- The Control Voice: It is said that emotions are the language of the soul. But what happens when that expression is muted? What becomes of feelings... that have no voice?
A woman with alexithymia (unable to feel emotions) is given a brain implant to correct this, but begins to hear voices and have hallucinations.
- The Control Voice: Errant computers can be reprogrammed, imperfect machines redesigned... but human beings are another matter.
The Tropening:
- Alien Abduction: Subverted. Beth Carter believes that she was abducted by aliens but it turns out that Joan Garrison and Kevin Flynn were trying to gaslight her.
- Destination Defenestration: Beth eventually gets revenge on the people who have been Gaslighting her by knocking them through a window, where they fall to their deaths.
- Gaslighting: Beth Carter suffers from alexithymia which prevents her from feeling emotions. However, she receives a revolutionary brain implant developed by Dr. Steven Molstad which allows her to access the full range of emotions for the first time. Beth moves in with Molstad's colleague Joan Garrison so she can slowly adjust to the outside world and learn how to process her emotions in the normal way. While staying in Joan's apartment, she begins to have strange experiences such as Hearing Voices, seeing Joan's cat Mulligan butchered (only for him to turn up alive and well later on) and being abducted and experimented upon by aliens. Dr. Molstad tells Beth that it may be necessary to remove the implant but she steadfastly refuses. It turns out that Joan secretly works for a rival company which is developing a brain implant similar to Molstad's and that she and her boyfriend Kevin Flynn (who pretended to be attracted to Beth) were attempting to drive Beth insane in the hope of discrediting Molstad's implant. They were assisted in their plan by Mike and Dolly Kellerman, two other residents of Joan's apartment building.
