Just one more tweak...

Dr. Circe Adams paced back and forth, stalking between the lit and unlit parts of the lab, squinting every time she passed under the stark fluorescent bulbs glaring down from on high. The lights were unavoidable--this deep underground, natural light just wasn't an option. Technically, there shouldn't have been any unlit areas on the entire floor, but she was having to conserve her dwindling personal funds now that the last of her sponsors had ghosted her.

"Just one more tweak, and we'll have it!” she muttered. “If they'd waited just a little longer..."

She would show them. When her experiments were finally successful, she would show them all. They would be awed by her work.

She'd make sure of it.

"Coming through!" called a voice, and Circe stopped abruptly, turning to the door.

Matt, her lab assistant, sauntered into view, the latest subject chattering at his side. Circe surveyed the young woman with a frown. Young. Blonde. Fast food uniform.

“She’ll have to do,” she muttered softly.

"And then the asshole had the nerve to say that if I didn't like it, I could quit! As if that's an option! Seriously, labor laws in this country. . ."

"Hm!" said Matt, his voice encouraging, but his eyes rolling theatrically behind the subject's head.

Circe's colleagues, back when she'd still had some, had rejected Matt’s application out of hand. Too blasé. Too loose with the rules.

Too creepy.

But Circe must have known, even then, that she would need someone like Matt.

"It's pretty dark down here," said the subject with curiosity as she looked around the carefully cleaned lab.

Matt glanced at Circe, his dead blue eyes staring out of a face that showed nothing more than vague amusement.

"It's after hours," he said. "We try not to waste electricity when no one else is here."

Two true statements, when stated individually. If the subject chose to interpret them as one fact and come away with the wrong conclusions, whose fault was that?

"How far underground are we?" asked the subject.

"Very," said Circe, shortly, and the woman looked at her for the first time, her eyes surveying her critically. "I'm Dr. Adams!" With difficulty, Circe smiled. She hated it when she was forced to replicate emotions for the sake of others. "The depth is related to our equipment." True--it was easier to hide it down here than on the upper floors. "It's much warmer down here." Also true. Just not actually connected.

Matt was starting to rub off on her.

"I'm Aster," said the woman, and Circe reminded herself to nod at the irrelevant piece of information.

"Welcome!" said Circe. Was that what one said when a new subject stepped into your lab? Or was that one of those birthday party things?

It hardly mattered.

"Thanks?" said the subject, one eyebrow raised.

Circe ignored the look and spun on her heel, heading for The Chair.

Only one subject had ever refused to sit in it, and Matt had

dealt with them just fine. Sadly, they hadn't been in a fit state to

participate in the study afterwards, but it could have been worse.

"This way!" trilled Circe, hoping she sounded cheerful and not, as Matt described it, like a demented bitch about to slaughter her seventh baby for the day.

"I was told that there would be a payment. . .?" The subject hadn't moved, but that was normal.

In fact, it was a good sign.

"Ah yes!" said Matt. He bounded across the room and snatched Circe's checkbook from its place on the little cabinet next to the chair. "And who do I make it out to?"

"Aster Brightly," said the subject, taking a couple of eager steps towards the chair. "A-S-T-E-R, and 'Brightly' the way you'd expect to spell it."

"Aster...Brightly...," muttered Matt as he made a performance out of filling out the check. "$250. Would you like it now, or after the session?"

The crucial question. Circe watched nervously. The subject was still quite near the corridor, if she got suspicious...

"Oh, now!" said the subject, striding forward happily to grab the proffered scrap of paper.

Circe breathed out. She moved quickly towards the chair. Timing was everything with what came next.

"And this won't bounce, right?" asked the subject, her voice half joking, half serious.

"Heaven forbid!" said Matt, and Circe decided that the only reason he got away with half of what he did was because he was tall and handsome. Based on tone alone, the subject should have broken down right there and then.

"Okay," said the subject, a little uncertainly.

"Now, if you would just sit down," said Circe, "we can begin the session!"

"Yeah, what exactly does the session involve?"

"It's basically just a localized MRI," said Matt, tapping the dome at the top of the chair authoritatively. "We lower this over your head, ask you some questions, show you some pictures, gather our readings, and then you're all set!"

The dome was completely useless, but Circe had discovered months ago that a chair with no attachments at all engendered inconvenient questions.

And the real attachments... well, it was better that they stayed hidden for as long as possible.

"Easy enough!" said the subject. She sat down. "How long will it take?"

"Oh, not long," said Circe, moving into place the same way she'd done hundreds of times before, Matt mirroring her movements almost exactly. "It will all be over soon."

As one, Matt and Circe grabbed the cable ties from their pockets. Before the subject knew what was happening, her wrists were secured tightly to the narrow arms of the chair.

"Hey!" shrieked the subject. "What the hell?"

"It's for your own good!" said Circe, dodging a flailing kick. "It's for everyone's good!"

Matt circled behind the chair and pulled the neck restraint they kept taped behind it free.

"My favorite part," he said, smiling slightly. Circe shuddered as Matt clipped the metal collar around the subject's throat, snapping it closed around the thin neck of the chair between the seat and the headrest. He turned the handle to tighten it. "Be still, or I keep tightening."

It didn't take long for the subject to still, her eyes wide and bulging as she tried to fight for air.

"Thank you, Matt," said Circe, tersely.

Matt waited just a few moments too long before loosening the collar. The subject gulped for air desperately, unable to speak.

Using the collar to gain compliance wasn't necessary, Circe thought as she pulled open the cabinets’ top drawer and grabbed the waiting syringe. Once the arm and neck restraints were on, the serum did the rest.

But, as it didn't actually affect the results, it didn't hurt to let Matt have his fun.

Aster's body went slack as the paralyzing effect of the serum took hold. It wasn't exactly what she was looking for, but Circe always preferred it when people were in this state. No anger or tears or inexplicable laughter. Just quiet, calm, passivity.

Of course, they were still feeling all those things, which was the real problem.

"What did we do last time?" she asked Matt.

"Well, we started with fear, like we always fucking do," said Matt. He unhooked the fake dome from the back of the chair, revealing the wires and access points for the real equipment. For a moment, Circe thought about starting with something else, but the wild-eyed look in the subject's eyes stopped her.

This was the one thing she was certain of. Fear was the worst of them all. It only made sense to deal with it first.

"Yes, fear first, and then what?"

"Oh, I don't fucking know, hold on." Matt strode over to a curtained area, flinging the drapes aside.

Circe averted her eyes.

"I'm not afraid of them," she told the subject. "Emotion has no place in my brain."

Circe didn't need to look to know what was there. In three rickety wheelchairs slumped the last three subjects. No restraints were needed in their case--they'd failed to meet Circe's expectations and would be moved to the dump site as soon as Circe could convince Matt to drive them.

And do whatever it was he did to finish them off.

Matt grabbed one of the wheelchairs. Whistling slowly, he wheeled it into the cube, until the old subject's knees were nearly touching the new’s. He leaned down, resting his folded arms on the back of the wheelchair, and stared at the subject, watching her face.

"Matt!" said Circe, impatiently.

"Let's make sure she feels really, really scared before we snatch it all away from her," said Matt.

"I asked you which emotions we removed last time!"

Matt stayed where he was, his blue eyes boring into the subject's green ones, just long enough to make it clear that he didn't have to listen to Circe if he didn't want to. Then, he straightened slowly and pulled a file from the back of the wheelchair.

"Fear!" he announced. "As if we didn't know... but that had the usual effect of removing his ability to feel excited as well..."

"I've told you a hundred times--excitement doesn't matter! It's not necessary for effective functioning!" snapped Circe.

"Yeah, yeah," muttered Matt, turning the page. "Then we nabbed his shame, which seemed to affect his self-compassion. So we took his ability to feel hurt, but that took his ability to trust and, well, with the serum wearing off by then... Then we tried sarcasm, for some fucking reason, quite the stab in the dark there, which erased his ability for amusement and, incidentally, rendered him non-functioning. Just like usual."

"It just needs to be tweaked!" snapped Circe. "If we get the sequence

right, then the human brain will no longer be this ridiculous mish-mash of mushy mess..."

"Very alliterative," said Matt, dryly.

"Remove her fear, and we'll take it from there."

Matt shoved the wheelchair away with a practiced twist. It skittered across the lab, bumping into the others, sending them careening around like slow, macabre bumper cars. Then he opened the cabinet and removed a cannister with a long, thick needle protruding from one end.

Circe tried to ignore his snigger of glee as she went to fetch the diagnostic panel and mounting tray from the unlit part of the lab.

As she'd done a hundred times before, she slotted the mounting tray into the waiting connectors above the subject's head. In a way, it was a dome, except that it consisted of dozens of empty, movable docks for the enormous needles all pointing in one direction--at the subject's head.

"Calibrate the cannister. Ensure it's in place," said Circe. Matt popped the cannister into a slot that gleamed from repeated use.

"Calibrated," he said.

"Check!" said Circe.

With a theatrical sigh, Matt snatched the diagnostic panel and pushed a button.

"See? Calibrated," he said. "It's always in the right place, because you never try anything else!"

"Initiate the process," said Circe through gritted teeth.

Matt was starting to become a problem.

Matt tapped the panel without even looking, the touch screen responding instantly.

Above the subject's head, the syringe began to move smoothly towards her head.

"This is the part where you should scream," said Matt conversationally to the subject, "except that you won't be able to..."

The needle plunged into her brain and Circe eagerly grabbed the diagnostic panel.

"That's right!" she said, happily as the nanobots shot into the subject's brain, heading straight for their target. "First, we remove the fear response, and then..."

"And then we lose out minds!" said Matt, waving his hands theatrically. He walked over to Circe and tapped the screen. "See? Excitement is gone too."

"It's not important--"

"You can't have efficient, motivated people if they can't feel excited about things," said Matt. "Emotions are all or nothing. You can't take away the bad ones without taking away the good ones too."

"I've told you before!" snapped Circe. "If you don't believe in the cause, then you're welcome to leave!"

"Oh, but you pay me so well," said Matt. It was true. Most of Circe's money went to keeping Matt on board. "And besides, it's fun!"

Circe tried to ignore him as she surveyed the subject. There was an angry glint in her eye, so strong that it couldn't be masked by her physical pain, but Circe knew better than to jump straight to removing anger, because that always led to immediate shut down.

"Have to tweak the sequence..." muttered Circe as she surveyed her options critically. "Let's try removing her confusion."

"That's a new one," said Matt irritably. "Well done," he added sarcastically. "Although I don't think. . .he paused as he became distracted with the task of targeting the exact part of Aster's brain where her confusion was housed. Circe popped a new cannister into another waiting slot and watched as Matt maneuvered it to find the perfect entry point.

Suddenly, the needle plunged, making Circe jump.

"Oh, did I scare you there?" said Matt, mockingly. The panel beeped at him. "And I was right. Removing confusion removes interest, and how can you function in this world without excitement and without interest? Seriously? At what point do you just give up, or at least try something else?"

"It just needs some tweaking!" snapped Circe. "The concept is sound! Clean up the mess known as the human brain and create a better species!"

"Uh huh," said Matt. "Sure."

The subject's eyes stared right past Circe. The anger was still there, but it was undirected. It had no point of interest to focus on.

Circe didn't like it.

"Remove anger!" she snapped. Matt was really pushing her today, and this was turning out to be a particularly uncooperative test subject.

"Whatever you say," said Matt with a mocking bow. He maneuvered another cannister into place almost entirely by memory. Moments later, it plunged into the subject's brain.

The panel beeped uncontrollably.

In the chair, the subject's body jerked, and then collapsed. Her eyes were open, but there was nothing in them at all.

"And... Now she's gone!" said Matt, dramatically, as though he were a magician revealing an empty box. "Please note my complete lack of surprise."

Circe smashed the panel with an angry fist, causing the beeping to cease instantly and lengthening the small crack that had developed in the bottom corner.

"Temper, temper," said Matt. "Look, we're out of wheelchairs. Should I just load them into the truck and move them sometime tomorrow?"

"Yes, fine," muttered Circe.

"And I think it will be my last run to the dump site."

"What?" said Circe, her head snapping up to stare at Matt.

"Yeah, this all getting a bit repetitive. You can do your own dirty work from tomorrow evening on."

Circe clenched her teeth and her fists and muttered, "Fine." It wasn't as if she could stop him.

Who would find new subjects? Who would get rid of the old ones? How would the research continue?

"Excellent! You're taking it remarkably well!" Matt turned his back to wrench the needles unceremoniously from the subject's head. "I'll just leave her in the chair--"

"No!" snapped Circe. "Put her behind the curtain!"

"Fine, whatever," said Matt, cutting the ties loose and heaving the subject from the chair, dragging her across the floor by the legs. Her head thudded onto the ground with a sickening crack.

"Oopsy daisy!" said Matt, cheerfully. He gathered the four unsuccessful subjects together and drew the curtain closed around them.

Circe watched him with calm detachment, an idea forming in her mind. Carefully, while Matt was distracted, she pulled another of the always-waiting syringes filled with the paralyzing serum and held it behind her back.

"If you're leaving tomorrow, you can at least make yourself useful today," she called. "Get rid of this!" she jerked her head at the mounting dock.

Matt raised an eyebrow.

"But who are you hiding it from?" he asked. "You won't be able to convince anyone to come down here."

"I'll manage!" hissed Circe. "It just needs one more tweak!"

"Sure," said Matt, stepping towards the chair and reaching for the docking device. "Next time it will suddenly, magically work, you just keep on--Hey!"

Circe had jammed the syringe into the only part of Matt she was sure she could reach in time-his butt. He spun around, arms flailing wildly as he tried to grab her, but the serum worked quickly and he collapsed, slumped awkwardly over the chair, his head and right arm hanging over the side.

Circe looked into his eyes. Amusement. Something that looked a little like awe.

"You might be exactly what I need," she whispered. With effort, she dragged him into place and secured the collar around his throat.

Then she moved around to face him, bending slightly to look him full in the face, as he had done so many times to the others.

"Just one more tweak."