Lincoln Loud had never been to hell - then he started puberty, and he became a regular visitor: He and the demon manning the front gate were on a first name basis; he could find his way without looking at the directory n the lobby; and in two more trips, he'd get the next one free. He knew what to expect thanks to Royal County's first rate educational standards (strange feelings, hair in weird places, lowering of the voice) but that's like saying you know what to expect from war from watching a bunch of John Wayne movies in the comfort of your own living room. The hair he could deal with, suddenly needing to apply deodorant too (though sometimes he forgot and started to smell a little ripe), and the voice thing...even that, despite his sisters' making fun of him when it broke. He could not, however, deal with being horny 24/7.

Before beginning his descent into the maelstrom, Lincoln noticed girls - their soft features, their shiny, silk-like hair, their big, shimmering eyes - and he even liked some of them, like Cristina. Ooooh, he wanted to kiss her so bad it drove him nuts. You know what he also noticed? Cool stuff on TV: He's see it, want it, then move on with his life, just like he did with girls. After the advent of puberty, however, he found himself consumed by girls...and his desire to touch them, taste them, have sex with them. Sitting in class, he'd get so worked up by the girls around him he'd pop a raging erection and from there, forget it - his train of thought would be derailed until he could, ahem, take care of business.

In the boys' room.

Alone.

Girls, and the things he wanted to do with them, plagued his every other waking thought, and there were times when he'd indulge those fantasies: He'd be playing video games, think of Ronnie Anne, and allow his mind to wander. By the time he came back to himself, he was flush with fever and shaking. God, and being around them - seeing them, hearing them, smelling their sweet scent - was enough to drive him up the wall.

It was a constant ache in his stomach and in his loins, and no matter how much he masturbated, the eye-rolling, knee-knocking pressure just wouldn't go away. It was like being burned in a raging fire but never killed; it was like being mind-controlled by a malignant outside force; it was like being cursed. It wouldn't last forever, he was told, but, God, each day was an eternity, a burning desert, and, brother, all the oasises were closed for maintenance. He'd do anything for relief, anything to silence his raging hormones, anything to cool down and find a moment's peace.

Well...almost anything. The way he saw it, only one thing would quench the fire in his pants, and it was a thing that you couldn't find in any corner marker (though if you had the money and went to the right neighborhood, you could find it on the corner out front). That's to say: Sinking himself slowly into a warm, pretty, fragrant, blushing, lip-biting girl. He'd do almost anything to blah blah blah lip-biting girl. Scale a mountain? Yep. Swim across the sea? You know it. Walk twenty miles in a soaking rain? Totes. Knock her down and take it from her by force? Uh...no. Convince your mentally challenged older sister that it was a Lincy-Leni bonding thing and don't tell anyone? Jesus, you're sick. He was a perpetual ball of teenage lust, but even he had limits, and they stopped at rape and incest.

Which left him in the same pitiful spot as a million other boys (and men) who felt the need to breed: Dating. Kind of sad when you get down to it. When you're hungry, do you have to go out, find a cow, charm it into going on a date with you, tell it jokes, call it pretty, then rinse and repeat five or six times before you can carve it up and eat it? No. But when you're horny, well...hope you like moving mountains, because you can't just go grab a package of girlfriend off the shelf at your local Meijer's like hamburger meat. He was so sprung he couldn't think straight, and when he tried to ask a pretty girl out, he got nervous because I hope she really likes me, God I'm so fucking horny FUCK HER FUCK HER, FOR GOD'S SAKE PUT YOUR DICK INSIDE OF HER!

It reminded him of this movie he saw once. It. About a monster who showed up to people as a clown or something. Kind of dumb. Anyway, adults couldn't see it but kids could. Well, these kids fought him and grew up and then came back to fight him again when he returned, and they could see him. Cut to one of the dudes in a library asking this lady at the front desk something while this asshole clown stood off to the side yelling and screaming and dancing around like a jackass. The guy raised his voice as he was talking to the woman to be heard over the clown, but she couldn't see the clown, and dude wound up looking crazy. That's how he felt: He's trying to talk to a girl and there's this clown right behind him, screaming in his ear like a drill sergeant. Smile! Relax your posture! Do whatever it takes to get in her pants, Private Loud!

Now, from all that, you might think he was some kind of player who just wanted one thing. That wasn't the case, though. Yes, he wanted sex, but he also wanted kissing and cuddling and hand holding, stuff Poppa Wheelie and the other guys he hung out with would call gay, even though they probably wanted it too. In other words: He wasn't looking to get it from a girl and then dump her, he wanted an actual relationship.

That included sex.

Ugh.

Anyway, that's where he was on a sweltering summer day when something happened that changed his entire life, something that he hoped would never would but always feared would.

One of his sisters walked in on him jacking off.

It was mid-afternoon and he'd been feeling the call of nature since breakfast, which really irritated him considering he whacked it in the shower that morning. How much nut can I make? He planned to ignore it and go hang out with Clyde at the park (there were girls there, in skimpy clothes) but Clyde's dads, apparently, had a whole day of flea marketing planned, so that was a bust. He considered hitting Rusty up, but Rusty was annoying, always playing that dumb Pokemon Go crap. I gotta get to the Pokestop, bro, there's a Flaming Charizard there! Ugh. There was Poppa, but Poppa liked roasting people too much. Lincoln didn't really mind it until it was his turn, and Poppa just did not stop - he'd go on for hours. You're a joke, Loud, you have white hair. You're not normal. Everyone thinks you're a weirdo. You're not accepted by your peers, Loud, we all make fun of you behind your back.

Sigh.

That left him with no one. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he hung his head and pressed his fingertips to his temples. Guess it's just me, Lincoln, and the floorboards.

Like an elder abomination waking from dark slumber, his dick stirred. You're forgetting about me, Linc-O.

No, I'm not; how could I forget about you? You won't leave me alone. You're worse than a Jehovah's Witness.

Knock, knock. Do you have a moment to hear the good news ABOUT SEX? Remember that Nikki girl, Linc? She was pretty tall...legs went on for daaaaays. Imagine how smooth they'd be if you ran your hands slowly up and down them...imagine the way she'd throw her head back and purr like a kitten…"That feels so good, Lincoln. Higher. Higher." And the higher you go, the hotter, until you're masturbating her.

God, please, stop.

No God here, Lincy, just you and Nikki, laying back on the bed, her legs parted for you. She's really warm and wet, isn't she? And look at her blush! You're really turning her on...making her shake...dude, look, she's cumming!

Great. Now I'm so hard girls need a GameShark just to finish me.

Nikki raised her hands over her head in an X, her small but pert breasts lifting. Finish in me.

Fine, alright, happy? Look, I'm kicking my shoes off and undoing my belt.

I'll be happy when you're inside me...thrusting…

Shaking his head, Lincoln stood, slipped his pants down, and let them drop to his feet, then stepped out of them. His erection pushed out the front of his underwear like a missile in a silo, ready to fly and deliver its payload~

I hate you, he thought as he laid back on the bed and yanked his briefs down. Sometimes I wish I was girl, I bet their junk doesn't do this - hell, they're notorious for being cold fish, and I bet it's true. If it wasn't, teen pregnancy would be 100 percent and getting one to go out with you would start and end with Hi, I'm -

I don't care, fuck me.

If he was a girl, he'd be able to make it five glorious minutes without gritting his teeth and pressing his knees together because oh, man, that chick's so hot. Heh. Wish in one hand and poop in the other, kid; see which one fills up first. Ya might as well pray!

Sighing, he wrapped his fingers around his pulsing shaft and started shaking hands with Ben Franklin, as the kids say. Ever see those rods they have at nuclear plants? The ones that get so hot they glow orange and have to go into a huge pool of water lest the whole place goes Chernobyl? That's what his dick looked and felt like - red and blistering. I'm gonna go to put this in a girl one day (if one ever lowers her standards enough to open her legs for me) and it's going to kill her.

I'm going to still finish, though; why let it go to waste?

Joking.

I think.

He called up a vision of Nikki from the city lying back on his bed, entirely naked except for a fuck me smile and a silver chain around her throat. He didn't know why, but he thought that was hot. He imagined prodding her hot center, gripping the sheets, and sliding in. He didn't know what a girl's pussy felt like, but all the dirty fan fiction he read online said it was basically like a pit of bubbling tar, but in a good way. Oh, and tight, like a vise.

Stroking faster, his hand gliding over his slickening dick, he started to lose himself to Dream Nikki - they licked each other's tongues as he thrusted again and again and -

A voice spoke, and his heart came to a complete halt in his chest. "You should really lock your door before doing that."

Crying out, he blasted to a sitting position and instinctively covered himself with his hands. Lisa stood in the doorway with one hand on the knob and the other resting at her side - her eyes were half lidded in that droopy I'm a boring scientist and I've been awake for 96 hours straight working on a project way of hers. Her face showed no emotion - she could have been deeply disgusted or obscenely aroused, and Lincoln would be none the wiser.

"D-Don't you knock?" he yelled - not to be heard over a clown, but the crashing of his own heart. Saying he was so humiliated he could die would be an understatement.

"I did," Lisa said, "several times. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go start work on a memory eraser so I can forget what I just saw." With that, she pulled the door closed, and the click of the latch catching rang with grim finality, like the shutting of a coffin lid.

Oh, God, she saw me jerking it, she's probably going to tell everyone and I'll be the laughingstock of the house.

Again.

His face burned with shame and his erection, tall and proud like the mast of a ship just moments ago, started to deflate.

I really should have locked the door.

When will I learn?

Sighing, he pulled his underwear up and sat. Now things are going to be awkward.

Can I ever win?

Lisa Loud closed her bedroom door, crossed to her computer, and sat, the child sized swivel chair creaking under her weight. She crossed her legs, propped an elbow on the arm, and touched her index finger to her nose. If you saw her, you might think she was a little girl submerging in deep thought, and you'd be right, she was.

Thought about Lincoln.

Not what she discovered him doing just now, per se, but about the disease to the masturbation's symptom.

Puberty.

Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in females and the testes in males. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. During puberty, a child's body is steeped in hormones, and their sex drives go through the roof. It's natural - like childbirth, death, and taxes - and serves a distinct biological purpose. Even so, Lisa was concerned about Lincoln and his reaction to it. Not in a logical way, mind you, but in a more...sentimental one.

You might not be able to tell from her cold, apathetic demeanor and perpetual irritability, but she was fond of her siblings, and when one is fond of a person, one does not like to see them suffer Lincoln, she had observed, was suffering: You could see it on his face and in his eyes. Every boy his age deals with constant hypersexualization - again, it's natural - but not every boy his age was her older brother, and not every one of them loved, supported, and encouraged her the way he did.

In other words, intellectually, she was a cynical forty-five-year-old scientist, but in her heart, she was a four-year-old girl who loved her big brother and didn't wish to see him in discomfort. She'd been meditating much on the matter recently, and had even begun, and abandoned, several different chemical agents meant to lessen or entirely relieve the effects of his overactive hormones. Blocking them was a simple matter, but there was the question of whether or not doing so would have adverse consequences. She was far from infallible, and the chances of her damaging his reproductive system were far too great. That, therefore, left her proverbially high and dry, back at square one, fresh out of ideas. Lincoln, it seemed, would simply have to endure, and so, too, would she.

Earlier, however, something occurred to her, and she'd been turning it over in her mind for hours now, investigating it from every angle and examining it close up, then far away, looking for weak points and finding none.

It was unconventional, and perhaps even a little 'off-the-wall' but her brother was, in essence, sick, and for what he had, there was but one cure...and she knew exactly how to obtain it.

Turning in her chair, she reached under her desk and pressed a button connected to a black box with a V-shaped antenna apparatus next to the computer: Electricity crackled between each antenna arm in wavering lines. Scooting close, she logged onto her computer and opened a window. For a moment, static filled the screen, then a little boy with short brown hair and glasses appeared, his expression one of placid indifference, save for the slight upward tilt of his lips.

"Hello, Lisa," Levi said.

Linka Loud was dead and this was hell.

At least that's how it felt sometimes. When her health teacher, Mr. Johnson, first touched on the subject of puberty, he talked about hair showing up in strange places and certain body parts growing (he totally meant breasts). He neglected to mention that puberty also turns you into a quivering ball of sexual need. He was probably really embarrassed about bringing that up, and she couldn't blame him, because that period, she was embarrassed. Ew, why is my teacher talking about penises and stuff?

Kidding. I know why - it's a natural part of human biology. And so is this horrible horniness. It was like an itch on your back...right smack-dab in the one spot you couldn't reach. You could rub against a doorframe or something, but while that kind of worked, it didn't fully get rid of it. To do that, you needed fingernails to move slowly up and down across your flesh - fingernails attached to a boy with no shirt and strong, rippling muscles like one of those hotties on the cover of a Harlequin paperback.

Ummm.

Before beginning her descent into the maelstrom, Linka noticed boys - their rugged features, firm voices, chiseled jaws - and she even liked some of them. Like Chris. She wanted to kiss him so bad it made her toes curl. You know what she also noticed? Cute shoes and jewelry at the store: She'd see it, think wow, I really want that, then move on, just like she did with boys. After starting puberty, though, she was the very definition of boy crazy, wanting to feel their arms around her, their hands in hers...and to feel their strong fingers caressing her chest and stomach. Umhm. She also kind of maybe sort of wanted to do other things with them.

Just a little.

Okay. A lot.

A whole lot.

Sitting in class, surrounded by boys of every shape, size, and description, she'd let herself get so worked up that the crotch of her panties dampened and her face blazed with her passion like a flashing neon sign. LINKA'S TURNED ON, EVERYBODY! GET IT WHILE IT'S HOT. When she was ovulating, like today, she could smell them - a light, musky, masculine scent that sent ripples through her core and made her mouth water. Sometimes she'd be sitting next to a boy and wish he'd put his hand on her bare knee and look her in the eyes. You're really beautiful, Linka. Wanna go out with me?

Uh, yeah!

If she concentrated on what she imagined it would feel like - a warm hand on her leg, then brushing the hem of her skirt up, the fabric fluttering against her skin - she'd lose all train of thought and after that, it was over, folks, Linka Loud has left the building. Gym class was the worst - seeing so many sweaty boys in little shorts that clung tight to their backs and fronts made her blush so hard she was surprised she hadn't popped a blood vessel yet. When it was over and the girls went to their locker rooms and the boys to theirs, she found herself fantasizing about their wet bodies glistening under the showers, steam thick in the air, a dozen naked, hard, scrumptious boys just waiting for a lone girl to stumble into their midst like a hapless lamb among wolves...a kitten among hungry dogs. Meow~

Thoughts like that were the reason she went straight to her room after school most days; alone, she indulged in lush fantasies of being pressed against slick tile walls and touched between her legs while hot water pounded against her back, and of laying naked before a group of boys and letting them explore her body. These always led to her playing with herself, her fingers rubbing her rose bud (street name clitoris) until she shook and panted through her teeth.

The thing was: Boys and the things she wanted to do with them were constantly on her mind. She'd be reading a book and her mind would wander to Ron, and before you knew it, she was blushing and squeezing her legs together to the thought of him kissing her while he slid his fingers slowly into her core, tracing its rim, stroking her walls, pressing against her G-spot and making her buck her hips against his hand. She'd be watching a movie, surrounded by her brothers, and a guy with no shirt would strut across the screen, turning her on like flicking a switch and breaking her concentration. Hope you didn't wanna finish the movie and find out who the killer is, Link. Here, have a buff stud with that sexy V pointing at his crotch. No matter what she did or where she went, the specter of boys followed close behind, dogging her, harassing her, driving her insane. It was an endless ache in her chest and stomach, a pressure that built and built under her knees shook, a fever that burned so hot it reduced her brain to cinders.

She's do anything to make it stop.

Well...almost anything. See, it was like a sickness, and for this particular ailment, there was only one cure, one thing that would cool her fever and release the pressure in her depths - a boy slowly sinking himself into her, his quivering rod massaging her walls and scratching the itch waaay in the back of her body, the one that she herself could not reach. She would do almost anything to get a boy in her bed. Climb a mountain? Yep. Swim across Lake Michigan? Sure. Tie one up like Annie Wilkes and force him? Ummm, no. Convince Loni that sex is how good big brothers spend time with their little sisters (but please, please, please don't tell Mom and Dad)? Ew, gross. She might be burning alive in the hellish pit of puberty, but even she had her limits, and those were rape and incest. She loved her brothers, but, uh, not like that.

This left her in the same spot as every other girl her age (and older): Waiting for a boy to come along and claim her as his own. It's kind of sad when you think about it. If you're hungry, do you sit around waiting for a cow to come over, chat you up, smile, call you pretty, ask you out, then rinse and repeat five or six times before you can eat it? No, but when it comes to boys, hope you like sitting in your window with your chin in your hand like Rapunzel. Boys are virile, they can just go out and take what they want, but girls are timid and have to wait to be picked like summer corn. Or at least she was timid. And when she did approach a boy, she got really nervous and started blushing and stumbling over her words like a doofus. Oh, and the whole time her hormones yelled at her like a gym teacher on his boy period. TOUCH HIS CHEST! ASK HIM TO TOUCH YOU! OPEN YOUR LEGS AND LET HIM PUT HIS DICK IN YOU!

Ugh. Leave me alone, please! I just want to live my life and be freeee. Is that really so much to ask? Five minutes of peace puh-leeze.

Nope. Her body was on her back worse than a tiger mom.

Now, from all that, you might think she was some kind of slut who just wanted one thing. That wasn't the case, though. Yes, she wanted sex, but she also wanted kissing and cuddling and hand holding. She wanted to be held and kissed and made to feel safe, loved, and protected. She didn't want a one night thing - even if she fantasized about those - she wanted a relationship.

A relationship that included sex.

Ugh.

Anyway, that's where she was on a sweltering summer afternoon when something happened, unbeknownst to her, that would change her entire life, something that she hoped would never happen but always feared would.

One of her brothers walked in on her touching herself.

It was mid-afternoon, and she'd been feeling the incessant pinch in her depths since morning, which annoyed her because she masturbated before she went to sleep the previous night, and that usually carried her to three or four in the afternoon, longer if she wasn't bombarded with stimulating material. She planned to just ignore it and go to the park with Claudia to watch hot, shirtless guys play Frisbee (counterproductive, I know), but apparently her moms had a rugged hike planned, so there went that. She briefly considered hitting up Mama Stoppie, but Mama liked teasing, which was okay until it was Linka's turn. There was Rachel, but Rachel was really into Pokemon Go, which Linka thought was dumb. I gotta get to the Poke gym and train my Flaming Charizard. Ugh.

Sitting in the middle of her bed with her legs crossed, she folded her arms and sighed. I guess that leaves just us chickens.

Like the surface of a still pond shattered by the dropping of a stone, her pussy rippled. What am I, chopped liver?

Go away! You're worse a door-to-door salesman!

Knock, knock. Hello, ma'am, may I interest you IN A FLIPPING CRAZY ORGASM? Remember that Nick guy, Link? Wasn't he cute? He had those toned arms and you just know if he fingered you, you'd see his muscles flexing and uhhhhhh, so hot.

Please, stop it!

You said please top it? Okay! Imagine him pinning your shoulders to the bed and kissing you like you owe him money, his tongue raping your mouth and his hands threading through your hair. Then...then...he puts it against you and pushes i y. Doesn't that get your motor racing? Huh? Doesn't' it, Linka? I bet you want to touch me now.

Linka squeezed her eyes closed and clenched her teeth. Yes, God, yes, she wanted to touch herself - the heat pouring from between her legs was maddening, and the feeling of her lips swelling with blood and her slit dampening made her squirm.

Fine! Okay! I'll touch you but you have to promise you'll leave me alone afterwards. Please.

Okay!

Biting her bottom lip, her cheeks blazing a deep shade of pink, Linka uncrossed her legs, reached under her skirt, and hooked her fingers into her panties. She lifted her butt from the bed, slid them along her thighs, past her knees, and over her ankles, then tossed them aside. Laying back against the pillow, she took a deep, ragged breath, and slipped her hand between her legs, the heat of her own touch flowing into her and increasing her arousal. She licked her lips and rolled her body like a wave, her middle finger sinking between her sticky folds and brushing the moist, sensitive skin they protected, like the petals of a delicate flower.

A delicate flower that right now wanted to be drilled.

She closed her eyes and imagined Nick's naked chest flexing as he deflowered her, her fingers finding the bulb of her femininity and kneading gently at first, then faster, firmer. She propped her legs up in an M and made quick circles against herself, her face turning beet red and blood crashing against her temples like an angry storm surge. She was so caught up in her pleasure that she did not hear the door open, did not see Levi walk in, register what she was doing, and then turn and walk out again without missing a beat.

And when she finally came, her body jerking and her eyelids flying open, she wouldn't have noticed even the start of the Third World War.

In his lab, Levi shut the door, crossed to his computer, and sank into the child-sized swivel chair - it creaked under his weight. Crossing his legs, he propped his elbows on either armrest and steepled his fingers against his nose. If you saw him, you'd think he was a boy settling in for a plunge deep into thought. To be fair, he was.

Thoughts of Linka.

Not what he discovered her doing just now, per se, but about the disease to the masturbation's symptom.

Puberty.

Puberty is the process of physical changes through which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of sexual reproduction. It is initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads: the ovaries in females and the testes in males. In response to the signals, the gonads produce hormones that stimulate libido and the growth, function, and transformation of the brain, bones, muscle, blood, skin, hair, breasts, and sex organs. During puberty, a child's body is a simmering cauldron of sex hormones, which causes dramatic spikes in libido.

This was perfectly natural, of course, and every girl Linka's age contends with it. Every other girl, however, was not his sister, and had never tucked him into bed, kissed his forehead, or comforted him when he suffered a nightmare about the collapse of the space/time continuum. That is to say that despite his cold outward demeanor, he felt very tenderly toward Linka - in much the same manner as he felt for his mother - and when one sees their beloved sister suffering, one can't help but be bothered.

And from what he had observed recently, Linka was, indeed, suffering. Her hormones were raging, perhaps more strongly than is normal (though he couldn't say, as he'd never studied the menstrual cycle of a female before), and it was causing her a great deal of discomfort. Sexual arousal is likened to a fire for a reason - because it burns - and from what he'd been able to gather, Linka was a witch tied to a stake, the flames licking her body and the pain neigh on excruciating. He'd considered creating a serum or drug to alleviate the worst of the hormones, or even to block them entirely, but there was a more-than-acceptable risk that it would somehow harm her, which put him -

On his desk, the transdimensional satellite link crackled with electricity, shimmering like spider silk between the extended arms of a V-shaped antenna.

Someone was calling.

A moment later, a window appeared on the computer screen: A green checkmark and a red X. LISA #1.

Levi smiled to himself. Eight months ago, hw set out to disprove the multiverse but wound up confirming it instead. He couldn't say how many there were - he doubted the number was infinite - but so far he'd established contact with fifteen, and as far as he'd been able to gather, each person who existed in one also existed in some way, shape, or form in the others, including himself: In some he was male, in others female, and transgender in at least two. Lisa #1 was not the first version of himself he discovered, but she was his favorite (certainly better than the wretched National Socialist one), and they regularly video conferenced, sharing scientific findings, research, and sometimes just talking. Her dimension was, he'd found, the mirror image of his own in every single way excepting the fact that males there were females here and vice versa: Whereas he was a boy with nine brothers and one sister, she was a girl with nine sisters and one brother.

Navigating the cursor across the screen, he clicked the green checkmark, and Lisa's face filled the screen. "Hello, Lisa," he said and leaned back in the chair, his hands gripping the arms. "While this is unexpected, I can't say that it's unwelcome."

Lisa nodded curtly, and Levi noticed a distinct lack of the friendly warmth she displayed when she called simply to chat, which told him she was wrestling with a problem and needed his help, advice, or for him to just listen to her, all of which he was glad to do. "I'm concerned about Lincoln," she said without preamble.

Ahhh. "As I am about Linka," he said. Leaning forward, he opened a drawer and took out a package of gummy bears, his one vice. He scooped a handful and tossed it into his mouth. "For probably," he drew as he did so, "the same reason."

"The ravages of puberty," Lisa said.

Levi chewed. "Especially the secretion of sexual hormones."

Across a mind-boggling chasm of time and space, Lisa took a quick, shallow breath, which is as close to a deep sigh as she could come. Levi's heart twinged in sympathy. "I know it's perfectly normal, -"

"But your affection toward him makes watching it difficult," Levi finished. "I feel the same in regards to Linka."

His universe and Lisa #1's were virtually identical, but they were not exactly, owing to gender politics, largely. Lisa and her sisters dearly loved their brother, but their relationship with him was not the same as his and his brother's relationship with Linka. Levi and his brothers were far more tender and gentle with Linka than Lisa and her sisters were with Lincoln - because Linka was a girl and Lincoln a boy. She and her sisters routinely teased and even physically assaulted Lincoln during family-wide scuffles, something that Levi and his brothers would do to Linka on only a cold day in hell. Even so, she and her sisters did care about him, and he knew that what she felt now was the same thing he felt.

"Yes," she said, "he seems to be in great discomfort and it's painful to watch. I'd given thought to creating -"

Levi nodded. "As have I."

In her universe, Lisa crossed her arms; when she did that, she meant business, and in a flash, he understood, in a roundabout way, what she was thinking.

And he didn't like it.

"No," he said.

Lisa raised one brow challengingly. "Oh?" she asked.

"No," Levi repeated. "You've formulated some bizarre plans - something I usually find endearing and even admirable - but this is too much."

"I don't see why," Lisa said, "Lincoln and Linka both need the same thing, and while they aren't exactly the same given social and familial evolution, they are as close in mind and body as two human beings could ever be."

Shaking his head, Levi plopped more gummy bears into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, mulling over her proposition while he did. She was right in that Lincoln and Linka were as alike as their differing genders and life experiences would allow, and they were both in the midst of what Levi couldn't help thinking of as 'heat' but the thought of 'hooking' his sister up with a boy - any boy - deeply disturbed him.

For a moment Lisa watched him in silence, then, when he scooped another handful and shoved them in, she said, "I understand your feelings toward Linka. You and your brothers are protective of her. We are of Lincoln, but not to the same degree. You know, however, that Lincoln is a...a good boy, and would be, physically and emotionally speaking, the perfect partner for Linka, and Linka for him. I don't know if she realizes it, but all a girl has to do to obtain a sex partner is display interest. Boys, especially when they're hormonal, are not picky. She will likely find this out and possibly wind up sleeping with someone who isn't a particularly good person. There are also the risks of pregnancy and venereal disease. As you know, the difference in genetic make up between your universe and mind preclude the possibility of both. Her womb will not accept his seed and even if one was suffering from VD, the other would not contract it."

She was right, of course, but, even though he knew Linka needed a mate, as it were…

"You're being irrational," Lisa said, a blunt, accusing edge in her voice. "You know damned well she wants it and that she'll get it. I have the same concerns with Lincoln, that he'll sleep with and possibly impregnate someone like Ronnie Anne Santiago."

Across a vast gulf, Lisa and Levi shared a shudder. In both universe, Ronnie Anne/Ron was belligerent, rude, and treated their respective partner (Lincoln/Linka) poorly. Ron treated Linka less poorly than Ronnie Anne treated Lincoln, but he was also more of a hoodlum than his gender-swapped counterpart, and Levi could very clearly see him hitting Linka in a fit of rage. Lisa was correct in that Lincoln was a good boy, and while Levi was not entirely comfortable with the thought of his sister with any male, he was starting to see the benefits of such an arrangement. "If we did," he allowed, "how would each take to the other? They are, after all, nearly identical, and may not be open to the idea of intercourse with one another."

"Honestly," Lisa said, "there may be reluctance initially, but once they're in the same room, basking in each other's pheromones, and the topic comes up, I believe it'll be a simple matter of us leaving them alone."

Levi thoughtfully stroked his chin. For his part, he himself had always found Lisa attractive, more for her personality and intellect than for her appearance; why, then, couldn't Lincoln and Linka feel the same?

Sighing, he returned the gummy bears to the drawer and closed it. "Alright," he said, "when?"

"Today," Lisa said, and Levi blinked. So soon? "I will contrived to get everyone out of the house so that Lincoln and I will be alone. I'll contact you then."

With that, she leaned forward, pressed a button, and the screen went dark, leaving Levi alone with his thoughts.

And misgivings.