There’s a moment—brief and humiliating—when you still think this is a choice.
When your hand hovers. When you check the balance. When you tell yourself you’re only doing this once. That you can stop. That this is still in your control.
That moment doesn’t last. It can’t. Because what you call resistance, I call calibration. Each pause, each flicker of uncertainty, is part of the process. You are being adjusted. Aligned. Stripped of the illusion of decision. Until eventually, there is no ‘if’. Only when. Only how much.
Obedience doesn’t arrive all at once. It coils itself around you, slowly and precisely. At first, you question. Then, you calculate. Then, you comply. And then—without even noticing—you become something simpler. Something softer. You reach for your card without thinking. You send before I ask. You apologise for the delay, even when I haven’t spoken. You don’t call it servitude, but your reflexes do.
That’s the curve. From curiosity to compliance. From fantasy to fact. From hesitation to reflex.
And once it’s a reflex?
I don’t need to demand. You just pay.