One Way Glass

I am prepared to admit that I may be pushing the boundaries of the assignment for the 2022 On The Job Challenge, but this story is itself about pushing the boundaries of an assignment. Besides, I think a serious research project is certainly a workplace, even if the main workers are still students.

Please remember (as is the case with all my stories), should you be looking for 'Realism', just move on. As always, I aim for 'Ridiculously Plausible'. All experimental subjects, as well as the scientists, are older than eighteen.

This one is a bit of a Sprawling Epic, spreading out as it is over length and breadth of all of seventy-two hours and two small rooms... It is certainly the longest single story I've written here on Literotica. I hope you enjoy it.

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*——The Kramner Institute of Behavioral Sciences is the over-glorious name for what is essentially a small but well-funded working group in the university psychology department. Despite the broad and bland name, Kramner focuses exclusively on the narrow study of human sexuality, and all its classes are labeled as such. The introductory classes, Human Sexuality 101 and 102, which are absolute prerequisites for all other classes within the major, boast a huge number of students, many from outside the HuSex degree track, and indeed from outside the field of psychology entirely. This is hardly surprising, considering that the nickname for HS101-102 among the greater student body is Perving for Pros. But HS101 has the highest drop rate among all classes at the entire university, and HS102 is not far behind, both are GPA killers... and both are, with intermittent exceptions, boring.

All this is by design.

The primary reason they are so hard and mostly so boring is to act as a winnowing, to ensure that casual students do not clutter up the more serious upper division classes. A student has to have a serious interest in the major to make it through 101, and a serious ability to make it through 102. But the classes are made just sexually interesting enough to keep up the reputation of Perving for Pros. That keeps those introductory classes swollen with horny undergrads, and that means funding for the department. ——*

I will admit, I was one of those freshmen who took HS101 because I thought it would be easy, and because, well, I was of course horny.

But I discovered in myself almost immediately a fascination for the subject, and not just the prurient parts. Furthermore, I displayed a real aptitude for the study as well. Not only did I make it through 102, I had already changed my major from PoliSci to Psych-HuSex before my freshman spring semester was even complete.

Once through to the courses that were effectively for HuSex majors only, almost everything changed for me and the others who made it. The course difficulty remained the same, but now everyone in the classes had shown an aptitude for and commitment to the subject in a serious way. We all could handle it, and could help each other when needed. That made the atmosphere relaxed instead of tense.

The subject matter became more interesting too, but let's not get crazy. I know people persist in thinking that Human Sexuality classes are little more than regularly scheduled orgies, but that is absolutely not the truth. You don't need to be sexually active at all to pursue the subject. I knew a girl in the class ahead of me who graduated Cum Laude while still a virgin. And to be honest, most of us don't socialize much at all, much less date within the department. There is a huge amount of work, and if you want any life at all outside the books, you need to take every opportunity to get away from your peers. I dated one girl from the department, my sophomore year. We fought constantly until we broke up, then almost as soon as we did, we found ourselves good friends once more.

It is not widely publicized, but Kramner's approach to Human Sexuality is not just as a field of study, but as an experimental science. This makes things tricky sometimes with the university's scientific ethics board, but it generally works. Students from Kramner almost never participate as subjects, however. Our knowledge of the issues at play makes us generally bad objects of study. If a study participant has significant knowledge about what the researcher is actually studying, it affects their behavior.

My final undergraduate spring term, I had two HuSex courses that made up fifty percent of my credits, but eighty percent of my workload. The more fascinating of the two was a new class, Human Sexuality 555: Advanced Isolation Study, which examined the effects of isolation from or with others on the human sexual mindset.

On the second Monday of the semester, I and the six other students in the course were waiting for class to begin when the door opened and we looked over to see not only Professor Gandy, the sweet, gentle lady who was our teacher, but also the dean of the institute, Dr. Mannheim. (We called him dean, but he was really the director. Kramner was too small to have an actual dean.) He had joined Professor Gandy that morning to outline for us a research project that we would be assisting the the two of them with.

One of the advantages for undergrads in our department is that there are damned few grads to get between us and the professors. Most upper division classes involve assisting in real research, even if it is mostly just interviews, observation, record keeping, or especially data collation and presentation.

"I've been very pleased with each of you in this class over your careers as students here," our silver-haired professor told us. "You would not have been invited to take this class otherwise. In light of that, Dr. Mannheim and I are going to give you the opportunity to manage your own parallel experiments!" That got an excited buzz.

"We have split you into three groups for this project," Dr. Mannheim said, in the light southern drawl the absolutely did not match his name. "That means that for well or weal, one group will have three students. You will each run one instance of the outlined experiment. You will have the opportunity to take responsibility for recruiting your test subjects, preparing the study space, proctoring the experiment, and reporting your results and your methods to us and to the class as a whole."

"Dr. Mannheim and I are studying the effects of total isolation upon pairs of strangers," Professor Gandy said, taking over the introduction. "Each group will be responsible for recruiting a pair of test subjects. Each pair should consist of one cis-gendered male and one female adults of undergraduate age, who are utter strangers to one another. Participants all need to be conventionally attractive at the least, currently unattached, and should be sexually active in the median range for the general population."

A few students stirred. Dr. Mannheim sensed the incipient objections and interjected. "Yes, this is a tiny data set, with very narrow demographics. And the criteria is weighted to create the best opportunity to observe... interesting results." It was nice to see that he confronted the obvious issues with the study head-on, and I for one relaxed a little. "This is an entirely new area of study for Professor Gandy and me, and this first round is more of a proof-of-value to see if we should devote the larger resources of the Institute to further research." He smiled, his soft face and neatly-trimmed beard displaying a sheepishly apologetic mein. "While this is a great opportunity for you all to gain almost top-to-bottom experience with experimentation in this field, I am afraid this is one of those rounds of research that will likely never see publication. Students who follow you may be the ones to get their names in print, I'm afraid."

Most of us didn't care. We were going to actually do some research, mostly on our own. This would be work work, not school work.

There were three guys in the class, so we were distributed one each among the three working groups. One girl was assigned to each of the second and third groups, while two, Anna and Chelsea, were assigned to... mine.

I was of two minds on this. A third team member meant a lot more man-hours to get the thing set up, especially valuable since we were going first. I had been in a few classes with each girl over my four years in the program. Both seemed fairly cool, but I did not know either well. I could be sure that each would shoulder her share of the workload, at least. But three people meant fifty percent more minds to settle disputes among, and if we did well, it meant a third less credit for each of us!

After handing out identical briefing packets to each student, the faculty dismissed class early so we could all go have team meetings and start assembling questions and a plan. Anna, Chelsea, and I adjourned together to a study room in the library that by some miracle was available on short notice, where we lounged around reading through the framework.

Chelsea whistled low. "Recruiting our subjects is going to be harder than I thought. I guess that is why they left it to us. It will be a big test in and of itself!

Anna asked, puzzled, "Hard? We get to offer an $1,100 stipend to each participant! We will be fending off applicants with a stick."

"Applicants, yes," I agreed with Chelsea. "But when they hear exactly what is involved? It is seventy-two hours alone in a single room, with a total stranger, no TV, no electronics, no communications, no personal reading material, no games, and no homework. We will lose almost every applicant before we even get to interviewing."

Chelsea toyed with her long auburn ponytail, biting the tip. "I do think that they are giving us some help here, by suggesting we do our recruiting in person, rather than just using the usual flyers."

"I think that is a good idea," added Anna, leaning forward. "Especially when you add some of the criteria we certainly won't be telling recruits about, like 'attractive'. What is up with that?"

"Oh come on, Anna, you have to know," I said with a grin. I tossed my stress ball up and caught it idly out of the air. "Let's make sure that we are all on the same page about what they want to study, and what they want to see."

"I think the subject name might be a clue: Human Sexuality?" smirked Chelsea.

"Exactly," I said. "Our job is to put two people in a room with nothing to do for three days and watch whether, how long until, and in what ways they decide to get jiggy with it. Getting good-looking subjects will make an 'interesting result' more likely."

"Is that good science?" asked Chelsea doubtfully.

Anna heaved a big sigh, which despite my focus on the task at hand, was not the worst sight I had ever seen. "Probably not. But Dr. Mannheim specifically said that they were putting their thumb on the scale with these proof of concept experiments we are running."

"Yup," I agreed, still tossing my stress ball. "Let's be blunt. They want that 'interesting' result. If we want to get the best grade, which I for one certainly do, we need to obtain subjects that will have the three of us taking shifts for three days as we watch two people explore their limits of boredom-averting copulation."

"Fuck!" exclaimed Anna, brandishing her packet. Chelsea and I looked at her, concerned. "About that trading off idea, no dice. They want us sequestered the whole time too, to ensure that we all have the same observational data. While they are stuck in the one room, we will be stuck on the other side of one-way glass in another!" She read a line or two more. "The only thing that we get to make it easier for us to stave off boredom is that we can bring our homework, personal reading material, and phones. But they warn that the facility is effectively shielded, meaning that we will have no cell service or WiFi either!"

"Fuck!" Chelsea and I agreed.

"If we don't get a live porno show to study, I may sleep twelve hours a day," I grumbled.

"I hope you don't snore. I hope none of us snore," Anna said darkly.

"I'll be sure to bring my Breathe-Right strips," Chelsea sighed quietly.

"Hey," Anna piped up. "We each get seventy bucks as a stipend for the overnight work!"

"Woo-hoo," I said with dark humor. "We are professional researchers now."

*

The brief seemed to suggest that the female member(s) of the team should take point on recruiting the female subject, and the male, the male. We decided that we would go against that advice. We didn't want conventionally attractive participants who had sex occasionally. To get the best grade, and to stave off boredom, we wanted two hot kids on the make. We all three judged that a guy could get a better read on the female candidates for our purposes, and vice versa.

To ensure that we fulfilled the total stranger requirement, we decided that the girls would recruit our male participant from on our own campus, while I would go all the way across town to a large art college located in the suburbs out that way. The student body there was seventy-five percent women, which helped us in several ways.

I checked on the public schedule at the arts campus and compared it to my own. I found a good time where I was available and would get to see the maximum number of students passing by, and got a permit to 'table' at that time each day from their administration.

We all started the very next day. I set myself up with a card table and a modest, professional-looking sign saying that our university's psychology department (technically true) was offering $$$$ to a female participant for a three-day study. I sat at the table, wearing my university gear, and displaying no information about the study whatsoever.

It took me ten of the fourteen days available to find a female candidate who was hungry enough, bored enough, footloose enough, and hot enough for our needs. Tabitha was crossing the campus and as I watched her walk, I immediately wished she'd come over and ask about the study, but we had decided that actively approaching subjects was a bad idea. Fortunately, she caught sight of my sign and detoured to find out more. She leaned the huge portfolio she was carrying against the table and leaned over to ask what this was all about. She wore yoga pants that outlined some way above average curves, and one of those athletic tops that is just a bra renamed so girls can wear it in public with no actual top on. The bra/top provided a lot more coverage than many like it, but then Tabitha had a lot more to cover than most girls. I signed her up on the spot.

*

The girls, being two reasonably attractive women, tabling on a much larger campus, had candidates to spare in only seven days. They ended up playing Roshambo to choose between their favorites. Anna won, and that meant we selected Carlos, a guy none of us had ever met before.

*

Participants set, we moved on to working with the other teams to set up the space we were provided. This was the only part of the project where we were allowed to work with the other teams. Otherwise, we were strictly forbidden by the protocol from discussing our efforts, strategy, subjects, or results until all experiments were finished and we presented our results to the faculty and class.

The Institute rented for us an audio recording studio from the school of music, consisting of two adjacent rooms, one large and well-lit, and the other somewhat smaller, and darker. The studio was available to us because it was in the middle of being renovated and updated. The old sound equipment, the giant mixing board, and essentially all other furniture had been removed as part of the renovation, and the replacement sound equipment would not arrive for installation for several weeks, providing us with the chance to use the space. We would employ the larger, more brightly lit space where sound artists performed when recording as the confinement area for the subjects. The connected sound engineer's space would be our observation room. In the case of our team, it was going to be a little cramped with three people.

We installed two full-sized beds from IKEA in the experiment room, two mismatched but similar and comfortable arm chairs, and lots of food. Our idea was to establish a comfortable space to endure some boredom, without being suggestive of this being an experiment in Human Sexuality.

When we went to set up our space, we found that we did not have enough room for two beds, much less the three our first group would have needed. After some discussion with the other teams, we put in three oversized, super soft futons, and three canvas director's chairs (the tall type) to give us a good view when observing for long periods. Anna, Chelsea, and I stocked our space with food for ourselves during our confinement. Our casual conversation between teams during set-up was mostly bitching about our own required isolation, certain it was unnecessary. But protocol is protocol, and you don't break it if you want a usable result.

Although it seemed a bit of overkill, I was still grateful when one of the other groups dropped off some yoga mats, hand weights, and a set of aerobic step platforms. I wasn't going to get out of shape in three days, but a little exercise can help when you go stir crazy, a fate I was by now expecting for ourselves. Hopefully, our subjects would just go old-fashioned sex crazy instead of stir.

Between the two spaces, there was a gigantic, triple-glazed, vacuum-sealed, sound-proof window. I and the other two dudes in our class spent most of our time during the set-up covering that window with highly reflective film that would give the observers a great view, and the study participants a great mirror. Doing it right was hard, and we wasted about a hundred bucks worth of the film before we got the hang of applying it. When we were done though, the four foot by ten foot window looked like a perfect mirror from the subject's side.

Both rooms were magnificently sound-proofed, from the outside and from each other. But, as we had been told, this also meant that the walls were too thick for cellular signals to penetrate (we all tried), and the inside WiFi repeaters had been torn out with the other electronics. The intercom was still intact, but we borrowed a sound engineer from the music department to futz it so that the microphone in with the subjects was always on, while our mic was completely disabled. We would hear everything they said and did. They would hear nothing from us.

Anna, Chelsea, and I obtained a supply of dark blue scrubs for the participants to wear during our experiment. The bland garments were adorned only with the light blue logo of the university and a matching band around the neck.

We researchers could wear our own clothes, but we were told that to get in the right clinical mind-set, we should wear white cotton lab coats. We were not working with any caustics or chemicals of course, which made the coats clearly pointless, not to mention a little ridiculous, especially for three students who would be wearing casual clothes underneath for comfort. But every Kramner faculty member wore the things all the time, so we all played along. I'll be honest, I didn't mind, and I don't think Anna or Chelsea did either. It kind of made me feel like a real scientist.

The experiment was to begin at noon, so the three of us showed up at 10:30. We stashed our book bags and clothes in the observation space, checked the one-way mirror one last time, and then split up to meet our subjects.

My recruit, Tabitha, arrived quite early, which was good. I double-checked and realized that she had parked somewhere where her car would have been towed if she had left it parked for three days in a row. I directed her to a better location, and we still had time for me to hand her a set of the scrubs and ask her to change into them. I stood guard over the door to an empty rehearsal room in the music building while she donned her scrubs.