The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Kim looked through the glass door of the Student Center Game Room. It was kind of dark on the other side, but it didn’t look like there were too many people. A few frat boys playing pool and table hockey, and one guy playing one of those arcade games with the plastic guns.

She took a deep breath, and walked in. The frat boys glanced at her, then ignored her, except for one who gave her a second glance, looked her up and down, and then ignored her like his friends. The guy on the arcade game didn’t even look up; he was apparently trying to be Player One and Player Two simultaneously, John Woo-style, and failing pretty spectacularly.

Kim relaxed slightly. She had dressed to go unnoticed: sweatpants, a loose t-shirt over a snug sports bra, and a baseball cap into which she’d stuffed her dirty blonde ponytail. The whole point to being here was to become comfortable with people watching her, but Kim intended to work up to it in stages.

In the corner of the room, slightly separated from the other arcade machines, it sat: the DDR machine. She had never used one of the arcade machines before, preferring the privacy of the home version, but that was part of the problem, wasn’t it?

She remembered Otakon a few weeks ago. Erica, her roommate, had dragged her along, and it actually had been pretty fun, though a bit crowded. Kim had allowed herself to be persuaded to join the DDR contest—an entire semester of Erica praising her skill had boosted her confidence—but it had been a complete disaster. In an open space, surrounded by total strangers, she had been paralyzed, incredibly conscious of the awkwardness of her long limbs and how silly they’d look flailing around during the game. She’d been utterly humiliated, and her opponent had gotten a by to the second round.

But the minute they got back to college in the fall, Erica started bugging Kim about “getting psyched up for next year.” Erica was on the lacrosse team, and seemed to think she was Kim’s DDR coach. She was just about the only person on campus Kim could talk to, so she put up with it.

Erica’s bugging had brought Kim here. As soon as Erica had hit on the idea of “acclimatizing” (she was taking a Gen Ed psych course this semester) Kim to playing in public, she had become unstoppable, wheedling with Kim almost every day to go down to the Student Center and use their machines. Finally, when it came down to the choice between snapping at Erica to leave her alone, and following her advice, Kim gave in.

She stepped up to the machine and pulled out some quarters, then stopped. The stupid thing needed tokens! She sighed and walked over to the little booth where they rented out the pool tables and such. “Um, excuse me,” she said. “Where do I get tokens for the video games?”

“Oh, I can sell them to you—” the moon-faced young man at the booth broke off, studying Kim intently. “Kimmy?” he said.

“Do I know you?” she asked. Then she paused. Subtract three inches from his height, add twenty pounds and acne, and lighten his skin a couple of shades: “...Dwayne?” she hazarded.

“Dwight,” he corrected. “Dwight Lee.”

“Dwight!” she said. “Wow, I haven’t seen you since, what, tenth grade? Where’d you disappear to?”

“Here, actually,” he said. “I started college a couple of years early.”

“Wow,” she said again. “That’s pretty impressive. What’s your major?”

He reddened a little. “I, uh, kind of graduated already, actually. Electrical engineering and psychology. I’m, uh, a grad student.”

“You must be some kind of genius, huh?” Kim said.

“Aw, not really,” Dwight answered. “There’s a few subjects I’m really good at, I guess, but it’s nothing that special.”

“You’re too modest! Not a lot of people get to grad school, especially not so fast!”

“I guess so,” Dwight said, still red. “How about you? What’s your major?”

It was Kim’s turn to look embarrassed. “English, but I haven’t decided on a concentration. It’s between creative writing and mythology.”

“That’s cool. I’m a little surprised you’re not doing art, though. I remember you used to draw really well. Did you give that up?”

“Well... yeah, I guess,” Kim said. “So, those tokens?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Dwight. “Sorry, nearly forgot.” He quickly exchanged her quarters. “Let me know if you need any more!”

“Thanks,” Kim said. “Good seeing you. Guess I’ll see you around campus or something.”

“Sure,” said Dwight.

Kim felt Dwight’s eyes follow her as she returned to the machine. She felt like such a geek as she fed tokens into it, but what right did he have to judge her? He was the one with the degree in electronics and the job in the game room. She just wished he’d stop watching!

Then it was time to play. As the first song started, Kim followed the arrows scrolling rapidly across the screen. There was no time for her preoccupations, no time for self-consciousness. The arrows pointed and her feet moved in response, tapping the large buttons on the floor. Soon she was hopping and whirling, her arms flying out for balance as her body moved. By the third song, she was in what she privately called her zone—that zen state where her consciousness got out of the way, and her limbs followed the arrows as if of their own accord. There was music and there were arrows and there was motion, and that was all.

Ten songs later, Kim was sweating and breathing hard. She stepped down from the machine on slightly wobbly legs and looked at Dwight. He was scribbling in a notebook. He glanced up to see her watching, and hastily put the notebook away. Blushing, but not sure why, Kim left the game room.

“So?” asked Erica as Kim walked into their room. “How’d it go.”

“I guess it wasn’t too bad,” said Kim.

“Anybody staring at you? Was it full of cute guys, or nerds?” Erica wasn’t really looking at Kim; she was lying facedown on her bed with her legs kicking in the air, leafing through a magazine.

“Not really. Some frat boys. Oh, and the desk guy was someone I used to know.”

Erica rolled over and sat up. “Ooh,” she said. “You know him biblically?”

“No,” Kim said, glaring. “Unlike some people, I don’t sleep with everyone I know.” She stuck out her tongue.

Erica threw a pillow at her. “You know that’s not true!” She grinned. “Only the girls.”

“What, am I a cross-dresser without knowing it?”

Erica laughed. “Just wait until I finish corrupting you. Mama won’t know her baby next time she comes home.”

Kim snorted, then went into her wardrobe for her towel and clothes. “I’m gonna grab a quick shower, then head for class.”

“Sure,” said Erica, going back to her magazine. “Right after you tell me about the guy from the game room!”

Kim sighed. “Look, Dwight’s just someone I went to high school with, we had a couple of the same friends, and then he went to college early. No biggie.”

“It must be destiny. I shall dedicate my life to ensuring that you and he are united in true love. Or at least get high and bump uglies.” Erica collapsed into giggles as Kim banged her head on something inside the wardrobe.

“Hi,” said Dwight. “How’s things?”

“Good,” said Kim. “You?”

“Good,” said Dwight. “Third day in a row, huh? You’re giving that DDR machine a better workout than it’s had in the past year.”

Kim shrugged. “I’m, uh, trying to get used to playing in public,” she confessed, and then reddened.

“Really?” asked Dwight. “Planning to enter a contest?”

Kim looked down. “Kinda.”

“Well, good luck to you! Let me know when it is, maybe I’ll join your cheer squad.”

“Heh, thanks,” said Kim, blushing.

Dwight handed her the tokens and she walked over to the machine. Each day, it seemed, she was able to get into her zone faster and deeper. Maybe it was the larger screen. Whatever it was, by halfway through the second song, she was the dance, and there was only the dance. She wasn’t even aware of the arrows or the gaps between songs. Her body moved exactly as the arrows required, and her mind was free, unbound by thought or consciousness.

She was brought out of it by a hand on her shoulder.

“Kimmy?” asked Dwight, looking concerned.

“Huh?” she said, and started to turn, then nearly collapsed. She was incredibly thirsty, soaked in sweat, and could barely stand.

“You’ve been playing for almost two hours!” he said. “Are you okay?”

“Huh?” she said again, and looked at the clock on the wall. “Oh my gosh, I’m late for class!”

“Late for class? You can barely stand! Come on, let’s get some water and food in you.”

Kim was exhausted, she realized, and a little dizzy. “Yeah. Okay.”

She leaned on Dwight as he led her out into the mostly empty food court. He left her in a chair while he went to buy food. Kim sat, trying to figure out what had happened.

She was still trying to figure it out when Dwight returned. “Here,” he said, handing her a water, a bottle of Gatorade, and a double-salt pretzel with a dipping cup of cinnamon and frosting. “I’m not sure how good the pretzel will take, but I figure you’re going to need a lot of salt and carbs after that.”

“Thanks,” Kim said quietly. Now that she was a little more rested, she was feeling more and more worried and embarrassed.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I just... forgot.”

“Forgot what?”

“Everything. Who I am, where I was, everything. I was just... dancing.”

He leaned forward slightly, studying her intently. She had a momentary vision of herself on a microscope slide. “You didn’t feel any sensation of tiredness until I stopped you? Didn’t notice me talking to you?” he asked,

“You talked to me? What happened to me?”

“Have you ever entered a trance state while playing before?”

“A trance state? Is that what it is?” Kim was definitely more worried, almost a little panicky.

Dwight reached for her arm, then paused. When she didn’t flinch away, he put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Kimmy. People enter trance-like states all the time. Getting caught up in a TV show, losing yourself in a lover’s eyes, these are all kinds of trances. Playing video games, strenuous exercise, and dance can all cause trances, and you were doing all three at once. It’s to be expected you’d enter a pretty deep one.”

“Well... something like this happens when I play games, but never this long or deep. If you hadn’t been there, I might have hurt myself!”

“Well,” said Dwight, “we can’t have that happening! Why don’t I keep an eye on you? I’m always in the game room, so you can come work out and I’ll make sure you take breaks. Okay?”

Kim hesitated. She did enjoy herself, and did a lot better than she did at home, and Erica would never let her hear the end of it if she quit. Besides, Dwight was trying to help, and she didn’t want to disappoint him. “Okay,” she said, and smiled tentatively.

Erica glanced up at Kim as she walked in. “You look like crap! Where’ve you been?”

“Thanks,” said Kim with a tired smile. “I went a little overboard on the DDR machine.”

“I’ll say!” said Erica. “Showing off for Dwight?”

“No! I just got a little too far into the zone. Dwight helped me out, actually. Calmed me down.”

“Aha! He likes you!” Erica ran a hand through her short, spiky black hair, stroking it manically, as she always did when gossiping. “You still haven’t told me if he’s cute.”

Kim rolled her eyes. “He’s doing psych. He was probably just practicing for class or something.”

“Hey, maybe he’s in my class!”

“I doubt it,” said Kim, “unless he’s TA-ing. He’s a grad student.”

The smile vanished from Erica’s face. “Wait. Are we talking about Dwight Lee?”

“...Yeah. You know him?”

“Christ, Kim, do you ever read the student newspaper? He was a huge story last semester!” Erica was a photographer for the Campus Chronicle, which maybe thirty people read. “He’s creepy.”

“He seemed like a nice guy to me.”

“Nice guys don’t get front page,” said Erica.

“I’m too tired for this,” said Kim, and flopped onto her bed. “First you’re trying to hook me up with the guy, now you’re telling me he’s a creep, both without ever meeting him?”

“His thesis got classified!” said Erica. “National security! You really want to hang out with a guy like that?”

“Actually, that’s kind of cool. All cloak and dagger.” Kim yawned the second sentence.

Erica sighed. “Fine. Don’t come crying to me when they haul your ass off to Guantanamo.”

The next day was Sunday, and Kim was back. She still wasn’t sure it was a good idea to keep playing, but if she had trouble again, she could always quit. When she walked into the game room, however, she nearly walked back out. There was a huge crowd, right by the DDR machine, cheering and shouting.

“Kimmy!” called Dwight. “Come see! Kyle’s kicking butt!”

Kim walked over to the crowd and peered over it. For once, being just shy of six feet worked to her advantage; she could clearly see the same guy from her first day in the game room, firing rapidly with two plastic guns, concentrating fiercely.

“Is he actually playing both players at once?”

“Yes!” said Dwight, flushed with excitement. “It’s amazing! It shouldn’t really be possible, but he’s doing it!”

Kim shrugged. “I guess. Can I get some tokens for the DDR machine?” Now would be great practice. There was a big crowd, but it was paying attention to someone else.

“Coming right up!” said Dwight. “Game room closes early today. Want to grab something to eat after?”

“Uh, yeah, okay,” said Kim, feeling a little bit of a blush and hoping desperately Dwight wouldn’t notice. He was just being friendly. Probably wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to faint after she danced. Kim had learned, over and over again, that guys do not ask out girls six inches taller than they are. They asked cute, slim little things like Erica—not that she’d go for it—or big-breasted blondes just the right height to look up at them through their eyelashes. Besides, she wasn’t interested in Dwight. She always fell for skinny, arty guys. Musician types. Dwight wasn’t fat anymore, but he certainly wasn’t skinny, and his neatly combed hair and clipped, precise way of speaking were about as far from arty as you could get.

So she danced. It was beautiful and brilliant. She remembered Dwight telling her that it was normal to drift off, so she relaxed and let it flow, and the world collapsed into flashing arrows, terrible-yet-catchy music, and stomping whirling jumping twirling. When she hit the right arrows at the right moment—and this far in her zone, she always hit the right arrows at the right moment—she felt the thrill of skill and motion, woman and machine and music moving together in perfect unison. It felt amazing. Better than a hot fudge sundae in a warm bath. Better than playing with herself on the nights Erica spent in someone else’s room. Better by far than the two furtive, fumbling times she’d had sex in her senior year of high school, with a boy whose face she could barely remember.

And then Dwight tapped her on the shoulder, and it was over, and for a moment she was filled with rage that he would break her out like that, when she was so close, so close to... what? What was she close to?

Kim shook her head. “Sorry. What did you say?”

“Time to close up, Kimmy. I’ve already swept up and all.”

“Oh,” she said. She looked around the empty game room. “Uh, thanks for keeping an eye on me.”

“No problem, Kimmy.”

They went out to the food court and chatted for a while, while Kim worked up the courage to say something that had been on her mind for a while. “Uh, Dwight? Do you think you could call me Kim?” She smiled, willing him not to be offended. “Nobody’s called me Kimmy since I was fifteen!”

“Oh!” he said. “Sorry. I guess I was just used to thinking of you as Kimmy.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “You didn’t know.”

“Why the change?”

“I dunno. Kim sounded more... grown up, I guess.” As long as she was asking dangerous questions, might as well go for broke. “So, my roommate was telling me something about you...”

“And you were wondering if it’s true my thesis is classified?”

“Yeah.”

Dwight sighed and pushed his glasses up his nose. “It’s true. I can’t ever publish it, so my career’s going to start out with two and a half strikes against me. But they offered me a lot of money to make up for it. Enough to let me take my research as far as it can go.”

“What is it?” Kim looked startled at her own question, then laughed. “You can’t tell me, of course. Duh.”

“Well, it’s no secret what field I’m in. I can tell you that much. Psychology and engineering, you know? Human-machine interfaces.”

“Uh-huh,” said Kim. “I’m an English major. I know how to read, and that’s about it. What’s a human-machine interface?”

Dwight pondered a moment. “Well, it’s the study of how people and machines work together. How to better make machines easy to use, and how to better train people to use machines. That kind of thing.”

“Oh,” said Kim. It sounded incredibly boring. “So you’re, like, designing controls for a fighter plane or something?”

Dwight laughed. “I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Kim grinned. “You probably say that to all the girls.”

“Just the beautiful ones.” Dwight and Kim just stared at each other for a moment, then both blushed, Dwight much more. “Um, so, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dwight stammered.

“Yeah,” said Kim, carefully not looking at him.

Another week went by, and the world seemed to forget it was late September. It was hotter and wetter than August had been, and Kim’s sweatpants were decidedly uncomfortable. She and Dwight had barely said three words to each other since he called her beautiful. He was shy, Kim supposed, and she knew she was confused. Dwight was completely not her type, but he was smart, and nice, and kind of cute in a geeky sort of way. And he called her beautiful. Kim’s parents told her she was beautiful, but nobody else ever had.

Erica had hardly been around all week. Whenever she wasn’t in class, she was sneaking off with her latest conquest, a Hispanic girl even shorter than her with the biggest, most heavily tattooed boobs Kim had ever seen.

So Kim really hadn’t talked to anyone much for the past week. That was okay with her. She had the DDR machine. An hour in her zone swept all her troubles and confusion away, and left her relaxed and exhausted and content. By Saturday, she had a visible spring in her step as she approached the machine.

Yesterday she’d bought two days’ worth of tokens, so she didn’t even need to talk to Dwight today. But she watched him out of the corner of her eye anyway as she fed her tokens into the machine. He had that notebook out in front of him, but he was watching her, same as he had every day that week.

She ignored him and used the machine. As she had all week, she felt the joy of perfection each time she hit the arrow perfectly. They flickered past, her feet flashing around her, and she felt herself getting more and excited by each step. Whatever it was she kept nearly reaching, she was closer than ever now. She was beyond perfection. Her feet moved almost before the arrows appeared. Between one song and the next, as she fed in more tokens, she impulsively fed them into both slots. She’d seen people play both player’s pads at once—it was a standard game mode—but she’d never had any interest in trying it herself. But now she was too good for the machine. She needed a better challenge.

She flew over the pads, perfectly following the arrows, moving faster than she ever had in her life, but totally controlled, doing with absolute precision exactly what the machine demanded. She was dimly aware that she was panting and sweating, nearing exhaustion, but she was nearly to the end of the song, and so far hadn’t missed a step. It was one of the easier ones, but at Maniac difficulty and two pads at once, it was harder than anything she’d tried before.

Her feet touched down on the left pad’s right button and the right pad’s left button, then alternated rapidly between up on the right pad and down on the left pad, several times. Right on the right pad, left on the left pad, and then she reached what she’d been straining for all along without realizing it: as her feet hit left and down on the left pad, she realized true perfection, and the ecstasy of it was so great she came right out of her trance.

Panting, she leaned on the console and drained the last drops from the bottle of Gatorade she’d been taking swigs from automatically between every fourth song. She was exhausted, damp with sweat, and—

Kim froze. It couldn’t be, could it? But there was definitely one part of her that was wet with something other than perspiration. Wet enough to trickle down her thigh, and seep right through her panties. Wet enough to create a dark spot on the front of her sweats.

Beet red, Kim fled from the game room, across campus, to her dorm, not making eye contact with anyone on the way. She flew into her room, then froze, face-to-face with Erica.

“Kim? Are you o—holy shit, is that what I think it is?” Erica stared wide-eyed at Kim’s crotch. “Wow, was Dwight going around shirtless or something?”

Kim slammed the door. “Shut up, Erica!” she shouted, her eyes burning and her vision clouding.

Erica sprang to her feet, instantly contrite. “Oh, honey, honey, I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Shh. It’s okay.”

“No!” Kim could feel tears running down her face, and hated herself for it, but she couldn’t stop. “It’s not okay. Something’s happening to me! And I’m scared, and confused, and you’re m-making fun of me!” Her voice broke, and she began to sob.

“No, no,” soothed Erica, hugging Kim and leading her to sit on the bed. “I didn’t mean it. I was just teasing. I’m sorry.”

Kim clutched Erica and buried her face in the shorter girl’s shoulder. Between sobs, she told her what happened.

“Shh, shh,” soothed Erica. “You were moving around a lot, rubbing your legs together. Hell, if I wear the right panties, I can get off from crunches. Especially in the gym, when the gymnastics team’s practicing.

Kim hiccupped a laugh. “You really do that?”

“Hell yeah,” said Erica. “I wear a skirt over my shorts, so nobody sees it when I stand up unless I want them to.”

“But, I mean, it’s gross! It’s not, you know, private. It’s dirty!”

Erica laughed. “You’re such a prude, Kim. Relax, have fun! Go try it again tomorrow, in a dress this time.”

Go back? Go back to a place where she’d been humiliated? But, humiliation or not, when she’d used both pads Kim had flown. She liked it. A lot. And she somehow knew that she wouldn’t get the same charge playing on Erica’s tiny little television, or even another arcade machine. Only the machine Erica had sent her to would work.

“O-okay,” she said. Still hugging Erica, she took her head from her shoulder and looked at her face. Kim’s own brown eyes looked right into Erica’s blue ones. “Thank you for putting up with that. You’re a great friend, Erica.”

Erica smiled. Something about it struck Kim as a little odd. It was almost sad, or guilty. “We’ll just add it to the number of times you owe me. My preferred form of payment is makeouts.”

Kim twisted out of the hug and stood, as fast as if she’s been burned. “You—” she said, her lip trembling. “You said—you don’t—I’m not—” She fell silent and stared at Erica.

Erica’s own lip trembled, and her eyes shone with tears. Then she burst out laughing. “Oh, I had you good for a second there!”

“Oh, I’ll kill you!” shouted Kim.

Late that night, Kim stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. She rolled over to look at Erica, lying peacefully and breathing evenly. Somehow, though, Kim knew she was awake.

“Erica?” she asked.

“Yeah?”

“Were you... really kidding. Before, I mean.”

Erica rolled onto her side, facing away from Kim. “Would you still be my friend if it wasn’t a joke?”

Kim shivered. Despite the heat of the night, she felt suddenly cold. “I don’t know,” she finally said.

Erica spoke so quietly Kim wasn’t completely sure she heard her. “Then it was a joke. Goodnight, Kim.”

“Goodnight.”

The next day she walked into the game room in a white sundress that fell to her knees, her dirty blonde, wavy hair tumbling to her shoulders. She felt a couple of heads following her as she walked up to Dwight, but she didn’t feel that embarrassed. Maybe creaming her panties in a public place had overloaded the embarrassment center of her brain or something. Whatever the reason, it actually felt good to have guys looking at her. For the first time, it occurred to her that, yes, a guy watching her meant he wanted to do things to her, and that was a little scary. But it also meant he thought she was worth looking at, thought she was pretty or sexy or even (she smiled to herself as she thought of it) beautiful.

“Hi, Dwight,” she said.

“Hi,” he said, carefully staring at the counter. “Tokens?”

“Sure,” she said. “No rush.”

“Oh. Uh... listen, um, hypothetically speaking, if a really dumb guy were to tell you that you look good in that dress, would you stop talking to him for a week?”

“I dunno,” said Kim. She couldn’t believe she was going to say what she was about to say, but somehow it dodged through a minefield of embarrassment and shyness and uncertainty without a scratch, and anything that could do that earned the right to be said. “I don’t see any really dumb guys around, so we can’t experiment. We could see what happens if a really nice guy says it, though.”

Dwight blushed. “Um, I think you look really good in that dress. Kind of like a dryad.”

Kim blinked. “Me? A dryad? But they’re goddesses!”

Dwight blushed even deeper. “I just meant, you know, you’re tall, and slender and your skin has a little hint of brown, and your eyes are really brown, and you just look like I’ve always imagined a dryad would. I’ve always thought that, but that dress really brings it out.”

“Always? Dwight, even in high school?”

“Um... yeah. I, uh, had a pretty big crush on you. You were really pretty, and your drawings were really good, and you were always nice to me, and, uh, most people weren’t. Especially not most girls.”

Kim was astonished. She knew Dwight liked her, but for that long? “I had no idea,” she said.

“Yeah. So, uh, here’s your tokens.”

Kim shook her head. “Dwight Lee!”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve just told me you have a crush on me, and I’m still standing here, and still smiling. Why the hell haven’t you asked me on a date?” Kim had her hands on her hips and her head cocked like she was angry, but she was smiling as she said.

“Oh! Uh, would you maybe, uh, like to have dinner with me sometime?”

“Why, I’d love to. Thank you for asking. There, was that so hard?”

Kim crashed through the door of her room like a whirlwind, pouring sweat from her DDR and the sticky day. “I need to take a shower,” she said, ticking off on her fingers. “Then I need to go shopping, and then I need to get dressed and put on makeup. Crap. Do I have time for a second shower?”

“Kim?” asked Erica.

“Hey,” said Kim. “We’re going shopping as soon as I get out of the shower.”

“We are?”

“Dwight asked me to dinner tonight, and I have nothing to wear! You need to drive me because the bus schedule sucks on Sundays.”

Erica frowned. “You’re going on a date with Dwight?”

“Hey, guess what? Just because you don’t like him doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to. Besides, I’m not marrying him. It’s one date, and we see how it goes.”

“All right, fine,” said Erica. “But I’m only doing this so that you can practice for the next guy you date.”

Four hours later, Kim emerged from her second shower of the day in a brand-new robe, and with a towel around her head. For the first time, she hadn’t dressed in the shower stall. She was very aware that she was naked under her robe, but nobody saw her as she hurried back to her room, so the experiment was officially a success. No more dressing in the stall for her!

“No peeking!” she said to Erica, and walked behind her wardrobe to change in front of the mirror built into the door.

“Yeah, like I’m going to peek,” said Erica, lying on her back and reading a paperback. “It’d be like kissing your sister.”

“Hey! I know how you treat your exes. If I ever catch you kissing my sister...”

The two traded barbs and jokes as Kim dressed and brushed her hair. She considered makeup for a moment, but decided it would go against the look she was going for.

“Ta-da!” she announced, and stepped out from behind the wardrobe.

Erica stared. Kim was wearing a long, but light and summery, white and green dress that seemed to cling and float at the same time. That she’d seen in the store. But she hadn’t seen Kim buy the hair dye. Now, instead of dirty blonde, her hair was light brown with green highlights. She really did look like a forest spirit, clean and fresh and incredibly alive.

“Wow,” said Erica. “If you weren’t my best friend, I’d completely jump your bones right now.”

“Um, I’m also straight, remember?”

“Yeah, I know. That completely wouldn’t stop me.”

Dinner was on a balcony under the stars, what few could peek through the clouds. It was a gorgeous night, the heat and humidity temporarily eliminated by the evening rain, now ended, and a light breeze wandered across the tables.

The food was delicious, vegetables and fish in light glazes, ordered off a menu in a language Kim didn’t even recognize, let alone understand. Dwight smiled and explained to her what various dishes were, made suggestions and let her pick. That was good—one guy she’d gone on one date with last semester, Erica’s girlfriend du jour’s brother, had insisted on ordering for her. He hadn’t gotten so much as a handshake at the end of the date.

“So,” said Dwight. “How goes English?”

“It’s okay,” Kim said.

“Just okay?”

Kim shrugged.

“Hope you don’t mind me asking, but if it’s just okay, why did you switch into it?”

Kim became very interested in the piece of broccoli on her fork. Dwight waited her out.

“I didn’t really have a choice,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

“Well, when they accepted me, they told me art students had to show the adviser their portfolio so they knew which classes to take. And, um, he didn’t like my drawings.”

“They wouldn’t let you into the program? But I really liked your drawings!” Dwight actually seemed a little bit angry. Kim liked that, in a weird sort of way.

“Well, not exactly. I was already accepted. But the adviser said, um, that they taught more serious, adult kinds of art, and, um, if I wanted to draw fairies and unicorns, I should do graphic design and get a job at Lisa Frank.”

“What an asshole! And you listened to him?” Dwight was definitely angry. Kim couldn’t remember the last time anyone had gotten angry on her behalf before.

“Well, I mean, my art was kind of kiddy stuff...”

“Who cares what you draw? All that matters is, you drew it well!”

Kim smiled. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

“You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe I should switch back.”

Dwight grinned. “Cool. I’ll get to be in your cheering section earlier than planned.”

“Heh, yeah. So, that was my embarrassing secret. Your turn! You’ve obviously got money,” she swept a hand to indicate the restaurant around them, “and you never actually play the games, so why do you work in the game room all day?”

“Human-machine interfaces,” answered Dwight. “All around me, all the time. The arcade machines, the air hockey, even the pool tables, they’re all machines. We never think about what games do to us. We think of them as things we play, but in a sense they also play us. When somebody picks up a pool stick and starts playing, they’re trying to get the best score they can, and that means hitting the balls in certain ways. If the table were a different shape, a triangle instead of a rectangle, they’d hit the balls in different ways. It’s an incredible environment for thinking about my project.”

“That’s what the notebook’s for?”

“You’ve seen that, huh? Yeah. I take a lot of notes in there. Observations of people using machines, and the ideas it gives me for my project. Lately, though, it’s been getting harder. I keep scribbling this name in the margins, over and over. ‘Kimmy.’”

“It’s Kim, now.”

Dwight smiled. “You’ll always be Kimmy to me.”

“People laugh when they hear the name Kimmy.”

“When I hear the name, I want to sing. But that doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is what you want to be called. Kim, Kimmy, Eduardo, whatever. You have the right to decide for yourself what name you like best, and everyone else has to live with it.”

Kim giggled at “Eduardo”. Then the waiter cleared the table, and there was a dessert, shared, something made of air and chocolate and quite possibly magic, and then there was the suspiciously long drive back to campus, talking quietly about nothing in particular.

“Well,” said Dwight outside her dorm, “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” said Kim, feeling suddenly more awkward than she had since the first time she went to the game room.

“So, uh... See you then.”

“Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“I should get to bed,” said Kim. “I have a morning class on Mondays.”

“Yeah,” said Dwight, “and I have to be in at nine to open the game room.”

They sat.

“Thank you,” said Dwight. “I had a really great time.”

“Same here,” said Kim. “I’m glad you asked me.”

More silence.

“Good night.”

“Good night.”

More sitting.

“Oh, hell,” said Dwight, and leaned over and kissed her.

Kim’s hands found his shoulders and rested there lightly. Dwight’s hands were on his armrests. Neither of them moved, except for their lips.

Dwight was actually a pretty good kisser, Kim noticed. She wasn’t sure why she was surprised by that. At least, he was one of the better kissers she’d encountered, but her experience was pretty limited.

Dwight broke the kiss, and a small sigh escaped Kim as he pulled back. He smiled at her shyly.

“Good night,” she said again.

“Good night,” he answered.

Kim leaned over and kissed him.

It took six more tries before she actually got out of the car, and by that time the first hints of pre-dawn were already graying the sky. The world, Kim realized, was an almost impossibly wonderful place. How anyone could manage to actually believe in it was beyond her. She felt like painting. And dancing. Painting and dancing, in that order. She was going to sleep until class, then she was going to paint until the next class, and then she was going to go to the game room. That was what she would do.

The next couple of days sailed by in a blissful haze. Kim would go to the game room in her sundress, or in one of the two or three other dresses she’d bought for DDR. She’d sit with Dwight for a while behind the counter, talking and playing with each other’s fingertips, and then she’d play DDR. The pool-playing boys stopped and watched when she did, and she reveled in their attention. She felt reborn, not plain bashful Kim anymore, but green-haired dryad Kim, dancing whirling energetic Kim, free happy laughing Kim. Admired, adored Kim, forest goddess, dancing the dances of autumn. And every time she got a perfect score on a song, always Maniac with two pads, she’d cum, and nobody knew. Everybody saw, and not one person knew it was happening except Kim herself. Finally, exhausted by frenetic dancing and a dozen orgasms, she’d stagger over to Dwight, kiss him hard, and stagger home.

Erica wasn’t around much. Kim assumed she was with yet another girlfriend, having broken up with last week’s girlfriend on Monday. It would have been nice to talk to her—Kim felt like she had to gush about Dwight to someone, or she’d explode—but she’d learned ages ago that Erica would show up when she showed up.

On Thursday, on her way back to the dorm to change into a DDR dress, Kim realized that she was beautiful and loved and strong, and could do whatever she wanted. Steeling herself, she grabbed her portfolio, walked straight up to the art department, and filled out the paperwork to change majors on the spot.

“I remember you,” said the adviser as she walked in. “Turning your hair unnatural colors won’t make your art any less puerile, you know.”

Kim slammed her portfolio down on his desk. “I want to do drawing and painting.”

“And I want to fly, but alas, I have not the talent.”

“You can’t turn me away.” Kim glared at him. “Once I’m accepted into the school, I can take any undergraduate program I want. I checked the rules.”

“I am an adviser,” he answered calmly, studying his nails. “And I strongly advise you not to pursue art as a career. The world needs Picassos and Goyas, not pixies and pretty flowers.”

“I’m an artist,” said Kim. “I don’t care what the world needs. I want to draw, I want to paint, and I’m going to draw and paint. And I want to be better at drawing and painting, and this school’s going to teach me or I’m going to find one that will! And you can bet your bitter, judgmental ass that your boss is going to know exactly why there’s one fewer tuition payment coming into the school next semester!”

The adviser stared at Kim speechlessly.

“Well?” said Kim. “What classes do I have to take next semester if I’m concentrating in drawing and painting? Do I have to switch any of my classes now?”

Quietly, he looked at the student ID number on her form, and tapped it into the computer. “No,” he said. “We have the same Gen Ed requirements as English, so all your classes this semester count toward those. You’ll want to take art history and either Drawing I or Painting I next semester, depending on...”

Back in her room half an hour later, Kim hummed tunelessly to herself as she assembled a new DDR outfit. Finally finished, she posed in the mirror. Dwight was going to have a heart attack.

She was wearing a purple and black Lycra top that covered little more than her breasts, and a pair of cutoff denim short-shorts that, as if they didn’t show enough miles of leg already, were slit completely up both sides and then laced together, exposing a half-inch-wide strip of skin on each side of her hips. Between that, her aforementioned legs, the way the shorts emphasized her hips and toned ass, and the long tight tummy completely exposed by her low shorts and high top, the pool-playing guys were the ones at risk of heart attack. Dwight would probably just burst into flames on the spot.

The door opened, and Erica walked in. “Hey, Kim,” she called. “I decided to steal your innocent look, and I got three phone numbers. Check it out!”

Kim stepped out from behind the wardrobe, finishing tucking her hair into a ponytail. “Nice!” she said, meaning it. Erica was wearing a pinstriped men’s shirt and a long burgundy shirt. With her lip piercing and bad-girl haircut, she looked like spoiled innocence just spilling over into sexual sorcery, like a virgin halfway through her first fuck, just figuring out that her lover was the Devil himself. Kim giggled inwardly at her thoughts. She really was like a new person, freer than ever before.

“Holy shit,” whispered Erica. “I think I either just got religion or ruined my panties. Hopefully both.”

Kim laughed. “Well, here’s hoping the boys in the game room think the same thing.”

“You’re going to go out like that? Wait, are those the shorts from that costume you chickened out of at Otakon?”

“Yep,” said Kim happily.

“And I thought that was a sports bra, not a top!”

“Well, technically it is,” said Kim. “But so what? Nobody’ll know the difference.”

“They will when you give every guy and half the girls you pass whiplash!”

Kim laughed again. “Oh, come on, I see girls wearing barely more than this all the time. You wear less than this when you’re on the prowl!”

“Well, okay, sometimes, yeah. Seriously, though, girl, you look hot. I’m worried you’ll finish off global warming and we’ll have to swim to class, and I can’t afford scuba gear.”

Kim grinned. “Hey, all you need is a pair of black-rimmed glasses and you can roam the bookstacks as the naughty librarian. You’ll have people begging to buy gear for you.”

They walked to the student union together, laughing and joking, and Kim almost managed to stop noticing the way Erica’s eyes kept roaming over Kim’s body without ever quite making it up to her face.

All games and conversation stopped as the two girls entered the game room. Every eye in the room was glued on Kim, and she loved it. People weren’t just choosing to look at her. They were choosing her over Erica at her sexiest. For the first time in her life, Kim was the hottest girl in the room without being the only girl.

But all of that was forgotten the moment she started her game. Dwight could barely talk as he handed her her tokens, and he was even redder than she was the first time she came in public. Thinking of that, she glanced down at her shorts, then shrugged. Somebody might notice. Who cared? It didn’t matter what anybody else thought; Kim was free.

She danced. She danced like she had never danced before, wild and whirling. She understood know what Dwight meant about the machine playing her. Whatever flashed on the screen, she did instantly, perfectly, hopping from pad to pad, moving with the perfect grace of the athlete at the peak of her game. Climax after climax ripped through her, barely registering, and then she was playing the last song, the hardest song, and it was easy, it was beautiful, she was more turned on than she’d ever been in her life, and she screamed with the ecstasy of release when the last announcement of “PERFECT!” flared across the screen and she was done.

Kim turned slowly. There was an enormous crowd gathered, men and women both, nearly all of them practically salivating as they stared. Her toned body glistened with sweat, her eyes shone, and there was a flush across her collar bone and neck. The wet spot on her shorts was obvious to the entire crowd, and the front row could see the glistening trickle running down her right thigh.

They were totally silent.

Kim smiled and waved at them. Then, her ponytail bouncing merrily behind her, she walked over to the counter, grabbed Dwight by the arm, and practically dragged him out of the building and to his car.

“Where are we going?” he asked as he unlocked it.

Kim hopped in and pulled on her belt. “Your place, silly. Where did you think?”

Dwight’s knuckles turned white on the steering wheel.

“You have your own place, right?” said Kim.

“Yeah, I rent a house a few blocks from here, but—”

“I don’t. I have a crappy little dorm bed and a roommate who I suspect is feeling a bit jealous of you right now. So we’re going to your place.”

“Okay,” said Dwight. “Wow. Um. Right. Key in the ignition.” He fumbled with the key, and Kim giggled, then stifled a yawn.

“I’ve decided you can call me Kimmy, by the way,” she said. “But only in private. I like the way you say it, and I want to keep it to myself.”

“Wow. Uh, thanks,” said Dwight.

Kim was already asleep.

She woke, briefly, when they arrived at Dwight’s house. He led her to a bed, which she fell into gratefully, and then she was fast asleep once more.

When Kim woke, it was dark out. Dwight was sitting in a chair by the bed, watching her. “Hi,” he said, smiling.

“Hi yourself,” she said. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Watching you sleep.” He stretched.

“Well, I’m done sleeping now, and I seem to vaguely recall I had a purpose in coming here. So, care to join me?”

“Wow,” said Dwight. “Um, before we, uh... Well, there’s something I want to show you. I’ve been making it for you, and, um, I wanted to see if you like it.”

“I’m intrigued,” said Kim, getting out of the bed. “What is it?”

“You’ll see,” said Dwight, leading her into the hallway, actually a sort of balcony over a cathedral-ceilinged living room.

“Wow,” said Kim. “Nice place.”

“Thanks,” said Dwight. “It’s in here.” He led her to a door at the far end of the hall. “Well, go in. It’s my workshop.”

Kim looked suspiciously at Dwight, but then smiled and walked in. “Wow,” she said again. The room was filled with arcade machines, all with obvious modifications—circuit boards and loops of cable sticking out of them, extra monitors, hefty transformers. She recognized a copy of the same gun game as in the monitors, but with an extra screen added.

But what drew her wow was in the center of the room. In the heart of an enormous tangle of cables and circuitry and equipment Kim couldn’t even identify stood a DDR machine, but with three screens arranged around the pads.

“I made it for you to train on,” Dwight explained. “The songs are much harder than on the normal machines, and you have to use both pads. The extra screens and stereo surround sound allow total immersion, so you can get into your ‘zone’ state faster and deeper than ever before.” He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. “Do you want to try it?”

“Absolutely!” said Kim, and kissed him deeply. “Wait for me, lover, I’ll be back in a minute.”

She hopped up onto the pad. The usual coin slots had been replaced with a button. A strip of masking tape next to it read “Start”. Kim pressed it, and a fourth screen slid down behind her. “Oh wow,” she said. “Dwight, this is incredible!”

Then the music started, not just all around her but, thanks to the subwoofer under her feet, inside her as well, thrumming through her bones, and there were arrows all around her, fountains and floods and stampedes of them, and she was moving moving moving.

Dwight wasn’t kidding. This was much harder than the machine in the game room. She could barely keep up, even got “Good” on a couple of steps instead of “Perfect”. She was getting hotter and wetter as she danced, but couldn’t quite cum like she did on the game room machine. She kept trying harder and harder for that elusive perfect score and orgasm, but she couldn’t make it, and in less than fifteen minutes she was hornier than she’d ever been in her life. Finally, she jabbed at the start button, and the screen behind her slid up.

“How was it?” asked Dwight.

Kim pounced, pushing him up against the wall as she pressed her mouth to his in a passionate, needy kiss. She wanted to destroy the distance between them, and the heat of his body through his clothes, against her bare belly and legs, teased her mercilessly. She pulled away from him just long enough to tear his shirt off, buttons popping and flying, and then she was pressed against him, kissing him again, his hands on the small of her back, hers tangled in his hair. His bare stomach pressed against her sweat-slick, shining skin, slid and slipped, but it wasn’t anywhere near enough. She didn’t want to pull away, she loved what his lips were doing to her neck, but she had to. She pulled herself out of his arms and peeled off her tight top, her firm breasts bouncing free. Grabbing Dwight’s hand, she brought it up to her breast, and moaned as he explored with his fingertips, stroking his thumb over her nipple.

Kim fumbled with her shorts, swearing in frustration, but finally she managed to tear off them and her soaked panties. Pressing herself against Dwight once more, she kissed him, hard and desperate and long, while her hands worked to remove his belt.

Finally, finally, all the barriers were out of the way. Dwight lay on his back across the DDR pads, and Kim lowered herself slowly onto him, moaning as his hard cock penetrated her. Then she was panting and gasping, driving herself onto him as she straddled his hips, her hands roaming over his chest. She was inside the machine. It was off, but she was inside it, and so arrows exploded across the inside of her skull. She knew exactly how to move her body, her gasps and moans and little sighs driving Dwight upward, as his more masculine noises drove her. The arrows guided her, and she moved perfectly. When the last arrow moved across the screen in her head, and Dwight cried out and exploded up into her, she was released by the alchemy of the perfect score. Her back arched and she screamed, completely shattered by mind-dissolving pleasure.

She collapsed panting across Dwight’s chest, feeling him still inside her and loving it.

“Wow,” he said.

“Wow is right.”

They lay in silence for a time, content to simply be.

“So,” said Kim when that time was done, “ready to go again?”

“Are you kidding?” said Dwight. “I’ll be lucky if I can still walk after that!”

But once again, she knew exactly how to move her body as long as she just let go and watched the arrows, and Dwight soon discovered he was ready after all. They made love twice more on the DDR pad, and then once in Dwight’s delightfully large bed.

As the first rays of dawn crept through the window, Kim roused herself from dozing peacefully on Dwight’s chest. “I should go back to the dorm,” Kim said.

“Do you have to? You don’t have class until Monday, right?”

“You have work, and anyway I need to change my clothes. I’ll come by the game room and we’ll hang, okay? We’ll come back here after.”

“Listen to you, all full of plans.” Dwight kissed her. “I think I like this assertive side of you.”

The kiss was very distracting, and led to other, greater distractions, which served to derail Kim’s plan for another hour. Finally, though, they made it out the door, and Dwight drove Kim to her dorm.

She kissed him briefly. “See you in a little while,” she said, and hopped out the door and up the steps. It had turned chilly overnight, and clouds were gathering overhead. She would be glad to get into something warmer.

When she reached her dorm room, it was dark. That wasn’t too surprising, since Erica usually slept in on weekends. She closed the door behind her, and realized Erica wasn’t sleeping.

She was sitting on her bed, staring at Kim.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” Kim asked, and flipped the light on. “Oh,” she said.

Erica was still wearing her shirt from the previous day, and what were presumably the same panties, but her skirt was dumped on the floor. Her clothes were rumpled and messy, and her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, staring hollowly at Kim. She was surrounded by used tissues and empty bottles.

She sniffled. “You were with Dwight, weren’t you?”

Kim nodded.

“You fucked him?”

Kim hesitated, then nodded again.

“Do you... do you love him?”

“...Yes.”

“I see.” Erica pulled a tissue from the box in her lap and blew her nose.

“I—” Kim began.

“I’ve never been in love, you know,” said Erica. “I fucked a lot of girls, and I thought that was all there was. Until I met this one girl. Sweet, shy, smart, talented, no idea how gorgeous she was. I wanted her so bad. And she wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Erica—”

“Let me finish. At first I wanted to fuck her, so I became her friend. A lot of girls are just waiting for a lesbian friend to come along before they start experimenting. They’re just fooling around, but it was always enough for me.

“Except this girl wasn’t interested in experiments. And as I became her friend, I realized I really liked her as a friend. More than liked her. I fell in love. Me. The cold-hearted dyke bitch. And you had no idea.”

“I had an idea,” I said. “But—”

“But you didn’t want to risk our friendship by telling me there was no chance. And I didn’t want to risk it by coming on to you. So instead we played a game. I pretended to come on to you and you pretended to be offended, and it was all a big joke. Except, really, every joke was me asking Do you love me yet? and you answering No, and I never will.

“I would do anything to make you love me. You know that, right?” Erica was staring at Kim, her eyes haunted and empty. “I used to lie awake at night, imagining love potions, secret magic. I used to dream that the Devil offered me your heart for my soul. I would take that bargain in a second, Kim.

Erica stood. “And you’ve noticed something different these past few weeks, haven’t you? You’ve been changing, Kim. Coming out of your shell. Coming alive. And I thought, Oh, she’s just really closeted. She’s not really straight. She loves me, but it scares her, and once she’s worked herself free, she’ll finally be mine.

“And then Dwight came along, and he stole you from me. You came out of your shell, you fell in love. You’re my best friend, and you’re in love, and you’re happy, and I hate you for it!” Erica’s voice rose to a shrill scream. “I hate you because it isn’t me!”

“Erica, please. You’re scaring me!” Kim pleaded.

Erica visibly struggled to regain control of herself. “But it’s okay, you see? You’re not going to stop here. I’m not going to let you. You’re going to keep coming out of your shell, get wilder and wilder, until finally you’re free enough to admit you love me. Because you do. You have to. I’ll make you!”

Erica stepped forward, and Kim grabbed for the doorknob and fled, terrified and weeping, her mind whirling. She staggered out into the thin, cold gray drizzle of October morning, and pulled out her cell phone. “Hi!” said the happy, wonderful, trustable voice on the other end. “What can I do for my favorite dryad?”

“Dwight, I need to see you. Now.” Kim felt her voice cracking, and the first tears began to fall.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll explain when you get here. I’m at my dorm. Hurry.”

Kim lay curled on Dwight’s bed, sobbing as she spilled out the entire story, her history with Erica, hours and hours of tears and memories. “She was my best friend, Dwight! And I was so scared. I think she may have gone crazy!”

“Shh,” soothed Dwight, stroking her hair. “Erica was the one who came with you to the game room yesterday?”

Kim nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“She must have been very upset and very drunk. That can do weird things to people.”

“I don’t know what she meant about making me love her. I’m worried she might do something to you.”

“It’s okay,” Dwight said. “We’re both perfectly safe. She’s just confusing wishful thinking with reality; she can’t possibly make you love her, and she knows that. Anyway, you should rest. It’s getting late. Tomorrow we’ll figure out what to do about your friend.”

Dwight started to stand, but Kim reached out and held his sleeve. “Stay with me, please? Could you just... h-hold me?”

Dwight smiled, his eyes full of love. “Of course,” he said, and slid into bed next to Kim, wrapping his arms around her.

“Thank you,” said Kim, snuggling against him, finally beginning to relax. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“So,” concluded the man in the upper right window of Dwight’s laptop, “it seems that the combat training aspect of the project is a total success. As with your initial test subject, our volunteers are now able to acquire targets quickly enough to reliably appear to be firing at two at once. Between the increased accuracy and the effect on enemy morale, I think this will have major and overwhelmingly positive battlefield effects.”

“Good,” said the man in the upper left. Dwight stifled a yawn and took a gulp from his coffee cup. He was sitting at his kitchen table, in his pajamas with an acute case of bedhead, teleconferencing with four of the most powerful people in the United States military. “What about the intel aspects?”

“I submitted my final report on Subject 2 a couple of hours ago. I don’t know if any of you have had time to read it. The subject is now possessed of reflexes and coordination near the peak of previously known human performance, and continuing to advance, albeit more slowly now. Subject has also repeatedly demonstrated that previously very strong inhibitions and anxieties are now substantially reduced or nonexistent, and shown greatly enhanced responsiveness to secondary subliminal training. I’m ready to pronounce the second phase a success, and ready to transfer over to your volunteers.”

“Excellent,” said the upper left man. “Any comments?”

“Yes,” said the man in the lower left, an alarmingly thin man with bulging eyes so pale it was hard to tell what color they were. “I have read the report in question, and I am concerned regarding the specifics of the subject and training. Namely, that you’ve taken a young woman and reduced her social and sexual inhibitions while programming in an attachment and attraction to you. You’ve been making a plaything, Mr. Lee, and I hardly consider that a suitable use of taxpayer money.”

Dwight slammed his coffee cup into the table and pointed at his webcam. “Ki—Subject 2 is not a plaything!” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath before continuing. “Listen, I didn’t volunteer for this job. I was just doing my thing when you came to me, and told me I could stop my research or sign on for this project. You took my right to publish and my career, and used my research on how to help people and machines work together better to find ways to turn people into machines. All right, fine, you paid me plenty of blood money, and I did agree to it, but even if I can’t help make the world a better place for everyone, at least I can make it better for a couple of people. The most I could do for Subject 1 was give him a parlor trick, but Subject 2? She was miserable! She was headed down a career path she didn’t like because she was afraid of confrontation. She let her only friend push her around because she was afraid of confrontation. She couldn’t perform in front of a crowd. She was deeply, pathologically anxious and shy, and I helped her. She’s happy now, and getting a chance to live out her dreams, and if I took a few steps to make myself happy too, well, what’s wrong with that?”

“What’s wrong?” demanded the man with the bulging eyes. “It’s sick, is what’s wrong!”

“Enough,” said the man in the upper left. “Mr. Lee, so long as continue to produce results we can use, and you do nothing to threaten the security of this project or this nation, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do to your test subjects. You can train them to be hookers and rake in cash for all I care, as long as you make absolutely certain it can’t be traced to you.”

“I’d never do that!” protested Lee.

“No. Of course not,” said the man with the eyes drily.

“So, Mr. Lee, are you ready to proceed to the next phase of the project?” asked the man in the upper left.

Lee nodded. “If you’ll look at the general project outline, page five, the next phase is a more ambitious variant of the training conducted on Subject 2. The goal, as you can see, is to produce deep, abiding, controlled changes in personality, preferences, and aversions. I believe I have determined a suitable candidate for Subject 3, and will begin filing reports as soon as I have collected initial data.”

“Another young woman for you to ‘make happy’, Mr. Lee?” asked bulging eyes.

“Actually, I’m planning to make two young women very happy, not that it’s any of your business.”

“Very well then,” said the man in the upper left. “We’ll reconvene in one week. I assume we’ll have your report by then, Mr. Lee?”

Dwight nodded. “Definitely.”

Dwight looked up from the DDR machine as Kim walked into the workroom, and felt his heart skip a beat. Her hair was mussed, her eyes sleepy, she was wearing one of his dress shirts and nothing else, and it was the sexiest, most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

“What?” asked Kim.

“Just thinking how lucky I am,” he said.

She smiled. “Not half as lucky as me. Guys who’ll hold you all night without trying anything are a pretty rare breed by all reports.”

“You needed to sleep, and besides, I have an insidious plan. My theory is, the more I show how much I love you, the more you’ll show how much you love me, and then we’ll have lots and lots of sex.”

Kim laughed. “So, what’re you working on there, anyway?”

“Not much. I’m putting adjustable skill levels back into the DDR box.”

“Oh? Did I do that badly the other night?”

“That night was the most amazing thing I have witnessed, participated in, or heard of in my entire life, and I fully intend for us to top it tonight. First, though, I was thinking that you would call Erica and invite her over to play DDR together, coach and athlete. No need to talk, no need to bring up yesterday, no pressure to make up. Just time together, sharing something, the ultimate healer of wounds.”

“Do you really think it’ll work?” Kim asked.

“If everything you’ve told me is true, Erica will do just about anything for you, and who can blame her? After that, just take things slow.”

Kim hugged Dwight. “Thank you. Have I told you today how much I love you?”

“No, actually. How much do you love me?” Dwight grinned.

“So much it even scares me a little,” said Kim. “But it’s okay. I’ve gotten a lot stronger in the last few weeks, strong enough to stand on my own. And with you, I’m even stronger.”

“I promise you’ll never have to stand on your own as long as I have anything to say about it.”

“How much do you love me?”

Dwight smiled and kissed her. “So much I’ll never fear anything ever again. You’re my strength.”

One phone call, a breakfast, and a very pleasant joint shower later, Dwight got into his car to head to work, waving to his girlfriend as he pulled out of the driveway. He knew Erica and Kim would love the two-player cooperative mode he’d added to DDR. And, in a few weeks, Erica would be very happy to discover her best friend’s brand-new bisexuality.

Of course, Subject Three had to be from scratch. There was no way to get good data otherwise. He’d had to program the machine to alter Erica’s deep-seated preferences, too. But that was okay. Kim would be very happy to have a way to show her new feelings for Erica without cheating, and Erica would be very happy to have something new to share with her love.

And if playing with his girlfriend and her cute bisexual lover made Dwight happy, too? Well, there was nothing wrong with that.