Passages
The computer finished its final scan, and Ray liked what he saw. He liked it a lot. He'd been crunching numbers since five that morning, and now the match was perfect, right down to the last gene. No aberrations. No surprises. Perfect. He leaned back from the monitor, smiling to himself as a warm feeling of gratification flowed through his body, then he sat back in his chair to take a few moments to simply enjoy the awareness of an idea having come to fruition. It was a good feeling. It was odd though, Ray thought to himself, how the result of months of work, and years of reflection could show itself in a single monitor display. He glanced over at the chemistry set-up of stands, clamps, glass and rubber, all of it culminating in the little glass vial at the end of the run. The drip had finished. The vial, about five cc in volume, was a little more than three-quarters full of the clear liquid he'd labored so long to achieve.
Perfect, he thought.
It would be the birthday gift of a lifetime for his beloved, Jasmin, and he had just enough time to get home to pick her up for their eight o'clock breakfast date. He took the vial from its holder, pressed a stopper into its open end, then gathered up his sweater and set about locking up the lab.
Not bad for a Saturday morning, he thought, give or take a few years.
Driving home, figures, and variables continued to churn through his perpetually active mind. The numbers were right. The model was perfect. So why did he feel nervous?
To take his mind off his discomfiture, he thought about his mate, and about how lucky they'd been. They'd met in college, and, from their first encounter, it was as though each had suddenly discovered a missing part of themselves. The experience they'd gained in their relationship in the ensuing years had done much to put that first impression into a more realistic perspective, but had never once diminished it.
Being two years older, Ray had started in the work-a-day world while Jasmin was finishing up her schooling. He'd taken a position as a research chemist with a large pharmaceutical firm. Now, five years later, he was head of one of the firm's research, and development, labs. Though he was obviously talented, inner company politics, and his own quirkish personality, had kept him from advancing any higher. One of the main problems was that he tended to get unduly preoccupied with his own little projects. He could easily become possessed by an idea, and would pursue it relentlessly. He had a number of minor discoveries to his credit, mainly due to his bulldog tenacity in solving a notion, but, almost as often, he'd wind up having to abandon an idea after he'd pursued it into the realm of simple impossibility.
Jasmin, on the other hand, had been far more fortunate after graduation. Though she'd majored in engineering, she was offered a better job in her minor, which had been architecture. Though she lacked experience, her inherent people skills quickly put her in a key position in client relations. After nearly three years with a small, but influential, architectural firm, she'd recently been promoted to the position of junior executive.
It hadn't all been a bed of roses between them - his workaholism being the biggest thorn in Jasmin's side - but, on the whole, they had been very lucky, and, with the completion of his most recent project, Ray had promised her that he'd slow down a bit. As he eased the car into his parking spot behind the apartment building they lived in, Ray's mind returned to that most recent project, the fruit of which rested in his pocket. Why was he still nervous?
Inside, Jasmin was putting the finishing touches on herself in front of their bedroom vanity mirror. She'd been getting increasingly miffed about Ray's stealing away so early over the past few weeks, but today was her birthday, and he'd promised that this would be the last time he'd be absent from their bed when she woke up. Needing a break from the decision of whether to wear her hair up or down, she subjected herself to a typically over critical self-appraisal. At just under five feet tall, and weighing ninety-four pounds, she was perhaps just a tad underweight, but she was proud of that. She had what's known as a 'Balanchine body'; long limbed, and lean, and slightly angular. It was toned, and honed, from years of rigorous ballet training. She bore well the effortless grace that discipline imbues, and it'd helped her shed the upper body stiffness common to an Asian woman's carriage. As she stood regarding her image, the very corners of her mouth pursed, as they always did when she felt dissatisfied, yet resigned. Not the best perhaps, she thought as she braved one last perusal of her form, but, over all, not bad.
Returning to the subject of her hair, she noted how it looked down, then sighed, gathered it from behind her neck, twisted thrice and plopped it on the crown of her head. Noting that look, she sighed again.
"Hey Imp!" she heard Ray call from outside the room.
"Bedroom!" she called back, giving her location.
Up . . . or down, she wondered. A moment later, she saw Ray's reflection in the mirror as he poked his head into the room.
"Hi," he offered with a cheerful smile.
She didn't turn to greet him. She was peeved, her hair wasn't working, it was her birthday, and he hadn't been in bed beside her when she'd awakened. She eyed his reflection in the mirror.
"Good morning," she replied in a tone of cool formality that conveyed exactly how she felt.
Undaunted (there are advantages to being a clueless male), Ray came up, and embraced her from behind.
"Hey Imp!" he greeted her again more quietly just before he buried his mouth in the base of her neck, and let out a lusty growl.
Jasmin squealed, and tried to squirm free. She'd always been too ticklish for her own good, and he almost always took unfair advantage of it. But they both knew that the tactic worked in lightening her mood. As he released her, she turned around to face him.
"So," she asked expectantly, "where's my birthday present?"
Matching her brashness, he cupped his crotch, and gave it a shake, "I got yer birthday present right here."
"Mmm," Jasmin intoned with a devilish smirk, "is this where I say good things come in small packages?"
Ray physically recoiled from the sting of her remark.
"Aw, now that is below the belt," he protested good naturedly. "And a little too close to home," he added as he moved away.
"Well, like they say," she noted as she returned her attention to her hair, "there's no place like home."
Ray pulled his the front of his trousers away from his belly, and peered down inside. "It's alright," he said consolingly, "she didn't mean it. Really." He listened briefly. "Yeah," he said in a low, conspiratorial tone, "we'll get 'er later, huh? You 'n me, pal; we're a team. We'll get 'er good."
For some reason, Jasmin began leisurely humming the tune to, 'Beautiful Dreamer' as she continued debating her hair.
Ray released his beltline, and returned his attention to his beloved.
"So," he asked, "are you ready?"
"Just about," she droned automatically, still being busy with exploring her hair options. She managed to divert enough of her attention to ask, "Where're we going?"
"Jimmy's," he answered.
"Ugh!" she decreed with gross-out distaste. "I hate that place."
"What's wrong with Jimmy's?" he wanted to know.
Questioning the acceptability of a man's favorite eatery is a personal insult of the highest magnitude.
"The food is terrible!" Jasmin stated, relishing the opportunity to enumerate her objections. "It's the only place where the burgers aren't listed by size, their listed by oil weight. After you're done, you don't have to walk out of the place, you can just surf your way out on the grease slick. God, even the oatmeal's made with WD40."
"So Jimmy's it is then," Ray concluded grandly.
Jasmin gave him the look of death, then opted to leave her hair down. With a resigned sigh of male-weariness, she conceded defeat, "Okay, let's go to Jimmy's."
"Great! Let's go," he said, moving to usher her out the door.
She grabbed her purse, grabbed one last check in the mirror, then hesitated. "Have you seen my keys?" she asked.
He'd heard that question hundreds of times over the years they'd been together. It could be attached to any object associated with her. He could never understand how an engineer could be so chaotically disorganized.
"Jasmin," he started, with the tone of fatigue long ago perfected, "how many times. . . " but then he caught himself, " . . . a year is it your twenty fifth birthday?"
They stood there, simply looking at each other for awhile; she, appreciating that he didn't go into 'the lecture' about her loosing track of things, and he, visually caressing her unusually symmetrical, Asian features. At length, Ray offered brightly, "It's okay. I've got mine. Let's go."
He lead the way to the front door, and opened it for her. As she was passing him on her way out, she paused and pecked him on the cheek.
"Thanks," she said, with a demure smile of gratitude.
Outside, they proceeded down the walkway to the parking lot, Ray following behind, as was their custom. Aside from gentlemanly gallantry, it always afforded him the opportunity to admire his woman's slender, dark skinned beauty. Along with her customary weekend sandals, she wore green that morning; a short sleeved, pullover top that enticingly revealed just enough of her finely toned, twenty one inch waist, and shorts of a lighter hue that even more enticingly revealed just the right amount of buttock.
"You wearing a thong?" he wondered coyly to her back.
"Are you wearing jockeys?" she replied, glancing at him over her shoulder.
"I'm not showing any cheek", he noted as his fingers lightly traced along the arc of one of her exposed under-curves.
"Hey!" she protested, sidestepping away from him, but throwing a smile in his direction. She continued eyeing him as he fell into step beside her. "You're going to get into trouble," she warned.
"Not if I get into those shorts first," Ray countered.
"Then you'll really be in trouble."
"Promises, promises . . . ," he droned.
"No promise," she retorted, playfully, "that's a threat!"
"Threats, threats . . . "
"Bugger," she laughed, pushing him away.
Ray smiled back at her. She was such a delight to be with, he thought to himself. He restored their closeness from where he'd been dispatched, and they walked on hand in hand. Ray took the opportunity to enjoy the aroma of her silken, black mane, and then tenderly kissed her head.
"You are so beautiful," he breathed softly into her hair.
"You're still a bugger," she stated.
Jimmy's was your typical working class American greasy spoon. It shared a building with a bowling alley, and was a tile, and vinyl, emporium of tasty food that slid right down, but not all the way through. The clientele of these places harbor a near fanatical loyalty to them, sharing with the staff a near mystical camaraderie that's unmatched anywhere in American society. They're a microcosm of social ills, and sciences, where everyone eventually gets to know everyone else. As many of these place's regulars attest; with friends like these, who needs Rolaids. Jimmy's was an extended family, and that family had given a lot of support to Ray after he'd become disaffected with his family back East. No matter how great, or wonderful, or beautiful she was, his parents had not been able to accept Jasmin as their son's betrothed.
Affectionate greetings were exchanged when the couple arrived. Jasmin experienced a touch of divine retribution when her foot slipped on a spot of water on the floor as they were being lead to the only empty booth available. The pre-work patrons had come, and gone, but the Saturday breakfast rush was just getting started, and the place was already filled. They got menus, ordered coffee, then borrowed into their own world amid the crowd.
"So what's this big secret you've been keeping to yourself all these weeks, and months?" Jasmin asked, rummaging in her purse to find her reading glasses.
"Oh, it's not finished yet," Ray answered.
The lady was not amused to hear this. Nor was she much of anything else that could be called positive. It was her birthday, she was at Jimmy's, whose ambiance she did not understand, and her man, who'd promised to spend more time with her, was now essentially telling her that he was going to be away longer than expected. Jasmin took a moment to let herself cool down from her initial reaction to what Ray had said. She set her glasses on the end of her nose while mentally editing the phrasing of her reply.
"Do you recall," she began slowly as she studied the pressed pattern on her napkin, "a conversation we had this past week," her hooded eyes looked up at him, "Wednesday, I believe it was," then returned to the napkin, "during which you promised me that today would be the end?"
Ray sifted through his number cluttered memory, located the event she was referring to, then said, though not quite agreeably enough, "Yeah."
Jasmin looked up at him.
"And now you're telling me that it's - not - the end," she ventured.
"Wul . . . yeah," he responded haltingly, "in a way, yeah." He couldn't avoid noticing her smoldering look of displeasure. "Wul, don't get me wrong," he made haste to explain, "the lab work is done. That part of it is finished, okay? No more. That's over with."
Past experience kept Jasmin from finding comfort in these phrases.
"But the results can only be ascertained through application," Ray went on to say.
"So it's not, as you put it, 'over with'?" she asked him carefully.
"Oh no, that part of it hasn't even started," came the reply.
Now, along with everything else, she felt hurt, and angry. Happy twenty fifth birthday Jasmin, she thought ruefully to herself.
Their coffee arrived, and they interrupted themselves long enough to order. After their waitress had left, Jasmin returned her glasses to her purse. Ray had drawn the little vial from his trouser pocket, and held it within a closed hand in the hollow of his lap, his thumb nervously toying with the stopper in its opened end. He watched Jasmin admiringly until she indulged a recently acquired habit of checking the temperature of a hot beverage by touching the tip of an index finger to the liquid's surface.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," Ray gently chided her.
Jasmin eyed him as she sucked her finger dry.
"One scalded tongue is enough for me, thank you," she replied with a dignity that she hoped would adequately conceal her defensiveness.
Though hardly satisfied, Ray opted to leave well enough alone.
"Okay," she exhaled with notable fatigue as she raised her cup to take a sip, "you were about to elaborate on the application phase of," she waved a hand in the air, "whatever."
"Yeah, well, that's something that's going to include you," Ray stipulated carefully with a warm smile.
How wonderful, Jasmin thought as she sipped her coffee.
"This is something that the two of us are going to do together," he assured her.
I can hardly wait.
"And if the results turn out to be anything like I expect, it's going to be incredible."
Hold me back! she thought before she said with studied patience, "All that is fine, Ray, but," then her eyes tensed with exasperated curiosity, "what the hell are you talking about?"
"Okay," Ray began, "you remember all my past projects?"
"How could I forget," she said sweetly, sincerely wishing that she could.
"Well, you know I had some hits, and some misses."
While I had nothing but misses, she thought, remembering how much she'd missed his company while he was all too often preoccupied.
"I realized not long ago that they were all - like - side issues."
I can relate to that, she thought.
"But they were all, in some way, pointing in the same direction."
Yeah, she thought, away from me.
"I've learned from all the mistakes I've made."
No - you - haven't, she thought as she tapped out each word with a fingernail against the table top in front of her.
"But now it's all come together."
Alleluia!
"Everything before was like finding individual pieces of a really big puzzle."
Reallybig shooo . . . , Jasmin thought, recalling how she'd seen Ed Sullivan intone the phrase.
"Y' know, it's amazing how you can be going in a certain direction, and you don't even know it until one day - bam! - it just hits you in the face."
Don't - tempt me . . .
Their waitress stopped by their table long enough to top off both of their coffee cups. They eyed each other during the pause in their conversation. Ray's thumb was once again toying with the stopper in the vial. All he needed was
A loud screech was heard from the street outside. Someone hadn't been quite awake when they'd gotten behind the wheel, and a changing stop light had taken them by surprise. Everyone in Jimmy's looked out the restaurant's big bay windows to see what had happened - Jasmin having to turn around to see where the car had come to a stop behind her. Ray stared at her coffee cup as he nervously fingered the vial in his hand under the table. As Jasmin saw the smoke wafting from the car's front tires, the commitment was made. She turned back just as Ray withdrew his hand. Returning her attention to her coffee, she picked up her refilled cup, and took a cautious sip. Finding the liquid not uncomfortably hot, she continued sipping as she got her mind back on track to what they were talking about. Her recollection thus refreshed, Jasmin glanced up at her man to notice him smiling at her strangely.
So close, she thought, and yet a thousand worlds away.
"Deedee?" she called to him.
"Huh? What?" Ray blurted with a start. His heart rate increased as he saw her beautifully exotic, almond shaped eyes watching him over the rim of her upraised cup. Why was she looking at him like that? he wondered.
"Are you alright?" she asked with a curious frown.
Alright, he thought. Why was she frowning? "Yeah," he answered at the very end of an exhalation. "I'm . . . okay."
Jasmin looked at him suspiciously as she took a sip of coffee. "What were you smiling at?" she asked in a playfully accusatory tone.
Ray's eyes looked down at the table between them as he managed a nervous laugh.
"Are you sure you're alright?" she asked again over her cup.
Ray cleared his throat, "Uh, yeah I'm . . . alright," he assured her unconvincingly.
Jasmin distracted herself from him long enough to take three good swallows of her coffee, then she set the cup on the table in front of her. It was only then that she noticed something strange.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing to the little chemical vial standing upright on the table just beyond her coffee cup.
"That," Ray announced, beaming with pride, gladdened that she'd finally noticed, "is what we've been talking about."
Jasmin had watched him say this. Her eyes drifted back to the vial.
"It's your birthday present," he informed her.
Jasmin looked at him again briefly, then she took up the vial to examine its colorless contents. She looked it over, looked through it, then shook the vial lightly.
"Be careful with that," Ray cautioned her. "The stopper's not all that tight."
Jasmin's looked at him, again briefly, then she returned her attention to the vial.
"My . . . ," she stated curiously as she looked back at Ray, "birthday present."
"Yeah," he told her happily.
Jasmin studied the vial. How do you spell . . . disappointment? she wondered slowly before she opined, "A little vial of . . . ," she looked at Ray again, "water."
"Oh-ho-ho," he laughingly informed her as he sat back in his seat. He pointed to the vial in her hand to specifically announce, "That - is not water."
"Then . . . ," she asked curiously, "what is it?"
"It's what I've been working on for the past four months," he duly informed her.
"Okay," she intoned in a manner of prompting him to go on.
"Well," he began by asking, "you remember how you've always been bothered about your size?"
"Yeah," Jasmin replied, thinking of the difficulty that she'd always had in reaching upper shelves, and how the fully forward position of car seats were barely enough for her feet to reach the pedals. "It would be nice to be a little taller."
"Well," Ray informed her, pointing to the vial nested in her fingers, "there you have it."
"What?" she wondered, frowning curiously.
"Your increased height," he told her.
Jasmin was still wondering. Her frown deepened.
"Wha' 's 'is?" she asked as she shrugged her shoulders, and casually waved the vial in the air, "Tall in a bottle?"
"No, no," Ray told her with mounting fatigue, and frustration. "Hey," he cautioned again, "watch that stopper."
He had to take a moment to marvel at how they weren't communicating, but then he realized that his devotion to work had never been an easy topic with them. He was about to shrug off her flippant reply, but he changed his mind suddenly when he came to think differently of it.
"Yeah," he offered in a less oppressive tone, "I guess you could call it, 'tall in a bottle', but it's a whole lot more than that."
"Okay," she prompted cautiously.
"Well, to keep it simple - "
"Stupid," Jasmin interjected without thinking.
This caused Ray to just give up at this point. He fell silent, and looked dejectedly at the table.
Jasmin could tell that she'd stung him badly, and instantly regretted her terse reply. She knew that they weren't doing well at the moment, and now she'd gone and tripped over her own sharp tongue. She'd agreed to Jimmy's in hopes of getting just a little more attention on her birthday, and she had to admit that he was granting her wish, be it, however, in his own way. She'd just expected things to be a little different . . . well, a lot different actually.
But hey, she thought. They had the rest of the day, and especially the evening to look forward to. Make an effort, she told herself, because, although in his own way, he had made an effort.
"Ray," she said across the table to him caringly, "I feel like we've become strangers to each other over the past couple of months, and I don't like it. I know I've been guilty too, because this promotion at work has been a big adjustment for me. But you've just gotten more, and more distant as you've gotten more involved with this . . . latest project of yours. It hasn't been easy for me."
The offer of reconciliation wasn't wasted. Ray roused himself from his somber mood.
"Well," he told her softly, "this one's been for you, Impy."
"I understand that, Deedee," his woman conceded, "but still, it's taken you so far away from me."
"Yeah," Ray droned in self-reproach as he studied the pattern his finger was absently tracing on the formica surface of the table between them. He realized now that, "I've missed you too."
She waited a moment.
His finger stopped as he looked up at her. He knew that look she knew he couldn't resist.
"No," he answered warmly.
Jasmin smiled at him. She was grateful for the indication of recovered closeness, but she knew how important his work was to him.
"So tell me all about my . . . "
"Little vial of water," Ray offered gamely.
Jasmin accepted the good natured barb as it had been intended. She replaced the vial on the table, and took up her coffee cup again.
"Good coffee this morning for some reason," she commented, peering into the cup as she swirled the dregs around. She then hoisted the cup to her mouth, and drained it. "Mm, it usually has a slightly bitter taste."
"Maybe they're using a better grade of oil," Ray suggested lightly.
She smiled.
"Alright," she said, setting her empty cup down before she looked at him, "start talking."
"Okay, well," Ray began as he reset his mental bearings. "Without going into tech-talk, you know how we achieve our adult size through puberty?"
"Yeah."
"And after that, growth stops, and that's it. We don't grow anymore."
"Okay."
"Well that," he stated, pointing to the vial, "overrides the genetic message that instructs the body to stop growing."
Jasmin's eyebrows pricked at this.
"Really?" she half asked, half stated. Either way, she didn't believe it.
Ray looked at her blankly before stating, "Yeah."
There was a pause between them before Jasmin ventured thoughtfully, "So . . . what you're saying is that . . . this stuff will make me grow."
"Wul . . . yeah," he told her. "Depending on how much you take."
"Have you tested it yet?"
"No. That's where the application phase comes in. I'll have to make a variation of the formula to match a test subject, and then administer it in a controlled setting to determine dosage and affect." He pointed to the vial between them, "But that one is all yours."
Their food arrived, but, as Jasmin's serving of oatmeal was being placed in front of her, the plate struck the vial, and tipped it over. The stopper dislodged, and the clear liquid poured out onto the table. Ray's hand shot forward to snatch up the vial, but it was already empty. Jasmin took up her napkin, and began blotting up the spill. The waitress apologized for the mishap, but Ray remained calm, and even dismissed the accident as, "No problem." The waitress apologized again, then left to get them more coffee, and to get Jasmin a fresh napkin. Having collected the liquid, Jasmin wadded the dampened napkin into her left hand, and then responded to what she felt Ray must be considering to be a major personal catastrophe.
"Ray, I'm sorry about this . . . ," she began to offer.
"What for?" he sincerely wanted to know.
Jasmin gave him an incredulous look, then held up the wet napkin enclosed in her fist.
"This is months of work for you," she explained, "and now it's . . . "
"All on computer," Ray assured her with a warm smile.
Jasmin stared at him uncomprehendingly. She couldn't understand how he could be so unperturbed about what had happened.
"Really," Ray said, seeing the need to assure her again. "That's just the result," he explained, pointing to the napkin in her upraised fist. "The formula, and all of its particulars is on computer file. I've already proofed it out to the models of your genetic structure, and the data's all there. It's just a matter of synthesizing another batch to the same specs. There's some specialized refining on some of the elements, but that's really no big deal."
Jasmin frowned at this. She understood what he'd said, but still, his unsettling calm would not be the way she would've reacted to months of her work winding up in a paper napkin.
"So," she ventured tentatively, "yer . . . okay with this?" she asked with reference to the napkin in her hand.
"No," Ray answered, "I'm not okay with it, but what's the point of crying over spilled . . . water?"
Observing him now, a warm glow ignited in the petite Asian's breast that quickly filled her being. Her look became dreamy, and just a bit unfocused.
"Is it any wonder that I love you?" she felt, then said.
"Hey, let's eat," he suggested, taking up his fork as he eyed the omelet on the plate in front of him.
Jasmin lingered a moment before she noted not too dryly, "You are such a bugger."
"But I'm your bugger," he told her after he'd hurriedly swallowed his first bite. He then looked at her as only he could. "And don't you forget it."
Jasmin's private glow intensified as she watched her man chow down. She lingered just a little more, then turned her attention to her single serving of WD40 enriched oatmeal.
They dealt with other topics as they ate. As no new napkin arrived, Jasmin kept the used one in her hand. She always held her napkin when they ate out, frequently employing it to dab suspected residue from the slightly insensitive one half of her lower lip. They discussed, at length, a presentation Jasmin had to give at work that coming Monday. It was at a conference of major importance to the company she worked for. It was also the first one of its kind that she'd been given to manage on her own, and she was understandably nervous about it. Ray probed her level of preparedness for the event as best as he could, and she felt somewhat reassured by her informed responses to his questioning, but still, it was much more responsibility than she was accustomed to, and she was concerned about her ability to handle it. Ray changed the topic to get her mind off an obviously worrisome subject. The ploy seemed to work as her mood brightened and, by the time their plates had been cleared, and they were savoring their last cup of coffee, they were smiling, and exchanging private glances as they talked.
It was during these lighter exchanges that Jasmin's behavior seemed to change. She started shifting her shoulders every so often, and took to rubbing the flat of her hand along her upper chest. She also seemed to be distracted in her conversation.
"Are you alright?" Ray asked at one point.
"Yeah, I . . . ," Jasmin answered quickly before she became aware of the sensation that her heart seemed to be functioning differently. The rate still felt to be its usual cool, calm fifty-two beats per minute, but it felt as though her heart was, somehow, beating deeper, and more fully, like it had suddenly become larger, and more powerful. " . . . I, uh . . . I'm feeling . . . ," she continued haltingly, wondering at the sensation. Although it was unusual, it was not at all unpleasant. "I'm feeling okay," she finally decided.
Ray imitated her shoulder movement for her benefit before he ventured, "You . . . look like you're uncomfortable."
His gesture called her attention to her own torso, and Jasmin immediately noticed that something wasn't right. She sat up, straightening her posture, and began randomly tugging, and pulling at her shirt.
"This top . . . ," she speculated hesitantly, "I know this sounds crazy, but . . . it feels like it's suddenly gotten smaller. Like . . . it shrunk."
Ray frowned at this, and studied her upper torso.
"Your shoulders look different," he stated after a moment or two.
"Really?" she asked as she looked at him with a curious frown of her own. "How so?"
"I'm not real sure . . . ," he ventured tentatively.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table so he could study her a bit closer. He noticed that the shoulder seams of her top were no longer resting on the center of her shoulder caps, but were now slightly above them.
"What's that top made of?" he asked her.
"Oh," Jasmin answered in a distracted fashion, her mind being focused on other things about herself, "I think it's like . . . forty percent cotton, and sixty percent acrylic - or something like that."
Ray mulled this information over for a moment.
"Fabric like that shouldn't suddenly start shrinking," he opined.
"I know," she agreed, still wondering as she tugged, and pulled, and periodically worked her shoulders. "It's really weird. It's like . . . ," she paused a moment to concentrate, then reported, "I'm breathing normally, but somehow . . . it feels like I'm breathing deeper."
Ray's eyes studied her shoulders again. The seams of her top were still where he'd last seen them, but, overall, her shoulders looked broader than he remembered them having been.
"Ugh . . . ," said Jasmin as she arched her spine, and drew her shoulders back. Ray saw the top stretch across her chest. He also saw two little mounds suddenly appear above the upper boarders of her brassiere cups.
"How's your bra feel?" he asked.
Jasmin's eyes quickly shifted up to him, looking a bit surprised at his posing such a question to her in public, but then she let her mind center on the area of her body he'd just made reference to. After mentally assessing the feel of her undergarment, she reported, "Tight." Ray could see her thorax visibly swell with her breathing, the material of her top stretching tighter across her chest as she inhaled. "Really tight," Jasmin added in bewilderment.
Ray kept his eyes on her, but his vision became unfocused with reflection. His unseeing eyes lowered as he came to wonder what was going on between them. With regard to how Jasmin was appearing to him; was he merely seeing things? And was she merely feeling things in regard to how her clothing fit? Had she been right about the food at Jimmy's all along, and now it was driving both of them insane? He smiled to himself at this last prospect, then leaned back enough to where he could work his hand into his trouser pocket without too much inconvenience. Once his groping fingers had latched onto it, he pulled out the empty chemical vial, and brought it up above the table so he could examine it. Resting his forearms on the table once again, he slowly rolled the little glass container over, and over in the fingers of both hands, watching the two to three drop quantity of clear liquid that was all that had remained after the spill.
"How are you feeling?" he asked her distantly, his attention still on the vial he kept on rolling slowly in his fingers.
"I'm feeling . . . ," Jasmin began, bringing Ray into her visual focus, and then she saw the vial. She watched it momentarily, then returned her focus to the task of self perception. "I'm feeling . . . ," she began again. It was difficult for her to identify, "a feeling of . . . awareness." She'd never felt what she was now experiencing before. "Awareness of . . . ," inklings which were new, and unfamiliar to her, " . . . of . . . ," but closely native to her, hardly foreign. "Awareness . . . ," she uttered softly. Let it come. Don't search, a tender urging told her. " . . . of . . . ," she barely spoke. Let it go. Surrender effort. Let all effort go. " . . . me." There you are.
Jasmin's eyebrows pricked, surprised at what she'd said. Ray had been watching her carefully as he continued fingering the vial.
"More," Jasmin said now, her tone both low, and somewhat mystical, even as she'd spoken with a certainty she hardly understood. She could feel strange new, "Forces," in her, "gathering." She had to think of them as forces, because they were both in evidence and, "increasing." Not that she was thinking of herself as being pressured, or under threat, but these, "Forces," as she somehow knew to call them, were not so quietly making room for themselves within her breast. Why was she so sure of these new, unheralded sensations? Her own reaction to them frightened her a bit. Not their fact so much, but more her unsuspecting and immediate sense of comfort with them. She did not feel compelled to challenge them, especially since they offered her no challenge, but she could definitely tell that their presence was, "intensifying."
Ray continued watching her carefully, wondering if she had more to say. Jasmin sat across the table from him apparently quite distracted with herself. He really didn't want to disturb her reverie, but still, he had to ask her, "Why?"
"What?" she asked, looking up with a start. She could see that Ray was frowning deeply in her direction. His look concerned her. "What, Deedee?" she asked of him.
Ray didn't answer. Jasmin could see that he was wrestling with a thought he didn't like. She could also see him nervously tapping the stoppered end of the little glass vial against the knuckle of a finger.
Needing an answer to Jasmin's peculiar behavior, and not finding one anywhere else, Ray slipped the vial into his shirt pocket, then picked up the napkin she'd been holding. He began to examine it, carefully unfolding it as he turned it over in his fingers. He didn't find what he was looking for, but he did find a possible answer.
"This napkin," he observed. "It's dry . . . "
A realization he didn't like imposed itself on his consciousness. He looked up across the table at Jasmin. He had to blink, and question his own vision before conceding that she looked different. Her appearance had changed in just the time he'd been looking away from her. What he could see of her upper body now looked larger, and fuller. Her shoulder caps extended beyond the shoulder seams of her top. The bulges over her bra had become larger, and more prominent. Her overall musculature looked thicker, and more defined.
"Impy," he called to her.
Jasmin didn't answer, but remained staring straight ahead, apparently seeing nothing. He could see that she was breathing normally, but it also looked as though she was breathing very deeply, the fabric of her top stretching tighter across her chest with each intake of air. He reached across the table, and took her hand.
"Jasmin."
"What?" she said with a start, her eyes focusing on him. She felt his touch, and immediately reciprocated.
"What are you feeling?" he asked her carefully.
Jasmin's vision became blurred again as she took a moment to consider his question.
"Movement," she answered distantly, "so much . . . movement. Incredible movement." Her eyes focused on him again. "Why?"
"This napkin you were holding," he told her as he looked it over in his hand. "There's no moisture in it. It's bone dry."
"Wul, what happened to that stuff of yours?"
"I don't know," Ray answered, now trying to feel any sign of moisture in the napkin.
"It must've evaporated then."
"No. Not that much volume over - what? . . . less than twenty minutes?" He felt the napkin as he studied it. "It couldn't've evaporated that fast."
Jasmin withdrew her hand from Ray. The sensations she'd spoken of were getting more intense, and coming to occupy more of her attention.
"Ray, something's happening," she stated, focusing her concentration inward. She knew that she was breathing far deeper than she thought she should be capable of. She felt her top becoming increasingly tight, and was now binding uncomfortably under her arms. Her bra straps felt like they were cutting into her flesh. Even her shorts were beginning to feel strange.
Ray looked up to her from the napkin in his hands, and at once noticed that she'd changed yet again. Her torso, arms and shoulders had become even broader, and thicker. The larger muscles of her arms, and shoulders had increased in size to the point where they'd individuated themselves from one another, and had become clearly defined. He'd never seen her chest expand so much as she breathed.
"Ray, what's happening?" Jasmin wanted to know.
She was now hyperconscious of increasingly powerful movement within her. Her clothing was becoming more, and more constricting. The elastic in her bra had somehow disappeared, and was threatening to crush her thorax. Ray looked at her in fearful amazement as he fingered the napkin.
"Jasmin," he told her in a far away voice, "your shirt isn't getting smaller." He could now plainly see that, "You're getting bigger."
"What?" she demanded in utter disbelief.
"You're growing," he told her in utter seriousness.
Jasmin sat there starring wide-eyed at him from across the table. Her distracted mind laboriously attempted to process what she'd just heard. She was having to consciously resist the urge to let herself become completely absorbed in an array of sensations which she had never felt before, but which she could not at all identify as being foreign to her.
"Don't be silly," she stated desperately. "That's . . . impossible," she went on to assert, and yet the feelings that were quickly overwhelming her now had a name: Expansion.
"The formula in this napkin couldn't have evaporated," Ray explained to her. "Especially not the way you were holding it in your hand." He demonstrated by completely enclosing the napkin in his fist. "Like this." He then went on, "With no air circulation, there's nowhere for the moisture to go."
"So . . . what happened to it?" Jasmin wanted to know.
Every nerve in her body now felt like it was on fire with an incredibly warming, cool blaze. She was finding it increasingly difficult to get a satisfying breath of air. Her bra was killing her.
"You absorbed it," she heard Ray tell her. The statement drew enough of Jasmin's attention away from the baffling turmoil going on inside her so she could hear him say, "You took the whole thing into your system through your skin."
"No," Jasmin wanted to declare, but, somehow, she couldn't. "No, that's . . . just not possible," she tried to state, even as she could now actually feel herself expanding.
"The formula that was in this vial was perfectly crafted to your individual genetic structure," Ray informed her, holding up the empty vial for her to see. "Your body recognized it as a part of you, and accepted it without question."
"No . . . ," Jasmin tried to deny as she pressed a hand to her chest. She was startled to encounter two fleshy mounds bulging over her bra. She looked down at herself to see the fabric of her top stretched tightly over the contours of a chest she didn't recognize. "My God . . . what's happening?" she softly cried.
"Jasmin," Ray called to her as he reached out to grasp her forearm. At once he noticed that her arm felt fuller, and very solid. "Impy, listen to me," he had to say before she met his gaze. She could see fear in his eyes. It didn't help.
"I don't know what's happening," he readily admitted. "I mean . . . I hardly know, but . . . the genetic mechanism that tells your body not to grow is being turned off."
Jasmin hadn't wanted to hear, and yet, she'd heard. "No," she tried to reply, her mind now darting wildly from one part of her body to another. Her perception was encountering tremendous movement everywhere. "That stuff . . . it evaporated . . . ," she tried to assert, but it came out sounding more like a desperate plea.
Ray took the napkin from his enclosed hand, and began unfolding it again. "A little over a week ago," he told her, "I left a sample of the formula on an examination slide at the lab. I forgot about it, and, when I went back to get it, it'd evaporated." He held up the fully opened, spotlessly white, paper napkin before her. "Evaporation leaves an orange residue."
Jasmin starred at the clean white napkin in Ray's hands. The sight of it made her expel a sick sounding gasp.
"Impy!" Ray quietly implored as he reached for her.
Jasmin could now feel the initial traces of new sensations occurring inside her. Stirrings which she somehow knew were the beginning of something incredible about to happen.
"What do I do?" she asked helplessly.
"I don't know," Ray answered with helplessness of his own. As he watched, he could almost see her body volume increasing before his eyes."
"Suffocating . . . ," Jasmin could scarcely say as she could scarcely breath, " . . . I have to get out of here . . . "
She reached for her purse on the seat beside her, looking so as to visually guide her hand. She froze suddenly when she caught sight of her reaching arm. It looked to be nearly twice as thick as it should've been. The muscles appeared to be extremely swollen, and bulged solidly under her skin. The veins on the back of her hand, and throughout her forearm were noticeably risen. Jasmin gaped in shock at her transformed limb.
"Oh my God!" she could barely squeak.
"Impy . . . ," Ray called to her.
"No . . . ," she said, unhearing as she grabbed her purse, and rose from the booth they were seated at. Without another word, she rushed out of the restaurant, and into the bowling alley.
Jasmin's abrupt departure caused a minor stir in the homey atmosphere of Jimmy's. People had paused to notice her as she'd left, and even some heads had turned. The ripple quickly passed, however, and things got back to normal once again.
Ray sat gazing blankly at the door Jasmin had disappeared behind. He felt lost in the presence of her sudden absence. He was now certain of what had happened, but had no idea of what was happening. What had happened was outside the perimeters of the lab model he'd carefully built, and monitored. Far outside. He tried to think of what to do in the face of what was happening, but all he had to go by was the model, and that was now useless. In frustration, Ray crushed the napkin in his fist, and threw it across the table. He cursed himself for not foreseeing what had happened. Desperate for a solution, he pulled out his note pad, and calculator.
"Dosage intensity of absorption vs. ingestion . . . ," he muttered to himself as he found a clean page in the note pad, and then began to search for what was happening.
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