The Recording Studio

It's Friday morning, her eighth. Casual Friday, which she hates.

She hates wearing jeans, prefers slacks, something looser, more feminine. She usually wears dresses. She had to buy the danged jeans just to fit in at work, and being so tall the only pair she could find were men's. Too narrow at the hip, too low a rise, they press against her sex when she sits. She has gained a few pounds or the jeans have shrunk from washing, but today they are a lot snugger than she likes.

Rowena, beside her cubicle hands it to her.

Now this. A summons to the editor's office.

Rowena raises her eyebrows, shrugs.

"Master Blaster wants you." She coos with her evil smile.

Karen scoops up her latest bit and scurries down the room, thinking, "Maybe he is going to fire me. I hate doing obits anyway; I know I can write if he would only have given me the chance."

She walks past the sports writers. The bullpen pauses and eyes scan her from breasts to lower body as she approaches. She knows they watch her bum wiggle after she passes. She seethes and squirms inwardly, hates being over six feet tall, the target of every ambitious Lothario for miles around. The shorter they are the worse they get.

She knocks, walks in to the glass walled office.

She tugs her long loose tee straight, looks at him across his messy desk.

A small aluminum plaque perched precariously near the front edge of the desk says Morris Blass Editor.

A bald headed forceful face on top of a broad powerful body. Blue eyes crinkle at her from below his bushy brows. He makes a wry smile with a pencil jutting out the corner of his mouth. The pencil wags as he speaks around it.

"You look terrified."

His big Black Lab mix flows swiftly from his basket in the corner of the room straight at her. As usual he wags up to her and thrusts his nose firmly in to her crotch.

She jerks forward one hand trying to fend him off, twisting away as Mr. Blass yells, "Down Rascal!"

He leaps around the desk and grabs the dog by his collar. He looks back over his shoulder as he drags him back to his basket.

"Stay!"

Back in his chair he says, "Sorry about that, doesn't usually happen. Please relax, take a seat."

She sidles to the chair and sits, feeling flustered and awkward as Mr. Blass looks at her crotch the whole way.

"Hope he didn't hurt you. Did he?"

She sees the blue eyes linger long on the zipper of her jeans. She presses her knees tight together.

"N no, oh no not at all!" She mumbled.

She feels her face flush red, looks down at her feet. She knows the tight jeans reveal the rise of her mons, her loose top is not long enough to cover it.

Mr. Blass looks at her face after a few seconds.

"Back to business." His voice is brisk.

"I hope you didn't worry about this summons. I have been reading your obits for the last week.

'I think it is time to give you a bit more to write about."

She looks up, surprised.

"We need a reaction piece for the Sunday edition. Can you give us a thousand words by Saturday afternoon's deadline?"

"Reaction to what?"

"There is a new concept business. Opened last month, apparently very high tech.

'They say it is a way to record people's sensations so they can and experience them later or share them in a sort of unique anonymous way."

'I talked it over with Maratha and she agrees we need an in-depth experience piece for the New Science section, can you work tonight?"

"Dressed like this?"

"They say it doesn't matter, it would only be a recording session, whatever that means, and the actual replay would be the following week when they have had enough time to process the raw data and so forth. Are you up to it?"

"Bbbb but – jeans and a Tee?"

"Stop stalling. You know it's a great opportunity. These guys are geeks; therefore no dress code. You'll be lucky to see them without overloaded pocket protectors and a dozen bits of gear hanging out of the rest."

"I, I, I, " she stutters.

"I know you prefer dresses, I like seeing you in them, but this is the way it goes in the News business. Besides, if the first article goes well, and we do a follow up next week, you would be the writer. Byline on the article."

Still wanting to say no, she nods assent. "This is a real opportunity," she thinks.

"I called them to set up a press pass for you. They sent it by courier, and said they will have someone to greet you and show you around."

He passes her a blank white plastic card with a thin emerald green rim. It looked like a credit card.

"They call it their Carte Blanche, it opens the door."

On the way out she acknowledges to herself that she is both relieved and happy to have been given the chance. It has been worth the persistence and the initiation via the Obits almost all reporters go through.

She feels his eyes sliding all over the back of her jeans as she closes the door.

She shudders as she walks back past the bullpen, eyes scanning her approach, never rising to her face.

--------------------------------------------

The deep green sign shows in the alley just a few yards in from the main boulevard; there is nothing on the sign except its color; and under it a big green door of the same shade.

The door opens to her white card. A chime rings deeper in the building.

In the brightly lit hall, she sees a very short woman with a huge mass of very curly brown hair floating on her shoulders as she walks forward.

The woman looks up from a small PDA, smiling.

"You must be Karen from the paper?"

She nods hesitantly, waving the card, wondering yet again if she was wearing the right type of clothing for this place.

"Hi, my name is Suze, I am your guru tonight. I will get you through the recording studio, then show you how the system works. I like it. I find it intriguing, it shows me a whole new side of men, women, social mixing."

"Yes, my editor told me it's a really new technology? Can you explain it a bit to me?"

"Easier to show you, follow me."

At the end of the hall was a window looking in to a large room divided in to several work stations. A few white boards propped up with arcane diagrams on them wee scattered between them.

"That is the farm as we call it. Its a cube farm where we write the code and test various improvements. We have been at for five years now. We are ready to go beta next week."

Through a second door, there is hall with a row of open doors showing small rooms with what looks like school lockers and some strange looking equipment in each one.

Suze beckons her in to the nearest, closes the door behind them, flips a simple catch to lock it from the inside.

"Here is where all the test subjects get fitted. We custom fit the input hat in ten minutes. Each hat is sterilized and refurbished after each use. The hat you use if you make a second visit has an inner liner that we make to your size in the recording studio. In the farm they call them party hats." She grins.

Suze shows her the clipboard, "I have a release form you need to sign, and I have to give you a warning about the process."

"Warning?"

"Yes, the process is interactive with your brain waves, it measures physical stimuli and emotive reaction, as well as being able to feed some sensations to you; and if you shut the recorder down in mid stream, there may be unfortunate events with your synapses."

"Unfortunate events?"

"A bit of confusion in sensory routs, a bit of disorientation - dizziness, memory lapse, but it passes after a bit and you come back to normal. Really it's quite safe."

Karen skims through the dense legalese and signs the document.

Suze indicates the padded bench and locker "Here is where you all take your clothes off and put them in the locker so you can change in to your input suit and do a system check before any replay. We will start with the cap fitting right away; then it takes a couple hours to do a thorough sensory scan."

"All my clothes?"

"No. No, that is for the replay. And only if you want to replay your session."

"Wait a minute there, sister. Does this mean there is some sort of recording anyone can just sort of read about me?"

"Oh no, this is just to scan your skin and input the data for the hat. After the scan, you put all your clothes back on and next week we hand you a Party Hat to wear. With the party hat and the feedback suit you can feel and experience almost the exact experience you had the last week. That is - unless you want to be interactive."

"Interactive?"

"Oh, you really don't know anything?"

"Nope."

"This part of the process scans your brain for the impulse waves caused by sensory stimuli on the skin. The stimulators have strain and pressure gauges attached to record how much pressure causes how much sensation. Then later we can do a playback combining generated input to your sensory system and give you a virtual feeling of being there, just by sending the signal to the party hat. Its wireless. You will be able to feel yourself dancing, while sitting in a chair."

"Um, wireless? Dancing while sitting?"

"Seems like Science Fiction doesn't it?"

"Yeah."

"Anyway, passive means you receive feelings from the hat, active means you send and receive. Active is more difficult, takes practice, and takes more gear. Costs more too."

"This input scan, does it hurt?"

"No, you get to determine how much pressure you find is too much, and we limit it to that. But some women have felt a bit – embarrassed because it is kind of thorough and a bit intimate. But it's really private here, and you only need to do it once. We take a recording and can put you back in the Party Hat again anytime you come back."

"Will I be able to remember everything?"

"Of course, it isn't mind control."

"And the data you collect about me? Will it be publicly available?"

"No. This session is for the purposes of the article and publicity. Only you will be able to authorize its release."

"Hmm. I would not do this myself mind you, but this is work. So let's do it before I change my mind. I'll do the passive thing."

Suze whips out a second form and says, "Sign this usage agreement; it's a really good deal for you if you decide to go public later and then if you become popular here, and – away we go!"

"Not as if I am likely to release this stuff, or hang out here and get popular," says Karen as she signs again.

The form is tucked away, and Suze brings what looks like a shower cap out of a wall cabinet. It is thick and floppy, looks rubbery, has a wide cable growing out the top which Suze plugs in to a socket on an arm that swings down from the ceiling.

"Please sit on the bench while I fit the recording cap and we can replace your shoes with these sensor boots. The boots record your foot pressure and location for the dance sequence."

Karen sits, "Will I have to wear that in replay?"

"Nope, remember for replay, the Party Hat is smaller, and runs by short range radio – the output is all mental and is direct feed. The input suit includes booties and is needed to provide sensory input about sweat levels, body temperature, flushes, stuff like that. There are hundreds of input sensors in the walls for most of that, and we filter the results to come up with a presentation you can experience. It takes about a week to integrate. Then with your feedback on sensations and the like we can re-record segments and fine tune the event."

"Wow, sort of like doing a film or TV show."

"Yep, and Karen gets to be the star." Suze thinks, "and she'll be big if I have anything to do about it."

Karen pulls on the thick rubberized cap; it pulls on her hair as she tugs it down. The heavy cable makes it awkward to settle.

Suze adjusts it, pulling it painfully tight, and pressing what Karen realizes are electrodes into sharp contact with her skull. Suze goes to the console protruding from the wall and fiddles with some sort of complicated looking mouse. After a few seconds the sensation of pain recedes, the cap becomes just a background sensation like a hat.

"You should feel no pain now, if we got the feedback right. This cap can both record and send, so we send back a canceling current to match the cap input so it feels like it isn't there."

"It's amazing. The cap does seem to almost disappear."

"Let me know when it completely disappears." Suze twiddles a bit more on the wall mounted console.

"It's gone now," says Karen after a few seconds of strange feelings in her scalp. They did the same procedure for the surprisingly lightweight boots.

"Ok babe." says Suze, "Strip off your top and bra."

"What? With you here?"

"Of course. I have to apply the sensations, it is not all automated you know."

Karen looked wildly around, "But I am a very p private person, it makes me uneasy."

"Just think of me as your gynecologist, I do this all the time. Believe me it doesn't give me any great thrill to do this." Says Suze, thinking, "What a lie, Suze!"

Karen reflects a moment then nods, "What about the hat cable?"

"With your top, we can slip it up the cable."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."

Karen raises the hem of the tee up over her belly, feeling it graze over the downy hairs on her lower torso. Just at the bottom her bra she says, "Please don't stare."

Suze says, "Sure," and turns to the console. She watches intently via the tiny video recorder as the tee rises over the bra, a gray sports bra, no clips she notes, and up over the tall girl's head.

Suze walks over to Karen with a step stool and she steps up, "Hold still now while I get it over the cap and on to the cable."

She looks down at Karen's head, curly brown hair spread around the cap, and the open space between her breasts. Suze notices Karen has freckles, and no tan at all on her very white skin.

"We might as well do the bra now, the same way please." Suze goes to the recording console and watches the feed as more sensations are recorded. She turns and looks at Karen, paused in the act of holding her bra over the cap.

"Nice pair ya got there Karen."

Karen blushes.

Suze walks slowly over to Karen and climbs the stool to slip the bra farther up the cable. She leans in towards Karen practically surrounding her face with her own breasts.

Karen can smell the fragrance she wears.

Suze says, "How do you like my tits? Do you usually check other women out in the locker room?"

Fingers brush lightly down her upper chest out around her breasts and under them, suddenly sweeping in at the lower crease where they meet her belly and up lightly flipping her nipples before leaving.

Suze goes back to the console.

Karen's face turns bright pink. She looks down, then swiftly up at Suze's chest.

Suze says, "your tits are not too big, I hate to see sag, you have great shape, nice nips too. I like a strong bit of color and the aureoles are nicely contrasted. Blondes are way too pale, don't you think?"

Karen can feel the flush go down her torso as she stares desperately at the floor.

"Thanks." She mutters bravely.

"How old are you?"

"Twenty."

"You must have been late developing; your nips are still a bit puffy."

"Please, I find it awkward to discuss my body with a stranger."

"Good, it helps the emotive input side when I know what you are feeling."

Suze grinned. "Sorry to have to put you through these feelings, but you'll make an outstanding recording, I think."

Suze checks the console. "Good recording strength right now."

She turns and looks again at Karen standing, pink faced, nude from the waist up, eyes down; letting her own eyes linger on the lovely breasts.

"I have to do the next bit from behind you. Just remember – it's not personal, it's the script."

Karen watches nervously as Suze walks slowly behind her, eyes on her breasts and nipples. She feels exposed and slightly ashamed at the fleeting sensation of pride at the praise of her boobs –her 'tits'.

"Now we put them back on." Suze says, approaching.

Standing very near on the stool, she reaches up and pulls the bra down the cable. Suze manages to make gentle contact with a breast as she reaches it down. "Oops."

She retreats a bit and watches intently as Karen shrugs it in to position. She tries awkwardly to half turn on the bench. The tee comes next, draping the tall lanky figure.

"On to the next bit," says Suze.

"Well that was a bit strange. At least it didn't hurt. What's next?"

"This is where you get to feel your own clothing being removed."

"What?"

"It's a matter of sensations for you to feel."

"Oh."

"Just sit there; I will do this bit for you."

Karen sat and watched nervously as Suze reached for the hem of her tee. Face serious, Suze raised it slowly up her torso, pulling a bit forward so Karen feels the material drag on the skin of her back. Suze then grabs it a bit stronger and whips it up over her breasts, making firm contact with them. Suze looks Karen in the eye.

"Did that hurt?"

"Not really . . ."

She checks over her shoulder at the console. "Ok, once more with feeling."

Suze slides the tee back down, and then raises it again. This time she saws the material roughly back and forth over Karen's breasts as it rises, flipping them up as the hem rises. She leans back a bit; looking down at Karen's flushed face.

"Good, now the bra."

Karen puts a hand out to stop her, "Please, that was a bit rude."

"Good. Did it hurt? Actually hurt?"

"No but its embarrassing."

"Well, stop being a sissy and let's get on with it. Only stop me if it actually hurts."

Suze steps very close reaching behind Karen to ruck the back band high, then scooping her hands under the bra around to the front, lifting it clear, fingers brushing intentionally firm up over Karen's nipples.

She stands very close raising the clothing up the cable, pressing her own breasts in to Karen's back. On the way down her hands grab both breasts and squeeze, massaging them around the rib cage and finishing by grabbing both nipples strongly, pulling and twisting on them as she stretches the breasts out from Karen's rib cage.

"Ow!" Karen grabs her breasts and massages them. "That was a bit much."

"Sorry, it's part of the sensation script. It's supposed to feel like some guy undressing you."

"Let me know if you are going to do that anymore. If you do, I will just pass on this whole thing."

"Oh be a sport, I would hate to call the paper and complain you don't want to do this. After all they set this up with me, and I had to call in a whole crew to run the programs. It's strictly business; and I assure you nobody at the farm can tell what is going on. It's just ones and zeros to them. It won't kill you; plus you get to tell a great story. We want it to be accurate, based on the real thing."

Karen pauses, looking as Suze turns and checks something on the console, then realizes she has forgotten she is nude from the waist up again. She thinks a bit more, then says, "Ok let's get this over with."

Suze smiles over her shoulder. "Thanks, I really appreciate what you are doing."

"Ok," says Suze, "now reach out with both hands and grasp both of these handles."

Suze pulls a pair of handles from the wall to either side of Karen. Karen can just reach them as Suze adjusts the length of the attachments. "They will measure perspiration in your palms, so don't let go."

"Ok," says Karen, "but they are a bit far apart."

"Here, I'll put these retainer straps around your wrists in case they slip." Suze wraps some rubberized strips rapidly around her wrists and to the handle ends. She twiddles the console again and the sensation of the straps and handles fades.

"Wow, magic." Says Karen.

Suze presses a button, and strong beat music comes on.

"Stand up and hop in rhythm to the music please."

Karen begins to hop and realizes right away her breasts are beginning to jiggle in synch with the hops. She blushes anew as she thinks of the spectacle she would make if this were in public.