Chapter 14: A New Meson Production Method

I am standing outside a door marked in Russian script 'Julia Romanova'. I knock and a voice calls, "Come In!"

I am confronted by another girl. She about my age with a bush of curly hair (oh, to have unkempt hair again, just for the fun of teasing out the tugs and tangles in it). She looks up quickly and beams a broad welcoming smile. "Vyerochka! Welcome! Dr Medeleyev said you were coming. I have just made coffee. You will have some?"

You bet I will - and one of the croissants, if I'm allowed. Julia pours two mugs; hands me one and also offers – no, hands me - a croissant, unasked.

"Well. So you are Vyerochka?"

What should I say? "Yes, I know that's what you all call me but actually I am Jenny." I know that will get me another caning for disobedience. I feel that I had better play for safety. "Yes, I'm Vyerochka – in Russia" (so with just a little defiance dressed up as precision.)

"Aha ... well I know your situation of course..."

"You do?"

"Absolutely. Don't look so surprised. Universities in the UK and US are always doing contract research for government or commercial interests, so don't judge us too harshly for doing the same."

"No, I wasn't it's, it's ... it's all been ... er ... to end up here."

"Hmmm, yes I suppose it must have been., " She looks at me with something between sympathy and understanding and then brightens: "Still, now you are here and you will never go back so perhaps you had better make the best of it? And by the way, just as a bit of advice – you are Vyerochka everywhere."

If this had come from Neena, I could have coped, but coming from this other girl, same age as me who seems to know all about my abduction and takes it all in her happy, breezy, stride ... I start to weep but seem to run out of emotion. My tears dry up. I think about my "situation" and begin to feel calm inside. As if I had been given some sort of anaesthetic.

"Look, Vyerochka we have a lot to get through so shall we just start?"

So I start, launching into a description of the project much as I would if I was presenting it to one of Angela's colleagues or to a group of undergraduate students.

"I have had the opportunity to conduct a longitudinal observational psychological investigation into the play behaviour of adults, specifically sexual play, specifically again BDSM fantasies and games, specifically again power exchange games between Dommes, Doms and subs.

"My sample contains 100 individuals. The parent sample was 120 and there have been 20 subjects lost to follow up, for various reasons. The sample was self selected.

I run through the details explaining how I had set the research up.

"The context is people who applied to spend one to two months following a consensual slave training programme at a commercial 'adult adventure playground' called Inward Bound."

"The subjects are all asked to complete a questionnaire when they submit an application to join a course at Inward Bound and they all have a personal interview afterwards. This is standard practice. For my investigation, they were asked to accept further questionnaires and interviews during and after their 'adventure'.

Julia is still sitting quietly watching me and listening. She doesn't say anything but lets me continue, "Basic descriptive statistics were collected for all subjects such as

age, gender, sexual experience, sexual fantasies at base line. The sample was divided into two groups: one month adventures and two month adventures. The ratio was 2:1. Also there was a gender bias for both groups of 3:1 in favour of females."

There's plenty more and once I start, I find it hard to stop.

"I collected the same data from two reference populations so I could compare the Inward Bound Adventurers with their peers. The first group was volunteers from University sports clubs. They were matched for age, gender, social class, academic achievement, sexual experience, sexual fantasies. I thought people might be reluctant to talk but they were very open and BDSM fantasies are really quite common, "The second group was drawn from contributors to a BDSM Consensual Slavery Message Board based in the UK. The Board Administrator gave permission for me to email contributors and the first email came from his "admin" address.

Julia's attention seems to be wandering and I guess that I have not told her anything that she doesn't already know or hadn't already guessed.

I conclude by summarising the research questions:

Do the IWB adventurers change during their stay?

• Do they seek out more experiences?

• Do they enjoy their fantasies more?

• Do they achieve more or less than they thought they would at the start?

• How many safe words used and how often?

• Do the safe words (1) cluster around particular challenges or do they cluster around particular individuals?

• Does the use of safe words increase towards the end of the course or decrease?

"The questionnaires after the 'adventurers' returned home were designed to see if changes in their outlook were maintained and if their home life changed.

"I had not managed to start on the detailed analysis before ... before..."

Julia sees me hesitate and is watching me more closely as I carry on. I take a deep breath.

" ... before I came here. However, my impression is that IWB subjects are a little more extrovert and have more BDSM experience, and BDSM fantasies than the "university" reference population, but were very similar to the people contributing to the Consensual Slavery Message Board. It seemed that subjects became more confident with their fantasies during their Inward Bound Experience; subjects were more likely to push at their boundaries and try to achieve more, so to speak, the longer their IWB adventure went on and that both these last effects were more pronounced in the subjects who had the Two Month Adventure.

"From that I draw the implication: people who are likely to enjoy BDSM experiences can be detected by questionnaire and the questionnaire answers predict which people are prepared to actualize their fantasies and when they are given the opportunity. Furthermore, they are likely to modify their behaviour, to do things they would not have done before."

I stop. My coffee is cold. I have been all of the talking. Julia goes to make some more.

"So what do you need to do now?" she calls over her shoulder. "I mean that seems well thought through."

It's just the sort of thing someone might say back home. I feel absurdly relaxed. "Well, really it's just the stats analysis to see if my superficial impressions of what the data says are actually correct."

"Well, Vyerochka, here is some good news for you." Julia puts another cup of coffee down in front of me. "The data has been entered into a statistics progamme for you – SPSS for Windows.

Are you familiar with that?

"Yes, that was the programme I had intended to use. I met Dr Mendeleyev recently who told me the data was now in SPSS and I had a first look at it. At home though, I would have been able to speak with a statistician, but here..."

"Vyerochka: this is your home and yes I agree. Statisticians are very helpful. I should know because I am one! I will be able to guide your thinking. I heard that you had quite a busy day, recently?'

She smirks at me. So there I am, humiliated once more and advised, in passing, of just how fully informed Julia must be about 'my situation', as she put it earlier. From somewhere a spark of non-compliance flares: I feel myself narrow one eye and slightly turn my head as if to say 'thank you but that was not necessary!'

Julia just laughs in reply and – and I giggle in reply to her, the tension broken

There is another problem, though. "And what about the psychology? I was working for an expert until..."

"We can support you there too. Contacts..."

Contacts ... Does that mean Angela? Surely she would recognize the data at once if someone sent it to her, or realize that the study data was being analysed somewhere else if an unknown person emailed particular questions to her? Could I use this to send her a message? Ask the sort of questions that I used to ask her? Or ask questions in the way I used to ask her? That would be safer, in case she is involved with them ... A little fountain of hope is beginning to well up inside me until it is quashed by Julia who continues...

"Dr Mendeleyev has spent an academic lifetime in psychological research and I believe he may even know your former supervisor"

Julia stresses former and I realize that, as ever, they are one step ahead of me. All avenues of escape indentified and closed before ever I knew they were there.

Julia continues, "It's probably best for you to continue working at Dacha Kustensky..."

Dacha: a country house in Russia. Kustensky: is that the place or is it the name of my Owner? Excuse me! The person who thinks they own me. Excuse me? No - I am going to have to give this up. They do own me. I suppose they always will, until I am disposed of...

"Vyerochka! Are you listening?"

No, I was not listening. I was gazing out of the window, across the roofs of an alien city, wondering which direction is west. The west. Where I came from. Once.

"I'm sorry Gaspazha"

Julia smiles, as if to tell me that she knows exactly what my daydreams were. She carries on. "This whole thing is very interesting. A new meson production method..."

"Forgive me Gaspazha, I'm lost."

"Yes, you are. Be grateful you have now been found. My boyfriend...

(A boyfriend! Oh, to have a boyfriend again. A boyfriend like Joe... )

... works in the high energy physics lab. Mesons are sub-atomic particles. In his lab they have a proton-proton scattering device, which produces mesons after the interactions between atomic nuclei – which are all very energetic. Now you would think, that to get people to do what your subjects have been doing, you would need lots and lots of psychological energy, but you don't, do you? Just create the right conditions and your subjects changed. They became their true selves. It's all really quite gentle. Not what you would expect from a 'slave training programme'? Hmmm?"

Julia continues: "So what are you actually going to do for the analysis?"

"First, I will tabulate the frequency responses for every variable. Then I will compare the results for the two groups at the various time points during their adventures and look for differences greater that ten percent and test for statistical significance to see if they are too large to be random chance variations."

"And the direction of changes?"

"I want to map the direction of any changes to see if then the changes seem to run in a particular direction. A tide running in favour of clients becoming "more kinky" so to speak. Next, I will look at the responses from individuals to explore the variations they experience. I will look to see if they seem to run in a particular direction, too, or if they merely eddy backwards and forwards. Then finally, I aim to build a statistical model to see if it is possible to predict changes in an individual's outlook on the basis of their original questionnaire responses."

"Well, Vyerochka, it seems to me that you are going to have your work cut out!" It's not clear if Julia is impressed by the plan or if she thinks I am mad to attempt it. Whichever it is she has obviously been asked to make sure I see it through so she doesn't waste time on praise or skeptical comment. "Here is how we should tackle it. Coming up here every day is not practical, because it would waste too much time and in any case, you need close supervision at the moment..."

"But surely I should be here with you for that? Although I'm used to doing research independently you know." I'm offended that she thinks I need her to keep an eye on my work. Even Angela lets me work pretty much on my own.

Julia laughs and points to my collar, "Vyerochka! I mean behavioural supervision, not academic supervision." I'm embarrassed now by my naive comment. How could I think that the academic issues were more important than my Owner's worries that I might try to run away or send desperate emails asking for rescue! "I think you will agree, that you are still settling into your new position in life. To be precise, getting used to being an owned slave." I nod in recognition of my stupidity. "So you will work at the Dacha, and keep in touch with me by email and web-conference – we have got Skype, for example."