Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 DISCLAIMER: Not to be read by anyone under the age of majority.  Do not
read under the influence of an evil hypnotist (If you are not sure, see
Table #67840, Hypnotists who are Evil).  He'll only stop you enjoying it.
Under the influence of a good, neutral, or utterly disinterested hypnotist
(Table #67851) or alcohol, however, feel free.

   BIOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE

   >Pick up the rubbish and put it in the bin.< The chimp, an expression
that even by chimp standards was blank, stood up, walked over to the Coke
can lying on the floor, and plucked it off the floor.  It ambled over to
the bin, dropped the can into it, and stopped moving.  Gerald grinned. 
"Cool... It worked." "We've invented telepathy?" Gerald nodded.  "Close
enough.  We can transfer thoughts, and in the case of the chimp they act as
orders.  But that may be just because you blanked his mind and there're no
conflicting thought impulses.  Have to clone a new pair of symbionts to get
that to work, though... I'm pretty sure they're solo pairs.  Still, it does
give us a handle on the housework." >Clean the lab.< *** Neuron symbionts
were one of those inventions that people looked at afterwards and wondered
what sort of person would even think of doing research along those lines in
the first place, like cooking (what sort of person would try dropping a
choice cut of meat in the fire for the first time?  It might wreck it).  A
clone pair of symbionts allowed a link between the minds in which they
rode, a link that couldn't be detected but along which thoughts could
travel at least as easily as *A Hard Day's Night* through radio waves, but
which could be converted back into comprehensible neural impulses only by
the other of the clone pair.  Any other symbiont set, assuming it could
pick up the messages at all, would get only gibberish.  The next stage of
the project involved widebanding transmission and comprehension among all
symbiont sets, to create true telepathy.  But that would be some time yet.
In the meantime, the scientists working on the project had staged a minor
coup in the university's biology facility and taken over the accelerated
growth incubation chamber, the cloning equipment, and sensory deprivation
tanks, using them in a wilfully illegal fashion to produce a series of
adult chimps with no thought impulses of their own.  With one half of a
clone pair in the chimp and one half in each scientist, the mundane work of
the laboratory doubled in speed.  Other developments in the field of
neurobiology swiftly followed, and moral standards slipped.  Their own
consent had been freely given, but there had been every reason to suppose
it would work, and still more reason to suppose trying would present no
danger.  On the matter of a second implant into the same brain as a first,
however, their collective judgement was less sure.  It had every chance of
being perfectly safe, but it was also likely to prove damaging.  Consent to
this second experiment - human to human communication - was less
forthcoming.  In the end only Gerald was willing to risk the second
implant. Which left attempting human-to-human as far away as it had been
before, if one went by ethical and conventional practices.  A fact none of
the research team were wholly willing to let stop them.  After all, the
illegal servitor chimps they had produced had turned out far better than
the team had hoped; why not go a little further?  They could restage the
experiments later, legally, if it worked.  But first, *it had to work*.  It
had to.  And if the unknowing experimentee were to decide, once they knew,
that not having given their permission was the important part of the
experiment, and not it's success or failure, their telepathic symbiont
research would be discredited for the best part of their lives, and whoever
finished it, it wouldn't be them, barring carefully co-ordinated ninja
night raids on laboratories by puppet chimps.  The experimentee, therefore,
absolutely must not be afforded that freedom.  Work began on modification
of the symbiont and on a more covert method of implanting it.  *** "So,
uh... where are you going, exactly?" "Well, I thought I'd use a place where
people are likely not to be missed immediately and where they won't be
surrounded by a horde of watchful friends." "And?" "And so I'm going to
risk embarrassment and hit a singles bar." "Ok.  Good luck, Gerald."
"Thanks, mate." And with that, the scientist set out.  *** The Birds and
Bees was a pretty low-rent establishment with an utterly pathetic title. 
As such, it wasn't likely that the clientele would be up to much.  This
much was evident to Gerald even before he walked in.  He'd never been in a
singles bar before - he might have been a typical science nerd, but he
wasn't desperate, he would have explained - but wasn't particularly
surprised with the layout.  He ran an eye along the drafts and smiled in
surprise when he noticed his favourite bitter on draft.  Hook Norton,
brewed in Oxfordshire and consumed in very few places, was available.  He
ordered a pint and took a seat, and waited.  After all, he might, as he
would freely admit, be a nerd, but he'd somehow failed to develop a paunch
- possibly because he was a *menial* science nerd and had to do a lot of
lifting and carrying - and he didn't look *too* bad, he thought, studying
his face in the reflection on his glass, with perhaps a little bias but, he
considered, strong overtones of his usual professional detachment.  And
anyone who'd voluntarily go to a singles bar had to be aiming for sex, at
least to some degree.  And that, he considered, was pushing the envelope
the other way, to avoid seeming biased due to popular prejudice.  Maybe it
wasn't, but it was as far as he intended to go.  After half an hour, he
wondered whether perhaps he should try making the running.  But, as he
started to scan the room for a vaguely acceptable candidate, a finger
bounced off his shoulder.  He spun around nervously on the barstool and
nearly overbalanced, but the counter top kept him upright.  "Uh, hi," he
squeaked.  "Hi," the woman replied.  Her voice stayed cool, very ice
maidenish.  "You've been very quiet so far." "Uh, w-well -" "Not used to
this sort of thing?" she inquired, one perfect eyebrow arched, a look
almost of contempt in her eyes.  But companionable contempt.  "Well, er...
no.  I - I" "I thought so," she said, cutting him off.  "Not let out much?"
*What an odd way to put it,* Gerald thought.  "W-well..." She nodded with
icy understanding and patted his head condescendingly.  Gerald felt a
shiver of annoyance run through him.  "Poor little sub." "Wha- Uh, no, I'm
not-" "Of course you're not," she smiled, still condescending.  "Or at any
rate, you *think* you're not..." Gerald decided he was going to test the
symbiont on her.  If anyone deserved the risk, it was her.  The fact that
his second implant had been substantially more risky than her first one
would be for her was irrelevant.  He looked at her for a couple of seconds,
shook his head, and turned back to the bar.  "Don't turn away from me," she
snapped, in a voice that brooked no disobedience.  Gerald was used to
fighting for research grants.  Voices that brooked no disobedience had no
terror for him; instead, they made him feel right at home.  "Another pint,
please," he said to the barman, who nodded cheerfully and pointed at the
Hook Norton sign, eyebrows raised.  Gerald nodded.  "Well remembered." The
pint was duly drawn; and while that was going on, Gerald glanced over his
shoulder at the woman, a slight smile on his lips.  He covertly produced a
small, paper-thin skin-tone sheet from his pocket, and watched for an
opportunity.  The woman was looking around irritatedly; clearly not used to
being treated in this way.  He peeled a small sheet off one side of the
thumbnail-size skin-tone and held it carefully by the other side, looking
for an opening.  When he thought he had a chance, his arm shot out and
attached itself momentarily to the back of her neck.  She wheeled at once,
hand rising to the patch of skin.  "What the hell did you just- why can't I
feel my neck?" Gerald smiled slightly and paid for his pint.  The barman
watched for a moment, amused, then leaned over the counter and
confidentially said, "About time someone gave that bitch a scare.  Nice
one," shook hands with Gerald, and ambled off toward another customer. 
Gerald watched him go, surprised and silently thankful that the barman
hadn't chosen to raise hell.  He looked back at the woman, and smiled.  Her
mouth had frozen in the act of speech, and now formed a perfect `o' that
was clearly not a standard facial expression.  Her hand had frozen with one
finger prodding the patch of skin to which Gerald's sheet adhered.  It's
quicker than I expected, he reflected.  To have anaesthetised her skin,
burrowed through, and worked it's way into the central nervous system and
shut down motor control beyond autonomics in the few seconds it takes for a
handshake and a gentlemanly confidence to be exchanged is incredibly fast.
Still, there you go.  >GET THIS THING OFF ME!< Gerald reacted to the
telepathic cry without thinking, without even being aware of the
possibility of thought in this situation.  He reached up and pulled the
sheet off.  It shrivelled, wrinkling, and he let it fall to the floor.  And
then thought about what he'd just done.  He'd removed the carrier mechanism
at her request, when every fibre of his body should have been screaming out
against such an action.  That was the only way a first implant could be
dangerous, and he wasn't ready to kill anyone.  On the other hand, since it
had shrivelled after removal, clearly the transfer had been complete in any
case.  He breathed a silent sigh of relief.  But why had he done it in the
first place?  The woman's muscles lost their unnatural rigidity.  "Thank
God for that," she said.  "Now, would you mind telling me what's going on?"
Gerald felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.  It hadn't worked. 
Worse than not having worked.  Someone had done something seriously wrong
with the auxiliary cell clusters, which was going to result in feedback
through his own symbiont cluster, a total reversal of what their backup
plan had been.  It looked like he could fall under her control, instead. 
If she realised... If she realised, he was going to be a sub for real.  A
very, very sorry sub.  Oh, great.  Fucking marvellous.  How the hell did
all this happen?  Feedback should not be possible.  *Feedback should not be
possible.* Unless... Unless someone had decided risking the operation was
worth a practical joke at his expense.  An impossibly vile practical joke.
Or not impossible, when you remembered Miles.  *Bastard*.  Someone was
going to get killed.  Gerald jerked his thoughts out of this panic and slid
down the falls to a still deeper level as the realisation that *he couldn't
do fuck all about Miles if she realised*.  Which being the case, no fucking
*way* was he going to tell her what was going on.  A fine resolution, but
for one inconvenient fact.  "I said, would you mind telling me what's going
on?" she repeated.  At virtually the same instant the thought >Tell me,
dammit!< slashed through the air between them with vibrant energy and
caused Gerald to respond without thinking.  In but a few seconds he'd
summed up everything she needed to know; but he was well embarked on a
half-hour discourse on the technical difficulties involved in designing the
symbionts - it was what was going on, after all - that she really clicked
to the fact that thought was what was involved, but only if clear
instructions travelled, and thought >Shut the fuck up<.  Gerald shut up
automatically and immediately.  And in that single picosecond, a thought
leaped fully-formed into his mind, having formed itself while his mind was
otherwise occupied and waited eagerly for a chance to present itself to his
mind when it could be sure of his full attention.  Clearly and concisely,
it ran: *Get the fuck out of here.* It seemed like a good idea, and since
he had nothing better, or indeed other, in his mind at the time, he acted
upon it immediately, rising and racing for the door in a single fluid
motion.  >Fall over,< the mental voice called after him.  >And lick the
floor as you hit it,< it added by way of an afterthought.  He didn't even
get a chance for a last thought, which would have been *Oh, fuck.*
Thoughtlessness swept over him, and he felt his legs stop moving.  His
upper body, however, didn't.  His tongue extended, ready to lick... *** His
new life was not one he would have enjoyed, had he still remained in his
body.  But his new Mistress had, unwittingly, stopped his mind; the
personality that had once been Gerald Cohen had ceased to exist, with the
mental command to stop doing what he wanted and obey her voice instructions
- a command that would render him a slave to her word for the rest of his
existence, and which kept his brain in hibernation for the same period. 
Because he could not get it back until his last mental order was finished,
and it could never finish.