Bambi Berenbaum grinned, holding up the three-inch long cockroach like she'd just won first prize in the county fair. It was, at the moment, the largest creature of its kind in the world. "See?" she said with a proud laugh. "You thought I couldn't make it work, didn't you? Well, take a look at this!"
Nathan Harris, her research assistant, looked over the giant roach cautiously. With her free hand, Bambi was pinning the scrambling insect down so it couldn't escape. The hooks in its legs, normally used for crawling up walls, were now large enough to be visible, and looked like they might be capable of actually scratching her bare skin.
"Does it feel like it has any added strength or weight?" Nathan wondered aloud, fascinated by the creature.
"No, not really," answered Bambi, "but that's to be expected. After all, it was only a tripling in size, and roaches aren't all that massive to begin with. If it were ten times larger, it'd be like holding a small dog in my hand."
Nathan shook his head in wonder. When she'd told him what she was working on in her spare time, the reason why she'd been spending all those long hours in the lab after work, he had to admit he'd doubted her sanity. But there was no doubting that any more. The device Bambi had created, entirely on her own time and initiative, was amazing. After all, this was just an ordinary American cockroach, Periplaneta americana, one of dozens of similar creatures kept in boxes in the lab.
She had, quite simply and literally, enlarged it.
Bambi set the gigantic roach back down into its box, where it joined its normal-sized fellows. In comparison with the others, it appeared to be some kind of insect Goliath. She fingered a control on the cobbled-together machine nearby, and the field of expanded space that surrounded the insect collapsed invisibly. The roach slowly dwindled back to its normal size, seemingly unaware that anything unusual was going on, and became indistinguishable from the other bugs in the plastic container.
"That's amazing," said Nathan, shaking his head slowly from side to side. "If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it. Do you realize what sort of practical applications something like this might have?"
"None right now," she replied carefully. "I don't think I have all the bugs worked out yet, so to speak. I want to tweak it some more, and get some use out of it myself before we turn it over. Let's just keep this between us, shall we, Nathan?"
He started to reply, intending to suggest otherwise, but then noticed her intense gaze and the words caught in his throat. She was staring up at him with her big brown eyes, a pleading little smile hanging delicately on her soft, moist lips. He couldn't help but notice, also, that from this angle he could just make out the barest curve of cleavage through the folds of her just so tightly stretched blouse. God, she was so beautiful, Nathan thought! If only she wasn't so devoted to those damn insects!
He knew what she was asking, of course. Since the two of them worked as part of a USDA research lab, studying ways to understand and control insect populations, any work they did on the side in association with such research was considered the property of the US Government. If this invention proved to have commercial applications, the USDA, or some other organization, would wind up in control of it. Bambi was basically asking Nate to help her hide her creation's existence from their superiors, a serious breach of ethics at best, and something that could easily get him fired. Or worse.
Bambi was by far the most stunningly attractive scientist Nathan had ever met. Even her name had a hint of sexuality about it, and even though she loved to explain how her parents had both been naturalists, it seemed sometimes like she secretly got a kick out of the raised eyebrows she received whenever she introduced herself. She also had an annoying habit of dropping sexual innuendoes in the middle of a scientific discussion, further evidence that she liked to toy with the emotions of stuffy male scientists. And, of course, she had a perverse ability to employ her finely chiseled looks and amazingly curvaceous body to influence others, especially Nathan, and unfortunately for him, she was incredibly good at it.
Even though he knew full well what was going on, Nathan could do nothing against those wide, persuasive eyes or that wonderful, cute little smile. He had no defense against her charms, and not for the first time, he wondered if she knew it. Did she have any idea of the effect her beauty had on him? Did she purposely twist her body just enough to give him a look down at the enticing curves hidden only barely out of view beneath her shirt? Was it an accident that her skirt sometimes climbed up enough to afford him the sight of her long, shapely legs? Did she do these things just to tease him, or were they merely accidental?
He had no way of knowing, and wasn't about to ask. "All right," he managed after a moment. "Now stop staring at me. You know I can't resist when you do that! I'll keep quiet for now, I promise."
"Thanks, Nate, I knew I could count on you," she said, flashing those gorgeous eyes at him again, and inwardly he cursed himself for being so gullible.
Bambi turned back to the bugs in their mesh-enclosed cage, as though bending him to her will had been an ordinary, everyday occurrence. "See, the enlarging field had no permanent effects," she told him, obviously proud of her invention. "You already can't tell which one was the subject of the experiment."
He nodded, switching his mind back to more scientific avenues. He always had the ability to push Bambi's desirability back into the back of his head, to immerse himself in his work without dwelling on her short, lustrous black hair, that lithe, curvy body, or those round, tantalizing--
"Hey!" he blurted out, interrupting his own thoughts before they could go too far. "I have a question! Just how big can you make the insects using this thing?"
"Pretty big," she replied. "Theoretically, I could make them oh, at least a hundred times larger, but a cockroach that size would be eight feet long and weigh more than you. I doubt we could control it."
"All right, not a cockroach, then," said Nathan. "Something more manageable, perhaps?"
She glanced around. The various cages, bottles and containers in the lab held a wide variety of insect pests. Just about any crawling creature that made trouble for humans was on the premises somewhere. However, Bambi was looking for something that wouldn't be an immediate threat to herself or government property if it suddenly grew to gigantic size. That pretty much left out flying creatures, which could cause considerable damage if they got free. Ants and other biting insects were also too dangerous to risk.
As she meandered among the various tables and desks scattered about the room, her eyes fell on a plastic case containing ladybugs, which were favorites for controlling aphid populations. "How about H. convergens? They should be safe enough, I think."
"Sure," replied Nathan, his eyes unconsciously following her movements as she glided through the room. Though she was casually dressed, in an unremarkable-looking blouse, white lab coat, and knee-length skirt, he still thought she looked like an angel. "So tell me, how does this thing work, exactly?" he asked, forcing his mind off her trim figure and back to the subject matter at hand.
"Just a moment." Bambi opened the lid on the clear container, reached in, and withdrew a dark red ladybug about a quarter of an inch long. It had about a dozen black spots on the back of its thick, oval-shaped carapace. The wings, enclosed underneath the shell, had been expertly clipped so the insect couldn't fly away during experimentation.
Carefully, she placed it in the center of a six-inch-high, cube-shaped lattice of thin wires. The little creature started to wander about, walked briskly to the edge of the mesh, and began testing the wall with its antennae. It started to climb, but Bambi covered the cube with a metal plate, and since the gaps in the wires were too narrow for its hemisphere-shaped body to fit through, it had nowhere to go.
Bambi reached into a nearby cabinet and drew out a contraption that looked like it was made of old vacuum cleaner parts. From one end of a long, ribbed tube, an odd probe-like appendage emerged, and she set this carefully on the mesh cage. "Well, it's hard to explain technically," she said to Nathan. "When I activate the enlarger, a field will be imposed on anything inside that cube. Within that field, space expands, and the object or creature will grow by whatever proportions I've preprogrammed in."
As she spoke, she adjusted the controls on a nearby computer, indicating which readouts meant what. "Here, I've set the expansion to ten thousand percent, the theoretical maximum," she went on. "This'll be my first test of this device's full abilities, you know."
"Should be interesting," remarked Nathan, fascinated by the potential this rickety device held in its kludged-together frame. Yet, even as he watched the little red bug crawl around in the cage, he found his gaze continually distracted by the way Bambi's raven-black hair meandered enticingly down her neck, not quite touching the thin slice of golden skin just poking out above her collar. He was seized by a sudden impulse to cover the gap with his hand, or perhaps caress it ever so gently, but just as always, he talked himself out of it.
She wouldn't understand, he told himself. She doesn't think of me that way. I'll just ruin an otherwise perfect working relationship. Besides, I'm too young for her, I'm not very good looking, I've got no money or status to offer her, I'm--
I'm a coward, he thought at last. But still he did nothing but watch.
"All the indicators are green, so I can go ahead and fire it up," Bambi said with a hint of excitement in her voice. She pressed a button, and there was a brief, high-pitched humming sound. The cage seemed to vibrate slightly, and the ladybug, by now perched on the side of the mesh, fell off and landed on its back. It flipped over easily and looked around, waving its antennae, almost as though embarrassed to have fallen.
"Okay, it's done," said Bambi, removing the top from the cage and reaching inside. The ladybug, already growing steadily, was easily captured and lifted into the air. They both watched as it gradually expanded in size, soon filling Bambi's palm entirely. "You're starting to get heavy," she said to it, and placed the insect on a nearby empty table.
It continued getting larger as they watched, but seemed not to be aware that anything special was going on. It crawled along the wooden surface, testing it with its feelers, while Bambi and Nathan looked on in awe. "Wow," Nate remarked as it finally reached its full size of about two feet long. "That is one impressive-looking bug!"
Bambi walked around the table, looking at the gigantic creature with amazement. Ignoring her completely, it walked to the edge of the surface it was on, opened up its carapace, and tried to spread its wings. Since they weren't there, having been clipped off to prevent flight, the ladybug couldn't lift off and instead fell unceremoniously to the floor. It made a loud clatter as its shell bounced off the concrete, but as before, the insect was unaffected. It simply flipped back over and began to meander about, exploring the lab as though being a hundred times larger was an everyday occurrence.
Bambi and Nathan followed it at arm's length. "This is wonderful," said Bambi. "I was afraid it might crush itself under its own weight, but it's just as solidly constructed at this size as it was when it was a quarter of an inch long."
"How long will it stay this way?" asked Nathan, who suddenly had a vision of a giant insect on the loose and rampaging through the countryside.
"Oh, don't worry, it's not permanent," she told him. "The field only stays up for a few minutes, or less time if I give the command to cancel it, like you saw. I haven't finished all my modifications, but I'm pretty sure there's no way to make something like this last indefinitely."
"Well, that's a relief," said Nathan, "I mean, it would be nice if we could permanently make things grow--think of the applications that would have for the world! No more hunger! But giant bugs getting loose and attacking people was my big fear."
"Sounds like a bad B-movie plot," she told him with a chuckle. "That could never happen, though. This would only be useful for research." She walked over to the gigantic ladybug, which had now begun climbing up one of the doors, heading for the ceiling. "Look at this thing! It's magnificent! Normally we can only see details like this with a magnifying glass, or a microscope. Now we can see firsthand how it can cling to walls, or how its jaws work when they're eating aphids. Why, I can think of a hundred experiments we were never able to try before that we'll be able to do now!"
"I agree," said Nathan. "This is certainly going to open some new doors for us!"
She nodded, watching the ladybug make its way across the ceiling. In due time, it began to shrink back to normal size, and once it had, she collected it and put it back in its cage. Like the cockroach earlier, it seemed none the worse for wear.
"One small step for ladybugs," she said, mostly to herself, "one giant leap for entomologists!"
Bambi accidentally merges with one of the bugs
Bambi accidentally merges Nathan with one of the bugs