Milk in the Future

Chapter 1

“What are these kids eating these days?” Kevin jokingly asked his friend as they watched a family of four squeeze into a booth at their local burger joint.  They were all obese.  Not one of them looked like they weighed less than 200 pounds, and the parents looked like they were well over 300.

Chris looked behind him and looked back at Kevin, snorting.  He was half a foot taller than Kevin, and considerably bulkier than he was, which admittedly wasn’t much of a feat; Kevin was only 5’4, and thin as a skeleton.  The fact that both of them were in the same division of the military was laughable.  Nobody would assume they were coworkers, or even friends.

“Better be careful,” he said.  “Don’t get some meat on your bones, they might be eating YOU.”

They both laughed.  That much could be true.  Kevin dipped my fry into some ketchup and ate it. He savored the flavor, the salt.  It was a rare treat.  Usually, he was locked up in the lab, working out the newest tech.  He relished getting out into the real world every once and a while, even if it was just for lunch.

“You think they’re gonna approve the newest build of the Cryo Machine?” Kevin asked, spinning another fry in the small cup.

“Who knows?” Chris shrugged.  “I wouldn’t get so wrapped up in it, though.  You know how dangerous it is to mess with things like time.  Who knows what could go wrong, you know?”

“Well, it would just suck to make us do all of this work, only to cancel AGAIN,” the small man responded.  “I know they have their protocols, but I’m ready for this project to end already.”

“I think we still have another round of tests-”

“I don’t know how many times I’ve had to tell them, there’s a limit to how much we can test,” he said, now arguing with himself.  “It’s not like we can tell 100% from tests that a person would survive for 100 years… without freezing them for 100 years.  At a certain point, we just have to bite the bullet and go for it.”

“Speaking of ‘biting the bullet and going for it’, are you ever going to ask Sharon out?” Chris asked, knowing he caught his friend.  He took a bite of his burger and just stared him down.  He knew this was his weak point, he knew he was a coward when it came to women, especially beautiful ones.

“Oh come on, Sharon would want nothing to do with a guy like me,” Kevin said.  “Look at me, I’m a twig.  Girls like Sharon, they want some studly guy with arms and, I don’t know… a vein?  On the arm, you know what I’m talking about.”

Chris laughed.

“I think you might be surprised,” he said.  “And besides, you’ll never know until you try.  Maybe there’s a chick out there that’s in to… small, shrimpy little guys…”

He laughed.  Most people would be offended, but they were cool.

“Seriously though,” Chris continued.  “You’re 21 years old, but you’re attached to one of the biggest projects in the world.  When this goes live, you’re gonna be rich beyond anyone’s dreams.  Tough it out, and the world is your oyster.  You’re not gonna have to find the right one, the right one’s gonna find you.”

“Yeah…” Kevin said, eating his last fry.  “We’ll see.”

-

“I’m afraid this is going to be permanent,” the doctor told Ariel.  He looked grimly at the notes in front of him, the words reflecting back into his glasses and scrolling with the movement of his eyes.  Ariel could see the red in the reflection, and knew from experience that color was rarely good news.  He took a sip of coffee from his mug, his fat fingers trying not to break the ceramic, a relic of days gone by.  He was very overweight, but he couldn’t help but feel the need for a change of scenery.

The doctor stood up and walked to the window, looking at the dark, cloudy sky outside and looking down on the city far below.  He admired the vast green beneath him, even if he knew it was all synthetic.  Now that traffic was barely an issue, as people got from place to place in vehicles that arrived on a by need basis, he could relax watching the calm streets below.  But it didn’t take away from the problems within the walls of his clinic.  No, there were some issues even modern medicine couldn’t fix, as much as they pretended to try.

“Doctor, I don’t know how much longer I can go through with this,” Ariel said.  “I can’t walk around outside without being gawked at.  I get stares everywhere I go.  I think my boyfriend is embarrassed of me!”

“I know,” he said.  He shook his head.  “I know how much of a struggle life is with your condition.  I know because I see it every day, I see it in all of my clients, just not as much as it is with you.”  He walked around the desk and put his hands on her broad shoulders.  “Look, it could be worse.  At least it’s not fatal, right?”

A tear rolled down her cheek.

“Sometimes… sometimes it feels like it is…” she managed to get out through her whimpers.  A tear rolled off her face and landed on her chest, which stuck out at least a foot from where her ribcage should have been.  It left a small wet mark on her white and pink striped shirt.  She was certainly a big girl.  Easily over 400 pounds, a normal chair would be straining under her girth.  But chairs had not been normal for over a hundred years.  Reinforced chair used to be something to be ashamed of; now it was standard.  All chairs were reinforced, all floors had to be rebuilt.

The door to get in the building was widened and heightened, all stairs removed, the elevators upgraded.  Society had gotten heavier, and doctors like Dr. Eaton had to stay ahead of it.  Something to do with hormones, something to do with managing how the body transfers energy.  All kinds of problems existed now because of it, and his specialty was figuring out just what to do with these people.

And he was one of them.

And he didn’t really know.

Nobody did.

-

Kevin walked back into his lab after lunch.  Everything was just as he left it, in complete disarray, organized only so he could sit and see his favorite futuristic bounty hunter Odin watching over him, letting him know that he had his back.  The man was the epitome of masculinity; he had a cold stare, bulging biceps, a toned physique, and a sweet gun.  He looked like he could beat you up in a fight and take your girl, and you’d be happy just to be a part of it.  Kevin often fantasized about being him, fighting the good fight in a post apocalyptic world, running and gunning his way through zombie encampments and cannibalistic societies, rescuing a damsel in distress, getting her back to safety, and in the panic of it all she would say-

“Kevin, is the I89 done yet?” came a girl’s voice.

The small man looked up from his desk.  It was Sharon, a skinny girl with red hair and glasses, looking down at him.  She always had a cold expression when she looked at him, and somehow it wasn’t a turn off.  Kevin’s voice always crackled when she was near.  Yes, he had a bit of a crush on her, but he knew nothing would ever come of it.

As much as he wanted to believe he was Odin, he was Kevin.  Always had been and always will be.

And Kevin didn’t get the girl.

“Um… yeah…” he said, scrambling through all of the paperwork on his desk, trying to find what she was looking for.

“It… it was in the email…” she muttered.

“Oh?  From yesterday, right?”

“Mmhmm…” she muttered.

“It’s um… it’s done, I just had it here…” Kevin was still searching everywhere.  “Look, can I drop it off in like, five minutes?”

“Yes,” she said, glancing around the papers.  “Just know that Mr. Jacobs needs it before five, he’s got a meeting early in the morning and he really needs it for final approvals.  It’s the last item holding us up.”

“You got it Sharon!” Kevin blurted with more enthusiasm than he intended.  He refused to look her in the eye after that, just looking down at his desk.  He could sense her presence, her weighted pause, for what felt like a lifetime.  Finally, she pulled away, leaving him alone to put his life back together.

He even felt like Odin was judging him.

-

Ariel and her boyfriend, Jack, sat down at a huge table.  His family surrounded the rest, and there was a lot of loud music blaring.  Jack’s family loved sports, so they always went to sports bars, and took Ariel out with them all the time.  Tonight, the Rage was taking on Team Evil.  THe family loved to talk sports, which alienated Ariel from almost every conversation, and tonight was no different.

“Did you hear about Team Evil’s new AI enhancement?  24b makes them five times more aggressive than before!”

“Not gonna do much against Rage’s new hard drive capacity.  The added memory will be tough to compete with!”

“Are you kidding?  What’s the use of a hard drive if you don’t have the players to store in it?  Rage hasn’t had a solid mainframe in years!”

Ariel just sipped on her soda while Jack argued with his siblings.  They all argued like they were actual players, or really, coaches.  The truth was, none of them had actually played the game.  They weren’t allowed, actually.  Sports were deemed barbaric but necessary.  They were now played by computers, and the industry seemed better for it.  Now, the game was managed and moved by the great algorithm, which was half run by chance and the other half by a major corporation.  You could probably guess which half was used more often.

“Ariel, you went to the doctor’s today, right?” Jack’s mom asked in the middle of all of the action.  “Did he say when you were going to get better?”

“He said it was permanent,” Ariel said.

“He said what!?” she asked.

Ariel couldn’t tell if she couldn’t hear or if she was surprised.  The music in here was so loud she could barely hear herself think.

“HE SAID IT WAS PERMANENT!” Ariel yelled.

She looked disappointed to hear the news.  Ariel could tell his mom didn’t know what to say, and didn’t want to come out as rude.  She did what everyone else did in almost any situation; she shoved a pile of food in her mouth to distract herself.

“Well…” she muttered while she chewed.  “Maybe that will change.  I think you should get a second opinion.”  Her eyes looked up and down her massive body with worry.  “I feel like they’re only getting bigger…”