“Hey, err… Pat?”

“Yes, Charlotte? Hi, nice to meet you,”

“Likewise. So, your first time in LA?”

“Just one of the first few, I’d say.”

Pat snuck out of Alyssa apartment at the break of dawn. He wanted to clear his head so kept driving aimlessly until till he found a diner down in Hollywood Boulevard. Then, he got bored and started messaging people on his favourite dating app.

“Brilliant. How long are you staying then?” asked Charlotte.

“Not long. Hazy plans, but I might leave as early as tonight.”

“Hmm… that’s unfortunate,” said Charlotte pausing to catch a breath. She came into the breakfast chain sweaty from a half-completed morning run. But barely anyone would begrudge this living commercial for why you should jog in the morning. She even came in sports bra and proper lycra pants.

“What brings you here?” she asked finally.

“Well… you know. I was try’na chase someone down.”

She gave him a curious look.

“Why don’t I bring you round on your potential last day?” she said, changing the topic.

“After we’ve something to eat, come back to my apartment,” she said trailing off coyly. “Let me wash up a little, you know I was already half way through my run when the app buzzed. Then, we’ll go sightseeing.”

“Yeah, okay. Sounds like a plan.”

“And I think that’s us,” said Charlotte raising her hand to the waiter.

“When did you?”

But Charlotte only winked. “Oh, but you’re paying for this meal, mister,” she added.

The waiter came over and set down some waffles and milkshakes. Pat gave his date and a once-over, but Charlotte was checking out the waiter.

“Man, the wait staff in this city… oh,” she said noticing him staring askance. It wasn’t about her checking out the wait staff, she thinks. Even if he was much more conventionally attractive than he is.

“I think there’s twice the calories in that shake than you could have burn in a run.”

“Hey, I’m having breakfast with you of all people. I think it’s my cheat day.”

Pat rolled his eyes.

They were a curious pair and drew occasional glances from passerby. The waiter, Pat noticed, took a quick glance back once he thought he was out of sight. She was pretty and fit. She wore an expensive sports bra and a tight-fitting lycra. Her gold hair tied in a neat ponytail. In his old tee and jeans, some might see him as a sloppy date.

“So, if I may ask, do you use the app often?” said Charlotte.

“Less and less now,” he said glancing down at his phone.

“Can I ask why?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “To be so blunt, it’s a bit of a been there done that time in my life lately. It’s hard to get excited about things anymore.”

“That was… blunt,” she said. “But I think I understand.”

“When did you start the whole project?” she asked.

“Not that long, actually. It’s been three years, I think.” There’s just something about the way she smells and sweat that’s really turning him on. It’s just how toned body was slightly flush and how her own sweat cling to it that accentuates how much she worked out.

“Three years and five months,” he added idly. He fantasized about how he would get close to her and smell her. He reached across the table to grab her arm. Without taking her eyes off him, she took her milkshake and pulled back slightly to drink, naturally putting herself just beyond reach. “The app’s only been up for about a year though.”

“That is a crazy thought. Three years and five months, huh…” she trailed off thoughtfully.

There were both silent for a moment. They both worked on their food and neither was in a rush to speak.

“So, what is it that you do?” he asked after he wolved down a whole egg benedict.

“Well… right now, I’m on a break. But I’m starting my residency back in Palo Alto.”

“Wow… that’s… congrats Charlotte.”

“Thanks.”

“But how?” he asked staring up and down her perfectly toned runner body and wondered how a doctor had time to keep that.

“The cheap answer is discipline. But come on, Pat. Of all people, you know the real answer to that.”

“Okay so, if I may ask,” he said lowering his voice conspiratorially. “How’d they get you?”

“I joined a sorority,” she said with a smirk. “It’s just part of the pledge, honey.”

“What?”

“It’s one of those pretty girls only sorority, Pat,” she said lowering her voice to the same volume. “Sure, occasionally we let in an uggo just to fill the quota.”

“On my pledge night, my sisters took all the freshmen down to the basement and blindfolded all of us. One by one they gagged us and strapped us down to a chair. I watched helplessly as my friends succumbed one by one,” she said scooting over to his side of the table. Her smell came to him in wafts, rosemary, lemon… and musk.

“I was breaking cold sweat waiting my turn,” she whispered in his ears. “Help, help I screamed. Don’t do this, I won’t tell anyone. But they just laughed in my face.”

“Slowly I lose focus and became more and more blank. Empty. I realize my skin wasn’t the only wet part of my body,” she said rubbing her wet body against him.

“And my mind. Oh my God, my mind was on fire,” she snuggled and moaned into his ears. “Like there were ten Pats gangbanging me while I was on acid. It made me so open and so weak, and so submissive. Then came the voices, those sweat cajoling voices telling us all about our new thoughts. New minds, new wants, new needs. Redirecting all our emotional and sexual energy."

"We were helplessly sat there and let the voices have their way with us. All we could do was drooled from our mouth and our pussy, and a few stray tears fell here and there mourning the people we were. But we were changing by the minute and everything just felt so good we never wanted it to stop.”

“When it was over we were so wet and so open, and we had an orgy all night. We fantasize you were there in the middle. We worshiped you kissing you, licked you, rimmed you until we can’t put our tongues back into our mouths anymore. And your name was the only coherent word that came out of us that night.”

“And then, I went home, text my girlfriend a break up message and jilled myself to sleep hoping I’d meet you some day. Then the next year, my sisters and I held down the next batch of freshmen and laughed in their face when they begged us to let go. And when they were ready, we whispered insidious nothingness into their ears.”

“Fuck me dead, is that how…” he trailed off. “I need to have a word with Acquisition.”

“Come on, cowboy. That’s all the reaction you’re going to give me?”

“That’s all you’re gonna get in public,” he said smirking.

“Alright, I lied. That’s not how it happened. Do the math bro, I think I graduated pre-med even before you started your little venture.”

“THANK GOD!” he said.

“But the truth isn’t so far off, and you really own several sororities on several university campuses.”

“At least tell me there is a local liaison officer you report to.”

“Yes, yes. We all report to an officer at a local HQ, which in Palo Alto is behind an ice cream shop. We follow a cooldown period before breaking up with anyone, and we submit our reports regularly using a designated device through our private VPN.”

“Thank fucking God!” He said.

“I think it’s about time we leave,” she said glancing at the unapproving stare coming their way.

“Guess you never know what you get with the app,” he said wistfully, closing the app on his phone.

It was a curious looking dating app. It had a slick UI and ran smoothly, but the app wasn’t a mainstream one. It can’t be downloaded via the Appstore, only installed manually. It has over twenty-thousand female users and is the only dating app where there are over twenty-thousand times more women than men.

***

Pat and Charlotte went back to her apartment after breakfast. They messed around a little in the shower. But he was too tired from the night before to do anything much and she ended up just massaging his back, wiping him down, and blowing his hair dry.

“So you’re from LA?”

“My dad is. My mom’s from across the pond. I grew up here.”

“That explains the name.”

“It does.”

“So, how come you don’t live at home?”

“I need my space, a lot of it. And I’m sure you’ve appreciated why this past year I’ve… become a rather private person.”

“I haven’t thought of it that way before. You got lucky though, a nice apartment like this just for the summer?”

“Oh no, you have no idea how deep this goes, have you? I got it from a sister who goes home for the summer.”

“Huh? You mean like a harem sister who lives here?”

“Precisely. I think her name is Pam and she’s a postgrad at UC. There’s a whole thread on the app for rent and sublet. If we rent to each other, there’s less risk of outsider coming into contact with sensitive materials.”

“Wow, that’s…”

“Technically, the California Chapter maintains a bunch of safehouses and properties, but they don’t like us using that unless we absolutely have to. Subletting and having legitimate financial transaction between us create plausible paper trail and explain away our relationships. No unnecessary favours in a Chapter with over thirty members.”

Pat shook his head. The logistics behind an international conspiracy was way over his head, even the absolute loyalty of every link could be guaranteed. They’d already broken the first rule of a good conspiracy, which was never include more than a few persons. After all, a few blunders here and there was sure to bring the whole roof down. So, he made sure to recruit and delegate both the design and execution to other, more capable hands. He hadn’t bother thinking about how complete and thorough the end result would have become.

“Come on,” Charlotte said finally. “If you’re gonna lounge here, you’re gonna lounge here all day. Get dress, and let’s go.”

“Fine, fine,” he said and followed her out the door.

Someone from the app gave them a fake Uber ride and dropped them close to the Walk of Fame. That’s where Charlotte said they should start their walking tour.

Pat went up to Alyssa’s star, touching it poignantly.

“This is what brought me here.”

“I’d say I’m impressed, but then again it’s not really unexpected,” she said with a slight shrug.

He gave her a crooked smile.

“Tacky of you to go for a star in her prime, but you’ve got good taste,” she said.

“I’ll tell her you said so,” he said.

Charlotte chuckled.

“Hey, Eskimo sis forever, am I right?”

“You’re disgusting,” she said shoving him playfully and prodded him on. “And you still haven’t slept with me.”

“Yeah well, someone else didn’t really let me sleep last night,” he said looking at the star on the ground.

“Men,” she said pointedly.

After playful photos by the Chinese Theatre, they went on to the Hollywood Cemetery where Pat had a moment walking through the grave of silver screen stars. Death might come for us all, but a man who has achieved all that he could ever wished was perhaps a man dead already. He was yet a man of thirty, but at that moment he felt older than all the skeletons six feet under.

Everywhere they went, they turned heads. They were an odd pairing, a gorgeous and snazzy lady in the arm of a man of her own height. They weren’t overtly flirty, but the energy of her attraction to him was so intense and so visceral. They were a spectacle to tourists. The local were far more subtle, but even they often spare an obvious glance or two.

After a late lunch, they went to the LA County Museum of Art, and took some more photo with the light installations. They then walked to the Griffith Observatory arriving just in time to witness the sun setting over the cityscape. As the city lights began to twinkle below, they sat down looking towards the horizon. They shared a quiet moment and a hungry kissed. He knew it was going to happen, she didn’t. But he vicariously let her nervous anticipation infect him, and the joy of her fulfilment stirred in him a kind of pity.

“You know,” he said staring out the LA skyline. “It’s funny to think. A few years ago, if only I had a date half as pretty, half as impressive, who’s half as interested in me… I’d try my darndest to put a ring on her and forget about my crazy little project in the basement. None of this would’ve ever happened.” He gestured towards the horizon as if he owned everything between here and there.

“You wouldn’t have… I think,” she replied quietly. “Or shall we say there’re enough social forces working against you that it’s… very unlikely.”

“And in my case, I wasn’t available. I’m quite gay, and I was in a very serious relationship.”

“Huh, I never would’ve thought…” he said.

Charlotte just smiled back at him wistfully, almost sadly.

“I’m just glad things worked out for you.”

“Thank you,” he said after a long pause.

“If there’s anything I can help with your girlfriend…”

She shrugged.

“I’m still with her, but it’s not the same anymore,” she said then added after a pause.

They were silent for a time. Then he said, “if I may ask, who was recruited first?”

“It was me,” she said finally.

“After you know… what happen happened, I had to evaluate who around me was going to be a potential leak. In my case, it wasn’t my parents, it was Ash. I just knew she’d suspect something and she’d never just let go.”

“Charlotte, I’m so sorry…”

She shook her head.

“No, master, I don’t think you get it,” she said. “You don’t get us. We don’t have feelings or guilt about… the things we had to do. I just thought about what needed to be done and then I just arranged for it to happen,” she said pausing.

“She begged and pleaded with me when I held her down,” she said quietly. “It was all written on her face, the confusion, the betrayal. But when I looked into her eyes and watched the lights go out, I was just really impatient for her to get on with it.”

Pat stroked her face and hugged her.

“You did good. You did as you’re told.” he said whispering in her ears. “You’re an obedient little slut for master, aren’t you? You’re my good little lesbian slut, and you will get me all the pussy I want.”

She nodded, and cried and snuggled against his chest. He stroked her head.

“Cum for me,” he whispered in her ears.

She shuddered and shivered against him, hugged him tighter and melted against him. He really liked her heat and her smell and her vulnerability. He took massive comfort in the fact that, unlike his experience with very pretty women earlier in life, he no longer was just a shoulder to cry on. He took a lot of comfort in that fact. In fact, his heart was full of joy.