The world wasn't built for this. Airplane seats became tight. Subway turnstiles felt narrower. Public health officials realized that by next year, the average adult would weigh an extra 70 pounds. Bridges were inspected for weight tolerances; elevators were derated for fewer passengers.
Five years in, the human form was unrecognizable. The average human carried 360 pounds of "Ticker-Mass" in addition to their original weight.
Society became quieter, slower, and strangely more empathetic. We were all carrying the same burden, second by second. No one was thin, so no one was judged. 1 Fat Every Second
The "Fat" didn't come from food. It was atmospheric, a biological glitch in the air we breathed. Every sixty seconds, exactly sixty grams of dense, subcutaneous adipose tissue would manifest on every human body on Earth. One gram, every second. Month 1: The Novelty
But humanity adapted. We became a species of constant movement. Since we couldn't stop the growth, we fueled our world with it. The excess tissue was surgically harvested in "Lipo-Plants" to be refined into biofuels. We literally ran our cities on the weight of our own bodies. The world wasn't built for this
By noon, the world realized it wasn’t a countdown. It was a tally.
By August, the laughter stopped. The average person had gained nearly 18 pounds of pure mass. Public health officials realized that by next year,
The global economy shifted entirely to "The Burn." Electricity was now generated by millions of people on massive, communal kinetic cycles, desperately trying to oxidize the fat as fast as it appeared. To sit still was to grow; to sleep was to wake up heavier than you went to bed.