Excerpt of The Body Institute by Carol Riggs

Five more reps, and I should be done with this body for good.

I pull the weight bar down to my chest, working my biceps. Here I am, flat on my back once more, communing with my old buddy the Fluid Resistance Machine.

Twenty-six…twenty-seven.

Man, I can’t wait to get back into my own body and be myself again. Hanging out with my friends, spending time with my family. Dancing. Urban paintballing. Messing around with kinetics experiments at the Catalyst Club.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the jog-pump-stride of other Reducers toning and slimming. Hard workers, these ladies: 100 percent keyed in to their jobs. Above us on the third floor, I’m sure a bunch of men are exercising just as hard in their own gym.

A chirp signals the end of my programmed reps. I ditch the machine and do cool-down stretches while it resets for the next victim, then take a brisk shower and head to the first floor for my weigh-in.

I shake a rush of tingling nerves from my fingertips. If my stats are on track this morning, I can finally check out of the Clinic. I’ve toned up Shelby Johnson’s body, plus kept her weight stable this past week. Imagine—fifty whole pounds, sweated off in three months. Soon, Shelby’s Before and After images will spring up in vidfeeds everywhere, peddling the Institute’s new client group, teens fourteen to eighteen.

Put an end to obesity before you reach adulthood, the ads will shout. Look fabulous in three to six months!

I’m happy to say I’ve made important progress for Shelby and the pilot program.

The scanner in the Weigh Center doorway blinks as it reads the ID chip in my hand. This early, the garish green waiting chairs hold only a few Reducers. I nod to another arriving worker, a guy who has about ten pounds left to lose. Before I can start up a conversation, an electronic voice near the ceiling intones, “Morgan Dey, report for weigh-in.”

In Admittance, I step toward an available tech. “Hey, how’s your day going?”

He grunts and barely looks at me as he waves me onto the scale, like Reducers are a bunch of faceless cogs on an assembly line. “Morgan Dey in the body of Shelby Johnson,” he verifies for the data streamer. He records my vitals and steps to the wallscreen readout. “Your assignment is complete. Restoration is scheduled for oh- nine-forty-five today in the administration building. Arrive at least ten minutes early at Mr. Behr’s office.”

A wide grin takes over my face. In one short hour, I can shed my Loaner body and go home. I exit the Weigh Center and take the stairs two at a time back to the second floor. With a hasty handprint, I access my dorm room. After I dictate a log entry of my morning workout, I grab my Institute phone so I can send a voice-to-text message to Mom, Dad, and Granddad. I word the message carefully, since Leo Behr, the director, screens everything a newbie Reducer sends.

Or so he says. Personally, I think it’s a bluffy scare tactic he invented to keep his workers in line.