Chapter 1 - they came in peace

When I was young, my father taught me that nothing in this world is free. No matter how small a gesture, there is always a price tag attached to it. The greater the gesture, the greater the price. He believed that generosity always came with an ulterior motive and he warned me regularly to not accept anything from anyone at face value. He applied this philosophy to everything; banks, neighbors, government agencies. He had little trust to go around.

Throughout my life and until recently I believed my father to be little more than a cynic; a crotchety old pessimist who's skepticism of others bordered on psychosis. Despite being fully aware of this, my father's lessons had stuck with me for a long time. As a result, I've never owed anyone a dime; yet being an overly suspicious twenty something had left me with few friends and even fewer lovers. So after spending my 25th birthday alone, I decided to make a change. I was going to spend the next year learning how to let my guard down, promising myself that I would not spend another birthday alone and afraid. It was a dumb resolution to make looking back on it and as I sit here in waiting on my well-padded rump, I can't help but look back and wish I hadn't rejected my father's teachings.

Allow me to explain and fill you in on some background. They came a couple months into my resolution. I was laying in bed with my new boyfriend when it came on the news. A meeting of the United Nations interrupted by an alien visitor. Nine feet tall with a massive cranium and emotionless expression. He greeted the body and all of us watching at home with an issue of salutations. His lips didn't move, but we could all hear him; his words being translated into whatever language was receiving the broadcast. He was a Kanamit from the planet Kanamite. He said he came in peace and that his people wished to help the human race.

I initially thought the offer was too good to be true, but as the rest of the world began to accept the Kanamits, I forced myself to become less suspicious. In a matter of weeks, they put an end to hunger, energy shortages, nuclear proliferation, and even war. Anything we could want, the Kanamits were willing to give us. I spent those early days thinking of what they got in return from all this. What motivation could they possibly have for helping us? This question kept me up at night, but as my new friends and the world seemed to disregard my concerns as mere paranoia, I began to loosen up and eventually stop worrying, especially when cryptographers translated the title of the book they carried around.

I assumed the tome was some sort of religious text when I first saw it on the news. My immediate thought was that they were missionaries who planned to force their alien religion on us. But when the title was revealed as "To Serve Man", all assumed that it was simply an instruction manual on humans and how best to aid us. In the end, after the United Nations declared that the Kanamits had nothing but benevolent intentions, the entire planet quickly came to trust them, including myself.

Members of the Kanamit race soon began to flood onto our planet from their ships, integrating themselves into human society as civil servants. They could make anything, provide anything, solve every problem. They were like living angels, granting us mortals with God's blessing from above. With this divine intervention, we were living in a new age Garden of Eden, where money was obsolete and all things came in abundance. But with that abundance, came shadows. This shining Utopia had black clouds over it, yet none of us were looking up. We were all too busy looking at our plates.

You don't need to be a scientist to know that an abundance of food will result in an abundance of eating and that a lack of motivation to be active will result laziness. All around the world, businesses shut down due to lack of demand. Jobs were lost, but no one cared. Anything you could ever want could be produced by a Kanamit in seconds. And as more of them moved in, the easier it was to obtain goods. Clothes, technology, food. Especially food.

I don't know how they did it, but their versions of our food somehow tasted even better than the originals. Everything was cooked and seasoned to perfect without a hint of human error. It was better than sex and I wasn't the only one who thought so. Romantic nights with my boyfriend changed from touching each other to eating with each other. Why make love when you could eat a chocolate cake so good it gave your tongue an orgasm?

When meeting with my friends for lunch dates, I learned that they had been doing the exact same thing. It seemed like everybody was. And you didn't have to look far to see that our Kanamit-enhanced lifestyles had been having an affect on our figures.

It had been five months since the Kanamit's friendly invasion when I finally noticed how fat everyone was getting. I don't mean everyone in my friend group. I don't mean everyone in my neighborhood. I don't even mean everyone in my country. I mean literally everyone. The entire planet. I looked at my friends and suddenly saw nothing but rounding faces and bulging stomachs, both being stuffed with rich desserts as crumbs gently fell onto increasingly tight clothing.

I looked around the restaurant and saw the same thing at every table. A young couple, a family of four, another friend group just like mine. All pushing the boundaries of obesity or surpassing them by a country mile. This realization startled me. If I hadn't noticed that everyone around me had gained weight, was it possible that I had gained and hadn't even noticed?