Hug freeuse

You poured yourself a cup of coffee and sat the kitchen table to have yourself a think. The previous two times that the rules had been changed were unintentional. Neither you nor Sara knew that the app was a powerful tool to remake reality instead of simply being an extremely lucid list of observations. If you were going to change the world, it was going to be a positive change.

You were still sitting at the table when Sara walked in and told you that she’s going to the mall with Kaylee.

“You still haven’t changed anything?” she asked.

“Nope.”

“I’m sure it’ll be something really good if you have to think about it for this long,” she trilled.

She seemed genuinely excited at the possibility of a perverted rule change. You wondered why before remembering that in your previous reality, if an attractive woman had wanted naughty things to be done to you, you would have been equally turned on.

After she left for the mall, you tried adding a safeguard rule:

• The app requires that each new add or edit receive the approval of two people.

The app denied your rule because it referred to a specific object, which in this case was the app itself.

You password protected your phone instead, which was the next best thing.

When Sara returned a couple hours later, you commented on the brevity of her outing relative to previous ones.

“Well, I cut it short because I had something at home I desperately wanted to fuck,” she smiled.

“Did you just refer to me as a ‘thing’?” you said with pretend outrage.

Sara blanched, and you laughed.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist. It’s so weird to see gender dynamics flipped.”

Her shoulders relaxed. The two of you moved over to the couch so you could talk more comfortably.

“Not everything has flipped, though,” you said. “While you were at the mall, I was trawling the internet, and apparently, women still like cuddling more than men. At least, that’s the stereotype. They’re definitely more likely to enjoy cuddling after sex, though. That’s not a stereotype.”

“Women do tend to like cuddling more than men than I’ve known. I’m no exception,” she said.

“I wouldn’t mind cuddling, right now, if you’d like to.”

Sara eagerly scooted next to you and leaned against your shoulder. You threw an arm around her. Yesterday, occupying your roommate’s personal space like this hadn’t seemed to be even a remote possibility.

“Hold on. If women were like that from the reality you remember, does that mean there was cuddle-creeping?”

“Cuddle-creeping?”

“Unwelcome bodily contact. Like, say a girl is sitting next to a cute guy on a bus, and she’s sitting closer to him than she really needs to. But he doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t know if it’s because she needs the space and not because she just wants to press against him . . .” Sara trailed off.

“No, nobody did that. Not that I know of. Cuddling wasn’t lascivious. Quite the opposite. It was considered cute and innocent.”

“Well, it’s still cute, not to mention warm and loving. Not sure about innocent, though.”

“I agree with the warm and loving. Only men from this reality don’t seem to care that much, based on the forum posts I read. If they don’t care for that, and they don’t care for sex, then they’re not really into physical intimacy in general. It kind of scares me how robotic they are.”

“They like physical intimacy,” Sara said. “But usually only in committed relationships, and even then, not as much as women.”

She shifted so she was sitting in your lap and hugging you. You hugged her back.

“I had a friend who had to negotiate with her boyfriend for hugs or cuddling,” Sara said. “He withheld them from her unless she did what he wanted her to.”

“See, that’s the kind of thing that makes me sad. That’s why I wrote a new rule.”

You showed her your phone.

Everyone is happy to give hugs or snuggling/cuddling to their fellow humans on request so long as this does not interfere in the activities of either party.

“I wanted to approve it together because I wanted this hug thing to be as new to you as it is to me.”

“Wow, that’s . . . incredibly thoughtful,” Sara said. “Do it.”

You hit enter.

“Feel any different?” you asked.

“No. I feel just as safe and warm. I suppose I can get this from everybody I want, now.”

“You can’t necessarily get this from everybody,” you said as you squeezed her butt.

“Oooh,” she said. “D—did you change any rules while I was gone?”

You caressed her crotch outside her shorts, eliciting a soft moan from her.

“Yes,” you said.