Down the Food Chain

[bodyswap with animals]

Gregor sipped the latte that the pasty-faced lab assistant had handed him. The almondmilk was watery and barely warm, the espresso too bitter. For the sake of the researchers at Biodigm Labs, he hoped his funding was going to produce better results than their coffee machine did. He tried to restrain his impatience as Dr. Volio, the head of Project: Omega, fumbled with the remote for the projector screen.

“This damned thing…” Volio grunted as the screen descended halfway, stopped, then slid back into the ceiling. “I swear, we had the IT guys fixing this just yesterday…”

Gregor set the latte aside and rose to his feet. He watched the handful of scientists in the room shudder at his movement. “Gentlemen, relax!” Gregor said, stroking his jet black beard as he smiled, trying to project warmth. “Listen, I’ve sunk over a million dollars into your research so far. I don’t want to feel like I need to walk on eggshells every time I show up to see how things are going.”

Volio, getting flustered, set the projector remote down and started pacing, his hands buried in his lab coat. “I’m so sorry Mr. Benton. We’ve produced some interesting results, but with less than 24 hours, our Powerpoint presentation may not be adequate to demonstrate–”

“Who wants to watch a Powerpoint anyway?” Gregor shrugged. He looked around the room. “Look, boys, we wanted to revolutionize the fitness industry–make the natural world work for us! We want to produce the next generation of superhuman muscle FREAKS! So why don’t you just take me downstairs, show me your hopefully SPLENDIDLY huge creations, and I’ll be on my way.”

The left side of Volio’s mouth smiled while the rest of his face remained stoic. “Well, you know… we very well could…” He looked around at the rest of his team, gesturing at them to get moving. “Give us just a moment to get things in proper order–”

“Dr. Volio, I’d like to see the experiment as it is AT THIS SECOND, not some polished up version,” Gregor said. “So, chop chop! Let’s get to it. For the sake of your funding, I certainly hope you can show me some musclemen!”

Volio feigned a laugh as he headed for a door at the back of the room. He and Gregor stepped out, walked briskly down the hallway and stopped at a massive door with an intricate keypad below the handle. Volio scanned his thumbprint, his eye, typed in a passcode and then spoke into a vocal analyzer before the pressurized security system unlocked.

“Just so you know,” Volio said as Gregor skipped through the door, “you’ll be the first person outside our research team to see any of the subjects.”

“Okay, now,” Gregor said, grabbing a tablet from the same lab assistant who had given him the garbage coffee. He swiped his finger across the top of the tablet and took a look. Subject 1 appeared: Damion Van Gunderson, a powerfully built, tanned young man with a lantern jaw held high in the image, his thick arms flexing to show powerfully peaked biceps. “Wow, this fella is bulging all over! So this… Damion… this photo is from BEFORE the procedure? He must be positively massive now!”

Volio shrugged as they opened another security door and entered a viewing room. Through one-way glass, they watched as Damion sprinted on a treadmill. Gone were the wide shoulders and the tree trunk legs. His thick neck had dwindled. While the rest of him was still sinewy and lean, he looked more like a long-distance runner than a bodybuilder now.

“Well,” Gregor said, cocking his head to the side. “Other than that big perky butt of his,” he said, noticing Damion’s substantial glutes bouncing as his feet pounded the rubber track, “he lost all his muscle. This isn’t exactly what we were going for, is it?”

Volio nodded furiously as he shrugged. “We, uh… see, we tried to overlay animal characteristics on each of the subjects,” Volio said.

“I know the mission statement of the project,” Gregor said impatiently. He watched as Damion, who had a metallic collar around his neck, hopped off the treadmill and ran to an upright water bottle. He suckled at it, easily consuming over a gallon of water before getting back on the treadmill and resuming his 7 mile-per-hour sprint. “We’re supposed to be making men BIGGER, not… like this!”

“Well, the practical applications of this version of the project–” Volio began.

“Dr. Volio,” Gregor said, impatiently. “Explain why this Damion here isn’t the size of a minivan?”

Gregor started as two men in labcoats approached with a clear plastic cage. They set it on a table next to the billionaire and backed away as Volio stood next to it.

“You see,” Volio began, “when we tried to transfer certain TRAITS of the animal mind… in this case, the hamster’s affinity toward exercise, its ability to recover quickly and exert itself for long periods of time without reaching mental exhaustion… well, we transferred a little more than we had originally hoped.”

Gregor glanced at Damion, who had hopped off the treadmill again and approached a pile of soft wood chips. The stringy-bodied, vascular man grabbed handfuls of the chips and shoved them into his mouth, chewing so wildly that he sprayed bits in all directions. Gregor’s head turned to the side as it all began to add up. “So, the hamster’s mind… ended up in Damion’s body?”

Volio stared at the ground and sighed. “Yes… in all the subjects, the human mind and the animal mind… got swapped…”

“So this…” Gregor said, approaching the cage, “is that big muscly man, crawling on all fours? Shitting little pellets and running on a literal hamster wheel?” He gestured to one of the nearby technicians to open the cage. Then he scooped the hamster out and stroked it gently. It trilled lightly, quivering at first but calming down as Gregor touched him more.

“He’s still quite aware,” Volio said. “His animal instincts take over from time to time, but he’s still… fully Damion…”

“Oh, you’re a big tough muscleman, aren’t you?” Gregor taunted, stroking the hamster’s chubby belly and squat rear. “You see that body that used to be yours over there?” he said in a saccharine voice. “All your muscles are gone! You’re a skinny little weakling now!”

Volio cleared his throat. “We’ll be changing his performance-enhancer regimen and diet in an effort to bulk him up before we swap them back…”

Gregor chuckled as he gently set the little hamster back in the cage. “But if that doesn’t work, this little guy has to choose between being a rodent or ending up looking like a bag of bones next time he goes back to his gym!” He clapped his hands together. “Obviously not ideal,” he said, “but I have to say, I get a kick out of it! Where’s our next subject? Hopefully you found more success with him?”

Swiping the tablet in his hand, Gregor found the next subject: Carl Chaisson, a blonde, well-built hunk. “Jesus,” Gregor said, zooming in on the screen to Carl’s ripped abdomen. “Abs I could grate cheese on! And look at that dick!” Carl wore a set of pink posing trunks in the photo, but the bulge within them was hard to hide. Despite the fact that his muscular body was already larger than the average man, his manhood was still proportionately huge. “Don’t tell me you turned THIS pretty piece into a hamster?”

“No,” Volio said as they entered the next room. Gregor put a hand over his face as he caught a whiff of what smelled like barnyard stink. “We put Mr. Chaisson in the body of… a donkey…”

On the other side of a fence was a grey, muscular donkey braying pathetically as it paced back and forth. It turned its head so that one of its eyes was looking at Gregor, whose face lit up at the look of the massive beast.

“Did you choose the donkey because of the size of his dick?” Gregor asked as he gleefully clapped at the pathetic fate of the beautiful musclehunk on the tablet.

“He just showed the most genetic compatibility,” Volio explained as two assistants poked the donkey with cattle prods to get him to walk toward Gregor.

“Genetic compatibility and DICK compatibility,” Gregor chuckled as Volio handed him a sugar cube. “Hey, Carl!” Gregor called out. “You want this sugar cube? Come have a snack!”

The donkey brayed sadly as it walked over, sniffed Gregor’s hand, then slurped it up with a spotted tongue. He whinnied again before his tail shot up in the air. A huge pile of dung poured from the donkey’s rear, his muscular haunches quivering as he sputtered, his fuzzy ears folded down over his face.

“Aw, Carl!” Gregor said, fanning his face. “Good god, what a pile of SHIT you just dropped! Carl, c’mon, big guy. No lady is going to want to get with you if you’re taking dumps like that!”

“Mr. Chaisson is… uh, a homosexual…” Volio explained. He gestured over to a large barrel decorated to look like a donkey. It had pink lips and long eyelashes affixed to its cylindrical head. “We made that so he could relieve his constant erections, but we’re guessing he turned it down because we made it look to feminine.”

Gregor reached out and slapped the donkey’s rippling haunches. “Nah, big Carl here just isn’t a fleshlight kind of guy. He probably wants all your lab techs to lube up their gloves and jerk him off manually!”

“We’ll probably have to do that,” Volio said, “as his erections… and his irritability… seem related…”

“So where’s his human body? I bet a donkey has done wonders with that big hunk of mass!”

Volio sighed as the went through yet another door to another viewing area. On the other side was Carl, dragging a weighted plow tied around him with rope. Far from the Greek god in the “before” photo, Carl’s body had bloated out like he’d been inflated. His arms and legs were thick and puffy now, his torso blocky with a massive paunch hanging down the front. His neck had grown so wide it nearly surpassed his head, which was now perfectly round with heavy jowls.

“He just won’t stop eating…” Volio said, shaking his head.

“So quit feeding him!” Gregor said, although his face seemed delighted with the round pile of chubby muscle waddling around before him.

“Well, he won’t pull the plow if we don’t adequately feed him,” Volio explained. “We figured it was best to keep him in caloric surplus if it meant exerting himself according to our training plan…”

“How much does this big bastard weigh?” Gregor asked as he watched Carl plod by, breathing heavily. The sumo-sized man farted loudly without even flinching.

“330 pounds,” Volio said. “A net gain of nearly 70, but his bodyfat has skyrocketed…”

“I love it!” Gregor said. “Call me when you swap this guy back. I can’t wait to see what he does when he realizes his gut’s so fat he can’t touch his own belly button–or his dick!”

Volio smiled at Gregor’s amusement. “So… you appreciate the results so far?”

“Oh, no!” Gregor said. “No, this won’t do at all. This is failed research, Volio. But if a few big bodybuilders come out of it completely transformed, I can at least enjoy the laughs a bit. I wonder if they’ll wake up in the future thinking they’re still animals? I wonder if big Carl over there will prefer a muddy stall to his own bed or something…”

Volio went white. It was clear Gregor was planning on cutting funding if they didn’t reveal some positive results.

“Well, the good news…” Volio said, shoving Gregor toward the final room, “is that we DO have a NEARLY successful project going on in here…”

In the final area, a hulking man stomped forward, hoisted a heavily weighted barbell over his head, pressed it multiple times, then tossed it down. The man proceeded toward a large granite block, which he hoisted up before squatting a number of times. Gregor’s eyes lit up at the man’s size: he had to be 6’5” tall, with legs further around than Gregor’s chest. He was a mountain of a man, his slick muscular body an obscene display of muscularity.

“Good god, what a FREAK!” Gregor said as the shaven-headed man dropped the granite block and proceeded to a climbing wall. With a massive chain wrapped around his waist, his started pulling himself up the wall with ease–without even using his feet.

“This is Trent Waywood,” Volio said. The beast seemed to be as big as a car! Gregor’s eyes seemed attached to the thick cords of muscle in Trent’s back as he reached the height of the climbing wall, then climbed along hand-over-hand bars on the ceiling. “He’s our most successful subject, by far, with one exception…”

Gregor pulled up Trent’s “before” picture and was stunned. Prior to his arrival at Biodigm, he had been the biggest of the three–300 massive, bulging pounds, roided out to the max. In the photo on the tablet, every muscle looked like it had been inflated to its absolute max, his head looking positively tiny between massive traps and above a powerful shelf of pecs. But the absolute mutant powering through the lab’s gymnasium with ease made the man in the photo look scrawny in comparison. Gregor’s eyes were wide. He licked his lips as he watched Trent relentlessly manipulating terrifying amounts of weight.

“This guy… is the biggest human being alive,” Gregor said, mystified.

“Well over 500 pounds, now,” Volio explained. “His genetic potential seemed to be at its max before, but having put one of our lab animals in charge of his body has allowed us to truly blast beyond what Mr. Waywood ever thought possible.”

“That guy can’t fit through a regular door,” Gregor mused. “He can’t get in a car! He’ll need special clothes forever… probably needs to eat ten cows a day, hunh?”

“His nutritional needs are a challenge,” Volio said with a shrug. “He prefers primarily dextrose-based meals, and he eats often. But his need for rest is… low.”

“What the hell animal did you put in this guy’s body to make him like THAT?” Gregor said, pointing to the quivering meteor of veiny human flesh on the other side of the one-way glass.

The lab assistant appeared behind Gregor carrying a small glass case. As he got nearer, Gregor saw that it was an ant-farm.

“No fucking way!” Gregor said, his eyes alight as he peered in to see dozens of tiny insects, each toiling away in the confines of their glass prison.

“Yes,” Volio said with a sigh. “We swapped Trent with an ant. He was very unhappy about this of course–still is.”

Gregor peered in, trying to figure out which one of the skittering little bugs within used to be a champion bodybuilder. “Hey there, little guy!” he taunted. “How do you like trading massive pecs for a couple of hypersensitive antennae? Is digging all day better than weightlifting?” Gregor looked up at Volio. “I don’t get it. Which one of these ants is Trent?”

Volio’s head sank. “That’s where the project has gone awry,” he said. “We thought, maybe, if we put him in a productive colony with other ants, he might forget the details of his situation and get swept up in his ant-like impulses, but… it appears we’ve lost track of which one he is.”

Gregor rolled his eyes. “Honestly, that’s on you,” he said. “You really should have expected that one, Doc.”

Volio nodded. “We had him marked, but the other ants removed his mark. And we’ve isolated them and given them tests, but somehow they’ve become smart enough to pass the tests as effectively as the real Trent. Sadly, the little guy hasn’t been able to prove his identity beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

Gregor burst out laughing, nearly dropping the ant farm. The assistant snatched it just before it fell. “Can you imagine? Being the biggest guy in the gym, and then… so tiny and helpless, and nobody believes you used to be a man!”

“We’re quite certain we’ll have him swapped back within several weeks,” Volio said. “But we have no idea just how big Mr. Waywood will be by then. Perhaps so huge he can barely move…”

“Well, that’s just terrific,” Gregor said. “You’ve kept my funding! But let’s see some more wild combos… Let’s get, I dunno… a pro wrestler swapped with a walrus. And a heartthrob actor put in the body of a toucan! Maybe turn a whole football team into a penguins! Yeah!”

Volio’s eyes narrowed. “Uh… you’re not serious, are you? The goal of the project is to revolutionize fitness!”

Gregor gently patted Volio’s face. “You have to have a broader perspective, Doc,” he said, clucking his tongue. “Imagine being able to put the CEO of a rival company into a worm to get him out of the way. What if a guy stole your girlfriend, but you put him in a ferret’s body while he ran around with an animal in charge of him? The ramifications of this project could be UNBELIEVABLE. We may have revolutionized revenge! Imagine a guy’s about to attack you, then BANG, he’s in the body of a koala, craving eucalyptus, while his human body just gets sleepy and lazy and climbs a tree.”

Volio winced as he realized what Gregor was asking him.

“I’m telling you, Volio, we may have just changed the world with all of this,” Gregor said, rubbing his hands together. “Alpha males better watch out… because if they’re not careful, they’re going to end up WAY down on the food chain!”