Birthday Games

22. Once Upon an Ending

"I love you," they were the words I most wanted to hear. If she said I was incredible, or complimented something in particular, that could be a token effort to appease my ego. I didn't want her to feel obliged to make me feel good, because that was my responsibility. I wanted to make sure everything was in place for Karin to be as happy as she could possibly be, and when she said those three little words, I knew by now it meant she was so pleased that she couldn't think of anything more detailed. It was exactly the answer I always strove for. So I could be content now, knowing that her birthday present had been everything she could have hoped for.

"Did you like the phone?" I asked. Because an overall opinion was one thing, but I still hoped the most expensive gift on the list would have plenty to recommend it.

"I don't know," she grinned, "I barely even used it. I think I was looking at it all day, but I don't even remember. That was incredible, how did you do that?"

"A simple post-hypnotic suggestion," I smiled proudly, "To make you feel whatever you saw in a certain font, and not to notice how much you were looking at it. The app was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. From my end, anyway."

"For me too. That was incredible, a whole fantasy, and there were so many other options. Did you guess which ones I'd pick and put most effort into those? Or... did I actually have a choice, or was it preprogrammed?"

"There are a dozen main paths in the story," I explained as best I could, "I don't really understand it, but the phone tracks which one you want by following your eye movement. And no, I didn't know which one you'd go for. That wasn't one of my best guesses, actually. But I made them all as detailed and varied as I could."

"Seems a shame that I only got to try one, then," she smiled, and then gave a kiss to try to take my mind away from a statement that could almost be seen as critical. She didn't like to say anything negative, I knew that much already.

"Oh, you can try the others," I grinned. I'd thought about the game a lot, quite besides all the time taken getting her to record parts of the audio for the narrative without remembering, and conditioning her to follow the suggestions in a particular font, and making sure it would all work neatly. I'd put a lot of effort into those stories, and consulting with Oz on the actual programming of the app. Of course, I'd want her to be able to play through it again. I gave her a quick explanation of the settings: that the retina scanner would be weighted towards options she'd not chosen before, so that if her preferences were close she would get the other option on her next try, and how the system was set up so that the next time she played through it wouldn't select the exact same path unless her eyes focused on those options and didn't waver for the whole sampling period. And how it always scanned at least four seconds of eye movement before assessing which option she'd looked at the most, so if she really wanted to try a specific one she could always tap the screen before that happened.

"Wow," she grinned, "You really do think of everything!"

"Anything to make you happy. Now, I'm sure you'll have time to make use of it again when–"

"Wait, I was supposed to be at college!" her eyes were wide as she realised, horrified at the thought of spoiling her perfect record.

"No, sorry," I couldn't help a little chuckle at that, "It's Saturday. I thought if you went out thinking it was a college day, then the surprise would be a little more fun. Many of the paths are supposed to happen in the park, or walking along the road, or involve you not realising that the place you've gone to is home, after all. I hope you don't mind the deception."

"Of course not, Master," she smiled, "You give me so much, make me feel so many wonderful things, I know now that giving you the choice is better than anything I could have come up with on my own. So I want to give you all the choices."

"That sounds fair," I nodded. And I really hadn't given her any post-hypnotic suggestions to influence that choice. To me, trust was like a karate black belt: the process of earning it is far more important than the item itself. "So, I think it would be a good idea if you try out the phone every Saturday, as long as there's more paths you want to explore. You can choose your fantasy in advance, or take the one that comes naturally. But right now, I think it would be nice to try that other present again. See if it gets any better now we're used to it..."

She didn't say anything, just purred and nodded in response. There was really nothing else she could say that would add to that. So I reached over to the toy on the nightstand, and turned out the light as well.

The End (or 'An End', anyway)

There is actually a chapter that follows on from this one, but it was designed to be a little easter egg... so I don't think I'll say what chapter number it is. Can you guess?