Doc's Complex 12 - Adam And Susan's Identity Transfer, Part 2 free porn video

Doc's Complex 12 - Adam And Susan's Identity Transfer, Part 2 by Lee Most Copyright 2012 by Lee Most -------------------------------------------------------------- Synopsis: Chapter 12 of the FMNaNoWriMo challenge novel "Doc's Complex." Susan in Adam's body gains his skills, but Adam in Susan's body has a problem. Categories and key words describe only this chapter. I said Victorian but it's actually the Regency period just before that. I'm concentrating on writing now, so I won't edit mistakes or respond to any reviews until December. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction to Chapter 11 "I forget," admitted Lilyan, "exactly which traits are passed on when RNA is transferred from one brain to another. Charlettia could probably tell you. She was involved in a study where they trained a rat to take the shortest path through a maze, and then injected the RNA from the brain of that rat into another rat, and the new rat took the same route through the maze that they had trained the other rat to take. RNA is a brain chemical about half as complicated as DNA, which is still pretty complicated. Our brains use it to store things like skills, habits, memories, things you had to memorize and can rattle off by rote afterwards like multiplication tables, poems, and all the dates and names and countries and other things you learned in school. In other words, the RNA in your brain stores all those other things that don't require us to think too much when we do them. Now, obviously, if you transfer thoughts from one brain to another by connecting wires between the two brains, you will not transfer the RNA, so while you can transfer things like thoughts, and that constant chatter and talking to yourself you do inside your head that makes up your identity and personality, you won't transfer the memories, skills, and all that knowledge you built up over time. When Doc transferred Adam's thoughts and personality into Susan's body, and hers into his, they each found themselves in new bodies, but they did not yet know what their new bodies knew. They also had the interesting problem of thinking that they knew things when they did not actually have the information in their current brains. Susan had the advantage there. She had never gone to school, and had been careful all her life to hide her illiteracy from even her husband. She had also carefully questioned him to find out what sorts of things he did know about, and they often passed the time of an evening with him listing his classes and topics of study, while she stared at him fascinated that a single brain could hold such a variety of knowledge. When she awoke in Adam's body with all of his Harvard education suddenly available to her, it was as if she had been climbing a mountain through fog all her life, and had suddenly broken through the fog just as she reached the peak. The whole bright world was spread out before her, she could see where she wanted to go as well as the best path to take, and it was as easy as rolling down a hill. She started her own accounting firm, soon hired the best of the people who had worked the closed ccompany, expanded to other cities, and prospered all her life. Adam's experience, however, was quite different. ------------------------------------------------ Chapter 11 - Adam And Susan's Identity Transfer, Part 2 Adam awoke for only long enough to answer Doc's questions. He felt a need to assure the ugly man that his experiment had succeeded, although he could not quite remember the reason for the experiment. Doc seemed satisfied, Adam felt relieved, and he dropped off to sleep again. The second time he awoke, he realized that he was no longer a man and screamed. When he heard the feminine pitch of his voice, he screamed again. When he discovered he had smooth skin and women's breasts, well, that's when he really began screaming in earnest! Someone held a bottle to his lips, so he must drink or drown, so he drank the sweet-tasting liquid and then he slept again, his dreams filled with images of that laboratory, of the ugly dwarf in the white coat, of beautiful women doing horrible things to animals, of two tables where something nameless and awful would happen if he approached them. A man woke him up. He would have started screaming again when he saw his own face on the other man's body, but a strip of cloth wrapped around his head gagged his mouth. "It's alright, Susan. I'm here. We're at home again. I'm healthy, you're healthy, and Doc did as he promised us. He paid all our debts!" Adam looked around himself and saw his own bedroom, the room he shared with Susan. He, wait! "That man with my face called ME 'Susan'! That doctor completed his experiment!" He remembered feeling those folds of flesh where his prick had been, the soft skin of his arms and chest, the breasts on his chest, and the sound of his screams. "Oh my gracious! I am Susan now, and she is me!" He could not speak, so he looked at the man with worried eyes and made a very small noise like a kitten. "Are you calm now?" asked the man, and Adam nodded yes. "You won't scream again if I remove the gag, will you?" Adam shook his head no. "Okay, I'm going to untie it now, Susan." He did pulled the strip of cloth away. Adam was going to speak, when the man put his finger on his lips. "Before you say anything, please remember that you are Susan now, and I am your loving husband, Adam. Doc said that we should not endeavor to attempt to perform his experiment a second time, it would be dangerous for us to even undergo the preparations for such a procedure so you must inhabit that womanly frame in perpetuity. Please know that I do love you, my darling, and I will endeavor to plant the pitiful stipend Doc paid us and nurture it into a tree, nay, a forest of affluence! for us to move even as far up in the social register as to consider taking up residence in Beacon Hill. I'm afraid however, that as I will be navigating the oceans of the financial world, you must needs take on the burden of performing domestic duties. Do you understand?" He removed his finger from Adam's lips. Adam did not know that his wife, in her constant attempt to hide her illiteracy, had often pretended that she understood her husband's long- winded proclamations, without having the vocabulary to know what half of it meant. Now he stared at the face of the man sitting at his bedside, completely ignorant of the meaning of any of those long, Harvard University words. To Adam, that speech was made even more difficult by his attempts to interpret what he did not understand in terms that he did understand. Susan's education on her father's farm by her mother in the skills that a woman must know, had resulted in a brain filled with a vocabulary that made Adam's desperate search for meaning misinterpret many of the sounds he heard. In fact, to him that speech sounded something like this: "Before you say anything, please remember that you are Susan now, and I am your loving husband, Adam. Doc said that we should not end ever to tempt to purr form his experiment (Why purr? Is there a cat here?) a second time, it would be dangerous for us to even under Oh! The palpitations for such a prose seed your sew you must in habit (I must sew a habit? What? Like those clothes the Catholic nuns wear?) that womanly frame (Does it frame a painting?) in perpetuity (I know that word! The pastor always uses that word when talking about hell. Is he saying my life will be hell from now on?) Please know that I do love you, my darling, and I will end ever to plant the piggy full sty pen (What is he talking about? You don't plant pigs in a sty, and a sty IS a pen. Is he trying to tell me that this house is a pig sty that needs cleaning?) Doc paid us and nurture it into a tree, nay, a forest of alfalfa lents! (Alfalfa doesn't grow on trees! He knows nothing about farming, which is odd because Susan grew up on a farm.) for us to move (Move! He does want us to move to a farm!) even as far up in the so shall Reggies trees two cons sitter taking up rezi dense (Pure nonsense.) in Beacon Hill. (there are no farms in Beacon Hill. That's where the rich people live.) I'm afraid however, that as I will be navigating the oceans of the financial world. (Oceans? Is he going to sail away without me?) you must knees steak (maybe he means I should knead steaks? Or pound them to make them more tender? I'm hungry. Is he suggesting steak for dinner?) on the burden of purr forming (There's that cat again.) domestic duties. Do you understand?" The honest answer would have been a simple "No," but Adam was too confused even to say that much. "Something seems to be wrong with my hearing," he thought as he silently gazed into the eyes he had only before seen in mirrors. "I know I myself have said all of those words, but most of what he said sounds like either nonsense or meaningless sounds to me. Perhaps that is what they mean when they say that a man and a woman can never really understand each other. I am in a woman's body now, so I must now do the things women do, and let him do what men do." Aloud, Adam said, "I trust that you will do your best, my darling husband." He saw the smile on the man's face and said, "And I, now being the woman, must begin to prepare our dinner. Am I wrong in thinking that you would like to have steak for dinner?" He sat up, feeling the new, yet familiar feeling of his breasts shifting on his chest under his cotton nightgown. Susan had a very shapely body, which did not match the current style of slender sticks, as he called the skinny women who showed off their figures these days. His full breasts and hips were a reminder of Adam's preferences. "I wonder if Susan will like this body as much as I did," Adam thought as he waited for the man's -- his husband's -- reply, "Steak? Yes, steak to celebrate our bright new future!" He reached into his pocket and pulled out his coin purse. "Let's find out how much your brain still knows. Do you know what the butcher is likely to charge you for a couple of thick, sirloin steaks?" "What he charges? Why, he, um..." Adam trailed off as he tried to dredge up any memory about a butcher. He thought, "I must know what the butcher charges. Susan got meat from him twice a week when I was still working. I know the memory must be here, but I can't get at it. Doc said this would happen and I only need to find a way to relate it to something I did as a man. I never bought steak, but I did help a client who invested in beef futures. I'll just divide the price of a hundred shares of beef by...uh...Oh, my! Oh, no!" That was when he discovered the horrifying fact that Susan's brain had no concept of large numbers or even basic arithmetic. Quickly exploring this hole in his knowledge, Adam discovered that even a "hundred" was translated as "a lot." He understood "a lot" to mean, "more than I can figure on my fingers." In response to the bewildered look of confusion and betrayal that must have been on Adam's face, the man said, "Oh, don't worry your silly little head about it, Susan. Here, this should cover it." He handed her a few coins. "I'm going to go out and see if an idea I have for investing out meager capital is feasible. I'll be back in time for lunch, darling. Good-bye." He kissed Adam on the cheek, and Adam, already thinking about several things at once: that he would now have to get dressed in women's clothing, and that he would have to cook breakfast now that Susan was a man and men did not cook, what to make for breakfast, and, starting to plan his preparations for dinner, which vegetables in their cold storage room would go with steak, absently said, "Good bye, Susan." PAIN! He had slapped Adam's face so hard that Adam fell backward onto the bed. The man's face changed color and he exploded, "DO NOT CALL ME 'SUSAN' EVER AGAIN!" Adam had only just started to reconcile himself to being a member of the weaker sex, cowered on the bed and looked fearfully, tearfully at the giant towering over him, and he started crying, and then cried more from the sheer shame of being a weak woman who would cry from a single slap. He had been in his share of drunken brawls in the taverns as a man. One of the pastimes of men in a tavern was to see who could hold the most liquor, it was a rare week when Adam had no bruises, but he had been proud of the fact that he always gave as good as he got or better. He was equally proud of the fact that he had never hit a woman, or indeed anyone weaker than himself, even when Susan had provoked him. She had always taken her anger out on him physically, and he provoked her back by NOT responding in kind. Now she, in his strong body, had hit him in her weaker one. That is not to say Susan's body was weak. She shopped wood, carried buckets of water and milk, walked everywhere she had to go, and was generally as fit as any woman would be who got several hours of heavy exercise every day. But Adam's outweighed Susan's by sixty pounds, he stood almost a foot taller, and his job included not only arithmetic figuring and accounting, but also handling the huge accounting ledgers, leather-bound books two feet high that weighed as much as thirty pounds each. He, too, walked everywhere he went carrying his heavy satchel, and while tavern brawling was often painful, it also developed strong muscles and quick reflexes. "I hate this," Adam silently lamented. "First, I wake up in a woman's body, then I find I cannot understand ordinary speech or arithmetic, I must do women's work for the rest of my life, I must live as a wife, subservient to my husband, who is my wife in my own body, and now he has hit me so hard as to knock me over! Look! He approaches! O! What will he do to me now? I cannot look!" He scrambled to the far side of the bed, cowering in the corner of the headboard and the wall, holding an arm over his face lest he be hit again. Strong hands grasped Adam's shoulders; he felt himself pulled up and being hugged by arms that seemed strong enough to crush him. "Oh! My darling! I'm sorry! I did not know the strength these arms possess! I promise never to hit you again." Adam sobbed into the strong man's shoulder, his tears soaking his coat. The position reminded him of being a small child in his father's comforting arms. "It hurt so much," he sobbed. "I feared you would kill me." "No, my love. I did not think! I know, now, how brave you were never to hit me back when I hit you before. There is such strength in these arms that I feel I could move mountains, and my rage, too, was so powerful that I wanted to destroy something, to lash out, to smash--" Adam pushed away from him and glared angrily at him, "And so you chose my face to smash! That is NOT the way a gentleman behaves, SIR! He does not beat women, or children, or anyone weaker than himself. You have my body now, and it is far stronger than this one. You are my husband, Mr. Hawkins: my protector, the man who is supposed to take care of me, and instead my face is aflame with pain and humiliation!" Adam sobbed again, sniffed, and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Your slap feels worse than any injury I ever suffered in any tavern. It hurts from my cheek right through to the other side of my head!" Susan, in his body, looked fearfully at Adam and then at his right hand. "I never knew," he said in wonderment, "how much strength you held back when I railed on you so, when I hit you in my fury. I see now that you were far more of a man than I ever credited. I can see now why you fought other men in the tavern. This strength makes me want to prove something." "Then do! Use your strength to prove what you always believed, husband. When we were, when you were in this body you always thought that your cleverness combined with my knowledge would overwhelm the male world of business and finance. Now you have both together in that brain, in that body. Do what you always berated me for not doing. Don't waste your strength brawling in taverns; use it to conquer the world!" "Oh, Susan--" "Do not call me 'Susan,' either, Mr. Hawkins. I do not know you, and you do not know who I am now." Adam laughed, "Heavens, husband! I don't even know who I am now, so how could you? Let us not be so familiar as to call each other by our first names, until our new identities are firmly established in our new bodies." Adam gingerly touched his burning cheek and added, "I do not even know if I like who you have become." The man looked put-off by that, but after a moment's pause, he stiffly said, "As you wish, wife. I shall call you, 'Mrs. Hawkins'." He stood and bowed. "You need not fear that I will hit you again, madam. I will leave the room so you can get dressed. Would you like a cold compress for your face?" Adam nodded, and his husband left the room. He sat on the bed, worried that he had said too much, that he had gone too far. "I saw the pain my words caused him. I never spoke so bluntly before in my life. I don't know what came over me. Can it be that my words can inflict as much damage to him as his hand did to me? I must learn to curb my own temper and withhold the strength of my tongue as much as he must learn to withhold the strength of his arms." He went to Susan's, now his wardrobe and sifted through the items neatly folded in the drawers, unfolding them to see what each one was, and then folding the duplicates back the way they were. She had arranged her clothes, he discovered, in the order that she put them on, "Drawers," he sniffed, pulling out the lace-trimmed underpants. "I have not worn drawers since I was old enough to wear long pants!" As he pulled the undergarment on under his nightdress, he sobbed again, and berated himself for taking such a long time to recover from the intensity of his emotions. "He left the room minutes ago! He apologized and I yelled at him, and I'm still crying. Why cannot I give it over?" He unfolded a chemise and looked it over. "Perhaps I am crying about more than that one slap. I've never put on one of these in my life! Look at the delicate lace trim, the embroidered flowers, her initials so carefully copied from that page in my notebook, because she said she wanted to copy the way that I wrote them." He thought about the way she had complimented him and gotten him to figure numbers for her, and how she loved it when he read to her, saying she liked the sound of his voice, but she would never do the same for him, saying she could never do it as well as he did. And now this. He already knew Susan could not do arithmetic. Was it that she liked his handwriting so much, or was it that she COULD not write? "Oh, no!" He held the garment out at arm's length, and then turned, looking around the room. A book lay on the small table where he had put it after reading Susan to sleep the night before the experiment. Fearing what he would discover, Adam picked up the book and opened it to a random page. There were the lines of print, the little ants and circles and lines that made up the letters, and that was it. "No, it can't be!" he moaned, closing the book. "All this time! If she'd only asked, I would have been glad to teach her how to read! Does this brain even know the alphabet?" He opened the book again, hoping Susan had at least learned that much, and he studied a page. "There's an S, and another one, and that's an H just like on the chemise. There's an E. I can see that. Huh. It's the big letters I know, but not the small ones. Oh, Susan, why did you have to be so proud that you couldn't ask me? I would have taught you to read and add. Without reading, she probably never learned to write, either. Oh, I'm trapped! I'm doomed!" A knock on the door, "I have your compress," Adam's husband said from outside. "Shall I bring it in? Are you decent? Mrs. Hawkins? Are you there?" The door opened, and he came in to see Adam sprawled on the bed crying into a pillow. "Oh, for heaven's sake! Are you still crying about..." He saw the book in his wife's hand and shut up. Adam turned on him, holding the book out as if it explained everything. It did, but the big man stayed silent. "I can't read! I don't even know the alphabet! You never told me! You never could read and you never told me! What? Did you think I would have left you? That I would have thought you were beneath me? I loved you! I loved reading! Don't you think I would have shown you how? Don't you think I would have taught you? Do you have any idea what you have taken from me? Books took me to places I could never hope to travel. They taught me things about the whole rest of the world, about things I did not know how to do! I depended on books to learn how to be a good wife to you." The man stared at Adam in confusion. "How to be a good wife? I don't understand." "OF COURSE YOU DON'T!" Adam screamed at him. "You have no idea what books are good for, because you never read one, you never used one to look up something you didn't know, because you could not read!" He got up and stalked past his former body, storming into their living room, walking up to the bookshelves, his spouse following in confusion. "Read the titles of these books. Aloud, please." He walked closer, and picked the first one she indicated. "'First Catch Your Hare....' The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy," he read. He put it back and took the next. "A New System of Domestic Cookery by A Lady." Then there was, "American Cookery," and a very old book called, "The Accomplisht Cook, or the Art and Mystery of Cookery." The next a book with a red binding, was called, "The Housekeeper's Instructor; or Universal Family Cook." Curious, he opened it and read, "Being a Full and Clear Display of the Art of Cookery in all its Branches, Containing Proper Directions for dressing all Kinds of Butcher's Meat, Poultry, Game, Fish, &c.; the Method of preparing al the varieties of Soups, Hashes, and Made Dishes; The Whole Art Of Confectionary, Picking, Preserving, &C; The making and Keeping in Perfection British Wines; and Proper Rules For Brewing Malt Liquor For Large Or Small Families. To Which is Added, The Complete Art of Carving, Illustrated with Engravings, Explaining by proper References, The Manner in which Young Practitioners may aquit themselves at Table with Elegance and Ease. Also Bills of Fare for Every Month in the Year; The Manner of Decorating a Table, displayed by Copper Plates; Directions for Marketing; Observations on Culinary Poisons, and the Management of the Kitchen and Fruit Garden. By W.A. Henderson, Many Years eminent in the Culinary Profession." "Do you see?" Adam's voice achieved a whining tone. "I knew that I know nothing about cooking or being a housewife, so I bought books that I could use to look up what I could not get from your memories after I became the woman of the house. Now that I, that I am, that I am STUCK in this body, in this illiterate brain of yours, I don't even know what half those words you just read mean, even if I could read them." "I can read!" "Fine," Adam said sulkily, "And I suppose that you're going to read and explain what every recipe means when you are off running your business somewhere and I am supposed to make your dinner." "No, I mean, I can read! I just read a whole passage out of a book! I never did that before! I look at a word and it's not just a lot of little marks." He pulled another book from the large collection, opened it to the middle, and read, "Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy? It is better to take many injuries than to give one." He put it back and opened another. "By hearing him often I came to distinguish easily between sermons newly composed and those which he," he stopped reading, saying, "The rest of the page is a footnote." He turned the page and continued, "had often preached in the course of his travels. His delivery of the latter was so improved by frequent repetition that every accent, every emphasis, every modulation of voice, was so perfectly well turned and well placed that without being interested in the subject one could not help being pleased with the discourse; a pleasure of much a pleasure of much the same kind with that received from an excellent piece of music. This is an advantage itinerant preachers have over those who are stationary, as the latter cannot well improve their delivery of a sermon by so many rehearsals." Adam sat in a chair with his elbows on his knees, his head cupped in his hands, looking up at his spouse reading aloud. Listening to his voice was soothing, calming; it dissipated his anger and frustration. Watching his husband's face light up in his enthusiasm at being able to read lightened Adam's spirits and inspired enthusiasm in him as well. "Is this what Susan felt when I read aloud to her and when I excitedly told her of my hopes for our future?" He felt a spark of love for the oddly familiar man who was now his husband, and whose brain held the spirit of his wife, a woman who had been far more complicated than Adam had ever imagined. ----------------------------------------------- Again in their bedroom, Adam got dressed while his husband went to the butcher. He had not known what the time was until he had seen the position of the sun. Evidently, he had also left behind the ability to read either the face of the mantle clock or a pocket watch to tell the time, not that anyone had wound any of them since the experiment. He remembered being so proud that he could afford to have a clock in every room, and had made a point of winding them each week. He stopped moving as he suddenly realized that the experiment must have been more than a week ago! Desperately, he looked around the room, as if anything there could tell him what day it was. "I'm being silly," he told himself. "There could be a calendar on every wall and I still would not know, even if I could read it. I need a newspaper." Then he added, "and someone to read it and tell me what it says." Throwing off his night dress, he pushed his arms through the chemise and then brought it over his head, unconsciously maneuvering it so it would not snag on the tight bun of hair he had at the rear of the top of his head. He pulled it all the way down so the hem hung below his knees, noticing that the legs of his drawers stuck out several inches below. He straightened the short sleeves around his shoulders, and then smoothed the bodice around his waist so there would be no uncomfortable wrinkles under his corset. Sitting on a chair he pulled on a pair of knitted stockings. He looked at the way they were knitted and he suddenly knew how to make another pair just like them. His corset came next. For everyday wear, he did not need to tighten it very much. Besides making his figure look nice, he mainly wore it to provide support when he carried heavy items like firewood and milk buckets. He wrapped it around himself, fastened a dozen hooks in the back into loops, and then threaded the long lace back and forth in much the same way that he had laced up his men's boots, tightening it and tying it off the same way. It felt snug and reassuring, like a constant hug. His gown came next, the colorful garment that men called a dress. He was glad Susan had been able to get some with the high-waist of the new fashion before Adam had lost his job. This dress was a light blue with white trim, puffed sleeves that went halfway down his upper arms, and a satin waistband below his breasts. A woman normally left her upper chest exposed when at home, but he wrapped a kerchief around his neck and tucked it into the neckline of his gown as if he was indoors with a stranger or planning to go outside. It was indecent to show off a lot of bare skin where others could see it. Adam still thought it was too soon to start being familiar with the man, although the ice around his heart had melted a little while listening to him read. Before leaving the bedroom, he pulled on his flat-heeled pumps, wrapped their ribbons around his ankles, and tied them into tiny bows. He looked in the mirror and murmured, "I think I'll also wear my cap." It was two pieces of cotton cloth sewn together to cover his hair so it would not get dusty. Again, Susan had sewn ruffles around the front to make it prettier. Women did not normally wear their caps at home when no visitors were expected, but Adam wanted to keep his husband at arm's length. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Lilyan said, "I'm going to have t'cut this story short. We're almost there. Doc'd told them t'visit him every day t'report their thoughts, discoveries, and what they found that they knew or din't know about themselves and each other. "It took three months for Adam t'finally admit t'himself that he was a she, t'allow anyone t'call her Susan, and t'start calling her husband Adam. She found that she had no problems doing women's tasks like cooking, sewing, knitting, tending their kitchen garden, and shopping. She insisted that Adam teach her reading, writing, and arithmetic." "The three Rs," Berrry remarked. "Huh? What three Rs?" "Readin', 'Ritin' and 'Rithmetic." She paused, and then said carefully, "You DO know that two o' those words don't really start with th'letter R, don't you?" Berry had never thought about it before. He said, "I never thought about it before. That's just what they call a basic education back in the Real World. Now that you mention it, it's a pretty uneducated way to describe a basic education, isn't it?" "Yes, especially while I'm telling th'story of a woman who didn't know any o' th'three! So, as I said earlier, Doc spent most of his time talking with Susan in Adam's body, recording what he did and did not remember about being Susan, and what he did and did not remember about being Adam. He interviewed Adam and gave him quizzes and tested his reactions, and almost completely ignored what was going on with Adam's mind in Susan's body." Berry did not comment aloud, but thought, "No wonder all the girls idolize this Doc! He really is more interested in a woman's mind than her body!" "I know about her side o' the story because after she learned to write, she recorded all her experiences and she gave her diary t'my grandmother as a small girl. My grandmother grew up and then searched for a descendent o' Doc's t'show him (or her) th'diary. Instead of a descendant, she found Doc himself alive and well and living in an 'intentional community' in upstate New York with dozens o' women and babies. He was delighted that Susan had learned t'read and write, and although he had performed and perfected many other ways of experimenting with and using living brains, he spent days with my grandmother digging out his own notes from that experiment and th'two of them created a day- by-day account of th'progress o' th'integration of their minds with their new bodies, and my grandmother joined his community and helped him with his research." "You said that Adam became successful in business. Did Susan become successful at something?" "Raising babies. Susan had eleven children including my grandmother's mother." ----------------------------------------------- To Be Continued! ----------------------------------------------- Author's note: I just realized that I forgot to go through what people said 2 chapters ago to make sure that Doc's Girls comments had those contractions. I'll fix that next month. I initially intended to make this a much shorter chapter, but the characters insisted on getting all emotional, and the story kept growing. I hope it was as much fun to read as it was to write. Comments welcome, but I won't be answering any until after NaNoWriMo is over. I'm writing this novel as part of the 2012 NaNoWriMo challenge to write a novel of at least 50,000 words between November 1st and 30th. I actually passed the 50,000 word mark with this chapter and November is not even half over, so this may end up being a novel with 100K words! Also, I intended to post a chapter a day during November, but this chapter took 5 days to write, so although it will be a longer novel than planned, it will probably end up with less than 30 chapters. (For more info about National Novel Writing Month, see www.NaNoWriMo.org.) By the way, if you like to write and can't resist improving this story with extra characters or new adventures or situations for the existing characters, go ahead! The Complex has over 500 Levels, is populated by millions of beautiful, buxom, sexy, intelligent women (and a few thousand men,) more than half of whom are scientists, and Doc's timeline spans over 200 years, so if there's a science fiction or feminist plot clich?, you can find it there somewhere! You have my permission to post your version on FictionMania. To avoid confusion, add a letter to the chapter #, like "Doc's Complex 09a," and make up a new title. Who knows? If enough people do it, FictionMania may add a new category!