Orientation
Part 2- Long Lasting Flavour

"Seriously!" Wanda pleaded for the second time "Where did that other guy go?"
"Walter" Ethan offered.
"Yeah, Walter. I just don't think we should be leaving without him." Wanda crossed her arms, refusing to budge into the elevator that already contained Ethan, Maggie and Ms. Himura.
"Miss Monique" Ms. Himura sighed. "If Walter has gotten himself lost on this floor, then that's entirely his own responsibility. He'll bump into an employee here eventually and they'll point him in the right direction. But for now, this tour WILL continue with or without him and the same can be said for you."

Wanda screwed up her face in dismay, finally sighed with defeat and stepped into the elevator alongside the others. Maggie did her best to console her.
"Walter's fine, he's probably just, I don't know, getting to know the place a little better. Maybe he made a friend?" she added helpfully, then popped her gum loudly.
Ms. Himura gave a brief look of disdain to the gum chewer and pressed a button on the elevator, sending the four of them off like a shot.
The elevator shuddered slightly for a split second, and then abruptly changed direction, hurtling sideways. Everyone inside, save Ms. Himura, was flung against the opposite wall of the tiny box. Ethan gasped as he dug his way out of the two thrashing girls, shooting an odd look at his new boss, wondering how she had managed to stay on her feet. Then again, what kind of elevator travelled sideways? The grayish blur outside of the Plexiglas doors gave way to a massive, bright hall. The quartet sped over top of a colossal assembly line, the various workers and stations below a complete blur. Realizing he was going to get motion sickness from staring at the spectacle below him, Ethan turned to the residents of the elevator. He smiled at Maggie, who returned the grin.
"So where are you working?" Walter asked.

"Phones" she shrugged. "Sales, I…I sell accounts" Megan had pretty impressive looks for someone who was going to spend her day on a headset. Her minimalist wardrobe did little to hide the impressively rounded hips and full bosom underneath. Ethan couldn't help but entertain a brief fantasy of her reclining across a cozy bedspread, her blond hair resting across her bare shoulders, uncovered by the yellow t-shirt and jeans that she was currently wearing, hey grey eyes peering up at him…. Ethan blinked these thoughts out of his head, hoping that he hadn't been subconsciously staring at her chest.

The elevator violently changed directions again, hurling Ethan into Megan a second time. Ms. Himura was still on her feet.
"You learn to anticipate that over time" She offered.
"Who designed this thing?" Wanda grimaced, picking herself off of the floor. "I feel like I'm in a paint mixer"
At last, the box came to a stop, the doors sliding open smoothly. The four stumbled out into a clean, spotless white room.
"Where are we?" Maggie inquired, trying to determine where the edges of the blank chamber were. She popped her gum again.

"The clean room" Ms. Himura stated simply. "We're going to take a brief trip through R&D, and it's a very sterile environment. We'll be going through that door one at a time. Once you're in the other chamber, strip down to starkers and put all of your possessions on the tray, then pass through the green gate. Once you're on the other side, you'll have a chance to get your things back on"
With that, she strode forward to a circular door on the far side of the room, which opened automatically and promptly shut behind her. A small red light went on, indicating that the chamber beyond was in use.

"So, I think I introduced myself as the new manager, and Megan here is working in our area's sales department, but what are you doing?" Ethan asked, turning to Wanda.
Wanda motioned towards the door wordlessly.
Ethan pressed further. "Ummm, might need more of an answer than that"
Wanda sighed "I'm in shipping. I manage outgoing accounts alright? That means I make sure that things go where they're supposed to"
Ethan recoiled slightly, feeling the temperature of the room drop significantly. A small beep from the door indicated that it was ready to accept another occupant.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I have some work to do. I've got enough friends and I'd rather keep my business and social life separate. It only ever leads to problems" She turned on her heel and strode through the door, letting in slide shut again.
"She has friends?" Ethan muttered.
Maggie giggled, and then a look of confusion crossed her face. "Wait, that other guy said he was a maintenance man, and I'm in sales and she's in shipping, how exactly are you all of our managers?"
"Oh" Ethan explained "Didn't Ms. Himura tell you? We're organized based on the product we're in charge of. So you'll be selling something, Wanda will be shipping it out and I'll be overlooking all of you"
"I think she might have mentioned that. This place has a way of making you forget the little things" Maggie blew a large pink bubble and let it pop, sucking the deflated mess back into her mouth.
"Charming" Ethan remarked. The door let off another beep. "Well, see you on the other side" He grinned, and stepped through, letting the portal shut behind him.  

The sterilizing room looked a lot like an airport security checkpoint, with a tray for his things that sat on a conveyor belt leading through an archway, running parallel to a larger arch meant for him. Wordlessly, he disrobed down to nothing and deposited his clothing in the tray, which was whisked off through the smaller aperture. Ethan shuddered as he stepped through the sterilizing checkpoint, his bare skin sprouting goosebumps in the cold air.
First, Ethan felt an odd, stinging sensation across his entire body, accompanied by a thin white layer of dust developed on his skin.
"Stage one complete, bodily composition scanned" an electronic voice chimed.
He had only walked another few steps forward when his entire body was instantly drenched. There were no visible liquid jets, it was as though the air had become so humid he could swim in it. The water dripping off of him was condensation of that.
"Stage two complete"
The liquid on his body began to fizz and expand into a thick, foamy substance like shaving cream. Within seconds, it's volume had increased at such a rate that from a distance, Ethan resembled a melting snowman. He staggered forwards slightly, spitting up foam.
"Now Rinsing" The voice declared.
This time, Ethan really was hosed down, left spluttering from the multiple jets that were shooting water at him from all directions.
"Sterilization complete" The voice continued. "Please dry off and retrieve personal affects"
A blast of heated air struck Ethan in the face, reminding him of a wind tunnel. Within a second, he was completely dry and deposited on the other side of the cleaning station, in front of an identical circular door. His clothes were waiting for him on a nearby pedestal, the nightmare finally over.

Quickly re-robeing, Ethan stepped through the door and into a small foyer, where the two women preceding him were waiting. Whereas Wanda's hair and wrinkled clothes looked an absolute mess, Ms. Himura still looked as pristine as ever, suit smoothly pressed and hair still brought back in the same loose bun as before, held in place by a crossing pair of jade sticks.
"Glad you could make it" The impeccable executive grinned, accompanying a raised eyebrow "now it's just Ms. Dower we have to wait on. She should be through shortly."
Ethan rubbed at his arm. "I feel like I stepped through a car wash. While I was in there, I got this weird burning feeling across my body. Is that normal?"
"Oh" Ms. Himura replied "That was the sterilizing system's scanner. It burns off a layer of skin to remove any impurities and takes a readout of your body's molecular composition, then cleans you up based on that scan, making sure your make-up matches the initial reading"
"Wait" Ethan tried to backpedal slightly "You're saying that thing cleans us on a genetic level?"

Ms. Himura's reply was cut off as another beep issued from the circular door, swinging open one last time to reveal Megan with her shirt on and her pants half-way up her legs.
"Ah Jeez" the half-clothed girl muttered, wriggling the skin-tight jeans the rest of the way up her backside. Ms. Himura stifled a giggle, both her and Maggie's faces turning a slight shade of red.
Megan zipped up her fly as she chewed the long past flavorless wad of gum in her mouth nervously. Attempting to regain some sense of composure, she joined the others.
The quartet left the foyer and emerged into a hallway as white as the previous room, with walls of clouded glass masking the actions of numerous workers beyond them, rendering them vague, formless shapes.
"This is the R&D department" Ms. Himura smiled "Our carefully selected squad of scientists and engineers work at all hours to bring their brilliant ideas into reality. Yes, the production facilities are vital, but THIS is where the real magic happens. Most of the prototypes developed in this department that don't see the light of day are used here, such as the elevators we've been using, or the sterilizing system"
"Can we see inside the labs?" Ethan piped up.
"Not at the moment" Ms. Himura replied "Everybody's rather hard at work and we wouldn't want to disrupt them, but I COULD show you one of the vacant work stations."

As the group quickened pace slightly, Wanda turned to Megan. "Hey" she remarked "I think that cleaner thing gave you a rash or something. You feel alright?"
"Huh?" Megan replied. "I don't feel itchy or anything."
Wanda frowned slightly "You've got like this HUGE pink rash all over your body."
Megan glanced at her arms and sure enough, they were a dull pinkish hue, slowly growing more vivid by the second. She gasped and the others retreated a few steps. Maggie rolled her sleeves up to the shoulder, gawking at her now hot-pink flesh. Her face was the same rosey shade as the rest of her, and as the others watched, the pink hue seeped along her hair, from the scalp to the tips.

"What's going on?!" The now fluorescent girl said, her voice steadily rising in timber, her knees feeling weak underneath her. Ms. Himura smirked slightly.
"Well, you may be having an adverse effect to something from the labs. And speaking of which…" She turned towards one of the many doors, touching a tiny black pad next to it and letting it silently slide open. "We should move into here, just in case this gets out of hand"
The four entered, Ms. Himura leading the way, followed by Wanda, a concerned Ethan and Maggie, who was on the edge of hysterics. In the intervening time, Megan's hair had started to congeal into long, flat strips of pink and the entirety of her eyeballs had turned the same colour as the rest of her. Her skin, and entire body for that matter, had taken on a smooth, slightly dull texture.
"I feel…weird" she stated uneasily.
"You look weird" Wanda answered back.
The room they had entered was a large, octagonal chamber, completely vacant save for a waist high desk running the perimeter of the space, dotted with faucets, outlets and the like. Maggie stood in the center, while the other three stood against the far side, as if afraid they would contract what was affecting the hapless magenta girl.

"Hmmm" Ms. Himura wondered "Are you sure you stripped down to nothing in the sterilization chamber?"
"Right down to the birthday suit!" Maggie responded, clutching her belly as a deep rumbling reached her ears.
"Were you holding anything?" Ms. Himura continued to question.
"No!" Maggie yelped again, feeling the bubbling sensation in her stomach intensify.
"Did you spit out your gum?" The executive raised an eyebrow.
"I-um" Maggie paused. "I don't…think so. But it's not in my mouth anymore! I didn't get rid of it! It just sort of…"
"Melted into your mouth?" Ms. Himura finished. "Well, that explains it! When the scanner took your initial reading, it detected the gum in your mouth! So at the end of the process, it ensured that your entire molecular structure contained the information of human and gum! Your gum became a part of your mouth while chewing because they're made of the same substance! Fascinating, the delayed response must be a result of the new genetic information being busy rewriting the old stuff…"
"Fascinating? I'm made of GUM ?!" Maggie howled. "How has something like this never happened before?"
"Well, we've had one or two instances, but nothing this drastic" Ms. Himura admitted.
With a last groan, Maggie's belly surged forward into her hands, leaving her holding a considerable paunch. "What's happening NOW?"
"Well" Ethan offered helpfully "It WAS bubble gum…"

Maggie's exasperation turned to panic as her entire lower torso started to steadily increase in girth. Her belly and backside inflating in unison. A small, quiet hissing sound emanated from her middle, only increasing Maggie's panic. "Ms. Himura, DO SOMETHING!" she shrieked.
"I did, silly girl" The tour guide replied calmly. "I moved you into a more spacious room"

The group and Maggie herself could only watch as she bloated larger. Her buttocks swelled, their definition pressing against her jeans and straining the buttons. The sliver of skin visible between her shirt and pants grew wider and wider as her waistline did the same, her belly button rising into view at the center of the pink expanse. The gas in her seemed to be searching for the areas of least resistance, bypassing Megan's slowly expanding chest and going right into her arms, blowing them up like sausages. She bent her thickened arms to feel her belly, which had grown to a point that the bottom of her shirt had been pushed up to the bottom of her now-volleyball sized breasts. There was a brief tearing sound as the straps of her bra gave up any semblance of structural integrity, permitting her bosoms unrestricted growth.  There was a good four feet of clearance between her chest and the top of her jeans, which were preventing air from blowing up her lower half, to an extent.
Megan was busy trying to get herself to burp, anything to vent the air building up inside of her. It was the strangest sensation, like the bloated feeling after a large meal, but instead of cramping up, her stomach and intestinal walls were simply giving way to billowing flesh.

At this point, Megan resembled a colossal pink globe, with a pair of puffy legs attached to the underside and with a pair of basketballs on top, a frightened face with long, tape-like strips of hair on top and two traffic-cone shaped arms jutting out of the sides. As mobility left her upper limbs, Maggie waved her comparatively tiny hands in tiny circles as the globe of her torso began to overtake her chest and neck, her t-shirt being pushed past her now bare mammaries, each one spreading over Megan's spherical torso like adjacent halves of a beach ball.
Maggie gasped as the cold air of the room hit her tea cup sized nipples, ponderously turning away from the group in shame and embarrassment as the tattered remains of her brassiere slid onto the floor. Her arms were next to gone, nothing but slightly raised bumps tipped with slender hands, restrained slightly at the wrists by the sleeves of her severely stretched out T-shirt. Finally, the strip of fabric snapped off completely, ricocheting away from Megan's neck and landing close to her bra.
Just as Maggie's titanic belly had done to her shirt, it was now doing to her pants, forcing them slowly downwards, slipping away from her colossal bottom that was steadily merging with the rest her body. Her trousers fell to her ankles, her panties quickly following. Now free of any constraint, the hapless gum-girl's bottom was filled with misplaced gas, her legs going from traffic cones to domes to absolutely nothing in seconds. Megan yelped as she felt her crotch touch the floor and her feet leave it. The fluorescent pink girl was little more than a complete sphere, completely naked save her sneakers, with a head on top and flailing hands and feet the only markers that it was once human, save the indented navel and slight bulging around her nipples.

Maggie shuddered out a breath. She had been exposed, transformed and humiliated twice in a matter of minutes, but at least it was over. She winced as Wanda and Ethan circled around, coming to her front.

"Um…Maggie, are…are you okay? Can you hear me?" Ethan stammered nervously.
Megan didn't reply, partially due to still being too mortified to speak and partially due to the idiocy of the question. Of course she wasn't alright. In the ensuing uncomfortable silence, the quiet hissing sound reached the globular girls ears.
"Oh no" she squeaked.
The already eight feet in diameter Maggie's growth became noticeable again, her pink skin pressing into her wrists, ankles and chin, slowly expanding past her hands and feet, leaving them at the bottom of deepening divots in her body. The swelling finally reached her face, puffing her cheeks up to the size of softballs in a moment, resting on what was once her shoulders as the swelling engulfed her neck.

"Hey" Wanda inquired. "I can kind of see through her!"
As she said this, a dark, blurry image of Ms. Himura faded into view from the other side of Megan's expanse, revealing her to be completely hollow.
"I believe the correct term is 'translucent'" the unflappable executive corrected. "The poor girl's sides are getting awfully thin" Ethan could have sworn he felt a note of genuine concern creep into her voice.
"I wonder…" she thought aloud, before making for Megan's side. "Mr. Harrow, please help me by removing Ms. Dower's left shoe."
Ethan was too dumbstruck to move.
"Mr. Harrow!" she said a little more forcefully, spurring Ethan into motion. The two worked quickly, stripping the bubble of the last articles of her clothing. The second the final pounds of ballast were removed, Maggie's bloated crotch left the ground and she began to float slowly upwards, slowing into a hover several meters above the ground. She let out a quiet whimper, still swelling and approaching the fifteen foot mark in diameter. All she could do was gawk, realizing how far she had departed from anything that could be considered remotely human. She didn't even have a heartbeat anymore to comfort her. She was vacant, nothing but a sugary skin stretched over a pocket of air.

"Well that should do it." Ms. Himura smiled. She reached for the tiny headset in her ear, tapping it once.
"Hello Sam. Yes, we've had an adverse reaction to the sterilizer…yes, I know, that's why we never mass produced them. I am aware. Look, the poor girl's terrified and I'm not sure what's going to happen when she pops-"
"WHEN I pop?!" Maggie howled in terror. At this point, she could barely see over the expanse of her body.
Ms. Himura covered the mic of her earpiece "If, sorry. I meant if" She returned to the call. "Look, just send someone up to take care of her and while you're at it, let me know where my new maintenance man wandered off to." She touched the button on the side again, ending the call. "Well, I've seen to it that someone will take care of our sticky friend here, so why don't we move on?"

Wanda retreated out of the room, never taking her eyes off of the giant pink globe floating in the center of the space, a look of confusion and disgust written over her face. Ms. Himura followed, providing the bubble-girl with a curt smile before leaving. Ethan lingered.
"Don't worry Maggie, these people are professionals" he attempted to reassure her. "They know how to help you. I've read about this before. A solid 60% of these scenarios end with a successful deflation."
The now twenty foot across Megan sighed. "Just…please go" she muttered. Ethan turned to leave.
It was only after the door slid closed behind him that she added. "Thanks for that though"

A good five minutes passed before someone else entered the room. On the plus side, her growth seemed to have evened out at twenty-seven feet across and three meters above the floor. Her hands and feet had been completely swallowed by her central sphere of a body, her now basketball sized cheeks were half hidden by the collar of her expanded body and she was completely transparent at her widest points.
Maggie heard two voices below her following the opening sound of the door.

"Wouldja look at that. Ever seen something like this before?" one said.
"Once, over in the testing wing" The other replied. A brief silence filled the room, broken when the second on added "How are we supposed to get her out of here?"
"Well" the first one pondered "Sam said that she was completely homogenous, so as long as we get all of her out of her, the state she's in won't really matter"
Panic washed over Maggie as she felt something long and cold poke her undercarriage.
"Hey, she's still got a lot of give to her, isn't taut at all" one chuckled. "Better get something sharp"
"Wait!" Megan yelled, muffled by her bloated cheeks "Who are you, what are you going to do to me?"
"Not to worry ma'am, we do this kind of thing all the time" The first voice assured "Me and my friend will have you out of here in no time flat. Pass me those scissors would you Mike?"

"Stop!" she screamed "Don't do this! No! NONONONON-"
Maggie felt a sharp jab in what was once her left buttock and then a loud, low POP emanated throughout the room.