Chapter 19

At 11am, I had Jeremy, Rob, Peter, Steve and Amy in my living room, all fully clothed. Stephanie was there as well, which made sense because she owned her yoga studio. There were two new women as well, Meghan and Laurie. I'd find out why there were there in a bit. Kristen came in from the kitchen with some snacks and drinks for everyone and sat down as well.

"I need you all to Behave Publicly for a bit. I don't need slaves overwhelmed by their sexual urges, I need the smartest, wisest versions of you. I want you to focus on what I talk about, and I'd like you to do your best to help further what I'm trying to do. If you are as smart about this as you can be, you will please me greatly. I have two goals today, which you will split up to help figure out. I will spend time with both groups, as will Kristen."

"The first for the computer science team is to go through the Slave and Loyalty programs and clean them up. Ideally, it would be faster, and less intrusive to the person than the current versions. I want to ensure we know what it is going to do with no side effects. I also want to revise the five instructions we've been giving everyone. For the current slaves, I want to let them live their lives as productively and self driven as possible. I want to maximize the positive side effects we've seen, where people are able to let go of their fears and do what they actually want, or stop doing something they found self-destructive. In fact, if a slave wishes there was something different they could be, I'd like to see if we can help them, within reason. I still want to preserve the secret though. I'd also like to know if there is a way to prevent a person from being trained, such as myself."

"The second group are people with business knowledge. I want to figure out how to turn this device into a legitimate business, possibly using a modified form of the programs we already have. For example, if we could help people quit smoking while still preserving the secret, but maybe that's too small. I don't want to create an army of slaves, but maybe an "Improve Yourself" script. I do not want to let more people know about the device than we need to. I'd like you to come up with a plan for this."

"Each team heard me describe all the goals I laid out. If any of you have a suggestion for a different goal, a different instruction to give to everyone, or a different risk I haven't thought of, I want you to discuss with each other, and then with Kristen and myself. I need your best expertise and experience to help us all today."

"Any questions? If not, lets get to work."

The two groups wound up in different rooms. It was both exciting to hear them discussing my ideas and dissecting them, and somewhat creepy the way they focused on trying to do what I wanted in the way I wanted. There was almost no ego, they were just trying to be ruthless and efficient in solving the problems I laid out. In a work environment, there would have been positions and argument, battles back and forth. Here it was just laid out as facts and opinions, then shaped to ensure maximum clarity. They were smarter as a group than I was as a person, but also in a way, narrower. They kept asking me to clarify some of my points, to ensure they got to my underlying meaning, rather than just the way I described it.

I learned more about the two new women. It turned out that Meghan was the mother of Tom, Jeremy's friend. She was also a Chartered Accountant which I had never heard of, but wikipedia was my friend. She could be the CFO of a company, but instead was focused on helping a large international conglomerate keep it's global finances under control. She was a fountain of useful information. Laurie, the other new woman owned a local bookstore, similar to Stephanie. Apparently, Jeremy really liked buying his science fiction books in her store. While maybe not as obviously helpful as Meghan, both of them knew the local business environment and commercial real-estate market very well.

I went back and forth between the two rooms. Pretty soon it was 1:30pm, so I called a halt while Kristen handed out sandwiches she had ordered.

The computer science team had already come up with a significant number of improvements to Jeremy's original code. Amy was able to get deeper into how the process worked, but they all agreed we'd need a neurologist and/or a psychologist to get much deeper. One person mentioned that they wanted to do functional MRI's on someone before and after enslavement. Interesting, but not helpful for the "don't make more slaves" goal. They also had come up with some improvements in the instructions, but more work was required. They did not make much progress in keeping me from being trained, mainly because it would require a lot more human testing, and if they succeeded in creating a pissed off untrained person, then what?

The commercial team was pretty much done. They had a plan to create a business in name only, it would not take on any obligations such as leases until we were ready, but we could use the entity for anything we wanted. If we wanted to raise money, we could provide a service to all the slaves and let them subscribe. One suggestion which was a bit off the wall, but interesting was that we could instead incorporate as a religion or non-profit. There were advantages and disadvantages to all of the choices.

They were pretty sure I didn't want to do anything illegal, but they did ask, just to make sure. One person pointed out that we could enslave a savings and loan or a small community bank and do all sorts of interesting things. Many of the controls in such institutions only worked if you assumed two people would not collaborate on something illegal. They also assumed that one of the people could be pressured to give up the other. It terrified me how easily one of the team described how that would be impossible to do with our slaves. They took it a step further and explained we had enough people who could provide foolproof alibis for almost anything. After taking a few deep breaths, I said that while all of that was fascinating to think about, we did not want to pursue those lines of thought at this time.

The more practical suggestions were similar to my "quit smoking" campaign. One suggested that we take over a psychologist's office. Others talked about executive coaching or a for profit school. All sounded like potentially a good idea, and more importantly, all of the team members had homework to go find out more.

I asked about the new instructions that had been suggested. They pointed out there was more work to be done, but I might find what they had done so far interesting since they were in order of priority.

- You will not allow others to learn the secret about about the device and what it is capable of doing, You will not reveal either through action or inaction, that you are a slave, or that there are other slaves to anyone who is not already part of the secret. You will aid your fellow slaves in preserving this secret. If you suspect someone might be close to learning about the secret, you will contact your fellow slaves, the Master, and/or their representatives to determine the best course of action

- You will take care of yourself to the best of your ability and knowledge. You will not allow yourself to be distracted by triviality, but will focus on your goals and the steps you need to take to achieve them. You will be honest with yourself about what you want, what you enjoy and who you like to be with. You can ask for the advice of others, including the Master and their representatives, but in the end, you need to be true to yourself.