"What in the world are you doing?"

Rae, the tip of her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth, was concentrating on her task.

She finished gluing a prosthetic fin to the back of a hairless laboratory rat, and turned to Mary. "I'm running some tests on GLOO."

"What in the world for?" she huffed. "Did mister Smith authorize this? And didn't he tell you to ditch the tail and ears or look for another job?"

Rae stood up, her fox tail twitching, and her ears slightly back. Then, she relaxed and smiled. Her tail raised and wafted gently and her ears perked up.

"Yes, he did. And mister Arthur told him to sit down and shut up. 'She is one of our knowledge workers,' he said. 'Our knowledge workers make our company run. Our knowledge workers are our profit. You are overhead,' he said. 'If our knowledge workers require an ass kissing, it's your job to deliver it,' he said."

Rae smirked, her foxy tail waving gently and sexily.

"That must have gone over like a lead balloon," Mary replied with a frown.

"Smitty needed to be knocked down a peg or two. He was ruining morale with his high and mighty 'I am middle management, and thou shalt bow to me' shtick."

"More to the point, he was ruining your morale," Mary said.

"Hey, I just want to be left alone so that I can keep cranking out miracles. Smitty was cramping my style. I tried to tell him that we genius types are supposed to be eccentric."

Mary smirked. "Oh, I would have paid money to see that."

"No need," said Rae. "I downloaded the security camera footage. I'll email it to you."

"You have access to the security cameras?"

"I have access to everything," Rae chuckled. "Even things that the top brass don't know about. And they wouldn't care if they did know because they like the money that I am making for them."

"You make it sound like they are working for you."

Rae smirked. "I choose to look at it that way. They take care of all of the little details so I can spend my time playing in my laboratory. They take my inventions and do all of the mundane work of finding a way to turn it into money. It's a win-win. Everybody is happy. Until one of my minions gets uppity and tries to tell me how to dress or what to do."

Mary shook her head. "Do they know that you have that attitude?"

"Pretty much. They are pretty pragmatic about it. I get to play. They get to make lots of money and live in their mansions and drive their Mercedes. Like I said, win-win. They're too smart to let pride get in the way of a good thing."

"Except for mister Smith," Mary commented.

"He learned better," Rae smirked. "He doesn't have to like it. He just has to behave." She paused for a bit, her tail still waving gently. "I hope he internalizes it, though. We should not be adversaries. I need to do my job, and he needs to do his. If he can be happy about the the way things run, so much the better for everybody."

Mary changed the subject. "So, what are you doing with that GLOO stuff? The last I heard, it was mostly used to get revenge on people, and to play some nasty pranks. Are you trying to figure out how to loosen it up after the three day setting period?"

"If someone wants to use my work to figure out how to get rid of the stuff, more power to 'em. I'm trying to figure out how it works, and how to make it more effective."

Mary was appalled. "More effective? There are already thousands of people with stuff permanently stuck to them!"

"And how did that happen?" Rae asked. "Get super glue on yourself, and you can scrape it off. Even if it soaks all the way through the dead cells to your epidermis, carefully lifting the glue and dead cells off will leave you with a tender spot, but it will be good as new quickly enough."

"The people that sell the stuff say that it's a trade secret."

"It's nanotechnology," Rae said. "It actually sends tendrils down into your skin, Trying to lift it off means removing the full thickness of your skin. Even a skin graft won't do the job. You still lost all of your nerve endings, hair follicles, blood vessels, and everything else. Unless it's a tiny patch, the scarring will be bad."

Mary thought about the implications of that. "If they can do that, they can probably run tendrils throughout your entire body."

"Some people have started mixing and injecting the stuff so that it'll do just that. Nasty stuff."

"And you're going to fix it?"

"Nope. Like I said, some of the other researchers and engineers can have a whack at if they want. I want to make the stuff more effective."

"Whatever for?"

"I want the stuff glued on to be more real. Ever wonder why people don't just cut off whatever is glued on? I mean, this guy who had fake boobs glued to his chest should have been able to cut the silicone off, and maybe leave a thin layer just over his skin. Why didn't he do that?"

Mary mused for a bit. "OK. I give up. Why?"

"It turns out that the stuff sends tendrils up into the prosthesis, too. Trying to cut into it hurts. Even if the doctors knock the person out and try to do it surgically, the patient starts to crash. They can do it if they're careful enough. But again, the patient is left severely scarred."

"So what are you trying to accomplish?"

"I want to make the prosthesis more effective. I want to turn the prosthetic boob into a real boob. Or practically real. Or real for all practical purposes. Being to lactate might be going too far, but at least make it as sensitive as the real thing."

"Your tail and ears," Mary said with realization.

Rae smiled. "Yep."

"What you have looks really realistic. I didn't know that the Fur-Tech products were so realistic. It reads your brain waves, right?"

Rae rocked her hand. "Sorta kinda. As I use them, brain plasticity allows my motor cortex to actually make new connections. I really feel like I have fox ears and a tail. But it's not real enough. Even with the modifications that I have made."

Rae grabbed and hugged her tail. "There is some sensation, but it isn't realistic enough. I want to use the GLOO nanites to make connections into my nervous system so that I can really feel my tail and ears." She brushed the tips of her cute little red fox ears.

Like I said, it's all Laika's fault. Read all about Rae's buddy Lori here --> https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/fiction/74835/72-hours-merman...