I followed him and we took our seats.

“Is there anything you have to report?” he asked.

I quickly wondered if he could be on to me, but thought it highly unlikely. “No. Paraphrasing Edison’s famous line, I’ve determined many frequencies that don’t work.”

He furrowed his brow. “You increased your working hours significantly for almost 2 weeks and changed your assistants’ schedules. Now you’ve gone back to your old schedule and you were singing in the hallway on your way in this morning.”

“Was I? I hadn’t realized it.”

“Dr. Wright, if you’ve discovered an effective lie-detector and are trying to hide it so you can sell it another company…”

“Absolutely not!” I replied indignantly. “If you must know, my husband and I had really good sex last night, and that’s why I’m in such a good mood, I suspect.” I hoped that would embarrass him enough to make him drop his line of questioning. It didn’t.

“Then why have you increased the frequency increments from 1 millimeter to 5 without discussing it with me first? That’s not the kind of thing you would do without reason.”

Oops. I slipped up. It was comforting to know, however, that I could probably use my transmitter to cover it up, but I didn’t think that was necessary yet. I tried to look sheepish. “I apologize, Dr. Conner. I let my impatience get the better of me. That was a violation in protocol, and I will correct it. We won’t have to retest the frequencies at 5 millimeters, however, so it hasn’t cost us any time.”

Dr. Conner had no further arguments, and I returned to my lab, going back to the unnecessarily narrow 1 millimeter increments.

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That night when I got home, I decided to have a lot more fun with Robert. Instead of telling him what to do step-by-step with the transmitter on the whole time, I decided to try to change his attitudes.