Sometimes, I’ll read something and go, ‘Ooh! I want to try writing a story like that!’. Unfortunately, they don’t usually get very far, but there have been a few that have made it further than most.
This part of my abandonware series, we’ll be focusing on those types of stories. If there was a direct inspiration that I can remember, I made sure to give proper credit so you could see the idea fleshed out in a much better way than I probably would have.
In any case, enjoy!
Adaptation
A woman finds herself awoken in a strange laboratory. She finds she has the unique power to adapt to her surroundings, her body morphing to fit her needs, such as gaining gills underwater, or being able to survive Lava. Would probably have only mentioned detachment tangentially. Was definitely heavily inspired by @LackingCPU 's excellent Producing Results series.
“Good morning subject #2657-A,” a loudspeaker buzzed.
“Where am I?” Daniella Hastings stood up in shock. The last she had remembered, she was safe in bed in Nowheresville, NM. She now found herself in a strange room, white-walled, like an insane asylum.
“You’ve been recruited as part of experiment #2657, as per release form #13574 signed by employees #342319 and #342318 on the 12th of August 1992.” This only barely registered in Daniella’s brain as her birthday. “Now, would you please proceed to the testing area so we may begin?”
Before her very eyes, the room began to shift and stretch, creating a hallway with a big painted arrow on the floor. Getting over her initial shock, a feeling of anger began to well and she burst out, “And what if I refuse?”
“Termination.” The loudspeaker now morphed into a gatling gun, “Now please continue to the testing room.” Not wishing to test the mysterious voice behind the loudspeaker’s patience any more, Daniella quickly followed the arrowed hallway, until she came upon a simple oak door. “Please enter.” The voice commanded. Daniella obeyed.
Daniella found herself in a simple brick room. As the door closed behind her, frame seemed to melt into the wall. “Where am I?” She asked, half as confident as she had when she first demanded information.
“This is trial # 1 for test # 2657. Codename: Wonderland.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Please remain quiet unless necessary subject #2657-A. Continuing with test procedures.” The sound of a rewinding tape played over the loudspeaker. “Project protocol as written by theoretical scientist #4832, and shall be read by him as such.” The voice on the loudspeaker switched to one of an elderly male, “Codename: Wonderland is an experiment based upon Darwinian Accelerated Theory of Evolution and Natural Selection. Through nanotechnology, such as those used in the amorphous building projects and human modification, it is believed that evolution can be manipulated and super-charged in order to create a “fully adaptable human”, capable of reacting to extreme stimuli on the fly. Such nanobots have been created and already implemented into subject #2657-A, and the testing environment is being controlled by amorphous building nanobots in order to create the extreme stimuli.”
Daniella was worried now. Shattered remnants of memories began flowing back into her brain. She could remember being rudely awoken by some, people in black camo suits… Had they injected her with something?
“First test. Aquatic environment.”
The room around Daniella began to fill with water.
An Article from National Body Magazine
This was first and foremost an experimentation with trying to really get good character voices. One of the issues I have with my writing is that I feel that I have a strong narrative voice, however am absolutely awful with making realistic dialogue. So, a little inspiration from @AccessWorld ’s magazine, and @cheesium ’s various fictional magazine articles caused me to try throwing my own hat into the ring. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t get very far.
An Interview with the Office Detachers
by Franklin Dunberry
There are many questions revolving around the subgroup of people commonly known as “Detachers”, scientifically known as ‘Homo Sejungus’. Making up roughly one percent of the global population,
Cecilia Reyes, 28, Editor, Beauty Section:
Samantha Garland, 35, Journalist, Health and Fitness Section:
Jacob Birdle, 54, Accounting:
Luna Madigan, 19, Intern:
Brad Taliani, 21, Intern:
Franklin: When was the first time you found out you were a detacher?
Franklin: Have you faced any stigma in your life because of the fact that you are a detacher?
Franklin: How useful is being a detacher in your everyday life?
Franklin: Alright, final question. What is one thing that every detacher should try at least once in their life?
A1: Oh man. There are so many great things that I’ve done, but I’ve got to say that my absolute favorite thing I’ve probably ever done is been drunk. What you need to do is find a blender and somebody you can trust to help. An extra body is recommended, but not necessarily required. So, the way I do it is that I’ll pre-cut myself up so that each part will fit in the blender, and then blend each part one by one until they have a liquid-like consistency. If you don’t have an extra body ready, then you’re going to want to make sure you leave one part of you out so that you can regenerate yourself from. Then I’ll have my partner pour it out into a single container, usually either the bathtub or an oversized punch bowl if we’re going to have a party. Make sure to get your partner to mix the bowl, as one of the best parts of this experience is the alien feeling of every part touching every other part. After that, feel free to serve yourself, although you’re going to want to try your best to fight against your body’s natural instinct to reform itself so that you’re not too chunky for people to drink down. The feeling of being digested and then losing feeling of yourself is so invigorating, and is will feel you leaving fresh and renewed if you set up your replacement body correctly to jump in as soon as the last of your old body is digested. Mixing yourself with alcohol makes the night even better, because not only does it make you harder to concentrate and keep a more liquid consistency, but when you jump into your new body, you’ll keep that buzz and be caught up with the party!
A2: Well, as I said earlier, I haven’t had much experience with being a detacher, but one of my favorite things I’ve done since gaining my powers happened in college. I happened to be going out with a detacher girl (we’re not together any more sadly) and she was completely shocked with the fact that I was a detacher who had so little experience with detaching. She was going over some of the crazy detaching stories she’s done, and when she said she would swap brains with her smart detacher friends in high school in order to cheat on tests, I said that I had never swapped bodies with anyone before. So, of course, she immediately demanded that we trade brains, at least for a while, so that I could see what it was like, and I have to say, it was pretty wild. For somebody who’s never traded bodies with another person, suddenly finding yourself in a smaller body of the opposite gender is pretty crazy. Of course, as much as I loved being a girl, mostly just for the easy access to boobs, we changed back more or less as soon as we did it. It’s definitely a highlight for me, but I don’t think I’ll be doing it again unless it’s someone I really trust.
Hoarding
This one wasn’t really inspired by a single person, but more so something I noticed from my infrequent visits to writing.com and other collaborative writing websites. And that’s basically the idea that ‘I like this thing… Therefore… More of this thing… and absolutely nothing else and no variation,” where a single idea sort of outstays its welcome to a ridiculous degree. (The immediate one that pops into my mind was a story branch where a person had the ability to create clones as part of a hive mind, and the user kept adding clones a few at a time, and then not doing anything with them. I'm not even sure how anyone would be able to make a captivating story with 75+ 'unique' clones?). So, I decided to take NBM to the logical extreme, with a story of a body part hoarding. Shockingly enough, I very quickly got burnt out (as I do with repeating chains of the same transformation over and over again), and the only thing I managed to finish was a section in the middle.
After struggling up the stairs, the two finally managed to make it to Jana’s bedroom. Surprisingly, it was by far the neatest room of their little house tour thus far. Jana’s bed was neatly made, her dresser drawers were closed, and there were no clothes or body parts strewn around loosely on the floor.
Instead, Jana had done a good job at keeping the mess that had swallowed the rest of her house underneath her bed, or in several large garbage bags the lined the walls of the room.
“Well… I can’t say I was expecting your bedroom to look like this,” Brynne said.
“Well yeah,” Jana sighed, annoyed that she was still failing at getting her nosy friend out of her sanctuary. She walked over and flopped on her bed. “I spend most of my time in here… Might as well keep it a little clean.”
Brynne walked over to the wall of trash bags, “Of course, I hardly would say keeping your mess in trash bags is much better… What do you keep in these anyways?” She spotted one on the floor that looked half empty and didn’t have anything on top of it, and began opening it
“Brynne! You really don’t-“ Jana sat up, but was too late to stop her nosy friend from seeing the contents of the bag.
Brynne’s eyes lit up, and her cheeks grew a dark shade of pink, as she reach into the bag, holding up three pieces of flesh accusatorially. “Really Jana?!” Brynne asked, flopping around what were clearly three mismatching, A cup breasts, their nipples standing erect, “I’ve literally never seen you wear anything below a C cup. Why in the world do you have an entire trash bag full of A cups?”
It was Jana’s turn to look embarrassed, as her cheeks turned a similar shade of pink, “Look! It’s bad enough that you’ve seen my home. Do I really have to-“
“Jana! Just answer the question,” Brynne said, “I have a few extra pairs myself, but not-“ She paused walking over to the bed and dumping out the contents of the trash bag onto her bed. The multitude of small breasts spreading out across her blanket. Brynne quickly mentally counted the breasts (which, she realized weren’t just random loose breasts, but seemed to constitute multiple sets) before continuing, “-20 whole extra pairs! Seriously! Do you just cover your whole body in them?”
“No!” Jana said, before mumbling, “I’d need like another 20 pairs to do that…”
“Jana!-“
“Fine!” Jana shouted back, her frustrations boiling over, “You want to know what I do with them?! I’ll show you!” Jana was quick to take off her shirt, revealing that she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath. Instead her D cup breasts had their nipples removed, leaving them as simply glorious orbs on her chest. She made quick work of pulling them off, tossing them to the floor (and causing Brynne to wince from the sound of them landing with a thud on the hardwood floor).
Jana made quick work of finding matching sets of A cup breasts, and within moments she turned around, proudly displaying her front, which now had 5 pairs running down the front of her body. She rubbed a hand down her front, drawing a circle around each of her nipples as she asked, “There! You satisfied?”
“And you do what? Hit on boys like that?”
“Hey, for some guys it’s more of a quantity than a quality thing,” Jana grinned, clearly remembering something fondly, “And besides, this way there’s less weight on my back.”
“Okay, and what about the other fifteen pairs?” Brynne gestured towards the bed, where the other A cups sat.
Jana sighed, “Brynne. You know as well as I do that nobody comes in to buy A cups. What am I gonna do? Let them just stagnate on the display stand? Or worse! Let Masterson recycle them?”
“Jana! They are inanimate pieces of flesh! They don’t-“
Suddenly, their conversation was interrupted by a cry for help from the closet. Brynne looked at her in alarm, rushing over to the door and opening it up.
Jana’s closet was rather small for a walk-in closet, but it made up for this fact by being lined from floor to ceiling with shelving space. Shelving space that was currently completely filled with a large variety of heads.
The front of the closet seemed to manage to have some consistency in its layout, with a shelf with all blonds, another with all brunettes, and so on. But as the rows went away from the door, any semblance of pattern disappeared, as heads were instead packed cheek-to-cheek.
“Thank God!” one of the heads (a redhead with bright blue eyes near the front) said, “She forgot to turn us off this morning! And we’ve been incredibly bored talking to ourselves!”
“Jana!” Brynne wheeled around in shock.
“I was in a hurry!” Jana said, holding her hands up in the air, “Do you know how impossible it is to find a good matching head for a body when you’ve got so many to choose from?!”
“That’s why you should choose the ones you don’t use and trade them in then!” Brynne shouted back at her. She walked into the closet, lifting up the redhead and pulling off the flap of flesh that covered her neck stump. Underneath, the appearance was slightly more robotic in nature, with two tiny red buttons, one with a label ‘sync’ and the other with a label that read ‘power’. She pressed down on the latter button, and a look of relief passed over the head’s face as its eyes closed.
“You know you can’t just leave your synced heads on like that!” Brynne complained, as she continued going around the closet, turning off any of the heads that asked. “Leaving them with nothing to do like that is just cruel!”
“I would have turned them off the next time I checked on them!” Jana shot back, “And besides, I get lonely sometimes and it’s nice to talk to someone.”
“You mean talk to yourself?” Brynne said.
“It’s easier to do when they have a different voice!” Jana said defensively.