Revelations

"So, you got a little tongue-tied during the whole opening ceremony," Kendra laid out as the two of them walked through the glass doors. "Penny for your thoughts?"

"I mean...this is all fucked up, you know that, right?" Turner's head was spinning with a million thoughts. "You can't just expect to bring me and ten people, some of which I'm very close to, here, transform them, and expect me to be talking like it's business as usual."

"Sure, but all the rest of them seemed pretty fired up, especially Becca and Kathryn," Kendra pointed out.

"Well they deal with their stress differently," Turner explained. "Kathryn...I don't really know her well enough to have her pegged yet, but Becca oftentimes gets angry when things are tough or when you're manipulating her mind. I don't really do that, I mainly try to step back and look at the whole situation...hey wait a second. You didn't give me that thing you gave Kathryn, I wouldn't normally tell you all of this. What gives?"

"You might've noticed this, but we did put a few transformations on you," Kendra said a little sheepishly. She saw Turner getting a little riled up about that, so she amended, saying "Only good ones! Don't get all upset."

"Only good ones?" Turner accused. "How am I to know what you decide is 'good'? You don't exactly have the most reliable moral compass, based on what I've seen."

"I think you'll like these though," Kendra said. "We increased your libido slightly, and that'll change based on how many different girls here you have sex with. We made you a little stronger, fixed ya' up a bit in general, et cetera."

"But what does that have to do with me speaking more freely?" he asked.

"Well, since you're on a TV show, we made you speak a little more freely when you're in what we call 'confessionals', where you or you and one more person are speaking to the cameras."

"Wait, am I always being recorded?"

"I mean, not always. We allow everyone their privacy while they're sleeping, but a lot of the events that take place during the day...they're recorded, yes. It's a TV show, we can't just NOT record you."

"What about, when I'm...y'know..."

"No, sex isn't recorded. The VPs given out by that is assigned instantly, by our magic or whatever you want to call it."

"Okay, well that's mostly good, I guess," Turner relented.

They left the foyer and entered the main hall of the hotel...it was more of a palace though, Turner thought. Especially if the girls had their own homes, what made this actually a hotel? Was it just for the name of the show? "Harem Hotel" certainly sounded better than "Harem Palace". You could keep the alliteration with "Porn Palace", but that didn't really sound as appealing.

"Anyways, what do you think of the place so far?" Kendra asked, bringing him out of his rambling.

"Honestly, it's magnificent," he admitted. "I never would've dreamed of being in any place as luxurious as this for...well for my entire life."

"Let me show you around, then," she responded. "You'll probably like it a lot more when you know what's actually here."

Kendra than proceeded to show him around the palace on a very lengthy tour. The kitchen was reminiscent of something that Gordon Ramsey would be envious of, with its cookware, ingredients, and appliances seemingly innumerable. There was a large table that seated 11 people nearby, fit for enough meal to feed an army.

Then, she led him to the library in the palace. It looked like something out of Harry Potter, the shelves of books going on for eternity. Every book he could think of was probably here, from 500-page novels to census reports from Sudan in 2009. What really piqued his interest was the adjoined library of music.

"We know that music is a big part of yours—and a lot of these girls'— lives," Kendra explained. "We pulled some strings and tailored this building to suit your needs better. So you have this library of every song you could ever imagine. Records, cassettes, sheet music, you name it, it's here. And if it isn't, we'll get someone to get it for you pronto."

"This is...wow, this is insane," Turner said. "Without all the illegal activities going on here, I would've thought I'd died and went to heaven."

"Well, just wait until you see the next room," Kendra coyly said.

When they burst through the next set of doors, Turner was bombarded with another music room. Not one for music storage, but one for playing. Everything he could think of was here, from his flagship instruments of trombone and piano, to the more weird things like a theremin. Audio engineering and music tech equipment lines one side of the room, mixers, recording equipment, the whole shabang. It was a small thing, but it made it feel like home. Whenever Turner went on vacation, he always missed doing things with music, and if Kendra was to be believed, there'd be a lot of down time here, so he'd likely spend a long time here.

"You look mesmerized," Kendra commented.

"Sorry, just...wow," Turner said, more in awe from this than almost anything that had happened. He really was a sucker for this sort of thing.

"C'mon, there's more to see, you can't spend the entire tour just looking at all this," Kendra dragged him down the hallway.

The next rooms were something that Turner expected to find in the central building of a resort or a cluster of beach houses, or something like that. There was a game room with arcade machines, ping pong, pool table, air hockey, and a couple odds and ends. There was a gym or workout area with just about every exercise machine Turner had ever seen before, and then some. There was a pool and hot tub room, complete with a door in the back that led to the sauna. There was a movie theater, a bowling alley, just about everything that one could want in a vacation.

"By the way, this goes for pretty much anything that you need, if something is missing, don't hesitate to tell someone, we'll send a servant to fetch it for ya'," Kendra said as they came upon a grand staircase. "Everything is free for you, your gals will have to pay for some things, but everything that comes in the palace is free for them as well. Well, up we go."

She led Turner up the staircase, and immediately his eyes were assaulted by a room that wouldn't have been out of place in the penthouse of a resort in Las Vegas. Everything looked like it was expensive, even the air _smelled _expensive in the room. There was a personal kitchen separate from the one downstairs, a little lounge area off to the side, a double glass door that led out to a balcony, but the centerpiece of the room was a bed. It was large, way larger than the bed Turner had in his apartment. He figured he knew exactly why too, because of the title of Harem Master that they had given him.

Turner stepped outside onto the balcony and immediately smelled the salty breeze of the ocean surrounding. It was quite the view from up here, he could see the entire town area, the bungalows housing the ten girls, the prominent mountain in the middle of the island, the sandy beaches stretching endlessly in either direction, everything. It was a powerful feeling to be up this high too, especially with everything that had just been gifted to him. It almost made him forget about the unfortunate circumstances he and the girls were in simply by being on this show.

"Pretty insane, right?" Kendra said, mirroring Turner's feelings.

"This single building is like...I'm lost for words," Turner answered, turning back around and going back inside to his room, leaving the glass door open.

"I have a few questions for you, actually," Kendra said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and patting the spot next to her. "Be honest, who would you have gone to first if I had let you be with the girls?"

"I mean, you probably heard me say Becca's name, so obviously her," Turner disclosed. "Probably would've talked to Liam too, he, or she, or whatever...I definitely need to make sure everything's okay. Abby definitely wasn't on her A game, and Emma's probably holding back a lot of feelings right now behind a façade."

"Not Paige, Sara, Kathryn, Charlotte, Lauren, or Mandy?" Kendra answered with a frown. "See, I warned you about this. Playing favorites can't serve to help anybody. The audience...they have their favorites. That was made clear in the first vote. And you know who got the last couple of places? Five of those six girls were in the bottom half, and Sara only beat out one other person. If you just let those girls fall by the wayside, they'll get eliminated. Do you really want that on your conscience? Do you want Mandy's brain to be filled with nothing but facts about sex? Do you want Paige to be so apologetic that she can only get off when she's screaming apologies? Do you want Charlotte to be nothing but a bimbo? Because those are the sorts of things that'll happen if you let these girls get eliminated. I know you care so much about them because you were so upset when they were here. So keep caring about them, and they'll all make it through this. It's a competition, and you're not exempt from participation just because you're the harem master. Got it?"

"I don't know if that's gonna be something that's possible," Turner countered. "You can't just tell me to want to fuck my ex-girlfriend, or my best friend's mom. I have no interest in most of the girls who are here, and you want me to just go at them like it's nothing?"

"Heavens no, we just want you to be yourself, but be open," Kendra amended. "Don't keep running to your girlfriend when things get tough. Don't only check in on those who are closest to you. In a lot of ways, you are all of these gals' support system. Their families, their friends, a lot of them are still back home, and all ten of them share one thing in common, that's you."

"I'm only human, I can't treat them all the same," he pointed out.

"And neither I nor the producers expect you to," Kendra agreed. "That's part of what makes this show work, is that you'll develop different relationships with each of the harem girls. Just be careful that you don't get too flippant that these girls start falling off of the show, because I don't think you'll be able to forgive yourself if you let that happen."

That cut deep. Turner was a natural procrastinator, he tended not to address something until it became a problem. Paper due on Thursday? That's a problem to solve on Wednesday. Computer cord not working? Jerry rig it and see if it works in a specific orientation before shelling out to buy a new one. It was nothing new here. One of the girls isn't doing too hot? She'll step it up. He realized he'd have to constantly remind himself of the fact that it doesn't work like that, he had at least _some _power to make sure it didn't happen.

"You're putting the lives of ten self-possessed...well maybe nine...girls in my hands?" he asked, a bit incredulous. "A 22 year old guy, just out of college?"

"You're an analyst," Kendra countered. "You can handle it."

"Junior analyst," he corrected, "And besides, they don't teach you how to take care of people who are decided to be a part of your harem by forces beyond your control in the college courses I took."

"Well, maybe they should do that," Kendra joked with a smile. That was the first time Kendra had said something that **** a genuine smile from Turner. She was making progress.