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to get Kate? She might find this in her programming.”
    Whatever had been left of Anderson’s erection shriveled completely, leaving only a damp spot in his shorts.
    “No,” he said, so full of realization that he couldn’t put a voice to it, even to Bobby, who had always accepted him perfectly as he was. “I don’t think Kate… Kate doesn’t… she’s not the person I want to participate.”
    Bobby? Yes. He would have liked that. Bren? His heart gave a slow, agonizing thud. Yes. His charm with Bren had probably been leading up to a moment just like this.
    There was no stigma attached to his choice, not on his mining colony. It was just… just that Bobby didn’t want him. Not that way. And for a moment, he felt incredibly lonely.
    But Bobby had been his friend for… well, he’d come online nearly two Earth years before, and as Anderson’s friend, Bobby smiled encouragingly. “I’ll talk to Kate. She’ll have an idea of what to do.”
    Anderson knew he turned a dull red. “Do we have to talk to Kate? I don’t think I want Kate to know what I was just doing.” He couldn’t help but think of Melody and how he would not have wanted his older sister to know about anything that he was doing to his penis.
    Bobby continued to look thoughtful. “Kate will probably react as I did,” he said reassuringly. “And she may have some ideas for your—” process, process “—dilemma. I really think sharing information would be a good idea, don’t you?”
    Anderson gave a little groan and buried his face in his hands. “Yeah. Yeah, Bobby. That’s fine. Just don’t do it while I’m there, okay?”
    Bobby smiled a little. “I think that could be arranged.”
    Anderson had a sudden thought about Mr. Kay and the touch that had started this entire conversation. “And, could you, I don’t know. Maybe keep this secret from everybody else?”
    Bobby simply nodded in complete acceptance, and Anderson had a moment to think that maybe privacy was not a concept that would be programmed into a holodeck program. It didn’t matter. Privacy had suddenly become important to Anderson , and Bobby and Kate took their cues from him.
    It was a satisfactory arrangement, because Anderson didn’t hear another word about a friend to help him massage his penis for a couple of months. That didn’t mean that he didn’t continue to explore this new development, but he had asked his roommates, and they had all agreed to a newly instated house rule about knocking before entering the sleeping quarters.
    The fact that his roommates were both programmed to forget or ignore this rule within a standard deviation of the number of times Anderson himself forgot or ignored this rule kept Anderson very conscientious about knocking. It didn’t matter that he was highly doubtful he would encounter either Bobby or Kate in such a compromising position. What mattered was that he now understood that privacy was a two-way street.
     
     
    I N ALL likelihood, Anderson would have eventually discovered the ins and outs of the magic in his penis—he certainly explored it an awful lot in the privacy of his holodeck quarters. He learned that if he continued what he’d been doing—simply lying on his back and stroking it until the wonderful, terrible pressure built up in his testicles, his spine, and his clenching buttocks—he would experience the most wonderful explosion, a climax of sorts. It was messy and sweaty, and embarrassing afterward, even if he was alone, but very often, the quest for privacy, the mess and the sweat, and even the embarrassment, were all worth it.
    He still wished for more knowledge—and for help. For, as Bobby called it, “participation.”
    He wasn’t stupid—he knew what “participation” meant. Melody had been thinking very seriously about taking a lover before… before. Anderson had liked the young man—liked him well enough to not dump worms on the two of them when he’d caught them kissing under a tree and he’d