Vignette: ParkaFit Corporation

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ParkaFit Corporation by Pragmaton

PATIENT ZERO - The ParkaFit Corporation sent a team of privately owned paramedics to the middle-aged man's home. Special-response teams were working overtime to keep a botched diet supplement rollout from being made public.

All the clinical trials showed remarkable results; the gene editing components derived from stem cells demonstrated consistent, steady weightloss in participants. However, what they didn't account for was that there was a statistically insignificant (1 in 867,000) chance of rejection by male subjects, due to a specific gene sequence on the Y chromosome.

Scientists at ParkaFit suspected it was a primitive survival directive designed for harsh winter climates, causing rapid weight gain for warmth and insulation. Normally, the genome that regulated the body's utilization of testosterone would be stimulated by the weightloss supplement toward a leaner, fitter end, but this particular genetic sequence had a different idea of a masculine and "healthy" body, which led to a peculiar mutation.

Realizing their mistake, ParkaFit stopped distribution, but not before several hundred products were distributed. Spending millions of dollars in surveillance, the company kept tabs on many, many customers, hoping against all odds that there wouldn't be an "accident." Then, one fateful day, a security specialist caught something on camera and immediately pinged the response center.

A middle-aged man with a high-fade haircut came out to get his morning paper. It was normal to put on a small spare tire after doing a stint in the military, but previous reports on the man's physique indicated this was no normal post-military mass increase. He walked toward the rolled up newspaper, wearing a blue and white striped pajama set, that was looking several sizes too small.

A bulging, 55-inched whopper of a gut lapped over his tight, tortured waistband, showing off a massive ball curve and a widening bellybutton. The bottom two buttons of the pajama top had burst, and above, giant ovals appeared between two beefy, overfilled moobs. The man had a tortured look on his face, rubbing his gut with one hand while reaching down sideways to grab the paper. The camera was at the perfect angle to see the seat of his pajamas rip, revealing tight red briefs underneath. In the three seconds it took him to grab the paper, the globes of his ass cheeks seemed to suddenly overflow, ballooning even fuller and forcing both the tear and his pumped-up rump even wider.

Standing up, his belly looked dangerously round, as if he just had a Thanksgiving feast all to himself and downed several gallons of gravy afterward as a snack because he wasn't yet full. He quickly waddled back to his open door, marshmallow lovehandles brushing the sides.

Before this footage even concluded, a team had been dispatched, and was already halfway to his residence. Upon entering, they were met with the shocking site of a naked, 500 pound man in the floor of his living room, surrounded by shredded pajamas. The hopeless look in his eyes said it all. "I don't...*urk* know what's happening to me," he pleaded, his double chin expanding into a thicker inner tube of fat before their eyes. They quickly got him dressed in a 8XL set of nondescript, black clothing, rolling him as needed to get the bottoms on. Initially somewhat loose, the clothes were already getting tight on his growing, corpulent form once they had him on a reinforced stretcher. Security guards disguised as paramedics informed rubbernecking neighbors that the man was experiencing a severe allergic reaction as he was wheeled into an ambulance the size of a military Humvee.

A half-hour later, the team arrived at the entrance gate of one of ParkaFit's secure facilities, which was a relief, as the formerly husky, ex-military dadbod was now approaching the size of an 800lb, buzzcutted hog, exposed belly pouring over both sides of the reinforced stretcher, suspension of the ambulance reaching the absolute limit with its rapidly engorging cargo.

Before they could even park, the vehicle's radio perked up with a message that made the spirits fall of the entire team.

In the past few minutes, seven more incidents were called in, and in the days that followed, that number was only going to grow...