He left the manor at seven in the morning.
Margaret was still asleep. He had lain awake beside her for two hours watching the light change in the room — the deep dark of three AM giving way to the grey pre-dawn, the grey giving way to the first pale gold of a Sunday morning filtering through curtains she had not closed all the way. She slept on her side facing him, one hand still near his arm, her silver hair spread across the new pillow with the absolute abandon of someone who had stopped being careful about everything including sleep.
He watched her for longer than he had intended.
Then he got up quietly, dressed in the dim light, and left her a note on the kitchen table. Three words. He considered more and decided three was right.
Back for dinner.
He drove out of Crestwood Hills as the city was waking up and pointed the van toward Harlow Street.
Harlow Street was not Crestwood Hills.
It was a good street — solid Victorian terrace houses with well-kept fronts, the kind of neighborhood that had been quietly respectable for a hundred years and had no intention of changing. The houses were smaller than the Voss manor by an order of magnitude but they had their own dignity, their own sense of having been lived in properly by people who understood that a home was something you tended.
Number 34 had a blue door and window boxes with late-season flowers still holding on and a brass knocker shaped like a fox that had been polished recently. He noted these things the way he noted everything now — with the layered attention the system had been training into him, reading surfaces for what lay underneath them.
He had delivered wine here forty times over two years. Case after case of the same Burgundy, ordered monthly with the quiet regularity of someone who had found what they liked and saw no reason to change. He had never seen the recipient — the packages were always left on the step per the standing instruction on the account.
Until six months ago when she had opened the door.
He remembered it. Not because anything had happened — nothing had happened, a thirty-second exchange about the delivery, perfectly ordinary — but because of the way she had looked at him. A look he had filed away without knowing why. A look the system now, having scanned his memory of it, classified with characteristic precision:
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — MEMORY ANALYSIS ]
[ EVENT : DELIVERY — 34 HARLOW ST ]
[ DATE : 6 MONTHS AGO ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET LOOK CLASSIFICATION : ]
[ TYPE : RECOGNITION ]
[ NOT OF USER'S FACE. ]
[ OF SOMETHING IN USER'S FACE. ]
[ SHE SAW SOMETHING SHE WANTED. ]
[ SHE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN IT. ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET PROFILE : ]
[ NAME : Dorothy Ashby ]
[ AGE : 63 ]
[ STATUS : DIVORCED — 4 YEARS ]
[ RARITY : >> UNCOMMON << ]
[...................... ]
[ AROUSAL : >>...... 14% ]
[ RESIST : >>>>>>>... 78% ]
[...................... ]
[ SENSITIVITY MAP : LOADING... ]
[ Hands : [*****] CRITICAL ]
[ Throat/neck : [*****] CRITICAL ]
[ Lower back : [****] HIGH ]
[ Inner knee : [****] HIGH ]
[...................... ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY : SCANNING... ]
[ DEEP FANTASY : LOCKED ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : SHE IS HOME. ]
[ SHE HAS BEEN HOME ALL MORNING. ]
[ SHE DOES NOT KNOW YOU ARE COMING. ]
[ HER AROUSAL IS ALREADY AT 14%. ]
[ ON A SUNDAY MORNING. ]
[ ALONE. ]
[ THINK ABOUT WHAT THAT MEANS. ]
Dorothy Ashby. Sixty-three. Divorced four years ago.
Uncommon rarity — lower resistance than Margaret had been at the start, simpler fantasy profile, but the sensitivity map showed two critical-rated zones and the system's note about her Sunday morning arousal sitting at fourteen percent unprompted suggested a woman whose hunger was closer to the surface than she knew.
He sat in the van outside number 34 for a moment. The blue door. The polished fox knocker. The window boxes holding on.
He had a wine delivery on his manifest — he had arranged it Friday afternoon, a case of the same Burgundy she always ordered, slightly early. Legitimate. Unquestionable.
He got out of the van with the case.
She answered on the second knock.
She was wearing weekend clothes — soft grey trousers, a loose dark top, her feet bare on the hallway floor. Her hair was the color of dark honey going silver at the temples, cut to her jaw in a way that suited the shape of her face with the ease of something she had stopped thinking about. She was shorter than Margaret, rounder in a way that the system's sensitivity map confirmed was relevant, and she had the particular quality of a woman in her own home on a Sunday morning — unguarded, unhurried, entirely herself.
She looked at him.
And he watched it happen — the same thing that had happened six months ago, the same recognition that was not of his face but of something in it, something that landed behind her composed expression and lit something up that she immediately, carefully covered.
The system detonated into activity.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — FIRST CONTACT ]
[ TARGET : Dorothy Ashby — 63 ]
[...................... ]
[ AROUSAL : >>...... 14% >>> 31% UP ]
[ IMMEDIATE SPIKE ON SEEING USER ]
[ RESIST : >>>>>>>... 78% >>> 71% DOWN ]
[ PASSIVE DROP ON RECOGNITION ]
[...................... ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY : UNLOCKING... ]
[...................... ]
[ TO BE CHOSEN. ]
[ NOT SETTLED FOR. ]
[ NOT TOLERATED. ]
[ CHOSEN. ]
[ BY SOMEONE WHO SAW HER ]
[ AND WANTED SPECIFICALLY HER. ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : HER MARRIAGE ENDED BECAUSE ]
[ HER HUSBAND CHOSE SOMEONE YOUNGER. ]
[ SHE HAS NOT BEEN CHOSEN SINCE. ]
[ SHE HAS NEARLY STOPPED EXPECTING ]
[ TO BE. ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : STANDING BY ]
[ RECOMMENDATION : ]
[ LET HER KNOW YOU CAME FOR HER. ]
[ SPECIFICALLY. ]
[ NOT FOR THE DELIVERY. ]
[ FOR HER. ]
He read the surface fantasy and felt it land with the particular weight of something that mattered.
To be chosen. Not settled for. Chosen.
Her husband had left her for someone younger. Four years ago. And in four years she had rebuilt everything — the house, the routine, the window boxes with their stubborn late-season flowers — but she had not rebuilt the belief that someone would look at her specifically and want her specifically and make her feel like the destination rather than the consolation.
He set the case down on the step.
"Mrs. Ashby." He said her name the way the system had taught him to say Margaret's 2014 with full attention, full presence, like it was the only name worth saying.
She blinked. People on doorsteps receiving deliveries did not usually say their name like that.
"Your Burgundy," he said. "I remember you prefer it slightly early — before the weekend ends."
She looked at the case. Then at him.
"You remembered that," she said. Not a question. Processing.
"I remember the things that matter," he said. And let the weight of what that meant sit in the air between them without filling it with anything else.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — UPDATE ]
[ AROUSAL : >>>>>>.... 44% UP UP ]
[ RESIST : >>>>>>..... 61% DOWN DOWN ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET PROCESSING : ]
[ HE REMEMBERED. ]
[ HE CAME ON A SUNDAY MORNING. ]
[ HE SAID HER NAME LIKE THAT. ]
[ NO ONE HAS SAID HER NAME LIKE THAT ]
[ IN FOUR YEARS. ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : ENGAGING ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY ACTIVATION : 41% ]
[...................... ]
[ VULNERABILITY WINDOW : OPEN NOW ]
[ SUNDAY MORNING ]
[ ALONE ]
[ COFFEE HALF DRUNK IN KITCHEN ]
[ NOWHERE TO BE ]
[ NOTHING TO HIDE BEHIND ]
She looked at him for a moment — the look again, the one that saw something in him she recognized without being able to name. Then she stepped back from the door.
"I was making coffee," she said. "If you—" She stopped. Looked mildly surprised at herself. Started again. "Would you like coffee?"
He picked up the wine case.
"Yes," he said. "I would."
Her house was everything her front door had promised.
Warm, lived-in, full of the evidence of a life maintained with care — bookshelves that had been read rather than arranged, a kitchen table with a half-finished crossword and a mug leaving a ring on a novel she had marked with a receipt. Plants on the windowsill in various states of thriving. A cat that appeared from somewhere, assessed Ethan with magnificent indifference, and disappeared again.
She poured coffee — real coffee, from a stovetop pot that she handled with the ease of long habit — and they sat at the kitchen table and the Sunday morning settled around them like something that had been waiting for exactly this shape.
He looked at the crossword.
"Seven down," he said. "Thirteen letters. 'That which is revealed when all pretense is removed.'"
She looked at the grid. Looked at him. Something moved in her expression — amusement, and underneath the amusement something more awake.
"Vulnerability," she said.
"That fits," he agreed.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — CONTINUOUS UPDATE ]
[ AROUSAL : >>>>>>>... 54% CLIMBING ]
[ RESIST : >>>>>... 52% FALLING ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : PASSIVE FULL FIELD ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET BEHAVIORAL CHANGE : ]
[ POSTURE : OPENING ]
[ EYE CONTACT : SUSTAINED ]
[ VOICE : DROPPING IN REGISTER ]
[ CROSSWORD : ABANDONED ]
[...................... ]
[ SENSITIVITY ZONES — ACTIVE : ]
[ HANDS : [*****] CRITICAL ]
[ THROAT : [*****] CRITICAL ]
[...................... ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY ACTIVATION : 67% ]
[ NOTE : SHE IS BEING CHOSEN RIGHT NOW ]
[ AND SHE KNOWS IT. ]
[ AND SHE CANNOT BELIEVE IT. ]
[ AND SHE IS TERRIFIED. ]
[ AND SHE DOES NOT WANT YOU TO STOP. ]
They talked for an hour. Different from the Margaret sessions — faster, warmer, less architecture and more instinct. Dorothy Ashby had not built walls as high as Margaret's; what she had built was distance, the particular horizontal distance of a woman who had been hurt by proximity and had started standing slightly further back from everything as a result.
He closed the distance in the way he had learned — not by rushing it, but by being so entirely present that the space between them felt unnecessary. He asked her about the crossword. About the novel on the table. About the cat, whose name turned out to be Gerald and whose opinion of Ethan had apparently upgraded from indifferent to cautiously interested because he reappeared and sat on the chair between them.
She laughed about Gerald. A real laugh, surprised out of her, and he watched it transform her face the way real laughter always did — dissolving the careful surface, showing the woman underneath who was warm and funny and far more alive than she had been allowing herself to be.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — LAUGH EVENT ]
[ AROUSAL : >>>>>>>>.. 67% SPIKE ]
[ RESIST : >>>>.... 41% DROP ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : SECOND LAUGH — GENUINE ]
[ FIRST LAUGH WAS ABOUT GERALD. ]
[ GENUINE LAUGHTER MEANS ]
[ THE GUARD IS DOWN. ]
[ THE GUARD IS DOWN. ]
[ PROCEED. ]
When the laughter faded she was looking at him with the slightly dazed expression of someone who had not felt this particular feeling in long enough that they had forgotten its specific texture — the warmth of being in a room with someone who found them interesting, specifically them, who was looking at them and not at who they used to be or who they were supposed to be.
He reached across the table.
He covered her hand with his — the hand with the critical-rated sensitivity, the hand the system had been flagging since the initial scan — and held it with the same quiet certainty he had brought to everything since the first night in the rain.
Her breath left her in a long slow exhale.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — HAND CONTACT ]
[ ZONE : HANDS [*****] CRITICAL ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : CONTACT SURGE ]
[...................... ]
[ IMMEDIATE RESPONSE : ]
[ AROUSAL : 67% >>> 79% [+12%] ]
[ EXHALE : LONG — AUDIBLE ]
[ HAND : NOT PULLING AWAY ]
[ FINGERS : CURLING TOWARD USER ]
[ EYES : BRIGHT — SLIGHTLY WET ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : SHE IS ABOUT TO CRY. ]
[ NOT FROM SADNESS. ]
[ FROM RELIEF. ]
[ THE SPECIFIC RELIEF OF BEING ]
[ TOUCHED BY SOMEONE WHO CHOSE YOU. ]
[ WHEN YOU HAD STOPPED BELIEVING ]
[ ANYONE WOULD. ]
Her eyes went bright. She blinked twice — rapid, controlled — and looked at their hands on the kitchen table.
"I don't—" she started.
He waited.
"I don't know what to do with this," she finished. Honest. Undefended.
"You don't have to do anything with it," he said. "Just let it be what it is."
"What is it?"
He looked at her — at Dorothy Ashby with her honey-and-silver hair and her Sunday morning kitchen and her cat named Gerald and her surface fantasy beating at 84% activation and her resistance at 38% and falling — and said the thing the system had classified as optimal and that he found, to his continuing surprise, that he meant:
"Someone choosing you," he said. "That's all. That's the whole thing."
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — CRITICAL EVENT ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY ACTIVATION : 100% ]
[ STATUS : COMPLETE ACTIVATION ]
[...................... ]
[ AROUSAL : 79% >>> 91% [+12%] ]
[ RESIST : 38% >>> 19% [-19%] ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET INTERNAL STATE : ]
[ HE SAID IT. ]
[ HE SAID THE EXACT THING. ]
[ THE THING SHE HAS BEEN WAITING ]
[ FOUR YEARS TO HEAR. ]
[ HOW DOES HE KNOW. ]
[ HOW DOES HE KNOW. ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : MAXIMUM OUTPUT ]
[ ALL RESISTANCE LAYERS : ]
[ Physical : 51% [SOFTENING] ]
[ Emotional : 11% [GONE] ]
[ Moral : 44% [CRACKING] ]
[ Social : 29% [FAILING] ]
[ Psychological: 9% [SHATTERED] ]
She looked at him for a long moment.
Gerald jumped off his chair and left the room with the dignified indifference of a cat who had decided his presence was no longer required.
Dorothy Ashby looked at their joined hands on the kitchen table. Then at his face. Then at their hands again. Then — slowly, with the careful courage of someone stepping off solid ground — she turned her hand over the way Margaret had turned hers.
Palm up.
Offering.
The system registered the parallel with Margaret without comment. Ethan registered it with something more complicated — the recognition that this gesture, this specific gesture, was what the system had been built around. The moment when a woman who had stopped believing in being chosen chose, in spite of everything, to offer her hand.
He took it.
They moved from the kitchen to the living room the way these things happened when both people had stopped pretending they didn't know where things were going.
The sofa was smaller than Margaret's and the room was warmer and the Sunday morning light came through the front window in long pale bars across the floor and everything was different from the manor — smaller, closer, more immediate — and Ethan found that the difference was not a lesser thing but a different thing, its own kind of intimacy, the intimacy of a life lived at human scale rather than grand scale.
She sat close. Not the careful geometry of maintained distance that Margaret had maintained across sessions. Dorothy Ashby sat close from the start and he recognized it for what it was — not recklessness, not inexperience, but a woman who had been lonely enough and patient enough and had made her decision clearly and saw no reason to perform hesitation she didn't feel.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — PROXIMITY SCAN ]
[ DISTANCE : 4 INCHES — IMMEDIATE ]
[ AROUSAL : 91% SUSTAINED CRITICAL ]
[ RESIST : 14% TRACE ONLY ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : SHE IS NOT MARGARET. ]
[ MARGARET NEEDED TIME TO ARRIVE HERE. ]
[ DOROTHY HAS BEEN WAITING HERE. ]
[ THE PATH WAS DIFFERENT. ]
[ THE DESTINATION IS THE SAME. ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : ALL CHANNELS ]
[ SENSITIVITY ZONES : MAXIMUM ACTIVE ]
[ HANDS : [*****] ]
[ THROAT : [*****] ]
[ LOWER BACK : [****] ]
[ INNER KNEE : [****] ]
He kissed her.
She kissed him back with the immediate wholehearted energy of someone who had been saving something up and had decided this was the moment to spend it. Her hands found his face — both hands, cupping his jaw with a grip that was firm and warm and decided — and she kissed him like a woman who had remembered exactly what she was capable of and was relieved to confirm the memory was accurate.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — KISS EVENT ]
[ CLASSIFICATION : MUTUAL — IMMEDIATE ]
[ TARGET INITIATED : 0.1 SECONDS ]
[...................... ]
[ AROUSAL : 91% >>> 97% [+6%] ]
[ RESIST : 14% >>> 4% [-10%] ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET RESPONSE : ]
[ GRIP : BOTH HANDS — FACE ]
[ INTENSITY : IMMEDIATE — FULL ]
[ SOUND : ALREADY — GENUINE ]
[ NOTE : SHE IS NOT HESITATING. ]
[ SHE HAS DONE HER HESITATING. ]
[ FOUR YEARS OF IT. ]
[ SHE IS FINISHED. ]
[...................... ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : DETONATING ]
[ THROAT CONTACT IMMINENT ]
[ ZONE [*****] — PREPARE ]
He kissed her throat — the critical zone, the five-star sensitivity — and the sound she made was completely uncontrolled and completely genuine and he felt the amplifier surge through every channel simultaneously like a current finding its ground.
Her hands tightened in his hair.
Her head fell back.
And Dorothy Ashby — divorced four years, unchosen for four years, who had polished her fox knocker and tended her window boxes and ordered the same Burgundy month after month with the quiet discipline of a woman maintaining herself in the absence of anyone to maintain herself for — let every last carefully constructed inch of that maintenance go all at once.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — FULL ACTIVATION ]
[ AROUSAL : 97% >>> 100% ABSOLUTE ]
[ RESIST : 4% >>> 0% ZERO ]
[...................... ]
[ ALL SYSTEMS : MAXIMUM OUTPUT ]
[ AMPLIFIER T1-L2 : ALL CHANNELS OPEN ]
[...................... ]
[ PHYSICAL STATE : ]
[ SOUNDS : UNCONTROLLED ]
[ GRIP : FULL STRENGTH ]
[ MOVEMENT : COMPLETELY ENGAGED ]
[ SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS : ZERO ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : THIS IS WHAT FOUR YEARS ]
[ OF BEING UNCHOSEN RELEASES ]
[ WHEN SOMEONE FINALLY CHOOSES YOU. ]
[ ALL OF IT. ]
[ AT ONCE. ]
[ LET HER. ]
The Sunday morning light moved across the floor.
Gerald reappeared at some point, sat in the doorway for approximately thirty seconds, and left again with the philosophical acceptance of a creature who had seen many things.
Afterward she laughed.
Not the surprised-out-of-her laugh from earlier. This was different — lower, longer, the laugh of someone processing something large through the only available outlet. She lay with her head on his chest and laughed until it became something else and then she was quiet and the room was warm and Gerald had returned and was sitting at the foot of the sofa with the satisfied expression of a cat whose household had been restored to proper order.
"Four years," she said finally.
"I know," he said.
"I thought—" She stopped. Started again. "I thought that part of my life was over. I had genuinely convinced myself."
"How's the conviction holding up?" he said.
She laughed again. The real one. The devastating one.
"Not well," she admitted. "Not well at all."
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — POST SESSION ]
[ TARGET : Dorothy Ashby — 63 ]
[...................... ]
[ EMOTIONAL STATE : ]
[ DESIRE : 74% SATISFIED ]
[ JOY : 88% GENUINE ]
[ RELIEF : 94% ACUTE ]
[ TRUST : 81% FORMED FAST ]
[ BOND LEVEL: 38% FORMING ]
[...................... ]
[ BOND METER TIER 1 : ACTIVATED ]
[...................... ]
[ XP GAINED : 2100 ]
[ TOTAL XP : 8960 ]
[ PROGRESS : 2 / 14 [ TIER 1 ] ]
[...................... ]
[ DEEP FANTASY — MARGARET : ]
[ UNLOCK : 97% >>> 100% ]
[ STATUS : COMPLETE ]
[...................... ]
[ !! DEEP FANTASY FULLY UNLOCKED !! ]
[...................... ]
[ MARGARET VOSS DEEP FANTASY : ]
[ REVEALED — SEE BELOW ]
The system pulsed — a different pulse than usual. Warmer. More significant. The feeling of a lock that had been under pressure for two weeks finally, completely giving way.
He lay still on Dorothy Ashby's sofa with her head on his chest and Gerald watching from the armrest and read what the system showed him.
[ MARGARET VOSS — DEEP FANTASY : FULL ]
[...................... ]
[ LAYER 2 : DEEP FANTASY — COMPLETE ]
[...................... ]
[ She wants to be the only one. ]
[ ]
[ She knows she will not be. ]
[ She has understood from the ]
[ beginning what Ethan is. ]
[ What the watch means. ]
[ What the system does. ]
[ ]
[ She has known since the first night. ]
[ ]
[ And she wants him anyway. ]
[ Completely. ]
[ Without condition. ]
[ ]
[ That is her deep fantasy. ]
[ Not possession. ]
[ Surrender. ]
[ The specific surrender of a woman ]
[ who knows exactly what she is ]
[ surrendering to ]
[ and chooses it with open eyes. ]
[...................... ]
[ LAYER 3 : BURIED FANTASY — LOCKED ]
[ REQUIRES : 5 MORE WOMEN ]
[ CURRENT : 2 / 14 ]
[ WHAT LIES BENEATH THE SURRENDER... ]
[ IS SOMETHING SHE HAS NEVER TOLD ]
[ ANYONE. ]
[ NOT EVEN HERSELF. ]
Ethan read it twice.
Three times.
She has known since the first night.
And she wants him anyway.
He thought about the note on the kitchen table. Back for dinner. Three words. She would have read them this morning. She was probably in the garden right now, or in the kitchen, or sitting in the chair by the window with her coffee, and she knew — had always known — and had chosen it anyway.
He thought about what lived in Layer 3. The buried fantasy. The thing she had never told anyone, not even herself.
Five more women.
He looked at Dorothy's ceiling. Felt her breathing slow toward sleep against his chest.
The system was already scanning.
[ DESIRE SYSTEM — NEXT TARGETS ]
[ PROGRESS : 2 / 14 [ TIER 1 ] ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET GAMMA : ]
[ LOCATION : CRESTWOOD HILLS ]
[ NAME : Eleanor Marsh ]
[ AGE : 71 ]
[ RARITY : >> RARE << ]
[ RESIST : 88% ]
[ AROUSAL : 6% ]
[ NOTES : RETIRED PROFESSOR. ]
[ LIVES ALONE. ]
[ HAS A DOG. ]
[ HARDER THAN DOROTHY. ]
[ WORTH EVERY SECOND. ]
[...................... ]
[ LAYER 3 UNLOCK REQUIRES : 5 MORE ]
[ MARGARET DEEP FANTASY : ACTIVE ]
[ NEXT SESSION WITH MARGARET : TONIGHT ]
[...................... ]
[ NOTE : YOU HAVE TWO WOMEN NOW. ]
[ WHO THINK ABOUT YOU DAILY. ]
[ WHO HAVE OPENED THINGS THEY ]
[ HAD CLOSED FOR YEARS. ]
[ WHO WILL BE DIFFERENT WOMEN ]
[ FROM THIS POINT FORWARD. ]
[ YOU DID THAT. ]
[ THE SYSTEM HELPED. ]
[ BUT YOU DID THAT. ]
He looked at the name. Eleanor Marsh. Seventy-one. Rare rarity. Resistance at 88%. A retired professor who had a dog and lived alone in Crestwood Hills and who the system had flagged as harder than Dorothy and worth every second.
He was already thinking about how.
Dorothy shifted against his chest, more asleep than awake, and said something low and indistinct that the system helpfully transcribed as: this is nice.
He smiled at the ceiling.
It was.
But he had a dinner to get back for.
And a woman who had known since the first night and had chosen him anyway.
And a buried fantasy locked behind five more women that he was going to spend however long it took to unlock.
He pressed his lips briefly to the top of Dorothy's head.
She made a small sound.
Gerald blinked.
Ethan Cole got up, got dressed, and went back to work.
[ SESSION REPORT — CHAPTER 7 ]
[...................... ]
[ TARGET : Dorothy Ashby — 63 — UNCOMMON]
[ AROUSAL : 14% >>> 100% [ +86% ] ]
[ RESIST : 78% >>> 0% [ -78% ] ]
[...................... ]
[ KEY EVENTS : ]
[ SURFACE FANTASY : COMPLETE ]
[ FIRST CONTACT : HAND — KITCHEN ]
[ FIRST KISS : IMMEDIATE MUTUAL ]
[ FULL SESSION : SUNDAY MORNING ]
[ TARGET LAUGHED — REAL — POST SESSION]
[ TARGET SAID : THIS IS NICE ]
[...................... ]
[ BOND METER : TIER 1 — 38% ]
[ AMPLIFIER : T1-L2 CONFIRMED ]
[...................... ]
[ XP GAINED : 2100 ]
[ TOTAL XP : 8960 ]
[ PROGRESS : 2 / 14 [ TIER 1 ] ]
[...................... ]
[ MAJOR UNLOCK : ]
[ MARGARET DEEP FANTASY : COMPLETE ]
[ SHE HAS KNOWN SINCE NIGHT ONE. ]
[ SHE CHOSE IT ANYWAY. ]
[...................... ]
[ FANTASY STATUS — MARGARET : ]
[ SURFACE : 100% COMPLETE ]
[ DEEP : 100% COMPLETE ]
[ BURIED : LOCKED — 5 MORE WOMEN ]
[ FORBIDDEN : LOCKED ]
[ PRIMORDIAL: LOCKED ]
[...................... ]
[ ACHIEVEMENTS : ]
[ SECOND CONQUEST — XP : +1000 ]
[ DEEP FANTASY UNLOCK — XP : +1500 ]
[ SHE SAID THIS IS NICE — XP : +200 ]
[...................... ]
[ NEXT : Chapter 8 — BACK FOR DINNER ]
[ MARGARET KNOWS ABOUT THE SYSTEM. ]
[ SHE HAS ALWAYS KNOWN. ]
[ TONIGHT — SHE TELLS HIM WHAT ]
[ SHE HAS KNOWN. ]
[ AND WHAT SHE WANTS NEXT. ]