Disclosure

You stare at Tammy and Molly, as they sit there stunned and half-nude on the sofa.

They stare back at you, a look of terror, of desolate horror, on their faces. You know that look. You’ve seen it in the mirror.

It says oh no.

It says oh my god, I fucked up.

It says I ruined it.

It says I ruined everything.

It says I ruined everything forever.

“…Jacob?” Tammy whispers, her face pale with fear.

“What… what, what… what?” Molly splutters in confusion.

Your head is spinning.

“I… I thought you wanted this?” Tammy says hesitantly. “We’ve been… we’ve been flirting with you really really hard, and… and you’ve been flirting back? Haven’t you?”

Oh god. She sounds like she’s about to burst into tears. Her eyes are wet, and she’s trembling. Your heart hurts.

“Tammy, I… no. I mean, yes. I mean, I mean… I do want this! I want you both so bad it hurts! But –”

“But it’s wrong,” she says dully, and slumps. “It’s sick. It’s perverted. I’m sick and perverted. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I just…” and she trails off.

“I’m an adult,” Molly says, “and that means I can choose who I have sex with! And I w-w-want youuuuuu,” and you can tell she was trying to sound brave and defiant but now she’s sobbing.

Oh god.

“No!” you say. “That’s not it! I don’t care about that!”

They both sit up straight. “You… you don’t?” Tammy says, baffled.

“No!”

She blinks. “But… but if you don’t care that it’s ****, and I don’t care, and Molly doesn’t care –”

“ – I do not care,” Molly emphasizes, her voice still a little sniffly –

“ – and we’re all consenting adults, then what’s the problem! Do you want a condom?”

You have no idea how you’re going to explain this.

You take a deep breath.

“Do you believe in magic?” you ask them.

Tammy scrunches up her face, perplexed. “Well, no,” she says. “‘Magic’ is just a word for something we think we can’t understand. If it’s real… then it’s not magic.”

“Sufficiently advanced technology, right?” Molly puts in, and wipes her eyes.

“I have to show you something,” you say, and you unplug your phone from its charger and hold it up in front of them.

“Phones aren’t magic,” Tammy says cautiously.

“Doesn’t it seem like this is moving a little fast?” you say. “My apartment was on fire yesterday afternoon. This is only our second evening together. Molly, I last saw you two years ago for, what, two hours? And before that, maybe eighteen hours total throughout your whole life?”

“It’s got to have been more than that,” Tammy says quietly.

“And now you want me to take your virginity? And you–” and you point at Tammy– “you want to watch me fuck her? To help me fuck her?!?”

There’s a long silence, then Molly tilts her head curiously.

“How did you know I’m a virgin?” she asks.

“Educated – actually, no,” you say. “I was going to say it was an educated guess, but the whole point of this is that I don’t want to lie to you. Molly, I know because I have a magic app on my phone that told me.”

They look at each other, then turn back to you, eyes wide.

“Jacob,” Tammy says slowly, “are you sure you’re –”

“Look!” you say, and you open the app and show it to them.

“That’s just your home screen?” Molly says.

“What? No, it –”

You look at the app. A warning message has popped up.

<SECURITY ALERT: UNAUTHORIZED USERS LOOKING AT A SCREEN WHERE THE AFFECTION MULTIPLIER IS OPEN>
<SECURITY ALERT: AS A PRECAUTION, UNAUTHORIZED USERS ARE UNABLE TO SEE THE AFFECTION MULTIPLIER OR HEAR AFFECTION MULTIPLIER NOTIFICATION ALERTS>

“Oh shit,” you say. “It’s not letting you see it. Because I’m the user and you’re not.”

“Jacob,” Tammy says, and you can tell she’s terrified again, but not for the same reason as a few minutes ago. Her voice is soft and gentle. “I know you’ve been under a lot of stress after the fire. How about you put the phone down, and in the morning we can talk to a doctor? Could you do that for me? Please?”

“All right, then – I’ll prove it.”

“That’s okay, Jacob,” she says, very soothing. “I believe you. You don’t need to prove anything. We can talk about it in the morning. Just put the phone down, okay? Please? For me?”

“Molly,” you say – she cringes away from you, and oh god that hurts to see – “you’ve given one blowjob to a boyfriend you no longer have. And you’ve… well, it says ‘experimented’ with your best friend, but that’s under ‘oral’. I assume that was Sonia?”

Molly’s jaw drops.

“How did you know that!”

You throw up your hands. “It’s in your profile in the app.”

Again, a long silence.

Tammy’s expression changes. She looks grim. “What does it say about me?” she demands.

“Uh, well, mouth and, uh, vagina are… I think it said ‘nonvirgin but inactive’, and you, uh, you don’t do anal.”

“It feels weird to hear you say ‘vagina’ even though we were about to have a threesome,” Molly comments. You shrug.

“I mean… you could have just guessed that,” Tammy says uncertainly. “Educated guess.”

“Okay, hold on…”

The security message has vanished, so you open Tammy’s profile and go to her sexual history.

“You’ve had sex with two guys when you were in high school. One of them was your age, and he used a condom, and that was only once, and one who… it says he was a construction worker in his thirties? I guess that was the guy who got you pregnant? – and you had sex with him eight times. And… you’ve sucked four guys, including the two guys you had sex with. High school boyfriend, twice; construction worker, eleven times; two other guys, once each. And you’ve experimented with two of your girlfriends.”

You look up from the phone.

Tammy is glaring at you. She is clearly furious.

“That’s what it says,” you offer defensively.

“In his thirties?!?” she bellows indignantly. “Darren told me he was twenty-two!!!”

Molly snorts despite herself.

You show Tammy the screen, then remember she still can’t see it. “It says he was thirty-six.”

“Christ,” Tammy says, and buries her face in her hands. After a moment she takes a deep breath, then looks at you more calmly. “Okay,” she says. “I was a gullible idiot when I was fifteen.” She turns to Molly. “Boyfriend was Alphonso?”

Molly nods.

“Did you swallow?”

Molly blushes a little, but nods again.

“Did he eat you out?”

“Uh, no, he said that was gross.”

Tammy pfft’s. “Good riddance, then.”

“I eat pussy,” you volunteer. “Or, well, I have. Once.”

They both grin at you.

“Anyway,” Tammy says, “you wouldn’t have freaked out if all this thing did was give you our sexual histories. What else does it do?”

Molly snaps her fingers. “I bet it influences our behavior!” she says, and a look of understanding passes over Tammy’s face.

You sigh. Sometimes, when people are really smart, they figure things out faster than you’d like.

“Yeah,” you admit. “Or… well, that’s part of it.”

“Go on…” Tammy says.

“This would be so much easier if I could show you,” you say. Then something occurs to you. “Lemme try something.”

You hold the phone up in front of them. “See it now?”

“Still nothing,” Tammy says.

“I like the wallpaper pic,” Molly says. “Did you take that yourself?”

You close the app, reopen it, and show it to them.

“How about now?”

“No?”

You close the app, reopen it, and show it to them. “Now?”

Tammy shakes her head. “Jacob, what are you –”

“One more time, wait!” You close the app, reopen it, and show it to them.

“You’re starting to scare me again,” Molly says, but just then there’s a notification buzz from the Multiplier.

“That did something!” you say, excited. “Hold on, let me check!”

They watch you uncertainly as you go to the Status Update Log. It is full of stuff that you'll look at later, but for now what matters is at the very bottom:

+ Background Check, Middleground Check, Foreground Check: Opened and closed the Affection Multiplier three times within sixty seconds in an attempt to show it to a Top Prospect. 0 points awarded; Instructions-for-User-Authentication.txt (3 KB) downloaded to largest owned device.

“It says there’s a way to authenticate you as users!”

Their eyes widen. You pull out your laptop and sit down on the couch between Tammy and Molly. There on the screen, next to the Manual, is a text file. Also, Molly is topless and Tammy’s blouse is completely open, all four tits are fully visible, and you know Tammy’s not wearing panties, but dammit, you need to explain this to them before you fuck them.

(Also, to be honest, you like explaining things.)

“Can you see either of those icons? The PDF or the TXT? Or the application?”

They shake their heads.

“If you hadn’t already proved this was real, I would be so fucking terrified for you right now,” Tammy comments.

The instructions in the TXT are pretty straightforward: open the ‘authentication’ tab at the top of the control panel (you don’t recall seeing it, but you have no doubt it’s there now, and probably will be from now on), type in the person’s full name and date of birth, and then have her say her full name and date of birth into the phone’s mic.

A few minutes later, the three of you are looking at the laptop screen, where a banner says that TAMARA SALLY CARTER and MOLLY CAROL CARTER have been authenticated as users and granted Level 1 Access to the Affection Multiplier Application.

“Holy shit,” Tammy says. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.”

“ ‘Affection Multiplier’?” Molly says, her head at an angle.

“Yeah, there was a glossary the first time I opened it. Don’t know if I can get it to display again, but basically it said it makes my relationships grow five times faster and it’s always on.”

“Does that mean that without it, we would have waited until the weekend before asking you to fuck us?”

“I have no idea,” you admit. “It’s not like there’s a standard linear progression – day one, couch-surfing, day five, threesome!”

“Don’t know if I would have made you wait quite that long, actually,” Tammy mutters quietly – although obviously it wasn’t as quiet as she thought.

“What was that?” you ask. “Oh, uh, nothing,” she says, and you’re pretty sure you know what you heard but you decide not to push it.

“Anyway, the way it works –”

“It’s magic,” Molly says.

“Yes, but the point is, it quantifies your positive feelings for me – liking, loving, lusting, zero to a hundred, gives me your score, notifies me when it changes, and tells me what caused it.”

To your surprise, Tammy nods semi-approvingly. “I can see that being really useful in figuring out social interactions,” she says. “Invasive, but useful.”

“Are we both at a hundred?” Molly asks.

“Last I checked Tammy was at a hundred on all three, and you were at a hundred for Lust and closing in on a hundred for the others.”

Molly kisses you passionately; when she lets you go, Tammy is watching with a big goofy grin, and has a hand under her skirt.

“I love you with everything I am,” Molly says. “And you’re really fun to hang out with. Does that help my scores?”

You grin. “Probably. But… really, that’s the problem. By making your scores go up faster than normal, am I… is it… I dunno, coercing you?”

Tammy frowns. “Well –” she begins, but Molly interrupts.

“No. Fuck no. That’s bullshit,” she says. “We were going in this direction anyway. Did you feel bad about having me pick you up in the car instead of walking here? Did you feel bad about using the dryer this morning instead of hanging your clothes on a clothesline?”

You frown. That argument feels too simple, somehow.

“Do the scores only go up?” Tammy asks.

Shit. Suddenly, buying I Think I Did Okay! for Tammy doesn’t feel like it was such a great idea.

“No,” you say honestly. “Like, last night – you got a plus to Lust for seeing my dick, but also a minus because you saw it while I was peeing.”

“Or when you made that joke about watching you pee, earlier?” Molly asks.

“Yeah, you got a plus for Affection, because you thought it was a funny idea, but a minus for Lust, because you thought it was gross.”

“It’s somebody’s fetish,” Tammy said, “and that’s perfectly okay, but it’s not mine.”

“Actually, on that topic,” you say, “hold on a minute?”

“What, fetishes?” Tammy asks, but you get up and head to the bathroom. Molly chuckles.

When you emerge from the bathroom a minute later, though, Tammy and Molly look terrified again.

“Jacob!” Tammy says, holding the phone out to you. “I think we broke it! It’s gone!”