by Wilson Barbers
Paula's father always blamed it on the fact that she'd been brought to term inside her mother - a form of child birth that was alien to most anorekts, tied as it was to the limitations of human flesh. Throughout her pregnancy he'd pleaded with his wife to place her developing pre-born in a suitably sterile environment. But all his arguments had been to no avail. Cara had been insistent where in most cases she'd have caved into her husband. She wanted to keep Paula inside her until it was fully time, had held off on any biomedical processes that would have interfered with this.
"I'm not goin' fully anorekt 'til I've had my child," she repeatedly told her hubby, Neal. So when Paula Okeh grew into childhood twenty kilograms heavier than any of her peers in anorekt zone, Neal knew where to point a skeletal finger.
"That fleshy birth," he said, pacing around a loft space already too fragile for the robust Paula. Anorekt furniture was inhospitable to most anyone else. For a reg-sized child to sit on it was like using penny nails on a paper wall.
"Calm down," his anorekt wife told him. "Once Paula's nineteen and old enough for med consent, she'll trim down if she wants."
"If she wants!" Neal sputtered, outraged at the suggestion that a daughter of his might even consider a different body type. Hadn't he reared her to be utterly contemptuous of the human physique? To prepare for a life of anorekt asceticism? What was all this talk about "if she wants"?
Theoretically, of course, body type was a matter of choice for everyone. The strides in biomed technology over the first half of the twenty-first century made it possible for young adults to customize their bodies to suit the lifestyle they preferred. In the old days, to be a specific physical type meant to be victim of the stereotypes associated with that physique. Now, a young man or woman could pick a frame based on their emotional compatibility with its associations.
Of all the body styles, anorekt was probably the most convention bound. Other types only took those parts of the package that suited them, discarding the rest - most adiposts, for example, picked that stock because they shared a love of eating. To be anorekt, though, meant following every stricture that the years had set down. Where adiposts were the hosts and hostesses of the metro community, anorekts were its bureaucrats.
An anorekt parent raised anorekt children. No other body type carried the same strict moral imperative.
Every imperative has its exceptions, however, and Paula proved to be one of them. As she grew to the age of med consent, she continued to develop beyond the range of every other child in zone. Reg-sized, with a budding, shapely form and large, innocent eyes, the pre-consent Paula was small by every standard but anorekt.
She was liked by her peers among the pre-consents. But as each of them reached the age of depletion, they had less to do with her. A new-formed anorekt is too tenuous for such companionship: Paula was just too physically there for them, too touchy-feely. She was simply too human for them.
Too, she ate like no other anorekt kid in zone. Savoring meals meant to be as tasteless as possible, she was as robust in her appreciation of food as with everything else. Nothing is as prudish as a transformed adolescent; to Paula's newly anorekt peers, the way she ate was practically obscene.
Most anyone else in zone would have buckled under the combination of peer and paternal influence. Paula didn't. When the day of med consent arrived, she announced to her anorekt parents that she wasn't ready to make any decisions and moved from their loft to a roomapt in metro center. Her father was practically beside himself with indignation, but what could he do? Paula was an adult. A reg adult.
"This is your fault," Neal fumed at his wife. But Cara refused to respond to the accusation. She herself had faced family disapproval when she'd cast her lot with Neal. ("Why couldn't," her mother had asked the night of their nuptial sealing, "you have fallen for a less repressive body type? One that'd let you stay the way you are?") Cara sat through Neal's rants and privately hoped that Paula chose the path which best suited her.
In metro center, body types of all shapes and sizes mingled freely - if not always congenially. Paula got a steady occ as receptionist for the citygov support system, which serviced the entire metro area. The diversity she saw outside anorekt zone was both fascinating and frightening.
She was particularly drawn to the adiposts, men and women who'd been biomedically enhanced to fantastically fat size. Having lived all her youth in a home that cultivated denial, the way these figures reveled in their enjoyment of food and company was intoxicating. She examined every other specimen of biomedical transformation that the era had to offer, but she kept returning to the adiposts.
It took several years for her to get up the nerve to visit adipost zone, however. She went with a friend from work, a self-professed adipostate named Lloyd Albright, who took her to a chomp 'n' bounce food bar called Gin's Joint. Lloyd was a slender reg who worked in bot maintenance; he was attracted to mega-sized women and spent much of his spare time working on adipost convenience items.
"Reg world isn't always attuned to adipost needs," he explained one afternoon over lunch. "S'why so many of 'em rarely leave their zone." His latest project: a portable wire that would allow an adipost to skip through too-small passages. Wiring traditionally required too much energy for such short-burst movements, but Lloyd was convinced he could solve that problem, siphoning energy from the adipost's own highly efficient metabolism.
"Thought the Metro Body Size Act mandated accessible passageways in all multi-use buildings," Paula said, biting into her second mesquite soyburger. (Hard to say which would've upset her father more: the thought of two burgers or the thought of spiced burgers.)
"Grandfather clause allows many older institutions to keep from altering their work spaces," Lloyd explained. "Unfortunately, the older institutions are where many of the good contracts get sealed."
"So yer just tryin' to level the playing field," Paula noted. "Pretty altruistic."
"Not really," Lloyd said. "Woman I seal a nuptial contract with will be adipost. I'm just lookin' out for our mutual interests."
If Lloyd weren't so stuck on adipost-sized women, Paula would have made a play for him months ago. He was both fun to be with and attractive, full of enthusiasms. His only visible concession to biomed alteration was a pair of retooled eyes that compensated for myopia. Dark, with only the slightest frame of white, they looked at you with serious intensity - at times, Paula caught him gazing at her behind the reception desk and she wondered what he was thinking.
She knew what his retooled eyes saw: a lithely framed reg woman in her early twenties, 55 kilograms or so, with long, black hair. The kind of body that stayed trim on its own, as if all those years of anorekt family propaganda had trained it to remain as lean as possible. As a kid she felt bulky and unlovely; as an adult, living in a more diverse community, Paula knew that wasn't the case.
There were still times, of course, when the old anorekt messages kicked in. But these had lessened in both duration and severity over her years in city. What was she? She still didn't know for sure, but more and more she seemed to be circling around the adipost option.
That first night's trek into adipost zone was more than just a touristy visit. Soon as she stepped into the brightly decked chomp 'n' bounce, something clicked in her that she'd never known: a feeling that she was among her peers. Her years of uncertainty were ending.
Gin's Joint was the ritziest food bar in city; all the big names in the adipost entertainment biz frequented it. Newsies and adipostates swarmed around its environs for a glimpse at each night's customers. For Lloyd to get access to this zone hotspot was a coup in itself. Brandishing his seal at the club's entrygate, he led Paula through the adipost friendly entrance with an understandable gesture of pride. Paula was amused, but her amusement quickly changed to amazement.
Seated at a nearby food wall were the Anders quints: five adipost blonds ranging in weight from 250 to 825 kgs. The quints were onetime stars of force fattener stimulations until Mari, the youngest sister, underwent her own enhancement, bulking up to maxi size. Without anyone to play the reg-sized ingenue, the sisters went into more mainstream adipost entertainment: gourmet dining stims, adipostate porn, inspirational bios.
The rest of mainfloor was filled with familiar looking adiposts and their companions. Slowly proceeding across the floor, portable platform holding her belly off the floor, was former stimtress Taylor Delta. Miz D. was the owner of the foremost biomed center in zone, hostess to thousands of enhancements a year. She'd obviously benefited from her association with her clinic: majestically dressed in a bodysuit that showed off every curve and bulge of her metric tonnage, she was gorgeously vast.
"All these people," Paula gasped to Lloyd. "I've seen so many of 'em on newsies."
"No different than yer average adipost," he said, but something in his voice belied his spoken nonchalance. One look at the way he eyed Mari Anders at the food bar made it clear he was as star-struck as Paula.
"Lloyd!" a mountainous male in a white tux bodysuit shouted from across the room. He rolled up to them and shook Lloyd's hand. Like most adiposts, he had to do this side saddle. "This the lady you were talkin' about?"
"Blake Conrad," Lloyd introduced. "Paula Okeh. Blake's downfloor manager of this joint!"
"Yer boyfriend did a bang-up job on some of our prepbots," Blake said. "More than doubled their production." He looked around happily at the appreciative food bar customers. "And - here's the tricky part - he did it without a discernible decline in the quality of our servings. Aren't a lotta service folk who'd pay attention to that piece."
Lloyd looked like he didn't know what to do with the compliment. Paula was charmed.
"Come upfloor with me," Blake continued. "Ginny wants to meet you."
"Ginny?" Ginny Briant was a name famous throughout adipost zone. A former singer, she'd opened Gin's Joint with royalty credits from her biggest disc, "Fill Me, Baby, Fill Me." Though she was a major mover 'n' shaker in zone, she seldom left upfloor of her establishment: too busy adding more cageys to her twelve-hundred-plus sized body.
Wasn't just anybody who got to meet this wondrous figure.
They found Ginny Briant working on foodstuff orders as she absentmindedly sipped from a liquical tube. Her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail that swirled down the expanse of her back. She was dressed in a cream colored shift that hung to the floor with her belly, seated on a platform that had to be wider than she was tall just to accommodate her adipost body.
"You must be Lloyd and Paula," she said, turning on her platform towards her guests, feet lifted several centimeters off the floor. "Blake sez you do good work, Lloyd." Her body shimmied all around her, taking its own sweet time to settle down. A dollop of liquical was hanging from the edge of its tube, but before it could drop to the floor, Ginny caught it with a single sausagey finger and licked it.
"What brings you here, Paula?" she finally asked. "Aside from the company of this talented young man, that is?"
The bluntness of her answer surprised even Paula. "I'm thinkin' of getting enhanced," she said. "Naturally, I wanted to check out the best food bar in city."
Ginny considered this, swallowing on her tube all the while, then she chuckled. "Isn't often you get a mature enhancement these days," she said. "I was one. A few years' perspective really helps ya appreciate the experience. Too many kids rush into medwork without taking the time to really consider their options."
"If I'd done that," Paula said. "You'd be looking at an anorekt."
Ginny whistled appreciatively. "Even more amazing," she said. "Takes a lotta will to overcome an anorekt upbringing. Fortitude like that makes for record breaking enhancements." With that, she instructed a nearby accountbot to give them unlimited downfloor credit. "Come back after yer procedure," she said. "I'd love to see how you turn out."
Downfloor, they discovered a niche reserved for them. Paula sampled everything on it - it was even richer than she expected - while Lloyd stood beside her.
"When did you decide you were gonna be adipost?" he asked as she reached the dessert offerings.
"Don't know," she admitted, grabbing a sweed roll. "Feel like I always have."
Once she was away from adipost zone, though, she started to retreat from her decision. Lying back in her roomapt, bodysuit loosened and belly comfortably stuffed, her doubts returned full force. What was she doing? Making a life-changing decision on the basis of one night's visit to a chomp 'n' bounce? This was the woman who'd left home to discover her options - and here she was, behaving like a morph addled kid. The least she could do was spend more time getting to know adipost zone better.
Next few nights, Paula returned to the scene of her decision. She became a familiar face at Gin's joint, tried out some of the other big name eateries, visited a stim parlor and experienced the Anders Quints' latest gourmet stimulation. The more she visited, the dimmer her doubting inner voice became.
She forgot about the newsies fluttering around Gin's Joint.
The day she sealed her contract with BigWeigh Clinic, Neal Okeh - who typically didn't bother with mainstream news - received a message from his service. Like many concerned parents whose kin went out into the big metro, he'd tagged his daughter's seal. Once her passing image hit the newsies, it was flagged and transmitted Nealwards.
He watched the newsie sequence five times, growing more indignant with each viewing. There she stood in the background of Gin's Joint, talking to a reg male. (What kind of degenerate would bring his daughter to this Den of Gluttony, anyway?) There she was in the foreground, biting into a tofu cake larger than an anorekt's entire dinner. His worst fears were being realized.
Though he hadn't left anorekt zone in years, Neal took the metro wire to city central, wife in tow. They hit the citygov building first, only to discover their daughter had taken a leave day. They shot over to her roomapt. No luck there either.
The unthinkable, it appeared, was happening. Dashing out of Paula's building, they wired to BigWeigh Clinic, which was situated on the edge of adipost zone. "Parent's still got some legal rights," Neal panted. "We can see her, maybe catch her before she begins." He looked over at Cara beseechingly. "She won't listen to me. But she might you. Talk her out of it."
"I'll talk to her," Cara promised.
With that, they strode up to the entry and its 550 kg. receptionist.
"Almost missed my daughter's enhancement," he told the adipost, inwardly cringing as he focused on her multiply-chinned face. "She'd never forgive us." Flashing his seal for verification, Neal stood back and waited. All around them, would-be adiposts and their companions were eyeing Neal and Cara curiously - you didn't see a lot of anorekts in BigWeigh.
"Yer in luck, Mr.Okeh," the receptionist said. "She's stayin' in clinic for the whole procedure. If you and yer wife will step on the platform, it'll take you to her room." She gestured them through the entrygate, Neal doing his best to smile politely.
When he saw Paula through the observation window of her room, his first reaction was: By lightness, she's already started! Lying back with a kimono wrapped around her plump body, she looked about ten cageys bigger than he remembered her. He said as much to Cara, who smiled and shook her head.
"No, dear, she's still her reg self," she told him, then she entered her daughter's room. As she did, the same young man from the newsie rose from a chair out of window sight. Neal came close to losing it right then, but instead he let his wife have her say.
"Mom?" Paula said from her futon. "How'd you ...?"
"Never mind that," Cara said, gliding over to her daughter's side. "Couldn't miss my own daughter's moment of transformation, could I?"
"I thought - "
"I know what you thought. All I wanna know is this: who are you doing this for?"
Paula sat on the edge of her mattress, looking puzzled. Her mother continued.
"The problem with choice is not everybody wants the same thing. Sometimes as women we subordinate our own desires to someone else's," she glanced over at Lloyd, who had the good sense to look suitably uncomfortable. "So I'm asking: do you want this thing for yourself?"
Paula nodded, then she stood and grabbed her mother's hand. Where most anorekts would have shown at least a flicker of unease at this unexpected physical contact, Cara didn't.
"When I first starting thinkin' of this," she told her mother. "I worried that it was in reaction to the way I was raised. But once I stepped into adipost zone, I knew that wasn't the reason. I'm an adipost, mom, and I don't wanna change that."
Cara nodded, then gestured over towards her husband in the hall. "Better come in, Neal. Doesn't look like you'll be stopping this."
"Stop this?" Paula laughed. "The process was initiated two hours ago. I'm ready to begin my first binge." She gestured to the nearby wall, which was opening to reveal shelves heaped with foodpaks. "You out there, dad?" she called. But Neal did not appear in the doorway.
"Nobody outside," Lloyd announced, sticking his head out the entrance.
"Just as well," Cara said. "Don't think yer father could handle watching this."
"If you wanna go - "
"Oh no," she decided. "If you must know, I'm kinda curious."
Paula smiled, then grabbed her first foodpak from the shelf. Soon as she opened it, the contents heated up. Creamy noodle casserole.
"You know much about enhancement, Miz O.?" Lloyd asked, as Paula started to dig into her first helping. When the anorekt shook her head, he gave a capsule explanation.
"Process involves altering the body and its systems so that the enhanced person is able to grow to fabulous size. But that's only the first step; once a person's been enhanced, their body craves nutrients to help it reach adipost proportions. To do this, the adipost-to-be indulges in a series of enhancement binges where they eat 'til they reach their first setpoint."
"First setpoint?" Cara asked.
"Adipost setpoints aren't set in stone," Lloyd explained. "They can always be elevated, though it takes willpower to do so. Once the initial bingeing ends, it's not that easy to add cageys. Most adiposts are content to just do maintenance dining - which is pretty impressive by itself. No point in being an adipost if you don't like to eat, though."
They looked towards Paula, who was sporking a large mouthful of casserole to her lips. She smiled broadly as she ate: a look of happiness that Cara couldn't recall ever seeing on her daughter's face. If she had any doubts about the wisdom of this process, that smile banished them.
Tossing her first foodpak into a nearby receptacle, Paula popped open a second. The scent immediately wafted through the room. "Tortellini Alfredo!" she said happily, biting into her first cheesy piece.
Each foodpak was different. As Paula pried them open, her face lit up with the excitement of discovery. She started out eating deliberately, but as her binge progressed, she increased speed. By the end of her first wave, Paula was scooping foodstuff into her mouth with the speed of a maintenance bot set on high.
Her first gain turned out to be a near duplicate of her original weight, 62 kgs. Pre-biomed measures would have put her in the upper mid-sized range, 270-plus pounds, but as an adipost, she was only a waif. To Cara, she looked huge, but Lloyd knew that she had just begun her transformation.
Still, you had to look hard to see the lean reg woman she'd been. Her figure had become round and womanly: full-breasted, widely-hipped, and softly paunchy. Adjusting her kimono, Paula settled back and fell into rem sleep.
"Each binge wave requires a period of rest," Lloyd told Cara, as a troop of maintenance bots dashed around them. "Gives the body a chance to adjust to its new size. She should wake in about an hour."
Cara seized the time to look for her husband, but he was nowhere to be found. By the time she returned to Paula's room, her enhanced daughter was starting binge number two. A selection of sandwiches rose within reach; liquitubes hung from the ceiling. Paula barely paused as she alternated between solid and liquid offerings.
Her capacity had grown with her body - as had her appetite. By the end of her second wave, Paula had eaten enough to put 140 more kgs. on her welcoming frame. It was almost inconceivable the way enhancement binges put weight on bodies, collapsing years of gluttony into mere hours.
Two-hundred-sixty-four kgs. Like many adipostates, Lloyd was adept at turning metric figures into old-fashioned poundage; the numbers were bigger, which suited an adipostate's appreciation of size. Paula's current weight came to about 590 pounds: impressively super-sized in the pre-biomed age. In a less enlightened time, her image would have been brandished across a circus banner.
Looked like she was going to be apple-shaped: rounder in the middle than anywhere else. Paula's torso had widened so it pushed her upper arms - themselves almost as wide as her tremendous thighs - to an angle. Her belly pushed ahead of her, drooping down between her open legs and forcing her kimono open. As if in imitation of that opening, her paunch had developed a vertical crease at navel center.
"Never knew this could be so much fun," Paula gasped, her round face beaded with sweat. Though she'd stopped eating moments before, she still looked like her mouth was full; her cheeks bulged so prominently, you were surprised to see her open her mouth to speak. "Why'd I wait so long?"
Binge three took twice as long and was devoted entirely to dessert entrees. Two-tier cakes, sweed rolls, bowls of carob and coldpaks filled with ice cal - it was all offered and quickly devoured. The resultant gain from two hours of nonstop binging was itself phenomenal: 180 cageys, putting Paula within seven kilograms of the thousand pound mark.
"Looks like yer in for a major enhancement," Lloyd said, as he read Paula's newest weight off the futon strut. Paula nodded, exploring her expanded self with her fingertips. The fabric of her kimono had stretched across her back to its limit: enough to barely cover her breasts, but the rest of her forefront spilled before her freely.
Her belly hung halfway down her calves. As she idly moved her bulging lower legs, her paunch shifted like a fluid sculpture. She'd started to arch her back to balance the forward weight, but with her next binge that would fill in, the only indication of her shift in body center being a tendency to face upwards. Paula's upper arms quivered almost as much as her breasts, cuffed by so many layers of avoirdupois that they looked like overstuffed king-size pillows. The sight of her bulges jiggling was hypnotic, Lloyd thought.
"Tell me something I didn't know," Paula said sleepily. Her voice had deepened in its new packaging, sounding more adult. Lying back once more, her body settled against the adaptable futon.
Soon as Paula started remming again, Lloyd turned to Cara. "Not a lotta anorekts who'd be able to sit through this," he said approvingly.
"I know," she said. "To be honest, I wasn't sure I could."
Fourth and typically last binge was pure liquical, the fastest and most efficient means of meeting a growing adipost's needs. Rows of brightly colored tubes dropped all around Paula. She finished them all, then loudly asked for more. A second series appeared, and Paula dispatched these with the same single minded speed. When she called for yet another refill, Lloyd gasped.
"She's in maximum mode," he explained to Cara. "A state only the greatest adiposts reach. It's like combining three or four binges into one final marathon. Only one in several thousand adiposts do this; it's as rare as 300 cagey adults were in the pre-biomed age!"
Cara nodded, unsurprised. It was typical of her daughter, she thought, to approach her enhancement with so much gusto.
The night passed, and Paula remained in maximum mode. By her fourth serving, the biotechnician overseeing her enhancement made an appearance. Watching her rabidly ingesting liter upon liter of liquical, he pulled out his monitor and scanned her visibly expanding body. "Tiptop shape," he pronounced, "in more ways than one!"
He looked over at Lloyd. "You prepped to nup with this girl?" he asked. Lloyd tried to look knowing but nonproprietary. "If yer not," the biotech continued, "I wouldn't mind buzzin' up Miz Okeh myself!"
Though you wouldn't have thought she even heard the conversation - the way she was so focused on swallowing -Paula ceased long enough to clear her mouth and say, "If Lloyd doesn't want to seal a nuptual contract, I'll be sorely disappointed!" She returned to her liquical tube, redoubling her efforts.
"No worries on that count," Lloyd said, patting his fiancee on an overflowing thigh. "I'd be an idiot to pass you up!" He moved back to sit with Cara and the biotech.
Paula didn't tire through eight full servings, more than 880 kgs. of liquical that quickly turned into adipost tissue. Her final weight: 1330 cageys - 2946 pounds by the old scales. Bigger than Ginny Briant, bigger than any of the hottest stim stars.
The Finished Paula was something to see: wider than she was tall, her adipost body was regally enormous. Midway into her final wave, a replacement robe had been brought in; she'd doffed it without missing a gulp. By binge end, an air-held platform was brought into the room to raise her paunch off the floor.
That belly was the focal point: it swelled to her sides past her elbows, bulged more than two meters ahead of her lower arms' forward reach. (Like many megasized adiposts, her upper arms mainly rested on the shelf her hips and torso created.) The lower half of her paunch was visible below her robe's hem; its base flattened against her platform emphatically. Her enhanced flesh was smooth and clear, stronger and more resilient than reg skin.
Yanking his attention upwards, Lloyd looked into Paula's eyes. Despite their obvious exhaustion, they shone with a life he had never seen before: the look of self-realization. Perched atop her cresting cheeks, they looked down at her body spreading all around her. Her chins covered her neck, settled against her fat-layered collarbone; the way her lower chins bulged, it almost looked as if her head was sinking into a ball of living womanflesh.
It was fascinating the way each smaller part of her body seemed to imitate the larger package. Her chins draping against her upper torso were like her belly draping against the platform. The way her fingers were splayed by the padding around them was reminiscent of the way her upper arms pushed the rest of her arms out. She looked too big to move, but, of course, that was an illusion. Paula wouldn't win any races - negotiating her limbs within her swelling torso took both time and enhanced strength - but she could get around. Life in adipost zone moved to a more deliberate time clock.
"Beautiful," Lloyd marveled. Paula was going to take adipost zone by storm, he thought. As she lifted her legs to lie on her side - her front was too vast for her to lie on her back - her calves swung down and uncovered the back of her feet.
"She is," Cara said with delight.
"How you feelin'?" Lloyd asked his adipost fiancee.
"Stuffed," Paula told them. "First three binges I didn't think it was possible. But I did it." She closed her eyes, tiny smile on her swollen lips, then fell into rem.
Cara left the clinic and returned to anorekt zone, where she found her husband pacing the floor of their loft. First thing she noticed on returning was their living quarters: the space was now too thin to fit their daughter. For an instant, she felt a flush of anger at this basic feature of anorekt architecture.
"Well?" Neal demanded once she entered the room.
"It's done," Cara told him.
"I know it's done," he snapped, "but can it be undone?"
"Not likely," Cara answered, fluttering down beside her husband. "According to her fiancee, Lloyd, only about three per cent of all adiposts are capable of reversing the process - and those that try didn't go through maximum mode bingeing."
"What in the name of lightness are you talkin' about?"
"Our daughter," she explained "has become adipost with a vengeance." She dropped a holo chip on the table before them; instantly, a six-inch image of their mega-sized daughter appeared. Neal blanched visibly.
Cara loved her husband, but that didn't prevent her from knowing when he was wrong. While she didn't regret her own decision to follow her nuptual partner into biomed reduction, a part of her thrilled to see her daughter make such a totally different choice. She was proud of Paula and more than a little irritated with Neal. Which is why she enjoyed slapping him with the fact of their daughter's transformation.
"And next week," she continued, "after she and her fiancee move into their new digs in adipost zone, you and I are gonna visit 'em!"
A brief sputter from Neal. But before he could get anything out, she continued: "Not a word," she said, placing a gleaming fingertip on his lips, "or we'll be movin' someplace that'll allow Paula to visit us! Someplace in metro center, closer to her zone!"
Neal knew better than to say anything at that point.
Paula and Lloyd sealed their nuptual contract two days after her enhancement. They continued to work for the city; ensconced behind her reception desk, maintenance kegs of liquical within easy reach, Paula stopped more than one adipostate dead in their tracks.
About once a month, Neal and Cara came to visit the happy couple - though he never told any of his peers in anorekt zone about it. Just the act of sitting through his daughter's maintenance supping was a major concession for Neal, though he never said a word about his feelings to either Paula or Lloyd. Cara let her husband rant back home, of course, but she considered that a small price to pay.
Paula became a regular at Gin's Joint. Both she and Lloyd were an ongoing source of newsie speculation after he sealed his design for an adipost wire over to the adipost merchant's association. This gave them an unlimited line of credit anywhere in zone, though neither was the type to flaunt their elevated status. It made it a whole lot easier for Paula to get higher quality foodstuff, though - meat and dairy even - then it would've been living on plain citygov contracts.
Lloyd loved the fact that he was able to keep his wife so well-fed. She continued to eat and grow at a rate that made other adiposts jealous. By the first anniversary of her enhancement, Paula weighed 1756 cageys, more than 3800 pounds. In repose, her limbs seemed to disappear between her torso's overflowing avoirdupois.
"Havin' you downfloor is good advertising" Gin told her. For though the thought of it appalled her father, Paula Okeh-Albright had become one of adipost zone's symbols: a close-to-maxfed eyeful who had overridden years of anorekt upbringing to become her own full-bodied self.
A testament to the glory of biomed choice.
Corrected Version Copyright 2001 - OakHaus Designs
