Prompt of the Week - Week 43

TAGS: Hyper, Implied Growth, Introspective Narrative

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The only thing keeping him attached to this job was the fact that the paychecks had far more digits than were really warranted. If not for the absolutely absurd level of pay, Jonathan would’ve bailed on it years prior, and even with the generous compensation and nigh-endless list of perks, he still sometimes went for several days straight without being able to sleep properly, owing to whatever project he was assigned to; sometimes he wondered what his life might’ve been like if he had chosen a different major altogether, or had decided not to pursue employment with that company in particular, but those occasions grew further and farther between as time went on and he just… acclimated. Not exactly got used to it, but just learned how to deal with it in his own, incredibly neurotic manner, even if he very often faltered and frequently flirted with the idea of substance abuse in order to cope; the bun knew, to a certain degree, that it wasn’t a healthy lifestyle, that it would end up biting him in the ass at some point and he’d wake up one day in a ditch somewhere after going on an all-night bender and spending most of his money on cheap alcohol, but what else was he supposed to do? As much of a pain as everything in his job was, it was still his passion, the one thing he lived for, and if nothing else, then the idea of getting through yet another construction project and seeing it be built and realized was a good enough light at the end of the tunnel… at least, for a time.

Jonathan wasn’t like other architects, in that he’d made the conscious decision to work in an industry known for its incredibly high turnover rate, rather than doing the sane thing that everyone else did and just taking a few occasional jobs as a consultant for still-exorbitant quantities of money. No, he went the full mile, accepting a position as a senior architectural designer at Dorden Industrial Solutions, a company that prided itself on being run “by hypers, for hypers”; while this was normally a non-issue when it came to most of their products, that being safety equipment designed for plus-sized and hyper-sized individuals, the same could not be said for their architectural and engineering division, who were consistently ranked amongst the world’s most mentally stressful jobs for one reason, and one reason alone: their clientele. It was relatively easy to manufacture PPEs for someone whose main concern was having an enormous dick or a chest-covering pair of tits, another one entirely to design functional, structurally sound buildings that were built to withstand constant use by hyper-sized persons, often on a daily basis. Considering the sheer variability in body shapes, sizes, weight and density, it turned what was already a complex, very attention-driven occupation into an absolute nightmare, something that had traumatized Jonathan to such a degree that he regularly had to contend with having the blueprints for the day burned into the inside of his eyelids hours after clocking out. The already complicated relationship between himself as the chief architect and the engineering team in charge of actually constructing the buildings themselves was heightened to the degree that shouting matches were simply accepted as a standard part of their job, and if a single day went by without at least some critical structural flaw being found that could potentially endanger entire floors, if not the whole structure itself, then everyone knew something was dreadfully wrong. All of this was wrapped up in the typical concerns an architect had, that being to design something that wasn’t just a concrete brick and actually looked and felt nice to be in and around; if it were up to the engineers, every single building under Dorden’s name would be cast out of rebar in the shape of a cube, then had the necessary number of rooms carved out by hand, and it was his job to make sure this didn’t happen. The company had a reputation to maintain, after all.

For the latest project, his employers of course decided that they should get involved in the business of skyline pissing competitions, and decided that instead of building a sensibly-sized skyscraper to house a new banking division, they would instead take the original plans, scrap them entirely, and then call Jonathan in to help spearhead the creation of the tallest building on the planet. The bun refused to believe this at first, thinking it had to be some kind of in-house joke that he just wasn’t in on, but as soon as the emails started to pour in properly and he received multiple distressed calls from his coworkers telling him that they too had been called over it, Jonathan began to panic. He was torn between the idea of outright quitting or just locking himself in his home and refusing to work until the company realized how absolutely absurd of a concept it was to create a hyper-accessible tallest skyscraper on the planet; the sheer material costs alone would be so immense as to make the entire thing a no-go from the start… and yet, no matter how many times he tried to convince his employers that it was a fool’s errand to even try, the whole thing was greenlit, he was given a generous bonus in order to participate, and was then pleasantly reminded that he was the only person they had on-staff that could even remotely begin to make the whole thing work. There were absolutely no threats of blacklisting him from the industry if he refused, and if Jonathan himself ever said otherwise, such an incident never occurred; nothing but goodwill between himself and Dorden Industrial Solutions.

This had been several months prior, and as predicted, everything had ground to a halt as the practical, logistical problems that came with designing and building a building like that one came to a head and smacked everyone down until they could barely move. In between a ballooning budget, uncooperative engineering team who refused to do anything until every step was quadruple-checked by outside experts and a series of strikes on the part of construction workers demanding better safety conditions, to say that the project was behind schedule would be downright charitable to how late everything was. Naturally, Jonathan himself wasn’t to blame for most of those, and indeed he made sure to try and keep on everyone’s good side as much as he could, but seeing as he had to be involved in the process from beginning to end and the company refused to let him move onto other projects, he had absolutely no reprieve from his misery. And yet, despite all this, it could have worked… if not for the mental block that had been hounding him for weeks. Perhaps the biggest issue with the entire thing was that the building itself was supposed to be split into two halves: on the bottom would be the public area, where contact with the general public would be held, whereas the top half would be comprised mostly of executive offices and the various spaces reserved for the endless bureaucracy of the international banking system. And while Jonathan could probably design the former to satisfaction with his eyes closed and his dominant hand tied behind his back, doing the same for the latter had proved to be… a challenge.

He didn’t know why or how his brain refused to work the way it usually did. It used to be that he could simply put pen to paper and everything would flow naturally without him having to think too much about it, a natural inclination that he made sure to hone and practice as often as possible. In sharp contrast, whenever he tried to come up with anything to do with the top half of this cursed skyscraper, all he got was a blank screen filled with static; no ideas, no trails to follow, no breadcrumbs leading to a delicious payoff, just… nothing. Even going through his vast back catalogue didn’t help; if anything, being confronted with everything else he’d ever done only left him feeling more frustrated that his creativity wasn’t flowing as easily as it used to. Worse still was the looming realization that it might not just be a one-off thing, because the stress he was constantly under would inevitably turn most of his attempts at designing anything into this uphill battle against himself; though he tried his best not to think about it, it was difficult to ignore the thought that he might just be on his last legs, and would probably need a prolonged sabbatical just to find out if he could ever even have a normal at all going forward. All that said, he wasn’t a quitter; if his brain refused to cooperate, Jonathan was just going to have to make it cooperate, even if that meant employing more esoteric strategies that might very well result in some kind of damage to himself… and not of the mental variety either.

He’d been sitting in his office for the past three hours, staring at a plastic bottle with several white, nondescript pills inside, occasionally throwing it from one hand to the other, mostly just keeping it on the floor in front of him, as if he expected his intense stare to burn a hole through it. He received it from a concerned friend, one who’d heard about his plight during a company meeting and suggested that he try to see things from a “different perspective”; while Jonathan was initially reluctant to resort to psychoactive drugs in order to achieve inspiration for something that required very straight (or at least properly curved) lines on paper, his friend was quick to correct his initial assumptions. It was precisely this correction, this revelation if one would, that left the bun wondering if he really should down the whole bottle as instructed, or throw it out the window and never think about it again; after all, there was always a non-zero chance that the hyperfication might end up being permanent, and as much as the idea wasn’t entirely alien or unwanted, it still wasn’t something Jonathan was willing to commit to without giving it plenty of thought. Perhaps it was fate, that the world’s best hyper architect was not, himself, an actual hyper; like a deaf composer or a chef without functioning taste receptors, the bun was forever cursed with being unable to fully appreciate that which he himself created, a concept that occasionally gave him far more strength than he felt it should. Now that he was given the chance to “correct” that, to turn his body into the kind that he designed buildings for… suddenly things stopped being simple. There was no black or white, just a smudge of greys of varying intensity, mixing together with a whole lot of emotions and desires that he’d done a good job of suppressing over the years; he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t considered taking boosters like those, but for the longest time, the bun was convinced that he was fine the way that he was, that he didn’t need to be any bigger. But as he occasionally glanced back towards his drawing board, to the painfully empty pieces of paper he had on it, Jonathan’s resistance to the idea of growing began to waver, and the concept of seeing things from this new perspective began to peak his interest.

Perhaps this was what he needed, he thought as he leaned down to pick up the pill bottle for what felt like the hundredth time already. A fresh start, an opportunity to truly look at his work from an angle that it actually deserved to be looked at from, a way for him to become immersed in what he was supposed to do, rather than relying on what was effectively just raw imagination tempered with enough practiced experience to drown out most of an architecture degree’s entire first year class; perhaps this way he could finally find some true joy in the process itself, especially since he could then use himself as a measuring stick as opposed to having to go through multiple past records and spending hours on calls with focus groups. He knew this would still have to happen though, which was precisely why that tiny voice in the back of his head asking him why he was trying to rationalize a kink away was even there to begin with; the bun wished he wouldn’t have to deal with that side of himself, but as his hands seemed to move of their own accord to uncap the bottle and his entire body began to shake in anticipation, he could hardly deny it anymore. He wasn’t really doing this for the sake of his job, he was doing it because he wanted to be massive.

Years and years spent designing buildings for people who, by sheer genetic luck, were blessed with the kind of curves and proportions that people like himself could only ever dream of without extensive self-modification. Years and years spent wondering to himself, in the back of his head, why exactly he didn’t undergo the procedures required to turn himself into a tailor-made hyper; it wasn’t as if he didn’t have the money, or the means, or hell, even the time! He could easily have scheduled a full complement of gene treatments in between different projects if he ever wanted to, which raised the question of why he just… hadn’t. Was it because of the stress? The thought that maybe the company wouldn’t treat him like such an indispensable worker if he was suddenly a lot bigger? Perhaps a bit of pride in his own image, whereby he quite liked the idea of being known through architectural circles as the best in the business, despite not even being a hyper himself? It was likely a combination of all these, plus a heaping load of whatever irrational nonsense his own anxiety cooked up on a regular basis, all conspiring together to keep him from ever taking the plunge and turning himself into the kind of person he truly wanted to become. How delightful, then, that the one thing that finally broke through to him was being unable to do his job at all; it took him undergoing a prolonged brain fart before he finally came to his senses, and even then he was lucky that his friend Blake had even been in the meeting room that day to tell him they had just the solution to his problem. A perfect combination of factors that all came together to tell him that yes, it was fine to want to splurge out, it was fine to want to be big, and he’d been nothing short of a complete idiot for denying himself for so long that he couldn’t even remember when he first formulated the desire to become a hyper himself.

If there was any consolation, it was knowing that the pills were temporary, at least in theory. Permanent growth was always a possibility, and indeed clearly marked as a possible side effect, but as far as Jonathan knew those cases were literally “one in a million”-type scenarios… and yet, as he stared down the now-open bottle, his mind racing with the many possibilities that downing all those pills would open up, he couldn’t avoid thinking about what it would be like if he was one of those lucky few. If he swallowed those things, bloated outwards into an immense version of himself, a dream version of himself, and just stayed like that for the rest of his life; honestly, it was alluring enough that a certain part of his body had already begun to grow ahead of schedule, and he was sure his blush was strong enough that he could fry an egg on it. The only thing stopping him was that moment of final hesitation that always preceded the taking of an important step, even when one knew just how vital it was to take; that last attempt of a feeble old self to resist change, to try and enforce a status quo that had clearly shown itself to be deficient. Jonathan was happy to discard it, happy at last to finally work towards giving himself the kind of body that, deep down, he’d always wanted; no more concerns about reputation, no more worrying about never enjoying his own designs, and plenty more opportunities to interact with the people that he had to deal with on a daily basis on the same level, as opposed to being constantly low-key embarrassed about the fact that he was so tiny when compared to most of his coworkers. Now all he had to worry about was clothing that fit him, and frankly, that wasn’t even something that registered as a complication with the kind of money he had to spend.

He smiled. It felt nice to finally be free of his old self, even nicer when he tipped the bottle over his mouth and let the pills inside of it fall down; the sound they made as they clacked against the plastic lining and fell onto his tongue, the slight dryness of it when they began to absorb the water on his tongue, the odd tingling that the bun could already feel even before he properly swallowed, all of it let him know that he’d done the right thing, made the right choice. Soon enough, his body was going to start growing in every direction, and quite uncontrollably at that, with his chair being the first victim that he had in mind for this size burst; it wouldn’t do to undergo a spurt like that without ruining at least some of the upholstery, and seeing as he had wanted to get rid of that thing for a while, why not kill two birds with one stone?

Those were his last thoughts before the warmth began to spread. The growth spurt had begun.

He was going to enjoy this.