My ladies were disappointed. At meeting time the next day we watched the recap on TV of the Salina meeting, and they watched in amazement.
"How could those police have been such idiots!" wailed Cindy. Inwardly, I smiled: it was just what I wanted to hear. The wedge was moving in place.
"Have patience." I said bravely, "We can get things worked out."
That morning I videoed interviews of the girls again, and in each I brought up topic of the bungled negotiation and let them react to it. Those who got angry about police interfering were providing material I would send to the parents. To get what I want, the wedge must push both ways, but one way at a time is fine.
In the video sessions I also asked them all what they were worth -- how much ransom should their parents pay for them? It was something few had thought much about, and nothing they had talked to each other about, so I got a wide range of answers. Cindy said a million dollars -- I think it was a number she plucked from TV kidnap shows. On the other extreme was Soo-Min, who felt she should be humble.
"Oh, it would be a terrible burden for them to come up with more than ten thousand dollars. That should be sufficient." she said.
Once again, I was gaining wedge material.
As we waited for the ransom drama to play out, our days were filled with activity. The most important activity was the Move Out drill. At random times I would yell, "Company coming, prepare to move out!" and the girls were to have themselves gagged, hands bound behind, and tied in groups of three within five minutes -- ready to move to the van in the garage or out the back door to some other destination. We practiced this often. The first time took almost fifteen minutes, but by Day Three we finally broke the five minute mark. We had a small celebration then, but we didn't stop practicing. I wanted it second nature so the girls wouldn't think twice about moving out fast should a real emergency come up.
Each day was a cleaning day. We cleaned everything: floors, clothes, furniture... everything. They would clean, and I would inspect. It kept them busy, and it kept them from complaining that we were living in terrible conditions. It also kept their homemaking instincts stimulated. For that reason, they also cooked.
Each day was a study day, too. I wouldn't let them neglect their schoolwork. This was easier than I expected because Melene and Suzanne had decided to come along. They taught a class each, and I taught two classes. I wanted the girls, all the girls, experiencing me as a knowledgeable authority figure.
Evening was entertainment time. It was always home entertainment. We would sing, or tell stories, or sometimes something more physical. At first I showed them how to massage. It was a way of being physical without being threatening. They were a little shy the first couple of times, but what I had them do to start was with backrubs with clothes on. By the third session they were comfortable touching all the body except the private parts. Massage was a way of getting them used to touching each other, and touching me. I expected we would be doing a lot more touching as our relation developed.
Phase two in the ransom drama came a week after the Laura Fiasco. This time it was Shelly's turn to be prima donna. I had reestablished connections with the police using Shelly as an intermediary. I dangled her bait that was just too juicy: I would send her tapes I had made of the hostages if she would air those tapes on a TV special, along with tape of the parents giving messages to the kids. I, in turn, promised to let the kids watch the TV so they could see their parents. To Shelly, this sounded like a win-win-win situation. It sounded good to the parents, too. The police couldn't figure out if it was good, or not. My challenge was to figure out how to discretely foul it up so that the wedge between the kids and the parents got bigger.
It turned out to be easier than I thought: all I did was report my daily progress on the plan to the kids. At first Shelly was super enthusiastic about the plan, and couldn't wait. I reported that. Then harsh reality set in at the TV station, and Shelly's simple "Yes!" turned into a series of "Yes, but..."'s. The first was, "Yes, we want to use the tapes you have made of the kids, but we need to edit them to fit the program time available." I told the girls what I told Shelly, "Tell me how much time is available, and I'll provide a tape that long." The girls had heard this kind of maneuvering before, and they quickly sensed that the show would not happen, and they would not see their parents. And... it wasn't my fault! By the end of Week Three, the plan was de facto dead. Ransom SNAFU #2 was complete, and the wedge had grown.
In Week Four I started the girls on wrestling, and we started on massages after showers, wearing towels rather than clothes.
The massage transformation happened easily, but the wrestling they had a harder time with. At first, they were reluctant to be so aggressive with each other with me around. And second, I found they were just very clumsy with some of the techniques I was showing them. Those techniques that were leg-oriented they could do just fine, but those that depended on strong, fast arms were hard for them. They learned, and I learned. By the beginning of Week Five, we had come a long way, baby!
By the beginning of Week Five, it was also time to move, for real. We'd simulated moving a couple of times, and many times we'd done an extended Move Out drill that involved getting into the van and driving around for 30 minutes. The girls were now both well practiced and quite compliant during drill time. When I called for a drill, they dropped everything and within seconds they were taping their mouths and tying each other up. They all knew how to arch their backs, roll back their shoulders and extend their arms behind them as they were being tied, and they all knew how to quickly loop rope around those extended arms -- first just above the elbows, then at the wrists. Within ninety seconds the girls were tape-gagged, helpless and collared together in their threesomes. They now moved quickly and silently to the door I indicated, and were ready to leave just as quickly and silently when I indicated the coast was clear.
As an ending for the drill I always gave my girls some nice touchy feelies. At first it was a simple and sweet backrub as I pulled ropes from them. But I allowed it to get more elaborate with time. Now all the ladies would get a nice backrub, and three would linger for a longer full body massage -- I would give, and they would give, too.
By Week Five some serious bonding was in progress. We had now spent more than a month together, and seen each other on good days and bad. I knew what the girls were like when they were bitchy, and they knew what I was like when I was playing Alpha Male. I played that a lot. The goal of this period was to raise up and bring to flower their traditional feminine instinct to enjoy being around a man who was being Alpha Male. This would happen if they learned to submit habitually, and got a nice reward each time they did so. If I was successful, being with me, and with the other girls, would very much feel like the right place to be. When that became the case, I had half won. The other half was convincing the community I was in that I had won, too. Now we had to move to a "convincible" community.