The Greater Good

Dr Cristina Drake had been stationed on the research ship Exploration for the last 11 months. She has been working on a process intended to desalinize seawater and turn it into drinkable freshwater. Over and over again her results have come close to what she has desired to accomplish, but as of yet, the process has not been completed successfully. In one month, her one year assignment will be over, and another pair of doctors will arrive from the mainland to continue the work she has dedicated herself to over most of the past year. She knew she was close to a breakthrough, and the possibility of turning over her work this far in the process to someone else who could potentially solve the problem in just a week or two was heartbreaking. So tonight, Cristina was allowing herself to feel a bit of pity for herself, and having a few drinks.

Cristina Drake was 28 years old, 2 years fresh off her doctorate in Environmental Biology. She was a tall, slim woman with an athletic build. She was wearing a tank top and shorts with her lab coat over top of them. Her long blonde hair, which was cut into a neat, short chin length bob when she arrived on the ship Exploration, now hung below her shoulders. She had dedicated most of the last year to her work, 12 to 14 hours a day, 7 days a week. Nothing else really mattered to her, although she did take some comfort from her colleague and the second member of the team, Dr Will Cobb, who was the only other personn on the ship besides herself, the Captain, and skeleton crew of six sailors. He was 34, very tall with dark hair, and rarely spoke except to compare results, although his stoic demeanor was always kind, and never panicked. Cristina was almost through the last bottle of wine left aboard the research ship, other than what the crew had stashed away in their room, but Cristina couldn’t stand the thought of rustling through a sailor’s bunk just for a drink. So she sighed, and tilted the bottle back and finished it in one gulp.

“What am I missing?” she said out loud as she ran her hands through her hair. “The desalinization process should have worked on the last experiment I tried, the chemical compound we created should have completely eliminated the sodium.” She stood up and walked over to her desk, staring at the compound she had synthesized only a week ago. It broke down the sodium molecules in the salt water into oxygen molecules, but it would not hold, and the sodium reformed after a minute. She knew that she was just one step away from finishing the process, but what was she forgetting. She decided to try one more idea, an algae based additive that she had only 1 remaining sample of. She picked up the sodium eliminating compound in a flask on her desk. To that blue liquid, she added three drops of the green algae additive and swirled the solution lightly. It was now a blue green color. She then picked up a second flask of pure, filtered salt water. She added a single drop of the blue/green algae-based sodium neutralizer and swirled. This was the moment of truth.

She let the saltwater solution sit for five minutes, and then she tested the sample. The sodium levels were less than 1 part per 100,000. She put her glasses on to make sure she had read the results correctly. She had. Cristina shrieked aloud. She picked the flask up, and though she knew there were some risks, she decided to take a drink. After all, the goal was to have easily accessible clean drinking water for everyone on Earth, so someone had to be the first to drink it. The water tasted clean and pure, just like fresh mountain spring water. Cristina screamed aloud “It’s clean! Will, I did it! I did it!”

Dr Cobb came running into her room. Cristina was giddy, jumping around, smiling and holding the flask close to her breasts. She came to a rest and blew a wisp of hair from in front off her face. Her disheveled blonde mane fell about the collar of her lab coat. “Will, it was the algae solution combined with the current neutralizer. I did it five minutes ago, and it’s still clean. Here, drink.” she said with a beaming smile as she handed Dr Cobb the flask.

“Fascinating.” Will said, “It seems like you were on the right track after all. I suppose we still have a few tests left to do, but we do have a month. It’s 3am in San Diego right now, but I think you should call Dr Martin in the morning and tell him the good news yourself. You’ll get a permanent position at the university because of this. If not a Nobel Prize. Cristina, I’m so proud of you…I know the algae compound is safe to ingest from our previous trials, but I can’t help but wonder if there could be other side effects.” He swirled the flask lightly, and looked closely. “It’s late, but I’d like to do a few tests myself. Enjoy yourself Cristina, you’ve earned it. I’ll talk to you in the morning.” Will left with the flask back to his lab.

Cristina felt a little lightheaded from the wine, but still giddy from the results. She decided to take a shower and relax. She took off her glasses, stripped of her lab coat, and then her tank top and shorts, and then her underwear. She felt tingly as she entered the shower, but chalked that up to the wine. She turned on the hot water and stepped in. As soon as the hot water hit her stomach, and rolled down to her vagina, she noticed her blonde pubic hair seemed to be coming out. She stepped forward and let the hot water strike her bush, at which point she was shocked to see it all fall out and fall to the shower floor.

“Wait a minute, this can’t be happening…” Cristina thought as she rubbed the mound above her clit. The skin was completely smooth, as though no hair had ever grown there, except for a few blonde strands clinging on. She moved her hand gently over them, and the blonde strands came out. She had discovered a side effect after all. Cristina turned the hot water off hastily.

She noticed that the fine blonde hair on her arms was gone as well. As a scientist, she now had no doubt, the solution seemed to also act as a hair remover. This certainly complicated matters, although the potential for good still seemed to outweigh the negative to Cristina. She looked at herself in the mirror. Since she had ingested the solution, and the hot water activated it, that was causing her hair loss. She realized she had not yet gotten wet the hair on her head, and she ran her hands through it just to be sure. A couple strands came out, but no more than usual. Her hypothesis was confirmed.

Cristina began to finger herself. She though of climbing back in the shower, and letting the heat from the hot water wash over the top of her head and her long blonde hair until it all lay on the floor just like her pubic hair. She pulled back her hair, and pictured how she would look bald, with no hair at all. The thought of being completely bald made her more excited than she ever realized it could, and in a matter of moments, she came, and collapsed to a quivering mass on the bathroom floor. Her mind was made up now, scientific curiosity had gotten the better of her, and now she had to see it through to the end.

Cristina stepped back into the shower, positioned herself directly under the shower nozzle, and turned the hot water on. The hot water poured onto her blonde locks, and she began to run her hands through her hair. As she did, clumps of blonde hair began to immediately come out in her hands. She shrieked in excitement and looked in her shower mirror to see she had a large bald area on top of her head. Cristina began to smile. She dropped it onto the floor and began again. This time she could feel the smooth, bare skin of her scalp through her thinning blonde hair. Again, a handful of blonde hair dropped to the shower floor. She looked in her shower mirror, only to see that she was mostly bald, with only a few flaxen wisps on both sides of her head remaining. She placed both hands at her temples and ran them over the sides of her head, until only bare scalp remained. Cristina continued to run her hands over her head until not a single blonde lock remained, and her head felt perfectly smooth, as though she had never had any hair to begin with. She moaned again with orgasmic fury as she stroked her bald head. She grabbed a towel and stepped from the shower.

She admired the woman staring back at her in the mirror. Not only was she proud of what she had accomplished professionally, helping the world, but she had also overcome some of her personal fears, as she looked in the mirror and saw the beautiful bald woman smiling back at her. Her green eyes stood out now without her hair, and her eyebrows had fallen out as well during her hot shower. Her scalp beaming in the light, she rubbed her hands over it for what felt like eternity, before finally stepping away and getting dressed. She prepared for her video call to the university by putting on a tight blue t-shirt and shorts, as well as her lab coat and glasses. She turned to admire herself again for a moment, the beautiful, intelligent scientist who had let her blonde hair define her beauty for too long, and now felt more comfortable with herself than she ever had before. She wondered to herself “Could the hair loss be permanent? I almost hope it is. I don’t think I ever want to have hair again, I love it so much.”

She smoothed out her lab coat against her hips, adjusted her glasses, and closed her eyes as she caressed her fingertips across the top of her bare skull to the nape of her neck. First she had to tell Will. Then she had to call the University. And after that, the world. She wondered if everyone would be willing to accept her discovery, knowing what she knows. Not everyone may be as enthusiastic or be as beautiful bald as Cristina was. Yet in her heart, to save lives, she already knew the answer. For the greater good.

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