“How is this even…?” the bear muttered to himself, looking at his monitor again. He had no idea what the readout on the screen meant, but he knew that it was something wrong. He had never seen such waves before, or rather he had, but they had been on a star and not coming from a living being. Something like this was not possible as far as he knew, but something about this seemed to work, too, despite everything the bear knew. It was as if he had stumbled upon a new way of looking at physics, yet he had no idea how it could even work. The entire thing looked just too wrong to his ordinary scientific mind, his typical data sets, and even those abnormal sets that were only hypothetical for it to make sense. The possibilities of what he saw were just too immense for him to even think about, yet he was starting to think about them. He would need to run models, he would need to run simulations, and he would even need to experiment on this himself. But, if what he saw was true, and it looked as though it was, then he knew there was something to all of this.
And he knew that he had found a new way to gain weight.
Psion had come to this planet to study plants, yet the plants were the least exciting part of this whole planet. Something being put out by the sun was making the plants abundantly fertile, almost to the point where they were growing too fast. He thought that perhaps he could use this phenomenon in his hydroponics or for other studies on terraforming planets more rapidly. However, when he arrived, he found something entirely different. The sun was putting out a different wavelength of light than he had expected. The atmosphere above the planet transformed this wave of light into what essentially amounted to calories. They were not actual calories per se, but they were rich enough to grow life faster than one would expect it to grow given the conditions on the planet. This light-rich atmosphere also affected the native life of the planet, much to Psion’s surprise. All life that was there, plant, animal or otherwise, had grown to take in this new wavelength of light as well as to take in the added benefits of the richness of the atmosphere and had all grown either immensely huge, or to Psion’s delight, immensely fat. The bear could already see the effects of the light on the few plants he had brought to experiment too, meaning that this wasn’t just a native life adaptation; there was something else going on here.
The bear continued to pour over the data outside his ship, looking over it again and again as he just stared down at the screens around him. His own readouts on his suit were showing the same things as his screens, and even the plants before him were showing this to be the case. Something just felt too right about how well it was working, as well as the fact that it was working as fast as it was. He had only landed his ship, The Insatiable Curiosity, on the planet a few hours beforehand. After making sure it was safe to venture out in his full protective suit, the bear had gone out… Of course, this was after fighting to put the suit on; a month or so in deep space had added a few more inches to his heavily pear-shaped body than he thought. Squeezed into his suit now and using the awkward but atmosphere-safe gloves which allowed him to use his equipment, Psion had carted out his gear, set up a small research station, and was taking readings within the hour. After a couple of hours of pouring over the data and just looking at various samples of the many life forms he found around him; a hugely fattened six-legged mouse of sorts that was easily three times the weight it should have been, a plant that grew so fast it had almost doubled in size even after Psion had plucked it for study, a bi-pedal avian-looking animal that was so fat flight looked to be a distant memory, and another plant which oozed purple liquid whenever it was handled. It was all astonishing to the scientist, and as his sensors and personal sensor ball, which fed all the data it gathered to his goggles, gathered more information, he just continued to gape at what he saw. There was no conservation of mass, no input of excess caloric matter, no hyper-luminal spectrum feeding in massive amounts of atoms… It was just atmosphere, light, and, somehow, growth.
Psion was utterly stumped, and as he watched his own plants begin to grow rapidly, he had no idea what he was going to do with this finding. He recorded everything; every good scientist did that to ensure their discoveries were known to the masses. It was also as if he were recording a movie because this didn’t make sense. Hell, he had needed to program his ship to automatically clean itself of the spreading plants after noticing them growing up into the engines in just thirty minutes! This was all such a wealth of information for him; and he was the first to discover it too. No one had been to this planet; Psion loved going to uncharted places because it left the most exciting discoveries for him. Pouring through the records on his monitors, his pocket computer and other tools were too unwieldy for his suit gloves after all, he found nothing like this ever recorded. Nothing even close to this was discovered, in fact, so he had no idea what he was going to say when it came to documenting all of this and making his findings known. So recordings and observations were all he did for now.
Psion had kept his plants all segmented into four groups. One to just get the light of the sun, one to only receive atmosphere, one to receive both, and one to receive neither as a control. The only one that was genuinely blooming and spreading as though it were being given a constant influx of food was the one exposed to both parts of the planet’s seemingly magic cocktail; atmosphere and light. It was strange, as the atmosphere on the planet was not only breathable thanks to the abundance of oxygen inside of it, but it was better than even the air inside of his own ship. Cleaner, more robust mixture, with even fewer pollutants; it was almost perfect. Life had flourished here, and it continued to do so as Psion just stood in awe at what he was seeing. Hell, he knew that he didn’t need his suit on, but he wasn’t quite ready to experiment with the exposure of himself to the hyper-fattening planet just yet. Something in his mind knew that he wanted to; Psion was hardly a thin scientist, and he did love adding more inches to his already-ample frame, but the bear knew this would likely be a one-way trip if he did. He had seen no signs of slowing, and no way that the weight could be lost once it was added without a heaping amount of exercise… Hell, he didn’t even truly understand where the weight was coming from on his living subjects. It was all such a mystery, and one that he was determined to solve.
The studying went on for hours, well into the night. The growth on his own plants stopped once night happened, and the living animals seemed to almost deflate with their own weight as well once the sun had set. They didn’t lose all of it, but the bird-like alien regained a semblance of mobility, and the mouse-like alien seemed to be teetering on the cusp of movement. It was a sight to see, as the pair of specimens lost more and more weight as the light’s absence continued to lengthen. Indeed, the sounds of animals around the area where Psion had landed began to grow as the night continued, but he was too lost in his work to pay much attention to that. He had computers and floating sensor balls to take those readings for him, as he was engrossed in the data he had already collected and turning it into something that would make sense within science as he understood it. The hunt for answers was Psion’s favorite part of exploration, and he was going to find those answers now no matter what; he really wanted to know what was going on.
Working well into the night, he continued to plug away at various ways of modifying and controlling the expansion of the plants. It was only when his bots reminded him that he had been working for almost 20 hours straight that he decided to take a break… But even then, he only slept for a few hours before heading right back out to work. The nights and days on this planet were far longer than the universal standard of 31.5 hours he was used to, but that didn’t matter to Psion. There were things to discover and work to be done, and he was going to set about doing it. Sleep and eating got in the way of his work, so he didn’t want to waste time on those. As he ate, a slapdash meal of something quick from his auto-fabricator in the galley of his spacious vessel, the scientist pondered going outside without his suit to speed up his work further. Just atmosphere had done nothing to expand his plants, and without his suit, he could use the tools that he was familiar with rather than the ones he was forced to use when in protective layers. Sure, he would need it during the day, but it was an entirely different story at night. Quickly shoving down his meal, he read on his pocket computer how long the night would be and made sure to allow himself some time to get inside without getting hit by light before he set an alarm. This would be his outside timer… And the bear was going to make the most of it.
The bear quickly returned to work by rushing out of his ship in his usual attire of a lab coat, goggles, skin-tight suit, and belt. Now that he had his complete suite of data-gathering tools, work went much quicker thanks to that and the added dexterity of his freed paws. He also could tell that his mind was more focused from the abundance of oxygen being fed to it from the planet, allowing him to think even more rapidly and suss out new ways to test and control the plants and animals, as well as their expansion. He quickly waddled from station to station, his heavy footfalls and oversized thighs bumping and jostling equipment as he worked feverishly to get through the experiments he wanted to run before the morning light took away his freedom of movement, as well as his ability to work with such heightened senses; something about suit air always made him a bit slow. He could feel progress flying by, and he had already made a few astonishing breakthroughs within just a couple of hours of stepping out of his ship. He had gotten the weight gain under control on the animals, as well as understood how they were losing the weight as the sun continued to be absent from them. The cells of the alien lifeforms were just expanding and contracting, like lungs of sorts. The weight wasn’t going anywhere, but rather shrinking back into a base layer of thin fat which had grown like yeast. The light activated these cells somehow, making them expand to critical mass. Some doubled, sure, but that was rare, and instead, it mainly was existing cells that expanded and contracted as the light warmed them and then cooled in its absence. It was a peculiarity, to say the least, but it was one that finally made at least some sense, and Psion was utterly thrilled to have given at least one phenomenon an answer.
The bear was working on solving the plants and getting close to it when the alarm he had set went off. It was a shrill alert, and one that yanked him from his work with a deep groan. His short, flicking tail, wagging gleefully above the bountiful cheeks which swished and fought for room in his tight suit, instantly settled upon hearing the noise. It was suiting up time again… And he didn’t quite want to stop working. He was oh so close! He could almost taste the breakthrough that he was going to have; the plants behaved similarly to the animals, but instead were using the heat of the sun as well as its rays and the simple fact that the oxygen was so rich to have a nearly limitless food source. It combined with a natural defense mechanism to grow when attacked by any outside source, including other plants, to produce such results. He needed to experiment more to find out what this mechanism was and how he could harness it to make his own plants grow on command… But he had to get in his suit or risk winding up like one of the aliens sedated on his lab benches.
Grumbling but moving to get back into his suit, Psion returned to his ship and squeezed back into his protective suit. He hated it even more now, as he could smell the difference in the air immediately, and he could feel how much it was pressing against his every curve, particularly down on his thighs and rear. He really needed to have the thing upsized again… But that could wait until he was done here and returned to Star Crescent University, where he would share what he had found. It was just a few hours he needed in the suit to finish his work after all, so it wouldn’t be that bad… Or so he hoped as he donned the helmet after a solid twenty minutes of struggle and went back out into the morning twilight of the planet. Some added light from the unique star would at least help to make his work more manageable, so Psion just got back to his experiments and his notes using his monitors again, tugging absently at the suit as it just pressed into him like an ill-fitting glove.
Psion didn’t notice the problem until it was a problem. He was all but ignoring the readings from his sensor ball on his goggles until he felt something give around his rear. Instantly he felt a release of pressure and sighed some relief; the suit seemed to have gotten… Looser… Psion’s vision went right to his sensor ball’s readings; the floating orb was tasked for the moment with monitoring Psion’s vitals and the area around him. The bear had put on about forty pounds of weight in under ten minutes, and his weight was steadily starting to climb. Just how made no sense to Psion for the briefest of moments until he put two and two together and let out a low, heavy sigh; the atmosphere. He had been exposed to the planet’s rich, dense air for hours, which was still in his blood. So when the sun started to rise and hit his visor, which was set to let all light in, well… There was about to be a whole lot more Psion. Mixing that in with the breach of his suit and undersuit, his bare bear rump out for the world’s native life to see as well as the sun, and the scientist knew he only had a few moments before he started to blimp up.
As Psion felt his pear-shaped form go from exaggerated to excessive, those moments came and went. His thighs and rear ballooned, filling our and then promptly shredding his space suit as though it were little more than tissue paper. His undersuit lasted just a moment or two longer before being turned into fabric debris that fluttered in the light morning breeze while stuck in the new rolls of fat that were forming on his fattening sides. The sun hadn’t even fully risen yet, and still each step Psion took towards the airlock of his ship a few hundred yards away felt more challenging than the last. Parts of his jiggled that had never been there before, his waddle turned into an awkward shuffle, and it was less than a minute before the bear was left huffing, puffing, and using his rear to rest on because it had started to touch the soft ground beneath him. Psion was beached over 100 yards from his ship with just the radio in his suit and his voice commands for his drones. He couldn’t call for help on his standard equipment; it was all stowed thanks to being useless while suited up. This was a predicament, to say the least, but as the pounds really started to fly on, thanks to the sun breaching the horizon… The bear didn’t mind much.
In fact, Psion was starting to enjoy this as he felt his mobility start to truly vanish. With what little dexterity he still had in his arms before they became too heavy to lift, he removed his helmet and placed it on what was now a hefty set of moobs. He had always been pear-shaped, which was still proving true as his hips flared out to make him wider than he was tall, but now he even had a belly and a growing chest. It was new for him and yet wholly welcomed. The added weight felt comforting and, above all, comfortable. He sank a bit into his new poundage as it continued just to explode outwards, hundreds of pounds flying onto the bear as his body just flourished in the rich, odd planet’s air. In mere minutes, his weight had gone from a stock 500 or so pounds to pushing against a solid ton of fat, blobby ursine flesh. There was no sign of this stopping either, his weight continuing to spiral upwards into dizzying numbers as the bear took in the readings from his goggles. He was already struggling to see anything past his goggles, the rear which he had rested on a few minutes before already starting to climb over his head and smother him from behind. His cheeks filled his vision from below, even his snout growing fatter as the light and air combined to push Psion to weights one could only imagine without unlimited funds and a team of doctors. Luckily for the bear, his in-built health kit was keeping him just fine, so really all of this weight was doing nothing but keeping him from moving even in the slightest.
Psion’s drone continued to circle the expanding blob of bear flesh, taking in measurements and readings as it did. Two tons, three tons, five tons… Psion watched as his estimated weight continued to climb higher and higher. He eventually switched to the drone’s feed entirely, unable to see anything but his furred flab, thanks to how immense he had grown. He looked almost like a shapeless mountain, spreading for yards in each direction and looking more and more like a rock that was endlessly soft and exceedingly warm rather than a bear. His rump was his key feature, a pair of peaks that quaked and wobbled on their own thanks to the jolts of weight that seemed to now rock him as more and more sunlight reached his expanding pelt. It was a surreal experience, and one the bear was thrilled to get… Even if he knew that he wasn’t going to be going anywhere soon. On that note, he knew that he should probably call for help at this point; before he became too fat even to do that.
“Call Star Crescent,” He slurred out, his words sounding as fat and as heavy as he felt. “Tell them to send help… And a cargo ship.” The bear knew that he would likely need at least that to make it home… But wondered if he would even fit in one once he was done growing. Of course, that was if he was ever done growing at all; he was about to hit thirteen tons of pure fat with just 30 minutes of exposure. The sunlight lasted for a solid twenty hours, and if he gained through that whole time, a freighter might only just fit him! But that would be something he could explore later. He wasn’t going to be going anywhere anytime soon, after all, so he could experiment all he wanted now… From the comfort of his own mass.