Date 4: Part 4

Alan and Chloe made their way to the kitchen.

Christian and Joan were already there, listening while Natalia explained something she’d discovered in the library. She looked unusually animated, like she’d found an old piece of Earth hiding inside the hotel’s nonsense.

“Those little glass vials,” Natalia said, gesturing with both hands, “have droppers built into them. And the labels are using the Dewey Decimal System.”

Joan blinked. Christian leaned closer.

“It was fading when I was in school,” Natalia continued, “but we still learned it. That means the vials are probably an information-storage system—like books.”

She tapped her notebook, then frowned in thought.

“We should figure out how they’re accessed. Laurel said the library was missing information about the Stargazers. These might be where it went.”

“Um—hi,” Alan said, waving.

He felt exposed. He wasn’t sure why, exactly. Chloe, on the other hand, looked pleased with herself. Almost smug.

Natalia waved back. “Oh. Hi.”

Joan gave a small wave too, blushing faintly. Christian’s gaze flicked over Alan and Chloe with obvious curiosity, like he’d been waiting for a report.

“We have data on the VP scoring system,” Chloe said, setting her shoulders like a soldier about to deliver intelligence. “And it’s good news.”

Christian gave a short giggle that was closer to a snort.

“What, did he give you a room key?”

“It didn’t give VP,” Chloe said matter-of-factly. “But yes.”

Alan’s face heated.

“We have… information.” Chloe placed a sheet of paper on the kitchen table. The girls gathered in, and Alan tried very hard to become a neutral piece of furniture.

At the top, in Chloe’s neat handwriting, it read:

VP DISCOVERIES

1 VP: Kiss Alan (credit to Christian)
2 VP: Exposure of breasts
3 VP: Full nudity (vagina, anus, other extremities)
4 VP: Genital touching of Alan
6 VP: Alan’s manual contact with breasts
1 VP: Chaste hug
6 VP: Alan’s ejaculation
4 VP: Unclear (ambiguous events)

Below that, in smaller print:

ACTS WHICH DID NOT PRODUCE VP:

– Verbal affirmations
– Variations on genital and breast contact with feet, face, mouth, and buttocks
– Gift of a room key
– Alan microwaving a Hot Pocket for Chloe
– Chloe microwaving a Hot Pocket for Alan
– Bathroom use while the other watched
– Ingestion of urine (thank God)
– Blood sharing
– Haircut
– Mutual watching of pornography
– Gift of a nude photograph
– Pole dance attempt (Chloe tripped)
– Pole dance attempt (successful, Alan did not trip)

And, at the bottom:

CURRENT VP TOTALS:

Chloe: 27
Laurel: 13
Ariadne: 10
Joan: 8
Christian: 4
Natalia: 1

Silence sat on the kitchen like a weight.

Joan cleared her throat first.

“Good job,” she said, nodding toward Alan and Chloe in a way that Alan realized—too late—was the nod you gave a couple who had successfully assembled furniture together.

Then she squinted at the page again.

“Is there a reason Chloe didn’t finish in the list?”

Chloe’s face flickered. She didn’t look up.

“It’s… hard for me,” she said quietly.

Joan’s expression softened. “Oh. Sorry. That makes sense.”

Alan felt a sudden flare of protective irritation toward the universe, the hotel, the Producers, and any system that had turned this into a team meeting.

“Well,” Joan continued, regaining her practical tone, “this is better than I expected.”

Natalia traced a finger down the paper. “Why don’t you know about four of these points?”

“They were noticed after ambiguous events,” Alan said. “We kind of… had to speed-run everything to gather data.”

Natalia’s eyes narrowed.

“What about first-time bonuses?”

Alan froze so hard it felt like his bones locked.

“There’s a first-time bonus?”

Natalia stared at him like he’d admitted he couldn’t read.

“Didn’t you read the pamphlet?” she sighed. “New acts count for double.”

The air changed instantly.

Christian’s expression sharpened. His gaze snapped to Chloe like a spotlight.

Chloe’s head jerked up. “I didn’t lie!”

Christian’s voice came out colder than Alan expected. “You didn’t tell us.”

“Chloe,” Alan said, tired all at once. “Why didn’t you mention it? I clearly didn’t know.”

Joan stepped in fast, voice controlled. “Are you sure she knew?”

Chloe’s jaw tightened. She looked angry and embarrassed at the same time.

“It’s only a few points,” she muttered.

Natalia raised her voice without meaning to.

“It’s not about the points.” She stabbed the paper with her finger. “It’s about the information. We need to know what’s being counted, and how.”

Then she exhaled, forcing herself back down.

“But… we have a lot more than we did yesterday.”

Joan leaned closer to the list, thinking like she was solving a math problem instead of a hostage situation.

“We can rule out anything with odd numbers,” Joan muttered. “That means the even numbers were probably new, judging by what’s listed.”

She did quick arithmetic under her breath.

“I think Chloe got eight to ten extra VP, depending on how the ‘unknown’ events were treated.” Joan frowned. “Which… doesn’t feel like a lot.”

“It didn’t feel like a lot,” Chloe admitted, eyes bright with something that looked like shame and defiance tangled together. “I was scared, okay? I felt like I had a target on my back.”

She swallowed hard.

“I just wanted a head start.”

Joan’s voice cut in before the room could fracture.

“We can’t turn on each other.”

Her expression was firm—disgusted, exhausted, determined.

“I’m not happy about this,” Joan said. “But we’ll deal with worse before this is over. And we’ll deal with worse after we go back and try to live together.”

She looked around the table, meeting each gaze in turn.

“This will be a nightmare if we don’t work together.”

Natalia nodded slowly, grateful for the rescue.

“You’re right,” she said. “Good thinking.”

Alan felt his shoulders loosen by a fraction. He hated how relieved he was that someone had said teamwork like it mattered.

He fumbled for a safer topic.

“Well… how are you all holding up?” he asked. “Um. Any issues with—” he gestured vaguely at Joan— “girlhood?”

Joan made a face.

“Eh. The period started, and it’s weird. I like not having tangly bits I can sit on by accident. Boobs are too sensitive.”

She shrugged, as if adjusting her entire physiology was a mild inconvenience.

“Giant snake under the kitchen table is more fun, though. But I’m pretty sure I should ditch the morph before Saturday.”

“Saturday?” Alan frowned. “Isn’t it Wednesday?”

Natalia shook her head.

“The hotel calendar says Thursday,” she said. “But we seem to have been **** at slightly different times. So it probably isn’t Earth’s calendar.”

Christian nodded. “Sunday’s the challenge.”

“Which has to do with deciding on a challenge,” Natalia added quickly, “but we don’t know the details.”

“Oh,” Alan said. “Good to know.”

He glanced under the table.

Coiled there was a long, serpentine body—an almost perfect duplicate of Ariadne’s Crawler form—resting with its chin against Joan’s calf as if it belonged there.

Alan blinked.

“Oh. Let me try to change you into Ariadne’s human form, if you’re okay with that,” he said carefully.

“Oh, sure.” The snake—Joan—leaned against his leg with warm, friendly weight.

Alan stared. Joan stared. Nothing happened.

After a few seconds, they both shrugged, mutually accepting failure as a default setting.

“I guess Joan doesn’t get the transformations,” Chloe said with a small smile. “Just the appearance.”

Joan’s human form sniffed. “Seems fair. I’d probably break something important.”

Chloe cleared her throat.

“Since I need to apologize,” she said, and the words came out more sincere than Alan expected, “and you mentioned getting a new form for the date… how about mine?”

Joan’s snake form spat out the device—an unsettling motion that Alan was trying to stop reacting to—and her human avatar caught it neatly.

Chloe leaned down and kissed the snake’s nose.

A flash of pink light burst outward.

A moment later, a girl who looked like Chloe in Chloe’s own shorts and t-shirt lay sprawled under the table, blinking like it had been born confused.

“Oh,” Alan said, impressed despite himself. “You get clothes. That’s convenient.”

“Yeah,” Joan said immediately, frowning. “But what if we lose stuff that way?” She helped her second body to stand up and tapped the table, thinking aloud.

“Like, if I lose a phone by changing into someone else, that’s expensive. We need to figure out if we can replicate matter, too.”

Natalia nodded. “Laurel wanted to test that.”

“She got sidetracked,” Christian said gently, in the tone of someone describing a tornado.

Alan’s mouth tightened. “How is she doing?”

Joan hesitated.

“She seems… competent,” she said carefully. “A little scary. Smart.”

Alan looked torn in a way that didn’t match the question.

“Well,” he said, then swallowed. “Is anyone attracted to her?”

Chloe giggled. Christian smiled. Natalia kept her expression neutral with professional discipline.

Joan sighed like she’d been waiting for someone to ask.

“A bit,” she admitted.

“Nope,” Christian and Chloe said at the exact same time.

Natalia flinched like she’d been stabbed by the awkwardness.

“Um. Not really,” she said, uncomfortable. “Why are you asking?”

Alan’s blush returned full ****.

“I think the awkwardness of having her in this goes down massively if she’s involved with someone else in the harem,” he said.

Joan nodded immediately, a thoughtful look on both faces.

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. That makes sense.”