Stranded on Asgard

by

Deuce Little O

 

   It all began when a strange visitor journeyed to Earth. She was a woman who only spoke fluent German and was no different than any other Earth woman of Northern European ancestry, with one major exception. It was obvious right from the start that the technology she had brought with her was far more advanced than anything we had on Earth, at least in the early 21st century. After being interviewed by the leaders of many countries at the United Nations building in New York, she admitted that she was from the 35th century.

   She claimed that she had traveled back in time to prevent a calamity in our near future from taking place, and that she was introducing technology at an early enough era to prepare us for whatever terrifying future we had waiting for us. It turned out to be a lie.

   She had made friends with the people of our world rather quickly, and she had voiced her true intentions to a few people among her inner circle of acquaintances, and they in turn informed the nations of the world. She was a Neo-Nazi from a parallel universe, from a version of Earth where the Nazis had emerged victorious from World War Two. She was trying to alter the history of the Earth in our universe, a history that would allow a Neo-Nazi empire to rise up and subdue the rest of humanity.

   It seems that part of her plan involved shrinking all people of non-Northern European descent, so her Neo-Nazi collaberators could have an easy victory. She had placed miniaturization weapons in geosynchronous orbit miles above the Earth, and they were programmed to shrink only people that didn't have a marginal percentage of the chromosomes that the people of Northern Europe had, such as the DNA that dictate whether a person has blonde hair, red hair, blue, green, or grey eyes.

   Ironically, it was the Germans who first decided to banish her from our world and stop her evil plan, and they spear-headed an effort to destroy the miniaturization weapons in orbit above the Earth. China, Russia, and the good old U.S. of A. joined in, and simultaneously launched nuclear missiles that destroyed most of the orbital miniaturization cannons. I was one of two astronauts chosen to go up in a space-shuttle to destroy the remaining satellites. My mission was to pilot a shuttle towards one of the satellites, and the other astronaut would use a rocket-pack to jet from the cargo bay of the shuttle to one of the satellites, and plant a bomb with a timer that was rigged to go off after he returned to the shuttle, then we would do the same to the other remaining satellites. It is sufficient to say that things definitely didn't go as planned.

   When he tried to plant the bomb, a white light engulfed him, and after the light was gone, so was he. I tried to contact mission control, but something was interfering with my transmissions, and I couldn't recieve any signals from them, either. I decided to try to nudge the satellite with the nose of the shuttle, to send it plummeting into the atmosphere, where it would burn up. As I piloted the shuttle closer, the same white light that swallowed up my partner also engulfed me.

   Looking back, my guess is that some kind of an interdimensional vortex opened up and pulled my shuttle in. I tumbled through the vortex, and I heard the radio transmission of a message sent to the radio reciever in my helmet. The message was from the woman from the 35th century. She informed me that my world was one of many stops on her mission to alter history, and that she had already successfully altered the history of other Earths. She said that as punishment for trying to tamper with her miniaturization satellites, she was sending me to a parallel Earth where every atom of that alternate reality existed on a much larger scale than our own reality...she went on to say that she had altered the historical events on that world as far back as the 17th century, so that the Germanic race of that world remained the size of giants, but all other people had been miniaturized to a fraction of their former size. She assured me that they had successfully subdued their world and conquered all who opposed them, and that I would soon find myself under their dominion as well.

   My space-shuttle emerged in orbit over a planet identical to Earth. There was a satellite in orbit above this world that was a duplicate of the one that brought me to this parallel universe. It must have been the other end of the dimensional gateway that brought me through the vortex. I tried to use the remaining fuel to steer towards the satellite, but it exploded right in front of my shuttle, and the impact of the blast sent my shuttle tumbling into the gravity well of the huge planet below.

   The shuttle was entering the upper atmosphere at an incredible speed, and at a dangerous angle. The friction of the atmosphere was already sending an orange glow cascading across the 'windshield' of the shuttle, so it was too late to try to achieve a higher orbit. All I could do was prepare for a crash landing.

   I came in too steep, so I pulled up on the throttle to pull out of the dive, but I was coming in too fast. I could see settlements below, so I tried to avoid them so I wouldn't injure anyone when I landed. I saw the reflection of water on a lake near a town, so I aimed for it. The ground came rushing up at me, and the shuttle splashed down into the lake. I unfastened my seatbelt and made my way to the door before the space-shuttle sank, and jumped in.

   When I surfaced and swam to the shore, I saw that the woman from the future had been telling the truth. The lake I was in would rival Lake Michigan or Lake Superior. The only thing that indicated to me that this was not an ocean, was the fact that there were no waves breaking on the shore. The trees, the grass, the flying insects, and everything else was in massive proportion in comparison with me. I walked through the woods and explored the titanic wilderness of this strange parallel Earth.

   The grass and shrubs to me were the size of huge trees, and the distance to the top of the actual trees of this world were at an elevation that boggled my mind. I just couldn't comprehend how a world this massive could exist, and yet I was stranded here, possibly for the rest of my life. It was unlikely that I could get the shuttle out of the deep lake, and even if I could refuel it and construct booster rockets, I knew it would be next to impossible to return through the interdimensional gateway I had passed through to arrive here.

   I found a path that was at least two-hundred yards wide, and I followed it. There were footprints in the dirt that were atleast sixty feet long and about fifteen or twenty feet wide. They were human footprints. As I got near the town that was not far from the lake, the dirt path gave way to a more formal road that was much wider and made up of gravel. The individual chunks of gravel that made up the road were like stepping stones, and I had to jump from one to another to stay on the road. Before I even saw the race of people who inhabited this strange world, I knew that they must be more massive than even the largest mammals of our own world. Even the blue whale, the largest creature on Earth, would be dwarfed by whoever had forged such a mighty road.

   I saw smoke from a chimney. I scurried from the road and took cover in the brush between some trees, to spy out these people, so I could see who I was up against. As I peered between two colossal blades of grass, I saw a dwelling. Architecturally, it was identical to German or Dutch houses between the middle ages and the European rennaisance period, with the exception that it was bigger than the Oakland Coliseum. There was a well constructed of boulders in the old European tradition, with a wooden frame and roof, and a bucket attached to a shaft with a handle for drawing water.

   A cobblestone walkway led from the main road to the front door of the house, and as I took all of this in, my eyes were drawn to a maiden sitting on a bench, using a wooden churn to make home-made butter. She was about 13 or 14 years old, and her clothing was very similar to the type worn by Dutch or German girls between 1600 and the nineteenth century, with a dress extending just below the knees, and a bodice strapped over her blouse. Her flaxen braids fell halfway to her waist, and on her head she wore the headpiece that I had seen Dutch girls wear in travel brochures and old issues of National Geographic magazine that I had read when I was a kid.

   I was in a state of shock, and immediately crept back into the brush, for concealment. My heart was pumping with fear as I realized that from my estimate of the girl's size, these people were so huge that I must stand about one inch tall from their perspective. I looked back through the blades of grass to double-check if my estimation was correct, and she wasn't there. Her wooden butter churn had been set on the ground where she had been sitting, but the giantess was nowhere to be seen. I couldn't imagine how such a human colossus could move so quickly without making enough noise to alert me.

   I turned and ran, afraid that she somehow knew I was there. I ran deeper into the woods, away from the main road, and it was then that I had my first encounter with the wildlife of this terrifying world. It was a gopher, peering out of the ground and sniffing at he air with its nose. It crawled out of its hole, and came towards me. It was as big as an elephant to me. I turned and ran the way I had come, and ended up right in front of the wooden butter churn.

   The blonde giantess was still nowhere to be seen, but I marvelled at the size of the butter churn. It was like something that would be on exhibit at a carnival or a county fair. In my mind I could just picture a barker standing in front of a giant tent, trying to entice people into paying a ridiculous amount of money to see this 'eighth wonder of the world.'

   I knew it wasn't safe to venture into the woods, and I didn't want to retrace my steps and return to the lake, so I decided to continue walking towards the town. As I hopped across the boulders that made up the giant-sized gravel of this giant road, the maiden returned. I looked back and saw her walking back to the butter churn, and we made eye contact. I stopped momentarily, paralyzed with fear as I saw her blue eyes widen in astonishment, then contract with determination as she dropped her butter churn and started in my direction. The chase was on.

   I didn't even have time to reach the edge of the road before the blonde giantess closed the distance between the butter churn and where I stood. It was amazing that people this massive could travel with such exceptional speed. All I saw was the rush of her blue dress passing over me, and I found myself gripped inside of the girl's fist. I struggled at first, but my efforts were futile. Her strength was far superior to mine, so I just gave up. That is how I arrived on the world I refer to as the planet Asgard; no other metaphor was appropriate to describe this race of giants, because to me, they seemed to be like the race of gods and goddesses from Norse mythology that I had learned about in high school.

 

   I was taken immediately to the home of the giantess, but during that interval of time, it seemed to me to be like an eternity, because I was terrified of what might happen to me. My fears soon proved to be unfounded, however, because the girl was benevolent, and meant me no harm. I was placed on a table in the main dining hall, and the girl and her mother crowded around the table to look at me.

   "They're very rare these days..." said the mother, "where did you find him?"

   The giant people of Asgard spoke a variation of the Dutch language spoken on my own world. I had studied the German language during my college years, as well as Dutch because of a girlfriend who had grown up on military bases in that region. My dedication to learning the Germanic languages surprised even me, because for years I had studied Spanish and failed every semester I had taken it in high-school, in spite of the fact that I am half-Mexican on my father's side of the family, so it should've come naturally for me. Astronauts who could speak German fluently were the only men considered for the mission to attack the miniaturization weapons in Earth orbit, in case that knowledge should somehow give some kind of an edge during the attack. ( I have kept a journal of my stay on Asgard, but for the consideration of whoever reads of my strange journey, I have translated the Dutch language spoken by the giants of this strange world into English.)

   The girl's mother was very concerned that I would escape, and she dropped whatever she had been doing prior to my arrival, and set to work creating an elaborate wicker cage while her daughter questioned me extensively. I saw no evidence of any technology even remotely resembling what was available on my world in the early 21st century, or the early 20th century. Even the limited technological advances of the mid-nineteenth century would amaze the giants of this colossal alternate world.

   The girl told me her name was Aleena, and began telling me of the duties she expected me to perform. I was expected comply with all of her commands, and I realized that she regarded me as a kind of pet, or a living toy. She was not a mean girl, she just couldn't comprehend that I was a human-being deserving of the same freedom and equal rights that she possessed. Their were many more people the same size as me on the planet Asgard, and it was accepted by the giants of that world that we were toys, and not people, despite the fact that we were living beings with intelligence and reasoning capacity.

   Aleena amused herself by giving me commands while her mother built the cage that would soon house me. First she told me to jump up and down, which I did, out of simple fear. She forced me to comply with many other equally ridiculous commands, such as jumping over her index finger while she looked down and observed me with amusement. During my first conversation with the giantess Aleena, I found out that little people such as myself were very rare on Asgard, and were usually found only in the homes of the very wealthy. This took away some of my initial fear, because it didn't seem likely that Aleena would hurt me if I was as rare and as valuable as she implied.

   When my wicker cage was ready, Aleena's mother placed it in front of me, and commanded me to step inside, which I did. Aleena quickly closed the trap-door in the ceiling of my cage, and carried me to her bedroom. My diminutive stature became apparent when Aleena first grabbed the handle extending from the roof of my cage. From Aleena's perspective, I was nothing more than a tiny man within a tiny cage that could easily fit comfortably within the palm of her hand.

   Aleena tied the cage to a rafter in the ceiling of her bedroom, to keep me contained while she completed her chores. After she left the room, when I was alone, I tried to formulate an escape plan. I tried to push the wicker bars of my cage, but the wicker was just too thick, and I didn't have a pocket knife to hack my way through. I climbed up the bars to the ceiling of my cage, but the trap-door was bolted shut. Every ounce of strength in my body couldn't budge those iron bolts. They must've weighed over 500 pounds.

   When Aleena's father returned from work that evening, the girl showed me to him, and he decided that Aleena's mother was to take Aleena and I to the local seat of government to have me formally registered as Aleena's pet.

   The language these giant people spoke was a variation of Dutch. I knew because I had taken German in high school, and at nineteen I met a foreign exchange student from Holland that I had dated for awhile, and she had taught me to speak Dutch, so I knew the difference. The dialect on this giant world was probably identical to the Dutch language as it was spoken on Earth in the 16th or 17th century, so I still had to spend alot of time learning new words and phrases, but because of my prior experience with the modern variation of the language, I mastered it quickly.

   When I was taken into town the next day, I was able to get a better look at the surrounding countryside. This world had remained unchanged for two or three hundred years. There were no automobiles or telephone poles, and no evidence of any kind of technology beyond what had existed at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Aleena's mother drove a horse carriage, and all the other inhabitants rode in similar vehicles or on horseback. The architecture was unmistakably Dutch. Everything was like Earth three-hundred years ago, with the exception of scale.

   The horse drawn carriage we rode in arrived outside the town hall. Aleena picked up my cage in her hand, and carried me along as Aleena and her father walked into the building. I could see that the entire street was composed of immaculate cobblestones. Each individual cobblestone was almost large enough to be a basketball court back on Earth.

   When we entered, the office was like a relic from a movie about the eighteenth or nineteenth century. I could just picture Ebenezer Scrooge chastening Bob Cratchet for putting too many coals on the fire, and this thought made me smile in spite of my hopeless situation. The massive scale of this world of giants must be about thirty times that of Earth. The inkwell on the table was taller than than I was high, and each article of ordinary every day use took on massive proportions compared to me. I would estimate that thirty Earth feet would be equal to one Asgardian foot, and thirty inches to me would equal one inch to this race of giants. As I pondered the massive scale of this alien world, the magistrate took a look at me, and gave Aleena's father the proper paperwork to fill out. With a crow quill pen he signed his name, and at that point I became Aleena's property, at least as far as the laws of the planet Asgard were concerned.

   Aleena picked up my cage, and in her native language informed her father that she wanted to show me off to her friends. He gave her permission, but told her to first fill up their water jug for their horses at the water well in the town square. With my tiny (to her) cage in one hand, and the porcelain water jug in her other hand, Aleena proudly displayed me for the world to see as she sauntered over to the water well.

   To me, the well was a massive spectacle. It looked to be many centuries old, with intricate ornate designs carved into the wrought iron faucets of the town warter well. There was a line there, and several other girls were filling up their water jugs as well. Aleena recognized one of the girls, and greeted her in her own language.

   "Inga! I've got my own tiny person!" Aleena proudly informed her friend.

   A much more heavy-set girl turned to look at my cage. She wore a dress with a bodice just like Aleena's, and she was about the same age. Inga reached out to pick up the cage in her hand, and Aleena gripped it possessively, unwilling to loosen her grip. My view was obscured by Aleena's fingers as she held firmly to my cage.

   "I'm not going to take your little man, Aleena!" the girl informed my owner, and Aleena let go of my cage. I felt myself being lifted to the eye level of the heavy-set girl. Her blue eyes analyzed me curiously, and she smiled at me.

   "He's cute," the girl said, and handed me back to Aleena.

   When it was Aleena's turn to fill up her jug, she asked her friend if she wanted to introduce me to her own personal tiny people. The larger girl agreed, and after Aleena's jug was returned to her father's carriage, the two girls ran to the home of Aleena's friend, and I found myself swaying back and forth as my cage was carried along in Aleena's hand.

   Before long, we arrived at the home of the heavy-set girl named Inga. Aleena placed my cage on a table in the other girl's bedroom, and the larger girl took another cage down from a high shelf.

   I almost felt sorry for the prisoners of this other girl; the shelf on which they were imprisoned was so high that even if the captives ever managed to escape from their cage, they would never be able to leap from the top level of the shelf down to the next level without killing themselves. The cage itself was inescapable. A black iron box with airholes cut into the sides and top, it was like a portable medieval dungeon.

   I was grateful to have been captured by Aleena when I saw the treatment that was dealt to the other prisoners by this portly teen. She reached into the top of the metal cage after she had unlocked it, and grabbed her tiny prisoners in her fist unmercifully, ans pulled them out of their murky prison.

   She held them for a moment in her clenched fist, probably to reassure them that she was in complete control of them before she dropped them to the surface of the table. By the look on her face, I assumed that she wasn't trying to be mean to them, she simply considered them to be nothing more than toys, undeserving of any treatment that would indicate that they were anything more.

   Two people the same size as me fell downwards onto the top of the table, a man and a woman. Their clothing was clean, and they appeared to be in good health, so I assumed that their mistress took great care of them, in spite of her seemingly harsh treatment of them. The man was a tanned dark-haired gentleman in his early twenties, and the woman appeared to be of Middle-Eastern descent, and in her late teens or early twenties.

   The two captives looked astonished to see me, and by the look on their faces, they were happy to receive visitors. Their happiness was short-lived, however, because Inga's fist slammed down against the surface of the table, and a look of fear appeared on their faces.

   "Toys," Inga shouted, her voice nearly deafening, "I have allowed you to have a companion for the day. He is owned by by my friend Aleena. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

   The man and woman bowed low to their owner, and the man spoke. "You honor us with this privelege, great one. We thank you for your kindness."

   When Inga was satisfied with his words of praise, her eyes shifted over to Aleena. "They must continually be reminded to mind their manners. Don't let your little man get away with having bad manners, Aleena. They get spoiled and forget their place. It just isn't proper!"

   To my surprise, Aleena responded enthusiastically, and agreed with Inga's assessment. With the attention of the two giant teens on each other, the man and woman rose to their feet and walked over to me.

   "Hi," the man said in the ancient Dutch dialect spoken by the people of this strange planet. "My name is Wes, and this is my wife Vashti."

   "Hi," I said, "my name is Darren."

   As Aleena and Inga had their own conversation, they ignored us, and we were allowed to have a semi-private conversation. Wes told me that he and Vashti had been purchased as a pair, and that the tiny people of this world were sold as pairs and were expected to reproduce, so the supply of tiny people would be guaranteed to continue to meet the high demand that the Asgardians had for tiny people like Wes and Inga.

   Wes said that he and Vashti chose to remain celibate, and refused to produce offspring in protest to the inhumane enslavement of tiny people like us, in spite of how well they were treated. He explained that Inga's harsh treatment wasn't obligatory, but served as a punishment she continually meted out to them in an effort to convince them to sire offspring.

   I didn't dare talk about escaping, because Aleena and Inga would've heard me. I wanted to ask Wes about the chances of successfully initiating an escape attempt, but I never got the chance. Before long, Aleena scooped me up and returned me to my cage, and we were off for Aleena's house again. I felt sorry for Wes and Vashti. They would surely spend the rest of their entire lives as Inga's captives, with no hope of ever attaining freedom.

   It was late afternoon when we returned home. Aleena's mother was cooking dinner, and Aleena helped. My cage was placed on the kitchen table, not far from all of the activity. Aleena took a paintbrush and snapped off the end of it, and gave it to me. She commanded me to sweep up the table with it. There were odds and ends of sliced vegetables that needed to be swept into a pile, and various crumbs. Although I was small compared to the Asgardians, I made alot of progress. I couldn't help but feel that my contribution was more for entertainment purposes rather than to actually acomplish something, though.

   At one thirtieth the size of the Asgardians, I was slightly under two and a half inches tall by their standard of measurement. Although I was small enough to be easily overpowered by Aleena, I was still large enough to handle clean-up jobs such as sweeping up the table or countertops.

   As the days went by, I grew more accustomed to the Dutch language as it was spoken on Asgard. Aleena helped me with words that were unfamiliar to me, and within a couple of weeks I was very proficient at speaking Dutch.

   My daily routine began to fall into a familiar pattern. When Aleena woke up, she carried my cage to the table, and we ate breakfast. She looked after me the way a mother looks after her own child. I was not permitted to be excused from my small table until I had eaten everything on my plate, and Aleena eagerly forced me to try new foods I had never eaten before. The table where I ate had been glued together by Aleena herself the day after I arrived. I sat on a spool of thread and used it as a chair whenever I sat at my table, but Aleena refused to allow me to have a more suitable chair. She thought it was cute to see me sitting on the spool of thread, and I wasn't in a position to argue.

   After breakfast, Aleena liked to sew. My job was to hold and seperate the thread while she worked the needle. Although it was the early 21st century on Asgard just as it was on Earth, the society was no different than the Netherlands of the early 17th century. Because of this, Aleena was not required to attend public school, but was home-schooled instead. When it was time for her studies, I learned along with her. Sometimes, she would let me quiz her. I would read the questions from one of her books, and she would try to guess the answer without looking.

   When it was time to prepare lunch, Aleena helped her mother in the kitchen, and I helped out in my own insignificant way. I used the paintbrush to sweep the crumbs into a pile on the table, and Aleena scooped the pile up and threw it in the trash. My place was always near Aleena's plate when she ate, and she always gave me food from her plate. My little table looked puny compared to the colossal accoutrements of these giants, but I got accustomed to this strange world before long.

   After lunch, Aleena did her chores. She usually fed the cows and sheep, and churned butter for the following day. When she fed the animals, she kept my cage tied around her neck on a rope that she wore like a necklace. From this vantage point, I could see just about everything on the farm Aleena's parents owned.

   After her chores were done, Aleena liked to read, and since I was her new pet, she liked to read stories to me out loud. Some of the classics were old stories I was familiar with back on Earth, but others were written by Dutch authors I had never heard of. Obviously, the altered timeline of this parallel world had changed history significantly enough that some of the books on my world had never been written, and others existed on this world that had never seen print back on Earth.

   When Aleena was done reading, she liked to take me to her friends' homes to show me off. Usually we went to Inga's, but she had a couple of other good friends too. The second time we went to Inga's, I can remember Inga trying to talk Aleena into getting me a wife of my own stature, so I could produce offspring. Within minutes, Inga had Aleena convinced that this was the best course of action.

   Back at Aleena's that night, Aleena tried to talk her parents into getting me a mate. I wasn't thrilled about the idea, because I still had hopes of returning to Earth. She wanted to find a wife for me the same size as me. Before too long, Aleena even had me convinced that it was a good idea.

   The only problem was that tiny people were expensive, that's why Aleena's parents couldn't afford to get her one in the first place. Aleena asked around whenever she took me to see her friends, and someone told her about a grant program. The supply of tiny people on the planet Asgard was so low, that the government had subsidized grants that would allow the owners of a single tiny person to be able to acquire the funds necessary to purchase a mate for their little person, so their would be offspring.

   Once again, Aleena took me to the town hall, where her father filled out the paperwork for the grant. Now it was just a matter of time before we found out what grant Aleena qualified for.