Prologue: The Pheromone of Comparative Advantage
Pheromone. A chemical substance animals secrete to provoke a specific response in another individual.
For creatures without any other means of communication, it is indispensable. For humans, though — beings for whom communication and cooperation come as naturally as breathing — the word lands with a different weight entirely.
It is the pure distillation of an inexplicable allure. The master key that unlocks another person’s heart. And so, from ancient times to the present, people have thrown themselves into endless attempts to pin down its true nature: pheromone perfumes, self-help manuals promising to cultivate your pheromones, exercise regimens said to trigger their release, and so on.
Whether human pheromones actually exist, however, remains a matter of dispute. Some claim the faculty atrophied once language became our firm method of communication. Others take the colder view that no such thing ever existed to begin with.
But pheromones are real. I am living proof of that fact.
I secrete a special pheromone no ordinary person produces. Satisfy a particular set of conditions — a particular situation — and it unleashes a power that can only be called devastating. I even know those conditions with perfect clarity. Not because I set out to discover them, but because I learned them with my body, through the unending torment of being desired.
The principle is simple. When someone who has been continuously conditioned to another person’s pheromones is suddenly exposed to mine, they register its superiority without even realizing it.
What is known as the Pheromone of Comparative Advantage.
I can say this without hesitation: with that power, I can make any woman mine. Bind her into a slave who shackles herself and surrenders her freedom. Or forge her into a zealot who would offer everything she has and still feel it is not enough.
Sounds incredible, right? If you can control even one of the three great drives — sleep, hunger, or lust — isn’t that already a successful life on its own?
Except it isn’t.
Think about it. The fact that my pheromone operates on the principle of “comparative advantage” means, conversely, that a “subject of comparison” is an absolute prerequisite.
In other words, my pheromone only works on other men’s women.