CHET NORTHFIELD'S P.O.V.
* * * * *
In the two months that followed, the people at M.A.C.H,O. (the Multi-Agency Counter-Homunculist Organization...in case you'd forgotten) learned several things. First off? A SEAL team from N.A.S. Glenview, Illinois, retrieved the body of Captain Reggie Saito from the Brotherton Reservation in Wisconsin.* Bringing it to a secret branch of M.A.C.H.O.'s Research & Development Division (beneath the campus of UW-Milwaukee) for autopsy by Dr. Donna X. McGee.
According to Miles Stone, the good doctor had been born at San Francisco's Mare Island Naval Base on Valentine's Day, 1974. Hence, her Irish-Mexican mom (nee Maria-Bonita Brophy) middle-naming her "Xochiquetzal" after the Aztec goddess of love! And, by age twenty, she began attending the USC medical school as part of the Naval ROTC program. Hence, her post-doctorate residency at the naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
It was there that she was first recruited into the organization...after witnessing two of its agents take down a serial homunculist who had tried to add her to his collection of shrunken love-slaves.
Her autopsy of Saito revealed that the nano-cyborgs were apparently able to assimilate any organic matter (solid or liquid) to augment whatever form of energy they usually ran on. Hence, the one I impaled having enlarged itself after soaking up some of Saito's blood! But, it wasn't just self-enlargement they were capable of, with that extra energy.
"It also enables them to...asexually reproduce."
It was difficult to determine whose ensuing "Say what?!" was louder. Mine or Meriwether's. So, Doctor McGee illustrated her statement by flicking a switch on her remote control. Thereby temporarily replacing her image (on Meriwether's office flat screen) with that of a glass container filled with water. The video camera that had been focused on her zooming in on that container, like an electron microscope, instead.
Eventually showing what resembled a bunch of armor-plated microbes.
"What you're looking at are colloquially known as 'water bears.' The only species of terrestrial micro-organism known to science that can survive almost anywhere. Even the vacuum of orbital space! Yet these, as we already know, are of _extra-terrestrial_ origin. Something that would be evident just from the electronic components of their anatomy!"
"Are those components what allow them to mentally link their hosts, together?" I asked.
"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed (reappearing on screen): "But, that's not all. With regard to the supra-normal gigantism, they can increase the density of their host body's skeletal structure, in proportion. Thereby eliminating the breaking of rib bones with every step taken over a height of ten feet. They can also retard--and, to a lesser extent, even reverse--their host body's aging process! Which would allow a middle-aged female host, for example, to resemble a teenager."
"Speaking of which," I replied: "What about those batons the alienized majorettes are wielding? What makes them tick?"
"You mean, what purpose do they serve?"
Meriwether and I nodded as one.
"Well," she continued: "One baton serves as a weapon, for both offense and defense. Emitting a beam of white light that basically transforms anions into cations and vice-versa. The more anions an object gets, when hit with this beam, the smaller in size it becomes. And the reverse holds equally true for the cationic transformation process! Whereas, the other baton is more of a tool. Emitting a combination of subsonic waves and psychedelic patterns of yellow light that basically lull the on-looker into a highly suggestible state."
"In other words," I summarized: "...a kind of subliminal hypnosis."
"A very sophisticated kind," she added: "One quite capable of inhibiting all normal inhibition. Like the one against cold-blooded murder, for instance."
"Thank you, Dr. McGee," said Meriwether: "Your report has been most illuminating."
tbc
Giantess World
Author's Chapter Notes:
M.A.C.H.O. HEADQUARTERS
(OCTOBER, 2014)
(OCTOBER, 2014)
Chapter End Notes:
*N.A.S. (Naval Air Station).
Anions: negatively-charged ions attracted to electrolysis anodes.
Cations: positively-charged ions attracted to electrolysis cathodes.
Anions: negatively-charged ions attracted to electrolysis anodes.
Cations: positively-charged ions attracted to electrolysis cathodes.