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Prompt of the Week - Week 64
🕑 Added 2021-10-08 11:04:04 +0000 UTCTAGS: Growth Juice, Industrial Accident, Macro Growth
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Contracts for growth supplements had gone up so quickly in the previous year that the factory seemed to be running on overclock from dawn to dusk, something that terribly frightened anyone who actually knew how fragile the machinery involved in the process actually was. One of them in particular, a senior safety technician by the name of Robert, had spent the better part of the past three or so months desperately trying to convince management that the production schedules were placing far too much strain on the synthesizers, not to mention the simple fact that the storage vats hadn’t been properly deep-cleaned in so long that if anyone bothered to come perform a basic safety check, the whole factory complex would be immediately shut down. Much to the bun’s dismay, however, his concerns fell on deaf ears, or at least on ears too busy hearing about record profits to really care about the fact that their golden goose was running on fumes and about to choke on its own sweat from how overworked it was. Still, every day Robert walked into the factory he was assigned to keep check of, and every day he clocked in he spent several hours rushing from place to place, reassuring those who worked there that he was trying their best to slow down the production line, or at least manage to find some space in which to conduct some much-needed maintenance. It was… difficult; with the sudden surge in popularity of growth-inducing compounds, courtesy of a genetic research conglomerate having finally cracked the code on how to create a drinkable compound that yielded almost immediate results, people around the planet were waking up to the possibilities that came with having a literal growth potion. They could give their bodies the shape they had always wanted, they could turn it up and go even more excessive, they could indulge in fantasies that were once thought impossible, and all for (relatively) affordable prices. The cost, however, was that the handful of facilities that could produce the compounds themselves were constantly overworked, never given any time to rest, and governed almost exclusively by Boards of Directors who couldn’t really care less about such thing as “the machines are ready to burst” or “the amount of contaminants in the vats are going to ruin the product and make it not work as advertised”. So long as the numbers kept rolling in, and the amount of complaints was kept to an acceptable minimum, the shareholders were happy, and if they were happy, then the owners and executives were as well, leaving the folks on the ground-level terrified of an accident they knew was going to happen at one point or another. It was a matter of time, and one that, whenever it did take place, wouldn’t just stop at a small spill or a machine simply refusing to work; with the compounded faults and cracks in the system, whenever any one thing finally got pushed too far and snapped, everything else would tumble down along with it, bringing not just the entire assembly line to a complete halt, but the entire factory alongside it… and, given what sort of materials were being handled there, most likely everything else around it as well. There weren’t a lot of people working the mostly-automated machinery, but there were a few left, and all it really took was one getting hit by the raw growth-inducing substance for things to get out of line. And really, Robert had no idea why the damned thing was as popular as it was; personally, he never once had thought about making himself larger than he already was, being perfectly content with a body that was, in all respects, entirely average. He failed to see the appeal in having an ass wide enough to get blocked in doors or a bust so large that one couldn’t even more straight without having to anchor themselves to the nearest wall; it felt like more of a hassle than anything else, so much so that he’d gone out of his way to refuse any potential “free samples” that might’ve been pushed his way as a “bonus” for such a job well done, even if said job was mostly ignored by the same people giving him what amounted to little more than a bribe to keep him nice and quiet. Still, the bun held out hope that maybe, at some point in the near future, he could convince his supervisors to shut down the production line so it could be given a full maintenance overhaul… even if he wasn’t quite convinced that would ever happen. In the meantime, he carried on doing what he was supposed to be doing: logging incident reports, making sure that things were running as smoothly as they possibly could (given the circumstances), and occasionally panicking whenever something looked to be close to a breaking point. It was during one of those moments that Robert found himself staring up at what could very well be the end of the line for the factory: one of the line workers had called in to his office to let him know one of the storage vats was making a “weird noise”, and upon reaching the location in question, a quick scan revealed that the massive metallic container was not only bent outwards near the base, but the noises coming from within sounded oddly like cavitation, despite the fact that there really shouldn’t be any anomalous air bubble formation taking place within them; they weren’t pressurized, sure, but the rest of the machinery was working fine… unless it wasn’t, and the actual problem wasn’t with the vat, it was with one of the fluid pipes, or, heavens forfend, the synthesizers producing the growth compound being pumped in. Quickly, Robert issued a series of orders to the shift on-call at that hour, splitting the various sections of the assembly line between them in order to identify any potential flaw as quickly as they could; in his mind, the bun saw it as an opportunity of sorts: if they could positively identity an actual issue, something that endangered the production schedule in a more immediate sense, right before it actually triggered a disaster, then he would have the authority to unilaterally mandate a complete shutdown. All he could hope was that the rest of the workforce could find where said issue actually was before it compounded itself too much for them to do anything about it, while he stood there staring at a vat that looked about ready to pop open whenever he blinked or looked away. The noises coming from within became louder and louder with every passing minute, and despite everyone’s best efforts, nothing seemed to have gone wrong elsewhere: the pipes were pumping their contents properly, the synthesizers were working perfectly well, if dangerously close to critical heat levels, and even the valves seemed to be entirely within regular parameters… which just didn’t add up. Something had to be causing undue pressure inside the vat, something had to be pumping in deficiently in order to create air bubbles to produce the noises they were hearing; unless of course there was actually something alive in there bumping against the sides of the vat itself, which was positively ludicrous as far as Robert was concerned. Sadly, he wouldn’t get to consider much else for much longer; no sooner had he turned around to try and block the noises somewhat so he could radio in with one of the few workers he hadn’t called yet than he heard something that made his spine freeze and his entire body lock up: metal grinding. It sounded like a great beast had begun squeezing the outer skin of the vat, a noise that heralded the complete and total structural failure of the storage container, as its contents had finally found a flaw they could exploit. Within moments, the whole thing would crack open along some fault line that Robert had failed to see (or that outwards bulge that he believed wouldn’t actually pop so soon), and from there, the whole facility would be drowned in the growth compound. That singular moment before everything came crashing down felt like it was stretched out for hours; Robert could tell that he was moving, that his brain was telling his arms and legs to get the hell out of dodge so he could pull on the nearest emergency shutdown switch, but at the same time, it also felt as if he was moving through thick syrup… either that, or his muscles refused to accept any input, keeping him firmly locked in place until something forced him out of it. As something would, when the holding vat, at long last, finally broke open, the deep violet fluids within spilling forth into the outside world, and, just a second later, smashing straight into him with enough force to knock all the air from inside the bun’s lungs. He narrowly avoided blacking out, even though he still ended up tumbling several feet backwards in the flood, slamming his back against a flat piece of metal… right before smashing straight through it like it was made out of wet tissue paper. The significance of this seemingly irrelevant detail didn’t hit him until he was done with being carried away in the tidal wave, not until the bun tried to get back on his feet and found his center of balance was markedly different from before; he initially tried to pass it off as just him being shaken up, which was understandable given that he had just been hit in the everything by a wave of a fluid thick enough to cling to him like melted syrup. It was only when he opened his eyes and began taking in his surroundings, ostensibly as a means of ascertaining how much damage had been done, that Robert was forced to confront himself with the very simple truth: he wasn’t confused, he was bigger. It hit him about as hard as the growth agent did, doubly so when he remembered he was still covered in the damned thing and thus would carry on growing outwards for as long as he didn’t rinse the substance off; it was unprocessed as well, far more potent than it would be after passing through multiple different dilution chambers, and more than capable of affecting people even through simple contact, rather than needing to be ingested. The bun, however, was thinking of precisely none of this; rather, he tripped over himself in his rush to get back to the holding vat, skidding along the floor as he desperately attempted to stop the flow from taking over the rest of the facility. The container itself might have been broken open, but the rest of the assembly line was still functioning somehow, which of course meant even more growth agent being produced, which meant even more of a leakage than before. It also didn’t help that their particular section of the factory was the one used to produce the “multi-purpose” variant of the growth agent; while Robert could only thank his lucky stars that he hadn’t been hit with the breast-enhancing variety, or the one meant to make his package even larger, or, heavens above forbid him even thinking such a thing, the variant that worked on both of those things, the fact was, he was still covered in a thick gunk that was designed from the ground up to make him larger overall… and that was a bit of a problem considering how cramped the factory space itself was. He could certainly try and avoid the catwalks, the stacked crates, the occasional wiring or even the machinery, but with his body growing bigger by the second, and the constant leakage from the holding vat making it exceedingly difficult to keep his footing, there was only so much the bun could do that wouldn’t inevitably lead to him needing to grab onto something to avoid falling over; this, of course, only meant further destruction, as Robert had yet to figure out how to properly control his newfound strength, which itself led to even further skidding along, further loss of balance, and before he knew, the former safety technician was stumbling his way around the entire assembly line, just inches away from collapsing on the whole thing. Even worse, the bigger he grew, the more uncoordinated his movements became; he may very well have kept his overall body structure, but the bun was not prepared to have a body so large that he genuinely had to worry about bumping the top of his head against the ceiling three storeys above ground floor while still needing to avoid swinging his arms around too much, lest he smash apart the catwalks that were somehow below him despite him still feeling his feet firmly planted on the floor. It was confusing and overwhelming, too much for the bun to really process at any given time, hence why he inevitably tripped over himself and promptly fell onto a large section of the chemical synthesizer arrays… which just so happened to be the same ones producing the exact compound responsible for that mess in the first place. The last thing that went through Robert’s mind when he felt his back flattening several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of electronic components was that, at the very least, he had fixed the issue of additional leakage; the last, because the synthesizers’ buffers were enough to hold a substantial amount of the growth agent as well, and falling on top of them was the effective equivalent of smashing open a bottle on top of his head and letting its contents wash over him. It was an odd mixture of relief and anxiety, in that Robert knew that it was out of his hands, yet couldn’t avoid wanting to panic at the thought that he was about to burst free from the confines of the factory because of an industrial accident that he had spent months warning management was about to happen any day now. He knew he’d get blamed for it at some point, and that should worry him… but, at the same time, he was growing so much that he could feel a frankly ludicrous amount of the factory floor underneath him, along with what he assumed was the sensation of him growing all over it: the bun could feel the floor itself “dragging” underneath him, even if it was less chafing than it should be thanks to all the spilled growth juice, and it took him a short while before he corrected himself, as the floor wasn’t moving, he was growing over large portions of it! Honestly, the more it happened, and the more the panic washed away from him thanks to Robert embracing the inevitable, the more the came to understand what it was people liked about growing that big to begin with; though there was still a small part of him that wanted to pretend like he wasn’t enjoying it, the same part that had once balked at the mere notion of ever growing larger, he couldn’t deny that what he was feeling at that point was, without a doubt, rapturous bliss just waiting to burst forth and wash over him with as much force as the initial spill had. He might try to deny it, might try to come up with rationalizations for why he was feeling the way that he was: it was just the growth compound, it stimulated one’s nerve endings, it was a rare side-effect, anything really to help stave off the realization that, deep down, he was just really, really horny thanks to the sudden growth spurt, and was having his doubts stamped into dust in the most direct way possible. Of course, this couldn’t be the case; he was the responsible one, the one in charge of making sure everyone else did their job right. It couldn’t be that he had lost himself to the pleasure of growth, it had to be something else entirely. It couldn’t be that he simply enjoyed the sensation of becoming larger and larger with every passing second, feeling as his body took up every available inch of empty space, seeing as everything around him seemed to shrink away no matter how hard he half-heartedly moaned that he didn’t want to be any bigger. Of course not, it had to be because of the growth compound… which, obviously, called for some experimenting; he had to be sure, after all, he had to know that what he was feeling was coming from the spilled compound and not from anything else, and thus the best way of doing so was to simply apply even more of it onto himself! It made perfect sense as far as the bun could think of it, plus it meant that he got to enj-or rather, personally test the results of overexposure to the product, which was certainly something worth doing, surely, at some point, maybe. It became harder to think the longer things went on, the more of the delicious growth juice was smeared over his burgeoning form, the more his body took up space inside the increasingly-ruined factory, the more he heard and felt as everything crashed around him, the closer he came to the warm outdoors. Robert knew, on some level, that what he was doing was catastrophic, enough so that it bordered on the downright indefensible; it was one thing for him to be accidentally overexposed to growth agent, another for him to go on a rampage in his quest to find more of it to slather himself with. Somehow, however, he couldn’t bring himself to care; he’d been telling management about the risk for this for so long that, really, he couldn’t help but think that they deserved what they were getting.
He was their comeuppance. He was proof positive that everything he’d been telling them was entirely correct.
And he was going to enjoy every second of it while it lasted.
