Sexperiment

“Don’t forget to call me if you catch an earlier plane
home from the conference or if your plane is delayed,”
said Florence. “I want to know either way, so I can be
ready.”

“OK,” said Erwin. “Why are you so obsessive about this
vacation?”

“Because your company owns you for the next five
days,” she said, “but the minute you get off the
plane, you are mine exclusively for three full weeks.”

“Don’t forget, the vacation doesn’t officially start
until the next morning,” he said, “and on the way
home, I have to stop off at the lab for a few minutes
to check on the rats.”

“How could I forget the rats?” she said. “We can never
forget the rats. We owe them everything.”

They both laughed as they embraced, and then he walked
out the front door. He didn’t see that her smile
changed to a frown as soon as the door closed behind
him.

***

For Florence and Erwin, rats were their life. Both of
them were fascinated by science at an early age and
from high school onward they knew they wanted to be in
research.

Each of them had achieved success. Erwin headed a team
that researched new drugs for a large company. He made
much more money than she did, but she was more famous,
because her research into human psychology, especially
sexual pathology, was frequently written up in popular
publications and on websites, in addition to the peer
review journals where Erwin’s discoveries were also
published.

They fell in love while they were taking care of rats
in a college lab. Each of them was working on an
experiment for a different class, but at night after
they finished with their rats, they collaborated in
some intense late-night human biology studies. They
were married as soon as they graduated, and since both
had multiple job offers, they were able to take
positions in the same city.

Florence thought their marriage was as successful as
their careers and Erwin never said anything to
indicate he felt otherwise. They were talking about
her taking a long break after she finished the two
projects she was working on so they could begin a
family.

Because she was a scientist, she was used to changing
her mind. She would often start a project on the basis
of what she thought was a sound hypothesis, because it
was validated by all the data available up to that
point. Sometimes, the results of her experiments
clearly showed that her initial hypothesis had been
wrong. It never bothered her to acknowledge that and
proceed from the new data.

A year ago, an earthquake had almost thrown her out of
her bed and she had called him at 1 a.m. at his hotel.
He was at one of his out-of-town conferences, but she
was concerned that he might hear about the quake and
worry, so she decided to wake him up. When he picked
up the phone and she told him why she was calling, his
voice sounded strange.

Then she heard another voice in the background, a
woman’s voice. The phone went dead and in a minute, he
called back saying he had been cut off. He sounded
more like himself and was concerned about her safety
and the damage to the house. She told him to go back
to sleep, but after she hung up, she didn’t sleep much
herself.

When he came home, he didn’t mention the call or
explain why she had heard a woman’s voice. That made
her wonder whether her hypothesis about their marriage
was valid. She decided to collect more data and re-
evaluate data from the last few years. After she
collated and examined it carefully, she concluded that
her hypothesis had been wrong. It wasn’t hard for her
to accept the new reality.

Much more difficult was deciding her next step. Her
previous conviction had led to her making many
assumptions about their future together. But without a
solid foundation for her dreams and plans, the
progression of her personal life was no longer as
clear as the progression of her research projects.

She thought about divorce and analyzed her personal
data and his. In examining her feelings, she concluded
that she still loved him. The data indicated that he
rarely cheated, and only on business trips. She could
find no pattern showing he was a serial adulterer. She
saw no variation in how he treated her. Her hypothesis
was that he probably loved her, too, and his cheating
was spontaneous. He didn’t plan it, but when he had
the opportunity, he also didn’t resist it.

After much thought, she decided to treat the situation
as a research project in human sexual pathology and
began working on it whenever she had spare time. To
her as a scientist, the concepts of love, cheating and
jealousy were simply different kinds of chemical
reactions in the brain, whose state at any given time
was the result of a combination of inherited genes and
ever-changing stimuli that started with birth. She
knew Erwin felt the same way.

Yet though she rejected associating romantic and
magical meanings to love, she still experienced strong
emotions. And it felt good to work on her personal
research project.

Her regular work kept her busy, so the personal
project moved slowly. But she wasn’t impatient. She
methodically gathered preliminary data until she felt
she had more than she needed. Now it was time to use
the data, along with data gathered from previous rat
experiments and published findings from the research
of other scientists.

That threw her for a couple of weeks. She didn’t want
to devise an experiment whose results meant nothing to
her or anyone else. The experiment had to produce
useful information or she was just playing a game and
wasting her time.

Then it hit her. Her situation was not unique. Why not
create a hypothetical solution to her situation and
set up an experiment to test it? If her solution
worked, it would be helpful to her and others. If it
didn’t, she would be able to analyze why, and that
could lead to further experiments that might prove
more fruitful.

Now came the hardest part. What would a solution to
her problem with Erwin look like? Florence thought
about this and came up with a rough idea. She adjusted
it frequently in the following weeks until she felt it
was clear enough to begin working on the experiment.
Maybe it wasn’t the outcome another woman would want,
or even the one most women would choose, but it was
the one she desired, and she was the one doing the
work, so that justified it for her.

The only thing she felt bad about was that whether the
experiment established her hypothesis or falsified it,
the results might only be applicable to Erwin. It
would take repeated experiments by others to replicate
hers and establish whether her results could be
applied universally. But she doubted whether
additional experiments would ever be undertaken,
because her study wouldn’t be accepted by any
reputable journal. It was more the kind of thing found
on a kinky Internet sex site. But this didn’t bother
her at all. She began working on the design of the
experiment.

***

When Erwin arrived home after flying back from the
conference and stopping at the lab to check on his
rats, he had no sooner walked through the front door
than he felt a sting on his neck, just a small one
like an ant bite. That’s the last thing he remembered
until he woke up. He was still inside the front door,
but now he was on the floor, and he was naked.

He looked up and saw Florence dressed in her white lab
uniform sitting in a kitchen chair next to him. He
felt dizzy and weak, and when he tried to talk, his
tongue felt so swollen that it was filling his mouth.
He couldn’t form words, and only random sounds came
out.

“Don’t try to talk yet, Erwin,” she said, “because you
can’t. The effects of the reagent will wear off soon
and you’ll be physically back to normal in half an
hour. No more chemicals are going to be used in this
study. Right now, you’re already able to comprehend
what I’m saying, so I can begin describing the
experiment.

“I left you here after injecting you as you walked in
the door, because I wanted to show you some of the
things I designed for the experiment before your mind
had to focus on other matters. From here, you can
already see one simple but vital piece of equipment.

“Look behind me to the end of the foyer. Do you see
our new piece of furniture? It’s a large, decorative
Chinese screen, and its purpose is to provide for
unexpected visitors. All our friends know that we are
gone for three weeks, so we won’t see any of them. But
if a delivery person comes to the door, and I open it,
all he or she will see is the screen behind me. Before
I put it up, you could see a little bit of the kitchen
and living room, but now they are hidden.

“Crawl with me behind the screen. I know you can’t
stand up yet, but you can move in the direction I’m
pulling. I’ve got a collar on you and a leash to pull,
but you’re much bigger than I am, so you could
probably resist my pulling if you wanted to and even
grab the leash to keep from choking. But you can’t do
much more, and you can see this wooden paddle I’m
lifting from the floor. I’m prepared to apply it
strongly to your buttocks until the pain is enough to
stimulate you to crawl where I lead you. I want to get
started right away, so I’ll begin pulling the leash
and give you 30 seconds to follow me.

“That was good. I really didn’t want to introduce an
additional variable into the experiment before I
started. Let’s go around the screen. Now I’m going to
bend down and thread the leash through here and pull
you forward like this into the holding pen. You’re
stopping. Probably you’re confused, but I’ll explain
everything in a minute. For now, all you need to know
is that you have to crawl a few more feet forward. I’m
going to give you 30 seconds again. OK, get ready,
Erwin. I don’t want to do this, and it’s going to hurt
a lot, but if you don’t move immediately–. There you
go.

“I knew your powers of reason would overcome your
emotional reluctance to get into the cage. Now let me
fasten it and lock it. As you see, it won’t allow you
to stand up, but it’s big enough for you to lie down
and stretch out, so why don’t you do that and get
comfortable while I talk. The bottom of the cage, and
most of the downstairs of our house, is now thick
padding, with a hygienic waterproof rubber mat
covering it, so it’s easy to clean by just hosing it
down to the drains I’ve installed that go through the
garage into the flower beds. I could invite the
neighbors over for a barbecue in our backyard, and no
one would see the drains.

“I’ve done all this myself in the five days you were
gone, but I’ve been planning this much longer and had
the materials stored nearby. It’s funny, Erwin, but I
realized as I was working on this the last few days
that I wasn’t doing anything new. I was just building
another rat experiment like I’ve been doing for years,
except this time, the rat was a lot larger.

“The impetus for the experiment was your cheating on
me at some of your conferences. We don’t need to get
into how I found out or my anger. We’re both
scientists, and we know how human sexuality works. All
I’ll say is that I had a strong, irrational, emotional
reaction and considered divorce, but I decided to
collect more data first.

“I decided that you weren’t a serial cheater, because
there was no pattern and not a lot of frequency.
Knowing you well, I was sure that you didn’t take any
chances that could affect your health and mine, and
that you were also protective of your good reputation.
Considering the risks of your behavior against the
benefits of our marriage, logic dictated that I
shouldn’t do anything rash.

“But as you know, the chemicals in our brain
frequently veer from the logical, and I found that
when I was assessing the situation, I wasn’t going to
be satisfied with accusations, apologies and promises
that I could never be sure you would keep. I thought
of revenge, such as having sex with other men, but I
had no desires in that direction. I also thought of
how I could hurt you psychologically — I would never
hurt you physically — and I came up with some ideas
that I might have been able to use to make you an
object of pity or derision.

“But sadism is foreign to my nature. The hardest parts
of my rat experiments are always when the rats are
hurt even slightly, either physically or
psychologically. I always work to minimize such
injuries. To me, they are only justified when the
experiment could yield results that could dramatically
improve human life.

“Thinking of my research with rats is what finally
gave me an idea that felt right to me. And since your
research is also with rats, it even felt poetically
appropriate. I worked hard to prepare my experiment,
and today we’re beginning. This phase will last for
three weeks and coincide with our vacation. I never
paid for the tickets or reservations, and as soon as
you left town, I canceled all of them. So we’ll be
staying here, even though everyone thinks we’re out of
town.

“The hypothesis for the experiment is this: In three
weeks, I can condition you to be totally submissive to
me in our personal intimate life without affecting the
rest of your life in any way, especially your ability
to do intellectually demanding scientific research.

“The fourth week, you’ll go back to work and we’ll see
how well the hypothesis holds up. Then I’ll evaluate
all the data and decide what to do after that.

“When I started working on the experiment, I realized
how audacious my hypothesis was. In the outdated,
discredited language of Freudian psychology, I am
trying to make you into a schizophrenic, so that you
are one person whenever you deal with anything
involving me on a personal level — and a different
person at other times. We both know the brain doesn’t
work like that.

“But I decided to see how close I can get to achieving
at least an approximation of that result, one that
would work for our careers, our marriage and the
family we were planning to have. That’s what we’ll
know in three weeks.

“You’ll find this funny, but for a few minutes I
thought about moral and ethical implications of what
I’m doing. Remember when we were in college and we had
those deep discussions? Later, when we had more
research experience, we both realized how naive we had
been.

“We know that we’re just like everyone else. Every day
we go about our lives imagining we have free will and
are making decisions for ourselves. But as scientists,
we know our brains are wired to respond certain ways
to certain stimuli, and we have no control at all. So
when I condition you to automatic obedience to my
wishes, I’m not taking away your freedom. I’m just
switching some of the connections in your brain to
hand over some of their control to me.

“As you’ve often reminded me, there’s no right and
wrong when it comes to power, whether it’s power that
controls us or the power we have to control others,
such as our research teams and support personnel. Or
as you put it, ‘Sometimes you’re the scientist, and
sometimes you’re the rat.’ Up to now, I guess our
marriage was a collaboration of scientists, but now
I’m changing it to a new model. I’m the scientist, and
you’re the rat. We both agree that neither kind of
relationship is better than the other. They’re just
different. And since I prefer the second one now and
I’m running the experiment, there’s no reason I
shouldn’t try to achieve it.

“As usual, the researcher will be working at least as
hard as the rat will. I won’t get much sleep, because
I’ll be recording my observations in the lab book and
making notes about the progress or lack of it.

“Sleep deprivation is a major part of the experiment.
We’ve both read the literature that started appearing
at the time of the first brainwashing discoveries, and
we know that lack of sleep makes the brain much more
open to suggestion that can lead to changes in brain
function. For the first two weeks, your days will be
five hours long. You’ll sleep only three of those
hours.

“At first, you won’t fall asleep right away, but in a
short time, you’ll be so exhausted all the time that
you’ll be sleeping whenever you’re not being kept
awake. I’ll gradually increase the amounts of sleep in
the third week, so that you’re close to normal by the
time you go back to work.

“Pleasure and pain will be other controls that I’ll
use, mostly as part of aversion therapy. You’ll see
how those work in a few minutes. Apart from the
conditioning, everything else, including bodily
functions will be kept as simple as possible so
minimal time is wasted. You and I don’t believe in
human dignity anyway, so it makes no difference if
those functions are handled as though you were a lab
rat. I will offer you a few concessions, and I’ll be
curious to see whether you choose them. If you do,
remember that you can’t take too much time, because
every minute counts.

“All right, Erwin, I see that you’re almost fully
alert. You’re probably analyzing the data I just gave
you, but now you have to stop, because our work is
beginning. I’m opening up one of the three gates
leading from the holding pen, which is where you’ll be
sleeping. You need to crawl through it and down the
narrow steel wire tunnel into the elimination room.

“You’re beginning to speak with sounds I can
understand, and that’s perfectly all right. You may
speak as much as you want, and you may also shout and
scream. I checked to make sure our house is
soundproofed a few days ago, and you can’t produce
enough decibels to be heard more than just slightly if
someone has his ear against our front door. But you
can save your breath if you want, because I’m tuning
you out and won’t respond to anything you say. If I
did, it might influence your responses and ruin the
experiment.

“So please move through that tunnel that’s open to the
elimination room, Erwin. I won’t try to reach inside
the cage with my paddle, but all the metal is wired,
and I will give you a slight shock if you aren’t
moving in 30 seconds. Then I’ll wait 30 more seconds
and increase the shock just a little. I’ll keep doing
that until you follow instructions.

“Good. Yes, keep talking Erwin, as long as you keep
moving forward into the next cage. This cage is much
smaller than the holding pen. You can barely fit into
it, and you can’t raise your head. That’s because your
body needs to be completely immobile to prevent
accidents.

“Your voice turned suddenly louder, Erwin, which means
you felt my finger going into your anus. I pushed some
lubricant in there. Now I’m going to take it out and
get some more. You’re trying to move your buttocks,
but there isn’t any space for them to go, so it’s easy
for me to push the lube in you. That should be enough.
Now I’m inserting a tube, and it’s going in smoothly
because of the lube. I’m pushing it as deep as I can
without hurting you.

“There. I think that’s as deep as I can get it. It’s
pretty far up your colon. Now I’ll slowly turn the
spigot. What’s going into you is plain water, with no
chemicals. The chemicals would work faster, but in
this case, I want to keep the test close to natural
conditions. Your stomach is expanding as the water
fills you up, and it’s not much different than you
drinking a six-pack of beer, except you’re drinking it
from the other end.

“A little water is starting to back up out of you, so
you must be full. I’ll carefully pull the tubing out,
and now you will have your first choice to make. I’m
raising the grill on top of the elimination room so
you can lift your head a little. Look up and in front
of you. The next room has a toilet, and if I raise the
gate to it, you can crawl into it and manage to get
onto the toilet, even though you’ll have to bend over.

“If you tell me you prefer that and will cooperate,
I’ll lift the gate for you. Now look underneath you.
There’s a nice-sized hole. If you prefer that, you can
squat over it. Don’t worry about urinating, because
you can see the hygienic rubber mat goes halfway up
the sides of the elimination room. If you choose to
eliminate here, I’ll just hose you down and hose down
the room so everything goes into the hole and out into
the flower bed.

“You have one more choice. You don’t even have to
squat over the hole. It’s much easier to stay on your
hands and knees like you are now and just let loose
when you feel the need like a rat does. It will be
more smelly, but I’ll hose it down the same way. I’m a
little curious as to what you’ll choose, because we
both know that there’s basically no difference between
a rat defecating and a human defecating, just cultural
habits of modesty. It would be a lot easier for you to
just stay where you are instead of crawling up onto
the toilet or squatting over the hole.

“I see your body is starting to agitate, so it’s time
for you to tell me. You’re saying a lot of things,
Erwin, and I’m not listening to them. I’m listening
for you to tell me you prefer the toilet or the hole,
and if you don’t make yourself clear, I’ll assume you
want to defecate like a rat.

“Oh, that was pretty clear. And when I lifted the
gate, you scrambled up onto that toilet pretty fast. I
wonder if you will make the same choice later when you
are exhausted from the sleep deprivation. Will you
still try to follow your cultural conditioning or will
you decide that since you aren’t any different from a
rat, there’s no need to make the effort?

“You will be eliminating at the end of every second
cycle for the first two weeks, or around every eight
hours. To get you on the schedule, we’ll use enemas
like this at first. As soon as your body has adjusted
to the new timing, you’ll be able eliminate on
schedule, and the enemas won’t be necessary.

“I haven’t been watching you to give you a little
privacy, but it’s been 10 minutes. Signal me when
you’re finished, or I’ll take a look in two more
minutes. I hope you haven’t been trying to do anything
to escape. I’m expecting that sooner or later you
will, but if you do, there will be consequences to
discourage further attempts that waste research time.

“Two minutes is up. I see you’ve managed to pull some
of the wires apart. Since I didn’t warn you about the
consequences earlier, I’m not going to do anything
this time. Because you’ve shown me how important it is
to you to use the toilet, that will be your deterrent.
If something like this happens again during
elimination, you will no longer be allowed into the
toilet room, and you won’t be allowed to squat over
the hole either. You’ll confined to your hands and
knees in the elimination room and wait like an animal
until you can’t help letting go. You’ll expel on the
floor, the walls and yourself until you’ve finished.
Then I’ll hose down the cage and you.

“OK, Erwin, you’ve finished with the toilet paper, so
please wash your hands in the sink. Yes, reach up even
though you can’t raise your head too high because of
the low wire ceiling. Did you realize you were in the
guest bathroom? There, you’ve managed it. Now back up
through the gate into the elimination room again. I’m
shutting the gate to the toilet room, and now I’m
opening the gate to the passageway. You need to back
up into it and keep moving back until you’re in the
holding pen and I shut the gate to this passage.

“That was good, Erwin. You moved well. In a day or so,
you’ll be more used to this, and I’m sure it will take
even less time. Now, I’m shutting the gate to the
first passage and opening the gate to the second
passage. Please crawl forward and down the passage.
Thank you for your cooperation.

“Yes, crawl through that gate into the aversion
fitting room. It’s the same size as the elimination
room, so you’ll be on your hands and knees again and
unable to move much, but just for a few minutes. And
here comes another tube to go into your anus, but this
time, you’ll be filled with oil, not water and only
enough to get you slick and slimy in there. See, the
tube is already coming out.

“Now, I’m replacing it with a soft, rubber dildo. It’s
so spongy that when I manipulate it, the shape
changes, so it’s hard for me to get it into you, but
by moving it around and gently pushing it, I’m slowly
working all 10 inches into you. It helps that it’s not
too thick. There. It’s as far as it can go, and all
that sticks out is a short tube with a bulb attached
to the end.

“One more piece of lab equipment needs to be attached.
It’s a clear, round plastic cylinder that goes over
your penis and is held in place by a band around your
waist. OK, that’s done.

“Look at the gate in front of you now, Erwin. I’m
pulling it up so you can crawl through it into the
aversion theater. To your right, you’ll see a large
pile of cushions against the side of the cage. Please
arrange the cushions so you can sit on them
comfortably. Push them against the side of the cage
and pile them up any way you want and then arrange
yourself on them whichever way you like, as long as
you’re facing to the right. Don’t worry about the tube
attached to your penis holder or the soft dildo. I’ll
make sure they don’t get tangled up.

“Very good, Erwin. You are sitting up straight for the
moment. As the cushions start to give, you’ll slide
down a little into a more relaxed position, and that
will be perfect for this part of the experiment.

“Now look straight ahead through the cage. You’ll see
I’m lifting the cover off a large flat-screen monitor.
This is what you will be watching for the next half-
hour. I’ve spent a lot of time the last couple of
months putting together your show. It consists of
images and video and a soundtrack that includes voices
and also music.

“It’s a show of women, beautiful women. They are all
races and many ages. Some of them you’ll recognize
because I tracked down several of your convention
hookups, and a couple agreed to pose in sexy photos
after I paid them a lot of money, but most of the
women you won’t know.

“Some of the photos and videos will show only faces,
some will be of women fully dressed in every kind of
outfit from innocent to seductive. There will be women
who are barely dressed, and women who are naked and
women who are positioned to receive sex in various
ways. And there is plenty of hardcore video of women
having sex in every possible way, from the most common
to the most perverse and degrading.

“But, as we both know, that’s really a false
distinction. What’s degrading to you could be normal
to someone else and vice versa. Scientifically,
there’s no difference. It just depends on how you’re
wired. I know a little bit about how you’re wired
sexually, but there’s a lot I don’t know. And that’s
why I’ve got a tremendous variety of women in these
visuals to stimulate you. Your wiring will determine
your response.

“As you’re watching, I’ll be watching you. When I see
even the slightest reaction to one of the images, I’ll
note which photo or video it was and halt the show
with the image frozen on the screen. That’s when the
conditioning starts.

“I see you’ve slid down a little, but you’ve got a
clear view of the screen and you’ve adjusted your
knees so the tubes between your legs aren’t bothering
you, so let’s get started. I won’t say anything until
I see a reaction. Here comes the first image.

“Well, that didn’t take long, but I didn’t expect it
would. I hypothesized that when the video of the cute
young white woman came up and you saw that giant black
penis pushing into her, you’d react, and sure enough
you did. The goal of the conditioning is for you to no
longer respond to scenes like that, and to achieve
that goal, I want you to associate the image with
discomfort. That’s why I’m squeezing the bulb
connected to the soft rubber dildo inside your anus.

“It’s an inflatable dildo, and in a second it will
grow enough to cause some slight discomfort. There,
your shifting legs tell me that you are starting to
respond. I’ll leave it at that level and turn on the
pump now. It’s set at the lowest level and has started
sucking your penis into the clear cylinder. It will
continue sucking until you’ve had an orgasm, and then
it will suck all the semen into this receptacle.

“You’re already beginning to respond to the suction,
so it’s time to go back to the bulb and give it
another squeeze. That puts your focus on the
discomfort again, and your penis has wilted. But the
suction continues, and the penis is slowly rising
again. Now here’s another squeeze of the bulb. You
yelled out that time, so I think your insides are
starting to be stretched enough to hurt.

“The penis went down, but now it’s slowly rising
again. Let’s let it get a little harder this time.
You’re moaning now, but it’s hard to tell if it’s
because of the sucking of your penis or the expansion
of the dildo. Time to squeeze the bulb again.

“That time your whole body reacted while you screamed,
but the penis was barely affected. Will another
squeeze affect it? Not much, but you certainly are
sweating and puffing now, and your face shows you’re
in tremendous pain. I think two more squeezes will do
it for this time.

“Your body is thrashing around on the pillows now.
You’re totally out of control because of the pain
inside your buttocks, but your penis is still hard and
is even thrusting. There you go. Your head is moving
wildly in every direction, so I don’t think you
noticed the semen coming out and being sucked into the
receptacle.

“I’m waiting until I don’t see any more semen, and
then I’ll wait another minute before I relieve the
pressure in your bowels. I want you to start
associating women and sex with unbearable agony, and
this was the first step. It took about 10 minutes. Now
I’ll start the images on the screen again. We should
be able to go through this once more before our time
is up.

“You may attempt to disguise your reaction to the
stimuli, but my training and knowledge of you will
help me spot any responses. Within a few days, I hope
there will be negative responses to some of the
images, and by the end of the experiment, I hope all
the responses to every woman and every situation will
be negative.”

They went through the aversion cycle one more time,
and when it was over, Erwin was lying on the floor of
the cage in a fetal position and whimpering as tears
streamed down his face. She observed everything and
wrote notes in her lab book.

After letting him rest 10 minutes, she spoke to him
again. “Erwin,” she said, “it’s time for the last part
of the therapy, and you’ll probably enjoy this part.
So please get up and crawl backward out through the
gate and back to the holding pen.”

It took him a long time to move back to the holding
pen, because each time he moved his legs, he felt
stabs of pain in his anus. Once he was there, and the
gate had been shut, she said, “There’s one more gate,
and I’m opening it now. This is the gate that leads to
pleasure for you and a positive outcome for my
experiment. I’ve lifted it now, so you can begin
crawling. I know you’re tired, but in a half-hour or
so you will get to sleep, so please start moving
forward. I think you’ve had enough pain for now, so I
don’t want to use any more to make you respond.

“That’s it. I don’t know if you’re responding to the
promise of pleasure yet, but I hope in a few days
that’s what you’ll be doing each time you crawl down
the passage you’re going through now. You’ve now
entered the attraction fitting room. It’s almost
exactly the same as the aversion fitting room, and
that’s the idea.

“You’re getting another dildo in your anus, but this
one is a lot thinner and firmer so it’s going in
easily, and the same kind of sucking mechanism has
been connected to your penis. Now please go through
the next gate into the attraction theater and get
yourself comfortable on the pillows. I hear you
pleading, but you don’t need to. This is going to be a
lot different. Look at the screen. The video’s
starting.

“There’s only one woman there. It’s your wife, and I’m
posing in many outfits and even different hair styles.
I had a lot of fun doing this one, especially the
dirty poses. Do you like me in that skimpy outfit?
There, I saw a slight response for the first time.
Even though I’m trying to be objective, I must admit
that made me happy. Now I’m turning on the pump and
the remote switch that controls the dildo. It’s set to
a gentle vibration, and as you start responding to the
pump, the vibration will gradually increase to keep
pace. And then you’re going to have a tremendous
orgasm from all the pleasurable stimulation. It will
go slowly because your body is still reacting to the
aversion therapy, but I hope we have time for two
pleasure sessions.”

She did manage to produce two emotion-filled orgasms,
and then Erwin collapsed again. She woke him after 10
minutes and guided him back to the holding pen, where
he stretched out and went to sleep.

***

She woke him three hours later and pointed to two
bowls she had placed in the holding pen. “This is your
food, Erwin,” she said. “I did a lot of nutritional
research and prepared enough for all three weeks while
you were gone. That smelly gruel contains everything
your body needs: protein, carbs, fats, vitamins,
fiber. It’s a complete meal, only liquefied. In fact,
since everything is scientifically balanced, you will
be healthier in three weeks than you are now because
this is all you’ll eat. There won’t be any junk in
your diet. You’ll have to lap it up like a dog because
I’m not taking chances with any utensils being used
for the wrong purposes.

“You have 15 minutes for your meal, and then I’ll take
it away. If you aren’t hungry enough yet, it will be
there for you later. I’ve measured everything out so
you get the right amount of nutrition during the three
weeks.

“I see you lapped up all the water, but you looked at
the food and sniffed it and you’ve decided you’re not
hungry enough yet. I know eventually you’ll eat it no
matter how bad it smells or tastes, but we may as well
not waste any time, so I’m taking it away for now.
It’s time for exercise.

“I’ve devised exercises to keep all your muscles
toned, and they’ll all be done here in the holding
pen. Some of them you already know, like push-ups and
upper-body and leg raises lying on your back. But
there are others that I’ll have to teach you that can
be done in this cage. You probably didn’t notice I put
a treadmill next to the toilet. Since you won’t be
eliminating during this cycle, I’ll lift the ceiling
in the bathroom, and you’ll spend some time on the
treadmill before going to the aversion theater. Part
of the experiment is to have you more physically fit
at the conclusion that you were at the beginning.”

The new cycle went smoothly. Erwin didn’t offer any
resistance to going on the treadmill or the aversion
therapy. He was once again exhausted after finishing
the attraction theater session and fell asleep
immediately once he was back in the holding pen. When
she woke him up, he was groggy. He drank all the water
and stuck his tongue into the gruel, but then there
were gagging noises and he quickly moved away from the
bowl.

The elimination room and aversion theater went the
same as before, but there was a change in the
attraction theater. After she attached the apparatus
to his penis and the vibrating dildo was in his anus,
she told him that his progress had been so good that
she was moving to the next phase three cycles before
she had originally planned to.

“I want you to get on your hands and knees,” she said.
“You can use the cushions for your knees if you want,
but they aren’t necessary, because the floor is soft
and spongy. I’ve taken away the flat screen monitor.
You probably didn’t notice the hinged flap in the cage
in front of where the monitor was, but now you see it.
I’m opening it, and you can see that it’s large enough
to get your head through. I’m attaching some spongy
rubber to the wire framing the opening. Now I want you
to stick your head through it to check and make sure I
made it large enough. That’s it. It works. Maybe it’s
a little larger than necessary. OK, now you can put
your head back in and look at me.

“Do you see that I’m naked now, just like you? You’ve
been looking at all kinds of women in the aversion
theater and experiencing pain when they aroused you.
And you’ve been looking at me in the attraction
theater while experiencing tremendous orgasms. I can’t
bring live women here for the aversion therapy, but I
do have a live version of me for the attraction
therapy.

“So I’ve moved this big, stuffed chair up to the flap
in the cage, and I’ve got lots of small cushions to
help me get into a position that’s comfortable for me
and accessible to you. Let me move this way a little.
There, my legs are spread wide, and my vagina is right
in front of you. You can see that my juices are
already running in anticipation.

“You’ve always given me amazing oral satisfaction, and
I hope I’ve done the same for you. So all you have to
do now is stick your head through the window and do
what you always do. Usually, you’re also holding my
legs and stroking them, but I won’t be able enjoy that
again for a few more weeks. For now, it will have to
be just your mouth.

“I’m not going to force you, Erwin. I thought you
might be ready for real human flesh, but if you
aren’t, I’ll bring back the monitor and you can watch
the images again. I know you aren’t happy with this,
but in a couple more weeks, your conditioning will
make you eager and excited whenever I offer myself to
you in any way. So why not fake it today?

“I see you’re looking at the window and my juicy
vagina and thinking about something. There you go.
Yes, move right up against the side of the cage and
stick your head through it. Ohhh! Your tongue is
magic, like it always is. I’m turning on the switches
to the sucking machine and the vibrating dildo now.
Ohhh! There goes my first orgasm. It looks like you
had one, too.

He had five orgasms in the half-hour session, and the
container that collected his semen was nearly full.
When he was back in the holding pen, he fell asleep at
once, and when he was awakened, he lapped up the gruel
until the bowl was empty. The elimination room,
aversion theater and attraction theater all went
without a hitch, and the cycles continued to proceed
smoothly for the next few days. Florence felt that
something was motivating him, but he didn’t say what
it was and she couldn’t figure it out.

She found out during a cycle that started in a
promising way. She no longer had to give him an enema
for the elimination room. He was as regular as
clockwork now. During the aversion theater, she was
able to eliminate two more types of images and videos
that Erwin was no longer responding to. There were
only five things left that aroused him at all when he
watched other women.

In the attraction theater, his mouth and tongue
brought her to her first orgasm within seconds, and
the orgasms continued cascading down and immersing her
with pleasure.

And then she woke up with his hands around her neck.
She realized what had happened. She was so worn out by
her own lack of sleep that the exhausting orgasms made
her nod off and her head fall forward. He must have
been waiting for that to happen, because he had
withdrawn his head from the window and stuck his hands
though and now had a choke hold on her.

She was alert at once and scared. She looked at his
face. He was glowering at her. But in a couple of
seconds, she was no longer scared, and she smiled at
what she saw. She could tell he was desperate, but
also that he was frustrated because he had made a
miscalculation. They both knew that a good scientist
never begins any kind of procedue without thinking
about and preparing for the step to follow. Maybe
because of the sleep deprivation, had formed his plan
but hadn’t thought of what to do next. She could tell
by his face that he had already realized that.

“Erwin, before you kill me, I want to say something,”
she said. “When you choke the life out of me, I’ll be
lying here outside of your cage. As we both know, my
body will begin decaying, and in a few days, it will
be black and puffy and smell terrible.

“You might not even smell it, because by then you’ll
already be smelling other things. You’ll be able to
twist a few wires here and there, but not enough to
get out of the attraction theater. You won’t be able
to get to your food and water, so day by day, you’ll
get weaker. You’ll foul your nest and lie in your
urine and excrement.

“I wonder how long it will take for someone to come
here after you don’t show up for work in two weeks and
nobody answers our phone. Most likely they’ll find
both of us dead and stinking. If you’re still alive,
you won’t be human anymore. They’ll put you someplace,
another kind of rat cage, and feed you until you
finally die.

“On the other hand, if you let go of my neck, things
will go pretty much as they have been for another week
and a half. Then, if the experiment has a positive
outcome — and the data so far seem to indicate
there’s a good chance for that — you will be
conditioned to be happy doing what I want you to do
for the rest of your life. You’ll continue getting
acclaim and lots of income for your drug research, and
you’ll get tremendous satisfaction at home from me and
our children.

“This episode will have to have consequences to
prevent a recurrence and any other acts of resistance.
You will be in pain. But it will be of short duration.
Compare that with death or debilitation.

“There’s a positive aspect to this, too, Erwin, for
both of us. It shows that even during your
conditioning, your mind remains sharp and agile,
capable of thinking outside the cage. Everything was
going so well, but I was still worried whether the
conditioning was going to affect your abilities as a
scientist. I think this shows both of us that we don’t
need to worry about that.

“All right, Erwin. I’ve said my piece. Now it’s up to
you whether to kill me or not. I think you’re too
rational to do it, but I also know that even the best
minds have episodes of irrationality, such as the
times you cheated on me. I’m afraid to die, but as a
scientist, I’m also curious about what you decide.”

He held onto her neck a few more minutes while she
smiled at him and he glared at her. Then he let go and
fell back onto the floor of the cage and began
sobbing. She ended the attraction session early and
moved him back to the holding pen, where he cried
himself to sleep.

The next time he was in the elimination room, he
waited for her to lift the gate to the bathroom, but
she didn’t. As she stuck a tube into his anus, she
said, “Just today, we’re going to do something else,
Erwin. I’m going to give you a real enema, so you’ll
need to eliminate immediately into the hole below you.
And then you’ll get a second one and do the same
thing. After that, comes a third one that will fill
you with lubricant. You won’t need to expel that.”

When he had been filled with lube, Florence said. “Now
we’re ready for you to receive the consequences of
grabbing my neck. I’m crawling in here behind you. I’m
not going to put the expanding dildo into you, but I’m
putting one finger into your anus and moving it in and
out.

“Here’s a second finger joining the first, and now a
third finger. You’re taking them fine so far, and
maybe you’re even getting some pleasure from them, but
I see that the fourth finger was not pleasurable. I’m
working in and out of you with four fingers now, and
there, I’ve tucked my thumb behind them and have all
five at work.

“The next thing is for me to slowly push the fingers
forward. I see you’re trying to move away from me and
shake your buttocks to get rid of my fingers, but the
cage doesn’t give you much space to move, so the
pushing continues. It’s not hard, but it doesn’t let
up, and I’m starting to feel — there, I pushed my
hand in to the wrist. You really rattled your cage
when you reacted. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.

“Let’s rest like this for a minute. I’m sure your
stretched anal muscles must be causing a lot of pain
now, but we’re not done yet. The tube irrigated you
deep inside your anus, so there’s a lot of lube in
there, which will make this easier. See, I’m starting
to push again, and now my arm is following my hand
inside you. I’m almost to the elbow. There’s some
resistance now, so I’ll just wait and keep up the
gentle pressure. There we go.

“Now we’re nearly done. My bicep won’t give you as
much trouble as the elbow did. There it goes. Now I’m
inside you all the way to my shoulder. I’ll keep my
arm there while I explain that this deterrent is
symbolic as well as painful. With my arm up you like
this, I’m the puppeteer and you are the puppet. It’s
really just another version of I’m the scientist and
you are the rat. I am in control of your body, and you
must go where my arm goes.

“If you show any kind of further resistance to the
conditioning, I will be doing this again, and after I
do it, I’ll add something else a lot more painful
because repeated resistance would call for a stronger
deterrent. But I’m sure I won’t need any more
deterrents, because things have been going so well,
and now you know what will happen if you do anything
to impede the experiment.

“Now I’ll begin slowly pulling my arm out. We’ll skip
the aversion theater today and go straight to the
attraction theater.”

The next challenge Florence encountered wasn’t a major
one. It occurred a few days later in the attraction
theater, when she spread herself wide on the chair,
but instead of presenting her vagina, she slid down on
the cushions and presented her anus. She saw Erwin
looking at her questioningly.

“Today is something new for both of us, Erwin,” she
said. “I’m doing this mainly as a test of the
conditioning process. You’ve been doing a wonderful
job at pleasuring my vagina with your tongue, but
you’ve always enjoyed doing that. You’ve never
attempted to do this, so I have a feeling you didn’t
want to. I don’t know if I will like it either, but
it’s important that you do what I ask you to, whether
you want to or not. I know it can’t be exactly the
same, but I want you to do for my anus what you’ve
been doing for my vagina.”

Erwin’s eyes were wide, and he sounded as though he
were gagging. He just stared at her from inside the
case, but he made no move toward the window to stick
his head through.

“I know you’re scared, Erwin,” she said, “but we need
to do this now, so please begin.”

He was frozen, and made no move.

“I could threaten you with the fisting and some more
painful persuasion, but this defiance is at a much
lower level than when you attacked me, so I’ll use a
gentler form of coercion,” she said, lowering her
legs. “I have the controls for the penis pump and he
dildo vibrator in my hands. Before, I just turned them
onto a low level so you would get continuous pleasure
and ongoing orgasms while you were pleasuring me.

“But now I’m going to turn the levels of suction and
vibration a bit higher, like they were when you were
watching my images. There. I see you’re responding to
the increased pleasure. I was observing your reactions
during the image conditioning, and I took a lot of
notes. I observed a certain breathing pattern that
began about 30 seconds before you came. It happened
every time.

“I’m going to be watching for it now, and there it is.
I just heard it, and I immediately turned off both
stimulants. You were startled, I could tell, because
you were sure you were about to explode. Now we’ll
wait for a while. It may take a minute or so, but I
want to look into the transparent sucking sheath and
see that you’re totally soft again. I think we’re
there now.

“Again, I’m starting the vibration in the dildo and
the suction and waiting for that breathing pattern.
That was a lot faster. I heard it, and I shut you down
again. Now we’ll wait. Do you see where this is
going?”

Erwin didn’t say anything, but after the fifth time
she had built him up and then deflated him, he
screamed as the pump and vibration stopped. His face
was full of frustration, and there was pain written on
it, too.

“It sounds like your testicles are starting to hurt,
Erwin,” she said, “even though I haven’t touched them.
When you’re ready to do what I tell you, just say yes,
and I’ll stop the pleasure torture.”

He immediately said, “Yes,” and said it loud. He was
lying back on the cushions waiting for her to turn the
knobs so he could finally get his release. After a few
seconds, when nothing happened, he looked at her. She
had positioned herself again on the chair, with her
legs spread wide and her anus open and pushed toward
the opening in his cage.

“I’m not going to start anything until you’ve worked
on me for a while,” she said. “So come over here and
begin.”

He groaned but moved to the opening and stuck his head
through and put his mouth at her anus. He stayed like
that for a while and took some deep breaths before he
finally stuck his tongue out. It went back in right
away as he began making gagging sounds and moved his
head away.

“If you need to, just throw up on the floor, and I’ll
hose it down,” she said. “This is a major step in my
experiment, so I’ll be patient with you. As long as I
see you’re trying, you can take as much time as you
want.

It took a few more false starts, but finally Erwin
began running his tongue over Florence’s anus. Over
the course of the next few cycles, she gradually got
him to lick the hair in her crack and then push his
tongue deep into her anus and move it in and out of
her like a penis. The first time he did that, he
actually threw up, and Florence did hose him down and
then gave him a towel and let him sleep in the holding
pen.

After that, it went more smoothly. He was even more
eager to please her vagina now, because it meant she
wasn’t presenting her anus, except for the one time he
had given her a few orgasms with his tongue at her
vagina and then she had slid down and told him to
continue in her ass. He went to pieces, and she
decided she’d better stick to one orifice or the other
at each session and not mix them.

Although she was ambivalent about his tonguing of her
anus at first, she found that she was beginning to be
stimulated by it. She decided it was partly because he
was so repulsed by it. Then she decided to try
stimulating her vagina with her fingers while his
tongue was penetrating her anus. She nearly fainted
from the power of the orgasms she achieved. That was
when she knew that her experiment had produced one of
those unexpected byproducts that scientists exult
over. She had discovered something that would be a
regular part of their sex life from now on.

Her next sub-project was controlling his orgasms.
Before the experiment, there were times when she
wasn’t in the mood for sex, often when she was totally
worn out because she had to stay late to work with her
rats. But because Erwin was so expectant, she rarely
turned him down. Although he usually came fast,
sometimes when she wanted it to be over quickly so she
could go to sleep, he seemed to last forever, and by
the time he was finished, she felt like she had been
pounded into pulp.

To fix this, she began using the controls while he was
eating out her vagina or anus. When she heard his
breathing pattern indicate that the suction and
vibration had him on the verge of coming, she yelled
out “Come! Come! Come!” She played with various
settings of the controls, the lower ones that made him
last longer and the higher that brought him to the
edge quickly. Each time she heard he was getting
close, she yelled “Come! Come! Come!” just before he
came.

After five cycles, she tested this conditioning. He
was pleasuring her anus with his mouth, and his
stimulation was on a moderate level. His breathing was
steady. “Come! Come! Come!” she said.

He lifted his head in surprise and looked at her and
then looked down at the suction sheath. She looked
there, too, and she saw he had come, and his semen was
being sucked into the receptacle. She smiled at him
and felt a sense of accomplishment. After that, she
didn’t have to play with the controls anymore. Whether
it was one minute or 15 minutes after his stimulation
began, whenever she shouted “Come! Come! Come!” he
came within 30 seconds, and as more cycles went by,
the 30 seconds decreased to the point that he began
coming almost before the third word was finished.

A week had gone by (but because of the short sleep and
training cycles, it seemed like much longer) when he
crawled into the attraction theater and was startled
to see her crawl in behind him. She was naked, and
once he sat against some cushions, she sat on some
others facing him.

“It’s time to move to organic stimulation and away
from the mechanical,” she said. “Today, we’re going to
have sex without any machines. Because you’re so tired
from lack of sleep, I’ll be doing the work, even
though I’ve had less sleep than you, so lie down on
your back.” He responded almost instantly to her hands
manipulating his genitals, and when she rode him, he
was so excited that she heard the signs of orgasm
almost immediately. She stopped and waited until he
calmed down, and then she resumed. She had to stop and
wait four times until she felt her first orgasm, and
then she kept going and had three more. Then he came
hard while giving a joyful shout and then collapsed.
She tried in vain to revive him for a second round,
and then she dragged him back to the holding pen and
let him sleep.

He was so aroused by having sex with her instead of
the suction machine and dildo that this happened again
next time. His excitement also excited her, but she
also felt slightly frustrated that she had to manage
the sex instead of being able to let go and enjoy
herself like he was doing. After this happened a third
time, she started thinking. When she was tired, she
knew that “Come! Come! Come!” would make him finish
immediately. But what about when she wanted him to
last longer? Would she always have to focus on holding
him back? Was there a way to condition him to last
longer?

She eventually concluded that such training was far
beyond the scope of what she was doing. And besides,
the problem wasn’t the length of time. It was that
unless she was monitoring him, he might finish before
her and fall asleep leaving her frustrated. Then she
thought of the solution, rejected it as too gross and
finally decided to try it anyway.

The next session in the attraction room, she didn’t
try to hold him back, and he came two minutes after
she began riding him. She waited until she felt him
become soft inside her. His eyes were starting to
blink, and she knew he would soon be sound asleep.
Slowly she raised her body and moved forward over his
belly to his chest, then to his neck, then over his
face. She adjusted her position and then lowered
herself.

As her vagina came down on his mouth, Erwin, who was
half asleep already, tried to turn his head away, but
she grabbed his head with both hands and held it
steady as she looked at him. He blinked a couple of
times, and then he woke up and looked around in
confusion. When he saw what she had done, his eyes
grew wide. He was totally awake now, and behind her,
she felt his body moving to try to escape and his legs
kicking. But she held his head firmly and sat with her
vagina pressed against his tightly closed mouth.

“This was not part of the original experiment, Erwin,”
she said, “but you and I know that sometimes the early
data indicate other fruitful areas of exploration, and
this one was obvious. What I’m testing is whether we
can have a mutually satisfying sexual encounter even
when you come before I do. The hypothesis says that
after you come, you can still satisfy me with only a
brief interruption by using your mouth. The challenge,
of course, is that you’ve never tasted semen, and from
what I can remember, you’ve always carefully avoided
any contact with it. I sometimes wondered how you
could be so squeamish about it and didn’t mind at all
how I felt when you came in my mouth.

“I don’t enjoy the taste and smell of it either,
Erwin, but I do it for you, and I’m going to train you
to do it when you come too soon. I don’t think I can
train you to enjoy it, but that’s OK. It will become a
motivator for you to train yourself to last longer, so
that you can bring me to orgasm before you, or at
least at the same time. That will be the only way you
will be able to avoid having to use your mouth on me
and, during the process, having to swallow the semen
you’ve deposited.”

As she spoke, she saw his eyes dart around
frantically. He understood, but he wasn’t going to
cooperate. She felt sorry for him for a moment,
because he was so afraid of eating his come. But then
she realized that as soon as she trained him, he would
go longer be afraid, only repelled.

“Your mouth is tightly shut, Erwin,” she said, “but
you need to open it and start using your tongue on my
vagina the way you do to give me those amazing orgasms
that usually turn you on. The only difference is that
this time, you’ll be swallowing your semen in addition
to my juices.

“I could pinch your nostrils right now, so that you
would feel like you’re being smothered. That would
force you to open your mouth. But I don’t think that
will be necessary. I’d rather use pleasure on you, so
I’m hooking you up to the sucking machine and
inserting the vibrating dildo inside your anus now.
There, we’re all ready. Now I’m going to start you off
slowly and build you up until I see in your eyes that
you’re ready to come. You know what happens then.”

He was so scared of opening his mouth, that it took
her five stimulations to the edge of orgasm before he
responded. She could tell that that the pain and
frustration were tremendous the fifth time and yet he
still wouldn’t yield. But the sixth time, almost as
soon as the sucking and vibration started, he opened
his mouth and stuck his tongue out. She turned off the
stimulation, and he began shaking.

“Don’t get upset, Erwin. I’ll turn it right back on as
soon as your tongue gives me my first orgasm,” she
said. “From the excitement I’m feeling right now, that
won’t be long.” It took less than a minute. She was
looking down at the come flowing into his mouth as he
choked on it and swallowed while his tongue was
frantically probing inside her and playing with her
clitoris. The sight of him and the feeling of his
tongue made her lose control, and her body rose and
fell on top of him as if she were pounding him with a
hammer. Then she turned the stimulation on, and in
seconds, he was having a huge orgasm, too.

She used the pleasure torture a few more times, and
then decided to stimulate him without the equipment.
To speed things up, she yelled out “Come! Come! Come!”
only a minute after she began riding him, and then she
turned around and got into a 69 position and lowered
her vagina on his mouth while her mouth sucked him in
and her fingers played with his testicles. Sometimes
she inserted a finger into his anus. She found that
worked as well as the mechanical aids. After using her
fingers and mouth one time to bring him to the edge
and then frustrate him, he no longer resisted
swallowing his come. From then on, she just pleasured
him.

One time, she lowered herself on his mouth but didn’t
begin sucking right away. She noticed that he was
already eagerly working away at her, so she waited and
did nothing. He continued nonstop, giving her multiple
orgasms until she had enough and rose off of him. She
looked at his face, covered, as usual, with the sperm
that had poured onto it from her vagina and was about
to tell him that she was going to pleasure him now.
But he was already fast asleep.

A few more tests showed that once he came inside her,
he really didn’t care if she brought him off again.
All he cared about was finishing her off as fast as
possible to stop the semen pouring into his mouth and
over his face. After that, he just wanted to sleep.
She went back to facing him as she sat on his mouth,
because she saw that he still was repulsed by his
semen, and the sight of him dealing with it gave her
the most intense orgasms of all.

Ten days into the experiment, she was feeling
exhilarated. Everything was going as well or even
better than she had expected, and she had discovered
some things that were going to make it even more
successful than she could have imagined. Then she hit
the wall.

She knew from experience that this could happen in the
most successful experiments, so she was not surprised.
At first she underestimated the problem and thought
that it could be solved using the techniques she had
developed. But nothing worked.

The problem occurred in the aversion theater. She had
conditioned Erwin to react negatively to every kind of
woman and every kind of sex, except for one stubborn
type that resisted all her efforts. She saw that he
was trying hard to avoid reacting to anal sex, but
whenever it showed up in any way, sometimes just in a
photo of a curvaceous fully dressed woman taken from
the rear, he couldn’t help reacting, even though she
kept increasing the pain from the expanding dildo
while he was sucked to orgasm.

When she saw that she couldn’t expand the dildo any
further without causing internal injuries, she added
other kinds of pain. She enveloped his penis and
testicles with the sleeve of a blood pressure
apparatus and kept tightening it until he screamed
from the pain. But he still reacted to images of anal
sex.

After one particularly painful session, when he was
still shaking and crying, she was so tired from lack
of sleep and so frustrated that she burst into tears.
“I’m so sorry, Erwin,” she said. “I don’t want to hurt
you like this. I can’t understand why I can’t get
beyond this wall. We are so close to success on my
experiment, and yet I can’t solve this final problem.”

Erwin stopped whimpering and began breathing deeply.
She could see he was trying to keep himself from
shaking but it was hard. Then she heard his voice. He
was trying to say something.

From the beginning of the experiment, she understood
that he was a smart, unwilling test rat. She knew how
persuasive he could be, so she simply tuned out
everything he was saying. After a while, he could see
that talking was pointless, so he didn’t bother
speaking unless a response was necessary. So why was
he saying something now? He knew he wasn’t going to
get her to stop trying to solve this problem. Had he
thought of a new way to trick her into stopping the
experiment? Her success to this point made her
confident that he couldn’t do that, but she was
curious as to what he would try, so she listened to
him and tried to understand what he was saying.

It took him a while to control his shaking long enough
for him to become understandable. He was repeating two
words. Finally, she could understand him.

“OK, Erwin,” she said. “Don’t try to speak. Just nod.
Did you say, ‘Insufficient data’?” He nodded.

“Are you telling me that’s the reason for the
problem?”

He nodded.

She thought for a while. “OK,” she finally said.
“Either you’re trying to manipulate me to stop hurting
you, which is OK, because you’re again showing that
this conditioning is not affecting your brain
functions, or you’re trying to help me, which is even
better. So I’m suspending the experiment until I find
out. You can go to the holding pen now and sleep. I
won’t wake you up after three hours this time, because
I want you to rest until you’re alert enough to have a
conversation.”

Even though she didn’t wake him, he only slept four
hours. His body has adjusted to the experiment, she
thought, and wondered whether there would be any
problems in getting his body clock back to normal in
the final few days, and her body clock, too.

She sat down outside the holding pen, and they looked
at each other. She tried to guess what he was up to by
looking at his face, but he didn’t seem to be trying
to hide anything. That could just mean he’s learned
how to do it better, she thought.

She spoke first. “I’m waiting,” she said. “Tell me
what you meant by insufficient data.”

His voice was weak but firm. “Thanks for finally
listening to me, Florence,” he said, “but I’m not
going to tell you anything unless you stop hurting
me.”

“You know that if you don’t tell me anything, I’ll
have to go back to what I was doing,” she said, “and
that means more pain. I don’t want to do that, which
is why I’m listening to you, but I will continue if I
have to.”

“You’re a scientist, Florence,” he said. “If you were
irrational, you wouldn’t care that I have the
information to help you solve your problem. But you’re
like me. It will kill you when you think about this
later and realize you had the chance to get the data
and didn’t.”

“OK,” she said. “Let’s stop playing word games. Tell
me what you want from me.”

“What I really want is for you to end this right now,”
he said, “but I know I’m not going to get that. So if
you want the missing data, you have to agree to shut
down the aversion theater immediately. After I tell
you, you’ll understand that it’s no longer useful to
you anyway, but I just want to make sure. Since you’re
a committed ethical scientist, I want your word on
it.”

She was silent as she pondered his words. Her first
inclination was to agree immediately, but as a
scientist, she knew she had to remain skeptical. Was
there something else going on here beside the obvious
attempt to avoid further pain? Finally, she decided
that she had to take a chance on being tricked.

“OK,” she said. “I agree. I’m sure you know what I was
doing, but I’m going to spell it out so there’s no
misunderstanding. You are highly attuned to anal sex,
and my efforts to condition you to eliminate that
desire haven’t succeeded yet. You now are conditioned
for aversion to sex with any woman except me — in
every way except for anal sex. If you can give me a
solution to that problem that doesn’t involve further
pain to you, I will suspend further procedures
involving pain. That’s all I agree to. If that
satisfies you, all you have to do now is tell me the
solution.”

“I agree to what you just stated,” he said, “so here’s
my statement of your solution.” He paused and smiled
at her. “There is no solution.”

She smiled back at him. That wasn’t much of a trick,
she thought. Maybe his mind is exhausted after all.
“Unless you can support that statement, our agreement
is null,” she said.

“Of course, I can support it,” he said. “Did you think
I was trying to trick you, Florence? Yes, you did. I’m
disappointed in you. It’s my second disappointment
since this whole thing started. I’m not disappointed
in your experiment as you explained it on the first
day. I wondered at the time whether I might have come
up with something similar if the situation had been
reversed. I don’t think I would have had the
detachment to do it, like you have, but I did see the
logic in it.

“No, the first disappointment was when I realized you
were starting your experiment on the basis of a faulty
conclusion from insufficient data. You didn’t do
enough preliminary research, and that’s not like you.
I have the feeling it was because you let your
emotions blind your rational thinking, though there’s
no way for me to prove that.”

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” said Florence, “but I
do need to remind you of a couple of things, and then
I’ll shut up. Number one, you’re not justifying the
statement you just made about your claim that there is
no solution. Number two, I know you are much better
than I am at being persuasive, so I’m only going to
listen to you for a short time. If there is no
substance in what you say, only attempts to manipulate
my emotions, I’m going to tune you out and resume the
experiment until it’s concluded. I’ll try to find ways
to solve the last problem that aren’t painful to you,
but I won’t make any promises since I’ll consider our
agreement void.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “This won’t take long. But you
will have to participate by answering some questions.
You say you actually met some of my sexual partners
and got two to pose for your aversion images. There
weren’t that many, so you probably found all of them.
Did you interview any of them?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I didn’t need to. I researched them without
their knowledge and found out everything I needed to.”

“And from your research, you concluded that I was not
a serial adulterer and there was no pattern. At least
you got half of that right.”

“What do you mean? Did you cheat more often and manage
to hide it? Did you cheat in town as well as at
conferences?”

“No. The serial part is the part you got right. I
rarely cheated. Since you knew that, why didn’t you
ask yourself why I cheated at all?”

“I did, and I decided it must have happened randomly
at times when you were vulnerable. Maybe you were
drunk, or the woman was especially attractive or
persuasive?”

“What was the data that led to that conclusion?” he
said. She didn’t answer.

“There was no data, because you never spoke to the
women. And there was one other person you could have
spoken to who had all the information you were looking
for. Why are you crying, Florence? Are you crying as a
woman. or as a scientist who realizes she made a
mistake that only an undergraduate would make?

“I can’t prove it, but I think the data point to the
fact that you were acting as an emotionally charged
woman, not as a scientist when you were preparing the
experiment. Otherwise, why didn’t you talk to any of
the women? Most of all, why didn’t you talk to me?
Maybe they wouldn’t have told you what you wanted to
know, or maybe I wouldn’t have, but how could you
know?

“You should have known me well enough to know I would
have been embarrassed, unhappy and apologetic, and I
would have begged you to not divorce me. But it
wouldn’t have been hard for you to get me to tell you
what happened. You see, there was a pattern. You
didn’t see it because you wanted to avoid the
emotional confrontations it would take to get the
information. But that’s no excuse. You do research all
the time into sexual pathology, so those emotionally
wrenching confrontations are something you’re used to.
But when it came to yourself, you couldn’t face them.

“You failed as a scientist in this case, but I’m happy
that you did, because your failure kept me from
despising you during this experiment. When I was
hurting and exhausted, I clung to your failure. I
thought I was close to you, and when you started
treating me like a rat, I thought I didn’t know you at
all. But when I realized you were doing all of this
because you were scared to find out what I was really
doing and why, it made me love you all over again. The
chemicals in our brains work in strange ways.

“OK, I don’t want you getting impatient, so here’s the
pattern that you never discovered, until you began
torturing me. You’ve already uncovered it, even though
you didn’t make the connection. It’s all about anal
sex.

“Whether it was physical or because they were groupies
trying to get some glory by seducing a successful
researcher, I’ve had women scientists approaching me
for many years, before and after we were married.
Nothing ever happened until a few years ago when I was
talking to one of them in a hotel bar, and she told me
that I was really missing out, because she would do
anything I wanted in bed, including things my wife
would probably never do. I don’t know why — actually,
I do know now, but I didn’t then. Anyway, for some
reason, I asked her, are you talking about anal sex?
And she said, sure, she loved anal sex.

“It turned out she was lying, because I was the first
man she had ever taken in her ass, and I had to stop
because she began screaming. But when I pulled out,
she went to the bathroom for a while, and when she
came back, she said she wanted to try again. It still
hurt her a lot, and I wanted to stop, but she wouldn’t
hear of it. Afterwards, she asked me if I were willing
to please her orally, and I did. She had a lot of
orgasms, and before I left her room, she said it was
worth the pain.

“You know we talked about anal a couple of times
before we got married and maybe a couple of times
after that, but you were so turned off and scared by
the subject that I just dropped it. I told myself that
our life was so good, including our sex life, that
even though I had enjoyed it with other women before I
met you, it wasn’t necessary.

“But that episode with the groupie at the conference
released what I had been repressing. My mind is so
hard wired for anal intercourse that my reasoning is
no match. I didn’t go looking for it, but when a woman
would come on to me, I would ask her how wild she was
in bed. They all said they were wild, but when I asked
them to tell me the crazy stuff they would do, most of
them ended up backing off. Except every once in a
while, one of them would guess what I was after and
tell me it was no problem. After the first one, I
always made sure they knew what they were getting
into.

“I thought about telling you several times, but then I
reasoned that all it would do was hurt us both. If you
accepted it, then I would be upset, because you
shouldn’t accept that kind of behavior in a marriage.
I wouldn’t accept it from you. And if you decided to
divorce me over it, I would be even more upset, and it
wouldn’t make you any happier either.

“Now you know why you get low marks on preliminary
research. Because if you had sufficient data, you
would have realized that even if you had tortured me
to the point of mutilation, my inclination toward anal
sex would still be there.

“I tried to tell you all this right at the beginning,
but you weren’t listening to me. I’m not faulting you
on that, because you knew that I would say anything to
get you to stop. You had no idea that I might even
tell you the truth.”

He stopped speaking and sat looking at her. She was
looking at him and crying. Finally, she spoke.

“So are you saying that this whole experiment was
flawed and useless, Erwin?” she said.

“No, Florence, not at all,” he said quickly.

“But if I had known that all you were after was anal
sex, and I couldn’t change that, I would never have
started this,” she said.

“Don’t think like that,” he said. “You did what you
did, and we are where we are now. You’ve succeeded in
conditioning me to some things without turning me into
a babbling imbecile, so your experiment was partly
successful. I’m not going to divorce you — or I
should say, that’s not my intention at this moment.
I’ve told you about the solution to your final
problem, and if you break our agreement and continue
to hurt me for no reason, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”

“Oh no, Erwin,” she said. “I’m not going to do that.
But I see you’re tired, and I am exhausted. I’m going
to bed, and when I wake up, I’m going to think about
what you told me and what it means to our lives. When
you wake up, we’ll talk about where we’re going from
here.”

He smiled at her and stretched out in the holding pen.
I should have offered to let him out, she thought, but
he’s already asleep. Without thinking, she put a bowl
of gruel and a bowl of water in the pen and then went
to bed.

She looked at the clock when she woke up and found
that she’d slept more than 10 hours. She rushed to the
holding pen, but she saw Erwin was fast asleep. He had
woken up earlier, she noticed, because the bowls of
food and water were empty. She sat there thinking for
more than an hour before she saw him stirring.

Before he could say anything, she began to speak.
“I’ve been watching you and thinking about what you
told me,” she said. “I thought about aborting the
experiment. That’s what you’d like, isn’t it? I’d like
that, too, but as a scientist, I know that no matter
what turns up during an experiment, the last resort is
to abort. The only reason would be if there’s no
reason to continue.

“At first, it didn’t seem as if there was any reason
to go on. There are only six days left now, and I’ve
accomplished everything I wanted, except for one
thing. And as you pointed out, there’s no way to
accomplish that.

“But as I thought about it, I realized that I was not
looking at the problem the right way. The problem is
not that you are hard-wired to want anal sex. The real
problem is that because that’s the way your brain
works, it makes you vulnerable. Or to put it another
way, since the only way you can get anal sex is by
cheating, you’re going to cheat, and even though we’ve
aired this problem and I know you’re going to try
harder — yes, I see you nodding, Erwin, and I believe
you — there is a good chance that you will someday
cheat again.

“But there is a way to prevent that, and it’s the same
way that I’ve been conditioning you to overcome what I
thought was your problem — desiring an occasional
other woman. I used the aversion theater to make
having sex with anyone else associated in your mind
with pain and humiliation. And I used the attraction
theater to make having sex and pleasing me associated
with intense pleasure.

“The inclination to anal sex didn’t respond to the
tremendous pain I inflicted on you. But there is
another approach, one that I didn’t think of because –
– well because, it’s unthinkable for me. But you made
me think of it, and for the last hour, as I watched
you sleeping, I’ve been asking myself whether I can go
through with it. Because to do that, I would have to
supply the pleasure, and supplying your pleasure would
mean pain to me. But as the researcher, sometimes you
have to meet the rat halfway in order for the
experiment to produce the desired outcome, and I’ve
decided that’s what I’m going to do.

“This is going to be hard on me, and as you’ll see,
it’s also going to be hard on you. Believe me, Erwin,
I’ve tried to come up with every reason for not doing
this, but as a scientist, I finally couldn’t avoid it,
because I honestly think it stands a good chance for
success. So from this second, we’re going back to the
earlier regimen, except for the aversion theater,
which I promised I would shut down. And you’re right,
it wouldn’t help anyway at this point.

“So please move forward to the elimination room and
the toilet room, and when you’ve finished there, we’re
both going to the attraction room.”

When they were both naked in the attraction room, she
said. “Today, I’m giving you my ass for the first
time, Erwin. I never thought much about your equipment
before, except for the fact that you knew how to use
it to bring me a lot of pleasure, but I just looked at
it now and realized it was really large. I’m scared to
death right now, but I’m going to hold on as long as I
can.”

She got up on her hands and knees and waited. Erwin
watched her but didn’t move. “What are you waiting
for,” she said.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he said.

“No–yes,” she said. “Damn it, Erwin, get going before
I change my mind or get hysterical.”

He got up behind her and looked at her anus. He saw it
was shiny from the lube she had used. As the tip of
his penis touched her, she flinched and then held her
breath. He pushed forward and concentrated on trying
to keep his intrusion so slow that it seemed like he
was barely moving. It didn’t help her, he noticed,
because from the minute he was into her, she began
shaking and making soft sobbing sounds in between
taking deep breaths. Finally, she said, “Please go
faster, Erwin. This is excruciating. I want to finish
as fast as I can.”

He moved a little faster and soon was all the way in.
When he began pulling out, she screamed and then
stopped herself. “Faster!” she said through clenched
teeth. He pulled almost all the way out and then
pushed back in a little faster. He continued to
increase the pace and she began puffing to try to ease
the pain.

He started to get excited by her muscles spasming out
of control around his penis, and he moved in and out
faster. Then she screamed loudly, “Come! Come! Come!”
and began sobbing uncontrollably. He pulled out one
more time, and as he pushed in, he came, even though
he didn’t feel like he was ready. He pushed deep into
her and stayed that way as she cried and he felt her
spasming, which kept him aroused. Finally, she stopped
and after a while he became soft. He tried to pull out
carefully, but she still jerked a few times and cried
out.

When he pulled out and sat down, she collapsed onto
the floor of the cage and wept. She lay there while he
watched her. Gradually the tears stopped, but she
still didn’t move. He heard her breathing slowing
down. Then she took a couple of deep breaths and began
moving. He was resting against some cushions and
didn’t see her grab his ankles and pull him down flat
on the floor. He tried to get up, but she had gotten
on top of him, facing him as if she were getting ready
to mount him. She was sitting on his stomach, and now
she bounced up and down on it a few times.

It knocked the wind out of him, and he stopped trying
to get up. He was lying there trying to breathe when
he felt her move back on him to get into the 69
position. But this time, she didn’t move all the way
back. Instead, she lowered her anus toward his face.
He saw it looked red and bruised, and there was a drop
of his semen in the middle of it.

“No,” he yelled.

“Yes, Erwin,” she said calmly. “You’re going to eat
out my ass now. I know you don’t like that, and
getting an assful of come in your mouth will make it
even worse. But you’re going to do it. I’m ready to
attach the sucking machine and the vibrating dildo to
start your pleasure torture if you’d rather do it that
way. But one way or another, you’re going to do it.

“It will save time if you reason it out. See, from now
on, I’m going to give you my ass every cycle until the
experiment is over. You’ll be getting all your anal at
home from this day forward. It won’t be every day, or
even every week, but hopefully often enough to keep
you from straying. But each time you pound my ass,
you’re going to eat your come out of it, and I’m going
to attempt to pleasure myself into orgasm while you do
it. That’s part of my conditioning process that will
help me to allow you into my anus.

“So we can do this the easy way or I can hook you up
and we can do it the hard way. It’s your choice. Take
your time thinking about it. I won’t rush you. We
don’t have many days left, but the rest of the time,
we’ll be focusing on this.”

She heard him underneath her. He was gagging, and then
he cried a little. Then she felt his tongue in the
area between her vagina and anus, and then it stopped
and there was more gagging. Inside her anus, she still
felt tremendous pain, but she noticed she was starting
to get aroused. Then she felt his tongue go across her
anus, and her excitement mounted. She touched herself
and found her juices flowing. She began moving her
fingers across her clitoris.

He continued licking for a while and then he took a
breath and stuck his tongue inside her. That’s when
she took off like a rocket. Her anus spasmed around
his tongue and pushed out semen into his mouth and all
over his face as she had orgasm after orgasm. It was
amazing, she thought, but then they were over, and all
that was left was the strong pain that radiated from
inside her anus all over her body.

The pleasure wasn’t worth the pain, she decided as she
lay there. But I’m going to have to accept it, like
Erwin will have to accept eating his come from my
anus. It’s the only way we can move on. I’ve got to
gradually build up to where he can spend as much time
as he wants in my ass and I don’t have to use the
words that make him come. If I don’t, he might resent
that I’m cheating him out of truly enjoying anal sex
with me. So he might still be susceptible to another
woman.

If I can use other techniques to arouse him, he’ll
probably come quickly anyway and won’t feel cheated. I
can’t take too many chances. He took a tremendous dose
of pain, and that anal urge was still there, so I’ve
got to do this for him. Maybe after a while, it won’t
hurt so much or feel so dirty and I can enjoy him
eating his semen from my anus without so much pain
afterward. She lifted herself up and looked at him. He
was asleep, and his face was filthy. I’ll let him
sleep now and hose him off when he wakes up, she
thought.

Later, he gazed at her silently as she spoke. “I’m not
going to subdue you by jumping on your stomach
anymore, Erwin,” she said. “Next time you go into the
attraction theater, I’m going to put restraints on
you. Your arms will be attached to the sides of the
cage, so you’ll be able to have anal sex with me in
the doggy position, and then I’ll be able to slide you
down on your back without much trouble and get on top
of you so you can eat my ass full of your semen.

“We don’t have too much time left for this, so this
last conditioning will be more intense. I saved all
the semen that the sucking machine pulled out of you.
I don’t know why, but now it will be handy. I’ve got
almost a half-gallon. After I give you my ass and you
eat your deposit out, I’m going to heat up the old
semen and inject it into my anus with a syringe. There
will be a lot more in there than you can deposit any
one time.

“You’re going to eat out at least two additional
assfuls each cycle. When you do, I’m going to suck you
and give you some nice orgasms at the same time. I
want you to continue associating pleasure with the
degradation of eating your semen from my anus. I don’t
expect you to ever like it, because I know that I will
never like anal. But I hope we can both endure what we
need to.”

Two days before he was due to return to work, she
opened the holding pen. He sat looking at her for a
while and then slowly crawled out. She helped him get
to his feet and held onto him as he walked around the
house. He saw her rat cage construction from the
outside for the first time and told her she had done a
good job.

That night she walked him upstairs to their bedroom
and encouraged him to make love on top of her for the
first time in over three weeks. They were both
tentative, but after a while, they got into the groove
and both had satisfying orgasms. She came just seconds
after him. She wondered if he was thinking about that
and was prepared to use his tongue if he had to.

They didn’t say anything after they cleaned up, and
both of them fell asleep almost immediately. She woke
up with a start. It was morning, and he wasn’t there.
She jumped out of bed and threw on a robe. Her mind
was racing. Had he run away in the night and left her
for good? Had she destroyed their marriage? Had he
done something violent to himself? She began crying as
she raced down the stairs, and then she smiled. He had
crawled back into the holding pen and was sleeping
like a baby.

That day there was no sex, but they didn’t talk much
either as they watched television. She awoke in the
middle of the night to find him missing again, but he
was back in the holding pen. I guess he finds it more
comforting there than to sleep in the same bed with
me, she thought. Once the experiment is finished, I
need to give him a lot of nurturing and tenderness. I
miss doing that, but I’ve got to be the scientist a
little longer. This isn’t over yet.

She called in sick the day he went back to work, and
she spent most of the day worrying. Would he come
home? What would he be like when he came home? Could
she do what she had to do?

She was at the window watching as he pulled into their
circular driveway and came to the door. When he opened
it and stepped in, she embraced him and gave him a
tender kiss. “I’m so glad you’re home, Erwin,” she
said.

“Me, too,” he said, looking at her. She steeled
herself.

“Now please give me your briefcase while you take off
all your clothes. Please put them on the chair here
and crawl around our pretty screen into your holding
pen. That’s it. Now let me lock it behind you while
you crawl into the elimination room first. When you
finish in the toilet room, we’re going to the
attraction theater, where I’m going to give you some
nice anal sex. I’ll try to hang on a little longer
today than last time. Yes, I’m happy that you
appreciate my efforts, Erwin. It helps me to know how
much this means to you.

“Afterward, you’ll get to eat out my anus while I
pleasure myself, and then you’ll get another assful of
warm come to eat while I give you an oral orgasm.
There’s not much semen left from the sucking machine,
so soon there won’t be any extra for you. I don’t
think you’ll miss it that much. That was a joke,
Erwin.

“Then we’re going to get out of the cages and wash up
and have a great dinner that I’ve cooked for you. And
then we’re going to bed, and I’m going to hold you
while we’re naked, and if that arouses us, we’ll have
slow and tender sex. I hope you stay in bed all night
tonight. I can’t wait until I wake up next to you.”

The next day she went back to work, but she left early
to make sure she was home before he was. He followed
her orders again, and everything went smoothly that
day and the rest of the work week.

On Saturday, she made a decision. When they were
eating breakfast, she said, “I was prepared to call in
sick to both of our labs Monday morning in case I
needed another week to reinforce the training. But now
I don’t think that will be necessary. So today, I
thought we’d tear down the lab equipment and get our
house back to normal. Wait. Where are you going?”

“Just to the garage,” he said without turning around.
“You told me it took you three days to put your
experiment together, but with my power tools, I’ll get
everything to the junkyard in less than two hours.”

She watched him while she sipped a cup of coffee. He
seemed relaxed, calm and focused, as he quickly
dismantled her experiment. A thought came into her
head as she watched him, and it bothered her. She
tried to dismiss it, but it was one of those ideas
that wouldn’t be willed away. In fact, after he put
the pieces of the experiment into the trunk of his car
and drove off, she couldn’t stop thinking of it, even
while she was preparing lunch. It was getting her more
upset by the minute, so she tried to analyze it
scientifically.

There was no data to support the idea, she decided,
but she still couldn’t let go of it. When they sat
down to lunch, she hesitated, but then she decided to
share her thoughts with Erwin.

“When I saw how fast you responded to disassembling my
experiment this morning, I was pleased at first,” she
said. “But then this idea came into my mind, and I
can’t get rid of it. I didn’t really order you to do
that. I just brought it up as something I was
considering. But you acted like it was a command and
completed it much faster than I would have imagined.
Was it because you were enthusiastically responding to
my implied desire? Or was it only because you hated
looking at it and what it reminded you of? Did you
just interpret my words to do what you were dying to
do? I can’t stop thinking about that question.

“It’s crazy, but do you know what I’m thinking? Even
though I have my lab book full of data, and your
responses are all still consistent with the desired
outcome, there’s really no way to empirically conclude
that the conditioning worked. What if it wore off in
two days, and everything you’re doing right now is
from your own decisions?

“What if the chemicals in your brain that produce the
feeling called love are back in control, and
everything you’re doing to please me is because of
love and not because of the conditioning. What if the
whole experiment was a failure?”

She looked at him as he swallowed what he was chewing.
Then a smile came over his face. “You’re a world-class
scientist, Florence,” he said, “but all of us are
fallible. We always have to fight against giving in to
unreasonable human emotions in our work.

“You know that sometimes after we finish an
experiment, there are still doubts. Did the rats
really confirm or negate the hypothesis? Maybe they
responded the way they did for reasons we are unaware
of. As much as we control the tests, we can’t be
perfect.

“A scientist who gives in to feelings like that will
never be as successful as you have been. The true
scientist knows that when the experiment is over, you
accept the results and move on to the next experiment.
As additional data come in and they don’t negate the
initial conclusions, you continue to assume that you
were correct. Otherwise, you would be paralyzed and
unable to do anything worthwhile.

“Your experiment achieved your positive outcome, so
you need to accept that and move on. Does that answer
your question?” His smile was even wider now.

“No,” she said.