Consensus, Day 1-4: Janitor

Christina rubbed her tired eyes from underneath her glasses as she attempted to retain her grasp on sanity. She was a well-accomplished scientist, the top of her biology and calculus classes respectively. Her photographic memory allowed her to ace any task put in front of her, pulling together the wildest leads and connecting the dots where no other genius would. Fresh out of college, everyone assured her that the world was her oyster.

So why the hell was she a janitor at some stuffy office?

Christina knew science was undervalued in the workforce, but this was ridiculous! She was the Albert Einstein of her time, her brain running a mile a minute as it generated brilliant theories. Then again, all this brainpower did come at the cost of her social skills, which were sorely lacking. Her mother practically had to beg the hiring agency to accept Christina, and it was for a job where she wouldn’t have to interact with anyone.

She retched as she filled the mop bucket up with stinky, highly-concentrated chemicals. With a 15-floor office building, she was only a quarter of the way done with her allotted floors. Eight hours of cleaning, only to wake up the next morning and do it all over again. It was grueling, it was demeaning, it barely paid well enough.

Worst of all, this was the very same office building that the infamous Howard Grove worked at.

He knew she had trouble with speaking to others. Hell, the whole building practically knew it at this point. Christina was prone to freezing up whenever he walked by, shell shocked from the times he’d lash out at her just for mopping “incorrectly.” Out of all the women who had the misfortune of interacting with Howard, Christina hated him the most.

Needless to say, Christina was doing everything within her limited power to find an out.

Today, however, an opportunity seemed to arise for her. She was mopping up around the top floor when she heard a particularly brutal argument unfolding within one of the conference rooms. Upon reading the name on the plaque, her eyes widened. This wasn’t just any conference room, this was the specific meeting place that Mr. Carob would zero out whenever he wanted to have a serious talk with a certain worker he was on the verge of laying off.

Christina was only more surprised when she heard the unmistakable gravel of Howard Grove’s voice barking back. Sure enough, a quick peek through the solitary window confirmed her hearing’s suspicion.

Howard was too valuable of a company asset to fire whenever he’d berate Christina for no reason, so to see the boss laying into him from behind closed doors sparked hope within her once-optimistic heart. Her job would be so much more bearable with him gone. Pressing her ear up to the door, she could just barely make out what was being said.

“...first the toll booth woman speaks up and now Carrie from accounting is bad mouthing you to the whole firm. You need to get your attitude in check or else your ass is fired!”

Carrie from accounting?

The fucking Toll booth woman?

Since when did Mr. Carob give a shit about the complaints of women? And from someone as random as the toll booth woman no less?

That got the scientific gears in Christina’s head turning. What exactly was different about today that generated such an unusual response? She ruminated upon anything unusual that was already pushed into the back of her mind.

Well, this morning, the lady at the toll booth did seem to be… sexier. That was the only word that came to mind, even for Christina’s scientific vocabulary. There was simply no other succinct way to describe her—the toll booth lady was downright beautiful this morning!

Come to think of it, there wasn’t any way of explaining that sort of beauty away with a new selection of makeup and a push-up bra. Those breasts of hers—even her heavy shirt and company jacket couldn’t conceal those D’s. Christina had seen the toll lady just yesterday and she didn’t look half as pretty as she did today. Something was up.

Christina’s mind then drifted to the other woman. Wait… a certain stand-out memory was calling to her. Carrie… that name ringed a bell… she had a twin, right? They were only a few cubicles apart from one another. Yes, their eyes were different colors, that was the only distinguishing feature between the two.

Until today that was.

Yes, the image was vivid in Christina’s thoughts now. Those twins looked similar yet different today, as if one was a far prettier stunt double to the other. Prettier—there was that word again. How had those twins gone from carbon copies to one compressing herself into a shining diamond of beauty? One was a strange coincidence, but two? That was a local pattern. What were the odds that two women in the exact same building just so happened to become drop-dead gorgeous overnight?

What did these two women have in common? Well, her first thought was that they both complained to Mr. Carob about Howard Grove. But, it couldn’t have been that simple, could it?

Christina wracked her brain for any possible connection other than Howard Grove but she came up woefully short. There just didn’t seem to be any other sort of link. She’d just have to start with her current hypothesis and observe where it led her. Such was the nature of science!

For the first time in her meek life, she would be the person to engage a conversation with someone else!

Once she sensed the conversation was ending, she leaped off the door and pretended to look busy, deliberately parking her body just enough in front of the entryway so that Howard would be forced to walk around her. He hated having to walk around her. It was a surefire success, he was already in a bad mood anyways from having to talk to Mr. Carob.

Howard slammed the door behind him, only to come face-to-face with Christina. A lingering sense of regret began to seep in as she watched his blood reach the boiling point before her eyes. He towered over her, his six foot frame glaring down upon her puny four.

“Get out of my way, you trollop! What, did your stupid woman brain decide to park itself right in front of my path just because you wanted to inconvenience me!?”

Even if Christina could muster up the courage to respond, she’d never in a million years admit that Howard was technically correct in his assertion. Men like him would just never understand a drive for scientific curiosity like hers. Needless to say, Howard’s outlash was particularly brutal and lengthy. She was trying to look for any connection, anything at all, but she was simply too terrified by his oppressive shouting and general rudeness to look for any sort of charm or hex on his person that could have affected the other two women. By the time Howard Grove had spoken his lengthy piece and Christina had mentally recovered, He had already left the scene— surprisingly fast for an old man.

And so, Christina was left humiliated and without any further leads. What else could she do? Mr. Carob would certainly be no help, given that he didn’t seem to care that a woman was verbally assaulted outside of his office. She wasn’t pretty, tall or shapely like the other two women had spontaneously become. She was short, chubby and ugly. Her glasses were thicker than her lips, with her unique brand of terrible eyesight requiring her to be confined to them.

She ran to the bathroom, holding back tears. She unleashed her sorrow into the sink, knowing that at least the pipes wouldn’t discriminate her sadness with the rest of the waste. Why was she so useless? She had one chance to get a lead on a strange anomaly, and she completely blew it.

The last thing Christina wanted to do was look in the mirror. She knew she’d only see a reflection that would remind her of what she hated the most—herself. Just one look into the depths of that aluminum-sprayed glass would reveal the human rejection letter that was her acne-less face, her larger, sizable breasts, her thickened, luscious hair, her—

Wait… what!?

She did a double take, staring long and hard into the reflective surface before her. It was blurry, yet the radiant beauty on display was clearer than eyes could convey. She wanted to look at it more, observe it in all of its scientific perfection. What was stopping her? What was this annoying glaze of imperfection that foolishly shielded her from drinking up the mirror’s marvel?

Her glasses. They were making her vision foggy now.

With a flick of a fingernail, her rimmed spectacles fell off her face, a lens cracking as they struck the bathroom tile.

Finally unobstructed, time became irrelevant as the gorgeous creation of feminine beauty captured within the mirror looked at Christina as eagerly as she looked back at it. The symmetry, like a mirror within the mirror. The cascading hair, as pretty as the natural waterfalls of the world.

Sure, there were probably more beautiful women out there in the world, but for Christina, this was it. This was perfection made real. This wasn’t just a woman in a magazine in the checkout aisle that she could longingly project herself onto. No, the mirror was now the one projecting her flawless vistage.

Perhaps, she was so captivated because she knew she wasn’t just some dumb bimbo. She now had the smarts and the looks. In fact, she felt… smarter? It was something she never knew was possible to quantify—the metric of “smarts” but now she felt smart enough to definitively say she was smarter. Perhaps she’d scientifically prove it. Maybe another time. After all, a grand realization was sweeping its way into her mind.

It was as if her brain—suddenly burdened by a vast, new realm of intelligence—had suddenly pieced together everything before Christina herself could even comprehend what “everything” entailed.

The doddering old fool was not only linked to the beautification of the two prior women, he was paramount to it. An encounter with him was likely to, quite ironically, benefit a woman more than it was anyone else. Mr. Carob wasn’t suddenly a stud after a vicious argument with Howard, yet the only women today who complained about his attitude were now drop-dead gorgeous.

And now, Christina was one of those women.

She could just complain to Carob, who would almost certainly take her side now, but a particularly devilish thought whisked that idea away immediately. Clearly, neither of these other women had figured out the secret of Howard encounters, otherwise they would be attempting the exact same scheme that Christina’s beautiful brain had just concocted—the deliberate Howard encounter.

After all, there were still so many questions that the scientific process demanded answers to! This strange Howard phenomenon, could it be intentionally replicated? Earlier, Christina had purposefully blocked the old man’s path and was rewarded beautifully, but at the time she didn’t know there would be a reward involved.

Now that she did, would this sort of karmic balancing still apply to her? She supposed there was only one way to find out.

This—this wasn’t just a devious thought, science demanded answers! And Christina was the most qualified for the job.

~

The testing setup was simple: get Howard even more angry than usual with Christina in the vicinity and see what happens. The scientific beauty already had the perfect plan in place. Howard’s routine was pathetically predictable to anyone with an expanded mind—even with the unusual break in formula with the Carob meeting, he would still get out of his chair at exactly 5pm on the dot for his evening coffee. Only this time, he was met with quite the slippery surprise.

Christina had made painfully sure to not squeeze the mop out, yanking the wet bristles out of the bucket and willy-nilly spraying water anywhere and everywhere. With her appearance, she felt almost justified acting like a total bimbo. She knew that all she needed to do was put a finger to her lip and apply a pouty face and she’d be able to get away with murder.

Fortunately for her, not even the prettiest lookers in the world could distract Howard Grove from his righteous fury. The old fool did slip, and the old fool did fall. He managed to catch himself before gravity could deal any serious damage to his body, but it certainly wasn’t a graceful fall into a basket full of pillows.

“Y-you! You dirty, dirty whore! Did they forget to teach you how to properly wring a mop out? No, because that would imply it wasn’t your fault!”

The onslaught continued, quickly becoming devastatingly personal and more than a little misogynistic. Words that Christina would not even repeat to god were said, yet Howard threw them out at the top of his lungs like candy on Halloween.

But, while a mere hour ago, Howard’s insults tore through Christina like rabid dogs, now she was embracing them. Like a fine fall morning, the sound of insults in the air was refreshingly soothing, a repressed sense of giddiness almost broke through as she attempted to contain herself. Christina now bore the visage of a confident and stunning woman, not to mention, the brain to pull it off.

But she was excited! Her plan was working! A scientific thesis in the making. She looked down at her fingers. What were once chewed, uneven fingernails had been replaced with smooth, even skin—and now they were being upgraded again, obtaining a glossy finish as they perfectly lengthened. Her arm, now hairless, was becoming a smoothness she never thought possible.

She looked back up at Howard, only she didn’t have to look as far. Her legs were lengthening, adding precious inches to her form she once thought impossible. The once imposing heights of Howard were mitigated as Christina rose to a far more manageable five feet of height.

She was fucking beautiful.

But the euphoria could only last so long, as Mr. Carob walked onto the scene. Or course, now that Christina had a body to rival a swimsuit model, he was ready to take her side.

“Howard! We literally just had this discussion!” he shouted violently, only to turn to Christina and apply a far softer voice. “Christina, is this man bothering you? Would you like to press charges?”

It would have been so easy for her to say yes, Howard would be fired on the spot. It was enticing, but Christina knew that her “testing” was far from over.

“Oh no, Mr. Carob, this was my fault. I clumsily spilled water and Mr. Grove slipped upon it!” She played up her innocence, while also hiding a darker undertone of sultry playfulness. Who knew it could be this fun to play with men’s emotions?

Almost reluctantly, Mr. Carob accepted Christina’s explanation. And while usually, this was a fireable offense for someone as low on the totem pole as her, Christina was let off the hook without so much as a verbal warning.

Once the boss left, she flashed Howard devious eyes, only reinforcing his harmful worldview that she had done all of this on purpose because she was a woman and that was simply what women did.

Yes, get nice and angry for me, Howard, Christina thought to herself. Tomorrow, I’m going to make sure I inconvenience you so hard, no institution on earth will be able to deny my sheer aptitude.