A Blemish on the Curve, Chapter 28, Part 1

I'll be posting the rest of the chapter by the new year <3 <3 

Chapter 28

Lucas hardly even acknowledged the strangeness of his apartment as he stumbled inside, closed the door, and locked it.  A universe of desire, fulfillment, and transcendence had all flashed before his eyes that day, only to be taken away almost as soon as it had started.  When he left his apartment less than 8 hours before, he had been decked out in a new suit that he had gotten from Lavender Drip Trends, in a spree of late-night shopping to find something to fit his diminished height, which at that time had been 5’0, a full foot taller than he was now.  He hadn’t gotten good sleep that night…Brooke had been over 7 feet in her heels at that point, and she had basically been running the office, wrangling all the girls onto the volleyball team, solving complicated programming problems for Dave, making him cum into that ridiculous container, for her to slurp up in front of everyone as her playful eyes sparkled with pleasure, glancing down at him as she swallowed it down and grew…

And all that had been before THAT moment, when they went into the janitor’s closet, and everything changed forever.  Lucas had seen the Goddess; she had branded herself onto his soul.  There was no getting rid of that memory, ever.  THAT Brooke owned him now, body and spirit, even though she technically didn’t exist anymore, as far as Lucas knew.  Anything else in life was superficial and flat compared to her.

Lucas looked around at his kitchen and living room, which seemed to be suspended in an unnatural stillness in the afternoon sun, which emanated through his curtains and hung in the air, a dull blue.  The faucet, the countertops, the fridge, the sofa…none of it seemed real.  Lucas himself hardly felt real.  All he could see when he closed his eyes was that impossibly, transportingly beautiful face, those burning eyes, that knowing smile…a smile that indicated a casual knowledge of the secrets of the universe never imagined by any human entity.  And those breasts, those hips, the way her body smelled, and filled up his nose with ambrosial aroma…the way she had sounded, like a waterfall, like the ocean, like the voice of a feminine entity beyond the boundaries of space and time, who was swallowing his soul.

A pipe inside the living room wall creaked, the same way it always did from time to time.  But the seemingly innocuous sound released a deluge of emotions for Lucas, and he felt his legs shaking as he backed up against his door, breathing heavily, trying to get his twitching mouth under control so he wouldn’t burst into tears.  He had no idea why his apartment was giving him this reaction, but if he had possessed the mental stamina to scrutinize himself, he would have realized that the sheer normality of everything was mocking him, as if to say, ‘Yes, that’s right, come back to your little apartment…sink back into your ordinary life…try and forget what you’ve seen…you can’t…you can’t…you got a little taste, and you’ll never, ever taste it again.’

But Lucas felt the warm, smooth device in his baggy pants pocket, and he stepped back from the brink of a breakdown.  He felt excitement.  Hope.  And, best of all, he knew he was doing something he shouldn’t.  While Rick and Dr. Drayton had been rambling on to each other about how smart they were, he had snuck under their noses and snatched this thing…and he knew that he had pulled off an impressive feat indeed, because this device felt expensive.  Taking it out, Lucas admired its sleek, metallic design, its gently flashing lights under the bottom keypad, and the central, shiny red button that almost seemed to glisten in the afternoon sunlight coming in through his curtains.  Lucas couldn’t get over how the bottom of the device came with finger-holds that matched his exactly.  He felt a surge of welcome warmth coursing through him, reversing the awful cold, clammy nausea he had been feeling just moments before.

Without really understanding why, Lucas proceeded to kick off his pants and bow out of his oversized t-shirt as he retreated to his bedroom.  He turned the doorknob lock on his bedroom door too, and then went over to his window and completely shut the blinds, pulling the curtains closed for good measure.  A moment later he was in his bed, snuggled up in the covers, holding the device in front of him as his heart beat faster and faster.  He felt a strong desire to press the red button, but before he could, he felt it suddenly grow warmer in his hand.  A gentle vibration followed, and a flashing hint of piercing red flickered before his eyes.  Subconsciously, Lucas understood that this red flash was some sort of laser, but he had no idea that his face had just been scanned.  Then, to his great surprise, a lovely female voice issued forth from some unknown region of the device, speaking directly to him:

“Welcome to the Cube, Lucas Mineur.  To begin, please adjust the flashing green dial for target acquisition.”

For a few seconds, Lucas wasn’t even able to do anything.  He was just staring blankly at the device’s screen, which was still black.  He looked around a little for the microphone where the woman’s voice was coming out of, but he couldn’t find anything.  It wasn’t Brooke’s voice – it was just a pleasant, soft female voice, almost like it was computer-generated.  But now Lucas was honing in on the little dial at the bottom of the device, below and slightly to the right of the red button.  It was flashing green, in a series of little bulbs that gave the appearance of an arrowed trajectory from right to left.  Lucas stared at the lights for a few moments, a bit confused, but then finally realized that he was supposed to turn the dial in the direction the lights were going.  He reached down and did so, feeling the tiny dial click out pleasantly into the air.  The sound seemed to gather the darkness around Lucas, and he felt delightfully cozy and secretive in his bed, with his blinds and curtains closed, and his doors locked.

As soon as he turned the dial, the device’s black screen immediately lit up with a 3D image of a person that seemed to come quickly at him out of the depths, like he had been traveling toward it at high speed before rapidly slowing down as it approached.  It didn’t take him longer than a split second to realize who the image was: Brooke…the “normal” Brooke, as she had appeared a short time before in the tank.  And, just like she was in the tank, her 3D image was completely naked.

For a few short moments, Lucas couldn’t help but admire the advanced graphics of the image.  It looked almost too good to be real.  The 3D Brooke had her arms slightly open to her sides, and was spinning slowly around in the black space, so that Lucas could get a good look at her body from all angles.  The uncanniness of seeing her so reduced from her previous form almost made Lucas dizzy.  Her small breasts, nonexistent ass, skinny limbs…it just didn’t seem possible that this was really her.

But Lucas didn’t stare at the 3D image for too long, because his eyes became attracted to a series of tiny red lights that had begun flashing gently on a panel below the image.  They beckoned his gaze to another black rectangular screen that Lucas hadn’t noticed before.  As soon as he was looking at it, a running series of white text appeared against the screen’s black backdrop.  Lucas was breathless as he read – his heart started beating even faster.  His eyes scanned quickly over what looked like a chart, which included a long list of what looked like Greek letters in one column, labeled “Τονίζει,” and in the adjacent column, labeled only “Setting,” each Greek letter appeared to be set to “0.”

“What the…?” Lucas muttered to himself, not understanding the meaning behind any of this.  The red lights below continued blinking gently at him for a few more seconds, almost seeming to mock his bewilderment, but then they abruptly switched to a bright green, and the flashing cadence changed up, so that they were going on and off in an “arrow” formation.  Lucas followed their trajectory with his eyes, and saw that the green lights were “pointing” at a small box on the screen he hadn’t seen before, which was simply labeled “Primary Settings.”

“Good, let’s start with the English ones first,” Lucas said to himself, a little annoyed that he had no idea what the first graph was all about, and then he held his finger up about an inch over the screen, hesitating for a moment.  Was this…some kind of touch screen?  Almost immediately, as if answering his unspoken question, the small box began glowing green, and growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking, making itself more prominent on the screen.  The animation seemed to pipe out, ‘Tap me!  Tap me!’

Lucas blinked and tapped the box.  He wasn’t even taking the time to be amazed at how this device seemed to be anticipating his every move, even his every thought.  He was too engrossed in his breathless exploration of what exactly the device did.  But as soon as he tapped the box, he got his answer.  An entirely new graph sprang up onto the screen, except this graph was all in English, and much easier to understand.  Lucas’s heart was hammering away in his chest as he read down the boxes in the first column: “Frizzy Hair,” “Oily Skin,” “Yellow Teeth,” “Moles,” “Pimples,” “Requires Glasses,” “Clumsy,” and “Stuttering.”  Next to all of these were checkboxes that were each marked with a white “X.”

Lucas felt his face get hot, and his breathing quickened.  So this…this device…it was just like the last one!  Way more advanced, obviously, but still…!!  He could barely believe his luck, and how easily he had managed to swipe it out of Rick’s lab, right from under their noses!  He felt himself inwardly swell with pride, just thinking about Rick and Dr. Drayton and Dave, and how they all looked down on him – especially Dave – talking down to him, disrespecting him, just because he had shrunk down a little bit, and just because, in their minds, he had let the first device get away from him.  What the fuck did they know about what had happened between him and Brooke!?  Nothing.  None of them could even conceive of what he had seen, what he and Brooke had shared together, what they had become.

“Dave acting all high and mighty with me,” Lucas muttered to himself, with a self-satisfied grin on his face, as he went down the list and unchecked all the boxes for the negative physical attributes Brooke’s “original” body had before.  “Basically threatening to fire me unless I keep tabs on Brooke…well how about this for keeping tabs on her, huh!?”

A fierce joy had started overtaking him, and the more he went down the list of negative characteristics, the more this joy increased.  He was going to have Brooke back…not at first, anyway, not as she had been, of course, but maybe he would be able to somehow…somehow learn how to use this device to get her to…to…

But here, Lucas’s mind stopped wandering, because he had gotten past unchecking all the negative physical attributes (though he noticed, to his disappointment, that it seemed like he couldn’t change her height, or weight, or breasts), and had reached the final two rows.  The first of these, labeled “Others Aware of Changes Made,” was glowing a deep blue, unlike the green of the previous columns, conveying to Lucas that this row was somehow different from the others.  Lucas sat there in his bed, mouth pursed, trying to understand what it meant.