The Product Tester

Chapter 1

"Five thousand dollars," Mary Bambine stared at the woman in the fashionable pantsuit sitting across the desk. She tried to maintain a neutral mask. She doubted it was successful.

"That's just the base fee, but yes." The woman, Katherine, slid a thick stack of papers across the desk for Mary to peruse, all formal and polite. It almost made Mary forget what she was negotiating over.

"And all I have to do is..." Mary trailed off for a moment. It was so plainly ridiculous that she didn't even know how to wrap her head around it. "You want me to wear..."

Katherine nodded, her polite, down-to-business smile completely incongruous with the subject matter as she finished the statement. "That's right, Ms. Bambine. Diapers."

Mary leaned back, the comfortable office chair reminding her just how out of place she was. The LAB-D offices were part of a billion dollar R&D company with contracts across the nation. Mary was a freelance IT consultant whose business was just successful enough to keep her pantry stocked with ramen and off-brand soda.

That morning, she hadn't even known that this project existed. Her fiancé, Ethan, had gone into work like normal while she stayed at home trying to drum up some work. When Katherine had called, Mary had gone down the line of assumptions: First, she guessed that Ethan was hurt. Second, she thought that their in-house crew was busy and they needed to bring in an outside professional to work on their servers. Third, that they wanted to offer her a job. Katherine had played it coy, asked her to come into the office, and only once Mary was there and seated did she drop the bombshell.

It was surreal. Here Mary was in an office better furnished than her entire apartment, sitting across from a woman who made more in a month than Mary made in a year, and she was being asked to...

"You want me to wear them for a month?" she clarified, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. "I'm sorry, I don't think I really understand this. Can you back up?"

"The contract explains it quite thoroughly," Katherine said, gesturing to the stack of papers, "But I can sum it up if you'd prefer."

Mary nodded. "Please."

"Simply put, we've got a new incontinence product that we need to field test, and your name came up on the list of qualified candidates."

"Qualified... to wear diapers?" Mary asked, adjusting her glasses and trying to determine if this was some kind of elaborate prank.

"Qualified to do penetration testing," Kat corrected, shaking her head. "We need a product tester who can ensure that we're up to snuff."

Mary pressed her lips into a line, feeling unamused. "I'll have you know I'm completely potty trained. Go find someone who actually needs... those things."

"The diapers are mostly incidental," Kat explained, adjusting a few papers on her desk and selecting a simple diagram from a folder. "What we actually need tested is the cover."

Accepting the schematic, Mary scanned over it. There was no mention of materials or specifics, just a basic sketch of what appeared to be a plain, transparent set of plastic pants with a heavy-duty fastener around the waist and a pair of reinforced wires running out of the back.

Staring at the design, she said, "I don't get it."

"I won't bore you with specifics, then," Katherine promised. "In short, there are places where it's necessary or beneficial for individuals to wear incontinence protection, but refuse to do so voluntarily. If you've ever been in a nursing home when someone removed their diaper out of stubborness, then had an accident, you'll understand the need. It can create a mess, and it's bad for everyone."