The Bullpen Ch. 06

Hannah remembered having laughed at Dr. Bernard's poor test subject with Erica. Though the time span was stuff of rumor, the twenty-one-year-old Wesleyan student had reportedly spent every waking hour with hard-on. And she remembered having gossiped for two or three days straight with one of the female lab assistants about the size of Jason Callahan's anatomy, while Erica laughed along with them, blushing the entire time.

Now, it was Erica who was subject of both the experiment and the idle chatter. Hannah was actually quite surprised that it had taken three and half weeks for the information to break, though she was unclear of who finally figured it out. Obviously, Erica's experiment was the one going on in the Bullpen, and Erica herself hadn't been seen coming or going from work at all in the past few weeks. But, perhaps it was so rarely the case that a test subject would be someone that any of the ConnPharm employees might recognize, that the idea of Erica experimenting upon herself took such a long time to materialize.

It had been the previous Tuesday when the news apparently reached a tipping point within the company, the same afternoon that Erica was supposed to be professing her apologies to Jamie Eggert. Erica's employee page, on ConnPharm's global Intranet, had suffered from a denial-of-service failure; so intriguing was the idea of a woman – and an attractive woman, if normally conservative in action and dress – naked in the Bullpen. Her ID photo, despite being unflattering at best, had been downloaded a hundred times over. Her profile was pored over by biologists, chemists, biochemists, and the rest of people who populated the Avon campus.

People who shouldn't have known about the project asked Hannah to pass their complements on to her friend, for having the courage to entrust her own body to her science. But, for every commendation Erica received in absentia, Hannah heard two or three whispers more concerned with the girl's body. Was she hot? Was she really naked? Were there videos or image captures? Hannah speculated that such chatter was more widespread than she was even aware – fellow employees were bound to hold their tongues around the Asian woman.

Noah Braddock, Erica's partner in the deuterotone experiments, was visibly shaken that Friday. Apparently, he had been approached by two men from the loading docks and asked if there was any truth to the rumors that the girl in the Bullpen had been caught masturbating. Noah vehemently denied the suggestion as untruth, and nearly taken the pairs' heads off for circulating such serious character assassination. Hannah, too, had heard people talking about Erica's supposed vulgar behavior, but most had dismissed such gossip as fictitious - wishful thinking on the part of ConnPharm's male population.

Hannah had longed to change the topic of conversation throughout the company's halls, but she was unsure of how to do so. There was little that could possibly quell such absorbing rumors, and she became convinced that Erica's personal stature would ultimately be diminished at ConnPharm, even if her professional stature grew simultaneously. And so, the Asian woman wrestled with what to do, eventually coming to the conclusion that she couldn't let her friend go through this alone – even if it meant sacrificing her own reputation alongside Erica's.

Reconfiguring the Bullpen for two people wasn't easy, but the systems had been designed with the capability to monitor five or six chimpanzees at any given time. Colin, after running a feasibility study for what he believed were Phase Two trials for Hannah's own projects, shrugged off the modifications as a few hours worth of work, no more. The changes were significantly easier, even, if the tactile waves had to only truly focus on one subject at a time. Though the small splinter of metal or physical protrusion into the Bullpen's rectangular box caused innumerable errors to the system, a second biological specimen could be quickly and easily added with relatively few negative repercussions.

But Hannah was incapable of confessing to Colin what her queries were really regarding, just as she was incapable of telling her fiancée Hyun-Shik Park what she was thinking about doing, just as she was incapable of truly following through on her word. She had nearly had a nervous breakdown the first time she'd been inside the Bullpen a few weeks earlier, so empathetic she was to her friend's situation. She had turned red-faced at the suggestion she'd have to strip to her panties and wear the Bullpen-approved scrubs into the clinical white room. And, to be honest, she worried about the unfavorable comparisons that others might make between her body and that of her friend's, with or without biochemical enhancements.

Days passed, hours ticked by, and still Hannah hadn't made up her mind about joining her friend in the Bullpen. Erica had, after all, only a few more days in captivity, and her libido should have waned with the conclusion of her deuterotone injections. And perhaps Hannah was overreacting to the thought of Dr. Rivers's sullied name; maybe, in a clinical setting such as the Bullpen, and Connecticut Pharmaceuticals, Erica's choices and behavior could be excused...?

Monday evening, however, told Hannah that she would, in fact, have to go through with her agenda. Seeking out a genetic sampler that she knew Noah and Erica had in their labs, Hannah welcomed herself into their workspace late that night, only to be surprised by the fact that Aaron Abrahams's light was still on. She knocked lightly, but didn't entirely wait for a response, and edged the door open.

The young man's pants were unzipped, his dick out, and his hand moving rapidly up and down on his shaft. He had headphones on, and had obviously not noticed either Hannah's knock or her entry. She gasped at the sight before her, but the lab assistant paid her no attention, so riveted was he upon the scene taking place on his computer. Perhaps it was that she'd seen her friend finger herself too many times to count over the past few weeks, and had become desensitized to such carnal behavior, but Hannah didn't immediately turn and flee. Instead, she was drawn into the scene - not by the overweight young scientist before her, but by the video streaming across his screen. It wasn't pornography, exactly, as she had first guessed, but rather a familiar feed of a familiar room and a familiar person.

Erica.

Staring up at a woman being taken from both ends being projected on the wall of the Bullpen, Erica was lost in animal passion with her own body. She writhed and squirmed on the floor of the room, her back to the ground, her feet pointed away from the projection, and her back and neck arched to watch the images unfold, even if they were upside-down from her current view. Two of her fingers were rapidly disappearing and re-emerging from her cunt, simultaneously with her wrist and palm moving expertly back and forth against the top of her slit. Over the previous four weeks, the dark-haired girl had mastered any number of ways to get herself off, and she was more than willing to demonstrate her command to any one interested in watching.

In this case, it was her direct report - Aaron. Hannah was unsure if the scene in the Bullpen was live, or if the pudgy young man had bookmarked it as one of his favorites. Either way, Hannah was far too embarrassed to stop him from continuing his own self-stimulation while he watched his supervisor's. She stepped from the room, allowed the door to shut quietly, and desperately tried to catch her breath.

No, Hannah had no desire to be the sexual plaything for Aaron Abrahams's imagination. And, yes, she was terrified about being naked in front of her friends and colleagues. But if Erica was capable of making sacrifices for her experiment, than Hannah was willing to make sacrifices for her friend.

***

With a knot in her throat and butterflies in her stomach, Hannah slowly unbuttoned her blue-and-white striped blouse, revealing the hints of a black lace demi-bra, with a delicate floral pattern stitched in flirtingly. Like Erica before her, Hannah had dressed that morning with the intention of undressing before an audience, even if that audience were just one man – Colin. This strategy had been cemented by weeks of seeing Erica's flirtatious, pink lace panties hung in the girl's locker, even if they had mysteriously vanished some time in the past few days. Clinical though Hannah may have wished this situation were, there was no question that the entire Bullpen-area had been infused with a level of sexuality and sensuality by the naked girl masturbating on the far side of the mirror glass. Thus, as Hannah shed her blouse completely, she tried to do so with confidence and a hint of flirtatiousness, even though Colin seemed more interested in the files and formulas on his computer screen than he did in the half-naked Korean woman by the lockers.

She hadn't told Hyun-Shik. Hannah was unsure if she herself fully understood the reasons she was stripping down in the Observation Room that day, and she was skeptical that her fiancée would ever see where she was coming from. Even if he were to forgive her, or give his approval, Hannah wasn't sure that she deserved either. She was doing something ignoble and noble at the same time, something morally questionable to accomplish something she felt was right.

At first, keeping this foray into the Bullpen a secret from Hyun-Shik seemed a bit hypocritical, given that Hannah had, only sixteen days earlier, urged Erica to tell her boyfriend Tom Russo about her situation. But Hannah had been more concerned about the mental stability of her friend than she had been about the state of Erica and Tom's relationship. Truthfully, Hannah had never cared much for the shallow and egotistical man, a feeling only justified by Tom's eventual infidelity.

Hannah shook both men, Tom Russo and Hyun-Shik Park, from her head, and continued undressing. After folding her blouse neatly on the exercise bench beside her, Hannah stood and unfastened the hook at her waist. She unzipped the rest of fly, exposing the first glimpse of a set of panties that matched her bra, with the same dark black flowers against the rest of the material covering her crotch. Hooking her thumbs inside the top of her pants, she wriggled the wool clothing past her hips, down her thighs, and – bending at the waist – into a puddle around her ankles. She stepped out of them, one leg after another, and turned to face Colin.

Still, the man was engrossed in his work, perhaps doing his best to avoid watching the Asian woman on the far side of the room. Hannah wondered if her scantily-clad state had little appeal to a man who spent day-in and day-out watching a completely naked bombshell, and consequently began to worry, once again, that her body would look that much worse when taken next to Erica's.

Hannah, though, was far from unattractive. Standing 5'4", she was diminutive next to Erica, but not exactly short, given her gender and ethnicity. Her chest, like her friend's in the weeks before the deuterotone injections, was a B-cup, though Hannah's breasts had always looked a bit bigger on her smaller frame. She was slender, with narrow hips, a toned abdomen, and silky dark skin.

Like Erica, Hannah's sex appeal had been masked by lab coats and conservative apparel, lost due to a lack of confidence, and long abandoned in favor of intellectual pursuits. But, clad in just her low-cut bra and matching low-cut panties, it was hard to deny that Hannah Cho was a knockout in her own right. Her new haircut, short though it may have been, accentuated her smile and her eyes to a tee, and the tan she'd paid for the night before gave her whole body a healthy glow.

Stripping in the tanning parlor for a full-body tan, without tan lines, had been the scariest moment of Hannah's life up to that point. And less than twenty-four hours later, that moment was already being trumped.

Hannah reached behind her back, nervously unclasping one hook, and then the other. She shrugged her bra forward, away from her chest, and down her arms. As she placed the flimsy piece of lingerie on top of the growing pile of clothes, she noted that her nipples were standing at attention. Erica's had been hard for what seemed liked days straight, and Hannah wondered if her friend's condition were ever subside. Hannah chalked her own up to a mix of nerves, excitement, and room temperature – though the Observation Room was kept at a climate conducive to Erica's lack of clothing, there was no denying that it was warmer clothed than unclothed.

Hannah approached the last remaining shred of clothing with even more reluctance than she had the rest. Though toplessness was no small feat, the gulf between "topless" and "naked" seemed even larger than going from clothed to walking around the Observation Room sans bra.

She was granted a reprieve, of sorts, by the technician at the ops desk. He asked, finally looking up, "Are you finished yet?"

Hannah blushed, embarrassed that she was taking longer at undressing than she should have, lingering upon each article of clothing as if it were the last time she'd be dressed in weeks. In actuality, she would only be Erica's guest for a little over twenty-four hours – she'd be fully dressed and at home by bedtime the following night.

"Almost," she responded bashfully. She reached for panties, but Colin interrupted her before they had been shed.

"Well, hold on, and come here. I want to show you something," he offered. Realizing the awkwardness of the situation, panties or no panties, he added weakly, "That is, if you'd like to."

Hannah was thankful for the pardon, even if it was only momentarily. Awkwardly, she walked from the exercise area of the Observation room to the ops desk, aware of every bounce of her breasts along the way. Though she'd be entirely nude in just a few minutes, and though Colin had already caught a glimpse of her breasts the first time he glanced across the room, Hannah draped her right forearm over her nipples, conserving a small shred of dignity in front of the technician.

"That's you," Colin said, gesturing at a dark human form standing next to a white human form in a computer mock-up of the Bullpen. "The tactile waves are keyed in on Erica," he continued, pointing towards the white human form, "which means they're picking up all the same information from her body that they have been over the past few weeks.

"We're going to be picking up residuals from you – nowhere near the same extent that we're monitoring Erica. Heart rate, body temperature, some aspects of brain activity, stuff like that. It's easier to scale back your readings than have the Bullpen ignore you completely."

Hannah nodded. She was well aware of the many aspects of her body that would be on record, both visually and in terms of pure, unadulterated data. Erica's staff could easily check her mass and her measurements. What bothered Hannah the most, however, was the fact that her brain activity would be catalogued along with the rest of her readings. As Colin explained, it was easier to take some readings on the second subject than no readings at all. And secondly, Natalie Hart was already planning to make available some of the Bullpen's information for other scientists in ConnPharm, like Harriet Lane, one of the women upstairs studying female sexual disorders, or "FSDs." A particular electric brain signal, P300, had been firing like gangbusters in Erica's head every time she was sexually stimulated, and Natalie wondered how it might compare to the same brain signal in Hannah's head.

Natalie had been told about Hannah's plan the day before, and had signed on wholeheartedly. The Korean girl didn't negatively impact the experiment in any foreseeable way, aside from causing a few hours worth of work for the technicians, and might provide good companionship for Erica inside the Bullpen. Noah agreed, surprisingly, suggesting that Hannah's own readings might be good to have, so that they could compare and contrast Hannah and Erica. Jake Rinaldi and Bill Forrester both knew, as corporate had to give their approval for the use of such expensive equipment as the Bullpen. And the technicians knew, like Colin Eggert, Wendy Milne, Tessa Romero, and a handful of other members of the staff, all of whom had been tasked with reconfiguring the Bullpen.

"Now, conventional wisdom might suggest that the further you stand from Erica, the better the readings would be," Colin cautioned the Asian woman. On screen, he showed a series of lines criss-crossing the Bullpen, bouncing off the walls and the dark and light figures in the center. "But the way the Bullpen is wired and configured for you, the strength of the tactile waves increases exponentially when all the emitters can concentrate on one area of the room at a time."

Hannah nodded.

"Which means, the closer you stay to Erica, the easier it is on the Bullpen itself. So, if you could stay close to her, and maybe go to sleep next to her tonight...er...two or three inches is fine....but, you know, the closer the better..."

Now it was Colin's turn to blush.

Hannah simply smiled, amused by the technician's discomfort.

Colin pointed out a few things more, and Hannah dutifully paid attention. But the longer she stood next to him in her panties, the more she wanted to get the process over with, and join her friend in the Bullpen. As she had told herself coming into this misadventure, there was a safety in numbers.

When Colin had finished talking, Hannah had a favor to ask of him. Her arm still draped coquettishly across her tits, she removed her engagement ring and placed it on the ops desk in front of the technician. Though Hannah didn't know Colin as intimately as Erica knew him, the man had obviously earned her friend's trust. Hannah had left most of her jewelry at home that morning, but she simply couldn't bear the thought of going through the bulk of her day without her wedding ring. With it off, she felt significantly more naked than she had only seconds before.

"Can you find a safe place for this?" Hannah asked. "I don't want to leave it in the locker."

Colin agreed, grimly. Obviously, Erica's missing panties perturbed him, but he hadn't brought the theft up with his staff, or with Erica's. They all were aware that Erica's underwear had been stolen – Colin, Noah, Natalie, the assistants, Wendy, Tessa, and Erica herself – but the issue had not been spoken aloud. Erica seemed to have shrugged such petty larceny off, and, consequently, the rest of them did the same.

The technician tucked the diamond ring into the front of his jeans pocket. It would be safe with him.

The two looked at each other uncomfortably for the brief moment. Colin had finished showing Hannah what he'd wanted to show her, and Hannah had finished asking Colin for the favor that had been weighing on her all day. The girl shrugged, turned, and drifted back across the Observation Room.

Before shedding her last final piece of apparel, Hannah first placed the rest of her clothes neatly into the locker next to that of her friend. Shoes at the bottom, with her duffel bag at the bottom. Her pants were laid neatly on the upper shelf, as Erica had done with her own clothes, and Hannah placed her blouse, cleanly folded, with them. The bra, however, was placed inside the duffel, and her panties would soon be joining them – the Asian girl had no desire for her intimates to join Erica's in some perverted thief's desk.

Taking a deep breath, with her back turned to Colin, Hannah peeled her panties off, letting the soft material descend down her legs to the floor. Her pubic hair was trimmed, as Erica's had been the week before, into a thin strip above her slit. Though she'd been exposed to Erica's sex for four and half weeks, by that point, Hannah had nonetheless ventured into the world of Internet pornography to choose how to best shave her most intimate of areas. After seeing all shapes and styles – including small hearts, Playboy bunnies, and even initials – Hannah had eventually decided to simply follow her friend's lead, trending towards both sexy and simple.