Chapter 1 unplanned experiment

Daniel Larraway sat in his office in the biology department of Staremore University. While most of the student body had already cleared out their dorms and apartments, he could see a few stragglers still wandered through the quad. Summer grad students, no doubt, he thought to himself. He glanced again at the clock - 2:58 in the afternoon. Laura, his TA and assistant for the semester, was due by any minute to drop off her lab key and close out for the year.

Daniel decided to kill the time by reviewing his notes. As one of the researcher faculty members, he had spent the last few years researching methods of improving the viability of food supplies in third-world countries and striving to help reduce, if not eliminate, world hunger. His latest successes had been in the area of caloric amplification and absorption. So far, the additive he had designed had shown great promise in tests. The rats that he'd given it to showed rapid absorption of ingested calories and at a more effective scale than anticipated. Each ounce of food had led to three ounces of weight gain in the study, and he hoped that this ability to add stored, increased mass would prove useful in areas of scarce supply.

His phone rang and he answered it. "Professor," said his secretary, "It's Laura. She says she's in the lab and asks if you can meet her there instead."

"Tell her I will," Daniel said. He stood up and grabbed his keys and walked across campus. The lab was on the remote edge of campus, and about 15 minutes later he arrived, seeing only her car in the lot. He walked in and made his way to his research lab, still with no sign of Laura.

He entered the lab and called for Laura as he shut the door behind him. He heard motion nearby, and the sound of something small hitting the tile floor as he turned around to investigate, quickly discovering its source.

Laura sat at a table, an empty vial and four pizza boxes in front of her, with a slice in each hand. She looked at him with a ravenous look in her eyes, as though she was overcome with the hunger of someone who had fasted for days. His eyes moved down to her midsection, seemingly bloated at first glance, and confirmed when he noticed the missing button near where her navel was. He followed the clue to the floor, finding the source of the earlier noise.

"Laura, what have you done?!" Daniel yelled, walking over to her and inspecting the empty vial. "Was ... was this the solution?" He could clearly see now her normally petite form was clearly bloated, so he knew the answer to his question. The pizza was half gone, and her face was smeared with traces of sauce. Her belly protruded out, straining the remaining buttons, which seemed as though they too would give at any moment. She had always been a lithe and busty brunette - not a part of his considerations in hiring her, but it had helped to make her a popular TA - and she now looked much more as though she'd been poured into her clothes and forgotten to say "when."

Laura bit off another big bite from one of the slices, looking up at him. "Yes," she chewed and swallowed. "I thought I could make a name for *hic* myself by proving your mixture worked," she said. She stuffed the last of the slice in her right hand into her mouth and chewed rapidly. "But I'm just so hungry. I can't stop eating," she said, swallowing the bite and patted her stomach before reaching hastily for another slice. She looked up at him with a glance that screamed simultaneously of both of horror and arousal. "Or growing."