Irene Basloe Saraf

The Pill to Save the World

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2026: VOL. 41.

Among Sarah’s looping worries that kept her awake at 3am was that her toddler would find the pills and think they were candy. Sarah had secreted the 253 pink pills in three places: in a cracked mug that read #1 Mom on the top shelf of a kitchen cabinet, in a little box underneath the lacy stuff in the back of her underwear drawer, and in an ancient oilcan behind the charging station in the garage. Otherwise, she feared she would find little Hank unconscious in a pile of underwear on her bedroom floor, dresser drawer open and empty.

They were weight loss pills, guaranteed to melt away all of her fat and all of her problems. Sarah weighed 228 pounds with her shoes off. She avoided looking in the mirror, but when she did, it was painful to see herself as others saw her and she could not avoid the truth: she was fat. Belly-spilling-over-jeans fat; double-chin-merging-with-neck fat. Wavy brown hair, warm brown eyes, sweet smile, clear skin: all this she could acknowledge as well. But she was still fat, fat in a world that had been ordered to become thin.

Even so, she was not taking the magic pills. She was hiding them.

Along with the pills, breath mints and gum were ubiquitous these days. The pills gave everyone bad breath, another golden opportunity for the multinational pharmaceutical conglomerate that produced them: combo-packs, mints and meds. But for some people, one-for-one wasn’t enough.

“I ran out of fucking breath mints yesterday,” Sarah’s husband said one September morning. Michael was pulling his things together, about to leave for work.

“Careful.” Sarah gestured toward the next room, where sounds of toddler play could be heard. “Hank.” The kid was an adorable sponge and had good hearing. One morning a week ago, before they were out of bed, the sound of a toy dropping to the floor in Hank’s room. Pause. Was he gearing up for a cry? Nope. Out of that cherubic mouth, shit.

“Ok, ok. Sorry. But my mouth tastes horrible.” Michael was now digging through the kitchen drawers. “Don’t we have any extra mints anywhere?”

“Here you go. Some kind of promotion.” She pulled the packets out of a cabinet. She had separated them from her own combo pack before she had hidden the pills. Michael’s mint supply was not keeping pace with his fat-inferno-induced halitosis.

“Thanks. Lots of meetings today. With Todd.” His boss. “And Suzy.” His work wife. Michael popped a mint, lips pursed, sucking, then leaned in for a minty kiss, just a peck really. When he called goodbye to Hank, the boy came running and hugged Michael around the legs. Michael bent down and planted a kiss on the top of his blonde head. Sarah scooped Hank up and they watched Michael back out of the garage in his silver car and glide away, solar panels gleaming on the car’s roof in the sunlight.

But even when he was home, Michael felt far away these days. Sure, the distance was explicable; he was busy at work, she was adapting to being at home with a child rather than being in an office, they were both still adjusting to parenthood. But it also seemed, as he shrank, day by day, lost the belly he had sported on their wedding day, he got farther and farther away from her. On the surface, it was all the same, kisses hello and goodbye, xoxo and I love you to close their InterComm chats, sex that still had its share of steaminess. But thin Michael was disappearing before her eyes, from her life. He came home late more often, did not seem to have as much to say over dinner. They used to sleep like spoons, nestled together, so she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his belly fitting into the small of her back. Now, he shifted away from her to sleep, his back toward her, her back toward him.

She reassured herself that she still loved him and he still loved her, that he was faithful and honest. She also wondered whether he was having an affair. After all, people were shape shifting all over the place and everyone was doing double takes at each other. Those women about whom people had whispered such a shame, tsk, tsk, she has such a pretty face now had the bodies to match conventional expectations. Like everyone, Michael worked with some of those women, including Suzy. Even if they did not intend to, they drew attention to themselves with their extreme self-awareness of newly slim legs and flat stomachs. Or maybe Michael was just having an affair with himself, with a body that made him feel he was 18 again.

Sarah got Hank dressed, unable to resist kissing the soft hair on his forehead and giving a raspberry to his smooth, round tummy, which made him giggle. She slathered him and herself with sunscreen, grabbed sunhats for them both, harnessed him into his stroller, and they headed out to the neighborhood park.

“Hey, Sarah!” It was Ashley, a playground acquaintance and mother to Lola. She beckoned Sarah and Hank toward the slide, one hand waving, the other hand shielding her eyes – even with sunglasses on – from the strong September sun. Ashley had been pleasingly plump and frumpy at Christmas. Now she was lean, in tight jeans and a fitted red t-shirt, blonde hair straightened to a shiny, undulating sheet.

Lifted from his stroller, Hank toddled across the green, faux grass SimuLawn toward the slide, arms held down straight and slightly outward behind him, for better aerodynamics. “What a cute little butterball!” Ashley said. Sarah felt herself flush, first in embarrassment at Hank’s proportions and then in frustration with Ashley for her comment and then with herself for being embarrassed. Was Ashley implying Hank should lose weight? He is an adorable toddler, for god’s sake!

But Sarah said nothing, as she and Ashley trailed Hank and Lola around the play areas, tented against the sun with brightly colored canvas. Ashley nattered on about the weather (98 and sunny in mid-September, was this the new normal for Seattle?), her husband (working too much), and her child (not sleeping well). And, wait for it, wait for it. As inexorably as the sun pursuing the moon, it was surely coming.

“Don’t you also go to Dr. Morgan?” Ashley asked. Dr. Morgan was a well-regarded internist with a practice nearby and several patients from the neighborhood.

“Yes. She’s my doctor.” Sarah feigned preoccupation with Hank’s progress up the steps at the slide.

“You know, she put me on an amazing plan.” Ashley had the shining countenance of a true convert. “You’d be surprised how much you can accelerate things with just some minor tweaks in dosage. After all,” with a sweep of her arm that encompassed her newly-svelte self, “look at me. Almost ready for maintenance. Have you talked to her about it?” Sarah knew that it was short for still being fat.

Seeking to disguise evasion with brightness of tone, Sarah said, “I’m due to see Dr. Morgan in a couple of weeks. I imagine she’ll discuss it with me.” Perhaps meeting Ashley halfway, an acknowledgment that, 253 days since the first of the year, she was nearly her same self, would bring the conversation to a close.

But Ashley was undeterred. She went on and on and on, about calories and metabolic rates and the rumored improvements planned in version 2.0 of the pills, as they pushed Hank and Lola in the swings and facilitated a game that they called catch but was really the mommies chasing after a big red ball on the SimuLawn. She quizzed Sarah about her breath and what time she thought worked best for taking the pills. Although they were prescribed for morning ingestion, Ashley had discovered that people on some of the InterSect nodes felt that the pills worked faster when you took them before bed. Ashley was more eager to talk than get answers, which worked well for Sarah, as she had none.

“So I’m planning to lose about four more pounds and then Dr. Morgan will put me on a maintenance dose. I bet she could up your dose if you’re not happy with the results.” Sarah could feel Ashley’s eyes flick over the flesh she knew was hanging over her waistband, revealed as she reached for the red ball.

Hopeful, Sarah glanced at her InterWatch. Phew. “Oh, look at the time. Hank!” Sarah scanned to play structure for Hank, who was poised at the top of the slide. “One minute and it will be time to go!” At this point, even one minute felt to Sarah like 55 seconds too long.

They said their good-byes, which included a toppled-over hug for the toddlers, and Sarah and Hank headed home. As she pushed Hank in his stroller over the baking pavement of the park, Sarah thought back to her first conversation with Dr. Morgan about FaBuTabs. Rather than trying to slow digestion and reduce appetites, FaBuTabs – FAt-BUrning TABletS – ramped up metabolisms, burning more calories more quickly, resulting in weight loss.

As the nation’s political pendulum had been tilting back toward authoritarianism over the past decade, it was not much of a surprise when, a year ago, Congress passed a bill and President Maria Martinez signed it. Starting January 1, everyone in the United States with a BMI above 30 had been required to take FaBuTabs. People with a BMI between 25 and 30 could take it if they chose and the cost would be fully covered. It was a mandated, nationwide New Year’s resolution.

At Sarah’s first appointment for FaBuTabs, Dr. Morgan had pulled up Sarah’s BodyView on her InterMedPad. Dr. Morgan was thin, 45 years old, with light brown hair pulled back into a severe ponytail and tortoiseshell glasses. Sarah wondered if the lenses were phony. Eyeglasses still implied intelligence, despite quick, affordable, failsafe corrective vision surgery. Some people were unwilling to do the procedure, but even people happy to go under the knife wore glasses for the image they conveyed.

“A moderate FaBuTabs dose should do the trick for you,” Dr. Morgan said, tapping on the InterMedPad. “We don’t want people to go crazy and gorge themselves, though you probably could and still lose weight. The pill works through the acceleration of internal metabolic processes. How much you eat, what you eat, how much you exercise – these things have no impact on the pill’s efficacy.”

“Ok.”

Dr. Morgan looked up from her InterMedPad. “I thought weight loss had always been a goal of yours.”

Sarah shrugged. “Not as much anymore, actually. I’m moving into body acceptance.”

Dr. Morgan’s eyes narrowed behind the glasses. “Sarah, that may sound liberating, but it’s unhealthy to be your size and weight. Actually, it will be more liberating to take FaBuTabs.”

“You’re not worried that we don’t know much about the long-term consequences of FaBuTabs? Or the possible side effects? People losing too much weight too quickly, losing lots of muscle?”

“Those people take doses that are too high, eat too little, or don’t exercise enough. As for the long-term, Prometheum ran thousands of multi-pronged A.I. simulations and they all indicate that FaBuTabs are extremely safe.” Dr. Morgan’s tones loosened as she looked at Sarah. “You used to joke about this, remember? That you just wanted a magic pill. Isn’t this your dream come true?”

This should have been a dream come true, to eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, in whatever quantities she wanted, and still lose weight. She had stopped at the pharmacy on her way home and picked up the prescription. The morning after that visit to Dr. Morgan, Sarah held a pill in one hand, a glass of water in the other. The pill felt as if it were burning a hole through her palm. And yet, to rid her hand of it, she didn’t swallow it; she let the pill fall with a soft tap onto the counter top. With her belly pushing against the kitchen counter, she could barely reach a mug on the high shelf. No one else used the #1 Mom mug. She picked up the pill, dropped it in, put the mug back up on the shelf. It seemed a safe hiding place. And so it had been, for months now. And the old oilcan. And the back of her lingerie drawer.

Sarah was puzzled by her own behavior. From the time she was a teenager, on the heels of the first of many succeeded-then-failed diets, she had wished there were a pill that would make her thin. But what she meant was a pill that would make her less drawn to food as her emotional crutch. Because anything was a reason to eat, not only physical hunger: sorrow, joy, excitement, anger, anxiety, frustration, boredom, fear, restlessness, pain, confusion, nothingness. Back then, she wanted a pill that would absolve food of its role as the never-ending answer to every twitch in her psychological state.

Candy, cookies, ice cream, chips, sweet, salty, greasy, anything considered bad by generations of diet gurus, these were the foods that soothed her. For years, she had loathed and loved the fat. It had been a shield, a fortified border between herself and the world, between herself and herself. Over the course of years in psychotherapy, she’d unearthed and analyzed the intertwining reasons she ate when she wasn’t hungry or to a point beyond fullness: to soothe her emotions and as a reaction to the deprivation caused by diet after diet.

“What made you first believe you need to diet?” said Betsy, her therapist.

As she parsed through childhood memories, she uncovered the origin of her teenage body dysmorphia.

“When I was eight or nine years old, I visited Aunt Maisie, my great aunt. She didn’t have any grandchildren, and I had become her favorite, her surrogate grandchild.”

Sarah could remember sitting with Aunt Maisie on Adirondack chairs in her yard one sunny summer afternoon. In those days, it was still pleasant to sit in the sun in the summer and yards were made of natural grass. Sarah was barefoot, eyes closed, feeling grass stems between her toes and sun on her cheeks and forehead.

“Did Aunt Maisie say something to you?”

“Oh, yes: Sarah, look at your tummy rolls. You’re getting a little chubby. You should probably be more careful about what you eat.”

“Well,” said Betsy, “it’s not surprising that was a trigger.”

Indeed it was. As she shared with Betsy over many therapy sessions, that comment from Aunt Maisie was buried deep but became active when Sarah hit puberty and social media led her down diet rabbit holes. She had dieted and cheated and dieted and cheated, messed up her brain and her body and turned herself into that self-fulfilling prophecy by eventually becoming fat, for real.

Sarah yo-yo’ed in weight through high school and then college: with each dieting success, the rebound weight gain was ever greater. She graduated with a degree in economics, a handsome, slightly pudgy boyfriend who would become her husband, and a mixed-up, love-hate relationship with food and her body. And so the pattern continued: she moved up the career ladder in finance and put on weight; she got engaged to Michael and lost weight, but regained that weight and quite a bit more in their early married days. She went on another big diet when she and Michael started talking about having a baby, a few years into their marriage, because she thought it would be bad to start a pregnancy as fat as she was. But as little Hank grew in her belly, she gained back more than she had lost, even accounting for the baby.

Around the time Hank turned one, she was surprised to realize that if she listened carefully enough, there was a small voice inside her, a voice that did not bother to speak very loudly after years of being ignored. That voice told her whether or not she was truly hungry, what she wanted to eat, when she’d eaten enough. She was not sure why she could now hear the voice, if it was the fruition of years of therapy or more mental bandwidth because she had left her job when Hank was born or something else. For the past year, she had been trying to listen to that voice, rather than the diet voice that said, you should be on a diet and therefore you should only eat salad all the time or the binge voice that said, you blew the diet by eating that cookie, so why not finish the whole package and eat some potato chips while you’re at it.

Alongside the new voice about food came a voice that was gentler about her body. She was never going to adore her fat body. But she could try to accept it, all her roundness, her soft rolls of flesh. Attempting to change her body had backfired again and again. She did not want to sacrifice the progress she had made with food and her body on an altar of thinness that might be only temporary. So she hid her FaBuTabs and tried to suppress any thoughts of the possible consequences.

As Sarah and Hank neared their house, Sarah saw Mia, a child from Hank’s weekly toddler playgroup, approaching from the far corner. A woman whom she did not recognize was pushing Mia’s stroller. Sarah had never seen Mia without Lexie, her mother. Although they were not close friends, Sarah felt a silent alignment with Lexie. In this era of FabuTabs, Lexie did not seem to be losing much weight either.

Sarah paused at their yard’s gate and waited for Mia and the woman to get closer.

“Hi, Mia,” Sarah said, waving at the little girl in the stroller. Mia smiled and waved back. Looking at the woman, she said, “I’m Sarah and this is Hank.”

The woman said, “I’m Laura, Mia’s nanny.”

Sarah smiled. “Nice to meet you.” In a lower voice, she said, “I didn’t know Mia had a nanny. Is Lexie ok?”

“Yes, she’s ok,” Laura said. Then she nodded down toward Mia and then looked back at Sarah, shaking her head and mouthing, can’t say more.

“Oh. I understand,” Sarah said, with her own quick nod toward Mia.

The nanny pushed Mia’s stroller past Sarah and Hank. Sarah turned opened the gate to their yard and headed toward the door to their house, wondering about Lexie and whether her weight had anything to do with her absence. In their airy kitchen, Sarah sat Hank in his highchair and spread his lunch out in front of him: rounded triangles of a cheese quesadilla, some peas, a sippy cup of milk, a sippy cup of water. She gently poked his chin as he reached for a sippy cup. “Enjoy, cutie pie.”

After a long slurp of milk, Hank had a few bites from each triangle, a few peas. “Ba-wees?” he said and Sarah put a small bowl of blueberries on his tray. They were genetically modified to grow in near-desert conditions, like almost all produce these days.

While Hank played with his blueberries, putting some in a row on the tray of his highchair, taking some out of the bowl and putting them back in, eating a few, Sarah made and ate a salad. She dressed the salad generously, no measuring to enable calorie-counting, and followed it with a three-cookie chaser. By eating the cookies, she ignored the diet voice; by not eating the whole package, she ignored the binge voice. It seemed to be the way Hank ate, naturally. Eat what you want, when you are hungry, and stop when you are full. It was not as easy as it sounded for a life-long dieter and binge eater. And she was still fat.

Sarah used to have lots of company in her fatness. The threat to the global food supply due to climate change had reached a crisis. Technology advanced and averted the crisis, in part, with calorie-dense bioengineered foods. In addition to increasing calories, scientists enhanced taste; the goal was to satisfy appetites with less, but the food was so delicious people consumed as they always had. Eventually, 93 percent of the country was labeled as overweight or obese.

With health care costs rising year after year, insurers, government, and the medical community declared that something had to be done about the fat. This allowed them to ignore the real reasons for higher health care costs: various cancers and other illnesses caused by environmental degradation and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle as people spent less time outdoors because of the extreme heat and more time in every manner of purely online social settings and activities.

The government created Prometheum, the joint venture among the major pharmaceutical companies, supported by artificial intelligence, to develop the game-changer drug that would solve the “obesity epidemic” for good. These powers, pushed and prodded by a unified phalanx of pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and processed food industry lobbyists, declared the end of the previously popular but ultimately ineffective weekly medications that were intended to slow digestion and reduce appetites. The new goal was a pill that would cause people to lose weight no matter how much they ate. Take the fat-burning fantasy of a 2005 late night infomercial or old-time spam and make it real. Adipose tissue would burn like tinder.

To the indulged and indulgent American psyche, the resulting FaBuTabs made immanent sense. After all, lawns didn’t shrink with draconian watering restrictions; everyone installed SimuLawn. Some people downsized to energy-efficient cottages, but many others installed HousEnvelope around their existing homes and reduced the energy bleed to nearly nil for the purposes of inspections while remaining in their mansions. To have their cake and eat it too was an American aspiration and FaBuTabs let everyone do it, literally.

Sarah read Hank a few storybooks. He seemed so comfortable, leaning against her soft stomach. A few weeks ago, when they were sitting on the floor, playing with toy cars, Hank teetered toward her to reclaim a car he had parked at her shin. He leaned over, patted her belly, and smiled. Mama has piw-woe for me. She wished everyone was so pleased with her stomach, including herself.

She laid Hank and Baba, a well-worn, well-loved stuffed bear, in the crib for a nap, gave him a kiss on the forehead, and hurried back to the living room couch. She put her InterSect on VR mode, put on her InterSpectacles, and clicked on AFF Room. Sarah was no longer sitting on a couch in her living room; she was on a chair in an InterSection auditorium.

She had tried to make her avatar as much like herself as possible, fatness and all, but she wasn’t sure how many of the other members of the AFF, the Alliance for Freedom from FaBuTabs, had done the same. People of all shapes, races, sizes popped into chairs until the room felt very full. Out of the din, a gruff, commanding voice urged everyone to mute their avatars. “Ok, people, ok, people. Quiet, now. Everyone please confirm that you’ve logged on in secure mode.”

The voice belonged to Mick, founder and chair of the AFF. His avatar was a balding, burly guy in a plaid shirt. Sarah recalled him being from somewhere across the country, Vermont maybe. According to AFF legend, Mick was a pretty uninvolved guy, politically, until the advent of FaBuTabs. Then he caught fire, started a virtual reality InterSection, and now over 500 people met each week to share news and strategize. Sarah was mostly a lurker in the group, listening but not speaking.

Mick always started the meetings with reports from any participants with news. Jamie, a large man whose avatar wore designer clothes in sizes not offered in the real world, waved his hand. “My sister is in the middle of a horror story. She’s in the two percent where the FaBuTabs don’t work. Her doctor accused her of taking fakes, called the police.” The eyes of Jamie’s avatar became teary. “She was taken away, to one of the FFFs, the Forcing FaBuTabs Facilities.”

Oh my god, Sarah thought, feeling her stomach clench. Had something similar happened to Lexie, Mia’s mom? Sarah heard shouts from around the auditorium: “Oh no!” and “Cruel police!” and “Fuck this government!”

The voice of Jamie’s avatar rose over the auditorium’s anger. “She’s going to be forced to take the pills for 90 days. Hopefully they’ll do testing to show that the pills don’t work for her. My brother-in-law is worried beyond belief and my nephew keeps asking for his mama. They can InterFace with my sister only once a week.”

“Oh, Jamie, that is so horrific. And that’s why we’re all here,” Mick said. “I hope you’re ok if we move on to more updates?”

With his voice a bit more solid, Jamie said, “Of course, Mick. Thanks for the chance to tell you all what has been happening.”

Alexa, sitting directly in front of Sarah, raised her hand and Mick gestured at her. All Sarah could see of her was a perfect ponytail of curly red hair. “My best friend was also picked up when her doctor reported her for not taking the pill. I have not been able to reach her.” Her voice broke a bit. “I think she’s in one of the FFFs.”

The auditorium roiled again with outrage: “That sucks! So scary!” Sarah felt jittery. Yes, very, very scary.

“Settle down, folks,” Mick said. He waved his hands up and down, a calming gesture that seemed to have some effect. “It’s good to know about these threats to us, even if they’re frightening. Or especially because they’re frightening. But we should move on with our agenda.” He looked around the auditorium. “Anyone have news from the science front?”

Carina, with an attention-grabbing fuchsia afro, said she had talked to a scientist who had come across some research, not released to the public, which showed evidence of gene mutations and illnesses in rats on FaBuTabs. Then Rob, a biochemistry post-doc in a lab coat, reported that he was having success in developing a FaBuFake, a pill that would mimic the buildup of FaBuTabs in the body so that people could pass a blood or urine test.

Mick became excited easily at good news and Rob had to talk him down. “Whoa, there, Mick! We’re still not ready for any kind of large-scale production. And even if you take them, you could still end up in a situation like Jamie’s sister.” Sarah thought she had enough in her own CryptoCash account to buy some FaBuFakes, if Rob would sell her some. But why would she? It seemed counterintuitive to be the test subject for one pill to avoid taking another.

A few people’s hands went up when Mick asked for any personal stories of adverse reactions to FaBuTabs: hair loss, muscle loss, joint pain, numbness in hands and feet, mood swings, brain fog, stomach pain, nausea, reflux, diarrhea. Then Mick requested a report from Jeannie, who was serving as AFF’s pro bono lobbyist.

An avatar with neat blond bangs and red lipstick stood up toward the front of the auditorium. “As I reported last week, Representative Malia Hastings from San Francisco introduced legislation to end the required use of FaBuTabs,” Jeannie said. “It’s called FOFTA, the Freedom from Obligatory FaBuTabs Act. She has 18 cosponsors already, mostly from either the far left or right of the political spectrum.” Jeannie put her hands together as if in prayer. “It would be great if everyone here would contact your member of Congress and ask them to co-sponsor the bill. We really need some more members on there.”

Someone asked about the prospects for the legislation passing. “At this point,” Jeannie said, “the legislation is a public relations effort more than anything. It will be a long road. This is where we’re starting.”

The conversation continued, a discussion of potential cosponsors and legislative strategy for the anti-FaBuTabs bill. Sarah’s mind wandered to her upcoming appointment with Dr. Morgan. In two weeks’ time, Sarah would be weighed and scolded and maybe even reported to the authorities for FaBuTabs evasion.

When the political discussion had run its course, Mick asked if there was any other business. A heavily tattooed arm and hand waved across the room from Sarah. Rita, blond, blue-eyed, from Los Angeles and one of the fatter avatars in the room, was not taking FaBuTabs. And her doctor approved.

“My doctor said she noticed that a lot of her patients were getting thinner but most other health markers weren’t changing much. The people who get thin still have high cholesterol, high blood pressure, the like, plus a loss of muscle mass. So she’ll prescribe if we want, but won’t report us if we don’t. She told me that there is a group of doctors meeting secretly who feel the same way.”

Rita looked around the room at her fellow avatars. “Whatever the government says, there is nothing wrong with being fat. We should be able to stay this way if we want. Sure, some people worship thinness. They can take FaBuTabs and live their dream. I have worked for years to accept this big body.” Rita pointed at herself, her fat avatar. “I’m keeping it.”

Sarah wished that she could speak with such confidence about her own fat body. Sarah wished Dr. Morgan were like Rita’s doctor. Sarah also wondered if being fat was already a reason for police to stop and arrest people, even if they were just walking down the street and minding their own business, on the assumption that they were not taking FaBuTabs.

Mick adjourned the meeting with a chorus of thank yous and good-byes as avatar after avatar disappeared. It was perfect timing, since Hank was stirring. Sarah roused herself, took off her InterSpectacles, and headed toward his bedroom. After an hour with unreal people, it felt good to lift her child out of his crib, hands around his soft torso as his arms reached for her. Sarah nestled him against her body and, still waking up, Hank put his head on her shoulder and she felt his warm breath against her neck. How could she consider doing anything that would separate her from this boy?

At the dinner table a few hours later, Sarah knew Michael’s eyes were on her as she ate, following the motions of her fork from plate to mouth to plate to mouth. “Sarah, I’m worried about you,” he said. “Aren’t you worried? It’s happening so fast for everyone else.”

“Well, I’ve lost 12 pounds.” Sarah had never kept such a big secret from Michael.

“I know you have. But you’re losing weight pretty slowly.” Michael stood. “I don’t mean to be a showoff, just an example.” He put his arms out and twirled slowly in a circle next to the table.

Sarah took in his newly angular features, his lean waist, the vanished belly that used to be. “Yeah. You’re a different person,” Sarah said.

“I really am. So many people are. It’s great!” Michael smiled that big, goofy grin that had drawn her in eight years ago. “You haven’t seen Suzy in a while, right? You should see her now. She looks like a model.” That was not the sort of commentary a wife wanted to hear about her husband’s favorite female coworker. “When are you seeing Dr. Morgan again?”

“I see her in two weeks.”

“Oh, good,” said Michael. “I bet she can fix this.”

In the past, Sarah and Michael had taken each other’s ups and downs in weight with genuine equanimity, for which she had been grateful. Why did she seem no longer good enough for him, just as she was?

In bed later, they kissed goodnight and Michael turned over to go to sleep. Sarah thought about the last time they had sex, not quite a week ago, how different his body felt, harder around the edges against the cushions of her belly, boobs, thighs, ass. It had seemed satisfying for them both, but she could not stop wondering what Michael might be thinking about her still fat body, especially compared to Suzy’s thin body.

After Michael’s breath became soft and even, Sarah slipped out of bed and back to the terminal in the living room. She checked their InterCredit account, scrolling through the transaction history looking for any evidence of secret assignations at restaurants or hotels. There were plenty of charges that could go either way, business or hanky-panky: lunch at the new restaurant on the waterfront, late afternoon drink at the hotel next to his office. But nothing was conclusive. Maybe enough to question or accuse, but she would seem paranoid if she did so.

She needed to distract herself from this line of thought. She sent an InterComm to Kit. Hey. You up?

A message came right away. Yep.

Can you meet?

Sure. Usual place.

Sarah walked across the room and settled herself in a more comfortable chair. She put on her InterSpectacles and clicked on K&S Wine Bar.

Kit was already sitting at their usual table, chic, asymmetrical top over form-fitting pants, black curly hair piled on her head. Sarah’s avatar sat down across the table from her. Kit was a casting director in Los Angeles and she had been Sarah’s best friend since they’d met on the first day of college. Kit wasn’t fat, had never been fat, but had a gratifying capacity for empathy. She had created their wine bar with wide chairs, no booths, so Sarah’s fat avatar fit comfortably anywhere. There was never a need to fiddle with the program, unlike the rooms created by some of Sarah’s other friends, who concluded that everyone must be making their avatars thin to match their current or aspirational bodies.

“Hey. We’re both up too late,” Kit said. “I’m anxious about a meeting with a producer tomorrow. What’s keeping you up?”

“Well, it seems I’ve exchanged anxiety about meetings at work for stress about dinner with my spouse,” Sarah said. “And seeing my doctor.”

“Makes sense. It’s a really big secret you’re keeping from Michael,” Kit said. Kit was a bit protective of Michael; she and Michael had become friends in a history class in college and then Kit introduced him to Sarah.

“I know. It’s absurd that being fat, staying fat, is now a crime.” Sarah and her avatar shrugged. “I’m breaking the law. I could be taken away, locked up and force fed FaBuTabs.”

“It’s terrifying.”

“Fatness was always subject to prosecution, but it used to be metaphorical, not actual.” Sarah sighed. “Being in our fat bodies was punishment enough, thinking people were judging us, and judging ourselves.”

“Why make things harder for yourself?” Kit reached across the table to take Sarah’s avatar’s pale hands in her avatar’s darker ones, gold signet ring on one middle finger, a stack of narrow, gem-encrusted rings on the other. Sarah’s avatar had only had her wedding and engagement rings. “I know it’s unfair, but you could just take the pills, instead of risking being seized, taken away from your child and husband.”

“I know. It feels so wrong that simply trying to be true to myself is putting me in such danger.”

Kit’s avatar squeezed Sarah’s avatar’s hands. Even if the physical sensation did not occur, Sarah’s brain imagined it did and she felt the transmission of love in the unreal action. “You are beautiful and beloved as you are, Sarah. You do not need fixing. But you may be risking your marriage by not telling Michael. And, of course, there may be other consequences if your doctor figures it out and reports you.”

“I know. That’s why I’m here, with you, at one in the morning.”

“Speaking of one AM, I have that big meeting, so I should probably try again to get some sleep.” Kit’s avatar pulled one hand away from Sarah’s avatar and used it to blow a kiss across the table. “Keep me posted. I miss you, girlfriend.”

With her avatar’s free hand, Sarah blew a kiss back. “I miss you, too.”

Sarah took off her InterSpectacles and snuck back into bed. She lay on her pillow looking up at the ceiling, eyes wide open, awake with her thoughts, with her fears. Michael’s quiet breath had turned into snoring.

It was painful that Michael paid attention to her weight. FaBuTabs were cementing the idea that it was ok – indeed, laudable – to only want to sleep with or spend time with or give jobs to thin people, that a person’s outside automatically and fully reflected the inside. Michael’s new focus on her body was so painful because he seemed to be adopting this way of thinking. Perhaps the person she believed he loved might not be as lovable to him now. With these thoughts in her head, she drifted off to sleep.

When their alarm went off the next morning, Michael said, “Sarah? You up?”

She opened her eyes and looked at him. He was on his side, facing her, and she turned onto her side, facing him. He put his hand gently on her cheek. “You know I love you no matter what, right? I just think it’s easier, especially these days, to be in a thinner body. And it shouldn’t be hard to get there.”

“I know, Michael.” She looked into his blue eyes and could feels his concern. “But at least I feel more comfortable in my own body lately, even if I’m not thin.”

Michael took his hand off her cheek and flipped onto his back, hands behind his head, looking up at the ceiling. “Are you not taking the pills at all? Is that why you’re not losing much weight?”

Sarah caught her breath, now fully awake. Could she tell her husband an outright lie? She turned onto her back, also looking upwards. “What makes you think that?”

“I was mulling over our conversation last night. If you were on the pills and they worked, you would have lost more weight. And if you were on the pills and they didn’t work but you wanted to lose weight, wouldn’t you have told me and complained to your doctor a while ago?”
He had figured it out. “I guess.”

“You guess? Sarah, just admit you are not taking the pills.”

If she were going to lie, she should have prepared, come up a plausible response long ago. But she had not. “I’m not taking the pills.”

“Well, that explains all of the extra mints.” He was silent for a while, leaving her to wonder what was going through his mind. She could sense that he had turned toward her. “Sarah, that’s so risky. Why would you do it?”

She stayed on her back, looking at the ceiling, certain her response would seem self-centered and whiny. “I know about the risk. But I finally started to feel better about my body, as it is, and now I’m being forced to change it. That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I realize that this was hard to tell me, or you would have done it months ago.

And that you are trying to be true to yourself, even if you’ve been lying to me.”

Ouch, Sarah thought.

“You could get taken away.”

“I know,” Sarah said.

“And what about all of the time and effort we put into fertility treatments? Now we have Hank and you’re willing put our family in so much jeopardy for your own body?”

Sarah clenched her jaw as she flipped to face Michael. “All that time and effort to get pregnant? And to be pregnant? And give birth? And take care of that baby? That was not we – that was me, my time, my body, then and now.”

“Ok, ok. Yes, you are right. But Hank is also mine.” Michael put his hand on his heart. “It would be devastating for me and him if you were taken away. And hard for me to parent him alone.”

“You could have Suzy come help you take care of him. I’m sure she’d love more time with you, if I’m out of the picture.”

“What the hell does that mean? What are you talking about?” Michael sat up and his voice was all anger, not a shred of guilt as far as Sarah could tell.

Not to be towered over, Sarah sat up, too. “Well, you show off your thin body, talk about her amazing body. It’s made me wonder.”

Michael took a deep breath, exhaled hard. “If you’re implying I’m having an affair with Suzy, I am not. You, Sarah, are the love of my life and have been practically since the day I met you.”

Sarah could feel her expression soften, her eyes getting teary. “But you can understand my worry, right? When we met, you seemed not to care about body size, mine or anyone else’s. Now FaBuTabs have you smitten with thinness, but I’m not thin.”

“Am I enjoying being thin? Yes. Have I been showing off too much?” He shrugged. “Yes.”

Sarah nodded. “You have. And it would be good to shield Hank from body judgment for as long as we can.”

“You’re right. I’ll stop. Does it matter to me whether you are thin? Yes, but only because of the risk to all of us if you’re not.” Michael cupped Sarah’s face in his hands. “I’ll always love you, want to make love to you, no matter your size.”

Tears were falling down Sarah’s cheeks, pooling on the sides of Michael’s hands.

Michael’s blue eyes were kind, but his brow was furrowed. “So you need to figure this out, for the sake of us, our family.”

Sarah looked into his eyes, unsure of what to say.

Two weeks later, with Hank ensconced at home with his babysitter, Sarah sat in Dr. Morgan’s waiting room, heart beating, distracting herself on an InterSect game node. A nurse called her name and instructed her to change into a gown. She was weighed and measured and relieved of three test tubes of blood. She knew what the results would be and she hoped that Dr. Morgan wouldn’t report her, at least for now.

The doctor strode in with purpose and dispensed with pleasantries. “Why aren’t you taking your pills, Sarah? You’re only hurting yourself.”

Sarah thought there would be some buildup, an easing into accusation, rather than this full frontal assault. “I don’t think that I’m hurting myself.”

“Oh, come on.” Dr. Morgan consulted at her InterMedPad. “You’ve lost 11 pounds instead of 50.”

“I thought it was 12 pounds.”

Dr. Morgan was unmoved. “I’m puzzled. And I’m required to report you. I won’t. But I want you to come back in a month and I hope to see progress. Or we’ll have to have a more serious conversation.”

Sarah was silent. Dr. Morgan sat in the chair next to her, crossed her slim legs and sighed. “What’s up, Sarah? I was sure you’d be one of my star patients, fabulous on FaBuTabs, as the ads say.”

“If you’d asked me a decade ago, I’d have agreed.” Sarah fixed her gaze on the BMI chart on the wall, male and female silhouettes from fat to thin. “I would have envisioned myself first in line, holding out my hands to receive a precious offering and finding rebirth as a thin woman.”

“Your chance is not yet lost.” Dr. Morgan rose. “Take the pills, Sarah. Please. I’ll see you in a month.”

“But that’s just it. If I take them, who will you see in a month?”

“You, Sarah. You.” Dr. Morgan shook her head. “It’s not transcendent, Sarah. It’s fat.”

But who was she, really, and how much did being fat have to do with it? She’d thought and thought about this, for 20 years she’d thought about this. She thought about this the next morning as she stood in her kitchen, Michael at work, Hank playing with blocks in the next room, a pink pill resting on the counter in front of her, a full glass of water on one side of the pill, #1 Mom mug full of pills on the other. Sarah picked up the pill. It was small and dry between her thumb and index finger. So much contained in one little pill.

❧❧❧

Irene Basloe Saraf practiced law, worked as an advocate for low-income housing at the state and federal levels, and has continued to engage in advocacy by serving on non-profit boards focused on housing and other policy issues. Irene earned a BA in Humanities from Yale University, an AM in Public Policy from the University of Chicago, a JD from NYU School of Law, a Certificate in Literary Fiction from the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle with her husband, her two children, and their cute dog, Cinnamon. This is the first time Irene’s work has been published in literary journal, about which she is both grateful and excited.