Playing for the Other Team
#1 of Playing for the Other Team
Ever since nanites had become practical new opportunities and ideas had proliferated. Two years ago, InGen Technologies completed a study on the use of nanites in healing injuries, specifically mining injuries from a collapse. But that technology had been put on the back shelf immediately afterwards by the FDA sitting on the approval. But it was about to break free in a most unexpected way.
Here comes a new series. It will be an Adult, M/M series.
Ever since nanites had become practical new opportunities and ideas had proliferated. Two years ago, InGen Technologies completed a study on the use of nanites in healing injuries, specifically mining injuries from a collapse. But that technology had been put on the back shelf immediately afterwards by the FDA sitting on the approval. But it was about to break free in a most unexpected way.
"I don't care if it's illegal, Richard!"
The mousey man cowered at the onslaught of anger pouring out of his matronly patron. Her wrinkled face was covered in an angry scowl as she pointed one bony finger at him before wagging it as if scolding a child.
"I'm paying you a lot of money to get this right-" She spat before being taken with another coughing fit, her head falling to be cradled by long, bony hands as she erupted.
"Miss Reese. If I-"He tried to talk, to defend himself as she hacked, but he knew that he wasn't going to fix anything like that. She was going to get what she wanted, come hell or high water. She always did, he thought as his matron's fit died down and she cut him off.
"If you what?" She sneered as she leaned closer to his face. "You scared of jail, you sniveling bitch? Not like you'd see it," she spat. "I'm the one telling you to do it. Just turn their evidence." Her voice grated his ears, but he realized that she was right, at least right enough. "You'd be doing it anyway since you're such a fucking coward." Her accusing finger again filled his view as she swung it in his face as he turned a new shade of red. "Or I could just use you as a test subject for your own work." Her voice was dark and threatening as she spoke. "It is in your contract." Her mouth broke into an evil grin as she spoke, age-yellowed teeth glinting in the light.
Richard gulped as he realized that she was serious. "I...I...Yes, ma'am." His head hung as he defeatedly accepted her order. "I should be ready for the trials later this week. I'll just need some chimps to test on."
"Bullshit, Richard," She spat. "All you're doing is synthesizing the dose. It's the same damned formula you already tested. Already proven it on a couple dozen miners years ago."
"But Ms. Reese, It could-"
"I don't care." Her words echoed in his mind just as much as they did off the wall of the tight office as her eyes burned into his own. "I've only got a little longer to deal with all of this, and I'll be damned if Jethro's work isn't the perfect solution to this."
The balding man gulped, peering through thick spectacles at the widower giving him orders. "I'm finishing the It may have side effects, ma'am."
"I know." Her tone was more measured, almost understanding as her eyes flicked away from his. "But it's all I have left." He was shocked at the despair and almost begging undertone of her voice. "The doctors said they don't know how I'm still here."
Richard huffed as his eyes met hers. They weren't the typical bloodshot accusing orbs, but he could swear that he saw something there that he had never seen there before, even after decades working with and eventually for the Reeses.
Fear.
"It'll take a few days, ma'am." His defeated voice escaped his mouth as his eyes dropped to the floor. "But could I ask for something?"
"What?"
"I'll have Pauline come by today." She could see his Adam's apple bulge as he swallowed nervously. "It's not that I don't trust you but-"
"Oh, horseshit. You don't, but I get it. Write up your ass-covering. I'll sign it."
She could see the relief that he was unable to contain and hide. "But get it done by tomorrow."
"Did you have a preference, ma'am?" His voice asked almost without his desire to ask the question.
"No, Richard." She sighed. "Just do it. Make it good. If you can..." She nearly stuttered, her guard completely down for just a moment before the mask went back up. "Make it interesting. I want to be as perfect as your machines can make it." Silently, inside her mind, she admitted to herself that even becoming a beggar would be good enough. Better than death.
"Yes, ma'am," He sighed as the pangs of guilt kept gnawing at him as he saw her take a step back, getting out of his face at least a little bit.
"Get it done." She tiredly sighed, her dejected mood a marked difference from the angry harpy that had first cornered him. "It's...It's....It's all I have." With that, she silently turned toward the stainless steel doorway that separated the laboratory from the rest of the facility. Her muscles relaxed just a little bit as a single tear fell from her eye before she turned and walked away.
Dr. Richard Grossman's blood pressure and anxiety had placed themselves at highs that he didn't think should have been even possible. Astonishingly Ms. Reese had stayed out of his hair since that day, letting him work, without interruptions. But he hadn't finished his job, and he knew that she would be getting impatient and that quiet would vanish eventually. It had been nearly a week since she had given him that ultimatum and he still hadn't finished. Every simulation and trial of the mutagen failed as he tried to make even just a functional body for his demanding patron. His cuss jar was overflowing from just the last week, and it wasn't going to stop growing anytime soon.
"Okay." He growled to himself as he paced up and down the laboratory floor. He scowled at the matte black workstation as he stalked past it. "None of the combinations worked. Every one failed hard in the sim. But the clinical trials went fine. Every attempt matched the simulations almost perfectly. What was the difference?"
He searched his mind, trying to pull the elusive link from his mind and find the answer before Ms. Reese tried to take him to the grave with her. The simulation was the top of the line, intended to perfectly mimic the reaction of the human genome to the genetic mutations that the drug induced in the body. Dozens of trials and tests had all been nearly perfect in how well it matched the desired result. It had been one of the most incident-free, painless trials that the doctor had seen out of dozens. Formulae and figures flashed through his mind as he thought back to the months he spent in that ward, seeing men go from being balled up in agony to being back on the job deep below the surface.
"I wonder." He mused as his fingers danced on the keyboard, shifting the target genome to a different preset that he knew had worked before. "Let's see Wha- Oh, hell," He swore almost as soon as he had pressed the button. Just that changed profile had sent the program running, the software busting through the programmatic logjam that had so bedeviled him for the past hours. A ball of fear and nervousness made itself known as it settled in the pit of his stomach.
"There were no women in the test. The simulation or formula are formatted to create men and we missed something. Fuck." He spat as he stood up and began pacing as the program continued its processing, looking perfect as could be as he tried to decide what he was going to tell her. He had been working with her program all week, trying to get it to work, but her biology meant that he would need to reverify the program. And there was no way he could do that in time. It had taken years to get the technique working on men, with dozens of scientists running the calculations and trying different techniques.
With a beep, the simulation did something he hadn't expected.
It completed.
The body of a fanger revolved on the screen in front of him. The rhinoceros was chunky and well built, just what had been programmed for the trial patient in question, and a far sight from the withered elderly woman that had supposedly birthed him in the software. Incredulous fingers and eyes clicked on the simulation report to make sure that the program input hadn't changed.
A lifetime of wear and tear, as well as luxury, met his eyes as her stats came up, just like they should have. But there had been such a drastic change to her theoretical form that he couldn't believe it. Scrolling through the report, his eyes locked onto the estimated resources and the light bulb in his head clicked on.
The simulation posited that the total biomass and nanite support and usage were three times the highest recorded amount used in any of the trials, even of the most deformed and biggest change in size.
"It's almost rebuilding her from scratch." He marveled as he realized just what this would mean. He could give her that new life, but it would be much different than she expected. Unsure of how she was going to take this, his shaking hand wrapped around the desk phone, but before he could work up the nerve to pick it up it vibrated and rang in his hand.
"Grossman, Genomics" He choked down his fear as he waited to find out just what voice was going to fill his ear.
"It's now or never." The voice of Ms. Reese's personal physician sent a shiver of dread down Grossman's spine. "We just staved off a heart attack, but it's only a matter of hours. Can you?"
Grossman's mind was in overdrive. He had only run one simulation that had worked, and if she had hours, he couldn't try again. She hadn't acquiesced to any of the caveats that he had just run headlong into, even if she had signed the reams of warnings and concerns previously. This had been the last thing that he expected to happen. But it was her only shot, and she knew, she had said as much.
"Is she conscious?" His voice quivered as he could guess at the answer to that, but hoped against hope that he could tell her what this decision would entail. It wasn't just going to be getting shaggier like she thought.
"No. We had to induce a coma to stop her from dying before I could even talk to you." The matter of fact statement belied a sense of remorse and defeat in the elderly doctor's voice as he was doubtlessly watching one of his longest term patients succumb straight in front of him. It made Grossman give the only answer he possibly could.
"Have her moved to the lab at InGen. I'll meet you there." He sighed as he hung up the phone. He was either going to be rich as hell after this, or out of a job. Clicking through the backdoor connection to the InGen lab his fingers entered a combination that he had memorized at the request of his elderly patron's late husband. He didn't have the time to build her a whole new profile, especially since he was guessing that she was already on the road to the laboratory. But he had one that would fit.
Jethro had been playing around one day back when they had just started the project and had jestingly told Grossman that that profile was his. He kept tinkering with it as long as he could, hoping it could be his lifeboat, but the scourge had taken him before they had managed to crack the genetic code and prove to themselves that the process worked. But what he couldn't use, perhaps his beloved wife could.
"Dear God, I hope this either works or if it fails, it's quick." His finger pressed down on the return key, converting an entire idealized body into nothing but ones and zeros and sending it across gleaming fiber optic cables to the lab where he was going to throw this Hail Mary pass.
Hopefully, Ann would be in the end zone to catch it.
The room was remarkably sterile and cold, the air smelling slightly of disinfectant and the walls coated with gleaming stainless steel. Two gleaming glass and steel clamshell halves lay beside the cold exam table that sat in the center of the room perched on the two steel arms swung out to the sides like some prehistoric predatory plant. Next to the apparatus, Grossman fidgeted and looked at his watch as he paced back and forth across the room, waiting for his patient to get there.
'Patient, hell. I'm using her as a damned test subject.' Fear pulsed through his mind as he paced back and forth alongside the stainless table. But beneath the fear and nervousness something else lay, pushing him forward. It was one of the foundational emotions of mankind, curiosity. If this worked, he would have done something that had never been truly achieved with so little preparation. The victory over disease at the least was possibly at hand while even the war against death was looking like there was an end in sight. But even deeper was another thought that even its owner wasn't fully cognizant of.
'If this works, I could fix anything. Be anything.'
But before that thought could percolate any further than the depths of Grossman's subconscious the stainless doors opposite the control room burst open with a clatter. Swiveling, clacking wheels rolled across the floor as the two transporting technicians wheeled the canary yellow stretcher to the center of the room, the physician trotting beside them.
"Put it at the foot of the table, doc." Grossman snapped as he saw the pale, shrunken form of his patron laying on the cot. "It's easier to pull 'em up the table than lift them over the clamshell." He let out a deep breath that he hadn't even been aware that he had been holding as he strode toward the contraption, snapping a pair of nitrile gloves onto his hands as he swallowed down any of the nervousness that still lingered.
"I followed your protocol, Grossman. Got four large bores, a central and tube. Anything else?" The urgency in his voice was palpable, even tempered by years of experience in both the calm world of private medicine and the chaotic state of the state hospitals.
"No," Grossman responded curtly. 'At least nothing you can do' He thought as he hoped that none of his fear was apparent on his face. Even as thrilling as pushing the boundaries of medicine was, this was still a gamble that even Vegas wouldn't have accepted.
If this went well, he could be going to Stockholm. If it went badly he'd be in the stockade.
But he bit back the concerns and fears, his body falling back into the same rhythm that had served him so well during all of the previous procedures, both successful and the not so much. Nanite and biomass pumps were hooked up to the catheters already buried in Ann's arms, legs, and neck. A larger, longer tube quickly replaced the endotracheal tube that had been placed by the doctor before she had even so much as been lifted onto the cot. A spider of gleaming steel arms wrapped around the decrepit form within it, pinning her in place regardless of however badly she writhed during the modification process.
A dozen eyes roved up and down the motionless form that was attached to the stainless table at the center of the room. Heartbeats thudded within a half dozen chests as eyes flicked to the pulsing beat of Ann's heartbeat that flickered across the black screen in iridescent green.
"Looks like that's it." Even as he tried to keep a calm, professional demeanor, Grossman's heart was running wild, his pulse audible in his ears as he waved at the other men in the room. "If you're going to be here, you need to come with me into the control room. Otherwise, you're free to go. But if this goes right, I'll make sure you are compensated for your time if you want to watch."
Knowing that what was coming was going to potentially be a tectonic shift in medicine at best and amazing at the worst, the entire gaggle moved into the glass-enclosed control room before Grossman activated the locking mechanism with a few keystrokes. "As of now, Ann Reese is dead." He breathed as he saw the clamshell doors close atop the withered body of his patroness. He steeled himself as the preparation process started, a ceiling full of warning lights and klaxons lit off, filling the processing room with flashing strobes of amber and red noise before a line of crimson red laser light shone on the floor.
Two thousand degrees of concentrated heat disintegrated any material in its path that had not been specifically designed to withstand the scorching temperature. From great tanks below the room, a custom blend of gases was piped into the sarcophagus-like chamber at the center of the room, preparing for the changes to come. Every single organic molecule was destroyed...no, obliterated as the machinery sterilized the entirety of the room. Not a single organism survived except the one that was locked within the stainless and glass sarcophagus at the center of the room.
But even as that chamber was spared the effects of the potent sterilizing techniques that devastated the room around it, the form within was undergoing a different metamorphosis. The last strands of hair had fallen from its occupant's head, the detritus quickly carried away with the nitrogen gas flushing through the chamber. Harsh UV lights burned off the top layer of skin, a rinse of deionized water coating her and rinsing her form off. But the sedatives and relaxants coursing through her body did their job. Throughout the entirety of the sterilization, not a muscle even spasmed.
Inside the control room, control screens flashed, standing in the center of all manner of dials and indicators. Readouts all around it flashed their digits, some the vital signs of the chamber's occupant, others the reserves of material still stored within the cavernous machinery that filled the room. But the one that everyone's eyes were drawn to was the main console, asking the question of the day.
Commence Genetic Resequenceing - Program Reese 1. Press Y or N.
Without any other choice, Grossman's shaking finger pressed down on the Y button. At this point, neither he nor his subject had any real options remaining.
As the monitors changed, a view of the resequencing chamber filled the main monitor. A red tracking line slid down Ms. Reese's body, the machine taking in almost every form of measurement of her body that was even physically possible. Weight, height, circumference, all the way down to toe length were fed into the computer, the rough estimates that had built up the simulation and associated preplan getting overwritten and variables recalculated to fine tune just what would need to be done. And there was a good chunk of work to do. As the numbers were input, the entire staff in the control room could see the resource requirements on the readout increasing considerably. With every scanned inch, the system found damage and mutations across the body. If it was to make the changes with which it had been programmed, every finding required more and more resources to perform its duties.
As the tracking line reached the ankles of the chamber's occupant, a holographic representation of her body appeared to the side of the main viewing window. Parts of her body were angrily flashing red, obviously calling for attention. Her joints, long bones, and heart flashed an obnoxious red just as Grossman had expected, those parts having suffered significant wear and tear over eight decades of use well as containing the underlying weakness that had necessitated this roll of the dice. But both her breasts and groin flashed red as well.
Pulling up the diagnostic, Grossman's worry was realized. The program, fine-tuned for the male form, was unable to work without a Y chromosome, had highlighted both the wizened breasts of the elderly woman and the remnants of her reproductive system. The system saw only a pair of oversized tumors on her chest as well as significant damage to her groin and reproductive system. But to the system they were merely another defect in the form it was working with. It was just one more thing on the list with the other myriad deficiencies that made up Ann Reese's aged body.
And buried in the code of Jethro Reese's personal opinion of the perfect form, a myriad of other changes were on tap for the changing human. Nanites and biomass were gobbled up by the changing form as the internal organs first repaired themselves. A lifetime of wine, succulent but fatty food, and sedentary life were erased minute by minute. Inch by inch, blood vessels were expanding and growing as her lungs and heart were repaired and strengthened. Inside them, plaque and clots were feasted upon by the nanites flooding her bloodstream, reversing the decades of buildup and damage.
As Grossman and the rest of the observers watched, the vital signs displayed in front of them started to fall, normalizing. He saw the heartbeat falling, growing slower and slower before the blood pressure started to follow suit. The cocktail of medications that she had been taking had been nowhere near as effective as the genetic resequencing treatment was. From the mid one fifties it fell, dropping almost a point a second. It took a mere minute for her pulse to stabilize in the forties as her pressure landed at a very respectable 110/66. The respirator had followed suit, decreasing the volume of oxygenated air that it was pushing through to her changing body as her lungs and heart were rejuvenated.
But the hidden changes that had occurred, only visible from the shift of a trio of numbers on a machine were only the beginning. Unseen machines had started into her digestive system and the rest of her abdomen at the same time. Their hidden work had not only repaired the damage of time and diet to her intestines and stress to her stomach but had made a few other changes that they had been programmed with. No longer would salad or vegetables be satisfying on their own. Red meat, the bloodier the better was the best thing to sate her hunger now. But on the even more eventful scale, her womb had been completely subsumed by the nanomachines that were flooding her body, the ravenous technology eating up anything that their programming told them was foreign. Meanwhile, a growing organ had taken its place; a young and healthy prostate had taken up residence, continuing the removal of any the internal signs of its host's femininity as the machines moved on from the life-supporting organs and onto the more...cosmetic ones.
Grossman's jaw was almost on the floor as he watched the flashing alert of the heart disappear as the flashing at her groin slowed. His eyes flitted down to the central console as the hologram's breasts flashed green as the nanomachines started attacking the tissue. The technique had worked, at least as far as her major organs went. Part of him wanted to hit the stop button. To revive his subject...no, patient with only the changes have gone only as far as they already had. She would be sexually and hormonally dysfunctional, but she would be alive and with the organs of a 21-year-old. But a larger part of him wondered just what was going to happen if he let events continue on their path, and if that was even a true option. They had never tried an emergency stop on a resequencing, and he didn't think it was worth it to try this time.
But even as the thought teased at the edge of his mind, the computer and its attached apparatuses took the option away from him. From the overhead view, it was obvious that Ms. Reese's body was starting to manifest not only the internal changes that were the core intent of the resequencing but the external ones that were its unavoidable side effect. Her head and feet had very obviously shifted from the position they had been frozen in when Ms. Reese had been locked into the draconian apparatus, inches of height adding on quickly. But even as the observers watched her bones thickening, there was even more going on. Keratin had gone wild on both her hands and feet, her manicured and polished nails darkening beneath their polish. Flakes of ruby red nail polish fell off of the changing flesh as the tips grew pointed and aggressive.
Those claw tipped new hands and feet made a quartet of pawed appendages designed to rip apart prey and bury themselves in the soil to maximize traction. The growing paws were quickly becoming an obvious feature of her shifting body, but it would be neither the final extent of the changes being wrought upon her body nor the most obvious once it was all over. Every pulse of her heart sent another slug of deep red blood into muscles that needed it but were not ready to accept it. With every heartbeat, the video monitors picked up the throb of biceps, quads, abs and other muscle groups as blood was slammed into them. Not only did they make it extremely apparent when they got another pulse of nutrition, but with every throb they grew just a little bit. Ashen skin darkened, the wrinkles covering it disappearing as muscles grew beneath them, stretching the thin, membrane to its limit and beyond.
Every breath and heartbeat added just another little bit of strength and power to Ann's form as all the observers could see the bones thickening and lengthening, growing stronger and more resilient to damage and injury. Muscle added itself atop muscle as the widow's frame grew stockier and rougher with each breath. Powerful muscles bulged and pressed against her as the nanites focused on the skeletal muscles, forming and sculpting them to perfection as they had been programmed to create. Power and strength suffused the changing body with every elapsed second as the millions of nanomachines did their jobs.
But the restoration of Ann's human body wasn't what was in the cards. Between the limitations of the recombinant therapy and the fact that her form had been unintentionally defined by her deceased husband, there was one other significant shift that was still outstanding.
As the muscular form of the formerly female human reached the last stage of the process, heat and needle pricks covered her body, even if she couldn't feel them from within the coma that still held her mind in its devious grip. But even without being felt, tanned skin was quickly being subsumed by a forest of fine hairs pressing from its pores. The multitude of hairs quickly spread across Ann's changing body as it writhed in the chamber as the hairs grew into a true pelt. Thick brown and black fur-coated the body occupying the resequencing chamber as her eyes shifted beneath her closed eyelids. Darkening gums and ivory teeth became more and more apparent through her mouth as her nose and face started to press forward from her smooth face as scruff pressed from her skin as her ears were subsumed into her head.
As the fur-coated her skin, Ann's face pressed forward, bones crunching and cracking while a dark and wet nose leading the way as it formed itself into a chiseled muzzle. Meanwhile, a pair of peaks pressed out of her scalp, the new canine ears flicking as light fuzz quickly coated them. Her wispy, wiry hair had already been subsumed by the mane of chestnut canine headfur that had coated her head. Bones and muscles creaked and groaned as the growth of her extremities slowed and the change focused back onto her core, shoulders widening as her chest barreled out. Drooping breasts pulled back into her chest as hard, flat pectorals replaced them as years faded as thick black and tan fur finished coating her body as the final and arguably most significant changes flowed across her body.
Her burgeoning chest grew thick and wide as it became more and more apparent that her husband's idle genetic doodling had a very specific end result. The powerful muscles the change had wrought were apparent, even prominent, even through the thickening fur as the change slowed and finalized. The coloration and shape of the thick muzzle and sharp, angular face that had pressed free from her face made her new form, her new species obviously apparent.
Jethro Reese had always loved having German Shepherds as pets, and now his former wife had been made into one that walked on two legs. But there was one final change that the nanomachines were still working on completing.
Her breasts had already been subsumed into her chest, their mass making up the new, thick pectoral muscles that stood proudly in their place as abs like paving stones pressed free from her gut beneath them. The few feminine curves left after decades of aging had been swallowed up by the rough, angular masculinity that the treatment had been imparting. But even that obvious change wasn't as concrete as the one that was going to cap off the shift. Beneath those hard abs, her labial lips had sealed up, her groin a flat, featureless desert of thick fur. But with each beat of the newly canine heart, two new flaps of skin pressed from that featureless groin. One pressed out between the thick legs as the second pressed out above it. Two growing lumps started to fill the new canine's sack, every pulse of his heart adding to their size and heft. Just above those growing balls, a growing cylinder of furred flesh pressed from his skin, the crimson tip of a canine cock peeking through the top of the new sheathe that wrapped it loosely in a protective barrier.
Two heavy balls and three-quarters of a foot of thick, canine cockflesh were the final signs of the complete transformation and rejuvenation of Ann Reese. Where an hour before a wizened old woman had been hurriedly hooked up to tubes and sensors, a young German Shepherd male hybrid lay. Nearly two feet of height had been added to the former woman's form as every sign of her femininity had been subsumed by the virile young male that lay inside the chamber. She had gone from being trapped in a hospital bed or wheelchair to looking as if he was just coming in off the ice in his first year of college, just entering the prime of his life.
All across the screen before him, Grossman saw the control board lit up from one side to another, green lettering and gages flashing as the whirring of machines slowed and stuttered. Nutrients and blood continued to be pumped into the unconscious form as his vitals stabilized, his pulse and breathing steady and regular. Not only had Ms. Reese's body regained over a half-century of time, but even the damage she had been born with had been repaired. The congenital heart defect that had plagued her body for her entire life wasn't even an afterthought of the new Ann Reese's heart. It beat hard and fast as it shunted its blood around his body, moving oxygen from his renewed lungs to thick, powerful muscles that Ann had never even had half of, even on her best days.
Grossman's eyes flicked up and down the board, checking and rechecking the vital statistics and results of the resequencing therapy that appeared across the screen. But as he clicked the command to start the final process review and to hopefully confirm a positive result of the therapy. But as the system and its associated medical recording and testing equipment started their final check, he moved the mouse over to a side tab and clicked on it. Dozens of boxes and checkboxes filled the screen as the social and legal profile that Jethro Reese had prepared on a lark for his new life. All the paperwork and legal requirements were there, and as soon as Grossman clicked the finalize button it would all start its way through the legal maze. Clicking on the name box, his fingers bounced around the keyboard, stopping just short of pressing down enough to register before he made his mind up.
Selecting the name of Joshua Ryan that had been previously prepared in the history, his fingers pressed down, changing the name slightly to more closely match the woman that had been strapped to the table a mere hour before. Skimming the options on the screen, he stopped for just a moment before he pressed the button to start the basic process to create a whole new identity.
Ann Reese had died at the start of the procedure.
Andy Ryan was about to be born.
Hopefully get some more coming soon. Look forward to your thoughts and comments.