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"I can't thank you enough for what you did back there." Dr. Ross Boxer held open the door for Celia as she walked out of the conference room. She smiled and nodded as she stepped past, and he could have sworn that the brush of her tail against his lab coat was intentional. "You really stuck your neck out for me in front of the VP."

The filly snorted and dismissed the danger with a wave of her hand. "He's a softie once you know how to work him," she said, clopping down the hallway. Ross' heavier hooves thumped a few times before he fell in step with her. "That's something you should learn how to do yourself."

Ross swept his ears back and rubbed his mane with hoof-tipped fingers. "Gee, Dr. Connelly, I don't know--"

Celia stopped him with a hand on his arm. She moved it once they had settled against a side of the hallway leading them back to the lab. Still, that brief contact sent electricity racing up Ross' spine. "I'm serious. You do so much for this company, Ross, and no one's going to recognize it unless you stand up and take credit for it. You need to stop being a pushover." She grinned, "I'm not going to be there for you every time."

She was joking with that last bit, he knew, but it still made him blush. She started walking again, back to the lab where the experiment was about to begin. He followed her willingly, pulled on an invisible leash. His nostrils flared once and he snorted, trying to clear his head so he could concentrate on the work ahead. "I know it's easy for

you to stand up and speak your mind, but...that's just not how I was raised. Work hard, speak softly. It's what my mother always told me."

Celia chuckled as she ran her ID card through the reader. Ross followed her, making sure the door locked behind them. This was a restricted area, after all. Only people directly involved with the nanotech experiments were supposed to be here today.

"I know, Ross. And that's something draft families tell themselves to make sure people aren't too put off by your size. But something showing off a little is good too." He could have sworn that she looked pointedly at his chest when she said that. He felt self-conscious about the way it bunched his shirt. He always felt that way when people stared. Even though his clothes were personally tailored, he still had a habit of stretching them out around broad shoulders and thick arms. It was embarrassing.

His ears flattened then, and the sparse fur between his nostrils allowed the darkening of his skin to show. "I guess."

She patted his chest. "Don't guess, Ross. Know." Another jolt of electricity. It was enough to make him squirm, but he simply flicked his ears instead. He looked down into her brown eyes, and she looked up into his. A full foot of height separated them, though Celia was by no means a short woman. There was an undeniable connection between them, and for a moment Ross felt like he could tell her anything.

A fox stepped out of the entrance to the lab and squeezed his way around them. Ross was pushed forward, and the intimacy of the contact broke the spell. He looked away from her, startled, too soon to see the momentary flash of disappointment.

"Well, this looks like your stop," she said, and smiled up at him. "I've got a few last bits of paperwork to sort out. See you later?"

Ross stepped back towards the door. He didn't know what to say now that he had let the moment pass. "Sure. See you later."

Celia clopped away clutching her clipboard tight against her massive bosom. The long hairs of her tail swayed through the split of her lab coat as she walked away. Ross watched until she rounded a corner, and then brushed his broad thumb against a keypad. The door to Experimental Lab Beta slid open with a hiss of air.

The Beta Lab was a riot of activity. They were just a few minutes away from conducting the live experiment. Everyone in that room had a part to play in making sure every protocol was followed to the letter. There were at least a dozen men in there, almost all of them with glasses and lab coats, looking down at computer monitors or

read-outs...sometimes checking between the two. Ross towered over all of them, and whenever he stood in an open space he tended to take up all of it. He thumped from station to station to make sure everything was in order. Everyone was nervous. He got swept along in the current of it.

At the far end of the room away from the door there was a window. The window itself was reinforced plastic that allowed the partition beyond to be vacuum-sealed. It was a completely different environment in there -- the room had its own air filtration systems, its own computer system monitoring the temperature and humidity. The walls were grey steel. So were the ceilings and floor. The only things inside the room were two white plastic platforms, with an apple on each.

The idea was that a set of nano-machines would be sent into the room to break down one apple into its components and add it to the mass of the second apple. If that experiment went off without a hitch, they would add increasingly disparate items -- a tomato, a chicken, and a small ball of iron -- to the apple's mass and analyze the fruit's makeup to see whether or not it was still an apple. If it was...the possibilities were quite exciting. It could mean the end of landfills and hunger in one fell swoop. It would be world-changing.

But before they could change the world, they had to get through this first trial. And that meant everything being accounted for, making sure that everything was as it should be. There were a thousand moving parts to this thing, and they all had to be looked after, measured to the smallest possible degree. It was amazing that things didn't get missed.

Or maybe they did. Ross looked down at the display and noticed something odd happening with one of the apples. Slowly but surely a spot was wearing away on one side of it. The skin was gradually disappearing, exposing the white flesh beneath it, then the core as the crater grew deeper. The horse looked at the video feed in fascination, then up at the rest of the lab. Was he the only one seeing this? Everyone else seemed unperturbed. Had the test already started? Was this supposed to be happening?

"Excuse me," Ross rumbled to the lynx next to him. "There seems to be--"

The other scientist gave him an annoyed hiss. "Not now, will you? I've got to make sure the gravity scales are working right. I've only got a few minutes."

"But--"

"Go to Lee if you've got a problem, I'm busy." The lynx shot him a look that said this was the end of the conversation, and went back to his readouts. Ross stood and looked for Lee in the room. The head scientist was nowhere to be found.

The horse sighed. The nano-machine release mechanism was probably broken again. There had been problems with one of the magnets designed to hold them back for weeks now, though someone should have fixed that today. If a small packet of nanites had been released already and imprinted the apple for dissolution, then it just might compromise the whole study. They would have to shut down everything, reprogram the nanites and double-check their containment protocols. That would set the entire experiment back weeks, and they were nearing the end of their budget as it was. Any further setbacks might kill the program altogether.

Ross couldn't let that happen. He'd have to do something to cover it up before anyone discovered something had gone wrong. The horse could just wiggle the magnet down until it worked again, turn the apple so that the dissolved side wouldn't face the cameras and quietly slip out before the experiment started in less than ten minutes. He would have to take great care not to make contact with the nanites that had already been introduced so they wouldn't imprint on him, but that wouldn't be a problem. If they were only escaping through a small gap in the magnetic field, the beam through which they travelled would have a fairly narrow focus.

He would have to be careful, and he would have to be quick. But that shouldn't be a big problem. Despite his size, most people didn't notice him. He would be in the nanite room and out with no time at all.

Ross threaded his way through the chaos of the room. When he pressed someone against a workstation with his bulk, they simply gave him an annoyed look and went about their work. This sort of thing happened in close quarters all the time, especially when you were seven feet tall and weighed close to 400 pounds. He slipped into the 'airlock' easily, briefly considering whether or not he should put on the protective equipment that ensured the environment stayed sterile. He decided against it. He would only be a minute, and it would take more time than that getting into and out of it.

He pressed the button that switched the ventilation system from the lab to the nanite room, then clomped in. His fur rose underneath his clothes, and the metal clip that held his name tag practically buzzed. The walls, ceiling and floor were magnetized as well, just to make sure the nanites wouldn't deconstruct anything they shouldn't.

It was strangely quiet in the room. There was the hum of the magnets, the hiss of the ventilation and the unsteady sound of his breathing. Through the window Ross could see the chaos of the lab, a room full of bodies reading and shouting to each other. Nobody was looking up, just at the screens or their nearest neighbors. It was odd to him. In just a few short minutes, all conversation would cease and people would be glued to the spot where he was standing. It was up to him to make sure it would be for the right reasons.

The big horse kneeled underneath the window, where the launch bays for the nanites were housed. The magnetism was strongest here. He could feel the long strands of his mane standing up as he pressed one big hand on the padded wall. He was careful to make sure he could look inside the launch bay without getting directly in the way. There were hundreds of nanites leaking through, after all.

The launch bays were open circles, lined with metal discs ringed with blue light. One of them caught Ross' attention immediately -- it was unlit and the metal disc hung from its perch at an odd angle. Surely this was it. He grabbed a pen from his pocket and poked at the metal. A small shove should set things right again.

Instead, the metal sparked and an electric current ran up the horse's arm. He whickered in surprise and jerked his hand back, right into the nanite stream. The side of his hand felt odd as thousands of nanites latched on to him. The sparks extended to other magnets, obliterating one launch bay and then the next. The sound emanating from the walls died down. The same pins and needles feeling in his hand raced up his arm. He knew this was a bad thing.

A dark cloud formed around the apple, which was gone in moments. It moved to the other apple, which disappeared even more quickly. Then it dispersed as it raced towards him, and Ross felt a pleasant buzz all over. The nanites had apparently imprinted on him. They would be taking the mass from the apples and adding it to his own.

His heart leapt into his throat. This was bad. He had compromised the study; who knows how long it would take for the nanites to be reprogrammed? Chances are he would be kicked off the program, but that didn't matter. The lab would lose its funding after this setback. All of his colleagues would lose their jobs.

He stood up quickly and planted his hands against the glass. His brain was whirling. He was in so much trouble. This would be the end of his career. What would he have to fall back on? Why couldn't he stop smiling?

The nanites worked with shocking efficiency. They bonded themselves to Ross' nervous system and brain, making sure the horse was flooded with endorphins. From there they quickly determined his physical makeup down to an elemental level. A few hundred nanites could never have managed the monumental task of mapping out a sentient organism, but with millions of them sharing the processing power it could be done quickly. Whenever they felt their numbers weren't enough for the job, they simply built more from surrounding materials.

The lynx that had shooed off Ross before was the first to notice the horse on the other side of the glass. Ross couldn't make out what he was saying, but he didn't need to. His wide-eyed expression told him everything. The cat was so amusing as he practically smacked the armadillo next to him and pointed. The other scientist froze for a moment, and then pressed a button. All hell broke loose after that.

An alarm sounded, and what was chaos with some semblance of order devolved into a full-fledged frenzy. Scientists dropped their work and ran out of the lab before the doors locked behind them. Ross could feel the glass thinning against his hand, the plastic material steadily eaten away by the nanites who would use it to build him up.

It was hard to think straight. He couldn't tell if his clothes were dissolving or if they were ripping out of him. He felt his bones thickening, lengthening, stretching his tendons until they too grew. His muscles filled out his frame even further before his skin stretched around them. It all felt odd, like his body was constantly building pressure in layers. Then something would shift to relieve it. That relief sent waves of pleasure through him. His body felt more and more right all the time.

The nanites were breaking down his clothes to save him the trouble of growing through them. His lab coat disappeared, then the shirt that stretched around his thick shoulders and barreled chest. The tweed pants with the reinforced seams were the next to go, and his boxers simply melted away to leave him fully exposed. Ross didn't see it, but the platforms holding the apples were being dismantled, too.

He felt his bones pop as they stretched wider, and a rush of endorphins flooded his brain. He nickered happily as he leaned a little harder on the window. The thinning material and his growing weight made the safety glass crack, and the webbing pattern grew as his fingers did. By now he was a few inches over seven feet tall and had gained fifty pounds of muscle.

Ross flexed as his chest widened, watching it rise with every breath. The sides of his pecs pushed against incredibly rounded biceps which in turn pushed back, growing wider, rounder. He felt the weight of those muscles grow, his forearms visibly thickening in front of him. The black cloud was constant, barely noticeable but there if you stared.

His tail flicked behind him, swishing over a pair of glutes that grew hard and steely, rounding out as well. His thighs were already heavy, but they only grew wider and more firmly packed. His short fur hid nothing of his definition, and each time he planted his hooves a little wider his bulk rippled.

The stallion's sheath had swollen as well, growing thicker and broader. The tip rose to his navel before the flat dome of his head appeared. The machines were working there, too, seemingly overtime. His balls were cramping between his thighs, hanging low and full, and even with his changed proportions he could feel his maleness outpacing the rest of him in weight.

He was breathing heavily, trying to clear his thoughts. It was no use, though. Every time he thought he had a handle on something his body would get another rush and he would visibly expand, completely demolishing any thoughts in his head. The nanites were cannibalizing everything in the room to replicate themselves and add to the bulk of the horse. They would keep doing so until they ran into a magnetic field, which told them to stop. If they made it out of this room, though, that would be much, much harder to do.

The glass Ross was leaning against finally shattered. The heavy horse toppled over and took out the rest of the wall with him. He barely noticed anything beyond the tip of his shaft brushing his stomach on the way down. He moaned and slipped his hand around the huge length, squeezing it. Encouraged, a few more inches slipped free. He flipped onto his back while the nanites went to work.

The lab was a much richer environment for materials than the controlled room. A black cloud rose from Ross and made short work of the row of computers above his head, growing denser as more nano-machines were built from its parts. From there it dispersed and started in on the nearby floors, the walls, the ceiling. They knew enough to cut power to the lab as they worked; the monitors flickered off, followed by the lights, and then the alarm. The room went dark and quiet save for the faint buzz of the room being dismantled on a molecular level and the rumbling, deepening moan of a stallion.

Ross' senses were addled by the machines, probably as a kindness. The constant work of converting inorganic materials to flesh and bone on a molecular level probably would have felt odd at best, and it could have been excruciating at worst. He only felt an increasingly potent rush of endorphins as he grew bigger, and every time his bulking musculature pushed against itself it was like an orgasm over his entire body.

He took in deep breaths now, the sensation overloading his brain. It was too much...too much pleasure, too much growth, too much size. Deep within the recesses of his higher reasoning a voice cried out that something had gone dreadfully wrong, that the unbearable bliss he was feeling was the product of a worst-case scenario. The rest of his mind could only manage a curious glance in that voice's direction before the next wave of growth and orgasmic pleasure washed over him, and then he was right back to square one.

The nanites worked tirelessly. The area in furthest corner of the lab, where Ross lay, had been completely dissolved of all furniture. Racks of computers, sensors and displays had all been broken down and 'fed' to the writhing, moaning mass that had grown into their places. In the darkness, there were small sparks that passed between areas of the humming cloud as it communicated within itself. Its own programming determined how it would develop, growing its capacity to make decisions by leaps and bounds, changing the way it interfaced with its host organism, working itself seamlessly and irrevocably into its vital systems. No one knew it yet, least of all Ross, but a brand new type of artificial sentience was born that day. The experiment was more successful than anyone could have guessed.

Ross grew towards twelve feet tall before he even started to form coherent thoughts again. His body had grown from well-developed to freakish; his long and graceful neck had been widened to hulkish proportions, leading almost directly to shoulders that bristled with power. His chest and back looked like the cage of a tank around his torso, pushing arms the size of young trees away from his body. His thighs rippled and swelled, packed with unyielding muscle. They would crash against each other if he ever stood upright, and he'd be forced to roll them against one another. His endowment had run away even faster with its development; his balls easily covered his legs down to the knees, and his sheath all but obscured the cobbled expanse of his stomach. And still he grew, legions of nano-machines bringing him more mass that had been cannibalized in the room. With every breath he took dozens of pounds of muscle, fur and bone was added to him. The machines had only cleared half the room now, but the pace was quickening even now.

"Celia." His voice thundered within his chest. His tongue and teeth felt strange and new. The nanites in the room shuddered sympathetically, lightning sparking from cloud to cloud. Celia. Celia. The budding consciousness searched its databanks for meaning but came up empty. It would take days before the nanites were bonded with Ross well enough for instant interchange of thoughts and data. All the cloud knew is that Celia was important. Maybe it was a new kind of magnet? Or a different shutdown protocol.

Ross could feel himself expanding, his hooves slowly inching along the floor while his body widened. He still couldn't quite move himself yet, but feeling was coming back and it was shocking. His back and shoulders were so immense he couldn't quite rest his head on the floor. His chest expanded past his muzzle by a good ways. His own member was a noticeably heavy weight over his thighs and stomach. And all the time, more, more, more. It was strange and new, and when he could think enough to understand what had happened his stomach turned cold. Science had literally run away with him, and this was the result. He was the world's first true cyborg, and who knew what would happen now. His life was over. Chances are he would be the subject of intense scientific scrutiny for the rest of his days. He would never see his home again.

This realization stunned him. No one wakes up in the morning expecting that this would be the last normal day for them. All the things he had planned to do -- find a girlfriend, buy a house, raise a family, run a marathon -- were out of the question now.

Well, most of them. He could still have Celia, if nothing else. She would understand him despite this. She would still be willing to give a relationship a try if only he could ask her. And he'd only be able to ask her if he could bring these nanites under control.

The giant horse tried to will them to stop. He could feel the beginnings of some sort of interface network there in his mind, and the electrical impulse passed from organic matter to nanobots within a split-second. The cloud hummed, though he couldn't for the life of him figure out what was going on there. A few seconds later, another flash of electricity, and the number '1' came up to his consciousness, unbidden.

His muscles and joints unlocked, and he could feel the tingling sensation of added mass slow and then stop. There was no telling how tall he was, there in the dark, but he could feel all of his bulk crowding itself as he prepared himself to move. He sat up and his head brushed against the ceiling twelve feet overhead. Unless he miscalculated, that would put him at over twenty, closer to twenty-five. Plains and pastures, he thought, ducking low and rubbing his forehead. How much did they take?

Experimental Lab B was mostly emptied of its million-dollar set-up. Even the tiles and wires underneath the floor had been stripped to add to the horse's tonnage. Without anything to do, the nanites returned to Ross, adding to his already impossible size, getting to work on connecting with him as seamlessly as it could. The doctor could feel its presence, new and alien, tangling with his own. It felt strange but wonderful, and any other time he would have probed it for a while. Now, he had only one thought on his mind.

The mammoth stallion rolled to his hands and knees, shaking the room and punching small craters into the concrete foundation wherever he landed. His back scraped the ceiling harshly, but pushing the copper pipes and steel girders felt strangely right somehow. He made his way slowly to do the door, nudging a hole through the wall surrounding it as gently as he could. There was no way he was going to fit otherwise.

He was greeting with a chorus of voices on either side of him in the hallway. Turning his head on his muscle-shortened neck, he saw that perimeters had been constructed at the extremities of either end. Portable magnetic blockades hummed behind a dozen or so security offers, each decked in full riot gear. He smiled to himself, shifted and sat down against the wall across from the door. The nanites followed him, forming a miasma of black smoke hovering inches over his fur. The quakes caused by his movement put everyone else on edge. He didn't even need to see them to know that.

"Dr. Ross Boxer?" A voice called out from his right. It was both firm and nervous. "We order you to stand down and wait for the nanites to be deactivated."

He chuckled. It was strange how his voice echoed and rumbled through the hallway. He could feel it shaking the floor beneath him. "All right," he said. It would take some getting used to, hearing himself talk. His timbre was almost demonically low. "Can I speak to Celia? I won't move. I just need to talk to her."

"I'm here." His heart leaped when he heard her voice. She called out instantly for him, and it made him feel so good.

"Celia." He tried to speak quietly. The bass and volume distorted his words to the point that he was little more than soundquake when he said something. "I know things are going to be crazy for a little while because of this. I accept that. I've...I've made a

mistake. But when this is all over, when they think it's safe for me to do it...would you go out on a date with me? I would really love to see you."

The hallway was quiet for several moments. Ross tried to fight off his nerves. It was an unusual request, at a really bad time. He steeled himself so that he wouldn't take it personally if she said no.

"Yes," she said. "When all this is over."

Dr. Boxer slumped against the wall, his weight denting it severely. The next few weeks would likely be hell. That one word was all he would need to get him through it.