New Line of Inflatable Lingerie, A

A New Line of Inflatable Lingerie

“Hi, welcome to Lane Buoyant!” the cheerful saleswoman called out as new customers entered the store.

The new lingerie product line from the women’s wear company, for a lack of a better phrase, had ‘taken off’ like an overinflated helium balloon. Sales were shooting for the skies, as more and more of the lingerie and swimwear flew off the stores’ shelves. The company had introduced the product line just two years ago, running in direct competition with several other stores with similar wares. But what set them apart was the newest gimmick. Inflatable women’s intimates and swimsuits, designed to give women a boost to the breasts and other parts. The inflatable cups of their bras and swim tops could be blown up to whatever size the wearer wanted, due to a new material that allowed the cups to stretch to incredible sizes and never break. The material that lined the fabric cups and made up the inflatable cup inserts, was called Blo-Tex, and was invented by a young entrepreneur and chemical engineer names Richard Johnson.

An unfortunate twist of fate, for a man who created a material that would go on later to be used in a line of intimate apparel, lingerie for couples to wear before and during sex, to have the name of ‘Dick Johnson’.

Though the product line was selling almost faster than the company could produce it cheaply in its factory in China, Richard was not receiving a penny from the use of his creation. He had taken his invention, Blo-Tex, to a patent company, who refused to grant a patent to his but instead stole the idea and formula, seeing the potential and selling it to a chain-store conglomerate, who began to incorporate it into their new line of intimate apparel and swimwear and selling them at new stores that were popping up in malls across the globe, usually right next to Victoria’s Secret. The name of the stores was a play on the name of another competitor, Lane Bryant, but since they sold inflatable bras and swimsuits, they called themselves ‘Lane Buoyant’.

Richard huffed angrily every time he saw a commercial from Lane Buoyant on television. The advertisement always showed women blowing up their bras discreetly under their shirts, or inflating their bikini tops, to add a little umph to themselves, with a smile. They offered items from full coverage to shelf bras, bikinis to one-piece swimsuits, all with inflatable pads that could be adjusted to every size imaginable. One of the national network morning television shows had done a promotional piece on the store’s wares, and had one of the female hosts inflate a Lane Buoyant bra under her shirt in an attempt to see just how big it would inflate before threatening to pop. She had burst every button in her shirt until she looked like she was wearing a pair of weather balloons, but the show proved that the product wouldn’t rupture. The television spot had started a stampede to stores world-wide, driving the inventor mad with the loss of income from the theft of his creation.

And that was when he began his plan for revenge.

The first version of the wearable, inflatable lingerie incorporated a valve that located behind the bridge in the cups of the bras. A small pump could be attached to the valve, and air added into the super-stretching pads and cups that way. But the wearer would always have to make adjustments to their cup sizes before putting on the garment. The second version now had a small capsule containing super-compressed air, about the size of a bullet, hidden where the valve used to be. Like clicking a pen, the wearer simply had to press the top of the capsule once to begin inflating, a second clip to stop blowing up, and a third to deflate. Lane Buoyant was even lately advertising the newest addition to the line, with a capsule of highly-concentrated helium, for those women who wanted more of a lift than just a boost to the bosoms. Each capsule had the capacity to release four cubic meters of compressed gas.

The most expensive version had the capability to activate the capsule’s various gases and inflate on command with the use of a small, key-sized battery-operated remote control. Women who used this had to be careful not to keep the remote in their purses in a place where other items inside might inadvertently fall on it and push the wrong button on the remote, triggering inflation when the wearer was unprepared for the growth. Sometimes the women had found that another’s remote would accidently trigger their own bra’s inflation, if they unknowingly got too close to another woman who was trying to artificially increase her bust size.

It was this weakness that Richard planned to exploit in his plot to take revenge on the company that had capitalized on his stolen invention.

The local mall was featuring the grand opening of another Lane Buoyant store. For their opening day, the store was selling the remote-controlled lingerie and swimwear for the same price as the regular items. The line to get into the new store stretched past the Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Victoria’s Secret stores, filled with excited women and the inwardly smiling men that accompanied them. Richard sat on a bench away from the crowd, fedora and sunglasses hiding most of his features, backpack in his lap. There were around one hundred people already in the Lane Buoyant store when he brought out the laptop computer from the backpack and initiated his plan.

He had hacked the store headquarters’ main computer system the week before, and accessed the remote-controlled capsules’ series of varying frequencies. Since the remotes were made to only broadcast short range, to be used within a foot or two of the wearer, he reverse-engineered a small parabolic microphone into a signal transmitter that would amplify the frequencies and could be broadcast from 50 feet way. The transmitter was covered by his trench coat on the bench next to him, and with a snap Richard connected the cable from the laptop to the transmitter and depressed the ‘enter’ key to activate the broadcast signal, and waited for the chaos to begin.

The cheerful saleswoman at the door that greeted people who were entering the Lane Buoyant store was the first to be affected. All the employees were expected to wear the company’s products, given to them for free, and of course she was wearing the top-of-the-line remote-controlled inflatable bra. “Welcome to Lane Buoy…” her greeting to another couple pushing through the door was cut short as her chest suddenly and unexpectedly shot forward, stretching her white linen buttoned blouse rapidly. Richard watched, a smile creasing his face, as she groped herself in front of a hundred onlookers in the line outside the store, trying to push back the inflation to no avail. Five other women in the line began to grow as well, some with yelps of surprise, their men simply staring at their women’s billowing tops.

A series of shouts emerged from within the store, as mass expansion began to spread. Displays full of inflatable bras and swimsuits blew up uncontrollably, most dropping to the floor. Other wares, including a shelf full of neatly-folded inflatable one-piece swimsuits, had their concentrated helium capsules activated, and began blowing up and slowly floating to the ceiling of the store. One petite saleswoman, fighting her own bra’s inflation, caught the lower parts of the one-piece floating suits, the strip that covers the women’s nether regions, and tried to pull them back down. But like someone trying to hold onto a clutch of balloons that has one too many buoyant spheres, the lift was too much and she was pulled off the ground, screaming for help.

One older teen, trying on her first Lane Buoyant bra, was trapped behind the closed door of the small dressing room. The bra blew up so voluminously and quickly that she was pinned to the mirror at the back of the cubicle, the stretching balloon cups filling up the room and preventing her from moving. Another small lady near the back of the store, grasping two helium bras she had intended to purchase, stumbled in the ensuing chaos and became tangled in the straps of several ballooning bras that had fallen to the floor. As she struggled to disengage from the cluster of colorful fabric, she was slowly, ponderously pulled skyward, tethered to at least four weather-balloon-sized garments, coming to rest next to a warm spotlight over a display.

One by one, every remote-controlled inflatable article of clothing within the broadcast range on the transmitter began to expand. Buttons were flying as women burst out of their shirts, some running away in embarrassment, while others demanded their husbands remove their jackets to cover up their burgeoning bosoms until they could extract themselves of the offending lingerie. One lady was wearing one of the store’s line of new panties with the inflatable butt pads under her skirt, and now looked like she was hiding an inflated raft under her pleats.

The most enjoyable feature of the day, Richard chuckled about as he filmed everything with the camera of his laptop, was the cheerful saleswoman greeter. She had been the first to start blowing up, and despite what was happening to her, she had remained dutifully at her post. Acting as if nothing odd was occurring, she assured the people still standing in line that nothing was wrong, and that all was under control. She had already inflated well beyond beachball size at this point, leaving the six buttons of her blouse on the floor. But as she smiled tensely at the remaining customers, some pulling out their smart phones and recording the enfolding event, the bra balloons to which she was attached began to rise up in front of her face. She was wearing a set with a helium capsule, and soon she was unable to see over her artificial cleavage. As the cups blew up bigger, unabated, the super-concentrated gas wouldn’t allow her to be able to pull down the inflating masses so that people could see and hear her. Bigger and bigger they blew up, and someone yelled, “She’s going to pop!”

Other people screamed. The cheerful greeter screamed. Pandemonium ensued with people running in all directions, the sound of balloons stretching and bumping together all around. But the bra didn’t rupture. Instead, the lady lost the grip of gravity as the cups pulled her upward. Flailing her arms and legs in the air, she slowly floated away, aiming for the ceiling of the mall’s corridor, three levels above her. Mall security had to extract her from the glassed ceiling later that night by reaching her with the use of hydraulic scaffolding.

Despite the chaos, no one got hurt. People later laughed when describing the event, saying that trying to escape the store later was like fighting your way out of a room full of beachballs.  The video that Richard and others had recorded, including the security camera footage, was leaked onto YouTube by the end of the day, and inflation fetishists around the world rejoiced in the underground lairs and replayed the scenes from every discovered camera angle repeatedly to their secret delight.

The new product line was deemed fallible, and was recalled by the company. In the ensuing investigation, the discovery of the true inventor of the Blo-Tex material was made, and Lane Buoyant was reluctantly forced to pay royalties for all the products they had sold that had used Richard’s now-patented creation. Under their new agreement, the company returned to the original design for their inflatable wares, with the valve and separate pump or the manually actuated compressed gas capsule, and never went back to the remote-controlled expandable pads.

Richard lived happily ever after, a rich and devious man.