Lorena Castellano, a latina philosophy teacher.

Lorena sighed as she gave yet another lackluster an appropriately poor grade. Loathsome fools can't tell Deleuze from Foucault. She had read twenty-three insipid papers this day, a Saturday, sitting in the red chair in her small house for eight hours, barely moving at all. Already the dull heat in her wrists was building again, from holding her hands in that unnatural position for far too long.

She was a lovely woman, she had been told. Thirty-nine years old, staring down the loaded barrel of a fortieth birthday in a few months. She was still beautiful, aging gracefully under the protection of her latina genes, dark of skin, hair, and eye, but she was undeniably aging. The lines in her face and hands, the sagging of her breasts, the slow but inexorable accumulation of mass on her belly.

Rubbing her eyes, bloodshot from the glow of the screen, she stood and began to pace in her modest living room, her knees creaking and popping painfully. She walked to the bay windows and looked out, accross the street, to the track-and-field where young, shirtless students were doing drills. She sighed and felt herself growing wet as she saw them.

She had been a real beauty during her youth, but had been consumed by books and intellectual puersuits. She had not lost her virginity until twenty, and had had few hookups or long-term boyfriends since then.

Wasted. Her precious youth, wasted, not appreciated until it was pissed away on worthless study and a dead-end job. Well, not-quite a dead end job; it payed reasonably well, by college professor standards, but she would never retire.

Thirty-nine. Half her life, what should have been the better half, wasted. And she had nothing to look foreward to but the slow decline of her body, mind, and soul.

Her phone dinged as a text arrived. From another teacher, Nessa, a math teacher.

Hey. Want to go down to the bar? I want to drink and talk a bit.

Lorena sighed and looked down at the laptop, before closing it. She would be able to make up for lost time later. She needed to get out of her house, get out of her own head, if only for a few hours

***

After hours, students and faculty mingled freely in the many bars through Shoubu campus, a college large enough to be a small hidden city. There were a lot of bars in the city. This one, simply called The Usual Spot, was within walking distance of Lorena's house. She entered the darkness of the bar, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light, and slid into a vacant seat at the bar. The bartender, a plump but affable man, glanced at her. She bought a large, fruity drink called the Liquid Lobotomy. She drank slowly, listening to the others in the room.

The Usual Spot was a calmer place than most on Shoubu grounds, a low bar to clear. A pair of young men, football stars by the look of their builds, were working their ways down paralell lines of shot glasses, tipping back one after another, while a dozen others surrounded them cheering. From the panicked expressions and frenzied motions of the two drinkers, a GAME was in progress, though she knew not the particulars.

"Interesting, isn't it?" Nessa said as she sat down behind her."The grounds are magic. We could do anything with it, but we waste it playing silly games." Nessa was around Lorena's age, white, with long red hair. It had been flame-red in her older pictures, though it had slowly faded into a catlike orange-blonde. She was lithe, almost bony, with small breasts and sparing curves. Beautiful, in her own way, like Lorena, but blanched and faded by the years, again like Lorena.

Lorena sighed and took another sip of her drink. Every sip tasted like a different; this last one tasted like cherries and praline pecans. "Evening, Nessa. How are the students?"

"Worthless, except as eye-candy. Fools. I do everything for them, and they do not care. This is a college, for god's sake. And they waste their time on , fucking, and games."

Lorena sighed. She was tempted to agree, but she was jealous of them. Oh, to be able to get high without her head aching for a week. To be able to fuck with impunity, to desire and be desired. She had hated the lascivious gaze of the men her age when she was younger, but now she missed it.

The GAME device sat in her pocket. The faculty were forbidden from taking games that could interrupt the functioning of society- and enslavement were off the table- but otherwise they were freely permitted to take whatever bets they wished, with each other or the students. GAME or no, they were permitted to fuck students as well, though they were cautioned against doing so with their own classes.

Lorena nodded. "Same, more or less. Like they're barely even trying. Doing just enough to get buy. A few years ago it was better. The older teachers say it comes and goes in waves."

Nessa smiled, as she sipped something that smelled like lighter fluid and old pennies. "When I asked the headmistress, she said the same. Some batches are good, some are bad. A generation of savants, a generation of criminals. And so on and so forth."

Lorena raised an eyebrow. "Like she's one to talk. She's... what, our age? If that?"

"She looks that way, but I've heard some rumors from the older faculty. Looked it up in the yearbooks just to be sure. She's always been the one in charge of this place." Nessa set down her glass and looked at Lorena.

"Always?" Lorena asked.

Nessa nodded solemnly. "Always."

There came a bellowing scream from behind them as one of the footballers finished his twenty-first shot, the last in the line. The other, the loser, lunged across the table at the winner, desperately, steak-knife swinging, only for a fist to the jaw to send him sprawling back. His clothes unravveled into thread and fell from his well-muscled body, even as that lovely stud-meat began to change. His body collapsed in on itself, turning from the hard, angular body of an athlete into the soft, curvaceous body of a cheerleader, breasts and hips swelling, cock and balls retracting, newly created pussy opening. He- now she- tried to run for the door, naked, only for the winer to grab her by her long, blonde hair and yank her back. She thrashed and screamed, as the other footballers began to unzip their pants and throw away their belts, an in a dozen heartbeats they were upon her.

Lorena stared at the unfolding scene in mute horror, while Nessa simply sighed and shook her head. "The power of the gods" she said, her lips curling in disgust, "and they use it on this. Fitting, I suppose. The gods_ _were horny bastards too, come to think of it."

An evil idea clicked in her mind, several half-formed details alighing just so, and Lorena pulled the GAME device form her pocket, and began rapidly typing. She tried to keep it hidden from Nessa, until it was too late.

Nessa glanced down at her lap and pulled her own GAME device from her pocket as it dinged.

GAME: Participants (NESSA and LORENA) will attempt to have sex with as many different men/boys as possible (having sex defined as being directly ejaculated into via the mouth, anus, or vagina). The winner will be the one with the highest score at the end of one week (168 hours).

PRIZE: Physical age is reduced by twenty years.

LOSS: Physical age is increased by twenty years.

Forfeit: Nessa's physical age is increased by ten years.

Nessa's eyes locked into Lorena's, incandescent with rage.

"I'm sorry." Lorena said. "Accept or don't." She said, downing the rest of her Liquid Lobotomy in a single gulp, before standing up and walking out of the bar. She remembered only afterwards that she did not pay. Whoops.

The device she clutched in her hand dinged. She glanced down at it.

The terms are accepted. LET THE GAMES BEGIN.