Chapter 2

When Larkin woke, the first thing he noticed was how his vest cinched into his midsection. He groaned, but still helped himself to an appropriate few mouthfuls of ration bars. The emergency survival supplies were vitalizing, but packed with nutrients and even more calories. Still, he needed the energy, especially for the climb ahead. Larkin circled back around the vast belly of the yellow, spotted mass until he found an incline he could tackle. For the dozenth time, he patted at the small pouch of mapmaker drones he kept on his belt. A single command would send them skywards, six little coaster-sized robots that would spread out and provide a full, three-dimensional map of half a dozen square kilometres. They could prove invaluable in locating resources, or at least saving him the hike he had planned, but he didn't dare do anything that brought the attention of those flying machines, and that meant keeping anything with an electronic signal tucked away.

The weary Vestimyr looked up at the mountain of soft, furry flab, visualising its distant apex. The climb wasn't an ideal use of his limited time and resources, but he had to confirm his suspicions. Grabbing a malleable handhold, Larkin began to ascend.

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It wasn't even noon before the growl of his stomach made Larkin sit down for another chow break. Even after finishing the bar, he still felt hungry. Normally, the experienced survivalist could go entire days with minimal sustenance, but something about this planet had left him with an insatiable appetite. He glanced down at the swell of fat he was sitting on and scoffed, wondering if his voraciousness was some sort of sympathetic envy of the presumably well-fed hulks he had been traversing. He took another swig of water, grimacing as he shook the canteen and gauged how empty it was. With any luck, a trip to this summit would help him locate a viable water source.

A song-like hum overhead broke Wade's train of thoughts. He barely had time to react before it passed overhead, even as he dove to the ground. It felt like face planting on a waterbed. After a few heart-stopping seconds, the hum passed overhead and all was quiet again. Larkin let out a breath. Either the flying machines had been too busy to notice him, or he wasn't considered a threat. In any case, he decided to keep climbing before anything decided to circle back. As he climbed, Larkin began to ponder what part these mechanical entities played in this ecosystem that seemed to consist solely of these gelatinous leviathans. Were they a defence network? Set up by whom? Had he crash landed on some sort of alien nature preserve?

The sun had passed midday before Larkin met a new obstacle. He had seen it coming from a distance, but now was faced with the first, gargantuan fold of fat that rose above him like a bulging cliff face. He vaguely considered utilising the climbing equipment on his belt, but doubted that hammering a piton into spongy flesh would provide much of a hold, and was hesitant to potentially wound a member of the planet's fauna. With a huff, he leapt upwards and grabbed hold of the convex surface. Grunting and swearing, he began to climb, occasionally glancing over his shoulder at the furry adipose below him. There was a small reassurance that if his grip failed, he was in for a soft landing.

After a sweaty and difficult climb, Larkin had crossed the apex of the bulge and was stumbling up a gradually lessening slope until he could get his feet under him. Finally back on the closest thing to what could be called solid ground, Larkin fell backwards, letting himself sink slightly into the soft fat. He panted from the exertion, and found himself loosening the fasteners on his vest. Finally he tore it open along the front and felt the pressure on his midsection relent. Glancing down, he placed a hand on his soft belly. In spite of all his exercise, the rations had done a number on him. And he was still hungry. This couldn't be normal.

Eschewing another food break, Wade rose to his feet and resolutely trekked onwards, even though his legs were screaming at him. His bulging stomach constantly reminded him that it needed more, but he refused to listen. There was a growing worry at the back of his mind that had to be satisfied first, and his answers awaited him up ahead.

After another half-hour of difficult trekking, Larkin's cycle of anxieties were interrupted when the “ground” suddenly gave way beneath him. He’d been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed the shift in consistency after stepping over a low roll. Suddenly the fuzzy terrain was swallowing him like quicksand. Soft flab folded around the Vestimyr’s legs and had him up to his waist in a moment, dragging him away from the firmer “shore” as he simultaneously sank and slid along the yielding mass that gave way to his weight.

Instinctively, Larkin threw his arms out and fell back, trying to increase his surface area as much as possible. His arms hit the gooey flab with a hard slap, but his descent was arrested.
He experimentally flexed his foot, feeling the deep fold of fur-covered flesh shift around him. It was pressing in on all sides of him, but gave way to slow and deliberate movements. He slowly pushed and kicked, gradually bringing more of his torso out of the suffocating pressure that had enveloped him. It felt like swimming through syrup. Finally, his legs were free, and with the occasional shift in equilibrium, Larkin could safely “float” atop the sea of soft flesh. He could conceivably kick his way back to the more stable flesh behind him, but answers lay further asea. He angled himself appropriately, and began to backstroke further into the ocean of soft flab. As he paddled, Larkin couldn’t help but feel some sense of intimacy with whatever creature he was swimming through. Blush found his cheeks, and by the time the flesh around him grew more solid and he could climb to safety, he was huffing out of greater cause than exhaustion.

Larkin looked back at the lake of softer fat that he had swum through. It consisted of dozens of comparatively small folds, rippling outwards like a stone had been thrown in a pond. He sat for a moment on the shore of this strange reservoir. His back was resting against a great swell that rose behind him like a fuzzy hill. It was nearly dark now, but he didn’t have much further to go.

Larkin rose to his feet and traced the perimeter of the swelling hill. There was a second one right next to it. The rippling folds of fat stemmed from between them like a river, and he became aware of a dim glow emanating between their twin bulks. He pushed forward, climbing over one hillock until he could stare down at the source of the light. He could finally see what he had spent all day searching for.
The surveyor hadn’t been entirely sure what he was expecting. Maybe a huge, toothy maw or more blank flesh would have been preferable. Instead, he could finally see a face. It was at the lowest point between the twin hills, utterly sandwiched between them and barely protruding. It was feline, sapient, and surrounded by several holographic, floating screens. Wade couldn’t make out much beyond a pink nose and a pair of green eyes nearly buried in the surrounding flab. He crawled closer until he was straddling the face’s closest chin. The protruding mouth coughed and the screens silently snapped out of existence.
“Oh….hey…wuzz….was that you this whole time?”

Words failed Larkin as his brain rapidly compiled and reoriented everything he had gathered after landing on this planet. This blob, this…landmass that he had been navigating was alive, intelligent and speaking his own language flawlessly. The implications sank in and blossomed, like ink dropped into water.
“Um….hello?” Was all he could muster.

The cat’s nose twitched.
“Hey…You doing okay?”

“I’m ah…” Larkin responded with uncertainty. “Having kind of a rough day.”

“You must be ah….exhausted.” The bloated cat’s words came slowly and casually, as if he had all the time in the world. His voice had a deep, sonorous baritone to it.
“If you’re that tickle I felt at my belly, and all the way up my ah….my side.” He let out a hearty laugh that shook and jiggled Larkin’s surroundings. “You’re a real explorer!”

“I almost drowned in your….chins.” Larkin responded. He leaned against one of what he now understood was one of the cat’s massive cheeks, looking at their small, sunken face.

“Oh, you would’ve been fine, the bots would have got you if they sensed distress.”

“The bots?” Larkin perked up. “Do you control them? Those flying drones?”

The cat smacked his lips.
“I mean…they do what I say, but they kinda run their uh…their own schedule. Best to let em’ do what they do.”

“Did they…” Larkin tried to phrase his question delicately. “Do they help you?”

The cat paused, his eyes glazing over as he tried to summon some distant memory.
“I mean, they helped me…helped me get here…made me cosy, cosier than I ever thought I could be…mmmm….” His eyelids drooped as he smiled. “You wanna bite to eat? I could go for a real banquet.”

Larkin tried to process what he was hearing. “Were you…always like this? This size?”

“Oh, no…” the cat sighed. “Hard to believe it....” He seemed wistful for a moment. “Can you imagine? Hah you…you really make me wanna..” His sleepy eyes flared with sudden inspiration. “Hey, can I get you something to eat? My treat!”

Larkin’s stomach growled before he could answer.
“I’m….I’m good.” He replied, lamely.

“Oh, okay.” The impossibly bloated landmass sighed. “Just ordered a fill up….A big one. Just looking at you makes me want to get bigger.”

“Bigger?!” Wade gawked.

“Don’t worry!” The cat smiled. “They’ll take care of you….Nmm-Network hates to leave anyone out.”

“I should go…” Larkin nervously glanced skywards. By the light of the setting sun, he could make out a few errant clouds drifting overhead. Then one of them shifted against the wind, and came apart. It was moving towards him. With a chill, Wade realised that the drifting white shapes he’d been discounting as weather formations weren’t clouds at all. They were swarms.

“Hey, want my friendcode?” the blob asked gamely.

“Sure!” Larkin yelped back. He dismounted the cat’s left cheek just as a simple alphanumeric passcode flashed on the HUD of his comms device. He frantically approved it as his feet found stability on…a neck? A shoulder? His geographical lexicon struggled to supplant itself with anatomical terminology. Larkin looked past his footing at the twin horizon-blocking spheres that lay behind his host’s head. Previous suspicions gave way to concrete certainty that he was looking at the fattest ass he had ever seen. In the distance, he swore he could make out a thin, fuzzy tail rising from the landscape between the two hind-cheeks like a lone sprout.

The familiar songlike hum of approaching drones behind him spurred Larkin into action. He hopped and leapt between thick folds of fat, aiming for the leftmost flank of one gravid buttock. Somewhere behind him, he could hear tickled laughter.

Sliding down a broader incline of fat, Larkin felt the ground beneath him quake and shift. Something was happening, something huge. He lost his balance and fell back, hands splaying out to break his fall. Beneath his palms, he could feel the flesh beneath him shifting, stretching and expanding. Larkin decided to save the exponential geometric calculations for later. He slid down the harsh slope of furry flesh even as it quaked and shifted. He leapt as the incline steepened, suddenly in free fall. The landing from such a height would probably have popped both his knees under normal circumstances, but the thankfully forgiving fat absorbed his impact. Even as the bedraggled Vestimyr attempted to right himself, there was another rumble as the titanic fat fold he had leapt from swelled and grew, threatening to eclipse him with all the inexorable patience of a continental glacier. He rolled, forcing his body to move until he toppled off of another fat fold and landed on a broader landscape of smooth, yellow furred flesh. The terrain beneath him swelled abruptly, bucking him forward and his surroundings became a blur once more.

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The next chapter of the sci-fi epic that I've been working on alongside  roundwombo
Our brave hero comes face to face with the planet's populous, and comes to terms with the trouble he's in...