The Effervescence Horizon

Chapter 1: The Great Mistake

Friday had been a long day in the laboratory. Benoit had been working overtime for several weeks now on a project to develop a nontoxic surfactant--a foaming substance that would not cause cancer, much less irritate the skin, and which was made from organic materials and thus absorbable by the skin. He had already designed four new surfactants--all now commonly found in thousands of cosmetic products from shaving foam to shampoo to toothpaste to condoms--but this new direction had consumed him in a way no previous project had. Few suspected the source of his seemingly endless motivation to develop new surfactants. He personally tested every new product in the lab shower--a large, Japanese-style bathroom, in fact, which had finally slipped through in some federal grant budget. The test was an elaborate affair, during which he twice washed his shoulder-length, brown hair, and when the product was good, ended up covered head-to-toe in foams and lathers of all textures and consistencies, his cum mixing with the thick, cream-colored shampoos and soaps pooling around his feet. And then there were those happy occasions on which he was joined by Ayisa, a Thai-Colombian escort with long, fine black hair whose true appreciation for the sublime sensations of soap made their sessions so satisfying that she refused payment after their first time. So maybe there was one other person who understood his motivation after all.

At the end of the previous year, however, a letter had landed on his desk from some big-name law firm. A lawsuit launched by a nonprofit agency dedicated to the regulation of toxic chemicals in household products had run their own studies of two of his surfactants--his personal favorites, Foamation and BeLather--and found that they both caused cancer in mice and led to chronic skin irritation in more than 50% of human participants. Furthermore, the lawyers claimed that experts could prove that his products were the reason for three individuals in three different countries to develop serious cancers.

He was immediately paralyzed by fear, shame, and guilt. And then anger. He knew his scientists wanted to please him, but he suspected in this case the direction came from corporate, and that they had simply arranged to get the results that were the most convenient for shareholders. And he had willingly let the wool be pulled over his own eyes because it was also more than just convenient for him. His position in the laboratory was what he lived for, after all. Luckily, he figured, he wasn't part of the majority who suffered from chronic skin irritation, otherwise he would be one giant, walking rash. But cancer? Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

When their own lawyers decided that a line of organic, nontoxic surfactants would be part of the solution to the legal morass, he immediately jumped on it. It was a fresh challenge. He had grown lazily content with the combination of Foamation and BeLather, and his colleagues had lately noticed that his late-night tinkering rarely seemed to generate anything productive. And there were the rumors that he could trace back to that custodian who apparently couldn't read the words "do not enter" and had walked in on him when he'd left the door open. He was happy to have any excuse to get something done, and this one it seemed might actually have a positive impact on the world, not to mention prolong his own life.

He had been collaborating on the project with a different arm of the company that worked in biotech, experimenting with different single-cell organisms and bacteria to exploit their various physical properties and capacities. It turned out there were actually a number of these that could be persuaded to produce surfactants, but it was only in the last few days had there been any progress in making anything useful, much less pleasant. But then the breakthrough came, and some interesting results emerged.

It started, as many of the best things in laboratories do, with a mistake. Some surfactant amoebas were left in a container with insufficient respiration that also had been improperly disinfected after the previous use. A bubble-blowing slime mold began to colonize the surface of the foamy little patch of amoebas, and by the time he found the mistake, the two had undergone a series of mutual adaptations, resulting in the death of the amoebas, and the evolution of the slime mold into a more complex single-cell organism, something like a fungus. And such was born a new name, if not quite yet a finished product: Foamungus.

Today was the first time that they had managed to create the right conditions for the fungus to create a condensed liquid instead of foam. This liquid was creamy, slightly thicker than shampoo and white with pale-yellow filaments. It had a sweet, musky smell, and was silky to the touch. As soon as it came in contact with water, it began to foam with minute bubbles on its own, just about doubling in volume. When rubbed between the palms it grew thicker an viscous like a velvety, fluffy slime, and when water was added while rubbing and agitating with a sponge, it grew into a thicker, lather that was slimy and viscous in the center, then dense and foamy, and finally left a trail of soapy bubbles all around it. Most importantly, it was the natural byproduct of a living organism that survived on the minerals and microorganisms in tap water, and thus also served as a water filter. He was going to make a lot of money, and feel good about it, too.

When the other scientists started to pack up--already well overtime at around 9:30pm--he announced to nobody in particular that he wanted to try a few more variations. There were a few nods and then he was alone with the Foamungus. He released some of the product from a vat into a deep tray, filling it to about six inches, then plunged his hands in. The feeling wasn't like his previous surfactants, which gave way like the thick liquids they were. Instead, he could feel the substance responding to his movements, condensing and growing thicker and more viscous in some places while bubbly foam filled in the gaps this left behind. He tried stirring his hands around, and the tray began to rise with thick, foamy lather. He stopped. Soon it would overrun the tray and make a mess. He pulled his hands out, and to his surprise they emerged surrounded by two large balls of writhing foam. Though he wasn't moving his hand at all now, the lathery mass had come alive. It moved slowly, sometimes pushing firmly against his skin, at others gliding gently over it, like a thousand massages, from microscopic movements to broad strokes that rubbed his palm, and even firmly squeezed his whole hand at moments in its slippery embrace.

He was about to try to rub the material off his hands when he noticed that the front of his pants was tenting out over a massive erection. He headed straight to the bathroom and locked himself in. He was able to sort of roll the foam up his forearms to take off his clothes before sitting on the shower stool next to the lacquered, wooden tub. He reached to turn on the shower to try it on his hair but then, unsure what the result might be, decided to go straight to his penis, which seemed to be straining toward the foam in great hope. He lowered his hands and closed the two foamy masses around his cock, and his mouth immediately fell open. He had never felt anything like this. Disoriented, he fell forward onto his hands and knees. The foam had left his hands entirely and now covered his whole rear end, engulfing his penis, testicles deep within. Inside, dense tendrils of viscous slime massaged his skin and licked his shaft while channels of foamy lather danced across his flesh.

It made a sound full of bubbling, squelching, and creamy rubbing. He was close to coming before he had really even had a chance to digest all the sensations, and then his cum game gushing out, and he felt the foamy mass sucking it into itself, like a hungry mouth. Immediately, he felt the pressure begin to release, and felt the silky texture of the original thick liquid caressing his still-hard cock, somehow sloshing around as if it were being shaken. Some of it started to ooze down his leg, and when he put his hand to his cock it dripped between his fingers. With his other hand he quickly grabbed another deep tray he kept on hand in the bathroom and placed it beneath him just in time. The whole foamy mass sloshed back into its original liquid form, splashing into the tray.

He showered off, still twitching from the intensity of the pleasure, and then funneled the Foamungus into an empty laboratory shampoo bottle, sealed it up, and put it in his bag. His wife was headed to the beach for the long weekend with some girlfriends, and he didn't want to have to wait around until Tuesday evening to keep tinkering with his invention. He locked up the lab and headed home, a distant look in his eyes.