Nadine nearly hadn’t showed up for the experiment at all - she had a tendency to blow off her commitments if something more interesting occurred to her on the day - but she was approaching her mid-20s and a freshman for the fourth time. She was starting to realise just how much debt might pile up, and every little payment? That was important. Even tiny payments for psych experiments.

Even so, she’d got there late. Slipped into the room just as the briefing was finishing. Signed her name on the consent forms without worry - they were students, after all. What would they get funding for that was any kind of issue?

She knew that sometimes experiments just focused on one section of society, but it still weirded her out to see only women gathered together for the experiment, with two men monitoring. She felt uncomfortable just looking. She’d signed the paperwork - could she duck out and get the payment?

They were ushering her and her fellow test cases toward the monitors before she’d had a chance to properly start sidling toward the doors. She didn’t have time to think up an exit strategy; frustrating but probably fine. She figured she’d just grit through and get it over with. Maybe - assuming she could land a new job before the second appointment - she’d drop out on that, though, and if that meant she didn’t get the second payoff she’d live with it.

It was safe to say that as she sat down in front of the monitor and picked up her headphones, Nadine was feeling suspicious and uncomfortable. She sat back and folded her arms, glaring at the screen as if she was daring the test to begin.

Nadine didn’t think of herself as an angry woman, but suspicion paired with the feeling that she might have started to suspect too late was a vicious cocktail. When the beat began to play in her headphones, she frowned; when the pastel colours started up on the screen she glowered at them.

Nothing about this looked like it was a memory test. So what was it?

Nadine stared at the screen as if daring it to try anything funny, and her arms stayed firmly folded across her chest. Her mouth was a thin, taut line; her breath came out in frequent angry exhalations.

And yet…

Anger propelled her through the experiment’s tricks for quite some time. But it’s difficult to keep up a head of rage when there’s nothing to fight, and Nadine didn’t see anything she could fight. The more she watched, the more it seemed like the experiment was a whole heap of nothing. Nothing to try and remember. Nothing to forget.

Nothing to focus on. Nothing to sustain emotion.

The tight fit of her folded arms was slackening before the first moan escaped the lips of one of her fellow test cases. She had a few moments of genuine bewilderment before even that seemed to blur and fade into indistinct confusion.

She no longer glared. The tension throughout her frame released. Her clenched jaw slackened and a pool of saliva began to form behind her lower lip.

Only her eyes remained alert, focused, drinking in everything she screen showed her.

*

What had happened to LaToya, Mimi wasn’t at all sure. She knew it had been down to the experiment they’d both attended - that Mimi had badgered her friend to attend, keeping the payoff in mind and knowing LaToya was chronically short of cash.

(That never made much sense to Mimi, either. LaToya wasn’t interested in parties, didn’t drink to excess, and most though not all of her food was handled on the dorm meal plan. The shared accommodation wasn’t even full of geek stuff. So how did LaToya never seem to have any money?)

The experiment had had something to do with memory, Mimi knew, but - as she’d had to confess, shamefaced, in the exit interview - she’d forgotten the whole thing almost immediately. The graphics had been vague, the music kind of lo-fi, and the result was something that just seemed to wash over and by her without leaving an impression.

LaToya hadn’t remembered much either, honestly - but she’d been a little vague that day anyway. The result was that they barely talked about the experiment.

And nothing much changed - LaToya went back to her games and Mimi went back to her studies, they did their best to keep from annoying each other, and frustrations continued to rise, right up until The Argument.

(It was impossible for Mimi to think of it without the capital letters. It had changed the course of their academic years, and it had revealed to Mimi that she had a capacity for mean-spirited pettiness she wasn’t at all comfortable admitting.)

She couldn’t remember now exactly how it had happened, but she’d been trying to stay reasonable. She knew if you could sound reasonable, whoever you were arguing with would often start feeling guilty just from that, and you didn’t necessarily need to push your point too hard.

Mimi was a big fan of looking and feeling like the good person.

In reaching for that reasonable line, at one point she’d tried “It’s not like I’m asking you to pretend you’re some kind of - well. Some kind of dutiful cleaning lady.”

She’d instantly regretted it. It wasn’t like she’d called LaToya uppity, or urban, or referred to her as ‘you people’ but the moment she came close to describing her a way you might talk about ‘the help’ she’d heard what she was saying, winced, and braced - LaToya wasn’t aggressive about things, but they were already annoyed with each other, and a line like that -

But LaToya didn’t say anything. She was sitting there, staring into space. Her expression was so absent it looked like she’d never even been in an argument.

Mimi waited for a moment, then tried “Hello?”

“Hello,” LaToya said softly. Her expression didn’t change.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing…”

“Why not?”

“I have no duties.”

Mimi sat there quietly, thinking over what was going on.

“You can stop fucking with me now,” she said, and “Oh-kay…” LaToya agreed.

But she didn’t stop fucking with Mimi. Her expression didn’t change at all. It was kind of eerie.

Mimi tried five or six different ways of asking what was going on before she even started to guess at the truth.

*

Nadine had been almost entirely out of contact with Nick and Joey for almost a month after the first experiment finished - not that she remembered either of their names. She had vaguely thought that a phone call the same day had sounded like one of them, but otherwise she’d set them completely aside. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have enough on her mind.

Nadine was at her fifth college, not as an experienced postgraduate bouncing around doing research work, but as a five-time freshman. She’d tried voicing the suggestion, after dropping out a third time, that maybe she’d be better off finding a job she actually liked with even half a chance of advancement, but her parents hadn’t listened. Not being quite ready to step out on her own, Nadine had gone along with it and tried to ignore the vague fear in the back of her mind that her student loans were reaching a levels he’d never be able to overcome.

Part of the reason she’d been willing to keep going back to college was that Nadine didn’t particularly want to try and find a job either. Or, more accurately, she dreaded the point three or four weeks into a job where the novelty would wear off.

That moment was going to be a test. Would she lose her momentum again? Would her drive fold, distracted by a dozen or more shiny ideas And the urge to pass her time scrolling on her phone rather than getting the work done?

It had always been hard for her to knuckle down and get the work done. She’d made it through to the second year only once, and that had been a concerted effort. Even that had collapsed a couple of weeks into the first semester of her second year, and she’d limped on for another month or so in the hopes that she’d be able to turn that all around - hopes she wasn’t able to back up.

But this past month…

Nadine had sat down for a lecture a day or so after the experiment, and something the professor said had caught her attention. Once caught, it had stayed caught; she’d listened to the entire second half of the lecture, after that moment. Once it was over, rather than go hang out with the stoner crowd and blow off steam, Nadine went back to her dorm room, where she sat down and tried to pull together usable notes on every previous lecture for that subject using only her vague memories of half-ignored talks.

After about an hour of that, frustrated, she’d got up and marched out to the library. Memories were stirring, but they were insufficient. Still, between Google searches and a little attention to any book whose cover she remembered seeing, she started piecing together what she needed to know to understand that day’s lecture. It was eleven at night when the library staff gently ushered her out, closed the doors behind her, and started locking up. Nadine stood on the steps outside the library, staring out at the night sky, feeling everything she’d tried to absorb that day click into place.

The next day she lost an hour before breakfast ransacking her room until she found where the textbooks she’d abandoned in the first week had been dumped, then settled down to read and study.

*

It did feel petty, Mimi had told herself so many times. Incredibly petty. Dubiously moral - well, alright, not moral at all, if she was forced to admit it - and if it wasn’t illegal that was purely down to nobody having thought to legislate against it.

But it was also impossible to prove. LaToya accepted anything she was told was her duty without question or hesitation, and afterwards she didn’t think anything she’d done was out of the ordinary. Even if she mentioned it to her friends (the few who were on the same campus), any chores Mimi gave her would always come across as perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable.

It had started out small. Mimi got LaToya to do the dishes a little more often, so Mimi was handling it twice a week instead of three or four times. Then she’d realised that she’d put herself in a corner one day and had to go do some essential things while she should be handling her Cheesecake Factory shift; she’d had no other way out, so she added onto LaToya’s duties that day.

Of course, every time you find yourself pushing your own rules, it gets that little bit easier to push them further next time. In a very few weeks, Mimi was giving LaToya two or even three new tasks every day. The guilt she felt she pushed aside. It wasn’t petty. Not when you remembered that LaToya would otherwise just be cooped up in front of her computer. She was wasting her college years. And Mimi was getting her out and about; while she was running Mimi’s laundry across campus to wash it she could meet people. Socialise. Feel better and more excited about everything.

When you kept all that in mind it wasn’t nearly so bad.

The problem was…

The problem was Joey.

Somewhere in the same couple of weeks where she was starting to take more and more advantage of LaToya, Joey had walked up to her as she passed between lectures. She’d done her best to ignore him. He skeeved her out, plus she’d heard he was dating someone else from the experiment anyway. She didn’t know Beatrice, but the woman’s reputation preceded her anyway. Apparently she was always spoiling for a fight, and nobody was quite willing to give it to her.

What she was doing with an odious little shit like Joey made no sense, but Mimi’s dad had always said ‘it takes all sorts’ whenever he couldn’t answer a question like that, so Mimi just followed his lead.

But Joey wouldn’t be ignored. He kept walking alongside her, smirking at her like he knew something she didn’t - an idea she found very, very hard to believe. And when it became clear that she wasn’t going to talk first, he huffed, then said “You know, you’re not being very helpful,” in the weirdest tone. Like it was some sly practical joke.

Mimi wasn’t at all clear on the rest of the conversation - which, she was gradually coming to concede, was probably not how anyone should be about a conversation where they gained a boyfriend.

Especially not a boyfriend they already knew was openly dating someone else.

Especially not someone else known for aggression.

She couldn’t really explain her decision, either. It was just that - well -

It wasn’t very helpful of her to refuse to be Joey’s girlfriend.

To refuse to be fucked whenever he wanted.

It was much more helpful to trek halfway across campus or even into town to make herself available for him. To let herself take up position as a welcoming cockwarmer while he half-fucked her, half-played on his XBox while braying his laugh and yapping to his friends over the headset. To moan, loudly enough that his friends couldn’t help but hear her.

Joey thought that meant they all knew he was getting laid more often than them. Mimi had considered pointing out that they probably just thought he was watching porn while playing games with them, but - well, he wouldn’t consider that helpful, and she’d learned over time to think of his definition as more important than her own.

*

The parts of campus where you saw Nadine had completely changed over the last month. It had taken a little time for her to settle into each part of her rhythm, but her newfound focus and attention to detail led her habits to completely change. There were quite a few who found themselves feeling abandoned, but she’d befriended others, some of them gravitating to her over the shared experience of the experiment.

In particular, Nadine and Felicity had grown close. She spoke to Cecily sometimes, too, and a few of the others she was on better-than-nodding-acquaintance with. But it was Felicity who, one day, sat in the dining area with plastic trays from the big campus concessions in front of them, looked around nervously, lowered her voice and softly said “So which of them’s got you?”

To say Nadine was taken aback would be to make too much of it. She was confused, if anything; barely even that. She assumed - as you might easily - that she hadn’t heard her friend correctly. “Come again?”

“Which of them’s got you?” Felicity asked again. There was something strange in her tone as she did. Patient, but persistent. She had a point, whatever she was talking about, and she had a goal.

This wasn’t entirely uncommon for Felicity, but Nadine found it difficult to keep up with her. Felicity was smarter than her (she expected), quicker than her on the uptake (definitely), and had spent a lot of her life learning to approach her point cautiously, circuitously. It wasn’t until coming to college that she’d loosened up and even risked talking about things directly. Nadine didn’t have that background, hadn’t learned to think like that. Hearing the first question Felicity had to ask and having an answer was always going to be beyond her, and Nadine had no objection to that.

“Who’s them?” was the only reply she had. Sometimes puncturing Felicity’s plans returned her friend to a less nervous way of talking and made everything much easier.

“You know,” Felicity said. “The gruesome twosome.” Nadine was none the wiser, and it must have shown on her fact, because Felicity lowered her voice even further and leaned across the table to say “Joey and Nick.”

“The… the two dorks from the experiment?” Nadine asked, bewildered, and a regretful lip-twitch told her she’d said something wrong. After a moment, she remembered seeing Felicity go into a sports bar with Nick a week or so ago.

Were they an item? Nadine hoped so. Felicity had told her, the week after the experiment, that her love life had always been either frustrating, a mess, or a frustrating mess. If she’d found someone who was fun, that was a step forward.

“Sorry,” she mumbled. Ever in control of her emotions, Felicity shrugged.

“Them, anyway,” Felicity confirmed.

“Wait - what do you mean, got me?”

“You know,” Felicity retorted quietly. After a few moments looking at the continuing confusion Nadine was labouring under, she tried again. “Which of them is fucking you?”

“Neither?” Nadine said, and her own voice dropped to near silence now the two of them were talking more clearly on this topic. “Aren’t you fucking Joey?”

Felicity nodded, and smiled despite herself. “He’s actually pretty good. Still figuring out how to approach me, but he really likes my mouth, and it turns out I really like his hands.” The smile became wistful. “And his cock.”

Nadine was pretty sure that was too much information, but held back from comment.

“But you two are exclusive, right?”

“Oh, no. Between the two of them they’re fucking more than half the test group.”

It was too ridiculous a claim - she’d seen how Joey behaved - and too big in scope. Nadine couldn’t believe it. Had to be exaggeration. She half-smiled. “Go on?”

“I’m serious.” Felicity nodded firmly. “I’ve spoken to most of us - Daphne absolutely will not talk to me - and there’s about a sixty percent hit rate so far, mostly Joey.”

“Oh that makes no sense,” Nadine retorted. “Nick’s a dork, but he’s a cute dork. I’m happy for you, by the way.”

Felicity looked at her for a moment. “You really don’t believe this?”

“I - you know, I do trust you. If you’ve seen it it’s probably true. But wrapping my head around it isn’t so easy.” That felt like a safe way to put it. And it was basically true, too.

“Wait and see,” Felicity told her. “Pretty sure your turn will come.” There was something in her tone, a finality, that finally brought the seriousness of the situation home to Nadine.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she said. “You’re serious about this?”

Felicity nodded.

“It keeps happening?”

Felicity nodded again.

“I can’t just wait and see,” Nadine told her. “If I do I might end up with Joey.”

“…You have a good point,” Felicity said. She pulled her phone from her pocket and fiddled with it for a moment. When she set it down, she smiled. “Come round to mine tonight?” she asked.

“I… sure,” Nadine said. “But Felicity - how is this going to solve my problem?”

“I don’t know exactly,” Nadine told her. “But I’m pretty sure it will.”

“This had better not get in the way of my coursework.”

*

Most of the time, Mimi put out of her mind that the Joey thing didn’t make any sense. Thinking about it was often confusing. Like there was something there, even if she couldn’t exactly think what - but no matter how often she prodded at the idea, it didn’t get any clearer.

She’d certainly never drawn any connection between her problems with Joey and the exploit planted in LaToya’s head, despite being absolutely certain LaToya had picked it up from the experiment. And she’d always erased chore lists before there was any risk of anyone seeing them.

Except that that day, Joey had knocked on the door without warning and, being helpful, she’d let her boyfriend into her rooms. And the chore list? It had been right there. No concealing it when he saw it, and even when she tried to wipe it off he said “That’s not very helpful,” so she stopped and instead just stood there, cheeks burning with shame, waiting for him to tell her how she could help him.

He read the list a couple of times, then shrilled that weird nasal laugh of his. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through something near the board, and Mimi knew he had to be checking something.

“You did do this,” she said quietly. She’d wanted to believe that what had happened to LaToya had been an accident, though she’d known it couldn’t be. Joey looked back at her and just grinned.

“You know what would be really helpful, babe?” he asked, and he reached out and picked up the chalk. “I really want my cock sucked.” Mimi started moving toward him, but he waved her back nonchalantly. “But I’d like it if I could try someone knew. It’d be really helpful if you let me use your roomie as a cocksucker.”

She wanted to say no. Wanted to shout. To scream. For a moment a vision swam before her eyes of calling this the last straw, snatching up the skillet beside her, and charging forward to drive him out.

But that wouldn’t be helpful. Wouldn’t help at all.

Sullenly, she let him write what he wanted on there. She folded her arms grumpily.

“I’ll be in your room,” Joey told her. “When she sees her new job, send her through?”

She nodded. She didn’t like it, but she’d help.

*

Nadine almost didn’t visit Felicity. She’d spent the entire afternoon worrying about what her friend might be up to. What Nick and Joey were up to.

Wondering how they could possibly be fucking so many women without getting into trouble. It wasn’t against the law, sure - but anyone who thinks the law is the biggest problem faced from sleeping around has never realised that women talk to one another.

In the end it was partly curiosity that drove her across campus toward her friend. Partly curiosity - and partly the memory of Joey’s self-satisfied smirk. The idea that she might somehow, for whatever reason, have to sleep with one of the two was horrifying. But if it was somehow true - ah, in that case, she’d damn well choose the better of the two options. And Nick looked like he might actually care what the woman thought of the experience, if only for his own pride.

Felicity seemed different when she answered the door. She was moving differently, her eyes half-closed but alight. Looking at her, Nadine had the impression of a woman whose senses were entirely focused on her body; how it felt, how it moved, and how both of those could bring pleasure.

“Ah,” she smiled. “Good.” She stretched out a hand and took Nadine by the wrist, and just watching the movement left Nadine feeling she finally understood what the word ‘languorous’ meant. That slow, blissful satisfaction in every movement and every second. Felicity drew Nadine into her room with sensual aplomb.

Nadine made her way in curiously. “Felicity, what on earth’s gotten into-” When her eyes fell on Nick, her question hiccupped to a stop. “Uh-”

“Good evening,” Nick said politely - although there was definitely some amusement in there, Nadine just wasn’t sure at what. “Felicity tells me you’ve been a little concerned my friend would, uh, get to you.” By now Felicity was sashaying across the room to him. She draped herself across him, sat on one thigh, head nestled in against his neck. Her hand came up to curl fingers into his T-shirt sensuously.

“…Have you done something to her?” Nadine demanded, caught somewhere between bewilderment and protective anger. Nick’s expression hardened.

“Oh, Nadine,” he said. “Stay focused.”

Her attention sharpened in on the pair on the sofa. Other sounds in the background vanished from her consciousness. Now she saw the desire in the two people who had become her whole world, she felt it rising in herself. A passion out of nowhere, just like in her studies.

Felicity beckoned her over with a lazy, lustful grin, and Nadine went to join them both. Their lips met, and it was passionate paradise. Then she kissed Nick, too, and his hand slipped under her top. Her whole focus was given over to the passion all around her.

Overwhelmed and compelled, Nadine became part of their lovemaking.