"Blimp Seventeen's Stress Test"

Blimp Seventeen waited for the engineers to open the doors from the other side. The rigidity of security protocols like this one did his head in, he hated waiting, but he supposed it couldn’t really be helped. After all he was company property. Expensive property at that. Every inch of his rubberised skin represented millions of pounds worth of investment and research into transformative biotech. Seventeen took pride in his value, he liked to sit in his room after tests and ponder just how much he was actually worth. How many pound coins could be used to fill a pool, just from the volume of experimental gas which filled his hollow body. If he wanted to, he could threaten to explode at any time. And without the facility’s rigorous measures in place to collect his scraps and the expelled gas, he could really do some damage to their finances. A fact he used to get his way and make his benefactors present him with whatever luxury he desired. It worked every time. The interlocking metal sheets barring his way finally parted to admit him, though his flanks still squeaked as they grazed the doorway on either side. “Need to widen this checkpoint lads, wouldn’t want me getting trapped like fifty-one did last week. Hang on, I’m sure I can get through without a problem.” He laughed.

Seventeen struggled with the door. He could hear the metal squealing under pressure from his inhuman girth. He grudged the idea of deflating himself for the benefit of anyone, or anything. With a defiant effort he pushed as hard as his pneumatically charged body would allow, bringing the cries of doorway and balloon to a feverish cacophony of metal on rubber. The masked checkpoint guards scrambled to grab hold of the intercom mic, and shouted demands for Seventeen to stop before he or the door gave out. Seventeen’s face was a beetroot shade of red, his anger manifesting as hot air whistling out of his ears and nostrils like a boiler ready to explode.

The masked guards plugged their ears, wary of the impending sound of a detonating balloon-man. Even through their reinforced glass, the noise had the potential to be deafening. They crouched under their desks, adhering to proper protocol, waiting for a booth-shaking blast that never came. Seventeen panted from exhaustion, he had managed to free himself before his anger filled him with excess pressure and wedged him tight. He wiped some sweat from his brow with a cocky “phew,” and gave the guards a dismissive hand-wave as they tentatively rose from under their desks. “Without. A. Problem,” he said.

Seventeen followed the strip-lights illuminating the floor, today the blue lights would lead him to his destination. At junctions in the stainless chrome pathways of the facility were traffic lights, at least Seventeen thought they looked that way. The lights indicated that another blimp was currently in transit along a particular pathway. Their purpose was to prevent collisions between two blimps, or a situation where two enormous subjects were unable to pass one another to get to their destination. Before the lights were implemented, there would be at least one incident a week where two blimps couldn’t rectify who had right of way and began fighting with predictably explosive consequences.

Seventeen had a fondness for the aesthetic beauty of sumo wrestling, so he rather enjoyed when bumping into another inflated man on his way through the facility culminated in a latex-clad parody of a sumo bout. Sadly, the facility disallowed “unsanctioned” uses of the blimps abilities. A fancy way of saying “stop destroying our stuff because you wanted to explode.”

When Seventeen got to the central hub, a familiar face greeted him. “Dude, you nearly gave the staff in the central hub a heart attack.” Forty-Two laughed. They were wider than they were tall, like Seventeen, but had been slightly taller than he was before their transformation into living balloons. His long hair stopped at his shoulders and he always spoke in a slow methodical way that gave his speech a dreamlike quality. “Where you headed?”

The two of them stepped on to a moving walkway, which was just wide enough to let them stand side by side. They were wedged together just enough for it to be comfortable, in its own way. Cosy, even. “I’ve got some kind of stress test, they said it was a joint exercise. I had kind of hoped it would be with you.” Seventeen looked at his long-haired friend. “Don’t suppose you’re following the blue lights today?”

Forty-Two shook his head. “Nah, I’m following the purple lights today my dude. Malleability testing.”

Seventeen shifted his weight, mimicking an elbow-jab with the force of his belly that his horizontally dominant body wouldn’t allow him to do with his actual elbow. “You’re probably the freakiest balloon boy in this place. I don’t know anyone else who’s as horny to get twisted into weird shapes like you are. Hoping they test a transformation sequence on you again, turn you into a big mascot? What was it you turned into last time, a vinyl chicken?”

Awkward laughter rippled through Forty Two’s body. “I ended up stuck like that for a month. Everyone kept laughing at me,” he blushed. “And embarrassment is one of my inflation triggers, so I just kept ending up more humiliated and squawking.”

“You loved it, didn’t you,” Seventeen winked.

Forty-Two shifted, his fat legs squeaked behind the pitch-black latex. “Yeeeeeah.”

The two round blimps were freed from the close quarters of the conveyor with a subtle pop. Seventeen gave his friend a belly-bump, attempting a hug would be futile without help. “I’ll see you in the lounge tonight, after the tests?”

“Yeah, hopefully you’ll recognize me if I end up a pumped-up clown or some pizza mascot.”

“Look for the out of place inflatable who’s real horny for what he’s turned into, got it.”

Seventeen followed the outer rim of the central hub towards his destination. Unlike the clean and clinical hallways and testing chambers, the facility had tried - maybe too hard - to make the central area feel welcoming. On the lowest platform was a circular swimming pool with a transparent bottom that let you see into the ocean below. The next three rings were filled with greenery, woodland and park-like biomes. And the remaining rings, each with the circumference of a small town and the walkway width of a city street, had been stocked with kiosks, bars, and recreational spaces for test subjects and scientists.

“Alright, here we go.” Seventeen bumped his belly into the door-mounted scanner. A metal doorway, several times bigger than the checkpoint, opened to admit him. He stepped over the black and yellow tape at the base of the door to indicate the possible dangers within, to discover a wide tiled space with a two-way mirror mounted at the far end. When Seventeen first entered, he thought he saw an orb at the centre of the room, slowly pulsating with a long, thick tube inserted from above. The closer he got, the more his eyes widened in surprise and... envy.

A bright number Eight was printed on the middle of the orb. Walking its perimeter, he noticed some thick conical shapes terminating in more round shapes. They reminded him of the latex gloves he used to puff up out of boredom in science class as a teenager. “Holy shit,” Seventeen could scarcely believe the size of it. “Is this still a person?” He asked, as if expecting an answer from the shape.

Seventeen jolted, the intercom buzzed. “So, you have met your testing partner.” One of the scientists from behind the mirror spoke in a grainy electric voice. “That is Eight, one of our more... sedate, living balloons. He has periods of lucidity, I assure you we do not keep him in such an engorged state at all hours, but he does tend to end up this way by his own volition rather frequently.”

“Lucky bastard.”

“We thought you might say that” a hose descended from the ceiling, with a clear plastic mask at one end. It attached itself, the straps animating via nanotechnology. It was snug around Seventeen’s bloated cheeks and double chin, but the sweet latex smell of the gas it pumped into him was worth the discomfort. A heavenly noise filled his ears, the sound of rubber stretching. The sound of his body, elastic and balloon-like, expanding to a new size as pressure moulded him. He ascended from the floor, arms and legs bulking up and flattening out into shapes which reminded Seventeen of comically fat pancakes. His fingers and toes, tingled, and inflated into round useless decorations. He quickly approached Eight’s size. In his mind, Seventeen gloated triumphantly that he had so easily caught up to the size of a single-digit blimp.

“Wonderful. Your lust for size remains as invaluable as an asset, as it is terrifying for our health and safety protocols. Do you feel any adverse changes, Seventeen?”

Seventeen wobbled, his head was sunk into the pliable latex expanse which replaced his shoulders. Shaking your head required a neck, something which Seventeen had been promptly robbed of by the speed and intensity of the gas pumped into him. “No, nothing yet.” He relaxed his body, relishing the feeling of euphoria which accompanied those first moments of weightlessness.

“No explosive urges?”

“Well, no physical ones,” Seventeen admitted.

“Very good, we can administer another cannister. Stand by.”

Seventeen’s nostrils were filled with the latex scent a second time. He desperately wanted to curl his toes to cope with the overwhelming joy the stretching of his globular body gave him. Being so tightly packed full of gas, while also being constrained by his numbered suit, was a curious duality. He felt like he had too much energy pent up and that it needed to be expended by doing physical tasks; running, jumping, fighting, but any form of exercise was impossible or near to it with his body as it was. Then, at the same time, he felt sedated, ready to fall into a comfortable sleep and release the elastic tension holding his body together so that he could reach the apex of his elasticity and pop like a bubble.

“That’s enough cut the gas. How do you feel, Seventeen?”

Perspiration matted Seventeen’s hair. His body throbbed, he had too much energy. It was starting to overpower that desire to just relax and burst. The latter urge still existed, he wanted to release the tension, but he wanted to do it in a far more active fashion. “I... I wanna blow... but I want to... do something. I feel like I’m too full of energy, like, I could run a mile!”

“Ah. The stimulant gas works, a promising result. That concludes test one, now for test two. Don’t worry, it’s a short one.” Tiles on either side of the chamber shifted, two giant robotic hands protruded. Both blimps were disconnected from the gas, and the hands began smacking them in the strangest game of human-balloon pong to ever exist.

Seventeen could see the face of Eight now. It had come alive, eyes burning with the same boom-euphoria as him. Every time the hands smacked their taut, round bodies, a feeling ignited. Seventeen knew he felt it too. The way the air shifted, distorting their forms, making cheeks, or faces, limbs disproportionally huge as air shifted looking for an escape route. They wanted to release everything, and they got their chance. The hands smacked both of them towards each other. Burning hot beneath the latex, their bodies were on the cusp of ignition. For a scant second, each time, they exchanged wordless desires. Again, they bounced together. Again, and again, like some animalistic display until finally the hands simply pushed them both together and the gas ignited from their raging wish to blow apart. The testing chamber was rocked, scorched by the fireball created by two over-pumped human balloons who would eventually be put back together by facility staff.

But to anyone walking into the chamber without that knowledge, all they would see were smoking scraps of peach and black latex.