What If Your Body Became 2D Flat

“The hardest thing on the planet is to get out of a warm bed early in the morning. The second most challenging thing in the world is to sit in an office and force yourself to start working. It’s hard to read a big book and cook your own food. It’s almost impossible to earn a lot of money.

Do sports? It’s something fantastic. Keeping a dog at home and walking it several times a day is just senseless. How do people live this tough life?”

Almost every day, Louis thinks about these things. And he is the laziest person in the world who loves only one thing — watching TV series and movies.

So, one day, he wakes up in a 2D flat body. The volume of his muscles and bones has decreased by almost 99%. He can’t turn off the alarm because his body is too thin and barely emits heat. Under the loud ringing of sirens, he tries to pull off the blanket. But it’s too heavy! Louis crawls out of bed.

He looks at himself in the mirror in horror, stands sideways, and becomes almost invisible. He tries to scream, but his voice sounds like a mosquito squeak! The fridge door is as heavy as the door in a bank vault! An apple on the table weighs like a barbell. Louis needs to go to the toilet but can’t press the handle. Fortunately, he’s thin enough to squeeze through the gap between the door and the wall.

He has to go to work, but he must eat something first. He sees the bread crumbs he hasn’t cleaned up from last night’s dinner. He picks up and swallows a couple of them. His stomach is super small now, so two tiny crumbs seem as heavy as two plates of spaghetti. Now, he needs to drink some water. All the bottles are closed, and he doesn’t have the strength to unscrew the lids. Fortunately, water is dripping from the tap. Louis drinks just one drop but feels like he’s had two cans of soda.

He leaves the house, runs across the road, and gets under a car. Our guy is invisible to the driver because he is standing sideways. But thanks to his light weight, Louis doesn’t get any damage. He flies off to the side, but he can’t land anymore. The wind blows and lifts Louis up.

He tries to hold on to the lampposts and traffic lights, but his thin hands are too weak. The wind is taking him higher and higher. Louis flies past the birds and the top floors. The temperature is getting too cold for his body. He freezes, but the wind changes its direction and takes him down.

Someone throws a banana peel out of the window. Louis grabs it and uses it to descend safely. He finally reaches the road and ties the banana peel to his laces. He’s walking slowly since it’s hard. The peel seems as heavy as a cart loaded with bricks. He crosses the street and falls every time people push him on the shoulder.

Louis screams back at them, but they don’t even hear him. Exhausted, he gets to his office. The boss scolds Louis for being late. Louis’s tiny ears are now sensitive to all sound waves, so the boss’s words seem very loud and low as if they come from a large speaker. The boss doesn’t care that Louis is flat. He wants all the work done.

Louis tries to take a stack of papers, but it’s too heavy, so he moves one sheet at a time to his desk. Each page weighs like ten skateboards for him! Louis moves three documents and feels like he’s run a marathon. Then he sits at the computer, but the keyboard doesn’t work. The keys don’t get enough load. Louis has to put a lot of effort into printing something.

It’s the end of the day, and Louis has done only 1% of all the work. He comes to the office kitchen, sees a delicious sandwich, but can’t bite it off completely. He breaks off tiny pieces of salad and bread. It makes him full. He notices that his hair is covered with frost. An icicle is growing on the tip of his nose.

Why has the Ice Age begun in the office? Oh, it’s just the air conditioner lowered the temperature by one degree. But our hero is sensitive to the slightest fluctuations in the air. Exhausted, he leaves the office and enters the elevator. The crowd of people presses him from all sides.

A drop of sweat from one guy’s neck falls right on Louis. Like a sheet of paper, he absorbs almost the entire drop. The elevator doors open, and Louis gets out quickly. He runs out into the street. The wind is pretty strong, but the banana peel keeps him on the ground. It starts to rain. Just a few drops fall on the ground, but Louis gets soaked through.

Seconds later, Louis feels like he’s standing under a waterfall. It’s hard to walk. He unhooks the peel and falls exhausted to the ground. He wakes up a couple of hours later. The sun is shining through the clouds. Louis is completely dry. He feels like he’s in the middle of a desert. He tries to raise his hand, but his skin is so dry that it hurts.

At this moment, a street dog approaches him. It licks Louis from head to toe. He stands up, pets the dog, and goes home. The animal follows him. He squeezes into the apartment under the door and falls into bed. The next morning, the alarm clock sounds too loud. Louis tries to turn it off and feels terrible pain all over his body. His muscles got a huge load yesterday.

Louis wants to scream, but he can’t! So, he cries. He’s terrified that he literally can’t do anything. He spends several days in bed and gets up only to use the bathroom and to fill his stomach with bread crumbs and tap water. At some point, he realizes he can no longer live like this. He misses ordinary food, delicious drinks, and a normal lifestyle.

He decides to work out. Every day he does push-ups, squats, and pull-ups. His muscles are not so thin anymore. And now, after two months of hard training, he can lift up the laptop lid. At work, he carries three sheets of paper to his desk at a time and can type two hundred words a day. He reads every document and understands that his job isn’t that boring and pointless. The boss notices Louis is motivated and raises his salary.

Our hero tears off small pieces of vegetables and ham from other people’s sandwiches. But he believes that he will cook his own sooner or later. Every day the dog accompanies him from home to work. When the wind is strong, he grabs onto its fur.

He is strong enough to unlock the door again, which means he can let the dog inside his house. Daily workouts and perseverance make Louis happy. He feels better than at the time he had a normal body. An active lifestyle inspires Louis to read more books. It turns out that literature is exciting.

And so, one day, he wakes up in 3D. He feels like a superhero, ready to become the best chef in the world, earn a lot of money, and win an Olympic medal in any sport. He can do anything! Why didn’t he appreciate it before? Now life seems fascinating and full of meaning.

But now, he’s about to turn on the laptop to start watching a new TV show. “One episode first, and all the achievements later,” he thinks.

Louis used to put a lot of effort into opening the lid when he was in 2D. So now he accidentally breaks the computer! Good for him! He realizes that it was a laziness trap, so he won’t go there again.