The Bullpen Ch. 01

All this technology allowed the emitters to observe change, and to monitor the status and health of the test subject. Deuterotone acted rapidly, accelerating a female's targeted "second puberty" to last for a fraction of the time of that female's original, natural pubescent stage, but it wasn't immediate. The models suggested that it would take an average of nineteen to twenty days for deuterotone to run its course in a human body, trapping the project's test subject in the Bullpen for five weeks - the first for baseline readings, the next three for the course of the experiment itself, and the fifth for post-experiment readings.

Of course, Forsythe and Rivers could have run their experiment in their own lab, using video cameras, heart monitors, thermometers, a CAT scanner, and so on, but using the Bullpen significantly drove down the costs and almost entirely removed human measurement error from the equations. In fact, it had been Erica who had pushed strongly for use of the Bullpen, even it meant trapping some poor girl inside for five weeks. Now, as it turned out, Erica would be that very girl, and she wasn't looking forward to it.

The imprisonment, of course, was a factor. She'd be living at ConnPharm for the next month, away from her perfect condo, away from her own bed, and away from her boyfriend, Tom Russo, who lived in the condo next door.

The lack of privacy was a factor, as well. Everything that Erica did, every breath she took, would be monitored by the Bullpen, the Bullpen's staff, and her own staff, as well. Every time she took a shower, every time she fell asleep, and every time she went to the bathroom would all be recorded for the sake of posterity and science.

But what made the Bullpen so unattractive, so dreaded, was the fact that the tactile waves needed cutaneous contact. They needed to touch bare skin. Erica would have to be stark naked for five weeks.

The girl had never completely understood how tactile waves that could penetrate skin, muscle, and bones to send back pictures and data to the mainframe were incapable of penetrating fabric. Fingernails, teeth, and hair were all issues, as well, but the Bullpen technicians had made alterations to minimize their impact. More than once, however, a chimp needed to be shaved from the neck down in the Bullpen to solve observation errors. If similar observations arose because of Erica's long, ebony hair during that first week of baseline readings, she'd have herself a new haircut fairly quickly.

In the past, subjects in the Bullpen had always been animals and men, and issues of sexual harassment and gender difficulties hadn't truly reared their heads. Women weren't allowed into the Bullpen itself while it had a human male occupant, and there were no exceptions. In fact, women weren't even allowed in the Observation Room without being accompanied by a male - unless, of course, the test subject had signed a waiver. Both rules would be reversed for Erica - no men would be allowed in the Bullpen itself, whatsoever, and no men would be allowed in the Observation Room unaccompanied, unless Erica signed that waiver.

The whole process was going to be humiliating. She'd be stripped naked in front of all her colleagues, and then monitored for five weeks as her breasts increased in size. She'd have no privacy, and no time to herself.

The layout and furnishings of the Bullpen furthered the humiliation. Three of the walls, the ceiling, and the floor were all clinically white, all with a barely visible netting of TW emitters implanted within. What made it worse was that one of the walls was actually one-way mirror glass. While people out in the Observation Room would have little difficulty peering in through that wall, Erica herself wouldn't be able to see who was on the other side.

Inside the Bullpen, Erica's furniture consisted of a toilet - and that was all. The toilet slid out of the wall furthest from the Observation Room, but could only be accessed, or flushed for that matter, by controls at the operations desk. Any sort of protrusion into the barren white room wreaked havoc on the TW emitters, and tucking the toilet away when it was not in use made readings that much easier.

Erica would be provided with a wireless keyboard, however. A projector inside the Bullpen would be available to cast a decent-sized screen onto the far wall of the room – and, as she was far-sighted, she could shed her glasses with little concern of having to pore over small print. She'd have access to television channels, a DVD player in the Outer Room, the Internet, and her own computer. As the room was equipped with some of the most state-of-the-art audio equipment, she'd be able to make phone calls and listen to CDs, MP3s, or the radio, on top of being in constant communication with whoever the technician was at the observation desk.

And that was it. That would be Erica's life for five weeks. No clothes, no furniture, no privacy, and no dignity.

***

"She's humping like a bitch in heat."

Noah's words, from just a few months earlier, rung heavily in Erica's ears as she arrived at work on the day of the experiment.

He had been commenting - crudely - on the reaction of Trixie the chimp to the injection of deuterotone. Unlike naturally occurring steroids such as estrogen or progesterone, deuterotone was man-made, and therefore not entirely identical to the hormones that produced pubescent development the first time around. Deuterotone had been cobbled together chemically out of disparate compounds, and though it certainly behaved most like 17B-estradiol (a common form of estrogen), its structure was perhaps more akin to testosterone than anything else. Thus, sometimes, the body mistook the deuterotone as testosterone, and generated some of the same results that were common among women undergoing testosterone treatments. Increased hair growth and deepening of the voice weren't in the models, and only one or two common traits of testosterone treatment had appeared in the animal test subjects. One that had, though, was an increase in the sex drive.

"She's humping like a bitch in heat."

"That's because she IS a bitch in heat," Erica had chided her lab partner.

Now, was she going to be faced with that same assessment?

"She's humping like a bitch in heat."

Trixie was an animal. Erica, yes, while still technically an animal, possessed higher brain function, a certain level of inhibition, and self-control. Women on testosterone treatments didn't hump anything and everything in sight, and this would be no different. Men were fully functional (or at least mostly functional) on far greater levels of testosterone.

And besides, Erica had never been an openly sexual person anyways. She'd be able to handle herself, even with a minor and temporary increase in libido.

Noah and Vijay were already in the lab when Erica arrived that Monday morning, going over the final details of the experiment in the hours before their subject was sent down to the Bullpen. After having been thoroughly and painstakingly cleaned over the weekend, the room was set for human inhabitation, but Erica wouldn't be moving in until noon. This gave the technicians a few extra hours to run all the proper diagnostics on the emitters, and gave Erica's fellow researchers a few extra hours to ensure that everything had been taken care of on their end.

As Erica put her briefcase down next to her desk and booted up her computer, Noah slid a couple of dollars across one of the lab benches to Vijay. "Do you mind going down to the cafeteria and grabbing me a bagel?"

Vijay seemed confused for a brief moment, but soon caught on that Noah was looking for a few minutes of private conversation with Erica. The Indian man nodded, greeted Erica on his way out, and departed for the cafeteria.

Noah shuffled over to Erica's desk. "How are you feeling?"

She smiled weakly, but didn't respond.

There was a long, awkward moment of silence, before Noah worked up the nerve to ask Erica what he'd intended to ask. "Um...Erica? I haven't really pushed you on this, because I know it's awkward. And I figured, since you took it home with you this weekend, you'd given thought to the waiver. I mean, it's fine if you don't want to sign it, because we can probably still hire a female temp or find a volunteer around the building or something to accompany us into the Observation Room and all..."

The dark-haired girl purposefully reached down into her briefcase and produced the waiver in question. With her signature already scrawled across the bottom of the page.

She was embarrassed, most likely more embarrassed than Noah for having to bring it up, but it was a necessity. Among the principal investigator, the senior research scientist, and the three lab assistants working on the deuterotone project, Erica was the only female. Dr. Cho had her own project down the hall, and Dr. Hart oversaw at least fifteen or sixteen other research projects in the Human Hormone Lab. Without the waiver, Noah, Vijay, Mike, and Aaron were handicapped from working on the project freely.

But accompanied by a female or not, all four of these men were going to see her stripped bare on tape, on top of measuring the size and growth of her breasts through various electronic instruments. Keeping them out of the Observation Room without a chaperone seemed like an unnecessary and petty hindrance.

"And the technicians?" Erica asked.

Noah replied, "I had Aaron look into it last week. One female technician, fully trained. Wendy Milne? Have you met her? She's been down there for a couple of months now."

Erica nodded. "She helped us run one of the primate experiments."

"Right. Um, and one female intern that the tech staff hired a few weeks ago. She'll be working with one of the male technicians for the first week, but after that, she should be able to run the equipment on her own. Pete Bowie's going to be the one training her."

"I don't know Pete."

"He's ancient. And a real nice guy, too. Wife, kids, grandkids. You'll be okay with him, and he'll be gone after that first week."

Erica nodded again.

"But, uh, the Bullpen staff is a bit male dominated, so that third technician is going to have to be a man, and we're stuck with him all five weeks. We looked at the schedule, and ensured that his shift will be the 8 AM to 4 PM shift, so that you're not stuck with him alone all night. But I did request Colin Eggert, because I figured you'd be more comfortable with him than any of the others."

Colin had been with Connecticut Pharmaceuticals for seven or eight years at that point, longer than Erica herself. He was an extremely good-looking man in his late thirties, married to a beautiful wife, and had twin six-year-old little girls. He was one of the brains behind the construction of the Bullpen, and he had been a fixture in the Observation Room since its inception. Erica had worked with him time and time again during the primate trials, and had even gone on a double date with Tom, Colin, and Colin's wife Jamie. The fact that someone Erica saw socially was going to see her stripped to her skin wasn't terribly appealing, but she figured that Colin was probably preferable to some of the other geeks and nerds that worked with the Bullpen.

"One of Dr. Brigham's female lab assistants offered to sit with him, if you opted out of the waiver. She can still come down an baby sit, if you want her to."

"No," Erica replied, shaking her head. "Colin is fine. I trust him. I don't need to inconvenience anyone else."

"So yeah, that's all settled," Noah said.

Looking to change the subject, he offered, "So what's up for this morning? I mean, all of your files and programs have been copied onto the mainframe downstairs. There are a few odds and ends to wrap up with the deuterotone, but we've got a week of baseline readings to get you through before we begin the injections, and that's pretty much all we boys have to do for the next seven days. With the waiver in, all the paperwork is done. It's nine o'clock now, and you don't actually need to report down to the Bullpen until just before noon.

"You want to go out and grab some breakfast?"

The girl smiled. It actually wasn't a bad idea - out of the lab and away from ConnPharm, she might actually be able to get her mind of the approaching strip show she'd be performing later in the day.

"Sure," she answered, but then asked, "Though, isn't Vijay bringing you back a bagel?"

"You know him," Noah said, waving a hand. "He'll probably eat half of it before he gets back."

***

Breakfast, and conversation with Noah, had allowed Erica to temporarily take her primary focus off of the imminent initiation of the deuterotone experiment. But the thought, and the fears that accompanied that thought, always seemed able to force itself to the forefront of her mind for a moment or two.

That would be her last time out of the Connecticut Pharmaceuticals compound for five weeks.

That would be the last time she'd be allowed to wear clothes for five weeks.

But the dread and doubt only seemed to make the minutes tick by faster. Before Erica had entirely readied herself, she was standing in the Observation Room with Noah, Colin Eggert, and Natalie Hart, preparing to take her clothes off.

None of the four seemed at ease, each uncomfortable with what was about to transpire.

The Bullpen and Observation Room, together, reminded Erica of a racquetball court. The entirety of the Bullpen was clearly visible through the one-way glass, and the emptiness of the room was on display. She had spent many an hour staring in at the chimpanzees inside, the chimps themselves blissfully unaware that someone was watching them through the mirror glass. Erica wouldn't have the luxury of such ignorance.

The Observation Room was as cluttered as the Bullpen was bare, strewn with multi-colored wires and computer equipment from one corner to the other. Erica had seen it much worse over the years, and she suspected that the staff had made a half-hearted attempt to tidy up before the deuterotone project began. On the wall furthest from the mirror glass, the operations desk sat on a raised platform, surrounded by computer monitors and facing directly into the Bullpen. Everything in the Bullpen was controlled from here, everything recorded by the Bullpen transmitted to here.

To one side of the op desk were a handful of exercise machines. There was a treadmill, an exercise bicycle, a Stairmaster, and a few other pieces of equipment. And, hanging casually a hook behind them was a small, black corset, the Bullpen away from the Bullpen. Cramped up inside the Bullpen for five weeks, Erica acknowledged the necessity of getting some exercise, but was skeptical about the treadmill. The thought of running barefoot, while her growing breasts bounced up and down, didn't appeal to the brunette in the least. She would be able to come out of the Bullpen from time to time, so long as she was wearing corset, as it had been equipped with much of the same technology as the Bullpen itself.

On the other side of the op desk, by the door Erica and others had come in through, was a metallic-looking shelving unit. It was sectioned off into open lockers, complete with hooks in each cubby.

Gesturing towards it, Colin Eggert began awkwardly, "Um, we have a couple of cubbies over there for your personal items. You know, in case there's a fire or something, you can come out and have all your things right here."

Erica had left her purse, keys, and a few other odds and ends in her desk back in the Human Hormone Lab, so all she had left were the clothes on her back. She wasn't sure, however, whether such close proximity to her clothes would be reassuring or just plain tantalizing.

"Do you want me to leave? Because I could leave," Noah offered, sensing justifiable hesitation on Erica's part.

"And come back in like thirty seconds to help Colin adjust the emitters for what we're looking for?" Erica nervously joked.

"Do you want ME to leave?" Natalie asked. Unlike Colin and Noah, she was a woman. But stripping in front of two people, regardless of their gender, might have been less stressful than stripping in front of three.

"It's okay," the black-haired girl replied. "I've got to get used to all this."

Looking at the three people around her, and touching her clothes, she amended her statement. "Or get used to a lack of all this."

"All right," Colin clapped his hands together weakly. "Why don't Noah and I give you a little privacy, and go over to the op desk. The door to the Bullpen is open, so whenever you're ready, just go ahead in, and I'll shut the door behind you."

And by "privacy," Colin met he'd go sit at a desk twelve feet away while Erica undressed.

Once the two men had sat down at the operations desk, and had begun to avert their eyes from the two women to their right, Erica had little choice but to get on with it. Day-in and day-out, the girl was usually meticulous about her appearance. Her hair was always tied back in the same manner, her wardrobe always stylish yet understated, and her make-up done to near perfection. Today, however, Erica had arrived at ConnPharm far more casual than usual.

Her black hair was still tied back, though in a ponytail instead of the more typical bun. She had foregone make-up altogether, as removing it would have been difficult that evening in the Bullpen. And while her outfit was more casual than usual, Erica was still dressed in a plaid, knee-length, tweed skirt and a simple but elegant short-sleeved, button-up, white blouse. Normally, she would have worn stockings or pantyhose, but such items seemed too much of a hassle to take off. She was wearing a pair of black pumps, as well - but those were the first to go.

There was nowhere to sit, so Erica simply stood as she kicked off the heels. She avoided eye contact with Natalie as she did so, and continued the evasion as she began unclasping her blouse from the top. Her fingers nervously pushed the buttons back out their corresponding holes, revealing more and more skin as she moved downward. The blouse opened display a lacey pink bra, a revelation that caused Natalie to smile to herself.

Erica had agonized over her undergarments. She hadn't been sure where she was going to undress, where her clothes were going to be kept, and who exactly was going to see her peel the layers of covering off her body. As Natalie rightly suspected, Erica had chosen something alluring and feminine, yet not too slutty or sexual.

After shedding the open blouse and unfastening the back of her skirt, Erica revealed a matching pink set of bikini-style panties, just as lacy, just as feminine. And, as she slid her skirt down two long, smooth, and provocative legs, it was immediately apparent why Forrester had attempted to identify Erica as "the one with the legs." This was a woman who, despite hiding her figure under a white lab coat all day, had the body that every woman dreamed off and every man lusted after. She was thin. She was tall. And even the breasts, still hidden behind pink lace - B-cup though they may have been - seemed absolutely flawless.

Standing in just her bra and panties, Erica bent to pick up her shoes and her skirt. Folding both the skirt and the blouse neatly, she placed the bundle of clothing into the cubby alongside her. As very few people were actually allowed in the Observation Room, theft from the open locker was unlikely. Still, Erica would have preferred the ability to hide her things from plain sight.

"Oh, God," Erica said aloud to Natalie as she reached behind her back. "Here goes nothing."

But her hands were shaking too much, her nerves frayed from the task at hand, and the raven-haired girl quickly discovered that she was having a hard time unclasping her bra, something that she'd been doing daily since she was twelve.