FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

The foyer was clean and cool, glowing with the sunset beyond the windows. Wendell was surprised they were willing to take an admission so late in the day but with the staff being mostly 24-hour live-in employees he supposed it wasn't so strange. The world felt fluid with the disorientation of these first new steps, or really his last old ones. Even living here with Mike they would probably be mostly videochatting for some time, but he could almost feel the gravity and love of his friend deep inside the building. They would be home now. He _wanted_to join the center, and he was bouncing in his step a little as he strolled to the reception desk, his member bulging in his skivvies.

Wendell was a Suffolk Sheep with a light pudge shifting against the buttons of his navy work shirt. He was shorter than most males of any species he encountered and he didn't work out. But why bother? This was the new world. This was the era of plenty; no disease, no death, no struggle for resources or standing. Everything had changed about five years ago, and ever since then the urge had been in Wendell's mind. Especially when they started opening the Lifestyle Centers. Something about it seemed off to him for the longest time even with all the promises that were met. No matter what they could stretch or inflate you to, no matter what knowledge or lifestyle or fetish they could grant you, you didn't want to succumb to one of the last remaining downers out there. You didn't want to be lonely. He'd seen the members of various centers traipsing about outside on recreation days, and he'd always remembered the horse swollen with muscle to the point she'd barely been able to move her arms. The woman had been sitting all alone on a bench in the park, staring blankly out at the pond where couples were sailing in the little pedal boats, laughing and oblivious to her yearning gaze.

They could give you anything you wanted now. They could make you into anything you desired with however that energy-flux theory they'd discovered worked. But unless you wanted them rooting around in your personality they couldn't change you, and Wendell hadn't been ready to let go. He kinda liked getting up every morning and going to the motor pool where they spent just enough time working on all the automated busses and trucks in the city fleet to keep their minds from rotting in boredom. Mike, a portly Ox with a bright grin, had been on the crew for several of those years, and Wendell had greatly enjoyed himself as Mike had tested the limits of the new abilities medical science had visited upon him by eating course after course when they took lunch. Mike was just... bigger than Wendell, louder and more boisterous and always ready with the quip for the moment. And Wendell had been so happy for him when he took up residency in the center, but he'd felt betrayed. He had almost no excuse not to join now, which brought Wendell to his real stumbling block:

Shame.

If he moved in and gave in to his desires, let them do what he wanted them to do to him, how could he face anyone? Even with all the new miracles in life there was still so much work to be done. Even if he was just a truck mechanic, was walling himself into a pit for fetish freaks what he wanted? Could he give up on life to that degree?

But many nights he'd chatted with Mike, dick hard under the covers as he watched his friend gorge between sentences. Smeared with jam and butter and crumbs and chocolate, pulsating there on the screen like some melted mountain. And he looked so happy. "It never has to stop, man," Mike had said before spending the next sixty seconds sticking his face directly into a large cherry pie. "I wish you were here, man. I miss you. I want us to rub guts like we talked about." And even with all the bulbous fat rolls surrounding his face, Mike still gave that million-dollar smile.

And then Mike had said what had made up Wendell's mind. "You're not worthless in here, man. We're not dead. We're not stupid. The people who work here love us. They love this job. They're our friends. I read, I still work. The guy in the next room is a computer programmer who's still at his old job. I started designing sneakers. We're just hidden away from the bullies. We're our own culture and nobody judges us and nobody makes us feel small."

Wendell had been eating his dinner, the takeout box cooling in his hand as they chatted. His gut burbled and he realized how full he was and how much strain his belly was putting on his sweater. And it was not enough. Now that it was free of a life of debtand he could indulge he'd exerted himself in his culinary pursuits, stuffing himself but only at home alone away from judging eyes. Mike had embraced the attention paid to his appetite, but Wendell could never shake the disappointment that he could not make a third trip back to the buffet much less a tenth like he truly wanted. He loved to watch Mike gorge and gorge, unconcerned of heart trouble or shame or ever finding a bottom to that pit inside. To grow and grow and grow and become great and powerful, like an old god. Wendell's erection had been throbbing and tears were beginning to come to his eyes, and Mike was looking at him with gentle concern.

"I want you to be happy. You don't have to be small anymore. And we can be together again. We'll be in different rooms most of the time, but they have carts and pulleys and stuff. I wanna rub bellies and hug you again, man. I want us to be together and giant and grow forever as friends." Mike was crying now, and his voice cracked as he said "I miss my friend. I don't want him to settle and I don't want him to be sad. I know it'll make you happy. Please, if you want to, tell me you'll do it?"

Wendell tossed the tablet onto his bed and straddled it with his fat thighs, shoveleing in the rest of the takeout and masturbating with his other hand, grunting and watching his friend resume stuffing himself. Both of them calling out encouragement from around their mouthfuls of food. And when Wendell climaxed he'd groaned and arched his back and felt the tightness in his belly touch the end of his dick as his thick cream squirted free, into his snarled wool. When he looked back at Mike that million-watt smile was back. "I believe in you, man. It's your choice, but I believe in you."

Thus, the cool lobby and smiling chipmunk with cornrows in a white polo, grinning happily at the prospect of another gainer for him to fawn over. Wendell wondered absently what, when and how much the staff themselves ate. Had any jumped on the wagon, diving happily into a swimming pool of pudding?

"You're Wendell, right?" The chipmunk asked. "I'm Reggie, and first of all I want to say I'm glad you're going to be with us. Everyone who joins us here is making the world better by changing how we view ourselves and our limitations. Telling shame and judgement to fuck off," he said with a laugh. "You're gonna blaze a trail into the future we still haven't achieved. And if I may say so, you look like you'll fatten up great!"

"You sound like my mom," Wendell said, and they shared a short, genuine laugh. "I read everything on the website and notified everyone, changed over all my codes and accounts so I think I'm good."

Reggie tapped at the display built into the reception desk, biting lightly on a claw as he checked the forms. "Yeah! All good. If you're ready to begin you can sign the screen on the counter there, and we can start the tour. Oh, and do you have any last questions?"

Wendell didn't want to ask the only thing still clouding his mid. He'd avoided the section of the online FAQ answering his last concern because it felt like a betrayal. He felt to voice the last doubt would jinx it, trash his commitment to himself and Mike. That it would make him weak, and all the power and contentedness would be tainted forever. But he knew he had to ask.

"Can I go back? If I'm not happy?"

"Yeah, man!" Reggie said. "This is a lifestyle. I love it, and you're gonna love it! But it's not prison. All your work, all your friends, all your family are invited whenever. Anything you could want to read or watch, any outing you want to take is part of your life here. But if it's not for you tomorrow or fifty years from now you can leave any time. Might take a few days to slim down, but we'll do whatever we have to."

"Has, uh... Has anyone ever left, then?"

Reggie grinned and popped a stick of cinnamon gum into his mouth. "Not once, man. Nobody."

"Damn," Wendell said and chuckled slightly as he signed the touchscreen. "Lead on!"

The lobby was all cream whites and deep burgundy furniture which no fur was sitting on this late in the day. Wendell had marveled at how big the building was from the outside, remembering it used to be an old trucking warehouse before being refurbished into a home for ridiculously fat furs. Reggie lead him through a set of leather-covered double doors and into the belly of his new home.

The halls were mostly cool blue, with pale yellow accent tile. The AC hissed softly in the vents, keeping the building chilled to what felt like 60 degrees. "Yeah, most places use passive vent cooling, but there's no way to keep the residents comfortable with that system," Reggie said. "I run pretty hot and do a lot of running around during my shifts so I stay in short sleeves, but when we get you started you may want to wear sweats until you hit your first K."

Wendell felt a tingle run through his member at the mention of the first thousand pounds of many. He'd not eaten all day, hoping to be ready for a feast when he arrived, and his stomach growled loud enough that Reggie chuckled.

"You wanna eat something right now, man?"

"Nah, uh, let's do the whole tour."

"Cool." The initial hallways were snaked with lines tiled into the floor in different colors indicating pathways to the kitchens, equipment rooms, medical wing and all the other nodes in the network of supporting endless eating. They took a short grey pathway to another entryway, stainless steel doors this time, and the air sucked noticeably against the doors when the chipmunk pushed them open with some evident strain as this new wing was even cooler. "These are the residences. You've got a friend here, right?"

"Yeah, Mike Reagan. He knows I'm coming in today."

"We'll swing by. You'll work your way up to the big rooms, but welcome to your new home." The bay before them was massive, with ceilings at least forty feet off the ground supported by stainless steel columns. The whole bay was filled with row upon row of clear plexiglass rooms of varying sizes, and within were furs of so many different sizes (though none of them small) that Wendell stared in amazement, his wool rippling in the gusts of AC.

Each room was decorated to the taste of the residents, carpeted or tiled and decorated with furnishings and art that all seemed new. He noticed quite a few photos showing the furs inside at much smaller sizes than their current forms. The ones nearest him and Reggie contained furs from his size up to those who looked to weigh just short of a ton, most of them reading, playing videogames, typing on computers tied to screens projected onto the walls or chatting with white-clad staff or visitors. Almost all of them were eating dutifully or at least intermittently. Some of the walls were opaque. "You can turn your room to private mode so people can't see in, but for the most part everyone's pretty social. We turn out the bay lights at ten, but you can keep whatever sleep schedule you want."

Reggie gestured to tracks running through the poured concrete floor. "For our two-ton plus residents we need to use mobile beds on these tracks to move them around, and they have plus-size bays for their group stuff, but you'll be mobile for quite a while. And you never have to get bigger than you want to, obviously."

Scattered outside the rooms intermittently were tables and chairs where massive furs gnawed happily on foodstuffs and chatted outside the confines of their private quarters. Reggie led Wendell up to the nearest one where an otter and a crow were splitting a massive birthday cake and talking about the European football league. "This is Eustice," Reggie said indicating the otter.

"And I'm Raoul," the crow said, offering a fleshy feathered hand. Everyone shook and Raoul held up a slice of the cake for Wendell. "Heard you would be coming today. You just get in?"

"Yeah," Wendell said, digging into the slice with the fork he'd been offered. It was rich and moist, darker and less abruptly sweet that a lot of the mass-produced stuff he was used to eating. "This is really good. Who made it?"

"We have about twenty-five full time chefs scheduled for meals and two dozen short-order cooks on call twenty-four hours a day," Reggie said. "The staff loves it. They get to make whatever they want and as much as they want. We encourage everyone here to take our classes, some taught by the chefs, for culinary appreciation. They love to get feedback on their work. And of course, you can make whatever you want for yourself at any time. We've got a good fire suppression system." Everyone chuckled.

"I dunno if you're a sports person, but we run the Euro League fantasy draft. You'll meet Juan. He does the fantasy football."

"I don't think anyone can miss Juan," Eustice said with a chuckle before shoveling a third of a slice of cake into his mouth. "We'll let you finish the tour. I'll probably see ya in the library later. And welcome, son," he said around his mouthful of chocolate.

Reggie continued on, a cake-chomping Wendell in tow. "This is your room. We'll spend most of tomorrow adjusting it to your preferences and having anything you need brought in from your last place. Requisition forms for anything you want changed or any new possessions you might want are all on your room computer. It should already be synched to your biometrics.

"Compy, show me porn," Wendell said, grinning as the wall displays lit up with massive swinging dicks.

"I swing the other way, but you're a man after my own heart," Reggie said, and clasped Wendell's shoulder with a friendly grip.

The room was basic in its furnishings but homey with plush carpeting and a bed nicer than the one he'd had at his apartment. There was a VR headset and an e-reader waiting for him on the wooden nightstand. He followed Reggie back into the bay, grinning.

They followed the tracks to the larger rooms, each about the size of a small house. The occupants within were certainly in need of the space. In one, a mountainous, naked shorthair cat typed on a keyboard balanced on her immense bosom while stuffing slice after slice of pizza into her mouth. She noticed Wendell staring and waved warmly before returning to her work. And then they arrived at Mike's room.

Although they'd chatted every other day before Wendell had joined, he hadn't fully wrapped his head around just how enormous his friend had become. The brown ox was swaddled in roll after roll of fat, flowing over and around himself in rolling slopes of flesh that jiggled softly with his breathing. He overflowed the cart-bed beneath him and his fat rolls settled to the ground and pooled around him. His face was padded with more fat than existed on Wendell's entire body, but when he smiled his eyes still conveyed true happiness. "You finally made it, you goofy SOB! Give me a hug!" Mike's voice boomed in the large room. He'd grown all over, and was at least twelve feet tall even sitting in his bed. Wendell walked up slowly, faintly surprised by how good his friend smelled, and laid into a roll of pillowy fat, his arms spread wide. "I'm glad you decided to join. You'll enjoy growing and living here. I'm excited to see you start blowing up."

"I'm so happy to see you, man." The ox's stomach growled, and when Mike laughed he could feel the undulations of his flesh shake like a seismic event.

"Hey man, after you finish the tour and they give you your mod, let's eat."

"Yes, I'd like that," Wendell said softly into the plush fur covering his friend's gelatinous flank.

Reggie took him to all the expected areas: kitchen, help desk, library, shower facilities (for while you're still able to use them, he'd said with a wink) and ran him through all the menus on the requisition system. The kitchen night shift was in, drinking beer and watching dirty movies on a wall screen as they shuffled forth to smoking pans or hot ovens intermittently. They welcomed him and shook hands, and assured him they'd bring a feast to Mike's room for the two of them soon.

The actual procedure to allow him to survive such gorging was a thrity-second energy soak in a booth that looked like an old airport nude-scan machine. Reggie assured him there were plenty of good videos on the facility's system if he wanted to know quite how it worked, but by the time it was done he was so hungry he thanked Reggie for the tour and booked it straight to Mike's room. The food was already arriving, and plate after plate of pizzas and stirfry were being wheeled in by a slim rat in a white polo with a shy grin. Mike had been eating intermittently all day, but he tore into the steaming plates of stirfry like a famished man. Wendell, finally let loose after playing around the edges of a lifelong obsession, stripped down to his underwear and ate furiously as Mike took his time, regaling his friend with stories of all the intrigue and hot, passionate fat sex that went on in the self-contained kingdom of the giant fat furs. Wendell was slightly nervous to hear about some of the internal drama, but the food was so good and his friend so happy to see him that he let the worry drift away. Or rather, he buried it under gallons and gallons of hot, saucy food. It's not like he hadn't been made to feel ashamed for a whole host of reasons even out in the post-singularity motor pool. At least here, he had something to talk to everyone about.

"You're gonna feel like you can eat forever, but even with our mods you won't enjoy it," Mike said as Wendell shoveled in a second pizza. His stomach was bulging beautifully and hung heavy and distended over the elastic band of his tighty-whities. "You'll eat more than you ever have, but when you feel it hit bottom it's best to stop. If nothing else, it helps you savor the times where you really push yourself." Mike chuckled, and his body jiggled delightfully. "My recommendation? Eat all day, but don't gorge outside of mealtimes. They'll bring what you want to you any time of day. Take some time, go outside while you're still mobile, and savor the flavors. People fight to be our chefs. It's a dream job for a lot of them and they'll treat us right."

Wendell had eaten like a man possessed, and his wool was stained and streaked with cheese and stray noodles and all manner of sauce. His belly hung like a potato sack and his breathing had become shallow. But he was happier than he'd been in longer than he cared to admit, and he and Mike split the three-layer cake the staff had brought as a welcome gift. After they'd eaten their fill, or close enough to it, they rubbed their bellies together softly as the hanger lights shut off one row at a time. "I'm glad you're here, man," Mike said in his low rumble. "I really am."

"Me too," Wendell said. Eventually he departed, padding softly down the hall with his clothes under one wooly arm. Raoul was still at the table, picking slowly at a plate of poutine and flipping through The New Yorker.

"Looks like you got the welcome cake!" the crow said. He snapped up a fist-size ball of fries stuck together with cheese in his beak and pointed to the fat potbelly hanging before Wendell's dick. "There's nothing like the first time you let go. I remember getting here only about a month ago. My sisters came with and threw me a little party in my room. Have a seat," he said, patting the spot on the table next to the wide spread of his belly.

As Wendell sat the table creaked noticeably but it held their weight. "My older sister just stared. She wasn't good at hiding how she felt. She didn't get it either. Why I wanted this. She thought I was just lazy."

"What's she do, if I may ask?" Wendel said, picking a gravy-smothered fry from the plate Raoul pushed toward him.

"She's a teacher. She's good, too. But it just didn't make sense to her. I was a waiter in a restaurant before everything changed. Then I quit and just spent my time alone. I drank too much." Raoul gobbled another fry-and-cheese ball while staring off into the distance before continuing. "I didn't like work and I felt small. What was I supposed to do? I never went to college. I didn't do well with the aptitude assessments they give out if you wanna go back to school. I tried to learn to program because I liked to write. But it's not the same. And they don't pay you, y'know? You have to like it, and I didn't."

"I worked on trucks," Wendell said, running the last fries around the plate to gather up all the gravy. "Still did until just yesterday. And I know what you mean. It's either a good challenge or a bad one."

"Exactly. Never wrote anything worth a damn. Still don't," he said with a chuckle. "But it feels good to get in that flow. Like when I go into breakfast and I get a rhythm. How I put the fried protein on the pancakes, how I pour on the syrup. How I build the little tower of biscuits before doing the gravy lava." Raoul patted the fat gut poking out from between his sweatshirt and pants and it wobbled like a waterballoon. He probably weighed what Wendell had already come to think of as a "mere" 600 pounds. "Gods-damn, though, I love to eat. Love it. Every dinner time I remember why I came here. I do the culinary appreciation courses. They're worth it. They don't serve no slop here. It's good, spicy or savory. They simmer shit, really let it build body. You think you love cooking, but you'll realize how good it feels to get spoiled. I catch the staff jacking off watching some of us eat from time to time," he said with a high cawing laugh. "That first time someone asks to lay against your belly all the shame goes away." Raoul sniffed dryly, then shifted his weight on the seat. "I ought to get back to my room. My sisters are gonna call. But my advice is call the kitchen and really treat yourself. Let it sink in, rub yourself. Sleep naked tonight. This is almost certainly the rest of your life and you deserve to start out enjoying it."

Raoul heaved himself up and waddled to the nearby counter for depositing used dishes. The top of his butt poked out of the rear band of his sweats, his cute little tail swaying atop massive ass cheeks that scraped his bedraggled feathers against each other as he moved. Wendell sat under the dim nighttime lighting as the rooms around him went opaque one by one and the dim burble of phone calls and movies being played echoed under the squeak of the occasional food delivery cart.

He lay back on the bench seat of the table and kneaded his gut lightly. He'd laid awake several nights just prior to this one, thinking of how many furs had tumbled through cold space on this planet for eons and eons of history. How many had wanted exactly what he wanted, growing up always hungry and feeling deep in themselves that they were too small. How many had this needling at the base of their skulls their whole life and maybe if they were lucky sneaked an extra meal once or twice. And here he was, cold plastic under his wool and enough food for three furs in his belly. He listened to its noises, soft gurgles like gas bubbling out of swamp mud. He tried to feel the currents running through his belly, where the pizza flowed past the lo mein. Learning how the high-volume toilets worked was going to be interesting.

With one last look back at Mike's room he hauled himself up with great effort and walked somewhat bow-legged toward his room. The poutine was good. He'd have to see what size platters of it they make this time of night.