Balloon Factory Pt 02 Lisette

The woman took a deep breath, put the latex hose between her lips, and blew hard. On a metal tube clamped to a stand on the floor, an orange latex spiral suddenly stood at attention. It seemed to hesitate, and someone watching carefully would have seen the redhead's cheeks bulge a little bigger and her brow furrow just a bit more, and then the bottom of the balloon blossomed into an orange sphere. It began to expand, the latex corkscrew growing bigger and longer. The woman didn't look at the balloon; instead her eyes were fixed on the screen of her laptop, which was wired into a spaghetti-like network of wires and tubes. Were it not for the fact that the action of her lungs corresponded to the growth of the balloon, an observer might never guess that the two were linked.

She took another deep breath, filling her lungs to capacity, then put the tube to her lips and blew again, her skin reddening under her freckles. Her powerful lungs forced air through the tubes, through the instrumentation, and into the strange balloon, her cheeks straining in protest and seeming ready to burst. The woman really didn't need to blow nearly this hard to fill the balloon; it required strong lungpower, to be sure, but not this much. But for such an endeavor as this, she preferred to set her apparatus for high backpressure, as it allowed more precise measurements. And she had the lung strength to handle it. All those years of playing the sousaphone in her high school and college marching bands had paid off.

She continued to blow until the balloon was about two-thirds full, the inflated part almost level with her eyes, and then her brow narrowed, not with effort but with the slightest change in what she saw on her screen.

"OK, my little latex sweetheart," she said ( to the balloon, as she was alone in the room), "is this where you're going to give up on me?"

She adjusted her equipment, filled her lungs, and blew hard into the tube, her lungs delivering maximum pressure while the valves allowed just a trickle of air into the balloon.

"There!" she said. She made some notes, holding the tube in her teeth. "Now, we should see..." She adjusted the equipment again, clamped her lips around the tube, drew a deep breath in through her nose, and blew as hard as she could.

"Yes!" she said around the tube. "There it is! I got you, you little stinker!" She scribbled more notes. "Now, if my calculations are correct..." She adjusted a valve, then filled her prodigious lungs, her bustline swelling beneath her lab coat, and said, "Say goodbye, sweetheart," before blowing into the tube again. And no sooner had she started than the balloon exploded like a gunshot. She knelt on the floor and picked up a piece of the latex remains, and looked closely.

"There it is!" she said excitedly, and put it in a bag with other similar bits of latex. Absently, she pulled the torn neck of the balloon off the metal stand and dropped it in the wastebasket, where it joined the half-dozen others she had blown to destruction that morning. She looked up at the clock: Ten minutes before two, just enough time to get to her meeting. Picking up everything she needed, she left her office and pulled the door closed. LISETTE INFLAR, the lettering on the glass read, and beneath that, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT.

--

"He's ready for you if you want to go in, Lisette," said the tall blonde who worked as Mr. Globos's personal assistant.

"Thanks, Mary," Lisette replied. "Say, can I borrow you and those fantastic lungs of yours? I need a balloon blown up until it bursts."

"Sure," Mary said. "Just have the boss call me when you need me. Oh, and before you go in, is there any chance we can move our lesson to the afternoon? My sister just had her new pool installed. The poor girl has asthma, so she asked me if I would blow up the pool toys. I'm sure she has about a million of them."

"Any time after four," Lisette said. "You sure you'll be up to it? I was going to have you try the big 6/4 tuba, and those require some puff."

"With the number of balloons I blow up in this job? I think I can handle it. Now get in there before Mr. Globos bursts."

--

"You can see the pressure changes here and here," Lisette said, pointing to the data on her laptop screen, "but it was this particular spike that attracted my interest. If you would ask Mary to step in, I'll demonstrate."

Miles Globos, owner of Fun Time Balloon Company, picked up his phone with a ring-ornamented hand as Lisette set up one of the spiral balloons on the metal test stand. A minute later his secretary was standing by Lisette at the conference table. Lisette set the valves, handed the tube to Mary, and said, "Start blowing, please."

The blonde secretary drew a deep breath, put the tube to her lips, and blew, and the balloon once again started to grow.

"Now as you can see, the pressure points are right where we'd expect," Lisette said as the graph on her computer screen rose and fell with Mary's deep breaths. "As Mary blows, we see a pattern typical of airship type balloons, and this stays constant as she blows the balloon to about two and a half feet in length. Okay, Mary, stop for a second. Now, I'm going to adjust the valves to slow things down a bit. Mary, go ahead and blow, hard as you can, please. Okay, see this?"

"What? Oh..." Mr. Globos took his eyes from his secretary's prodigious bustline, which pushed hard against her tight sweater as she filled and emptied her lungs. "Oh, yes. That is unusual."

"Blow again, Mary," Lisette said, and Mary did as instructed, her cheeks puffing with the effort. "See, the pattern changes a bit more. The curve will continue to move this way as Mary blows the balloon past about 38 inches." Mary continued to huff and puff with long blasts of air that stretched the balloon longer and longer.

"And if that curve continues..." Mr. Globos said, the screen finally taking his attention away from his secretary's huffing and puffing.

"It will pop," Lisette finished. "Stop for a second, Mary."

"But we knew that," Mr. Globos said. "That's why a spiral-shaped balloon will never work. They always reach critical pressure before they get to full length."

"But wait," Lisette said. "Blow just a little more for me, Mary... one more... okay, stop. Now, I'm going to close these valves way down, Mary, so you're really going to need to give me a big blast. Can you do it, or do you want me to blow?"

"No, I can handle it," Mary said. "You need to talk, not inflate."

Lisette smiled. "Okay, watch very carefully. Mary, take a deep breath and blow as hard as you can, and don't stop until the balloon bursts."

Mary filled her lungs, put the tube to her mouth, closed her eyes tight, and blew with all her might, her reddening cheeks ballooning to enormous size.

"Now watch," Lisette said. "See what it does... right... there!" And with that, the balloon exploded, shards flying everywhere. Mary gave an involuntary squeal, then smiled, her face flushed from the effort.

"Well now," said Mr. Globos, "I've never seen a pressure change like that. But what does that tell us that we didn't know?"

"Well, that's the exciting part. Take a look at the latex..." Lisette looked for the piece she needed, and she found it adhered to Mary's sweater, riding the swell of her right breast. "Excuse me, Mary," she said, picking it off gingerly and putting it on the desk. She handed Mr. Globos a magnifying glass.

"Now look carefully at the edge of the tear on the left side. You've seen plenty of balloon shards, but never anything quite like this."

"I see," said Mr. Globos thoughtfully.

"And look," Lisette said. She took out her bag of shards and laid a half dozen of them out side by side. "These are from six spiral prototype balloons I blew to bursting this afternoon. Same shape, same pattern."

"Interesting," said Mr. Globos. "But these were all done on the test stand, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"What happens if you just blow them up by mouth?"

"Same thing, Mr. Globos," Lisette said. "I blew a bunch to popping without the apparatus, and I asked some of the girls in the inspection department to blow some them to busting as well. All by mouth, not using the air hoses. Here, I'll show you." She reached into her lab coat and took out two more of the spiral-shaped balloons. She handed a yellow one to Mary and put a blue one to her own lips. Both women began to blow up the big spiral balloons, and as Mr. Globos watched his tall, busty blonde assistant and his lithe redheaded R&D chief inflate their balloons, his hand crept surreptitiously into his lap. Both women blew long, deep breaths and blew with big, puffed cheeks. Mary had strong lungs, but Lisette outpaced her, her balloon growing past a foot, then two feet, then three feet, with Mary;s just a couple of inches behind.

"We're getting close to the bursting point," Lisette said breathily, giving Mary a chance to catch up. She put the balloon in her mouth and started to blow again. Bigger and bigger, the balloons grew, until BANG! Lisette's balloon burst, and then BANG! It was followed an instant later by Mary's.

The virgin balloons were completely shredded by the women's lungs, and Lisette had to search the office to find the pieces she wanted. She found the shard from her balloon clinging to the bookshelf against the wall, started to look for the remains of the yellow balloon that Mary had blown to bits.

"Is this what you are looking for?" Mr. Globos said, pulling a long, wet, yellow piece of latex from his cheek.

"Oh, sorry, Mr. Globos," Lisette said. She would have blushed were she not already red from the effort of blowing and popping the big balloon.

"Not at all, Miss Inflar," he said. He put he two shards on the table and picked up the magnifying glass. "And there it is," he said, "Just as you predicted."

"We just have to thicken the latex here and here," she said, indicating points on a red spiral balloon, "and that section of the balloon should inflate properly. I've stress-modeled the balloon and predicted a couple of other places that may need reinforcement, but I won't know until I've had a chance to test them. If you'll approve, I'll have the molding department make up some samples for me to blow up."

"Yes, definitely," Mr. Globos said. "You have my permission to keep making prototypes until you have a balloon that can be blown up to its fully rated size. And make sure we get the design patented. This is great work, Miss Inflar. Because of you, Fun Tyme is going to have the first-ever spiral balloon. If it all works out, you're going to have a healthy bonus. Which reminds me..." He opened a desk drawer and pulled out an uninflated Fun Tyme 16" balloon with something rectangular and flat inside. Lisette smiled; she was familiar with this ritual. "Why don't you go ahead and blow that up, Miss Inflar?"

Lisette put the balloon to her lips, took a deep breath, and blew. Quickly and expertly, she inflated the balloon to rated size.

"Big enough, Mr. Globos?" she asked.

The executive chuckled. "Oh, I think you'll want to blow it bigger than that, Miss Inflar."

Lisette huffed and puffed, blowing a big, thick neck into the balloon and barely leaving enough nozzle for her to pinch between her fingers.

"How's this, Mr. Globos?"

"Very good, Miss Inflar, but I think you'll find it a bit more satisfying if you keep blowing."

"I could have Mary stick a pin in it, Mr. Globos," Lisette said.

"No," Mr. Globos said, his voice thickening, "I want you to blow it bigger, Miss Inflar." His hand was once again under his desk.

"You're the boss, Mr. Globos," Lisette said with a smile. She filled her lungs to capacity, her blouse swelling out of her open lab coat, and for a split second she looked almost as busty as Mary. She let loose a torrent of air, blowing fast and hard into the balloon, which squeaked in protest. The neck strained and distorted, and Lisette bent with the effort, keeping her head up so as to prevent the giant balloon from touching the ground. And just as it seemed her lungs were empty, as she pumped the last bit of air into the balloon, KABLAM!! It burst into shards with a bang echoed off the walls of the office.

A winded Lisette bent down and picked up the $100 gift card from the floor.

"Thank you, Mr. Globos," she said, gathering up her laptop and testing apparatus. "That was very generous of you."

"Thank -you-, Miss Inflar," said Mr. Globos. "Oh, and do you think you could leave a couple of those spiral balloon prototypes with me?"

"Of course, Mr. Globos."

"Thank you. Good work today. Mary, please stay for a few minutes."

"Yes, Mr. Globos," said his secretary. She closed the door behind Lisette and walked back to Mr. Globos' desk. She picked up one of the spiral balloons with one hand, and began to unbutton her sweater with the other.

To be continued...