A little apprehensively you pick up four of the cookies and quickly stash them into your bag. It's a big pile, at least thirty on one large plate, so you figure a few won't be missed. Being a woman, and a superfit field operative at that, you'd normally steer well clear of such a sugary snack. But after several days deep behind enemy lines your food supply is depleted, and you never know when you might get cornered and have to lay low for hours - perhaps even weeks.
Suddenly you hear footsteps coming down the corridor. Hastily zipping up your bag your dart across to the door on the other side of the room, only to find that it's locked. Swearing under your breath you look around for a hiding place. The lab is huge, full of large microscopes, equipment and tables, but nowhere that you could- aha! You spot a small ventilation shaft underneath a desk that's pushed up against the wall opposite you. For a moment you look at it, biting your lip with doubt, but the sound of voices just outside the door makes the decision for you. Scampering softly across the shiny floor in your skintight black spy gear, you quickly slide off the vent's grill and back your 36 inch hips in, silently thanking your stars that you kept up those extra cardio boot camps.
You've just finished pulling the grill back across the vent when two men burst into the room, swinging the double doors on their hinges. Ever the espionage expert you peer throug the grill, watching them closely and taking mental notes and snapshots.
The first thing you notice is that the're scientists. This is obvious from their attire. The second, equally obvious thing, is that they're fat. Very fat - even by male standards. Both must be over 500lbs, with massive tummies protruding like yoga balls from their unbuttoned lab coats, and big bubble butts bouncing behind as they waddle towards the workbench you recently vacated.
The sight of such sizeable scientists makes your pulse quicken with interest. Three decades ago, long before the war broke out, science reached its apex: pills could guarantee good health and with robots carrying out more and more manual jobs necessary for human survival and flourishing, experts predicted a shift in body shape, towards a softer and rounder physique for both sexes.
And they had been right. Half-right, anyway. With male-dominated consumer society continuing to promote - subtly and overtly - a lean, firm and curvaceous figure as the ideal beauty standard for women, the females of this brave new work-free world dedicated large portions of their extra free time to exercise. Fitness became woven into their social lives. Gyms and swimming pools sprung up everywhere, with all manner of female-oriented fitness classes - from spinning and circuit training to yoga and zumba. Groups of local women started running clubs and cycle groups, donning lycra and spandex, much to the delight of their husbands and boyfriends. As a result of all this, and in direct defiance the initial expert predictions, the female sex actually began to get slimmer and fitter over the subsequent decades.
As for the men... Well, with no work to do, and no such beauty standards to live up to, they reclined into a life of leisure. While wives and girlfriends stretched and sweated and toned in the gym, their male counterparts would be found plonked on sofas and bar stools, swigging beer and grazing on pretzels or ordering chips, pizzas and burgers as they cheered scantily clad sportswomen on their ultra-sized TV screens. (Women's sports had quickly overtaken men's in popularity - another consequences of male-domination of society. After all, what man wanted to watch a bunch of sweaty jocks banging into each other on the football field when he could watch supersexy scantily clad young women do it instead?)
Staying comfortable and well-provisioned on their sofas while their wives worked out in the gym, cycled up mountains and ran charity marathons, men quickly began to fulfil their half of the expert predictions, becoming almost universally obese. A guy's waistline became a good indicator of his social class or rank. The rounder the belly, runs the notion, the richer the man: the more lavish food he can afford, the more robots to make his life easier. After the rebellion and the walkouts by women (triggered mostly by a simmering resentment at how easy the male sex had it, and how demanding they were of the female) it was confidently predicted that the consequent disappearance of all their wives rich home-cooking would cause men to lose weight. In fact the opposite happened. Without women to provide them with Sunday roasts and all manner of delicious pies, the men resorted to fast food, eating enormous quantities of junk to make up for the quality meals that left with the women and swelling up around the middle as a result. What's more, when women were captured, they were inevitably sold to the richer, more important men who immediately put them to work in their kitchens. On this rare, almost-forgotten influx of fine dining, said men gorged wildly, becoming fatter still.
Hence your excitement. Given that weight is generally a sign of rank and social status, these two must be very important scientists indeed. One of them waddles over to the work bench with the mysterious cookies and drops his bag on the table and begins to unload. Your heart starts to beat even faster. Will he notice the missing snacks?
Fortunately his mind is on other things.
"Man I can't believe we're not allowed to the feast," grumbles scientist 1, a handsome-faced man who looks to be in his mid thirties, with messy highlighted blond hair. His shortness and belly width making him almost spherical.
"Don't worry," replies the other, a taller darker, slightly older specimen. As he slumps into his seat with a grunt his vast, proud gut surges towards the table, causing your eyes to widen. He must measure at least eighty inches around - a true heavyweight in size and social standing. Surely he and his colleague must be involved in the secret weapon men are developing!
"I had the kitchens whip these up specially," grins scientist 2, salivating as he pulls a massive foot high burger crammed with beef and bacon and dripping cheese and barbecue sauce. "They're the same as they got in the banquet hall. And we got four each!"
The petulant blond slaps his belly. "Well good, I'm starving with a captial ARVING!"
Watching the man's enormous gut wobble as he lifts his first burger to flashing white teeth, you can't help feeling that he's exaggerating. Forget missing a meal, these men look as though they eat constantly.
You look down at your own deprived stomach by contrast. It starts to grumble. Queitly unzipping the bag, using the grunting chomping noises from the men as cover, you pull out a cookie and lift it to your lips.
"Careful there munch buurp Toby," cautions the darker scientist, pointing towards the mound of fries his colleague has just dumped onto the work bench. "Don't get any of that near the specimens!"
You pause, the unbitten cookie between your open teeth.
"Haha, you're right man," says the blond scientist, carefully pushing the plate of cookies further away from him. "Damn, I can't wait to unleash these bad boys on the women. They won't know what's hit em!" He laughs, popping the remaining quarter of his second burger into his mouth and rustles in the bag for his third.
You look down at the cookie in your hand, wondering what it might contain. A virus? Unlikely, the men really want to bring the women back until their control, not to kill them. Some sort of long-term sleeping potion, perhaps, an experimental mind-control drug? Breathing a quiet sigh of relief at having narrowly avoided eaten it, you zip the cookie back up safely with the others in your bag. No doubt HQ will want to anaylse it when you get back.
With the two scientists gorging on gourmet burgers and glugging huge cannisters of soda, you decide to continue your search for the secret weapon. After shuffling backwards for a while, you find a small area to turn round in, and continue quietly down the ventilation shaft. It's like a maze, running throughout the big industrial building, and you feel like you've been travelling for hours, until, turning a corner, you spy a grill in the ventilation shaft floor just ahead of you. You also smell something incredible wafting up through the grill. Sniffing longingly, you shuffle forwards and peer down the grill, finding that you're just above...
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