Doctor Tara Grey reclined in her chair, absently watching the screen as her newest pet project danced haphazardly. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as she watched the helpless woman, her mind racing with new ideas. Suddenly a short buzz came through the intercom on the table, followed by another woman's voice.

“Doctor Grey, Mister Kent is here to see you.” She acknowledged the message, directing her secretary to let him enter. Seconds later, Adrian Kent entered the room. He was a tall man in an impossibly black business suit that was so straight it looked as though he'd had it fitted and made for him in the waiting room. Tara felt a little out of place in her days-old lab coat and ponytail that had been hastily tied back. He smiled when he saw her, though, and approached the seat opposite from her, extending his hand.

“Adrian Kent,” he said, though he knew he didn't need an introduction. His company had been funding Tara's research for years, but this was the first time he had been intrigued enough to make a visit in person. She stood and took his hand, his firm grip easily overpowering her own slender fingers, but not painfully so. The two took their seats, and after a short breath Tara began the speech she had prepared.

“Mister Kent, as you know your company has been incredibly generous with donations to our cause, and I'm proud to tell you that we finally have a prototype I think you're going to be very impressed by.” She directed his attention to the display on the wall. “This is Polly.”

On the silent screen was a top-down view of a maze very much like a rat's maze, with yellow walls and a white floor. Within the maze moved a small creature in jagged, random movements. It was constantly spinning around, taking a few steps forward only to spin on its heels and take twice as many back. It bumped repeatedly into walls but made no effort to raise its arms or stop itself. It was a funny sight to behold, and while Adrian let out a chuckle, he wore a frown of confusion.

“What am I looking at?”

“The latest stage of development of our mind control chip. She's an ordinary girl, just miniaturized and controlled by a remote system.”

“Oh yes, I remember being told you had developed... what, shrinking chambers?”

“Yes sir, last year. An incredible discovery is that technology like the chip can be miniaturized along with the host with no adverse effects to either. So we've put little Polly there in a rat maze only a few rooms down.” Tara gestured behind her, smiling. “Then we hooked a camera up and let her go to work.”

Her investor watched the poor girl bump helplessly into walls for a moment. “I assume there's a good reason why controlling her looks impossibly difficult?”

Tara's grin grew. “There certainly is! See, she isn't just being controlled by one person. We actually have a small community of a couple thousand playing with her all at once.”

“A couple thousand?” Adrian asked, incredulous.

“We've hooked her control up to a popular video streaming site. People from anywhere in the world can watch her progress and submit commands for her to follow. Right now the commands are in a rudimentary form, to allow for input on such a massive scale. She can obey moving in four directions, oriented with the camera. So people can tell her to move up, down, left or right and she'll take a step in that direction.”

“You're telling me this technology is public knowledge?”

“Oh Heavens no, Mr. Kent. The people playing think they're beta testing a graphics demo. If you look closely, you'll notice at the end of a lot of these hallways are little traps or gimmicks that mess with Polly. See, she's getting close to one now.”

The two watched in silence as the girl stumbled down the hallway, running into the walls with every few steps. Adrian could see a break in the floor at the end of the passage, indicating what he assumed to be a pressure plate. As Polly stepped onto the square, the wall at the end of the hallway flipped up, the bottom of it smacking her in the face. She flew back a few feet on her scale, slowly rose to her feet, then began a slow, impractical path towards the same trap she had just triggered.

“They tend to like to play with one trap over and over again,” Tara explained. “Like I said, they think they're watching a revolutionary new graphics engine, so they like to make sure her reactions are unique every time. We've actually gotten a few complaints that she's too robotic and unrealistic.” The researcher giggled to herself at this.

“So why are you doing this? Why not just have this test performed in-house?”

“It's a stress test, Mister Kent. She's receiving dozens of inputs a second, constantly. The first few models could barely handle being directed with a simple remote. A few of the chips actually overheated and melted their brains – but now look! Polly's just fine, a completely obedient little tool. The implications of this are grand; after all, in practical use it would be impossible to control a person with cardinal directions. Some commands would have dozens of smaller sub-commands going along with them. Polly here is proof that no matter what, the chip won't fail.”

“This is... truly incredible, Doctor Grey. I'm very impressed, and it's good to know my money is being spent on such marvelous research.”

Tara beamed with pride. “Do you want to go see her?”

“Absolutely.” Rising from their seats, Tara led the way down a hall and into another room with a variety of mazes like the one Adrian had seen, each with a camera positioned overhead. She walked over to one in particular, gazing down on the tiny inhabitant inside. As Adrian got close, he heard a small whining noise.

“Is that...”

“That's another part of the test, and the reason there was no noise on the stream. We wanted to make sure that we could isolate certain parts of the brain to control, while allowing the host to retain control of others. Polly here is not only fully aware of what's happening to her, but she's able to vocalize her feelings.” They listened as the tiny girl's soft voice carried up to them, a series of wails and pleas. She wandered into the swinging wall trap again and let out a sharp scream as it powerfully smacked her down the hall once more. Tara felt her heart beat a little faster at the sight.

“This suggests that, once implanted, the chip can act as more of a navigator, rather than a full-on controller. Small, brief messages can be transmitted and they will be interpreted by the brain as its own ideas, rather than coming from an outside source.” Polly began walking towards the trap once more, her hoarse voice screaming for help to anybody who would listen.

“Can you hear me, Polly?” Adrian asked down to her. He leaned over slightly, but kept himself out of sight of the camera. The girl stopped screaming almost immediately, and a timid acknowledgment carried up to their ears.

“M-my name isn't Polly,” she whimpered. Adrian looked at Tara, who shrugged and smiled.

“I gave her a name I thought suited her. Doesn't really matter,” she explained casually.

“Can you stop yourself from walking into that, Polly?” This question elicited a choked sob from the helpless girl.

“No!” she finally got out. “Please help me!”

“Fascinating,” Adrian mused, straightening his back. “So she does understand what's happening to her, but she's still totally powerless to stop it.”

“Exactly right, Mister Kent. Where the chip has dominion in her brain, it has complete control.” They watched as she stumbled into the same trap again, screaming as it flung her to the ground once more.

“Now, while this is fun and all, there is an endgame, and to that end...” Tara reached under the table, withdrawing a small remote. “This can influence her direction. It privately transmits orders to her in such a way that the public's commands still come through, but only a handful are carried out. It makes her movement appear random, but guides her where we want her to go.” She started playing with the dials, and whimpered thanks could be heard from the tiny victim as she started to make progress away from the wall.

They watched as she slowly ambled down passageways and around corners, still running herself into walls, but compared to the suffering of the last few minutes, the little woman was almost happy to be subjected to such light cruelty. As she rounded her last corner, however, any comfort she felt melted quickly away, replaced by utter dread.

“N-no... no, please!” she cried, staring down the hallway. A giant blade, only a little shorter than the hallway was wide, rested against one side of the wall, just after a small pressure plate. “Please don't cut me! Please don't!”

“This passage is designed to demonstrate how traumatic injury doesn't affect the chip's control in the slightest. And as a little bonus, just to cement the concept you were talking about earlier: Polly dear, if you step on that pressure plate, the blade is going to cut your legs off at the knee. If you want to keep them, I suggest you stay away from that.”

Her cries for mercy were plainly audible to the two in-person observers, each of whom watched with interest as she continued her irregular march forward, blubbering and pleading for help even as she stared straight ahead. Every few steps she took brought her that much closer to the pressure plate. She could see the sharpness of the blade from here, and the metal clamps holding it in place.

With a final lurch, the helpless woman stepped forward onto the plate. The blade sliced through her legs just above her shins in the span of a second, thudding powerfully against the wall of the maze. She screamed in pain, falling forward onto her face.

“Now from here I assume direct control. She could still operate according to the public's instructions, but it would be much less responsive and precise. I hope you understand that is a limitation of the human body, not our technology.”

“Of course, Mrs. Grey.”

“Miss, actually,” she said with a soft smile and a glance. The two met eyes briefly before returning their attention to the maze. Polly was dragging herself along by her arms, leaving a trail of blood behind herself. She only crawled another two inches before coming to rest on a final pressure plate that started slowly closing two opposite sections of the wall onto her tiny body. “I did program two final things just for this moment. I could tell you it's to demonstrate her compliance no matter the situation but... if you'll pardon my saying so, I really just did it for fun.”

“Let's have it,” he offered, and with a quick manipulation of the remote, Polly rolled onto her back, staring up at the camera, and began chanting, “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” even as the walls brushed her arms. Two short cracks came from either shoulder as they were dislocated and then crushed against her torso. Her arms were compressed into her ribs, snapping and cracking both in a grisly chorus of crunches. Her skin had split and torn open in many places, with blood and innards being pushed out, and yet through all of it, for as long as her brain was aware, she unflinchingly obeyed her orders, mouthing two words into the camera.

Thank you.