The end of the world as we knew it came not with a bang, but with a press release. I am referring, of course, to the Portasizer, that most useful of household appliances. Think back on it. Do you remember the day they first announced it to the world? No, I don't either. Like all things which bring true change -- the printing press, the telephone, the car, the computer -- no one really pays attention until you wake up one day and realize the world you used to know is gone.

Oh, I know, you've read it all before. The shelves are clogged with books by every hack in search of a buck, about how it's changed our lives, either for the better or the worse, depending on who's doing the writing. Lots of us held our collective breath waiting to see what would happen, back when those first Portasizers were the size of a compact car and only places like NASA or IBM could afford one. I guess there must be people who are still waiting to see how it all turns out, the way some people still refuse to have a computer or a telephone in their homes. On the day the first "Portasizing for Dummies" book was published, I think most of us looked around and realized that half our friends either owned one or had access to one, and the genie was out of bottle. The Portasizer is here to stay.

I was an intern at Milenko General, just starting to think about going for a specialization, when the hospital bought its first Portasizer. Perhaps it was fate that the chief surgeon at Milenko, Dr. Scott Grildrig, was to pioneer a whole new field of medicine which became known as endonautics, for he was also my friend and my mentor, and, on at least one hazy occasion after too many post-surgery martinis, my lover.

"Vivian, take a look at this article," Scott had said one day, handing me a copy of the latest Lancet. In those days, I was on call 24 hours a day and rarely got more than five hours of sleep a night, so if he hadn't pointed it out to me, I would never have seen it. I scanned it quickly, frowning at the references to, and I quote, 'quantum sub- atomic reduction of mass in organic tissues.'

"Sounds like science fiction," I said. Near as I could figure, it meant real, honest-to-God shrinking, like in the fairy tales. Of course, that was in the days before the Portasizer had come into common use, handily shrinking every pollution problem we've ever had in a flash of light. "Is this some kind of silly prank? Who did the peer review?"

"I did," Scott said, his eyes twinkling. "Tell me, does anything suggest itself to you? No? Well, perhaps this image will suggest something. Picture an inch-tall surgeon..."

And that's how I found my specialty. That's right, I'm an endonaut, one of the few women in the field. Oh, sure, it sounds romantic. I thought so too, the first time I saw Scott climb inside a living heart and repair it by hand, the way a stonemason would repair a fireplace. The thrill quickly wore off when Scott started me practising in actual cadavers. You don't realize just how physically taxing everything becomes when you're an inch or two in height; fortunately, I keep myself in fighting trim with regular workouts. Back then, we worked in wetsuits, and more or less by feel. There were no textbooks. We were pioneers in an era of breathless new medical advances. Then, as the technique spread, the first accidents were reported and we were all instantly sobered. A clumsy nurse accidentally tearing a surgeon into two pieces with forceps during an operation. Cadavers being sewn up and frozen or incinerated with students still inside. A muscle spasm in an improperly anaesthetized patient crippling an orthodontic surgeon between two clenched molars. It wasn't a game any longer. There were very real risks involved.

These days I run my own private clinic, with my own name on the shingle. Vivian Sawyer, PhD Endonautics. That's me. We've come a long way since those early days, and our equipment is every bit as specialized as any astronaut's. Advanced cybernetics takes the place of what used to be sheer muscle power, which is good because I'm not as young as I used to me. I'll never see my fortieth birthday again, but my work keeps me fit and I haven't yet spent a night alone that I didn't want to.

I don't remember the day I met Lisa Brandt for the first time. There was nothing about her which impressed itself on me, and it's likely that we will never know why she did the things she did. Certainly it's too late to find out now. In my notes, I can see that Lisa, only just then having turned sixteen, came for her first consultation visit with her mother, Jacqueline. Lisa had been referred to me by a gastro specialist who had met me at a medical conference the year before. My services are not cheap, and most insurance companies won't pay for endonautic work. Even though the results are demonstratably and statistically superior to conventional treatment, it does cost more. That meant the Brandt family was probably quite wealthy, which turned out to be the case.

Lisa had been complaining of sharp abdominal cramping for several weeks. Neither x-rays nor biopsies had been conclusive, though there was a suspected partial blockage somewhere in the upper intestinal tract. There were a number of potential treatments, but endonautics offered the least painful -- though, ironically, the most intrusive. It is perhaps unsurprising that many people balk at the idea of having another person, even a doctor, actually inside their body. It's irrational, but our bodies are our most personal possession. Even I prefer, if I can find one, a female rather than male endonaut when I get my yearly pelvic exam. It's for this reason that I like to spend time getting acquainted with my patients, to put them at ease. If they like me, they don't seem to mind as much when I go crawling through their innards.

I made no mention in my notes, but I know I must have explained to both Lisa and her mother in great detail the procedure which I would use. I would use a medical Portasizer to reduce myself to slightly less than an inch in height, and would allow myself to be swallowed by Lisa, who would remain awake throughout the entire operation. It's important that the patient be conscious, so that normal digestion takes place. After a brief examination of Lisa's stomach, I would enter the small intestine proper through the duodenum and begin a more thorough examination. Within 24 hours, I would have travelled the entire length of Lisa's digestive tract and be excreted.

It goes without saying, of course, that I would remain safe inside my endosuit the entire time. If you have never seen one, they resemble something like a cross between a suit of medieval plate mail, a gorilla, and a particularly bulky space suit. Full size, it stands seven feet tall, weighs in excess of a thousand pounds, and its cybernetic servos are strong enough to lift a truck. There is a two- inch-thick armour of glaze-hardened ceramic which covers the entire structure except for the face-plate, which is perspex. The ceramic is harder than the best steel, and won't dissolve in the high-molarity hydrochloric acid secreted by the stomach, though it is somewhat brittle and can be damaged by a sharp blow. The suit has its own life support system complete with air recycler, and a power supply made from a miniaturized slow-breeder nuclear reactor. Equipped with a whole set of specialized tools for internal surgery, the occupant is totally self-sufficient inside it. The suit is worth more than my net income for five years, and I am justifiably proud in owning one.

That day, I would have held the endosuit in the palm of my hand, reduced to the size at which I would be wearing it, a little bit more than one inch. It's far too heavy and molecularly dense for me to justify the expense of reducing and enlarging it for anything except maintenance. Even then, I have found it cheaper to reduce the technician, if he's willing, than to grow the suit. I would have shown it to Lisa and her mother, and explained how the suit worked. After slowly outlining the steps I would take, I would have given Lisa a dozen simulated endosuits to practice swallowing and scheduled her for an appointment within two weeks. The entire operation would be done on the premises of my office, which possesses a fully-equipped surgery.

It was a common enough procedure. It's time-consuming, but not at all difficult or dangerous, and I did at least two dozen of them a year. And that's probably why I remember nothing about Lisa until the day of the actual operation, the events of which have been burned into my memories as if by fire.

 

The inside of the BMW sedan was silent with brittle hostility as Manfred Brandt pulled out of the driveway. His knuckles, which were visible through his kid driving gloves, were white on the steering wheel and his heavily-browed forehead scowled deeply. Beside him, Jacqueline had her face turned away, as if she was deeply interested in something outside her window. In fact, she felt trapped in the suffocating atmosphere inside the car, and in her mind, she was flying free in the blue sky above, far from the stress which had become such an omnipresent part of their family life. Unconsciously, her fingers twisted at the pearls around her neck, as if it was a hated collar which bound her.

"I hate you," said Lisa, from the back seat behind her father. She knew from experience that he couldn't reach her there while he was driving, and she would have plenty of warning if he pulled over to the side of the road. "I'm going to run away from home."

Manfred ground his teeth and stared furiously at the road ahead. He was determined not to sink to the level of shouting, and he knew if he opened his mouth, it would either be a satisfyingly glottal german profanity or a roar of anger. Jacqueline was being her usual distant self, floating along, he assumed, with the help of whatever brand of downers her tamed analyst was prescribing this week. He despised her for what he saw as a typically feminine weakness, but grudgingly admitted that he preferred her doped and distant to shrewish and screaming, which seemed to be her only other mood these days.

"I mean it," said Lisa. "I'm going to run away and let anyone who want to, fuck me. I'll give blow-jobs to all your shareholders and they'll laugh when I tell them I'm your daughter."

Manfred hunched his head unconsciously into his shoulders, as if he was being beaten, which was a mistake. Lisa saw it and realized that her current line of assault was making progress.

Lisa narrowed her eyes smiled bitterly. "Then I'll fuck their servants and maybe even their favourite dog. And while I'm screwing Rover in front of their kids, I'll scream 'Oh Manfred, you're the best Manfred, even if your dick is kind of small.'"

A white-hot flash of fury blinded Manfred, and he wrenched the wheel savagely to the side, sending the BMW screeching onto the shoulder of the road. Only the anti-lock brakes kept him from swerving in a fishtail into oncoming traffic as horns blared around the sliding car. Jacqueline gave a sharp cry as her forehead bounced off the side window. Even before the car had stopped moving, Manfred was twisting in his seat, grabbing for Lisa, who was struggling to make herself a smaller target by crouching down behind the seat.

"You little whore!" roared Manfred, reaching around, grabbing a big handful of his daughter's bleach-blonde hair and pulling, causing her to give a cry of pain.

"Stop it!" said Jacqueline, her placid demeanor cracking as her voice rose two octaves. Tears began welling up, threatening to make a ruin of her mascara. "I can't take it! Just stop it!"

"Ow, my stomach, ow," shouted Lisa with questionable veracity, as she tried unsuccessfully to yank her hair free.

"Fred! No! The bruises," hissed Jacqueline as her huband brought back his other hand for a punch.

Manfred's poised fist stopped in mid-air and the car was silent for two whole seconds while he fought down his rage. The sun glinted on the large gold ring on the middle finger of his fist. Like a bitter pill, he swallowed his anger, where it became a burning coal in his stomach. Slowly, he uncurled his fist and let go Lisa's hair. He began to tremble in a delayed reaction to the adrenaline pumping through his system.

Lisa looked straight into her father's eyes and smiled. It was a gloating, cynical smile that said: "I win."

Things had first begun to disintegrate for the Brandts the previous year. Lisa, the only child in a household of more than moderate wealth -- Manfred was the CEO of a bank which had started as a small neighbourhood trust in Lisbon and grown into a Fortune 500 company -- was accustomed to getting what she wanted, and when she was fifteen, she decided that what she wanted was her father.

It had been easy. Lisa had waited until the night her father had consumed rather more than the two cocktails to which he normally limited himself, and then seduced him. A bathrobe that wasn't closed completely, a playful kiss turning suddenly serious, and then his hands were all over her. It had been thrilling at first, a taboo and forbidden pleasure, but Lisa had quickly discovered what her mother had known for years: Manfred might be a fireball in the boardroom, but he was a dud in the bedroom.

Since then, Lisa had played her cards for all they were worth, extracting every concession she could get away with from her father until her blackmail had become too much for him to bear. In the chaos which resulted from the ensuing clash, the household had been totally shattered. Jacqueline had known almost at once what had happened between father and daughter, even before Manfred had told her in a clear and emotionless voice. She retreated to twice-weekly analysis and chemical solace. Manfred kept whatever feelings he might have had to himself, and spent less and less time at home. Instead, he chose to spend his time working, and leaving Lisa to be raised more or less by the servants.

Lisa's sly, malicious nature quickly made her even more hated than her father, who was roundly despised as a tyrant by the servants. It culminated in two maids whom Lisa had especially disliked vanishing without a trace one night, and Manfed was livid with rage, good help being so difficult to find. None of the other servants affected to know where the two women had gone. He become convinced that Lisa had orchstrated it.

And now had come the final straw. Lisa had been found in the shed by the gardener with her skirts around her ankles, screwing the son of one of the valets. It was intolerable. She had become the gossip of all the servants, and Manfred would not stand for it. Despite, or even because of Lisa's protestations of love for Teddy, the scruffy young man with the tattoo and the rings in his face, Manfred had paid off the valet and sent him away with his family.

Jacqueline touched her forehead where she had bumped it, hoping there wouldn't be a mark. Since Manfred had taken to using his fists, she had more than once spent days wearing dark glasses or long sleeves around the house to hide the bruises from the servants, whom she imagined, falsely, did not know. She was terrified that outsiders might find some kind of mark on Lisa, and that she, Jacqueline Brandt nee Chanelle, would be thought a Bad Mother. What would the women at the Club say?

Lisa settled wordlessly back into her seat as her father pulled back into the road. Her hand went to her abdomen as a sudden twinge made her wince in pain. Though she often used it to her advantage, Lisa was, in actuality, suffering from very real cramps. If the pain had not steadily increased, she would never have consented to sit in the same car with her parents, much less spend a whole day and night in their presence while everyone waited for her to take a shit.

The remainder of the trip was made in icy silence. Lisa had made her point, and she knew just exactly how far she could push her father.

The Brandt family was met in the waiting room of the clinic by Sven Holmgaard, Dr. Sawyer's assistant. He was actually a registered nurse, but with his six-foot tall, solidly packed Nordic build, no one could ever seem to bring themselves to call him Nurse Sven. When he spoke, it was with just the slightest trace of Finnish accent.

"Dr. Sawyer is just getting ready for you," said Sven, coming out from behind the large, modern, glass-and-chrome desk. "You have done as you were told, Lisa?"

Manfred answered before Lisa could open her mouth. "Exactly as the booklet you gave us said. She's had eight hours' sleep, and a big breakfast with plenty of bran."

"Good, good," said Sven, clapping his big hands. Then if you will come into the examination room, Dr. Sawyer will join us in a few moments."

The examination room was actually very large, a combination of operating theatre and electronics lab. The lighting was subdued but indirect and shadowless. Faint strains of modern classical music played from hidden speakers, and the floor, while bare, was softly padded and coloured a warm taupe to match the walls. In the very centre of the floor was an examination table which, while it did not look precisely inviting, was more like a high divan, amply padded for comfort. Scattered around the room were three large leather chairs.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," said Dr. Sawyer as she bustled into the room. She wore a white labcoat and her long, black hair was tied back from her face into a tight ponytail. "Is everything ready?"

"Yes, Dr. Sawyer," said Sven. He and the doctor were on a first name basis, and they had even slept together a couple of times, but in front of the patients she was always Dr. Sawyer. When they came to her, prepared to submit their bodies or their loved ones to her skill and judgement, they wanted Apollo, the God of Medicine; not the human, and thus fallible, Vivian Sawyer.

"Splendid," said Dr. Sawyer. "Lisa, if you'll get changed and hop up, we'll get things started."

Lisa took the thin paper gown which Sven proferred and looked mildly amused. She quickly shucked her clothes and shrugged into the gown, then climbed up on the examination table and laid down. She submitted to a brief but thorough examination by Dr. Sawyer. "What's it going to feel like?" asked Lisa, trying to keep the nervousness out of her voice.

Dr. Sawyer smiled. "You may experience a little discomfort, and if you do, I want you to tell Sven. I'll be very careful, I promise. If there is any pain, we'll administer a local anaesthetic, but that shouldn't be necessary. We'd prefer not to do that if we don't have to. Have you been practising swallowing the endosuit?"

Lisa nodded as Dr. Sawyer checked her blood pressure. "Yeah, it's pretty easy if I let my throat relax. It's like a really big pill."

Finishing her examination, Dr. Sawyer stepped back and smiled warmly at Lisa. "Good, then we're all set. Just remember the rules you learned and everything will be just fine. No unnecessary movements, no sleeping, and drink plenty of fluids. If you have trouble staying awake, Sven will read to you, or you can get him to put some real music on instead of this damned muzak!"

Lisa giggled, and Dr. Sawyer laughed back.

Sven had been examining a piece of equipment that looked something like a large camcorder on a wheeled tripod. He pressed a button and a soft, rising whine filled the room, then tapered off. "Ready when you are, Dr. Sawyer."

"Is that the Portasizer?" said Manfred, speaking for the first time.

"Yes it is," said Dr. Sawyer, as she walked over to the far end of the room, where a white circle had been scribed on the floor.

"It doesn't look like the ones we have at home," said Jacqueline.

"This is a medical Portasizer," said Sven, without turning to look at her. "It's more powerful, and a lot more accurate; we can specify tolerances down to one ten-thousandth of a millimetre."

Dr. Sawyer removed her shoes, and then her labcoat, which she hung on a peg placed just for that purpose. Underneath, she wore only a black body sock that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. She was a very attractive, large-busted woman. She felt more than saw the sharp interest from Manfred and was inwardly pleased. Lisa seemed to be giving her more than just casual attention too, which Dr. Sawyer noted with a wry lift of one eyebrow. She could see that Lisa, while not as bosomy as she was, would be a real heartbreaker some day. Dr. Sawyer, though, was firmly hetero and planned to stay that way, so she could judge Lisa's physical appeal only in a theoretical way.

"It's going to be very warm inside Lisa," explained Dr. Sawyer. "The endosuit can keep me cool, but there's no need to tax it more than is necessary. Alright, I'm all set. Oh, and Lisa, please remember not to chew."

Lisa's eyebrows went up in surprise.

"Going on three from mark," said Sven.

"Mark," said Dr. Sawyer, staring straight at the short barrel of the Portasizer, which pointed at her midsection.

"One, two, three," said Sven, counting off the seconds. On three, Sven's finger depressed the firing stud. The room lit up with a flash of bright white light, and there was a sudden tang of ozone in the air. The Portasizer made its trademark crackling bark. Dr. Sawyer was now a minute, black, insect-sized speck on the floor. Sven took the miniaturized endosuit from its usual holder on the counter and placed it gently on the floor, several inches away from the tiny doctor.

"She looks like a bug," said Lisa with an unpleasant smile. "I can see why she'd be worried about me chewing."

Sven gave a rumbling chuckle. "She warned you not to chew for your sake, not for hers. Your teeth would break before the endosuit did. Dr. Sawyer will be fine. She's a tough lady."

 

The vertigo hit me the way it always does, as the ceiling and walls seemed to rush away from me in all directions. I stood very still for a second, just allowing my brain to adjust to the sudden change in perspective. I watched Sven's suddenly gargantuan form lumber away to the distant mountains of the counter, and then return with the endosuit in his hand. The vibration of his footsteps shook the floor under my feet as he came close. Fingers the size of oak trees put the endosuit down in front of me, and as I began running through the external safety check, I managed to catch the exchange between Lisa and Sven. When you're less than an inch tall, the sound waves are so large that normal voices drop several octaves. It takes skill to be able to catch words which sound like rumbles of thunder. So why, you ask, don't I have the same problem with light waves? Good question. The physicists are still arguing about that one. If you figure it out, let them know.

When I was satisfied that the endosuit was undamaged -- there was little chance of that happening, since I inspected before and after each time I used it, but when you're this small, you don't take chances -- I cracked the shell open. It eased open with a pneumatic hiss that told me the pressure seals were working just fine. The whole torso swung open like an iron maiden, allowing me to step backwards into the leg holes. I hooked up the catheter (I would prefer a diaper but I am, after all, locked in with my own smell) and stuck my arms into the arm holes. The torso swung slowly shut, and I was encased in a thousand pounds of endosuit.

Self-diagnostics began running as soon as the suit closed. Green, all across the board. I know endonauts who will operate with an amber light or two in non-critical systems, but not me. I don't take risks I don't have to with a body I hope has thirty or forty good years left in it.

I keyed the throat mike. "Hey Sven, you getting this?"

"Five by five," came the reply, in Sven's voice. The electronics make allowances for the difference in size and step up the pitch for me.

I took a few steps back and forth, allowing the cybernetics to run self-correction routines as it slaved itself to my nervous system. When I moved, the endosuit would actually know before my body did which parts would be moving, which effectively allowed me to move as if the endosuit was a second skin. I certainly couldn't have moved its vast bulk with muscle power alone. "Ready for insertion," I reported. I double-checked that the transponder through which my position would be constantly monitored was working, and relaxed my muscles.

"Roger that," said Sven.

The huge fingers returned and the whole endosuit gave a lurch as Sven pinched it between his thumb and index finger. External pressure gauges remained nominal. I knew Sven would be squeezing the endosuit with more pressure than is strictly necessary, since he knew it could not harm the suit, whereas if he dropped it, it would shatter into a million pieces -- along with me. Everything grew dark as the pad of his thumb pressed against the two-inch-thick perspex of the face plate.

I had a sensation of rocking motion, and then I was standing in the concave boul of a metal teaspoon. Lisa's face, as large as a drive-in movie screen to me, was directly ahead. As I watched, she opened her mouth, revealing a cave full of white stalactites and stalagmites. The spoon swept forward and I passed under the arch of her top lip, past her teeth, and into the interior of her mouth. I stepped from the spoon carefully, the feet of the endosuit sinking deeply into the wet, pink flesh of Lisa's tongue. The light vanished as Lisa closed her lips around the spoon, plunging me into utter blackness. I toggled the klieg lights on, and the glistening flesh inside Lisa's mouth sprang into view. The spoon had been withdrawn and now I was totally alone.

The tongue undulated beneath me. I forced my body to remain loose as I was bounced head over heels to the back of Lisa's mouth. This was the worst part, for me. Once I was in the stomach things would be relatively calm, but I was going to pick up some bruises before I got there, despite the padding in the endosuit. It could get especially bad if the patient couldn't swallow me on the first try, and I ended up tumbling around again and again. That was why we gave them imitation endosuits to practice on.

Lisa, to give her credit, did it on the first try. I was forced to the roof of her mouth, and then I slid backwards in a slippery pool of saliva into the yawning black tunnel which was the entrance to her esophagus. Her throat muscles held me in a wet embrace, and began kneeding me down her throat. I dropped what seemed to me seventy-five feet or so, accompanied by the magnified gurgling sound of Lisa swallowing. At the end of the trip, both I and the accompanying river of viscous saliva were squeezed through the sphincter at the end of the esauphagus and into her waiting stomach. After a short fall of another twenty feet or so, I landed noiselessly amidst the soft, folded crenellations in the pit of her stomach. The world turned 90 degrees as Lisa laid down on her back, and then there was no motion at all.

I laid still for a moment, checking the life support systems again, and found them all green. Other than the usual bruising, I didn't seem to be hurt, so I stood up and played the klieg lights around me.

Beautiful. No matter how many times I see it, the wonders of the human body, seen alive and from within, never fail to bring me a religious sense of awe. I stood only an inch tall in the sagging, meaty sack of Lisa's stomach, and it was more beautiful to me than Westminster Abbey. All around me, the infinite folds of Lisa's pinkly healthy stomach lining reached up, arching overhead toward the tight pucker of its entrance. It was for sights like this that I became an endonaut to begin with. Even as I stared, the walls began oozing a runny yellow liquid, bile to protect the lining from the concentrated hydrochloric acid which had begun to pool around my feet. The stomach muscles began to contract around me and it was time to move on. I could tell at a glance that this was a healthy stomach. The problem would lie somewhere farther down the digestive tract.

"Everything okay in there?" came Sven's voice from the speakers.

"Roger," I said, shaking myself out of my introspective mood. I was being paid to do a job, not admire God's handiwork. "Stomach is looking fine. Tell Lisa to relax and just let her body do what comes naturally."

"Got it," said Sven. "Call when you need me."

"Will do," I said, and keyed the mike off. Sven and I had a system, and we trusted each other. Some endonauts like to chat while they're working. Not me. Sven knew I would keep radio silence until I had found something that needed reporting. Besides, he could track my location with the transponder, and if anything like a total life support failure happened, Sven could have Lisa unconscious and under the knife within two minutes -- which, of course, explained why Lisa was wearing a tearaway hospital gown.

Muscular contractions were beginning to push me in the direction of the duodenum. The air outside my face plate was hazy with the lung- searing fumes of the acid which pooled up to my knees. I wouldn't have lasted five minutes without the endosuit, which is why I take such careful precautions. I knew that the acid was strong enough to dissolve even the perspex over time, so I made sure to have the face plate replaced every few operations, when it showed any signs of getting cloudy.

What seemed like thousands of gallons of water came thundering down around me as Lisa drank her first glass of water, plunging me beneath the surface. The muscular contractions became stronger. Through the murky, bile- and acid-filled water, I saw the sphincter of the duodenum relax slightly, and allowed myself to be carried through, as if I was a morsel of partially-digested food. I could have forced my way through, but allowing Lisa's body to do the work for me meant less discomfort for Lisa.

I had entered the small intestine. Most people think it must me like a sewer tunnel made of flesh, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. There's a lot of intestine, hundreds of yards of it, and if it was all inflated, you'd need an abdomen the size of a van. For me, it was more like being rolled around inside a thick, wet blanket. The water began draining quickly, and I allowed it to push me, assisted by the muscular contractions of the small intestine itself. Picture a snake trying to eat an egg just slightly smaller around than the snake itself, and you'll get a good mental picture of what it's like.

Almost at once, I could see the inflammation. The lining of the intestine, which should be silky-smooth and greyish-pink when it's healthy, was a somewhat darker shade with patches and striations of angry red, and had a puffy, swollen appearance. I popped the hypo built into the arm of the suit, which looks, at the scale I was at, like a long, lethal spike, but is really a very slender needle. I dialled up a broad-spectrum antibiotic and plunged the tip of the spike into the wall of the intestine. It might give Lisa the runs for a few days, but I didn't like the look of that swelling. A pneumatic pump hissed as as the antibiotic was injected, and I kept the spike in place, fighting the clutching contractions around me, until I heard the musical tone which informed me I could retract the hypo. I let myself get pushed along once more.

Things continued this way for the next two hours. I was in what I call "doctor mode," which means I had little sense of myself as anything more than a pair of eyes. I clicked a few seconds of footage through the suitcam of the inflammation around me for the files, but mostly I remained quiescent and watchful. It was then, two hours into the operation, that I spotted the blockage.

There it was, big as life. I smiled when I saw it. It was a little smaller than the endosuit, so it wasn't quite an inch across, and it was covered in a thick cocoon of bile and decomposing food. I could see the deep red and purple circles, like a target, around the spot where it was wedged into the side of the intestine, nestled into a kink where it was already especially narrow. There was enough room that I could probably have squeezed the endosuit through, so it was only a partial blockage, but whatever had caused the obstruction was also embedded in the flesh of the intestine itself. I played the klieg lights along the wall of the intestine, noting the thick ridge of scar tissue where the obstruction had torn the lining as it was dragged along by the contractions of the intestine, stopping only when it reached this narrowing. Lisa was a lucky girl. If it had torn all the way through, she would have been looking at a case of peritonitis.

It was probably a chicken bone, I thought. I had seen enough cases like this to know what to expect. I would pull it loose, and either break it up into smaller pieces or smooth the sharp spot so it could slide out on its own. I could then cauterize the wound, finish my reconaissance, and emerge successful. Still smiling, I began wiping away the slimy coating from the obstruction.

 

"Sven, are you there?"

Sven was instantly alert. His head snapped up at the sound of Dr. Sawyer's voice from the speaker. He knew her well enough to recognize the sound of distress, though he knew the other people in the room would not. He made a show of smiling and remaining calm. "Go ahead, Dr. Sawyer," he said to the invisible pick-ups. Already he was running through a mental checklist of things he would have to do to get the doctor out of there in a big hurry.

"I need something from Lisa's file," said Dr. Sawyer.

Sven smiled and nodded, rising casually from his chair. "Understood, I'm on my way."

Dr. Sawyer needed no such thing, Sven knew. It was a code they had worked out between the two of them, when she needed to say something out of the hearing of the patient. Usually it was bad news. Sven went to the comm panel and toggled the speakers and pick-ups off, switching it to private mode. "I'll be right back," he said to Lisa and her parents as he left the room and closed the door behind him.

Sven picked up the phone on his desk in the waiting room and pressed the 'link' button. "Okay, Viv, I'm clear. Go head."

"We have a problem," said Dr. Sawyer. Her voice was the cool monotone she reserved for crises. "I've found the obstruction. It's a car, Sven."

Sven frowned. "What, you mean a toy car? What do you mean by a car?"

"I mean a real car," said Dr. Sawyer. "It's been reduced to, uh, about three quarters of an inch, I think. Sportscar, it looks like, mostly plastic, aluminum engine. Not much metal to show up in an x-ray. It looks like a crumpled piece of one fender is lodged in the lining of the small intestine."

"How the hell did she get a shrunken car inside her?" said Sven, scratching his forehead with his fingers. "You're sure it's real?"

"Sven," said Dr. Sawyer, her voice still calm, "there are people in the car. The doors are closed and the windows are rolled up. The inside is all rotted, but there are two skeletal bodies in the front seat, and one in the back. It's real."

Sven lowered himself into the chair. The silence grew while he rubbed his forehead with his fingers, frowning down at the rolodex on his desk.

"Are you still there?" said Dr. Sawyer.

"Yes, yes, still here, Viv," said Sven. "Sorry. This... I have no idea how to handle this. What do we do?"

"This car is evidence," said Dr. Sawyer. "I don't want to damage it, but I've got to work it loose, or it could lacerate her intestine, and then we're looking at peritonitis. First thing you do is get her parents aside and let them know, then you call the police. I'll stay with the... obstruction, and try to guide it through the rest of the digestive tract without it coming apart. If it starts to break up, you may have to open her up and get it."

"Understood," said Sven, rising to his feet. He hung up and walked back into the examination room, his mouth set in a thin slash. "Mr. and Mrs. Brandt, if you'd like to come with me, please? We won't be long, Lisa. Just call if you need anything."

Sven held the door for Lisa's parents, then closed it behind him as he joined them. All three stood. Manfred looked grim, while Jacqueline looked frightened.

"Is there a problem?" said Manfred.

Sven nodded and looked away, then forced himself to look back into Manfred's face. "I'm afraid so, Mr. Brandt. Now, before you start worrying, Lisa is fine. Dr. Sawyer has found the obstruction, and she's removing it as we speak."

"But that's good news... isn't it?" said Jacqueline in a nervous voice. She was twisting her pearls in her fingers again.

"Yes, Mrs. Brandt," said Sven. "The problem is the nature of the obstruction itself. It seems to be an, um, an automobile. A very small automobile, a real one. Dr. Sawyer says there are three people inside it."

Jacqueline gasped and put her fingers to her mouth. "Are they alive?"

"Don't be so stupid," snapped Manfred. "Of course they're not alive, you idiot woman."

"Oh God," whispered Jacqueline. "It's those boys, isn't it. Lisa hated them! And then they disappeared, and, oh God..."

"Shut up," hissed Manfred. His eyes moved to Sven, who stood staring at the two of them as if he had turned over a damp stone and found something nasty living there. "How much?"

Sven blinked. "Mr. Brandt?"

"You heard me," said Manfred, pulling his chequebook from the breast pocket of his suit. "How much? Shall we make it one million? Will the Sawyer woman keep her mouth shut?"

Sven's face hardened. "Dr. Sawyer is not that kind of woman."

Manfred nodded. "Fine. It's dangerous work, I'm sure accidents happen, yes? Poor Dr. Sawyer, lost in the line of duty. How much do you want? Let's say two million." His fountain pen scratched against the creamy paper of the personal cheque.

From ears to neck, Sven's normally pale white skin flushed red with suppressed anger. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sudden melodic tone of the telephone on his desk ringing. The room was pin-drop silent as Sven lifted the receiver to his ear.

"What the hell is going on out there, Sven?" demanded Dr. Sawyer. "Unf! Why is Lisa moving around? Ow! Dammit!"

Sven looked up at the door which led to the examination room and saw that it was open a crack. He had taken care to close it quite firmly when he came out. His face grew even more grim. "Hang on," he said, "I'll take care of it."

Sven put Dr. Sawyer on hold, then drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. He knew Lisa must have heard everything, and would probably have to be restrained. Well, that was no problem. The big Finn was an experienced nurse, and trained for that. The examination table had restraining straps, tastefully discreet, and he would use those if he had to. The important thing was to calm Lisa down without causing unduly violent movement which could injure the tiny doctor inside her.

"Lisa?" said Sven, going to the door. He put his hand on the knob and paused. He didn't want to panic or frighten her. "Lisa, I'm coming in now, I just want to talk, okay?" He opened the door and walked in, having only a fraction of a second to realize that the Portasizer had been rolled across the floor to point directly at the door, and that Lisa stood behind it.

"Fuck you, boyscout," said Lisa, and pressed the firing stud.

The Portasizer gave its sizzle-crack sound, and when the afterimages from the flash of light had died away, the big Finn was now a tiny inch-tall form on the floor.

"Lisa!" screamed Jacqueline, framed in the doorway beside her wide-eyed husband. "What are you doing?"

"What I should have done a long time ago," said Lisa, her voice glacial with frost. "And fuck you too."

The Portasizer gave a second sizzle-crack, and Lisa's parents became a pair of snall, well-dressed figures on the floor, their inch-tall bodies struggling in the plush of the carpeting in the waiting room.

Sven had begun running the second he understood what had happened, hoping to make it to cover underneath the nearest counter. His flight came to a stop as a bare foot which seemed to be more than 40 feet long slammed down directly before him, like a huge, pink wall. He stared straight up the massive, apartment building-sized pillar of her leg, hardly even noticing that he was looking up her paper gown, and up to the eyes which stared down at him from seemingly hundreds of feet overhead.

"You stupid asshole," said Lisa with a sneer. "You don't even have a lock-out code on your Portasizer. I don't think I have any use for you, so, guess you get to mnake like a bug."

Sven screamed and raised his arms is a useless gesture of self-defence as Lisa brought her foot up -- and then brought it smashing down on top of him. He vanished under the ball of her foot, and there was a wet crunching sound. Lisa twisted her foot back and forth several times, as if she was putting out a cigarette, and then slid it back across the floor, leaving a long smear of blood and grease.

"Ew, messy," said Lisa. She laughed and drew a little circle with her big toe in the blood, then crossed it out.

"You," said Lisa, as she padded barefoot into the waiting room -- leaving bloody wet spots -- and extracted her struggling parents from the rug with her fingers. "You I have plans for."

Lisa closed her eyes as she closed her fingers around her struggling parents, shivering with the delicious feeling of hatred and power, only just barely able to restrain herself from crushing them into a broken mass of flesh and bone. God, how she despised them.

Quickly, Lisa dressed and dropped her inch-tall parents into the front pocket of her jeans. As she came out of the examination room, tucking her shirt into her pants, Lisa noticed the 'hold' light on the phone in the waiting room flashing. She picked up the received and pressed the button.

"Sven!" shouted Dr. Sawyer. "What the hell are you doing? Sven...?"

Lisa smiled coldly. "And fuck you too, bitch," she said softly into the phone, trailing her fingers lightly over her abdomen. Then she gently hung up the phone and left the building.

Using her father's punch code, Lisa started the car and drove back to the mansion. She didn't have a license, but no policeman who valued his badge would randomly stop a car registered to the CEO of a major international bank. She parked it haphazardly in the U-shaped drive in front of the house and, after a brief detour to her bedroom, went immediately to a disused potting shed behind the gardens, where she settled down to wait.

To pass the time, Lisa reached into her pocket and extracted her terrified parents. She sat in a corner with her knees drawn up, and she placed them each on one of knees so they were directly before her face. Peering at them closely, she could see Manfred stood stock still with no expression on his face at all. Jacqueline couldn't stand, and so she kneeled in her print dress, burying her face into her hands as if this would make the world go away.

"I'm just waiting for Teddy," said Lisa in a conversational tone, making Jacqueline look up. "Even after you sent him away, he comes back and fucks me."

Lisa saw her mother wince. "You don't like the word 'fuck,' is that it? Not that a blame you or anything. I mean, Manfred's a pretty bad lay and all. Fucking would bother me too if I was married to him."

A thought seemed to occur to Lisa, and she pursed her lips. "I guess I can do anything I want now. I mean, I always get what I want anyway, that's what you taught me, but I mean I don't have to worry about what anyone is going to think."

Taking an outraged Manfred between her fingers, Lisa began carefully tearing his clothes off with her fingernails, sticking her tongue out as she concentrated. When she was done, she put him back on top of her knee.

"There," said Lisa. "That's the way I like to see you. Put on some weight, haven't you? Look at that gut. I guess Old Ironsides Brandt is getting soft in the middle." When she laughed, it was a soft, sly kind of laugh, the kind that causes chills.

When she got no reaction from Manfred, Lisa turned her attention back to Jacqueline, who had her back to her daughter's face and was huddled as small as she could make herself with her legs tucked up inside her dress. She was rocking quickly back and forth, and Lisa knew without even looking that she was twisting her pearls ceaselessly in her hand.

"Such a pathetic cow," said Lisa, flicking a long fingernail at her mother's back and sending her sprawling, nearly off the top of Lisa's bent knee to the floor. Jacqueline quickly huddled herself into a ball again, tucking her head down into her shoulders. "You make me sick."

Without speaking, Lisa used her fingers to tear the dress from her mother, smiling at the high-pitched squeaks and chirps which were Jacqueline's loudest and most ear-splitting shrieks.

"Oh, what will the girls at the Club say," mocked Lisa in a falsetto imitation of her mother's voice. "Did I ever tell you I used your dildo once? I found it while I was snooping in your room. I thought it was really hot to use the same dildo my mother had shoved up her cunt. I licked it all over."

Jacqueline, naked except for her panties now, crouched as small as she could with her head tucked between her knees and her hands over her ears. Manfred, standing on Lisa's other knee, watched his wife with utter contempt.

"Verdammt," growled Manfred, his voice so small that only his wife had any chance of hearing it. "For once in your worthless existence, show some dignity, you useless, spineless, coward."

"Make it stop!" screamed Jacqueline. "Make it stop!" She repeated it over and over until she broke into wracking sobs that stifled her words in her throat.

Lisa hummed to herself as she fumbled in her pocket for the ballpoint pen there. With an expression of vague interest on her face, she rolled Jacqueline over with a finger, so that her tiny cotton-clad buttocks were pointed up and slightly raised. Then using one of her fingernails to roll down the panties, she slid the nib of the pen between her mother's labia.

Jacqueline screamed at the outrage to her body. The nib was hard as steel, and as thick around as her wrist. It rammed violently inside her until the very tip slammed painfully into her cervix, depositing a thick blob of ink. While Jacqueline writhed and screamed in pain and humiliation, Lisa repeatedly raped her with the nib of the ballpoint, pumping it in and out like a huge dildo. Lisa smiled the entire time. Only once the nib of the pen had been slicked with blood did Lisa deign to remove it, leaving Jacqueline limp and sobbing, her hands clutched to her bleeding groin.

Manfred turned his head away in disgust and spit. "Phaugh."

Lisa flicked her tongue over the nib of the pen. "Don't be so smug, Manfred. You're next."

Manfred backed away a step. "Vas ist --" was as far as he got, before the massive, tree-sized fingers of his daughter forced him onto his stomach. When he felt the nib press its way between his buttocks, he let out a single hoarse shout, and began to struggle helplessly against the restraining fingers. As the nib rammed home, forcing its way up his rectum and stretching it until the tissues began to tear, Manfred let out a low groan and turned his head to the side -- where he was shocked to see his wife looking at him with such a look of venomous, gloating hatred that he momentarily forgot the agony inside him.

While Lisa rammed the nib in and out of her father's rectum until it bled freely, Manfred glared back at his wife and bit his tongue to keep from screaming. He would not give that weak jellyfish the satisfaction of hearing him scream. He suffered in quiet torment, while his anus was torn ragged, uttering only the occasional pained grunt.

"Those three shitheads in the car weren't the first, you know," said Lisa as she stopped raping Manfred for long enough to examine her handiwork. "I used the Portasizer on those two maids, too. You should have seen the look in their faces." Lisa laughed.

Deciding that she had done a good job, Lisa tossed the pen away into a corner and smiled as she watched her parents try to staunch their bleeding orifices. "I shrank the maids to three inches with the kitchen Portasizer, and made one watch while I fed the other one to the gecko in the study. It was funny as hell watching her little legs kicking in the thing's mouth. It looked like so much fun I ate the other one myself. I had a lot of trouble swallowing her whole, so I kind of bit parts off until I could get her down. Really messy, and it tasted like shit."

Lisa shrugged. "Anyway, that's why, when those three guys from the Club pissed me off that night, I made the their car nice and small. While the two of you were still getting shitfaced in the bar, I followed them out into the parking lot, got the Portasizer I had hid in the car, and let them have it. I swallowed the entire thing whole. Made me laugh like crazy. I could feel the wheels spinning in my throat. I never thought the damned thing would get lodged in my guts, you know?"

Like a light switch, the smile turned off on Lisa's face. "They shouldn't have called me a stuck-up bitch."

"Who's a stuck-up bitch?" said Teddy as he opened the door to the shed and clomped inside. He wore heavy military boots with dungarees and a somewhat battered leather jacket. Rings pierced his left nostril, one eyebrow, and both ears. His hair seemed to nearly stand up on end, stiff with gel that made it look wet. In build, he was stocky and solid, though not as powerful as Sven had been.

"C'mere," said Lisa. She gathered Manfred and Jacqueline into her hand.

Teddy closed the door of the shed and threw himself down in a rustle of leather beside Lisa. Leaning over, he pressed his face to hers, giving her a long, open-mouthed kiss.

"Mmmm," said Lisa, smiling, when they broke apart. "I have a big surprise for you."

"Yeah?" said Teddy. He ran the fingers of one hand through his hair to make sure it was still sticking up. With his other hand he groped at Lisa's breasts through her shirt.

"Stop it," giggled Lisa, slapping his hand away. "Let me ask you a question. You think my mom is sexy?"

"Fuck yeah," said Teddy without thinking, only then realizing what he had said and glancing over to see if Lisa was mad. He wasn't overly burdened with intelligence, and he was forever falling into Lisa's traps. He was relieved to see that Lisa didn't look angry, although there was something weird about her mood he couldn't place.

"Would you fuck her if you could?" said Lisa. She lifted her eyebrows suggestively.

Teddy scrutinized Lisa's face to see if he was being led into some kind of trap. With a mental sigh, he acknowledged Lisa was too good at it for him to tell, so all he could do was tell the truth and suck up later if he had to. "Yeah. She's like, all upper class and stuff. You know, like that french chick that makes all those clothes. Your mom is really hot."

Lisa grinned in a way that made Teddy nervous. "Here," said Lisa opening her hand and holding it out to him. "Look at this."

"What the fuck," said Teddy. His eyes bugged. His jaw dropped open with a jingle of steel rings. "Lisa! Those are, like, people!"

"Sure are," said Lisa.

"Lisa! Man, you can't do that," breathed Teddy, unable to tear his eyes away from the two inch-tall little pink bodies in her hand. One shrank away from him, trembling, while the other one struggled to its feet, defiant. "That's. like, illegal or some shit like that. Your folks are gonna freak out totally."

"Teddy," said Lisa patiently, in the tone of voice teachers use on slow students, "those are my parents."

Teddy goggled, first at the the tiny people, then at Lisa, and then back at the tiny people. "Whoah. Oh man. That's some heavy shit. Oh Lisa, I don't feel good about this. This is, like, uh... whoah."

A little smile crossed Lisa's lips. "Would you like to hold one?"

Teddy licked his lips nervously, and wiped his palms, which had suddenly become damp, on his pants. "Uh, yeah. Okay. Which one should I... ?"

"Here, take Jacqueline," said Lisa. She held her hand over Teddy's, using the nail of her index finger to herd her mother into his palm, tumbling her bodily the last two inches.

Manfred had watched the proceedings without expression until Lisa passed his wife to Teddy. Now his eyes narrowed to slits. He had no illusions as to his chances of survival, but now that it was too late to help, he was able to ignore the excruciating pain in his bleeding rectum to think clearly. Once, he had thought himself more ruthless than his daughter. Now he knew he had been mistaken. "Teddy, you imbecile," he muttered. "She's using you."

Even had Manfred screamed it at the top of his lungs, and even had Teddy heard him, it's doubtful that it would have had any kind of effect. The tiny woman in his hand held Teddy's full and rather limited attention.

"She's so small," said Teddy. "I can hardly feel her. Hey, it looks like she's bleeding or something."

"She had a little accident," said Lisa. "Touch her. Go ahead."

Jacqueline made little squeaking noises of protest, cringing away, but Teddy's fingertip pursued her relentlessly. It slammed her down onto his palm and held her nearly immobile while its rough, leathery pad stroked her whole body, mashing her breasts down painfully against her.

"Awesome," said Teddy. "She's so soft, like velvet or rabbit fur or something. Uh, like, are we going to get in trouble or something, Lisa? I mean, your mom, she doesn't look too happy about this."

"I don't think it's going to matter," said Lisa. "You ever done a three-way, Teddy?"

Teddy shook his head.

Lisa, using her free hand, reached over and began unbuckling Teddy's pants. "How would you like to do me and Jacqueline at the same time?"

Teddy grinned. "Oh yeah, that's like, so fucking twisted. I love it. You're such a perv! But, uh, isn't your mom kinda, you know, small?"

"Mmmm," said Lisa, tugging open Teddy's pants. He wore no underwear and his immense member sprang instantly forward. "You're not."

Wriggling his buttocks, Teddy squirmed out of his jeans until they were huddled down around his boots. His penis, easily eight inches long, wobbled back and forth comically, in time with his struggles. It was, in fact, the uncommonly large bulge in Teddy's tight pants which had originally tempted Lisa to check it out more closely. His unit had turned out to be everything the packaging had suggested -- and more.

Lisa looked dowm at Manfred, thoughtful. "Let's keep you out of mischief for a while," she said, and lifted her hand to her lips. They opened wide in a huge red arch leading to the wet, toothy cave beyond.

"Gott in Himmel," said Manfred, staggering away from those lips in panic. Lisa's hand tipped sharply upward and his feet lost their purchase, sending him falling backwards, arms flailing. The back of his legs struck Lisa's lower lip, then his buttocks struck her lower incisors, causing him to flip completely inside her mouth, onto the hot, slimy surface of her tongue. Her lips closed, and she pressed him to the roof her mouth, trapping him immobile and terrified in the steamy blackness.

With both hands now free, Lisa began doing a slow, sensual strip-tease before Teddy, with a look of terrible sexual hunger on her face. When she began pulling her black lace panties down a few inches at a time to reveal a bare, shaved mons, her expression became indistinguishable from raging fury. Teddy realized, vaguely, than Lisa was not looking so much as him as she stripped, but at the tiny woman in his hand. It made his animal instincts ring with alarms, but he didn't understand why. Lisa was already very wet, her labia puffy and gaping.

Wordlessly -- her mouth being otherwise occupied -- Lisa held out her hand. Teddy frowned quizzically until she pointed at Jacqueline. He glanced down at his hand, and realized the inch-tall socialite was making frantic motions and unintelligable chirping noises at him.

"No! Teddy! No!" screamed Jacqueline, making supplicating gestures at Teddy. "Please Teddy! No! Don't let her take me! I'll give you anything you want, anything! Oh God, Teddy, she's insane, don't let her hurt me!"

Teddy shrugged and dropped Jacqueline into her daughter's hand.

Lisa smiled a terrible, sinister smile as she seized her mother between her fingers and sank to her knees.over Teddy. With her free hand, Lisa wrapped her fingers around Teddy's member and began pumping up and down until it came fully erect. A single drop of fluid oozed from the top of his penis and glistened wetly. Still smiling, Lisa set Jackeline down on the very tip of Teddy's member, so that she rode it like a horse. The tiny triangular patch of hair at Jacqueline's groin, already damp with blood, became soaked with what seemed to her to be gallons of watery semen. She began to cry.

"Holy shit," said Teddy, who stared open-eyed down the length of his body from where he lay, propped up on his elbows. "I can feel her," he breathed.

Gently, Lisa rubbed Jacqueline back and forth over the spongy tip of Teddy's penis, and against the sensitive underside, which made Teddy gasp. The most violent beatings Jacqueline could inflict with her heels and fists not only did not hurt, but added to the pleasurable sensation.

Still smiling, Lisa bent Jacqueline backward, so that she lay almost spread-eagled, with her buttocks mired in the now steady leak of semen from the hole at the top of Teddy's penis. Then, holding Jacqueline in place, she rose up on her knees so that her hot, dripping cleft hovered only an inch over Jacqueline's heaving breasts.

"Jesus," said Teddy, suddenly alarmed. "You're not gonna --"

Lisa sank down, deftly removing her fingers as her labia spread to envelop both the knob of Teddy's penis and the screaming woman lying prone atop it.

Jacqueline shrieked for all she was worth as she saw the black, wet chasm bearing down on top of her, but was muffled as the velvety flesh of her daughter's labia passed on either side of her, pressing her into the slick, soft flesh inside her vagina, pinned in place by the massive organ underneath her.

Lisa continued to drop down, enveloping inch after inch of the huge member. She knew from experience that she could take the whole thing only by applying her full weight and stretching until it hurt. Two inches from the bottom, she felt slight pressure against her cervix and a powerful tickling sensation. With a rumbling giggle, she rose up an inch, and then dropped back down with a little bit more weight. A second later she repeated this. Anything Teddy might have said was silenced as he lay with his head back, panting and groaning with the need for release.

Jacqueline felt herself slammed forcefully into the slightly yielding surface of Lisa's cervix, driving out what little breath she had left. The pressure eased, and then she was slammed forward again with even greater force, nearly making her black out. The third time, several ribs snapped, and she twisted in agony, prevented from screaming by lack of air.

Lisa groaned ecstatically, nearly dropping Manfred from her mouth in the process. Panting heavily through her nose, she let her full weight drop down, impaling herself on Teddy and shivering as she felt the tiny body crumple and explode inside her. Her orgasm caused her vagina to grip Teddy like a glove, which sent him into shuddering release also. For a full minute, Lisa bounced energetically up and down, giving herself repeated orgasms until Teddy began to grow limp inside her. Teddy slid out of her with a wet pop, his shiny half-limp member covered in a mingling of their combined juices and smears of blood.

For a moment, Lisa considered taking the time to dig the smashed remains out of herself, but decided she liked the idea of having Jacqeline's remains pasted inside of her. There would be time to douche later. In the mean time...

When Lisa's fingers curled around his nearly-flaccid shaft, Teddy felt himself begin to stiffen again. It was almost painfully pleasureable. He knew Lisa was capable of coaxing two or even three orgasms from him in a row; more if she was feeling horny and vicious. When her lips touched the head of his penis and parted to allow him entrance into her mouth, he had to bite his hand to keep from shouting, which might alert someone that they were in the shed.

Lisa parted her lips very slightly, allowing a dim bar of light to penetrate the inside of her mouth. As she expected, she felt Manfred scramble across her tongue toward the light, desperately trying to squeeze between her teeth. Laughing deep in her throat, she tipped her head and took the head of Teddy's penis in her mouth.

Manfred raised a hand in defence when he saw the gigantic, subway- sized penis force its way between Lisa's lips, cutting off his light once again. He tried with as much desperation to crawl away to the side as he had to get out, but Lisa's tongue forced him back. The spongy knob collided with him in the dark, and began forcing him toward the back of Lisa's mouth -- toward her throat.

Stifling her gag reflex, Lisa brought her lips lower and lower on the huge, gently throbbing shaft, using her tongue to swab it clean of juices and her mother's blood. She smiled around her mouthful as she felt Manfred fighting against the push toward her throat.

Manfred felt more than saw the sucking blackness behind him and knew he was in Lisa's throat. With utter heart-pounding fear, he grabbed hold of the ridge of flesh which marked the edge of Teddy's knob and hung on grimly.

Lisa began bobbing her head up and down, gently at first and then with greater and greater speed. She could feel the shape of her father clinging to the end of Teddy's penis, which made her groin ache with pleasure. Finally, she rammed her lips straight down until her chin struck Teddy's balls, driving his rod deep down her throat. His balls spasmed, and Teddy groaned as he exploded into her throat. Lisa began swallowing quickly.

"Oh scheisse," whispered Manfred as he felt the first rumblings of the coming explosion. In less than a second, the thundering, firehose impact of the semen tore him violently loose, and he began sliding in a foaming cataract down his daughter's rapidly-working throat.

For thirty seconds, Manfred laid where the slimy tide had dropped him, in utter darkness. The ground felt silky, wet, hot and terribly biological beneath him. With trembling hands he wiped himself as best he could of the clinging semen, knowing where he must be. Then Lisa sat upright, and the world tilted ninety degrees. He fell a short distance into a puddle of warm goo that rose to his shins. Once again, he wiped himself with his hands and stood tentatively. For a minute or so, he listened to groaning, creaking noises, like the hausers of great sailing ships, which he realized with a sob of despair was the sound of muscles contracting. Behind it all, like a drumbeat, was the regular thud-shush of Lisa's heartbeat. The air was thick, humid, and stale, and reeked of the sharp bleach smell of Teddy's semen. Dripping noises began as he felt the muscles of Lisa's stomach contracting beneath his feet. Lacking the protection of an endosuit, Manfred found the experience somewhat less than religious. Soon the air was acrid with the smell of acid, and Manfred might have screamed for a long time as the flesh sloughed away from him had the acid haze not also dissolved the delicate tissues of his lungs.

Lisa lapped Teddy's softening penis clean, and then sat up, rubbing her stomach with a strange, intense smile on her face.

Teddy, his face red with exertion, propped himself up on one elbow to look at Lisa. "Uh, I sort of noticed what happened to your mom. Um, is your dad..."

Lisa licked her lips like a cat and grinned, showing lots of teeth.

"Holy fuck," said Teddy, his eyes huge. "You didn't! You ate your dad?"

"He was delicious," said Lisa, smiling.

"Oh shit, oh shit," said Teddy, sitting up straight and cradling his head in his hands. "We're in such deep shit it's not funny. Oh Jesus, Lisa, my folks are going to go crazy. Lisa, we're gonna go to jail, man! You can't do shit like this." He groaned. "Oh Christ, what has my dick got me into this time?"

Lisa stood and stretched, uttering a polite burp. "You have such a dull little mind, Teddy. That's what I like about you. We're not going to jail."

Teddy looked up from his growing misery. "We're not?"

Lisa laughed. "I was ready to blow this popsicle stand long ago. Do you know how much jewellery Jacqueline has? She never even knew when I grabbed some, or if she did, she must have blamed the servants. And Manfred keeps little stashes of bills around the mansion. I think he must be hiding it from the tax people. Anyway, I plan to raid the house safe before I go. I have enough money to do whatever I want, wherever I want."

Teddy's eyes lit up. "Wow. So, we're, like... rich!"

"Not quite," said Lisa, padding barefoot to the shelf and picking up the Portasizer she had taken from her bedroom. "I'm rich. You are a liability. It's been fun. Bye."

"Lisa, wait!" said Teddy, trying to stagger to his feet and getting tangled in the pants around his ankles.

The Portasizer went sizzle-crack, and the shed became an aircraft hangar to Teddy. Lisa picked the little six inch doll-sized Teddy up in her hand and deposited him on top of a rickety wooden table.

Teddy pulled up his pants and began running the second she dropped him on the table. The Portasizer gave a second sizzle-crack, and this time Teddy found himself waist-high in the woodgrain of the table, and Lisa grown to the size of a mountain.

"Nothing personal," said Lisa, leaning over the table and spotting the tiny moving speck, a small fraction of an inch in size. To Teddy the sound of Lisa's voice was completely unintelligible, like the roar of a Saturn rocket lifting off. "You're just too stupid to be useful."

Lisa dipped her face nearly to the tabletop, used a finger on the side of her nose to block one nostril, and snorted. When she looked again, Teddy was gone. She smiled and sniffed a few times.

Teddy saw the massive black nostril descending, and then he was whipped off his feet by hurricane winds which sucked him straight up into the interior of her nostril. He collided jarringly with tiny hairs like young, springy sapplings, until he was slammed against the inside of Lisa's right sinus cavity, where he became instantly and hopelessly mired in the thick, jelly-like mucus that rolled down the walls in sheets, He struggled and fought in the cloying mucus in the pitch darkness with Lisa's breath howling around him for an hour until, completely exhausted, he sank deeply into the gelid mass and was drowned.

Lisa dressed and, toting her Portasizer with her, left the shed for the mansion. It would probably be at least another twelve hours before anyone reported Manfred missing -- he was expected to be at the clinic for as long as 24 hours -- but Lisa didn't plan to take any risks she didn't have to. She would move as quickly as she could without arousing suspicion.

Most of the servants had the day off, the family having been expected to be at the endonautics clinic. Lisa saw no one as she got her hidden cache of swag together, then raided the safe in the study. It took three hours, and when she was done, she returned for a last look at her room to see if she had forgotten anything. And that was when she started to feel strange.

"Oh damn," said Lisa with sudden comprehension, putting a hand on her abdomen. She had forgotten about that chick inside her. It wasn't hard to do, since the little endonaut was only an inch tall, not even a small risk. Or was she? Lisa began to grow nervous as she wondered what, in fact, a trained endonaut could do inside her.

 

"And fuck you too, bitch," said the cold, quiet voice from the speaker. I recognized the voice with a jolt as Lisa's. Before I could frame any kind of coherent reply, the connection was broken.

"Sven!" I said, keying the mike. "Sven! Dammit, you blonde bimbo, where the hell are you? Shit."

The shaking and jerking continued unabated, and I had to switch on the onboard gyroscope. Instantly, much of the jarring abated, but the gyroscope draws a lot of power and I knew it would leave me short for other things. While the slow breeder nuclear pile would continue to give slow, steady power for months, its output can't be increased. The gyroscope is intended for short-term use, and not only would it eventually burn out its bearings, but it would leave the endosuit short on other systems -- like life support. The air had become more stale, and I grimly -- and accurately -- predicted that it was going to grow a lot staler yet. I had no choice. It was either this, or be slowly battered to death.

Working quickly, I used the arms of the endosuit to free the little sportscar from the lining of the intestine, making the klieg lights dim with the power drain. Whatever else happened, I had to make sure that my patient was not harmed. It's both my professional and moral obligation. The sportscar began immediately to drift down the intestine with its grim cargo, and I grabbed it quickly. Using a gauntlet, I smashed the sharp edges from the fender, then released it. I would follow it shortly, but first I had to do something about the open wound which was now leaking blood into Lisa's intestine.

I let my body relax and become loose, then switched off the gyroscope. Instantly, I started rattling painfully around like a dried pea in a baby's rattle, and bumped my nose repeatedly on the perspex face plate while I swore a blue streak. Gritting my teeth, I charged the laser capacitor, which required full power. In two minutes I had a full charge, and quickly reactivated the gyroscope. Cauterizing the wound closed took just thirty seconds, playing the red beam of the laser over the torn flesh. Thirty seconds after that, I was once again being passed down the small intestine. It would be many hours before I was excreted, and it would give me plenty of time to think.

Repeated attempts to contact Sven failed. Even triggering the emergency transponder, which should have brought him in with a knife in less than two minutes, did nothing. I was forced to conclude that something had gone terribly wrong. And that voice I heard -- was it really Lisa? It certainly sounded like her. And clearly, from the way everything was bouncing around, Lisa was moving around without regard for any passengers inside her. What had gone wrong?

Scenarios began suggesting themselves to me, some wilder and less plausible than others A robber had broken into the clinic looking for drugs and kidnapped Lisa at gunpoint. No, how would that account for the voice on the phone? Now that I thought about it, I was quite sure the voice had been Lisa's. Lisa had somehow eluded Sven and escaped from the clinic, carrying me with her. But why? And how could she possibly have escaped? Had she hit Sven over the head when he wasn't looking? What were her parents doing while all this was happening?

Whatever was happening, I realized that I was completely on my own. My mouth took on that thin, determined look my mother knew and hated so much. I would get out of my patient, and then there would bloody well be some Hell to pay.

I passed, in due time, from the small to the large intestine. The longer I thought about it, the more likely it seemed to me that Lisa must have left on her own, of her own free will, for whatever reason. I knew it would be a simple matter to burrow to the surface of Lisa's skin and escape. There were a dozen ways I could incapacitate or even kill my host, from drug overdoses to tearing open an artery like the major vena cava. Maybe that's what I should have done. Yeah, I know, you would have done everything different. That's what everyone else says too. The difference is, you weren't there. I was.

There's an oath I took when I graduated med school. The Hypocratic Oath. You've probably heard of it, even if you haven't read it. Most schools don't even use it any more. Too old. Too outdated. Well, call me old fashioned, but it means something special to me, and the most important of the dictates in that old oath is: "First, do no harm." If you think I should have gone causing a brain hemmorhage on nothing more than idle suspicion, well, let's just say I think you could learn a thing or two from a very old Greek doctor.

It was starting to get very hot. The air in the endosuit was so thick I could cut it with a knife and eat it, which, since all I had in the suit was protein solution which I could sip through a tube, was pretty damn appetizing. For ten minutes I turned the gyroscope off and cleared the air a little, for which I was punished with big purple bruises all over my body.

Eventually, I snaked my way down to the colon, where things started to get a little thick. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was up to my shoulders in what one would expect to find there. I was pleased, because from the look of it, there was a full load. I wouldn't have to wait around. It was here I decided that, while it might be a little hasty to start doing serious damage to my wayward host, it would be only prudent to make sure I had a few cards of my own to play if push came to shove.

I dialled up a powerful emetic, popped the hypo, and let Lisa have it right in a nice, thick artery. It wouldn't kill her, or even do any serious damage, but for a little while she was going to wish that I had killed her. A fit of violent nausea and vomiting will take the wind out of anyone's sails, and I wanted Lisa nice and manageable when I got out of there.

A few minutes later I was packed solidly into the bowels. I couldn't see anything, of course, but you get a feel for the amount of pressure it takes to trigger a bowel movement after enough times through the works. From the feel of things, Lisa wasn't quite ready, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. Hesitantly, I switched off the gyroscope and found, to my relief, that Lisa wasn't moving. I had a suspicion that the emetic had a hand in that. The life support went into high gear, and I had enough power now to bull my way through the contents of her bowels. The muscles were unyielding and I couldn't pry them open without the risk of tearing them, so I gave them a little squirt of local anaesthetic with the hypo, and I was on my way, barreling through the rectum at the head of a thundering faeces locomotive!

Lisa had her anus tightly clenched, probably astonished that she was in the midst of soiling herself, and it provided a few seconds of tense resistance. The servos in the endosuit whined as the pressure built behind me. Finally she could resist no longer, and I went scooting out between two horizontal slabs of buttock flesh, with several pounds of excrement following hot on my heels.

I gave the suit two seconds of sonics, the vibrations causing the excrement to slough away from my face plate and suit. In that time, I slid off the buttock, dropped what seemed about fifteen feet to the floor, and rolled desperately to the side to avoid the brown deluge behind me. The fall had knocked the breath from me and, worse yet, cracked the endosuit. Half a dozen systems flicked instantly yellow, and a couple to red as alarm klaxons began buzzing around me. The sinister hissing sound I heard informed me that pressure seals had been broken.

What I needed was about two minutes to collect my wits, but time was a commodity I didn't have. I groaned and staggered to my feet, damaged servos whining as I did so. Beside me was an immense pile of steaming faeces three times my height. Beyond was the titanic form of Lisa, and she was lying on the floor, nude, with her back to me. The low, rumbling roar I heard was a groan of anguish. Clearly she was not enjoying herself.

We were in a bathroom. That was easy enough to see from the toilet and the bidet. This was a very large bathroom, however, with all black marble facilities, and real gold trim. I guessed, accurately, that Lisa had gone home. Why? There would be time enough for answers later. I thought it best to make myself scarce for the moment, and began making my around Lisa's feet, stretched out on the floor. It was sheer ill fortune that the servos on one leg of the endosuit, damaged in the fall, picked that moment to malfunction, tipping me forward with what was probably a small clatter on the tile floor, to skid heavily into Lisa's little toe.

Lisa's head came up, and I could see the strings of bile hanging from her lower lip. Her eyes looked haunted and sunken in. For just a moment I had a terrible attack of conscience, knowing that it was my doing which had prostrate her like this. Then, spotting me, her face twisted into a mask of sheer hatred -- she clearly having made the same conclusion I had as to the cause of her troubles -- and smashed the heel of her foot down right on top of me.

The alarm klaxons in the suit were replaced with the voice of a calm Japanese woman reciting off a series of extremely alarming endosuit failures and malfunctions. Another dozen telltales flicked from green to yellow as her heel smashed me down. I couldn't take too many more blows like that. The endosuit was never intended to take that kind of punishment.

Lisa roared in pain -- the endosuit in very hard -- and launched another weak kick at me, that sent me spinning across the bathroom floor like a marble, to bounce off the full-length mirror that covered one whole wall from floor to ceiling.

"Warning, warning, structural integrity breached," explained the patient Japanese voice. "Primary motile systems non-fuctional, switching to secondaries. Primary power system at 56% efficiency, secondary power system at 78% efficiency, tertiary power system..."

I let the voice drone on without paying attention. If something broke now, I would simply be done for. There was nothing I could do about it. As I picked myself up off the floor, I could see bits of broken ceramic fall from the endosuit, and I could feel sparks making little pimple-sized burns in my flesh. It was a tragedy to treat a delicate surgical tool this way, but if it got me the hell out of there, I didn't care if the damned thing fell right off my back in pieces.

Lisa crawled over to me, her looming shadow warning me of her approach. Her hand came down on top of me, scooping me into her fingers. I knew if she got hold of me, I was doomed. Whether she flushed me down the toilet, threw me at a wall, or simply dropped me, it would be the end of me for certain.

"Oh no you don't, you enormous bitch," I muttered, dialling up the most powerful local anaesthetic in what remained of my pharmaceutical supply. I popped the hypo and stabbed it deep into her thumb. It must have stung because she gave a sharp cry and let me go. Then, a second later, her whole right hand went numb to the wrist. I smiled grimly. This little mouse had teeth.

Enraged, Lisa flailed her useless hand at me, battering me twice, but with no real strength. The other hand she was using to support herself off the floor, where a puddle of bilious vomit was pooling. Strengthless or not, the sheer mass of the hand broke more pieces from the ceramic armour of the endosuit.

The Japanese voice in my ear became more strident. "Danger! Danger! Primary power system offline! Negative structural integrity! Main computer offline! Danger! Danqrtzgx..."

The sudden silence was deafening inside the endosuit, and I was starting to cough on the haze of electrical smoke. Life support was completely gone. As I watched, the few remaining yellow telltales were flicking over to red or, more ominously, simply going out. I stood and began limping slowly, temporarily out of Lisa's reach. The servos lurched or locked up every second step, and I kept the suit upright by muscle power alone. I was running on battery alone now. Tt would be over soon one way or another.

Lisa, whatever else anyone could say about her, had tremendous force of will. Despite the weakness in her limbs which made her tremble and the dry heaves which still wracked her, she put her good hand on the lip of the toilet and forced herself onto her knees. Placing the elbow of the hand in which she had lost all sensation on the toilet, she was able to scrabble on top of the counter with her other hand. When she drew her hand back, an icy knot of fear formed in my stomach. She had a Portasizer.

A smile that could only be described as hideous twisted Lisa's face into a gargoyle mockery as she pointed the Portasizer in my direction. Her finger tightened on the firing stud and my options rapidly began to dwindle. In a second, I would be the size of a dust mote, and as good as dead.

I drained all my reserve power into my capacitors. If this didn't work, the endosuit would be completely drained and powerless, but it wouldn't matter anyway. I wouldn't live long enough for it to matter. Lisa pressed the firing stud as I raised my arm and pointed the suit laser right through the target formed by the pupil of her right eye.

The pain must have been incredible. I have often thought back on what I did and wondered if there might have been some other way. I knew even as I fired that Lisa would have permanent damage to her vision. In the end, my own will to live was stronger than the injunction against me to do no harm.

Lisa screamed loud enough to make my head ring with pain, even through the endosuit. The Portasizer veered wildly off-target, reducing the bidet to the size of a toy, and then zig-zagging the invisible beam diagonally across the room as Lisa clutched for her wounded eye. She was probably in such agony that she never even heard the extended sizzling zap of the Portasizer, the firing stud of which she still held down. The invisible beam struck the great wall-sized mirror -- and bounced, enveloping Lisa in its radiance. I called to her, but there was no way she could have heard me; I was so small, and I was entombed inside the endosuit. In seconds, she had vanished, so small that even I could not see her.

It was over.

The rest of the story you probably know from the tabloids and the movies of the week. Heroic doctor, clad only in a body sock (I assure you, I do not look one bit like that actress who portrayed me -- I could never squeeze breasts like those inside an endosuit) treks across miles of carpeting, climbs the phone cord, and spends an hour jumping up and down on the 911 autodial button, trying to depress it with her negligable mass. Police arrive, the doctor is found, cut to epilogue.

Except there's a few things they never told you.

First, I ended up having to endure quite a few hours of questioning -- sitting in the sweaty palm of a police detective, who looked like he would enjoy nothing more than to mete out a little rough justice with the long arm of the law. Coming on top of everything else, and wearing nothing more than a body sock while a whole roomful of cops stared at my tiny inch-tall form was a little more than I could bear, and I cried a lot. It wasn't pleasant, and I won't go into it.

And secondly, they never found Lisa.

They did look. They had me point to the spot where Lisa vanished, and they tried using a police Portasizer to grow the tile. They got giant dust mites the size of poodles, but no Lisa. Not a trace. If you read the coroner's report, they call it death by misadventure. Either Lisa was eaten by a bacterium, or she kept right on shrinking into the subatomic scale, never to be seen again. I'm told that below the size of Planck's Constant, the rules of reality break down, and that she would be in a state much worse than death.

I tried to tell them that there were other possibilities. She had a Portasizer with her. She could have grown herself when I left the bathroom and escaped. Nonsense, they say. The charge left in the battery could not have brought her anywhere close to full size. And if she wasn't full size? If she escaped from the bathroom the size of a cat, or a mouse, or even an ant? How long would it have taken her to figure out some way to restore her height? But the police were looking for answers, not more questions.

I sued the Brandt estate and got enough to replace the endosuit a hundred times over. No amount of money will let me replace poor Sven, and I miss him every day. I still work as an endonaut, and now I run a string of clinics, some of them in the poor inner cities. The Holmgaard Clinic in Watts is considered one of the top endonautics learning centres in the world. It's only right that Brandt money should fund all of this.

Lisa's gone. I'm sure she is. The police are right, the odds are that she found her end in that bathroom. Still, if you should happen to meet an attractive girl, one who maybe has a problem with one of her eyes... you will be careful. Won't you?