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a good-faith effort with Len, but after four days without even getting a complete sentence from the poor boy, even the eternally optimistic Bobby had to admit it was a wash.
    “I’d sort of feel bad about pulling the plug on the guy,” Bobby said that night, “but really, he seemed so bloody miserable the entire time, it was sort of merciful really.”
    Anderson scowled at him. He didn’t like “pulling the plug” on anybody . It felt like cheating, that he and Bobby and Kate could essentially play God with the people who came and went on the holodeck.
    But then, he didn’t want to be permanently alone either, so the scowl was as harsh as his expression got, and the next day, Peter was introduced to the class.
    Peter had plain brown hair and plain brown eyes, a pair of spectacles that he liked to push up, and a studious, earnest expression that appealed to Anderson immensely. Peter lasted a little longer than the first two boys. He was invited to dinner with Anderson’s family and allowed to watch vids with them as well. But by the fifth date, when Peter excused himself early to go home to do homework, and he hadn’t cracked a smile, even once, not even at some of Bobby’s more inspired clowning, Kate had shaken her head.
    “No, Anderson, I’m thinking this one is a wash.”
    “What’s wrong with him?” Bobby looked hurt. Peter must have been a whole lot of his idea. “He’s quiet, he’s serious, and he’s a lot like Anderson!”
    “Well yeah!” Anderson burst out, throwing some popcorn at him. “Except I like to think I’m not a complete tool!”
    “Not all the time,” Bobby conceded with a badly concealed smirk, and this time it was Kate who threw popcorn at Bobby.
    “Yeah, Bobby,” she chortled, “only when you’re not !”
    Bobby responded by throwing popcorn back at the two of them, and when they were done, very little of the popcorn had been eaten, they spent an hour cleaning the front living space of their dorm, and the three of them had laughed until their stomach muscles hurt. (Bobby whined about it most of the next day, and Anderson figured Kate was just a lot more stoic.) It was a good time, with the three of them, and they left it that way for a month or two.
     
     
    A NDERSON ’ S loneliness grew more and more apparent, though, and Bobby and Kate became less and less eager to share their own intimacy with him. He began to spend more time studying the explicit sex vids on his own, and his own body with them. He was on the verge of asking the synthesizer if it could possibly program some sort of sexually stimulating anal probe when Henry was introduced in class.
    He was so grateful for some hope that he couldn’t even glare at Bobby this time.
    Henry was great. He had a wonderful sense of humor, and he and Bobby could tell bad jokes and make fun of vids for hours. He was a little dryer than Bobby, though, and a lot less expressive. He was dry and sarcastic and analytical, and interesting.
    Kate liked him—just not for Anderson.
    Anderson might have been inclined to ignore her, but he realized that after their sixth or seventh date that he had no desire to hold Henry’s hand, or kiss him, or even share a moment of breathless anticipation with him.
    Henry was a friend, and nothing more.
    Anderson walked him to his dorm that night (all of the students lived in the same complex—one of the driest bits of programming Anderson had done) and told him that they’d see him in the morning, and Henry—who had dark hair, glasses, dark brown eyes, and a dimple in his cheek, gave him a crooked smile.
    “Really?” he asked softly. “The other kids talk, you know.”
    Anderson blushed. He didn’t know. He thought of the first three boys who had simply not shown up the next day and felt bad. “You’ll be there,” he said softly. “You’re a friend. And you help. We… we don’t have a lot of fuel, and we can’t use it on people who don’t make things run better, but you’re