Chapter 43: Project Renewal

“Project what?” asked her minuscule lover, frowning a little.

“Project Renewal” explained the giantess, smiling down at him. “It’s… it’s something really huge, life changing for a lot of peoples. But I think that there is someone better suited to explain it to you” she added, hoping to sound quite mysterious.

She rose to her towering height and languorously walked toward a shelf, from which she retrieved a portable computer. She made sure it was charged, up and running, pivoting so that her enormous ass sauntered above her fiancé, and giggled when she heard him gulp audibly. It was always reassuring to know that she was able to raise his lust easily. As a MAJOR, she needed to reassert her confidence in their relationship, because she knew that Minors could be fickle, even him. But she shooed away those thoughts, because she had something far more important to deal with now.

“There, it should be good” she said, carefully putting the computer on the table, next to Alejandro. “You may want to hop on the sofa my love.”

“How so? I’m not a good climber and I can’t fly” dryly replied Alejandro, which brought a smile to her face and shake her head, amused.

“I wasn’t engaged with a Minor when I had this tower built and the penthouse furbished honey. But I’m pretty sure I can lend you a hand – even an arm!” she laughed.

She laughed even harder as he looked at her, puzzled, until he saw her extending her arm, letting her hand rest on the table as her shoulder falling on the sofa, beaming at him. She redoubled in her hilarity as he gawked at her, his eyes bulging a little. Then he closed his mouth, stiffened and to her surprise, he walked briskly toward her hand, as if he was willing to walk on her arm to reach the couch. He wouldn’t be so damn oblivious!? she thought, even if she realized he probably was.

“Stop” she ordered, frowning lightly. “You can’t just walk on that, it’s far too precarious!”

“What am I supposed to do, then?” scoffed the Minor. “Run on it?”

“No, you beautiful dork” she chuckled, amused by his outraged attitude. “You can crawl on it!”

“A dork!? I’m not a dork! A nerd, at worst – if you see it as an insult, which I…”

“Enough!” she cried, laughing her ass off. “Won’t you just crawl on my arm so we can discuss project Renewal with its main architects?”

“Fine, fine!” he grumbled even as he let himself fall on all threes and slowly moving up her arm.

“It tickles” she said, chuckling and doing her best to not move her arm, which was extremely difficult.

“Hey! Careful!” cried out her Minor when his hand brushed the inside of her elbow and made her whole body shake in delicious pleasure and tickling sensation both.

“Sorry, sorry” she said, doing her best to steady herself. “It just that it’s kind of hard to not move when you tickle me – on purpose I’ll wager!”

“MAJORS really are crazy…” grumbled her little lover as he finally reached the sofa and hopped off her arm, between her armpit and breasts. “Who would tickle on purpose an ogress when her arm is his bridge?”

“An ogress!” yelled Shannon in mock outrage. “Is it how you see me, a monster! Woe is me! The man I love and whom I gave my heart break it so callously! How may I still live, I ask thee!”

“Drama queen” chuckled Alejandro. “Don’t you need to hurry to present me Project Restarting?”

“Renewal” she corrected automatically. “And you’re right, of course. Here, you can sit next to me if you want, or any way you feel okay with, because they won’t see us…” she added, shifting to be better able to reach the computer without having to sit.

“Uh, shouldn’t you… I don’t know, sit correctly before starting a webcam or something?” asked her deliciously nervous fiancé.

“The camera’s disabled. It’s one of the basic of computer hacking, to enter into one to spy on its user. There was no way I would facilitate corporate espionage by not having my own little program disabling the camera but not the micro” she explained, quite proudly.

“So, they will hear us but don’t see us?” asked her Minor. “Won’t it be… awkward?”

“Don’t worry, they are used to it” explained Shannon, who found absolutely adorable how the whole situation made Alejandro so meek. “You can relax my love, it’ll be fine, really.”

He didn’t answer but she noticed that he slumped a little and leant more on her huge breasts, which would have been more than a cushion for him if he had wanted to lay on them. She smiled once more and kissed the top of his head, before starting the discussion. Several floors below, a camera lighted up and on her screen, doctors Singhay and Ionescu straightened up, knowing that the eyes of their boss was now on them and that, like with any interaction between MAJORS, they would be judged – and Shannon Matthewson was a harsh boss, they both knew that perfectly.

“Good afternoon, Miss Matthewson” said doctor Singhay, with almost no trace of Hindu accent in his voice, his dark face making his bright teeth so much brighter as he smiled at the camera.

He was handsome, with his short hair and beard, well-proportioned and with some muscles beneath the white blouse and blue shirt he wore. It was harder to tell on screen, but she knew he was relatively small for a man, something made even more apparent by his partner. Doctor Ionescu was sharp-looking, tall and lithe, made entirely of long muscles. Even her brown hair was kept long and straight, and her little square glasses added to her appearance of severity. As always, her face was unreadable and she simply nodded to signal that she acknowledged her boss’s presence.

“Good afternoon doctor Singhay, doctor Ionescu” replied Shannon, her voice colder and businesslike, something which probably surprised Alejandro, since she saw him startled and looking up at her, from the corner of her eyes. “I scheduled this discussion because I have with me a potential recipient for Project Renewal and I wanted you to explain everything to him.”

“A disabled Minor?” asked the female doctor, her face suddenly lighting up as she looked straight at the cam. “Is there any way to know what he has lost?”

“I… I lost my left arm” interjected Alejandro, but the doctors looked at the screen, as if expecting something still, which made him visibly uncomfortable.

“He’s lost almost all of his left arm” repeated Shannon, before whispering to her little morsel. “You need to speak louder love; the setting his for me to be heard without screaming, and I’ve quite a powerful voice. Yours is a little too weak at normal, I’m afraid.”

“O… Okay” he stuttered, blushing visibly and looking away, until she used a finger to bring her face toward her.

“You’ll be fine. You’re doing fine” she said, still low enough that only he would hear.

“Miss Matthewson? Can we… can we know how much of his left arm is left, actually?” asked Singhay, after whispering for a moment with his partner.

“I’ve about 20cm (7’9) left to form a stump” explained Alejandro, forcing on his voice –still sounding quite nervous realized Shannon, who started to massage his back to help him calm down.

“I see… well, that’s a good news” said Ionescu, almost to herself, which horrified Shannon.

“I don’t see how having a Minor – anyone- be disabled is good news doctor” she growled, shaking the woman on her screen out of her self-mumbling reflection.

“I’m sorry Miss” hastily corrected herself the older woman. “What I meant is that with a stump this size, we could have the whole range of our Project brought to this potential candidate.”

“But perhaps we could explain him what is Project Renewal first?” asked Sanghay, looking mildly concerned. “I don’t think it’s all that apparent otherwise.”

“I guess it’s some sort of prosthesis?” hypothesized Alejandro, which made Shannon’s heart swell with pride. “Very advanced ones? But I already have some so…”

“None like those Mister…”

“Ferrand. Alejandro Ferrand” hastily said her Minor, realizing that he hadn’t introduced himself”

“Well, Mister Ferrand… You aren’t entirely wrong, Project Renewal touch on prosthesis, but they are unlike anything the world has ever seen.”

“We are easily at least twenty years ahead of any of our competitors in the simple materials used; and that’s without taking into account the amount of technology we had to create from scratch to achieve our objectives” explained Ionescu.

“And it’ll help us corner the market on something which is, sadly, quite present in our world” added Shannon, quite proudly. “I think that will change a lot of lives, for the better, once we can commercialize it.”

“Indeed” added Singhay, smiling even more now. “As you can see here” he added, gesturing toward his left, which made the camera move to follow him, “we have devised more than a simple tool. Without playing with the genome, Project Renewal’s goal is to actually create new limbs from scratch. With the ability to move and feel like a normal life.”

Shannon looked at her lover and felt her heart be moved like never before. He was leaning toward the screen, his mouth slightly open, and his eyes wide open and perhaps a little teary. He seemed entirely absorbed by the words of the doctors and the schematics now visible. She knew them by heart and yet read them again. She doubted he was able to understand everything, since even she couldn’t, but the basic idea was outlined here. She saw him gawking even more when he realized that it was truly a different kind of prosthesis than the one he used.

“Are you saying that this Project… It can… Can it be used to have an arm, or a leg, or…”

“Any limb lost can be replaced by Project Renewal!” beamed Singhay, and even Ionescu smiled. “It’s the very goal of this, to allow Minors – and MAJORS, some of us do lose limbs, especially soldiers- to have a normal life. We were held off by some design flaws in many prototypes, but thanks to the Masumoto, we have ironed them out!”

“What Doctor Singhay is trying to say” explained his female colleague, “is that you would be a test subject – we have already done animal and even human testing to less developed versions of the prosthesis, and the new ones are far better adapted to human physiology. So if you have any worry about what could happens to you, you can drop them, Mister Ferrand.”

“I… I see” stuttered her Minor, looking part astonished and past hopeful.

Shannon was so happy. In her head, she had envisioned a lot of scenarios for this moments. Usually, he was bawling like a kid when it was revealed that he would be able to let the past eleven or twelve years of his life behind him. She imagined that she would cuddle with him, appeasing him and making him so happy. But seeing him with so much hope on his face, as he leant toward the screen, as if it would help him to have a better understanding of what was written on a floor below their own… It was far better than any fantasy she could have conjured.

“How are they?” he finally asked, managing to find his voice back.

“I’m sorry?” replied the doctors in perfect unison.

“The prosthesis. What do they look like? Are they… are they costly? I don’t think I could afford them but…” he started, but Shannon interrupted him with her erupting laugher. “I don’t see what’s funny!” he shouted, a little angrily.

The MAJOR knew she shouldn’t have acted like that, but she couldn’t help herself. He sounded so concerned that he wouldn’t have the funds for this, it was hilarious. She had a hard time breathing as tears of joy rolled down her cheeks. Even on the screen, the two doctors, who had returned to the center of the camera feed, were chuckling. She delicately snuggled him closer to her, enjoying the way his body fell against her own. She would have to make him relax a little and realize how funny what he had said was, but for now, she needed to calm herself to keep the conversation from dying out.

“I don’t think you would have to pay for this” explained doctor Ionescu.

“I don’t see why… Oh. You would buy it for me, I suppose?” he asked to her, frowning a little.

“Of course I would” she said, managing to keep a rather professional tone, once her joy had calmed down a little. “It would also be built to your exact wishes. We can craft a lot of different styles, from something mimicking a normal arm to one of those… what’s their name already?”

“Automails?” asked Alejandro, sounding quite hopeful. “Like in FMA?”

“Yes… How did you know it was what I had in mind?” asked Shannon, quite surprised, but doing her best to not be heard by her computer.

“Well, I talked about it this morning, when you asked me why I had chosen a metallic prosthesis, even, if I don’t usually put it on” low enough for him to also not be heard by the doctors.

“Oh make sense” she admitted – to her, it hadn’t been that important a conversation.

“Miss Matthewson? Are you still there?” asked Singhay, bringing them back to the present.

“We are here doctors” replied Shannon. “My fiancé and I simply wished to discuss some private details, because I felt he needed to be reassured that he could afford to receive one of our prosthesis.”

“Oh. Of course. So… have you any question, Mister Ferrand? If not, perhaps we can fix an appointment to have you prepared to have your body stats and your first set of surgery.”

“What surgery?” asked her Minor lover, louder than necessary.

Shannon’s mood soured immediately. She hadn’t told her employees to not talk about the necessities of undergoing some relatively minor surgery to have her new mechanical limbs attached and running. She knew perfectly how Alejandro felt about hospitals and spending time there. He hated it, and learning that he would need to be under the scalpel to have his arm back. And now, she would have to pick the pieces and make sure he didn’t refused to go with that idea. She needed to help him heal, and it was a part of it, even if it meant spending days or weeks agonizing over how to make him understand that she only wanted the best for him.

“There is no need to schedule an appointment yet” hastily interjected the giantess, letting her hand fall over her lover, in spite of how uncomfortable it was to do so in her position. “I just wanted him to see the main architects of the project explain it to him. I don’t think that rushing to a decision is a great idea, right honey?”

“Sure… But I still want to learn about that surgery. Or is it surgeries?”

“Well, yes… there is at least three operations which are needed to have a fully functional artificial limb” explained Singhay, while Shannon sighed in despair.

“The first one is the most invasive” added doctor Ionescu quite calmly. “We have to graft receptors into your stump, directly attached to your nervous system. Then, during two weeks, they’ll read and send us the map of your nervous impulses.”

“Then” said the male doctor, “we’ll be able to graft the external interface, directly into the receptors. For two more weeks, the interface will simulate low level sensations, as if you still had a limb, only half asleep. And then, we’ll attach the replacement arm to the interface.”

“And I’ll be able to have two arms, just like that?” asked her Minor, even as she noticed him nervously scratching his stump – she stopped him by taking his arm between her thumb and forefinger, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“No. You’ll have to undergo a straining procedure to relearn how to use your arm and accommodate the sensations, since we have decided to add fine sensors into Project Renewal’s artificial limbs. On our part, we’ll also have to provide with supervision to ensure that your replacement limb is fully functional, that there is no glitch and that everything is painless.”

Doctor Ionescu sounded awfully detached to Shannon’s ear. She was talking about something extremely important for Alejandro, and yet she seemed to be no more moved than in the weekly reports she had done for the last few years. The giantess had hoped for a little more passion as their insane project was ready to be revealed to the whole world. Instead, she seemed to have switched to the more practical follow-up of the commercialization. Even for a business mogul like her, it was little disconcerting.

“Okay…” slowly said her fiancé, clearly taken aback by all he had just heard. “Well… I’ll let you know my decision concerning all this, okay?”

“Of course” replied doctor Singhay, even if he seemed a little preoccupied now.

“That’ll be all doctors” said Shannon, trying to sound as assertive as ever when talking to employees.

Having said that, she cut off the feed and sighed heavily, letting herself fall on her back on the sofa and bringing her lover with her, letting him rest at the top of her breasts. She chuckled when she felt his hand graze her skin through her clothes and grab some of the latter to try and avoid falling from his precarious position. She enjoyed a silence which fell on them, because she could tell he wasn’t angry, simply thinking about all of it, and she decided to let him talk first.

“So… I guess this is the project which secretly led you to become a billionaire?” he finally asked, his feet rhythmically hitting her sensitive rack – and eliciting almost no sensation, since neither of them were in the mood for some sexy time right now.

“Yes. Quite a different thing than social media, where I started merely five years ago, right?” she replied, chuckling a little and shaking him a lot in doing so.

“Indeed” he admitted, laughing himself, which made her a lot less nervous – he didn’t seem so bothered by the idea of surgeries. “And to have already something so crazy working… I guess you started on it as soon as you had enough money?”

“You know me too well already!” admitted Shannon. “Indeed, I poached the two doctors you saw almost as soon as I became a millionaire. You see, a lot of peoples didn’t believe in them and their ideas. But I knew there was a market for actually incredibly developed artificial limbs. I just needed to be the first here, to leave all others in the dust.”

“How much does any of those costs? I mean, you want to buy mine, I guess I get the point but…”

“It’s far too pricey for almost anyone”, yet” admitted the black colossus, letting her hand envelop his upper body. “It’ll take several years, possibly decades until it becomes affordable for all.”

“Then, it makes me even surer of my decision. I won’t have one for the time being.”

“What!? Why!?” cried out Shannon, inadvertently sitting back, which would have made him fall quite a distance if she hadn’t clutched him in her hand; instead he simply moved from the nipple area to the top of her cleavage. “Don’t you want to have two arms?”

“Of course I do. But I… It’s weird really, but the idea of being able to hold something with two hands it’s… it’s almost like a fever dream, you know?” he tried to explain, looking a little confused. “I… I’ve been with just one arm longer than I had both, you see? And… and I… I think I’m a little afraid that it wouldn’t work, that I would have a new left arm and have it taken from me just after…”

“Oh sweetie…” she said, feeling extremely sad suddenly. “You don’t need to have one of those if you aren’t feeling it my love.”

She brought him to her face and kissed him, again and again. He didn’t try to resist and even kissed back. She suddenly felt his hand tickling her beneath her shin, which made her laugh a little. She removed him from there and put him back on the sofa, even as she herself rose to her full size. They looked at each other, and she felt the urge to place her doll-sized lover in a warm embrace, but resisted it. She had important things to do and she couldn’t belittle him by acting as if he was a lost kid or a poor pet. It just wouldn’t, do.

“I’ll be right back. I think we both need something to drink, and possibly eat. Do you prefer orange, apple or pineapple juice? And something salty or sugary to eat?” she asked him.

“Orange juice and something with a little bit of sugar, but not too much, please” he replied, smiling up at her, which almost made her coo.

“Okay, I’ll bring that back!”

She sauntered toward the kitchen, where she had had her fridge filled the previous day. Opening it, she selected some orange juice bottles and some donuts. They would have to wait to eat them, because they were far too cold just about now. She placed all of this on a tray and took too glasses, one custom made for her size, the other Minor-sized. On a whim, she took a bottle of MAJOR vodka, something far too powerful for her lover, but she felt that she could pour some of it in her glass.

“Here!” she chirped when she returned to her lover. “I hope you like MAJOR-sized orange juice. I couldn’t find juice for Minors recently, I guess more peoples I buying those and the production is still too low. Which is a good thing, it means that your kind’s need is more taken into account!”

“That or it actually doesn’t exist. I never drank any juice made from Minor-sized fruit, you know? And will you truly start drinking alcohol like that?”

“Why not? I’m able to handle it far better than the usual MAJOR, thanks to my size. I would offer you some if I had Minor-oriented alcohol, but I don’t have any, sadly. If you want, I’ll drink most of my glass, refill it with juice, do that again and let you taste it.”

“I’ll pass” replied her lover, amused by her antics.