they called it the fat tax.
it started in california, like most strange things do. a small pilot program linking state tax rates to body fat percentage.
fifteen percent body fat? fifteen percent tax rate. thirty percent? well, you get the idea.
the economists loved it. finally, a way to price in health externalities. the doctors said it was complicated, which everyone correctly heard as yes.
what started as an experiment became a form.
by april, everyone knew their number.
dan used to do his taxes in one evening with a glass of wine and a bad attitude. now he had an appointment at a certified scan center between the dentist and the vape shop.
the waiting room had motivational posters with people sprinting across beaches. everybody in the room hated the beach people.
his form was called BFP-1040. line 7 asked for adjusted gross income. line 8 asked for certified body composition. line 9 calculated shame.
the technician was twenty-two and spoke in the gentle voice normally reserved for funerals.
"you are allowed to breathe normally," she said.
dan had not been breathing normally since january.
work changed first because work always finds the tax advantage.
HR sent a memo explaining that the company cared deeply about employee wellbeing and would therefore be installing voluntary quarterly scans in conference room b. voluntary meant your manager got a dashboard.
middle management became literal middle management.
the finance director lost eleven percent body fat and became unbearable. one intern gained weight on purpose because her parents were politicians and rebellion has to use the materials available.
novo nordisk passed apple, then the department of defense, then several religions.
black markets arrived by summer. synthetic scan results, water-loading coaches, ankle-weight folklore. a man in wisconsin sold "heritage density supplements" from a barn and got interviewed by three podcasts before the indictment.
some regions declared themselves fat havens. tax refugees moved to samoa, mississippi, and one suspiciously libertarian valley in austria. adipose arbitrage.
dan's number was 24.8.
not terrible. not good. expensive.
he stared at it in the parking lot and tried to remember whether pasta was worth four thousand dollars.
his wife texted: cake day at mum's sunday. don't be weird.
cake day was the loophole everyone pretended not to understand. one day a year, the scan did not count. offices filled with contraband brownies. schools sent home allergen forms that read like criminal indictments. grandmothers became logistics experts.
dan's mother made black forest gateau, the proper kind, obscene with cream.
everyone ate too much and talked about property taxes.
the children loved it, then feared it, then loved it again.
dan took a second slice home in foil.
he told himself he would throw it out.
he did not.