Nancy's First Adventure

“All finished…” Steve thought. “Sorta…” This latest contract had proved to be a lucrative idea after all. Steve was an independent inventor. He was creative and confident, a good combination. With a great amount of faith in his own ability, he went into business privately, on his own. He took up whatever contracts he could find. He worked with companies, organizations and sometimes even governments who needed a little extra brainpower.

This latest project was a rapid air pump. The idea was to engineer a rapid evacuation device for soldiers who were in dangerous situations. A very efficient pump would quickly inflate a balloon very quickly, launching the soldier upward and hopefully out of harms way quickly as it later would float back down to the ground.

The idea was a good one and the prototype had even worked on smaller scale models. However, he needed to test an up to scale model with a human sized weight. The dilemma had been bugging him for days and he couldn’t submit his project to the government until he knew for sure that it would be safe for all involved.

“My conscience won’t let me launch some poor person up into the air…” He thought out loud. “Yet, if I use a weight, the wind may take all of my work away forever. I need something conscious to be up there for me.” This last musing had given him the inspiration he had needed. A remotely controlled propeller system could allow him to steer the device after launch. The weight of the system itself could provide the lifelike test. He spent the next few hours constructing such a device.

Nancy was Steve’s live-in girlfriend. She was too nosy for her own good. Steve had always done a good job of protecting her from herself, but he could never tell what was coming next. Nancy was determined to blow herself up.

She came downstairs, into the dirty basement that Steve liked to pretend was a workshop. She padded softly down the wooden staircase in her white socks. The jeans she wore were fairly tight and light blue. This morning she wore a plain white T-shirt with no design on it. Her hair was either dark red or light brown depending on the time of year, the light and her mood that month. She had somewhat dull green eyes, but even though they didn’t glitter, they were alluring in a cute way.

“Hey honey, how’s the jet pack coming?” Nancy knew that it wasn’t a jet pack but did not care to learn. All of this stuff was over her head anyway.

“Good, I’m pretty sure that I’m nearly finished.”

“Really?!?!”

Steve was surprised at her sudden flared interest. However, Nancy had been pretty excited about this thing from the moment that he had begun talking about it. She wanted to fly up in the air like some amusement park ride. And the view coming down would be breathtaking. Nancy wasn’t afraid of enough things for her own good.

“Yeah, just in the….”

“I want to try it!”

Steven suddenly got a bad feeling about the whole thing. Whenever she had gotten her mind set on something, it usually happened. Steve was hoping that she was just on a whim and that this was not one of those times.

“No, listen its still in the…”

Nancy didn’t care to hear the rest, she was gone. She grabbed the deflated rubber balloon, headgear, tubing and ran out of the basement door.

“Nancy!” Steve shouted, following after her.

“Tell me how or I’ll just have to play with it myself!” Nancy said, strapping parts to herself.

“Okay, okay okay…” Steve’s mind was racing, he knew Nancy well enough to know that she would do it. She had the misplaced confidence in herself to feel that she could figure it out. Now he was simply trying to end this as harmlessly as possible.

“Okay connect those two tubes….MAKE SURE THE VALVE IS LOCKED FIRST…”

“What’s the Iron Man helmet for?” Nancy asked, poking fun at the science fiction feel that the apparatus gave off.

“You are going to be moving so quickly that your body will be under G forces that will make it almost impossible for you to breath. That will make sure that your lungs are provided with oxygen and that you don’t pass out due to the lack of it.”

Steve’s mind was racing. He couldn’t be held responsible for the fact that his idiot girlfriend had accidentally hooked up the pump valve to the mouth piece before he began giving directions. It was a very complex prototype of a future invention, there were many things that he was trying to monitor.

“Alright,” he commanded, “Put on the helmet and if you’re still crazy enough to want to do this, hit the read button on the wrist of the left glove…”

Nancy giggled and then donned the headpiece. She gave him a thumbs up before slowly forcing herself to press that button.

With beads of sweat forming below Steve’s hairline she pressed the button. The balloon didn’t inflate and his girlfriend didn’t rise off of the ground.

“Ooophh…” Was the first noise that Nancy was able to make. The first thing that began to happen was Nancy’s chest began to swell. Not painfully and not gruesomely, but she took on an altogether cartoonish look.

Despite being frantic with worry, Steve’s scientific curiosity couldn’t help but be piqued at the odd sight that was unfolding before him.

“Interesting,” he thought wondering what could possibly be making her expand like rubber.

It was not long before the expansion spread to all of her body. Even her arms and legs look swelled. Soon, the helmet collapsed as her head grew proportionally.

“Mmmph?” Nancy muffled. She was too immature to be worried and even if she wanted to spit the mouthpiece out the shock at what was happening all but immobilized her.

It wasn’t long before she began to lift off of the ground completely.

“Oh crap…” Steve muttered, fumbling with the controls. His nervousness as her boyfriend had overcome his curiosity as a scientist. Unfortunately, there was no way to manually stop the pump once it began, it was just too powerful. It didn’t last long but it moved a lot of air.

“MMPPH!!!” Nancy squinted her eyes shut, now she was worried. However, it was too late to spit the mouthpiece out. Her inflated face was too bulky too control. In fact she could move no part of her body. Like a balloon she was stuck, immobile in the position she was in when the pumping began.

Everything happening in mere seconds, Nancy’s arms and legs started to disappear into her bulging body. In fact, it wasn’t long before only Nancy’s nose was sticking out from her spherical torso.

Floating higher and higher, she rolled downward in her orbit. She blinked stupidly at Steve. She was a little panicky but not quite afraid, figuring Steve could do something. She just blinked stupidly at him, feeling ridiculous.

Her expanding body swallowed more and more of her. Her fingertips disappeared into her body and her socked toes kicked there way into the ball as well.

Steve was now looking onto a tuft of light brown hair that ornately swung down from a balloon that used to be his girlfriend. Soon after, her hair was taken in too and Nancy was truly a perfect sphere.

The whole time, Steve had been racing through his past inventions, who he could call and what tools he could use. Unfortunately, he came to the inevitable conclusion. There was nothing that he could do now. He watched Nancy the “amazing” shrinking ball until she had floated up out of sight.

“Ya know…” he said to himself. “Somehow I always knew it would end here. I don’t know why I thought of this…but all along I somehow knew it…”