"So this is the boob job project, right?" asked the heavyset man as he descended the staircase into the bowels of Connecticut Pharmaceuticals. As the Executive Vice President for Research and Development at one of the nation's premier biomedical research laboratories, Bill Forrester was usually a bit more diplomatic with his words. But, in the privacy of the stairwell, accompanied only by one of his more trusted employees, Forrester didn't need to bite his tongue.

"Yes, sir," Jake Rinaldi replied, a step behind and a stair up from his boss. The younger man had wanted to take the elevator, but Forrester had been adamant about taking the stairs, intent upon getting himself in better shape. As they were going down the stairs, however, Jake wasn't quite sure whom Forrester was trying to fool. The real test, Jake thought to himself, would be whether the older man would take the stairs back UP to the executive offices.

"I may not know the exact science," Forrester huffed, "but I know that we're sitting on a potential cash cow if we can stimulate natural breast enhancement."

"Well, it's not exactly natural," Jake interjected. "I mean, we're still working with a synthetic compound that we manufactured in the lab."

"I mean no knives," the heavier man growled. "No surgery, no silicon, no implants, no knives."

"A targeted second puberty, sir."

Deuterotone. The Deuce. Synthetic human hormone. Forrester didn't care whether it was swallowed, injected, or rubbed on - he just knew that Connecticut Pharmaceuticals would profit heavily upon a non-surgical alternative to breast augmentation. He, through Jake and the head of the Human Hormone Lab at ConnPharm, Dr. Natalie Hart, had been pushing research into deuterotone for nearly twelve years at that point. The patent had already been submitted and approved, and now the clock on ConnPharm's financial return was ticking. It would take another four years before they had finished the various phases of clinical trials, and another two or three before they finally put it out on the market. From there, they'd have just thirteen years to squeeze all the profit out of their decade and a half of research before their twenty-year FDA patent ran out and clones began to spring up.

And now there was a snag that would slow the process down.

"The girl, the guinea pig, she quit?" Forrester asked the younger man.

"Not exactly," Jake replied. "I don't know if she did it intentionally, or just honestly forgot about all the restrictions, but she fouled up her eligibility for Category F research by getting a tattoo."

Forrester stopped on the stairs, turned slowly, and stared angrily at Jake. "She got a tattoo? And screwed up six months worth of physicals, approvals, and paperwork?"

Since the deaths of seventeen people in a Beta Technologies drug test in Maryland two years earlier, the FDA had stepped up its requirements for human research to draconian levels. And it wasn't just the drug companies that had to meet significantly higher standards, but the research subjects themselves were forced to meet higher standards. Physical exams, medical histories, family backgrounds, pre-testing - the process for getting a volunteer through the FDA's hoops typically lasted longer than the course of the experiments themselves. And depending on which category the FDA placed that particular experiment, the conditions for being approved as an eligible candidate could add weeks to the process.

ConnPharm's deuterotone experiments had been labeled as "Category F," which Forrester understood to be something along the lines of "extraneous and risky" or "superfluous and unpredictable." Jake had lobbied heavily for the FDA to grant them "Category E" status, at the very least, but had been unsuccessful.

Thus, for twenty-two-year-old Emily DiStasio to become eligible for the deuterotone experiment, ConnPharm had been prepping her for nearly six months.

Apparently, she'd thrown an entire half-year away, simply by inking her skin up with a butterfly, or a rainbow, or whatever the hell else twenty-two-year-old girls were putting on their bodies nowadays, Forrester thought to himself.

"Intentionally?" Forrester asked, as he stared, annoyed, into Jake's eyes. That girl, and her butterfly, had probably just cost his company millions of dollars.

"Well, we don't know," Jake shrugged. "She said she hadn't fully considered the fact that a tattooing needle was still a subcutaneous needle. But, personally, I think that as the date got closer, she soured on the idea of spending a month of her life in Bullpen."

Forrester shuddered a little bit. He certainly couldn't blame anyone for wanting out of the Bullpen.

But this girl had known, from the very beginning, what she was getting herself into. She should have "soured upon the idea" six months earlier, and saved ConnPharm six months of their time. Not to mention whatever the cost was of getting someone approved for "Category F" research.

Still scowling, Forrester turned and continued his descent. "We're looking into it, right?"

"Yes, sir. It's not really a job for the researchers, though. Or really for me, for that matter. But I handed it over to Legal, and it's still on my scope."

"Good," the older man snarled. Intentional or not, Emily DiStasio had wasted ConnPharm's time and money. "And we have no one else, no volunteers, available for Category F?"

Jake gulped. "No, sir. This happened at a bad time. Dr. Cho's adult acne experiment reached Phase One three months ago, and Dr. Slattery's stimulated metabolism program is in the process of bringing in its volunteers now."

"We can't just pull one of Slattery's volunteers?"

"Ninety-nine subjects aren't enough to finish out the FDA's Phase One. So if we give someone to Rivers, Forsythe, and Hart, we end up damaging Dr. Slattery's experiment. Which we could do, I guess, but that nullifies the results of the ninety-nine other Category F volunteers in that one."

Boob jobs and diet pills, Forrester shook his head. That's what Connecticut Pharmaceuticals had become.

"Damn it," he swore. "And there's nothing coming down the pipes?"

"We began the Category F process three weeks ago, so that we'll have the volunteers for Phase One of the deuterotone project when we finish with the early analysis. We could probably get the FDA to bend on the early analysis, at least, and let us just move right to Phase One." It would be a tough sell, Jake thought to himself. But the initial testing process, on one volunteer rather than a hundred, wasn't codified anywhere or part of the FDA's legalese. It just tended to be a good practice. Should something unpredictable pop up, it was less tragic to deal with one volunteer, rather than seventeen.

Forrester, gruff and mercenary though he may have been, seemed to have some misgivings about skipping the early analysis. "No, no. We need it. Even leaving aside the moral and humanitarian concerns, we have to worry about liability and public relations."

"Damn it," Forrester swore again.

They continued down the steps towards the Human Hormone Lab in silence for a few moments.

"Forsythe?" Forrester asked. "That's the one with the legs, right?"

Jake smiled at the older man's sexist comment. "Dr. Noah Forsythe does indeed have legs, sir. But I think you mean Rivers. Erica Rivers."

"Rivers," the vice president repeated, letting the name swirl around in his mouth like a fine wine. He didn't know much about her, other than that she had Ph.D. in something or another, she had black hair, and she had fantastic legs.

"The deuterotone project - that's hers?"

"Yes, sir. It had been Dr. Hart's, but when we pulled her up to take over the Human Hormone Lab, Dr. Rivers was made principal investigator." Jake paused. "She looks young, but between CalTech, Hopkins, and MIT, she's more than qualified."

"Hmm," was all Forrester had in reply, content upon letting the dirtier thoughts circulate through his head.

As they stepped out of the stairwell and into the Human Hormone Lab, Forrester's eyes were treated to what his memory was fixated upon.

She was tall, perhaps 5'7" or even 5'8". She had dark black hair, meticulously tied back in a bun on the back of her head, away from her face. She had thin lips, a sharp jaw line, and two of the most alluring green eyes hidden behind her geek-chic rimmed glasses. Beneath the white lab coat, Forrester imagined that she had dressed herself in something sensible and conservative, yet fashionable at the same time. Even through the coat, the heavy-set old man could see that her figure was striking - slender and inviting. Her chest was neither big nor small, but it seemed to be the perfect fit on a perfect female specimen. And unlike most of the other female eggheads and lab geeks, she seemed meticulously put-together and flawlessly made up.

This was Erica Rivers.

And she had solved their problem.

"I'm doing it," she said announced as the two businessmen joined the researchers in the lab. "I'm volunteering myself."

***

Throughout childhood, girls and boys are essentially the same creature. Yes, there are different parts and different societal pressures and expectations. But from a chemical standpoint, natural steroids and hormones within girls and boys are nearly identical.

This changes, of course, with the onset of puberty. Boy or girl, the body's hypothalamus eventually senses that it is time for change, and begins to secrete gonadatrophin releasing hormone, or GnRH, into the bloodstream. This sets off a chain reaction elsewhere in the body, with the pituitary gland releasing Follicle Stimulating Hormone (FSH) and Luteinizing Hormone (LH), which, in turn, kick starts hormone production in the testicles and ovaries. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone soon flood the blood stream, allowing the miracle of puberty to begin.

Unfortunately, many factors have been linked to incomplete breast development, from an improper diet to stress to over-exercising. Far too many teenage girls accidentally and unknowingly stunt the full growth of their own breasts. But many, many women, even after reaching their fullest potential breast size, remain unhappy with the size of their breasts. Miracle bras, herbal treatments, growth creams, breast pumps, and even surgery are all available, with various levels of success, labor, and emotional turmoil.

But Connecticut Pharmaceuticals had discovered a means of "natural" breast enhancement, allowing a synthetic human hormone to re-start the process of puberty, and specifically target mammary growth. This discovery had been an unintentional side effect of earlier research, but the synthetic hormone "deuterotone" had proved wildly successful at that one particular phase of pubescent development in females. Or, at least, female mice. And rats. And rabbits. And chimps.

Whether or not it would be successful in women, however, remained to be seen. All that was standing in the way was an unthinking twenty-two-year-old girl's spontaneous decision to get a tattoo. But now, even that no longer seemed to be an obstacle.

"I'm volunteering myself," Erica repeated to the two men who had just joined them in the lab.

Jake glanced around at the others in the room. Dr. Noah Forsythe sat behind a desk to his right - a tall, awkward researcher who served as Erica's partner on the deuterotone project. Dr. Hannah Cho, who had her own projects and her own lab down the hall, was on a lab bench to his left, idly swinging her feet. Dr. Natalie Hart, who had initiated the deuterotone project years earlier, stood with her arms crossed and back against the far wall. Scattered randomly around the room, wherever there had been an open seat, were Rivers's and Forsythe's three lab assistant - Mike Takahashi, Vijay Patel, and Aaron Abrahams.

And, standing resolutely before him, was Dr. Erica Rivers.

Before Jake could ask the first and most obvious question, Erica offered, "I'm already approved for Category F research. I volunteered myself for Dr. Cho's project earlier this year."

Forrester stood silent for a moment, mulled this over, and then asked, "Wouldn't that make you ineligible for this project? If you were apart of Cho's thing, doesn't that mean you were taking pills that cured adult acne, or caused adult acne, or whatever it was that was going on?"

"She was part of the control group," Hannah Cho replied for her friend, slightly put off by the fact that ConnPharm's executive vice president didn't know a thing about her project. "Sugar pills. She spent six weeks taking sugar pills."

"Certainly you need to be on this end of the needle, though, for this experiment to go right," Jake scoffed at Erica. Turning to Hannah, he asked, "What about the rest of the control group? I mean, there has to be someone else, other than Erica, who we can talk into coming in for a few thousand more dollars. Someone else still has to be Category F approved."

Hannah shook her head. "There were twenty people in my control group. Eleven men, nine women."

"And none of the other women....?" Jake asked.

Obviously, they'd all already pitched in to find an alternative.

"Flu," Aaron replied for the first of the nine women.

"Pregnant," Vijay continued for the second. "As of last week."

"Belly-button piercing," Noah offered for the third.

"Uninterested, doesn't like needles, and uncooperative for my experiment," Hannah cycled through the next three of the group.

"Angry about the fact that she still has acne," Mike said, excusing the seventh.

"Claustrophobic," Natalie excused the eighth. "Not an issue for Dr. Cho's experiment, but a liability if we're using the Bullpen."

"Which leaves me," Erica finished. "It's me, or we wait six months."

Forrester raised an eyebrow. "You don't sound terribly thrilled by either of those alternatives."

"Should I be happy about subjecting myself to my own experiment? Should I be happy about the concept of radically altering my own body? Should I be happy about spending four weeks cooped up in - of all places - the Bullpen?"

All eight people in the room glanced around at each other gloomily.

"But I do get Emily's $2500, don't I?" Erica made an attempt to lighten the mood. "That's a plus, at least."

Jake cracked a smile, still going over Erica's suggestion to use herself. He had been wracking his brain for an alternative to the DiStasio problem all afternoon, but had gotten nowhere. He simply wasn't going to come up with an alternative to their newest volunteer.

But he did foresee a problem. "I don't know how to put this," Jake began delicately, "but Emily was particularly well-suited for this project due to her...um...bust size." Emily was nearly flat-chested. Erica was not. "Is this still going to work?"

The raven-haired girl swallowed hard. "The model that we've been working on, and the experiments we've done on other mammals, suggests that we were probably going to see an increase of about two cup sizes. I may not be an A-cup," Erica smiled weakly, "but there's always room to grow."

She looked at the two men standing across the room. "B to D," she offered after a few seconds pause, answering the question that they were asking themselves internally.

Distracted for a moment by such an intimate revelation, Jake had to shake the mental image from his head before moving on. "So in order to reinstate you as a Category F human research subject?"

"Well, I'm still cleared," Erica corrected him. "I don't need to be 'reinstated.' I do need to submit an updated physical..."

"Which I can give her this evening," Hannah offered.

"..and I am going to need to fill out about an hour's worth of paperwork, from release forms to informed consent documentation..."

"Which I've already begun to put together," Noah interjected. "If Erica wants, I can stay late tonight and go through it with her after she's done with Hannah."

Erica nodded, and then turned back to Jake and Forrester. "Factor in a two-week turnaround time from the FDA, and we're right on schedule, albeit with a different test subject."

"And the project? The science?" Gesturing to Noah and the three lab assistants, Forrester asked, "Do you trust these monkeys to run the lab side of equation while you're sequestered down in the Bullpen?"

The girl smiled. "I'm still running the show, just from a different vantage point. And while I may not be the one staring into the microscope, I can still go over the paperwork and analysis side of the project. If anything, this'll give me firsthand knowledge of my research, without having to rely on complaints or comments from someone else."

The girl clearly didn't want to do this. She was putting on a brave face. She was selling the idea to her company's higher-ups. She was putting herself out there to stay in the good graces of ConnPharm itself, to protect her project and the expected profit margin of the company she worked for. Five months of waiting for the next available subject would be unbearable.

"You've been awfully quiet," Forrester commented, looking in Natalie's direction. The older woman was still standing on the far side of the lab, her arms crossed in front of her. "After all, this was your project, once upon a time."

"Once upon a time," the blonde biologist repeated. "And I still believe it, I still believe in the promise that deuterotone has to offer. But this is Erica's project, and Erica seems to believe in it just as much as I do. If I already had Category F clearance, I'd submit myself as a subject in two seconds flat."

"Well, it's my Bullpen," Forrester began. "And it's Dr. Rivers's project. But it's your lab, Dr. Hart. And if you see no alternative to using one of your own people, then you have my approval."

The blonde nodded, and the black-haired girl forced a smile. Erica had been the one who briefed Emily on exactly what her role would be as an early analysis test subject in the deuterotone project. But even still, Erica had no idea what she was getting herself into.

***

The Bullpen may have been one of the most state-of-the-art innovations at the ConnPharm compound in rural Connecticut, but human test subjects, unless they were natural exhibitionists, dreaded their time in the room.

It had been built four years earlier with primate testing in mind, and only at the last minute did a few researchers speak up and suggest that it might be useful to build human accommodations, as well. But, while some facilities and creature comforts had been incorporated to support human inhabitation, the Bullpen was still primarily used to run experiments on chimps, orangutans, and their brethren. Erica herself had run some of her initial deuterotone experiments on chimps in the Bullpen. In fact, over four years since first being constructed, the Bullpen had only been used for human experimentation six times, all men, and none for more than a few days at a time.

What appealed to researchers about the Bullpen, though, were the cutting-edge sensors embedded within the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room. The whole room, and its few furnishings, had been designed around innovative "tactile waves," calculating for how such waves moved and bounced and returned to their source. It was as if the Bullpen itself were a giant CAT scanner, feeding multiple layers of data and readings into the mainframe in the Outer Room. The scientists who used the room as a tool to further their research simply referred to the tactile wave technology as "TW emitters."

The state-of-the-art sensor technology allowed researchers to monitor and record just about anything they were interested in, all at the same time - body temperature, heartbeat, stress, pupil dilation, body odor, and so on and so on. It could take readings similar to x-rays, and others similar to actual CAT and MRI scans. Normal or abnormal, the emitters could read it all. Five minutes would give most researchers all the information than they could possibly ever need, and five days would provide more than they'd be able to sift through in a lifetime. Erica would be in the Bullpen for five weeks.
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.
Natalie saw the difficulty Erica was having, and saw the apprehension and embarrassment in the girl's face. She made eye contact for the first time in a few minutes, and placed her hands gently on the girl's naked shoulders.

"Calm down," the older woman assured her protégé quietly. "Take a deep breath. Don't worry about me, or Colin, or Noah. Take your time."

Stepping just to one side of the girl, Natalie reached around the Erica's back with her right hand, and skillfully released the clasp that held the pink bra on. It was a bit too intimate, and a quite few steps beyond their normal personal boundaries, but the blonde could tell that the younger woman was struggling with her nerves.

Erica's pink cups were still in place over her breasts, and Natalie stepped back and away, saying, "Look, I'm just going to go over and sit up with Colin and Noah. Just take a deep breath, take your time, and finish up when you're ready."

The girl nodded. Natalie was nearly twenty-five-years Erica's senior, and in this situation, she suddenly had taken on a very motherly feeling. She was right - Erica needed to calm herself down and complete the task at-hand, or she was going to give herself an aneurysm. It was going to be tough at first. It was going to be awkward. But she had five weeks in front of her, and she would adjust. She just needed to take the first few steps.

Erica let the bra fall forward and off her body, revealing large brown areoles and a pair of nipples that sat higher on her breasts than on most other women's breasts. In fact, in college, Erica's roommate Julie had even accused her of having implants, as she possibly could have revealed quite a bit of each mammary below the nipple without actually exposing the nipple itself. Though they seemed to fit her body perfectly, Erica had always thought of her breasts as just a bit smaller than she would have liked. In just a few weeks' time, however, that wouldn't be a problem.

She savored the last few seconds in her panties, but then hooked her thumbs under the waistline and slid the underwear down her legs, slithering out gracefully. Her long, luscious limbs did, indeed, have a terminal point, flowing nearly flawlessly into two shapely buttocks at the top. The only slight imperfection on Erica's entire body, the only thing that marred her silken skin, was a single café-au-lait mark just below her right buttock. It was a discoloration, hardly bigger than a nickel, and slightly brown in color. But, if anything, Erica's single flaw made her backside that much more bewitching.

Her whole body was slightly tan, completely uniform, with no tan lines. Hannah had suggested Erica go lie in a tanning bed for a bit that weekend. She'd be indoors for five whole weeks, and the tan itself would dissipate over the course of the experiment. But if Erica was going to parade around naked for thirty-five days, she might as well not look like a pasty-skinned corpse at the outset.

Presentation, apparently, had carried over from the tan to Erica's pubic area. She was meticulous about every other part of her life, and the hair growing just above her nether regions was no different. She was nearly shaved, aside from a neat little triangle just above the top of her slit. Leg hair would grow, her tan would fade, and ever her pubic hair would grow out, but Erica had fully intended to step into the Bullpen looking her best. If she was going to be seen nude by all her friends and co-workers, she was going to make the right impression.

Erica cursed herself five minutes later. Instead of tucking the pink lace neatly under her skirt and blouse, she absentmindedly left her bra and panties sitting atop her other clothing. Anyone who walked into the Observation Room, past the cubby, and to the ops desk, would be able to glance inside and see the bright pink lingerie within. But Erica had been nervous about the three people just a few yards away, nervous about presenting herself in the Bullpen, and nervous about what the next five weeks would hold for her.

Her glasses were the last article to be deposited into the cubby - she wouldn't need them to read the large print of the projection screen. But as took them off, Erica couldn't help but feel that much more naked, that much more uncomfortable.

Without looking in the direction of the ops desk, Erica took a deep breath and walked to door of the Bullpen. Like the automatic glass doors at the supermarket, the door to the Bullpen slid open to one side at the command of the ops desk – though, it had been open ever since Erica, Natalie, and Noah had first arrived. But Erica had taken only one step into the room when a screeching alarm had begun to wail.

Erica's whole body jumped at the sound of the claxon, terrified that it was some sort of fire alarm and she'd be forced to evacuate in just her birthday suit.

"You've got something metal with you," Colin shouted across the Observation room, as Erica stepped back from inside the Bullpen. "Rings? Earrings?"

"Shit," the brunette cursed herself. She'd forgotten to take out her earrings. Her heart racing from the alarm, she removed her jewelry, looking up to see that Colin had joined her down on the floor of Observation Room. She was suddenly conscious of the way her breasts were dangling in front of her, acutely aware that her nipples were as hard as diamonds. The man's proximity to her naked body sent a shiver down Erica's spine.

She handed the earrings to Colin glumly, apologizing for the mistake, and turned back around to enter the Bullpen.

Colin winced, not wanting to call the girl back. But he had to. "Um, Erica?"

"Yes?" she replied, partially turning. She just wanted to get this over with, get into the Bullpen, and get on with the experiment.

"I need the elastic, or the scrunchy, or whatever that is in your hair, as well."

Erica was already blushing all over, but the absentmindedness first of the earrings, and now of the hair elastic, embarrassed her a bit more. "Sorry," she offered again, letting her ebony tresses down, and loose, out of the ponytail.

"It's alright," Colin answered. "No big deal." Taking the girl's hair elastic and earrings, the technician made his way back towards the operations desk, while the girl herself stepped through the door and into her prison.

***

Erica had been inside the Bullpen before, but never facing the prospects of remaining inside for such a long period of time. An orangutan named Yogi currently held the longest record for time spent in the Bullpen - four months and nine days. A random college student who had volunteered for a project held the human record - five days, three hours. Erica might not have been in danger of breaking Yogi's record, but she was going to pass by that second record by a comfortable margin.

She was surprised, however, how clean and clinical it smelled inside the Bullpen. She had been expecting the stench of monkeys and feces, but was pleasantly surprised when she smelled absolutely nothing at all. Obviously, the Bullpen staff had done a good job of preparing the room for her.

"I'm going to close the door now," Colin announced over the intercom and into the Bullpen. "Okay?"

"Okay," Erica replied, turning to face the mirror wall behind her, glancing out into the Observation Room for what she guessed would be the last time in a while. Behind her, the doors mechanically slid into place, covering the gap in the wall that she had entered through. It was disconcerting - knowing that Colin, Noah, and Natalie had no problem seeing her through the walls of the Bullpen, while she herself saw only her own naked reflection in the walls.

She looked around the room, finding it completely barren. There was a small door on the far side, from which the toilet rolled out of. Erica was none too keen on the idea that she'd have to ask the technician to provide her with the toilet, or ask the technician to flush it when she was through with it. But she had decided that neither of those things compared with actually USING the toilet while someone else watched. Just considering that eventuality made Erica shudder. She had made sure to use the bathroom in the Human Hormone Lab one last time, right before coming down to the Bullpen.

Below the empty space where the toilet would emerge was a drain, located at the nadir of a gradual decline around it. Directly above the drain, mounted in the ceiling, was a showerhead. Erica would be able to shower and clean herself each morning. Though she'd have no one to meet and no real reason to shower each day, the girl looked forward to getting into some sort of routine.

The Bullpen had diagnostics built into the toilet, and the shower drain, as well, for urinalysis and various other tests. The systems were temperamental, though, and the most commonly failing tools that the room had to offer.

Facing the toilet-drawer while standing atop the drain, there was a thin, horizontal indent into the wall, the only imperfection in a perfectly cubical room. That shelf was where Erica would keep shampoo, soap, toothpaste, and a toothbrush.

"Erica?" Colin called to her over the intercom.

"Yes?" she replied, unsure of where to look. She knew where the ops desk was located, in relationship to the Bullpen. But she couldn't see the man that she was addressing - only herself, staring awkwardly back at her.

"We're getting some of the initial readings, but your hair is fouling things up a little," the technician explained. None of the previous human test subjects had had long hair, as they were all men with close-cropped hair-dos. "So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to spend a couple of hours playing with and modifying the emitters a little, and maybe adjust some of the system's algorithms."

He paused for a moment, before continuing, "If I can't get some sort of baseline, some sort of equilibrium, without too much interference and fluctuation, we may have to cut your hair."

It had been a possibility, but Erica had hoped that she'd be able to keep her long black hair. How would she explain herself to Tom when she finally saw him again?

The thought of her boyfriend produced a pang of guilt. She had lied to him, about where she was going to be and what she was going to be doing. She was in Arizona, running her experiments in a government-provided facility in the middle of the desert, not being poked and prodded, gawked at in the nude, only a few miles away in Avon, Connecticut. Though she hated being dishonest, Erica hadn't been able to tell him the truth – it was too embarrassing, too awkward, and too intimate.

And she didn't want to cut her hair. But then, she also certainly didn't want to be spending five weeks locked naked inside a box. She'd already sacrificed herself for her science - she could sacrifice some more.

"Okay," she heard herself respond, looking up towards where the intercom projected Colin's voice. He was standing less than ten feet away, but was unseen through the mirror glass.

"Is there a way that I can see you guys? Like, through the projector?" Erica knew full well that she'd be able to see Colin, Noah, and Natalie on the outside, through a camera feed that could be projected from the ops desk into the Bullpen. At least then she'd have a frame of reference, somewhere to look.

"That's a negative," Colin quickly and succinctly replied. "Any sort of projection fouls up the baseline readings and requires a little extra energy. Let's just see if we can combat the problem with your hair before we flip on the projector. Okay?"

"Okay," Erica repeated.

Standing in the center of big, cubical box, the girl was unsure of exactly what to do with herself. The room was lit from above, a soft glow emanating from the ceiling. She could see her own reflection as she looked towards the mirror, which only served to remind her of how naked she really was. Her skin was exposed for everyone to see. Her pubic hair was exposed for everyone to see. Her tits, smallish now, but set to balloon over the next few weeks, were exposed for everyone to see. And it all began to sink in - she wouldn't be able to cover herself again for five more weeks.

***

For three hours, Erica sat in the Bullpen, bored out of her mind. Colin had gone completely incommunicado, not even updating her as to his progress on reworking the emitters. And, after standing in the center of the room and staring uncomfortably at her own naked body for a few minutes, Erica had opted to sit down against the far wall, bored and gazing blankly towards where she guessed the ops desk to be.

There wasn't any less humiliating way to stand, and there certainly wasn't any less humiliating way to sit. Erica had originally just plopped herself down in the center of the room, but didn't think about her level of exposure while sitting Indian-style on the floor until she had done so. After realizing her exhibition, the brunette had repositioned herself with her back against the far wall, her bare ass cheeks on the bare floor, her legs crossed out in front of her to hide her pussy, and her arms folded across her chest in an obvious attempt to shield her nipples.

It was in this position that Erica found herself when the intercom came to life once again. "Erica?"

"Yes?" she answered the sound of Colin's voice.

"Um, I've got some bad news."

"My hair?"

"Yeah," Colin sighed.

"I'm not going to have to take a razor to my scalp, am I?" Erica asked, half-joking. She assumed that she'd have to have her hair cut to the same length as the men who had inhabited the Bullpen before her.

"No, no. In fact, I think if we can just bring it down to somewhere manageable, like somewhere just above your chin, that might work."

Well, at least she wouldn't have to go boys' length, Erica consoled herself.

Colin continued, "Or, at least, I think we can get away with that. The calculations I've made, and the models that I've run, seem to work well enough with your hair just a few inches shorter."

"So what's the plan?" the brunette asked.

"Well, we've got two options, I guess. Number one is that we make you a hair appointment for later this evening, you go home tonight, and come back to get a fresh start in the Bullpen tomorrow."

The appeal of putting her clothes back on was undeniable. But having already stripped once, Erica was not sure she'd be able to do it again the following day.

"Number two," Colin continued, "is that we do it ourselves, just you and me."

Despite her meticulous nature, and despite the fact that each and every one of Erica's hairs was in place each and every morning, Erica chose this second option. She had five weeks for whatever sort of chop-job she was about to receive to grow out. And it'd be over with now - quickly and painlessly - without forcing her to put clothes back on, and then take them off again. The sooner the baseline readings began, the sooner the experiment itself would begin, the sooner it would be over, and the sooner Erica could put clothes back on and go home.

"I'm just going to grab you a towel," the technician said after he had heard the girl's reply. "We can do it right out here in the Observation Room."

"Okay," Erica heard herself meekly reply. A towel? To wrap around her body? One of the selling points of Plan Number Two had been that she'd avoid having to dress and then undress again. Colin had been seated just a few feet away, staring at her naked body for over three hours at that point. Did she really need to cover herself up again?

But, despite all this, Erica couldn't bring herself to voice these concerns out loud. If she had said anything against the towel, it might have seemed that she was enjoying this, that she was an exhibitionist unwilling to cover her own nudity. And so, she swallowed hard, and waited for the door to the Bullpen to slide open once again.

She didn't see Colin right away, but rather a strong-looking forearm extending a simple red bath towel. Erica had no idea where Colin had found the towel, but she half-heartedly thanked him for it as she reached out to grab it. The way Colin had positioned himself was somewhat ridiculous, Erica thought to herself. Yes, she understood that he was hiding around the corner of the open door to give her a sense of privacy, some sort of peace of mind. But he was also directly in front of her, staring through the mirror-glass of the Bullpen at Erica's naked body.

The towel wasn't a large one, and after Erica had wrapped it around her upper body and tucked it in on itself, she noticed that it fell only slightly past the bottom of her ass. She'd have to be careful stepping from the Bullpen, and she'd have to make sure to cross her legs while Colin gave her the haircut. Erica laughed at herself as she realized the false logic of these thoughts - Colin had been looking at her for the past three hours as he tooled and retooled the Bullpen. Clearly, she shouldn't have been quite so concerned about accidentally flashing him over the next few minutes.

She stepped out from the Bullpen, and back into the Observation Room. Natalie and Noah had long since left, isolating the girl with just this one other man. But Colin, despite the fact that he was still wearing all of his clothes, seemed as ill-at-ease with the situation as the Erica herself.

The technician hadn't provided her with a chair or a place to sit, as Erica had been expecting. Instead, he had simply dragged a large trash barrel out from behind the ops desk and placed it in the center of the room. She wasn't going to be seated, or receive a shampoo, or be provided with idle chatter and gossip. This haircut was going to be quick and utilitarian.

"Do you want a place to sit?" Colin asked, after seeing the hesitant look on Erica's face. "I just figured I'd have you lean over the trash, and avoid the clean-up."

"Yeah, that's fine," Erica replied, shaking her head. "I can stand. It's not a big deal."

And so, wrapped in a towel that rose up her thighs to a point of near indecency, Erica leaned forward at the waist, bracing herself on the edge of the trash barrel. Colin already had the scissors in hand, though uncertainty over what he was about to do left him frozen a few feet away.

He shook off the doubt, however, and explained, "I'm going to bring it a bit higher than we actually need, just a few inches above your chin. That way, we can let it grow out a bit, and we're not going to have to worry about doing this again."

Erica nodded.

Colin took a step closer, and raised the scissors to the girl's long, beautiful black hair. Before she knew it, Erica heard the first snip, and watched as a length of hair tumbled downwards into the trash. It was quickly joined by quite a bit more.

"The girls," Colin began. "Jamie would never let me do this to the twins."

"That's reassuring," Erica joked, watching inch after inch of her ebony hair fall into the trash below her.

After a few minutes of cutting, Colin brushed the loose hairs off of Erica head with his fingers. The girl couldn't help shivering because of the contact, though she hoped that Colin hadn't noticed. She herself shook her head and ran her hands through her hair, shocked by exactly how short it was.

Colin took a step back to admire his work, giving the towel-clad girl a thumbs-up. "Not bad," he offered. "It's really not bad at all."

Erica was doubtful. But what was done was done, and it wasn't as if she had to go out in public with this particular haircut anytime in near future. After she had discarded all the loose hairs, she looked back up at the technician, asking, "So you think it'll work?"

"It should only take about five or ten minutes before we know. And then we can get started with all the baseline readings in earnest."

"And Noah gave you all the information and settings were looking for?"
"No. He was waiting for me to finish messing with the emitters." He frowned. "Sorry."

Erica ran her hands through her hair again, unnerved by how short it was. It had been since her sophomore year of college that her hair had been this short. "It's okay," she replied. "It's not like I'm going to see him out here anyways."

"Yeah," Colin agreed, unsure of exactly what to say. There were a few more moments of awkward silence, before Colin finally said, "Okay, let's give those emitters a try. The sooner you're in, the sooner you're out."

Erica had been thinking the same thing. But, as she'd expected, covering herself for even such a brief period of time made it that much harder to shed the towel. Swallowing hard, she unwrapped the small towel and tossed it towards the lockers, watching it drop to the floor of the Observation Room. She stepped completely naked back into her prison.

"Oh, wow," Erica offered as she caught sight of her reflection in the Bullpen's mirror glass. The door rolled into place behind her. "Not bad at all."

Would it have been a haircut that Erica picked out for herself? No.

Was it uneven in places? Of course.

Was Colin going to win a hairdressing award? Of course not.

But short as it was, as quickly as it had been done, Erica had to admit that her new look wasn't all that bad. Gone were the long strands of black hair hanging alluringly down past her shoulder blades. But her hair was still longer than she'd expected it to be, falling cutely past her ears and nicely framing her face.

In fact, Erica was still taking in her new haircut when Colin called through the intercom, "Perfect!"

"Yeah?"

"Yup. Absolutely no problem with the emitters."

"Which means I can use the projector, right?" Erica asked. Her first three hours in the Bullpen had been excruciating, not just because of the nudity, but because of the absolute boredom. Having had nothing to do, all Erica had been able to think about was the fact that she was naked, and that people were looking at her through the walls of the Bullpen. All that she'd been able to do was stare at her own naked body in the mirror glass across the room.

She was answered by a flickering on the wall furthest from the ops desk, as the projector came to life. Unfortunately, the image that greeted her was that of the ops desk camera, with Colin leering into the Bullpen. Suddenly, the distance between "here" and "there" seemed infinitely smaller, and the idea that there were people looking at her body from "out there" began to conflict with the presence of Colin's image "in here." Of course, so long as Colin was staring into the camera at the desk, it meant that he wasn't staring out across the Observation Room and into the Bullpen through the wall.

"Well, it's three thirty now," the technician announced. "Anything on TV that you're jonesing to see on a Monday afternoon?"

"Just whatever you have for a DVD out there is fine," Erica replied. She didn't want to do work. She didn't want to think about her situation. She just wanted to sit back and vegetate in front of a movie, getting her mind off of the past three hours and the upcoming five weeks. And so, as Noah returned and helped Colin adjust the measurements that the Humane Hormone Lab needed, Erica sat on the floor of the Bullpen watching "Ocean's 11."

***

It was only a few hours later when Erica felt as if she needed to use the bathroom. Colin was still on duty, though Noah had come and gone by that point. Erica couldn't bring herself to ask the man for the toilet, though, preferring to wait for him to leave and for Wendy Milne to take over. It was silly, and childish - Erica would eventually have to use the bathroom while Colin was on duty. But she excused herself from this embarrassment on her first day. After all, she'd debased herself enough in front of him for the first day.

But by six, after she'd moved onto her second movie, after the emitters had all been adjusted, and after both Colin and Noah had gone home for the night, Erica decided that it was time to bite the bullet. After all, she'd been in the Bullpen for six hours at that point.

"Wendy?" Erica asked as she stood, visibly blushing from head to toe.

Erica had met Wendy countless of times before. They weren't friends, but it wasn't as if they had a bad relationship at all. The black-haired biochemist had her work, and the pierced and tattooed, peroxide-blonde technician had hers. They had little in common, but it never ceased to amaze Erica how open the girl had always been with her. Within hours of their first meeting, back during the primate trials, Wendy had begun talking about her menstrual cycle, her clitoral piercing, and the size of her ex-boyfriend's penis. Erica was completely buttoned-up and tight-lipped, conservative when it came to sex, or talking about sex. Wendy, though, didn't have the same hang-ups, and didn't seem capable of being embarrassed.

The blonde girl was certainly not going to understand the level of humiliation that asking for the toilet was going to bring to Erica.

"Yup?"

"Do you think I could use the bathroom?"

"The toilet, yeah," Wendy replied. Within seconds, the toilet had emerged from the wall. There was no toilet seat, just porcelain all the way around.

The room was large and open, making Erica feel uncomfortable about her lack of privacy. Of course, there was no one in the Bullpen with her, and she couldn't see out beyond the glass wall.

But she knew that Wendy was out there, watching her urinate. She knew that she was being recorded as she did so, making her humiliation something that would stand the test of time. Still, she sat, she peed, and she asked Wendy to retract the toilet into the wall.

"I bet that must get old," Erica said aloud. "Opening and closing the toilet all the time."

"Well, I mean, it's different with the men," Wendy replied casually.

Erica wasn't quite sure what Wendy was getting at. Men needed to use the bathroom just as much as women. How was it different? That she wasn't peeing while standing up?

"The men have, in the past, just pissed in the shower drain," the female technician replied. She then added, "But don't worry, that place has been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected like seven or eight times over. Colin's been making us scrub up in there for the better part of two weeks."

Erica wasn't terribly concerned about the sanitation issue. After all, this room had hosted scores of chimps and orangutans over the years, and Erica knew from experience that peeing the shower drain was a lot cleanlier than some of the things she'd seen the apes do.

What concerned her, though, was the fact that she was being treated differently than the men who had come before her. That she, as a subject, required extra work on the part of the technicians who watched over her. The thought made the girl uncomfortable.

So uncomfortable, in fact, that it festered over the next few hours. Erica was watching "Doc Hollywood," but had a hard time concentrating. She'd been stripped naked. She'd been locked inside a box. She'd been given a forced haircut. And she'd urinated in front of another woman, as well as literally hundreds of little recording devices. But yet, she was concerned about the added effort that she, as a woman, required on the part of the Bullpen staff. No, it wasn't much work, but it seemed as if, given the choice between a male test subject and a female test subject, they would go with a male subject every time.

Maybe it had more to do with the fact that the technical staff was more men than women, that sexual harassment concerns were lessened with a naked man instead of a naked woman. But Erica didn't want yet another reason to choose a man for research over a woman.

Could she use the drain? Could she bring herself to squat over the shower and relieve herself that way? Certainly, it was humiliating, but was it really that much more humiliating than sitting on the toilet bowl? Was it more humiliating than asking the technicians for the toilet, and then asking them to flush it when she was done?

It was around ten o'clock that evening that Erica felt the urge to go again.

And, instead of requesting the toilet from Wendy, she simply crouched down over the shower drain. In the reflection across from her, Erica could see that she was blushing badly, embarrassed about what she was doing.

Thankfully, Wendy didn't say a thing, as Erica had feared she would. The embarrassment was excruciating, and she didn't want to talk about it. Maybe Wendy mentioned it to the other technicians, maybe she didn't. But Pete Bowie never brought it up, nor did his intern Tessa Romero during their shift afterwards. Colin never mentioned it once. For the next five weeks, it was just accepted that Erica would be using the drain at the corner of the Bullpen, and no one acknowledged this development. It just was.

That first night, falling asleep was difficult. None of the male subjects who had come before her had been particularly thrilled at the prospects of sleeping on the hard, white floor of the Bullpen, and Erica herself hadn't been looking forward to it. She tried sleeping on her left side, on her right side, and on her back, but she simply couldn't get comfortable. Even a pillow would have been a godsend.

But it wasn't so much the floor that kept Erica awake, no matter how ungiving it was. Rather, it was her own mind. She was still very much aware of her own nudity, as she had been all day, and aware that right at that moment, there was a woman on the other side of the wall watching her. In a few hours, Wendy would be replaced by another male technician and his female intern. Eight hours after that, it would be Tuesday morning, Colin would return, and the staff at Connecticut Pharmaceuticals would begin their day, breezing in and out of the Observation Room.

Each one of them was going to see her bare body. Each one of them was going to watch her shower in the nude, watch her work in the nude, watch her urinate in the nude. She had worked hard to gain the respect of her colleagues, and she couldn't help feeling that she was flushing it all away. Would they see her as Ph.D. that she was? Or would they see her as a sexual object, a naked girl to watch for their own amusement? She had gone from being biochemist Erica Rivers to peep-show girl Erica Rivers in no time at all.

It would be a long night.

It would be a long five weeks.