Day 5: Colleen (Protocol Negotiated)

You bring a charger.

It’s a small thing, but after yesterday’s disconnect, it feels symbolic—like you’re showing up ready to participate instead of passively observe. She’s already at the student lounge when you arrive, hunched slightly forward over her laptop with the familiar glow reflected in her glasses. Same table. Same posture. But this time, her shirt is plain grey. No cryptic code or visual puzzles. You can’t help wondering if the change is intentional.

She doesn't look up as you approach, just mutters, "You're early."

"So are you," you reply, sliding into the seat beside her.

"I wanted to make sure the outlet wasn’t already claimed by some lunatic running a crypto mine on their toaster." Her tone is flat but not sharp, and you think—maybe—that's her version of friendly.

You smile and take out the charger, setting it between you as a peace offering. She doesn’t comment, just plugs in and keeps typing. A few long moments pass like that—keystrokes, caffeine sips, shared silence—and then you speak.

“I wanted to apologize. For yesterday. If I missed something or said the wrong thing... I just didn’t mean to blow anything.”

She keeps her eyes on the screen, but her fingers pause briefly on the keys. "You weren’t awful," she says after a beat. "Just... incomplete input."

There’s the Colleen brand of forgiveness—compressed, neutral, halfway between a truce and a debug log. You’ll take it.

You lean back in your seat, watching her for a second longer, then venture, “I figured out your shirt. The one with the 000 111 000? It wasn’t binary. It was Morse code—SOS.”

This time, she stops typing completely. Slowly, she swivels in her chair to face you. Her expression is unreadable, but something in it softens just slightly.

“You’re the first person who’s ever caught that,” she says. She's not being ironic or sarcastic. Just... factual. She's letting you know nobody is picking up what she's putting down. Maybe they never have.

You blink. “I thought it was just a nerdy shirt.”

“It was a nerdy shirt,” she replies, folding her arms loosely. “It was also... a signal.”

You let that sink in. In retrospect, it’s so obvious. Morse code, grouped for human readability, printed across the chest of a woman who spends most of her waking hours surrounded by people who understand a dozen programming languages but maybe not a single form of eye contact. It was a beacon—and you’d been too busy nodding thoughtfully at risk modeling to even notice.

She closes her laptop with a soft click and shifts toward you, her posture still composed but her eyes sharp now, focused entirely on you.

“What do you think we’ve been doing all week?” she asks.

There’s no edge in her voice, but the question still cuts. You glance down, fiddling with your charging cable like it might contain the answer.

“Er... we've been talking about COMPAS,” you admit. “And loop bias. And algorithmic... stacks.”

She snorts. "You still haven't learned anything have you? You don't even remember basic terminology let alone know what it means. You're not into computers. At all!" Her silence stretches long enough that you finally look up again. She stares at you, eyebrows raised.

“I was trying to flirt,” she says. “Apparently I suck at it as bad as you do at computer science.”

Your mouth opens, then closes. Then opens again. “Wait... you were flirting?”

Colleen’s expression flattens. “God. What did you think I meant when I asked if you were a plus or a minus?”

You wince. “I thought... you were asking if I was a decent person.”

She stares at you, blinking twice in a row like she’s trying to refresh your brain with her eyes. Then she exhales and leans back in her chair, arms crossing more tightly across her chest.

“No," she says with a sigh. "I was suggesting you might be someone I was considering having sex with or not. Talk about a 1d10t user error!"

She takes a moment to sip her coffee. Her eyes fix you as if she's trying to solve a particularly nasty bug hidden in reams of code.

"Look, I decided this year I was going to finally punch the v-card,” she says, voice quieter now, like she’s tired of circling the point. “You were... attractive, not a dick, didn’t interrupt me every five seconds, and didn’t act like my IQ was a liability. So I figured… maybe.”

The words hang between you like static.

You nod slowly, trying to absorb the reality of it. The pieces fall into place now—the offbeat jokes, the strangely specific shirt, the way she kept showing up even when you hadn’t made any bold move.

“I didn’t have a clue,” you say. “Not until just now. Sorry.”

“Clearly,” she mutters, and you think you catch the shadow of a smirk ghosting across her mouth before it disappears again.

There’s a pause. Then you add, “Punch the v-card? Do people still say that?”

Colleen shrugs. “I like it. It's cute. It reminds me of old computer programming when they used punch cards.”

“No shade,” you assure her. “It’s just... surprising. But yeah. I mean—if it wasn’t clear, I’m very much flattered. And I’d be happy to... you know. Help you with that. If you still want to.”

“Not just for pity points?”

“Not even close. You’re smart, sharp, completely unapologetic about who you are. And yeah, once you’re not talking in pure machine logic, you’re kind of beautiful. So no, not PITY points...”

She blinks at that. Once. Then a second time.

Then her voice flattens out again. “There’s a catch, isn’t there? The way you emphasized pity.”

You nod. “Yeah. There is.”

And so you explain. All you are really required to tell her is that you have to record the sex for a game, but you go further. You tell her all about the game. About her about the points on her card, the points multiplier from different challenges. The structure. The different players, without giving names. The power plays. And the fact that you're not completely safe from being eliminated this week. You walk her through it all carefully, leaving space between every point for her to object, question, back out.

She listens without interrupting. Her face is thoughtful, not withdrawn. She doesn't even react to discovering she's just a two, or seem to mind that you might only have made a move to avoid being ejected from the game. She's just quiet, contemplative. When you finish, she leans forward in her chair, hands folded loosely.

“So if we don’t... you know... I go back in the deck and someone else might draw me?”

You nod. “Yeah. If we don’t complete the challenge, you’re technically back in play.”

She nods once. Then again, more emphatically. Then she looks at you with that same sharp clarity she’s used on justice models and ethics matrices.

“Honestly? Everything in college is performative. People dress up for dates like it’s a TikTok reel. Post thirst traps like they’re resumes. At least this system admits what it is.”

You exhale, shoulders relaxing despite yourself. “So... that’s a yes?”

“It’s a yes,” she says, standing and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Conditional on proper prep time, zero assumptions, and no weird poses.”

“Got it.”

“And we are not doing it here.”

“Here in the student lounge? Of course not.”

“No, you fool, I mean here at the college. I don't need to get a rep.”

“Also fair. I’ll book us a room at the Nest.”

She adjusts the strap on her bag, eyes still on you, one brow lifting slightly. “Okay,” she says. “But one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I want you to teach me how to flirt. Properly. If I'm failing this bad I need to debug my process."

You smile. “I'm a guy. I'm not the best person to ask how women flirt, but I might know just the person. She's a cam girl, has a website called HellInHeels.”

“You mean Kaiju?” she asks, immediately.

You try to hide your surprise. “You follow her?”

“Sure, she's my vibe girl. She’s terrifying,” Colleen says, nodding. “But incredibly sexy. HellInHeel's is right. You know her?”

“You could say that," you say. "I was on her show a couple of weeks back. She was my first card in the game. I’ll set something up.”

She gives a single approving nod, "If you can set something up with her after we've done this then you BETTER be get that room booked."

This time, her exit doesn’t feel cold or clinical. It feels like a perfect connection after a week of buffering and loading failure. Clear, mutual, and finally out of debug mode.