how to remember results of a views query in rules
As a possible alternative to make this work (instead of using Views Rules), you may want to give it a try to process the results of a VBO enabled view via Rules, whereas your rule performs 2 Rules Actions:


Load the VBO list that you want to be processed.
Add a loop to perform a Rules Action, for each row contained in your Views results.


For more details, have a look at the tutorial "How to process the results of a VBO enabled view via Rules?".

To actually trigger such Rules Action, you should be able to use a Rules Event like "... when the user requests it using a flag." (as in your question).