The Bullpen Ch 02

Jason Callahan had been an athletic star in the NCAA, and it had showed in his physique. As a member of the Yale swimming team, he had led the Bulldogs to a national title. He had broken Ivy League records. He had broken NCAA records. He had broken Olympic records.

And, for a period of four days last year, he'd resided in the Bullpen.

It was an honest enough exchange. ConnPharm provided him with the funding that he needed to pursue his swimming, and Jason, in turn, provided himself as a subject for medical research. Dr. Robert Van Guilder had been extremely interested in just how Jason's body worked. What was his lung capacity? How quickly did his pulse rise as he exercised? What was his metabolism like?

Jason had allowed himself to be poked and prodded for ninety-six hours, residing naked in the Bullpen.

Erica could still see his naked body, chiseled and well defined. His pectorals. His abdomen. His back. His arms. His penis.

She hadn't meant to walk in on him, she hadn't meant to see his penis, but she had needed to discuss technical specifications of her upcoming experiment with Colin. Emily DiStasio was still months away from finishing her Category F requirements, and months away from receiving her fateful tattoo. But Erica wanted to know that the Bullpen would be fit for long-term human inhabitation.

Erica had expected Jason to be in the Bullpen, on the far side of the one-way mirror. She had expected to go unnoticed in the Observation Room, the swimmer unaware that a woman was standing only a few yards away from his naked body. But as she walked into the Observation Room, she was greeted by the sight of Jason Callahan on the Stairmaster in the corner of the room. He was clad only in the black corset, which stretched from below his massive pectorals down to his hips. His long, loose penis flopped down in front of him, and for a minute, Erica couldn't take her eyes of it.

Not that she was thinking about it sexually. She had simply been shocked, to walk in and find it there, in front of her. In her entire life, she'd seen three penises in person - her boyfriend's in college, her boyfriend's in graduate school, and her boyfriend Tom's. But there, in the Observation Room, at work, she could add a fourth to that short list.

She remembered having blushed. She remembered stuttering as she spoke. And she remembered the grin on the man's face, the casual disregard for his own nudity that he'd shown. The confidence. Erica had been fully dressed, while Jason had been wearing nothing but a piece of technical equipment around the midsection. But it had been Erica who was ashamed, and it had been Jason who had the upper hand.

Erica struggled to remember that confidence as she herself continued the simulated climb on the Stairmaster. Her breasts, still small, bounced with each step. She could feel sweat dripping down her back, dripping down past the small of her back and towards her buttocks. With Pete and Tessa watching from the ops desk just a few feet away, Erica did her best to remember the confidence that Jason had shown. But it was still Erica who was the one ashamed. It still wasn't her who held the upper hand.

If anything, she felt as if the corset wrapped around her abdomen called more attention to breasts and pussy, still exposed above and below the black material. She had asked Colin why it couldn't have been stretched just a bit larger, why she had to remain nude if the corset was wrapped around her body in the Observation Room. He'd explained to her something about short-range tactile waves, something about the corset taking readings more from the areas around it than the areas beneath it. Erica hadn't followed it, but she hated the slutty way it made her look and feel. She had covering, but she wasn't covering the right parts.

She wanted to show the same confidence and power that Jason had shown her. But even after a week without clothes, Erica hadn't gotten over her nudity. She wanted her clothes back. She wanted the experiment to be over.

***

Soon after first entering the Bullpen, Erica found herself in a routine. She woke up each morning around seven, said hello to Pete and Tessa, and scanned the latest headlines on the projector from electronic copies of the various newspapers. In the Bullpen, the girl would do push-ups, sit-ups, and her stretching routine, uncomfortably aware of just how sexual this last practice came off. As Noah had assured her, though, Pete was too old to be very threatening, and, at any rate, his time in the Observation Room was quickly drawing to a close. By that Monday night, Tessa would be on her own for the late night and early morning shift.

After stretching herself out, Erica met Tessa by the open door to the Bullpen. After a week of putting on and taking off the corset, Erica felt as if she could have done it on her own. But every morning, Tessa would wrap the black fabric around the biochemist's naked stomach, fastening each of the six adjustable hooks, and running a quick diagnostic on the corset's built-in sensors. Before Erica was allowed to step too far beyond the open Bullpen, however, Tessa had to run another series of tests and checks from the ops desk, and anything abnormal had to be logged and reported. But, usually after five minutes or so of standing around and making idle chitchat with Pete as Tessa worked, Erica would finally be allowed to work out.

She exercised for well over an hour out in the Observation Room each day - using the exercise bicycle, the Stairmaster, the treadmill, and a few of the Nautilus machines. At first, she had looked forward to escaping her clinically white prison cell. But, as the week went by, Erica began dreading the time she spent out of the Bullpen. While inside, she could feign ignorance of the people just beyond the mirror glass. While outside, she was constantly aware of their presence across the Observation Room, constantly aware of her own nudity, constantly aware of how ridiculous she looked exercising in the futuristic corset.

But, at the same time, she was getting herself into better shape than she'd been in months, working out in a set schedule instead of trying to squeeze an hour into the gym on her way home from work each day, as she did with occasional success in the weeks and months before signing on to become her own guinea pig.

During her exercise routine, Erica's breakfast was brought down to the Observation Room from the cafeteria by one of a few technicians. It seemed to be a different technician each day, but Erica hadn't yet guessed that the they were taking turns with the duty, casting lascivious glances at the test subject while they delivered her coffee, orange juice, and food.

After finishing her workout routine, Erica ate her breakfast at a small table on the far side of the ops desk. The silverware, the plates, the cups, and the food itself would all aggravate the emitters if it were brought inside, and, therefore, the girl was forced to come out into the Observation Room three times a day for her meals, each time wearing the corset. She sat in a swivel chair that had been brought down from someone's office upstairs, her bare skin against the fabric, the sweat from her body seeping into the material, usually scarfing down the food so she could return to the Bullpen as quickly as possible.

Around this point in the morning, as Erica sat in the corner of the Observation Room, Colin typically showed up for his shift, secretly delighted by the girl's glistening body. Whenever he talked to her, he sounded casual and aloof. Whenever he looked at her, he was sure to come off as clinical as possible. But wife or no wife, professional or not, Colin couldn't deny the raging hard-on that he got just glancing at the gorgeous, naked, raven-haired girl in front of him.

As the last act of her shift, Tessa unfastened the sweat-soaked corset and exposed Erica's stomach once again, allowing the girl to step back into the Bullpen to take her shower. The emitters in the corset were durable enough to withstand a quick rinse in one of the washing machines elsewhere in the building, and the equipment would be ready for Erica again at lunchtime. In the Bullpen, however, the biochemist had to ask Colin to turn the shower on, and then turn it off again when she was done. All the controls were at the ops desk, and Colin quickly discovered that Erica's choice of water temperature fluctuated from day to day. When she had finished, and Colin had turned the water off, warm fans from above blew her body and hair dry. Her hair was always wild and untamed, but as she told herself most mornings, whom was she really trying to impress?

At ten o'clock each morning, Noah (through the ops desk's camera) briefed her on what was going on in the Human Hormones Lab without her. Typically, she talked with one of the lab assistants in the afternoon, at four, as well. Until the experiment truly began, however, there wasn't all that much to talk about. Still, Erica liked to have a schedule, she like having something - anything - to break up the long, boring monotony of life inside the Bullpen. Most of the day, Erica spent scanning documents and data on the projector, some of it her own, some of it extra work that Natalie and Hannah had tasked her with to keep her busy.

As the day wound down, Erica usually said goodbye to Colin for the afternoon and greeted the arrival of Wendy. She settled down and watched the news, some television, and a movie or two before bed. It wasn't a terribly exciting life, but it had become her life nonetheless.

Throughout it all, Erica was unable to dismiss her undress. She was aware of her exposed pussy every time she sat down. She was aware of her tits being on display every time she had a conversation with Noah, or Aaron, or Colin. She couldn't ignore her own naked reflection staring back at her, every time she glanced at the front wall. She couldn't stop thinking that, just beyond those walls were people looking in at her, taking in her bare body.

***

Natalie had originally volunteered to give Erica her three deuterotone injections herself, but in the end, she had tasked the responsibility to Dr. Cho. Hannah and Erica were good friends, and Natalie thought that Erica might be more comfortable with her friend than with her boss. Hannah's project had also slowed down in the weeks between Phase One and Phase Two, and Natalie felt the Asian-American doctor had more time to spare than the Director of the Human Hormone Lab herself, as Natalie was busy dealing with the a difficult Phase One trial over in Dr. Slattery's laboratory. And, when it came right down to it, the older woman didn't want to be forced to jump through the hoops that would have been required of her.

It had been decided that the injections were to be given in the Bullpen itself, and not outside in the Observation Room. Erica and Noah had both been extremely interested in the body's immediate reaction to the injection of deuterotone, and while the corset was functional enough, it didn't provide all the sensitivity and accuracy that the Bullpen did.

The room itself was often home to multiple primates at similar stages of testing, but configuring the emitters to read more that one entity – and in this case, human beings – was hours of work. In any case, a second person inside the Bullpen would be subject to the same stringent rules that governed the first, and it had been Erica who had originally insisted that she wouldn't strip down to her skin to inject Emily DiStasio with the deuterotone.

Colin and his fellow technicians had, rather ingeniously, been able to dampen the effects that another person in the Bullpen would have on the emitters focused on their guinea pig, but the process required the other person to be covered in hospital scrubs fabricated from a special, synthetic fiber. Thus, Hannah came down that Monday morning, just a bit before three o'clock, to pick up the specially designed Bullpen Suit that had been laid out for her.

Metal, of any kind, was impermissible, which meant that Hannah had to remove all of her jewelry, anything with a metal fastener or zipper on it, and even her bra, because of its underwire. When she returned from the unisex bathroom down the hall from the Observation Room, Hannah was barefoot, dressed in the loose-fitting purple scrubs and wearing only her own panties beneath them. She laid her clothes in the cubby next to Erica's, and steeled herself for the Bullpen.

Hannah had come down to visit Erica in the week before, and had even had lunch with her on Friday. They'd talked on the phone throughout the week, and had even shot e-mails back and forth at each other. But most of Hannah's visits found Erica on one side of the mirror glass and Hannah on the other, sometimes the test subject completely unaware that her friend was even out there. Hannah, a few days earlier, had even watched in shock as Erica squatted and pissed into the drain in the Bullpen, seemingly forgetting that there might be anyone on the far side of the glass.

Armed with only a plastic needle, Hannah stepped through the slowly opening door and into the Bullpen, finding Erica patiently sitting and waiting for the deuterotone. Colin had shut the projector off when Hannah had first arrived, and Erica sat in silent contemplation, waiting for her experiment to begin in earnest. If she were going to back out of the test, if she was going to hold back from radically altering her body, this would be the last opportunity. She could chalk the past week up as an experiment in nudism only, and go on with her life as a B-chested biochemist waiting for another volunteer to test her deuterotone upon.

Instead, Erica simply steeled herself for the injection, knowing that she was taking a step towards making a name for herself, a step towards confirming her science.

"Long time, no see," Hannah joked as her eyes wandered over the dark-haired girl's naked body. Hannah was certainly attractive in her own right, but she found herself suddenly jealous of Erica's firm stomach, her slender curves.

"You've got three minutes and twenty-eight seconds," Colin announced through the intercom overhead as the Bullpen's door rolled shut. "After that, I can't keep the emitters functioning properly at even a mediocre level. So, let's hurry the process along, because I don't want to have to reboot the mainframe, and I really don't want to spend my night replacing blown emitters."

Realigning the tactile waves to ignore a second presence caused an increase in the energy needed to run the emitters properly, and there was a very good chance that they could overload if Hannah stayed inside for too long. Reading the second presence, along with the first, would have been significantly easier, and would've saved time and hassle on the part of the Bullpen staff. But Erica hadn't wanted to put herself on display each time she injected Emily DiStasio.

"You heard the man," Erica grimaced, lying back, flat on her back, and slowly spreading her legs.

She couldn't believe what she was doing. The pinkness of her vagina was currently on display for another woman, another woman who had been her friend for the better part of the past few years. As if Erica hadn't been through quite enough humiliation in the past week, she would now be subjected to Hannah poking around at her inner thigh, just inches from her most private of places.

Not that she hadn't known what was coming. Erica had, after all, performed the same procedure on dozens of female chimps out in the Observation Room over the past few months - the deuterotone took hold best in the system if injected into one of the femoral arteries just below the groin. In this situation, Hannah would be playing Erica's role, and Erica would be playing Trixie's.

Trixie, though, had fought as the sharp needle approached her pussy. Erica just cringed.

"Just think of it as a gynecology appointment," Erica told herself. In comparison, Hannah's fingers wouldn't actually be penetrating her, and that had to be listed among the positives. Instead, as Hannah's bare fingertips found Erica's bare skin, the Asian doctor would be concentrating on her inner thigh.

Erica felt Hannah's fingers on her body, closer to her groin than she might have preferred, followed by the dull, aching pain of the plastic needle injecting its contents into her bloodstream.

Staring up at the ceiling, Erica couldn't help but feel more like a whore than she had in the past week. She tried to think about what was going on as clinically as possible, but she couldn't help but fixate upon the scene that Colin must have been gazing in on. The black-haired girl was on lying on her back with her legs stretched open. Another woman, an Asian doctor only a few years older than her, was crouched down in front of her pussy, her fingers grazing against some of her most intimate areas.

After the deuterotone had been unloaded into Erica's right thigh, Hannah stood up, and took a step back. Erica, her legs still spread wide open as if an open lesbian invitation to the Asian doctor, had her eyes closed tight, wincing in pain as she felt the hormones spread down her leg. It hurt – more so than Erica had been anticipating. But it passed quickly, and the girl rated it only just above getting her ears pierced as a teenager, in terms of pain.

"I'm going to get changed," Hannah announced as she backed towards the door of the Bullpen. Obviously, she felt uncomfortable about being around her friend, naked and in pain. But, as Erica wiped a small tear from one of her eyes, she noticed that Hannah wasn't averting her eyes from her uncovered body. Instead, it appeared as if Hannah was focusing on the black-haired girl, desperately trying to avert her eyes from the clinical claustrophobia of the Bullpen itself. Hannah, apparently, was uncomfortable being inside the Bullpen - even for just a short period of time.

"Come back and talk with me over the camera before you go," Erica asked politely, propping herself up on her elbows.

Hannah nodded, stepped from the white room, and disappeared into the Observation Room beyond as the Bullpen doors slid shut.

And so it had begun. The TW emitters were quickly processing the course of the deuterotone in Erica's body, tracing its path from her femoral artery down into her leg and back up towards the rest of her body. Data was being generated. Readings were being taken. Body temperature. Dispersion rate. Absorption rate. Stress. Heart rate. Blood pressure. Nothing was left uncharted or unmeasured, and Erica knew that her staff would have more than enough information to keep them busy this week and beyond.

She, meanwhile, had nothing to do but sit and wait for her breasts to begin their growth.

A few minutes after Hannah had stepped white-faced from the white room, the projector came to life on the far side of the Bullpen. There, on the large screen, looking considerably more calm and collected in her own – and significantly less purple – clothing. As soon as her image had blinked on, the Asian doctor apologized.

"I have gained so much respect for you," Hannah said, catching Erica somewhat by surprise. If anything, Erica full expected to be the laughing stock of ConnPharm.

"I could never do what you're doing," her friend continued. "And it's not the nudity. I could probably do the nudity." Erica watched as Colin's eyebrow inadvertently went up. "But it's the room – the Bullpen itself. I don't think I could ever stay in there as long as you have, as long as you plan to."

Erica smiled glumly. "Don't remind me." She still had four weeks to go – the actual experiment had only just begun.

***

The dreams began that first night.

Erica awoke from her slumber, covered in perspiration. She was lying facedown on the floor, but as she cast a glance around the room, she discovered that she was no longer in the Bullpen.