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This is an adult fetish story that will contain female weight gain. If that ain't your bag, please avert your gaze elsewhere.

Chapter 1 (prologue)

  We all know what we were doing on Wednesday 23rd April 2033. I think that much is safe to say.

  I’ll tell you what I was doing. I was curled up on this burgundy chaise-longue – and I’ll always remember the ghastly colour of it – in this hotel in New York that I was staying in, headphones over my ears and totally in the zone, editing the podcast that I host. Astro-logical Episode 33. Or 34, maybe. Can’t remember the exact episode number.

  So when my mobile lit up, I was grateful for the interruption to be honest. Editing is the most boring thing about having your own podcast. There’s only so much of your own voice you want to hear before you find yourself yearning to take pins to your eyes. Every man and their dog had one those days, and I felt that I was just as worthy a host as any over-opinionated man.

  I glanced at the caller ID and it was my old professor Dr. Chipo Oliseh. Dr Oliseh took me under her wing while I studied my Masters at the University of Melbourne back when I was just starting out. She had not just been my professor, nor just the woman that shaped me to become the woman I am today. She was and is also a good friend, and one of my oldest friends to boot. Still, it was unusual for her to ring, especially given the large time-zone difference.

  “Hello?” I answered hazily, my mind still not left the podcast I was working on, trying not to lose track of my progress and have to listen through the damn thing again.

  “Hi Gwen, it’s umm, well it’s me, Chipo”

  Her voice wasn’t as assured as it typically was. She always had a great voice did Chipo, a deep smokey Australian drawl with just a hint of her African ancestral roots coming through. It was always effortlessly authoritative despite its glacial pace and leisurely enunciation.

  “Hi Chipo, it’s nice to hear from you. Wait, what time is it over there?”

  “I need to tell you something, but you might want to sit down first.”

  It was a good job I was sitting down, the news came completely out of the left field. That’s what everyone says when they talk about how they first heard the news – the disorientation of being hit by something they didn’t see coming. And how literally that was the case. Chipo explained to me in clear and precise terms that Grendel was closer to us than the models predicted, and it was only getting closer. Astro-logical Episode 33 never got released.

  “Wow, this is a spectacular find Chips. Good on ya!” was my initial and wholly naive reply. But it was understandable on my part. It all but guaranteed Chipo and her team at the university a historic second Nobel Prize. She was already one of the most famous faces in astrophysics in the world but now her name would go down in history. But the kicker, of course, was that there wouldn’t be much history for her name to go down in.

  “The physics team at MIT are crunching the same numbers and coming up with the same answers, it doesn’t look good Gwen. I just thought you should know.”

  The timbre of her voice still maintained that rich sobriety, but there was a glassy edge to it now.

  “So what sort of probability are we looking at?”

  “It meets the five-sigma criteria. So, unless there is something fundamentally wrong with our understanding of physics, or with our model, then it’s a done deal I’m afraid.”

  I finally placed the tone of her voice. It was the same as the voice you hear when a policeman knocks on your door and tells you he has bad news. It was careful and deliberate, calm but empathetic. She was giving me bad news.

  “Do we have a time frame yet?”

  I was keeping my composure outwardly, but inside my mind was rattling. It was slipshod and spiralling down thought ravines trying to digest the news I’d just heard.

  “No, that will come next. I’ve got to go Gwen, sorry, I’ve got a call with our Prime Minister in 5, and I’ve got to tell him the news.”

  “Oh god, sorry. And good luck Chips. And thank you, thank you for thinking of me”

  “I just thought you should know, you’re a good friend Gwen, always have been. And given that Grendel was the subject of your doctoral thesis, it seemed fitting. Good luck”

  An awkward pause.

  “Yeah, you too.”

  And that was how I first heard about how our solar system was about to be swallowed up the black hole at the centre of our galaxy.