(Thanks to Jen Lit Girl for the edit.)
In hindsight, like all stupid ideas it seemed like a good one at the time; but then, so did the Tuskegee experiments. "If you could do it to poor niggers, spics, and retards you can do it to anyone," so the head of the Project said. Of course he was the type of person to say those things. He came from a long line of unrepentant, unreconstructed Klansmen. His father hung up the robes but kept the racism and his son sucked it up. Bigotry being no longer culturally approved, the man kept it hidden through West Point, MIT, NSA, and whatever secret project he headed for Uncle Sam at some point or another.
Uncle Sam knew exactly the kind of person they employed. The feds didn't care. He got results and he employed people who got results: doctors and scientists who copied ethics and morals from Nazi prison camp doctors and their Japanese counterparts. Unit 731 morals were ideals looked upon favorably in this project.
Non-consensual experimentation on African-Americans, Hispanics, mentally challenged and poor people was taboo these days. The Project Head, an old school eugenicist, cursed the fates that birthed him in the politically correct age. Even animals were off limits. Then a minion came up with an idea: sex offenders.
Who gave a fuck about sex offenders? Society's bogeymen, Law and Order's favorite villains, people clamor at the polls to get them out of the way. Easily disposable, especially in overcrowded prisons. The Project Head went for it.
The requirements were specific: unrepentant, incurable sociopaths who hadn't graduated to murder, weren't too violent, and weren't exactly bright. Child molesters and serial killers were in the queue as well. Facilities for them hadn't been made yet.
The governors quietly went along. They needed space in their prisons. The subjects were sold the usual bullshit: experimental cures for their disease, extra privileges, shortened prison time, opportunities to pay their debt to society. The prisoners swallowed it down along with the pills. When most of them woke up without the ability to speak, the doctors said it was a side effect. Actually the doctors cut their vocal cords. It wasn't that the doctors had consciences but screaming was distracting.
The experiments went well. Towards the end, a merry prankster mixed Viagra with the other pills. Ultimately, twenty prisoners survived and the Project Head could report invisibility was achievable. A new era of covert warfare was about to dawn but first, take the twenty to their shortened sentences which included fatal doses of morphine.
Infrared goggles were useful for herding. The whole matter was close to closure but hurricane Angie, blinding lightning flashes, power outages, clumsy guards, and mischievous hackers murphied everything up. When the smoke cleared, the twenty were gone...and everyone was in deep shit.
******
Kelli Rhodes smiled in her shower. The high school reunion had gone oh so well. "The looks on their faces...." she remembered savagely. Her ex had been there too and the look on his face was priceless. Kelli knew she'd be the talk of the old crowd for years. "Kilo Kelli no more," she smiled, with the satiation of revenge.
Kelli Rhodes had spent much of her thirty-four years fat. A chubby girl, she became a fat teen. The mean girls dubbed her "Kilo Kelli". Junior high and high school were hell but she had one bright spot: the boy who would become her husband. He was one of the geeks and a fellow outcast. Mutual solidarity brought the pair together and they married right out of college.
A few years into the marriage however, things started to come apart. Her husband turned out to be a late bloomer. A gym membership, a switch from eyeglasses to contacts, and increased confidence from workplace success brought out a handsome look, hidden in adolescence. It also brought forth previously undetected character flaws. Kelli meanwhile, grew fatter, frumpier, blotchier and her hair, lankier. Women started to notice her husband. Men and women ignored her. Worse towards the end, her husband did the same.
The final straw broke when her husband returned from work with divorce papers. He announced he was leaving her for a co-worker, the kind of woman who made their lives miserable as teens. The only good thing from the divorce was she got to keep the house, a grudging grace from her ex.
She stood before the living room mirror, twenty-eight years old, razor in hand, warm water running in the tub, going over the wreckage. A once loving husband who turned into one of them. A non-entity of a life with two hundred fifty pounds of fat and pasty white blotchy skin over a 5'6" frame. Why not just end it? Who would miss her? Not even her mother.
It was at that moment a goddess spoke to her. Oprah Winfrey, goddess of all media, giving one of her improve-your-life spiels on TV and wonder of wonders, it worked. Kelli looked at Oprah, looked at the razor, looked at herself, and threw the razor away in horror. She looked at herself again and just like that, she switched. Kelli the frump vanished and Kelli the pissed-off, betrayed and divorced fat girl was born. "Kilo Kelli, eh?! I'll fucking show 'em! I'll be so fuckable they'll rip their own cocks off to fuck me!"
Kelli got to work almost immediately. She went through the fridge and cupboards. Out went the fats, in came the vegetables. Health became her new religion. The gym, the jogging track, and the YWCA swimming pool, her new church. Spa treatments to remove body hair, skin treatments to get rid of the blotches, nude sunbaths to turn it to a permanent light tan. Visits to the hair salon to chop her locks into a short bobbed cut. Weightlifting, Pilates, stomach and thigh crunches, body sculpting, all embraced with religious devotion.