Chapter 1: The Proposition
The dust in Professor Atzler’s office tasted like regret and forgotten footnotes. Allison Morris tried to breathe through her mouth, but the smell of old parchment and something faintly mildewed was unavoidable. It coated her tongue. She shifted on the cracked leather guest chair, its springs groaning in protest, and exchanged a glance with Will Lockwood beside her.
Will’s usual lopsided grin was absent. He looked… apprehensive. That was rare.
“Your final papers were adequate,” Professor Atzler said, her voice a dry scrape of chalk on slate. She didn’t look up from the sheaf of papers she was ostensibly grading. Her silver-streaked black hair was pulled so tight it stretched the skin of her temples. “Adequacy, however, is a currency of diminishing returns.”
Allison’s green eyes narrowed. She’d gotten an A. Will had gotten a B-plus. They’d survived her notoriously brutal Germanic Linguistics seminar. This post-finals summons felt like a trap.
“We appreciated the class,” Will said, his tone careful, diplomatic. The politician-in-training voice. Allison felt a prick of pride at how good he was at it.
“Did you.” It wasn’t a question. Atzler finally set down her pen and steepled her fingers. Her pale gray eyes moved between them, clinical and assessing. “You are an unusual pairing. The pragmatic scribe and the ambitious actor. A study in complementary dysfunction.”
Allison stiffened. “We’re friends.”
“A profoundly durable friendship,” Atzler amended. She leaned back, the old chair sighing. “I have observed you for two semesters. You possess a rare symbiosis. You, Miss Morris, observe the cracks in the world. Mister Lockwood here is adept at slipping through them. Together, you are… curiously competent.”
The compliment, if it was one, lay there like a dead thing on the cluttered desk. Will’s knee bounced, a tiny tremor of nervous energy.
“You didn’t call us here to analyze our friendship,” Allison said, her voice quieter than she intended. The office felt like it was shrinking, the towers of yellowed textbooks leaning in to listen.
“No.” Atzler reached into a drawer and withdrew a plain manila envelope, fat and slightly bent at the corners. She placed it on the desk between them with a soft thud. “I called you here to make you an offer. A singular opportunity.”
She nudged the envelope forward with one bony finger. Will glanced at Allison, a silent question in his eyes. She gave a minute shrug. Open it.
Will pulled out the contents. A map of the United States, unfolded, crisp. Every state was outlined, but each one was also filled with a precise, shocking red ‘X’, marking it like a territory conquered. A single, well-worn sheet of paper, dense with legalese, sat beneath it. Will scanned it, his brow furrowing. Then his eyes went wide. He stopped breathing.
“What is it?” Allison whispered.
He didn’t answer. He just turned the map around so she could see it fully, his hand trembling slightly. All fifty states. Each marked.
“My husband, Friedrich, was a romantic,” Atzler said, her gaze drifting to a faded photograph on the shelf—a younger, softer version of herself beside a beaming man with a kind face. “An absurdist, but a romantic. Before his illness, we conceived of a project. A joint endeavor. To… cement our union, as it were, in every constituent state of this union.”
A cold trickle of understanding began in Allison’s stomach.
“The goal was simple. To make love. In every state.” Atzler said it with the flat cadence of a lab report. “A physical cartography of passion. He thought it would be an adventure. I thought it was juvenile. We compromised, as couples do. We began. We reached… fourteen.”
She fell silent. The dust motes danced in the sliver of light from the blinds.
“He died,” Allison said, not to be cruel, but to ground the surreal horror in fact.
“He died,” Atzler confirmed, her eyes snapping back to them, bright and hard. “The project was left incomplete. A folio of memories, now just a source of acute psychic discomfort. A bookmark in a story that will never be finished.”
Will found his voice, hoarse. “Why are you showing us this?”
“Because I am offering you the capital to finish it.” She tapped the legal document. “This is a contract. A private grant, disbursed through a blind trust. The terms are explicit. You will travel the United States together. You will engage in sexual intercourse in a verifiable location within the borders of each of the remaining thirty-six states. You will provide discreet documentation—a photograph of a landmark, a dated receipt—to be cross-referenced with the location data from trackers you will wear. No imagery of the act itself is required; the verification protocol is outlined in appendix B. Upon completion, you will each be paid the sum of one million dollars. Tax-free.”
The words hung in the stale air, ludicrous and immense. A laugh, sharp and startled, burst from Allison’s throat. It died instantly.
Atzler wasn’t smiling.
“You’re serious,” Will breathed. He was staring at the contract, his economist’s mind already racing through the numbers, the logistics, the sheer staggering value of the offer.
“Utterly.”
“Why us?” Allison demanded, her mind racing. “You could hire… anyone. Professionals.”
“Professionals lack the necessary narrative,” Atzler said dismissively. “This is not a transaction for strangers. It is the fulfillment of a dream. It requires a partnership that appears… genuine. Organic. Your friendship is the perfect substrate. You are young, unattached, intelligent enough to execute the logistics, and you possess the requisite anatomy.” She said it so blandly. “Furthermore, you both need the money.”
It was a vicious, accurate blow. Allison thought of her student loans, a mountain of dread waiting for her after graduation. Will’s jaw tightened; she knew he was thinking of his family, the quiet, constant strain of their debt, his fierce, burning need to never ask them for another dime.
“This is insane,” Allison said, but the protest lacked force. It was drowned out by the echoing number: a million dollars. Each.
“It is a solution,” Atzler countered. “To my problem of unresolved grief. To your problem of impending financial oblivion. You trade a season of your youth, a modicum of discomfort, for a lifetime of freedom. Think of it as experiential art. A performance piece, with a very generous stipend.”
Will looked at Allison. His eyes were no longer apprehensive. They were lit with a terrifying, calculating fire. “Ally,” he said, her name a question, a plea, a plan all at once.
Her mind fragmented. The moral vertigo. The sheer, grotesque practicality of it. The look on Will’s face—he was already halfway to agreeing. She saw the future he imagined: debt-free, master of his own destiny, catapulted out of the life he was so afraid of being trapped in.
And beneath it, a darker, quieter current she instantly suppressed. The thought of Will, not as her best friend, but as… a partner in this. It was unthinkable. It had to be.
“We need to discuss this,” Allison said, her voice surprisingly steady.
“Naturally.” Atzler slid the map and contract back into the envelope. “Take it. The offer expires in seventy-two hours. My discretion is absolute. So, I would suggest, must yours be.”
They stood on shaky legs. The office, the world outside, seemed to have warped. The envelope in Will’s hand felt nuclear.
They didn’t speak until they were outside the building, the cold Maine air slicing through the academic haze. Will stopped under a barren oak tree, gripping the envelope like a lifeline.
“Allison.” He turned to her. The wind tousled his dark hair. The recklessness she so often tempered was now fully unleashed in his eyes. “A million dollars. Each.”
“I can do the math, Will.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “It’s… it’s monstrous.”
“Is it?” The politician was back, arguing the case. “She’s not asking us to hurt anyone. She’s giving us a grant to travel the country and… and have sex. It’s a weird grant, okay, a batshit grant, but it’s her money. Her grief. Our way out.”
“It would change everything,” she whispered, staring at a crack in the sidewalk.
“That’s the point.” He stepped closer. His voice dropped. “Ally, look at me. What’s the real objection?”
She finally met his gaze. The real objection was a tangle of fear—of ruining what they had, of becoming different people, of the stark, physical reality of the contract’s core requirement. Of the fact that part of her, a part she kept locked in a quiet, dark room, was terrifyingly curious.
She saw him see it. His expression softened, just for a second. The best friend, not the aspiring strategist. “We don’t have to decide now,” he said. “We talk. We think. For seventy-two hours.”
He held up the envelope. The map of a life they hadn’t planned, marked in red. A promise, or a poison. Or both.
Allison looked from the envelope to Will’s face, the face she knew better than her own. The path of their ordinary future seemed to recede, fading into gray. This new, red-lined road pulsed with a dangerous, glittering light.
“Okay,” she said, the word barely more than a breath of steam in the cold air. “We talk.”
But they both knew the talking was just a formality. The offer was already inside them, working its way into their bones, reshaping the landscape of their friendship into something unknown. They began to walk, side by side but separated by a new and massive silence, the weight of the envelope between them as palpable as a third person.
They began to walk, side by side but separated by a new and massive silence, the weight of the envelope between them as palpable as a third person. The campus paths, usually familiar, felt like a film set they were moving through. Every ordinary sound—the laugh of a passing student, the distant slam of a dorm door—seemed staged and hollow.
Will finally spoke when they reached the edge of the quad. “I need a drink.”
“It’s two in the afternoon,” Allison said, her voice automatic.
“Exactly.” He hefted the envelope. “This feels like a five-p.m. problem at minimum, and it’s already here. We’re ahead of schedule.”
She didn’t argue. Her apartment, with its quiet and her own thoughts, seemed like a terrifying place to be alone with this. “My place is closer. There’s The Anchor next door.”
The Anchor was a dive, all sticky floors and dim lights, chosen precisely because no one from their classes ever went there. It was their place. A booth in the back had borne witness to three years of existential crises and poorly planned essay outlines.
They walked the rest of the way without speaking. The silence wasn’t comfortable anymore. It was charged, like the air before a lightning strike, full of unsaid things buzzing against the inside of her skull.
The bar was nearly empty. The bartender nodded at them, used to their weekday appearances. They slid into the back booth. Will ordered two beers and a shot of whiskey. Allison just nodded.
When the drinks came, Will downed the shot, hissed, and then clutched his pint glass like it was anchoring him to the planet. He stared at the envelope on the scarred table between them.
“Say something,” he said, not looking at her.
“What do you want me to say, Will? It’s a million dollars to have sex with my best friend thirty-six times across the country. The sentence itself is insane.”
“But break it down,” he said, leaning forward, that feverish light back in his eyes. “The having sex part is one component. The bigger part is the travel, the logistics, the… the project management. We’re good at that. We planned a cross-campus food truck rally in a week for Poli Sci. This is just a longer rally with a very specific… activity at each stop.”
She couldn’t help it. A bitter, tired laugh escaped her. “Activity. You’re already using neutral terminology. You’re compartmentalizing.”
“Of course I am! How else do you process this?” He ran a hand through his hair. “Allison, be real. If this was some anonymous grant to travel the country and write a blog, you’d already be packing. The sex is just… the method of verification. It’s a biometric signature.”
“A biometric signature.” She repeated the phrase flatly. It was so cold, so Will. She took a long pull of her beer. “And us? What’s the method of verification for our friendship after this? What’s the neutral term for that fallout?”
He faltered. That was the crack in his analytical armor. He looked down at his hands. “I don’t know.”
His quiet admission undid her more than any argument could have. She saw the fear in him, too. Not just of poverty, but of losing her. The weight of the offer pressed down, a vise on her temples.
“We could try it,” she heard herself say. The words were out before her brain could censor them.
Will’s head snapped up. “What?”
“Not the trip. Not… all of it.” She traced a watermark on the table. Her heart was a frantic bird in her chest. “We’re approaching this theoretically. But it’s not theoretical. It’s physical. It’s us. So what if we… removed the theoretical obstacle first. On our own terms. Here. Where it’s safe. Just to see if it’s even possible. If we can even… do that. And still look at each other the next day.”
Will stared at her, his expression unreadable. “You’re proposing a trial run.”
“I’m proposing data.” She met his gaze, forcing her voice to stay clinical, even as her face flushed. “If it’s a disaster, we hand the envelope back, tell Atzler thanks but no thanks, and we never speak of it again. We have a horrible, awkward story for when we’re eighty. If it’s not a disaster…” She shrugged, the gesture feeling impossibly fragile. “Then we have a real decision to make. One based on fact, not fear.”
The air between them vibrated. The hum of the cooler, the faint jukebox music, it all faded into a distant buzz. Will was looking at her not just as Allison, but as a variable in a new, staggering equation. She saw the moment his practicality overrode his shock. It was a calculation. A risk assessment.
“Where?” he asked, his voice low.
“My apartment. After several more of these.” She lifted her beer glass, her hand steady though her insides were trembling. “Liquid courage is a valid part of the experimental protocol.”
A slow, familiar grin spread across his face, but it was different this time. It wasn’t his charming, public smile. It was smaller, more private, and utterly terrified. “Okay, Morris. For science.”
“For science,” she echoed, the words tasting like fate.
They finished their beers in that charged, silent understanding. Will paid the tab. They walked out into the gray afternoon light, the envelope tucked under his arm. At the corner where he would turn toward his own place, they stopped.
“I’ll go home. Shower. Change,” he said, as if listing tasks for a group project.
“Seven o’clock,” she said. “At The Anchor. We’ll… talk first.”
He nodded, gave her a last, long look that seemed to try to memorize her face as it was right now, and then walked away.
Allison walked the final block to her apartment building alone. Her mind was a white noise of static. She let herself into her quiet, book-cluttered studio. She stood in the center of the room, the reality crashing in.
She pulled out her phone. Her thumbs hovered over the screen. This was the point of no return. Sending the text was the first concrete step off the cliff.
She typed, deleted, typed again. It had to be simple. It had to be them. She finally settled on the plain, unvarnished truth.
Allison: Meet at The Anchor at 7. We’ll have several drinks. Then we’ll go to my place and have sex. Data point one: Maine.
She stared at the words. They looked absurd. Monstrous. Honest.
She took a deep, shaking breath and hit send.