Chapter 1: A Scientific Snafu

“So then… I uh.. I take it that the bioweapon is a success?”

“Um, yes. Sir. Yes sir, the bioweapon is certainly… very successful... Sir.”

Commander Vasquez rolled his eyes.

“Feel free to dispense with the formalities, doctor. For the sake of time. I uh,” the scarred and grizzled commander sought his next few words carefully. “I didn’t think you’d be using yourself as a test subject.”

Dr. Seward attempted to sit up straight, but that was a difficult thing to do when her body was spread haphazardly across three different swivel chairs, all creaking under the young scientist’s prodigious weight. Weight that she had not been carrying just last week when she had last updated the commander on her progress…

“Well, I…” she tried to explain, blushing, “hadn’t originally intended to…” the morbidly massive mad scientist sighed heavily and then slumped her soft shoulders, her chairs creaking even more ominously as she sunk her vast body further into their compressed confines. “Correct containment protocol wasn’t followed and my lab became contaminated with O.B. particles.”

The commander raised an eyebrow.

“The particles,” Dr. Seward explained, “that get spun and fired by the laser’s main capacitor.”

“The laser,” Commander Vasquez got straight to the point, “can I see it? Where is it?”

The doctor sighed again, more heavily this time, as she brushed a strand of black hair away from her glasses. She began lurching back and forth slowly, attempting to build up momentum to prepare herself to stand. She clearly wasn’t used to this new body of hers, having been practically waifish in size before the little “containment malfunction” of her top secret project.

She let out a loud and labored grunt as she rose to her feet, all three of her swivel chairs crying out in relief as they were relinquished of their burgeoning burden. Dr Seward was slow to rise to her feet; she was even slower when it came to moving around, her breath heavy and hot as she waddled across the floor of her lab at barely a snail’s pace.

The commander had no choice but to follow in the wake of the woman’s wobbling, billowing backside, all the time wondering just where she had managed to find a lab coat that was probably twice the amount of fabric as a tablecloth on such a short notice.

It was actually a bit of a shame, really. He knew that the doctor was only twenty-seven years old if her bio was accurate, and he’d actually found her rather attractive when she’d first signed on to the project. Far too young for him, certainly, but a looker all the same, with her long dark hair to pair with her full lips and even fuller figure.

Dr. Samantha Seward’s current figure was much, much fuller than when she and Vasquez had first made their acquaintance just a handful of months ago. The mass of woman wobbled and shook as she slowly trudged through her lab, having to squeeze her way past tabletops and avoid knocking over stray swivel chairs as she waddled with both arms held out to either side for balance; with how much the good doctor teetered to one side and then the other with each clumsy, ungainly step, Vasquez had to wonder how it was she didn’t fall over. Or… if he would be able to help her back on to her feet if she did.

Dr. Seward must have been fully aware of how preposterous her body looked while it was in motion. In spite of her heavy breathing, the mere act of walking at such a menial pace clearly managing to take its toll on the astoundingly obese millenial, she still took time to politely apologize to Vasquez for the length of time that she was taking to walk to the adjacent hangar where the “bioweapon” was being housed and developed.

“I’m… whoo…. Sorry….” she huffed without turning around. “I’m still not… used to… *huff…. huff…* all of… this…”

Vasquez took a moment to clear his throat, clearly at a loss for an immediate response. Dr. Seward was obviously talking about her new size, really meant all of herself, the saddened and supersized scientist intensely overburdened by the hundreds upon hundreds of pounds of fat that she had accidentally accumulated during her errors in experimentation.

“And this process you’ve undergone,” Vasquez hazarded asking, one eyebrow raised, “can’t be treated or reversed?”

The “no” that escaped Dr. Seward’s lips couldn’t have sounded more dejected. Still panting as though she was on the final leg of a marathon, the beautiful but bovine bioengineer still made no effort to turn around or at least turn her head to address Vasquez eye to eye, dead set on waddling forward instead, likely so that she could find a new place to sit down and relieve her poor plump feet of the burden of her own body.

“I’m still gaining…” she breathily confessed, “at least… seventy-five… pounds *sigh*... a day…” She gulped. “I can’t stop…”

Vasquez didn’t need to be facing Dr. Seward in order to tell that she was frowning in between all of that laborious panting and wheezing; she obviously wasn’t entirely pleased with her new figure. Although… the commander himself couldn’t help but feel pleased, ecstatic even. The doctor was living, waddling proof of his new weapon’s efficacy.

Although the hangar was hardly more than a few meters away from her laboratory, the journey still took enough time where, by the end of it, Dr. Seward was completely spent. She leaned heavily on the entrance to the hangar sucking down as much air as she could while Commander Vasquez walked around her, thankful for the width of the bay doors.

What the commander was presented with upon entering the hangar looked like something he might have seen on an episode of Star Trek or similar sci-fi show. A giant metal laser about two stories tall was laid horizontally atop several support beams, monitors and other devices humming and whirring around it as it shone sleekly in the large and well-lit room. Commander Vasquez hardly knew what exactly he was looking at, didn’t understand the inner or outer machinations of the contraption he was scanning with his weathered gaze, but felt enamored all the same.

Especially given the fact that he’d already seen what the device could do merely by accident.

Vasquez was in fact so captivated with the device, even going so far as to circle around it a few times, marveling at the laser in awe from every angle that he could, that it gave the mad scientist who had created it some time to recuperate, although she did still desperately want to sit back down. With the hand that wasn’t being used to prop herself against the hangar entrance, she weakly gestured to the device with an upturned palm.

“You wanted it… *huff*... and you got it,” Sam sighed one last time, hardly as proud of her new invention as she could have been. “The United States military has a Fat Ray.”

Vasquez was absolutely beaming. With a jagged-toothed smile, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a burner phone. Flipping it open, he punched in a quick series of numbers before lifting the phone to his lips.

“Tell our contacts at the Condor Corporation to get their satellite ready to launch. I want this thing up in orbit immediately.”