Our Daily Bread

An easy, safe way to lose weight is a good thing, right? Right?

“Eureka!”

Since the beginning of his professional career and, indeed, some time before that point, Doctor Leopold Saunders had always wanted to shout Eureka. It felt good, so he did it again.

In fact, he shouted it twice more. “Eureka! Eureka!”

“What in the name of Charles Darwin are you eureka-ing about, Leo?” His research associate, Doctor Thomas Atherton, wandered towards him across the lab, a paper cup of coffee in one lean hand.

“I’ve invented the most amazing thing since, since, since…fire!” Leo raised his pudgy arms into the air.

“I’m pretty sure fire wasn’t invented, Leo. Try discovered.”

“Potato, potahto.” Leo waved both extended hands airily. “All I know is, we’re going to be rich.”

“GiCon is going to be richer, you mean.”

Gigantic Conglomerate Unlimited owned their research output, their houses, their vehicles, and a goodly proportion of the entire planet.

“But some of that filthy lucre, Thomas my lad, will certainly fall towards us, as is the natural manner of such things which roll downhill.” Leo poured a cup of coffee, to which he added seven packets of sugar and stirred…and stirred.

“And we,” agreed Tommy, “are without a doubt downhill. Now tell me more about your discovery.”

Leo Saunders drank his coffee in three gulps, then motioned his colleague to follow him towards a stainless table with cages full of obese white rats.

Doctor Saunders’s daily manner consisted of complaining and whining, interspersed with the occasional nap at his computer console, cleverly disguised to no one but himself as ‘consideration of his next step’. Today, however, as Tommy noted in some surprise, Leo Saunders had a spring in his step, a smile on his face, a gleam in his eye, a song on his lips—in short, Saunders appeared to be somewhat more than pleased with life in general and his own situation in particular.

Leo donned gloves and began to mix ingredients in a small bowl. He added measured spoonfuls to feeding dishes at the sides of one of the rat cages. The chubby inhabitants began eating, watched in some dismay by their closest neighbors, who had not been fed. Doctor Saunders remedied this oversight at once with untreated food from a fresh container for the cage next door.

Meanwhile, Tommy was thinking how much Leo Saunders resembled his furry associates in more ways than one, doubtless from long association, as is often the case in marriages. Tommy Atherton, on the other hand, was as lean as a piece of spaghetti, though he could consume chocolate at a rate that filled Leo with despair.

“Do you see these rats, Thomas?” Leo pointed a pudgy forefinger at the ones that had received his specially prepared chow.

“I see them clearly, Leo.” Tommy was beginning to look interested. “And I must say I’m impressed. In a long career of working with rats, I don’t think I’ve ever seen fatter ones. If your ‘eureka’ is related to that, then bravo. What the world is most in need of is fatter rats.”

Each cage sat atop scales, and the weights were continually displayed. Leo grinned. “Note the weights of the rats that I just fed my new invention versus the other rats.”

Tommy eyed the scale read-outs with some curiosity. “The ones who just ate your stuff weigh several grams less than the others,” he noted. “Yet they seem to be eating as extravagantly…or more so. This is looking interesting, Leo, it is indeed.”

“Isn’t it?” Leo beamed. “But let me tell you the most interesting part of all. Yesterday, I selected rats that weighed as close to the exact same amount as I could find. They’ve all been cross-checked for bone mass, body structure and everything else I could think of, to eleven decimal places. These rats,” he waved an expansive hand across the tops of the two cages, “are so close in everything measurable that they are basically clones.” He unwrapped a chocolate bar and closed his eyes in ecstasy as he chewed.

“Got it. The rats are pretty much the same.” Tommy nodded. “But these weigh less than those. And I know you, Leo; you’re feeding them the same amounts, and you’re checking their little rat turds just as carefully. So give, Leo, my boy. What’s your secret ingredient?”

Leo was licking his fingers for any trace of chocolate. He grinned. “Secret is the operative word, Thomas. But it’s safe, it’s common, and it’s going to make us rich.”

“I’m all for rich, but what do you mean, safe? And of even more importance: what do you mean, common?” Tommy pulled a candy bar from his pocket. “Come on, Leo; give. And I’ll return the favor.” He waved the chocolate in front of Leo’s face and was rewarded with a gleam in his colleague’s eye.

“I have discovered the ultimate weight loss product!” Leo seized the candy. “Congratulate me!”

~~~~~

Congratulations, however, were somewhat premature. Indeed, Leo had discovered the formula for a substance which would and could induce weight loss for any mammal. Naturally, GiCon marketed WeightAway immediately, not wasting time on pesky old human tests; the board of directors knew a good thing when they saw it. Tons of the stuff went out across the country. Then, as could have been expected, the formula got into the water system, so even those not taking it got their share; and it worked on all mammals, remember? Within weeks, every human and every other mammal was a lean, mean eating machine.

Operative word: eating. No one could stop. It seemed that WeightAway not only instigated weight loss, it created a voracious appetite to go along with it. Soon, famine stalked the land; there was simply not enough food left to fill ever-craving bellies.

Leo Saunders was one of the last to go; he’d had enough fat reserves to last for quite a while. He didn’t die from WeightAway, at least not entirely; it was the concussion he got when his last crate of chocolate bars fell on his head that took him out in the…

End