Bleaahhhhhh.
The bitter taste of that "barium milkshake" still lingered in her throat. She had bravely gulped it down as the team stood around her in that cold sterile lab, perhaps taking extra interest in the tectonic tremors of her breasts as she took gulp after nasty gulp. Now, in the brightly lit gym, Dareen turned her attention to the task at hand, the strength test. These were the heaviest barbells that could be obtained, apparently; in her mind she added up the numbers embossed on the weights and came up with more than seven hundred pounds on each. Yet she held one up over her head in her left hand, one in her right, with hardly a thought. She looked up at the weights not for focus but just to avoid looking in front of her, thinking of the ponderous protrusion of each breast, so effortlessly lifted up by the raising of her arms, such that her huge dark nipples seemed to be looking up too, a sight to awaken the most jaded eyes.
Now, three aides carefully rolled another barbell toward the nude young woman, the heavy rolling sound showing that it was at least as heavily weighted as the two she held aloft. Dareen looked down, having been briefed on what to do, and lifted one bare foot, then anchored her toes under the bar. With a flex and a little grunt she lifted the third barbell with her toes as if it were a pair of panties she was picking off the floor. If only! Then when the aides were safely to the side she flipped her foot and the barbell flew across to the wall twenty feet away with a terrific crash that left a crack in the painted cinder block wall. The weights rolled off the bent and now ruined barbell.
The bubbles were a little ticklish and she tried to imagine she was alone in a whirlpool, not that she had ever actually been in one. She looked up at Colonel Mike and the others monitoring her through the glass, then up at the surface, ten feet above her. She had been submerged for twenty minutes now, using her flying powers in reverse to stay at the bottom. And still felt no need to go up for air. She looked down at her buoyant breasts, right under her chin it seemed, and then looked blandly at the team. What was she supposed to do now, just wait and wait? In boredom she sat down cross-legged, her toes wiggling idly. Then, after five more minutes, she got up and swam from one end of the tank to the other, feeling the water stream past her, wishing she was alone to enjoy that feeling, but in full knowledge that with her sinuous body and buoyant breasts she was giving a show that most men would pay a lot to see.
The walls slid toward the naked subject from both sides. ‘What on earth did they use this for?’ she asked herself. ‘It couldn't have possibly been built just to test my body.’ She looked at the spectators who sat in the safety of the observation booth. Dareen sighed and as the walls closed in she hopped up and extended her legs almost to a ballet dancer's split, grasping the walls with her toes and then her flat soles. The walls shuddered and quaked and finally fell silent, the unseen mechanism broken, having been built to exert only fifty thousand foot-pounds of force. Dareen stayed perched up there, her split pussy practically in the observers' faces. First that barbell, now this sliding wall place. I've ruined thousands of dollars of government property without hardly trying.
The flight test was a relief, a momentary respite from the constantly peering eyes. They had gone out to a clearing, branches snapping under her feet as she walked, then Dr. Vanaver had set up his radar gun and all she had to do was jump and be off. Up past the tops of the trees she was out of their sight, though the sensor she clasped in her hand told them where she was. She felt good doing her loop-de-loops and dives and ascents as if she were once again in the night sky over her favorite pond out past Thomasville. Though now it was a sunlit afternoon and she could see Atlanta way over there in the distance, the buildings clear and familiar. She tried to guess where her apartment was, she longed for it to be even two months ago, when she and Elly, comfy in their pajamas, would watch TV over popcorn.
With regret she came back down, then moving a few feet over the watchers, did various positions, on her back, upside down, showing how body position affected her flight, finally hovering spread-eagled, looking down at them past her toes and the fluff of her pussy hair, feeling her lower lips open, knowing that they could see right up inside her. Then, as instructed, she descended to the ground and uprooted a tree, wrapping her arms and legs around it, feeling the rough pine bark against her inner thighs, scraping her breasts, feeling the sap sticking against her. With a little upward motion of her stomach muscles the tree was torn up from its home. She unwrapped herself and carried it in her arms up and away to a gully a hundred feet away where she laid it down.
Oddly her innards sensed sad vibrations from the tree, as if it were in pain. As the team ran up behind her she looked down at the prostrate pine, then, though this wasn't in the protocol, she flew back to where it had been uprooted. She stuck her hands and feet into the earth and easily displaced several cubic yards of stony but rich Georgia forest soil. She flew back to retrieve the pine and carefully guided it into its former hole. Then, once again as the team ran up to watch, she stood on the ground next to the tree, holding it gently with her hands to keep it upright, while packing the displaced dirt back in with her bare feet and with their now dirty toenails. No ordinary human would have the strength to keep the tree upright or pack the dirt tightly enough, but the nude girl's motions were gentle and tender like a little girl planting a tiny seedling. Colonel Mike and Ms. Danby looked at each other and smiled. This girl was a real sweetie, good-hearted and gentle and sensitive; which was lucky for the rest of the world.
"The imaging results are in. These are LAJA rays," Dr. Vanaver said. They were sitting at a table in one of the rooms where the offices were, up near the entrance to the installation. A very utilitarian place, nothing fancy, just white tables and white metal chairs, though this meeting room had a big picture of the Apollo lunar module on the wall.
Dareen felt insolent and rude, sitting naked at the table with these people. She should be dressed in business clothes like they were. She just couldn't get used to being naked in an office. Her nudity, along with the white decor, made her brown skin in the presence of all these white people so much more vivid. Then there was the recent memory of that second shower, out in full view of course, everyone watching her breasts bobble as she scrubbed her fingernails and toenails. "Laja rays?"
"'Low amplitude jovian anomalies'," Colonel Mike said. "Jovian means Jupiter." Dareen, the librarian, knew that. "Since 1955 they've known that Jupiter emits a special kind of electromagnetic waves, like radio waves, only slightly longer wavelengths."
Dr. Vanaver said, "There seems to be a field of laja rays surrounding your body." Dareen looked at her hands, then down at her breasts, remembering how they used to have a normal sag, but no longer. Maybe it was her imagination but he made it sound like clothing covering her. But she sure didn't feel surrounded by anything; she felt exposed and open.
Dr. Vanaver's eyes were hidden by the glare of the overhead lights in his glasses. "We still have much processing to do of our findings, but apparently during that storm, laja rays got a hold of you. The storm was of unusual character. There were a lot of free ions in the air that night. Possibly they acted as a conduit for the laja rays."
Ms. Danby said, "The laja rays were very strong that night. Jupiter was at its closest approach. It was at perihelion, while Earth was at aphelion. That means..."
"Yes I know," Dareen said. Perihelion is the point in a planet's orbit closest to the sun, aphelion the point furthest. "But my powers..."
"That is the big question. We don't know why you have them. They are considerable, and beyond the measurement of the devices we have," Dr. Vanaver said.
Dareen tried not to look down at her nudity a second time. She had been sworn to secrecy as to these findings but was as curious about it as the rest. "When I put on clothes..."
"Apparently the field is disrupted," Colonel Mike said. "You say that even putting on a ring turns the powers off?"
"Yes."
"We'll test that in a moment," the colonel said. "We won't use metal, we'll start with the most inert possible material and work our way up."
Dareen's legs were pressed together. "Can I use the ladies' room?"
"I suppose that barium milkshake is going through you," the colonel said. "It's done its job. Ethel, can you show her?"
Ms. Danby led her to the women's room, down the hall past a secretary's desk. Dareen walked in and sat down in the stall. At least she would have privacy in urinating. She looked down past her violet pubic hair at the strange green pee coming out. Then she stared blankly at the door of the stall, contemplating her situation.
On the stall door was an old graffiti that had been scrubbed over but could still be read. "George Vanaver is really Clark Kent." Dareen grunted.