Gender Bending Investigations Pt. 02

"So what are those rooms?" I pointed over to the far wall.

He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then steadied himself. "Well, just like a little sleep can help restore your energy, a little sex can help take the edge off of any stress that might build up."

I blushed and took a step back. I'd never really heard of that before. Well, okay, sex did help with stress, but to have a company so open to the idea that they set aside rooms in the office for it? That was almost crazy.

"It's completely voluntary, of course. There are even toys if you don't want a partner. Again, no judgment, just don't let it get in the way of your work." I could see that he was gauging my reaction. What would the little country girl think of this. Midwesterners were still thought of as relatively conservative, especially on things like this.

"Wow, I guess I never would have expected something like that." I blushed a bit and looked up at him bashfully. It really seemed a bit crazy, even if it made a bit of sense. The worst part, however, was that now I had the idea of sex on my brain, and I felt an even more vigorous quiver up my spine when I looked at Phillip. "Do you ever... well, indulge?"

That really hit him. I could see him actually blush a bit. "Yeah, I guess most of us do, except for the married ones. Though, seriously, I don't want you to feel any pressure on this one."

I nodded. I certainly understood and yet I didn't want to linger here for too much longer. Nothing good could come from dwelling on the point. "I understand, but I'll definitely have to think about it. So, shouldn't we get on to our team?"

"Right, we've got work to do." He pulled his chin up and spun us back towards our office. I knew he was just putting on a cover to handle his momentary discomfort. I could tell that he was trying to tread a fine line. No doubt, he'd like to get some one on one time with me in one of those little rooms, but that was just basic animal instinct, and as our team leader he didn't want to get off on the wrong foot with a new coworker.

We walked the rest of the way in somewhat awkward silence. I had to admit that I was thinking a lot about those little sex rooms. The idea of popping into one of those rooms for a quick fuck was a little disturbing and a lot sexy. I knew it was just my fired up libido, but I'd already gone two days without some good hot sex and it was starting to affect my concentration. I took the time to focus myself on my mission. I couldn't let myself get distracted so easily.

"And this is our team." Phillip motioned around the room. It was so unlike my office that I could scarcely believe it. The room seemed to exist as two separate rings. The outer ring was like little open offices, separated by cubicle walls on both sides but open into the room. The desks were all placed against one of the walls, so you couldn't just walk up behind someone and easily see their computer monitors.

The inner circle was a mix of open tables, free standing white boards and couches arranged so that you could have an easy circular discussion. The room was open overall, and felt quite comfortable, but I could see that a lot of work got done in here. Each of the whiteboards was filled with scribbles and the central table had a rather complicated data model on the holographic display as several people had a rather animated discussion around it.

At least they were talking right up until they noticed me. Then they all gave me a big smile and waved me over. We walked up to the table and they all lined up to look at me.

"Hi, I'm Karen." I smiled. That name still sounded weird to me, but I was starting to get used to it. Oddly enough, it was one thing that hadn't caught in my conditioning. It didn't help any that I was now the focus of attention for this group of men and women. As soon as I spoke, everyone from around the room came over and we all traded handshakes and introductions. It was a bit awkward, and I made careful note of all their names. This was one of those times where having a photographic memory really paid off.

Once all the introductions were over most of my new coworkers drifted back to their work until it was just me and a few others.

"Karen has a few hours until her official orientation seminar. Why don't you see if she can help you with your little problem." Phillip was doing his best to wrangle me into work. I had to admit I was curious. Just what could a company like this need with someone like me anyway?

"Sure." Susan nodded, and dragged me over to one of the tables showing a data model hologram. It was strange getting pulled around by a small Asian woman, but I wasn't about to object. "Okay, do you understand what you're seeing here?"

I took a moment to scan over the display. I let my jaw drop a little. These kind of displays were still rather cutting edge, and I'd not seen one outside of a trade show. The Agency didn't have the budget for this kind of tech. As cool as it was, it took me a moment to figure out what I thought it was displaying.

"Do you mind if I touch it?" I asked. This was a bit scary for me. I'd never done more than fiddle at simple tasks with a holographic display. Now I had to look like I at least had some experience with them. Since I was supposed to be a recent graduate, I should have at least put in some lab time on this kind of display.

Susan tapped the controls a couple of times. I followed the motions of her hands and watched the displays that flashed past. She was saving the current settings, so if I messed anything up, she'd be able to restore her work. Then she slid the control over to me. I held up my hands and did a quick calibration. It was strange to work with a computer with nothing more than a visual interface, but then I noticed a strange feeling in the tip of my finger as it approached the holographic controls.

The burly looking guy across from me smiled as he noticed my surprise. Jack was casually dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, which managed to show off his equally trim figure. For techies, everyone around here either kept good care of themselves or were paying hefty sums to the rejuvenation clinics to keep in shape. "We've got all the latest here, state of the art force feedback interface. It's actually a low energy electron beam that's fired off when your hand gets close to something on the display. Just enough for you to feel it, but not do any damage."

"Nifty." I grinned. Then I started to play with the data model. First, I spun it around, studying it, then zoomed in, so I could see the details on each component. It was a wild way to see data connections, and whatever it was they were tying together, they weren't going for simple. This thing easily had a couple hundred major relationships displayed, but I drew in on the ones flashing in bright red.

"Well, it looks like these correlations are consuming a lot of your resources." I said.

"Any suggestions?" Susan asked firmly. She wasn't quite curt, but just sharp enough that I wondered about her intent. She looked at me with a critical eye. I knew this was something of a test, a sink or swim moment, in her mind if nothing else.

I took another careful moment to look at the data relationships. I skipped over the obvious answers. Each of them had a cost that wouldn't improve the situation much. I did sense a degree of frustration from both of them, they'd clearly been trying to work through this issue for a while. My guess was they wanted me as a tie breaker, as well as to test my general skills.

The data sprawled out in front of me and I worked through my options, going deeper into the linkages, looking for places where I could improve the processing speed without causing fallout, and most of all, looking to get as much bang out of it as I could. This wasn't something I normally did, sure I did deep analysis of data for criminal investigations, but this was different. On the one hand the data sets were more organized, but there were also far more of them. It was the amount of cross linking that made things trouble.

I could see they were both growing impatient, I had to give them something and then I found it. There was a data nexus that had been skipped over, it was deep in the algorithm, but by redirecting the links and slightly changing some of the cross references, I could eliminate their bottleneck. I threw my hands into the work. It was actually kind of fun playing with the hologram, stretching and tossing data representations with the flick of a wrist. Finally, I was done and turned back to them.

"How about this?" I took a step back and let them examine my work. Susan and Jack tore through it, every link and every change. I knew they were looking for faults, not to be mean, but because that was what this kind of software work was all about. Even the smallest error could come back to bite you when you were making systems this large.

"Well, I'll be." Jack muttered as he fell back into his chair.

"Yes, it seems we've been shown up." Susan crossed her arms and gave me a look that sent shivers up my back. It was a mix of respect, scorn, and bemusement. I wasn't sure exactly how to react to it.

"Congratulations, you've just blown through about a months worth of their work." Linda giggled as she popped up behind me. The lanky blonde didn't quite look like she belonged here, aside from the black rimmed glasses, she was dressed more for a high class party then a software development lab.

"Three weeks anyway." Jack nodded. He at least was smiling. I could see it bothered him that I'd managed to solve their problem so quickly.

"Well, then that calls for a little celebration!" Linda clapped. "Well, we needed to properly welcome our new team member, and since she's put half of us ahead of schedule, why don't we go hit Craven's?"

Everyone seemed to agree to that quickly enough and before I could beg off, I was swept away with the crowd. Craven's was apparently the favorite dining hole around here.

"So, completely overwhelmed yet?" Linda asked as she led me into the restaurant. The place was a bit of a dive, but one that was still cared for with love. The atmosphere was intentional and not from neglect, though at first glance it was easy to miss that distinction.

"A little, it really isn't quite what I expected." I nodded and followed everyone over to a set of tables.

"Yeah, it's not like most companies, and after we got bought up by Thineritech a year ago, it's been wild. Not bad, but the management changes have really got us working outside the box." Linda explained.

"What kind of changes?" I was curious. I rarely dug into this kind of detail in my previous investigations. As far as I'd been able to tell, Oswald hadn't used his subsidiary companies for much more than profit generation and patent collection. He wanted to control the technology and who could use it, but otherwise, he left the companies alone. It was only a few core operations that seemed to have nefarious intent.

"Well, we'd always been a somewhat flexible office, but you've seen the lounges right?"

"Yeah, Phillip took me by one this morning."

"Well, the old ones were little more than break rooms with a couch on the side. Nobody cared if you popped in for a quick nap, but it wasn't something most of us did. After the buyout, the whole office got upgraded, all thanks to Big T." Linda continued as we got our menus. "After that, we were encouraged to take breaks, and unwind. If you were tired, take a nap, if you needed to blow off some steam go play a game. The strangest thing though, when five o'clock comes around, the managers will shoo you out, and they really discourage working from home after hours."

I let that sink in. I'd never really paid much attention to the working conditions in Oswald's companies. I'd generally assumed they worked like other tech companies, right down to the long hours. Sure the lounge had been extravagant, but that was just a feature designed to keep you in the office all day, every day so you could work more. There was one more thing though that struck me as odd. I leaned in so I could whisper to her. "I'd think the sex rooms would be the weirdest thing myself."

Linda was quiet for a moment, and I looked up to see her with the strangest expression. It cleared, and she went back to her smiling self, but it was like I'd triggered something. "Oh, don't be silly. I forgot you're from someplace in the Midwest right, Ohio, wasn't it?"

"Iowa." I interjected.

"Sorry, Iowa then. I know people are a lot more uptight about the whole sex thing out that way, but really, it's no big deal here. That doesn't bother you does it?" Linda looked at me with a sincere concern. I had to admit her statement surprised me. I knew the world had changed a lot in the last decade I'd been holed up inside the Agency, but I hadn't expected this level of comfort with the subject.

"Oh, no, I'm okay. I guess, I just hadn't expected it." I smiled and let the conversation flow around me. They got most of my cover story out of me in a few minutes before drifting back into office talk. It was almost refreshing how normal it seemed. I just sat back and let them feed me information on the day to day work of their little department.

It wasn't until we were heading back to the office that Linda held me back a little and then leaned down to whisper in my ear. "If you're really okay with the whole sex thing, then make sure to swing by my desk around five. There's a little place some of us like to go after work and I can guarantee you have an experience you'll never forget or regret."

She gave me a quick pat on the shoulder and then skipped ahead to join up with the rest of the group. I stumbled forward, a bit stunned and a lot intrigued. It didn't help that my energized libido quickly sent my imagination to the kinkiest places. I had to shake my head to clear out the most distracting notions. It was time to go back to work.

Or rather, it was time to sit through new employee orientation. A company as big as Crentechnics tended to hire a lot of people, so they brought them in every two weeks as a big wave. That meant a lot of auditorium style briefings and corporate pep rallies. I could see that a lot of the people around me were excited to be here, especially the younger ones. I tried to mimic their enthusiasm. Sure, I'd given up the corporate world after just a couple of years, but my new identity was supposed to be at the on ramp to her career and not the slightly jaded mid career fellow that I was.

There wasn't much useful information to glean from those meetings though. It was all pretty standard, and as such hopelessly dull. I tried to mask the boredom, but it was impossible to keep my mind from drifting back to what Linda had implied after lunch. I was beginning to think that the world really was different now then I'd expected. I'd been so wrapped up in the Agency that it had been easy to ignore the changes, but now that I thought about it, it wasn't surprising.

The same technology that allowed me to transform from an unkempt middle age guy into a perky and petite twenty something was no doubt having big impacts across the medical spectrum. Birth control was now virtually perfect, a simple treatment could adjust your body not to make sperm or release eggs until the procedure was reversed. Sexually transmitted diseases, as well as any other bacterial or viral infections were a thing of the past. Doctors could give you a simple nanobot injection that would hunt down any undesired infectious agents and kill them in a way that also trained your immune system to hunt them down if you were exposed again, much like a vaccine.

It wasn't hard to see that society might kick back to the sexual revolution type of thinking. Free love, after a fashion, seemed to be back. Sex could be had without the risk of negative consequences. It was only in places that still held to more traditional moral values that hadn't quite gone as casual as the more cosmopolitan areas of the country.

The logic of it was hard to ignore, and I kicked myself silently as I realized just what I'd been missing out on. While I'd been content to run deep data analysis for the agency and spearhead lots of investigations, I'd been missing out on the new sexual revolution. It wasn't that I regretted all of my choices, but I certainly could have indulged more than I did.

So, by the time I managed to get out of the orientation, I didn't hesitate to meet up at Linda's desk. It certainly wouldn't hurt the investigation to get in closer with the team here at the office. At least that was how I rationalized it. I was trying not to admit that I was looking forward to whatever kind of debauchery they had in store.

"Oh, I'm so happy you decided to stop by. You are going to head out with us tonight, right?" Linda smiled as she saw me approach. My eyes looked her over with renewed vigor as she waited for me. She was hot, not that she was quite my type. She was a bit too tall and lanky. My preferences ran towards the shorter and curvier variety. Still, the look of enthusiastic lustfulness on her face made up for any deficiencies. Whatever it was I was getting myself into, she certainly was ready to enjoy it.

"Yeah, I guess I'm too curious to say no." I blushed a bit. In some ways my previous lack of experience was going to be a bit of a boon here. Sure, I'd been messing around with Agent Raikins, but despite the intensity of our coupling, we'd kept it pretty tame as far as kinkiness went. I suspected that this little outing was going to be a lot more adventurous.

"Great! I'll get Jack and Susan. Some of the others might stop by later, but since you're on our little team, it's kind of up to us to warm you up." Linda smiled wickedly. I felt a shudder roll up my spine. The more she spoke about it, the more convinced I was that I had to find out what she was planning.

The others joined us and then we were on our way. We headed down the sidewalk and soon found our way to a rather non-descript building just outside the club district of town. We walked inside and I was blown away decor as soon as the door closed. Where the company had tried to meld the modern with the classical, this place made no such attempt. It was dripping with Roman style, right down to the marble statues of people in almost every variety of sexual embrace carved in relief and ringing the room. There certainly wasn't much left to the imagination there.

To complete the look, there was a young woman dressed in a flowing white dress that matched well with Roman fashion, aside from the almost translucence of the material. Her every curve was readily seen, as were her dark nipples. About the only thing her outfit truly hid was a clear view of her pussy. The effect, however, was just as intended, and I could already feel the rush of heat starting to flow between my legs.

"Welcome. Please, come this way and check in. We have the standard waivers on the screens. Is there anything special you'd like tonight?" She smiled and waved us over to a small table that had several small computer terminals lined up on top.

"No, we'll just be joining the main hall today." Linda smiled and pushed me over to the terminals.

"It's all just boilerplate waivers. Just thumb print it and we can get going." Linda prodded as I quickly scanned the documents. If it was a standard waiver, it sure didn't read like it. Of course, I'd never been to a place like this before. Somehow, I seemed to be entering into some kind of orgy. I wasn't sure what to think about that, but I quickly signed off on the documents and followed Linda down the hall.

The hallway broke off in two directions, one for men and one for women. For a moment I almost went the wrong way, but Linda gave a quick shout and I followed her over to the women's side. I was kind of surprised to see a rather comfortable looking locker room.