In the not too distant future, Dr. Emma, a scientist on the verge of the breakthrough of her generation put the finishing touches on her prototype. She emerged from behind a strange looking pod, clad in a wrinkled lab coat and with a head full of long, disheveled black hair, both clearly showing the signs of their owner having worked for several days straight.
Taking a brief second to admire her handiwork, both the pod she completed and the identical one on the other side of the room, she smiled and imagined the possibilities. If this was successful, her device would revolutionize the way people travel and ship goods, possibly even saving the environment by removing most of the vehicles from the highways and planes from the air, and more importantly, she would be remembered as the brilliant mind that saved the world from global warming once and for all, and be given endless grant money to pursue any scientific discovery she could dream up.
The device had already been successfully tested on non-organic material, the next step was animal testing, and then finally, human testing. It just so happened that the door she had left open a crack was pushed further open as the institution’s mascot and stress relief officer, Whiskers the Cat, forced his way into her lab. Emma, with a grin on her face, walked over to a drawer and fished out a laser pointer. It was originally purchased for work related purposes, but mostly saw use in playing with Whiskers.
Turning the laser pointer on, she used it to lure Whiskers into one of the pods, and the cat instinctively chased the red dot exactly where Emma wanted him to go while she made some adjustments on a control panel in the middle of the room.
“Let’s see, we’ll set it for… 10 pounds should suffice.” Due to the immense amount of energy the prototype consumed(something she hoped to reduce in her final product), the institution demanded she add a setting to calibrate the energy used to transport matter by weight, both to reduce how taxing it was to the power grid and their electric bill.
A few more boops and beeps, and the pod fired up, a blue light engulfed the unaware Whiskers, and then faded, leaving the pod empty. A second later, the pod on the other side of the room filled with the same blue light, this time, however, when it faded, the poor cat was inside the pod. His back was arched, ears pinned back, and pupils dilated to their maximum. He clearly knew something unusual had happened to him, but lacked the intelligence to know exactly what. He simply scampered out of the room to go find something to hide under for a while.
Emma, however, was grinning ear to ear. Her teleporter had successfully transported a living being without harming it(physically, at least), which meant it was time for the final test. She hit the button on the control panel once again, and then walked into the pod herself. Perhaps she should have waited for her assistant, whom she had sent out for coffee, to return in case something went wrong, but she couldn’t wait any longer. Her entire life had been leading up to this moment!
She stepped in, turned around, and let the blue light surround her, making a sudden realization at the last second, “Wait, I forgot to recalibrate the…” she was cut off by the teleporter moving her to the other pod. When the light faded, she finished her sentence, “... weight.”
The first thing she noticed was that she was indeed now inside the pod on the other side of the lab, but that her field of vision was much, much lower to the ground. “Did… it shrink me down to 10 pounds?” She asked aloud. Her voice didn’t sound like she shrunk, so she tried to take a step forward, but found she couldn’t. Tried moving her arms, nothing.
“What’s going on? What happened to me?” she asked again. She once again tried flailing her limbs around, but still she remained still. It was then that she realized she felt a strange pressure in her neck, like something hard and cold was pressed against it, and could feel nothing below it. Her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth definitely still worked like they always did, but her body felt completely numb. Taking a deep breath, she conjured up the courage to look down, and when she did, something unexpected happened. She tumbled forward, rolled out of the pod and onto the floor, and came to stop on her cheek, facing the door. At the very least, she no longer felt the pressure on her neck.
The door swung open, and in walked her assistant, Laetitia, carrying two of the largest cups of coffee the institution’s cafeteria offered, and promptly dropped them and screamed when she saw what had become of her boss.
“Hey, Lae, um, am I just a head?” Emma asked after putting together all of the information she had gathered about her predicament.
“H-h-h-how?” Laetitia stuttered as she backed into the wall in shock and fear. Emma took it as a yes.
“As to how I wound up like this, I tested the teleporter on Whiskers, and then myself. In my excitement, I forgot to recalibrate it for my weight,” She explained, surprisingly calm given the circumstances, “As to how I’m still alive, your guess is as good as mine.”
Emma’s eyes, which were fixed on her frightened assistant, shifted towards the spilled coffee, which was slowly making its way across the floor to her helpless head. “Hey, could you pick me up before the coffee makes a mess of me.” She blushed and added, “And, you know, because it’s kind of humiliating to be stuck on the ground like this.”
Laetitia’s wobbly legs slowly carried her to Emma’s head, and she bent over and reached down with shaky hands, “Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” Emma reassured her.
Emma felt Laetitia’s hand slide under her cheek, and the other place itself on the unobstructed cheek, and then felt another strange sensation as she was lifted off the ground, her point of view changing so quickly, rising through the air several feet, all out of her control, it made her feel a little dizzy. She was now being held around Laetitia’s chest level, leaving Emma to stare directly at her bust for a second. *Boobs, don’t have those anymore, I guess.* Emma thought to herself, *Oh well, my best asset has always been my brain, and I still have that!*
Laetitia then titled Emma’s head back a little so she was now staring at her face, “HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SO CALM RIGHT NOW? YOU DON’T HAVE A FRICKIN BODY?!”
Emma smiled up at Laetitia, “Well, I’m a scientist, I devote my life to discovering and understanding the unknown, and well, it doesn’t get much more unknown than this! I’m living without a heart pumping blood, breathing and talking without lungs, who knows what implications this could have for medicine and surgery! Frankly, I’m excited!”
“You’re insane!” Laetitia exclaimed, before calming down and asking, “Hey, um, my arms are getting kinda tired, can I put you down?”
“Hm, before you do, can you do me one favor?” Emma asked, “Can you… tell me what the bottom of my neck looks like? I mean, there’s not blood all over the place, right? For that reason I don’t think there’s gonna be anything nasty down there.”
“Sure, I guess…” Laetitia was relieved by Emma’s logic, as she didn’t handle gore well, so she slowly and carefully turned Emma’s head upside down, and just as the scientist had predicted, there was no blood and guts, only a flat blue surface, the same shade as the teleporter’s light.
Emma reveled in being handled in such a way. It was a bit dizzying, sure, but it was just so strange, so impossible, and yet she was experiencing it, something nobody else in history has ever experienced. She almost forgot the reason she asked for this in the first place until her assistant reported her findings.
“Could you… touch it?” Emma asked, blushing again, though at this point it could also be from being turned upside down for so long.
“Uh, okay, but let me put some gloves on first,” she replied.
“A fair precaution,” Emma agreed as Laetitia moved towards a table, sweeping aside some miscellaneous tools and parts before she gently placed Emma’s head down on her side, giving her a view of Laetitia as she turned around, walked toward another desk, and bent over to fish out a pair of latex gloves kept in the bottom drawer. Emma found herself admiring Laetitia’s bottom in her tight jeans. Why was she so fascinated in the female form now that she was just a head? she never checked out Laetitia before. Maybe she was just jealous of what she had lost? Maybe because she was helpless to look away? She COULD close her eyes, but didn’t feel like it.
Laetitia, hands now protected by a layer of latex, stood up and approached Emma’s head.
“I’m going to touch the, uh, cut surface now.” she informed Emma.
“Do it.” Emma said in a commanding tone. She was eager to explore her new form, both for science and for her own personal excitement. She felt the gloved finger poke the middle of the cut surface of her neck, “Ooh!” she cooed. It felt strange, it felt like she was being poked in an area that should not be able to be touched under normal circumstances, but it also felt like her belly button got poked at the same time.
The sound Emma made caused Laetitia to withdraw her finger, asking, “Are you okay, did that hurt?”
“It certainly felt strange, but it didn’t hurt.” Emma replied, “Try… a different area of the cut. I have a hypothesis.”
Laetitia complied, using the tips of her middle and index finger to lightly rub the blue cut surface of Emma’s neck. Much like how poking the center felt like having her belly button poked, when Laetitia moved her fingers to the side, it felt like her arm and hand was being rubbed. She traced the edge of her neck, working her way down to the back, and Emma started laughing uncontrollably as it felt like her feet were being tickled.
“STOP, STOP! I’m ticklish there!” she managed to say as tears welled up in her eyes.
“Okay… I think that’s enough science for one day,” Laetitia said, removing her hand from Emma’s neck stump and took off the gloves, “But, what is that hypothesis of yours?”
“Well, when you touched parts of my neck, I could feel like I was being touched on parts of my body that no longer exist,” She began to explain, “So perhaps, my body DOES still exist, but is compressed in spacetime due to the teleporter being calibrated to only transport 10 pounds. Or it could simply be a form of phantom limb pain. More tests will be needed.”
“Wait, so where was I touching you that made you burst out like that? Do I need to file a MeToo report with HR?”
“Just my feet,” Emma said, though she desperately wanted to know what it would feel like to have her more intimate parts stimulated in this manner, the workplace was no place for it. A shame she couldn’t do it on her own, though. She was helpless not only in that matter, but would need help just getting around and doing basic tasks in her work.
“You know, I’m going to need a lot more help from you now that I don’t have a body,” Emma said, “I should talk to the director about getting you a raise.”
Laetitia, ever the voice of reason, pointed out the reality of the situation, “I think if the director saw you right now, the LAST thing on his mind would be my pay. He’ll probably freak out about OSHA having his head on a silver platter. Um, no pun intended.”
“Oh, that pun was totally intended and you know it,” Emma grinned up at her assistant,
“Now, could you please sit me down on my neck stump. I was able to balance on it before as long as I don’t move my head around too much.”
Laetitia complied, helping her boss get into a more comfortable position. Every time she was moved, she felt a little dizzy, but hoped it was something she would get used to. Emma once again felt the pressure as her neck stump pressed against the table. It was a strange feeling, and not nearly as pleasurable as when Laetitia was running her fingers along it, but she figured she was something else she would also get used to eventually. It was better than sitting on her cheek. That just felt so undignified.
“So, it is getting late. I suppose you’ll need a lift home?” Laetitia asked.