"You sure?" Jessica asked, one eyebrow quirked and inviting. "This is a heck of a chance to experiment--"
"Oh, yeah." Nick said. "I mean, you caught me earlier. I just...took care of myself. I couldn't bone you if
I wanted to." His member twitched, sadly, in agreement.
"I could set your refractory period to zero. I saw it while I was sifting through the settings earlier--"
"Aaand what if your boyfriend shows up?" Nick said, laughing nervously and feeling a little uncomfortable
with his roommate having an answer ready for him that quickly.
"Oh. Well, we're not going out right now." Jessica said, helpfully.
"Aw, that's too--wait a second." Nick said, his voice going from a feminine sympathetic coo--if in a
masculine voice--to a stony realization. "You'd have told me if you'd broken up. Did you use the computer
thingy to make you not-an-item?"
"Kinda?"
"...define 'kinda.'"
"Well, the Chronivac only does mass-rewriting of memories around a change." Jessica said. "And that's really
just making them 'normal' within the guidelines given. Yeah, I'm sexy now, but all that means is that the
world remembers I've always been hot. You're a guy, but you've been single all your life, just having some
platonic, non-romantic relationships with other guys. You've never had a girlfriend, let alone had
sex...though not for lack of interest." She gave Nick a flirty wink. "Anyway, I could change _his_ memories
so we were never going out, but everyone else would remember and someone would ask him and it would be weird,
so I figured, hey, why not just use the Chronivac to do something to him and get him out of the picture?"
"What did you do?"
"Oh, there's some sort of Random button. I just hit that. He's, like, a girl now, or a dog, or a girl dog,
or a miscarriage or something. I never met him, now, and so? I'm single."
"What?!"
"Oh, don't worry." Jessica rolled her eyes. "I set it for twenty-four hours, and at the end of that he'll be
right back where he was, maybe even in mid-sentence, and then he'll go on like nothing ever happened. And
about half an hour after that...Well, he'll come over, we'll screw, and maybe I'll give him a larger cock for
the hell of it."
"Jess?" He walked toward her, and she grinned for a moment, only to be shocked when he forced his way past
her. "This is fucked up. All kinds of fucked up. If I gotta change myself back, I will."
"Nick, don't mess around with that." Jessica seemed worried, all of a sudden.
"Oh, what's the worst that's gonna happen? I'm going to write myself out of the world?"
"There's all sorts of little settings. That's really powerful, and if you don't know what you're doing--"
"Don't know what I'm doing?!" Nick looked over his shoulder. "You might have just retroactively aborted your
boyfriend and you think I don't know what I'm doing?"
"But you could rewrite memories for individuals, set triggers for future changes associated with those
memories, and lay traps for people who aren't doing what you want them to!"
"No, I wouldn't--" He turned back toward his roommate's bedroom, and then paused in midstep. That was kind
of disturbingly specific and applicable to the moment. "What are you getting at--"
"Remember the baseball game?" Jessica's voice was no longer pleading, nor commanding. It was, if anything,
shy and kittenishly affectionate.
Nick hesitated, and turned with a smile. "Of course." He said. Somewhere inside, he felt something distant
and troubling--the sensation of having forgotten something terribly important, and then forgetting that he
forgot at all--and then put it from his mind, his roommate lounging against the doorframe.
"We had a bet riding on that, didn't we?" She said, the shyness starting to give way to something a little
bolder. It had been a drunken wager, but now that Jessica mentioned it his memory came clear as day. "Your
team wins, you get me. My team wins, I get you."
He hesitated, deeply confused--Jessica had walked in on him minutes ago, after he had ejaculated, and he
wasn't ready for another go-round quite yet. And he'd told himself that he'd wait until marriage or
something--that he wasn't ready for sex. But enough beers, and he'd at least been willing to joke about it.
Jessica started to advance like a predator, like a horny tigress.
"Um. Who won?" He asked. He wasn't worried as such, but he was starting to feel quite a bit nervous.
"Does it matter?" She said, resting a hand on his chest--oh, shit, he was still naked, wasn't he?--and
pushing him back just slightly. It wasn't enough to force him at all, but he was having trouble forming the
presence of mind to resist.
Her fingers reached through his tangled hair and pulled him down into a hungry kiss. Nick hadn't even
realized he was undoing the buttons on her blouse until it fell to the floor. Her pants and camisole followed
seconds later, falling in an enticing breadcrumb trail toward her bedroom.
Nick also didn't realize how close he was to Jessica's bed until he ran right into it; he tumbled with a yelp.
"Woah!" He fell with a loud *thump!* and Jessica's lust parted for just a moment as she watched, and laughed.
Nick's flaccid cock still sat there, looking despondent as it twitched. "Sorry, Jess. I mean..."
"Oh, Nick." She said--not quite on the bed, but planting a trail of kisses across his jaw, and down his chest
and belly, stopping short of his thick, dark pubic hair and cock. "I think I can work around that." And she
turned to her computer. "Lemme just shut down a few windows." She said, as she absently traced her nails
down the inside of one hairy thigh. "It'd kinda suck if my friends Skyped in right now, you know?"
"Right," he laughed, slightly raggedly. "that'd be a story for my first time."
"Mm-hm!" Jessica said. "So just lay right there and..."
<Click!>
SET REFRACTORY PERIOD VALUE:
0 hours.
0 minutes.
0 seconds.
<click!>
ARE YOU SURE?
<click!>
Yes.
"Told you it was simple." Jessica said.
"What?" Nick said, vaguely aware of the sudden tension in between his legs as his cock began to surge up
proudly once more.
"Nothing." Said Jessica, straddling him, planting one hand on his chest, and starting to grind herself
against Nick's hardening, hungry erection through the fabric of her panties. "Just...mmmmmnnothing."