The Bodily Council

[JFrost147]

In the world of The Bodily Council, human bodies are operated by microscopic organisms called Helpers which keep their brains whirring, blood pumping, hearts beating, and more besides.  Each body part sends a delegate to the Bodily Council, which agrees on decisions to do with the body's upkeep.  When Emily Patterson overindulges on a night out for the first time in her life, the council inside her must decide where on her body those excess calories will settle.  The judgement is made amicably, but as Emily's eating habits begin to spiral out of control, tensions arise between council members as they vie to make sure the increasing amount of extra blubber settles somewhere on her frame that they aren't responsible for.  Who knows how chaotic things will get...

Prologue

Have you ever wondered why you’re alive?  Not in the metaphysical, existential sense, but in terms of how your body works.  How it really works.

Let’s take one example.  Your heart.  At the basic level, even infants are, at some level, aware of their own heartbeat.  They can’t not be.  Go and sit in a soundproof chamber, and there’ll still be two noises you can hear.  One is the insistent thud of the ol’ ticker, and the other is a dull throb that you might be able to deduce is made by your blood flowing around your circulatory system.  It’s inescapable as a sensation.  But how does it happen?  Well, you were probably taught at an early age that the heart pumps the blood, and if you paid attention at high school and weren’t too busy passing notes to your crush or staring out the window at the fight taking place across the street, you might know that the right atrium pumps oxygen-poor blood through the tricuspid valve to the right ventricle, which sends it to the lungs through the pulmonary valve, from whence, now saturated in oxygen, it travels to the left atrium by way of the mitral valve, after which the left ventricle sends it to the rest of the body with the welcome assistance of the aortic valve.  Rinse and repeat, for around eighty years or so.

Yet to say that a valve or ventricle “pumps” surely implies intentionality.  Which implies consciousness.  True, trees photosynthesise and grow, yearning towards the nourishing sun, without having anything approaching a thought enter anything approaching a mind.  But to imagine that all these life-giving processes happen spontaneously and automatically where an organism as complex as the human body is concerned?  Come on.  Do you really believe everything they teach you in school?

The truth is, and this may come as a shock, that your heart pumps because it is pumped.  Not by you, don’t be silly.  Imagine having to will yourself to stay alive sixty times a minute.  You’d go mad.  And you have to sleep.  In fact, your body is full of minuscule beings, variously amorphous and maybe two to three times the size of a cell, only visible to each other and hidden from even the most powerful electron microscope, that do all the hard work on your behalf.  Working in teams, highly skilled and organised, they push the strands of your hair through the follicles so that it appears from the outside to be “growing”, they massage food down your gullet, through your intestines, and out via what we shall decorously call your embarkation point, and yes, they make your heart beat.  Hopefully that reassures you. 

Don’t be alarmed.  They’re not a threat.  Some of them can be difficult on a personal level, but they’re here to help.  They’re Helpers.  That’s not what they call each other, but for the purposes of our story, it’ll do.

[JFrost147]

Chapter 1

It was the end of the working day.  At least, if you were lucky enough to have a standard 9 to 5 job.  For those preparing to open up their struggling family restaurant to welcome the evening’s customers, or to work a night shift at their manufacturing plant, or to drive a freight train through the night, it was only the beginning, and as it was a cold November night, that wasn’t a welcome prospect for most.

As on the outside, so on the inside.  In the body in which our story takes place, the bosses and middle management tended to work regular hours, leaving the irregular shift patterns to those lower down the chain.  After all, you couldn’t shut everything down even while the host was sleeping; you needed teams on hand to manage breathing, Snoring Mitigation (a new department formed in response to feedback from a few kip-starved romantic partners), REM, the list goes on.  But as those were low-skilled occupations – or so the Helpers in charge liked to believe – there was no need for the real higher-ups to be present in the wee small hours of the morning as long as robust processes were drawn up and followed under light supervision from a few of the more dynamic drones.

It was for this reason that, floating its way into the appointed place in the right ventricle on a tide of soon-to-be-oxygenated blood, a – comparatively – tall Helper could be heard booming a vehement complaint at being called to a meeting at an hour it usually considered “clocking-off time”.

“There had better be a damn good reason why you’ve called this meeting, Nordstrom,” it fumed in a deep patrician voice, annoyance making its aura glow slightly pink.  “I consider my scheduled family time on a Friday night to be sacrosanct, and every second I spend here is making me later and later.”

“Which family would this be, the one you brought to the Christmas Ball or the secret one you’ve set up in a nice palatial submucosa that your partner doesn’t know about?” drawled an endomorphous form occupying the far left of the conference table.

“How the devil do you know about that?” the tall Helper snapped as pink turned to red and the infinitesimally thin membrane surrounding its internal matter began to undulate and palpate in anger.

“Everyone within a turd’s length of the ileum knows about it.  You aren’t exactly discreet, de Pfeffel.”

“The Thirty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution,” said a reedy monotone as though the previous argument hadn’t happened, “states that the holder of the rotating presidency of the Bodily Council – this being myself at the current time – reserves the right to call a meeting of said Council at less than twenty-four hours’ notice in case of an emergency, the urgency of the aforementioned situation to be determined unilaterally by the holder of the rotating presidency.”

“Fine, fine, fine,” grumbled de Pfeffel, shimmying into a space between fellow Helpers.  “If this is the way it must be, let’s do roll call.”

“I thought you had a family to get to,” sniped the endomorph, glowing yellow in mirth.

“An orderly, well-run body requires that due process is followed where required.  Let nobody say that a de Pfeffel does not abide by the rule of law, even if the law is an ass.”

“That was almost a joke by your standards.  You know, ass…oh, forget it, clearly humour’s lost on Rearenders.”

“Hang on, surely this isn’t everybody, is it?” chimed in a slightly trapezoid-shaped Helper sitting next to the president.  “There’s nobody here from Brain, Eyes, Ears, Nose…”

“The Thirty-Ninth Amendment to the Constitution states that an emergency meeting of the Bodily Council can be considered quorate even in the absence of a majority of department heads, as long as a reduced list of invited delegates has been determined – ”

“ – unilaterally by blah blah blah, we are aware of the amendment’s content, thank you,” interrupted de Pfeffel, drawing a few sniggers from Helpers on the other side of the table, as it was well known that the snobbish and lascivious being’s professed respect for the law did not extend to more than a passing interest in what it actually said.

“In short, I’ve only asked along those with a stake in the matter at hand,” said Nordstrom in a peeved tone.  “Which, in the spirit of adhering to procedure, as my colleague so helpfully and politely suggested, we are obliged to list before the meeting begins.  I’ll go first: Nordstrom, Stomach.”

“De Pfeffel, Posterior.”

“Kristeva, Breasts,” said the top-heavy shape that had been taunting de Pfeffel earlier.

“Zheng, Hips,” came a clipped voice from Kristeva’s right.

“Anibaba, Thighs,” said a warmer one, the trapezoid.

There was a pause, and then the final attendee shook itself and gabbled, “P-Palmer, Upper Arms.  Sorry, I didn’t know if I should introduce myself as I’m new, or…”  The entity tailed off lamely.

“I thought you were Braganza.  Don’t tell me that lazy swine’s sent the bloody intern!” snorted de Pfeffel.

“Surely you know what Braganza looks like by now, you’ve met them enough times,” tittered Kristeva.

“I can’t tell these bloody Upper Armers apart.  Oh, don’t give me that,” de Pfeffel spat as it sensed hostile stares in its vicinity.  “Just because our host reads this woke cultural Marxist nonsense doesn’t mean we have to bow to the PC brigade.”

“Palmer; lovely,” said Nordstrom in what it hoped was a soothing voice, but which came out as exactly the same dull thrum it had used when enumerating the details of the various constitutional amendments.  “May I extend my welcome on behalf of my fellow councillors, and myself of course.  To what do we owe Mx. Braganza’s absence?”

“Um…they impaled themselves on a cilium outside their home,” said a reddening Palmer, clearly suffering from second-hand embarrassment on their superior’s behalf.  “It’s nothing serious, but they’re currently resting up to heal the wound.  I’m authorised to act on their behalf,” the nervous Helper finished with a gently defiant look at de Pfeffel.

“Never mind what happened to that old fool; why are we here, Nordstrom?  What is this so-called ‘emergency’?  Has the pH of the gastric acid dropped by 0.1?” fulminated the overbearing Rearender sarcastically.

“That was a faulty reading, as you know,” replied Nordstrom flatly, not rising to the bait.  “No, the reason I’ve called you here it quite different.  I don’t know how to say this, but it looks like we are going to have to activate the Adipose Distribution Protocol.”

There was a stunned pause, then de Pfeffel floated up from its position around the table.  “I’m sorry, clearly I have been labouring under the misunderstanding that it is late Autumn and not the first of April.  I’m taking my leave; I’ll be billing your department for the overtime I’ve expended on this ridiculous farce.”

“It’s true, de Pfeffel,” retorted Kristeva.  “Nordstrom told us before you arrived.”

“So you’re in on this little prank too, hmm?  Well, I wasn’t born yesterday.  You expect me to believe that the oh-so-disciplined Miss Emily Patterson has overeaten?  The girl who calculates how many calories she’s allowed each day so precisely that I’ve seen her throw away the last third of a banana?  The girl who only eats dessert when she’s within spitting distance of a gym where she can burn it off?  That Emily Patterson?”

“The numbers don’t lie,” said Nordstrom.  “The stats boffins down in the stomach reported to me that Emily exceeded her RDA yesterday by 528 calories.”

“Bollocks.  You’re pulling my leg.”

“Sorry, the Adipose What Protocol?” asked Palmer uncertainly.

“This is exactly what I mean; we last had to invoke the ADP so long ago that this wet-behind-the-membranes neophyte hasn’t even heard of it!  You’re asking me to believe that the sky is green!”

Nordstrom sighed.  “I thought you’d react like this, knowing you as I do.  So I had Eyes send over a video of the incident.”

Zheng manifested an appendage and extended it to the middle of the table in order to press a button, after which a squamous column of matter rose out of it with a squelching sound.  At the top of the pillar emerged a faint light, which began to shine brighter and brighter until it was a projecting a video onto the ventricle’s inner wall.

+

A cheerful waitress ambles over to the table.  “Can I interest you in one of our desserts?”

The video becomes blurry for a second as Emily shakes her head.  “No thanks, I really shouldn’t.”

“For heaven’s sake, Ems, treat yourself!” cries the girl across the booth from the Helpers’ host.  She’s young, dark-skinned with wavy black hair and a nose stud, dressed in a red cardigan that fits her well, aside from across her generous chest, where a couple of buttons look as though they’re under pressure.

“I mean it,” says Emily lightly, as the server waits patiently, used to losing the odd minute of work time to these sorts of impromptu debate.  “I only did 4k on the treadmill tonight, so I haven’t earned dessert.  You have one though, Anita.”

“Who says you have to earn dessert?” responds Anita, laughing.

“I do.  Seriously, order one; I’m happy to wait.”

“No way, I’m not eating pudding alone.”

“But you just said – ”

“I said I didn’t have any qualms about having dessert, not that I didn’t have any about ordering it on my own.  Big difference.”

“Ever the logician,” chuckles Emily.  The waitress begins to tap her foot, partly out of impatience and partly to remind the jesting girls of her presence.

“Just the bill, please,” says Anita.

“Don’t be silly!” exclaims Emily.  “If you want something then have something.”

“That’s just what I’ve been saying to you!  Why are you telling me to follow advice that you won’t follow?”

“Because I’m a dirty hypocrite.  Didn’t we establish that when I got my dad to drop me off in his 4x4 at that climate protest?”

“Look,” says Anita, her tone more sombre.  “I know you’ve had a shitty week.  The work placement application that didn’t come off, that guy ghosting you on Tinder.  It’s okay to comfort eat.  I’m not saying you should do it as much as I do, but one ‘unearned’ dessert can’t hurt, can it?  Especially not for a skinny bitch like you!”

“Okay,” replies Emily.  The top and bottom five per cent of the screen turn to black, which the council recognises as a tell-tale sign that she’s smiling.  “Can I get a slice of the lemon cheesecake?”

“And I’ll have the tiramisu,” beams Anita.  The waitress, no doubt breathing a sigh of relief that she no longer has to bear witness to this little drama, takes the menus from the two girls and goes off to tell the kitchen.

Emily and Anita begin to talk about the aforementioned ghosting, which de Pfeffel insists Zheng fast forward through.  The council only catches distorted snippets of phrases such as “idiot manchild” and “never good enough for you anyway” until the server skitters into view again and Zheng hurriedly whacks the gently pulsing play button.

The cocoa powder-dusted tiramisu is placed in front of Anita, who sniffs it and pretends to sway from the alcohol content: a favourite gag of hers.  Emily, meanwhile, is presented with a thick slice of lemon cheesecake including a crumbly base, a fluffy middle and a practically luminous yellow swirl in the centre, topped off with a generous scoop of already melting vanilla ice cream dotted with little black pods.

“Sorry, I didn’t ask for it with ice cream,” protests Emily.  But by that point the waitress has gone…

+

“Now are you convinced, de Pfeffel?” inquired Kristeva hotly.  “Or is that just fake news to you?”

“And you’re certain she didn’t complete any exercise after that?” said de Pfeffel.

“Eyes reviewed the footage in full,” explained Nordstrom with a weary air.  “Following the meal, Emily and Anita walked back to their house, after which Anita joined the menfolk in the living room watching Naked Attraction, and Emily retired to her room.  She completed twenty situps – not nearly enough to burn off that dessert – then clearly changed her mind about working out.  She watched Netflix for an hour or so, then went to sleep.  Leading to, as I believe I have already stated, 528 excess calories that are going to need to be stored somewhere.  So, as per the aforementioned protocol, which states that a unanimous vote of the Bodily Council is needed in order to reach a decision regarding the location of said storage, do I have anyone willing to put their department forward?”

“You can count me out,” grumbled de Pfeffel.  “I’m not spending any time travelling back to HQ and organising a party to manifest those blasted fat cells.  You’ve already made me late for my rendezvous with Brownlow.”

“So it’s Brownlow this weekend, is it?” carped Kristeva mirthlessly as de Pfeffel puffed itself up as if to tell the catty Breastian that it had exhausted its permitted allocation of barbs.

“Why not allocate it all equally?” asked Palmer in a soft voice.  “That seems fair to me.”

“With respect, it wouldn’t be an efficient use of resources to do that,” replied Anibaba.  “528 calories is, what, not even one-fifth of a pound?  We could all go back to our regions and engage a few workers to distribute the fat, but it would barely seem worth the trouble when you divide such a small amount by six.  Better that one of us takes the hit and saves everyone else’s time and effort.”

“Is that your way of volunteering, Anibaba?” came a sound from de Pfeffel’s direction.

“I’ve got theatre tickets to see the Pancreatic Players tonight.”

“I’ll do it,” said Kristeva nonchalantly.  “I don’t mind.  My partner’s been a pain in the tits lately, so I don’t mind pulling a late one.  I’ll see if Maharaj is around and can set up a team for me; they owe me a favour.  Besides, if Emily gets a bit more size up top, maybe the next guy won’t ghost her.”

De Pfeffel laughed boorishly, but nobody else did.  Sometimes Kristeva’s humour could become cruel, and jokes at Emily’s expense were considered very poor form by – almost – every Helper.

“Thank you very much, Kristeva,” intoned Nordstrom, choosing diplomatically to ignore the last sentence spoken.  “Please report back to me and the rest of the council at your earliest convenience, so that we might share best practice with regards to workflows and discuss possible new advances in fat distribution technology.  It would be advantageous for us to know what works well in the event of this happening again.”

“Come off it,” retorted de Pfeffel.  “What are the chances of that happening?”

[Lt. Chubs]

Hey, this is really good! A cool, new idea, and you write very well. I’m glad you included the short section actually featuring Emily - that was helpful. Please continue this!

[scl04]

This is a really interesting concept for a weight gain story, I'm looking forward to see how things continue!

[Guest ratetankmark]

You know, this is a really awesome concept for a weight gain story, as has been said and I just love your style of writing and how you've made it easy as can be to understand what's going on.  I look forward to seeing more of this from you, man. Good to see that you're writing.  

[Hoss Delgado]

So the idea and theme are intriguing on their own, but holy moly, your writing is just top notch! The banter between the different Helpers and the way they are sectioned off by different body parts works so well. Reminds me a bit of the world of Osmosis Jones. Very much looking forward to reading more of this!

[JFrost147]

Wow, everyone's been so kind! 🙂 You'll be happy to know I've started Chapter 2 and will hopefully have it done by the end of the weekend.

[crtwrght_mrk]

This is a great concept, although I was expecting Palmer to get completely railroaded so props to Kristeva for saving the new guy.  Looking forward to more.

[JFrost147]

Chapter 2

“Nordstrom, Stomach.”

“De Pfeffel, Posterior.”

“Kristeva, Breasts.”

“Zheng, Hips.”

“Anibaba, Thighs.”

“Braganza, Upper Arms.”

“Nice of you to join us, Braganza,” sneered de Pfeffel, practically vibrating with their habitual contempt.  “Recovered from your little mishap, have we?”

“If you call being impaled almost through the width of your corpus a mere ‘mishap’,” retorted Braganza in a quavering tone that betrayed the advancing age of the Upper Arms’ head honcho, “then I can only assume that you yourself are as tough and hardy in the face of physical peril and injury as they come.  In the face of all available evidence.”

“You must forgive my impertinence.  You may regard my black mood simply as an unfortunate consequence of my being called to this godforsaken organ at less than an hour’s notice again.”  The high-born Rearender turned to its left to face the president.  “I mean, really.  Could this not have waited until next week, Nordstrom?  Or did you just want to make our Friday nights as full of tedium as yours tend to be?”

“When I clock off, I go home to my partner and offspring and we regale each other with stories about our day, and after that we play games together as a family,” replied Nordstrom blandly.  “Regard that as tedious if you wish, but that really says more about you than it does me.”

Kristeva’s aura began to glow a shimmering green with spiteful pleasure; this was the closest thing to a “zinger” that Nordstrom had ever come out with.

“Spare me your moralising,” spat de Pfeffel, “and tell us why we’re here.  Don’t tell me you’re going to start harping on about fat cells again.  We sorted it last time, didn’t we?  Kristeva would deal with it and feed back in the unlikely event that Emily overate again.  And seeing as I don’t believe that to be the case…”

Kristeva and Nordstrom’s forms briefly took on the same ovoid shape; a gesture fulfilling the same function as what humans call “exchanging a look”.

“Zheng, would you kindly recite the figures with which I provided you prior to the meeting?” requested Nordstrom.

“On Friday 3^rd December,” began Zheng without preamble, “Emily’s caloric intake was 349 above her recommended daily allowance, or RDA for the sake of brevity.  On Friday 10^th December, Emily’s caloric intake was 411 above her RDA.  On…”

“Now hang on just one minute!” spluttered de Pfeffel.  “How is it that this is the first I’m hearing of this matter?”

“Oh, shut your yap and let them finish,” replied Braganza.  “You can throw your toys out of the pram at the end.”

“Thank you, Braganza.”  Zheng’s aura briefly glowing in thanks.  “On Friday 17^th December, Emily’s caloric intake was 499 above her RDA.  The next spate of overindulgence was over Christmas, wherein Emily consumed 1932 excess calories over a three-day period surrounding Christmas Day itself, and 576 extra calories of a mostly alcoholic nature on New Year’s Eve.  That concludes the figures for 2021.  Would you like me to enumerate the days wherein she burned more calories than she took in before I proceed to 2022?”

“Thank you, Zheng,” said Nordstrom.  “I think that will do.  I can see that de Pfeffel has a point to raise.”

“I’ve got more than a point to raise!” fulminated de Pfeffel, now coloured even redder than the still-obvious piercing wound in Braganza’s middle.  “Why on earth have you hidden this from the council, Nordstrom?  A conspiracy is what this is!  The deep state rears its ugly backside again!”

“The Forty-Seventh Amendment to the Constitution,” responded Nordstrom as if reciting from the statute book itself, “stipulates that a task agreed upon by the Bodily Council may be extended in duration by way of agreement between the president and the member deputised to carry out said task, without recourse to a full vote of the Council.”

“You wouldn’t have a problem with that, would you, de Pfeffel?” said Kristeva impishly.  “Seeing as you’ve got such respect for the Constitution and the rule of law.”

“If memory serves,” spoke up Anibaba, speaking for the first time in the meeting, “this provision was inserted into our law when, in the midst of a longer-than-expected bout of gastroenteritis, a certain entity present around this table objected to being consulted every time extended hours needed to be agreed for the Bowels team, on the grounds that they didn’t want to be bothered with such base and disgusting matters more than was necessary.”

That shut de Pfeffel up.  At least, for a few seconds.

“What you seem to be trying to tell me, in this disagreeably roundabout way, is that all fat cells generated since our last emergency meeting have been added to Emily’s breasts.  Is that so?”

“Quick on the uptake today, aren’t you?” replied Kristeva.

“And you don’t mind the extra work?”

“Some of us take pride in what we do and aren’t constantly looking for ways to cut corners and leave the office early.  And anyway, I’ve been able to redeploy the unneeded staff from the Milk Production team that someone at the last full Council meeting wouldn’t stop stamping their pissy little appendages until I agreed to hire.  What was it you said?  ‘Emily’s bound to fall pregnant any day now?’”

“She’s 20 years old,” harrumphed de Pfeffel.  “Prime breeding age!”

“Maybe in the 14^th century,” shot back Kristeva.  “Mind you, that’s where most of your opinions seem to come from.”

“If I may interject,” said Anibaba before the two could manifest clubbing implements and come to blows, “are we to infer that the reason this is being raised now is because the current arrangement is no longer sufficient?”

“Correct,” replied Nordstrom.

“And why might that be?” inquired de Pfeffel.  “Kristeva seems happy to continue this task with the additional workers I generously procured for them – you’re welcome, by the way – so what’s the problem?”

“Rather than tell you, I think it’s best that I just show you what the consequences of continuing would be.  You will each find in front of you a device that our scientists located in the cerebral cortex have invented.  It is modelled closely on the contraption that humans call an ‘iPad’.”

“So that’s what that little gizmo is,” breathed Braganza with the sense of wonder that the not-quite-very-elderly often experience when faced with new technology.  “I thought it was a kind of fancy plate.”

“Eyes can send footage straight to multiple devices upon my request, so no more faffing around with that desiccated old projector.”

“How do we turn it on?”

“You simply pick it up and shake it.  This functionality is modelled closely on the miniature computer that humans call an ‘Etch-a-Sketch’.”

“My god, those science boffins of ours are brilliant, aren’t they?”

“Let us each review the video, and then hopefully everybody” – Nordstrom leaned in de Pfeffel’s direction – “will realise that we’ll need to make changes to how we’re doing things.”

At this instruction, each member of the six around the table, some more eagerly than others, extended long tendrils of matter from the sides of their globular forms – more earthbound thinkers might have termed them “arms” – and gripped the devices at each end, shaking them vigorously as a human child might have shaken a snow globe during the festive season just passed.

+

Emily is stood in front of a mirror.  But not Emily as the Council knows her.  Or, more saliently, as any of her university friends who haven’t seen her since before Christmas know her.  Whereas Emily’s breasts had previously been firm, modest and perfectly proportioned with her lithe, athletic frame, she is now – and there is no other word for it – busty.  Quite noticeably busty.  Which is all the more apparent because Emily is naked and braless, her tits full and pillowy and sagging down under gravity’s inexorable force, her light pink areolas expanded from the size of a 10p coin to the circumference of a ping-pong ball.  The fruits of Kristeva and their team’s labours are very, very apparent.

She blow-dries her long blonde hair, every wiggle of her wrist as she tries to direct the jet of hot air to those still-damp areas causing a corresponding shaking in her chest.  The tablets the Council held vibrate as Emily speaks, letting the sound waves travel directly into their bodies so that everybody has their own audio stream and thus preventing six separate channels, each slightly out of sync with the others, converging in the air and rendering her words an indecipherable muddle.  These are the innovations you need to make as a designer when you know that headphones aren’t going to be feasible on account of the technology’s users not having ears.  Or heads.

“I know, I can’t wait to see you and the guys next week either!  Well, maybe not Rob,” says Emily in her pleasant Welsh lilt.  “Oh, I know he’s a nice boy, he is, but if he leaves his muddy rugby kit on the back of the chairs in the dining room one more time I’m going to scream.  What do you mean, what’s that noise?  I’m just drying my hair.  Yes, I do wash it, thank you very much.  You’re such a bitch!”

“Is she talking to herself?  Should we contact Brain and ask what’s going on?” says Braganza with an air of grave concern.

“Can’t you see the phone on the side?” laughs Kristeva.  “She’s obviously chatting to a friend.”

Sure enough, once Emily clicks the switch on the hairdryer and sets it down, a second voice can be heard coming from her mobile, quieter and distorted, but recognisably that of Anita, the bubbly friend with whom Emily had been enjoying dinner – and that “unearned” dessert – in the footage screened at the last emergency meeting.

“What are you washing your hair for?  Special occasion, I assume?” jokes Anita.

“As it happens, I’ve got a date tonight,” replies Emily in an oddly insistent voice that mixes equal notes of pride and nerves.

Anita squeals in excitement down the phone.  “Lucky you!  What’s his name?”

“He’s called Ollie, we went to high school together.  Not really spoken very much since then but we reconnected on one of those Facebook groups where you share stories from school.  You know, the sort of stuff that was considered ‘banter’ at the time but when you look back at it was completely inappropriate.  He’s funny.  Quite good-looking too.”

“I can’t believe you lot are still using Facebook.  Must be a private school thing.  So, what are you wearing?  How about that blue dress you wore to the Summer Ball last year?  It looks amazing on you.”

“Um, could do,” says Emily in an uncertain tone, squeezing her swollen left breast unconsciously.  “It’s just…I’m not sure it’ll fit that well at the moment.”

“Feeling the Christmas bulge, are we?” giggles Anita.  “Go on, what’s the damage?”

Three bloody cup sizes, Emily wants to say, though the Council cannot sense it, not until the tablets start to transmit thoughts as well as sound.  “2 and a half pounds.”

“God, is that all?” laughs Anita.  “I wish I’d only put on that little.  I’ve been eating like a pig.  You should have seen me on Christmas Day, I didn’t stop!  Mum and Dad bought some fancy chocolates and I saw off the whole box before bed.  They were so good.  But for real, Ems, I’m glad you’ve been enjoying your food.  If you can’t indulge at Christmas, when can you?”

“I guess…” says Emily.  The truth is, she doesn’t know whether she’s been overeating or not.  She’d decided to stop counting calories so strictly over the holiday period, primarily out of a growing sense that such close attention to the numbers wasn’t normal.  Most people who are in shape, she reasoned, manage to do so just by eating right and exercising, not this regimented way of living that frankly isn’t much fun.  If I can maintain my weight simply by being sensible, then so much the better, and that will free up brain space that can be better spent on, for example, revising for my increasingly looming final exams.  And as far as she can tell, she has been keeping up her good habits.  Sure, she ate heartily on Christmas Day, asked Mum for a second big plate of turkey, gravy and vegetables, and then a third, but that was all part of the plan; normal people overeat on occasion and burn off the calories later.  Which she has been doing, as far as she’s concerned, with her situps and crunches before bed, and her twice-weekly trips to the gym down the road from her middle-class parents’ well-appointed four-bedroom house.  Her mind does not associate the growth in her breasts with any imbalance between the twin axes of calories in and calories burned.  Girls don’t get bigger up top through turkey and stuffing and the odd mid-afternoon chocolate bar or couple of biscuits without seeing an effect on their stomach.  That wouldn’t make any sense at all.  She spent some time googling “breast expansion” last week and, after wading through quite a lot of erotic literature, came upon the term “macromastia”: a condition where a woman’s breasts, due to a hormonal imbalance, begin to grow rapidly and uncontrollably, often to ridiculous and unmanageable sizes.  She can’t get the word out of her mind.

“Well there you go!” trills Anita, blithely unaware of her friend’s worries.  “Right, I’ll let you finish getting ready.  Don’t worry about those couple of extra pounds; you’re gorgeous, you’re brilliant, and you got this!  Okay?”

“Okay,” smiles Emily, and presses the red button to end the call.  Noticing that time is getting on, she hurriedly walks into her bedroom to start getting dressed.  She doesn’t want to keep Ollie waiting.  Opening her bedside drawer, she pulls out a bra, purchased in haste with Christmas money just before New Year, black and lacy with an underwire.  Emily looks at the label.  34D.  She puts it back.  That one hasn’t fit since the first few days of January.  She extracts an even more recently bought undergarment, this one white, cheap and more functional – as who knows how long this one will fit either – and begins to put it on.  The clasps meet around the back with no problem, but Emily’s success, or lack thereof, in making the bra fit becomes quickly obvious to the Council when she looks down and they see a good inch of each soft orb spilling over the cups.

“God damn it!” mutters Emily, clearly shaken.  “Why won’t you stop.  Fucking.  Growing?”

+

The videos on the tablets ended, and Nordstrom allowed the other Council members some time to process what they had seen, before speaking.

“As you can see, our current policy of diverting all excess calories absorbed by Emily’s body solely to her breasts is unsustainable.  If she were to gain 5 more pounds under such circumstances, and I have seen nothing that would persuade me such an eventuality is not very possible, they would swell to what humans term a ‘J cup’.  Considering how much distress Emily’s growth to date is clearly placing her under – about which I can provide evidentiary data from Brain upon request – coupled with concerns I have received from Lacroix at Back over the strain on his department’s resources that a large amount of additional breast tissue would occasion, I propose that we consider alternative protocols for distributing fat cells in the future.  I thank Mx. Kristeva for their work, but it is neither fair nor desirable for them and their workers to continue to shoulder this task alone.  I open the floor to suggestions.”

“It seems obvious to me,” said Braganza without much hesitation.  “We should distribute the fat evenly around the body parts for which we are responsible.  Each department apart from Kristeva’s shall account for one fifth of the work until such time as we agree Emily’s breasts are now in proportion with the rest of her body, after which we should begin once more to add cells there – if excess calories are still entering the system by that point, which may not even be the case – after which the division shall become one sixth each.”

“This is communism if ever I saw it,” protested de Pfeffel.  “You may as well put Jeremy Corbyn in charge of things round here if this is the way you’re going to go on!”

“It’s nothing of the sort,” said Zheng firmly and passionately.  Everyone else around the table crammed whatever words they may have been about to say back in their vocalising membranes.  It was the first time any of them had heard the Helper responsible for Emily’s narrow hips speak with such emotion.  “It’s a way of soothing Emily’s emotional state, and considering this is the year of her final university exams, on which so much of her future rides, that should take priority as far as I’m concerned.”

“Damn right,” agreed Kristeva.  “For god’s sake, de Pfeffel, show some compassion one of these days.”

“We’ll just see what getting a ** belly does for Emily’s ‘emotional state’,” responded de Pfeffel, the last two words dripping in venom.  “Because mark my words, it is going to happen if she keeps on like this.  But if you idiots are set on this course, let nobody say I stood in your way.  As for you, Braganza, I see what you’re doing.  All this Marxist talk of ‘equitable distribution’ sounded very familiar from last time.  That Palmer’s got you wrapped round their little appendage, haven’t they?  Is this what you two do for pillow talk?”

“You are the last entity to make such insinuations, from what I hear,” sniffed Braganza in a dignified voice.

Before de Pfeffel could snipe back, or Kristeva could utter similar sentiments much more rudely, the Council members began to sense a loud, quickening throbbing, as if Emily’s heart had started to beat faster for some reason.

“What’s that all about?” asked Anibaba jovially.

“I’d say it sounds like that date is going pretty well after all…” said Kristeva.

[scl04]

Another great chapter, I really like how things are shaping up (LOL) and of course I'll be waiting to see how things continue now that the calories will begin to be divided for each part where they are stored.

[JFrost147]

Do feel free to follow my DA account (and favourite and comment on the chapters there if you like!) - I've also got on my page a couple of interactive WG text adventures I wrote years ago, which people seem to enjoy 

https://www.deviantart.com/jfrost147

[crtwrght_mrk]

Very interesting, particularly the part where at least some of the Helpers actively consider what Emily wants/would want rather than simply performing tasks.  Given that the stomach is presumably one of the easiest places to store excess fat as well as one of the least desirable this seems like a nice setup.  Also, I like that the man in charge of the rear is himself an ass (and also appears to cling to 1950s gender stereotypes, reminds me of an evolutionary psychology professor I once had the misfortune to hear lecture).  Looking forward to more.

[Guest OriginalPenNameReturns]

cool story! thanks for sharing