chapter 5 - the slow waddle to the last restaurant challenge

After such an impressive display I thought how hard it would be to one up myself at my final challenge but that did not stay a thought in my head very long. My company received a buyout bid from a local billionaire's trust who apparently had found our work good enough to put down more than $50,000,000 on buying out the company and its patents for permanent majority ownership. We were going to be sized up and ahead of that our division needed to close the books on a few projects that fell onto what remains of my lap. For the next two months I was working 12-18 hour days 6 days a week just to keep up the demand for things to get done at work. I entered into a major withdrawal from the world as a result because I knew the opportunity I had, if I could be the Swiss Army knife my bosses thought I was, I'd be taking home twice my already stupidly large salary. My every minute needed to be devoted to something or someone else and as a result I decided to make my eating easier and switch to an all liquid diet of the high calorie meal replacement shakes. The website I had been ordering from finally lost their ability to keep up when I moved up to my new 5 case a day consumption rate at 14,310 calories a meal and plenty of “snacking” in-between I was practically superhuman in my gluttony. I called around the manufacturers sales department and got a line on a Los Angeles distributor who, given the quantity and regularity of my ordering, had no problems with becoming my supplier. Dropping off 20 cases twice a week let me stay working longer, drawing up a new search algorithm or debugging every idiot's mistake out of our code. I had a mini-fridge delivered that could hold 3 cases worth of 8 oz boxes and set it up in the space between my bed and desk allowing me easy access to keep my belly satisfied at all hours of the day. My movements became so infrequent I could end up only standing 2 times in a day to relieve myself and of course transition from the bed to the desk or in reverse. I replaced my wastebasket with a pair of 5 gallon buckets since I was filling the one between meals and the handles made them easy to have carried out of my bedroom. My roommate who had been recently laid off and was between jobs agreed to take a huge discount in rent to receive my deliveries and keep me restocked and take out the trash without questioning why I needed to stay seated naked and chugging enough shakes to supply a hospital. My 10xl work polo shirt was still functioning when I had to turn on my webcam and look professional but in reality could barely cover more than a foot of my breathtaking belly below my pillowy chest rolls but that didn’t matter anymore. The days melted together and weeks were rolling by so fast that I could barely guess the date by anything other than the deadlines I had to meet, day or night didn't make much difference for me, I kept one hand on the keyboard and the other was reaching for the next meal replacement shake and didn’t look too closely in the mirror at what was happening.

When the metaphorical dawn finally broke I emerged from my bedroom a very happy man. I had hit every deadline, met every request and the transfer to the new ownership was complete. My rewards for more than two months of nonstop work began to be hard to keep track of. Everyone above me knew that I had proven to be a critical linchpin in the software side and as new vacancies began to open in management my name was becoming ubiquitous as a candidate for consideration. For the work I had put in thus far the small amount of stock I had as an annual bonus were being bought out at 2x their value or nearly 150k! Quite a nest egg for retirement. Better yet I was also nominated for a performance bonus by any and every manager who had put things on my plate during the transition and HR had told me to keep an eye out in the mail for a check. My future felt secure in a way I couldn't have imagined and that wasn't even the best part. Driven by that thought of utter hedonistic bliss I had seen while eating the meat mountain I had been drinking my high calorie meal replacement shakes near continuously. There wasn't a moment of any day now where I wasn't thinking about trying to eat something. The weight put on by my lifestyle was unbelievable as well. Checking the calendar it had been 72 days since the internal announcement about the buyout which started the week after my trip to Skinny Sam and Fat Dave's. I knew that I was 690 when I stopped by, waddling onto the scale for the first time since then yielded an unexpected number. I knew I had gotten bigger, not bothering wearing clothes beyond the polo I kept on a hook next to the desk had given a poor impression of how much however until my little LED readout I had mounted on the wall read back 832. I had put on two pounds a day… EVERY day without trying and had become an enormous whale beyond even cable TV show grade obesity. I tried putting on my 10xl tracksuit bottoms and after untying the waistband cord found they could still get pulled up under my belly which I could feel on my knees. Covering the apron in a shirt I soon discovered was a lost cause as well, my gut jutted out several feet before beginning it's cascade downwards and was more flesh than the 12xl shirts could contain. Scouring the internet I figured it was the last stop when I found 15XLT shirts and sweatpants, after this I’d have to find someone to make my wardrobe on custom order from I guess… I’d muse on that after my case of shakes. I went into the tailor on my first weekday off in longer than I could remember. I had called around and warned them ahead of time that I’d be a very special order and found a guy who said he’d done custom suits for guys my size and for the occasional movie production as well, he’d be able to measure me and have everything ready in less than a week and I couldn’t believe my luck, only in LA! I went into the tailor on my first weekday off in longer than I could remember. The man was a portly fellow himself, probably on the lower side of the 300s and was quite the professional and patient with my limitations, I hadn’t tried standing for more than the few feet of walking I needed to so it came as a shock how little I could do anymore. The angular mirrors at the shop gave me a very blunt view of the damage I had inflicted but instead of the horror I’d expect most would have, it was pride I felt. My awakened gluttony has gifted me with the best time of my life pushing myself to the limit of mobility but I knew that wasn’t going to stop me anymore. After picking out a black tux for the party and a grey suit in case I had to make any other appearances in the office I warned him that I had put on quite a lot in just a few months and didn’t see it slowing down and he said he’d throw every trick in the book to make sure it had plenty of ability to be let out. Given I was already measured from top to bottom standing and very importantly sitting! I asked the tailor for my measurements and commissioned to enjoy the rollover from spring into summer and visit my last challenge in an appropriate style for a boardwalk ice cream parlour I had thought about long ago and pulled up a bookmark and threw enough money at them that they couldn’t refuse to make it a rush order ready for overnight shipping before the weekend.