So it went, throughout the week. He had gone to bed with a growling stomach, awakening after poor sleep to a vast emptiness and the prospect of dry toast choked down with black coffee. What was his reward for suffering these torments? Confidently plopping his ample rear into his seat, he was shocked to see that he had gained five pounds.
Real cute, those seats, Ron thought bitterly. Like so much in life, now, they were in large part a product of Galactic technology. The seats utilized a direct mass sensor, independent of local gravity. As the unhappy dieter sat down, an almost imperceptible jerk took place, and the victim’s weight appeared on the readout. Should he have cared to know, Ron, by touching a few more buttons, could have seen what he weighed in the units and gravities of a few hundred of the more local Galactic planets.
This had amused him the first few times he had attended these sessions, but now Ron glared at the readout panel. If weight loss was so damned important, why the hell couldn’t the aliens have developed some reasonable way of dealing with it? He failed to see why it was so important, anyway. Galactic medicine ensured that he didn’t need to fear the high blood pressure or cardiovascular problems associated in the past with obesity. The problem was social. The unreasonable prejudice against fat had become magnified when Terrans became exposed to the slim, trim Galactics. The one which annoyed Ron the most was something which looked like a huge sac filled with transparent slime. Terrans were told that its very transparency was due to the fact that internal fat globules were practically non-existent.
The skinny reformed fatso in charge didn’t say anything when she saw the readout. Her look said enough. No sympathy for evidence of what she could only view as regrettably weak character. Now Ron, wounded to the core, sadly reviewed a week of pointless virtue. Patiently, he sifted through his memory for every gram he had consumed during the past week. This wasn’t hard. Meals had been few, scant, and desperately needed. Suddenly, he remembered a smell. Chocolate—a rich, warm aroma. A brownie, exactly one inch by one inch.
It hadn’t been much of a straying from the narrow path, but it had been enough. The week before, he had eaten nothing untoward. He hadn’t gained, but he hadn’t lost, either. Before that: one can of beer. That had cost four pounds. And so on. Ron reflected on his high hopes when he had started the program, under the urging of Dr. Biddle.
Dr. Biddle, Ron’s department head, was a fitness nut even by the stringent standards of these times. When Ron joined T. U., he learned that he was expected at least to try for Biddle’s level of physical perfection. Ron never had a chance. Biddle was one of those wiry perpetual motion machines that ate constantly and never gained a pound. Following Biddle’s rather pointed recommendations, Ron had joined the Slimness Workshop, as well as starting several physical activities. He bought a bike, and even attempted to ride the thing. He joined the Terran University bowling league, where he held all in awe at the meagerness of his scores. He tried. Oh, how he tried! It soon became evident that physical culture in any form was not his forte.
Ron reviewed all of the weeks of virtue and suffering, counting every miserable calorie of intake, and balancing this against his impressive weight gains. Suddenly, the germ of a wildly improbable idea began to form. He was too good a scientist to miss the implications of data all too easily available to him. Anomalies he had started to experience in his own research began to shift in his mind, clicking into place like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. Trembling, he turned to the ample woman sitting next to him, and clutched her arm.
“Alice!” he whispered. “I’ve just thought of something! Let’s get out of here! We’ve got work to do!”
Alice Geery was Ron’s best friend, fully as massive, mentally as well as physically, as he. Her specialty was biochemistry, but she possessed a flair for physics. She was engaged in the newly expanding field of teasing out some of the basic physics of biochemical reactions. Lately she had been concentrating on some of the apparent impossibilities which were coming to light, mostly in the area of energy conservation. It took her no time to read and understand the urgency behind Ron’s interruption, and soon two large, self-conscious individuals were sneaking conspicuously from the meeting.
“OK, Ron.” Alice said, uncomfortably aware of the disapproving stare of the Slimness instructor. “We left the meeting. Now, what did you want to talk about that’s so important it can’t wait?”
“Alice, I think I have it!” Ron said. “You are just the person I need to help me get to the bottom of this!”
Alice remained unenlightened. “Ron, what on Earth are you talking about?”
“Not Earth, Alice! The whole damn Galaxy!”
“What?!”
“All that fat. Alice, do you know how hard we’ve been trying to lose weight?”
“Of course.” She replied, sardonically. “How could I miss that slight detail?” Alice had been seen absent-mindedly nibbling her lunch bag during department softball games.
“And all those blasted aliens in form-fitting uniforms. Each wretched beastie at the absolute peak of physical perfection. Do you have any idea how we’d look in those things? But, you know, my idea has to do with that very thing.”
Alice was giving him her very worst “Oh-no-what-a flake” expression, but Ron continued undeterred.
“Listen, Alice, I’ve been thinking, and reviewing my intake and weight gain. Look, we’re both scientists. Recently, Terrans have been rabid on the subject of weight loss. That’s what has blinded us to the truth. If you think about it, this obsession with losing weight is completely illogical. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Rendered speechless by his overbearing earnestness, Alice continued to listen.
“Look at the data. One lousy one-inch-square brownie causing me to gain five pounds. Your initial loss wiped out by one stinking Oreo. We’ve even set up tripwires between our beds and the refrigerator to rule out sleepwalking. What did that get us? Zip. Zilch. Nothing at all. Alice, we haven’t been sleepwalking, or doing anything else which would cause us to eat without knowing it.”
Alice Geery was skeptical, but she was too much of a scientist to ignore evidence, no matter how improbable, when it was held up in front of her. Slowly, she shook her head.
“You know, Ron, I hate to admit it. It goes against everything we’ve ever learned about the laws of physics, but
I see your point. I thought that I was in error somewhere, and was trying so hard to disprove what I’ve been seeing that I didn’t even see what it was.”
“A few laws?” Ron said. “Try conservation of matter and energy, or the laws of thermodynamics.”
“One miserable cookie going to four pounds of fat??!”
“All that virtue—”
“Running our bodies on nothing—”
“Or next to nothing—”
“And gaining!”
“Something for nothing!”
Slowly, two overweight scientists turned to stare at each other, as the implications of what they were saying moved slowly into full mental view. In the late twentieth century people had became obsessed with diet and fitness. As the cost of medical care soared and life spans increased, people began to do what they could to cut doctors’ bills. By the twenty-first century, naturally rotund individuals found themselves under ever more unbearable social pressure. Slimness-obsessed Terrans were propelled into full mania by the arrival of the sleek, trim aliens. The prosperity which those aliens brought allowed even people subsisting in historically famine-afflicted areas the possibility of a good diet, and the money to spend on the “lite” foods needed to trim back to near famine. In the ensuing orgy of guilt several rather nasty tasting “healthy” foods became best sellers, while the manufacture of chocolate was almost stopped entirely.