Part II: The Apparatus
It had been so good the first time that Andrea had decided to masturbate with the beer
bottle again just before going to bed. It had been even better the second time, since she
was refining her technique, and she fell asleep almost instantly afterwards, sleeping better
than she had in ages.
She woke up to find sunlight streaming through the small window set high up on the wall
of her bedroom. She was comfortable and relaxed, and decided to stay in bed and doze
for a while. After drifting in and out of sleep for a while, Andrea decided it might be time to
get up. Checking her clock, she noticed with shock that it was already 2:23.
The hours for calling the psych experiment place were one to four, so it shouldn't really
matter, but she had intended to call immediately after one, just in case they filled their
need for subjects before she called in. Andrea got up and pulled on a pair of panties. She
was feeling kind of sexy after last night, and chose a g-string, which she rarely wore.
Grabbing the newspaper, she headed for the phone. Opening to the ad that she had cir-
cled, she dialed the number in the ad. The phone rang a few times before a woman an-
swered.
"Hello, Dr. Ridgewell's psychology lab, can I help you?"
There was something about the woman's voice that Andrea didn't like. It had an edge on
it, something hard to place: Not threatening, not abraisive, exactly. It was just… severe,
humourless.
"Yes," replied Andrea, "I'm interested in being a subject in the experiment Dr. Ridgewell is
running."
"Very good," said the woman and gave Andrea an address, "be here as soon as you can."
Andrea sensed that the woman was about to hang up without saying goodbye and blurted
out, "Hold on!"
"Yes?" said the woman, a note of impatience in her voice.
"Could you tell me what the nature of the experiment is?"
"I'm sorry," said the woman, sounding annoyed, "but the nature of psychological experi-
ments is that to obtain valid results, the subjects cannot know what is actually being tested
until after the experiment is concluded."
With that, the woman hung up. Andrea mentally kicked herself. Three years of psychology
courses and she had let her excitement cause her to forget one of the first things she had
learned. Of course they couldn't tell her what was being tested. If she knew what they
were looking for, her responses would be subconciously affected, even if she didn't delib-
erately attempt to botch their results. The woman at the desk probably now thought that
Andrea was a complete idiot. Andrea hated that. She couldn't stand it when she gave
people a bad first impression; she had to remind herself that she herself had a bad first
impression of the woman as well. That made her feel slightly better.
Before leaving, Andrea decided to make herself look good. She put on a short skirt suit,
which her mother had bought her a couple of years ago for job interviews. It was too hot
for stockings, so she just slipped on a pair of high-heeled sandals. For reasons she could-
n't explain, even to herself, she took the jacket and blouse off again and switched her bra
for one of a push-up variety. When she put the blouse back on, she left an extra button
undone to reveal just a little bit of cleavage. She shrugged the jacket back on, and went to
the bathroom to tastefully apply a little bit of makeup and pull her long red hair back into a
ponytail. Inspecting herself in the mirror, she decided that she looked the best she had in
weeks; she didn't even think her thighs looked fat. Satisfied, she headed out the door.
Her opinion that she looked good was confirmed on the subway. She couldn't help but
notice that she was getting a lot of looks from the guys. Andrea didn't really like the atten-
tion, and stared down at her feet. She thought about doing up the button on her blouse to
hide her cleavage, but she couldn't think of a way to do it that wasn't obvious. So she en-
dured the lusty glances, blushing lightly, and fairly soon she was at her stop.
The address she had been given was about four or five blocks uphill from the subway sta-
tion. Andrea looked about for a bus she could take, but there didn't seem to be any wait-
ing, so she started walking. Although slightly cooler than the day before, it was still swel-
teringly hot. Worse, it was humid today. Andrea very quickly began to sweat. Halfway to
the lab, she removed her jacket and slung it over her shoulder. It helped a bit, but she was
still breathing heavily and red in the face when she arrived at the lab.
The building didn't look at all as she had expected it to. It was a very run-down three story
building, part of a row of identical attached buildings. The third floor windows were
cracked and boarded up. Andrea realized that there probably wasn't much money out
there for independent psychological researchers, so it sort of made sense after all. She
was about to go in, when a guy came out the door.
He was tall and thin, somewhat cute in a geeky sort of way. He was wearing a small pair
of oval eyeglasses and peered down at her through them.
"Excuse me," Andrea said, "is this the psych lab?"
"Yeah," said the guy, "I just finished being tested."
"Oh," said Andrea, "what sort of thing does it involve?" She figured that although the peo-
ple running the experiment had good reason not to tell her, this guy probably would.
"It's pretty boring," he said, "just a short film and a long questionnaire."
"That's what I figured," said Andrea, somewhat disappointed.
"Well, nice meeting you," said the guy, and walked off.
Andrea pulled open the door and walked in. The first thing she noticed was that the place
was very heavily air-conditioned. Soaked as she was in sweat, it was very cold for her,
and her perfect nipples became erect almost instantly. It was only then that she noticed
that the sweat had caused her blouse to go almost transparent, and her black bra and
erect nipples were clearly visible underneath it.
This did not go unnoticed by the receptionist, who raised an eyebrow at her. The woman
looked as unpleasant as she sounded. She was not unattractive; on the contrary, she was
very beautiful. But it was a very harsh sort of beauty. The eyebrow she had raised at An-
drea was thin and completely black. Her lips were equally thin, and didn't smile. Her fea-
tures were angular and her face pale, and her raven hair was pulled back into a tight bun.
Andrea donned her jacket once more, as much because she was embarassed as because
she was cold. She walked up to the desk and told the woman she was here for the ex-
periment.
"Yes," said the woman, "Dr. Ridgewell is expecting you. Second door on the left." She
gestured to a corridor leading off the lobby. Andrea's subconcious mind thought it detected
something menacing in her tone, but her concious mind rejected the notion on the basis
that she was biased against this woman from the start.
Andrea walked down the corridor and through the indicated door. She entered what ap-
peared to be a fairly ordinary psychology lab, with a few writing desks, some audio-visual
equipment and a coffee maker. There didn't appear to be anyone there, so she sat down
at one of the desks to wait.
About ten seconds after she had sat down, a door at the far end of the room opened and
Albert Einstein walked in. Or rather, a man in an Albert Einstein mask walked in.
"Hello," he said, in a voice that sounded distinctly robotic and inhuman, "don't mind the
mask or the voice filter. It's essential to the experiment that the subject does not see the
experimenter's real face or hear his real voice. You'll understand later."
This struck Andrea as unusual, but no more unusual than many psych experiments she
had participated in previously. Modern psychology had progressed to the point that most
human behaviour could be at least somewhat explained in most ordinary circumstances.
Research was moving in the direction of seeing how people behave in unusual circum-
stances.
"Coffee?" he offered.
Andrea had never been to a psych experiment at which she had not been offered coffee.
She had also never refused a cup.
"Sure," she said, and took the offered mug.
She sipped the coffee. It was delicious, made just the way she liked it. And it was warm,
but not warm enough to burn one's mouth. So she took a bigger sip and thanked Dr.
Ridgewell, or Einstein, as she thought of him now. She hadn't had a cup of coffee before
leaving her house in the morning, and she was deeply grateful to get some now.
"Now that you're here," said Einstein in his mechanical voice, "I can tell you a bit about the
experiment. I'm sure you're familiar with Pavlov's dogs?"
"Yeah," she said, "he always rang a bell before feeding them, and thereby taught them to
salivate at the sound of a bell, demonstrating what we call classical conditioning. We
learned that in first year."
"Ah," replied Einstein, "a psych student. I wonder how that will affect the results. I guess
we'll just have to see. Anyway, as you probably know, it's difficult to demonstrate classical
conditioning on humans, since our minds are more complex. Our thoughts operate at a
higher level, and so we can be conciously aware that even though we hear a bell, it does-
n't necessarily mean we're going to be fed."
"Right," agreed Andrea, wondering where this was headed.
"So, to test it on humans, I theorize that we need to burrow down below the concious mind
and use stimuli that work on our most base instincts, our inner animal nature."
"Isn't food a fairly basic stimulus?"
"Only if you're on the verge of starving to death, and that would be impractical for the pur-
poses of our experiment. No, I'm thinking of two sensations that go right to the bedrock of
your subconcious. Sexual pleasure… and pain."
Andrea didn't like the sound of this, and said so.
"Oh no, I'm afraid it's too late to back out of the experiment now," said Einstein, in a voice
that sounded threatening even through the filter, "You've been commited to it for a while
now."
Andrea got up from her chair and backed towards the door. Or at least, she tried to. She
managed to get herself to her feet, but her knees were wobbling underneath her and her
head had begun to spin.
"The coffee…" she whispered.
"Yep. The oldest trick in the book," said Einstein, and shrugged at her as she pitched for-
ward onto the ground.
Andrea awoke in what she quickly figured out was a trunk. She was still woozy, and
pounded feebly on the lid of the trunk. She became aware of the sounds of an engine, and
highway asphalt whizzing by under the tires. The car hit a pothole and she banged her
head painfully on the lid. She groaned, and resigned herself to the ride, trying to estimate
how far they were driving, and keeping track of the turns they were taking. She was too
out of it at first to be scared, but that quickly passed and she began to sob.
She was still crying her eyes out when the car stopped. She heard footsteps and the trunk
lid opened a crack. She had been planning to attempt some sort of escape when that
happened, but before she could react, a cloth was tossed into the trunk and the lid was
slammed shut again. Andrea was puzzled by this for a few moments before she smelled
the unmistakeable odour of chloroform coming from the cloth, and began to beat frantic-
ally on the lid. She began to scream and beg to be let out, but her screams quickly be-
came slurred mumbles, and blackness enveloped her once again.
When she came to again, she thought she was still in the trunk. It was pitch black, and
she seemed to be lying on her back. As she came to her senses, though, she realized that
she wasn't in the trunk anymore. First of all, there was no light coming from a crack be-
tween the lid and the body of the car. This could be explained if it was now nighttime, but
there was more.
There was pressure on the insides of her legs, and gravity wasn't pulling her straight down
on her back. By her best estimation, she was being supported on something which was
leaning back at about a 45 degree angle. She could feel cold metal pressed against her
pussy, and occasionally one of her nipples brushed up against something.
Andrea was suddenly overcome with shock. How could there be something pressed
against her pussy unless… unless she was naked. The air was cold, and she could feel it
against her bare skin. Her nipples were erect and not pressed against any sort of material.
She was definitely naked. More than that, some of the cold metal between her legs was in
contact with places which had never been in direct contact with anything before. She
gasped as she realized that her pubic hair had been completely removed.
Andrea began to struggle, and realized that she couldn't move. Not at all. Her arms and
legs were bound, spreadeagled. In fact, she realized that her legs were being held in a full
sideways splits position, perfectly in line with each other. There was a strap around her
waist and another just below her breasts. Her head was held back by a strap under her
chin, staring up and away from her body. Padded plates were pressed tightly against her
temples, keeping her from turning her head from side to side. She was overwhelmed by
despair when she realized that each and every one of her fingers and toes was bound
down. She couldn't even wiggle them at all. Through experimentation, she quickly discov-
ered that there was not a single part of her body that she could move more than a milli-
meter. She strained and struggled, but none of her bonds would budge. She was forced to
admit to herself that there was absolutely nothing she could do, and began to sob once
more.
She became aware that she had little spots of itchiness all over her body and a vague
ache in her right arm. And her muscles were twitching. At first, she thought that she was
shivering, but the twitching was of a different nature than that.
As she pondered this, a green light came on, maybe six inches away from her eyes. It was
behind frosted glass, so it didn't appear as a single spot, but as a generalized green glow,
bathing her in eerie light. She tried again to get a look at her surroundings, but she could-
n't move her head. Eventually, by swiveling her eyes all the way to the left, she could just
barely see her left shoulder with her peripheral vision. It was bare, as she had expected,
but there were several tiny needles stuck into it, connected to wires. They corresponded
exactly to the itchy spots.
Andrea was a very intelligent girl, and quickly figured out what they were for. They were
sending small electric currents into her muscles, causing them to twitch. She assumed
that there were more, all over her body. Their purpose was to keep her muscles stimu-
lated so they wouldn't atrophy. Andrea realized, with a fresh wave of despair, that this
meant that she was going to be kept in this… thing indefinitely. And that would mean that
the ache in her right arm was an IV needle, feeding her some solution which would keep
her alive through her ordeal, whatever that might be.
Approximately five minutes after the green light came on, there was a whirring, and An-
drea felt something metalic press up against her clit. She whimpered in fear, and a second
later the thing sprung into action, vibrating rapidly. It very quickly began to turn her on,
despite her efforts to ignore it. Through a haze of building pleasure, the robotic words on
Dr. Ridgewell came back to her…
"No, I'm thinking of two sensations that go right to the bedrock of your subconcious. Sex-
ual pleasure… and pain."
Andrea screamed with the realization of what was going to be done to her, and strained
with renewed vigour against the bonds which held her, but there was nothing she could
do. Soon she was exhausted, hanging limp in her restraints, the stimulation of her clit
causing her to whimper with a strange combination of pleasure and terror.
