Maple's Story Part 11 (Patreon)

(Sorry for the slight delay, a mixture of illness and bad weather did not permit me to finish this earlier <3)

As the transit pod sped through the station and deeper into the Scylla’s ocean of clouds, Maple was relieved to see that the transport system’s designers had kept with the traditional style of fully opaque walls. In some of the more progressive stations the vixen had visited, transit pods were completely transparent and passengers could be seen as they were pushed down mag-rails towards their destinations. Not that it mattered too much, Maple suspected. In her present state all anyone would see would be a mass of blue rolls squished into a tube far, far too small for its occupant. Even so, she appreciated the privacy and the time to reflect upon what had just happened. The very idea that she’d farted in the face of that poor dove gave rise to a sickening amount of dread and she just /knew/ that her name would be smeared on the local network in a matter of seconds if it was reported, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that the dove wouldn’t. In that last moment, right before the door slid shut and above the sound of her own flatulence, had Maple heard a moan of pleasure squeeze from the dove?

Somewhere beneath her blubber, a viewscreen gave Maple the station’s standard welcome, complete with a light explanation of what was accomplished in the aerohab without going into any potentially patent worthy details. It didn’t matter too much, the viewscreen was out of sight and muffled, no doubt pressed against her stomach or flank. So the vixen took a few moments to relax, catch her breath and enjoy the privacy whilst it lasted. Squished so tightly in the small pod, she felt almost suspended in her own blubber, as though she could feel her skeleton, her muscles, everything that had been her a week ago, buried beneath feet of wobbling fat. It would have felt perhaps like floating in a pool of jello, except for the fact that she /was/ the jello. Her stomach gave a grumpy little rumble that echoed through the small pod, causing Maple’s cheeks to darken. Was she really hungry, so soon after breakfast?

At the transit shaft of floor 7, quad 4, a soft tone bleeped to let the scientists who were waiting for an available pod know that someone was arriving. The pair stepped back in polite anticipation of a passenger departing, discussing the recent fluctuations in local surface temperature and the annoying way that the pipes above their bunks hummed whilst they were trying to sleep at night. They were even less prepared for what came next than Maple. As the door to the pod slid open, for a moment, all that could be seen was the bulge of slightly transparent duratex suit. Like something out of a horror film it lurched forward, claiming the newly available space and spilling out onto the laboratory floor. The scientists, now no longer conversing but instead wondering if they were witness to some sort of experiment gone wrong, only realised that what they were looking at was not a gelatinous blob when the very, /very/ obese vixen behind the duratex covered bulge of blubber staggered forward and into sight.

Maple hadn’t been expecting the door to open so soon, or in front of her, so when her stomach had surged forward free of the confines of the pod, it was all she could do to stagger after it, her hands flailing as she barely kept balance. She gave a little moan as she realised that despite what had to be several hundred pounds of blubber now on the other side of the transit door, half of her gut was still stuck inside the lift with her. Bracing against the floor, she slowly pushed herself out, dedicatedly ignoring the murmurs and gasps of the two scientists who had been so obviously trying not to watch. One was another fox like her, grey tufts growing out of his orange fur with age. The other was a cybernetically augmented hawk, whose mechanical eye whirred as it recorded the phenomenally fat porter.

After a moment to recover, the fox gulped and stepped forward. “Uh… miss? Do you… is everything alright? Do you need a hand?” A speedy ping to the local network identified her as a porter, but he’d never seen anyone quite so fat.

Maple only grunted, wondering what exactly the fox thought he could do to help - grab a love handle and pull? She shook her head. “N-no… I’m okay…” She managed in between panting breaths as she pushed herself forward. Thankfully her suit was still decently lubricated with sweat, so she managed to plop out of the pod with all the grace of a wad of dough spilling onto the floor. She stood there, panting and fanning her face with a flabby paw. At some point after that the fox and the hawk must have decided to hurry on and use the same pod she’d come down in, since when she next looked up they were nowhere to be seen.

Although as a porter of small and expensive goods Maple had visited many research outposts and refineries, this was perhaps the first time she could remember that she’d actually been permitted to travel any real depth inside. Most stations granted her the lowest tier access, enough to pay the loading drones to handle her cargo whilst Syn browsed the local network for cheap prices on fuel and supplies. She could usually hang out in a bar if she wanted, though cramming herself into a booth surrounded by other porters, each stinking of sweat and booze, never really appealed to her that much. If she wanted to stretch her legs, VR was far more engaging and far less socially taxing than anything some backwater station could offer. Today was the first time she’d been granted a level of access high enough to actually see a laboratory and she’d have wondered why that was if Dr Lalique wasn’t renown for his love of social isolation. Likely to him, taking a transit hub to the docking bay would have been as mentally taxing as it was proving for Maple to drag her bloated body down to the laboratories. Given she /did/ have to make the ride down here, she figured she should at least take in the sights.

The laboratories weren’t the strangest structure she’d ever been in, but they came close. Domed observation style rooms bulged along the outside of the station, giving a magnificent view of the raging chemical storms beyond. Though the thick, sickly brown smog the outline of the web-like catchers could be seen, huge sail like structures that billowed in the intense winds, the occasional lightning bolt trickling down their spines. Through clear glass windows, Maple could make out strange arrays of pipes made out of some sort of reddish metal. They fed into gurgling, sloshing machines that dripped a refined, golden chemical into a bed of plants beneath them. Whole rows were set up where plants overflowed their pots and spilled down across the floor in a carpet of leafy vegetation. Most of the rooms looked as though they were sealed behind airlocks, for good reason too the vixen suspected, her half-squinted eyes picking up the subtle shape of floating golden spores being released into the air beyond the reinforced laboratory glass.

Maple shrugged. She didn’t have a clue as to what purpose the experiments served, and standing around gawking was only wasting time and getting her face put up on more humiliating network posts. Her neural interface informed her that she was barely thirty feet from Lalique’s personal laboratories, and she was just about to start the laborious walk across when her stomach grumbled again, this time louder and more impatient. The vixen’s ears flattened against her head as a blush red as ink spilled across her muzzle and cheeks.

“Hush you, I just fed you like, ten minutes ago!” She whispered hoarsely.

“Do you require my assistance Maple, or have you in fact taken to talking to your stomach as though it were a person?” Syn’s voice rang through her head, only deepening Maple’s blush.

The vixen grunted a little and started moving, depressed by how familiar the feeling of her stomach pushing back against her knees was becoming. “I’m just hungry is all.” She muttered, her chubby fingers clenching and unclenching where they were resting atop the broad dome of her gut.

“Are you unaware that there is a nutrient paste dispenser close by?”

A 3D overlay of the floor rolled across Maple’s vision, highlighting a rectangular hole in the wall not ten feet away. Now she was actually looking at it, Maple could make out the words: “High value nutrient paste”.

“That shit tastes like dirt.” Maple grumbled, but hefted her bloated, wobbling mass in that direction anyway. It took her a couple of minutes to push and heave at her gut, first to approach theachine and then to maneuver her massive body into a position where she could actually reach it, which meant standing side-on. The dispenser was standard hole-in-the-wall design, with a stack of cups protruding from the top of the cavity and a series of hoses within that would no doubt dispense the high-nutrient goop. Up close Maple could see signs of regular use. The metal was scuffed and worn, lacking the polish that the rest of the station had. It made sense, she figured, given the station’s reputation. In a lab full of hard workers, why waste time on a full meal when a cup of grey paste would feed you for the day?

Maple reached out and tugged one of the cups away from the stack, holding it under the goop nozzle. “One serve, please.”

The machine rumbled and after a second a small plop of disgusting looking grey paste curled up in the bottom of her cup, steaming lightly in the crisp air of the laboratory. Maple wrinkled her nose. She’d give anything for a nice burger right now. But food was food. She brought the cup to her lips and like she was taking a shot tilted her head back to swallow. Unlike a shot of alcohol, the paste travelled slowly down the edge of the cup before plopping heavily in her mouth.

It tasted like Maple suspected mold would. As she struggled to get it down fast, she decided it /absolutely/ had a fungus-like flavour to it. As the bulge of goop travelled slowly down her throat, Maple pulled a face. When finally it settled in her stomach she waited for a moment. By all means that one serving of nutrient paste should have been enough food to provide energy and nutrients for an entire day, but her stomach still burned with hunger. Her fingers drummed along the edge of the cup. Surely another helping wouldn’t hurt, would it?

She thrust the cup back into the hole in the wall. “One.”

Once again the machine rumbled and after a moment another small plop of the sickly looking grey paste found its way in the bottom of the cup, before being tipped into her mouth and pushed to the back of her throat by her tongue. Once again she could feel it traveling down her esophagus, the lump of dense paste settling in her stomach like a pebble in a pond. She winced, clutching her stomach and watching her fingers sink into the doughy flesh, waiting for the strong sense of hunger within to abate.

It didn’t.

With an almost pig-like grunt, she pushed the cup back into the dispenser. “Five.”

As the machine churned and whirred, Syn piped up. “You do realise you’ve had twice the recommended intake of energy and nutrients for your species and size, right?” She said. “The dispenser has automatically adjusted for your considerable weight.”

The goop started flowing and this time it didn’t stop at the bottom of the cup, instead forming a coiling, steaming little river that continued until the cup was filled with the sludge, on the edge of overflowing. “I know…” Maple whined, “But I’m still hungry…” She brought the cup up to her mouth and tipped it back eagerly, trying to focus not on the taste but instead the sensation. It felt like she was swallowing wet cement. As the disgusting slop hit the back of her throat, Maple feared that her body might reject it. That it might show more common sense than the vixen and she might gag. But she didn’t. Her throat muscles gripped the sludge and massaged its slow descent, lump after lump being pushed down and into her waiting stomach.

With a little groan, Maple felt a few things at once. The first thing she felt was her body slowly expanding, blubber rising like dough in an oven. Her collar’s nanites were working overtime to process more fuel than ever before into fat. She could see her cheeks starting to inflate, her fingers being pushed gently apart with blubber, her stomach rising like a hill in front of her. And she still felt hungry.

The threads of her incredibly expensive, incredibly high-tech duratex suit gave up at the seams with wet snapping sounds as the vixen leaned over, dropping the cup and grabbing one of the dispenser hoses. Across her body she could feel her flab poking out through newly created holes in the garment, expanding, pushing upwards and outwards. The dispenser groaned as Maple tugged a shining metallic hose out of the hole, for a moment she feared something would break and the only source of food available to her would start to spill on the floor beyond her reach, but after a few quiet snaps, the rigging that held the hose in place gave way and it uncoiled, allowing her to drag it up to her mouth.

Holding the hose in front of her like a prized trophy, Maple took a moment to admire the absurdity of the situation. She knew it was wrong. Worse than wrong, humiliating beyond compare. She knew that every mouthful of the sick stuff was making her fatter, faster than anything had before. She could feel herself growing, already to the point where she wondered if she could even walk anymore, if her stomach had simply grown too large. All of this factored into her mind when she formed the next words she spoke.

“One hundred.”