Liposuckers

A silly thing I wrote today because it wanted me to.

---

Liposuckers

It was the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences back in '41 who led the project that made hunger history. It looks good, doesn't it, of course; Students Solve World Hunger. With high-yield high-carb nitrogenating drought-resistant cereal stock, not marches and placards, needless to say.

I saw some of the work the University of Helsinki did on the root nodules. Genius stuff. Nothing to do with me; I'm a corporate man. Sold my soul to the faceless, yadda yadda.

The blondes'd barely announced their solution to world hunger before I had my team working on a solution to world obesity. Call me a cynic.

World hunger was solved, and how. Before morbid obesity had hit 10% in Kenya we'd gotten nineteen worldwide patents for our work.

Mosquitoes were chosen as the vector right at the start. Not many places those little guys can't go these days. Of course engineering them to suck fat instead of blood was the headbanger. We had to redesign them from the ground up, proboscis, digestion, resistance to pesticide, the whole nine yards.

And of course they had to be purple.

Corporate branding, you know.

Yeah, that backfired.

The first purple swarm covered Eastern Europe and swept west. The USA, then Asia, the Middle East, Africa...

I thought those pictures of skeletal, insect-covered children were all in the past.