Test Subject, Part 14

Author's note:  The following story is satire, and is not intended to, in any
sense, impugn the fine folks at big tobacco companies who, no doubt, put
their customers best interests ahead of their profits.  

The author does not necessarily condone the use of tobacco, by adults or
minors, nor the use of illegal substances, nor masturbation, nor
participation in lesbian sex, nor any other morally questionable practice
depicted in the story.  Later parts of the story contain graphic sexual
language, and are not suitable for underage readers.  
Any resemblance to smoking fetish fiction is purely accidental.  
All other imaginable disclaimers apply.

Test Subject
Part 14: "Cynthia's development"

The rising sun in the eastern window made visible the thick blue smoke
clouding the room. Maureen was lighting up another luxury length Allure from
the short cherry on the butt of her last one, while Cynthia was taking long,
easy drags off of her own half-smoked cig, and blowing ring after ring into
the sunlight, where they hovered for a long time before slowly breaking up
and dissipating. 

Although Maureen had a class later in the morning, she decided to skip it,
and Cynthia didn't seem to be making any sort of move towards getting up
either. This pleased Maureen, who was more curious than ever about the
origins of the strange and beautiful variety of smoke that evermore dominated
her thoughts and actions.

"So what did your mother say, after you finished your first cigarette?"
Maureen asked, breaking the long mutual lull in the conversation.

"My mom is an unusual person. You'll see if you ever meet her. She's not a
overly talkative person. Anyway, true to form, she never said anything about
me smoking. Not a single word. She just kept smoking her cigarette, lost in
deep thoughts.

"Finally, I spoke up. `I really liked that,' I said. `I won't bother you
again about your smoking. Who knows? Maybe I'll want to try it again.'

"After I said that, my mother seemed to brighten a bit, which meant that she
seemed somewhat less pensive. I spoke again, `What's the matter, Mom. You
seem really distracted. Is everything ok?'

"Mom began to cry, which was very unusual for her. She wasn't bawling or
anything, but tears were coming steadily down her cheeks, as if a crack
appeared in her tear ducts. As I said before, she's a person of few words,
and not overly expressive. I went to her, and put my arms around her. I
noticed then, for the first time, that besides smoking a lot, she had put on
a little bit of weight, which was also highly unusual for her, since she had
what you might call a fit figure. `Do you want to talk about it?' I asked.

"She stood up and took a few steps away from me before she turned around and
spoke. Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. `Today, I lost my job. I got
fired. I had seen it coming for a few weeks, but today, it became official. I
don't know what I'm going to do.'"

Maureen popped in her inhale. Lately, it seemed to her that she always took a
drag before speaking, as if the smoke helped her form the words in her mind
before it drifted out of her lips with her words' utterance. "The company
fired her? Why would they do that, when she is obviously so brilliant?"

Cynthia blew out a few more rings as she reached again for the long black
cigarette case. Finding it empty, she frowned in mild annoyance as she
removed a pack of regular Allures from the nightstand drawer. "Somebody at
the company thought she was becoming a liability, particularly given what she
did. I'll tell you more about that soon. Back in 1987, tobacco companies were
just beginning to come under increasing scrutiny for business practices
considered unethical by the anti-smoking establishment." She rapped the pack
against her wrist and opened it. "However, as questionable as their ethics
were, my mom went further in her pursuits."

"How do you mean?"

"I found out about it all that very day. When my mom told me she'd lost her
job, my heart sank for her, because I knew that she loved her work." Cynthia
gave another one of her cryptic smiles as she lit up. "Exactly how much she
loved her job, and why, I would learn from my own experiences. 

"About this time, I began having my first craving for a cigarette, a strong,
gnawing sensation like all I wanted in the world was more smoke in my body.
As I spied the unadorned package of cigarettes on the table, I didn't even
consider not giving in to the urge to smoke. Briefly, I considered asking my
mom if I could have another one, but instead of speaking the words, I just
helped myself to my second cigarette, and lit it up myself, inhaling just
like my mom did. She still didn't acknowledge my sudden change in attitude,
but she did smile at me, in a motherly way, like she did whenever I made her
proud.

"It was as if my embrace of her habit gave her encouragement to open up to
me, and, for the first and one of the only times in our relationship
together, we had a long and meaningful talk, while we enjoyed some cigarettes
together. She didn't confide everything to me, but she did tell me all about
what she did at her work. There was something else she was worried about,
which I found out about some time later, but I don't want to go into that
now. 

"As we sat and smoked, she told me about how she had come to be involved in
research for the company in the late 70's, working on product development to
attract new smokers and keep them hooked. Some of the documentation of this
is pretty interesting, though very technical for a layperson. If you are ever
interested, look up tobaccodocuments.org on the web, and you'll see what I
mean.

"Anyway, while we smoked together, she told me how, while others she worked
with discussed additives in their company's product, she envisioned using the
emerging technology of genetic engineering to create a whole new and improved
breed of tobacco. She studied agricultural techniques, processing methods,
and crossbreeding procedures. She even told me how, when other researchers
wanted to test the addictiveness of their product on rats, she wanted to up
the ante and test primates. Though she didn't tell the company, she wanted to
go even further, with human experimentation. She was a very driven woman,
without scruples." Dr. Monroe fired up another cigarette and wolfed the smoke
down inside her chest. "She still is.

"The final straw for the company was when she developed a prototype of a new
product, without their knowledge, and, after she had gone as far as she could
with rats and chimps, she went far over the line by testing it on herself. By
the time the company found out what she was doing, my mom had managed to
stockpile a sizeable quantity of the prototype cigarettes, and she absconded
with them, but not before also taking all of her research notes. The company
didn't exactly want to attract the attention of law enforcement or public
attention, so they just let her go, and made a clean break of it.

"And after that," Cynthia said, pausing to exhale out her nose while she
dragged and inhaled, "She pushed the envelope even further, by making an
addict out of her only daughter."

"What did you think, when she told you all this? Were you upset that she had
turned you into the subject of her experimentation?" Maureen knew that she,
for one, felt honored to be a test subject for Allure cigarettes, and she
took a deep puff as this thought crossed her mind.

"I suppose that I would have been upset, except that smoking those cigarettes
felt so fantastic. Instead of being upset, I just lit up again, and thanked
her for confiding in me, and for introducing me to such an alluring pleasure.
That was how our cigarettes got their name.

"Obviously," Cynthia said, taking a long puff for emphasis, "I happily
continued to smoke. My habit quickly grew. I'm sure you could figure out how
it went. One day I thought smoking was disgusting, and the next I wanted to
smoke all the time, and the next I needed to smoke all the time. Before I
knew it, my life revolved around getting my nicotine fixes, but I never
minded. It's weird, how a person can actually like being hooked on
cigarettes."

Maureen nodded her head sagely in agreement, taking a puff as if Cynthia's
words reminded her that she needed to. Cynthia likewise took a drag and a
deep inhale, as if to show how much she liked being enslaved to her little
white friends.

"As I got older, my mom trained me in the rudiments of botany, organic
chemistry, engineering, psychology, and applied genetics, along with any
other discipline that could help us reach our goal. Although I was young, I
was an apt pupil, and she was an equally effective teacher." Cynthia grinned,
a little bit too broadly and a little bit too abruptly, while she sharply
pulled in more smoke. "She had special ways of motivating me to reach for the
stars.

"It turned out to be a good thing that she got me involved; I provided at
least some degree of moral redemption for the product. My mother didn't care
about anything but increasing the addictiveness of her invention. I, on the
other hand, became interested in developing a cigarette that would have other
benefits in addition to the pleasure component, such as the increased energy
and mental prowess, and the diminished health risks that Allures provide
their users. Although my mother wasn't interested in this at first, she
conceded that this did increase their marketability, and so we began
developing the next generation of Allures. When Emily grew up and began work
on the aphrodisiac properties of our cigarettes, we took Allure cigarettes to
a whole new level!"

At this, Maureen helped herself to yet another cigarette. She exclaimed,
"Emily? I thought she just did filing and answered the phones, and all of
that."

"Well, there's only her, my mom, and me, and somebody's got to do the grunt
work. She's the youngest, so she got picked for that sort of stuff. But don't
underestimate her. She's probably the brightest one in my family. It was her
idea that we begin recruiting new people to work with us, although of course
my mother made the final decision."

"How old is your sister, by the way?"

"She's the same age as you are," Cynthia said, as she chain lit another
smoke.

"That's very interesting," Maureen said, sucking down more nicotine as she
did some quick math and turned over some details of Cynthia's story in her
mind. "Very interesting indeed."

After a pause while she held the smoke in her lungs, Maureen exhaled as she
said, "You mentioned that she thought of recruiting new people to work with
you. Does that have anything to do with the proposal that you mentioned
yesterday?"

"As a matter of fact, it does. You proved your loyalty when you sold your
sister into nicotine slavery, and you are beautiful and intelligent." Maureen
blushed at these words, while performing a nice snap inhale. Cynthia gave her
quirky smile as she continued, "My mother is, of course, the C.E.O. of our
company, while I will be working in human resources, and my sister will
continue with product development. We need a team to do marketing for us, and
you and your sister came to mind. What do you think?"

Maureen snuggled up to Cynthia, and kissed her on her nose affectionately. "I
think that's an excellent idea," she said, taking a seductive drag on her
cig, "Just so long as there aren't any policies at A.T.C. against sleeping
with your boss."

With that, she kicked off the covers, and went down on Dr. Cynthia Monroe,
sending up frequent puffs of smoke as she explored her new boss' clit with
her tongue. Cynthia laid down on her back, smiling her strange and mysterious
smile, blowing up countless smoke rings, and trying not to cry out too loudly
as a consequence of her friend's sexual attentions.

Previous part | Next part