Unreliable Narrator

Unreliable Narrator

Copyright March 2025 By Fit529 Dotcom

(Started 3/2025)

== Chapter: We Are Our Memories ==

Though I don't remember it, I was born on a Tuesday. It's probably just as well I've forgotten since undoubtedly it was painful and upsetting.

For that matter, my childhood is mostly an odd half-recollection, memories OF memories, flashes and bits of things. Like most people I think, the original memories might be there but are vague and have merged with what I've been told happened, plus lots of possibly-real, possibly-imagined bits, stories like 'when I was 4...'

My actual memories are flashes, images of places and people randomly assembled, moments of action, oft-compounded scenes overlaid like turning into my driveway. The overlaid stuff isn't separable - like the umpteeth watching of a TV show intro song.

Some memories are traumatic sounds, or happy ones. My mother's laughter, or her sneezes, or where she screamed about something.

Some of my image-memories require a vantage point of being 3 feet tall.

The things that I remember most clearly were traumatic events like when we moved. I was little. It was my mother and I, alone in the car, driving in the desert. Then, there were fields, and we were somewhere else. Snippets pop up. Playing word games, or... imagining that we played word games. It's hard to separate.

Our move was from a small town to a medium-town, far away. Not gonna say where, to protect the innocent.

I was always bookish. I read a lot, we had books all over the house. My favorite books, my favorite times, my favorite memories, all are sitting on a lap, being read to, comfy and loved.

For normal kid-reasons I loved dinosaurs. Their names and years and morphology and latest theories, I knew vast amounts. Modern paleontology means it's outdated now, but BOY I was excited about 'em! Like any kid, I was plenty happy to prevaricate (talk at length whether the other person was interested or not) about dinos and many other things.

Besides dinosaurs, I really liked walking around and looking at plants. Someone gave me a book, 'Gray's New Manual of Botany'. It was way too long and complicated, but the more times I read it (over and over and over), the more understandable it became. Walking around, I'd carry it and use it to identify plants, usually weeds, that grew around our yard and in the rest of the neighborhood.

Our house had a garden, and I had to keep it weeded. I remember a lot of things about gardening, sensory things like dirt in fingers and pulling on thick-rooted weeds and swinging a hoe to break up clods of dirt... lots of things.

I really did know most of the plants I saw. We had some wild areas nearby and I walked through with the Gray's Botany. When I was older, I found I could name genus and species (Latin) for everything I ran into - because I was walking mostly in the same places every time and there were only a few hundred plants to look up.

Later, I liked reading about rockets and space travel, and knew all the parts and what they did and how it worked inside - turbocompressor pumps and ignition sequences and injection plates and all that stuff.

Besides the non-fiction about rockets, I read a lot of science fiction. I never got into fantasy, though, I believed it was anti-math and anti-science and that flew in the face of physics - and I really wanted the world to make sense. I couldn't see the storytelling behind it, I was too literal. It's odd how kid brains work, especially when that kid brain was my own.

There was a library about 3 blocks from my house, so I spent a lot of time there, checking out up to the max of 10 books at a time, sometimes taking them home, reading them, and returning the next day.

All the librarians knew me, and I knew them.

One day we had a new librarian and she said I couldn't check out any more because I had 10 checked out already. I said, no, they're in the return bin right there, and she got them and we were okay.

While she was handling it one of the other ladies came over - I knew her well - and told the new lady about me and that it was okay, I was trustworthy.

I really liked that. I swelled with pride. Of COURSE I was trustworthy, I was a Reader and this was a Library and we just Went Together, and there was no way I'd do anything to ruin that idea.

In school, I was kind of a loner because I had some autism and Asperger's that set me apart from others. The teachers, they let me read during class time because I always knew the answers anyway, and people mostly ignored me. I ignored them, too. It was fine.

When I got to 8th grade, we were assigned a month-long task of writing an autobiography. We had to include all the important details, and a lot of other details and stories, and it all had to be very real. My mother had to sign off on it, even, that the stories were real and I hadn't missed anything.

We had to include details of every vacation, every trip, every relative we'd met, the big things that happened in our lives, all that we could. I had an easy time - we'd never been anywhere, after we moved. We'd never taken a vacation anywhere. We had no money for that.

I remember laboring over the assignment and writing enough to fill a notebook. The notebook was one I got from my communicants' class at the Catholic church, it was a super-nice bound-book one with paper that absorbed my pen nicely. I loved writing in it.

Everything was in-bounds for this autobiography. I even included what my everyday life was like in 8th grade, who my friends were, what I did from morning to night, tv shows, what books I was reading, everything.

Describing my friends was easy - they were obsessed with sports and I wasn't. I didn't care. They knew the names of teams and players and performance stats and who might be good later and all the things I just didn't give a solid good-God-damn about.

Not being fat or thin was an advantage, in that I didn't get teased, just picked for games in the middle of the pack. I was neither gifted nor tragic, just mostly average and treated that way.

My mom had a minimum wage job so we didn't have much money. She'd grown up on a farm, so we worked together (okay it was mostly me) to dig up a huge section of our backyard as a garden. This took significant effort, though mostly that declined as I learned tricks to do it easier (thank you, librarians, for 'gardening tricks' books). We managed to raise an immense amount of vegetables, which we then canned or just froze in the late summer or fall. The bounty meant we could eat more cheaply all winter.

Mr. Jenkins, an older retired guy down the block, liked my mom a lot. He brought us lots of fish since he went fishing almost every day and caught tons.

Mom filled our freezer with his fish and we always had some, fresh or frozen, filets or soup or whatever.

In retrospect, we had far better nutrition than our neighbors who had far more money. They ate junk food. Our carrots tasted like CARROTS not cardboard and I got to be kind of a snob about that, though I was instructed carefully to keep my mouth shut. We couldn't afford to share, and Mom warned me that neighbors sometimes sneak in and take your produce. They might think it's just one thing, but each of those one things takes a huge effort to raise given the number of weeds that grow and how hard it is to bend over to pull them.

So that was my life mostly. It was decent as a childhood, maybe better than average, but otherwise unremarkable.

In high school, I wasn't into sports or music, but I did go on a few dates freshman, sophomore, and junior years. These were complicated by my being somewhat 'on the spectrum' (high functioning, not a big deal) and even though I could mostly act normal, sometimes I just didn't understand what some social implications were.

My dates and other high school stuff was fun enough that I even added them to my autobiography.

So, this was my life, until the day of my 18th birthday, my high school senior year.

== Chapter: Birthday Night ==

Turning 18 for most people would mean a party, but for me it was going to be the following Saturday; a friend of mine from DND (dungeons and dragons was a fun diversion) just said we'd celebrate my birthday later that week as part of our normal Saturday game.

It was fine by me to wait a few days since I knew his mother was Turkish and made incredible baklava - OMG that Baklava!!!!!

So with homework to do, I settled in at my desk to crank through my trig assignment, something I generally had trouble with and had to spend actual time on. I liked the topic, I just had trouble concentrating sometimes when I lacked sleep, or (as I'd recently figured out) when there were too many new symbols it was intimidating and I'd have trouble just starting the assignment.

But... Then...

My entire life then changed.

It felt like a shifting of perspective, like when the elevator drops and your vision goes weird, or a blink when you've had a head cold and suddenly you're looking in a different direction than you thought.

In that moment? BLINK - and everything seemed... Very Very DIFFERENT.

I struggled to understand what had moved or happened since I was still sitting in a chair at my desk. The confusion was real, though, like when I woke up after a dream and tried to separate where I was and realize what was happening around me.

It was so sudden and odd at the same time. I realized I was hearing a buzzing - in my head? It wasn't a noise FROM anywhere! I plugged my ears, it was the same volume, like tinnitus but all different frequencies, and suddenly.

Then, a voice spoke.

The voice was female, and older, like a mid-30's person talking, but nice enough, not like a mom scolding, just sounding like a calm, normal, average older person.

The tone of voice was like someone describing an event, or telling a story.

It said the following:

[[ NARRATOR: Sometimes learning a new thing can have big consequences. As Kevin recently learned from a video, it's best to treat math like playing piano. You aren't 'good at math' or 'bad at math', you're just well-practiced or not. The vid had said, do ALL the problems in a chapter, but importantly you have to do them in a random order or your brain doesn't really get any practice selecting the right trick to solve the specific problem at hand.

Math is easy when you're confident of the previous material, and only learning the latest skill. ]]

Suddenly, another voice cut in, a girl's voice, younger, far more urgent. I didn't recognize it.

VOICES IN MY HEAD?!??!?!

WTF!??!

[[ AUTHOR: No... NO, No. Has to be shorter, to the point... ]]

[[ NARRATOR: As Kevin settled in to do his trig homework, he decided to take his teacher's advice and do ALL the problems, from the front of the book onwards, until he could do them fast and right each time. Then, it'd be easy to do the new stuff. Kevin liked that, so he literally opened to the first page and started his entire Trig career over again. ]]

As the voice spoke, I could literally picture Mrs. Abernathy (my trig teacher) telling me this exact thing. The memory came back to me, as if it had happened exactly that way, that afternoon.

The thing was, Mrs. Abernathy was on maternity leave, she was out for the rest of the semester, and the new substitute wasn't really a trig teacher, she taught history and had been made to teach our class despite obviously minimal knowledge.

Thus, the NARRATOR didn't know what was going on!

And, I was gaining memories of things that never happened??!?!

WTF?!?!

Still, I was calm about it, because of course I was. Outwardly, I showed no signs of my inward turmoil, my mind was a blasting WTF festival, while outside I was calmly opening my trig textbook back at chapter one and re-reading it.

[[NARRATOR: Kevin started in again and found he could work the problems very easily. Math was a fun subject for him anyway, and getting more fun as he sucked in the info and worked through the problem sets of the first 8 chapters. ]]

WTF? I had to re-do homeworks for 8 whole chapters? ALL the problems??! WTF?

Still, the voice's authority seemed to be significant, and I decided to not fight it and actually do the problems. The material was stuff I'd been doing for the past 5 months anyway, so it wasn't that hard, it just took some practice to get quick at it, keep track of progress as I did problems in a random order, and check my answers with an online tool.

The NARRATOR was actually correct.

After about 3 hours of this, working steadily because it was actually pretty fun, I finished the last of the problems from chapter 8.

The NARRATOR's voice came on again, right INTO my head. I again plugged my ears and found that it rang through with no loss of clarity or volume.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevins' trig homework was done and he stood up. His legs hurt from his track meet that afternoon, enough so he just stripped off and got in bed. It was late, time to sleep anyway. ]]

I stood up? I hadn't decided to do that! My body just automatically did what the NARRATOR said?

My... Track Meet?!?!

I wasn't running track! I ran track and cross country my freshman year because it seemed fun, but then it had been a burden and I had to get a job mowing lawns and at the sub-shop to help Mom out with bills.

Still - ahead of me on the wall was... something new?

It was a piece of notebook paper, on which I'd written at the top 'PR SHEET' and listed each event I'd run. The thing was, I now remembered writing this, and putting it up, and revising it after every meet...

EVERY MEET?

I hadn't run at all, and yet... I now remembered being in track and cross country, for the previous four years, doing all kinds of events.

Memories were being injected in my brain.

I could still remember telling coach Williams I wasn't going to run again, in a phone call that summer before sophomore year, that I needed a job. He understood.

That memory now collided with another call I'd had, getting info on our first practice workout the week before school started.

My sense of calm about how this was happening wasn't right. I wasn't really this calm. Except, the NARRATOR hadn't said I was freaked, so I wasn't.

It was controlling my mood.

I could still control my thoughts, though. I still had clarity on that, and could decide things for myself, even if I was compelled to do some stuff.

My body was on autopilot. While I was noticing this stuff, my hands had started undoing my belt and jeans and getting undressed for bed. These dirty clothes I put... into a hamper?

I didn't have a hamper!

I had a laundry basket in the corner where I threw things, for sure, but that was gone now and I had a really nice sweet laundry hamper, wicker sided, by my dresser.

On a hook on the wall was a new hook, where a towel and a threadbare bathrobe hung, neither of which had any real history with me but now had a solid history going back to... 4th grade, I was pretty sure. I even remembered installing that set of hooks AND simultaneously being very positive of my actual history being that I'd never actually owned a robe.

Putting on the robe, I headed over across the hallway to the bathroom...

The... EXPANDED bathroom?!?

And... All the counterspace was covered with girl stuff?

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin brushed his teeth quickly, avoiding his sister's stuff scattered irritatingly all over the counter. He made pee quickly and somewhat loudly because he didn't really care, then headed back to his room to sleep, perchance to dream. It had been a full day. ]]

This was definitely not something I could have narrated - I never used the phrase, 'made pee'. I'd always say, 'I have to pee', or I peed, or something like that. Making pee was a phrase I hadn't heard or read much, it was outside my common parlance.

Wait, did I talk like this now? Who says, common parlance?

Frankly, I probably would any other day, but I was second guessing everything I was thinking.

My mind was fully occupied thinking about what it said, but that didn't change the fact that my body went ahead and did the things it described.

Once my head hit the pillow, yeah, I was out.

Sleep.

== Daytime, Awakening ==

Hearing my phone alarm, I reached over and turned it off. I was awake, for sure.

The world paused, and I paused with it, mid-movement. I felt that I COULD move, but I didn't want to? It was an odd thing. Moving would have been... rude? Regardless, it was the feeling I got right before...

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin got up, pulled off his underwear and put on the robe, then went across the hall to get his morning shower. { NOTE: The voice paused, and I did as it described. } He had to work around his sister's bathroom stuff to get his toothbrush loaded and the shower started. { Again, I did so } Closing the door, he got it going and stepped in, brushing his teeth and feeling the sensuously warm-hot water cascading down his back. { My body was on autopilot. I could have contravened the actions, maybe, but I didn't, I don't know why. } ]]

Until the moment the NARRATOR said warm-hot, the water had seemed kind of cool if not cold, at those words, the water was instantly exactly that, warm-hot, but more than that, I had a separate memory of the water being a perfect soothing temperature as I'd gotten in.

History was re-written on the fly. More than that, as the NARRATOR spoke, I did exactly the actions it was describing.

[[ NARRATOR: He lathered up and got clean, using his sister's body wash, then shampoo, then conditioner. He liked the way it made his thick hair thicker, since the girl he sat near in chorus had said once he had great wavy hair. ]]

Everything was wrong with this, on a deeper level than my body being controlled.

First, I never brushed my teeth in the shower (except, now I remembered doing it a lot?).

Second, I hadn't really ever used conditioner. I had only ever tried it once, as an experiment. It was yucky and useless, like I was making my hair dirty again for no good reason. Clean hair squeaked. The conditioner obliviated the cleanth and I was stuck with, again, dirty hair. Why would I ever repeat this!?! I deeply believed that conditioner was stupid and wrong... for me, at least.

Third, I didn't sing in chorus. I sang with the radio, but all sorts of memories were flowing in about having sung in chorus for a long time, and being pretty good at it, a strong clear voice right on pitch - intonation - enunciation - breath control - trying a tremolo - and I had regularly surprised myself with my own vocal agility and range.

The words my brain dredged up were from the implanted memories, words I didn't remember using yet I also freshly remembered. It took a few moments for the meanings of those words to sink in, like my two lives were mixing and swirling.

I could get the info, the mental images - but what it really meant took a moment longer.

Well then!

There was lots happening at once. Huge parts of my life story, meaning extra-curriculars at school of nothing AND chorus, were in deep conflict but were both true. On a case-by-case basis, I could tell that a memory wasn't true, it felt not-quite-right, but it still was there and I had to cope with the conflict.

I wondered: would I be the same person after all these memories flowed into me? Would I think the same way, or was my life just batshit crazy from now on?

What would the test for this be?

Maybe the test of my reality-checks was simultaneously remembering different things.

The thing was, the new memories were that I'd been all 4 years in chorus as my class right before lunch. Since I had a full day that didn't include AP Econ at all, I knew I wasn't enrolled in that anymore.

So... No more AP Econ homework?!?

Memories of running endless cross-country and track workouts nearly every school day and a lot of weekend days and summer vacation days, from during 7th grade until... a track meet just the previous afternoon? That conflicted, I had simultaneous memories of all-day DND campaigns, lawn-mowing, yard work, full after-school job days, etc.

I'd been in DND... but, I wasn't anymore?

My new memories of weekends were different. Some of my old friends weren't so prominent, yet I still clearly had all those memories with me.

Adding new memories wasn't making existing memories fade. They were still there and vibrant, they were just one more layer to the side of the other layer.

Would my friends remember me? If I was supposed to be in two places at once, who would remember me?

My reverie was interrupted by the bathroom door opening.

WFT?!?

The world froze... but the water kept flowing over me. The physics of this were oddball. Clocks stopped - a quick glance up showed the bathroom-wall one wasn't ticking, but... the water was still going?

Sure, why not. Physics be damned.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's sister's friend, Grace, opened the door to the bathroom and sleepily stumbled in, wearing only short clean-white cotton panties plus the half-shirt she'd slept in.

Grace had initially moved into one of the three over-garage bedrooms, but then had switched to be in the main house because it was more convenient. This was the second time she'd come in while Kevin was showering. He again wondered why she didn't use the bathrooms over by her room, but she was stumbling-levels of tired so it might not have been intentional.

She had done it the previous morning and one morning a few weeks before, so he hadn't locked the bathroom door, quietly hoping she would do it again. She was super-sexy to watch while she sleepily brushed her teeth. ]]

WTF?

We had more bedrooms? Three over the garage alone? How big was our newly-existing garage? We didn't even HAVE a garage, before...

My previous memories were of a tiny two-bedroom one-bath ranch with on-street parking. I had come home from school and that's what it had looked like then...

Except...

Memories of my house were shifting.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's house was plenty big enough to have guests - 8 bedrooms and 4 baths in the main house and another 8-and-4 as jack-and-jill arrangements in the attached coach house (with a 3 car garage on the main floor). His mother had inherited the property from a now-deceased great-aunt. It was way too big for just the three of them, so Grace was a welcome guest and based on seeing her boobs jostle as she brushed her teeth, he decided maybe it'd be nice to extend more invitations. Or, eventually, find 'someone or sometwo' girls to help fill the place with more morning-bathroom-glance possibilities. ]]

One of the bedrooms, as the NARRATOR spoke, I got images of as a 'sewing and crafts' room my mother used. Another big room in the high-ceiling basement was a workout room with a treadmill I used when it was bad weather.

Lastly, there was my sister's room, a second-master arrangement in the connected coach house that had its own hot-tub in an ensuite.

I didn't have a sister.

Except, now I did?

She was apparently an irritating blonde girl two years older than me and going to community college but about to head off to a... a large university out of state.

Where were we getting money for this?

What the hell?

My sister wasn't real, but thinking of her, whole sets of overloaded images flooded in, doing things with her, being criticized for tiny shit she found offensive or rude, being found to be ugly and useless and stupid and irritating, frequently, until she started getting nicer in about 8th grade (I was in 6th grade then? This was... odd.)

I hadn't ever had a sister, I didn't know what it was like.

Except, now I did, I did know, and it was both highly irritating and home-feeling when she sometimes gave me hugs and said, "I love you, Leel-Bro."

That was cool!

Back in the moment, Grace was in front of me (through the clear shower curtain) and had gotten out her toothbrush and was brushing.

Grace looked to be a dark-haired beauty, though that hair was sleep-tousled. The hair framed a generally-friendly-looking but weary face, soft of curves and with a button nose and soft lips that I had fake-memories of really wanting to kiss. The part of her bare back I could see below the half-shirt, and the panties that went over her A-Mazing butt just made my heart kind of skip a little.

Below that butt, legs slightly apart as she bent over, there was a diamond of open where the panties covered her mound. I saw that in an instant, too, before my eyes went up.

The thing drawing my eyes was the underboob, her half-shirt not hiding it, the SWAY as she was moving her arm to brush her teeth...

Oh... My... God...

Gorgeous.

Fucking Gorgeous!

She mumbled, "Kev, sorry, Dale doesn't let me use her bathroom. Glad I have a spare toothbrush in here."

I could see through the almost-clear shower curtain quite easily. Her boobs moved stiffly, but shifted, dangling against the half-shirt. Her bending over to brush was the Best. Ever.

"Uh... Okay?"

I looked up and saw that her face was in the mirror, dark hair kind of obscuring her eyes but looking right at me.

I was... naked!

My hands flew down and I turned, shielding myself.

Grace chortled and spoke through the toothpaste, "Relax, Ranger-Dave, I've seen dicks before. My mom's last-year boyfriend, the scumbag, used to parade around the house like it was nothing."

"Oh."

[[ NARRATOR: "Grace's mother worked as a forensic accountant for the Catholic Archdiocese of Kuala Lampur, Indonesia, and had to travel a lot." ]]

I laughed, almost out loud, but it was hidden by the shower water.

[[ AUTHOR'S VOICE: "NO nOOOOOOO NOoOOO No. Bad. Not believable." ]]

The AUTHOR voice was definitely not the NARRATOR. Besides sounding different, the cadence and mode of speaking was different, more feminine and younger, and not as definitive as the NARRATOR.

Grace had focused on leaning over to keep brushing teeth, and I saw her underboobs keep swaying away, a minute, two, this was... Wow!

I couldn't quite see nipples but the brown spots of her aerolas was a shadow almost to be found...

She spat again, her normal toothbrushing was ending.

[[ NARRATOR: Grace had engineered this maneuver to get a look at Kevin, and she knew full well that her half-shirt could startle him enough to get a clear look at what her friend Dale (Kevin's sister) had called his, 'dangly-bits'. Grace's eyes were half-closed but it was an act, she was really focused on seeing his package. More than that, her ploy worked. Kevin stood still, transfixed by her beauty and ignoring the fact that his penis and testicles were clearly visible to her through the clear-plastic shower curtain. ]]

That much was true.

I was transfixed by the beauty of her body, so sexy, so... close.

Slowly I let myself come to an awareness she had turned around and was staring right at my package. I had let my hands drift away as I was transfixed by looking at the bouncing orbs of happy-flesh just barely hidden by the half shirt, some underboob even peeking out and nipple buds plainly poking enough out that the areola was partially visible too.

Egads, I was thinking, this is freaking awesome!

[[ NARRATOR: Grace and Dale were long-time friends. When Grace's mom had to move to Cleveland to help her own mother through hospice and clean out the house and estate, it meant leaving Grace behind. Grace couldn't take off time from classes to help so she'd stayed behind with Dale since there was a lot of space anyway. ]]

I noticed the corners of Grace's mouth start to turn up, and her eyebrows went up, too, with a small nod of appreciation almost folded into a natural movement. She turned back to the sink and spat again. "So, Kevin, gonna leave me any hot water? I need to get in."

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin was shy. He had been naked before around people, but in the guys' locker room after practice, or after gym class. This was different. He didn't know Grace that well, though they had interacted over the years, and even if he was turned on by her boobs - and her eyes - he didn't want to push it. ]]

I found myself saying, "Hold on, I'll get out."

That last part might have been garbled as I put my head under the water again to get the last of the conditioner out.

[[ NARRATOR: Grace saw an opportunity and jumped on it. She was normally far, far more shy than this, but she had been watching Kevin for simply AGES. He was profoundly clueless and would never make a move unless confronted with the stark reality of there being no other path, so she risked it. Having pulled off her top and shucked her panties quickly, she calmly pulled open the end of the shower curtain and climbed in behind him.

She'd deciding to adopt an air of disgusted disdain for him and his 'dirty parts' to give her emotional cover in case he objected too much. ]]

"Move over, schmuck. Your dirty bits are barely cleaner than they were, and I need the water now."

The voice was from behind me. I knew from the NARRATOR what had happened, but couldn't really move while the voice was talking. The water still flowed, though.

That meant that time wasn't frozen while the NARRATOR spoke, but we did - both her and me.

This was a new rule for this situation. I filed it away.

Back in the moment of rinsing off, I sputtered since I was still getting the conditioner out of my hair. It felt slick, still, not squeaky like shampoo did when I rinsed it out. Just after she got in, I decided it was rinsed enough since it'd been a full minute and maybe that was how the conditioner worked. I didn't know. I had limited experience with it.

There was a hand on my back, hard, not tentative, more on my shoulder. Grace was nearly my height, maybe 177, so she was probably 167 or so... taller than some...

This moment gave me pause, just right there, under the water. In my head, I'd thought about her height in centimeters, something I knew very little about except from physics class and I was sure I couldn't convert 5*12=60+10=70 inches * 2.54 in any kind of reasonable timeframe.

That didn't stop my brain from trying it in the moment, nevermind I had a beautiful naked girl behind me!

The math was interrupted.

Really, the math was FAR less important than the HAND ON MY NAKED BACK, and nakedness impending, the sexy oh-my-God-ness of it all.

Her hand was moving me, my face still wet with dripping water, and I was being turned around sideways in the tub and pushed over. She was trying to cut in, behind me, to get to the water.

"Kev, hold it there, big boy, don't fall over."

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin stumbled a little, getting physically moved out of the way by Grace, who took charge of the situation since she was getting no water at all and the bounce-spray was cold. She had no choice but to get him turned, and decided it was safer to slip behind him than in front, since she still was a little shy of him and that made a difference. ]]

I felt her go by me, in back.

[[ NARRATOR: Grace's breasts - really, her nipples - and thighs brushed against Kevin's back.

This sent shivers of thrilling YES into the pit of Grace's stomach. Really the thrill was deeper than that, but it took a moment to suffuse her body with the yum she really desperately wanted to feel, from Kevin, and soon. Not today, maybe, but... soon. ]]

Grace's motion had paused while the NARRATOR spoke, but continued again and I felt the points of her nipples below my shoulder blades, the softness of her skin...

And, then, I was faced towards the back of the tub and I heard behind me, "Yo, dude, the exit is right there. I have to get ready for classes, hurry up."

My brain was echoing with the touch-sensations I'd just encountered, quite unlike anything I'd felt before, and something I desperately wanted to repeat.

I did think about turning back around to face her, but it seemed crass and uncultured and like I'd better be the better guy and not do that.

Glancing back, though, as I got out, I did decide it was okay to pay her a compliment, but all I could do was whimper a little as I saw her shapely butt.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's appreciation of Grace's butt came out in the form of a whimper that Grace actually heard over the shower water. This was Beautifully Correct - exactly the kind of reaction she'd been hoping about, from her share-the-bathroom 'roommate'. ]]

Since I was finished getting out of the shower and putting the curtain back, I could still see through the plastic and took a moment to appreciate her. Grace had her arms up, damnit, so that shielded my view of her medium-large breasts.

She turned, her face irritated. "Please just dry off and get out of here? I'm not here for you to oggle and drool over!?! I'm living here now, so cope with it. We've all got places to be, doofus-man."

My towel was right there so I faced away from her and dried off quickly, deciding to leave my toothbrush on the tub shelf for the moment and get out of there before I got cajoled again. If there was the possibility of repeating this, I wanted to make a good impression as a fair bathroom-sharing... "roommate", like the NARRATOR said.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's decision to regard Grace as a 'roommate' as opposed to a temporary houseguest had cemented the moment she told him she was 'living here now'. For him, this had possibilities given he really liked her, laughed at her jokes, and wasn't irritated with her like he was with some other girls.

Correspondingly, Grace's love for Kevin was deep and complicated by having to put up with uncertainties. When her mom had to leave for a while, the opportunity jumped. She was well on her way to a husband-possibility, and all she'd had to do was stay-over and show some backbone to advance her cause. ]]

Husband?

I wasn't sure about that. In fact, I was sure, I had no idea why anyone would be thinking of getting married at my age, but then again, the world was filled with girls that had odd ideas, and I wasn't going to presume I had any clue what they were thinking.

The fact that she called me, 'Ranger-Dave' made no sense anyway, maybe it was a reference to something. Or, that 'Ranger Kevin' sounded bad for some reason?

Girls! Ug.

Back in my room, I hung up my towel by my dresser and started to pull on clothes. This was uneventful and not narrated, so I got dressed... in black jeans and a button-down oxford dress shirt? My closet was full of them? I would have had to put in significant effort to find clothes that were different, so I figured something was going on.

Plus, we definitely never had enough money to buy me dress shirts to wear for school, no matter how much I liked looking more classy than average.

I was just about to go downstairs so I opened my door, but then had to get my backpack.

Across the hall, the bathroom door opened and around the doorframe Grace leaned out. "Yo, Ranger-Dave. This bathroom sharing thing ain't half bad - you get the water warm for me and I can get right in. Thanks."

She had a towel on her hair, but was holding her half-shirt and panties in a way that obstructed most of her breast. I got a hint but no nipple. My mind melted a little at that.

SEXY!

"Oh, and put your eyes back in your head. My goals in life do not include being the subject of your fantasies."

[[ NARRATOR: Grace had spent the second half of the shower thinking up exactly what she was going to say, and she'd carried it off perfectly. Her goal was to implant the idea of him fantasizing about her, without approving of it, as in, 'don't think of an elephant'. It worked. Kevin's brain was already full of after-images of her parts, and they'd continue to give him pause all day long. ]]

All I could respond with was a word they'd learned a while back in English class. "Callipygian, Grace. Callipygian."

Grace was confused by this, squinting a little before she pushed away to go down the hall to her room. Her bare butt undulated in the process and I liked confusing her with the word even more.

[[ NARRATOR: Grace's well-laid plans of getting him on his back foot weren't quite going the way she wanted, given his response. Her line had come out exactly as she'd wanted, but then he'd used a word she hadn't heard before. When she got back to her room, she quickly looked it up, trying several times before she got the spelling right. 'Callipygian' meant 'to have a shapely butt'. She smiled at that - he'd given her a compliment - and smiled again that maybe her plan was going okay after all. ]]

Backpack packed and ready, I headed downstairs to get a bagel. Instead, I ran into a girl I barely knew, but I had memories of that went way back: my SISTER, Dale.

Dale looked up. She was standing in front of a stove over a skillet. The stove looked normal, but the kitchen itself was Huge. There was even an island with a sink, and barstools against one side, though flowers on the counter meant we weren't eating there.

She greeted me with a jaunty, "Hey, Kev. Made you french toast, for your birthday."

French toast was one of my favorites, but how could she know that?

Oh yeah, she was my sister.

I was thankful. I hadn't had anyone cook me breakfast much, at least in recent memory. Mom had done it, once upon a time, deep in my past, but this was new. "Thanks!"

Sitting down, she brought over a plate piled with french toast slices, and another full of scrambled eggs. There was... fresh OJ on the table? Who were these people?

The answer was, apparently I was one of these people.

"Mom got handed a double shift. Not enough ICU nurses, so she's filling in. She called me this morning and 'suggested' (her tone was mock pain-in-the-ass but really she was smiling) I make some breakfast for you."

"Really, thank you, uh, sis."

(My version of my mother had worked at a grocery store as an assistant manager, so this idea of her as a nurse was strange. Still, images popped up with her in a hospital and nursing home and lots of times coming home exhausted with someone's blood on her scrubs. This was ODDBAll with a capital ODDBA.)

Dale nodded at me, the angled head wave telling me to dig into the breakfast. I was more than happy to, it looked great.

As I started eating, she went back and finished up cooking the last slices, turned off the stove, and started getting the rest of the dishes into the dishwasher. I watched, but she informed me as she finished, "It's your turn for dishes this week, I know, but just for today, birthday happiness and all, I'm handling it. Yours tomorrow again."

"Oh. Right."

Memories of us trading off dishes responsibility flowed in, hard-negotiated chore-sharing with task sets divided by time requirements. Dishes and trashes went together, and vacuuming and laundry - run through but not folded - was the other task-set. We'd established how much time each task took and balanced it carefully so we were equally oppressed.

I had the lawn mowing in the summer, but we both had to tend to the gardening (weeding).

Grace came bouncing downstairs in a conservative thick-sweatshirt and jeans, hiding her top and what I freshly knew was a bounty I'd so greatly enjoyed and hoped to sometime enjoy again.

After some compliments to Dale about a great breakfast, Grace broke the ice.

"So, Dale. Kev used a new word this morning."

"And?"

"Callipygian. Know it?"

"Nope."

"Means, 'having a shapely butt'."

Dale smiled with one eyebrow up. "Talking about?"

"Mine."

Dale nodded, then thrust her lower jaw with pursed-lips. "Yeah, I can see that. Probably... And, how would he know?"

"Gave him a sneak peek in the bathroom this morning."

Dale rolled her eyes. "Not nice to tease, Grace. He's already frustrated."

[[ NARRATOR: It was no secret to Dale that Kevin usually rubbed it out twice a night, sometimes even three times on weekend nights if he was home. His bed rocked into the wall and made thumping sounds, and sometimes Dale even heard him grunt. Her bedroom had been the one next to his until she moved to have the one with the ensuite. Kevin's double-nightly was barely keeping up with his libido, regularly getting boners in school despite the attempts to keep himself sated. ]]

Oh. My. God.

Apparently I was a wank-master?

Dale looked at me as I got up to take my dishes to the sink. "So, get an eyeful? She does have a nice butt. I've seen it."

Grace giggled.

I decided to give voice to something I was thinking. I'd seen Dale's butt, in her jeans, standing at the stove just then. I also had memories of seeing her in a swimsuit, at a beach? Those were implanted memories - I'd never been to any size beach, more than the side of a lake outside of town.

Being nice to the person who'd just made my favorite food? Required. Complimenting girls randomly? I'd heard that was a good plan. Best if it was unexpected, I'd read.

"I'll say that I'm not going to compare butts - yours and hers - but I will say there's plenty of beauty to go around."

They both made an appreciative, "OoooooOOOOooooo...." sound.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's just-before-school meet-up with his on-again off-again girlfriend Barb was on again, so he had to get moving. The girls stood up to get ready to go, too, and Dale's opinion of him as a snotty little brother had shifted more or less over the last year to now being fully in the 'capable strong upstanding brother-type dude' category.

In light of this, she walked over and as soon as he'd put his dishes down, gave him a big hug, intending to convey appreciation for his hard work on the house - which she couldn't do and he could since he was an 'engineer' - as well as some sisterly love she hadn't shown enough in general. She did love him and was proud of him seeing Grace's butt and managing to compliment hers, too. ]]

Indeed, Dale had moved over while the NARRATOR was talking, and did exactly that, wrapping me in a big tight hug. Her hair smelled great, and I delighted in the fact that her boobs pressed into the front of my chest.

As she pulled away, Dale grabbed both sides of my head and looked me in the eyes, "Go Get'em, Kev. Congrats on being 18, you're fully legal now. Sleepovers and everything." She paused, then said, "For Luck."

Then, she kissed me.

Full on the lips - together-lips of course - but full on the lips.

Soft, warm, wet lips, on mine.

I reacted; I knew it was a platonic sisterly kiss. But I also knew there was real emotion in it from what the NARRATOR said. The idea that she had real affection didn't matter given she was a real person, hugging me, being very solid despite my knowing she didn't exist in my version of yesterday.

She pulled away and smiled, letting me go.

[[ NARRATOR: Grace wanted desperately to kiss him, too, and in a much less chaste way, but she couldn't do that in front of Dale. Dale knew this, but she also knew Grace was much more shy than that despite putting on a good act of being over-the-top outgoing. Grace had plans for that evening, plans she had FULL intention of putting into effect. Those plans included finding his bed and kissing more than just his lips. ]]

Grace and Dale had paused while the NARRATOR spoke, again. This was seemingly the pattern. When the NARRATOR spoke, everything was mostly on hold, though some things kept going, like shower water and clocks ticking. I liked to know the rules, and those seemed to be the two options.

After resuming motion, Grace put her dishes in the sink in an impatient way and as she went upstairs again, said over her shoulder gruffly, "Ah, fine, yeah. I'll hug you tonight or something, I gotta get to class."

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's ride recently was his mom's cybertruck. The hospital had been paying for robotaxis due to overworking her and not wanting liability if she crashed on the way home, so she left the truck at home and Kevin got to use it. Grace and Dale were both going to the community college so they usually shared robotaxi rides to and from. ]]

I got my coat and headed outside... of our three story house (!!) and looked back at it. From the front it was immense, but partially obscured by bushes from the street. This was VERY new to me, and yet I had old memories?

This conflicted in my head but I couldn't do anything about it.

To sate my curiosity, I walked to the side slightly and looked to the back lawn. Beyond some more trees was our garden patch. It was near the back fence and medium-sized since we had enough money in this reality to not absolutely need the veggies.

I had to get to school, I somehow knew that, so I headed for the truck.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin liked the truck mostly because it could drive itself and had a third row of seating for when he and his DND group would want to make a donut run on off-track-season Saturday mornings. This morning, though, the self-drive was going to come in handy because he needed to quickly review his trig homework... ]]

Suddenly, I heard a different voice!!!!

[[ AUTHOR: Oh SHIT! He needs to be in Calc, for later! Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck. Gotta fix that... ]]

[[ SCENE SHIFTING: ]]

[[ REVISION ONE: Visions flashed in. They were of the night before, reviewing calc first, then showing the trig book but as a calc student. He then returned to his calculus textbook. The problems he'd been working in calc directly used the trig from sophomore year, and the NARRATOR made note of that in an altered way. ]]

[[ REVISION RAPID-FLUX SCENE CHANGES: various NARRATIONS mostly the night before (as I was finishing up my studying) explain at various points I'm in Calc-3, doing well but at a cost of significant study time. ]]

[[ NARRATOR, REVISED, NIGHT BEFORE: Penalty to AUTHOR, unnecessary revisions, dilution is 'Two'. ]]

Images flowed into me of there being two girls in my calc class, Monica and Darlene. It includes how I know them well and study with them every once in a while in the library. In real life, I knew both of them. Monica was shorter, a brunette honor roll student on gymnastics and Model-UN and who had once said I had nice eyes, in 5th grade or so.

Darlene was always on volleyball, as long as I knew her since I was pretty sure she moved into our town when she was in 8th grade. She was taller, a blonde, but had a big bustline she didn't mind showing off with tight shirts, something I very much had enjoyed from afar.

The fact that we'd studied together was new, from a sequence of image-flashes of our "new" histories.

More than that? I knew trig!

I knew more than just trig, I realized. Whole sets of skills were being downloaded into my brain about trig, calculus-1, calculus-2, and most of a year of calc-3.

I knew shit! This was cool!

But, the thing was, I was confused. I was in Calc-3? What the heck? I had newly-remembered images and skills from having taken calculus my junior year, and somehow that was okay? Calc-1 and Calc-2, I had done well in, along with a bunch of other named classes I thought were college level classes.

I was freaking out!

Trouble was, I was only freak-out-able on the inside. On the outside, I was the same old unperturbed Kevin, just going through motions of sitting in the truck while it waited on me to approve the destination of the high school.

I'd learned several interesting things.

First, there was an overall plan for this novel! At least, the AUTHOR had one. This was a good thing, probably. As long as it wasn't a tragedy, I might live through it.

Second, I also knew that I would need calculus for the purpose of the novel, at least according to the AUTHOR. This made me more than a little nervous, because all my calculus knowledge was magically imparted and I was unsure of how good I actually was in the subject.

Third, the NARRATOR was changing the fabric of reality.

Apart from making our house be larger - and some of the houses on the other side of the street were normal-looking to me so it was mostly our house that had changed - the profound fact that every cybertruck I'd ever seen before that day had only ONE backseat, not a third row, EVER? That meant that really big things were going on, it wasn't just local. The trucks were made far from where we were.

Fourth, for the novel I was in, since I was living in a big house, that would probably be needed later for plot reasons. Things like that don't change unless they should change for a reason, right?

I had no idea.

It sounded logical?

Or, it could be the AUTHOR didn't know how small my house was before and had just made changes to ensure the result was the correct size later.

So who was this architect? If the NARRATOR wasn't the AUTHOR, who were they? Reality itself, the whole world's history of building this house and making it work, was different

The AUTHOR and the NARRATOR disagreed, and... the NARRATOR won? Penalties to the AUTHOR? This was supremely odd.

Strange things are afoot at the circle-k, Ted.

I had no idea what was going on but I was getting a sense of the power involved in this situation and warping reality was a major change indeed. I wondered what the limits were...?

Could this AUTHOR do anything at all?

While the truck drove on and I wasn't acting intentionally, my automatic actions were to open my backpack and get out my calc book. I'd started paging through it, reviewing.

The previous-me had no history with this textbook, but all of a sudden it looked familiar and I realized the implanted memories included doing lots of work from this exact book, and getting almost all A's on the tests.

Well! This was easier than actually studying!

I could just wait for the AUTHOR to specify that I knew something, and I'd know it!

Stepping back from the situation, though, and I had to do that, things were so weird, I looked at what I was doing and why, when I hadn't intended to do it.

Some part of my actions were being determined for me.

I could decide to do things, but some things were made-to-be by an external force.

My mind was my own, I could tell that, at least as far as my internal monologue. No NARRATOR change had affected my free-will or mood, with the exception of things I didn't care about like opening up a calc book on the drive.

At least, I hoped so.

If I was being directed to do things?

That meant I was acting, for an external audience. I had to think that I had some limited ability to do what I wanted, as long as the overall plot arc was served.

I was confident at some point soon, my actual desires and plot's demands would diverge. Perhaps if I kept quiet, if I pretended everything was normal, I might have more power later, so I could act independently in a crucial moment.

I could only guess when that would be.

== Chapter: Arriving at School ==

The truck drove itself to school and dropped me by the entrance, then drove off unoccupied to park itself in the remote lot. I'd seen cars and trucks do this in my real memories though we only ever had manual drive gas cars, and gas cost too much so I always walked to school.

The world paused...

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin knew something big was going to happen today. His girlfriend Barb had been giving him the cold shoulder for the past week, after having made a cryptic comment at lunch.

The comment was, "Unless you make choices, you're going to have more options than you want." This was a startling statement.

A nearby group of girls overheard this, so it was interpreted in three different ways.

Firstly, Barb had meant that her deliberate manipulation of his affections was coming to an end and she would be moving to the next step in the relationship, free and unrestrained sex, pretty much all the time she could manage it.

She'd read in a Cosmo article that if she was emotionally older - and she deeply felt she was - she'd need to promise it but not deliver, and make him wait. Then, the moment he turned 18, she should turn on the spigot of love and make him hers, forever.

This magazine article was deeply flawed in many ways, and most older women knew to ignore magazine clickbait-logic. Her self-concept of being emotionally older was also deeply flawed.

Secondly, Kevin interpreted the 'unless you make choices' and 'more options' statements as meaning, he'd better say the exact right thing to her by some deadline, or they were over. She had previously promised that if they didn't work out, she would set him up with 'a few of' her friends.

When she'd promised that, she'd meant that she would set him up with either a succession of loser-girls, or a complicated polyset of antagonistic girls that would make him regret leaving. Then, he'd come running back to her and be properly subservient to her running his life.

Kevin took the previous 'few of her friends' as, 'set you up in poly arrangement', since there were far more girls than guys available. Barb was both popular and controlling, but not vindictive, so this seemed reasonable and likely. She would want to determine who he dated next, and he was okay with that since her friends were generally both smart AND hot.

Thirdly, the 'more options' statement was overheard by several gossip-prone girls. Thus it was repeated fast and wide: Barb would break up with him for sure that day-after-his-birthday, and she definitely wanted him to have poly options.

After all, the 'more options' was a popular song lyric and it meant being poly.

The early-90's GRIP retrovirus pandemic had profoundly changed humanity. In a tiny set of changes to mitochondrial DNA, sperm cells with both those mitochondrial changes and the female XX chromosome configuration were favored during spermatogenesis (sperm production in the testes), by about a ten-to-one ratio. This had obvious effects on the gender distribution of society.

Secondly, the altered mitochondria were significantly better in many subtle ways. These included being more efficient and long-lived, turning white fat cells into brown ones, favoring cellular repair including preventing and detecting DNA transcription errors, regrowing teleomeres, prompting stem cells, etc.

This almost completely eliminated obesity, a major killer, lengthened lifespans significantly, tightened ligaments, and had a host of other effects to increase general health and decrease various illnesses.

Outwardly, the most obvious ligament effects were to raise and firm up breast tissues, greatly ease distance running and endurance sports, and speed up recovery times after childbirth.

As far as anyone knew or was allowed to suspect, these changes were completely random mutations associated with a random retrovirus, but the real story is somewhat more complicated.

The net effects were that Kevin's school had about ten times as many girls as boys. This obviously led to Kevin having more opportunities than he'd taken. His dalliance with Barb had put a strong lid on his love life and this lid was now gone, as far as he and the other girls in school were concerned.

So, as he walked to the school, Kevin knew that he had been functionally dumped, and was anticipating being asked out by several simultaneous setup-girls that Barb had, no doubt, arranged. All he'd have to do is say yes, and it'd sort itself out.

He knew Barb was pretty smart, she'd get him going the right direction, and then move on to the guy she really wanted... whoever that was. Barb was kind of enigmatic about stuff like that. And... there she was, right at the entrance, waiting for him.

Nearby, several sets of girls stood waiting, though he didn't know what would happen.

Kevin's life was about to get more complicated, more lively, and significantly happier, one would presume. ]]

As the world resumed its motion, I thought about what the NARRATOR had said. I didn't have a choice. The words had instigated a huge torrent of memories flowing into me.

It was like when you wake up and realize you have a really busy day ahead because this or that had happened. Not just the events, but the reasons for each event populated a sequence in your head. These fast-flash oh-yeah moments just kept going!

Each realization made it natural and expected that the stuff the NARRATOR said was true.

I got a NEW personal history, an ENTIRE new lifetime downloaded and overlaid in a fabric.

I kind of freaked out, on the inside.

Outside, I knew I was just standing there, thinking, by the far edge of the dropoff area.

Whut?

Most of my experiences in life... were now with girls , not guys. Friends I'd had, enemies, people in class, out in public, everywhere, girls and women far more than men?

Whirlwinds of tempestuous images started connecting together to give me this new and interconnected lifetime. I was a guy, and thus a minority.

I was two people.

I was still the before person. That meant a world of half-girls half-guys, where I lived with just Mom in a small house with on-street parking and a small bedroom, where my friends were mostly in an all-guy D&D group, and where I'd just barely had a girlfriend, Barb.

In my yesterday-life, Barb and I had gone out on dates, inconsistently, and she had been far more standoffish than I wanted but that was her style. I'd been lucky to date her since she was pretty smart, far more good looking than me, and in the In-Crowd group, so I'd stuck with her despite not making 'progress' I'd seen with others in my friend group.

I was also this new person? That is, I was the same on the inside, but I had all these vast histories with different people and places and vacations and a sister (!!) and a big house.

My (really good, close) D&D friends weren't in these new memories! They'd... never been born? I'd never see them again?!?

I felt the loss.

I felt the shifting perspectives of how I'd "lived" my life, the connections I had with people as new support and encouragement and caring from friends I newly remembered I had. It was a whole other life, someone else's life but ALSO my life.

I couldn't handle this many changes!

I had to lean against a lamppost for a few minutes.

Could I handle this? It was a lot to appreciate. I still had my old life, my yesterday, but it was overlaid with this new stuff. What if there was a situation that required me to know things - people I'd never really met, but I had memories of meeting? Would I remember crucial details about them, even though it was just downloaded info? Would I FEEL the connections with people I barely really knew?

I was probably going to react strangely, and I knew I would need to be on the ball, to 'get with the program' and pretend that the new normal was really... Normal?

Still, my WTF-O-METER was pegged.

A pandemic?

More girls than guys?

Wow!

This would certainly change things.

No previous NARRATOR statements had mentioned any, ANY part of this. I had to wonder if this was a late revision, or if it was something long-planned as part of the 'plot' of my story.

Was this story even about me?

What if I was the villain, or the tragic doomed character? Or... was I the 'plucky sidekick'?

I had no way of knowing.

Thinking back on the previous memories I'd been given, I had some of those from the previous night while studying. That is a NEW last-night! And, with that newness, even the NARRATOR speeches from then were different.

Both versions were there, both sets of events.

It wasn't just what the NARRATOR said, though: with this new version, I had been in trig, calc1, calc2, and calc3 classes in previous years.

My different teachers were mostly women anyway, but instead of half-guys and half-girls in my classes, it was just me and one or two other guys - Jason in calc1, Ted and Mort in calc2...

So, I had memories from both of my histories. I had to grin a little in the moment at the idea I might be really, really good at trig because I'd taken it twice and... yes, gotten A's both times.

It wasn't easier, though - I had memories of having had to work hard to get those grades, both times! Is it really 'easy' if you remember hard effort as well as the results?

This whirlwind was in my head, and the world was largely on pause, still, since I was just standing there in the parking lot.

What did this mean?

The NARRATOR had revised previous NARRATOR words, with new things in my life, profound things, And a lot of the memories were really, really different.

I definitely was keeping all my yesterday-memories, and for that matter, I could recall really specific things about each life, even the ones that were now superseded.

Moments in class popped up in my memory from the new, mostly-girls version. An instance jumped out: Someone... Sarahjane, she'd laughingly asked in calc how to find the volume under a curved surface, specifically the multiply recurved complex shape like her breast. Our teacher, Mrs. Goodall, told us that would require fourier transforms and we wouldn't get that until diff-eq, but even then, the stoichatric approach of submerging it to displace a volume of water might be easier. But, on a practical level, maybe use something larger than a teacup?

The class had laughed. I laughed too, remembering Mrs. Goodall's fingers pretending to daintily sip from a tiny teacup, pinky up. Sarahjane did have large breasts and that teacup was wrong by two orders of magnitude.

This was my life, another life that I'd been given, memories of an entirely different existence. I knew it wasn't real, and yet it mostly felt like I'd lived through it, also.

There was a difference - it was subtle - I just *knew* that the new memory was implanted.

I could TELL what was being given to me wasn't originally mine, it was grafted in.

Whatever magic this was, it let me differentiate, and for that, I had serious joy and relief. My realization that I COULD differentiate was a blessing for my sanity.

As for the reality in front of me, the NARRATOR was correct. I did see my newly-ex-girlfriend Barb. She was distant, by the back doors of the school. Looking at her, I had overloaded memories of both the my-before and new-memory versions, of all the dates we'd been on, conversations, etc. It seemed like we liked each other well enough in both timelines?

I had to think about that part, if she was the same in both memory-sets.

Barb was always tall, almost as tall as me, from 6th grade onwards. We'd been in the same junior high and in both realities we had known each other forever.

She was really smart and creative, and had a very in-charge attitude. Where in my real-yesterday memories she was assertive and capable (but controlling), my new memories had her that way as stemming from deep uncertainty about me, and I could see through to that.

I wasn't terribly intuitive, I had some Asperger's spectrum stuff going on, but some things are obvious.

In both places she was kind and funny and had definite opinions, which I liked listening to, and she listened to mine, so it was mostly give and take. Her looks and smarts generated a high-status vibe and I liked being around that, but then again I was mostly-deliberately just going along with what she suggested most of the time.

With a perspective that freshly included a lot more life experience, I had to revise some of her actions as being really snooty behavior.

Thinking about my life had taken a few minutes, and I was just hanging out mostly by that lamppost.

Barb hadn't seen me yet, but some girls were walking by and they noticed and nodded to me in a silent friendly way that told me the changes had probably improved my social standing significantly. I wasn't any great catch before, I knew that much.

In the before, I was kind of a schlub - a bit overweight, somewhat awkward despite being book-smart, focused on my stuff instead of sports or trendy things, etc.

In this world, and in my new memories, I had some standing and wasn't a reject at all.

My smile at my realization brightened the day around me. I could go into things having some better life than I'd had before? This was nice, for sure!

Between the cars, I could see Barb was looking for me, but she hadn't seen me yet. She was looking off to my left at the end of the parking lot aisle where people were coming towards the building.

I started walking. I had to get to school sometime, though I wasn't necessarily in a hurry to see Barb. I did like her a lot, maybe even love her. In my yesterday, I knew full well we were nowhere close to a forever thing, so a goodbye was inevitable but still lamentable.

As I got closer to the end of the aisle, I saw three other girls walking towards me. They'd seen me first, and were walking with body language that said a conversation was about to happen, and why not, so I diverted slightly to meet them.

Once we reached the same space, we paused because (of course) the NARRATOR started again.

[[ NARRATOR: Mary Obrados, Kelly Booker, and Brit Jenkins had been friends since their sophomore year, and had had many nights-over discussions about what guys were interesting or immature or both, and which would probably reach 'sanity' first and/or best.

It had first been Mary's idea to band together as a ready-made polyset, but they'd found it made great sense. Their polyset was obvious - they were already friends, they'd date the guy and figure out if he was a keeper, then hopefully they could do the normal routine. That is, life and marriage and kids and college and jobs, in whatever order, as a happily-ever-after scenario.

They had liked Kevin a long time, but had been kept away by Barb's clear assertion of 'Lonestar', a religious thing limiting to one-on-one dating.

Lonestar was a relationship status setting in social media and Kevin had not refuted it, showing deference to Barb's wishes.

That deference was now gone.

Even though the social media setting remained, everyone who was in on the gossip was fully aware it was outdated, and to say that the school operated on gossip would be a vast understatement.

Kevin had known they were interested and already was aware of their polyset possibilities, so seeing them together and approaching him was not unexpected or unwelcome.

Of course, Kevin had several other polysets waiting and he had a pretty good idea who those people were. As much as some relationship decisions are instant and depend on a true expression of emotion in the moment, others are telegraphed enough ahead of time that everybody knows what's about to happen.

His love life was expanding and he felt pretty good about it.

After all, these girls were gorgeous and smart and friendly, so he intended to, quite promptly, 'hit that.' He felt this kind of thing was overdue even if it was only his first day being over 18.

Kevin's intentions were quite likely to succeed. ]]

Mary spoke first. "Hey, Kevin. Can we call you Kev?"

"Sure." I nodded, I was used to it. They were pretty enough I would accept a lot, they could call me anything and I'd live with it.

I had no idea what poly relationships looked like from the inside, the images I had freshly gained didn't include those details. The NARRATOR words had inspired images and scenes to appear in my memory, but not the kind of intricate info that would be helpful right at that moment.

Looking over at Brit, I pulled from some new memories and said, "I think... I know you from scouts, back Sophomore year."

Brit smiled hopefully, but was typically both very quiet and somewhat aloof, so I didn't expect much. "Thank you, sir."

I reacted by instinct and replied, "Sir?"

Brit nodded. "Kelly and Mary agreed, we'd call you 'Sir' for the first week, if you'd permit it. We decided to polyset - us three. And... we're interested... in asking..."

She had hesitated a moment too long, so Mary cut in. "... If you'd consider us. We're compatible, we've all signed the Brindle-Bundle, clean bill of health, and baggage-settlement. We also have a 3-E-M K-sponsor, if that matters."

Brit was scandalized and turned to her friend. "Mary! Too soon!!"

[[ NARRATOR: Brindle-bundles are simple agreements that women in a polyset sign that pre-agree to certain intimate familiarity being permitted between some or all of them, with the understanding it's voluntary, not totally preferred, but somewhat expected.

The 'baggage settlement' agreement meant they'd done group counseling and talked through preconceptions of life together. These counseling sessions were frequently complicated by real life worries and very open discussion of bad habits. They were not easy but the certificate at the end meant something to them and others.

A baggage cert always included solemnly sworn oaths to uphold a roommate agreement division of chores between them with consequences for non-compliance, and shared expectations for helping with each other's lives in specific ways.

Kevin understood what those keywords meant in general, it had been the topic of some lunchtime discussions in his friend-group. The girls tended to want to hash out what-if scenarios and he listened abstractly to these debates. Usually he distracted himself from the obtuse aspects of the discussions by studying, or by just reading random wikipedia articles, which worked out well for trivia contests because he remembered almost everything he ever read. ]]

What the hell?!?!?

This was cool!

The articles and debates and images of a new life-history were pouring into my head. The rest of the world stopped, so I wondered if everyone else was getting the same info downloaded into their heads, too. My own recollections were being filled-in with flashes of conversations I'd allegedly been in - but really never was in - where various bad and good situations with brindle-bundles were discussed.

This reality-shifting inflow went on for a while, for me at least, before the world resumed motion.

For some reason, I just responded automatically with an, "Ah. I see."

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin liked hearing those keywords from them, it showed he was talking with a polyset where they'd worked out differences ahead of time and he might have fewer conflicts with them where they were fighting among themselves and bringing him into it - a popular problem in high school polysets.

As for the k-sponsors 'for 3-E-M' and not 3-A, that meant someone would sponsor all living and medical expenses relating to 'E', meaning each, of them having three sets of births, whether they were individuals or twins. That meant anywhere from nine to 18 kids total, in their polyset, as long as they had equal M, 'Matched' numbers of children at the same time. The sponsor was probably a parent, a wealthy godparent, or a school fund set up for just such things, in order to increase the birth rate. ]]

WOW.

These girls already were thinking about being... mothers? Marrying me, as a group? I started to wonder about that.

But, then... Barb walked up! She'd seen us.

Barb? Here?

Would there be fireworks?

Her face was seriously worried and hurt at the same time.

Mary turned to her and said, "Barb, good to see you. Thank you for the Lonestar Relinquishment. Our polyset is three, but we aren't looking for a fourth yet." She turned to me. "Are you open for a non-committal coffee or date-night, Kev? We've seen your clean-bill, so we could invite you for dinner, after practice tonight if you want."

Barb started to speak, but it came out as an inhale and then a shut-up moment as her eyes darted back and forth.

[[ NARRATOR: Barb at that moment figured out she'd really lost Kevin, pretty much guaranteed. She had been playing a high stakes game to be his polyset Prime, and have a lifetime of leverage over her marriage partners.

Playing around and leading him towards her version of social success had been a power trip but her insecurities had only gotten worse. Kissing had been nice but ultimately fruitless and frustrating for him with no payoff for the 18 months they'd been dating.

She likewise had been immensely frustrated, on an emotionally personal basis waiting for their Union to ripen. She was also tremendously frustrated on a physical basis since her masturbatory fantasies almost always included fuzzy handcuffs and him behind her taking what he wanted, sometimes with a small riding crop like the one she had behind her nightstand.

Barb did want into their polyset, she liked these girls, but she knew that was unlikely.

This was correct. Mary didn't like her that much. She correctly saw through Barb and decided this was a girl who was not going to balance group-needs with self-needs, and that's a giant NO sign over the forehead of a polyset potential-member, at least until they got a good dose of reality thrown at them. Reality was definitely hitting Barb deep in the gut at that moment.

In this context, deep in the gut as a phrase meant in her emotional shame center, as well as the empty love-lost spot from a primal fear that someone besides Kevin would eventually fill her uterus. ]]

I thought this was slightly humorous and did in fact look for a literal 'NO' sign over Barb's forehead, but none appeared.

The more I could objectively integrate the memories of Barb's treatment of me with my sense of right and wrong, the less I thought it would be a good idea to keep dating her. Still, I didn't want to totally close the door.

Searching my feelings, I actually did feel significant loss at knowing that Barb wasn't going to be part of something. I had built a real friendship with her both in my previous life and in the one the new-memories were showing me.

[[ NARRATOR: Idly, Kevin wondered if he could just ask Barb to get on her knees and give him a blowjob, right there. Not that he would ask, or that she would say yes, it's just that he could see her desperation and how her world was shifting in real time.

Kevin could - of course - have a BJ from Mary's polyset anytime he asked with just a 'Beej-time?' query. For that matter, the same phrase to perhaps half the unattached senior class girls would generate an enthusiastic 'YES!' just from the girls both wanting and needing experience. There weren't enough chances to practice given the relative scarcity of guys.

Most high school senior girls intended on marrying inside two years following graduation, at the latest, or the good guys would be gone. Generally there was agreement that it was better to be in a polyset of 20 with a good guy than a polyset of 5 with a bad one. That was a balance, though, as it depended on guys being either persuaded or taught how things should be. ]]

A short tone-pair sounded and I knew that meant first period would start soon, and I had to get to my locker to shed my coat. "I have to..."

Kelly, quiet up to this point, spoke up and completed my sentence. "... get your coat to your locker, we know. We've proper-stalked, we know your habits, same as half the class that's not committed yet. I'll take it, if you like, just text me if you need it. We'll be here until after practice, I have volleyball but usually we're done before track is back inside."

The fake-memory images flowed in from that idea. They had been there from previous NARRATOR info, but her words were serving to remind me and the implications / putting it together meant I could only nod in return. "Inside, then. Still cold out here."

Almost too quietly for anyone to hear, Kelly added, "Inside, is, more comfortable."

I knew that meant something besides inside a building, her tone was to-herself but her soft exhale and stuttering-inhale after she spoke had a questing desire in it.

Barb said a humble, "Thank you," then walked back towards the building faster than we were going, and I knew she was going off to cry. I didn't like that - I didn't like causing people pain - but there was some balance to the hassles she'd caused me in this alt-universe...

Just like that, memories popped up. I'd had to deal with her wanting her way or not at all and there was emotional subtext for each time, with my being totally frustrated by her maneuvering.

Once in the building, I was faced with trying to figure out where my locker was. I sort-of remembered it was in a different place than my previous-existence locker. I passed a girl pulling off a sweatshirt and not being concerned with pulling the shirt with it, showing off her lacey, frilly-edged bra in the process.

As she turned, I even caught sight of enough to clearly discern the dark spots under the bra that were areaolas... and, then, happily, the sizable bumps of two erect nipples underneath as well!

Yowza!!

This was different! Better!!!!

With more girls, it made sense though, with fewer worries about being seen.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin started walking to his locker... ]]

[[ AUTHOR: NO NO NO NO NO!!! My GOD this is WRONG! They can't all be wearing different things! Uniforms, Japanese schools, should be like that. They should have uniforms, with ties, and suit jackets, and skirts or slacks... EGADS, I can't do this! I'm leaving this, I have to get to class... ]]

There was a pause. The world paused. I waited, we all waited, it's what we were supposed to do.

[[ AUTHOR: Okay, finally. Back to this. Right. Uniforms... Sexy uniforms. Not too sexy, reality has boredom and dirt... Okay. Got it. ]]

My world shifted, and a whole set of memories flowed.

Suddenly, like watching a movie through my own eyes on super fast forward, I was back in my room at home, getting ready for school?

Fast motion, events unfurled quickly. Instead of jeans and a t-shirt, I remembered pulling on one of many stiff-starched white button-down collar oxford shirts in my closet, put on a tie with practiced ease while getting dark socks on, shoved my feet into comfortable black gym-dress shoes, etc.

[[ AUTHOR: Gotta have insecurity about what to wear, that's real life, he's worried about whether he's ironed his pants enough or cleaned his tie recently and if girls will like him wearing this or that variation... ]]

[[ NARRATOR: Rule violation attempt. Obviated. ]]

[[ AUTHOR: Oh, shit! Subordinated? Oh... penalty is... yeah. Three more. Ug, more sharing, less time. Craptastic. And I won't even... Yeah. ]]

I had no idea what that meant, but it was kind of a voiceover on top of the flashing images of my revised morning flying past my eyes.

There were differences now versus what I saw earlier, the other students in the parking lot were dressed in student uniforms not random clothing.

The uniforms were apparently either black slacks or a long black skirt, a white shirt & tie combo, and a black suit jacket.

Again, I was caught up with reality, only this time the school building was different. The entire back entrance to the school was a two-story changing-room area, with underclassmen on the upper floor and seniors in the most convenient spots.

Rows and rows of large-scale wide lockers, people opening them with a thumbprint and getting ready for the day. That part was normal, sure, extracting books into backpacks, hanging up coats, but... changing shoes?

My yesterday definitely didn't include school uniforms or even the idea of school shoes.

The new ones were institutionally-issued white canvas-topped sneakers.

Memories shifted into me, of having done this every day, of various problems like forgetting this or that and either having it in my locker or not, all the normal things that went with high school. The thing is, I knew these were false memories, and yet, that's what my brain was filling in.

There was now a tradition of... electrical tape on the heels of my shoes?

After I got my locker open, and that part kind of whizzed by, Mary got out some blue tape from her bag, and put it on the back of each of my shoes, above the heel. The tape wasn't just medium-blue, it was a day-glow azure lapis-lazuli / cobalt blue that jumped out.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's new tape color meant 'Available and Looking', but everyone pretty much knew that already since his attributes had already been measured by most of the senior girls and found to be Very Very Much more than adequate. Social media had already recorded the encounter in the parking lot, just based on body language, and those that wanted to know such things were informed.

Still, the outward confirmation did get friendly smiles and eye flares, and Kevin found his interest in return was rising to notable prominence in his slacks. This wasn't an embarrassment as much as an advertisement, so he knew it wasn't too much of a worry to hide it. Still, it was a little concerning since if it lasted too long it was a health hazard. ]]

Wait... a health hazard? WTF? Not being embarrassed by a boner in school? This WAS an odd transition!

And, yet, memories flowed in of seeing this before, having the problem before, and it being mostly a mundane reality.

Odd!

Another bell rang, a 3-tone chime that meant 10 minutes to class and I knew I'd better get walking since my first period class in this reality was... AP Botany? There was a lot of material to cover, for sure, but I mostly knew it anyway and had taken the class for the easy A.

The 'Gray's Botany' book from my childhood was in both realities, so I was set.

As they broke up to walk away, Mary leaned in and gave me a kiss on the cheek, as did Brit and then Kelly, each smelling different and wonderful and sexy. Both Brit and Kelly brushed up against my erection as part of their hug, and it was obvious they meant to.

Egads, I was a piece of meat.

Still, it's nice to be appreciated.

Walking to class, memories of the previous work I'd done in the class flooded 'back' into my brain, from the teacher (a German lady with a significant accent) to the outright innuendo the rest of the class had fun with while they talked about plants. Stamens were compared with penises and sometimes even artwork showing that had been hand-drawn by other girls near me.

I was seriously horny.

Could I really just ask for a 'Beej-time' !??

Getting to class - two other guys and 30 girls, in a big classroom - I wondered what the actual demographics were. I could probably look it up or ask, but I wanted to save that exploration for later since it might reveal I was a fraud, a fake-person who'd been pushed into a role to do things I had no idea about, by an unreliable NARRATOR.

Was the NARRATOR unreliable?

Things were changing for me, mid-flight, to conform to the new directives/explanations. The changes had been horrible and good at the same time, so many people I knew were gone, but seemingly far more were around in my new life, and were attentive to me.

That attention might or might not end up being good for me, I knew that much. In the words of a comic I'd seen once, "The 'special' in 'special ed' doesn't mean 'better'."

Really, I could be specific. The NARRATOR was unreliable, but only in that their descriptions might be superseded not too many minutes later.

Actually, I had to consider, my life in this new 'verse was considerably more prosperous. And, I knew there was distinct potential for my getting laid. Wooo-Whoooo!!

Still... I knew, my D&D friends had never been born. I was alone, of nearly my whole friend group. Some of them were really good friends, too, damnit.

Near the end of class, announcements came on, just as in my reality. They put them at the end of first period because a fair number of seniors chose to have their 'study hall' / free period be first-period, so they could sleep in.

Memories of my schedule, meaning, my new schedule, floated in.

I no longer had study-hall fourth period, it was third period... because... then I could have a relaxed shower after my now-second-period gym class? I guessed that made sense. It's definitely something I would do.

The announcements started with, "Stand in Membrance of those lost, fallen, and unborn."

Everyone stood in a somber mood, and I did also. What did this mean?

[[ NARRATOR: The 'Membrance' moment commemorated those dead and afflicted by GRIP34A.

Those who survived and grew up in this new world sometimes died from these changes, and that continuing loss was a drain on society that was known as a common and deadly risk.

This risk could be somewhat mitigated by building up lactic acid in the muscles and blood. This meant everyone, of all ages, exercised regularly and strenuously. Of course, they all wanted to anyway, but to avoid this innate need for exercise was actually quite risky.

Exercise, while good, didn't protect against blueballs.

A reconfigured prostate, capable of much, much more output, stored seminal fluid and needed regular release or a buildup would cause discomfort, pain, and then in extreme cases, either plentiful spontaneous emissions or death from prostate rupture.

Women knew the crucial factors in keeping men alive was keeping them sated, which required more than one woman for both the social gender-ratio reasons, as well as the obvious monthly reasons. ]]

WTF, again!??!?

As these images flowed in, the history to back up this narration, my brain reeled with the newness of the ideas. I freshly-remembered regularly heading to a satroom, a 'satiation room', to jerk off, with lube and towels provided. I did it most days right after lunch, or during my free period, or between classes if I was particularly frustrated. This was entirely expected and built into the school day, and everyone knew what was going on and accepted it because it was medically necessary.

These memories were both disturbing and entirely mundane in the way that all things tend to be, over time.

The Membrance moment of silence ended and we sat.

Announcements were typical who-did-what on the sports teams, that the late-winter musical would be Penzance, and a reminder to register for AP tests or college visits in the counseling office.

The lady reading cleared her throat but paused.

[[ NARRATOR: On this day the marriage announcements included two: a holy, blessed-union PolyAdd of a girl to an existing Poly4 with Samuel Davis to make a Poly5. This was followed by a new Poly3 with Dave Butler and two girls whose names Kevin didn't recognize. Kevin did know both Dave and Sam, from elementary school. Sam had always been studious, but Dave had been a total joker back then and a bit of a counterculture rebel. Kevin remembered with some bemusement seeing Dave walk around with two pencils sticking out of his nose. ]]

The NARRATOR was correct, I did remember Dave, he was a class joker in my reality also, and I wondered how his being a rebel fit with his new married life, to 3 women.

The announcement lady read words that echoed the NARRATOR's description, then continued.

"Diane Foreman, senior, gave birth last night, and the twins' names are Greta and Callisandra. Abby Kilmeade, senior, gave birth yesterday morning but we weren't informed in time for announcements. Those twins are Jessica and Henry, a baby boy."

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin idly wondered what it would be like to have three wives, and three sets of twins in a house - six infants at the same time - something his friend Dave would have in about 8 months since all his wives were now pregnant, each with twins since almost all pregnancies after GRIP were twins. ]]

We went off to the next class, which in my case was gym.

== Chapter: Gym Class ==

Getting to the locker room and knowing (due to flashes of memory) which gym locker was mine (happily, also a thumbprint lock), I noticed several things that weren't typical of my previous locker room. First, it was much more brightly lit and had nicely painted walls, none of the peeling-paint and dingy moldy look it'd had before.

Secondly, my locker was much larger than before. It held two complete school-uniform jacket-shirt-pants combos (which added to the two in my main entrance-hall locker), another pair of school shoes, as well as having shelves with many pairs of running/athletic underwear, gym socks, gym shoes, shorts, and spandex/lycra gym shirts.

Everyone seemed to be getting into them, so I went ahead. The lycra shirt was skin-tight and showed off my muscles. This was undoubtedly so the girls could see them, and I wasn't complaining that I might be noticed.

We few guys filed out of the locker room into the main gym and stood together, just a few guys among many girls, mixed randomly.

Class started with jump rope for 5 solid minutes, then push-ups, then mountain-climbers, then L-sits on fingertips, then chinese pushups (handstand-headstand-handstand) with a partner.

My workout partner was Denise, a girl who was nervous around me but frankly looked right at my package as I worked out, pursing her lips and giving short inhales that went at the same time as her eyebrows went up.

Denise had it bad, she wanted something, and I knew I was on the menu.

After adding a set of fireman-carry deep squats carrying our partner (and she held me on her shoulders with significant strength), we did out and back full-basketball-court sprints. I thought we'd stop when we were winded, but I had to just keep going and going.

The coach blew the whistle and we were done.

Denise found me and we walked back to the locker room. "Kev. I'm your assignment today. You turned 18 yesterday."

I decided to agree. "Yup."

"So, first time in the Up showers. I'll lead, I've done this before, only twice though. Clean bill, we're good."

"Okay?"

We got to the locker room, but instead of the door that led to the main part of the men's entrance, she led me into a side door, into what had been the room they kept the basketballs and ping-pong tables in.

Inside, it split off to another door into the men's locker room, and then down to the right was a row of maybe ten shower stalls. Shower curtains separated the stalls, very low-tech, hanging from ceiling pipes near HVAC ducts all painted bright white. The lights were down, though, only every 3rd light fixture was on.

I could hear other people already in there, and behind us as we went into a stall, Rob Estes and a girl I didn't recognize came in, headed to a farther stall than ours. Rob's face was tight-lipped and businesslike, slightly worried in a preoccupied way.

I took this as a good sign. It was everyday for him, this was normal-ish, so his concerns weren't with what was going to happen but some other thing.

Another noise came through as a shower started, not Rob's, and then there was groaning, so I knew someone else was being 'serviced' down the row from us.

Denise turned me around and pulled the curtain shut, then motioned for me to put my things in a labeled plastic tote.

My name was on the tote.

"Strip there, I'll wash you, and when you're done with the shower we'll have a comfy-release BJ. Or, if you want me - front or back, it's fine - just say so, I always get worked up from this. Oh - and I don't do anal.... If you want more than a beej, fine, but I'm not a robot, gotta warm me up. Kisses first, in case you don't know. It's kind of expected and good manners."

Her mood was getting-it-done, and she started stripping, her eyes telling me to do the same.

While she undressed, the NARRATOR voice came back.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin had managed to find videos of this online as masturbation vids, but it was much more vivid in person. His ability to see straight was limited after his cock went up, and it was definitely up. Medically, if he didn't ejaculate sometime in the next few hours, he'd be at some risk since his erection was quite strong, plus he hadn't used it in almost 48 hours.

Denise was pretty enough, and Kevin knew that his cum could make her innards push out a happy pair of babies in no time. That part was inevitable - Denise was committed to it.

The attraction was mutual. Kevin knew her to be funny and smart and they'd had school projects together over a long school career.

As she stripped, Denise decided that her timing was just about perfect, and if she got a good load from Kevin she'd do a little dab-and-stuff to see if it would take. Motility was an issue in some men's sperm, so it might not work, she might have to get a load from him the next day delivered right next to her cervix - if he'd let her.

Kevin had the right to say no, of course, to her using his cum, but she was desperate enough she would probably break the rules even if he declined and apologize later. Still, she knew there's never a need to apologize for a pregnancy, Ever.

The first task was to get him washed down, quickly, she didn't want to suck a stinky cock. This wasn't a totally romantic encounter, it was medically warranted and her duty since she was up on the roster. She had pushed to be on Kevin's roster for his first post-18 gym-relief about a year before, when the date opened up, and had tightly regulated her cycle to ensure she would be ready on this exact day.

Denise actually deeply loved Kevin, a fact she was in some denial over since finding a guy and landing him were different things and it didn't pay to hope too much.

For his part, Kevin had no idea of her attachment because he was mostly clueless.

As it was, he was already stripped bare but hadn't quite noticed he was naked in front of a gorgeous girl because he had been facing the wall. ]]

I'd stripped somewhat automatically as the NARRATOR talked, my body was on autopilot. This was a change from previous freezes while the NARRATOR spoke, but it just emphasized how not-in-charge I was.

I had put my clothes in the tote as indicated, but then turned to watch Denise drop her panties into her tote, then get the water turned on and to the right temperature.

She stepped under the three showerheads and pulled me in. I felt the water, beautifully warm and right and my cock was up and hard and indeed I wanted her and there she was and naked and wow and... water.

Pulling off a garden-hose sprayer, she triggered it away from us against the concrete wall.

I imagined the high-flow low-pressure water from it would be cold, but very quickly she turned it on my legs and I found it was warm and nice. Getting me more wet by aiming it up and down my back and legs, she paused at my butt.

Like talking to a child, she said, "Now, stand with your legs apart..."

I did, and felt the water (and her hand) on my upper inside thighs, then butt cheeks, then up my butt crack.

"Soap, Kevin, sir. Get the stink off, you got a good workout."

I did soap up from a pump-container, almost automatically, like I was used to doing that. Parts of my memory were automatic and I wasn't sure where I knew how to do things from, but this part of the shower experience was ingrained from... running? I had a lot of memories of getting showered quickly after gym class, and this was no different.

One more pump from the 'body wash' and my hair was clean. So much water was going over me it was prodigious. Her soaping-help on my back was kind of surprising but it made sense. Still...

When had I ever washed my own back?

It just normally got clean when I stood in the shower. I didn't really wash it that often, I couldn't reach it. So, now, here she was, washing my back.

Huh.

There was no time to revel in the hot water, she announced, 'all clean!' and shut it off, then handed me a big towel and started drying off with one herself.

On one level, I was just drying off.

On another level, I was horny as all get-out, egads I wanted to tap that! Her body was booty-licious, muscular with feminine curves, an almost-sixpack of toned belly flowing down to pronounced raised mons. That mons was popping out but bare-shaven, and my eyes followed it down into a pronounced cleft where her inner lips were plainly visible just standing there.

I admit, I whimpered.

There was no way to compare her brunette hair to her pubic patch since there wasn't one. It occured to me they might be different, I'd seen porn where girls dyed their head hair but left their pubic patch alone.

Her breasts were sweetly high and tight and rounded but into that most-perfect of shapes, concave on the top and convex on the under, small but slightly raised and ultra-crinkled areolas (from cool water spray no doubt), and pronounced, thumb-thick nipples. Those were standing proud by most of a lickable centimeter, maybe.

Why was I thinking in metric? Why was this occurring to me?

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's first post-gym shower BJ was impending and his mind was already on the impending joys of getting to touch the richness of Denise's 'HotBody', enough to measure it in specific ways so he could remember it later.

Kevin had thought about HotBodies - one word for a reason - since his AP Thermodynamics class had covered radiative thermal losses. Denise hadn't been in that class with him; he'd sat next to a senior girl (he was then a Junior) who wore tauntingly low-cut tops that showed off her back, too, and that kind of exposure got him going.

Nearly every day after that class he'd had to use the relief room next door, enough to make him consistently late to his auto-shop class. The lady teaching that didn't care, she understood, most of the underclass boys had a tough time walking around with erections all the time and having to step out to drain seminal fluid. The girls were willing to help but there were rules and age limits so they couldn't. ]]

This narration didn't quite make sense to me. I knew enough about thermodynamics (I'd seen a book in the physics classroom in my yesterday-history) to know it required some kind of advanced calc, but... of yeah, I was in calc 3. I did know that stuff.

So, now, I had a complete set of memories of thermodynamics and knew how to solve lots of different kinds of problems of heat flow, a skillset I had no idea if I would ever use.

My brain returned to the task at hand - DENISE!

Her drying off involved pulling a towel across her back, generating a twisting and shaking motion that bounced and swayed her breasts and I knew my eyes were dinner plates. This was incredible, the kind of body that made me want to reach out and touch her all over.

She finished drying just as I did, but instead of dropping the towel she draped it across the metal inclined bench/chair I was to lie back down on. Intellectually I knew they cleaned them frequently, there was a bleach smell about the place, but there was also the temperature factor of cold metal and institutional vinyl being not-sexy.

Smoothing the towel, she decided it was about right and guided me to lie back on it.

Whatever she wanted me to do, I was probably going to do.

Her breasts, leaning over, tipped just slightly away from her body at the bottom, mostly they had only the smallest under-crease, and I knew what that looked like.

How... did I know that?

Images in my brain of women's bodies, from years of porn and lots of jerk-off sessions in small but quite well soundproofed private school relief rooms, came back as memories I didn't originally have. In this version of my life, I apparently had done a LOT of regular masturbation as a medical thing, during the school day.

Really, it made sense.

With so many more women than men, and the women were _available!!_, I'd have gotten busy long ago if it weren't for rather strict age constraints drilled into us (in my new memories). Of course I was frustrated!

Getting boners is no fun when you can't get them to go down, and there's some times when I had needed to git'r'dun or I'd burst. That carried some overtones of fear in my new memories since it could be fatal.

Spreading my legs on either side of the end of the bench, it let her kneel into me and lean over, she ran her hands up my legs and over my lap. The kneeling-pad got her to just the right height, but there were adjustment knobs to raise and lower both that and the bench.

Who designed this thing?

Someone had to have spent significant effort designing a way to help guys get blowjobs effectively, and I had to wonder what kind of mechanical engineering that was.

My mind flashed to a job interview. "What do you do?"... "Oh, I design blowjob benches. Have to be comfortable, solid-stable, adjustable, easy on the knees, usable as sex benches also, you know. And, gotta be able to steam clean 'em. You know. Spunk."

Strange things that occur to you, if that makes sense.

Situated, she grasped my very forthrightly-up cock and looked it over, clucking with a happy face and flared eyes enough for me to see she was enjoying herself.

Kissing the end, she realized she forgot something and stood, leaning far forward over my body with a hand on my chest to hold herself up. She came up to lean into my face and kiss me, her eyes crinckled with a smile that was somewhat condescending. Her intent was to solve a problem I had, but she was also going to enjoy herself doing it.

As she'd come up my body, her breasts dangled over me in a way that drew my eyes in. The kiss, though, made me close them - it was stoooooooo good!

Warm, soft lips, breathing passion, wanting breath-stutters, and even a small moan of want came through to me. She was so turned on, I could see it in her face.

Breaking the kiss, she moved back down to kiss my chest over my heart, then dropped down to her knees again and covered my cock head with her mouth.

Oh.

My.

God.

Soft warm... HOT mouth over my cock, holding it in place, wet tongue going round it and rounding the curve of the glans and top and wowwwww yes this was good!

One hand jacked from the base, pulling up slightly, while her other hand came underneath to cup my ballsack and caress it gently.

Her fingers started straying even farther down below my ball sack and that got me a little nervous.

I suddenly knew what she was about to do with those fingers. I wasn't upset by it, but it was a little weird to be rubbed ever-harder on the taint.

After she'd sucked for maybe two minutes, bobbing her head up and down with her fingers dancing below my balls on my perineum, she started to let them go almost tickling over my butthole but then more firmly and back and forth.

She was pressing to get in, a wet finger feeling actually rather good?

This was amazing but stimulating at the same time.

[[ NARRATOR: Since a prostate swollen with fluid is dangerous and physical pressure on the prostate while ejaculating helps discharge as much as 75% more fluid, it was common to massage the prostate while giving a relief blowjob.

Kevin wasn't used to this idea, of course, this was his first gym BJ, but he'd seen it done and wondered with some anticipation what it might be like. He'd even tried it on himself, but the angle was entirely wrong, it was too hard to get a finger in there to apply pressure correctly while jacking off.

Denise was totally okay with doing the palpate-massage thing, she'd done it several times before, mostly with Jason, though he had some prehistoric-misogynistic religious ideas she didn't agree with and she had no interest in having his kids. Kevin's would be Excellent. He was smart and capable and his jokes were actually funny at least half the time. This was a good average for a guy with what was turning out to have a sweet dick and an even sweeter disposition.

Denise approved. Little Kevins, or more likely, the female version of her and Kevin blended, crawling around and burbling with happy baby sounds, that would be JUST right for her. Denise wanted this. Denise would make sure she got it. Smart and Cute, that's just what she wanted in her baby-batter, and in a role model for however many kids she could make before they got too old to do that anymore.

That number would likely be at least 8 pregnancies, more likely 12 given that many women were fertile well into their late 30's and early 40's from GRIP's rejuvenating effects. Granted, she wanted to space them out by a year just to give some space to the tykes when they popped out.

Denise would be an excellent mom, patient and organized, and whether or not Kevin knew it, her lfie vision and capabilities would fit in nicely in a polyset family with him. ]]

My only reaction to this was... Whut!??!?!?!

Of course, I was getting a blowjob, and though the world paused while the NARRATOR spoke, there was no urgency to it restarting for some reason. I just resumed my enjoyment and wondered at a world where a girl this good looking had decided not only a year ahead of time to blow me, but that she wanted to make a life with me.

Knowing her priority set was that intently focused?

It was good the NARRATOR knew she was that capable. If the NARRATOR said it, it'd been borne out as being true, and my intuition was that, sure, she'd be great.

But... what was I thinking?

Was I really contemplating a life ahead with this girl?

She kept blowing me.

She definitely had the oral talent.

I'd seen her, at least I had memories of seeing her, helping out in the school nursery, we all had visited and helped work there.

What?

My memories of that flooded in, too.

It wasn't so strange in reality, it was just another set of rooms in the school, kids of students, mostly seniors, we all had to take the kid-care classes.

My former life, my yesterday-life, found this very jarring, but it was totally mundane in this existence, and both memories settled together as my brain integrated them as the new way-things-were.

She kept blowing me.

Bobbing on my cock, jacking with one hand, playing with my butthole with the other.

Denise wasn't going to be concerned with getting a little of my poop on her finger, she was just going to calmly do what had to be done. If she'd done the butt-finger thing with this Jason guy, she wasn't going to be upset with my experience.

I just let it happen, since what the NARRATOR said was the most natural thing to let happen anyway.

Her finger pressed in, then up, then... Oh, yeah, I was getting there... getting closer...

Denise's mouth and jacking got insistent and regular and she started humming, though that wasn't really anything I could feel more than just hearing her.

I was there.

I was.... THERE!

Her tongue and lips ran magic through my very soul, the electric YES was about to... almost... almost...

"OhSHiiiiiittttTTTTT YEAH URrrrggg URggggg Urrrrrggg!!!...."

I admit I made some noise. It was the same noise coming from elsewhere in the room, it wasn't unusual, it was the most natural thing in the world to grunt, and Well Then, Fine, I Grunted - yelled even - with the OMG JOY of coming!

Her mouth was firmly clamped over me and I shot big, throwing myself in the chair but tensed up to clear isometric max-hold on armrests, muscles quivering, my entire mind thrown into the spurting happiness of YES cumming in a blowjob GREAT blowjob OHHHH yeahh blowjob frenzy!

The finger in my butt?

It could feel it moving, pressing, and tugging along in there, she was doing something, and it just cranked up the pressure for me to get more and more out.

Looking down at her through squinted eyes, I saw her jacking hand make a cup and some significant amount dripping out of her mouth into it. I pretended not to look.

[[ NARRATOR: Denise's prep and practice for dripping the mouthful of cum she'd just gotten into her hand wasn't prepared for the quantity she'd gathered, and she did swallow by accident with the first spurt. A goodly bit remained and she dripped that into her fingers, watching it roll into her palm. Down, down her hand went, carefully keeping the liquid there, her eyes watching Kevin's face for any sign of him seeing her actions.

It wasn't exactly normal to use a first-gym-BJ to purposefully get pregnant. It happened, but normally girls wanted a more fulsome experience in getting the cum exactly where it should go. Denise wasn't sure she'd get chance to have Kevin pound her deep and inundate her cervix this cycle but her timing was so right, this made huge sense. It would also make far more clear and permanent their association, which was almost equally important to her. ]]

Hearing this let me relax into the remainder of the oh-yeah cumming experience without looking, so she didn't need to fear me opening my eyes.

After some shifting around, I felt both hands again and opened my eyes to see her smiling up at me. One hand was wrapped in a small towel - that would be the one with the finger that had gone up my butt - so it's just as well.

Her smile was huge, as was mine.

I had heard the bell and knew our time was done, but I had a free period coming so it was just fine if I wanted to take my time.

Denise, apparently, didn't. "Kev, I have a test in bioinformatics, I gotta get going. Can you dress yourself, or should I text my instructor?"

I smiled, "Go. Go, it's fine."

She did, standing up and walking over to get her school uniform on, something pre-positioned so she must be have pre-dressed for gym in this stall.

Her upper thighs were wet so she'd gotten my load where she wanted it. My... lode? Load? I contemplated the term. It would do with both spellings, probably.

Her bra-putting on process was like I'd seen on porn, from the back and latch in front, then turn around and arms through, then adjust properly. I didn't have to do that.

Panties half-up, she pulled the plastic off a pad and carefully positioned it into the crotch of her panties before pulling them up. Glancing at me watching, she said, "Oh, yeah. You got me going. Won't do, making my desk chair wet." She laughed, and I laughed with her.

After she was put together, she stopped over to lean in and kiss me, but looked down at my mostly-deflated but still somewhat thick cock on the way. The kiss was warm but short. She added, "Hmm... Looking forward to tomorrow. If you want to pound me then, I'm up for it. You're... sweet, and I like your taste, a lot! I'd like to keep you. My personal dessert topping and... handyman... and, hunky-dude..."

"Oh?"

"Dreams, dreams, dreams, Kev. A girl's gotta dream."

I sighed and nodded with a smile.

She kissed me again quickly and left.

She had more than dreams. Denise had plans. I knew that, but the subtext was playing funny hell with my sense of where I was in the world. Life was a lot more complicated than my yesterday had made it out to be.

Seeing I was going to just be cold if I stayed there, I got up, used a towel to wipe down, and realized I needed my school uniform, not my gym uniform.

There was a toilet with bidet next to the shower, so I stepped over and used that to go number two (not much there, I'd gone a few hours earlier) but the bidet rinse was good to ensure I didn't have any stinky left over from her finger's action.

I sooooo totally wasn't into buttplay in my former view of the world, but in my new one this kind of thing was entirely assumed.

The word 'assumed' had 'ass' in it. I wasn't above that kind of chuckle.

Wrapping a new towel, tossing the others in the hamper-bin, I grabbed the tote and headed through the clearly marked door, coming out in the men's locker room and noting this was quite convenient.

Unbidden, my brain provided a set of overlaying images of guys walking out of these doors, every year of high school. I'd never seen them, but I'd always seen them. Also there was an emotion of familiarity, of hearing things and random conversation snippets, all pointing to the surety of what was happening in there, in the place I just was.

The memories didn't include my imaginings and suppositions, they just focused on rumors and overheard things. The emotions associated with that, envy and anticipation, also came in but were very vague and disconnected. They were memories of memories, and I could tell the difference.

That was a differentiator.

In any real version of my life, my emotional attachment and anticipation (of what life would be like behind the door I just emerged from) would be huge.

Instead, the new ones mostly were just factual and overheard bits, plus laughing at some of the jokes.

I got dressed and straightened up, leaving my dirty gym clothes in the clearly-marked 'dirty clothes' bin at the bottom of the locker. This meant someone would be coming through to pick them up, and that was a service I didn't think about existing until I just did think about it.

The strange thing about these new memories was that there were all sorts of additional implications of things that I hadn't thought about, even if I kind-of-knew they happened? I knew there was a dirty clothes bin. I didn't think about how that was emptied until just that moment. So, I'd gotten the memory of the thing, but it was like the NARRATOR or AUTHOR wasn't really considering all the substantive implications of the universe they were altering.

I knew my life was changing, right in front of my eyes, and I had no control over that. I could keep thinking what I was thinking, but that's it.

== Chapter: Library ==

For my free period, I headed to the library where both in my former life and my current one I spent time catching up on homeworks, doing my reading, or just reading a sci-fi novel for fun.

My memory was, I was expected there, strongly expected, it was an obligation to meet there.

Walking in and coming up to my 'usual' table, I found more faces than normal: Kelly, Mary, and Brit, my polyset-aspiratnts from before school. They were already settled in since I was getting there about 10 minutes after the bell.

They all smiled, and stood up when I got there, an odd reaction but I realized it was one of deference, a respect and formality factor I wasn't used to seeing in my yesterday, but which was fairly common in this altered life. I was apparently high status compared to them, and they acted on that. Their eyes told that story, too.

Also sitting at the table? Liz. Liz was a free spirit, an unabashed lesbian with a habit of wearing unusual clothes, all black or combinations of formal-and-disheveled. In new memories, where dress codes were more explicit, she typically wore two black ties instead of one.

That, and she usually sported a big metal Catholic cross on her front. This contrasted (in my real memory) of her typical black concert t-shirt for some hard-rock band, cut so there was a triangle of cloth missing to let the cross-bottom dangle between her cleavage.

I enjoyed the view, don't get me wrong, but her makeup was on the odd side for her, being startlingly normal by being startlingly missing. I was used to seeing her in black eyeliner, or red, or whatever, changing, but always very pronounced and to my mind, excessive on purpose, making a statement about conformity or something.

Whatever her dress patterns, Liz was always and everywhere, 'Freestyle', body-size=nice, personality-size=ExtraLarge.

This Liz also didn't have the double-tie of my implanted-memories. She did have a new version of her Catholic cross pendant, but with no hole in her blouse it just sat in front like anyone else's would.

Liz also had an out-front attitude that took no prisoners.

"Hey, Kev. How's the penis hanging? Left today?"

I laughed. "Just turned 18."

"So I hear. And..." she smiled coyly, "YOU just got a suck-off after gym class, didn't you! The first After-Gym Blowjob of Joy, cumspurting the walls! You bellow out a hearty grunt, fill her gullet with hotswimmers?"

Her words were more out there than her tone, and I knew from hearing her in the past that her goal was to get a response from me. I had chosen early on in both of my realities to be frank with her, though perhaps the most outlandish thing she could possibly do, for her, was to not wear makeup at all. I liked it. She was really pretty.

Mary's face was obviously showing she didn't know what to do with Liz's words. She was scandalized.

I thought about what I would say, given how amazing it had felt, how my heart was filled with joy at the intimate-sharing-gift that Denise had helped me with.

The best response was the straightforward one, for her. I could not shock her, but it was fun to try. "Got that right. Amazing blowjob. Haven't had one before. Denise gave me a great knob polishing, no complaints at all."

"She give you a good jacking, too? Suck that head right in? Swirlies? Drink you down?"

Mary's face, not that I was looking at her, contorted at the blatant aspects of this.

I decided to break this into Liz's court since I'd lose this if it just focused on me. "Oh, for sure, but she's had practice. You probably haven't even touched a hard cock, much less slurped on one. More focused on cracks than handles, right?"

Liz's face went a little wry with that comment, still smiling. "Oh, what I lack in experience I'll make up for in enthusiasm. You're legal, today. I could jerk your cock all class period and edge you 'til lunchtime."

I was smiling. "Jerking isn't a BJ, Liz. Knobs need some lube. They don't polish themselves."

"I can-too lick. And, I munch real good, too. I'd polish your knob up right. Maybe tomorrow, I can stop by and give Denise a good slathering while she's popping you off again." Glancing over at Mary, who was obviously uncomfortable with this talk, she added, "Or, Mary, here."

Mary shifted, she was deeply confused by Liz.

This was fun. I ignored the dig at Mary to keep Liz from scaring her and focused on Denise. "Denise might be game. You'd have to get her permission first, though. No sneaky-sudden clit gobbling."

Liz threw back a self-assured nod and chin-thrust, smiling. "She'd love it."

"Maybe. All I hear is words. Maybe we should have a contest."

Liz laughed. "Sure! We could start now. Heavens to betsy, I'd happy for the practice. Or, more, even. Spit-roast me. Just slide your chair out right now! I'll sit on your lap and one of these girls can bend over, give my mouth some of that quim-tasty... fold-parting, quivers and yells."

Her grin was infectious and I loved it, but it turned into laughter. Her lesbian priorities in my former life had not ever included (as far as I knew) any penis-sharpening. "So, that would mean you'd flip-skirt, here? For some... uh, cervix polishing?"

(It was all I could come up with)

She laughed back at me, genuinely amused, her head coming down in a slight embarrassment at contemplating the actual act. This was new. Before that moment I don't think I had ever seen her embarrassed, ever.

Regaining her composure, her smile considered and she replied carefully. "I do whatever I need to do, Kev. And, if I needed to, sure. But you wouldn't do that, too adventuresome. You're not the out-in-public, type. Besides, you've got these three, ready to fall backwards and hike-skirt for you. You're into the good old-fashioned honeys, I know your type. Missionary and boring. No thanks to the boring for me. I likes-me a pert boobie in the morning. Not that I'm getting any."

"Life not giving you enough boobs?"

"Just these." She grabbed her own from the edges over her jacket, her thumbs almost into her underarms. "They'll work just fine, but I wanna suck 'em, and my head doesn't... quite... reach."

Her mock-stretching was odd because I could tell her breasts were, indeed, large enough that she'd probably be able to lick them. I wasn't going to point that out. It would seem rude, in a way that didn't quite seem like normal banter as a thing to mention.

Still, I could comment on the other stuff, but chose to mock myself and agree with her, even though I obviously didn't mean it. "You're probably right, I'm much more into the lights-out, afraid of seeing or being-seen. Of course, if I ever did think about getting adventurous, I might learn a thing or two from you about how to... what's your phrase? Slather-pussy. Tongue-tweak on your wicked-freak?"

The phrase had come to mind, she'd said it to me before both in my real yesterdays and the revised ones.

She laughed, "You. Yeah. Okay, sure. You line up the honeys, maybe these or some others, I'm game. I'll get 'em off, you fill 'em up. Make you some kidlets to run amuck and destroy your furniture."

Brit burst out laughing and we looked over. She rolled her eyes as she finished chuckling to explain. "My cousin just took a hammer to my aunt's dinner table, it's ruined. She's, like, four. I'm pretty sure she knew better, but her older sister probably egged her into it. We're not sure. My aunt was always lenient and it's come back to haunt her. Plus, my niece's babysitter is like 90 and she doesn't explain things very well."

The cringing reaction was universal: "Ooooo!"

Mary was nodding, "Yeah. Gotta keep 'em pointed at the toys or the nice stuff goes away. Been there."

There was someone at a table near us, and I saw her head move in response, probably laughing or reacting with us.

[[ NARRATOR: Ella Thompson overheard this whole conversation since she was sitting at the next table over, and thus knew Kevin had just gotten his first gym-BJ. Thus he might or might not be open for a grope session. This much she'd anticipated, the dates for these things are well known in advance.

Ella was prepared.

She pulled out the big black tablecloth from her backpack, ready to play ARTHRITIS and hoping she might get felt-up a little at least, though she definitely wanted to solve a 'deep' problem she had if she could possibly arrange it.

ARTHRITIS was a game going around, for the over-18 crowd, and was very trendy. She'd made the cover-cloth with Velcro adjustable head-holes just for this occasion with Kevin. She liked him. She liked him a lot, and had gotten almost no look-backs from him given how devoted he'd been to Barb and how Barb's manipulation of the system prevented anyone else from intruding on his love life.

Kevin had heard of the game. Under the large cover cloth, heads out but bodies underneath, they'd sit nested in a line facing the same direction, open legs and tight fronts to backs. The back person would start by saying, 'A'.

A was either Articulate, meaning bending hands around but not going under clothes, or Access, reaching to touch someone.

R was for reach-under clothes, but on the sides only.

T was Tunnel-around, or Touching-Nicely, or To-the-Front.

H was Holding-Packages. It applied to cupping boobs over the bra, or cupping the guy's crotch, holding and feeling what was underneath.

I was investigate, or Inside. Hands went underneath the clothing. Bras were shoved up but not unlatched (unless necessary), slacks were unbuckled / unzipped on guys, underwear was moved. On girls, adventurous people could undo a skirt's latch to gain more access and go down the front.

T was for titillate, meaning grasping and deliberately stimulating the person being grasped. Pulling on nipples, pulling on penises, all had to be done gently, this was tittilation only and not intended to get someone off.

I was for Induce. Touching moved to deliberate bringing of someone up the excitement curve, giving things that were needed and helping them along. Skirt fronts were definitely moved out and getting this far meant finger-bangs.

S was Spasm or Spurt or Satisfaction, whatever applied. Guys and girls should get release, not good to leave them almost-there, whether or not that meant keeping their heads out from the covering blanket. The girl could back up to sit on the guy's lap behind her, impaling herself in a both-facing-forward fuck, or the girl in front or back could duck under and blow or lick as was needed. The clear obligation of the other girl involved was to help the first one, make it happen by whatever means. This was debated quietly but anyone who failed their duty would be asked pointed questions about why, and urged to not let it happen again since they were all in this together.

It was expected that in this position the guy should be able to reach the girl's joy button, but if he couldn't, the person in front of them both should try to reach backwards.

Alternately, S could mean Suck, where the girl behind the guy could duck her head under the covers and give a good BJ to the guy, sucking him off quietly with the covers offering a polite fiction that there was nothing happening.

The thing that made the game a game was, everyone had to pretend nothing was happening, absolutely everything was just backrubs underneath, nothing at all unusual was occurring. It was a polite fiction that the younger students just didn't see anything, and although they might have heard rumors about what happened, they couldn't directly observe anything and would look away or leave the area to allow things to progress naturally.

So, as a game, so far as anyone knew, everyone's hands were perfectly in the right places, proper and nothing happening.

The ARTHRITIS game was fun and amazing and on-school-property without being sanctioned, but the teachers only pretended it was bad. Secretly they all totally endorsed it, it was part of the push to make more students, and the world needed more guys and more activity from guys. Men were dying all the time from not enough releases of over-full prostates, and releases kept the guys safe, a vital part of public health. ]]

Images of this game flowed into my head. I newly-remembered seeing people do this in the distance, the stiff canvas fabric of the cover-cloth billowing out and things happening underneath? That all flowed into my head unbidden, the NARRATOR descriptions filling in between the images and perspectives I'd almost-had.

Ella came over to us and held up the canvas in an unspoken invitation. Mary looked at me, but I was already standing up. This sounded like an amazing game, and I wanted in.

The thing was, who was going to be in front of whom?

There were six of us: Mary, Brit, Kelly, Liz, Ella, and myself.

Mary immediately said, "I want him tonight?"

Kelly and Brit nodded, but Ella's voice was more questing. "Please, please? Fronting? I'm... I've waited... too long? I need to be... complete?"

The implication was, she wanted me.

Of course, she had choosing rights, she was holding the cover-cloth.

I processed the implications, too: She wanted to Sit-Back... !!!

I was okay with this idea.

I'd thought sometime in my distant past, what would my first time be like, my 'de-virgin-ification', but this was going to be... in a library? With a girl behind me, and another in front?

Would I really want this to be my first time?

Fuck yeah!!!

Now was a great time!

NOW was the right time for this. I wanted the NOW to be, well, NOW.

I nodded, and the other girls got in a row.

We got on the floor against the wall to our right and backed up against a bookcase, the table moved safely to be in front of us. Carefully configured chairs, book bags, other bookshelves, and the table combined to let us create our own little secluded corner out of view of the rest of the library.

Pulling the cloak over us in order, it was, from the rear, Brit, myself, Ella, Liz, Kelly, and Mary.

We sat on our knees to start with, since it seemed the best option for having some room and being able to maneuver.

Starting with Brit behind me, she said, "First letter is... A. Access..."

We put our hands on each other's back, Brit on mine under my arms on my flanks, mine on Ella's waist.

Ella's waist was shifting - she went into quick efficient motion, pulling her coat off under the cover, head out but things happening that weren't visible. She followed that (obvious by my being able to see in the slit in front of me where the fabric had a gap) by untucking her shirt and starting to unbutton it. She was working fast.

I repeated, "A... For Access...."

In front of me, Ella said, "Access... A, for Access."

In front of her, Liz said it, monotone, and they all repeated it towards the front.

Ella had her shirt unbuttoned and sat up on her haunches enough to tug at her skirt, turning it around and unbuttoning it, then shifting sideways to push it down past her knees to her ankles. I could feel all this with my arms, caressing her sides, and soon her bare shoulders as she finished getting her shirt unbuttoned and off.

Behind me, not waiting, Brit said, "R... Reach!"

Her hands had already come around and unbuttoned my jacket, pulling it off, so I shed that and she worked on my shirt front, then the front button of my pants. My braces (suspenders) were already pulled to the side, she was fast.

This was moving Right along!

Behind me, I could feel Brit was doing something, and then I felt her against my back, brushing something... Ah. Her boobs, still in her bra, scratched across my back as she was trying to reach down my front to get my zipper down.

Touching Ella in front of me, I let my hands go up her sides, under her arms slightly, and then down and around. The so-so-soft skin, the undulations of her ribs, her breathing hard as she was working at getting everything situated.

In front of her, Liz called back quietly, "Ella, you need to touch me. I didn't get into this to just hear you panting."

"Oh... Sorry..."

Ella had a lot to do, apparently, or should I say, 'apparel-ee', since she was seemingly getting mostly disrobed under there, in front of me.

I let my hands go all over, gently caressing, and she obviously wanted more than just that. Her hand went between her legs, but then she pulled down her underwear, too. That went below her knees to her ankles but not off, I presumed so she could pull it up again rapidly if she needed to.

We waited a minute or so until we were all less frenzied. My jacket and shirt were off, my pants were unbuttoned, unzipped, and with a little wiggling, down to my knees. Brit was working on that part assiduously, but then paused and I felt her bra brush past me as she took it off and set it beside her.

Brit's hands came down my sides and around my chest, stroking my pecs and then gliding down farther still.

Brit said, "T. T means, Touching Nicely."

I did that, to find Ella's arms quickly had pulled her bra up and out of the way, still on but pulled way up and letting her boobs float free.

In front of me, Liz obviously had backed up, since I felt her back moving towards and bumping up against the backs of my hands as I was rubbing Ella's stomach and then over her breasts. I stayed away from the nipples to start with since that was a 'next step' in this thing, but since Liz's torso was there and I could reach it, I said, "Liz. I can reach your back, too."

Her voice came back, typical Liz. "Just grab those boobies on Ella, Kev, finger her up good, get her good and lubed up. I'm working this side. You want to grab MY boobies, well, fine, but I'll expect some kind of flowers later and none of your sticky man-juice on them, either."

Her snarky voice was soft so we could barely hear her, but I got the message and kept my hands moving over both of them gently. She hadn't told me to go away, which to her meant 'please please yes touch me'. I knew her that much.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's hands brushing Liz's sides gave her chills and abdominal happy-shudders at the possibility of a real man touching her, for once. She'd had girls, but no guys, there weren't enough, and her banter with Kevin was a front to cover vast disappointment. Kevin had seen most of her once, she knew it, when they were in Really Really Dumb swimsuits in the swimming unit in gym class. He showed no signs of doing much about it, and his manhood then was already straining the suits' extra-tight constraints, almost invisibly, but she could tell. ]]

Images flooded in of me seeing her, at the time with wet hair and yes, the dumb swimsuits that hid nothing, but looking super-cute despite running eyeliner, and I'd wanted her then.

Those images weren't from my previous experience. They were implanted. They were good, though. Along with them came memories of having to do swimming but then duck out and masturbate in a room alone since I medically had to relieve pressure.

[[ AUTHOR: "NO NO NO NO. Wrong! He can't know about her! He has to have the first time seeing her and that group be later! Right..." ]]

Images of us being in different swim classes, guys in one area and girls in another, then came to me and I had an entirely different history. With that came seeing Liz, Brit, Mary, Kelly, all of them, in 'those stupid suits', but then having that changed so we didn't see each other like that.

The lesson was, as I figured out earlier, the NARRATOR gave me new memories and didn't remove the old ones, but the new info was, the AUTHOR didn't know that.

I knew: This Was GREAT.

In some way, I could know that my memories were not being played with, at least to have any removed. Additive was fine. Removal would make me a different person and I wanted to be ME, and ME only.

Back in the library moment, I leard Brit behind me say, "H. HOLDING Packages."

Her hands went down my front but to the sides to slip my pants and then underwear all the way off, including my ankles. I let her. She pushed down, and down. I was starkers on the downside, though it had taken some shifting.

My own hands went to Ella's front to grab and hold her breasts again, more firmly this time, squeezing them, since I hadn't had much chance to do that before and I loved it.

I found myself saying, "H. Holding Packages."

Ella repeated this, and I felt her hands go forward and around Liz's front.

Liz repeated it, too, but then turned her head and told Ella in an instructional tone, "Firmly - so you don't tickle. Cup them, then pull forward, and twist the nipple from behind the base of it... That's right... More? Base of thumb indentation there, yeah... better. Okay, just keep that, ohhh yessss, you're getting it."

My own hands echoed what Liz said she wanted, and Ella seemed to like that plenty. Her boobs were C cups, probably, pointy and very thick and firm, a solid package but soft and pliable at the same time.

Brit's hands had come down. One was cupping my balls, the other had made an OK sign wrapped around my dick with her fingers and was stroking up and down very slowly.

That hold shifted, it was awkward. She changed to an overhand thumb-down 'Euro-Jerk' (my new memories supplied that phrase but it still amused me).

I whimpered, the touch was nice.

Brit said, "Sound. NO sound."

My own breathing was going.

Knowing what was coming, I pushed my hands forward and down and across the flat of her abdomen and Ella said, "YES, down!"

Finding her mons was prominent and hard, the scratchy-soft of a tuft her pubic hair as a landing strip under my fingers, there was a cleft, and my fingers found it.

"Oh, Please?!"

For some reason, I wanted Liz to have a good time, too, so I whispered. Into Ella's ear, I said, "Finger Liz. From behind. Up under, rub her. Gently. Taunting, then firmer... Make her bend."

Liz inhaled, I could hear it, and my own breath was going fast.

Brit said, "I... for, Inside. Investigate."

My fingers dipped in, then rubbed around, and found Ella was incredibly wet already. I brought one hand around and went up between her butt cheeks, to rub her clit, then to stick a finger in while the other hand was making the kind of circles on her clit I'd seen in porn.

Brit's head was moving behind me. She was shifting, and then disappeared, ducking under the canvas. Her head came around under my right arm, and I could tell she was doing something.

HOOOOooooooOOOO-yeahhhhh!! A hot wet mouth took in the top of my penis, the beautiful slathering of holding love that is a blowjob.

I turned as best I could, backing up slightly to give her room. There were slurping sounds coming from underneath the canvas.

We heard Brit say, "Kevin. Move forward. I'll put you in the right place. Ella, bend."

Ella immediately shifted, bending forward, then giving up and pulling the canvas over her head to duck underneath also.

Liz's head turned, and she saw what was happening, smiling broadly at me and nodding. Softly, she said, "Gonna Get Some!!! Way to go, Cooper!"

I could only close my eyes, but then I felt Ella backing up to me, and Brit moving my cock down, then up between her thighs, then into the right place.

Ella whispered up to us, a voice from under the canvas, "I have a toy. You're the first... human? Please... slow, to start?"

I whispered down, my arms going to grab the sides of her hips and getting myself in place."Ooo-Kayyy. Slowly it is." Waiting a moment, I felt fingers all around.

Brit said, "You're set. Make her a woman."

There was a small hesitation from me; I didn't want this to be incorrect or mistaken in any way. "Ella, you want this?"

"Oh-God-Yes?!? Do it. Now."

Her back stiffened, and she held herself in place, so I pushed in, and slowly slid, directly, pulling out slightly and then forward again, inwards, into... heaven.

There's nothing at all that's anywhere close, in my entire existence, in all of my whole life, that was better than this.

Ella whimpered but I could tell it was muffled by her hand or something.

I paused, then pulled slightly and repeated the thrust, then again, and again, setting up a good slow pace several seconds per push.

This was AMAZING!

Behind me, I heard Brit say, "This. This is... I want this. I want YOU, Kevin. I want YOU."

Ella's whimpers showed she was all onboard with this, so I just pumped and pumped, slight slapping noises coming from when the front of my thighs hit her butt cheeks.

Mary's whisper, from behind my clenched eyes, said, "Quiet with the slapping!"

I inhaled and nodded, figuring they were looking at my face, and that's fine. The library was a distraction and I was focused on the ONLY thing that mattered, the fact that I had my dick inside this gorgeous girl, this (invisible) girl whose pussy was wrapping and holding and sliding and beautiful and amazing around my length as I slid in and out of it.

We went on, and I got more and more urgent, knowing I was going to come, and wondering what that would be like, in her, holding her against me.

There's no way I could pull out. I couldn't think straight. The mere idea of pulling out to come just seemed incredibly wrong.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's hands held Ella's hips in place, but Ella was exactly where she wanted to be - impaled on Kevin's beautiful sticking-out penis. She'd seen it before, under his trousers, prominent when it shouldn't be, worrisome if it stayed up too long and she wanted to help... but sadly she couldn't. That was his job. This time? Ella's intent was to get it going, and she was in heaven, right perfectly where she should be. Her mom had said this was intense, but she hadn't known it was THIS intense. All of his dick, up inside of her, each tiny micron of length parting her insides to push aside the bits that she wanted pushed aside! Kevin was going to cum, she knew, and she wanted it, all of it, against her topmost bits. She could imagine the swimmers going, giving her life. Life, making LIFE, in her, gloriously in her with the JOY of fucking fucking fucking fucking this manly hunk of meat! ]]

The images coming into my brain then were odd, they were... Ella's memories? She was in her room, green walls and a big mirror and her legs up and she was looking at a dildo going into herself?

A stuffed giraffe was next to the bed, a big one, but behind it, a periodic table on the wall. Ah - a geek girl! I liked that bit, in the instant I saw it.

But, that was my limit. I was done thinking, I could only feel, and that feeling was a cresting Yes that became an actual "Hrnnnnnnggg...." noise, suppressed but tightly. My focus, my being, was pushing my cock into this girl's tight.. Cunt, yes, CUNT, her cunt was squeezing and my cock was thrusting past resistant walls and ooohhhhhh yeahhhhhhh....

I came.

I came big.

I pushed and pushed, and threw myself around and very quietly groaned and wanted more and more of it, eye-splosions of colored happiness making it all good.

All of it was good, this was the right way to be, everything was right with this and even the wrong place for it was the right place and that was fine.

Pulse and INNnnn and ... PULSE and Innnn and ohh, slightly DeEEEPrrrrr yesszzzzz...

Slowly I settled in.

This was right.

Feeling it?

Feeling the best part of anything, that was sex, that was this SEX, this COCK IN CUNT, this fucking FUCKING rocking cock-holding masterwork of bio working bodies, spraying out my best and she's got it now, it's up there and she's got it.

I wasn't too cogent.

I didn't need to be.

Settling down, twitching once, then again, delay, and again in a clench-happy-pulse, I knew I was pushing some little bit more into her as an echo and why would I ever be anywhere else if things could be this good?

Liz moved, and shifted in, and helped out, I could tell, and it was a great thing she was there.

We just breathed for a minute or two.

Ella pulled off, a HUGE loss for us both, but, then, there was a mess to clean up, and we had to handle it.

I didn't know if it was a mess, but figured it probably was one, since when I finished jerking there was usually a mess on my stomach.

Some kind of terricloth towel (I could tell the texture of it) came up and went between Ella's legs, then over my penis very briefly, then... wait...

Someone was grasping me, pulling...? And... into a mouth? Someone was licking me off?

It was good, but it didn't last. It had been Brit.

I made a mental note that I really, really had to help Brit get some good satisfaction since she had really helped me get some myself.

We got cleaned up and started to get dressed, and it's a good thing the canvas was plenty long since we could kneel fully and still have it hit the ground.

I got my underwear back up, then my pants up again, and my shirt buttoned, and pants buttoned, and tie almost arranged, and coat back on...

Under the canvas I was being helped through this process.

Part of the canvas against the wall went up and was held up by Mary, who managed to act bored as she did it. She whispered to us as she did, "No one watching. They're all in the other section, this was a good place."

That other section wasn't more than ten meters from us, but it was far enough.

A few minutes and the girls were back together and looking nice and stood up, looking almost-happy but almost-bored in a total acting job that didn't probably fool anyone.

We sat back at the table and tried to act normally, but none of us actually said anything.

Liz finally broke in, quite softly so we could all hear her but certainly no one farther away could. "So... No one is talking. I think I'll start. Kevin, your cum is delicious. Love it. For guy cum, it's great. Ella, you're pretty sweet, too. I'd lick you any day of the week."

Ella humored her, but mostly Ella was stuck in a happy-happy-joy-joy place of just-been-nicely-fucked and all the other stuff was irrelevant.

We sat there a moment and the girls moved their books around to pretend like we were studying again.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's world had been blown by having sex, for the first time. The fact that it was hidden and secret sex, a semi-public place but out of view, was all the more daring and his mind was reeling with the newness and shock of it all. ]]

This wasn't true. My mind wasn't reeling. I was surprised, for sure, it was a bit surrealistic, but I was very much still in control of my thought processes and my internal 'Weird-Shit-o-Meter' ("WSOM") level was only slightly above where it had been - mostly pegged high all day.

On the other hand, thinking about it, my levels for what constituted the 100% level on my WSOM had been entirely redefined and the having sex part was stuck down at the 50th pecentile range. For reference, having french toast before school in my before time would have been a solid 10%.

French toast, given new information, had been redefined as being safely in the "1 divided by Avagadro" region of percentiles.

(I'd coined the WSOM term once when I was in junior high and saw a car accident happen right in front of me. I probably hadn't ever used it in front of anyone, but I did think about things that way sometimes.)

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's mind was flashing back to when he'd taken AP Anatomy and Physiology sophomore year, then Advanced Physiology during summer school the year before. He could remember how all of those internal parts fit together and how the nerve clusters he'd had to study trailed off, white huge-branching knotted root-structure of strings all joined towards the spinal cord. ]]

Images flew into my head of how human bodies were constructed.

The coolness was HUGE! I got to see all the parts of a human body, inside, how it all fit together, how it looked under the surface of the fluid in the lab where we'd done the dissections...

EXCEPT, it wasn't real! I was getting these memories pumped into me! I could tell - they were abstract images, what info would be in those circumstances. They only sometimes included my asking questions in class, since in this reality I was mostly quiet there. I remembered all the class material, for sure, since the NARRATOR had said I remembered almost everything I read, and that meant my memory of classes where I'd not done well because I didn't remember things from studying, all that was irrelevant and I newly remembered EVERYTHING from those classes, and all my other classes.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's mind wandered to the tissues...]]

[[ AUTHOR'S VOICE: NO NO NO NO, wrong!!! Can't do that. Doesn't fit with innocent ways he looks at the world, can't have intricate knowledge of human anatomy, too early for a high school student. No... Better... ]]

[[ NARRATOR: PENALTY, attempting to remove perspective, dilution two. ]]

[[ AUTHOR: Damn! No harm intended! Fuck. Okay... He's gotta have perspective?... ]]

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's mind flashed back to the previous summers when he'd done yardwork for with Mr. Simmons, his retired super-rich down-the-block neighbor. He'd seen the man's two really pretty college-age daughters out by their pool quite a lot, and that led to needing relief, so he avoided temptation, usually.

He'd done yard work for Mr. Simmons initially, then helped train the girls up in TaeKwonDo since Kevin was a third degree black belt and the girls wanted private lessons. They had taunted him but Mr. Simmons paid enough that he knew to keep it professional with the college girls. He even taught them some Korean words for things. His TKD dojang was taught entirely in Korean language, so he'd had to learn conversational Korean as part of his normal routines there. ]]

HUGE quantities of images And information, from Korean language to taekwondo intricacies to what that house looked like on the inside.

Maybe the most interesting parts were the TKD moves - strikes, jumping combinations, breaking bricks, bowstaff (Jang geun), Geom wood-sword, Hwanduda and soo do knife-combat (dull and plastic for safety), even Yeoja throwing weapons.

Along with these images and moves, all of it was happening in Korean.

I knew Korean!!!

This was COOL with a capital COO !

I got images of myself doing these things, jumping and sweating and being an expert and getting calm assurance from knowing what I was doing.

Positively years of complex skill-building and sweating hard-work flowed into my head. I got muscle memory of how it all worked, I just knew how to twist this way and that, to make things work and how to make an opponent powerless.

I KNEW, just Knew, how things were supposed to be. I knew the traditions of real Korean TKD.

Suddenly, I realized that if I knew Korean I should test it out. I tried it, speaking my own inner dialogue with a solid Oijambu-region accent: 맛있는 김치는 할머니가 만들어 주시는 김치뿐입니다.! ("The only good kimchi is the kimchi your grandmother makes"). Except, I knew I didn't really like kimchi that much and only put up with eating it because my instructor sometimes gave me his as we ate after classes together.

[[ AUTHOR: NO NO NO NO, this can't work. He's not a martial arts expert, that's irrelevant. We can't give him too many skills, damnit! He won't be a 'normal guy' and I want him to be a normal guy, only, nice, sweet, even. Uh.... Right... Yardwork. He just does the guy's lawn, but... yeah, he sneaks in sometimes... His memory is REALLY good... ]]

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's summer jobs had included lawn mowing for a set of neighbors, and that included his right neighbor's property. Mr. Killianred seemed pretty normal with the exception of obsessing over a super-old beat-up 1930's car, something called a Bugatti Atlantic.

Kevin learned he was secretly really, really rich. Kevin had a flyer to advertise his lawn 'service', and one of Mr. Killianred's wives suggested he could use the photocopier in their home office.

Kevin went in and used it, but while he was waiting, he saw a piece of paper on the desk nearby, mostly obscured by a paperweight. Lifting the interesting paperweight, he read, "BTC wallets and sec-keys" and had a bunch of codes. He quickly took out his phone and took a picture of that page, but put the paperweight back in place carefully and left the room quickly.

Over the next two weeks, he memorized all these numbers easily with his trick memory, thinking it might be useful sometime. Little did he know those wallets held hundreds of coins each. He became sole owner of them (and thus incredibly wealthy) when another Mrs. Killianred burned the house down and fled the country. ]]

Wow, I did that?

I thought about it. Sure enough, I could clearly recall the page of letters and numbers, codes, and could easily write them if I needed to. I also remembered the house burning, all the fire trucks...

[[ AUTHOR: NO NO NO this won't do. I don't want him to be a superman! Egads, he's gonna be super duper rich now and that's no good! Hmm... Okay, so, he shouldn't remember numbers and stuff, just that he'd seen them and SHOULD have memorized them. He'll beat himself up for that, recurring regret, that drives need later... That would have been cool? ... 'Kay, so that fits... Right... Instead...]]

[[ NARRATOR: Penalty. Penalty assessment. AUTHOR shall not contrive to burden the main character with guilt. Dilution, two. ]]

Huh. I was confused but the pause was short.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin remembered going to Mrs. Killianred's house once to mow the lawn, his regular summer job, and finding a bikini on the side of the hot tub. That implied that someone had taken it off there, in view of the lawn, that he was mowing. Combined with having seen a fully-clothed but Very Very Attractive Mrs. Killianred, his imagination went wild and that imagined viewpoint became a theme in his masturbation visions and sometimes in class as well. Those visions had now been replaced by real memories of real naked women, a zero-to-sixty just with events that day. Added onto that were his Actual Memories, of an Actual Blowjob... And, Actual Sex!! ]]

The vivid images of what I'd done that day, as well as the false memories that included racy views since retracted by a revised narration, were clearly in-view in my head whether I wanted them or not.

Okay, fine, I did want them.

Alice Killianred, and the girls in swim-class, were WAY hot.

The disconnectedness that happened when I got new memories still bubbled around in me and I was sorting through what was real and what wasn't, to make sure I remembered my real life even when getting these extra memories.

The AUTHOR thought I should be nostalgic and a little freaked, and certainly guilty - but I wasn't. I was calm. To make sure the AUTHOR saw what I wanted her to see, though, I pretended to be nervous and stared off into the distance to keep that illusion going.

The bell rang, and it was time - 4th period - to head to... English class.

Walking upstairs, I got in the classroom in time to see three girls tug on their necktie/scarf thing in a very distinct way. Looking at me intently, they each pulled them with their right hands, not to take them off, but to show they were interested in something.

It was obviously code for something, but as to what, the NARRATOR hadn't informed me yet.

The teacher walked in, Mrs. Kenny, and my implanted-memories said I liked her and respected her at least a medium amount.

She called the class to order, then asked us for a one-minute or less summary of our assigned work for overnight, 'Ice Cream People' by Bukowski. It was apparently a poem that some of the class had read, but that didn't include me.

She put the poem up on the screen and we could read or re-read it, it was short.

Bukowski is fun! Lots of swearing, and he even used the word 'pecker'.

She asked various people, as part of this go-around-give-opinions thing, if there was a comparison point between this poem and Eugene Ionesco's 'The Rhinocerous', an absurdist play where gradually, literally everyone in the play turns into a rhinoceros. I had a (new) complete memory of the book and I was loving it as I 'remembered' what it was about.

A girl that had very short hair dyed pink and one earring raised her hand and said they were both metaphors about being gay.

The class laughed and was going to be dismissive, but I saw her point and raised my own hand.

Mrs. Kenny called on me: "Mr. Cooper... Mister - 'eligible' - Cooper, I should say."

The class laughed again and I had to as well, apparently my being 18 was now a thing.

My reply tried to pick up on what she'd meant. "Emily's idea is great. Everyone turned into a Rhino because it was fashionable, and living in a society where you're an outsider for thinking differently, feeling differently than others? You have to adjust, and sometimes even if you don't want to, you get dragged along. And, the guy in IceCreamPeople, he had been in one society for so long he was just discovering what it was like to exist in another one. Kinda, both? They're talking, like, they have to adjust, they're being forced to conform, but daring...? To... think differently?"

Mrs. Kenny nodded, like she was surprised at the answer, but was still confused.

I decided the best way to finish was to joke around, so I added, "And, like, not everyone can have a horn, but it's perfectly okay to conform a little and strap on a horn if you need one."

My risque idea created first silence and then echoing laughter as soon as they figured out Mrs. Kenny wasn't going to punish me for the sexual reference.

The rest of the class was just chatting about the assignment, writing up the compare/contrast paper. We debated what should be in the rubric for it, which I didn't know was a thing until it came up and I then instantly loved that we were discussing it.

The bell rang and I headed to 5th period chorus.

== Chapter: Chorus ==

Walking in I found people waiting - 2 groups. One was 3 girls, the other two.

They both walked up, standing separately so I knew they were two groups. It helped that each group had similar-color handkerchiefs in their jacket front pockets.

Angela, a dark-haired girl-next-door who wore thick glasses but had a kickin' body and was on the math team (very nerdy, I loved it), spoke for her group of 3. "Hey."

I'd known her since 2nd grade in both realities. "Hey, Angela...?"

"We... Mindy (blonde, innocent eyes, medium-everything), Soonyo (black hair, Korean-American, short but agile and quick-eyed), and I, we... we'd like to see if you're interested. We have a pact, clean bill, and... we've been waiting for you. You seemed to indicate okay, before..."

I smiled. "I did." This was turning out to be a really good day.

"I..."

Madison Jeffers, also a senior (they were all seniors), interrupted. "We are also interested. If, there's a possibility here. It's side-bound, just Camile and me... myself, I mean. Oh, and cleanbill-Brindle, too."

Her making sure to phrase it with good grammar was something I noticed, and yes, she was super-nervous.

[[ NARRATOR: Madison, or Mads to her friends, was quite desperate. She'd already paired with Camile and that had turned out well, they had similar ideas about a lot of things, but Camile wasn't nearly in the hurry that Mads was. Madison knew her mother had gotten breast cancer at age 30, so she was on a time crunch. She really wanted to have her kids ASAP, maybe 2 or three pairs since twins were by far the more normal number, so she could have a preventive mastectomy before age 28 and save her own life.

Kevin would have been totally receptive to the idea had he known, but his only clue to her actions was her nervousness. Mads would literally blow him right in that room in front of everyone if it got her the chance to have a normal life. There was no limit, she'd already decided it, she would do Everything, to have kids and a chance at a future. Kevin was the key to that, and the second-best guy was way down her list. ]]

I regarded this news with some equanimity; I wasn't supposed to hear this NARRATOR probably but I did, and that was a hell of a thing to hear!

For sure, I'd be glad to help, but I didn't know if I knew Mads well enough to agree to marry her, just standing there, even given that the depth of her commitment was formidable.

The rest of the class was heading to their seats, getting some kind of computer tablet out of the organizer at the front of the classroom.

I didn't know what to do, so I winged it: "Tell you what. I think... I'd better spend a hot minute thinking on what my options are. Maybe... I could invite all-y'all over, for dinner."

(Where the phrase all-y'all came from, I didn't know. I didn't normally say that. I think Angela's kind of twangy accent influenced it, but I also had to consider that my dialogue was being written for me despite not being conscious of being manipulated.

This was dangerous territory for me. I might not be in control of my own fate.

This fear became laughable as I realized that since the previous night I was nowhere close to being in control of my own fate.

The girls accepted this as we were all shoo'd into our seats.

The chorus teacher, Mrs. Archer, started once we were in our places.

"First, class, some announcements. Mr. Cooper here, as the third-to-last person in this senior chorus group to turn 18, is being promoted to sensen, and we wish him well."

"Everyone here is in sensen now, except Erin Spoon and Jennifer Fork."

[[ AUTHOR: No no no, those are stupid names...]]

My memory shifted, what she'd said was revised to, "Mrs. Krall and Mrs. Dooby. But, I can mention that they were recently married and while we already congratulated them, they're not 18 yet so will have to exit the class now. We're going to have a sensen day."

[[ NARRATOR: Sensen was a group of senior-seniors, aged 18+ seniors, that had activities - either sponsored by the school or at off-campus gatherings - that were adults-only due to strict laws being in place to prevent certain kinds of nudity and sexual activity around those under age 18. These activities were well-shielded from the under-18 crowd and thus could be well over-the-top compared to the relatively tame under-18 parties and classroom activities. ]]

Memories filled in, mostly in a sane way, of hearing about parties I wasn't invited to, where rather risque things happened. I didn't hear details, of course, just that Something Had Happened, and oh-my-God, and wow-did-you-hear, but then I didn't hear more because, yeah, I wasn't 18 yet.

Secondly, and somewhat more oddly, other memories flooded in of seeing plenty (not tons, just maybe 5% to 10% of the senior girls) of sensen walking around the halls with anywhere from beginning-bumps to late-stage pregnancies.

The choral director's words about sensen were revised in my memory - that fast - to be a commonly known school group, not just something she was mentioning. I was pretty sure the NARRATOR or AUTHOR was doing something in real time, and I was getting the memories associated with whatever backstory they were inventing.

Revisions were happening quickly, and I was noticing, but wow, it kept me on my toes to figure out what was new and changed as it happened.

[[ NARRATOR: Some of the sensen activities were organized around ensuring the girls that wanted to get pregnant could do so. There were plenty of incentives and support for both those who were pregnant and the new moms among the senior class.

That support included in school child care while they went to classes, but it served the double purpose of helping younger students learn child development, early childhood education, workforce scheduling, etc.

Not everyone wanted to be a mom so quickly after age 18, but sensen was organized to help that along. There were great school programs that assisted completion of classes and college prep even for those who took off some time to have kids. ]]

Some images I got were of girls I knew to be seniors, in the hallways carrying infants, pushing small strollers with bassinets, having baby-bjorn front-slings, etc. Also interspersed were images of these girls nursing their infants in the lunchroom and sometimes at the back of class - the infants were brought in, they'd nurse, and someone would take the kid out again.

Needless to say, this hadn't happened at all, like, EVER, in my previously-lived actual life.

The two girls mentioned, Krall and Dooby, left the room, smiling, and I had a feeling they knew what was going to happen despite being under 18's, but I didn't know. Girls talked about a lot of things and I wasn't included in those conversations.

"Right. Now. We're going to do O-Brevs. Observed breathing, you remember the drill... Most of you do, at least. Tablets have your pairing and position. Kevin, your pairings were scheduled last year, so this isn't a random thing. Congratulations."

I nodded, confused but accepting, and looked at my tablet. It showed (same as everyone's) where to stand in the room, and the people we were paired with. I had Kirsten, Deb, and Allie. I vaguely remembered seeing this exercise from afar once, and I knew the theory but she explained.

"Right. Left shoulders touching, in a square. Right hand holding tablet. Untuck your shirt, give access. Left hand, reach up the shirt to touch the stomach of the person in front of you. Careful, forceful touch, no tickling."

She paused while we did this.

"If you want to shift your bra up to allow better access, feel free, but the point is to have the left hand thumb over the sternum and fingers along the ribs. This will let you feel their breathing."

She waited a second. "And... music's on your tablets. Good. We're going to run thru 'Fa Un Canzone', while having your partner press in, holding you to help you feel where your ribcage is while singing. The goal is, keep your ribcage OUT, inflated and up, for the first half of the breath, then slowly decline as you have to. This stresses the right muscles, you get better tone this way."

I did as ordered, and found the hand touching my ribcage had cold fingers - Allie was behind me, and she apologized. Kirsten was in front, and as I slowly put my hand up her shirt she shifted to give me better access. Tucking her tablet between her legs for a moment, she reached under her jacket and shirt behind her back, and unbuckled her bra.

Undoing several buttons on her shirt and pushing up her bra in front to be over the upper half of her breasts, she picked up her tablet again and proceeded as if this was perfectly normal.

Some of the other girls were doing the same thing.

I was tentative. I hadn't felt up that many girls... at least before this whole thing started, I hadn't.

Letting my hand go up, she spoke to me without looking at me. "Kev. Kiss me, quickly? I have a rule - no touching boobs without a kiss first."

Shrugging, I said, "Oh. Okay," and leaned over. She leaned back and turned her head, and I was treated to an open-mouth, soft-wet-lips tongue-soft-yes kiss with a moan and exhale in the middle.

Wow!

She didn't break it, so I had to, I felt nervous.

Pulling away, she stutter-breathed like this was a thing that had shot some excitement into her, and I was pretty sure I agreed with that idea.

My hand, guided by hers, pulled up her chest and up under her breast to cup it, holding.

Deb said, "No fair! I want him, too."

Kirsten said, "We switch, she's had us switch before."

The director said, "Now, BLEND. Soft but match volumes with your group. Feel their ribs move. Feel your ribs move under their palm."

Kirsten's breast was probably a full C cup, proud of her chest, firm to my touch and resistant to my squeezing. The corners of her mouth, that I could see, curled up and she nodded at me. "Cup? Cup me?"

I did as requested, supporting something that didn't need supporting but squeezing a little in the process.

BOOBS!!! I loved it.

We started singing. The tempo was very very slow, which was odd since the song was usually quite fast, but she wanted us to do this with good attention and I got that.

To me, Kirsten whispered, "Too gentle! Grab my boob, Kevin. Grab it, full on. Please?"

I complied. It was so fun! Her nipple was totally poking my palm.

Kirsten whimpered. "Pull... the nipple, gently..."

I did.

"Twist, slightly...?"

Kirsten whimpered and had trouble singing.

Deb's hand (I could see whose was whose) came in and then went down and pulled up on my pants, on my package, running over my very erect underwear-filler. I wanted to do something about that, for sure, but... when?

Softly, Deb said, "Kirsten. He's hard for you. He could stick this dick into you, right now, Kirsten. His hardness, pushing... Pushing up into you, Kirsten. Sliding, penetrating, filling the depths, making that empty spot... full... Kirsten."

Kirsten whimpered again and said (not quite as quietly as she should have), "Oh my God I want that dick. I need that dick."

Several people near us laughed and Mrs. Archer overheard us enough to look our way. It had been quiet, and we'd all been focused on listening closely to our partners.

We started singing again, feeling the music and being aware of both our own chest movement from breathing, as well as that of the person we were holding onto. At least, I felt the hand on my chest, and my own hand was clasped around the delightful full, soft, pliant and amazing breast of Kirsten.

I kneaded away, loving the sensuousness of it, the soft-pliable giving-yummy of it...

As she sang, my mind wandered to memories of her. I hadn't met her before in my previous life, but I had definite implanted-memories occur as I held her. Both of us apparently went to St. Albans on 3rd, and I'd known her from Catholic Youth for... forever. She was fun to be around, for sure, but I had to search in my mind for other times I'd seen her.

Flashes crept in of memories of her in the parish childcare center, where they let kids play and mess around as a daycare, while their parents are in the sanctuary. There were tons of kids at the daycare, but Kirsen was there, shepherding them to one group activity or another, or another time I'd seen her sitting and reading with a few kids around her. She was great with them, I had those memories flood in.

I'd also seen her with a school tennis-team outfit on, looking good with tight legs and a pert butt under the white short-skirts they made them wear.

I even had a memory float in of imagining her naked as I masturbated, and that was a good image, so obviously I had a history of fantasizing about her in this new existence.

All the while I was singing and remembering, my hand was moving. Kneading with fingers, pressing and pulling on the breast, rubbing my hand around to get the sense of the thing, making it into a cone and then caressing the undersides.

Kirsten's breathing was heavy and she'd stopped singing. I could tell - I was holding her chest and listening to her from inches away.

Allie's hand had started at my sternum and managed to proceed downwards. The braces (suspenders) that held up my slacks meant my waistline were loose enough for her to get her hand down.

And, she did put it down there, finding I was PLENTY hard. On finding it, she hesitated and withdrew quickly, but when I turned my head to her and said, "Keep going" (it felt really good to have my cock held), she did. Her hand wrapped around the head, then down the shaft making an OK around the shaft and starting to stroke up and down.

Maybe another minute of this and I was getting really uncomfortable, with a pressing NEED to put that thing somewhere.

Kirsten's earlier statement was figuring large in my mind.

Suddenly, Allie's hand pulled up and went back to my chest, and I saw Mrs. Archer appear by my side.

"Allie? Your hand was NOT on his chest."

"Ma'am? We have a problem. It's... a Problem, problem. Probably, like, really soon."

Mrs. Archer's voice cut through the low singing we had been doing. "Duh! Should have seen that coming. Fresh young breast and him, on SenDay ["senior day", first day after I turn 18 is a known thing, I 'remembered']. Egads - Medical excuse, for sure. Respite room... Okay. But.... just a minute..."

Turning to me, she pulled me aside, but as she did I had to let go of Kirsten and that was disappointing. Kirsten inhaled and mutter-whimpered a low-grunt at the loss.

We went over, the two of us, by the wall, with me facing the class and a huge boner popping a tent, pushing way out on the front of my pants. I knew I couldn't do much about it, and everyone already had to know, so that ship had sailed.

Quietly and close enough so only I could hear her, she leaned into my ear and whispered, "You're going to the respite room, Right Now. Thing is, you can bring either two or three with you, and there's ways to do that. I can pick for you - Kirsten's a given, she was obviously Proximate Instigator. I like you two together, too, think about her."

"Already been thinking."

"So, who else? You'll need, probably, at least two ejaculations to bring that down, if I know what GRIP does, and I do, I've been here long enough. Ug. Lost too many to prostate rupture. Okay, so who else? Any ideas?"

I thought.

She leaned in. The chorus continued to sing, switching to a beautiful Mendohlssen piece as she pointed at the board where she'd written that as next up.

Her voice went into teacher mode. "Listen. Your SenDay partners, lots of times, become your wives. Might be accidental, might be purposeful, there's things to think about. Who do you want to take with you, right now? Who do you want to wake up with, ten or twenty years from now? It's not gonna be the prettiest - beauty fades. Smarts stick around. Compassion is good. Who do you want?"

I thought about it. I had a bunch of images running through my head, of various memories of the girls I knew.

She interrupted me and asked, 'What's your criteria? It's gonna be them, over tonight for your SenSen dinner, who do you want there?"

For some reason, I spoke without thinking, but it was a deep unbidden idea, an ideal I'd had in the before-time, a long-held idea based on who-knows-what. I said, "Farm wife. I want a farm wife, or however many of them. Make do in a pinch, cope with anything, strong, capable, tidy, smart. That's what I want. Farm wife... wives."

She was obviously smiling, but I couldn't see her face, she was off my shoulder to speak in my ear. Prompting me, she said, "Someone... cooks, cleans? Makes a house a home? Makes your babies and keeps you fed? Solid ethics, raises solid kids?"

I chuckled, nodding and smiling, that she'd gotten it. "Yes. That's it, exactly."

"I can handle the invites, I'm SenSen leadership, kinda goes with being choral director, traditional. Okay... So... Kirsten..."

She pulled up her computer tablet and punched through some names. "Looks like, Allie, from this morning..."

I freaked a little - she knew about that?!?

... Of course she did.

"And, what about the three pledges from this morning, before school? That was reported, and they're registered as Intentional."

I didn't know what that meant, but obviously there was some SenSen stuff that went with the 'club' thing that was implied.

"Says here, polyset before school was Mary, Kelly and Brit. Refusing a SenDay first-prop would be... rude, unless you've known them to be unethical or something.."

"No, they're fine...?"

"Good. Added. And, Denise, from your gym class."

She did know everything!

"Definitely."

"Who from the library?"

"All of them."

"Great! I was actually going to bring one up in particular."

"Who?"

"Elizabeth Woolstonecraft. She was in chorus last year with you. I've been watching her, watching you, for 4 years now. She's got it. She knows what she wants, and that's you."

"But... I thought she was lesbian!"

She scoffed in a way that teachers do when students say something stupid and they don't want to SAY we're being stupid. "Total act. Well, sure, she might be, also, but she's watched you. Whatever you were doing in class, she was aware of it. Wherever you were, she made sure she could see who was with you. Not as a bad-stalker, more proper-stalking. And, more subtle. She's so gone, obviously deeply in love with you. If you don't pick her as a final, you're... You would be... unwise. That girl wants to have great-grandchildren with you."

Her smile told me she was holding back things she wanted to say, this wasn't the time.

"Huh."

"Okay, so if there's any more that you want at your SenSen Dinner, just say, 'Mrs. Archer' and they'll know what that means, and see me for details."

I nodded.

"So, for now?"

"Kirsten, and Mads. Make sure... You have Angela's, uh, polyset?"

"Of course, already on the list, with Camille, Deb, and Allie."

"Thanks."

She turned around and went to the conducting stand and pulled out three big plastic cards, twice the size of playing cards, blue, and two green ones. I got the blue one.

She handed one to Kirsten, saying her name, then walked over and gave the other to Mads. "Mads. Medcare, Respite room, stat. Now." Her voice cut through the singing, and I saw a lot of girls smiling, but some disappointed, too.

Kirsten and Mads got their things, as did I, and we left out the room. Behind us, Mrs. Archer changed the song to one that required faster staccato and I realized the breathing thing might be really useful - based on previous 'experience' in chorus that I didn't until then know I knew.

So... this skillset I was given included intuitions about how things worked, not just raw info?

Huh. I was impressed UNTIL I realized it was the same as having muscle memory from TaeKwondo thrown at me, or getting intuitions about how to approach thermodynamics problems. It was as if I'd taken the subjects and been around them for the implied amount of time, it wasn't just that I had a dream where I was that-thing, my brain really did have the experience set of BEING that thing.

In the moment, I followed Kirsten.

She knew where we were going - the respite room at the end of the practice rooms. It helped to have one close, I thought, and I'd fake-seen / implanted-memory-seen plenty of people go in there before...

This was entirely outside my experience! Going to a place, deliberately, to have sex?

Wow!

In the room (and I knew this from having investigated previously, my explorations had been put into my brainstem along with so many other things) was a bent-up bench like the one in the gym respite/shower room, plus a table for books and clothes, a sink for hand washing, a pile of towels, and a hamper.

Mads immediately started helping me take my clothes off.

Kirsten was tearing her stuff off with all due speed, but was folding things onto the side table as she did so. I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. She repeated - in a way that told me her mother had drilled it into her - "Always. Be. Tidy."

I knew the saying - and I liked that she was into that! My mom had always put more emphasis on keeping my room clean than I wanted, but I'd seen lots of pictures from girls of their rooms (which probably was intended to get my opinion on decorating style, maybe, or help me picture being in there with them). There was a wide leeway on what girls considered, 'clean', and a lot of it wouldn't fly with my mother.

I'm not saying I was a neat freak, but it's just... good to see that someone values it?

My own clothing was going onto the table quickly and that meant I sprang free of my underwear, to the intense looks of both Kirsten and Mads. They both pursed their lips and I was pretty sure they were intent on using me for... well, a known purpose.

I was okay with that!

Until then, I had seen precious few girls completely naked, so my perspective was limited. Even then, the sight of Kirsten's incredibly beautiful body gave me pause and I had to stare.

My voice probably betrayed an emotion. "Egads. You're... Beautiful!"

Kirsten did a happy-cringe and half-laugh, which told me she took that statement for the genuine appreciation it was, not just a thing randomly said.

I was looking at ALL of her - plus socks. I didn't see her feet, walking barefoot on the linoleum might not have been a good idea. It was, after all, a sex room.

She came up and kissed me.

Mads, not quite naked yet, said, "Kirsten is first, but I'd like... to be... in line?"

Looking over, I smiled and nodded and said, "Oh, yeah!" That was for sure, Mads was definitely in the 8.5+ range in attractiveness, but I also had a feeling (based on the NARRATOR's description of her motivations) that she'd be 'enthusiastic'.

Kirsten and I closed the gap and started kissing, my front turned to the side to prevent me bumping too much, but she moved and took me in hand. "Must..."

She sank down and looked me over, then opened her mouth and bobbed down on me, moaning in the process. From my perspective, all I saw was the back-top of her head, but the feelings?!?

I had to exclaim, it was too much - "Ohhh!"

Her mumble of, "Mmmm, Hmmmm..." met that as a reply and she started going up and down, then pulled off and licked up the side. "You... will need to be slow, to start. I'm a virgin, obviously, I'm not going to be used to this... size. My toy is... smaller."

"Okay?"

She pulled me towards the bench, a sloped slanted-up-back weight-bench idea but with a curved bottom and adjustment foot controls and knobs. It could be moved to raise or lower the end, to match hip-heights.

I knew how they worked from implanted memories of watching porn, but it's a different thing to have use for it in person. It'd been under a towel when I was with Denise after gym and I didn't need to adjust anything.

Mads covered it in towels, then stood back. Mostly she was adopting a more relaxed air of 'gonna watch', but then her hands started undoing her skirt.

Kirsten's pull was on me, to lie on top of her. "Missionary? Please? I want to look in your eyes?"

I was def okay with that, but I did take a moment to kiss down her chest as she leaned back, nuzzling a breast and pulling it into a cone to lick and flick.

She swooned.

I moved down, and wanted to get my face closer to where I'd imagined going so many times before - dipping down to kiss my way into real, live, sexy girl-parts.

Real life (versus drawings, pictures, videos, or even the artificial memories from anatomy class) made for so much better experiences. I could see everything, touch everything, smell... taste...

I knew some girls were sensitive or worried about how they smell or taste, so I made sure to compliment my way in, but this was just mostly a narration of my true amazement and delight at what I was experiencing.

With plenty of, 'Mmmmm' sounds, I liked it and said so and kissed my way in from the thighs towards the center. I'd read before that it was a good plan to stop just before getting there to build the tension, then come back in again. The second time, though, I kissed right next to her lips, and on the other side, and around, and then right over and on her lips, and then... licked up slightly.

'Mmm!!" I liked the flavor! Tangy and sweet!

Licking more, I didn't need to add to the puffy-out wet fullness there, this was only for my benefit really. It was seriously fun!

(Because, of course, licking pussy is fun!)

She squirmed, showing my power over her feelings, and I got a rush from knowing I could help her like that.

Her voice pleaded. "Now?... Please, now?"

I moved up, positioned, and as I did she brought her legs up and back. This gave me more access, but I was already at the entrance. I leaned over farther, to press my chest up against hers.

I felt my cock pressing right where it should be - right there, started at the opening of where it was going to go. I had to ask, again, feeling the weight of the moment. "Soooo... Now?"

Her nod and flared-eyes told me the 'yes' even before the word came out, but it did anyway: "Yes!!?!!"

I put my head by her shoulder, turned away so if she screamed I wouldn't get it in the ears directly, then... paused... then....

Pushed...

No...

Pushed again, harder...

BuRsssstTTTT and INNNnnnnn!!!

OhhhhhmyfuckingGodYssssss....

I'd done this before, on that day, even, but this was somehow different, it was (as I pulled my head away) face to face and personal and that never gets old.

The difference was that it was Kirsten, the Kirsten of such capability and Coolness and Rightness and yes, well, that's exactly where I wanted to be.

How could it be better?

I was WITH Kirsten. I was INnnn Kirsten, sliding up and in, my cock in her cunt, the head just - oh, that was soooooo goooodd - going in and grabbed by her pussy, her hot pussy, wet and slippery and right and gripping me.

It held me below.

Her arms held my chest.

I held her chest and torso and body and... penetrated her, into her, and her heart and mine and that was the way things should be.

Simultaneously with being so close with her, in the moment it came to me that my memories of her were implanted. I didn't really have the history that I supposedly had, and my mind flashed to the question of whether... that really mattered? Did it?

She felt that we had a connection. Her reality mattered profoundly. I had already become a not-virgin earlier in the day, but this was her first time so it had to count more for her than me. I wasn't irrelevant, but I did realize I needed to be hyper-attentive to her feelings even more than my own - a difficult task because the sensuality, the (fake? implanted?) emotional closeness, the face-to-face primal nature of the act just burst over me in overwhelming glory.

Were my memories and history with her any less valid just because they were implanted?

Really I knew I was being manipulated. But if that manipulation meant I felt an artificial closeness, did it matter how that closeness came to be?

Was I going to reject what felt like real love from her? Was I to reject my own soul-touching affection for her, on the abstract principle that it wasn't originally my life or memory? Was I supposed to interrupt this moment of transcendent beauty because of some idealistic notion of staying true to my original memories of who I loved and who I didn't?

There's no way I would do that.

Even if love is inspired by artificial sources, by an unreliable NARRATOR, it's still love, and love still matters. Of ALL THE THINGS, on this Earth, that matter, LOVE matters. OMG, Yes. Love matters.

Feeling her? Feeling her... closeness, and her body against me, and my movements, and her exclamations, all that mattered just as much as if I had really lived the life the NARRATOR described.

I didn't care.

I could choose not to care.

I was having sex with the body attached to a beautiful soul, and that's all that should count.

Breathing and starting to stroke in and out in small bits, I was getting deeper each time. Besides the omg greatness that was the inside bits, there was also the feeling of my hips against hers, tightly, completely seated in there, all the way in, she was all the way around me and we were Together.

Of course, together is two-gather, but it's also Being Joined, and there's really not words for that unless you're saying the word 'sex' and meaning the depth of emotion as well as the depth of pressing cock in pussy and sliding and loving it.

Sensations!

We went on for a minute or two or five, and I glanced over to see Mads was naked (but with socks) and standing with her butt leaned against the table but her legs spread, one hand at her crotch over a black landing strip making circles and dips, the other pulling at her breast. Her eyes had been looking at my ass, pressing into Kirsten, but as I glanced, she looked me in the eyes and smiled big with raised eyebrows.

That expression said, 'HOPE'.

She wanted this, too.

One at a time, I thought.

Going back to pushing into Kirsten, sliding in and out and pumping my way to ever-growing happiness.

She was getting happy, too.

Her breathing got stiff, and she started to clench me tighter, and tighter...

The world paused.

[[ NARRATOR: One of the hassles of sex in the modern age was the difficulty many women had in achieving orgasm. Generally it took too long, required additional stimulation, or was just turned off too easily by trivial distractions.

It's for this reason that it was an absolute godsend that one of the effects of GRIP was to dial up sensitivity and strengthen the sexual response cycle in women, primarily as a response to even tiny amounts of seminal fluid released as pre-cum before and during intercourse itself. It wasn't uncommon for women to pass out during strong orgasms, or to experience continuous overwhelming waves of orgasm during intercourse.

The upside or downside (depending if this was desired) was its influence on oxytocin and other 'love hormone' neurochemistry, switching ON the devotional and nesting responses. These previously were mostly observed during late-stage pregnancy, but were now a side effect of seminal-fluid-enhanced orgasms.

The GRIP effects on ovulation were also significant, reducing the number of ova wasted in useless bursts throughout life to save them for times of sexual activity and thus orgasms. The vestibules in the fallopian tubes, once merely a pausing-place for an ovum to wait for incoming sperm, expanded to ensure there was almost always an ovum there if the uterus was anywhere close to ready for implantation.

Concomitantly, this expansion also benefitted sperm longevity, feeding them and allowing them to remain viable in the vestibules for as long as 4 days instead of the previous two.

Another odd side effect was that for unknown neurochemical reasons, GRIP made women by and large immune to the effects of heroin and other opioids. Further research using data from this effect showed a general mechanism - and subsequent drug regimin - to cure and vaccinate for opioid and other addictions, something that had afflicted humanity since the beginning of time.

Since this drug regimin had second-order effects of blocking large-scale pain during childbirth, almost every woman was inoculated as soon as practicable. This put many anesthesiologists out of work, but they found other things to do.

In the case of Kevin's tryst with Kirsten, her buildup wasn't just causing the kind of masturbatory-style orgasm she normally experienced at home alone. Instead, the seminal fluid exposure into her reproductive tract was setting off a new-normal chain reaction of neurochemical changes that would transform her orgasms (over repeated exposure) into a wholehearted, utter-devotion love of Kevin.

It also was a rockin' good time for Kirsten, whose world was foundationally shaken by the brain shattering orgasm she experienced. ]]

Huh.

I resumed stroking into Kirsten as I had been, but as the NARRATOR said, her orgasm had started to shake her to and fro with some violent abandon.

I held on and grinned, she was a tiger.

Inside her, the clenching on my cock was distinctly there, not, there and not...

She came and was grunting up a storm, almost screaming, hold me super-tightly, throwing herself side to side and her head backwards as she tried to arch and failed.

In my memories of just that morning, making love with Ella for the first time in the library, the event shifted and instead of Ella grunting almost silently during our lovemaking, she came, loudly and forthrightly, deep guttural grunts of full volume at the joy of the event. This filled the library with sound, but I knew from other new memories that such things were absolutely, positively ignored by everyone nearby, as a matter of nearly universal social agreement...

This set of memories flowed into me in a flash, but I was busy.

In that moment, my own orgasm was getting ever closer.

The clenching continued even as she wrenched her body to and fro. The constrictions on my cock were clearly started and stopped, and while OFF was good, ON was even better! Pulses kept going as she kept going, about a second of clench and a second of less-so.

Her grunts and then screams, her orgasm, made my own so much in sync with her, I felt what she was feeling - the sheer ecstatic pure wondrous sensations...

My God this was great!

Almost there...

Then....

Then...

I admit, I yelled. "OOOhhhh FUUUuuuCK! URrnnnnngggg!!! URrnnnnngggg!! Uruhhhhhhhh, FuUUUuuuuukkkkkohhhhh FUUUUCkkkkkk.."

She was still coming, under me, and I was coming, too, INTO her and up her and on her and with her, joined and joining and hugging....

Yes, we were somewhat loud.

The rooms were obviously soundproofed, the foam on the walls did that, but still I had not been shy about making noise, it was too great, too overwhelming.

This was perfect.

I thought about Kirsten, as a person, more than as a girl I knew.

No, she wasn't a girl.

She was a woman.

I had helped that transition, maybe?

At least in my mind, that change was, yes, she's female, oh-my-god-yes, all the right parts. But the being-full, being RIPE, being well-stacked as a Complete Person? An Adult?

Yes.

She was that.

(all this was a dawning realization that came with me pushing in, hard and hard and up and in and clenching happy cum-spurting yes-sounding goodness, it was back-of-mind.)

How is it, that my brain still worked sometimes and I realized it at the most odd points?

Who knows how brains work.

Regardless, like the other times, I wasn't just coming, cumming, as in big long spurts. I was coming tons, way more than I had in my yesterday. My spurts weren't just haphazard and small bits of liquid as a tiny pulse of happy. This was LONGER, a shooting YES, an expulsion with the best possible electric-YES-cum-joy release ever.

If there's one thing I knew from jerking off (in the yesterday-me world), it was what orgasms felt like. This was Way Way Way Way bigger.

It was even bigger than that morning. Unwritten, maybe, the NARRATOR had helped men out with the depth of feeling, too.

I relaxed and collapsed on her, resting my full weight.

Next to me, Mads had walked up, and brushing up against my leg to give me warning, she started stroking my back gently. Her hands floated over my back, caressing and holding, squeezing to make sure I was real maybe. The touches were tender and conveyed an emotion.

First looking down at Kirsten, I moved my head to open my eyes and look into her face, into the face of a girl... a woman... that ... I ... loved?

Yes.

I loved her.

I realized this, it wasn't just random.

I didn't know her really at all, more than as an acquaintance, in the before version of me. But, in that moment of after-glow happy-happy, I felt it, the unmistakable connection, invisible threads of brain-to-brain, out of my face and into hers, the tug of togetherness.

There's no limit to loving. I could love her, too.

With that realization, I found my heart was growing, too, and... I loved some other people.

Looking over, I felt Mads' hands on my back, and I realized, I loved her, too.

I loved Liz.

I loved Ella.

I loved... Denise.

There were others. My heart really WAS growing.

I pulled away, and rose backwards, grinning like I was getting away with something, probably because I was.

Standing back up, I stood and breathed.

Mads shifted to be immediately behind me, supporting me. She kept rubbing my back, but then came around to the side and pushed her boobs into my upper arms as a side-hug.

Mmmm... Boobs.

I glanced over at her face and saw her smiling at Kirsten. She was genuinely happy for her. I got the vibe that she was being encouraging and part of a team that had the goal of everyone being happy.

Kirsten looked at her and smiled back. "Mads, you're next, but gotta say... Wow."

"Looked like it!"

Mads turned to me but looked down at my dripping cock, half-up but starting to curve-downwards at the end. Her voice was almost to herself, deciding things as she spoke, and taking charge of something she saw needed to be done. "Sir needs a clean-up."

That wasn't a 'Sir, you need a cleanup.' It was, 'Sir needs this', third-person about me, a statement of fact observed by her, a responsible person noting something that a thing had happened and there were obligations to fix that.

Except, despite it not being directed at Kirsten, she thought it was. Kirsten half-nodded and started to lean upwards to get up and come over to me, but was stopped as she saw Mads shift around. I, too, watched as she squatted down in front of me. Her fingers, only slightly cool, quickly took my length from the base and lifted.

She looked around at it, observing closely, then opened her mouth. She tentatively licked, then sucked in, and made an 'Mmmm...' yummy-sound.

Mads' fingers grasped around the base and pulled up, milking my cock to pull more cum out, maybe, but also getting any liquid on the surface up to her mouth. She licked her fingers and repeated the process, then pushed her head down to deep-throat me as best she could.

This made me step back, and after a few minutes, she was going to town with much better effect, returning me to fullsize in length and girth and definitely in rigidity.

Objectively looking down, I was pretty sure I was larger than I had been.

Her attempts at deepthroating me, however, failed. I was too big for that.

She seemed to acknowledge that she couldn't get down farther since I felt myself hit the back of her throat, and then curve a little, but she did try.

I had to give voice to what I was feeling." I'm loving this, it'd be great if you could get enjoyment out of deepthroating like this..."

[[ AUTHOR: That's such a great idea! Choking would be such a hassle...]]

[[ NARRATOR: Madison's first attempts at deep throating a cock were amateurish because she was, indeed, an amateur, but this changed as it did in all women after they'd swallowed a little sperm.

Physiologically, women's - and some men's - throats responded to the hormones in seminal fluid. Over the weeks that followed this exposure, additional connective tissue, muscle structures, and voluntary nerves, all grow to a 'final adult configuration'. The effect of this was to greatly enhance the ease and enjoyment of fellating a penis. Of course, the male receives additional stimulation from these better structures, but the main evolutionary effects were to enhance a woman's ability to keep him sated and safe from excessive seminal fluid buildup. ]]

What?

OMG!

This definitely didn't happen in my previous reality, but things were definitely different here, and getting more different-er.

Did I do this by thinking 'it would be great if'??!?

And, wasn't this inconsistent with the reason for the buildup in the first place by being some disease making mitochondrial DNA changes?

It's like the AUTHOR didn't remember.

If this was a book being written, was I the only one to see the inconsistency?

Besides... What would be the net effect?

Women would enjoy blowjobs more, it sounded like.

Would I like them more?

The blowjob I'd had from Denise that morning had been really powerful. And yet, it sounded like this change was... just now.

Same as after every NARRATOR speech, more memories rolled in that were (to me) obviously not original memories of that event. Some of these new images had overtones and feelings that comported with the new, altered reality of women's throats being internally reconfigured to drastically enhance the enjoyment - for them and me - of a blowjob!

Nothing looked different from the outside.

Everything still functioned normally for eating and breathing.

The only effects would be observed during fellating a penis, and then, additional muscles and structures that undulated and stroked would take effect.

My... physiology class had covered this?

New memories were still appearing.

Still, this was a... an odd thing to think about.

I wondered if, with this new idea, if it was possible to measure the physical change to a throat and determine if a woman had given a blowjob before. If so, all those puritans who were obsessed with their virginal daughters remaining 'unspoiled' until marriage - they'd have to deal with the reality of blowjobs being given.

Of course, the whole idea of staying virgins until marriage was kind of a patriarchal old-men-in-charge thing and I somehow doubted those ideas were still in force given the demographic shift towards societies mostly being women.

Anyway, back to the events.

Once she was done trying to blow me, Mads looked over at Kirsten, still trying to lean up but still with her back against the bench. Mads stood and faced Kirsten and stood up, formally, her back straightening and her arm crossing her chest to cup her own breast and point the nipple at Kirsten.

Kirsten's eyes got bigger as she did this, a half-worried half-excited look.

Mads said, "I accept rites if you are Prime. I defer to present surfeit authority, by previous copulation. Will you consider polyset, negotiation phase today?"

This obviously meant something, but I wasn't involved, mostly.

Kirsten's face considered, but she shook her head no. "I accept polyset, but I'm not prime. I know that much already. But, polyset, sure. I've thought about it with you, but... we never got together on that."

Mads was smiling also, this was good news for her. "Excellent. May I demonstrate seal-worthy notice?"

Kirsten said, "Sure. 10 seconds is fine."

Mads nodded, then dropped to her knees in front of Kirsten and kissed up her thighs, and then sucking and licking on her sex, freshly packed full of my well-spurted load. As she licked, she held up her fist and then turned it palm up.

Kirsten started counting. "Zero, One, Two, Three..."

She kept going, to ten, and her face twisted in obvious collapsing enjoyment of what Mads was doing.

Finishing, Mads stood and went over, getting Kirsten's underwear, then picking up a panty-shield she'd gotten out ahead of time.

This girl was prepared!

Kirsten laughed and thanked her, getting up from the bench with a groan.

Taking the proffered items, she pulled on the underwear, but stopped with it up to her knees.

Putting a panty shield into underwear was a process I wasn't used to watching but it made perfect sense for keeping things aligned since trying to put something in the crotch of underwear that you were trying to hold with one hand would never work.

Plus, I'd put lots of liquid in there.

She got dressed, but as she did it Mads led me to the bench to lay me down.

I did as asked and lay down, but Mads wasn't done, kissing my chest and making a stay-there chest-pat, then going over to the sink and rinsing her face off with water and rinsing out her mouth.

Then, coming back, she leaned in and we started kissing. It was tentative, with her, eyes open, wondering at me, wanting to experience all there was that I could give her.

Breaking that after a few minutes, I felt her hand move down her front, and I knew she was touching herself.

Her head moved more and she bent down, then re-applied lip-lock to my half-up and started calmly bobbing her head.

My stiffness had barely declined, but it returned to ramrod-pointy-clenched and I was ready for her to 'use for a purpose'.

I was okay with that. She had priorities, after all, survival ones. There's no question, when it's a matter of life and death for her, you do the thing.

Of course, 'the thing' had side benefits for me, too.

The side responsibility of having kids with her?!?

My mind wasn't quite wrapped around that, but it appeared there were limited needs for me to do the kid-chasing if polysets mutually supported such things.

My brain shifted gears back to the OMG sensations of being blown! Oh.... Yeah....

After a minute, I heard a grunt and looked down.

There, in somewhat of a shock-move, I saw Kirsten behind Mads, reaching around to cup her breast but pulling and twisting the nipple, kissing her shoulder, and... her other hand was down?

Was Kirsten feeling up Mads' pussy?

Oh, Wow!

Looking better, downwards, I could see her hand moving there, and Mads' breathing was stuttering like she was getting a good diddling from Kirsten's fingers.

Kirsten said, almost sultry and definitely appreciative of beauty in front of her, "Oh-kay... Kev, she's ready for you. You want her on her back, or on top of you?"

I could just shrug, feeling the wonderment of a great blowjob and being distracted. "Whatever's easier."

Mads pushed me back to be lying on the bench, then stood up and threw a leg over to straddle me, her legs barely reaching the ground on either side of the bench.

My legs were down and on the floor, but the back was leaned up enough so I could see and ogle the beautiful boobs in front of me as she swayed. They were dangling slightly as she moved, shifting upwards to get positioned and in the process making tickling-happy feelings with her nipples on my chest.

Looking at me, she said, "Gentle goes it, you know. But.. Please, do whatever you want? It's fine, I'm... just so happy to be... with you."

She was super-nervous, and yet mostly-confident seeming at the same time. Both emotions were playing out. It was like she had planned this but the stress of the moment was obviously a factor.

Her hand found me and put me at her entrance as she looked down, then she was there, and ready. Her face found mine, her eyes found mine, and we connected.

I had to smile.

I realized, I knew her well enough. I loved Mads, too.

I said so. "I love you, Mads."

Her smile was almost demure, but she shrugged it off, she was busy, preoccupied with a really big thing she had planned. "Oh, I know." Getting set, she obviously steeled herself to the pain that she knew she'd feel.

I wasn't sure if she'd scream, losing virginity involved some tearing, sometimes, of hymens. I knew that much.

I knew a hell of a lot, actually, even before this thing started, but the world was changing and I had to hope what I knew was still useful and accurate.

She was ready. "When?"

I nodded, and leaned up, and she leaned down, and we kissed.

Unkissing meant eye-lock. I said, "On three. One.... Two.... Three."

She sat down on me hard as I pushed up on three, and instead of some kind of bursting, I went into a super-tight space, farther than I'd thought I might, but held like a tightly-clenched fist all around me.

It was much the same feeling as before, in different pussies that day, but welcome and beautiful and all-encompassing and that was Just Fine with me.

We relaxed in the moment and just let our breathing happen.

"I - am - a woman - now."

"Oh. Glad to know. Was this in doubt?" My carefree happy voice was balanced by my gently caressing her back, stroking up and down with some emotion playing in the touch.

She saw my eyes and said, "Once I decided? No. No doubts when it comes to you. All-In. I'm... Yours now. All that I have, all that I am. You're, just... Right."

There's no way to respond to a statement like that except, Kiss The Girl.

I did.

As we moved, she started shifting up and down, riding me, giving some motion, some pushin-to-the-cushion, and I was slipping up and down her, INNNNNN and out, Innnnnn and out...

Her hip-tilt moved in a way that didn't shift my in-out at all but apparently gave her some different sensation inside. I let that go for a bit, but it got to be too little and I wanted stroking so I started pushing up with my hips.

She got the message and made the strokes longer.

I wondered if she was going to come.

Her breathing started getting heavier. She was getting closer.

Would she?

Would this... happen?

OH, yeah!

She came. She came Very Very Loudly!

Because, of course she did, the NARRATOR had said that was the new normal, I should expect it. I kind of did, but at the same time, it's one thing to intellectually know and another thing to experience a beautiful girl riding your cock and grunt-shouting an announcement to the universe that she was at a pinnacle.

Her activity on me, the quivering inside-her-pussy clenching Yes! Yes! Yes! had an effect on me, on top of all the squirming and excitement. I loved that writhing, it was a trip to know I could help her have that joy.

Oh, YEAH!

I came, too. Again, LOUDLY.

It'd been over five minutes, probably longer than with Kirsten, but it was just as good, and I held her and pushed into her with maximum-power push-grunt happiness-spurting, the waves of happiness rolling over my consciousness in ways that almost were like alternating a waking up and sleeping cycle, leaving and rejoining reality.

Spurting, clench thrust-clench-thrust Ohhhhh urnnnnnng yeah, Immmm yessszzzzz right, there.

We slowed on each other, grinding and holding and being Right and Perfect and glorious.

The start-after was: Breathing. It was shock and waking up and takeover and awake-shock again.

The middle-after was still sort-of-middle as moments of partly-cum, partly after-cum. Breathing was stutter-inhale resets on my muscles, an opening up in the aftermath, a feeling and a physical motion and an ecstasy-echo-sneeze-clutch of greatness, God incarnate in our bodies together.

I knew I loved Mads just as much as anyone, certainly as much as Kirsten but in a different way. It wasn't as deep a feeling, there weren't as many little strings tying me to her in places at times of memory and observed-life.

So we just breathed.

The after-after was starting to come to realizations that we were where we were again, that life was going to continue, and I had done what REALLY needed to be done.

Mads bent in and kissed me, long and slow and languid, unhurried, and I fell into the sensations without urgency to move myself. I just received her kindness, our parts still joined and any small motions shooting sensual-ultra-pleasure right into an electric core part of me.

She was giving me power, this way.

I was powering-up, despite having been 'spent', I had gained by joining, and that was all for the better.

My hands glided over her back, and down to her butt enough to cup her butt cheeks and pull them apart. "I like this part. In HERE, in the center?"

My eyes connected with hers and she grinned back.

"Yours. That middle part is yours. I like when you... Fill me. I'm... complete."

"Complete? I think you have some bits missing still. We both still need to work on that Mendholssen piece."

Kirsten, leaning up against the table, stifled a laugh. "You don't have to do squat, Kevin. The piece is mostly Sopranos and you're just the rhythm section."

This was a frequent jibe of one of the soprano girls, a hot-blonde who turned me off with her mostly-fake way of handling the world. She could hold notes, sure, making pretty noises, but she probably hadn't had an original thought in her life.

This was not a secret but her insults were (to me) background noise.

Mads kissed me as a peck and then pulled off. She inhale-whimpered, only to be met with a handful of toilet paper handed to her by Kirsten.

I was going to move but Kirsten then came over and shushed me (though I wasn't saying anything) and motioned for me to lie back.

She bent over, her school suit-jacket opening slightly, and pulled my length upwards from the base, sniffing first, then licking up along the side of my length several times.

Of course, a thought occurred, so I said it out loud. "When Someone is Giving You a Blowjob, You Say, 'YES!'"

She giggled, and I heard Mads giggling, too, getting out her own underwear and panty liner and doing the cleanup thing on herself.

Soon Kirsten had bobbed her head down (not very far, I was too bulbous or wide or something), but she got it all clean and handed me a towel. "Dry."

It was a command to get up disguised as a factual statement. The thing was, I was absolutely okay with being bossed around a little.

I got up.

Kirsten grabbed a wet towel from the table where she'd wetted and folded it, and started wiping down my body, my back and my package, all of it.

Then, it was time to get dressed, and we did,

And it was time for kisses,

And...

The bell rang.

Timing was perfect.

== Chapter: Planning for the Evening ==

Walking to my next class meant really walking to lunch, but I got stopped at the exit to the music hallway by Mrs. Archer again.

I stopped, Mads kissed me and left, then Kirsten did the same. I stayed behind, Mrs. Archer pulled me off to the side.

"Kevin. So you know, I wasn't kidding about dinner tonight. You might already know this?"

"Not really. I mean, I've heard, but didn't know..." I meant, specifics.

"Most everybody, sen-day night, the night after their first full day as sensen, they have dinner. At their house, almost always, everyone comes over. Rarely is it a restaurant, too public. So, everyone comes over, you can talk out what your polyset is going to be. Rules and Patterns, gotta hash that out. Sometimes there's negotiation, but usually that's deferred. Makes sense?"

I thought about it. For sure, it did. It really had to be there, and then. "Guess so."

She looked up and to the side. "I remember once, hearing, a guy chose to do this ahead of time, but that was because there was some surgery in the family coming up. It's kind of tradition, so... has to be...?"

"Gotcha."

"Arrangements are, yeah, pretty much already done, probably for weeks now, by your family. You have parents?"

"Just my mother. Divorced."

"Just as well. Sometimes if you have sisters, they help, too, maybe with people they know."

I remembered that morning, and chuffed, things were falling into place. "Definitely."

"Expect, given your, uh, popularity? You'll have, maybe twelve? Fifteen? It's usually something capped by the family, or by you, but it doesn't sound like you've thought much about this, and that's kind of unusual."

Not knowing how to respond, I came up with the truth: "Complications."

"Just as well. So, I'll see you tomorrow, and if you have any worries, you can message me - school SMS or chorus-chat, I'll respond quickly and DM you back asap."

I nodded, and she was done, so I just said thanks and left - I had to get to lunch, I was hungry.

In the lunchroom, things were different, in a big way.

Instead of long tables, there were mostly circular ones, or U-shaped ones so more people could sit facing each other.

Getting in the lunch line, I was quickly embraced by Danielle, who guided me to my 'new' table. Instead of eating with my (now-nonexistent?) D&D club friends, I directed towards a circular table with familiar faces.

Mostly I was surprised to see, and NOT surprised to see, Liz, seated right near the open spot that was obviously supposed to be for me - and even had a placecard with my name.

Liz had been a part of my lunch group in my previous life but very much in the end-of-table crowd with two other girls. Those girls weren't around so I didn't know what was up there.

Various trays were set out, and everyone had seating cards like mine, written on little folded pieces of paper. Someone had put some effort into this.

Liz was next to me, and pointed to my already-filled tray of tossed greens, a chicken-salad sandwich, etc.

Before too many others sat down and just after I got settled, she arranged the stuff on her tray and casually asked me, "So, Kev, I heard your shot a juicy load into Kirsten AND Mads just now. Got 'em off, too, screamin' wheelies in the Big-O department."

I smiled. "News travels fast around here."

"Oh, yeah, I hear lots of stuff. You haven't switched to sensen health class yet, gonna have a good time there. We got to palpate some wrinkle-fest hairy scrotums when we got the second guy in our class."

She wasn't going to stop trying to get my goat, so I had fun with it. "Yeah, well, I guess I'll find out when I get there. Did they taste good? The ballsacks? Lie back and let them hang in your mouth for a bit, swirl 'em up like swirling your tea, upside down?"

Liz chuffed; maybe she was surprised but I could never tell. Her eyebrows showed confusion. "Both testicles at once? Ballsacks are bigger than that."

I smiled. "There's your advantage, being a bigmouth."

She laughed and I laughed with her, this was good fun.

A few other girls came up and sat down with us. Ella, from the library, Kelly and Brit from the morning, and a few others I barely knew.

The topic of the day was how to best prepare brisket, a type of food that's hard to eat because it's a tougher cut of meat. Per the conversation, it's usually turned into corned beef, but Ella was Jewish. Her tradition was to have a great version of it for Passover dinners, which she called a 'seder'.

There were lots of rules for that meal, she said. Short but specific prayers had to be said for lots of things, but since there were so many they passed the responsibility around the table, reading out of a booklet that had lots of corny illustrations.

Of course there are family traditions, and one of hers was that sometimes they said the prayers in silly accents like a pirate or a New Yorker or whatever someone was inspired to do. She said it's really oddball to hear someone speaking Hebrew with a pirate accent and adding, 'arrrrr!' to the ends of the phrases.

It was a really good lunch and I enjoyed the camaraderie. They seemed to like chatting with each other and I could be mostly quiet at the edges and contemplate the vast differences between what my life had been and what it was becoming.

Some of the polysets in the lunchroom were married couples since one or more of the girls were pregnant and the guy in the group kissed all of the girls before they got up and left to go to their separate classes. Taking a semester or even a year off to have a pregnancy or two and restarting classes to ensure they graduated meant some of those girls were 19 or even 20.

Of course I had memories of these things implanted so it wasn't that unusual. Still, seeing the family groups of seniors and tight-knit groups of other students? It was definitely a challenge integrating this into my everyday life and expectations.

When it was time to go, I got up and took my tray to the clean up window. There was a wine line so I had to wait but things started going faster when someone said, "Make room, it's Kevin."

Apparently I was known, even among Non-Senior girls.

One girl complimented me by saying she really loved the jazz piano piece I did the other day, whenever that was.

I had no idea what that meant, except that the NARRATOR would undoubtedly fill me in on it soon.

== Chapter: Sensen Health Class ==

After lunch I headed out to my next class: Health.

I'd had health class and I remembered it from my real sophomore year. We had covered bone and muscle names, common ailments and diseases, took our blood pressure, learned about birth control and reproduction, listened to anti-drug messages, etc.

I was almost to the classroom when the NARRATOR spoke again. Everyone stopped, including myself. I could move, probably, but it seemed like I had to stop, so I did.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin's under-18 health class had fewer and fewer students as fellow-classmates aged into the sensen-level health class, until he was nearly the last one left. There were a variety of things age-appropriate to sensen that couldn't be covered until then.

Comprehensive topics on sexuality and relationships led the list. These had gotten some pushback initially from conservative groups but practical matters - GRIP versus human extinction - won out, and most societies became far more liberal. It's far easier to enact universal healthcare, UBI, climate change mitigation, universal childcare assistance, and school funding reform - among other liberal causes - when there's a pandemic on and when there's more women to displace a conservative patriarchy. ]]

As the NARRATOR's words ended, we resumed going into class, but my memory was flashing ultra-fast with images of sex-ed classes taken previously that came across as mundane, but to my context of my Life-Before, I felt amazed and enlightened.

Relationship argument rules, anatomy (abstract versions at least), stimulation techniques, child-development and parenting tips, pregnancy and childbirth complications with real stats, all these were covered with the forthright clarity that only dumb high school quizzes can reinforce.

I sat down in class.

It was odd, but I was the only one that was preoccupied. Everyone around me went on quickly with their motions. The obvious reason was that reality had shifted early in the past and I was the one moving bodily into the altered-now, with all the implications and subtle effects already in place.

It made sense. If the NARRATOR had said, 'redhead freckles go away over time like a tan', I wouldn't see them go away in real time, they would already be gone and I'd notice the change as a slide-shift in my perspective of the world.

(To say my life was being upended every time the NARRATOR spoke would be a HUGE understatement.)

The rest of the class filed in, one other guy and maybe 20 girls. The teacher, a 20-something just as fit and frankly, just as gorgeous as any of the girls in the class, called us to order and handed back quizzes they'd taken previously.

Being new I hadn't taken that quiz but the teacher told me as a side comment I would have to take it later after I'd had a chance to review the material. Coming in late to the class wasn't an excuse for skipping topics, she was adamant that the material was some of the most important that we'd ever learn in school for practical living.

The quiz that they'd taken was on paper. Some classes used tablet devices, others used paper, with no reasons given. It wasn't consistent, but I had to file away the urge to draw conclusions from that since the teacher was pulling up her shirt.

"Right. It's Wednesday, time for our weekly breast and testicular self-exam. Cubbies are on the right, towels on the table. We'll keep doing this all semester, people, gotta make it second nature to do it regularly."

She motioned to some cubby hole shelving to her right, and everyone stood up in the bored and put-upon ways that we all adopted when confronted by repeated boring tasks.

I hadn't disrobed like this in class before, since I had no implanted memory of doing that, so that was new. Still, somehow, it made sense, and I had a vague expectation that this was coming that certainly originated with the NARRATOR's implanted memories.

The girls just took off jackets, ties, tops, and bras; the other guy was taking his pants off, too, and I saw I needed to do that also. If we were going to do testicular self-exams, that would need to be done while naked.

Seeing this much skin got me interested again, but I was somewhat fearful given I was disrobing more than they were. I'd estimate I was halfway up, a good enlargement but definitely aimed out and down, enough to be proud of, maybe.

In this new reality, just having had sex, twice, in the previous 2 hours, was no barrier to having it again. My old ideas were based on old info; as the cartoon quote went, "Snu-Snu? The spirit is willing but the flesh is soft and spongy."

The teacher had us all move desks (chairs with armrest desks) out of the way, and we stood in lines as she walked around and watched us. The girls raised one arm and started feeling under their armpits, then along the side and tops of the breast, and around.

There were quite a variety of boobs there, and WOW that was fun!

Even with being in this altered reality, Boobs Are Cool!

There was one difference with what I'd seen before in porn: Nothing Sagged. In my previous reality, during porn-stroking I'd seen lots of boobs, and anyone over 20 that had any size at all, had a sag to them. The sag showed as a fold under the breast, but it was definitely missing in both the girls I was looking at and in the sweetly-endowed teacher. Her breasts were C or D sized but pointed way out from her body in a defy-gravity way that I just wanted to caress....

Egads. Gotta focus, I realized.

Once we were done with our own (and I did the same thing on my own chest after the teacher told us that men could get breast cancer, too, just that it was exceedingly rare), both Dwight and I were directed to practice on a volunteer.

I happened to be standing next to Carrie, who had B-cups that she taught me to make pressing-circles on to find under-flesh bumps. I didn't find any. She said of course, but had me proceed all around the breast until I'd gotten it all. There were thicker parts and I was confused about those but she clarified that was normal and part of the way the milk ducts work.

Dwight didn't need explanations, he'd done it before, and the other girls were doing it on each other as well.

This made sense if people were living in polysets and women would be intimate with each other enough such that knowing how to self-exam (other-exam?) on their partner's breasts would come in handy.

After we'd done ourselves and another, the teacher asked Dwight and myself to come up to the front.

The girls moved and we came up. I was more than half-up since I'd just been feeling boobs and it was Very Very sweet to do so.

She had both of us walk up on small 3-stair platforms and then face the class.

My dick was partially up, as was Dwight's. It's not that I was particularly interested in what his dick was doing, but we were kind of out there in public and it's hard to NOT notice when it's hard, so to speak.

"Dwight, you've done this before. Kevin, first you're going to do your testicular exam, then the girls are going to repeat it so they know what they are feeling and can identify problems later."

Of course they would, I thought. Anyone giving a beej should definitely know what normal and abnormal testicles felt like.

"Everyone, sinks are over there, wash your hands now. Warm water, please."

The girls went to do this, while the teacher wiped her hands on a hand-sanitizer towelette, and guided us (really me) through carefully feeling each testicle, where the vas deferens was, was there any section that was painful (no), were they the same size as before, etc.

Dwight and I both said yes they were the same size, but I knew mine were at least double if not triple their previous size.

As the girls came back, she pointed out that just like breasts were different sizes left-to-right, most testicles were different sizes, too. For my benefit probably, she noted that they'd felt that on Dwight before, but here was another example. Perfectly normal, she said, variations like that all the time.

This version of health class was actually informative.

All hand-washed, the girls lined up in front of us and were staring rather intently at our packages. I saw some pursed lips, some definite interest as 'want', but more than a few girls had rings on so I presumed that meant they were already in polysets with some other guy who got to experience the glory that was their body, in front of me (at least the naked top half).

"Right. We now have more than Dwight to practice on. After this, we'll need volunteers for respite, usually happens, I'll pick... Oh, Soonyo, I see you're here for Kevin. Good."

Soonyo was the one of the girls in the two polysets from chorus, who I didn't have much history with either in my previous or this altered reality. She was Korean-American, I knew that much.

Since my revised life-history didn't include knowing Korean anymore - that had been changed - I'd have to pretend to now know how to speak it with her, no matter how much I wanted to show off and impress her with it.

My attention was brought to immediately-forward, looking down at the first girl in line. She got her face very close, then reached out and lifted my penis out to the side so she could feel my testicles.

This has a way of focusing my attention!

The girls took their time examining me. Most lifted or touched my penis even if it wasn't necessary, and I respected the interest in seeing what it felt like, I'd certainly want to if the roles were reversed.

I considered it.

Had I ever felt an erect dick before, that wasn't my own?

Who was I kidding, not a chance.

Still, it did intrigue a little, what it was like. Probably just about the same as feeling myself. I knew I wasn't gay, not that there was anything wrong with that, it was an idle curiosity but also one where I found myself second-guessing my motivations despite the obvious sexy female beauty and cool-nakedness around me.

Huh.

When the girls felt my balls, sometimes I had to tell them to be more gentle, but most were pretty tentative to begin with. They all got a chance to feel around under the watchful eyes of the teacher, who noted the hair growth patterns (out of the skin nearly sideways on the scrotum), how crinkled and expansive the scrotum was, and how things should feel inside.

Despite being gentle, after a while they were getting a little achy. I didn't usually feel them up that much and they weren't used to it.

The thing was, it was a scientific exercise. I didn't feel threatened or humiliated at all These girls were sincerely interested in what they were seeing and how it all functioned, very appreciative, and attentive to details with eyebrows furrowed in concentration as they looked carefully.

Dwight was getting similar treatment, though they were less attentive on him since I was pretty sure they'd examined him weekly since the class started.

Once they'd all had a chance, the teacher had Dwight and myself go through a door in the back of the room to a set of other small rooms, each with doors. Of course, we were accompanied on this trip by a girl for him, and Soonyo for me.

Soonyo was very nice about it, but was businesslike, and had me sit on a towel on a nice chair. Her hair was already back in a scrunchie, so she set to work quickly giving me a blowjob.

A BLOWJOB! DURING CLASSTIME!

Well, not IN class, but everyone knew why we were going through that door.

This was very, very, very different than my previous reality. To say this never happened would be absolutely and emphatically accurate.

I closed my eyes.

Soonyo's attentions were not expert at all, she was kind of clumsy, and her teeth brushed my glans a few times, but her enthusiasm helped.

After maybe 5 minutes of her sucking and jacking, I came, but instead of swallowing, I saw through squinty eyes she had covered the end of my penis with a collection-condom. Memories of what those were popped up in my head. She was getting a sperm sample.

I just kept coming.

There was a lot of fluid, for sure, and it was cool to see how much more there was. I was comparing to my yesterday, since in every previous time that day so far it had been IN someone or quickly swallowed.

Finished, she lay her head on my cock for about a minute to let me breathe and catch up with wakefulness again. That led to her dropping the sample condom into a hard-plastic container and screwing on the lid, then on it writing with a sharpie.

As I stood, she stood on tiptoe (she was shorter) to kiss me.

That was sweet.

I liked her attitude and her smile. She seemed quite genuinely happy to be helpful.

I was happy to be helped!

We went back into the classroom, and she handed off the container to the teacher, who handed it to another girl (dressed by now, everyone was except me) who headed off nearly at a run to 'Room H'. The nurse's office was room-H, though it was several rooms not just one, I had implanted memories of being in there.

Dwight came out right after that and we got dressed.

[[ NARRATOR: the next class topic, licktek, was familiar to everyone as a universal subject in sensen classes since the beginning. Licking Techniques, really oral sex on a woman, required very specific terminology to allow for people to request specific actions.

Licking descriptions required: Pressure, Duration, Length, and Flatness.

Pressure was aways Hard-Mid-Light. Duration was Fast-Norm-Slow. Length was Full-Reg-Short-Flick. Flatness was Flat or Point. Only those words, in that order, were correct. Any modifiers (up, down) applied to a right-side-up vulva (clitoris at the top), even if in a 69 upside-down position.

All the girls knew this. All the guys knew this. The sensen class was practice-on-partners but on their hands between middle and ring fingers, palm down. ]]

The girls paired off when the teacher announced licktek, and everyone took each other's hands and did the things called out by the teacher. Mid-Fast-Reg-Flat. Hard-Slow-Full-Point. Light-Fast-Flick-Point....

We did that for maybe ten minutes and class was over. I wasn't any good at it but it was known I was a beginner.

== Chapter: Calc 3 ==

My next class, Calc3, was with my previous math teacher, Mrs. Hellas. She was very, very Greek, in that her skin was olive colored, she talked with a Greek accent, and she wore floating dresses that could be called tunics complete with print designs that reminded me of Greek restaurant decor. Why? I had no idea. She just was always that way, and no matter how odd the world had become for me, she was a constant of oddness and fun in the day.

I met Darlene, 'Darr', and Monica, in class, when they pulled the chairs away and motioned me over in a practiced way that new brain images filled in as 'what we always did'.

Most of the class was pretty mundane. We went over things I somehow was very familiar with, thanks to the new NARRATOR-provided memories of having done exceptionally well in previous classes.

When the bell rang, I headed to my next class (new to me but old from implanted memories), AP European History.

[[ AUTHOR: No No NO! Bad idea. Have to give him a useful skill. Plumbing? No... Better? Aero Spacecraft Design? Plasma Physics? Fusor Construction? Child Development? Programming?... Ug. ]]

Each of these phrases had just the right pause after it, and I was overwhelmed with information and skillsets, for each class As She Said Them. Egads.

I was full of this info!

What was a fusor...? OhMyGod, it was theory and applied-tech of building a working model of a lithium-hydrogen fusion generator! I even muttered the word, 'Fusor?!?' out loud.

The implications of this were HUGE.

Perhaps my saying it out loud decided the matter. Or, maybe that was a decision of the NARRATOR or AUTHOR and I was just giving voice to what they put in my brain. I had no way of knowing if I was the person deciding anything.

So... I was headed for Fusor Construction class.

We were building fusors all right, in an auto-shop environment because it was exactly the auto shop. There was even a car off to the back, but half the building was taken up by equipment and storage for components, big-screen computer monitors for showing what was going on and how it should work right, etc.

Our class had built one, the previous (fall) semester, but it had to be tuned and optimized, and that took time, as did fixing problems the teacher gave it so we could learn to spot them.

My memory filled in parts where I'd 'seen' rockets take off with them, lifting large payloads to bases on the Moon and Mars. In my previous reality, we had NONE of that. No bases, no presence outside of low Earth orbit ("LEO") space station that was meager and minimal.

I paid a lot of attention because this was seriously cool, but also because I wanted to fly up there someday.

Based on these new memories, most men weren't allowed to fly into space, they were too valuable on Earth.

As the bell rang, that was the last class for the day, and I was off for... track practice?

Just as I got to the hall, the world froze again.

== Chapter: After School Athletics ==

[[ NARRATOR: Shortly after GRIP changed the world, new sports had to be developed. Most people suffering the after effects had large amounts of physical energy they needed to work off. Over their lifetimes, they had a continuing innate urgency to do at least an hour of strenuous physical activity a day.

This energy wasn't just instant, it was matched by profoundly extended stamina in both men and women due to mitochondrial efficiency gains. While sports records weren't always broken, the median level of performance in both men and women increased to levels previously found only in high-level male athletes.

The most simple way to make sports more strenuous was to combine them, so at the high school and collegiate levels the USA focused on octathlon. This was scored as lowest-score-wins, of the sum of the places-taken for each event. The sports were:

● 1 5k run

● 2 300m low hurdles

● 3 Archery

● 4 200m freestyle swimming

● 5 Gymnastics floor exercise

● 6 TaeKwonDo Forms

● 7 Yoga

● 8 Piano

Individually each sport took strenuous practice, but combining them required both endurance training and skills training. This gave high school (and collegiate) athletes the choices they craved in doing hard but interesting things.

Piano had replaced a race involving walking on hands called 30m Halk ('hand walk'), which wasn't well liked due to it making people's shoulders uncomfortably large, and being risky for pregnant participants. Pregnancy-handicap was a separate bracket for women since center-of-balance shifted significantly and up to a quarter of college-aged participants competed in one of the 8-15 and 16-23 weeks categories.

Foursome teams were also a category at the collegiate and pro levels, scoring the top two places of each four person team and allowing some specialization. Collegiate intramurals usually were married subsets of four, though some IM leagues allowed up to 12 women in a polyset marriage to compete but ignoring the bottom (highest) two places in adding scores from each event.

Steroids, having a strongly bad effect on pregnancy and prenatal health, were not just banned but shunned. Universal free healthcare meant required weekly health screening for every student and monthly screening for adults, which saved large numbers of lives by detecting warning signs very early.

Second order effects were the nearly complete elimination of STDs and other low R-naught communicable diseases.

Octathlon varied slightly around the world. Canadian versions included speed hockey, which was a racing sprint around the 'opposing net' (really just a cone) and back, throwing a puck through a small target hole mounted 4 meters overhead, and repeating this 5 times. There was considerable skill involved, but no fistfights.]]

Standing there listening to this, I felt the now-familiar shift of memories being poured into me, along with skillsets from extended training experiences over my life from earliest days to what I'd done the previous week.

EGADS.

I could play piano?

I suddenly 'remembered' the giant debates from history class about how arts students had pushed it and won. Contestants were graded by computer on how accurately they could sight-read musical pieces, jumbled sections of existing works of varying complexity.

For practice, I now played... Oscar Peterson and Art Tatum pieces at real-time speeds?

There was nothing to do but head for the locker room and get busy. Octathlon practice always required distance swimming and running first, then skills practice second, so once I was dressed I headed out for calisthenics as a warm up.

It was no wonder everyone looked so fit. We all really were seriously buff, capable athletes, able to do impressive amounts of physical conditioning on a random school day afternoon.

I was not the fastest or most elite athlete in my group, but I could mostly keep up. Apparently having testosterone was no longer a determining factor for muscle capability. On both guys and girls our muscles looked fit but not that much larger.

For instance, in my before-yesterday life, I remembered seeing some guys with veins on their arms near the surface, showing they were super-fit, but my new memories had very few people with such things. Some girls had super-well-defined muscles in their legs, but it was mostly sexy, not anything like those bodybuilder competitions where everything is just so huge.

In my yesterday reality, in almost every sport guys were far, far superior to girls in athletic performance. Middle of the road high school guys regularly beat women's world records.

This was absolutely no longer true. We were far more even in capability and in the skills categories the only difference was in who practiced more or had an innate individual talent.

== Chapter: After Practice ===

As the truck drove me home I sifted through my memories for examples of girls doing heavy lifting, etc. Men were still taller on average, we just didn't have any advantages in muscle strength or fitness.

Barb came to mind - we had done some weightlifting workouts together. I'd also seen other girls lifting or doing power gymnastics work during our gym units for those, and after school as well.

These memories were odd for me to integrate, since I had very little experience in previous-life with seeing girls with barbells. Of course, I was anything but an athlete before so what did I know.

In both my yesterday and my today, our high school gym classes had a 'unit' on each sport, and we cycled through them from freshman year to senior year, even with a golf unit hitting wiffle balls around (huge fun, for sure).

Barb - Barb was on my mind. Why was I thinking of her?

She had been an obsession in my real life, for a while, a girlfriend that I'd rejoiced in since she was smart and pretty, but one I'd had to put up with being a controlling tease at the same time.

I'd dealt with this being-a-tease by just resigning myself to her games and knowing it'd eventually be over and I'd go to college. In the meantime I got to go to some fun parties and hang out with more trendy, in-crowd people than I normally would have.

Barb had sometimes tried to intrude on my D&D game nights/days, but I had a firm stand on that and she figured out she couldn't cajole or guilt-trip or passive-agressive manipulate her way into getting me to give that up in favor of her. She did try, but I laughed at the idea.

Those guys... weren't around anymore.

They only existed in my memory.

So many guys I'd known, not just my age but men at the parish I'd said hi to after mass or at a K-of-C fundraiser, all those people were... gone.

They'd never existed, or had died early. GRIP had done huge damage to human societies and ways of life.

I was strangely not feeling that loss, as a grief thing. I had a feeling it might be some kind of denial or shock. My new personal history included having taken classes on relationships and thus I knew the stages of grief, but it's one thing to know something like this and another to assess it in yourself.

A loss that I did feel acutely was the idea that I had been so familiar with and interested in and kind of obsessed over Barb, and yet in this new arrangement she was not going to be a part of my life anymore.

That was something I actually had emotions about.

She was really funny sometimes. She made me laugh.

We'd walked around her block or through the neighborhood a lot, in the before. I'd gone over there usually, We'd mostly been in her neighborhood since it was more convenient for her if I went over there, and it was only six blocks door to door.

My recompense for the hassle of walking or biking over was that sometimes we'd stop to neck (kiss passionately with a little light over-the-clothes caressing) under a tree or something.

It wasn't every time that we'd stop, since she had always been nervous we'd be seen by a nosy neighbor or something. In retrospect, it might have been a power move to assert dominance over what we did and didn't do.

She could have actually been embarrassed by hanging out with me, or it might have been an act. It didn't really matter since I was amused by the very idea. I was happy being me and if she was embarrassed it was just one more sign of her being manipulative.

My eyes had mostly been open about this stuff as it happened but I knew if I rocked the boat she would just find another guy to latch onto.

I wondered if she'd change, after this.

We all change when big things happen, and losing a boyfriend might be... probably was, big for her.

My own changes had been literally world changing. The very fabric of reality had PROFOUNDLY shifted. Even the property boundaries, meaning the sizes of lots that houses were on, was different.

Just driving home, my eyes beheld a new, shifted-reality cityscape.

Though I had lots of memories of my neighborhood streets from before this thing, the current reality strongly diverged. Instead of houses tightly packed and small because people couldn't afford big houses, and not many streets having front sidewalks... there were sidewalks everywhere.

The sidewalks were WIDER than normal, too?

Not only that, but at the end of every block, on a grid, where there had been maybe one or two or three houses, those were gone and they'd been replaced by small playgrounds, most of which were in use. Moms were out with strollers, or kids were throwing balls and running and jumping on the equipment, all that.

It was odd to see - there weren't nearly as many kids around before, but now? Now, it was a much bigger population and people were out and about everywhere.

The truck had to slow down several times for kids crossing the street to get a ball or frisbee or whatever.

[[ NARRATOR: As the number of children in any city grew immediately post-GRIP pandemic, cities tore down houses and built what the parents were demanding - playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, etc. All these had been asked by parents but those ideas were usually rejected by older voters as being too expensive.

With many older people not surviving grip, and far more people becoming parents, of larger families, these features became utterly necessary.

Houses, too, changed, getting additions or being combined as two houses into a single much larger structure. In larger cities with very small side-yards, the combining process was a simple matter, but in the suburbs it was about half tear-down-rebuild and half build-one-into-other.

Also prevalent were backyard chickens, and most breeds of dogs gained instincts to protect the children AND the chickens, mostly from other dogs. ]]

Images in my head shifted, memories of seeing lots of chicken-houses in backyards, playing with chickens as a kid, collecting eggs, walking a dog... we had a dog?!?

Yes. We had had a dog. Rusty. Rusty was our dog... A goofy-happy golden with a sometimes on-off skin condition on his hip. He'd died... the previous year. We were sad - my Mom and... Carrie? Aunt Carrie? Oh, right, her WIFE, my new-mom Carrie. She'd been 'aunt' for about 10 minutes, back when I was really young.

New memories are freakin' weird.

I had another MOM?!?

Oddball doesn't even come close!!!

It was like suddenly remembering that I had a second mom and how could I have possibly forgotten that! Except, while it seemed like I was just remembering something, I knew that it was just brand new memories being shoved into my brain.

Driving up to the house, the truck pulled in and I saw a different house than I'd left that morning. Yet, it was familiar from long experience, in implanted long-held backgrounds of other events.

The architectural style was mostly the same as that morning, but now it was a full three stories, similar to half the houses on the block. The stories were higher, so it was high-ceiling'd like a victorian but still in the colonial style.

The window awnings were so we could have windows open despite any rain... and They also allowed baseballs to roll down them. I knew that made a with a cool-sounding stuttering rattle, and sometimes 'accidentally' made that happen until I missed and had to replace the window glass.

This was an implanted memory but nonetheless one I could smile while recalling.

Back to my arrival...

The size of the house was seriously impressive.

We'd had it added onto, again when I was little... New memory.

Still, things were still changing in my head.

That morning, it 'only' had 8 bedrooms in the main house and another 8 in the attached coach house? Those were... different, shifted, old info. The new memories had 6 bedrooms per floor, twelve per house, plus big roomy basements with weight/workout rooms, etc.

The center of the block, instead of just being fences between backyards, now held a common central open playfield big enough for running games, etc. Each house had its own fenced areas, chicken houses, swing sets...

This was a kids' dream location.

I have to say, it's really odd finding new memories popping up at the same time my current existence was riding in a truck driving itself into a much larger driveway.

Just as I pulled in, Mom and Carrie and my (?) sister Dale and ... other sister Janice (?!?) walked out. Janice was pregnant... Yeah, I knew that. By that, I mean, yes, she was married to... Ken Watson, a guy I'd been in Octathlon with a few years before.

OMFG, my memory was just chock full of new things.

I got out. Everyone walked up and gave me hugs, as they... had lots of times before, I think.

Mom's face was joyous but purposefully trying to be restrained. "Kev, your polysets are inside and doing prep for the dinner tonight. I helped a bit - wasn't supposed to, I know, they're supposed to show off their mad homemaking skills. Still. I figured I could show them where things were stored and not interfere too much. Moving in will be odd, lots to get used to, new faces around the breakfast table."

Somehow this was supposed to be normal, and while my face was smiling a 'normal' amount, my insides (brain-freakout-wise) were going sideways with implications and cross-linked newness.

There was something else on my mind: Barb.

I'd been thinking about Barb, but I wasn't sure what to do. She almost certainly wasn't included in this dinner thing, but I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.

"Moms. Question. I'm presuming Barb isn't in there?"

Carrie and her looked at each other, then at me, with the expression that grown-ups use to show they're surprised about a choice you're making, as possibly a risky choice.

Mom's eyebrows got quizzical, maybe even suspicious. "No, she's not there? Everyone else is. Not sure why you're asking. I figured you delayed coming home from practice so everyone could get here and get set up. Kind of a special day, of course."

"So... not there."

Dale spoke up. "Mrs. Archer handled the invites - as your Second, I helped? Archer's list was stuff I didn't know about, but I read in some polyset notes that Barb had been on the list but was removed this morning. As always, she's on-deck if you want her, but there might be... complications?"

"She spent a long time trying to get to know me. Not doing it the right way, but, still, there was effort. I liked her... jokes, I guess. She's fun enough to be around, just... I couldn't handle her manipulation, I guess."

Dale nodded, as did Mom and my ('new' sister) Janice.

Carrie acted like she was dubious and I had a feeling I got why. Frankly, I was dubious myself. I didn't know, but... it hung there, an 'almost'.

Dale and Mom considered most actively, based on their faces. Janice spoke up, though. "Just... you can... okay, yeah. Assert she's welcome, but as an obeisance secondary. If she's insulted, fine, but if she goes for it, she'll have to work her way into the good graces of the others, over the next year. Or... until you share a firstborn, the rule is. Once she's got a kid with you, obeisance secondaries convert to full polyset rights."

There was so much to unpack in that statement, but it had to be good enough.

I liked it, and nodded. "Okay, it's that, then? Obeisance. How do I get her here, with that condition?"

Dale rolled her eyes. "Duh. I do that. You just tell me, I make it happen. I'll even go over and get her, she might not be ready. Hold on..."

We waited as Dale typed mad-fast into her phone. Her phone, and my phone, dinged at the same time. And, more dings.

I got mine out from my back pocket and signed into the sensen app - both fake-remembered and new to me. It showed a 'pending' over Barb's name, which was in a color different from the others that I just knew meant 'obeisance secondary'.

As I watched, it dinged a new status, "Accepted."

Dale looked up. "I'll go get her, she's..."

"Down the block past the music store, I was there a lot."

"Oh, right. Yeah. Back in 10."

Mom replied, "We'll all go. I have to brief her on house rules on the way back. She'll be doing extra rounds of dishes and laundry until she conceives, the third miss, so miscarriages don't stop the workload. At least she'll need to know some things. I promised myself if you ever got an obeisance secondary I'd take a break from those for a while as fair use recompense. I'll have my hands full being a grandma for her twins anyway, so it'll work out."

They all had started walking to the truck even as Mom was talking, so I was about to go inside.

Mom stopped me long enough to gave me a big hug, as did Janice and Dale.

Looking me in the eyes with a sense of importance, she added, "I've said this before, I'll say it again. Make me some lots of happy-baby grandchildren."

My body made an eyeroll-okay-Mom automatically, even though I'd never heard that from her (and always had, of course).

They left, and I went inside, the front door opening for me. There was still a fair bit of activity happening in the kitchen and... big dining room? Was this my house? It was so much bigger than before and even though some of the furnishings were from 'before', the grand piano wasn't. Taking off shoes by the door wasn't either, and neither was the deeply soft medium-dark berber carpet that gave beauty to my feet.

The girls were all in bright white A-line dresses, short-sleeved and just below knee-length. The bustlines (with a wide but pleasant variety of content sizes) allowed for some cloth-folding cleavage but mostly it was a medium-thick conservative dress that of course made them all even more beautiful than I remembered.

I'd seen the underneaths of many of those dresses, which is to say my day had been full, but that wasn't everyone.

For example, even though I'd held some communion with Ella's innermost bits in my first-ever, I'd not actually seen more than her bare shoulders since the ARTHRITIS tablecloth/tarp was sufficiently thick to prevent that.

Still, Wow.

Mads came up and hugged me, gave me a kiss on the lips that was brief but soft and sweet, and pulled away to have a look in her eyes. "Sir may have a shower first? Denise has volunteered."

Denise was by the stairs and I took that to mean we were expected to go do that, so I did, trodding shoeless up the wide stairway that wasn't a feature of my yesterday.

My bedroom was normal, at least, larger but normal-ish, with the exception there was a tux laid out on the (new? Old! New memories said, 'old!') quilt on my freshly King-sized bed.

A tux?

Sure. Why not.

I stripped and headed over to the bathroom across the hall, mostly the same as that morning, and got into the shower quickly. Denise came in naked behind me, the dress being easy to doff presumably, and we got in. She stayed in the end of the bathtub but covered my back with soap and I was happy about that.

It's a lot to shampoo three times in a day, but what the heck, she was in charge.

Rinsed and done it was quick and we were out, drying off in vast square meters of soft towel, done and ready and hair brushed and teeth brushed (again), I went back and joined her to get my tux on.

Of course, it fit.

She took some pictures as I was dressing, because of course, why not - but only after I had underwear on. I had a feeling the pics would be shared around much like wedding photos were, I'd been at a friend's sister's wedding long ago (in the before) and that was normal there, pics of the bride-to-be dressing, even in the before-time when life was different.

Back downstairs and I was greeted by the group of them, in some kind of ordering that turned out to be alphabetical by (of all things) middle name. I had to laugh at that one.

Each girl gave me a hug and three kisses - one on each cheek, then on my lips - and we sat down to eat.

Just before we were to sit down, the front door opened.

Barb walked in.

She was wearing the dress, a slightly different kind than the ones the other girls were wearing, but that was fine, it was close.

There were some murmurs at the table, and some thin-set lips. Dale showed her where to shuck off her shoes (to footie-socks, not bare feet, was the standard), and she came over.

Dale left, waving goodbye.

Everyone was waiting.

There was a place at the table so I presumed everyone's phones had bing'd that she was coming just as soon as she accepted.

In the moment, I wasn't sure what to do.

Ella took charge, stepping up and addressing Barb, who looked out of breath and supremely worried, but focused. I'd seen the look on Barb's face before, when I'd suggested once we go bowling and she'd never done that, but wasn't about to be shown up by me as being superior at anything.

It was funny then. It was just a moment loaded with backstory and baggage for me.

Ella's attention had Barb stop in front of her, acknowledging the power that she no longer held.

"Barb. We all know from the app you've been invited to polyset with Kevin conditional on being an obeisance secondary. That means we can each - all around this table - ask you for one, one-hour task per week, and you are required to comply. If you refuse and we perform the task instead of yourself, you will have ten hours doing that task or another assigned by the Primary. Do you understand these obligations and will you comply?"

Barb's eyes showed determination and enough subservience that I had a much more relaxed feeling that she wasn't going to throw a wrench into things like I'd been half-fearing.

[[ NARRATOR: Barb's mother, on learning that she was no longer invited to polyset with Kevin and having positively counted on that, had spent much of the day asking Barb very hard questions about how she'd treated Kevin. Barb had come home from school and it was not a vacation day, with that kind of interrogation and soul-baring openness.

Barb's clarity on the path forward had been given to her in stark terms since her mother knew, once branded a troublemaker, she'd have trouble being accepted into a polyset, and if that failed, she'd have a complicated and possibly quite lonely life, probably married to a ne'er-do-well and living in a hovel.

Barb now knew she must do exactly as she was told, even if it was demeaning and insulting. She would be restored to equality - and no more - once she'd given birth and joined her legacy with Kevin's. Tradition dictated that things started over then. She knew, she could be an exceptionally good wife AND an Ob/Gyn or surgeon, or even a GP physician. Her aspiration had started young but had varied slightly over the years, but it was all well within her wheelhouse, so she wasn't wrong. ]]

Barb, waiting like we all were for the NARRATOR to finish, said simply, "I do promise to comply until birthright conveyance abates."

(This had the ring of something long-memorized or at least traditional and I smiled on the inside despite showing no outward sign).

Ella gestured in a sweeping motion for us all to take our seats, and we did.

Grace remained standing and faced us, holding a wine glass now filled with red wine. "I'm going to pray now, it's Hebrew since I'm Jewish, but you can drink or not as is your right. This is a blessing that says, 'Blessed is the Lord thy God maker of the universe, creator of the fruit of the vine'. That's grapes and wine, not watermelons."

We all laughed.

"... And, so, in Hebrew, that's... Baruch atah adonai elohenu, melech ha'olam, borei p'ri HAGAFFEN!"

We all drank, and then people started eating.

After some prodding, Grace taught us all to say the phrase until we could all rattle it off quickly. I think we knew it was going to come in handy, though strictly speaking not while the girls were pregnant.

After a while, the person next to her stood. Mindy stood and raised her wine glass and said a simple thank-you and asked-blessing for all of us there. It was nice, but short, and she was somewhat embarrassed, I think.

After a few it got to Darlene. She stood up, raising a water glass - she had no wine glass - and said her blessing. "I have another language to pray over food in. It translates to, 'Praise be to God, who provides us with food and drink, who made us among those who submit to him.' It's kinda traditional, you'll hear me say it a lot. Feel free to repeat after me?"

We nodded and shrugged, sure, swallowing, etc., then switched raising our water glasses after being prompted that it's NOT done to toast with alcohol over an Islamic prayer.

"I'll say it once through, then we'll go slow and repeat it... Alham bolee-huilal lah-dee at'amana wa sakana wa ja'alana minal muslimin."

It wasn't that bad; she repeated it and we did it slow with her. A good prayer, I thought. I certainly had no choice but to submit to God, who was making my life interesting with the NARRATOR changing the fabric of reality in my new WTF-meter-pegging life.

We smiled and drank our water, and she blushed a little before sitting down. I could tell she wasn't used to speaking out in 'public', but we were going to be a lot more than public with each other, around that table.

I thought maybe Soonyo (being Korean-American) might offer a prayer in Korean, but it turned out she was Methodist and thus her prayer was a pretty normal Protestant-Christian one.

It got to me last and I said a few words about how great it was to be there, among such interesting people who I wanted to get to know better, and I thanked God for keeping me alive to be this lucky.

That went over pretty well, and we kept eating.

Dinner conversations kept going, but I was on the outskirts and I wanted to be that. Each time I looked at one of the girls, new memories of me and them doing things together popped up. I had long histories with all of them, over our time in school and sports together, so while I was freaked out about the day in general, the idea of eating with them changed from 'who are these people' to a gathering of really close friends, friends I was pretty sure I loved.

That emotion was probably implanted, to a degree, but I didn't care. What's the difference between induced love and 'real' love, it's all love.

As the girls started cleaning up the dishes, I looked over at the grandfather clock, not the one we'd had on the mantle but a 'new' floorstanding one that looked antique, it showed 7:40 pm. I got up to help with kitchen-work but was quickly told to 'go sit in a chair and just hang out for a bit.'

This, I could do, and did.

Without warning, as was now the usual thing, the world froze.

[[ NARRATOR: Kevin sat and waited for the ceremony of binding. The Prime would soon make things complete, functionally marrying them and starting their family of 18 on a path like so many others in the houses around them - making and being families together, with all the good and bad and complicated and beautiful and ugly and things everywhere in between. Kevin's polyset had been the subject of much debate among the girls: who would self-invite? Who would be invited as 'obvious' and who could request it with some degree of probable success?

Central as an idea was who would be approved by his mothers and sisters. Kevin had toggled auto-approve for himself, but this just meant endless questions from Mom and Carrie and mostly Dale about how he knew which girl, what he thought of them, which ones were smart or good with kids or tidy or flighty or whatever.

These decisions were thus not Kevin's to make, and yet, he could easily just say a word and someone would be on or off the list, ranked up or down by Dale and debated with his moms to some depth.

There was the matter of the house being huge, inherited as a big place initially for sure, but then added onto by robotic labor that made construction projects far more simple in the modern age.

Kevin's choices over who would be there had hung in the balance for a while, and though the polysets had approached him, this was a formality and they all knew they were already coming to this all-important dinner.

It was, indeed, a night to make a lifetime by.

Even though it was nerve-wracking in the implications, all the steps towards it had just been one-next-next. Kevin liked these girls. He didn't know if he loved them all yet, but that would come. He could compromise with their needs, they would compromise to be together in a complicated house, and together they would build a prodigious passel of playful progeny.

The New Family Cooper? It would be as right as rain. ]]

So. That was what was happening...

Revisions were happening in this NARRATOR speech, of previous NARRATOR speeches. These changed reality _again_ and implied huge things.

I was walking into a new world every time it spoke.

For one, and it was a BIG ONE, I was going to be married. Functionally, really, it wasn't that - the memories showed we were technically called a 'cohort' to start with.

Our actual marriage was automatic the moment they had their first kid with me, it wasn't a ceremony or anything, life got too busy with a new baby in the house. The celebrations that were 'christenings', where the baby is officially named in a religious ceremony, had taken on the air of weddings since lots of people could be invited.

There were even Binding Wakes, which were like a combination of a funeral for children that died soon after birth, plus a wedding for the parents, since that didn't change regardless of the fate of the child. With many more children being born, this happened, and was sad but also part of the fabric of life so much more accepted and normalized as yes-grieving but also we-will-move-on ideas, too.

Thinking about this, I realized how much more put together life was with this new set of memories, whereas my previous reality had few chances for healthy grief.

Shifting my focus to the people around me, all doing things or talking or waiting for something bigger to happen, I had to have a step-back moment and try to understand why I was going along with this idea.

Did I want to be married?

In this reality, that only happened after kids got there.

Did I want to have kids?

... thinking, I pondered that.

The girls moved around the house with deliberate tasks, they had a plan and they were executing the plan...

... Of course I wanted kids...

Kids were great, I loved playing, helping out in the nursery at the parish in the before, and both at the parish and at school in the new normal.

I had a feeling my life had shifted left or right or sideways-upways-slantways and no one had asked me anything about it. I had no choice - run with what's given.

Did I want a choice?

These girls, these... women, yes, women, I... loved, they were... smart, for sure. Pretty? Oh My God, yes. Athletic, capable, motivated, on the ball, all the good things.

I knew some of their foibles. A few were ADHD and had trouble staying on track. I knew I had more than a little ADD / ADHD things in my habit-set, as well as some Asperger's tendencies to not understand social environments, etc., though I was tolerant of that. I mostly just liked reading because I liked reading, not from being autistic... did I?

It didn't matter. I had hopes we could help each other get better at doing the needful.

There wasn't much I could do about them being imperfect. I certainly was.

Could I avoid this whole thing?

Did I want to?

This reality was oddball, but it was sweet.

Huh.

I thought about the implications, what I knew about each girl, and let the time pass while they got the dishes cleared and table cleaned and room arranged...

Right nearly at 8, everyone lined up in the front room in lines - except for Liz.

Liz went over and picked up a package from a table by the door. I hadn't noticed it.

Just by the way she moved, it was hefty, and wrapped in a worn leather satchel.

The girls stood still, and I realized they weren't blinking, that time had stopped. Quite literally, the grandfather clock had stopped in front of me, the pendulum in mid-swing.

Liz was still moving? This was a first. Every other time, when something stopped, everything stopped but me, and here she was, moving also?

She flipped open the satchel's flap and pulled out a book.

The book's surface was MOVING.

It wasn't a single thing, it was a huge set of designs, all intertwining and twisting in a calm deliberate way. It was a way that sucked in your eyes so you just knew not to stare.

She turned and very deliberately/carefully handed it to me right-side-up to me. "Kevin..."

Her pause was for a breath, and to look me deeply in the eyes with a hopeful eyebrows up expression. She was showing me the importance of what she was going to say:

"I ... AM... FOR... YOU."

My hands had their own motion and volition and I took the book but I couldn't speak in response. My throat was closed, I somehow knew I could literally say nothing.

The book wasn't heavy, yet it was incredibly heavy. I couldn't tell. My arms didn't complain, but maybe it's best to say the book had inertia but low weight?

My hands opened the cover.

Inside, designs and writing were already moving, lines of them flowing out of unfocused mists and appearing, gliding in a curve around the page, and then out of focus again.

Many of these lines appeared. Each had different alphabet.

The characters had a different typefaces, more than alphabets. Some were hand-printed, some had a drawn-character calligraphic beauty, others were just dashed-off scribbles.

Each line of text would appear floating up from deep under the page and up to the top, surfacing to become focused and easy to see, then falling away again to the side or in a flowing curve, to be replaced by another.

I saw a cuneiform line, like from pictures we saw in history class.

I saw hieroglyphics, from Egypt.

I saw stylized animals, and Chinese symbols, and simplistic symbols, and runes, and all manner of things.

Gradually it settled into English, as the title.

"Book Of Life."

More lines appeared, and as each one arrived the whole thing scrolled. The odd thing was, it all stuck in my memory with COMPLETE clarity, forevermore.

[[ NARRATOR / SPEAKING TO ME: KEVIN. This object is a book because you need it to be. Think about it as one, or don't. We are many, I am One, I am many, we are One, the cycle will not end, the cycle changes rotations but stays loving. It is immutable but fungible, chromatic and dancing, at all scales of discernment. ]]

Whatever that meant?

My smartass brain popped out a silent, 'Dude, enigmatic much?'

I sensed, somehow, this thing was so old it had no sense of humor, but was somehow responding to me.

The words on the page were, I was given to know, written for someone else.

I was being allowed to see them.

The words weren't just words, though! They had a depth of emotion and clarity and intuition and eternal far-off all-wrapping Truth to them, too.

So, suffice to say, it wasn't just English. It said (with things noted below in parentheses handwritten by Liz. The words kind of 'smelled' like her emotions, somehow, if that's possible):

== == == == == ==

BOOK OF LIFE

== == == == == ==

I, undersigned with my Natural Given Name ________ (Elizabeth Bennett Darcy Jennehle Woolstonecraft), do bind myself to the Book of Love ("BOL"). I seek lifelong marriage to the "MC" with the natural given name of ______ (Kevin Fenimore Cooper).

I am willing to rewrite the lives of myself and him, and of this entire existence, to enable and enhance our marriage. I understand that all changes by their nature will result in more love and life being created than is destroyed.

I understand these changes must happen over a single 24-hour day of unalterable length. Only the MC, and NO other person including myself, will be able to sense changes to this reality. Only the MC and myself will hear the NARRATOR; only I will be able to make limited changes and only immediately after the NARRATOR speaks.

I will not attempt to subvert or contravene the wishes of the NARRATOR, only make modifications required to ensure the MC and/or myself inhabit a world more logical and conducive to our sensiblities.

I understand that any change that removes a life's timeline will replace that life tenfold, or ten-times tenfold, to ensure that LIFE continues into the cosmos! This is the Book of LIFE!

Of my own free will and accepting that I must use this power only with the most altruistic of motives, I thus grant this binding.

Sealed with my bloody thumbprint: ______ (thumbprint shows)

=== ===

The book paused, then more text appeared:

=== ===

The Venerable, Kevin Fenimore Cooper:

Humanity's long tradition of narrative forms bound on paper in books acts to seal the format of this mechanism into a metaphor made solid.

You have the following options, as the MC of this work.

KEEP: Stay as you are now, in this altered universe.

RESET: Reset back to your life before today. Doing so would restore the nearly 4 billion human lives killed by the GRIP pandemic over the past 20 years, but it would also cause the deaths of nearly 9 billion more persons who were instantiated in this reality shift.

There is another consideration. Humanity was on a highly probable path to destruction and extinction. Short of great changes to make more equivalent the fates of the rich and poor, the forces that generate death would soon have overwhelmed those that create life.

This BOL has an ulterior motive of preserving mankind and by these alterations has done so. Various changes not visible to you have also occurred to ensure this.

Obviously you can choose RESET and thus probably doom your species. It is a right given to each sentient species on the cusp of self-destruction, and sometimes it might be considered 'for the best', though considering the relative sparseness of sentient LIFE in the universe, this ethical construct is not shared widely among our scholars.

To ensure you are confident that your decision is not being unduly influenced, your memories have only been ADDED to, not replaced or deleted. They are yours to keep and share if you choose.

Your thumb is now bleeding. Press a thumbprint in your blood:

To choose Life and KEEP, press here ______.

- there was a wide gap and several separation lines -

To choose extinction and RESET, press here _______.

== ==

Duh. I pressed it under KEEP.

== ==

The book evaporated.

[[ NARRATOR: You have chosen. Your race will greet us eventually. Until then, you will grow and learn. On every level from relationships to politics to physics, there are certain universal truths. I give you one now: 'There is No PERFECT. There is only GOOD ENOUGH, and Negotiation.'

Use this truth. Love your children and make as many as you can, and fill your star system and those beyond with your questing progeny. You are worth saving. Compassion for others will always be challenging but is always worthwhile. Work at being Good-Enough for yourself and others. You are forgiven. You are ripe. You are fit-for-purpose. Go forth and make things better.

Amen. ]]

The voice disappeared and I knew (somehow) the voice had echoed not just in my head, but... in all of their heads?

Liz looked up at me and smiled. She was a little shorter; she walked up and took me in a hug.

We bent in and kissed, the rest of them waiting calmly, smiling at us (I glanced).

Breaking the kiss, she took my hand and turned to face the other girls.

Speaking as though she'd previously memorized the words, she addressed me and the group together, but mostly the group. "Kevin, I am Prime. I promise Equity and Love. We and you and all of us will make this house a home. There is no place here for jealousy, only negotiation and fearless humble honesty." She turned to me. "Words?"

I didn't know any. I had to come up with something.

Looking at their earnest faces, they were clearly epic of beauty and purpose, young and fresh and hopeful and joyous?

Speaking up so they could hear me, my own voice ringing in my head, I said: "My house is now fully your house, to build in or suffer in... or both. All that I have and am, I'm pretty sure we're in it together now. So, let's do this thing. Let's make this... work. I will give you whatever I can, to fill your life. I will try to accept what you give, and thanks for everything ahead of time, I'll certainly forget or not notice or fail in some way."

I paused.

"Something has happened that's pretty profound, to me and you and the world, and there's no real way to tell what I know, from my perspective, right now, it's too big. I'll try, later. But in the meantime... yes, let's make this house a home."

I remembered my autobiographies just then, and decided I'd tell some of the story that I couldn't tell them in that moment. Having a reference to refer back to what my original memory was, that would help. But... would they be the same as my original-yesterday? Or different? I'd have to check later what version was in those writings.

Of course, I had work to do before then. I had to make honest women out of those in front of me.

Could I be a husband to 18 of them? I could try. I would try. I owed them that much. I owed, and they owed, and we all owed each other.

As for my words, Liz decided this was good enough and reached up to her shoulder for the clasp. She undid it, and dropped her dress. This left her Most Definitely Naked.

Ella (standing next to her), helped out by bending over and picking it up, a huge grin on her face.

Like all the other girls with giant smiles, Ella knew what was coming.

For that matter, I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, too. At least, physically, in the next few hours.

As for the rest of my life, the emotional weight of my life to come was too much to contemplate.

At least, it seemed like I'd been blessed by a God. Or, an alien. Whatever. It didn't matter. It felt good, and inspiring, and I was almost overcome - looking at Liz, then the other girls' faces - and I felt fulfilled, like this was... just about the way things should go.

Was it misplaced optimism? I'd find out.

The moment culminated with a single thought of wonderment, and I praised God and thanked the NARRATOR, silently, because, yeah, no words.

Liz went up the stairs, pulling me to start, then walking up.

I followed behind her, plodding up and deeply happy. Each butt-wiggle in my face was a promise...

And I found myself deeply loving the soul that butt was attached to.

- The End

== Afterword ==

All persons named herein are over age 18 at the time anything sexy happens, because that's the way things happened. All the names have been changed to their exact opposite. If you find your name is the same as any of these people, please give it a rest, this isn't you. If your worldview conflicts with anything here, congratulations, you're more right than I am, but please seek professional help because always being right is complicated and causes worry and (I hear) the inability to pee correctly? Short of that, good luck, we're all in this together and maybe there's some cool other planets we'll see sometime, or maybe one of our 14 kids will get there instead of us.

Peace and Blessings be Abundant and Flowing on you and your kith (friends) and kin.

== ==

References, for internal use only, do not fold, spindle, mutilate, cajole, or tease these lists.

Schedule:

● 1 AP Botany

● 2 Gym

● 3 Study period

● 4 English

● 5 Chorus

● 6 Lunch

● 7 Health

● 8 Calc3

● 9 Aero 203 Spacecraft design / plasma physics / fusor construction / Child Development / Programming /

● Octathlon practice

Backrub Game - ARTHRITIS, 9 chars

Sit nested. Cover with tablecloth with velcro at neck. Hug.

Everything is by Explicit Permission, over the shoulder.

● 1 hands over clothes.

● 2 hands under clothes, on torso-back or the side.

● 3 hands up sides and to front.

● 4 hands free ranging up and down front but below boobs/above waist

● 5 Hands over boobs gliding, or over package, above underwear/bra.

● 6 Bra displaced, hands under bra, but not touching nipples, holding only

● 7 hands squeezing freely and rubbing over breast, nipple with palm only

● 8 Nipple with fingers or penis with fingers.

● 9 Full stimulation with fingers of nipples, or downstairs by permission.

— Personnae:

● Mrs. Archer, chorus teacher

● Morning Wakeup:

○ Sister

○ Grace, sister's friend

● Before School:

○ Barb (old Girlfriend)

○ Mary Obrados

○ Kelly Booker

○ Brit Jenkins

● Gym:

○ Denise, BJ giver and shower partner

● Library:

○ LIZ!!! Elizabeth.

○ Anglea

○ Mindy

○ Soonyo

○ Ella (first sex)

● Chorus:

○ Madison Jeffers, Mads.

○ Camille (with Mads)

○ Chest-grab circle:

■ Kirsten

■ Deb

■ Allie

● Calc Class:

○ Darlene

○ Monica

● Sister, Janice.

● Second-Mom, Carrie.