Catching up with reality

Joana sat at her desk, still flushed from the aftershocks of transformation, the RAC resting like a sleeping god in her palm. Every subtle shift in her balance, every brush of fabric against hyper-responsive skin, reminded her that this body—this version of her—was no illusion. It was her. Permanent. Or at least as permanent as she wanted.

She took a slow breath, breasts rising with hypnotic buoyancy beneath the too-small tank top that had materialized with the change. Her lab coat hung from her shoulders like a costume, open and purely ornamental. The room still smelled faintly of ozone and warm circuitry.

Curiosity tugged.

“If I’ve always been Joana,” she murmured, “then what else has changed?”

She swiveled to the console and tapped into her credentials—new ones. The system recognized her instantly.

Dr. Joana Kekyll, Lead Field Coordinator, Reality Alteration Systems Group (RASG) — Finster University.

No mention of “director.” No “principal investigator.” The credentials were… solid, but not exemplary.

Her brow furrowed.

Where once she’d been at the cutting edge of theoretical application, now she found herself listed just beneath a familiar name: Dr. Harold Minch, a pompous former colleague who hadn’t published a decent paper in a decade.

She scoffed. “I was his boss.”

Except… she hadn’t been. Not now.

She clicked through lab records, publication indexes, funding reports.

Smaller grants. Fewer speaking invitations. Her last paper—co-authored, watered down, technical.

Her brilliance hadn’t vanished. But something in her new persona… dimmed it. Just a bit. Just enough.

Enough to be noticed, but not heard.

She sat back, lips pursed.

“I’m hotter than ever… but they treat me like someone who got here by networking and not neuroscience.”

The sting was real. Unexpected.

They didn’t see the genius. They saw the heels. The curves. The smile.

And somehow, even with a doctorate, even with the RAC in her hands—they doubted her.

Her fingers drifted to her phone.

She tapped open her social media profile on a whim. Maybe there, she’d see some reflection of the worship she deserved.

@DrJoanaKekyll: 932 followers. Mostly undergrads. Half of them bots.

The last photo was a half-blurry lab selfie. She looked stunning, cleavage peeking, lips pursed in an accidental pout—but the caption?

lol forgot goggles again oops. #lablife #notgeniusbuttrying

Joana stared.

“What the hell?”

She scrolled.

Photos of latte art. Loose cables. Quotes from physics she’d clearly understood, but captioned with phrases like “idk if this makes sense lol.”

Comments were sparse. A few thirsty compliments from frat bros. A handful of pity likes. One coworker had replied to a chart she’d posted with, “You’re so cute when you’re trying to do science!”

Her nails clicked once against the phone screen.

She could’ve made people drool. Instead, they just… dismissed her. As a flirty blur in goggles.

Beautiful, yes.

Respected? Not remotely.

She leaned back in the chair, staring at the RAC, the gears in her mind turning with slow, surgical clarity.

If she could alter perception… culture… history… physiology…

Then surely, she could fix this.

She wasn’t just a goddess in heels. She was a pioneer. And if the world refused to remember it, she would rewrite the world until it did.

She tapped a fresh slate of parameters.

The next shift would hurt—not the body, but the world around it.

“Time to recalibrate respect,” she whispered.

Joana’s finger hovered above the activation key, the RAC already loaded with a fresh set of modifications—ones that would command professional reverence, cement her name in academic circles, reframe her as the brilliant, unignorable **** she truly was.

But she didn’t press it.

Not yet.

Instead, she slowly sat back in her chair, the soft creak of leather beneath her hips punctuating the stillness. The lab lights buzzed overhead in quiet disinterest, casting soft shadows across her impossibly sculpted figure. Her hand lowered to her thigh, the RAC still resting delicately in her grasp.

The smile faded from her lips, replaced by a subtle tension in her jaw.

Too much, too fast.

Someone might notice.

She was already a spectacle—every hallway glance lingered a second longer than it used to, every interaction in the quad now punctuated with too-wide smiles and lowered voices. Professors talked down to her without realizing they were doing it, and undergrads stared like she’d walked out of a cartoon daydream. But if those same people suddenly began treating her with sharp, instinctive deference—respecting her without cause—they’d notice. They’d ask.

She couldn’t afford suspicion. Not now. Not when she was the only one with access to the RAC.

If someone questioned how Dr. Joana Kekyll—a bombshell with curves that defied ergonomics—had just casually rewritten quantum stabilizers or published a revolutionary thesis on entropic inversion, they’d start looking for answers. Maybe even follow her. Maybe even… steal.

The thought of someone else holding the RAC twisted her stomach into a knot.

Losing it now would mean losing control.

No—no, for now, it was better to coast. Let the world underestimate her. Let them believe she was a sweet, bumbling airhead who got lucky with the occasional “oopsie-genius” breakthrough. Let them look past her. Let them not see the razor edge beneath the gloss.

She could afford that.

For now.

Besides… this body?

She glanced down, a slow smile creeping across her face.

It deserved some exploration.

She stood, stretching languidly, her back arching almost involuntarily. Her breasts lifted under the strain, straining her tank top deliciously before settling again with a soft bounce. She watched the movement in the mirror, marveling not at the physics of it—she understood that—but at the sensuality, the casual, **** femininity of it.

A thrill rushed up her spine. Her hips swayed as she took a slow step toward the mirror, then another. Her reflection met her gaze with perfect, pouty indifference—green eyes framed by cascading red waves and thick, low-set glasses.

She tilted her head, smiled at herself, ran a hand through her hair.

She was beautiful.

No—she was stunning.

And for the first time in her life, she wasn’t afraid to feel it.

She turned slowly, watching her ass roll beneath the curve of her lab coat, bare legs catching the light as she posed—half amused, half aroused by her own image.

The power wasn’t just in the RAC. It was in this version of her. This skin. This walk.

She could be anything. Anyone.

And right now?

She just wanted to be.

Joana giggled to herself and sauntered to the back of the lab, where the storage closet held a full-length mirror she’d never used before.

She grabbed a small Bluetooth speaker on the way, flicked it on, and loaded a playlist titled “Dr. K’s Private Experiments”—mostly synthwave and sultry basslines. The kind of thing no one would ever associate with a tenured academic.

She struck a pose in the mirror. Then another. She popped her hip, cupped her chest, pouted dramatically, then spun in place to watch her ass jiggle in real time.

“Damn, Joana,” she whispered, breath fogging the glass. “You’re lethal.”

She wasn’t ready to be taken seriously just yet.

But she was more than ready to be taken.