CHAPTER TWELVE
“Questions”
Wednesday, December 20th, Night
Dave called in to the office that night and left a message for Susan delegating all of the tasks he had scheduled for the next day and the day after to some of his senior associates giving himself a five day holiday weekend. He then called and talked to Jennifer, his sister.
“Hello.”
It was a female voice but Dave was instantly sure it wasn’t Jennifer.
“Is this Megan or Molly?” Dave asked.
“This is Molly, Uncle Dave. Just a minute, I’ll get Mom.” He heard her set the phone down and yell for her mother. “Mom, telephone. It’s Uncle Dave.”
David could hear Jennifer say something back but it was too soft to make out exactly. A moment later, Jennifer picked up an extension and hollered that she had it. A second after that he heard the click as, presumably, Molly hung up the phone.
“Hey, little brother. Is this the call where you tell me you’re coming to visit?”
“What choice do I have? All the women in my life are conspiring against me to make sure I do.”
“I knew there was a reason I loved those girls of yours. Are they there?”
“Sitting across the table from me.”
“I’m proud of you, Dave. You finally got a backbone again. So, when will you be here?”
“Well, I just got off the phone with my office. I delegated all my work away so I’m yours for the next five days if you want me. We were thinking of coming over early tomorrow afternoon for the twins birthday. Is there going to be a party?”
“Emily reminded you that it was their birthday, didn’t she?”
“No!” Dave said, smiling at the three women sitting around the table.
“Oh, so it was Hayley.”
Dave closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Have you no faith in me? Do you really believe I’d forget my own nieces’ birthdays?”
“David, you forgot my sixteenth birthday party and you were involved in planning it. Hayley reminded you, didn’t she?”
Dave surrendered.
“Yes,” he said rather grumpy.
“So, will you and the girls be staying here through Christmas? Please, David? I really don’t want it to be just me and the girls again.”
“Hold on.” Dave put the phone down and covered the mouthpiece. “She wants us to stay there until Christmas.”
Emily and Hayley looked at each other, smiled and then shouted “Yes!” at the same time.
“Olivia?”
“David, I have never met your sister. I have no way of knowing whether I will enjoy myself there anymore than I know whether I will enjoy my Christmas here. I leave it up to you.”
“Better get used to it, Daddy,” Emily said with a smirk.
Dave stuck his tongue out at Emily and then put the phone back to his ear. “Alright, we’ll stay.”
“Yes!” Jennifer shouted.
“Hey, Jenn, You okay?”
There was a long pause. “Yes, darling brother, just a little down in the dumps right now. Once you all get here, I’ll be just fine.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow then. Oh, and Jen?”
“Yeah?”
“There’ll be four of us.”
“Who’s the fourth?”
“A friend of mine. Her name’s Olivia. She’s staying with me for a while.”
“Where did you meet her, and why haven’t I heard about her before?”
“Because until yesterday, I hadn’t met her. We’ve been talking on-line for the last few months. She left her job up in Boston and came down here looking for a new job. When she mentioned she would be in the area, I asked if she wanted to meet. We hit it off so I asked if she wanted to stay here. Save some money and such.”
“Uh huh.”
“Gimmee a break, Jenn.”
“Of course you can bring her, Dave. I am the last person in the world who would want someone left alone on Christmas.”
“Thank you. See you tomorrow.” They hung up and Dave looked around the room. “Well, that seemed to work.”
“Told you so,” Hayley said as she stood up from the table.
The four settled in for a quiet night at home. When Emily and Hayley were ready for bed, Emily came over and asked where she should sleep.
“In your bed.”
Emily smiled, kissed his cheek, and said “I knew you couldn’t do it. Not with Hayley around.”
She turned and headed for the bedroom.
“Hey, Em,” Dave called out before she disappeared down the hall. He waited for her to turn back before speaking again. “I don’t wanna hear about you trying to convince Hayley to do what you did. If I find out you’re pressuring or trying to convince her, I’ll spank you and send you back to your mother.”
Emily smiled. “I would never do that, Daddy.”
She turned and went down the hall to the bedroom she shared with Hayley leaving Dave and Olivia alone in the living room.
Olivia and Dave slept together that night, and Olivia slept naked.
“It’s how I always sleep,” she told him when he asked about it. There was a quick kiss and a lot of snuggling together but no sex. Dave was sure he’d hear about that in the morning from Emily.
Thursday December 21. Early Afternoon
Dave was surprised they had gotten out of the apartment so early. By noon, everyone was packed and ready to head to Jenn’s house. They loaded all the luggage into the car and then sat down and ate lunch together. By one thirty in the afternoon, the four were in Olivia’s rental car, a four-door sedan, and on their way across town.
While Dave lived in old town, right in the heart of the city, Jennifer’s house was on the outskirts of the city, out in what Dave called the boonies.
Dave viewed his sister as somewhat of a tragic figure. She was two years older than him and was definitely the smarter of the two. She had finished high school with a 3.8 GPA and had easily gone on to college. At college she had met an unusual young man with the unusual name of Dimitri Santiago, a first generation American who’s father was Bolivian and who’s mother was Greek. Jennifer and Dimitri fell madly in love and married two months after finishing college, both with degrees in business. Both also already had jobs to go to. Dimitri took over as the head of the American branch of his parents import/export business while Jennifer went to work for Dave’s uncle doing the exact job that Dave now held.
At the time, Dave was two years out of high school, already married to Rebbecca, and they were only months from finding out that they were pregnant with Emily. Dave was working his way up through the company starting in the warehouse.
Within a year of their marriage, Dimitri was diagnosed with some degenerative brain disease that David could never remember the name of and was told he had maybe two years to live. Within months Jennifer was pregnant, desperate to hold onto some piece of her beloved Dimitri. Molly and Megan were the result, and Dimitri died a few days after their first birthday.
Dimitri’s parent’s had bought him the house where Jennifer now lived when he finished college. He and Jennifer had lived there from the day they got married. Upon his death, Jennifer inherited a small fortune, somewhere around three million dollars between his trust fund and his life insurance policy and was told that the house was hers by her in-laws. At first, Jennifer wanted to sell the house only to find out Dimitri’s parents would have been devastated if she had sold or rented out their gift to their late son. Jennifer was all but forced to remain in the house where Dimitri died.
Jennifer had dated some over the last fifteen years but none of the men had ever matched up to Dimitri. About five years before, Jennifer had all but stopped dating and settled into life, alone, with her two wonderful daughters who were now about to celebrate their sixteenth birthday.
Dave was driving the car. Olivia was in the passenger seat beside him with Emily and Hayley in the backseat. It seemed to Dave that Hayley had been waiting for a captive audience. As soon as they were in the car and on the road, she sat forward in her seat, wrapped her arms around his head rest to hold herself up, and started the grand inquisition of Olivia. It seemed that Hayley wanted to know all about SLuT9 and SLuT10.
“Daddy told me that SLuT10 doesn’t have the nasty side affects of SLuT9. Is that true?”
“I have no idea, Hayley. I’ve never used it nor seen it used. Theoretically though, no, it shouldn’t.”
“Does it still make the woman horny?”
“According to the information Dr. Casey sent me – Dr. Casey is the man who invented it – no, it doesn’t.”
“It doesn’t,” Dave added and immediately regretted it.
“You’ve used it, Daddy?” Hayley asked.
Dave nodded.
“On who?”
“Mishy. Do we have to talk about this?”
But now Emily was interested as well.
“Why did you use it on Mishy?”
“I wanted to find out what was going on inside her head but she wouldn’t open up. So I gave her some SLuT10 and told her to answer all my questions fully and completely.”
“At least she wasn’t horny the entire time you were interrogating her,” Emily said softly.
Olivia chuckled at the comment. Hayley looked from her sister to Olivia to Dave, obviously confused. She apparently decided right then was not the time to inquire further on that topic and went on asking about SluT10.
“So, SLuT10 is nothing more or less than total mind control?”
Olivia shifted in her seat, turning sideways so she could see Hayley better.
“Basically, yes. With the level of control the formula gives the user, there’s really no need for it to make the woman horny. If the user wants to have sex, he can just order her to have sex with him.”
“Why are you so interested in all of this, Hayley?” Dave asked.
“Unlike you and Olivia and Emily, I just found out about this stuff last night. I haven’t had the time to ask all the questions and figure everything out.”
“And I’m sure the fact that she’s a geek has nothing to do with it,” Emily said with a smile.
Dave didn’t see Hayley stick her tongue out at her sister but he would have bet good money that she had.
“So how does it work?”
“The main ingredient in all of the versions of SLuT has been a drug that Dr. Casey invented years ago, even before you were born, called Luckicite. It lowers the inhibitions of the individual. It was originally formulated as a truth serum, something better than sodium pentothal. It didn’t work though.
“The other main ingredient is a synthetically produced form of serotonin. Serotonin is one of the chemicals released by the brain that makes you feel good. The synthetic version is called serotoxin. Basically, the Luckicite makes a woman willing to do whatever is asked of her while the serotoxin makes her feel good about doing it.
“The individual has no awareness of being drugged, feels good doing the chore, and remembers herself being a willing participant. While she may later question her judgment in doing as she was told, she can’t very well grow to dislike or hate the person who told her to do it. After all, she enjoyed it at the time and she was a willing participant. It also lowers the chances of the individual going to the police or looking deeper into why she did these things just because someone said to.”
“Why would Dr. Casey invent such a drug? Was he still trying to come up with a new truth serum?”
“No!” Olivia said flatly. “Dr. Casey had long since abandon that quest, even though in the end he did succeed in doing exactly that. As your father just said, by giving someone even a small dose of SLuT10 and ordering her to tell the truth, you have yourself a truth serum.
“When Dr. Casey discovered what SLuT did twenty years or so ago, he wasn’t doing it for noble purposes. He was doing it for exactly the same reasons any man would use the stuff. He was using it to have sex with any woman he wanted. The early versions didn’t work nearly as well as the SLuT9 your father got. Some were painful. Some took a tremendous amount of time, hours, to begin to take effect and then wore off within a few hours. You ended up with two, maybe three, hours of the woman being truly horny and willing. I think Dr. Casey viewed himself as some sort of mad scientist. In the end, he was right. That’s exactly what he was.”
“Does it only work for the person who gives it to you?”
“No. That’s one of the drawbacks to the formula and one Dr. Casey had only begun to figure out an answer for when he died. He had this theory that you could make a version of SLuT that was DNA specific to the person giving it. I’d have to read further into his notes to get all the details but he was working towards just such a thing. Right now, once given a dose of the formula, you are pretty much at the whim of whoever happens to pass by.”
“Does that include you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Daddy said you’ve received so much SLuT that you’re now… his slave,” Hayley said with a shrug.
“That’s true. But that was my choice. The SLuT formula effects a persons desires. From the time I was in high school, I preferred being dominated. Dr. Casey used that against me when I was his lab assistant and then, later, when he used me as his guinea pig in testing the earlier SLuT formulas. This led to me being his… sex toy. The drug has a deteriorating effect on that part of the brain that gives a person self-will, that part of your brain that screams that you get to decide what happens to you. With me, that voice has always been almost a whisper. I preferred allowing others to make my decisions for me. The SLuT formula made it worse, and, eventually, disabled it completely. I knew, or strongly suspected what would happen when I met your father. I had suspicions for years about what effect one or two or three more doses would have on me and whether I would be able to cope.
Olivia looked at Dave and studied his face for a long moment. Only Hayley saw the look on Olivia’s face as she continued.
“When I met your father, I knew he would dose me. I trusted Dr. Casey’s judgment and hoped he hadn’t led me wrong this time. When your father I were in that van together, I knew immediately that Dr. Casey hadn’t let me wrong. He’d picked just the right man to send me and the formula to.”
“Do you think he intended for you to be here all along?”
“I think Dr. Casey was a lot more lucid than he let on to his friends, family and associates. I would imagine that Dr. Casey was perfectly cognizant of what would happen to me when I arrived here. He counted on it.”
Olivia looked at Hayley.
“I’m the only one who’s so far along. Dr. Casey professed his love to me before I graduated college. I left anyways. When he realized what he had done to me and what effect it would have on my life, he wanted to make sure I was cared for. I knew when your father made love to me that first time in the van that he was the man to take care of me. I could have run. I could have fled. I would have become depressed within a few days but there are ways around it, ways I didn’t mention to your father at the time.”
“What ways?” Dave asked.
“I’m not sure I wanna tell you. You might send me away.”
Dave smiled at her. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“It’s simple,” Olivia said with a shrug. “I already told Hayley that it isn’t user specific. All I’d have to do is find someone else to swear myself too. Someone else to take care of me. Another master. It would be difficult. I have bonded with you, David. But, if worse came to worst, the option is there, but I don’t see myself taking it.”
“Why didn’t you?” Hayley asked. “Someone you know better? Someone you trust?”
“I may not have known your father. I may not know him that well now. But I trusted him the moment I met him. Dr. Casey was always a very good judge of personalities.”
“You’re in love with my father, aren’t you?”
“Okay, that’s enough!” Dave said. “Hayley sit back in your seat. We’re almost there. I do have one question for you though, Dr. Barrett.”
“Oh sure,” Olivia teased. “Last night I was slut. Now I’m Dr. Barrett.”
The two girls both giggled in the back seat. Dave shot Olivia a look.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that,” Olivia said, dropping her eyes to the floor. “It’s not true. It was meant as a joke.”
Dave nodded and turned his eyes back to the road.
“I called you Dr. Barrett because the question is to that part of you that makes you the person who knows more about SLuT10 than anyone else in the world right now.”
Olivia looked up at Dave and gave him a nod.
“My question is if I gave someone a dose, a small dose, one or two drops, and told them to make a life altering change, I’m pretty sure they would do it at the time but would that…”
“Suggestion? Would they take the suggestion to heart and change their life as you had instructed?” Olivia said, finishing his question.
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know, David. Dr. Casey never used SLuT10. You are the only one who has used it, and I simply haven’t had time to go through Dr. Casey’s notes to figure out what kind of effect SLuT10 might have.”
“Now I feel guilty for using the stuff on Mishy. Who knows? I could have made one little remark that she takes as an order and sets out to change her life.”
“There’s an easy way to test it, Daddy,” Emily said, listening from the back seat. “Give it to someone, someone willing, and order them to do something you know they don’t want to do and see if the order holds once the drug has worn off.”
“I wonder where I’d find such a person?” Dave said, looking into his daughter’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
“Hey, you could give it to Em and tell her to become a clean freak. You’re always saying she needs to learn to pick up after herself,” Hayley said half-teasing.
Emily gave her a swift smack on the arm for her tease.
“Ow!” screamed Hayley, clutching her upper arm.
“Emily, don’t hit your sister.” Dave paused. “I think it’s been five or six years since I’ve had reason to say that. Anyway, Em, it’s pretty much exactly what you suggested.”
“I know,” Emily said, still scowling at Hayley. “Speaking of the SLuT formula, Daddy, did you pack it?”
“I was wondering when someone was going to ask. I guessed it would be you.”
“So did you?”
Dave nodded. “Yes. I packed the SLuT10 just in case. I left the SLuT9 at home though.”
“Just in case of what, Daddy?” Emily asked.
“Just in case your aunt or cousins clue in to the fact that something odd is going on around here. With the SLuT10, I can at least stop them from doing something that would hurt all of us and make them listen, for a while anyway.”
“Hurt us how?” Hayley asked.
“Hurt us by calling the police or the government or … well, who knows? I’ve never really thought about who to call if I found out someone had a drug that allowed them to control minds. The problem never came up before.”
“You’ve led a sheltered life, haven’t you?” Olivia said, teasing.
Everyone laughed.