Bryce’s Big Act in The Diaper Dimension: Chap 2 (Patreon)

Some character designs are finally done. Hammering out a long plan for this story has hopefully made the wait worthwhile. :)

Clicking on the title to view the post directly, rather than from the Patreon page, can also help enlarge the images a little on desktops.

[Note: I tried a small trick with the artwork in this chapter - which may depend on the screen type viewed on - where looking from a lower angle may reveal more details in the outdoors scenes]

Bryce's Big Act in the Diaper Dimension

Chapter 2 - Pure Thoughts

Bryce stood at the top of the stairs. With a tapping of her heels, she checked her watch again. Three minutes late.

Finally the cars came around the corner. Silver and sleek and carrying the potential investors from the cruise terminal. Not a moment too soon, the island was threatening to unleash one of its torrential downpours. And no matter what targets Bryce set, operations was not getting any better at predicting the weather on their island.

She lifted her chin and recited the names of the investors who would be touring the facility today. As she tugged her jacket straight, her hand brushed the data stick in her pocket. Why was she lugging that around with her? Well, there was nowhere better.

She skipped down the stairs in her heels, and wore a big smile as the investors emerged from their cars.

“Welcome,” she said, “To Quantum Worlds.”

The first man to emerge was unusually handsome, and Bryce found her breath catching as he held out his hand.

“Miss?”

“Kemper,” she smiled, shaking it in return, and confirming that she wasn’t in fact a missers.

“Shall we?” she asked with an even larger smile than usual.

Bryce swaggered as they entered her natural element, leading the guests through research facilities and display halls.

“- and this here is the device which located our secret research component,” she said, gesturing to a nondescript and tarnished metal box with a few wires poking out.

“But what is it?” a frumpy woman asked, leaning in to frown through the display glass.

“Oh,” Bryce said with a wry smile, “I can’t tell you that, of course. But the results speak for themselves. Twice now we’ve managed to turn iron into gold. And when our teleportation project is complete, it’s going to revolutionize transport.”

The investors nodded along. They’d of course had it pre-confirmed that the science coming from the facility was legit.

“Imagine,” Bryce said, gesturing to an animated display, “The ability to travel from New York to Tokyo in an instant. People want faster. They want more convenient. They want new. And that’s where we come in.”

She smiled, then turned to push open double doors into a mock transit station, albeit filled with cardboard commuters standing about. Bryce strode in, and the investors followed.

“Your brands and labels plastered on every teleportation station in the world. It could mean exposure on a level not yet seen. There will of course still be waiting times, queues, the perfect placement for advertisements which can’t simply be skipped with the click of a button. People will be actively searching for stimulation.”

The investors took it all in, giving nods and smiles. Even Mr Logan looked around with a boyish wonder, distracted from his small flirtations with Bryce, and Bryce bit her lip watching him in his natural state. They perhaps didn’t immediately notice the desks hidden around the mock station, nor the researchers working away on computers. Bryce wasn’t one to waste floorspace for just a display, and besides, it was motivational to work among the vision of what they were trying to build.

She spotted Owen with his arms folded by a wall, looking none too pleased about Mr Logan. She rolled her eyes, then excused herself and pranced over.

“Mr Bradley. I presume you have reason to be here?”

“Er, more or less, Miss Kemper,” he said, then frowned and glanced down, realizing that she was insinuating that his outfit was bad for the presentation, “I spoke to them like you asked-”

“Good,” she said, turning to smile at the investors, standing straight and tall, “Because we can’t have any interruptions. Especially not the antics of the twins.”

“That’s what I came to talk-”

Bryce’s preening flickered as she scanned the room and saw two blond figures in lab coats chatting to her investors.

It wouldn’t take them long to spill all their secrets, or at least drive away the guests. She might as well just declare that she had fantasies about- No, goodness. That damn data stick.

This was why she didn’t like to delegate, and was why she would personally fix this. She set out across the room at a pace more suited to joggers than heels, and reapplied her corporate smile.

“No, it’s not so much teleportation as-”

“-unifying quantum fields, one where the state you wish to achieve-”

“-is already present, circumventing the whole need for knowing how to-”

“-teleport. Yes yes I was just about to say that Rose.”

“Well of course you were Robert, since I was-”

They blinked as Bryce appeared between them and gave the investors a warm smile.

“I see you’ve met our staff. They’ve just come to update me on our fantastic progress - over here, and out of your way - then we will move on if you don’t mind.”

With a light touch and another big, nearly-comical smile, she guided the twins away.

“Oh Miss Kemper? Good. Just the person we came to see. We wanted to let you know-”

“It can wait.”

She glanced over her shoulder, giving another grin, and ensured that the investors were out of earshot.

“But the algorithm is-”

“Mm, if the asset is showing any activity, then we’ll shut down any active scans we’re running and resume them in an hour. Our vacation winners can be released from their obligation today. These investment tours are very important. Now I-”

“We’re not running any scans.”

Bryce slowed. “You said-”

“Yes yes. But anybody can run the computation, since-”

“-it is a construct which exists in quantum space itself after all.”

Bryce paled. “One of our competitors must have found the mechanism, and figured out the inputs before we did.”

“Oh, hardly. It’s probably just us in a slightly different quantum field.”

Bryce blinked, unsure if she’d heard them right. “I, uh - we’ll have a meeting about that in the near future. For now we’ll presume that we’ll potentially have to move towards making a buyout.”

The twins glanced at each other, then shrugged.

“Indubitably.”

“If you say so.”

Bryce glanced between them. At times she could swear they almost seemed… No, they were getting results, there wasn’t time to consider anything else.

“Well,” she said, rolling her jaw and ensuring that her back was turned to the investors as she frowned, “Keep the asset under close supervision. If the algorithm really is activating, perhaps you’ll, I don’t know, get some clues about how the device was designed? Maybe your whole notion that the inputs are a mental scan is wrong. I’m surprised, however, that you two would even leave your experiment if it’s active.”

“Mmm? Oh yes. Your assistant was calling. Said it was rather desperate.”

Bryce paused, and checked her phone. She’d kept it muted. It was flashing even now.

“Yes Katie? I’m here? My schedule clearly shows that I have an investment meeting.”

“I’m sorry Miss Kemper. But weren’t you going to see your nieces and nephews off at the docks before they left?”

Bryce blinked. Already? She frowned, and counted the days since their vacation had begun.

“Well, give them each an envelope with a hundred dollar bill in it. Tell them it’s a gift from Aunt Bryce, and ask them to keep quiet about how we didn’t quite catch up. I’m very busy, they’re getting big enough to understand. Did they, uh, enjoy their vacation?”

“More or less,” Katie replied, sounding a bit cold. Perhaps she didn’t appreciate the week of babysitting duty. Well, Bryce had bigger concerns to worry about.

She clicked off her phone, and turned to find that the investors had lured the twins right back for another round of questions. Yet… it didn’t seem to quite be a disaster.

“It’s a shame,” a voice said, and Bryce jumped, glancing down to find their IT head at his workstation among the fake plants, surrounded by toys and candy wrappers.

“What is?” she asked, smoothing out her jacket from the series of exertions.

“Well… Do you really think those investors are more important than your family? Are you going to feel more pride about seeing their advertisement on one of your teleporters, or when your niece gets her diploma?”

Bryce arched an eyebrow, and glanced behind him.

“Clean up your workspace Larry, it’s filthy.”

With that she set off at a march, back towards the investors.

He turned to say something, and only succeeded in knocking a Godzilla from his desk, which fell right into a trashcan which Bryce punted in his direction as she marched past. He was perhaps watching in awe as she walked away. Her employees knew better than to look at her butt.

Her personal rating for today hadn’t fallen below an A- score. It would be higher except for the gross data stick, and her occasional meandering into nightmarish daydreams about- No, that was completely off-limits.

“So this headband can scan my thoughts? And that’s part of how this works?”

“Well, by looking at the frightful number of input variables on our secret asset-”

“It’s the company’s asset Robert.”

“Hrm? Oh yes Rose. Quite so.”

“Chin up brother. I’m sure that’s only sometimes true.”

“But yes yes. The goal is to find a matching mental wave in the infinite quantum noise for somebody who would now be standing precisely where you want to be standing. As soon as we can reverse-engineer an existing wave we found and used once alre-”

Bryce arrived just in time, and whisked the scanner from a guest’s hands, then gave them all the biggest smile she’d yet managed.

“Thank you Rose and Robert for the presentation. We’d of course never scan your thoughts without the proper contracts and data partitions, we appreciate the sensitivity of your business information.”

The tubby man blinked, and nodded, then finally looked a bit pouty.

“We were just going to see how it-”

“Oh, I can show you.”

Bryce slipped the metal band over her head. Oh this was going to play havoc with her expensive hairdo. The only stylist was across the island at the resort.

“See?” Bryce grinned. “Just like this.”

She craned her neck for them to see, and tugged her jacket straight. Her hand brushed something- oh, that damn data stick. Stupid thing. She’d at least put all the earlier thoughts out of her mind about wearing unmistakable, crinkly- No.

“Now,” she said, with another big smile, “We should move on and see the gold nuggets which we created in our early experiments.” That always got their attention. The more dollar signs they saw the better.

“Have you considered Rose…”

“Yes yes, activated from two sides at once. That explains everything.”

“I think I suspected that.”

“Well I did.”

“Exactly.”

Bryce turned to give the twins an unimpressed look which would hopefully speak volumes

“Our researchers just never stop working. Now is everybody here?”

She found it hard to spread her smile beyond Mr Logan, hoping that she didn’t look too ridiculous in the metal headband.

Goodness, she could take that off now.

She reached up to remove it, then paused. Wait, had she had those kink thoughts while wearing it?

A sweat broke out, and she tried to recall if she’d thought about… things… without specifically thinking about.... what those... things were. Maybe if she tried to remember if she’d imagined the sound of crinkling, or the smell of talc, or even a busty woman who wore a nursing bra so that she could… Oh god, this was just being more specific, not less. Was it all going on file? She had to… She needed to regain...

“There. Look at those readings Robert.”

“It must be a dual event. Just like when I-”

“When we.”

“Yes, when we first saw it.”

Bryce turned to give the investors an apologetic smile, and noticed a few odd looks. Goodness, was she getting enough air? Breath. It was fine. She couldn’t let Mr Logan see any weakness. Of course, if she did show any, Mr Logan might see another purpose for Bryce, where he already had a busty wife, who he would bring Bryce home to for training as their obedient daughte- No! This was precisely why she had suppressed these thoughts in the first place. Before long she always ended up in the unacceptable state of picturing herself in a diap-

Bryce slipped the crown from her head.

What if Mr Logan brought the company, saw the files, and then declared that it was obvious that Bryce couldn’t be trusted with anything but the thickest-

She handed it to the twins, and was the model of calm.

“Make sure the data from today is wiped,” she said, “We don’t want to risk any collection breaches.“

She turned to lead the investors away.

With another smile she forced down all the gross, terrible thoughts. Her head was a battlefield after such a terrible day.

All she had to do was take the first step, and put her kink behind her.

She managed a step with a wobbly heel. Except the world seemed wrong.

And then she fainted.