Eleanor Pervis and the Three-Course Gainer Gum
Eleanor Pervis had been counting down the days since she'd found that golden ticket gleaming beneath the wrapper of a Wonka Bar. At 23, the former high school weightlifting champion still lived for the rush of competition—and the promise of Ms. Wonka's legendary factory tour was the ultimate prize.
The Inventing Room gleamed with impossible machinery and bubbling vats of experimental confections. Ms. Wonka—tall, eccentric, with wild curls barely contained beneath her purple top hat—gestured dramatically toward a small piece of gum resting on a silver pedestal.
"My latest masterpiece!" she announced. "Three-Course Gainer Gum! Tomato soup for strength, roast beef for power, and blueberry pie for peak performance. Each course scientifically formulated to build muscle mass, specifically targeting the biceps and arms. Perfect for athletes!"
Eleanor's eyes lit up. This was exactly what she'd been looking for—a edge to help her return to competitive form.
"Ms. Wonka, I wouldn't—" one of the Oompa-Loompas began, but Eleanor had already snatched the gum and popped it in her mouth.
The tomato soup was delicious, warm and savory. The roast beef course made her flex instinctively, feeling a pleasant pump in her shoulders. Then came the blueberry pie.
"Oh, this is incredible!" Eleanor said, chewing enthusiastically. Then she noticed her arms. "Whoa, is this supposed to happen?"
Her biceps were swelling, growing larger and rounder, filling out the sleeves of her jacket. But they weren't just getting muscular—they were turning a deep shade of blue.
"Oh dear," Ms. Wonka murmured, adjusting her goggles. "The formula wasn't quite stable. The juice concentration is localizing in the arms rather than distributing evenly."
Eleanor's arms continued to inflate, the blue spreading across her skin like watercolor on paper. Her biceps became the size of beach balls, then yoga balls, stretching her sleeves until they burst at the seams. The juice was concentrating exactly where the gum had promised—her arms—but in the worst possible way.
"What's happening to me?!" Eleanor gasped as the swelling spread to her torso. Her body began to round out, her blonde hair falling across her increasingly spherical form. But while her central body swelled into a large blueberry shape, her arms ballooned into absolutely massive orbs, each one larger than her torso, jutting out from her sides like enormous blue satellites.
Her hands remained normal-sized, protruding comically from the ends of her gargantuan arm-spheres. Her head sat atop her body, unchanged except for the blue tinge spreading across her cheeks. Her feet, still in their athletic sneakers, remained deflated beneath her massive rolling form.
"The juice is pooling in the bicep tissue specifically," Ms. Wonka observed, taking notes. "Fascinating. The gainer formula is working exactly as designed, just with the unfortunate blueberry side effect."
Eleanor's arms had become so massive and round that they eclipsed her central body when viewed from the front. She looked less like a blueberry girl and more like a collection of blue spheres—two enormous ones where her arms should be, flanking a smaller (though still huge) central sphere that was her torso.
"I can't move!" Eleanor wailed, her small hands flapping uselessly at the ends of her balloon-like arms. "Roll me somewhere!"
The Oompa-Loompas began their work, and Eleanor discovered that with her arms so massively inflated, she rolled in a peculiar wobbling pattern, her arm-spheres acting like training wheels on either side of her body.
As they guided her toward the Juicing Room, the Oompa-Loompas began their cautionary song:
*"What do you get when you ignore the warning?*
*When you grab at gum without a morning*
*Of research and testing and careful review?*
*You turn into something massive and blue!*
*Eleanor Pervis thought she'd get stronger*
*Her biceps now couldn't be any longer*
*They're giant blue spheres, enormous and round*
*The biggest blueberry arms ever found!"*
Eleanor groaned as she wobbled and rolled, her massive arm-spheres making her the strangest blueberry case Ms. Wonka had ever seen.
The Triple-Sphere Spectacle
Eleanor had stood 5'8" before chewing the gum—athletic, solid, with the broad shoulders of a weightlifter. Now, she was a monument to experimental confectionery gone wrong.
The Dimensions:
Her central body sphere measured roughly 6 feet in diameter—already larger than she'd been tall, a taut blue orb that had consumed her torso entirely. But that paled in comparison to her arms.
Each arm sphere had swollen to an absolutely massive 9 feet in diameter—half again as large as her body, jutting out from either side of her like twin planets orbiting a smaller moon. The sheer volume of blueberry juice concentrated in her biceps and arms had created these colossal spheres, each one smooth and taut, the deep indigo skin stretched tight and gleaming under the factory lights.
The Structure:
When Eleanor was upright (relatively speaking), her central 6-foot body sphere sat *elevated* between the two 9-foot arm spheres, perched higher like a capstone. The massive arm-orbs touched the ground on either side, supporting her weight, while her torso sphere hovered approximately 3 feet off the factory floor, suspended between them.
Her head—still normal-sized, with her blonde hair now plastered against blue-tinged cheeks—protruded from the top of her central sphere, giving her a view of the factory ceiling and very little else. Her small, uninflated hands extended uselessly from the very ends of each enormous arm sphere, barely visible bumps on the far sides of those massive blue orbs. They could wiggle her fingers, but the gesture was absurdly inadequate given the scale of her predicament.
Most humiliating were her feet—still in her athletic sneakers, still normal-sized—dangling completely off the ground beneath her central sphere, kicking uselessly at the air a full 3 feet above the factory floor. She couldn't reach anything, couldn't brace herself, couldn't do anything but hang suspended between her own massively inflated arms.
The Rolling Motion:
When the Oompa-Loompas began to roll her toward the Juicing Room, the physics of her triple-sphere form became grotesquely apparent.
The two arm spheres acted as the primary locomotion system—like enormous training wheels or the wheels of a bizarre tricycle. They rolled forward in tandem, their 9-foot diameters covering ground quickly. But Eleanor's central 6-foot body sphere, suspended between them, had no choice but to rotate along with the motion.
As the arm spheres rolled forward, Eleanor's entire world began to spin.
Her head, which had been pointing upward, suddenly tilted forward as her central sphere rotated. Then she was looking straight ahead—briefly—before continuing the rotation. Her vision flipped upside down, her blonde hair hanging toward the factory floor (though still 3 feet above it), her dangling feet now pointing skyward.
"Oh god, oh god!" Eleanor moaned as she continued rotating, completing the revolution. Her feet swung back down, her head came back up, then the whole cycle repeated.
*Roll, rotate, flip. Roll, rotate, flip.*
Her arm spheres maintained consistent contact with the ground, but between them, Eleanor's body and head performed continuous forward somersaults. One moment she'd glimpse the Oompa-Loompas walking alongside her massive form; the next, she'd see only ceiling; then floor; then faces again.
Her small hands, protruding from the ends of her arm spheres, traced enormous circles in the air with each rotation. Her feet kicked helplessly through their own arc, sneakers pointing at walls, ceiling, floor, walls again in endless succession.
From the side, the sight was almost comical: two enormous 9-foot blue spheres rolling majestically forward, with a smaller 6-foot blue sphere revolving between them like a rotisserie chicken, a blonde head and two sneakered feet appearing and disappearing with each rotation.
"Make it stop!" Eleanor wailed during one brief moment when her head was upright. "I'm so dizzy!"
But the Oompa-Loompas continued rolling her steadily toward her fate, the triple-sphere blueberry champion tumbling helplessly toward the Juicing Room, her massive arm spheres carrying her forward while her world spun end over end.