Choose-Your-Own-Brainwashing-Adventure

Welcome to June! Today we’ll be beginning an amazing journey together, choose-your-own-adventure style! The premise is simple: every day I’ll give you a snippet of story, at the end of which will be a set of prompts so that you can choose where the story goes. Everyone will have 24 hours or so to vote, and then the story will continue. It will, of course, be a story about brainwashing, and if you should happen to feel as if the events of the story might be happening to you, well that’s good too, isn’t it?

If you’re seated comfortably, we can begin.

Please imagine that you and a group of travelers, maybe people you know, maybe people you’ve never before met, are all waiting for a train. You’re at an old-fashioned kind of depot, like one you’d read about in a story about small-town kids moving away to the big city, or solitary travelers running from their troubles in the dead of night, or young lovers at the turn of the century embarking on their life together. It’s that time of day called the golden hour, where everything is touched with drips of gold, and motes hover in sunbeams like drifts of pixie dust.

I’m sure that you can decide for yourself where you’re going; what’s important for this story is not so much where you think you’re supposed to go, but rather the fact that you’re probably not going to get there. You, and all the travelers milling around you, have just realized that the train’s arrival time has come and gone while you’ve been standing there, watching the dust in the sunbeams, and that you’re not going to arrive on time to your destination. You are just beginning to think about alternate forms of transportation, when a voice makes itself heard over the crowd.

“Welcome to the journey of a lifetime!” it says. It’s not very loud, but cuts through the murmurs of your fellow travelers as if it’s the most important sound in the world. “You lucky few, out of all the creatures in existence,” it continues, “have been chosen to experience the world through my eyes. Won’t that be wonderful? Won’t that be exciting?”

Your first instinct is to say “no”, but before the word can pass your lips, you suddenly think to yourself ‘why not do something new for a change?’ You don’t notice that the voice of your thoughts sounds a little bit like the voice that is still speaking, its words hovering over the depot before dropping down into your ears.

“Before we can begin this journey together, I need you to do something for me. It’s a very simple something, as simple as saying hello to a friend, or sipping water when you’re thirsty, or saying yes to a kiss. You’ve done all of those things before, haven’t you?”

You nod your head yes, and see the others around you doing the same.

“Wonderful!” the voice says, smiling. You can feel the smile on your skin like whispers in your ears as the voice continues. “In order for us to journey together, I need you to trust me, and to listen to me, and to focus on my words. And I know that you can do that so easily, and I know that the more you listen to me the more you’ll want to do that so easily, and the more that you want that, sooner our journey together can begin.”

And it’s true, you’re finding that the more you focus on the voice’s words, the more you want to listen to them, and the more you listen, the more you trust the voice. You continue to stand on the platform in the early evening, as the sun bathes you in warmth and the voice keeps speaking.

“Thank you everyone, for trusting and listening and focusing so completely for me. In a moment, a train is going to pull up in front of you, and if you want to keep going on this journey with me, all you have to do is climb aboard. It’s time to make your decision.”

Do you want to:

1. Climb aboard the train.
2. Ask the voice some questions.
3. See what everyone else decides to do before making your decision.
4. Go find a taxi to take you to your original destination.

Please reply with your vote by 7am on June 2nd to continue the story!