An awesome art drawn by  Sugarboy. :D

Story by me. :3

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"I just wanted to thank you again for signing up for this project, we really think it's going to help a lot of people," the horse proudly stated. "In fact just this month we've managed to divert over several thousand pounds of food." He flipped through his clipboard. "Quite a bit more than we had expected actually, it turns out a lot of restaurants were throwing away way more food than they had estimated. You may be interested to know that the effect that we use to transport..."

Tiffany sighed as she tuned him out, he was talking about the technical details of the collar again and she really didn't care. All that mattered was the little extra cash this 'experiment' was supposed to be paying her. Her job at the restaurant had been rudely interrupted by a customer attempting to park their car in the kitchen. Fortunately nobody had been injured but everyone's pay had been indefinitely suspended while they repaired the damage. Unfortunately she was going to be short with this months rent if she didn't manage to scrounge up some extra cash.

Tiffany studied the faintly glowing collar in the room's mirror. It had turned from black to a light blue. She cut off his speech, "Is it working?"

"Er, yes. Now that the calibration has finished you should be getting a limited amount of food from the network. Blue means things are working normally."

"And it's safe, right?"

He grinned, "Perfectly safe. All the food you receive is perfectly sanitized." He glanced away for a moment, "We ironed out all those bugs in the first phase."

Tiffany looked away from the mirror and back to the horse in the lab coat, "I don't feel any different."

"Correct. While in automatic mode you'll be getting a small amount of food throughout the day, so you're really not likely to notice it. You just won't get hungry. If you'll check your phone the control app should also be working now."

She grabbed her phone and poked at the screen. The app didn't seem all that complicated; the display simply said 0.1kg with a pitiful dollar amount under it. A little triangle on the left pointed to the word 'Auto' with the words 'Manual' and 'Off' slightly grayed out under it. She poked at the 'Manual' text and the triangle moved to it. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the collar's color changing from blue to a slightly burnt orange.

The horse made a somewhat surprised grunt before snatching the phone out of her hands. "You don't want to mess with manual right now, it's kind of buggy," he said while switching it back. The color faded back to blue.

Tiffany looked at him quizzically, "What do you mean?"

He handed her phone back to her, "Well, manual right now just turns off the limiter. The network is having to handle way more load than we expected and if you turn off the limiter you'll get way more food than you'd need. Auto should keep things in line with your daily caloric needs."

She pondered for a moment before replying, "But what if I wanted to earn more?"

He chuckled, "Well, yes, I suppose you could use manual mode to exceed your daily intake a bit... but I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to gain a lot of weight. It tends to send food at a rather, let's say rapid, rate."

Tiffany smoothed her dress over her stomach, feeling the soft layer of pudge under her hands. She supposed she could handle a little extra weight if it meant not missing this months rent. The payment table was complicated and she wasn't sure how much she'd actually need to 'eat' but she was sure it wouldn't be that much.