Alternatives

Alternatives
A brief interlude by Loquacious Jango

Desmond grimaced as another growl of hunger rippled through his stomach. He had done his best to ignore the sensation of emptiness in his gut, but it was steadily overpowering his ability to think straight. Things had been going so well today too. His sister was out of the house, he had no work, nothing to accomplish and no projects that needed tending to. For the first time in what felt like months, the young man had no other obligations to prevent him from sitting down, turning on the TV and lapsing into a quiet, peaceful vegetative state for a few hours. That is, until his stomach had started up, demanding that he rise from the cozy groove that his ass had made in the cushion and go find sustenance.

Desmond quickly scanned the room, hoping to find something edible within arm’s reach. He normally wasn’t this desperately attached to the concept of lethargy, but again, this was his first complete day off in a while. Unfortunately, the only thing that he could safely grab for was a bag of beef jerky on the coffee table, left open by his slob of a sister. He felt tempted to grab piece for a few seconds, but ultimately rose to his feet with a groan of effort and exasperation.

Desmond stalked to the kitchen, making a beeline to the fridge. He scanned the contents of the opened icebox, his eyes flickering off of various foodstuffs, several of which were incompatible with his diet. His sister had done the latest bout of grocery shopping, so his options were a bit slim. Anna was understanding of her brother’s vegan lifestyle, despite being a pure-blooded carnivore in her own right. Literally. The two siblings shared a lycan father, but Anna had gotten the genetic lion’s share by way of a wolfish snout, fur and a tail, whereas Desmond only had slightly sharper teeth and yellowish eyes.

Anna’s meat-only diet may have slightly influenced her brother’s decision to go vegan, if only because he figured that enough of the world’s supply of animal carcasses had disappeared down his sister’s gullet. Finally settling on a bag of carrots and some soy milk, Desmond found reason to pause as he procured both items from the fridge.  He wasn’t holding his usual brand of soy milk; it was some new label, gaudy and colourful.

“Soy and So” he read with a single, skeptical eyebrow raised. “Whatever, as long as it doesn’t taste weird”  
Desmond rolled his eyes as he imagined his sister’s derisive voice in his ear. “Wouldn’t a soy product by definition taste weird?”

Before committing to anything, the young man decided to pour himself an experimental glass of the stuff. It tasted fine, hell, better than fine; it had a creaminess that reminded him of the days before his dietary vow. But there was a certain something that was…off about the consistency of the beverage. It felt strangely slippery going down his throat and seemed to be carrying something with it. Desmond shrugged and poured himself another glass of the stuff. He grabbed his bag of carrots and made back for the couch

Desmond’s eyes snapped open as he jerked back into consciousness. A loud explosion from whatever movie was playing on TV had awoken him from his slumber. He smacked his lips in an attempt to dislodge the slippery sensation from the milk that was lingering on his tongue and adjusted his weight to alleviate the numbing sensation in his butt. He tenaciously poked his stomach as it let out an odd burbling sound. Then he froze. Desmond had to turn on the lamp next to the sofa to be sure, but the extra light source confirmed it; his healthy complexion had faded completely, rendering his skin a blank, snowy white.

The newly pale young man ran a hand across his arm, supressing the panic that was pushing at the back of his mind. His skin was smooth and slightly slick to the touch, almost watery. Another bubbling in his stomach drew Desmond’s attention down to his abdomen, which started to visibly stir under his t-shirt. He slowly, shakily got to his feet, noting that the act of standing upright seemed to be considerably more difficult than it used to be. His legs quivered as though his bones had gone missing in action and his bare feet had considerably less traction than they once did.

Suddenly, his gut gave off another glub of distress and his insides shifted, feeling as though they had become packed with glue. He lifted up his garment in alarm, which quickly turned to puzzlement. If the young man thought he had a flat stomach before, then that concept had been taken to its logical extreme.

His entire chest had become as flat as a tabletop, any concept of curvature lost to a smooth, white expanse. The changing young man watched in wonder as a tugging sensation along his ribcage accompanied the formation of visible edges along the length of his body, mirroring another pair of hard angles along his posterior side. Before his own eyes, Desmond’s entire torso had become a solid rectangle. His new cuboid belly started to bulge, apparently not content with its new shape. It started to swell in all directions, front and back as one unit, already pressing against his arms, which were starting to tingle.

Desmond’s eyes flew about the room, looking for something he could use to halt this bizarre metamorphosis. Through the haze of panic, the only thing that sprang to mind was something cold. Maybe he could find  way to freeze or slow this bizarre shift in his physiology, which seemed determined to convert him into something out of Minecraft. Desmond made towards the kitchen, forgetting his newfound lubricant properties. His smooth feet slid along the floor, causing the young man to windmill his arms as he tumbled forward, landing hard on the wide front face of his geometric belly.

Desmond’s swelling form had reached the point where only his arms up to his elbows could reach the floor, and that was gradually shrinking. Desmond tried to kick at the floor, finding it increasingly difficult. He struggled to look over his shoulder, only to be greeted with a pair of engorged cubes where his butt used to be. Desmond’s backside seemed to be losing its hard right angles, the sides starting to bulge outwards and becoming slightly rounder. Beyond the massive, jiggling rear end, Desmond could only imagine his thighs and legs were suffering the same fate. He could feel his pyjama pants straining against lower limbs and a waist that they were never designed to contain.

Desmond realized that turning his head was becoming increasingly difficult, causing him to revert his gaze back forward, his eyes resting on the flickering screen of the TV, which played on unsympathetic to his plight. The blocky figure brought a hand up to his steadily bloating neck, which seemed to spreading outwards as a bridge between his massive gut and still untouched cranium.

Desmond winced. On the way to the floor, he had bitten his lip hard enough to take a tiny sliver of flesh off. He rolled the piece of himself around in his mouth, the truth of his metamorphosis slowly dawning on him. Whatever he was turning into, he had had it in his mouth before. The faint taste, the slippery texture. Desmond balked as his cheeks started to grow out. It was bean curd. He was turning into tofu. A humongous block of tofu.

Demond felt his shoulders and arms tingle as they developed the same geometric dimensions as the rest on him, starting to swiftly bloat and become harder to move. Desmond started to scan the room, looking for options. He was quickly losing mobility, swelling at an accelerated rate and the only objects within immediate access were an empty glass, a lamp, a sofa and the TV. Sighing, Desmond stretched his rectangular arms out to place his palms flat against the floor, pushing his slick body forward. He slid to a stop reaching out and picking up the only thing that could make a difference now.
The TV remote.

Desmond’s podgy, brick-like fingers pressed at the channel buttons before settling on a rerun of his favourite cop show. Behind him, he felt his brick-like legs thicken to the point of immobility, pressed down slightly by squared buttocks the size of sound amps. His colossal midsection dominated his profile, the square shape so massive that it was bulging outwards, with soft, curving sides. Desmond could barely move his fingers, which lay on the end of arms that resembled pyramids. His lego-brick lips had been puckered by his cheeks, which were as angular as the rest of him.

Desmond sighed through his nose as his bean-curd body throbbed, quietly waiting for his metamorphosis to finish. He had no options left and any panic brought about by the change had diminished, replaced by a faint buzz of dread in the back of his skull. All he could do now was lie there, wait for his sister to find him like this and hope that this was at least partially reversible. At least his day off had taken an unexpected extension.


“Dr. Moth!” a young woman yelped, scurrying through the halls of the R&D department of Amalgatech’s southern branch.
The hunched figure she was pursuing paused and turned, beckoning the mousy young woman to come closer. She placed the cell phone that she had been ferrying in his hands, quickly babbling out an explanation for her urgency.

“You said that you wanted to hear the first call that came in about our new soy milk and…”  

“Thank you Tilly” the older man nodded, relieving her of the phone.

“Hello?” He spoke into the receiver.
“Yes?...I see…Right…No, I understand….Right, Anna was it? Yes…Of course we’ll see what we can do about your brother. Not to worry. Some men will be by your place shortly…yes, of course you can come with him. Alright. Good…say, just out of professional curiosity, could you give me a quick measurement? It’s all for the purpose of helping him” Moth bit his lip.
“8 feet by 8? Excellent, thank you. See you soon”

Dr. Quentin Moth hung up. “Damn” he finally profaned. “This wasn’t supposed to happen in the first wave. People are going to start asking questions soon, and that Desmond fellow’s sister might be a problem. If they take legal action, this could get ugly” He turned back to Tilly. “Ms. Fedding, please get me a line to Ms. Sarkonin immediately, she may need to run damage control. And would somebody please tell me how a contaminated sample of our soy got into general circulation so quickly?”

Tilly scurried off on her errand, leaving the aged doctor to lean against a nearby wall and check his watch. This wasn’t the worst hiccup he had ever had to deal with, but an inconvenience was still an inconvenience. Things would seem more manageable after he had a chance to talk to the Desmond boy. With any luck, he could offer him a job and shut him up.

Quentin sighed again. He was getting too old to be running around like this. Political subterfuge, executive sidestepping and mad experiments being leaked to the public were all games for younger men. There was just too much heaped on his shoulders these day. Too many problems, too many secrets…
In the end it didn’t matter. His problems matter. Nothing mattered but the mission. Doctor Quentin Moth straightened his tie, took a deep breath and got back to work.