Reverse Polarity (An ADMIN Tale) Ch. 07

Reverse Polarity

An ADMIN Tale

The Needs of the Poly...

Sunday Morning

The harsh sound of an incoming call startled Aaron from his sleep. He squinted at his bedside table, then grabbed his phone and noticed he had a number of missed messages. He swiped to accept the call, which appeared to be from Tamasree, and hoped his voice didn't sound too hoarse when he said, "Hello?"

"Sorry to wake you. Did you not see any of our texts?" said Tama, sounding very subdued, perhaps even worried.

"No, not yet, sorry. I guess I didn't hear the alerts when they arrived. Are you okay? What's wrong?" Aaron asked, waking up more fully as alarm bells started ringing in his head at the unusual circumstances.

"Well, a lot of things, I guess, but I'd rather not talk about them over the phone. Can you meet us somewhere?" she replied.

"Us? You and the others? Are they okay?" Aaron inquired urgently, sitting up and feeling the first twinges of panic.

"Yes, we're all okay. Well, maybe not okay, but not injured or anything like that, luckily," answered Tama. "I don't know exactly what's wrong with Melissa and Nora, aside from the fact that Nora lost her phone somehow. But for the last thirty minutes, we've all been having basically the same conversation with each other that I'm having with you."

"God, I hate mysteries," moaned Aaron. "Where do you all want to meet? Do you need a ride?"

Tama's voice was muffled as she spoke to someone else for a moment, then said, "Yes, can you pick me up? Nora just asked if we could meet at Melissa's apartment, and she said that was okay. I've got them on a video conference on my laptop."

Aaron ran a hand through his sleep-tousled hair and glanced at his clock. "I can swing by your place in about fifteen minutes," he said, "I need to wash up a little and then I'll hit the road."

"Okay, thank you. See you soon. Love you," said Tamasree quietly.

"I love you, too," he said, "and tell the girls the same for me, please."

"I will. Bye," said Tama as she disconnected the call.

~~

When Tamasree got in his car a little while later, it was obvious from her reddened eyes that she'd been crying. Alarmed, Aaron once again asked, "What's wrong?"

Tama simply shook her head as she fastened her seat belt, quietly replying, "I don't want to have to say it more than once. Please, let's wait until we're all together before I explain myself."

Aaron felt a chill of dread gripping his spine as he backtracked toward Melissa's apartment. He couldn't imagine what the problem was, after things had seemed to go so well the day before. He wondered if one of the parents had suddenly reversed their acceptance despite the influence of the ADMIN app, but told himself that was unlikely, if only because no one was trying to interfere with them meeting up.

They rode in uncomfortable silence for the short trip, arriving to find that Nora was already there, waiting outside the door. Melissa opened it even as they clambered out of Aaron's car. The blonde and the redhead tried to hug one another, but it seemed stiff and uncomfortable, not the way lovers would normally embrace. Their greetings to Tama and himself likewise felt forced and awkward, and his anxiety only grew as a result.

Stepping into the living room, Aaron finally burst out, "Will someone please tell me what's going on? What's with all the cryptic messages and why is everyone looking like someone died?"

To his horror, all three women started weeping, quietly in the case of Tama and Melissa, and outright wailing from Nora. He was mystified and terrified at their seemingly inexplicable distress. He began to panic, starting to believe he'd somehow damaged them by abandoning the quest, or else that they'd learned of his manipulations and were about to dump him, or call the police, or else just kill him. Aaron started hyperventilating, trying to convince himself that his three lovers at least did not seem murderously angry. Fumbling for words but finding none, he simply collapsed on an armchair catty-corner to the couch they were occupying.

Over the next half hour, as the three women explained how their Saturday nights had unfolded, Aaron couldn't help crying as well. The stories came out in dribs and drabs; the girls kept breaking down as they tried to prepare one another for how awful they had behaved, and how disgusted they were with themselves, and how everyone else would be thinking the same as soon as they knew the whole truth. By the end, everyone felt drained and cried out, and they sat staring at their laps, awkwardly glancing at one another, but no one seemed to know how to proceed.

It was Nora who finally broke the silence and now seemed the most composed. "I guess fantasizing that I had been caught and then making a mess of my floor while my roommate watched actually seems like I, um, got off lightly." She cringed at what she realized was poor word choice even as she uttered it, but her face was already so red and blotchy that her fresh blush was barely noticeable. Her girlfriends glanced at her briefly but then looked back at the floor.

"This is all my fault," thought Aaron, feeling hollow and nauseated. "I was congratulating myself on barely needing the app to keep boosting their interest in the fetishes I gave them. Why didn't I realize things were headed this way? Fuck! What if I've ruined their lives? What if they can't resist the urges I gave them? What's going to happen to them if they really do fall all the way to actually needing to debase themselves in service of the kinks I forced on them?" Feeling suddenly sick, Aaron leapt from the chair and raced to Melissa's bathroom, only barely making it in time as he vomited bile into her toilet.

Returning to the living room after cleaning up and rinsing his mouth, he simply said, "I'm sorry." Nora looked up with tears glistening but simply nodded her head, while the other two mumbled their own apologies.

Reaching into a pocket of the heavy flannel shirt she was wearing, Melissa held out a roll of mints, saying, "I've been puking every few hours since I got home." Aaron accepted the offering, popping one in his mouth while he tried to come up with something he could say or do to make things better, or at least comfort his lovers. He didn't think it was a good time to try confessing his own sins, given how unbelievable they were, but he was on the brink of doing it anyway when Tamasree spoke up.

"I love you all, but I'm not sure we should be together anymore," she said quietly, tears falling into her lap again. "I'm disgusted and humiliated that I couldn't make it even one whole day after announcing that we're together to our families before I'm seduced by strangers because they happened to guess my weakness. And now I know I'm not the only one. I want to say it'll never happen again, but I don't trust myself. I don't think any of us can trust ourselves, and maybe we can't trust each other, either."

Nora and Melissa moved in to hug Tama from either side, leaving Aaron feeling useless and left out. Then he told himself he'd earned it, because he'd caused them pain he couldn't really understand, and that they deserved better than the likes of him.

Aaron looked up at his three lovers and thought he saw them saying goodbye to one another, albeit not with words. Suddenly angry that he was moping and feeling sorry for himself rather than looking for a solution, or at least consoling his friends, he abruptly said, "NO!" in a very loud voice, surprising the girls, who looked at him with fear and shock, which nearly broke his heart.

Before they could ask about his outburst, Aaron said, "Sorry to startle you, but pump the brakes. None of what happened is your fault. Don't ask me how I know, just please trust me on that. I get that you're feeling guilty or ashamed or disgusted, but don't, please don't."

Melissa gave a single, bitter-sounding laugh and remarked, "This from the man who just tossed his cookies in my bathroom."

Shaking his head, Aaron tried to explain, "I wasn't disgusted with what you did, I was disgusted at myself. I can't really explain, but I am at least partly responsible for where you wound up last night because I have been doing everything I could to encourage you and your kinks." The girls spoke all at once, objecting in various ways that he didn't give them their fetishes, which made him grasp his head with exasperation and a barely resistible urge to laugh hysterically.

Aaron waited until their jumbled voices faded out and continued, "Look, I know that being perverted is isolating. That's why I wanted you all to be perverts, too, and did everything I could think of to make you more kinky. On some level, I think I felt you needed to be outcasts like me in order to stay with me. I learned that wasn't true as I was getting to know each of you, although I didn't realize it was a lesson until just a few minutes ago."

"So what are you saying?" asked Nora. "You think we're stuck with each other because no one else will want us? It's either stay together and betray one another over and over again, or be alone?" The redhead looked both worried and defiant, an expression that was mirrored to some extent on the other two women.

"Don't try to make this about you!" said Melissa. "You can't seriously believe our guilt will go away just because you think you're guilty, too?"

Sighing, Aaron considered his next words carefully. "I'm saying you shouldn't feel guilty enough to give up what we have. Or what we could have. Whatever mistakes we've made or poor judgement we've exercised, I don't think we should abandon each other. Not because I think we'll always be alone otherwise, but because I love you, all of you, too much to give up so easily. At the very least, don't decide now. Give it a day. Just one day."

"What difference will one day make?" asked Tamasree, seeming sad and skeptical.

"You'll find out by tomorrow," said Aaron.

Sunday Mid-Day

Aaron had reluctantly left Melissa's apartment, pretending that he had a family obligation that couldn't be avoided. He took Tamasree back to her home and then drove off and stopped at an isolated park. His real intention had been to try using the ADMIN app to fix the problems he'd caused with it, but his dreams of a deus ex machina solution were going down in flames. He cursed himself for using all of his saved tokens on the girls' parents, but it had seemed like a wise investment at the time. Now, faced with an even more daunting dilemma to resolve, it looked like he wouldn't even be able to count on his ace in the hole.

"FUCK!" Aaron screamed as yet another long-shot command to one of the girls to decrease her guilt and anguish failed. He punched his steering wheel, making the horn blare and scaring off a number of birds that had gathered in the trees in front of his parking space. Grinding his teeth, Aaron considered his dwindling array of options.

He supposed he could start a new quest of some kind on each of the girls in order to earn more tokens, but those were necessarily rather slow-developing. They would require making additional changes to his girlfriends' thoughts and personalities, and it now sickened him with worry to contemplate screwing around too much with their minds. Trying to fix something broken was one thing, but breaking other stuff in the process was no longer an acceptable cost.

As far as he knew, the app couldn't affect memories, but it might be possible to play a similar trick to the one he'd used to condition the girls to think positively of him. "Maybe I can make it so that any time they think of how bad they feel for what happened, the very next thing they think of is how happy they are to be with me and the others..." Aaron mused. He then shook his head, worried that such a scheme could backfire the way his various commands for them to get pleasure from indulging their fetishes had led them to their current anguish. If he tried to gloss over their guilt, they might just keep getting involved in blowbangs and orgies and risky public nudity, eventually realizing that there was no long term consequence to themselves.

"I really need to learn how the mind works," Aaron muttered, holding his throbbing head in his hands. "Who the fuck invents an app like this and gives it to a horny idiot?!" He let loose with several more profanities to vent some of his anger, briefly enamored of the idea that he could blame the developers for his predicament. After a while, however, his own guilt reasserted itself; the makers of ADMIN were not without their faults and sins, but those had relatively little bearing on the fact that he'd been a willing instrument for abusing their power to his gain.

"Maybe I should just fucking fix myself," Aaron snarled, bringing up his own profile. He entered a behavioral command, "Stop being a manipulative douchebag to the girls and just be there for them," and entered it without even waiting for it to offer an estimated chance of success. He tossed his phone on the dashboard and massaged his temples. The app sounded a gentle chime that he knew meant the order had gone through, and he scoffed, wondering what it would feel like to not be a douchebag.

Aaron's head suddenly snapped up and his eyes blinked rapidly. He didn't know if the epiphany he thought he was experiencing was his douchiness evaporating, but he suddenly saw the clear path forward, realizing that most of the obstacles that had concealed it before were his own doubts, greed, and laziness. He took a deep breath and picked up his phone, messaging each of the girls and begging them to meet with him that evening. It took some cajoling, but they finally acquiesced, and Aaron drove off to gather the supplies he'd need for his new master plan.

Sunday Evening

Aaron sat on a spread blanket with a picnic basket and a cooler off to one side, watching the girls approach warily in the waning light of the day. He waved, then opened the containers and said, "I've got water and juice and soft drinks, and a bunch of snack foods if anyone's hungry. I didn't feel much like eating anything all day, and I figured you all might be feeling empty, too."

"Um, thank you," said Nora, accepting a bottled water and seating herself. "That was thoughtful." She and the other girls made no move toward the picnic basket, however, as they all opened their drinks, still looking reluctant and hesitant.

"Why are we here?" asked Melissa, speaking at the same time as Tamasree, who inquired, "What did you want to tell us?"

"Lots of things," Aaron said to Tama, then answered Melly, "Because I had an epiphany about how dumb I've been, and I wanted to share it and see if you ladies agree that it was a valuable insight." That was clearly not the answer they had been expecting, as they all looked mildly surprised, but he thought it best to press on quickly.

"First, I want to apologize for suggesting and assuming there's a quick fix for our problems. One day is not enough, but every day can help. So I stand by the rest of what I said, about not giving up. All couples have problems fitting themselves together, and with four of us, our problems are that much greater than normal. But so are the rewards." Seeing that he hadn't won anyone over, Aaron continued, "I also need to apologize for assuming I need to fix things. The only way I could fix things is to make them how I want them to be, and doing that is pretty much guaranteed to break them for the rest of you."

"So what are you planning to do," asked Tamasree.

Aaron shrugged. "Love you. Forgive you if you want forgiveness. Help you think of ways for us to be better together and avoid hurting each other. That goes for all of you. I know what you did but can only guess how you feel, so I can't impose a solution that addresses your real problems."

The girls softened slightly at the earlier words, but Melissa's expression darkened again as she asked, "And just what is it that you think our real problems are?"

"The same as mine," Aaron said, "The same as everybody's. We're people with passions that sometimes get out of control and make us indulge ourselves at the expense of others. Speaking personally, my mistakes have been mostly the stereotypically male variety. On some level, I was thinking of you all as conquests, or prizes. I was maybe a little less territorial or covetous than some guys would be, but that doesn't mean I wasn't being selfish and manipulative."

Aaron made eye contact with each of the women in turn, saying, "I realize that, however devious I thought I was being, you were all acting on your own impulses in most respects. My scheming may have nudged you in certain directions sometimes, if I was as clever and lucky as I like to think, but you are who you are and I expect you did what you wanted whenever you thought you could get away with it. You were probably selfish and manipulative yourselves at times, even if it didn't bother the rest of us because we wanted the same things." The girls all looked uncomfortable at his words and he thought they might be on the verge of tears again.

Taking a deep breath, Aaron concluded, "I expect that much of the guilt you're all feeling is from knowing that you hurt the rest of us, because what you wanted in the moment outweighed other considerations. That's how I feel about how I've been behaving, anyway. Maybe you don't think my bad conduct stacks up against your own, but that's fine; it's not a competition. I hope we can forgive each other, but I don't think the details of what we did are what needs to be forgiven. We acted selfishly, instead of putting the needs of our relationship foremost, and for the first time since we got together, our selfish needs were not in happy alignment. We can do better, if we work at it. I want to work at it. I don't want to lose what we have."

Tama gave him a weak smile and then a brief hug, even as tears leaked from her eyes. "That sounded pretty rehearsed, but I still liked hearing it."

"Apparently my public speaking skills have been dramatically improved thanks to our group projects," Aaron teased gently, making everyone laugh a little, albeit somewhat reluctantly.

"So what now?" asked Nora. "We just pretend nothing happened?"

Melissa shook her head and answered before Aaron could. "No, pretending nothing was wrong is living in denial. We need to remember, or we'll do the same again later, or worse.

Tama was nodding her head in agreement, then chimed in, "We can try to put it behind us, but keep it in the rear-view mirror."

Nora's lips curled into a teasing smile as she remarked, "A driving metaphor from the only one here without a car? How humorous!"

Melissa and Aaron laughed quietly, while Tamasree reached over to bonk the redhead with her empty water bottle, "It's not like I don't know how to drive!"

"So do we really all forgive one another?" Melissa asked, eyes darting from one face to the next rapidly.

Aaron replied, "Yes. I forgive all of you unequivocally. I was always much more worried than angry or anything like that."

Nora nodded and agreed, "I think, for safety, we should be very careful about relations with anyone outside our group. Diseases and whatnot. But I'm personally not too opposed to inviting other people to party with us, at least from time to time. So yeah, forgiven."

Tamasree and Melissa both looked very relieved, and their eyes watered. Their gazes met, and although they said nothing, the tight embrace they gave one another was understood by everyone. They opened their arms to the others after a few moments, so Aaron and Nora joined the group hug. As they knelt on the blanket, swaying together, the foursome started muttering, "I love you," to each other, and soon they were all crying, but they were tears of relief.