Water Weight

The sounds of shuffling papers filled the stagnant boardroom air. A plastic clock mounted on the wall gently ticked away, the movement of its hands barely audible from across the drab space. It was a decorative relic, a piece that no one ever looked at but whose presence was mandated by all office decorators nonetheless. It read 3:02 PM, Although it may very well have been off by some quarters of an hour. No one had bothered to adjust it since it was put up. What Lina knew was that the caffeine she had woken herself up with this morning had worn off. She assumed everyone else in the room was going through the same withdrawals, judging by their baggy eyes, lazily transfixed on her, or at least somewhere around her. After an overly long silence, Lina cleared her throat.
"Good afternoon."
She spoke with her characteristically confident demeanour, despite her tiredness. She tried to ignore the light from the projector in front of her, and all the otherwise invisible particles of dust it illuminated. She suspected her body might have been casting a bit of a shadow. She clicked a button on the small remote in her hands, turning around to read the first slide. She found the screen blank. She clicked again. Blank again. What was going on?
"My apologies."
The attendees looked as if they couldn't care less. Lina roused the computer from its sleep to check the presentation. After the title slide, there were just three more, all emblazoned with "Click to add title". Had she uploaded the wrong file? She felt a lump build in her throat. She frantically clicked away at different folders. The other office workers slumped a little further into their chairs. Someone yawned. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead.

"Aah!"
Lina yelped. She groggily lifted her eyelids. Her bedroom was filled with warm morning glow. Why couldn't she have better dreams? She stared at the wall across from her, its drywall hung with dusty pictures she hadn't ever touched. They were slightly askew, which irked her enough for her to notice, but not enough to stir her into actually adjusting them. An equally dusty calendar on the wall to her left read September 2254. It was a few months off. As soon as Lina awoke enough to realise it, a pang of hunger shot through her. She needed some fuel to get her to the kitchen every morning, and a morning as nerve-racking as this one was no exception. This would be a big day for her, she said to herself.
She groped around at her side to find the control stick for the bed. As her pudgy fingers discovered the controls underneath her, she flicked a switch. The bed slowly began to fold at its midsection, gently whirring as it did, bringing Lina to a sitting position as she yawned.
Lina had admittedly been a bit high-strung lately. Her company was about to secure a huge deal, and it was her department's responsibility to make sure it went smoothly. The stress weighed her down like a ton of bricks, and her imbecile subordinates were putting down more slack than they were picking up. As her brain began to turn with thoughts of what work awaited her, her stomach interjected with a loud gurgle. Work can wait, food cannot.
Lina shifted her weight to her left as best as she could manage and stretched her naked arm out, hovering it over the treats set out on her bedside table. As she pondered what bag of snacks to devour, the heaviness of her arm would make the choice for her. She couldn't hold her arm out that long, after all. She picked up the bag and set it atop her bosom. Joyous Cashew Butter Cookies, it read. Now with 100% more butter! Whatever, Lina thought. If today was anything like yesterday or the day before, She'd eat everything on that table before even getting out of bed. She shoved two cookies in her mouth at once, barely chewing before picking up two more.
As the cookies disappeared, Lina reached for another bag of some equally sweet treat that left its grease on her fingers. Joyous Cashew Cookies weren't the only confection that had doubled their fat content, after all. Crumbs of all sorts littered the tops of her breasts like freckles of carbohydrates. After the strawberry-flavoured whatevers were finished, she grabbed a tube of some cookie dough whose packaging politely suggested it be cooked. Lina never read the packaging. Into her mouth it went.

Lina reached out her hand once again to find all her morning snacks eaten. A protesting sound arose from her tummy, demanding more. She wedged her hand underneath it, rubbing its rolls as if to comfort her yet unsatisfied stomach. She'd have to get up for breakfast. Lina's mobility scooter was parked almost right next to her bed, basically as close as it could be while still giving her room to get in it, and yet it still seemed too far. Just plopping her huge ass down on the thing would be a huge ordeal. The scooter's seat, as wide as a flatscreen TV, glowed with 9 AM sunlight, teasing her.
Lina began to shift herself off of the bed, by moving one collossal leg at a time across the ridiculously large mattress. As she turned herself to face the scooter, her whole body jiggled ferociously. Her massive breasts swayed back and forth, helplessly bouncing with the inertia of her movement. Her belly, upon which they lay, rippled with her struggle. As huge as it was, most of Lina's weight was in her lower body. Her thighs, too heavy to lift themselves, sloshed against her tummy, which lay between them. As Lina sat on the edge of her bed, she took a breather. Just turning herself around had taken the wind out of her. As she panted, she cupped her nipples in her hands to calm their movement.
Her soft breasts, still covered in greasy crumbs, protruded out a couple feet in front of her, at least when she was sitting down, which she was pretty much all the time. Her belly stuck out a little further than her breasts, which it supported. It was pale and rotund save for her bellybutton, which had been long buried within a seemingly bottomless fold that bisected her gut. On either side of her belly were her two legs, pancaked out across the mattress, smothering any semblance of a thigh gap between two mountains of adipose tissue. Her knees, too, were the site of valleys where her lower leg flesh met her thighs. The most monumental portion of Lina's body, however, was her behind. She had always been a little bottom-heavy, even before reaching her adult size. When Lina sat down, her butt made a shelf of at least over a foot, probably more, that prevented her back from touching whatever chair it had consumed. Her two cheeks jiggled and bounced against each other at the slightest movement, sending ripples across her body. Lina had long since given up on wearing any sort of clothes, at least while in this state, ever since her butt had torn through her last pair of panties some years ago. Whatever. They had it coming anyways.
With a huff, Lina shifted her weight onto her overburdened soft feet and stood up. Her mirror, already designed with larger bodies in mind, could barely contain her rotundness. And what rotundness! Gravity pulled her belly down like a generous fig leaf to cover her shame. With a wobble, Lina took a burdened step towards her scooter. Her butt sloshed as she transfered her weight from one leg to another, causing her to blush as the waves of jiggling made their way around her body. Another step. Her breasts shook wildly, her stiffened nipples swaying from side to side in unison. Her fat arms moved back and forth, only causing her bosoms to bounce even more. Another step. As she swung her leg forward, it bounced against her belly, who she could swear responded with a plap. Plap, plap, plap, plap. She waddled towards the mobility scooter, realising just how badly she needed it. As she sat down once again, her heart racing from the excersise, she felt her huge butt immodestly envelop the chair. She panted and moaned, almost too tired to even drive the scooter. She really wanted another cashew cookie. or ten.

Having reached the kitchen, Lina parked her scooter beneath the table and furiously ordered a breakfast of champions from the replicator interface. As she tapped away at the screen, she thanked the gods for food replication technology. Apparently, back in the day, one would have to open something called a fridge and make their food themselves. Lina thought that sounded like way too much work. Soon enough, her first helping of food was ready, although she made sure to order another one for after. Plates of bacon dripping with grease. Stacks of pancakes soaked in syrup and crowned with four cubes of butter. Bowls of neapolitan ice cream. Between her four orders of the replicator, she must have put away about nine plates. Nothing out of the ordinary. She burped.
Having finally placated her stomach for the next few hours, and having let all manner of syrupy goodness fall onto herself, Lina turned her mind to work. Today was the day she was supposed to meet with some clients on behalf of her company to finalize a deal they'd been working on for a few months, and she would not let the deal fall victim to idiocy. Lina scooted over to the nanocompression machine, starting her day at an early 11 PM.
The machine, though it didn't come with her apartment, could basically be considered a home appliance. Basically everyone had one, aside from those unfortunate few who had to lug around their full weight outside. Lina, for her part, basically couldn't go outside at all without it. She hadn't tried fitting her supersized ass through the door in a hot minute, and if she was any bigger than last time, she probably couldn't fit even her front half through that thing, much less her even larger behind.
Lina slowly lurched her way out from her scooter to assume her spot in the machine. As usual, the ensuing few steps sent a cascade of jiggles coursing through her still-naked body. The breakfast baby she bore in her stomach weighed her down, ensuring her second two-meter waddle of the day would be nearly as tiring as the first. Her fat shook the whole way. Upon reaching the machine, she nearly wanted to collapse. She normally wouldn't have had to stand just after breakfast, but her work duties called, and she was determined not to abandon them.
As Lina entered the walk-in machine, she grabbed onto a handlebar inside with one hand and pushed a button with the other. The door closed, grazing her butt as it did. Stupid machine. Even it couldn't handle her curves. The machine whirred, while a lining that had covered the machine's interior surface detached and began to tighten around her. The machine spoke.
"Calibrated weight: ### Pounds."
Yeah, She was fat. I mean, everyone was, but she was exceptionally fat. Lina knew this, of course; I mean, her friends could at least waddle around their houses, while she... Yeah. Lina didn't really care. After all, what did it matter if everyone worked from home? What did it matter if people only went outside having been nanocompressed? Aside from her front door, her apartment fit her pretty well. She couldn't claim to be entirely comfortable with her weight, but she wouldn't give up eating as much as she did for anything. Her weight simply wasn't a priority.
The machine, having enveloped her fat body, switched into compression mode. Her rolls upon rolls of soft, pale fat were slowly compressed to match her desired skinny shape. She could feel herself transform from landwhale, to hippo, to seal, to vixen. Her butt became firm and toned. Her face dropped a couple chins. Her massive tummy gave way to abs. Her breasts now resembled grapefruits more than blimps. Of course, her compressed form was somewhat illusory; It would last for six hours, at best, and probably a little less given just how much of her the machine had to contend with. It would certainly last for four, however, which gave Lina just enough time to attend the meeting she was expected at. She confidently strutted out of the machine to go make herself up.

By the time Lina reached her apartment's foyer, she was abuzz with activity. She carried a briefcase hastily packed with looseleaf paper and her phone went off thrice a minute. She strutted out of the elevator in a tapered suit and heels, constantly checking her watch. She summoned a taxi and paced around the first floor, her shoes tapping against the granite-coloured tiles. The taxi app told her it would arrive in two minutes; in other words, an eternity. Maybe she should have taken the train. At least then she wouldn't have to bum around in this place and respond to her colleagues.
As the shiny black taxi pulled in front of the building's entrance, she hurried out, past a series of sliding doors and out to the open air. The taxi was quiet, just as Lina liked it. After all, a robot was driving it, and they aren't exactly known for conversation. She fervently tapped away at her phone, cursing her ineffective subordinates all the while. Why did it take them two hours to respond to an email while they were on the clock, at home? Were they too busy gorging themselves? They probably were, and Lina would have been too, had she been at home, but she prided herself on her ability to gorge herself while working. As Lina patted herself on her figurative back for her ability to multitask, the taxi opened its doors in front of the client's office building.
It was an imposing grey structure with slightly inset windows. Its scale impressed upon her just how big of a deal this client was. She took a deep breath and took to the wide staircase leading to a pair of revolving doors, past a courtyard with some spider-looking metal sculpture.
Lina strutted inside and up a couple flights of stairs. The building's cool lighting was just as unsettling as the concrete landscape outside it. The boardroom, just like in her dream, was a dull place with a mandatory ticking plastic clock. People in suits sat around an equally drab table topped with some sort of faux wood vinyl. These people couldn't decorate a room for their lives.
The man sat across from her talked and talked, ad her own nauseam. He was handsome, in an older gentlemanly way, though he still had all his hair. Lina had to stop herself from savouring the eye candy. After all, he was probably only slightly less compressed than she was. I mean, who wasn't? A kid? People didn't really have those these days. Lina muted her phone after one of her subordinates sent her one too many stupid questions about how many days off the company could give him. The guy kept talking.
A bluish glass pitcher of water sat on the table. Lina poured herself another glass. The guy kept talking. The clock kept ticking. She remained alert, listening for her cues to laugh and nod, but she wasn't any more present than that. She poured herself another glass. The guy kept talking. She poured herself another glass. And another, and another, and another. At some point the pitcher ran out and was swiftly refilled. Lina wasn't even thirsty, hell, she didn't even really like water. It was kind of bland. She was more of a juice kind of girl. But there really wasn't anything else to do, and she liked to keep her hands busy. She had another glass of water. And another, and another, and another.

I can't really tell you how nanocompression technology works, but I know that the machine calibrates its actions to the user's weight. If the user deviates from that weight, even by a little bit, it's dangerous to keep them compressed in the same way. Ideally, the user would re-calibrate themselves after doing something like, I don't know, drinking two pitchers of water, but alas, people are busy. The whole calibration thing is one of the reasons people don't just keep themselves compressed all the time. That and that it wears off after a few hours, but still.

Lina had another glass of water. This time, though, something was different. Was her shirt tighter? How come her belt was digging into her waist? Oh, no. Lina checked her watch. 2:46. She should have two more hours to go, right? She opened her mouth to breathe a sigh of relief, only to be interrupted by her ever more constrictive belt. What was going on? She knew you weren't supposed to eat while compressed, but she only had a few glasses of water, right? Gods, she wanted to eat. These meetings sucked! She unbuckled her belt and shifted it a few holes down, only to find that her belly had rapidly expanded to take up what space had been afforded to it. Oh, no, no, no! The compression really had stopped, huh? Lina looked down to see a dangerously bulging muffin top straining around her belt. Her belt being already as wide as it could go, Lina opted to unbuckle it entirely, causing the sound of jingling metal to fill the stagnant boardroom air. Every tired eye, aside from those of the guy who continued to babble about whatever, turned to look at Lina's waist.
Her breasts strained against the buttons of her shirt, peeking out from between them. Looking down to unbutton her shirt which dug painfully at her flesh, she could see a canyon of cleavage begin to stretch out in front of her. Lina began to hyperventilate. Surely, what was about to happen would be incredibly scandalous. She might lose her job. She stood up, still breathing hard and hardly breathing, her head dizzy with catastrophic scenarios. By now even the handsome blabbermouth had stopped talking as the sounds of her anxiety resonated between the painfully gray walls. Lina tried excusing herself to the washroom, but her pants had something else to say.
R-r-r-r-r-ip! Her dress pants split along their seam. Before Lina could think, a torrent of fat flesh pushed its way out of every seam on her body. Her weight brought her down with it, causing her to crash to the floor in a Hindenburg-like fashion. Her now-huge butt overturned a chair or two as it made its jiggly descent. Lina wrestled with her strained clothing as best as she could, but her own girth outpaced her. Her breasts popped out from underneath her bra, which now sat defeated atop them, comically undersized, like a David to two busty Goliaths. Her legs parted to make way for her belly, which sat distended, its massive lower roll gently sloshing between her thighs. Her underwear, having until now accomodated a few feet of more Lina, gave way with a quick rip as it allowed her massive butt to assert itself in all its adipose glory.
Though everyone in the room was now transfixed on the jiggly girl, or more accurately, heifer in front of them, Lina was blinded by her own shock. As her field of vision filled with wobbly pale flesh, her brain left the scene for its own sanity. She was really in trouble now. A few people gasped. A couple eyeballs tracked her stiff nipples as they swayed, unrestrained in the stuffy boardroom air. The only part of her that had retained any semblance of modesty was her back, which had managed to keep an only somewhat torn button-up shirt around it.
As Lina's growth slowed, she slowly returned to her senses. She looked around the room, making a half-assed attempt to cover what little of her blubbery self she could. She blushed a deep pink as she realized just how over it was for her.
Hoping to go to the bathroom to do something about her predicament, Lina put her hand to the floor in a vain effort to push herself up. Unsurprisingly, this failed to do anything but jiggle herself around a bit more. She grunted and pushed even harder than last time, to the same effect. This she did again and again, wobbling herself back and forth in an attempt to shift her centre of mass. By now her tummy and breasts had picked up quite a bit of inertia, and were wildly sloshing against each other, making gentle smacking sounds as they hit her fat-laden arms. With every attempt, Lina's grunts slowly turned into plaintive moans, her blush of embarrassment spreading down her wobbly fat chest.
Next to her stood a chair, whose metal legs felt cold as they pressed into the skin of her thighs. Lina plopped her exhausted arm onto its seat and began to push off the ground with her other hand with as much strength as she could muster. Her bare buttcheeks slowly turned to reveal themselves, one after the other, like twin suns, as she turned to shift her weight onto the chair. As her arms bore more and more weight, what little energy Lina had slowly dissipated. She let out a final hearty grunt, as if it could somehow channel her strength into raising her off the floor. And it might have worked, at least for a bit. Lina's legs, though still pinned to the floor under their own weight, had their burdened lightened just enough for Lina to believe her efforts were not in vain.
But the path of a chubster is a difficult one. More difficult than her two pudgy, chronically out-of-shape, gravitationally impeded arms could bear. Lina weighed far too much to be lifted by her own efforts, or the efforts of two people, or the efforts of three. Her cramped arms reminded her of just how futile it even was to try, of just how much she weighed, of just how much she loved to eat, of just how absurdly squishy she had become. Lina grasped at her tummy and rubbed her hands along its smooth contour.
She was fired now, wasn't she? Every shocked face in the room seemed to confirm it. Judging by their faces, she might as well have cussed out every one around that ugly table and their mothers. It was as if everyone had seen their worst fear realised before their very eyes. Come to think of it, this might have been Lina's worst fear. If not this, at least, then what else? Lina felt a tear run down her chubby pink cheek. What would she do? Her nightmares always ended at the exact point of failure, after which she assumed her life would be somehow over. But here she was, and as much as she might have wanted it to be, her life was not over.
Lina sniffled and whimpered as another tear ran down her face. She exhaled, her breath wavering from embarrassment. People started filing out of the room. She began to play with her tummy as the room slowly emptied, too mired in self-pity to do much else. Another tear rolled down her cheek. The talkative guy came back with one of those reflective emergency blankets. It was obviously plundered from some long-forgotten, recently-remembered first aid kit. It mercifully covered at least a good part of her top half, nipples included. The guy squatted down to her level, judging whether to put his hand on her shoulder or not. He decided against it.
"Are you OK?"
Lina whimpered and sniffled again, responding with a small shake of the head.
As she shook her head, her whole top half shook with it, her breasts ruffling the emergency blanket. She squeezed the lower roll of her belly, giving it a shake. Yep, still fat. Fat, fat, fat. Lina sighed. She ran her hands along her belly, confirming that she was really as huge as she looked. Gods, she was fat.

As the last of her tears fell from her eyes, and her jiggling had long settled, Lina looked up at the man, who had been making some calls to get her taken home, or at least back to a nanocompression machine. She'd certainly need some help getting up, and most of the other attendees had since left. As the man's phone made a soft dialling sound, his eyes met hers.
"Um, can I get you anything?"
For someone so talkative, He really wasn't sure what to say. Becoming uncompressed in such a way had before been too mortifying for him to even consider, like some sort of great unspoken of social taboo. He did pity her, though, seeing her in such a state, perhaps as much as Lina pitied herself. Lina, for her part, famished since her last morning snack, had decided to come to terms with her situation. After all, no amount of not eating could make her any less fired. And she was really hungry and really fired. Lina smiled at the thought of stuffing another bag of cashew cookies into her mouth.
"Can I have something to eat?"