Of course they were not able to give her shoes. For NakedGirl, walking barefoot over the rough stony road would have been no problem; that is, if she didn't fly over it instead; but for Dareen Alkaras, a modest Arab-American girl of 24 who was not one to go barefoot let alone naked, it was a trial as she tried to keep up with the boots of the military men, her tender feet hurting with each step. No doubt they realized her discomfort, they could not help but notice her arms tilting and body lurching back and forth as she tried to even up the assaults on her soles and avoid the pointier outcroppings, her outsized breasts gently swaying with her movements. The situation was unexpected but unavoidable, now that they knew that her powers only came when she was naked, and only after being without clothing for about two hours.
It was a long walk along this curvy stony road that led from the little clearing of the helicopter pad into a forest. It was a hot day and Dareen could feel the sun on her bare butt, intensely ashamed of her exposure. Her skin and face felt hot and flushed, which if she were white would register as a full-body blush from head to bare toes. Colonel McNulty tried to make conversation, his pasty white complexion half in shadow from the visor of his cap. "You see we really do like hanging out in the middle of nowhere." Dareen could begin to make out a round, low, white building through the trees. "This used to be a fallout shelter for what they called 'essential government personnel'. Ten years ago they converted it into a bio lab. And now, Miss Alkaras, it is devoted to studying you."
Dareen's poor soles felt like they were bruised permanently as they approached the glass entrance. "I'm flattered," she said insipidly. A scary idea: an entire lab devoted to studying her nude body. At least it wasn't in "public", like when she was standing in front of all of downtown Atlanta holding up the Joly Tower.
Of course there was a security checkpoint. The others got in by holding up their passes. Dareen walked her naked self through the metal detector and fortunately there wasn't any beeping. Still, the guard had her stand there while he passed the wand up and down her sides and her rear. As he passed it over her front it lightly clipped her nipples. "Sorry," he said, as her breasts jiggled for a second. He wasn't used to such outward protruberances. She hated this reminder of her bustiness. She longed again for the breast reduction that had finally been approved by her health insurer, but by now that was probably just a dream. She tried to numb her mind to what was happening as the guard and the others all looked at everything she had, all out for everyone to see. The guard had her raise her arms and passed the wand along her armpits. She caustically thought of body cavity searches then shuddered as she realized that here it was a real possibility.
Fortunately they did not deem her that much a security risk and the ordeal was over. It only remained for her to accompany the officers to the little registration desk. She signed her name on the clipboard, with difficulty because the little string attached to the right side didn't quite reach over to her hand. ‘Isn't anyone here left-handed?’ she thought. Then she was given a name tag. She held it and looked up at McNulty, who suddenly laughed. She found herself laughing too. With a shrug and nowhere to clip the tag, she simply held it in her hand as they walked.
She was grateful for the cool smooth floor under her tortured soles as they went down some stairs and then into a white-walled room with a table. And to her dismay, six people, four men and two women, all white, in lab coats. Well what did she expect? She was introduced to them individually and she felt ridiculous, nodding and shaking each of their hands, as if she were as fully clothed as they.
As Dareen positioned herself Ms. Danby took the little ladder away, leaving the subject of the testing stretched out in an X, arms and legs splayed along the upper and lower bars, facing the semi-circle of technicians who looked up at her total frontal exposure.
The thick metal bars extended from wall to wall, the lower one about four feet above the black floor. Each bare foot rested on a sticky rubber pad that had been tied around the bar. The upper bar was just at the height where she could reach it with her hands stretched way out to each side. Each hand, too, clutched a sticky rubber pad. The air was a little chilly in this subterranean place and the totally black walls and ceiling gave it even more the feeling of a crypt, or a cave. She was shamefully aware of her pubic area between her widely spread legs and knew from the feel of the cool air up into her insides that her lower lips were slightly parted.
One of the team came around with a camera and started clicking from the left, from the right, close up, far away. It was almost a parody of what Dareen imagined to be a porn shoot. She could almost picture him saying, "Smile for me baby, you're beautiful... that's it, stick 'em out, you have such big lovely ones." She imagined Anna Ohura having to put up with this on a daily basis. Dareen closed her eyes. ‘I'm not a nude model; I'm a modest Muslim woman.’
To distract her thoughts Dareen looked up at her hands, down at her feet curled around the pads. After dozens of clicks the photographer finally finished. Dareen forced herself to look in front to where the research team, led by Colonel McNulty, was retreating behind a glass partition. Except for the colonel, they all sat down behind a console. Knobs were twiddled, checklists marked, apparently some monitors were being looked at. Dareen looked up and for the first time noticed cameras up in each corner, mounted on the black ceiling. She looked behind her and saw there were more back there too. And now she noticed cameras below, and to each side. Her nakedness was being scrutinized and filmed from every angle.
It was the colonel's slightly staticky voice coming through a speaker. "Are you comfortable, Miss Alkaras?" Dareen nodded. "It's good that your powers won't come for a while, this way we can test you in your normal state first. You will hear a hum and see some bluish light. These are electromagnetic tests to take a picture of you, so to speak, with various frequencies along the electromagnetic spectrum. It should take about ten minutes."
And so it was. Dareen, stretched out along the bars, heard the hum and saw the blue lights and thought of every inch of her, every crevice, being penetrated by probing light waves of both the seen and unseen variety. She thought of the Psalm about Allah knowing of all one's innermost secrets. "When I was being knit in the womb, you saw me... Your knowledge is high; I cannot attain it." As the minutes passed she closed her eyes and was grateful for at least being mostly in darkness, the only clothing she could have. She envied the techinicans in their clothing and lab coats, hiding behind the console, and felt goose bumps rising across the tops of her breasts and her butt cheeks, felt her nipples hard and erect, the cool air seeming to chill her to the bone.
No darkness now; she was in the bright light of a big medical lab, a glorified doctor's office, being measured and weighed. This was not so bad, not so much out of context, she told herself: being naked during a physical. Still she longed for the dignity of a paper hospital gown, knowing that even that flimsy amount of covering was out of the question. "Height, sixty-four inches. Weight, 105 pounds."
Now she sat up on an exam table, hands pressed down on both sides against the crinkly paper, facing her questioners. Actually the only questioning was by Dr. Vanaver, a young guy with glasses, as the colonel looked on with three others. All of them, unavoidably, looking at her naked assets. She tried to answer their questions in a calm voice, taking deep breaths. Her pretty bare feet dangled below, the slow wiggling of her toes being the only outward sign of her nervousness.
"When was your last period?" Dareen realized she hadn't even had a period since before that night of lightning, now six weeks in the past. "June 16" was her guess. "Before that, had your periods been regular?" "Yes, every 30 days or so."
"Have you always had such large breasts?" It was a question that Dareen had sometimes heard asked by jerks who were trying to be nice. But this was a doctor asking and she had to concede it was a legitimate question. After all, though her breasts were large before, nowadays she looked like a super-busty comic book heroine, only without the benefit of their skimpy costumes.
"Yes, I suppose, since I was about 14; though they didn't become so firm until after the lightning."
"When did they develop? Did they develop right away?"
Why this emphasis on her breasts? Then Dareen realized it was because she had told these folks about the tingling in her nipples before the pulse bomb. That was what they were probably concerned about most. So naturally they would focus on her breasts. As did everyone else in the world...
She exhaled and tried to give as brief yet detailed an account as possible. "They started growing when I was ten. By the time I was in junior high they were up to a C cup. I passed double D in high school." She rolled her eyes. "It wasn't easy, having the biggest breasts in the school, but that's always the way it was." She glanced down at them, as if they were two wayward children of hers whom she was trying to explain to the school principal.
"You have our sympathies, Miss Alkaras," Ms. Danby said with a little smile. "Thanks again for being so cooperative."
"It's okay," Dareen said.
Then they asked her to lie down on the table. Five faces crowded around her, looking down. "If you don't mind..." Dr. Vanaver said, "I will now palpate for any masses." He encircled Dareen's left breast with both hands, then pressed down. Then grabbed and pressed and moved his fingers around, pushing deep into her breast flesh. It was like the self-exams she did every month only more forceful. "They are unusually firm and resilient, but I find no masses or fibroids."
He went over to the other side and gave equal treatment to the right breast. And now Ms. Danby was working on Dareen's left breast, her fingers smaller and cooler, her smaller hands together unable to encompass each great mound. Soon each of the lab-coated team was taking turns feeling up Dareen's breasts. A couple of them had really cold hands. Finally the colonel took his turn, his hands more gentle than the others.
"I will now try to express from the nipple," Dr. Vanaver said. To Dareen's face he said, "This might hurt but just a little." A quick little inhalation from Dareen as he grabbed and then, realizing the nipple was too big for just two fingers, grabbed with fingers of both hands, pulling the nipple up, stretching it up from her breast, then twisting it and squeezing it. Now he let go and repeated the process. With a quick nod to the others Dareen found both her nipples being pulled up and squeezed. She quickly recognized the motion; it was exactly like milking a cow. She indeed felt like a cow, like a piece of livestock, her big udders being milked. She closed her eyes. Such a shameful thing in the sight of Allah, to be so on display and poked and pulled at this way, though she knew Allah would take no offense because it was a medical procedure. It was the one time a Muslim woman was permitted to expose her entire self. But she still felt the natural modesty of a shy Muslim woman under seige.
There was no discharge from the nipples, of course, though all the doctors seemed to be doing enough yanking for her to produce several gallons of milk. Suddenly she smiled and giggled. The similarity was so obvious that it had to be on everyone's mind. The last one, the colonel, finally finished, and his pasty-white face smiled down at her as he said, "Thank you, Miss Alkaras."
Dareen couldn't help it; she said, "Moooo." And everyone burst out laughing.
The break in tension made it easier for her to get up and walk naked in their midst into another room. Unfortunately it contained what she recognized as a mammogram machine. She had had two in her life, once when a doctor detected fibroids (they disappeared with her next period) and once to complete the physical for entering college. She had heard that for women with large breasts the process was painful and her experience had been no exception.
The machine had a stool in front, and she felt her private parts pressing against the cool metal as she sat down, hands down at her sides. Ms. Danby told her what to do, though she already knew. She placed one breast on the glass and metal shelf and winced as the upper shelf came down on it. At least when her breasts were normal and a little saggy they had "give" to them and spread out to the sides, but with her new firm breasts that wasn't possible. Which meant the machine had to squeeze harder. She took a deep breath as her breast was squashed as if in a vise. Fortunately it only took a moment. Then she turned and placed her other breast on the shelf. In her pain Dareen allowed her thoughts to turn dark. She imagined she was a naked prisoner and the doctors crowding around were torturers, witnessing a daily ritual, the crushing of Inmate Alkaras's huge breasts.
By the time she walked out of the mammogram room her poor breasts were throbbing, having been poked and stretched and mauled. Fortunately it seemed they were going to get a rest. The next room contained a platform upon which was a treadmill, surrounded by a console and lots of wires.