Chapter 164: Liaison Meeting; Pipeline Mathematics

Sunday, May 1, 2005 (Continued)

Julia started the meeting off with, "I'll begin by saying that I had a few wrong ideas when I started the Liaison system. The biggest error I made was wanting every suitable girl at school to fall for Mark, to want to chase him, and to treat him the way I thought they should. That caused me far too much frustration and work. So many girls failed to understand how wonderful he is that I felt I was banging my head against a brick wall most of the time. I didn't want any girl to miss out on the opportunity of Mark, nor Mark to miss out on the opportunity of any suitable girl, but Mom made me see that I was mostly behaving this way because of my ego. I wanted to 'win' with every girl, and I reacted badly to my failing to convince them to behave the way I wanted. Mom convinced me not to care about individual girls, especially because there were far too many for Mark to spend time with anyway."

^-- "So rather than our - me and you - trying to educate every girl into behaving properly, we're going to turn it around, and make the girls responsible for their own 'survival' in the competition to reach Mark. We're going to start eliminating girls mercilessly, so only the best will have a chance of getting close to him. I originally had alphabetic allocations of girls to Liaisons so you knew which girls you were responsible for, but I'm scrapping that. From now on it's all up to the girls. If they sit on their asses and do nothing - expecting Mark to chase them, for example - then they'll never get started or will get eliminated. If they're motivated enough, then they can do whatever they think might be useful to their chances, including talking to ANY of the Liaisons. You're a resource they can use to find out more about Mark, and especially to find out what they need to do to avoid being eliminated.

^-- "In case you're worried about it, how much time you spend on your Liaison duties is up to you. If a girl wants to talk with you about Mark, and you're busy, tell her to go away. If one specific girl keeps plaguing you, tell her you won't talk with her any more. That's up to you. We'll have the list of Liaisons on the website, and we can add more if all of you say you're swamped, for example.

^-- "The elimination process would work like a pipeline that gets narrower and narrower, like a funnel..." Julia went on to describe the idea of several girls being put in a group, they'd be allocated a future day and time, and they'd be responsible for arranging a date for me. After which I'd decide which girls got eliminated from that group.

Pat started a question, but Julia interrupted to say, "There are quite a few important issues that we could get distracted by, but it'll be best if I finish the overview first. Then we can swap another girl onto Mark's lap, and start on the questions."

A few minutes later, when Julia had finished her overview, she got me to give Ava a goodbye kiss, and then Ava got off me.

Julia said, "I don't have a coin on me, so which of you," Julia was looking at Pat and Lily, "will go next."

I'd had an idea a while ago about playing "Hide the Hair" with Lily and Pat. Just as something amusing to do if we ran out of things to talk about (rampant sex would be a better choice, but my sisters' presence made that a little awkward, hence my thinking about alternatives). I could easily modify the game to make it the equivalent of a coin toss, so I said, "Julia, how about a game of 'Hide the Hair', modified so the best guesser wins? It'll only take a minute, and the girls should enjoy it."

"Sure. That'll be good. I could do with a pause from talking."

I said, "Can I ask you to do a LITTLE more talking please? I was thinking that you've already seen the game, so maybe during it you could phone a pizza order in. I forgot about that before, sorry."

"I did promise you a pizza, didn't I?"

"Yes. And it's very important not to break promises; and the most sacred of all promises is a pizza-ordering promise!"

"Haha. Okay. I'll do that now. What type of pizza do you want?"

The important practicalities were discussed and agreed on. Julia got out of the tub, wrapped herself in a towel, extracted payment from my billfold (I'd offered because my money was closest. Anything that made getting a pizza quicker was fine with me), and she wandered off to place the order and tell her mom to expect the delivery.

Meanwhile, and less importantly, "Lily, you've got the most distinctive hair. Can you pluck out a single long one please?"

When that was done, "Now tie a couple of knots in it, so it looks very distinctive. Unlike one I could have picked out of the water for example."

While Lily was doing that, I had a thought,

#3: <Can we create a fingertip underwater, or use them a long way underwater? We've never tried those, so we need to find out or make sure we don't play "Hide The Hair" with our hands under water.>

#2: <We've pushed a fingertip into milk then widened it, but we've not actually tried creating one underwater. We did create light blobs underwater, remember? And they worked fine.>

#3: <Blobs are pure energy, but NP-fingertips seem to have a physical presence of some sort. They don't seem to have mass, as far as we can tell, but I'm wary about creating one inside a pool we're all sitting in. I'd rather we didn't create some sort of matter-annihilating nuclear explosion in the middle of the Williams' house. Preferably not even a small one.>

#2: <What about the air molecules that we create fingertips in? There's less chance of an air molecule being inside the fingertip when it's created, but we've created so many fingertips by now that it must have happened hundreds of times.>

#4: <Why not steal the hair out of our hand before we put it underwater? Some day when we're outside on a rainy day, we can try creating a fingertip in a puddle a long way away from anyone.>

#3: <Agreed.>

[We subsequently did an experiment equivalent to the puddle idea, teaching us that we couldn't create NP-fingertips inside water.] [[It's a density issue. At the level of ability and force that I had at this time, creating NP-points within water was impossible. Simplistically, they need to 'push' any atoms away extremely quickly as NP-points are created almost instantaneously. That's easy in air, but water is too dense, its atoms requiring many orders of magnitude too much force to compress.]]

When Lily was ready I said, "Lily, show the hair to Pat so she'll be able to recognize it too. It's too far away for me to see it clearly, so there's no way I could reproduce it. To make doubly sure of that, I will drape my right hand outside of the tub and leave it there the whole time."

I extended my left hand palm up in the approximate center of the tub. "Place the hair carefully in the center of my palm please Lily."

Lily did so.

"Watch carefully." I slowly closed my fist on it, turned my hand over, then slowly lowered it a few inches into the water. By then the hair had flown around to be near Carol. Both of Carol's hands were underwater, but I created some more NP-fingertips and pushed upward on her arm. Carol moved her arm in accordance with my pushes on it, so that it was resting naturally on the edge of the tub, as if she was cooling down a little. I used NP to open one of her fingers and slid the hair in, making sure she understood to keep her fingers closed on it by holding them closed with my NP for several seconds.

I raised my hand out of the water slowly, turned it over, and opened it. "The hair is gone, which is hardly impressive as I could have let the water wash it away. Except that I know EXACTLY where the hair is now, and can produce it anytime I want. I want Lily and Pat to guess where it is. Whoever is closest gets to sit on my lap next. So what are your guesses ladies?"

They hesitated, so after a couple of seconds I added, "It's not important, as you'll both have a turn on my lap anyway. This is just a fun way of replacing a coin toss. There's nothing really at stake, so make a random guess if you want."

Lily suddenly said, "In hand," pointing to my other hand.

Pat agreed, "Yes. That's where it is."

"I was hoping you'd choose different locations, otherwise how can I tell who is closest. I'll get you to guess again, because it's not in that hand. In fact, it's not anywhere to do with me. Not in either hand, not under one of my legs, not in my mouth, or anything like that. Try guessing again?"

Now they were flummoxed. They were so indecisive they couldn't make a guess.

Pat asked, "Is it in the water?"

Julia came back into the room, "Twenty minutes or so, Mark."

"Thanks, darling." Julia gets called "darling" whenever she orders pizza for me.

While Julia was getting back in the tub, I said, "This is taking more time than it's worth. How about I tell you where the hair is, and then you play a game of 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' to decide who sits on my lap first?"

"Yeah, that'd be easier," agreed Pat. Lily just nodded her agreement.

It was certainly easier than getting them to pick a random spot somewhere in the pool. I said, "Carol, hold yourself still. Lily and Pat, move so you've got a clear look at Carol's right hand when she opens it."

In due course, Carol slowly opened her hand while Lily and Pat watched closely. When the hair was exposed both girls were amazed. All the usual comments, "Wow, how did you do that?", "I never saw a thing", "Do it again!", etc.

I jokingly answered, "I can't do it again. Performing such complex magic is very tiring, haha."

Lily responded, "Magic. Ahh! You do magic!"

Lily looked and sounded like she believed it, so I quickly said, "I DON'T think so, Lily! Magicians have things hidden up their sleeves, and in case you haven't noticed, I'm not wearing any sleeves, haha."

Lily wasn't going to be diverted, "No. REAL magic. Yes?"

Lily was quite serious, which surprised me. Partly to stall, but mostly because I was curious, I asked, "Do you believe in real magic, Lily?"

"Of course. Very good you can do. You more special and more special every day."

#3: <Oops. Time for some repair work, I think. Who'd have thought she'd take our magic joke seriously.>

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but it wasn't magic. I was joking about magic. I didn't expect anyone to take me seriously. You shouldn't go through life believing in magic, because it doesn't exist."

"Yes does. You do magic."

"I know exactly how I did that, Lily, and there was absolutely no magic involved. Just perfectly everyday things. Nothing to get excited about."

Lily shook her head, completely unconvinced.

#4: <I think our protesting any more will just make us look more 'guilty'. Let's drop it, okay?>

#2: <Okay. No more magic around Lily though.>

#4: <That's for sure!>

I said, "We've wasted enough time on that. How about playing RPS so I can get another pretty girl on my lap, and we can get on with business?"

That was quickly done, with Lily winning.

#3: <She must have used magic!>

Lily climbed on eagerly, with her back to my chest as Julia had instructed Ava. My cock slid into her easily and she sighed in happiness, hugging my arms tightly to her. I expected her to say something, because she seemed so enthusiastic and happy, but she remained silent.

Julia resumed, answering a question that Pat had asked earlier, then took more questions. The conversation turned into a free flowing discussion.

There were several questions to do with the correct judging of the girls in a group. Correctly determining who did good things, who did bad things, etc. For example, "If one girl does most of the work preparing for their group's date, how is Mark going to know that? The other girls could exaggerate their input to make themselves look better." Similarly, "If a date goes bad, the girls might unfairly blame a scapegoat."

Julia's answers, paraphrased together, were something like, "As part of each date Mark will ask the girls who did what, ideally early in the date so the result of it won't bias their answers too much. To actually monitor their preparations would require far too much effort, so we're not going to do that. There are plenty of girls, and trying to implement solutions to all the various schemes they might cook up would be far too much work, so my short answer is that we'll live with it.

^-- "The girls who cheat to advance themselves are going to trip up sooner or later anyway. I don't think many of them will survive to the end of the pipeline, because Mark will be spending more and more time with them as they near the end, so he'll be able to see through them. If some of them do get to the end, then Mark will have some interesting experiences handling their deceits.

^-- "More of a worry are the good girls who get unfairly eliminated, because some of them might be good for him to get to know. One idea I had about that was to have two types of elimination: a red card and a yellow card. A girl who behaved badly on a date would be red-carded, which would mean permanent elimination. A girl who was rejected, but not for particularly bad reasons, would be yellow-carded. She'd be allowed to join another group and reenter the pipeline a few weeks later."

Everyone thought that was a good idea, even Lily once Julia had checked that Lily understood what yellow and red cards were used for in soccer, so Julia added, "I wondered whether to allow each girl retries after every yellow card she gets, or only one retry after her first yellow card, so the second one would effectively be a red card. I'm leaning heavily toward only one retry. The main reason for that is that Mark is a wimp. Sorry darling, but you are. For this pipeline idea to work, we have to eliminate girls rapidly. I'm thinking of halving the number after each date. I figure we might have three hundred girls who'd be..."

"THREE HUNDRED! Surely you exaggerate? I really can't see that many. There are only forty or fifty that turn up to our lunches, and I'm sure many of them don't want to be my girlfriend. Most of them would refuse to have sex with me, for starters."

Julia answered, "I'm fairly confident in my number. I don't want to get into justifying it now, so can we please just use it as an illustrative number for now, and I'll explain it to you later?"

"Okay, I guess. My ego would love to believe it, but it's obviously excessive."

"I don't think you have an ego, but it's only for discussion purposes, so let's use 300. Assuming 15 girls per group, 300 girls requires 20 groups. If we eliminate half the girls after each date, 15 girls drop to 1 winner after 4 dates. So 4 dates per group, for 20 groups, gives 80 dates. Yellow-carding half the rejects, and allowing them only one retry, increases that to 120 dates. We might be able to average about 3 dates per week: something like one weekday night, a Friday or Saturday night, and a morning or afternoon on the weekend. That'll leave enough time for normal social activities, such as dating Ava and me! Plus time with the Liaisons and any other girlfriends Mark accumulates during this process. Over summer we should be able to achieve more than 3 dates per week. I'll guess 5 per week. 3 months of summer totals about 65 dates, leaving 55. At 3 per week that take another 18 weeks, so the end of this academic year and four months into next, by which time there'll be even more girls who'll want to join in, especially all the college girls Mark will be getting to know.

^-- "You can see that even with eliminating half the girls after every date, half of whom are red-carded and the yellow cards only allow one retry, the result is on the very edge of practicality. I think it's even over the edge. But if yellow cards allow more than one retry, OR if Mark is a softie and issues more yellow cards than red ones, OR he doesn't eliminate half the girls after every date, then the numbers quickly become totally impractical."

I said, "I'm impressed by the numbers, Julia. You've obviously thought about this a great deal, and the numbers are very convincing, but they are highly dependent on your assumption of 300 girls wanting to be my girlfriend. I personally think the answer is probably about 20 or 30, but even if we used 100, your figure of 120 dates becomes 40 dates, which wouldn't even take us to the end of summer. In fact, we'd need some slack, because the girls who emerge victorious from the pipeline are going to want to spend time with me."

"Yes," agreed Julia. "I was partly ignoring that, and partly assuming they'd be treated like the rest of us, and would see you outside of those three dates per week. I need to justify the 300 to you. Let me whisper it in your ear." Julia whispered, "Dollars." I could tell by proximity that Lily had all her attention focused on my ear, but I was sure she didn't catch Julia's whisper.

"Ahh! I understand. But I wouldn't like girls who wanted to date me because of that."

"They're not going to be wearing signs declaring their reasons. It's not that simple anyway, as all the reasons combine. Most girls honestly won't know what their main reason is, they'll just know that they're hot for you. Regardless of their reason, or reasons, 300 girls will need to be fed through the pipeline.

^-- "We can cut a few corners. For example, if you see a girl behave in a way you don't like at school, then red-card her. If she's already in the pipeline, then she's eliminated immediately, rather than after the next date. If she's not in the pipeline, then get her name if you can, and we'll never let her join a group. Another shortcut is to eliminate three-quarters or more of the girls if the date wasn't enjoyable. That'll motivate them better, and it'll cut the numbers down faster. Or possibly red-card half of them, and yellow-card the rest, so the whole group is eliminated.

^-- "Another possible way of reducing the number of dates, which I quite like, is to let three groups enter the pipeline at a time, call them groups '1A', '1B' and '1C'. After two weeks you should have had six dates, which is two dates per group. They'll be down to three or four girls each. Merge them into one group, call it 'Group 1D', with about ten to twelve girls. Let three new groups start: 2A, 2B, 2C, who'll repeat exactly what the first intake did. Group 1D you'll keep dating, so you'll need four dates per week. By the time 2A, B and C are ready for merging, in two weeks, Group 1D will be down to two or three girls. You should know them well enough by then to know whether you want to make any of them a more official girlfriend - which should be rare or you'll be swamped - or you could eliminate any of them you think will never measure up, or most likely you could put them into Group 2D, so they can keep trying. It's quite possible that you could have girls from the first intake still trying several intakes later.

^-- "If you adopt that structure you'd have to have 4 dates per week, rather than 3, but 45 girls enter the pipeline every two weeks. 300 girls would take 7 intakes, so 14 weeks, which would finish before the end of summer, which would be ideal. If you stick to 3 dates per week, you'd have to have 3 weeks between intakes, but otherwise it'd work much as I said, so it'd take 7 blocks of 3 weeks, being 21 weeks, taking us to the end of summer, so there's no slack.