Chapter 1

Vanessa couldn’t remember how long she’d spent studying.

Sure, she’d been cramming for the past week nonstop, but she couldn’t exactly remember how long she’d been studying for her entire life.

Her early years in elementary were easy, as were middle school, but when the reality of high school had hit, she’d begun to hit the books and the gym twice as hard as ever.

She’d thought she’d be able to earn herself a good future by getting good enough scores to find a spot at a top university, but the moment she arrived she’d realized she’d set herself up for failure.

Her prerequisite course was a simple law class all students had to take at some point. A refresher for anyone in a business degree, really.

Vanessa didn’t really care for business, wanting to be a model once she graduated, but she wanted something to fall back on once she aged out of the career.

So, as she sat in that first semester class of her’s with a proud smile on her face while jotting down notes, on the screen came the informative slide that made the room so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop.

Adephagia’s Law.

The professor of the class, a slim and tall woman, ran through the slides as though it were no big deal. But to every student in that room, it felt like life or death.

The history of this law coming into place was peculiar and had a long and complex history that required a few things to happen before it could ever come into discussion.

A lawsuit here, some troubles there, one large food manufacturer sues a health organization, fists get involved, a couple of threats. The usual.

But either way, for twenty years now Vanessa had grown up knowing this law like the back of her hand as did everyone else in that classroom.

The nation wanted to encourage higher ranking employees. Fewer retail workers and more doctors and lawyers.

Their idea?

Punishment.

It was difficult to enlist into the nation and riots against it surely happened, but at this point no one really seemed to fight it.

In fact, some people even supported it.

Only the best people of the nation should be allowed not only their intelligence, but their beauty as well. Only the tall, slender, beautiful people could truly be idolized as the genuine ideal.

Not to mention there was starting to be an issue with the youngest of the workforce contributing only the bare minimum the same way they did with their university and college work.

So, legislation brought into place a solution to help everyone out.

Out of every graduating year for universities and colleges, all bachelor-degree students would be in a theoretical competition with one another. Reach for the top and you’ll find yourself a cozy new 9-to-5 to live out. But if you find yourself in the bottom 20% of your graduating class, however? Well…

That’s where Pharma Atem Technologies comes into play.

Instead of job hunting, the bottom ranking students would be pulled out of the work field and given the label of a cow.

That wasn’t the word, per say, but it was what most people Vanessa’s age called them.

The actual names of these “employees” of Pharma A. Tech would change from time to time for public image purposes but it happened so frequently that the little nickname had stuck instead.

These young adults would be marked with a small chip in their upper arms and start their life as a product sampler. They would report to a particular office or factory for tastings, eat at certain restaurants for lifestyle and living quality checks, and then return home the same way the regular working force did.

The problem?

They got fat.

Massively, absurdly fat.

At times, it felt as though the word cow wasn’t fitting. Vanessa would walk down the street and pass through a restaurant window just long enough to see these morbidly obese people stuffing themselves with food to what seemed like the point of exploding.

Their faces swelled, their chins grew in size, the flab of their arms would jiggle with a single breath, some couldn’t walk properly due to their size, and the women in particular seemed to be accustomed to their barrel sized breasts and asses while men carried rotund stomachs that could practically rub against the floor.

It was enthralling and terrifying and exciting all at once in a way the community wanted.

They were meant to be cautionary tales of going off the right track. Laziness and apathy were one way tickets to becoming immobile pigs and cows grazing on artificial slop that fast food restaurants and junk food factories shoved down their throats.

No one was actually sure anymore what happened if you reached immobility since no one ever seemed to get that large in the public eye.

But, either way, this was Vanessa’s world and she was determined to succeed.

She’d flown through her four years of schooling with flying colors, getting perfect or nearly-perfect scores while participating in extracurriculars when given the opportunity. She’d joined a sorority and had found friends to spend sparing moments with when she wasn’t studying. Overall, she’d found things to be going her way.

That all came crashing around her one month ago when someone had posted photos to social media of her university’s internal ranking sheet.

So deep in her world of studying, Vanessa had forgotten that everyone else around her was also studying their hardest to escape a plump fate.

Out of a graduating class of over 3,000 students, nearly 400 were in the top one percent with perfect scores. These students had never achieved an individual test score or assignment grade less than an A.

Below that, the percentages shifted. Photographs showed that a solid 40 percent of students beneath these perfect scores were only one or two points away from being perfect. Maybe a single wrong answer one time in a particular classroom or they’d been given half a point instead of a full one.

But as Vanessa scrolled her phone with sweating hands, she found herself coming to a terrifying realization.

She was in the bottom 30 percent of students.

With a single B+ dropping her overall score, it was enough to drag her to the near bottom. When she’d scrolled to the very end of the list, she saw it was a student with only two more B’s than she had her entire four years at the university.

The competition of her peers had been the one thing she hadn’t paid attention to, too prideful of a person to believe that anyone could truly be a threat to her. But now it was all falling apart with only a few weeks left of her final semester.

In a panic, she’d shot up from her bed in her dorm room and rushed to her desk to study despite it being an hour past midnight.

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The dark circles under Vanessa’s eyes were puffy and prominent. Usually she would pay close attention to her appearance but she’d been too wrapped up in her world of note taking and reading that she hadn’t bothered.

Her long blonde hair was dull and even looked greasy from a lack of showers. Her normally perfect skin was dull and even appeared dry instead of it’s usual supple touch. Her nails were bitten to the nub, she had chapped lips, and even her clothing was casual and wrinkled.

Yawning as she read one of her science textbooks while chugging down coffee, Vanessa made sure to stay as lucid as possible. She needed to succeed and keep her score higher than ever before. This was a final cumulative exam for her entire degree and she needed to make it work.

Walking up to her side was a friend she’d made at sorority.

Bebe was a sweet, bubbly girl with a jiggling set of E cups, acrylic nails that could poke an eye out, and a stomach flat enough that her hip bones jutted out the sides. But today, she’d ripped off her nails and sported a plain t-shirt with sweat pants as did every other student surrounding the pair.

Her hand shook as she drank from a bright pink energy drink. “God, how much did you sleep?” She asked in a high pitched voice.

“Ugh, like,” Vanessa groaned, her snotty valley-girl accent noticeable even a distance away, “Nothing at all! I’ve been cramming bio and chemistry because I keep messing up these stupid formulas.”

Bebe whined, reading her own set of notes. “Tell me about it. Three hours of beauty sleep and two showers this week, and I’m still trying to figure out the division sequence of a stupid fractional square root!”

Similarly to Vanessa, Bebe also wanted to be a model. She wanted her body to be lusted over and desired but she’d chosen a degree in English due to her prolific skills as a writer. Thusly, mathematics wasn’t exactly her strong suit. The poor girl had thousands upon thousands of her family’s money spent on private tutoring to make sure that their darling daughter didn’t end up as a globe in the next five years.

Both of the girls came from prestigious, remarkable families, actually. In fact, it was a key detail that let them originally bond at their sorority parties and outings. Both of them understood the pressure that they felt from their parents to not only succeed, but be in the top 80 percent of the campus students to spread their family names further into the world.

If they wanted to be models, in this world these girls lived in, it was an incredible career that fewer and fewer people were actually able to become. The most ditsy and empty-headed girls would simply become cows due to their lack of intelligence while the ones who ended up in the top 10 percent never had enough time to care for their bodies or faces enough to qualify for such a career.

Bebe, Vanessa, and a few other friends of theirs were the rare mix of luck and money: enough luck to be born looking the way they did without trying while having enough money to maintain it and to maintain their studious methods.

But as they entered the main auditorium for their final exam, they both knew this was the one place where everyone would truly be on equal ground.

Acing this exam would be enough to bring anyone up to the top tier rankings.

But failing this exam could bring even the highest ranked student down to the very bottom.

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To relax after their exam, the girls returned to their regular lifestyle of shopping, gossiping, and partying their worries away. They had very little else to do since the leaked social media information had been reported and removed and the graduation ceremony was a week away.

So, they tried to ease themselves into success.

Of course they would graduate. In what world wouldn’t they?

If anything, the universe would be playing a cruel joke onto them to have them be such gorgeous women with such bright minds only to end up living the rest of their days shoving sugary, greasy food down their throat until they could no longer do it on their own.

And as the girls got dressed and prepped for their graduation ceremony, placing their cap and gowns while taking photos and wishing the other luck, Vanessa couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling in her stomach.

Entering the large graduation space (a basketball court that could transform into a sizeable space when needed), Vanessa took a seat with the rest of the business students while Bebe headed to her fellow English majors.

After a few songs, a brief introductory speech from the university superintendent, and another song played by the university band, the valedictorian was called to the stage.

She received a loud and roaring applause due to the sheer impression that being a valedictorian brought to their minds (which seemed to shock her and bring out her shy expression).

“Hello,” she spoke softly into the mic as she adjusted her glasses, “My name is Bethany Marks and I’d like to thank you all for all of the hard work you’ve put into furthering your education and furthering our united futures. Your achievements will be rewarded starting today.” She toyed with her choppy black hair, fingering and twirling it nervously as she licked and bit at her dried and chapped lips. She had heavy dark circles underneath her eyes and had a face covered with zits. She had dull skin and a weak, demure appearance. It was clear that her place as valedictorian came with a heavy price.

“As we all know, we are not only students, but friends and competitors. We must all work together to make sure that our society can function and run. Please remember, that not only are those who graduate important, but so are those who join the ranks of Positive Interest Guides.” It was the newest name introduced for cows, but it surely wouldn’t last. “You all will be the ones who assist with society’s health and balance. Without you, where would our quality of life be? Where would our advancements in science and technology come from.”

Everyone believed the idea that the stronger the competition, the better it showed in the real world.

Vanessa rolled her eyes at the speech, crossing her arms over her chest as she waited for diplomas to be handed out. She just wanted to grab her diploma and get out! She had a celebration party to head to with the rest of her sorority after this!

“And now,” Bethany announced at the end of her long speech, “I’d like to begin our diploma ceremony. As always, if you have been selected to join Pharma Atem Technologies, please know that we will give you an identification card instead and at the end all new members will be guided straight to their training.” The unspoken implication was that security was everywhere, ready to grab any desperate student ready to bolt.

The principal of the university grabbed the microphone next, immediately calling off names with a smile on his face. “Adam Atoms. Please, come up and grab your degree.” A good omen, some would consider, that the first name called had successfully graduated.

Vanessa sat in her seat watching in silence as some students were handed degrees while others were given identification cards as tears began to well in their eyes.

“Bebe Lee.” The principal announced, watching as Bebe bounced from her seat and up the steps to receive her diploma.

But her expression quickly changed when she was handed a plastic card instead with a barcode and her university photo on it. “Wh-What?” Bebe looked shocked, face pale as she was guided off the stage while the next name was called with a degree waiting for them.

Vanessa sat up straight, nearly jumping out of her seat as she watched from a distance Bebe begin to sob as she was moved out of the stadium and to a hallway before the door closed.

Now, her nerves were lighting up. How had Bebe gotten a low ranking!? She was an incredible student who had gotten the most incredible tutoring there could be! She was supposed to have graduated! She was supposed to have been signed up with a modeling agency starting tomorrow! What was going on!? How could this happen?

“--ssa Thompsan.” Vanessa vaguely heard her name be called, a student next to her pulling out of her haze as she heard her name again. “Vanessa Thompsan.”

Walking warily, nearly tripping over her large platform heels, Vanessa walked towards the stage with her hand out to accept her diploma.

But when she looked down, she had a cold plastic card in her hand.

Looking up to her principal, he didn’t even try to give her any eye contact as he called for another student.

In an instant, tears began to fall from her eyes and down her cheeks as her mascara immediately began to run. “N-No!” She began to cry as a nearby guard grabbed her wrist and guided her off the stage to the same door Bebe went through. “No! No! This wasn’t supposed to happen!” She sobbed loudly, the guard not even bothering to comfort her as he pushed her into the empty hallway where a slim woman with a bright smile on her face stood.

She clicked the pen in her hand and pushed it against her clipboard, looking straight ahead.

“Hi Vanessa. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” She hummed, motioning with her chin for the guard to push Vanessa to her side for them to walk further down the hallway. “Why don’t you tell me what you like more? Salty, or sweet?”