"The Nightmare of Christmas 3: Enter Melody"
a Pokemon story by Jos Gibbons

Kate, a being of great deliberation over avenging her most sincere furies, had first been scorned by the lighter Misty on Christmas Day 2002. An unusual phenomenon had that day been observed whereby the eating capacity of the fallen could be reborn anew and transferred to another. The mechanism of this is far beyond the comprehension of psychologists, or indeed physicists, at this present moment of writing. Firstly it is unclear as to why this power transfers to whomever it does rather than any other, or indeed splits amongst many, or indeed moves not at all; and if the power to eat can be reborn before the completion of digestive processes in a satiety-knowing individual, why should it not transfer itself to that individual? The latter issue can be dealt with on the physical grounds that that would indeed require digestion to proceed, but the first issue is one with more possibility of investigation – or so this unusual event indicated.

The next year the Yuletide had been long awaited by, and prepared for by, the disgruntled Kate of a thousand gourmets (or pounds for that matter). She had recruited the eating prodigy May, a girl who had shown almost record-breaking abilities in consuming chicken. May undoubtedly weighed far less than Kate, but nonetheless soon surpassed her as a master eater, and although by Noel she had not yet become as heavy as her mentor, she too was more corpulent than the now annoying opponent Misty. If ever one hypothesised the heavier were better eaters, perhaps they ought to reconsider, since Misty had met for two Christmases in a row her heavier counterparts and both years outperformed. It has been suggested in line with the occurrences of 2002’s festive events that the subsequent events of 2003 were explicable in terms of an exploitation of Kate. For when Pikachu had the omen I previously referred to (see Kate’s Revenge, the former edition in this series, a Clerihew-like farce of a poem),a note was also deposited, and wherein it was secreted Misty learnt something astonishing upon discovering the note’s existence. Performing the feat of literacy, one which we unfortunately overlook so frequently as if a universal ability, she learnt what May had done to her mentor – namely she had outdone her, which Kate had somehow minded less than when Misty had done so, thanks to the onset of a possibility of revenge – and so gained the same advantage over May that people such as Sakora and Whitney had given to her over Kate. I did not explain this in the previous issue because it was centred entirely on the events of the Eve, and she discovered this note (and responded accordingly) the following morning.

In this edition, I will relate not only what happened the next year, but also certain intermediate events. The most crucial of these involve a look at various people who gathered for a Thanksgiving event in 2004. The details of that will follow in due course – but first, let us turn to Melody. You will remember her of old from the Orange Islands. Melody has an older cousin who owned an ice-cream stall, and because the Orange Islands has a government who considers it necessary that all children do work experience when they come of a certain age, Melody happened to spend some time there in June 2004 – only a week mind. The crux of this moment lay in a subsequent summer festival on Shamouti Island, where there was laid down a challenge to eat a gallon of ice cream faster than anyone else. Melody knew from the typical half-lives of the rapidly decaying free samples she had consumed (when unobserved) that she stood an interesting chance, but what she had not counted on was the prize being a subsequent trip to the United States to compete in a thanksgiving eating contest. (This time it was one with neither time limit nor a single foodstuff, but rather multiple rounds, of a nature similar to those I have described in previous reports.) Melody had some five months or so to prepare, not wanting to get an earful of racism for underperformance (she had heard exaggerated accounts of the behaviour of Americans from her grandmother, who had never gotten over the occupation of her nation after the Second World War).

Melody began her attempts to better to eating capacity by scouring the Orange Islands for anyone she could learn from. She soon found her muse in the form of Captain Maren, who had spent sometime fulfilling one of those tourist attraction bids that the Government had organised. Just as the occasional down on the highway has a restaurant where you can see if you can get your name in a book by finishing a large steak in an hour, so Maren’s home island had a challenge to lay down to tourists of a similar nature. Maren spent the whole day taking on challenges of eating more than passing opponents, and her flawless record was due to her consuming more than everyone else put together each day. Now Melody soon learnt about this, and decided to see how well she could fare – and where her weaknesses lay, she may be able to learn. She did so perhaps too well, for within a month Maren became shocked by the worst day of her career. Believe it or not, over the course of twelve gruelling hours, she lost to Melody. That would not have been as tumultuous a result if it were not for the empty stomach that Maren started with. Melody became after some discussion the new attraction under the Council’s funding, and Maren had to look elsewhere for employment.

Now I do not want you to feel sorry for Maren – well, not until you have finished reading this, as it will distract you from the point of the story. In her new post Melody got plenty of practice for the Thanksgiving event, and when she went there she came a respectable third internationally. She was beaten to the post by representatives from two other nations, neither the host: I forget whom they were. (I bet you never thought I would personify two nations, did you? Of course you didn’t – that is reserved for a single nation in each of various anthems, and never two in simultaneity.) Melody’s outstanding performance was one she intended to better herself on if she got another chance. Meanwhile her thoughts lay elsewhere, with becoming more famous in her home nation. The Japanese government was so impressed by her performance that they decided to give her some help. They had previously organised a search for eating prodigies (see my earlier Valentine’s story) and were interested to re-assess their national champions. Who was the better eater – Melody, or one of the others? Only time could tell.

I will now return to Maren. Her position – you know, the one that she lost to Melody – was not an undeserved one when she had held it. She had held it for eighteen months, originally selected after an audition to which attendance was compulsory (for some reason I could satirise if I knew less about it). She had began her career slim, but had piled it on while letting her self go for it (and she was too uninterested in the opposite sex to care); and the council’s realisation of her skills didn’t help when it led to their decision to have her working hours extended. The wage was satisfactory to Maren, whose pre-occupation with weight was if ever existent now long evaporated, and now her gains in adipose were nothing bar accelerated. The eighteen months had taken her weight form something like 120 lbs to more like 320 by the time Melody got her sacked, and 380 by the time some additional training had led the Council to allow her to compete in the additional event which would celebrate Melody’s newfound transnational prowess. The event was scheduled for Christmas Eve, and Maren hit the 400-mark just in time for it. She was bigger than the subliminal date!

Melody and Maren were of course not the only ones to be in attendance. Kate, May and Misty added to the list, but they too were insufficient to complete it. Misty was only one of those who had attended the international Valentine’s Day event – one that the UN was sore to repeat due to its lack of managing to justify its costs. (They believed it could improve peace, but if you have watched any news programs in the last couple of years you will realise it failed to hit home how equal all races truly are. That could be because some nations’ representatives outperformed those of others.) The rest were Ash, Sakora, a sumo wrestler and one of the seemingly denumerable Officer Jennies. (Look up Cantor’s theory of transfinite cardinals to understand the hyperbole.) Neither the wrestler nor Jenny – who had discovered the ruse employed by those ne’er-successful ne’er-do-wells, Team Rocket – accepted an invitation to attend. Kate her self was effused permission to do so by the hospital that was holding her, because of the costs involved in her transport. May, who was not yet under the same medical stringencies, was delighted to attend. She would however be one of only six – but at least she would not be the odd one out, as would the male Ash. Were it not for his high metabolism she might have been the nonconformist on the previous occasion, as back then she had not yet gained any weight. The same near miss would affect Melody, for like Ash she kept trim. Mind you, had her metabolism been less than infinitely conducive to this, she would have worked out anyway, because she had heard that fat strangles the stomach, restricting the eating capacity of obese gourmands in a counter-intuitive way.

Anyway, now you know the storyline – it was a case of Melody vs. May vs. Misty (what, too many M’s?) vs. Maren (okay, perhaps you’re right) vs. Ash vs. Sakora (except you are not). The date was set for Christmas Eve, which left so little feel of anniversary for revenge that Kate was resigned to protest.

The next part of the story to talk about was Misty’s own preparation. She had risen from the 450 of the previous year to 530, and as such was outweighed only by May, who was 675 lbs. Misty wanted to eat more than her, as had happened last year, but weighing more was not to her a necessity – the fun of eating was, to her, in the eating itself, a purely intrinsic affair. Actually there was of course the instrumentalist issue of performing well, and she wondered whether she would, for there were reasons to doubt her doing so. Although she knew from experience that even the ever-hungry Ash was unlikely to represent a serious threat to her, no one else who would be in attendance was a comforting opponent for her. Sakora had come third in her first Christmas contest, and had only by sheer fluke failed to beat her to national representative on the massacred Valentine’s day – a date so described both for the almost-Mafia like behaviour of Team Rocket (relative to their own history, of course) and because the idea of repeating it had been slaughtered. Sakora had, however, been the picture of health in the stereotypic sense on both previous occasions, and by that I mean she had far less adipose than the rest, but by this time she was almost Maren’s size, a hefty 375 lbs all by her self within the past year or so (having worked over time at a pizza restaurant in January, and having discovered a talent that got her a similar promotion to Maren, things just sort of took off). Melody was equally famed as a likely candidate for outperforming the less favoured candidate of Misty in this year’s event, or so Ladbrokes said. Naturally May’s size and fame was unprecedented for anyone bar her self and the like, i.e. those at hand. Misty was less concerned about Maren, because at least she had known defeat – something she had in common only with Ash. Misty was worried, however, over whether she could do better than fourth place out of sixth. In fact even Maren was a problem in truth, having competed professionally for a long time, and chosen out of the entire population of the Orange Islands for her (until recently) held post.

Misty had never really researched the concept of eating heartily, because it had never occurred to her to be one of necessity, but she still felt that now was the time to get on with it. She had a month, and she would see what she could learn. Should she stuff her face? That might give her practice, but on the other hand excess fat could constrain her. Mind you, that had not stopped her before; but then again, she had a lot more this time. The bookkeeper’s favourite was Melody because of her helpful slimness. Misty could not be sure if this was the right thing to do, but she was considering feeding on fruit, so as not to make the situation worse. The thought then occurred to her that her stomach might then lose its familiarity with digesting stodgier victuals. What Misty was definitely sure she would not do was get liposuction, because she was happy with her weight and did not wish to suggest otherwise to anyone. However, beyond that her mind was not made up – and it didn’t seem to make it up. She was not in a comfortable position.

On the third of thirty or so days of preparation, she happened to be munching melancholically on a bag full of wine gums, which Brock attempted to persuade Misty to share with him, as happened on any of those fortunately rare occasions when he felt ill. Misty was unapologetically unsupportive. “Brock, this is my last packet!” She received a hard stare from Pikachu, a good sensor of lies, and Togepi, a not so good sensor of lies, but a good sensor of wisdom. “Okay, my last open packet!” she admitted.

Speaking of Brock, while we are on the topic of him, it is worth remembering that this was the first time he had ever met Melody, not knowing the older history that she shared with his friends. He was all too typically … Brock-like in his reaction to her. (It was different, for some reason, when he saw the heavier competitors; it appears that Brock has limits to what he likes in a female. After all, he has never shown any interest in Misty, contrary to the hypotheses of gymshippers.) His stereotypic reaction was all the more amusing for the lack of help from the Muses.

“What beauty has thy islands bequeathed to nature, beyond its fruit and this fine complexion? Truly its wonders no doubt never cease; but you are its encore, to which the rest pales in comparison.” Melody sweat-dropped. Why oh why was he doing this? She began to form some conjectures.

Perhaps his Shakespeare wasn’t quite right; perhaps his eyelids were far too tight; but she thought that the most likely reason of all was that his brain’s social section was two sizes too small.

Brock soon got a sharp tug on his ear from a girl whose hair was the colour of his shirt, who said, “I’d say something amusing which satirises your comments if they were not already self-stultifying enough”. (She was referring to the sheer embarrassment they generated.)

Misty decided a new sort of research would be more helpful than that which she was already conducting, based on University journals, library encyclopaedias, respected but not so austere local professors, and the Internet. (The anti-climax was actually not the one I have suggested; the anti-climax would list the professors last because the only ones she could find were experts on the digestive tracts of pokémon, not people.) What Misty needed to do was some fieldwork. What were the strengths and weaknesses of her opponents? Having dismissed Ash as the sort of person who was worth considering a threat, bar in a hyperbolical system of doubt characteristic of a Popperian or Cartesian, she proceeded to learn what she could about the others. She was most displeased with what she discovered. I would deal with them I an abecedarian fashion, but there are so many M’s involved perhaps it would go unnoticed. Well, on second thoughts, I’ll be abecedarian about it anyway. The permutation of discussion then involves beginning with Maren, carrying on with May, and concluding with Sakora, but not until mentioning Melody.

Maren turned out to come from a fairly long line of big eaters. Her mother almost got a knighthood until the ageing queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island learnt from a rather embarrassed court jester that it was for eating many animals, and not beating them, that she was famous. (It should be noted that this near miss of a serious international incident could have counterfactually occurred only in a way pre-dating the recent end to legalisation of fox hunting, which was opposed bitterly by the royals, the aristocratic and many people employed by them to form a bigger crowd for a small fee.) Maren’s grandmother, on the other hand, had come close to being a victim of a political assassination because her demonstration of an eating prowess chose a dangerous moment of correlation (not to be confused with a moment correlation coefficient) with her home nation’s poor economic state of affairs, which was owed with at least some degree of arguable justifiability to the Allies, who had had a fallout with the Japanese in more ways than one – or more than two, in fact, if you count the two cities separately. Maren represented the third big eater in her family in a row to be recorded in any way satisfactory to a sceptical historian, although there were unconfirmed reports of older generations showing similar properties. The notes began with her grandmother because she deliberately showed off about it, and was the first person in the family to do so.

Then we move on to May. You will no doubt recall how she was first discovered. Kate had invited her to tutoring in a discussion that led to a one-night stay in a fairly cheap but overly sleazy motel, although this was of little relevance to the two of them because of the nice area and their mutual heterosexuality. (Oh sorry, have I gone too far? Apparently an author cannot even mention heterosexuality any more without complaints. It is part of the Little Britain culture, I suppose.) May was of course most famous with her ability to consume chickens, but was more concerned about the Christmas lunch because it would obtain turkey instead. No, she wasn’t brighter than Ash (well, not much). Misty grew concerned when she learnt that May had been training extensively that year to make sure that their next meeting would not involve her in an other 20 % deficit against her now arch rival, the now much anxious Misty.

The greatest concern for Misty, however, should have come from Melody, who apparently was the favourite of ever bookkeeper this side of Wall Street (well, their side of Wall Street anyway – I am not certain if I, or my readers for that matter, can be found on the same side of it as Honshu.) Melody never seemed to gain a millimetre in waistline through her many crushes of lavish and proud, kingdom-like opponents (I refer to their structure and their grandiose self-esteem). One scientist had calculated that the only way this was possible was if her digestion accelerated food particles sufficiently to induce Cherenkov radiation which would lead to their chemical and nuclear break-down, and perhaps even baryonic disassociation as the fabric of the space-time continuum fluxed at an energy in excess of the most powerful theoretically realisable particle accelerator. Unless, he added, she was pushing the food by peristalsis in to her intestines. In case you were wondering, this is the same scientist I refer to who worked out that strictly speaking the laws of physics did not rule out the possibility of Tony Blair being honest about something. (He said that, like passing through a solid wall while leaning on it, the laws of quantum mechanics only make this event extremely improbable.)

I said that Melody should have been the greatest concern for Misty, but in fact her greatest concern was – for less rational and more psychologically motivated due to their common history – represented in the form of Sakora. One additional factor that led to this was that, like Misty, she considered her self a specialist with ice cream. Finally, Misty was concerned by Sakora having gained so much weight in this last year – about three times as much as herself in the same time period. Although the aforementioned scientist assured her that a formula he had devised [see P.S.] showed Sakora must still have been eating less than her (assuming their metabolic rates per mass were the same), her trepidation was nonetheless unperturbed.

All in all, Misty pined in thought, and with a taut and adipose melancholy – well, I have parodied that part of Shakespeare before excellently, so let us just say she felt bad.

The government doubted the veridical nature of the affirmations made about certain contestants, and in fact their supreme commander (who I would name if it was not for Giovanni’s wish to be anonymous – oops!) did not trust Maren’s accounts one bit, or her justification for being entered. For this reason he arranged a qualification round on the eighteenth, which involved finishing a gallon of ice cream in 15 minutes, the world record being a little over nine. Now he had deliberately chosen ice cream because, being a racist fellow, he was against those in the Orange Islands, and he had it on good wisdom that it was with regards to ice cream that Maren had ultimately lost her post to Melody. Indeed she did fail the qualification, albeit only by a few of the 160 fluid ounces in the gallon. Much to her surprise a similar fate befell May, but Ash, Melody, Misty and Sakora had no trouble.

“You see, Misty, that’s where size gets you,” commented the comparably emaciated Melody in passing, after the qualification round was over. “The largest girl is one of the first out. As the next heaviest, you will no doubt follow her – in all honesty, that is.”

“Thanks,” said Misty, in one of those voices indicative of being shocked by awkward sincerity.

“By the way,” continued Melody, “how is your relationship with Ash?” Misty blushed, but eventually was as honest as she had been during the latter half of their original encounter (you know, where she had said that Ash was never alone because he had her). In fact for Melody’s liking she was somewhat too graphic and detailed in her description.

Different spectators disagreed on who was the fastest; they were divided between Misty and Sakora, whose completion times were subject to minimal difference. Ash was a few seconds behind them, but Melody was the slowest qualifier. In fact speed was not her specialty, but this neither concerned her nor comforted Misty, for the contest on Christmas Eve was not subject to any constraints of speed or time. Instead it was one of those “no time limit” competitions, one which Ash was more familiar with as a term to describe gym battles.

The real thing on Christmas Eve would begin with a need to finish ten pounds of steak before the main meal began, so the competitors felt fuller. Those who finished earlier had the advantage of getting more time to digest before the next round, but Giovanni’s judgement was never questioned by his underlings. Because Sakora specialised in speed in particular, she finished first, although Misty was only a few minutes behind her. Although Melody was slowest again, she nonetheless illustrated confidence in her face, and it was not her who resigned from satiety after the steak round. Ash did not feel that any further competing was suited to him (he never was a very good digester of beef, but in the Valentine’s competition he had found no need to face this difficulty). Professor Nanba, the (secret) official dealing with the organisation of the contest, had no objection to this, as it would decrease by 25 % the foodstuffs required (assuming Ash would have the same capacity as the rest, which he clearly did not, so Nanba’s estimate was excessively optimistic).

In due course the time for the next round came, and Sakora seemed a bubbly character, innocent to the danger of Melody and comfortably advantaged against her opponents in terms of digestion. However, she soon found her mistake. Although she could keep up through triple-sized portions of most components of a Christmas meal – something that Melody was, of course, unaccustomed to due to her nationality – she finally succumbed to the mince pies that had been her failing some 730 days earlier. (I know you might think it was 729, comparing a Christmas Day to an Eve, but 2004 was a leap year, so there!) The mince was too rich for her, and so she had a much smaller capacity for them then she planned. Admittedly the twelve-inch diameter of them did not help, so it is no wonder her third was her last.

“I can’t believe I have failed in the same way in two Christmas competitions in a row,” said Sakora. (If I were not quoting her precisely I would prefer “in succession”, but that was not her personal preference to use.) Misty felt shocked that her real nemesis was someone very different. Now came the moment Misty knew needed to be her most dreaded. She was the last one present, and either way the result would have tensile effects on her friendship with Melody. Of course she didn’t see her that much anyway, but she had a tendency to be less analytical in her normative concerns. Now the two of them may have encountered mutual recognition of a social difficulty, and perhaps then they would have reciprocally resigned as equals; but to talk of this is to discuss alternative contingencies counterfactually, and I as the author lack any desire to pursue such talk. (What? Oh all right, so authors DO like being counterfactual, so sue us. You can’t do that across the international borders, even with the Internet, you know; the ease of lawsuits will be useful to you neither from American nor from the similarly altered modern British courts.) Although Misty felt like the aforementioned still inexplicable phenomenon of guilt-fuelled hunger was in effect upon her yet again, she knew that melody would be a very tough opponent. Like Misty her self she had survived much longer than Kate’s able student, and Misty had to admit her own history against them was usually less successful; however, Misty had come as far as her final opponent on this day, and she was not about to give in now. There was nothing for it but to plough on.

Speaking of plough, this story and the food in it were both sponsored by Ploughman’s, the food company that doesn’t know when to say when (or no; they couldn’t decided which slogan I should use). Sorry to sell my self that way, but – well, anyway …

A last-minute change to the plan was arranged because Nanba discovered he had less food than he thought, so they decided upon a first-to-be-faster-than-your-opponent-on-traditional-Japanese-fare-because-of-an-extra-sponsor-three-times-in-a-row conclusion. Now Melody’s goose was cooked, and I refer not to the one she had finished in twenty-six minutes earlier that day. Misty was not a speed specialist, more of an all-round achiever with a finger in every pie (or pie in every snack), but that was still enough to deal with Melody.

The consequences were multiply pronged. Scientists could dismiss the previous phenomenon as pseudoscientific hearsay, Melody knew what to improve her talents with, Misty amused a priest with her attempt to find out how to take away her feeling of guilt from having won by ridiculous fortune, and Ash learnt not to resign in future, because if you are up against people you have little precious chance against, you may still get embarrassingly lucky (as had happened to them in the past, e.g. when he won a blimp ride to the Orange Islands, so you would have expected him to learn all this earlier). On second thoughts, he forgot shortly afterwards, so he didn’t learn anything in the long run.

Now you may be wondering why the Japanese government – well, Giovanni who must not be named to be precise – wanted the event on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. There are a number of possible reasons; no one knows why.

Perhaps his calendar wasn’t quite right; perhaps the available wage was too tight*; but I think that the most likely reason of all was that his free time on Christmas Day was two hours too small.

(* Have you ever tried getting cooks on Christmas day, or for that matter any employees? It isn’t easy, you know. It can only be arranged for the right price.)

You see, the term “Christmas Pudding” actually has significance in Japan, and they are perfectly aware of at least a secular form of Christmas. They even associate the date of the twenty-fifth with it, and this leads to a metaphor related ton their own traditions. A “Christmas pudding” is a young woman, not quite yet twenty-five, who is as yet unmarried, but ought to have a husband by her twenty-fifth party; any later and that pudding is too late “consumed” so to speak. (Only the Japanese could take so distant a correlation as an age with the day of a month on which a festival to whom they are new falls and use it as the basis of a metaphor that an entire society has to understand when the religion the festival is associated with is a minority religion of 15 % or so in their home nation. After all, have you ever known an even remotely similar metaphor in your own nation?) Now Giovanni’s brother had married – not so long ago – a young Christian woman on her twenty-fifth birthday, which was also the twenty fifth of December. You can imagine the shock that gave the involved vicar, but crucially for Giovanni he was expected to visit his brother on Christmas day for lunch, rather than be anywhere else.

On Christmas Day, Misty had mixed feelings. She enjoyed all the typical festivities of the big day, but on the other hand there was Melody to contend with, who stayed overnight with her in the Pokémon centre (I’m proud of British spelling.) Apparently veterinarian hospitals are in their neck of the woods as funded, lavish and important as human hospital facilities, and further they also serve as a free hotel for drifters and pilgrims. Well, that’s nice. Melody was planning to spend Christmas on Honshu for once, far from her family, purely due to the limitations on her funds. Misty decided to invite her to Christmas lunch, but because of their own lack of funds there needed to be a few provisos.

“I’m afraid that, as much as I doubt the fairness of today’s events, we can’t make up for it tomorrow,” she said as the night thickened, “because we don’t have that much on offer. I my self look upon what is happening tomorrow as involving less food than most days.”

Melody laughed, musing, “In the United States it’s more a day for eating more.” Melody had never been to Britain; let me assure you as one of its residents that we are no different to our American cousins in this respect. We just don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and consequently only have one roast turkey, not two as some may.

“Secondly,” continued the less internationally travelled Misty, “we were planning to stick to typical Japanese food – nothing special by either tradition’s standards. I’m, just inviting you because … well, it’s worth seeing you for a while.”

“Sure!” replied Melody. “Don’t worry about today. I know where I need to improve – besides, if anyone is to blame, it’s them for changing the schedule at the last minute. Perhaps we can compare ourselves again at some future date, but it would be too competitive for a festive time, don’t you think?”

At that Misty realised how silly she had been in the previous two years. “You know, you’re right there,” she said, holding back the guilt-ridden emotion from surfacing on her face or in her tear glands. If she were to encounter Kate or May again, she would know very different behaviour was in order.

The next day came and went, and with the exception of Melody and (of course) Ash, Misty saw none of the contestants. The time they spent together did not suffer from any malady, save for Brock hitting on Melody yet again, as he had on the previous day.

“Melody, you make me think of several components of music besides melody: harmony, rhapsody, …”

Misty dragged him off yet again, uttering, “Mention any more of the Destiny Angels and I’ll se to it you are assigned a vocation as dangerous as theirs!” (See Captain Scarlet sources for more information on this; for some reason she had seen it.)

Brock never did get a chance with her; nothing’s changed. Ash never did learn anything; nothing’s changed. Melody never did become a central character for long; nothing’s changed.

THE END

P.S. The formula the scientist had come up with was the following:

M(t) = (M(0) – I/k)e^(-kxt) + I/k

In this, M(n) is the mass of the person a time period of n time units after measurements start (so the initial mass is M(0)), I is the energy intake per day (assumed constant), k is the metabolic rate in energy units per unit mass per day (which by a curious coincidence has the same physical units as luminous intensity), x is the mass of a quantity of body fat which during complete combustion releases one unit of energy, e is the familiar numerical constant, and t is the elapsed time. In the imperial system ( ;) ) typical values for k and x are 14.3 cal/lb/day and 1/3500 lb respectively. It is a simple matter of rearrangement to work out that, no matter who light Sakora was at the start of the year, because her mass was positive she must have been eating less heartily. I must confess to being the scientist criticised in my own story; the satirisation of Blair is my only justification, as I clearly have far too much free time on my hands!