Turnaround - Part 4-2 (Patreon Commission for MephistonOwl)

TAGS: Gators!, Weight Gain, Hyper Weight Gain, Building Destruction, Gorging/Feeding, Blob/Obese, Godlike/Ascension, Macro/Macro Blob

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Months passed, and with them, the old world. There was little left of Earth as it used to be, both literally and metaphorically, as not only was the planet itself upturned when it came to its natural processes, but the people living upon it had undergone a… transformation, so to speak. There were two groups, based entirely on whether or not they had met Woz or even heard of the Great Hungerer, the Ravenous God, the Bottomless Maw. Like the gods of eld, his presence was made known all through itself, as no actions were technically needed for him to spread his influence to all that lived and breathed. Merely by existing, he could subvert and corrupt… or, as his followers would put it, enlighten and exalt. It was a matter of perspective, of course, where the former side was wrong, and the latter side correct; after all, who wouldn’t want to be elevated next to their god, an actual god, one that provably existed and demonstrably blessed those who were faithful to him? Certainly not the entirety of the population of Europe and most of Asia, who gleefully gave themselves over to Woz as soon as the first effects of his presence made themselves known. It was a fortunate consequence of his having grown as massive as he had, as now his body was big enough to disrupt the natural processes of the Earth on a planetary scale just by him being there; when one was so colossal that one covered the near-entirety of North America, along with practically everything from Mexico to Bolivia passing by the Gulf and the Caribbean, one was large enough to alter weather patterns and have one’s power seep into the very land itself… though, to be fair, it was likely just a combination of the burping, pheromones, and whatever godly particles were emitted by a body as glorious as Woz’s. He couldn’t so much be seen from orbit as he was in orbit; it was difficult to ignore the continent-sized mound of pudge and fat that had grown uncontrollably over the past few months, especially when their presence alone was enough to cause world governments to fall to pieces as their citizens left en masse to join with the Congregation of the Ever Gluttonous, as Delton’s organization had taken to calling itself. Much as some states tried their best to offer better conditions to their people, there was just no competing with the gator, nor the Heaven that he promised; what were better roads and health services compared to an eternity of bliss and self-indulgence? How could any mortal pleasures possibly compare to what a god like Woz could provide with the barest amount of attention paid to the world around him? Thus, step by step, person by person, supplicant by supplicant, he grew bigger, fatter, a larger and ever-greater conglomeration of fat rolls and flab fields, of blubber and pudge that grew forevermore and never ceased, until he took the planet itself for his throne. Granted, it was hard to tell just what Woz himself was thinking at that point; none had spoken to him in months, and even Delton, the one closest to the god, only occasionally received grunts or whispers that he had to do his best to decode. Woz was, ultimately, still gorging himself on countless tons of mass per day, and while he certainly could talk if he wanted to, doing so would mean spending time not eating, which wasn’t an acceptable course of action in his mind. No, he’d much rather just keep on devouring whatever was dumped into the black hole that was his mouth, and worry about the finer details never; just as long as his worshippers managed that, then he didn’t have to worry about anything else. Nevertheless, given the warmth radiating from his form, the occasional giggling heard from on high, as well as the shockwaves coursing through his body whenever he had a particularly heavy mouthful go down, all those living on the gator just assumed that he was having the time of his life; how could he not, being a god and all? Thus, none stopped to think of any path that wasn’t “more”, nor did they do anything at all beyond feed the gluttonous monster that Woz had become, until there was very little left of the continent he used to call home. The one change came on the tail end of this process, the First Step as it was called, when Delton actually did something for the first time in what felt like forever; rather than simply feed off of his god’s residual energy, the man woke up properly and began issuing orders, seemingly taken by divine inspiration. Very few understood the full scope of what he was trying to accomplish, but as soon as the disparate pieces issued to disparate groups were put together, the Congregation came to realize what they had been ordered to build: a communicator. The facility itself was gargantuan, easily bigger than most of the nutrient paste factories, and set directly next to the titanic maw of their god; once turned on, it would allow for direct communication with Woz, albeit limited in who actually got to speak with him. For only those educated in the deeper mysteries could so much as begin to scratch the surface of the deity’s mind, which in practice meant Delton and a few of his chosen. Not that anyone minded; they’d spent months living perfectly fine atop Woz without any actual instructions, so even at its worst, installing a means of communication was a net positive. Hence why, in the frigid lands of the northern Yukon, a small settlement was rocked one night by the appearance of an Emissary, one chosen by the Congregation to carry the Word of Woz to the furthest reaches of the world. In their hands, a device for direct Communion, that they may speak to their divinity directly rather than through second-hand interpretations. Hence why this particular emissary, a stoat-turned-gator who weighed in at a respectable couple of tons, was ordered to make the journey over to northernment reaches of the territory, on a direct mission from their god. On paper, their job was to serve as advance warning that this would be one of the last settlements to be taken in the First Step, when Woz’s body at long last covered the entirety of the North American continent and dipped into the frigid arctic waters further beyond. Off-record, however, the Emissary had been tasked with a goal far more important than merely advising the residents to finally get off their asses and join up with the rest of the Congregation, for there was someone very important living in that town, someone who had for too long resisted the call. There, sitting at a bar, staring up at a tiny television mounted on a corner, was someone who was about as far-removed from their natural habitat as they could be; he’d been sent there nearly a year prior as a result of his actions, and in retrospect, it had perhaps been the best thing to have ever happened to him. It took Antoine a significant amount of time before he came to see it as such, especially since the first couple of months were mostly dedicated to him trying to survive in the cold, but after a short while, he came to understand that there was a reason he’d been sent there, and it wasn’t because he had been bested by a “runt”. Looking back at what he’d done, the way he’d acted, the manner in which he treated others, he had to admit: he was kind of a dick. Not the fun kind of dick, who made snarky comments but ultimately had a heart of gold to be found by someone who wanted to look past the rough exterior, but just… a dick, pure and simple. And it took him being bested in what he thought what his “turf”, then sent literally flying away as a result, for him to understand how wrong he was, and how terribly he’d acted towards everyone and everything around him back at the bayou. It was mostly for this reason that, when he saw the first news of Woz’s ascension, his reaction was one of pity and disappointment; to him, this was what he would’ve become, had he not controlled himself the slightest bit; had he just been continuously fed by others, he too would have become a ravenous god, rather than a random gator taking up lumberjacking as a profession in the forests of Yukon. Yet, the more he heard of it, the more he listened to the reports and to the handful of people who came back to the town to deliver the good news, the more he came to realize that his initial impressions were… half-right. Yes, he would have become just like Woz had he been given the chance, but the fact of the matter was that he would never get that chance to begin with. The only reason the “runt” was so big was because others were happy to feed them, something that never happened when he was back at the swamps; Antoine had to scrimp and scrape and intimidate for every bit of food he ate, and considering how much of it went down his gullet, that was a significant amount of effort expended just to stuff his gob. In sharp contrast, all Woz had to do was open his mouth and people gleefully threw as much food into it as they could, regardless of what the gator had done for them, or if they even knew him to begin with. And thanks to this, Woz had become something akin to a god, fed purely through his gluttony, but fueled through his compassion, his love for others, and his willingness to extend the blessings he received to everyone around him. It was, ultimately, the biggest lesson that Antoine had to learn: that the reason why he’d lost weight was not because he’d come second in a two-person eating competition and was then burped to the Yukon, but that, at the end of the day, he had just been an unpleasant cunt to be around. Maybe, if he’d given the slightest shit about people other than him, they would’ve paid back in the same coin, and it would’ve been him on the news rather than Woz. Or, perhaps, he would’ve come to appreciate the simple pleasures of a life lived with loved ones all around, and settled for merely being the biggest dumbass in the bayou. Hard to tell, given all things that had happened; for all that Antoine knew, he didn’t even have the ability to grow that large. Thankfully, such questions would be answered, and in short order as well; the gator barely looked away from the screen when he heard and felt the heavy steps of the approaching Emissary. Indeed, when the colossus squeezed his way through the front door, loudly announcing that the settlement would be next on the First Step, and that any who wanted could leave with them to join with the great Woz… he sighed. Antoine sighed, slipped off from his chair, and then turned around to face the mountain of jiggling blubber that was that… thing, that transformed creature who was once not a gator, yet no longer had a choice in the matter. He faced them, clearing his throat, before at long last finally saying something after months of remaining silent by choice.

“I have business with your god,” he declared, voice hoarse from lack of use, “and I wish to speak with him. Please, take me to him.”

The Emissary smiled. The communicator he kept close to one of his ears buzzed, the heavenly tones of his deity reverberating through his skull.

“The Ever Gluttonous, too, wishes to speak with you,” the corpulent giant replied, “come, child; let us go together, and see brilliance on the horizon. Your day hath come.”

***

There was a plan… of sorts. It wasn’t much at first, and it had plenty of gaps that couldn’t really be filled without experimental technology that no one truly had, but with Delton’s genius behind the proceedings, the Cult was optimistic about their prospects, even if production lines were slow to build and even slower to kick into gear. It was hard to get anything done when most of one’s existence consisted of neverending bliss and a constant fattening that literally could not be stopped no matter how much anyone wanted it, forcing those involved in the project to take increasingly unorthodox paths to solve what would’ve once been perfectly mundane problems. Yet, at the same time, this was seen less as a hassle and more as further evidence that theirs was the correct choice, that their decision to live upon their god’s frame was the one most likely to deliver them to their Heaven; after all, if it weren’t, then people wouldn’t be too busy slowly turning into ever-fatter balls of pudge to do any work, nor would they be so enamored by the notion of doing nothing while their bloated that they couldn’t perform any of the delicate operations required to get the project into motion. It fell to Delton and his direct assistants to get anything done… Delton and, of course, his new right-hand gator, Antoine. The meeting between the old, self-proclaimed leader of the bayou and the Ever Gluttonous was one that few were permitted to witness, and even fewer knew the significance of; even Delton, who up until that point had been the main point of contact between Woz and the world, was not allowed to actually listen to what was said. What was known was that, after all was said and done, Antoine, by that point big enough to overshadow a well-sized downtown distract, approached the head of the cult and whispered to him some choice words, and from there on, he stood at the man’s side, ready to provide his expert opinion on whatever was necessary. And thus the Ever Gluttonous grew ever fatter, with the gator god’s girth approaching the shores of Europe and Africa, having all-but completely devoured the entirety of the Atlantic. By then, of course, there were few people left that could even think about the consequences of this; most population centers around the planet had relocated onto Woz, and those that hadn’t were well on their way to preparing one final evacuation before leaving their homes forever. Rumpus abounded that the priesthood was trying for something different, for a more permanent, or at least more long-term solution, but maddeningly few scraps of information were filtered down from on high. The most that anyone knew was that it was called the “Big Move”, and it involved finding Woz a source of food that would last for longer than the already abused Earth. One didn’t become so far as to cover multiple continents without thoroughly upending the entirety of the planet’s natural processes, and the only reason why it was inhabitable at all was because Woz happened to be on it; soon enough, he would become so immense, so gargantuan, that the world would fail to keep him on it… though, by then, everyone and everything worth saving would’ve been given some space on him, turning him into a life-preserving Ark on which the whole of Earth’s ecosystem could survive on nothing more than the gator god’s presence alone. And this, ultimately, was the crux of the issue when it came to the Big Move: the idea that Woz’s source of power was, indeed, bottomless. In any other scenario, one would be content with knowing one broke the laws of physics in a way that would’ve made old world scientists bawl like babies, but when it came to Woz, even this wasn’t enough. In truth, the growth had merely been a fortunate side-product of the real sacrament, that of mindless consumption: think not on the why you eat, only that you do eat! The move wasn’t happening because they needed to get the gator god more fuel, but because it was, put simply, the right thing to do; in theory, the amount of power held within Woz should be enough to let him coast through most of eternity on that one colossal, year-long meal he’d been having, but that just wouldn’t do. For a god like him, for a god that a cult had taken to calling the Ever Gluttonous, to not be eating was a travesty, and to be satiated was a mythical state considered worse than death. Better to hunger than to be full, better to yearn than be satisfied, and it was for this precise reason that the Move was planned. Few were privy to the details, mostly since they involved high-end physics that even Delton was afraid of screwing around with, but the one certainty that everyone involved in the thinking had was that there was no method of propulsion that could get them where they wanted… apart from Woz himself. The planet certainly wasn’t going to move, and even if it did it wouldn’t carry with it sufficient resources to be worth taking along for the ride. This left Woz and Woz alone, and the means through which to achieve motion in space were… difficult, to say the least. The answer itself was somewhat obvious; the problem was getting the math to work out and for their calculations to not inevitably lead to errors powerful enough to make calculators want to bite the fingers off presumably startled researchers. In a way, Antoine’s presence was a fantastic boon for the process, as he was the one person with extensive personal knowledge on how this particular trait of Woz’s biology worked, even if he was reluctant to discuss the subject matter if it ever related directly to the root cause of it, or the long period of isolation and (semi-)self-imposed exile in the Yukon. He alone knew what it was like to be propelled long distances via the gator god’s burps, and he alone could tell Delton and his crew what the experience was like, in the hopes that they may draw the right conclusions from what were, essentially, a bunch of disparate anecdotes with no hard data to back them up. Not that anyone disbelieved him when he told the story, but the lack of measuring instruments made it hard to truly gauge what was needed for a burst of that magnitude, and all he did was get blown halfway across the continent, rather than the literal stellar distances that Delton was planning. For ultimately, they might as well go for the biggest target that wouldn’t singe everyone contact, the one biggest source of mass in the entirety of the Solar System: Jupiter. In theory, it was a perfectly sound and rational decision: get Woz into Jupiter’s orbit, then use the gas giant as a source of mass for the Ever Gluttonous. With it being several times bigger than the Earth, there was no telling how long it would take for their god to go through the cosmic meal, and by the time he was finished, it was highly likely that his body would be so enormous as to encompass most of the rest of the system around him, thus making it quite simple to just relocate the mass conversion facilities to wherever was most convenient. Getting to Jupiter, on the other hand, was the hard part; not only did they require a means of propulsion that could get Woz’s non-insignificant frame off-planet, but one that could last all the way to their destination and still be usable to slow down in order to be caught by the gravity well properly. After weeks of deliberation, it was decided that the best chance they had was to rely on the gator’s own belching: to force their god to burp one extremely loud time, and redirect the energy contained within it to get his body to move upwards and outwards towards Jupiter. To that end, the solution was actually ingeniously simple: just stop feeding him. The moment food stopped pouring into Woz’s gullet, he was certain to belch, given he’d spent over a year being pumped fuller and fuller at every second, and the longer he went without being able to alleviate any of that pressure, then, surely, the biggest the resulting burst would be. Quite fortuitously, the feeding schedule the gator had been under for most of his time as a god had prevented him from being able to burp, something Delton was quick to turn into official policy as soon as Antoine revealed to him some of the deeper mysteries that even the High Acolyte was not aware of. That much, however, was not all; sure, they had stumbled upon a perfect means of propulsion, but the cult still needed to actually aim, and to do so in a manner that would allow for near-perfect entry into Jupiter’s orbit, all while taking into consideration slowdown periods and potential adjustments. It was all quite complex really, as was finding astrophysicists and astronauts with direct experience in the subject matter that hadn’t already succumbed to the overwhelming power of Woz’s mere presence; in the end, most of the time was spent calculating the correct moment at which the pumps would be turned off, as well as devising a means to funnel the full power of the gator god’s burp into one specific direction, rather than spread around wherever he opened his mouth. This was resolved with, quite literally, a funnel; it was a low-tech solution, and not the most dignified either, but Delton being who he was, a perfectly functional solution was a perfectly functional solution, with there being little need to improve upon form if it risked infringing upon function. Thus, the full plan for the Big Move was slowly etched out into what would be its final, complete form: a large titanium funnel would be placed inside Woz’s mouth when the planet he sat upon aligned him just right with the correct escape trajectory, and, upon reaching the precise moment that guaranteed maximum odds of a correct orbital path, the nutrient paste pumps would be turned off. If timed correctly, this would mean a very sudden and explosive release of a year’s worth of pent-up belches, all of which would be directed towards the funnel and then expelled as a sort of improvised engine, lifting the gator off from the surface and directing him through space towards the destination of Jupiter. Once up in space, it was as simple as managing the “exhaust” so that the living god-ark wouldn’t overshoot its intended end point, and once successfully captured by the gas giant’s gravity well… well, it was just a case of getting the pumps ready to siphon countless tons’ worth of gas for further reprocessing! It would be a feast of calamitous proportions, given how unpredictable the effects on the Solar System would be, but given that the endgame was to have Woz serve as a fully mobile “planet” upon which his congregation could reside, this seemed hardly worth thinking about. In fact, Delton had already been drawing plans for how they could use the Sun as a fuel source, and was intending on using Jupiter as a test run to see how his hypotheses panned out; if he was vindicated, then he expected to be done with the local stellar system within ten years at the most, and from there, it was off to the next star to see how much mass could be obtained from it. Beyond that… hard to tell. Perhaps they would just keep going until there was nothing left of the universe to consume, but the scales at which they would be operating were so immense as to make their very underlying notion a twisty mind screw.