Signed, Sealed, and Delivered

by Catherine Linda Michel

 

Part 4

As we ended that day at work, I was feeling totally relaxed with looking and feeling like the beautiful woman I was masquerading as and, from my talks with the other "guys" I could tell that they were experiencing the same feelings as I was. We laughed (well, giggled, actually)at almost everything and I actually caught myself flirting with a couple of (gulp) guys who were working on the loading dock. They started to come over to us to talk, i guess, but, just then, Ms. Smith came back out and asked us all to come back inside for the final part of orientation. I gave the guys a smile and so did the other "girls" and we all headed back inside.

We filed into the orientation room and sat down and Ms. Smith started to speak.

"Well girls, you have gone through your first couple of days as women. From the looks of things you are all feeling very at ease and comfortable with your new looks. Any questions?" she asked.

I spoke up since we had decided that I would be the "spokesperson"for our little group. "Yes, Ms. Smith, I have a couple of questions. Number one is, When we take these suits off, what happens to us? I mean the training that was on those tapes was very thorough and I don’t necessarily want to act like a woman when I don’t look like one. Number two, How long can these suits be worn before they become too uncomfortable or, for whatever reason, HAVE to be taken off? And number three, Is there any danger of us getting trapped in these things?

She gave me one of those looks like I had seen Cary give me once in awhile since this whole thing began and said, "Those are excellent questions, Ginny, and I am glad you have asked them. I had planned to go into these explanations anyway." She sat down with us and it seemed to me that she was trying to be friendly and, well, almost condescending at the same time. She then continued, saying, "When you take these suits off, which you will probably do for the first time on this coming Saturday, you will find that all of the temporary characteristics that you have acquired since putting them on, will fade into the back of your minds and should not come to the fore again until you put the suits back on. The programming is keyed to your appearances and when you put the suit back on and look into any mirror, the programming will re assert itself. Oh there MAY be some very minor disorientation this first time when you remove the suit because of the length of time you will have been wearing it, but it will be very minor, I assure you." "Your second question is not quite so easy to answer since these particular suits are the newest things available. According to all of our research and development people, You should be able to wear these suits indefinitely without discomfort and, unless there is a valid medical reason for removal of the suit, you could, theoretically and, if you wanted to, wear these suits 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the rest of your life. All that is ever needed as far as maintenance is concerned is to just bathe of shower regularly. As a matter of fact, I have been wearing this one for almost a month solid now and I feel just fine. I even think that, as I wear the suit, it seems to gain more natural feeling as regards tactile senses."

Now, I have to stop here for a second and tell you about the reactions of all us "girls" at this revelation of Ms. Smith because they ARE worth mentioning! Every one of us had our mouths hanging wide open, looking like fly traps with lipstick around the edges of them! I definitely recall hearing gasping sounds coming from at least three of us and I also remember hearing things like NO WAY! And WELL I’LL BE DAMNED! And other expressions of disbelief! It took a moment for me to, A. catch my breath and, B. find my voice. When I did, a lot of gibberish spewed out of my mouth until my brain caught up and slowed me down. The first thing I said that made any sense at all, sounded like, "You!.. BUT, BUT,.. That’s a!......WHAT THE.........! Yeah, I know! That doesn’t sound like anything intelligent but it was the best I could do at the time! I mean, we were all shocked and confused and well, jabbering like a bunch of (gulp) women! Well, after all that died down a little bit, Ms. Smith stood up and put her hands up to the back of her head and we all heard a rrrrrrrrripping noise like velcro makes when you pull it apart. She pulled at the back of her head and her face changed! It got, well, weird looking like she was taking off a mask which, as it turned out, she was! In a few seconds she had enough of the face pulled off her head that we could see who it really was. It was Mr. FRANKLIN!!! The guy who had hired me!

"That’s right, gals" he said. " I’m the fella who hired you all! The only time in the last month that I have had this bodysuit off was the day I interviewed and hired you. The rest of the time I have spent as Ms. Smith so I can reassure you that the wear time for those suits that you have on is as advertised. When I did take this suit off for the one day, I experienced NO "bleedover" from the programming at all." She, well, he, aw whoever it was, then pulled the false face and hair back up around her head and resealed it and in just as long as it takes to tell it, there was Ms. Smith again, smiling at us! She then carried on as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had happened. "As to your third question, can you get "trapped in those suits? Not as far as I know and not as far as our R&D people can predict. As you can guess, though, your suits are just a bit more advanced than the one I am wearing and we don’t have ALL the test data back yet but all indications seem to point to the fact that those suits will come off as easily as they went on. Now I do have one word of caution. If you should ever be completely doused in very hot water, say about 140 degrees or so, you MUST take the suit off before you dry off. If you don’t, well, then there is a chemical reaction that takes place and the material of the suit bonds with whatever is inside it at the time it dries, and, as far as we can tell, it would become inseparable from your own skin. In fact it WOULD BE your new skin. That’s the only warning I know of at this time and it seems a remote possibility so I wouldn’t worry about it." Any other questions?" Well, I couldn’t think of anything else right then and even if I could have I doubt I could have vocalized it! Ms. Smith took our silence as an indication that we had no more to ask and got up to leave. "Okay, ladies. If that’s all, I will expect to see you all back here Bright and early tomorrow morning for your first real delivery runs. Since you five have stuck with it up to this point with no complaints and seem to be willing to carry on with this experiment, I am authorized to tell you that, in with your first paycheck, there will be a bonus of 100 shares of company stock worth, right now about 10 dollars a share. I don’t expect you to sell them but if you want to, you cannot until you have held them for a year or more from their issuing date. We can hold them for you in the company vaults or you can store them in your own safe deposit boxes at your bank of choice. Congratulations and, on behalf of the company and all the investors, Thank you all for your courage and commitment. We are breaking new ground here and there is no telling where we can go from here!" Then she shook our hands and left the room, looking for all the world to be a gorgeous female and moving like one.

We sat around and I guess we were all gathering our thoughts because nobody said anything for several minutes. Carl/Carla finally said, in a subdues tone of voice, "Wow! That was certainly an eye opener! I never would have guessed that she was him, I mean that he was... that Ms......" and he just sort of petered out at that point with an amazed look on his/her face, I guess, at this point I should refer to everyone as the gender they looked like at the time. It’ss make things easier.

No one else spoke up so I finally said, "Well, we might as well head for home or do any of you want to go out for a drink? I think I could use one after what we just saw and heard. Also, in case you missed it, each of us is gonna get a thousand dollar bonus in our first checks! What do you say, Jeri, Dana, Carla, Terri? Feel like a little celebration drink? There’s a nice looking little place just down the street from that restaurant across the street from here. I noticed it when we were coming in to work this morning. Maybe we could get something to eat there as well."

It’s an indication of how well the programming on those tapes had worked on us because with the exception of Dana, all the rest of the Girls agreed with me. Dana said she had to get back home and talk this whole thing over again with her girlfriend so she couldn’t join us this time but she promised that she would go with us the very next time. We did the female, "kiss, kiss" thing goodbye and headed out to our cars. We paraded out of the parking lot and Dana went her way and the rest of us drove down the street to a little place called The Stumble Inn. Yeah, I know. Cutsie name, but it actually looked like a chic little place so we parked out front and went in to check it out. I guess we must have beaten the supper crowds because the place was pretty empty when we walked in.

A cute little brunette waitress greeted us and said, "Good evening ladies. Table for four?" I looked around and noticed that the place was nicely decorated and there were also no seedy looking drunks passed out at the bar, always a plus for an Inn, in my opinion, and answered, "Yes, that’ll be just fine." She took us over to a secluded table and, after we were all seated, took our drink orders and left us menus saying she would be right back with our drinks and to take our dinner orders. "Well", I thought, "so far, so good. The place looks clean and respectable, there are no stains on the menus OR the tablecloths, and the waitress is friendly." We sat and talked a bit and perused the menus and in a few minutes, she was back with our drinks. She placed them on the table and whipped out an order pad and asked if we were ready to order. When we had finished ordering, she gathered up the menus and started to move away from the table but stopped and turned back towards us and asked. "Are you ladies working at that new delivery place up the street? I’ve never seen any of you before and I know they are just starting up." We replied in the affirmative and she continued. "Do you know if there are any more openings there? My husband has been out of work for almost two months and we are getting kind of desperate, moneywise. He was a driver for another delivery firm that went out of business and I am sure he would fit right in at that new place."

We all damn near lost it at that point and I made a show out of taking a sip of my drink before I answered her. "Well, honey," I said, "I will ask at the office up there and see if they need any more people but don’t get your hopes up. I have no idea if they are going to be hiring anyone else, for a little while at least." I managed to get that out without strangling on my own laughter AND without laughing in that poor girl’s face. I could picture her hubby in one of these bodysuits and the more I pictured it, the more I had to laugh, until I couldn’t hold it back anymore, and I just burst out in a full belly laugh which, by the way, sounded very weird in my female voice.

At that point, all bets were off and the other three at the table broke up as well and for a few minutes we were all just shrieking with laughter and had tears rolling down our cheeks.

When I could see again, I noticed that poor girl had an angry look on her face and I realized that she must have thought we were laughing at her! Before she could say anything I held up my hand, palm towards her and, through my giggling, I said, "Please, honey, don’t be mad. We aren’t laughing at you. It has been rough getting trained up there and today was the final training. We are all just so relieved that it’s finally over and we will be really starting work tomorrow that we decided to stop here and celebrate and I’m afraid we got a bit carried away for a second there. Please forgive us." The angry look slowly left her face to be replaced by a questioning, "I’m not sure" look, and she turned and walked away to place our orders.

I elbowed Jeri who was sitting next to me in the booth and I said, "We have to leave her a really nice tip" to all of the girls. She’ll remember us now and if we ever have to come in here again, she will treat us better if we tip well and leave her with a good taste in her mouth about us." OK, ok, bad choice of words but that set everyone off again and it was one of those things where whatever was said was funny, even if it wasn’t and we were just recovering, finally, when the waitress came back with our food. She set the food down on the table and took our mysteriously empty drink glasses. I didn’t remember drinking mine but, then, I didn’t remember much of the last 15 or 20 minutes. I had been laughing too hard and having too much fun with the other girls. We reordered drinks, going with a light wine this time since we were going to have to drive when we left here and I took the opportunity to reassure the waitress, Betty was her name, that we were really sorry if it had seemed that we had been laughing at her. She smiled a little bit and said it was ok and left us to enjoy our dinner. The food was very good and Betty’s service couldn’t have been better. We all had a good time that afternoon/evening and, all to soon the time had come to part company until the next morning. We left Betty a really good tip, about 35 dollars altogether and paid our bill and left the Inn, promising to come back again and we meant it too. Then we all went to our cars and headed our separate ways home.

On the way home, I did a lot of thinking about where I was and what I was doing. Okay, I’m out on the west coast, California. Sunshine, movie stars, beach bunnies. What could be wrong with that? Well, let’s see. The first thing that comes to mind is, I LOOK LIKE ONE OF THE BEACH BUNNIES!!!!! Now I want you all to understand where my mind was at this particular time. I was thinking, acting, sounding and moving like a real woman. My responses became more feminine with every hour I spent inside this bodysuit, BUT, I didn’t feel weird about it or concerned at all. Instead, I felt relaxed, happy and well, feminine! I remember thinking, "Boy, if they ever patent the programming they used on me and the others, they’ll make a fortune to go with the fortune they are gonna make by selling these bodysuits." And THEN it hit me! WAIT ONE DAMNED MINUTE HERE!!!!! That thought came slamming into my brain like a runaway freight train! I had to pull over to the side of the expressway or I would have lost control of the car for sure. I just sat there shaking for a few minutes, trying to work through that thought but I knew I wasn’t gonna work it out just sitting here at the side of the road. Besides, some cop could come along and I had no I.D. that would match the way I looked. So I pulled back onto the roadway and cautiously made my way back to Cary’s apartment. When I got there, I parked in the lot and practically ran up to the apt, unlocked the door and slammed it closed behind me. I threw my purse in the direction of the couch, kicked my high heels into the corner of the room and flung myself into the easy chair.

I sat there, halfway angry and halfway scared for about 2 hours or so, trying to figure out what the hell was going on here and why Cary had been lying to me! He had to have been lying, after all. NOBODY would go to THIS much trouble to set up a delivery service! There HAD to be another reason but what could it be? I got up from the easy chair and began pacing around the room. Sometimes that helps me think but this time I came up with nothing. I was going to have to have more information before any of this would make sense. I also realized that I wasn’t going to be able to talk to Cary about any of my suspicions until I knew where he stood in all of this. I knew also that I would have to clue in the other girls, unless they had already reached the same conclusions I had. Could this be some kind of government thing? Or maybe some BIG business secret? Or maybe..... Oh my GOD. Could this be an espionage kind of....and with that thought, my mind spun off into several fantastic and, to the best of my knowledge then, ridiculous scenarios.

The next time I looked at the clock, it was 9:45 PM and I was no closer to figuring anything out than I had been out there on the road when the idea had first hit me, and Cary still wasn’t home. I took a quick shower and went to bed, my mind reeling with thoughts of government conspiracies, and spy agencies and big business plots. The one thing I definitely knew for sure was that the next few days at work were going to be nerve wracking and very, very interesting!

 

 

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