Multiversal Yarns

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Ciao for now and thank you for your time.

Drew

Just Like in the Plan

Evolution is a time consuming process, adapting to changing environments takes generations, sometimes even millennia.  Deformities can creep up much faster, sometimes in a single generation.  Deformities by definition are isolated incidents but in the year 2054, some sort of genetic shift took place and similar deformities were seen all around the world.

This schism seemed to segregate the world’s population into two district groups.  Even a novice anthropology enthusiast could easily divine that the global dividing line was based on wealth.  The children of affluent or even middle class families were affected very differently than the worlds poor.  The ever present income gap rose and rose until there was virtually no similarities between the lives of the rich and the lives of the poor.

The genetic shift seemed to tweak people to be even more suited to their current lifestyle, much like the slower process of evolution.  In the case of the rich that shift translated to a new human form that only slightly resembled that which humans had come to identify with.  Affluent people found themselves surrounded by increased amounts of technology, as all of their interpersonal communication and even work life became predominantly electronic.

Their back-sides grew and became more padded to accommodate all the time they spend seated in chairs.  As convenience took over from function, the most prosperous people owned luxurious chairs that were capable of basic conveyance throughout the house.  Since they rarely walked the genetic shift took away a lot of their leg function, their lower limbs were underdeveloped and would have a very hard time holding their increased weight.  Text messages and email took over for phone calls and going to see people in person, therefore thumbs were used more than human voice in communication.  The great shift caused the manual dexterity and eye-hand coordination of the rich to skyrocket to seemingly impossible levels.  The trade off of course was that since they weren’t being used, their vocal cords were drastically weakened to the point that the rich could only speak in shy whispers.

The poor of the world however were affected quite differently.  So few had access to computers and digital communication, so they rarely spent extended time in a seated position.  Food wasn’t readily available, it had to be farmed, necessitating manual labour.  Every task in their lives was more work, many people had to walk for hours just to get water to do laundry.  Here again, the deformities were aligned with evolution and made their bodies more suited to their needs. 

The shift tweaked their metabolism, causing them to have a pre-disposition for extremes of athletics and endurance.  The bodies of the poor people of the world were now a shinning epitome of muscular efficiency, allowing them to be eerily strong and fast, survive exposure to severe weather and elements, and lowering their required food intake dramatically.  Their lives however were quite simple.  A few chores aside, it was a cycle of work, eat and sleep.  This simplicity translated to a reduced requirement for dynamic and creative thought so the poor of the world suffered a loss, intellectually, in the great schism.

The disparity between the rich and poor was disturbing in the early 2000s but once the children born after the great shift of 2054 rose to adulthood, they may as well have been a different species.  The rich still took advantage of the poor, forcing them to grow their food, work in their factories.  All manual jobs were worked by the now sleek and capable but mentally lacking poor and all managerial, scientific and political positions were filled by the comparatively plump and smart rich. 

The genetic divide made it very difficult for the 20th century’s concept of a self made man to exist.  Your social status was imminently evident at first glance.  Rich people who lost their money or weren’t able to compete in the job market rarely survived.  Their soft, flabby bodies were simply not capable of working a field or an assembly line.  A few prominent poor people made it to the ranks of the elite but they were never fully accepted among their new peers.

There was however an exception to this rule, as there so often is.  This exception was in the form of the curious rules of human attraction.  Despite innate and environmental human conditioning guiding him to be attracted to “his own kind”, Trillam Garda could not help but admire the poorer women.  Trillam was a very successful factory owner.  His industrial empire made clothes, food and the most elite model of hover chair that money could buy. 

A Garda brand chair was more than a seat, it was a command centre for your life.  It was small enough to get you around your house but when you need to go to work, it encapsulated you in a bubble and autonomously conveyed you there faster than most other modes of transportation.  The chair gave you the ability to interface with any computer with the on board controls and even order food from anywhere and it would be delivered with a small drone.  There were very few reasons to ever get out of a Garda brand chair, in fact Trillam himself hand’t left his chair since he got his hands on the newest custom model.  Embarrassingly he even sat in the chair through several performed upgrades, technicians working around his vast body.

Trillam loved to tour his factories, there was no real need for him to ever actually visit them or indeed leave the house, but something drew him to the catwalks above the factory floor day after day.  It was mesmerizing to watch the fleet of sleek poor workers as they toiled on assembly lines.  Their bodies trained over years to be more efficient than any robot.  He watched as each person completed their specific job and handed the item off to the next person without a wasted second, all day long, for weeks and years.  Some people worked at the same station for their entire working lives.  That terrified Trillam but he also felt a distinct jealousy towards what his worker’s bodies were capable of and how they looked.

As often as not he found himself watching the women in the factory.  He was supposed to pair up with someone of his own social standing, but he could not bring himself to find a pudgy woman trapped in a chair, attractive.  Direct corpulent love making was no longer done by the rich, deemed to be too much work.  The chairs once again stepped in for humanity.  Two chairs would be side by side and a connection made, an apparatus in the chair went over the man and into the woman and in a matter of minutes the pleasure and fertilization is over.  The same apparatus could be used at any time to provide the pleasure part of the process without the second chair being required.

There was one woman in particular that fascinated Trillam Garda and caused him to spend the lion’s share of his time in his largest chair factory.  Her name was Marsha Kalegra and she worked as a nurse to tend to minor wounds and prepare more serious wounds for medical evacuation.  Where she a doctor or surgeon, she would be among the rich, the gap between doctor and nurse was much larger than before the divide as nurses relied on agility that only a poor person’s frame could provide for. 

Marsha was a stunning woman to behold, she had a natural skin tone that mimicked a perfect golden tan and glowed just enough to catch the eye.  If you were to describe her to someone from the early 2000s you would inexorable circle around the term fitness model.  She had defined, squared shoulders and long, lean arms without excessive vascularity.  Her trim, sleek midsection betrayed defined muscle when the edges of her shirt exposed an inch or two as she moved to help a patient.  In profile her butt was a textbook half-circle but from the front there was little deviation out beyond the hips.  Her legs were always clad in scrubs but that couldn’t disguise their tone and shape.  Trillam had a very hard time looking away from her.  She had never taken notice of him way up in the catwalks of the factory… You would be surprised how long people go without looking up.

Trillam hatched a simple plan to force their meeting.  He didn’t really need to have a plan mind you, he owned the factory where she worked, the sheer economical divide between them meant that nearly anything he asked for she would comply with.  He went to his office and tried to drive his chair into the corner of his desk, hoping to hurt himself and call her in to tend to the ensuing wound.  The chair was too smart for him and at the last minute safety features kicked in moving the chair out of danger on its own.  He looked around for something to cut himself with or on but again there was a lifestyle problem.  Since the rich rarely left their chairs, all mail and correspondence was handled digitally so even in a well equipped office like his, there was no writing utensils or letter openers. Truly they led a life without risk, even their food was easily digestible to cut down on choking or gastric problems.

Not wanting his first meeting with the woman of his dreams to be based on position alone, he realized that the solution rests in his leaving the confines of the chair.  Powering the chair down it slowly sunk to the floor and turned off, becoming a static piece of furniture.  With much effort he thrust himself away from the seat, trying to remember when he last left the chair, and failing to. 

The moment his underdeveloped legs tried to support his girth he didn’t need to fake anything to get Marsha’s attention.  He staggered forward and fell, striking his shoulder on the edge of a shelf and cutting it.  His howl of pain alerted his assistant to call for help.  Before long, Marsha Kalegra sauntered into his office.  The pain had left his body and he felt a little pathetic.  He watched her athletic figure round the corner and maneuver to him and could not help but compare her agility with the 3 steps that he could barely manage before hurting himself. 

She made eye contact and he was immediately lost in her gorgeous green eyes.

“Are you alright Sir?  Where does it hurt?”

“I think I cut my Shoulder” He motioned to the cut on his arm.

“Just relax, I’ll have you good as new in no time at all”.

She touched him for the first time and her fingers felt divine, he could sense her youthfulness, energy and strength.  This rush of human contact and raw energy was almost too much for him.

“What is your name my dear?” He asked, knowing the answer, and more.

“Marsha Sir. Marsha Kalegra, Sir.  I am a nurse here and I will do everything in my power to make you feel better Sir.”

“Everything?” he asked innocently enough.

“Anything you need, just ask and I will do my best to make it happen, Sir.”

Quickly bandaging up the rather minor cut she pulled his chair back over and got set up to help him return to the safety of his throne.

“Here we go Sir.  Put your arms around me and I will help you into your chair again.”

She leaned in close as if she were about to give him a hug and wraped her arms around him.  His arms rose up and wrapped around her slender midsection.  He had imagined for a long time what it might feel like to touch her, to caress her bronze skin, nothing came close to reality.  She was at once firm and soft, taught muscle was covered in delicate feminine skin.  He was immediately hooked and he knew that he would dedicate himself to having her in his life.  All at once his distaste for women of his own social standing was justified, their swollen, immovable bodies held no appeal to him. 

The Hypocrisy of his preferences was not lost on him, he only hoped that his considerable wealth and power would be enough to convince Marsha that he was a worthy suitor.  Leveraging the opportunity to speak with her he surprised himself by how calm and poised he was despite speaking to his long time crush. 

“I must say Marsha, that I find you to be quite fetching.”

“Sir?”

“I will admit that I have noticed you more that once and if you’ll pardon me for saying it, I think you are the most attractive woman I have ever seen.”

“Well Sir I…”

“I don’t mean to say that I have be spying on you or anything of the like, but now seeing you up close and feeling your gentle caring touch I am fully convinced.”

“Sir?”

“I would like to take you out, buy you a beautiful dress and take you to…” 

Suddenly his confident stride was lost to him.  He didn’t know where they should go.  In times of old people would go out for a meal, all his meals where incorporated into his chair.  The rich didn’t dance or overly drink and all entertainment was piped into the screens and VR terminals built into the chairs, so there was no movie theatres or stage performances.  Where should he take this gorgeous young woman?  Then it dawned on him, she doesn’t have a chair, the poor live simply.  He could take her traveling, even fairly locally and that would surely impress her.

“I will take you to the ocean, have you ever seen the ocean?”

“No Sir I have not, it is something I always hoped to see one day, but surely you would rather travel with someone more your… status”

“I’ll hear none of that.  If you’ll allow it, I can think of no one I would rather travel with but you.”

“In that case I accept.”

This marked the start of a wildly controversial coupling.  Trillam Garda was a well known business man, he was the face of the marketing campaign for the best selling and most elite chair available.  News media always had their eye on him but now that he had a lower class woman at his side wherever he went, questions began to form.  As a rule, people are scared of change and news relies on people’s fear to maintain viewership. 

What the media didn’t plan for is that Marsha Kalegra was a gorgeous woman.  Rather than ostracize Trillam for mixing the classes, rich men started to look at the thinner, sleek women around them as potential mates.  This concept wasn’t limited to men, rich women started to notice that the men that worked for them were handsome chiseled examples of masculinity and the fat sloppy rich men couldn’t compete.  Rather than identify Trillam’s weakness, the media inadvertently advertised the concept of finding yourself a more attractive, lower class spouse.  This concept rose in popularity to the point that is became popular or even the norm.

Inside of 3 years, nearly every available upper class person had paired up with a more attractive lower class person.  Even some long standing upper class couples had separated so that they could each find a lower class mate.  There was however still a problem, Although the classes were mixing in relationships and even marriages, the poorer halves of these couplings were still being treated as second class.  The power balance in these mixed class relationships was ludicrous, the rich made all the decisions, to an extreme.  The poorer spouses were expected to wear what they were told to wear, to show off their fit, beautiful appearance.  They were told what to eat and basically had to follow their rich spouses around all day.  That is without getting into the perverse sexual demands spurred by the renewed interest in direct physical coupling that the rich had long since left behind.  The poor were frequently reminded that they were readily replaceable, the population imbalance meant that there was still a host of attractive, poor people waiting for a chance to move up in the world.  They were not far above pets and they knew it.

So it came to be that Marsha Kalegra, the woman that started this new trend felt that she had some responsibility to set things right.  It started as an online community but over time the support grew for a new equality movement.  Meetings started to happen, small at first but more and more they grew.  Every person trapped in one of these one sided relationships was becoming tired of the demands made on them.  They knew they could just leave but they didn’t want to return to a life of abject poverty.  Slowly a plan started to hatch, it started as an intention to file for legal action but as these things all to often do, it escalated quickly into a more extreme plan, agreed upon by the vast majority of all lower class partners.  April 1st was the ironically scheduled date for the execution of this global coup.

On that morning Trillam Slept noisily in his floating chair, Marsha had been awake for hours but was faking sleep on her small bed in the corner of the room on the floor.  Even the famous Marsha Kalegra had not yet earned a real bed, she was treated as less than human.  Trillam was awoken by his own particularly loud snoring and looked around, evaluating his surroundings.  He saw a gorgeous creature curled up on the bed in the corner, wearing black lace lingerie.  His beautiful wife Marsha, he smiled at his own genius for coming up with the idea of marrying her, which began an international movement. 

“Wake up Marsha, I want to get a better look at you!” 

The love in his voice had long since dropped away.

“Yes Sir, whatever would make you happy”

She said pretending to be groggy.  She stood before him feet shoulder width apart, hands at her sides, allowing his eyes the time to look over her pristine figure. 

“You look amazing, dance for me, I want to watch how you move.”

He put on music and she began the seductive movements that she had done so many times before.  Leaning his sloppy body back in the floating chair Trillam watched as Marsha’s flawless body undulated hypnotically until he forgot all of his worries.  Problems at the factory were miles away, concerns about his health didn’t seem important now.  He was in a lull as she came closer, still dancing and moving to the music. Enticingly she touched his arm, slowly walking around the side of his chair she dragged her slender finger up his arm to touch his neck rolls.

As Trillam closed his eyes in ecstasy, he could suddenly hear the cooling fans of his chair slow down and he felt like he was gently drifting lower to the ground.  His eyes shot open and he tried to look behind his chair but he was too fat to turn around completely.  Struggling with the controls, his chair was unresponsive and it now fully rested on the ground, devoid of power.  He heard a familiar voice behind him, It sounded like his wife’s voice but it had an odd confidence that he had never heard, it terrified him to the bone.

“This is almost too easy.  You wealthy few treat us like animals and you have the audacity to be surprised when we rise up against you.  Look at you, trapped in that stupid chair by your own lethargy and excess.  This isn’t even sporting, who is the animal now.”

“But…  What!?”  Was all he could manage.

“Here is how this is going to work, today the world changes.  An economic gap created this problem, this divide between us.  Even after being given everything you could possibly want, you rich bastards still wanted more, you wanted to own the poor of the world as well, as little more than pets.  Well, your pets have gotten organized and today, right now, all around the world this same encounter is happening.  You tell me, how do you think this will play out?  What do you think happens next?”

“Oh God, you’re going to kill me aren’t you?  Please don’t hurt me, I will set you free, give you money just please don’t hurt me!”

“How about that, you are smart after all.  The social divide is what dies today.  Within an hours time every so called upper class person on this planet will be dead, leaving their ludicrous wealth to their married spouses.  That money will be pooled together and distributed to all the people of the world without prejudice or ulterior motive.  Everyone will have the same as everyone else and the globe will be reborn into a new era of sharing and working together to bring happiness and prosperity to all.”

“What!?!? You can’t do that, the global markets will collapse, the manufacturing sector will halt on a dime.  With no bosses or owners there would be no one to drive the workforce.  It doesn’t work that way you naive little girl, don’t you get it, we can’t all be equal, it doesn’t work that way!”

“I am glad you said that, thank you.”

“Finally, you are listening to some reason.  So you understand that your little scheme will never work?”

“I was holding out hope that some of you rich bastards would be able to adapt and live in our new world.  I have spoken to many poor people and heard some of the atrocities that your people have committed against my people.  You are one of the nicest of your kind, even then you are an asshole.  If you can’t function in the new world then what hope do some of those monsters have.  You were going to die either way but you just steeled my resolve, now I know that our cause is just and necessary.”

“What!?! I…”

He tried to say more, but the garter belt from his wife’s enticing lingerie was wrapped around his neck from behind.  His poor physical health meant he was out of breath at the best of times.  He had no hope of defending himself from something being wrapped around his neck and pulled tight by the glorious physical specimen that was his wife.  With his final thoughts he realized that this would be happening all over the world.  The rich had evolved based on a presumed secure environment, having let these physical masterpieces into their inner world, they had sealed their own fate.  They were no match.  They would all die.  Just like in the plan.