He lied.
His test subjects were not animals. Animals were too simple, he argued. He needed complex emotional response. He found them in the forgotten corners of the city: runaways, undocumented workers, people who would not be missed. He offered money, shelter, a chance to “participate in science.” They always said yes.
Dr. Sugimoto was a genius of neural mapping, a man who had spent three decades refining a device called the Synchro-Lens. The Lens could record sensory experience directly from a person’s nervous system and replay it in another subject’s brain. His peers called it the “empathy machine.” They envisioned it curing trauma, bridging political divides, teaching compassion. He lied
The first few experiments were gentle. Recordings of comfort, a warm blanket, the taste of chocolate. Sugimoto reviewed the data with cold precision. But soon the recordings grew darker. He discovered that fear produced richer neural data than joy. Desperation, sharper than contentment. And humiliation—humiliation painted the brain in colors he had never seen.
Later, alone in his quarters, he played the recording back through the chair. He closed his eyes. He felt what she had felt. And for the first time in years, Dr. Sugimoto smiled. He needed complex emotional response
His laboratory, tucked beneath the dull concrete of Okunoin University, was a cathedral of chrome and humming servers. Few visited. Fewer questioned. The graduate students saw only the published papers—breakthroughs in pain management, memory retrieval, phantom limb therapy. They never saw the private wing. They never saw the padded chair.
He repeated the process. Each victim was a new instrument, each terror a new symphony. He became connoisseur of suffering. He told himself it was research. He told himself the breakthroughs in anxiety treatment would justify everything. But late at night, he no longer bothered with justifications. He simply put on the headset and swam in other people’s nightmares. feeding back loops of pleasure
One night, he strapped in a young woman named Rei. She had been living in an internet café, three months behind on everything. She trusted his white coat, his gentle voice, the promise of 50,000 yen.
The Synchro-Lens was destroyed by university lawyers. The files were deleted. But rumors persisted that somewhere on the dark web, a single recording survived: six hours labeled “Dr. Sugimoto—Final Treatment.” No one who listened to it ever spoke of what they felt.
And the chair? The chair was scrapped for parts. But in a dozen cheap electronics markets across the city, second-hand neural interface headsets occasionally appear for sale. The price is always low. The warning label is always missing. If you meant something lighter or closer to a different genre, let me know and I can adjust the tone.
The chair was Sugimoto’s true masterpiece. It could not only record sensation but amplify it, feeding back loops of pleasure, fear, submission—any frequency the wearer produced. He called it “Lecherous Treatment” in his private notes, a phrase he typed with clinical detachment.