The Taboo Transformation Ch. 01

Despite her lingering anger, Jane felt a soft glow of pride. For years, the Holy Grail among pharmaceutical companies had been a safe, effective birth-control method for males. And it had been Jane Richardson, only four years out of medical school, who had won the prize. The long-looked-for 'pill for men' only needed to be taken once every five days, and had made her wealthy beyond her dreams. It was not, of course, protection against STDs, but it allowed people in committed relationships a higher amount of pleasure in their sexual lives, and permitted hundreds of thousands of men to slide into bed bareback.

And it had put one hell of a dent in the condom industry, she thought with an inward smile.

"Anyway," she said, picking up her fork again. "We've got more important things to deal with. I've got two weeks off, and I intend to enjoy them. Let's make some plans, huh?"

*****

Later that evening Jane stepped out of the shower. During the evening, despite the cheerful facade she had put up for the kids, her mind had been running in circles. Periods of anger had been followed by world-weary acceptance, followed by anger again, and then bleak depression.

As she surveyed her body in the mirror, she felt the anger returning, churning in her stomach like poison.

Her family had always trended toward tall, lean figures, but in her case she felt that genetics had played a cruel practical joke on her. Despite her toned muscles, she resembled nothing so much as a pre-pubescent boy. Her chest was completely flat, without even the slightest hint of a bustline. In fact, over the years, several casual acquaintances has asked her, stammering in discomfort, whether she had been forced to undergo a double mastectomy.

And her lips thinned as she remembered the drunken executive at a holiday party who had mistaken her for a man, had asked her whether she was a "pitcher or a catcher," and had offered to take her to his hotel room and give her a blow job.

Two things had happened the next day. She had reported the ass to the HR department, and she had resolved to grow her hair long to make sure such misunderstandings did not recur. Which was why the shining mass of her dark brown hair now reached almost to the small of her back.

But that was poor compensation for a life without breasts. And as if in mockery of her failure, her nipples were abnormally large and sensitive, surging erect at the slightest provocation. Which was why she had to wear a bra, despite the complete lack of flesh for a bra to conceal and support.

Taken away. All my hopes, taken away.

Colleen's words from earlier in the evening, half-heeded at the time, wandered through her mind like a stray cat.

"...especially if you had proof"'

What if I did have proof? Proof in the form of my own body? Proof of the change as it occurred?

Her eyes widened in the mirror, and her hands clenched on the edge of the sink as the enormity of what she was thinking sank in. What she was considering went against every professional scruple. Everything she had been taught. Every ethical consideration.

"Fuck it," she whispered softly. "I'm going to do it."

*****

Twenty minutes later she was speaking to the laptop, which was recording her words and image. She was completely nude, her thin, curveless body displayed for anyone who might be interested.

"For the record," she stated, "my name is Jane Marie Richardson. I am a licensed physician and medical doctor. Right now it is ten fifty-two in the evening. The date is Friday, June twenty-fourth.

"The purpose of this experiment, where I will be both the subject and the attending physician, is to determine whether my newly-developed method of genetic splicing will work on humans. As you can see from the video, my secondary sex characteristics are severely limited.

"I propose to inject myself with genetic material from another woman, one whose body more closely conforms to current ideals of female beauty."

That's putting it mildly.

"My present measurements are as follows: bra size and cup: thirty-two null. Waist size: twenty-four. Hip size. Twenty-six.

"My hopes are that my measurements will change to match or closely resemble those of the donor, whose identity will be kept secret for purposes of privacy. A secondary goal," she said, her face flaming red, "is an increase in secretions in the vagina to make sex more pleasurable. A tertiary goal is an increase in the sex drive itself, as well as the ability to reach arousal and orgasm.

"Possible side-effects include possible joint pain as my body changes to match that of the donor. All other possibilities are merely conjectural and I will not waste time by going over them at this time."

She was tempted to make a grandiose speech, castigating the executives at Darwin who had cut off her project, but put the idea firmly aside.

No sense in making yourself seem unhinged. When this gets out, if it gets out, you have to appear completely sane and rational, rather than some megalomaniac who is ranting against "them." Mad scientists always seem to come to a bad end in the movies.

So instead she merely uncapped the vial which she had retrieved from the sample box, now resting quietly in the refrigerator with a big "DON'T TOUCH" scrawled across the front on a sticky note. Her hands were shaking so badly it took her four tries before she was able to shove the syringe through the protective covering and into the sample itself.

Slowly she sucked the injection into the syringe, her body trembling with fear and tension. With the ease of long practice, she stabbed the needle into the muscles of her right thigh, hissing slightly at the pain. Before she could change her mind, she slowly injected the sample into her leg. Removing the needle, she swabbed the area, then covered the tiny wound with a band-aid.

She faced the laptop again. "For the record, the measurements of the donor are thirty-six D, twenty-seven, thirty-four. She is, by any objective analysis, absolutely gorgeous."

She smiled softly to herself, remembering the day two years ago when she met her.

*****

Valentina. The woman had burst onto the American scene like a firework, startling and vivid. For nearly two decades she had been an inescapable part of the cultural landscape.

She had first appeared at the tender age of fourteen, in a remake of the film Lolita. While the movie was a commercial failure and had been subject to brutal, scathing reviews by the press, even the most savage critic had good things to say about the performance of young Valentina Belmonte, a young Venezuelan girl from the barrios of East Los Angeles. Her innocent sexuality had touched even the most jaded soul.

From that moment, the arc of her career had never faltered or slowed. First there had been a four-year stint on one of the Spanish-language telenovelas, Corazones de Fuego, during which she had bloomed from an attractive teenager to a stunningly beautiful young woman. Then a modeling and lingerie line at the same time she was attending college at UCLA.

After her graduation, she had announced her desire to be a serious actress. While the talking heads had laughed, she had proven them all wrong by proving herself a performer of incredible depth and sensitivity. Before she was thirty years old she had won two Golden Globes and an Academy Award for Best Actress.

But it was her life off the screen which had generated the most controversy. Valentina had shown herself to be utterly uninterested in modern conventions where sex was concerned. She had married and divorced three separate times, the first time at nineteen, but none of her husbands had been able to keep up with her rampaging libido and her inability to stay in a monogamous relationship. At the time of Jane's meeting with Valentina, if the gossip magazines were to be believed, she was currently in a five-cornered relationship with a pair of Romanian gymnasts, the co-lead of her most recent movie, and the speaker of the California House of Representatives, whose popularity had only grown once she and Valentina began to be seen in public together.

Jane pulled her rented car up to the gated community in Vail, still unable to believe her inquiry had been met with interest on the part of one of the most beautiful women in the world. She rolled down the window and pressed a small button beside the entrance.

"Who is it?" came a warm, throaty voice from the speaker.

She cleared her throat nervously. "Doctor Jane Richardson. I have an appointment with Miss Belmonte."

"Come in," came the reply, and the gate rolled aside. She pulled forward, parking her car in the semicircular driveway. After she halted, she sat still for a moment, gathering her wits about her. While she was forbidden by the privacy rules in the patient-doctor relationship from disclosing where her samples came from, persuading Valentina to be a part of the project would be an enormous coup. She imagined returning to the lab in triumph, one step closer to achieving her goal.

Or slinking back in failure, one step farther away.

Climbing out of the car, she observed the house. Unlike many of the grotesque mansions of the newly rich, Valentina's home was surprisingly modest. Two stories high, built of red brick, it nestled contentedly into the landscape, basking in the early spring sunshine. Two beautiful young aspen trees flanked the front entrance. The white-capped mass of Mount Princeton rose behind it in the distance, its head thrusting through a scrum of torn gray clouds.

She rang the doorbell, and only had to wait an instant before the door opened. Valentina herself stood smiling before her, silhouetted in the afternoon sunlight which poured down from a skylight in the foyer.

"Doctor Richardson! Come in! I have been looking forward to your visit so much!" She stood aside to allow Jane to enter. Her voice was obviously the same one which had answered her in the driveway, warm and deep, with just a hint of a Hispanic lilt clinging to the vowels.

Jane walked in slowly, somewhat put off her stride. She had expected a servant, perhaps a butler, and a formal interview. Instead, Valentina was dressed only in a pair of white bikini panties, cut high on her hips, and a blue peignoir which was little more than a few ounces of blue fog. Jane could see right through it to the warm brown slopes of her breasts, capped with dark nipples the size and shape of ripe cherries.

She blushed, taken off guard. While she was not a prude, this display of casual near-nudity was far more than she was prepared for. In confusion, she chose to look around the entranceway and halted, entranced.

It was a sculpture. But saying that was like calling The Ode to Joy a piece of music. Life-size, it stood on a marble plinth in the middle of the room, demanding attention. On it, two bronze figures were engaged in the act of love. The woman was on top, leaning over her lover in a pose of infinite tenderness and desire. Her hands were splayed on his chest, his cock caught half-in, half-out of her bare cleft. In turn, his hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs grazing her erect nipples. His head was thrown back, hanging off the edge of the plinth, his face contorted in a rictus of passion. There was a sense of dynamism about the sculpture, as if when they turned their backs, the bronze figures would recommence their lovemaking.

"Do you like it?" Valentina asked, her voice openly curious.

"I do," Jane breathed, walking around the sculpture so she could examine it from every angle. "It's...incredible. I've never seen anything like it."

Valentina smiled, her hands tracing the curve of the woman's spine, lingering for a moment on what appeared to be a leaf-shaped tattoo on her lower back. "It's by a man named Joshua Sunderman. He lives in Chicago. I saw it at a charity auction I went to last year, fundraising for the homeless. I'd heard about him before. But his work has taken a leap lately. It's gone from being great to being extraordinary. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to have it. Had to bid against a couple of billionaires to get it, too, which is why I had to do that Seth Rogen film."

Jane laughed, suddenly at ease. "Tech Support? The kids and I saw it in the theater a couple of months ago. I thought it was hilarious." Valentina had played a walk-on role as a ball-busting supervisor in the workplace comedy.

The smile Valentina returned was slightly pained. "It wasn't bad. But when you're trying to be taken seriously as an actress, you try to leave the stoner films behind."

"Well, it could have been worse," Jane said. "At least it wasn't an Adam Sandler movie."

Now it was Valentina's turn to laugh. "Heaven forbid." She looked Jane up and down, and she tried to keep from hunching under the shrewd gaze. "Did you bring your swimsuit? I was just about to hop into the jacuzzi."

"Swimsuit? No. Nobody told me anything about a swimsuit," Jane stuttered.

"I really do have to get better assistants," Valentina mused thoughtfully. "They should have warned you. No matter. I often use the jacuzzi nude. I would offer you one of my own swimsuits but..." she trailed off delicately.

"It would fit me like socks on a rooster," Jane said. "Don't worry. I'm not shy about my body," she lied. "I don't mind being naked in a hot tub."

"Good! Let's have a nice long soak and maybe a glass of wine, and we can talk about this little project of yours."

*****

"Doctor Jane Richardson," Valentina mused, a short time later, when both women were lolling contentedly in the hot, churning waters of the jacuzzi. A glass of red wine was at her elbow, and her arms were hooked over the lip of the tub, making her spectacular breasts appear even larger. Droplets of water slowly trickled down the upper slopes, catching the light and throwing it back in glittering sparkles, until it appeared she was covered in liquid diamonds. "High school graduate at sixteen. College graduate at nineteen. Graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School at twenty-three. Senior researcher at Darwin Pharmaceuticals. What can I do for you?"

Jane blinked, startled by Valentina's familiarity with her history. "How do you know all that?"

The dark-haired woman gave her a brilliant smile. "Come on, Jane. I was a lingerie model when I was in college. And your sister was a fashion model. It's a small world. We were thrown together several times. I was happy to count her as a friend before she died." Her look was sad. "Elizabeth talked about you all the time. She was so proud. Her brilliant baby sister who was going to change the world." She switched tracks, as if she was aware of how much the praise was embarrassing Jane. "I understand the kids came to live with you?"

Jane smiled. "They did. Colleen is a freshman at Minnesota. Zach and Lillian are in their junior year of high school."

"I hope they are doing okay now their mom is gone?"

Jane nodded. "It took a while for us all to adjust to each other. Heck, I was living in a one-bedroom condo, despite all the money I had been raking in from the patents on Notosterone. When the kids came to stay I bought a house for all of us. Thanks to Liz, they won't have to worry about working a day in their lives if they don't want to. By the end of her career she was disgustingly rich. But they're good kids. Not spoiled a bit. I think they will do well once they get out on their own. And they're not going to be useless drones, living off the interest on their trust funds. They can't wait to have lives of their own and contribute to society."

Valentina smiled. "With you and Liz as role models, I can't imagine them turning out any other way." Jane smiled back, slowly relaxing. "She was a smart woman, and gave me good advice. When I graduated from UCLA, I couldn't decide whether to stay as a model or go back into acting. It was Liz who advised me to be an actress. She said a model had ten years, fifteen tops. But a good actress could work for the rest of her life."

"I think she was considering trying to get into that line of work herself," Jane said. "But then..." She trailed off, remembering the phone call from Colleen, at three o'clock on a February morning.

"Mommy's dead," the little girl, only nine years old, had sobbed into the phone from five thousand miles away. Elizabeth had been modeling a new line of women's dresses. She had been lying on the back of a horse. Spooked by the glare of the lights and noise, the horse had bolted, throwing her sister into a neck-snapping fall.

"She could have done it," her companion said. "Hell, Elizabeth Richardson could have done anything. Just like her sister.

"So what is it you are doing, Jane? Your e-mail was pretty vague. If my assistant hadn't recognized your name, she would have sent it straight to my spam folder."

Jane sat up straight. "It was vague because I didn't want to reveal too much. And there are always people who can't be trusted. You know I work in the pharmaceutical industry." Valentina nodded. "I am in R and D. Research and Development. I've..." She took a deep breath. "I believe I have come up with a new way of gene-splicing. A way for people with genetically inherited diseases to be cured.

"Imagine," she said, "that you have some sort of incurable illness. One which you have because your genes don't work right. Like muscular dystrophy. Or Lou Gehrig's Disease. Or cystic fibrosis. With my therapy, I can inject you with the genetic material from a healthy person. And you will be cured. The disease itself eradicated due to the genes which are causing your problems no longer being in your body. Removed and replaced by genes which function properly.

"With one pinprick I can cure a child with diabetes. No monitoring of blood sugar, no insulin shots. No lifetime of fear. What greater gift can I give to a parent than to cure their child?" Her voice rose with passion. "What greater gift can I give the world? If this works, with one stroke I will take away so much human misery as to be almost beyond comprehension."

The dark-haired woman's jaw had slowly fallen open as she listened to Jane. "That's...that's unbelievable," she breathed. "How far away are you from this being real?"

"A few years," she replied. "The test results in the lab have been promising. We have changed the hair color of mice and rats with no side effects. What I am doing now is collecting genetic samples to be used for the FDA trials. We hope to have something ready to present to them in the next eighteen to twenty-four months."

"So long?"

Jane grimaced. "The wheels of bureaucracy grind slow," she said. "And there have been rumbles from the executives that my breakthrough has not been greeted with hosannas of joyous rapture. They would rather make millions of guaranteed money off of boner pills than take a risk of billions of dollars on the biggest thing since we discovered the double helix."

"What about inheritance? Will a person you cure be able to pass it on to her children?"

"No. The therapy doesn't affect the reproductive cells. How could it? They only have twenty-three chromosomes. My technique only works on cells that have forty-six." She shook her head unhappily. "That's why it won't work on people who have Down's Syndrome. They have an extra chromosome.

"Besides," she continued, "I think it would be dangerous if we messed around too much with people's reproductive cells. If we take away the possibility of mutations, we run the risk of our gene pool itself becoming stagnant."

"Or maybe you don't want their children to be cured, so you can keep making money selling them your technique."

Jane gasped, hurt. Her head came up. "That's untrue." Her voice was cold in her ears. "I would give anything take the stigma of genetic disease away forever.