"Adorable ballet dancer nicknames!" Asher is too cute.

Asher grins and snuggles Bruce until he gets bored.

Eventually Bruce gets bored too. "I need to go do boring science things, but this was really fun."

"Have fun!"

Bruce's lab is not ero. No one has placed little fishnets on the mice, there are no giggling undergraduates fucking on the table, and no one has pulled Bruce's grant and told him he needs to study penises instead.

The ideas Bruce writes in his lab notebook are arguably ero by proxy, since he got them from a semen-fueled brainstorming session, and one of them tangentially relates to reproduction by way of heritable epigenetics, but they are otherwise as normal as the rest of the lab.

It's almost a disappointment, in a weird way. He wants to do science to the weirdness overtaking his reality, and possibly exploit said weirdness for awesome world-changing applications, and his science setup is apparently the only thing that's immune. Still, it's a damn sight better than having the Erogame biasing the results of his unrelated work.

As soon as he turns from his lab notebook to his experiments, everything slips away and three hours later he looks up, his to-do list entirely complete, with a feeling like surfacing from underneath deep water.

That was the most intense flow state he's ever been in. Possibly the effects of "But he was such a good student", or possibly the slightly more mundane effects of having gotten laid. The sensation is pretty great, though his episodic memory of the past three hours could be a lot better. Maybe if he sleeps with so many people he forgets who they are he'll get an eidetic memory.

A skill has been created by a special action! Lab work has created the skill Biochemistry.

A skill has been created by a special action! Combining single micrograms of liquid and staring at them with a microscope that costs more than a car has created the skill Fiddly Lab Work.

A skill has been created by a special action! Using Good Student's less well-documented advantages has created the skill Beauty With Brains.

Info/Skills/Biochemistry

Biochemistry. Active. Lvl 1. 1 D|S / use.

You have an intuitive knowledge of the chemical processes within and related to biological organisms. You have a chance, scaled according to the skill's level, your ERO, and the difficulty of the problem, of knowing the answer to any biochemistry question you pose. 

Info/Skills/Fiddly Lab Work

Fiddly Lab Work. Passive. Lvl 1. 

You don't drop the beaker onto your foot. It is easy to squeeze out precisely the amount of the chemicals that you intended to use. Machines no longer require mystic incantations or propitiary gifts to work properly, although for best results you should get fucked in your lab on a regular basis.  

Info/Skills/Beauty With Brains

Beauty With Brains. Active. Lvl 1. 2 D|S / use.

The game doesn't have an INT stat, but there are times when the hot guy with glasses will be called upon to have an opinion about quantum mechanics. When using this skill on a specific question of general knowledge, you have a BOD% chance of knowing the correct answer. Beauty With Brains cannot provide insight into problems or give you information that you would not be able to find in a diligent search of Wikipedia. 

Being able to pull biochem information from thin air at higher ERO is the best thing. Fiddly Lab Work is also the best thing in a different way, namely that he will absolutely have sex in the lab if it means the electron microscope will stop giving everyone "Sensor Adjustment Error" and "Stacker Pusher Movement Error" at the worst possible moments.

Quest available: Better Than That Ponce

You know what's not ero? Aging is not ero. Disease is not ero. People having bodies other than the ones they feel most comfortable and happy in is definitely not ero. Fortunately for you, you can fuck your way to a cure. 

Accepting this quest unlocks the Come With Me If You Want Everyone To Live quest tree. 

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest available: Uplift

Successfully uplift, and then have sex with, a member of a commonly eaten food species, allowing it to advocate for itsef and leading to the development of cultured meat and an end to animal consumption.

Success: ???
Failure: ???

Quest available: Fuck Your Arbitrary Standards

Cause the definition of a kilogram to be changed.

Success: ???, +2 science, +? XP
Failure: continue to live in a world in which a kilogram is defined as the mass of a particular metal rod in a sealed dungeon in Paris.

Quest available: Never Forget a Fuck

Personally administer orgasms to 250 strangers.

Success: Eidectic memory. 

Quest available: Optimize The World With Friendship and Ero

If people are wondering where their next meal is coming from, they're going to have trouble having multiple orgasms and a fulfilling sex life. Fuck your way to a post-scarcity society.  

Your ERO is too low to begin this quest.

He is not at all sure what "Ponce" he is supposed to be "Better Than" but if it gets him a cure for aging he'll figure it out. Or ??? trying, apparently. Accept!

Uplift an animal to sapience and fuck them: surprisingly appealing! He is learning all sorts of things about himself. Such as the fact that when he asked himself "which species" his brain answered "octopuses are considered food in some countries". He wonders if he'll end up doing this quest with or without ero things other people won't be able to replicate, and which way would be better given that other people might try it with variously benign and nefarious motives. Anyway, accept.

It appears the, let's say the GM, agrees with him on the obnoxiousness of the standard kilogram. And . . . he thinks he might be getting a sense of how this game works, and especially how it does wordplay . . . Do they want him to put the standard kilogram up his ass? Does he want to put the standard kilogram up his own ass? Even if that's not what the quest meant he'd probably get away with it now, both medically and in terms of not ending up in a French prison. But does that mean he should do it just because the entities running the universe dared him to? And offered him whatever tempting thing "+2 Science" is? Whoops he just hit the accept button before he could second-guess himself anymore. It's not like anything will change if he fails, he can wimp out at any time.

Oh look, it took him up on the weird dumb idea. He's not sure he's actually psychologically capable of sex with 250 strangers, but his levels of lust and comfort with sexual things are now raisable stats, and there's no time limit or failure penalty, and eidetic memory would be really great . . . Accept but not in a committing-to-do-anything way, he just wants to keep the option open.

"Optimize the world" . . . yeah, he really needs to raise his ERO stat. Which reminds him, he's still got that quest to raise all his stats by one point. Hmm, how to deliberately increase the weirdness of his life? His mind goes to a certain xkcd that seems appropriate. He pulls out his phone, generates some "random numbers" (aka whatever numbers the game wants him to get) and puts them into Maps. Hopefully it will lead somewhere reachable by public transit, since he doesn't have a car and barely remembers how to drive one.

It sends him to a coffeeshop not far from campus!

There are several people he doesn't recognize, Sarah of the astonishing breasts, and Lev, reading a copy of Thinking Fast and Slow.

+1 ERO for allowing the Erogame to make decisions.

Quest complete: Rules of the Erogame

+1000 xp

Nice, he finished a quest on purpose! And now he can spend his level-up stat points on things. He can probably get Lev to not immediately write him off as bonkers if he spends a bunch on BOD while Lev is watching and possibly filming. Then Lev could know about the Erogame and they could investigate it together and that would be super great, because Lev is an excellent scientist.

But first: he has a quest to set Lev up with somebody, and here's Lev and someone he knows to be cool hanging out in a coffee shop the game sent him to. He can take a hint. He orders a small coffee with sugar and no milk, mostly to have something to do with his hands but also because caffeine, and then makes his way toward Sarah's table.

"Hi!"

"Hi! I've been reading Shards of Honor; it's lots of fun. How's your life going?"

"In spite of all my work, the earth continues to warm."

Quest available: It's Getting Hot In Here (Let's Take Off All Our Clothes)

Mitigate the effects of climate change.

Success: ????
Failure: ????

No, Erogame, he is not getting naked in a coffee shop. Arguably it's less crazy than putting the standard kilogram in his ass, but that he can at least theoretically do without getting caught. Also it's intruiging on an appel du vide level. Public nudity is just rude.

"We're a morbid pair, aren't we? Both have a good chance of getting killed by our fields of study."

Lev chuckles at something in his book.

"I find a little fear of death spices things up wonderfully."

"I'm afraid I can't say the same, but you do study much more exciting kinds of death. Speaking of research, one of my labmates is right over there. Hi Lev!" This last is a bit louder and accompanied by a wave.

Lev glances up from his book to see who has so inconsiderately interrupted him, waves, and returns to reading.

"Come over here and be social!" Says the massive hypocrite. "You can tell us what you're reading about."