Chapter 23: The Ripple Effect
The morning after Studio A tasted like stale whiskey and regret. Aidan arrived to find the Collective’s usual hum of productivity replaced by a brittle, watchful silence. Eyes flicked away from his the moment he met them. Whispers dissolved into the click of keyboards. The air felt charged, as if a lightning strike had already happened and everyone was just waiting for the thunder.
Cho, usually a ghost in the halls, didn’t look at him at all, her small face pale. Priya offered a weak, complicated smile before hurrying into a meeting room. Sasha was the only one who spoke, passing him at the coffee machine. “Well,” she muttered, sotto voce, “we broke the simulation. Congrats, player.” Her tone wasn’t congratulatory. It was a diagnosis.
Lena’s office door was shut. It remained shut for two hours.
The summons came not from her, but from the corner office. Margot’s assistant, a man with the impassive demeanor of a royal guardsman, appeared at Aidan’s desk. “Margot wants you. Now. And she’s already collected Lena.”
The founder’s office was a study in curated power. Sleek, minimalist, with a breathtaking view that seemed to digitally render the city below. Margot sat behind a desk of polished black stone, Lena in the chair opposite her, back rigid. Lena’s wild hair was tamed into a tight braid, her clothing high-necked and severe. She looked like a prisoner awaiting sentencing.
“Close the door, Aidan,” Margot said, not looking up from her tablet. Her voice was the same cool, polished instrument as her desk. “Sit.”
He sat beside Lena. He could feel the heat of her arm, inches from his. She didn’t move.
“Lena has just finished presenting her preliminary findings from Session 22.1,” Margot began, setting the tablet down. Her eyes, a sharp, intelligent grey, settled on him. “The data is fascinating. Also, professionally catastrophic.”
Lena flinched, almost imperceptibly.
“The mandate was to observe sexual response within a controlled, multi-partner scenario for the purposes of reader education,” Margot continued, steepling her fingers. “What you delivered was a documented emotional meltdown. The primary investigator,” she gestured at Lena, “became a participant. The control variable,” her gaze shifted to Aidan, “became an emotional anchor. The data is now contaminated with a variable we expressly sought to eliminate: personal attachment.”
“The attachment is the finding,” Lena said, her voice husky but clear. “It’s the contaminant that readers write in about. ‘I caught feelings for my FWB.’ ‘My one-night stand won’t leave my thoughts.’ We’ve been treating sex as a series of mechanical problems to solve. Connection is the unsolvable problem.”
“Our brand solves problems, Lena,” Margot said, her tone frosty. “We provide actionable advice. ‘Catch feelings? Do these three cognitive behavioral exercises. Draft a list of his negatives.’ We don’t document the messy failure of our own methodology.” She stood, walking to the window. “The gossip is already toxic. The integrity of the column is in question. If it gets out that our head writer is emotionally compromised by her research subject, we become a joke. A slutty, unprofessional joke.”
The word hung in the air, cruel and clinical.
“So we quarantine the compromised data,” Margot said, turning back to them. “And we run a clean experiment. We test the hypothesis that the emotional entanglement was an artifact of prolonged, individual exposure. We introduce new variables.”
A cold knot formed in Aidan’s stomach. “New variables?”
“Fresh subjects. No prior contact. No shared history. Two new interns from the marketing pool. They’ve been vetted for discretion and signed NDAs thicker than their college diplomas.” Margot’s smile was thin. “You will repeat a modified version of the group scenario. They will be instructed to engage physically, to document their purely physiological and psychological responses to a novel, well-endowed partner in a multi-stimulus environment. You will be instructed to engage mechanically. The objective is performance, not connection.”
Lena was staring at the floor. “You’re turning him into a dildo with a heartbeat.”
“I’m isolating the variable,” Margot corrected. “You and your team will observe from the observation booth behind the one-way mirror in Studio B. You will take notes. You will see what clean data looks like. This happens tonight.”
The setup in Studio B was sterile. The room was smaller, used for intimate interviews. A plush, grey-upholstered chaise sat in the center. On one wall was a large, dark mirror. Aidan knew they were behind it: Lena, Priya, Sasha, Cho, Catriona. A gallery of his past, watching his future.
Margot was with him, her demeanor one of a director blocking a scene. “The interns are Maya and Chloe. They are aware of the column’s nature. They are curious. They have no emotional baggage regarding you. Your task is to follow their leads, respond physically, and avoid any conversational intimacy. Understood?”
He nodded, feeling hollow.
The two young women who entered were pretty, dressed in stylish but uncomfortable-looking loungewear. They smiled at Margot, glanced at Aidan with a mix of nervousness and appraisal. He shook their hands. Their names evaporated from his mind immediately.
Margot left. The