chapter one

As the final checks of our vital signs were made, and the glass lids of our suspended animation pods were lowered, I thought of the mission ahead of us. Our small team of ten would arrive at the target planet in six months, to investigate the atmosphere and other environmental conditions and decide whether it would be a suitable location for terraforming and eventual human settlement. The suspended animation pods would reduce our metabolism and pulse rate down to a minimum level, to conserve resources on board so that we would have enough remaining when we arrived to carry out our mission. We were a fit, well trained unit. Each of us with our own mission specialities. Mine was computer systems.

The six months passed in a timeless, dreamless sleep.

Our craft achieved orbit around the target planet, and my eyes opened in the darkness, as the gentle hum of life support equipment increased. The lights raised softly and the lids of the pods began opening automatically.

I felt very weary and heavy, but I assumed that this was a normal part of waking up from the stasis. But as the lights raised, I could see that something was not right. There was a large, rounded shape sitting heavily on top of me, making my breathing difficult. I tried to sit up, but it pushed me back into my pod. I raised an arm and I was shocked to see that my fingers were thick and pudgy and my arm was bloated to several times its normal size. The large, round, heavy shape was my own belly! It had ballooned during the trip into something the size of a space hopper. Bigger than that, even. I was massively fat!

I thrashed and struggled, grabbing a the sides of the pod. My huge belly and bulging chest wobbled heavily as I heaved myself into an upright sitting position. My massive gut sat heavily on my swollen thighs, curving out beyond my knees, and my chest, which had ballooned into a huge pair of breasts, rested heavily on my belly. What the hell was going on? Was this a dream or something?

I looked around the circular room at my colleagues' pods. They were also sitting up, blinking in disbelief. They were all appallingly thin. Their cheeks and eyes were sunken, their arms and legs were spindly and their clothes hung in loose folds around their shrivelled bodies. They were all staring at my hulking, struggling form as I sat helpless in my pod like a great swollen balloon fit to burst.

My colleagues were similarly helpless, though through weakness, rather than sheer size and weight like me. I weighed more than the other nine crew members put together. Clearly something had gone very wrong with the automatic food supply during our journey and I had received all the nutrients meant for the whole crew. So while they slowly withered away in their pods, I gradually swelled up in mine.

"What are we going to do?" I asked. "You're all to weak to move, and I'm too fat. Look at me! I'm huge!"

"Let's reduce the artificial gravity" said the mission commander. "At least we should be able to move around and then we can put this mess right."

We all nodded in agreement that this was obviously a good idea.

"Computer, reduce gravity strength to half normal". The computer bleeped an acknowledgement.

I felt the crushing weight of my gigantic stomach reducing, although it was just as huge and round as before, of course. I struggled out of my pod at last and stood on the floor. Standing next to my puny colleagues, I looked immense. It was embarrassing to be so massive when everyone else was so small. My giant belly ballooned out a good two or three feet in front of me, hanging just low enough in the low gravity to cover my modesty. My clothes had ripped and split and fallen from my huge body during the voyage as a expanded in the pod. I stood naked and so obese that it was difficult to move at all. I waddled slowly, adjusting to my huge new size with every heavy, padding step.

"I need to find some clothes, but what the hell is going to fit me now? I'm like a walking airship!"

My colleagues eyed me bitterly. They had no sympathy for me. It was as though I had greedily stolen all the weight from their bodies and packed it onto my bulging frame like some kind of selfish overlord taxing the starving peasants. I could see it in their eyes. Distrust. Hatred, and... was that envy?

"Hey, I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't mean to get like this", I said, patting my colossal belly. The resulting jiggling only served to deepen their scrawny bitterness.

I lumbered down the narrow corridor towards my sleeping quarters. My fat belly bounced and swung alarmingly in the low-G environment and I was forced to take it very slowly. The doors and passageways were not designed for someone as galactically overweight as I had become, and it was a bit of a struggle to squeeze through. I reached my quarters and forced myself inside. I reached for the wardrobe door handle, but my massive stomach pressed hard against the door before my hand could reach. I shuffled around to turn sideways-on to the wardrobe and managed to get the door open. It was then that I caught sight of myself in the full-length mirror. I was a staggering sight to behold. I was absolutely huge, with massive, bulging arms, a huge pair of basketball-sized breasts bobbling around on top of the biggest, roundest, fattest stomach I had ever seen. If it weren't for the low gravity, there would be no way I would be able to walk at all. I must have gained many hundreds of pounds and I was going to find it very difficult getting used to being so super sized.

I peered into the wardrobe looking for something, anything, that might stand a chance of covering my gargantuan bulk. Trousers were not even worth thinking about. Even if, by some miracle, I could find some large enough for my spectacular waistline, I wouldn't be able to put them on. I couldn't reach my feet. Hell, I couldn't even see my feet! I grabbed a spare bedsheet and, cutting a hole in the centre for my head, I fashioned a kind of poncho. I retrieved a roll of wire from the technical spares cupboard. How much length do I need? I looked again in the mirror. God, I need at least eight feet of this to loop around my enormous waist. I cut about ten feet of cable from the roll and, with a great deal of struggling and wobbling, I managed to throw it around my middle. My massive breasts bulged up under my chin when I moved my hands together to tie the cable, which restricted my view severely, but I managed to use the mirror to see what I was doing, and at last the cable was tied.

Out of breath, I sat down heavily on the bed. I sunk deeply into the mattress and my belly billowed out over my lap. If it weren't for the low-G, I would have broken the bed. Sitting made me feel uncomfortably huge and round and bloated, my stomach squashed between my wide, fat thighs and my huge bulging chest. I lay back on the bed to think. I found that laying on my side was better because the huge weight of my stomach was not pressing on me. I lay there and thought about the crew. Thin, angry, weak. I cuddled my big, soft belly, or as much of it as I could reach, and felt ... reassured. Happy. Yes, I felt happy to be huge and fat.

I didn't care about the mission any more. I didn't care about my jealous colleagues. I just wanted to stay here in this ship, orbiting the planet, getting fatter and fatter and fatter, and reducing the gravity more and more until I was just an enormous human sphere, floating in space, bumping off the walls...