(ok-this is a story but it is full of ideas)
Wetdog Chews the Fat
I was chewing fat, way back in old, old days, before the first calamity.
All people chewed the fat back then, chewed fat four-leggers, fatty birds, and fat, fat plants.
We all grew round and fat and soft back then. Farms plumped up pigs and ducks and you could squeeze the wet-fat out of corn and other oily plants, all for us to eat.
Then calamity came. Gene engineers melted all our fat with their creeping virus genes. The twisting virus strangled and rebuilt our genes to stop the fat from growing in us living things. All because the engineers sold gene treatments to the rich to make them slim and sleek and to the starlets to let them eat and eat. Their virus genes escaped and stopped all internal living fat-making machines. No more fat in all us living things.
Gene engineers lost control. The virus crossed the planet. Then people, cats, dogs, mice, all creatures, plants, and even labs not specially contained, could never create the fat we loved. No more precious calories bulging under well-sized arms or in bouncing, happy thighs or in our belly rolls. That was the big calamity. All people were doomed evermore to eat and eat and eat.
“Oh rue the day of calamity the angels say.”
Now all must nibble constantly or drain their fuel—like humming birds have always done. These little birds fell down hard when their inner food ran low. Now people do that everyday. Just drop when calories are gone and internal carb accounts are drained.
“Oh, sweet, sweet fatty angels help us through the hour when no sugarbars or chiplets come. “ We pray that prayer ten times a day. “Oh, fatty angels guide us on.“
Now, the calamity has long past. Nothing ever bulges fat. All people are just molded tissues under tight-stretched skin. Lean and mean they used to say when I was young, but that was wrong. Now all are lean—the mean and good ones, too.
Some still want the fat, fat look. They bulge themselves with insert bags surgically slipped underneath their skin. These are the RoundOnes. They look like fatty angels, all round in their bellies and their puffy cheeks. But RoundOnes are not the angels of the earth, as they often claim. They are only stringy lizard folk like me. Eating stringy meals, but singing fat-filled eating songs together every night. Songs about the round way people ought to look. They act like there are no stringy selves inside their puffed out skin.
Everyone knows this noisy, cultish group because most RoundOnes with the insert bags choose Transparency. Their bones and liver, heart and spleen all show through their color-missing skin, show through their insert bags hidden deep in belly spaces. Their organs and a map of arteries and veins are bared. Transparent RoundOnes are not the fatty angels that they try to be. No fatty angel would expose her gassy bubbles, squirting tubes and organs pumping slimy juices.
Some Transparents slip bright glitter chips in the round insert bags that paunch out their shining belly rolls. Some keep swimming fishes in round-the-waist bags dodging intestines and other squirmy body things. I never care to see the golden fish beneath their see-through belly skin.
The true fatty angels float above us, full-covered with their robes and feathered wings. We should do as they would have us do.
“Be round but be covered,” I always say when I see transparancy. “See it and be it,” the Transparents yell back to me. I tell them, “cover up and keep your organs to yourself.”
True fatty angels never would display their inner stuff. We should all be like the angels in their covered state. I follow fat angels’ one true way. I cover all with all the fur I grow myself, thanks to the
Fur priests say that our Furry sex is no better than the others. “The Furry sex is not above the Feathers, Scalebacks, and the Crawlers. Furs are not above Transparents and the minor sexes, too. No better in the fatty angels’ eyes. But all Furs know, “Outside is what does matter.” The Fury Oath I took back on my sexing day says so.
The
I am Wetdog. I am fur. I sing each day before I pray:
Fur fends off rays,
wraps bodys warm,
and keeps the nose glare free
and skin from harm.
fur forever and brush my face.
(clap clap clap)
But this story is not about the Furs or insert bags. This story is of LaDu, one of the true fatty angels and how she grew and sprouted wings and flew away.
Yes, I was chewing fat that day back then when we conceived LaDu. That day, my family feasted in the center of the grassy, rolling townyard green on long communal tables fitted out for family days. We feasted on this conception day for the One-Who-Is-to-Be, and that would be my sister, the soon-to-be-conceived, LaDu. She would be conceived as soon as the lambduck leg was carved down to the bone. Townspeople watched from the edges of the yard, remembering their family conception days when they sat and prayed to the angels for their One-to-be.
The calamity would come within the year (of course we did not know it then). That was the last time my family had communal fat to chew. In love and happiness we chomped down to the bone that day. The angels smiled, blessed us all, and wiped their rounded, greasy chins.
I sat on the far side, on the children’s side, with child Lulu and Lulene. We children sang conception songs as parents reached for the center cooking pot for meaty, dripping chunks:
Angels, angels come today
And bring our new baby, baby
We make our baby with this song
Baby, baby come along
Suck the sauce and chew the bone
Feast today for baby comes
Dance the dance and carry on
Make the baby, sing the song
MamaLa and MamaTrogh were furs like me. They sat to my side. These two mamas were my favorite mamapair. MamaLentroline and MamaJenelate sat across from them. They were of the feather sex and had their plumage spread and covered the full tableside. MamaMako was the ScaleBack of the family. She sat with MamaLen from the minor sex of Crawlers. MamaPapa, our Transparent, sat on the far side from me. She wore a feather robe that day and covered well. She had the place of honor. She handed out the meat and did the carving work. The lambduck meat was sliced away. The family laughed as they held the greasy food and let it slide down inside as they swallowed whole their greasy bites.
Time finally came when all were all filled and food was done. The Conception Song had all twenty verses sung, so MamaLa, who led the party day, pulled up the BabyView upon the table. All watched as the projected image of the One-to-Be danced undefined, ghostlike, in the center of the yard. The BabyView had been used for years to conceive by all town families. The engineers built them way back when the sexes were more constrained. Some said the innies and outies existed then and those two sexes were all there were.
MamaLa took the GeneSpin from the BabyView to architect new baby genes for our One-to-Be. The first gene choice went to our MamaPapa. All beamed wide, wide happy smiles. She had the carry for nine months now with the big insertion bag inside that plugged into her bloodtap to carry new baby LaDu. MamaPapa should be first to choose, because she had the babycarry chore. Of course, the family helped and plugged in when they could, but the bag was hers. MamaPapa smiled and picked the eyegene: Orangy-Red. We cheered and clapped and yelled for her.
MamaLu spun again and we called out genes as the choice turn went round the table. Each Mama chose new genes for the One-to-Be. The genes filled in and the projected image ghost grew to fully colored flesh dancing in the townyard air. Of course, the baby was not sexed, not until adulting day, so the baby had that boring look that children have—that’s what the Mama’s said to us—boring red-black-brown-foam-and even blue, but always with that undercoat of red. Not like adults with their fur, scales, and feather rainbow looks.
After an hour of spins, the One-to-Be was fully formed. The genemap blazed in lights above the townyard glen. Then all the Mamas came to MamaPapa’s chair and picked her up. They chanted as they carried the family bagholder over the field to the baby cleanroom for Mamapapa to receive the new one in the angel-blessed bag. The children carried baby presents on their heads and danced around the babycarry’s chair. Fatty angels danced above the townyard square.
The townsfolk who had watched the family party with only sly side looks now dropped their feigned distance to parade across the yard, to sing and to pop bags with loud bangs, as we always do on conception days. The children ran through the line, but the Mamas walked straight to the babyroom. Mamapapa smiled and all children knew it would be their job to wait on her until the day was due when the bag was broken and the One-to-Be would join us and get her baby name. That was the start of our LaDu.
We conceived LaDu the month before calamity. It came like fever through the town and all were changed. Sex did not matter--all sexes: furs, feathers, tranparents, even the antennae folks, too, whom noone ever sees. All caught the virus, young, mid, and old-withered too. Even those conceived but not yet burst to life, like LaDu.
All seemed wrong when the virus came. We were all hungry all the time. We started melting like old lardcakes frying in the pan. In only weeks we looked so lean and many of us danced like rich starlets after their fancy no-fat creams. We would all be fit and lean and become starlets on townyard screens, that’s what the children thought.
MamaPapa stayed big, round in the middle, the bag held her very tight. She slimmed down everwhere but there, in her arms and legs and even in her neck.
In the next months, other babies burst out skin and bone. Lizard babies we called them then. No fat was showing anywhere. Families cried when a bag was popped. Only lizard babies were carried out of for family children to view.
So everyone was crying when Baby LaDu’s day came. MamaPapa flipped the flap and pulled the bag. She popped the plugs and other tube things from the side. The bag was opened and baby given the twelve volt jump from the start machine. We sang the baby welcome song:
Unzip the bag and pull her plug
Let the baby breath in air
Give her room to stretch and move
Then hold her snug with Mama care
But we sang with little heart, for fear of what LaDu would be. A lizard baby scared us all.
But all inside the bursting room were laughing like before Calamity. Then I saw LaDu, fat as any baby ever was. I was down to boney legs and arms but LaDu had fat rings round her arms and legs, and a chin that puckered seven times. She smiled at me and I smiled back and gave her a furry Wetdog cry.
We sang to Baby LaDu that night. Everyone in town put her down to sleep. The next town heard the songs and then the next town too. All knew we slept happy in our family.
Soon engineers came to see Ladu. In white coats they scoped her belly cells. We told them, “see, calamity is done; the virus is not strong. LaDu can beat it. Engineers like you could fix us all. We will plump out again.”
LaDu was hope. LaDu was joy. We sang to her each day and squeezed her tight each night as we lay her in her nesting room.
The engineers came back again. They shook their heads and said we were wrong, “wait, LaDu will be a lizard baby too.” For three months they came but our LaDu got rounder everyday. She bounced her head up and down and we squeezed and squeezed the soft baby fat legs and toes.
Finally the engineers took LaDu away and told us that she was a fatty angel, not of the Wetdog family. She was not a baby but belonged above. They took her to fly above the town, dropping sugarballs and chiplets down.
The family cried but could not save LaDu from her angel fate to save us all and drop us daily sugarballs. MamaPapa, we could not console. She dripped tears like fatty droplets used to fall. She had watched the baby grow inside her see-through bag. Now she watched LaDu dance in the sky each night. She cried for her angel child.
MamaPapa knew what to do. She reinserted the bag from her LaDu and filled it full of chiplets and other LaDu sugar things floating around to remind us all. The RoundOne cult started on that day. Now they bulge around us all.
That was the end of baby LaDu. She was not a baby child at all. She was an angel called to fly, by engineers who knew her fate. She hovers nightly in each townfield sky, projected over clouds and stars. She sings praises to the engineers who found her grounded on the earth. We Wetdogs pray to our LaDu to save us every, every day.
