Field Research - Chapter 11

How’re you doing back there?, I texted Jenny, boredly watching the foliage speed by out the window.

ill live, she responded after a moment, but its not the comfiest ive ever been.

Want to pull over so I can come back there with you?

nooooo. relax up front. i want you well rested for what im gonna be putting you through 😘

I grinned, blushing a little. I was self-conscious that Paul might notice my reaction, but he was too focused on the road.

Jenny was heavy enough now that she didn’t really play nice with chairs of any kind; the driver’s seat of her own car was slowly getting a little more crushed every time she drove it, and she could barely fit into it now anyway. So, when we rented a U-Haul to take all the lab equipment out to a cabin on the lake, we realized that Jenny wouldn’t be able to ride in the cabin if we wanted the deposit back. She was in the back along with her equipment, some blankets for comfort, a lamp and a book to pass the time. At 3’9”, I didn’t really feel comfortable operating a big truck like this, so I was riding shotgun as Paul drove us through the woods.

***

Dr. Walker had made all of us really consider for the first time that Jenny’s research was revolutionary on a scale that was hard to fully appreciate. She’d invented a way to induce a second puberty to make a person grow larger and stronger, and she’d invented a way to modify human DNA to compensate for the stress that put on the body. That was already absolutely mind-blowing stuff, and it didn’t hold a candle to the third pillar of her research: a method of using the human body’s metabolic systems to convert light matter to dark matter and vice-versa. 

I barely even understood what that meant, and even Jenny had to admit that the full ramifications of that discovery were beyond her; in a sense, her “drug” gave whoever ingested it the power to create something from nothing. What if Jenny could reformulate it to grow giant livestock and solve world hunger? What if she could find a way to create matter other than living tissue to produce building materials or rare-earth minerals? What if she could create currently impossible kinds of matter, metal that was sturdier than steel but lighter than cotton, fuel with no exhaust? Even if none of that is possible, imagine a world of ten-foot-tall construction workers, six-inch-tall electricians running wires through walls, giant soldiers, tiny spies, absolute mastery over the shape of the human body. 

Right now, in these early stages, we were just using the formula to explore our mutual sex fantasies. But in ten years’ time, the world could very well be completely unrecognizable, and it would be thanks to Jenny’s research.

And, while that was beyond exciting, it was also dangerous. Everyone who’d so much as glanced at an invoice related to the project would be clamoring for a slice of the credit and profits that would come out of this, and by her own admission, Jenny had played fast and loose with the rules, more concerned with shrinking me and growing herself than with doing things by the book. If she wasn’t careful, it wouldn’t be hard at all to push her out of the limelight, to downplay her contributions, push her name further and further down the list credited scientists until she fell off altogether. After all, that was more or less already happening to Dr. Walker.

“Even if this project had been a sterling example of integrity and ethics, we still might’ve ended up getting screwed,” Jenny explained. “We gotta start thinking about this in terms of narrative. We need to be able to present a story that can’t be spun, can’t be swept under the rug, can’t be denied. A story that says that Jennifer Miller, with the help of her two hard-working research assistants and her devoted boyfriend, were the primary minds behind this formula.”

“Uh. I haven’t really contributed to the formula at all,” I’d replied. Jenny smiled down at me patronizingly.

“Step one of building the narrative is don’t contradict me.”

I blushed and smiled a little. “Right. Got it. So, what’s the plan?”

“Right now, I’m pretty damn big. Not quite ‘tallest person to ever live,’ but getting there, the next dose will probably make it happen. Sean, keep it in your pants, we’re strategizing.” I blushed harder, Paul and Amanda both laughing softly at my expense. “I’m big, but I’m only big by human standards. What if I was big… by inhuman standards? Too big to hide, too big to write off. Big enough that I’m a one-woman media circus, that it’s impossible to look at me without thinking, ‘yeah, that’s obviously the person who invented the growth drug.’”

“...Just how big are you thinking?” Amanda asked.

“Well, this little pervert over here made a deal with me,” she said, grasping my hand. “That I would only grow from his cooking, and that he’d keep shrinking as long as I keep growing. The way I see it, that puts a cap on how far we can take this. Eventually, he’ll be too small to work a kitchen.”

I was embarrassed into silence, far less comfortable airing out these kinds of details than Jenny was. She was, of course, getting a kick out of embarrassing me like this… and I can’t pretend like I didn’t kind of like it.

“What I think we should do, is relocate all of the essential lab equipment, along with every digital copy of the documentation. Take it somewhere remote, where there’s no risk of Dr. Walker or anyone else muscling in, sabotaging us, or stealing our research.”

“There’s some nice cabins out at the lake, my family usually rents one over the holidays,” Paul offered.

“Perfect. Me and Sean head out there, we push both of our sizes to the furthest extremes we can take them, and I come stomping back to town a few weeks later, full research paper in one hand and my tiny boyfriend in the other. No one else can try to claim credit because no one else was within 50 miles of where the experiments were conducted.”

***

I fiddled with the truck’s radio, but we were far enough out that we couldn’t get anything but static.

“Hey man,” Paul said, the first words either of us had spoken in a good thirty minutes. “Uh… we don’t, really know each other. But… Can I ask you something?”

I shrugged. “Shoot.”

“What are you… I mean, why… I don’t…”

“You want to know why I’m agreeing to shrink?”

“I mean, no offense, but it just seems crazy to me.”

“Well… Jenny hasn’t really been shy about it ever since we started talking more to you and Amanda. It’s… you know. Kind of a…” I screwed my eyes shut; there was really no point in being embarrassed about it when Jenny was so quick to out me to them. “It’s like, a sex, fantasy, thing.”

“Okay but! Like! First off, I don’t even get that. How can you be… into, something that isn’t even physically possible?” He squinted. “Wasn’t even physically possible?”

I shrugged. “Lots of people are into lots of stuff. I couldn’t tell you why this does it for me, but… well, actually, I couldn’t tell you why it doesn’t do it for everyone else. It’s obviously hot as hell from my perspective. You might as well be asking me why I think breasts are sexy. I dunno man, they just are.”

“Alright, sure, fine, I guess that’s fair enough. But even so, I mean… aren’t you taking this kind of far? You’re kind of giving your whole life over to it, y’know?”

I chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve had a lot of conversations with myself and with Jenny about that. I mean, you were there the day she gave me the first dose of the shrinking pill, I wasn’t too thrilled about it. But… I love Jenny. And I trust Jenny. Going through with this helps her, and it’s… I mean, to hear her tell it, the entire reason she went into this field in the first place was to bring our fantasies to life from when we were horny lovesick teenagers. Maybe she was just saying that to be romantic, I don’t know, but… she’s such a genius that she could’ve devoted her life to anything, and she devoted it to this. If I’m gonna be with her, it’s only fair if I devote myself to it too, right?”

“That’s… actually really sweet.” Paul smiled and quietly considered my words.

I grinned. “Plus, man, come on, can you really not see the appeal of tits bigger than your head? Tits bigger than your entire body? Of having your entire body licked like a lollipop?”

I laughed as Paul turned a bright shade of crimson, refocusing on the road.

The forest was beautiful, lush greens in every direction you look, unspoiled save for the single road we were driving down. Before too long, the trees started to thin out, revealing a massive lake, sunlight dancing on its surface.

“We picked a good time for this,” Paul said. “A few weeks ago, this place probably would’ve been swarming with college kids looking to have fun on the cheap for Spring Break.”

The shoreline was dotted with boat rental shops, fishing shacks and cabins, but Paul had snagged us a place a little more remote, isolated up on a small hill on the opposite shoreline. The trees were dense enough that as we pulled into the cabin’s driveway, I couldn’t even see the lake. That was perfect; it would help keep Jenny out of sight until we were ready for her big reveal.

I did my best to help with the unloading, but I was small enough now that most of the boxes and bags we had were too heavy. At least, the ones Jenny kept directing me to pick up were too heavy.

“You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? You like me having to ask you for help lifting things.”

Jenny looked off to the side, smiling innocently. I could practically see a halo materializing over her head.

“Asshole,” I said with a laugh. “Can my big strong girlfriend pwease bring this box inside? It’s full of frozen meat, I need to get it into the freezer.”

“Only because you said ‘pwease,’” Jenny said as she ruffled my hair. I tried my best not to show just how good the attention felt.

I followed Jenny inside, where at least I could work to unload the groceries… at least until I filled up the shelves I could reach on my own. Paul was busy in the living room, pushing furniture out of the way to clear space for the lab equipment.

“Amanda’s gonna come by next week with fresh groceries, right?”

“Yeah,” Paul answered, grunting as he pushed the huge section toward the wall. “But I still don’t understand why we couldn’t just get you guys more canned goods. We had plenty of room in the truck, we could’ve had you stocked up for the month.”

I rolled my eyes, trying to remind myself that the degree of disgust I was feeling wasn’t quite rational. “I need fresh ingredients to cook, Paul. If there was a butcher anywhere near her I wouldn’t even be settling for freezing the meat.” I made a mental note: once we were settled, I should look into what kind of fish people caught out of that lake, and also look up some recipes for venison and rabbit; there was sure to be somewhere around here I could buy fresh game meat.

“I’m just saying, don’t we have more important things to worry about than cooking?”

I inhaled sharply. “Paul. You’re a grad student, so I’m gonna hazard a guess you can’t remember the last time you ate something that didn’t come in a microwavable container. But let me explain something. All of our asses are on the line here. We need to be doing everything we can to support Jenny. Maybe she can grow just the same from just double-fisting McDonald’s, but making sure she’s eating well is what I can do to support her.”

“Are we getting McDonald’s?” Jenny asked as she came through the door, lugging a piece of lab equipment nearly as tall as she was.

“Oh, jeez, Jenny, you should’ve let me help you with that, it’s delicate!” Paul rushed to try and take one side of it, but Jenny just lifted up out of his reach, grinning.

“How am I supposed to show off how strong I am if I let you help?” she said, setting it down in one of the corners he’d cleared.

The work of unloading went pretty quick—largely thanks to Jenny’s giant-sized strength—and before long, we had a living room full of complicated equipment and a fully stocked kitchen.

“Why did you put so much in the top cabinets? I’m the one cooking, and I can’t reach any of that.”

Jenny just smiled and bent down low, way down low, to speak directly into my ear, which also gave me a direct view into her absolutely impossible cleavage.

“It’s just one more thing you have to beg me for.”

My entire body went rigid. “We need to get Paul out of here.”

“We need to get Paul out of here,” Jenny agreed.

There was still some work to be done—getting the computers up and running and calibrating the machines, mostly—and the sun was finally starting to set by the time we were waving him off.

“You think we can trust them?” I asked as I watched the U-Haul disappear into the woods. I was standing in front of Jenny, the back of my head squished against her belly, her hands draped lazily over my shoulders. “I mean, if we’re worried about someone scooping the credit… we’re leaving them alone back in town, and we don’t know that they handed over every copy of the data.”

“Nah, I think we’re safe. They’re reliable, and, honestly, no disrespect to either of them… but they don’t understand the work well enough to pass it off as their own.

“But enough about that!” Jenny shouted, and I reflexively yelped as she crouched down and grabbed my ankles. In an instant I was hanging upside-down, gently swinging in front of her as she carried me back into the house.

“I have been waiting all. Day. And I’m not waiting another second.” Jenny crouched through the front door, then lifted me up, pressing her thick, lucious lips all over my face, so aggressively that I couldn’t even see where she was taking me. I’d barely gotten used to hanging upside-down when I was flipped again, dropped to my feet, so disoriented that it took me a second to realize that I was standing in front of the stove.

“Cook me something.”