“Ms. Forrester, as you are no doubt well aware, I had many reservations with you joining our genetics program.” Dr. Bartlett said from the right side of the four person panel. Maggie took a deep breath. “I worried that your maturity would not be a match for your advanced intellect.” he shuffled through the dense stack of papers that represented an entire semester’s worth of research and work.
Maggie stood tall with her back stiff and hands behind her back and suppressed an ironic smirk since she was now a full two years more mature. She was also a full inch and a half taller than she had been when she first met her department chair back in January. Everyone, her classmates, the staff and even her roommate and her boyfriend chalked it up to a growing girl going quickly through puberty, but she knew the truth. She had sped things up.
Forrester cleared his throat. “This is very strong work. I am impressed” he said as businesslike as possible.
She was pleased to hear this, but maintained her composure. The now too-small bra digging into her side was slightly painful as it pinched, but also served to help her keep her professional level focus. The added years solidified her confidence.
“Once you buckled down with hard science and stopped getting distracted by whimsical theories, it all came together.”
Little did he know that those whimsical theories were now proven science. She discovered more beneficial anomalies that varied with the type and length of the delivery system.
Her own embarrassingly botched attempt at ingesting beer had revealed an interesting result that proved to be repeatable. The minute amount of alcohol mixed with the small amount of edited DNA material didn’t affect the extent of the changes, only the duration. When she woke the following morning, she began to notice slight changes which slowly manifested themselves fully, but unlike with Bryan or Carolyn, who after ingesting bottles of beer had experienced substantial changes within minutes, hers took several days to fully complete the transformation.
He looked up at her, taped the stack of pages on end to put them back in line. “Well done.” beamed proudly at her.
It was imperceptible to everyone around her, but she noticed subtle changes to how everyone interacted with her as she matured. She wasn’t dismissed as much as a child. She was heard. She was also hit on by a frat boy in the cafeteria which she wasn’t sure if it was flattering or unsettling. Thankfully Bryan was nearby to rescue her from the situation. She was enjoying the vastly improved interactions with her peers, who were beginning to see her as a peer as well.
Over the past several weeks, she took another small dose, this time a thimbleful of vodka which wasn’t nearly as awful as the beer was and only gave a slight aftertaste on her breath. The changes progressed slowly again. Then a third round which increased her height and gave her the same teal hair that Carolyn had sported earlier in the semester - an easy cover with a box of hair dye in the bathroom trash.
“I look forward to working with you directly on your research over the summer.”
The other three on the panel clapped politely. “Thank you Dr. Forrester.” she said with an equally polite smile. “I look forward to working with you as well.”
She turned and walked out of the small auditorium with a sense of confidence and accomplishment for the first time that semester. As she pushed the bar on the metal doors out to the campus courtyard, she wondered when the DNA mini-shot she drank the night before would start to kick in and bring her just a little bit more respect?
——
Bryan sat at the table in the kitchen, several textbooks open, his forefinger and thumb pressing on the bridge of his nose as he staved off a massive headache.
“C’mon honey. You need to get some sleep. You’ve got this.” She started to carefully close up some of her own books for the night. r32;r32;“I don’t understand why they have to dump all of this on us at once.”
She rubbed his back. “It’s the same as it ever was. You’ll do great. Just relax and get some sleep. You’ll do better on a good night’s sleep.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” He started packing up his own stuff.
“Get through the tests tomorrow and Thursday, and then just think, Friday night is Game Night with all of our friends….”
“And Homebrew Night!” he said, nodding over to the plastic tub fermenting his special homemade beer next to the fridge.
He just didn’t know how special that brew was going to be…
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