Inflation Olympics Chapter 1

Sarah collapsed back into her office chair as she returned from lunch. She hadn't had as long to eat as she usually liked, but her editor, Ted, had made it clear earlier that he had a new story that he wanted her to get started with. Anxious to find out what it was, she picked up her phone and dialed her voice mail.

"Hey, Sarah, it's Ted. I'm not really sure what to make of this, but this morning I got a call from downtown. Supposedly some local group is holding a sort of privately-run Olympics this month, starting today. This is the first I've heard about it, and they wouldn't really give me any details about the program over the phone. I would have written it off as some sort of publicity stunt... some bozo trying to get media coverage... except they said that they were giving coverage of the events to us, exclusively. I apologize in advance if this turns out to be a waste of time, but I'd like you to at least go check it out. The address they gave me was '134 E. Redwood Drive, at the intersection of Redwood and Lake, downtown. So when you get back from lunch, could you please head down there and see what is going on? Thanks. Bye."

Click.

Sighing, Sarah hung up the phone and began to gather her things. She slid her micro-cassette recorder into the pocket of her slacks, and grabbed her clipboard. She snatched a mechanical pencil out of her "you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps," mug, and shook it to make sure there was still lead in it. Satisfied by the rattle of the lead inside, she tucked it into her pocket as well. She grabbed her car keys and headed for the door, pausing only to briefly run her fingers through her auburn hair at the mirror on the back of her office door. She also gave an exaggerated grin to the mirror, checking to make sure that no remnants of her lunch were still in her teeth. Finding everything in satisfactory order, she headed down to the parking garage.

She found the address without incident, but she was a little bewildered. The lot matching the address was occupied by a large concrete and aluminum structure that seemed to be more akin to a warehouse than any sort of sports arena. There were several cars in the parking lot, and they covered quite the range of vehicles. There were a few sedans in various states of repair, one jeep at the edge of the lot, a few fairly large sports-utility-vehicles, and surprisingly, two limousines. Sarah got out of her car, and walked to the front of the building hesitantly. There was a door there, but it was locked, and no one responded to her knocking. Not quite ready to give up yet, she decided to check around back. If there was no way to get in back there, she'd just call Ted back and report that it looked like this was a prank call.

She rounded the back of the building after a long walk, and began to look for an alternative exit. As she walked along the side of the building, she passed a concrete partition and saw another door, but it was very oddly constructed. The door was painted green like the front door had been, but this door was almost square, about seven feet on a side, rather than the standard narrow rectangle like the front entrance. Even more oddly, the handle of the door was set directly in the center of the door, rather than offset to be opposite of the hinges like normal. A white plastic sign reading "locker room," hung at eye-level on the door.

Well, a locker room sounded promising. The front door being locked was rather odd, but perhaps they weren't officially open yet. Sarah decided that she'd give it a try. She grabbed the handle of the square door, and found that it pushed easily open into a concrete hallway that continued a few dozen feet forward and then made a ninety-degree turn off to the right. Rather cold air conditioning flooded out into her face. She stepped inside and shut the door behind her, as it didn't seem to want to close by itself. She heard a number of distant female voices coming through the bend in the hallway, several women in conversation with each other. Hopefully someone that could relay her to whoever was in charge of this event, Sarah thought.

She began walking towards the bend in the hallway, but she hadn't gone more than ten feet before her right foot caught the lip of a crack in the concrete, causing her to stumble and fall to the ground. Her clipboard clattered to the ground a few feet in front of her. She mentally reprimanded herself with an internal cry of "Klutz!" Wincing at the pain in her knees from the fall, she crawled forward and retrieved the clipboard. She looked back toward the crack that had spilled her, and noticed that her pencil had come out of her pocket. She climbed to her feet and walked back over to the crack in the concrete that had gotten the best of her, and retrieved her pencil. She stood there for a moment, facing the door she had just come through, while she brushed herself off and regained her dignity.

"Excuse me?" said a contralto female voice behind Sarah.

"Oh, sorry," began Sarah, as she stepped to the side and started to turn, "I tripped, I was j...OH MY GOD!" she suddenly shrieked, saucer-eyed, as she got a look at her companion. The woman was, without exception, the widest human being that Sarah had ever seen. She was Sarah's height, and her face was thin, but below her neck, the woman began to... bulge. Her huge breasts rose from a swollen torso that was very nearly as wide as the woman was tall. Her thighs, shoulders, and upper arms were vastly distended, sausage-like. Her thighs descended into hugely swollen calves and then into incongruously normal ankles. Her thick upper arms narrowed into slightly-plumped forearms and graceful, normal hands with very well-trimmed fingernails bearing splashes of pink polish. All of her immense curves had somehow been stuffed into a giant grey unitard. The woman had brown eyes and eyebrows, but her ponytailed-hair had been dyed bright red. She jumped in response to Sarah's shriek.

Sarah could do nothing but gape. Recovering from her own shock, the woman smiled and shook her head ruefully. "Sorry about surprising you, hun," the swollen redhead apologized. "I heard you trip, and I wanted to make sure you were okay. You're the reporter, right?"

"Bu-uh-h-h? Huh?" Sarah stammered.

"You're the reporter, right?" the woman tried again, speaking more slowly this time. "Sarah Alders, from Valley Sports?"

"Uh... Y, yes I am," Sarah finally managed. She was beginning to get a grip on herself again. "I-I'm sorry I stared, I just wasn't expecting..." she began. The woman's rich laughter cut her off suddenly.

"Quite all right! Like I said, I was coming to make sure you hadn't hurt yourself... I hadn't been thinking about how you were going to react to my appearance," the woman grinned. She stepped to turned her immense body sideways and offered her hand to Sarah. "I'm Laurie, nice to meet you." Laurie's body, now in profile, almost made Sarah go into hysterics again.. the woman was almost as deep as she was wide! Quavering, Sarah took her hand timidly and carefully shook it. Laurie grinned at her again, and chuckled "you don't have to look so nervous!" She pressed in with her fingers on various places on her bloated body, dimpling the unitard as she pushed inwards. "This is all just helium," Laurie explained.

"Uh... what?" Sarah asked blankly. Laurie laughed again.

"Geez... I'm not going about this very well. I had it all rehearsed how I was going to explain things... and then you tripped, and I managed to forget all about it," Laurie sighed. "Tell you what... why don't you come have a seat over here, on one of this benches, and I'll try and start over and get this explanation done right," suggested Laurie.

"Okay," Sarah conceded, glad to be on familiar ground again. As Laurie took a hand to Sarah's back to guide her over to where the locker room benches were, she spied the mechanical pencil still clutched in Sarah's hand from when she had picked it up off the floor.

"Oh, um... why don't you give that pencil to me, for right now?" Laurie requested. "We've never had any accidents here at the arena, and we certainly don't want any today... and definitely not any involving me!" Laurie laughed. She held out a hand to receive the implement, slightly anxiously.

"What?" Sarah asked yet again. She was beginning to think she was losing her mind. "Oh." Giving in, she surrendered the pencil to Laurie.

"This way, please," she called as she walked over towards a pair of benches beside a row of lockers. As she walked, Sarah went wide-eyed yet again; Laurie was just as huge from behind as from the front. Each buttock had to be at least a foot-and-half across. In motion, Laurie's gigantic backside beneath the unitard was like watching two cats fight in slow motion inside a sack. She had a rolling sort of stride, almost a waddle; Laurie didn't walk like she was heavy, just like she was too round for walking to be an easy task. As she passed a small green trash bin, she flicked the pencil into the trash receptacle.

"Hey, my pencil!" Sarah called. She didn't know what was going on, but she at least knew that she needed something to write with.

"I'll get you a wax-tip pencil instead," Laurie volunteered. She paused for a moment, and cryptically added, "They're safer." She showed Sarah to a bench, left briefly, and then returned with a new pencil that held colored wax rather than graphite for her. Laurie handed the pencil to the seated Sarah and then sat on the bench herself. She filled almost all of it, even though it would normally have been able to seat four people comfortably. Sarah squeezed as close to the armrest as she could, to avoid being squished against Laurie's body. "Okay!" Laurie said. "The explanation!" Laurie closed her mouth, and Sarah could see Laurie's jaw and tongue working at something that appeared to be at the base of her teeth, like she was trying to get at a particle of food that was wedged there. Abruptly, a torrent of wind flooded from Laurie's mouth, and she was replaced by a very trim version of her former cartoon-like physique, more compact than Sarah herself. Her unitard still fit her as snugly as it had before. Sarah let out yet another shriek of terror. "Ah.... much better," Laurie sighed.

"Please tell me what is going on," Sarah pleaded.

"Sorry about that," the-now-normal-sized-Laurie apologized. "This is how I meant to meet you," she explained as she gestured at her now-trim figure. She looked fit, and there was nothing at all alarming about her current body. "I was working out when I heard you come in and I started to deflate, but then I heard you fall and ran to see if you were okay without thinking. I'm sorry to have startled you," Laurie added. She tucked a strand of red hair behind an ear.

"But... what..." Sarah stammered.

"I know, I know, I'm getting to that, just let me talk," Laurie promised. She pursed her lips in thought. "Okay, here we go. You know the athletic event that you were sent to cover?" Laurie asked.

"Yes," Sarah agreed.

"That was it, right there," Laurie said. "This event is a contest of inflation," Laurie said with a grin. "We all come here every few months to compete, and see who's the best at various things. We see who can get the biggest, who can hold the gas in the longest, who can inflate the most quickly, things like that," Laurie explained. Sarah just stared at her.

Finally, Sarah asked, "Why?"

Laurie shrugged her now-slender shoulders and said, "Why do anything? Why do people play any of the games that they do? It's fun, it's exciting, it's challenging, and it's certainly competitive." She leaned back against the backrest of the bench and smiled. "Frankly, it's pretty hard to come up with a new idea these days, and for all of us here, this was something new and exciting."

"I.... see," Sarah said a last. She could mentally still see Laurie's incredibly distended former figure filling the entire bench to capacity. It was hard to imagine that this was the same woman! Now that her initial surprise had largely passed, she could at least try and cling to a shred of professionalism. "Okay," Sarah began, withdrawing the tape recorder from her pocket and readying her clipboard, "So, um, Laurie... tell me, what do you enjoy most about this... uh, sport?" Sarah depressed the record button on the recorder, and heard the tape spindles begin to spin. Laurie bit her lip and thought about it.

"Well, for me, I really like the competitiveness of it. Also, I think it feels REALLY cool to inflate... well, like you just saw. You feel so stuffed, but there's also a sense of snugness and contentment. I can't speak for everyone, but that's what I like about it," Laurie said.

"I see," Sarah said, who didn't see at all. She began writing on her clipboard, laying out an outline to organize things, in addition to the recording. "Well... one thing that I'm still in the dark about, is how is this even possible? How can the human body even possibly stretch like that?" Sarah asked. Laurie's ballooned-body was still present in her mind's eye. Laurie nodded.

"It can't, not normally anyways," Laurie said, considering. "I don't personally understand it all that well. Some of my friends can explain it better... you can meet them later," she added. "Anyways, I'll try and explain it as best I can for now," Laurie offered. "Basically, skin is composed of two components, collagen and elastin. Collagen is a rigid protein that gives skin its structure, and elastin is a flexible protein that gives skin its flexibility. The thing that prevents skin from stretching too far is that eventually the collagen framework tears. "

"So... what, somehow you've gotten rid of this collagen frame?" Sarah asked, now genuinely curious.

"No, it's not that simple," Laurie said, with a negative shake of her head. "With no collagen, skin is wrinkly. There's nothing that gives it a defined shape to return to," she said. "When we're competing or training, we take special pills. What they do, over the course of a couple of months, is cause new skin cells to make something other than collagen and elastin," Laurie explained. "It's called 'helical elastin.' It's a protein that has some properties of collagen and elastin both. Normally it is fairly rigid, but when enough external pressure is applied to it, it will stretch, and it will snap back when the pressure is released. Under enough pressure, it is a couple dozen times more flexible than elastin, and when not under pressure it is rigid like collagen," Laurie continued. "So basically, my skin is different from yours right now," Laurie added.

"Weird," Sarah observed.

"At first, yeah... it feels a little different too, but I've gotten used to it," Laurie said.

"Okay... so how do you actually inflate?" Sarah asked.

"Oh... there's nothing too terribly complicated about that," Laurie said. She leaned towards Sarah and opened her mouth wide. When Sarah looked in, she lifted her tongue back towards the roof of her mouth. Under her tongue, Sarah spied a tiny black opening. "I just take a hose of compressed gas into my mouth, press my tongue tightly against the back of my mouth so the gas doesn't go down my throat, and the gas goes down into that opening instead. I had this surgically put in when I first got into the sport. Most people have a similar sort of system," Laurie explained.

"So... uh, where does that go?" Sarah asked.

"All over," Laurie said with a smile. "The main tube breaks up into a couple of smaller ones, and it takes the gas to various areas in my body. As long as I'm taking the pills, I just safely stretch along with the gas flowing into me!"

"What gas do you use?" Sarah wondered.

"Helium, like I said before," Laurie said. "Helium is safe because it doesn't react with the body at all, air or whatever would. We can't take in enough of it to float, though," Laurie chuckled. "Well... I can't, anyway," she added cryptically.

"So how do you deflate when you want to let the helium out?" Sarah asked, continuing to make notes on her clipboard while the recorder ran.

"A certain tongue motion opens and closes the valve in the tube," Laurie answered. "When the valve opens, the pressure of my skin trying to snap back just blows all the gas out at once. It's really a rush," Laurie said.

"I noticed," Sarah said dryly, but with a bit of a smile she couldn't quite suppress. This was definitely bizarre, but it was bizarre enough to be interesting! "Okay, so the big question... why did you invite me here today? How come you want this report done?" Sarah asked.

"Well," Laurie began, considering. "We want to share this with people. When you enjoy something as much as we enjoy this, you want to give other people a taste of the fun as well," Laurie said. She seemed to be thinking for a moment, and then smiled to herself. "We only asked your magazine to cover it exclusively for two reasons: you cover a lot of extreme sports already, and if we only invited one magazine to cover the events this month, there wouldn't be much chance of things getting out of hand and turning into a media circus," Laurie finished. "We want to be taken seriously, not made fun of." She turned and looked at Sarah, "Will you do this story for us?"

Sarah thought about it for a second before answering. At the very least, this would be a new experience...

Sarah grinned and said, "Sure, Laurie! You're right about one thing... my magazine does cover a lot of extreme sports... but I think that you and your friends are about to turn the extreme sport world upside down!"

Laurie said, "Great! Come on, I'll take you to meet some of my friends... they're going to be thrilled, too. After that, I'll show you what it's like when I get really round! You just caught me halfway there when you came in, after all!"

Sarah gulped.

Laurie grinned at her reaction. "Welcome to the Inflation Olympics, Sarah!"