Your name is Jean Doe, and you can decide later whether you’re male or female. You’re just another average everyday student of Hayminch High, maintaining your grades and your friendships as best you can. You tend to be a bit of a busybody, often involving yourself in things you’re usually ill equipped to handle, and finding yourself way in over your head.
Your story begins one bright morning, about a week after Hayminch High School signed a contract with a new food distribution company out of nowhere. You usually brought lunches from home, so you haven’t eaten any of the cafeteria food. The vast majority of the other students have been eating the new food, and it’s apparently very delicious, more so than school lunches probably should. Everyone seems to like it so much that they ask for bigger portions, or else go for seconds and even thirds. You can’t help but notice it it’s been having a profound effect on everyone’s waistlines.
On that note, everyone is getting ridiculously fat ridiculously quickly. Hayminch used to be a shining example of a model school, where most everyone had a perfect bill of clean health. Nowadays it’s hallways are fit to bursting with titanic teenagers and flabby faculty. By this morning everyone except for you has fattened up into near unrecognizability, hardly anyone lighter than 300 pounds as far as you could tell. Your ponderously pudgy peers were short of breath as they waddled and shuffled between classes as fast as their fattened legs could carry them, their many rolls and folds jiggling and wobbling as they went. You couldn’t help but notice that everyone seemed much clumsier as well, often bumping into each other and knocking each other over, their bodies making uncomfortably wet and meaty slaps as they hit the ground.
At first period you asked one of your classmates about the situation. Marty Hudson was his name, and he used to be the skinniest guy you’ve ever known. Now he’d blown up into practically a globe of fat, a veritable ham planet if you’d ever seen one.
“I see what you mean, man,” Marty said, “Whole school turned into a friggin’ fat camp overnight! Maybe it is the new school food, huh? Hey, at least I seem to be immune to fat, right Jean? I haven’t gained a pound since this started!”
“You’re so full of shit, you know that?” said Marcy McDoyle, one of the girls in class. Marcy used to be a very petite woman who wore sweater-vests every day. That same sweater-vest was stretched distressingly tight over her bloated chest while a dimpled apron of a belly flopped out from underneath. “In case you couldn’t tell, you’ve gained a ton of weight. You’re just as fat as everyone else is.”
“No I’m not, McDoyle,” Marty insisted, “I can see myself! I’m still scrawny as hell! You’re the one who got fat, piggy!”
“Are you blind or something, Marty?” Marcy asked, “Look me in the eyes and tell me that again. I’m the one who didn’t get fat, not you.”
“Pfft! Sure,” Marty rolled his eyes, “I’ll believe it when I see it, lard ball.”
“Insult me all you like,” Marcy turned her nose up, “It doesn’t affect me because I know it isn’t true. I’m still as petite and healthy as usual.”
“Uhh… no, Marcy,” you explained to your fattened classmate, “You got fat too.”
“Oh not you too, Jean!” the gargantuan girl groaned, “Seriously, everyone has been calling me fat and it’s seriously getting on my nerves! Meanwhile whenever I try to explain to someone else that they got fat, they act like I’m lying and insist that they haven’t gained even so much as an ounce! I’m glad to see you’ve stayed in shape too, Jean.”
After that conversation, you came to the conclusion that everyone can see how fat everyone is, except for themselves. You felt a burning need to investigate why everyone is getting fat, because you had a gut feeling that whoever or whatever was behind this had some ulterior motivation. You just have to find out what!