Detective Ethan Adamson arrived at the address Randy Goodman and the delivery people had given him. From outside, the house was just as Randi had described. The front lawn looked like it hadn't gotten any proper attention in a long time. Everything looked either overgrown or dead.
"This is the place." Adamson said, as he left the car. He motioned to the accompanying police officers, Sean Briggs and Robert Bowen, to follow him to the front door of Dr. Chance's house. Briggs and Bowen were not only good officers, but both were open-minded enough to deal with bizarre circumstances like these. Adamson knew they would treat this no differently than they would a drug bust or a weapons bust. It also helped that both Briggs and Bowen had been among the officers making the arrests at the water supply facility, so they already had a good idea of what was going on even before Adamson outlined to them what Randi had told him.
Detective Adamson headed to the front door of the house, and carefully picked the lock with the tools he had at his disposal. The door swung open, and Adamson, Briggs, and Bowen walked inside.
There seemed to be very little out of the ordinary in the living room and the foyer, aside from a toppled over dining room chair in the living room, with some ropes on the floor next to it. Perhaps Dr. Chance had been holding a prisoner there.
"Stay close." Adamson said. "We don't know just what we're going to find here. We'll check upstairs first."
And so they searched the upstairs of the house. It was mostly ordinary, with three bedrooms and a bathroom. But there was a rather alarming collection of sexy girl's outfits. Stewardess outfits, nurse's outfits, French maid outfits, bikinis, farm girl outfits, Japanese school girl outfits (even though none of the girls apprehended were Asian), and the type of police outfits that no self-respecting female police officer would be caught dead in.
"Looks like that Welles girl was right." Officer Bowen mused quietly. "This guy had a definite turn-on for sexy outfits."
Adamson nodded. This matched the stories of Randy Goodman and the others who'd been questioned.
Finding very little else of interest upstairs aside from a few dirty magazines ("They still print these?" Briggs asked. "I thought the Internet put them out of business."), the trio then made their way back downstairs. The kitchen seemed normal, though there was a large amount of bottles of water.
"Careful." Adamson said. "From what we've heard, the chemical when mixed with water is completely invisible. We can't be sure just from looking what is and what isn't this 'Bimbo Water', so best not to open those bottles."
Briggs and Bowen nodded. Continuing the search revealed little else unusual aside from a large collection of discarded cell phones in the dining room cabinet. Closer inspection revealed that many of them unlocked easy, though only some were charged enough to work. The ones that still worked lit up to reveal they were the cell phones of Melissa Smith, Tom Welles, Amber Levine, Reggie Deckman, Biff Meadows, and Doug Townsend. "Tom Welles ... Doug Townsend... those are two of the girls we arrested, or so they claimed." Bowen said.
Adamson took a few of the cellphones. Melissa Smith had claimed she and Reggie Deckman had recorded the transformations of the jocks sprayed with the fire hose of Bimbo Water. If that were the case, those videos were likely still stored on their cellphones. He turned to the officers. "We'll recharge all of these at the station and see if we can find further evidence on them there."
Now, there only remained the backyard pool area and the basement to search. If Randy's story was any indication, only the pool itself was of any interest in the backyard area. "Best not to get too close to that pool. Some chemical analysts can take samples from it later." Adamson said. "Let's check the basement."
And so the trio headed down into the basement. The basement turned out to be more of their idea of what a sinister scientist's basement would be like. There were three computers, two tables loaded with equipment, two more tables with vials and beakers and other items that would not be out of place in a chemistry lab, and shelves with various devices, many looked incomplete. Some other equipment was shoved in one corner. On one of the walls was a safe.
Adamson looked around with interest. To look through all of Dr. Chance's notes would take hours. What they needed was more information about this 'Bimbo Water', and how and why it was created. Adamson went to the nearby computer. To his surprise, it was turned on. Either Dr. Chance was in too much of a hurry to turn it off before traveling to the water facility in the Ralphdens' stolen RV, or he was in the habit of leaving his computer on.
Adamson noted that this computer was not connected to the Internet. There was no indication of WiFi or other connections. Adamson guessed that this computer was where Dr. Chance stored the notes on his inventions and discoveries, and clearly kept it separate from the Internet to be sure no one else knew about his inventions until he unleashed them on the world.
"It looks like we've hit paydirt." Adamson said. "There's a lot of information on this computer, and a lot to go through. I'll do some inspecting just to be sure it's safe, then I'll clone the data and bring it back to headquarters. This might take a while. Gather up the other evidence - the cellphones and the bottles. The chemical lab already has the bottles from the RV but it can't hurt to give them more material to analyze. Just be careful and keep the bottles tightly closed."
Briggs and Bowen then headed upstairs to the dining room, while Adamson opened Dr. Chance's Documents folder. There were dozens of text files present, all involving discoveries and failed inventions of Dr. Chance's that he had abandoned. But it was the one invention that actually worked - the Bimbo Water - that interested Adamson. He opened the subfolder marked 'Bimbo Water'. There were six text files on the Bimbo Water.
One of them was the recipe detailing how to create the Bimbo Water chemical, and how it was made so that when it mixes with water it became colorless and invisible. The other files were Dr. Chance's rantings about his ex-wife, and notes on the successful tests up to and including the fire hose attack. There was also a note about a balloon of some sort that Dr. Chance intended to launch to fly to a distant town, but it was unclear whether or not he had ever found the opportunity to do so.
Adamson brought out his flash drive, and copied all of Dr. Chance's invention data onto it. He had brought two flash drives with him - one to share with the others at Lake Point Police Headquarters, and the other for him to study on his own later and make further copies.
As Adamson read Dr. Chance's notes, he realized that Lisa Donovan - as recounted by Randi during Adamson's questioning of Randi - was right. Dr. Chance really was a brilliant inventor, yet he wasted his talents trying to make his shallow sex fantasy a reality. Was turning people into bimbos and making them dress in ridiculous sexy outfits as far as his ambition went? Even the Bimbo Water could be put to better use than that - Dr. Chance just lacked the imagination to see how it could. It was for the best that Dr. Chance was now a bimbo himself - or herself, to be accurate.
Adamson could think of so many other uses for the Bimbo Water. Government agencies, mobsters, brothel owners, secret societies - all would love to have it, and the secret of how to make it. In the hands of certain agencies, traditional assassinations could become a thing of the past. Assassins and hit men could put aside their guns and their traditional poisons for something far less messy.
And these people would probably pay a good deal for this kind of discovery.
Officer Bowen and Officer Briggs had gathered up the rest of the cellphones. Briggs was now carefully placing the water bottles into a watertight container they had brought with them in the car for this occasion. Briggs wasn't entirely sure the chemical analysis department needed more bottles to analyze, but he knew it was best to find and confiscate as many bottles of the Bimbo Water as they could.
Officer Bowen, meanwhile, was in the yard staring at the pool. Looking at the pool, one would think it was a normal inground pool, filled with water and chlorine. No one could guess just from looking that the water contained some invisible chemical that altered people's bodies and minds.
Bowen looked around the yard. Aside from the pool, there wasn't anything of interest. Just a few discarded bits of litter, rope, and branches. He knew there wasn't much to be gained by staying here long. The chemical unit and the biohazard unit would have to come along later to drain the pool and place the water somewhere where it wouldn't harm anyone.
With that in mind, he walked to the patio door intending to rejoin Briggs in the house, when he slipped on something. With horror, Bowen realized he was falling in the worst possible direction - towards the pool.
Briggs heard the splash of someone or something falling in the water outside. He rushed out to the back yard to see Bowen flailing in the pool, clearly panicking. "Help!" he cried. Bowen was moving slowly toward the edge of the pool, his watersoaked police uniform slowing him down. Briggs wanted to help him, but knew he could not. If the stories were true, the pool was filled with Bimbo Water.
Adamson, too, had heard the splash. Setting aside his flash drives (which now both had copies of all the invention information), he rushed upstairs and arrived at the back yard just in time to see Bowen reach the edge of the pool. Bowen's clothing was dissolving as breasts ballooned on his chest and his body took on a perfect hourglass shape. His hair, too, had grown longer and girlish.
Bowen began to giggle. New thoughts were entering into his mind, and he tried to no avail to not drown in them. I'm not a bimbo! I'm not some ditzy girl, I'm a man! A policeman! My name is Robert...
He felt a strange sensation in his crotch, then giggled again.
Berta (short for Roberta) stared at the police officer and the detective staring in shock and wonder at her. She smiled and giggled. "You guys look kinda cute. I hope you're not here to arrest me. Could you, like, get me a towel?"
Briggs' jaw dropped in shock. He had heard about the Bimbo Water's effects, but to see it happen - and to one of his friends and colleagues on the force - had him speechless.
Adamson looked on with a grim expression. "You should have stayed away from the pool. Now look what you've done. Briggs, toss her a towel. And find her some clothes. If nothing else works, you can give her one of those silly outfits from upstairs."
Briggs rushed to the nearby table where beach towels were stored, and tossed one to Roberta, who had just stepped out of the pool. She toweled herself off, and as she finished, the towel itself began to dissolve in much the same way the clothing had.
Adamson watched. According to the notes, Dr. Chance himself did not know why the Bimbo Water dissolved the clothing it soaked. And Chance hadn't had the time to do further experiments to see what sort of clothing would be unaffected before the water facility incident happened.
Adamson turned to Briggs. "Go and get her dressed. I'll call HQ and tell them we have all the evidence we need. The chemical and hazmat unit can take over here once we've left."
Briggs escorted the giggling bimbo upstairs, trying desperately to ignore her attempts to flirt with him. Detective Adamson, meanwhile, returned to the basement to pick up the flash drives before heading out to the police car.
One thing was certain. They had just found out that the Bimbo Water was very, very real.
