Warmup Story: JacFox

“Experiment Log. Balloonification continues on test subject 21 at expected rate. Approaching test subject 56’s room next,” Jac said to a small drone with neon blue highlights, floating alongside the captain a few feet above the floor. The red, pooltoy fox bounced lightly on the ground with each kicking step forward. In spite of the ship’s artificial gravity he still bounced as if he was walking on the moon. As captain of this ship Jac was responsible for daily sweeps of all corridors and wings. Here in the Science Wing was his personal favorite. So many fun things going on. Balloons and transformations mostly.

Jac approached the window and squinted at subject 56. The grey otter with red stripes inside squirmed against the glass, inflated to the point of filling over half the room. His balloon body squeaked against all sides of the enclosure and the small knot on his tail puffed bursts of air every few seconds as it struggled to keep the pressure inside.

“Hmm. Test Subject 56 is inflating at an accelerated speed. Computer, please halt inflation,” Jac said.

The drone next to Jac beeped acknowledgement and its color highlights turned red. Inside the room the otter stopped his growth, creaking ominously. His face flushed a similar shade of the drone’s red in this brief moment of respite before his expansion started again. Jac frowned at the otter and pulled up a hologram projected on the window. Must be a glitch of some kind in this room’s computer. No problem, a little manual manipulation and he’d get this experiment back on track.

He pressed the hologram ‘On’ button with a vinyl mitt devoid of fingers, and nodded when it beeped. It only said ‘Off’ for a second before flipping spontaneously back to ‘On.’ Now he was getting annoyed. He pressed it again with the exact same results. The captain button-mashed it over and over until the screen glitched out and zapped him. Jac flew several feet backward (not that impressive for someone filled with air, mind you) into a test chamber, landing with a hollow bonk on the back wall.

Jac got his bearings back just in time to watch the chamber’s door seal shut. The pooltoy rushed forward, banging on the door in vain. He knew that the door only opened from the outside, not the inside. He also knew exactly what was going to come next. The pressure inside him grew surprisingly quickly. Already the stout captain was rounding up. His belly expanded against the door until he couldn’t reach his arms far enough to knock against it.

“Computer, stop. Computer STOP. Computer, stop, off, turn off, cease, power down!” Jac yelled through the window at the drone floating just outside. The machine either couldn’t hear him or was just as glitchy as the other computer though, because it floated away down the corridor and out of view. That gave Jac a straight shot at seeing the room across the hall, where the grey otter was now large enough that he’d filled the entire room. The otter’s head was packed in tight against the glass and that grey, translucent body was ominously close to the ceiling. That would be him soon.

“SOMEONE TURN THIS THING OFF!”