Chapter 117: Hot Tub Party; Pipeline Idea Suggested

Sunday, April 24, 2005 (Continued)

Dinner conversation was very lively, as we entertained the Williams family with incidents from the date. Prof, for example, had us in stitches with the recount of his visit to our room. He'd been tall enough to see over the back of the sofa that the dozen girls had been hiding behind, so was able to see the chaos that had erupted there. It made for some very funny recounting.

There were a couple of serious topics. The first was very brief. Prof asked me, "Mark, do you have any idea how long you'll need tonight? I know that's an awkward question because you don't know how successful you'll be, or what unforeseen problems might emerge, but I'm only asking so I have a better idea of what time we should leave and what time we'll probably be back. It's not critical, so just take a guess."

Prof had said that roulette takes two minutes per go, so thirty per hour. I could fairly easily imagine that I might need about that number of trials, to test different ways of doing it. Issues like whether it was better to fill all the adjacent pockets with fingertips to stop the ball entering them, or whether it was better to let it enter the wrong pockets naturally and then flick it out, or perhaps to lift it out. Presuming my ability worked usefully, I should be able to find out how in about thirty tests. Then I might need quite a few more tests to see how well it performed. For example, if the best I could do was to get within plus/minus three pockets of the target, then I should play at least another thirty times to get some statistics for how often I hit each pocket as it was unlikely to be a flat distribution.

"I'd guess two to three hours should be sufficient. If it took longer than three then I've either hit a serious problem or we're gathering statistics for a wide spread of results, if you know what I mean?" Prof nodded that he did. "Taking less than two is also possible, because it might be very easy, or maybe we quickly find out that it's virtually impossible. But I'd guess two to three hours is most likely."

"Let's leave at 7 then. Is that okay with you?"

"Sure." It wouldn't leave us much time after dinner, but it would be AFTER dinner, which was the important thing.

The other serious topic was introduced by Julia, "I'm not succeeding well enough at getting the other girls to treat Mark properly. I tell them incredible, amazing things, and they nod and act all excited, and then carry on behaving like short-sighted, selfish, silly girls. They revert to their normal behavior if I'm not standing over them, managing the whole thing and essentially forcing or tricking them into behaving the way I want. They can't comprehend that their needs are less important than Mark's, so selfishness rules the day. I could work with them if they realized they actually had to do something rather than sitting on their asses waiting for the world to give them everything they want.

^-- "Lily's the only one that sees beyond the short term, and she saw the long term virtually immediately. I'm sure she's got her own agenda, because she asks me many questions about Mark's abilities - I mean like his IQ, college studies and other things she knows about - but not many questions about Mark as a person. She's obviously got something in mind, but I'm reluctant to tackle her about her motivation in case it creates a confrontation. I don't want to lose her, because she's the only one of them who's significantly useful to me. She's saved me many hours of work, whereas every other girl has drained my time to some degree or other. My problem is how to get the others to see beyond the short term.

^-- "The first times I talked to them about Mark, a few days ago, I stressed the most important amazing thing about him, which is his intellectual abilities, but it seemed to go right past them. Even the smart girls couldn't see how important that is. Today I stressed his physical and sporting abilities, and they got far more excited about that, the idiots! They don't seem to understand that a lifetime of intellectual accomplishment is far more valuable than five years or so of whatever sports Mark chooses. How can entertainment be the only thing they comprehend and get excited about?

^-- "The other thing I could do is emphasize money, but that's a weak point until Mark is rich, then they'll be all over him because I know they understand what 'rich' could mean to them. But nearly all of them will still be short-term thinkers, which means they'll still be nothing more than nuisances.

^-- "What was particularly annoying about today, is that I picked these girls because I thought most of them would be good replacement Liaisons. Instead they all acted like idiots. I wanted to fire Laila today, but I don't have a good replacement for her. I could pick a replacement more or less at random, but that's not good enough. The ONLY girls here today who were slightly cooperative, were doing so because they wanted sex with Mark. If that's what most interests them about him, they're not likely to become smart, successful Liaisons. They'll be fun for him to play with, but there's no shortage of that type of girl. I want SMART girls, who can be USEFUL. Lying on their backs and waving their legs in the air seems to be about the only things these girls are capable of, Lily excepted. I had an image of our having a large bunch of girls, all eager to be useful and impress Mark. We could choose the most useful to be Liaisons, hopefully all as useful as Lily, and all able to do different things so I could use each of their skills as needed, just like Lily helped with Mark's website. Remind me to show that to you, Mark.

^-- "I know it'll take time and effort to train up Liaisons, but it's obvious that it's hardly worth bothering with most of the current ones, and it's obvious that anyone I replace them with isn't going to be worth bothering with either. Laila, for example, is almost certainly going to be fired this Tuesday night. She's got a little menage-a-trois going with her sister and another girl. Laila's loyalty is totally to her group. A win-win is fine, but Laila's only interested in making sure her group gets a win, and she's completely blind to Mark's side. It doesn't even occur to her to think about it. I would have fired her already, but I've got no one sensible to replace her with."

I interrupted, "Umm. First, I'd like to see my website. I don't know ANYTHING about it, and I am kind of curious, seeing as how it's about me."

"I'll show you after dinner. It won't take long as it's very simple."

"Thanks. Second, I thought you were intending to pick Katelin. She was smart enough to pick 280 for my score, and she seems enthusiastic about me."

"I will pick Katelin, but not because she's smart. Picking 280 on the information she had available was probably stupid rather than smart. What she's got going for her is her enthusiasm for you. The two guessing games I ran today were just my way of finding out which of the girls were the most extremely pro-Mark. If I can't find sensible, long-term thinking girls, at least I can find girls who're blindly enthusiastic about you. They'll be highly motivated and easier to control, like Ava is. But it's hardly an ideal approach."

"Oh."

"Another thing that worries me is that I expect all the good work we've done today impressing these girls, will unravel over the next few days. I can get them excited if I work on them for several hours, but as soon as it's over they start to 'forget'. They're so short-term thinking that unless it's right in front of them, they don't react to it. They also seem to believe there's safety in a group. If a large group of them are acting in a certain way, no one questions it. They all go along with the majority, rather than trying to deviate in any way. The silly thing is, that according to the scenario they think they're in, they're supposed to be competing with each other so the larger the group the worse off they are.

^-- "I never expected this level of short-sighted, selfish stupidity, and I don't know what to do about it. I've known most of these girls for years, and I know most of them are better than average students, but they've all turned into simpletons just at the time I want them to behave as smart as they possibly can. You know Linda Hogan, Mom. I think she'd be good for Mark, as her skills and attitude complement his nicely, but unless I stand behind her and push, she does nothing. She barely said a word to Mark all day. I don't understand why none of these girls are grasping ANYTHING that I am telling them, Lily excepted. I would have gone insane with frustration today, if it hadn't been for something Mark said in the car between the pizzeria and here."

Vanessa raised her eyebrow in the way mothers do.

Julia answered, "I had a mini-frustration explosion in the car. Mark said that if nothing else ever went well in his life, having Carol and me was more than enough to make him a very happy man, and I shouldn't get so frustrated about trying to add more. It was lovely, and it saved my temper here today, but as lovely as it is, it's not practical long term. Mark's being able to finish his BS next year has shown us that things are going to happen a lot faster than we'd thought, which means less preparation time. Plus Mark does need to learn about girls and women, and he's going to need a large support team, especially as the amount of work he is capable of burning through these days is so much higher than I previously thought. Mark's lovely statement made me realize that THESE girls are not important, and I shouldn't get so wound up about them, but I need to do a LOT better at understanding and managing girls and women for the long term. Any advice you've got will be GREATLY appreciated."

Vanessa said, "I've got some opinions or thoughts you might think about further. But first, Mark, thanks for defusing Julia's explosion. Julia often does get too wound up about her projects and she doesn't handle frustration well, so it's good that you've learned a way to make it easier for her. Ironically, Julia, it's YOUR lack of long-term thinking that leads to that. As you said yourself, these particular girls didn't matter much, so you were getting too focused on the short term, and its frustrations affected you too much.

^-- "Moving on to your particular issue, I think the problem is fundamentally rooted in two things. First that what you're asking them to do is romantically relate to a boy. I know you've successfully had some of these girls involved in other projects before, Linda certainly, but this time the project is a boy. The second aspect is their age. Sixteen-year old girls have not yet developed many ways in which they can successfully relate to boys. You present them with Mark and tell them how wonderful he is, and about the only way they know how to respond to that, is - to borrow your description - 'to lie on their back and wave their legs in the air'. For the most part 16-year old girls have nothing else to offer, which has never been much of a problem, because 16-year old boys don't want anything else, haha.

^-- "They don't have many technical skills. Lily's setting up a website is an exception. You're an exception too obviously, but you know that already. That's the way we chose to raise you and you've risen to the challenge. You say they're smarter than average, and I'm sure they are when it comes to schoolwork and in their interactions with other girls, because their ability to have meaningful relationships with girls is far greater than their ability to have meaningful relationships with boys." [Actually, Lily wasn't doing the website. One of her father's staff was, with Lilly acting - appropriately - as the liaison between Julia and the programmer. I didn't know that yet but Julia did. She didn't speak up because it wasn't worth making an issue about.]

^-- "Some of them will have brothers, friends who are boys, maybe part-time jobs where they work with boys, etc., so they're not as one-dimensional as I'm painting, but you're presenting Mark as boyfriend material, and they all know that the way to treat boyfriends is to make the boy run around trying to please them, and if he does that well enough, let him get closer to scoring. Their short-term thinking is programmed into them because boys are supposed to 'Pursue and Persist' while the girls use 'Attract and Resist' to test the boys' interest and commitment. Boys show they're interested by chasing girls, by investing their time and energy in an ongoing pursuit of a chosen girl. Presuming the girl's interested in him, then instinctively she wants him to put so much effort into pursuing her that he's got none left to pursue anyone else, thereby proving his commitment to her.

^-- "Girls' instinctively short-term memories force the boys to keep the pursuit highly active. If a normal boy fancied a normal girl, but he took a couple of weeks off from trying to impress her, when he next approached her virtually all the relationship ground he'd gained previously would've been lost. She'd never treat another girl that way, if they met casually two weeks apart, but romance-seeking boys she will. That's the human courtship ritual. A two-week gap in effort implies a gap in commitment, and that's a deal-breaker for a girl instinctively looking for a lifelong commitment. You're fighting against instincts, Julia, and my money's not on you in that battle. You need to change your approach sufficiently, so the situation your friends find themselves in no longer meshes with their normal courtship instincts. Mark's being rich will certainly trigger other instincts; greed being the obviously highly motivating one. For the most part that'll result in short-term thinking and actions too, although some women are smart enough to take the long view; sometimes investing several years in an attempt to lure a rich man to the altar. Whether ordinary 16-year old girls are capable of sustaining a long-term campaign is doubtful.

^-- "My other general comment is not to worry so much about this problem. The only things Mark is likely to learn from these girls are their short-term tricks, like Dakota's crying that we talked about on Friday. Did I detect that Anna - that was the name of the girl lying on Mark's chest when I came in, wasn't it?" Julia confirmed the name. "Did I detect that Anna had a schoolgirl crush on Mark?"

"Yes. She was emotionally young, inexperienced and naïve. I let her down a small amount today, and I'll let her down the rest of the way Monday or Tuesday."

Vanessa said, "Thought so. The look of rapturous worship on her face is a somewhat of a giveaway, haha. That's another short-term effect Mark should experience and learn how to handle WITHOUT his passing it on to you! No doubt it'll make him feel uncomfortable, which is exactly what he needs to experience, so he learns that sometimes toughening up is the right thing to do. By the time he's handled a few of those, and maybe mishandled a couple too, he'll have absorbed that lesson.

^-- "I think you have been trying to achieve too much with the material that 16-year old girls offer you. With young women from college you'd have done much better, and even more so with young professional women, but not with school-aged girls. I suggest you do two things. Scale down the number of girls you're attempting to handle at one time. You should scale them down in a smart way, eliminating the girls who're the least satisfactory and retaining the best ones. If you do that in a process where the girls know a significant number of them are going to be cut regularly, you might see some interesting behaviors emerge. If you manage it properly you can probably have three or four groups in a pipeline. Do you know what I mean by that?"

"Not really, no." Me neither. The idea of girls in a pipeline created a very peculiar image.

"You don't have enough time left in this school year to do it fully, but it might be usable over summer, and it certainly will be next school year. Start with a large group of girls, something like you had today. Call it 30. Have a date or two with them over a two-week period, and then eliminate half of them. Start a completely different group of 30. Now you've got one group of 30, and another of 15. At the end of two more weeks of a date or two for each group, halve each group and start another new group of 30. Now you've got groups of 30, 15, and 7.

^-- "At the end of another two weeks you've got four groups feeding through, two weeks apart, hence the pipeline image. Or if you prefer, you can think of it as a funnel. The smallest group is now 2 or 3 girls. You can either inject them back in a starting group to seed their behavior, or you can keep the few individuals as some sort of final group that you spend most of your time with. You can have the new girls that arrive every two weeks replace the few you'll get rid of on a case-by-case basis, as you get to know them better. That'll include the girls that you catch trying to manipulate Mark, like Dakota did.

^-- "With about four groups in the pipeline, and assuming you'd need two dates with each group before you did a cut, that means eight dates. So a two week cycle is probably the minimum because there are other activities you want to do. Time alone with each other and schoolwork being two good examples. I'd suggest at least three, maybe even four weeks between intakes, which makes the rest of this school year only two cycles long. There's no reason you can't keep socializing beyond the end of school, of course. Do you understand the concept?"

"Yes. It sounds very good. Thanks very much."

"There are lots of details that need working on. For example, getting the next group of thirty girls ready to start. You could hand that job entirely over to your Liaisons and give them points for each of their girls that survive each cut, with more and more points for the later cuts. That way the Liaisons will be motivated to choose good girls, give them good advice, answer their questions, etc. Obviously the Liaison points give the Liaison girls various privileges that they'd value. You could even auction off various 'prizes', so they set the values for you.

^-- "You should have each pipeline group completely arrange every date, rather than your running around doing it all, and cleaning up after. You'd tell them the day, start time and end time, and standard rules - which you'll need to develop before you start this, like how many girls are allowed how much time with Mark, what they're allowed to do, and such like. The group then has to arrange everything. You arrive, have the date, and you leave. Make sure they know that if they mess-up preparing a date that you'll randomly eliminate half of them immediately. That should be a good enough inducement. Get them used to running around after you, not the other way around. You might get them to pick up the tab too, as that'll help reinforce that they have to do everything and that this is not a normal boy-chasing-girl situation. If each group has two dates in a cycle, then one of them could be here, one elsewhere, at their choosing. I'm sure you can think that through.

^-- "You might want to eliminate the allocation of which girls go with which Liaisons. Let the Liaisons get girls from wherever they want: from different grades, outside of school, or wherever. It's their job, and the more ambitious ones will do it better, so why constrain them. You also need a review process to pick which thirty girls are in each intake. You might restrict each Liaison to only submitting ten girls to each intake. That way they'll pick their best ten, rather than submit an unmanageably large number. With six Liaisons you'll have sixty girls. Get your database system going, have you or Mark review the sixty, and pick the thirty that get accepted into the intake. The Liaisons would get minor points for that too. Girls who failed that cut can be resubmitted any number of times, if their Liaison wants to keep putting them forward. It's no extra work for you, so who cares.

^-- "You might want to let SOME girls who get eliminated in the pipeline - depending on why they were eliminated - have ONE more try through the system. It's likely they'll be much smarter the second time, which would serve as a good example to the other girls in their new groups. Obviously that wouldn't apply to girls who were cut because they behaved too badly. You don't have to make the groups thirty strong either. No reason you can't start with twenty or ten, or any other number. You need to think that through yourself, and consider what Mark's going to be doing over summer."

I said, "As far as I know, I'm not doing anything much. If tonight's trip proves successful, I won't need my vacation job. My only other planned activity is studying for next year's college courses. That's right, isn't it Prof?"

"Yes. My feeling is that it'd be good to start you at a fairly busy level at the beginning of summer, until we've got enough progress that we can extrapolate it for the whole year, with the intent of your graduating college and high school at the same time. We can then adjust your workload to suit your productivity. It'll have to be online study as the lecturers will be on vacation, but that's no problem because I can fulfill their role for all the undergraduate courses. If I'm a little rusty at something, it wouldn't take me long to get back up to speed, so you could just do something else for a few hours. One large advantage we've got is flexibility, so we can juggle your days, times and courses around. That'll make dating easier for you, just so long as that's not too many nights a week."

"That sounds good, Prof, except I'm a little worried what 'start you at a fairly busy level at the beginning of summer' means. That could be scary. Can you put some numbers on that? If anyone can, you can, haha."

"I'm not going to dictate to you, Mark. That's not my place. I will SUGGEST the following. That you do the nights the way you do now. It seems to me that you've got nothing else worth doing at those times anyway. As for during the day, if you'd normally have worked two days a week in your vacation job, then doing two days of study per week makes you no worse off. Better really, because if one of them turns into a nice day, you can decide to play and make up the time some other day. You're a diligent boy - despite my daughter's best efforts to lead you in temptation - so I'm not worried. Ideally I'd like to start reasonably fast, but I'll leave that up to you. You understand what we're trying to achieve as well as I do. Maybe if you enjoy yourself, you might want to do more. How's that for hopeful? Haha."

The wee small hours were freebies as far as I was concerned. Provided I didn't get bored and had plenty of food to keep me going, I was perfectly happy to study during them. A couple of days a week wasn't onerous. I can't recall ever telling him how many days I worked in my vacation job, but he'd got accurate information from someone about that. I'd rather study math than work in a warehouse anyway. I could always go for a run for half an hour or so if I needed to blow the cobwebs away.

#4: <Or call up a girl and DEMAND she come over for sex.>

"Sounds good to me, Prof."

Vanessa had been waiting for my answer, and resumed her ideas, "So Julia, Mark will be around and flexibly available. If you had groups of girls in your pipeline, they can arrange some summer activities for you. It sounds like you might have a fun summer. A few minutes ago I said I had two suggestions, scaling down the number of girls by using the pipeline system being the main one. The other suggestion comes at it from the other angle: how about Mark doing some traditional dating with individual girls? That way all their normal instincts will kick in, so Mark will experience them. You'll need to modify the process in some ways, but it should still let girls' normal instincts kick in. Normally, for example, girls rather frown on their suitor going out with other girls. That's not going to fly in Mark's case, so you'll have to find girls that can tolerate that initially. As much as possible Mark should be the one picking the girls, managing them, etc. You need to know what's going on, but keeping informed is not the same as managing the process for him. Your existing Liaisons are the obvious first candidates for one-on-one dates, but it doesn't need to be them, or just them.

^-- "HOWEVER - and it's a big however - girls aren't the only ones with instincts; guys have them too. If Mark starts one-on-one dating with another girl, some of his instincts are going to come to the fore. There are dangers in that, so the three of you need to think about that carefully. There's no hurry to act on that suggestion, so take your time. The other obvious source of one-on-one date material are the girls who survive to the end of the pipeline process, which gives you several weeks to think about how to treat them."

Julia said, "Funny you should mention that Mom, because I've half-started it with one girl already today. Not for the reasons you said, because I never thought of those, but it's still heading the same place you suggested." Julia looked at me and said, "Chloe."

"Oh. Really?"

"Only half-started. She might not be suitable, but I should have a better idea about that in a day or two."

^-- Turning back to her mom, Julia said, "You haven't seen her because Chloe couldn't come here after lunch. She's got huge breasts - which is something that didn't escaped Mark's notice, haha - but she's also got a major negative issue about them. So much so that they've ruined every chance she's had for a relationship with a boy, because as soon as he looks at her tits, which is literally impossible for a boy not to do, she believes that he's only after her for them. She's got no confidence in herself, and a one-dimensional character when it comes to boys, so she'll be extremely easy to manipulate. At lunch she did a nice thing for Mark, and just after lunch he did a nice thing for her, so the ice has been broken. I've already started the process of convincing her that Mark is trustworthy, and in a couple of days she should be eating out of his hand. I was setting it up so it was HIS hand she was eating from, not mine or ours.

^-- "It's straight out of your negotiation textbooks, Mom: a single-issue negotiation. She won't have read the books so she won't have a clue what's happening. She doesn't have any relationship experience with boys because none of her relationships last more than a few hours of face time, she doesn't have any confidence, and she's a big-hearted girl, like Carol, so I can't imagine anyone safer for Mark to start with. That's presuming we can get over the hurdle of her tits, haha."

"She's like me?" asked Carol.

"In many ways, yes. Weaker, unfortunately for her. There are important differences, but the best aspects of Chloe's personality are similar to the best aspects of yours. It'll be interesting to see what sort of person she'll blossom into when Mark and I finish working on her. I think she might become a very good person, which is why I'm trying so hard to make it happen. I think this project will be a large win-win. A life-altering win for her, and two very wobbly wins for Mark, haha."

Vanessa said, "Sounds like you've got it all mapped out already."

"It's very easy, Mom. Chloe's crying out for this. It needs a boy to do it, and Mark's the perfect boy because Chloe likes Mark a lot already."

"Huh? How can she like me? We've barely spoken all year."

"That's largely why. Boys hang around her like flies, trying to talk with her while staring at her chest. She loathes that, but you don't do it, or stare at her from a distance. You ALWAYS try to be inoffensive to people - that's your GREATEST defining characteristic! I'm sure you know the way to offend Chloe is to look at her breasts, so you don't. I can't say that I've noticed in particular, but I've no doubt that if you met her head-on in a doorway, you'd be a total gentleman toward her, whereas virtually every other guy would deliberately rub up against her as they crossed. I've seen countless occasions where boys have deliberately timed their arrival at a doorway to coincide with Chloe's, so they can try to rub her, although she always holds her bag to her chest going through doorways."

Back before my first merge, sixteen months ago, I'd done the doorway trick several times. Maybe not making the effort to time my arrival, or not very often, but I certainly used to take full advantage of any lucky doorway encounters. That used to be pretty much my sole source of sexual contact with girls. My first merge, and its resultant increase in my ability to notice people's reactions, led me to stop doing those sorts of things. Fortunately my early stupid behaviors had not been in the same grade as Chloe, so my reputation with her was spotless. "Oh. Umm, I'm confused about what you're doing with Chloe. Is she 'eating out of my hand' like you said, or 'blossoming' like you also said? Because they don't sound like the same thing."

"Getting her to eat out of your hand will make her blossom. Which I know makes no sense to you now. I'll explain after you get back, because we don't have time now. I have to tell you so you'll know how to talk with her tomorrow. Don't worry, it's very easy. She's a one-dimensional character when it comes to boys, so you'll easily understand what I mean, and what you need to do..."