THE MONUMENT
a short story by:
Sprint Sprite

WARNING: This contains adult material and strangeness. It should not be read by minors. Use only under adult supervision. Light fuse and get away. So chock full of cuteness, it'll make you scream!

(Yes, it's a small dream of mine, but we all need dreams, don't we?)

(This was inspired by a conversation with Grildrig. Enjoy.)

THE WORLD'S WEALTHIEST MAN DIES AT THE AGE OF 94

David Jourgensen watched through almost unseeing eyes as they lowered his great-grandfather's casket into the ground. It was so sudden, his grand-father's death. David sighed and wiped the tears and rain from his face for the millionth time that day. His Grand-father was many things to him. He was David's adopted father, after David's real parent's were killed in the Los Angeles Quake of '29. Grandpa was an eccentric, about as crazy as they came David imagined, but his stories were so wonderful to sit and listen to. David walked slowly to the open hole and stood there, the grave-digger's stepped away and huddled in a corner of the pavilion, staving off the cold with cups of coffee and giving David space to say his final goodbye. David dropped the red rose downwards into the open grave. 'Goodbye you old fart, ' he whispered affectionately to the dark oblong of lacquered wood, 'I'll miss you. Give grandma a kiss for me.' David trudged over to the black limousine and his bodyguard opened his door.

Several months later, after the will's reading, David sat in the mansion his grandfather had willed to him. David's best friend, Scott, sat beside him on the couch, they had just finished a game of Indigo, the newest of the combat simulations for the VRogue, David's new Virtual Reality machine. Scott noticed David lost in thought, staring at all his departed grandfather's antiques which filled the darkened room. 'I miss him too, David.' 'Yeah. he was a pretty cool old guy.' David and Scott exchanged a relieving laugh. 'I never did understand how he always managed to beat me in Death Match on Indigo,' grinned Scott. 'He cheated.' 'He what?' Scott sat up, shocked. 'Yeah, he would sit up all night editing his reflexes, making auto-commands, you should have seen him, like a little kid.' Scott laughed, imagining David's crazy white haired grandfather sitting right where he was seated, helmet donned, in a darkened room, muttering and laughing to himself. 'Damn him! Damn it!' Scott cried incredulously. David laughed and looked up at his friend. 'He made me promise not to tell you, it was so hard not to, you were such a sore loser!' They both laughed for a long moment. Scott sighed and finally got up the nerve to do something he never thought he could again. 'Come on, let's go down to his play-room, I need to go through his stuff, besides, there are things down there I know he would want you to have.'

The room was just as his great-grandfather had left it. Suits of armor and electronics spilled everywhere. In the center of the room was the mini-computer that his grandfather had purchased, standing on a pedestal like another museum piece. David and Scott spent half the night sorting through the old man's prized belongings, Scott acquiring a rather large pile of possessions to take home, no matter how much he protested to David. David reminded Scott of his grandfather in that regard, always giving something unexpected and valuable away without a thought at all. They finally both stood admiring the slick black plastic casing of the mini-computer. 'You still have no idea what he used it for?' 'No, not really, well, you were there the only time I managed to get a peek. Some kind of Virtual Construct. He worked on it whenever he couldn't sleep.' 'And that was all the time.' Both the young men laughed. Scott and David sat quietly for a long time, finally Scott couldn't stand it anymore. 'Well?' 'Well, what?' 'Aren't you curious about it?' David sighed and flipped the power switch on the computer, it hummed to life. Scott retrieved two V.R. helmets from a nearby table cluttered with parts. They suited up in two of the tactile suits and stepped into the empty room adjacent to the cluttered play-room. David and his grandfather used this room whenever they played any games that required actual physical movement of more than a few feet. David and Scott keyed up the suit's transmitters and fitted on their helmets.

A new world exlpoded in front of Scott's eyes. A standard horizon line extended around them and violet clouds boiled rapidly by. Scott looked his virtual body over, a slender orange human form, Scott looked over at David and saw the same form, complete with his name blazoned across his chest. David was struggling with the cloud of icons that hovered in front of him. 'This is very odd.' exclaimed David. 'According to this, we are hooked right into the global net.' 'Looks like your grandpa still liked to shoot the tubes.' 'Yeah.' David popped open a crimson polyhedron labelled 'Monument' and stepped back as a shape leaped out of the icon and unfolded in front of them into a large white marble archway. 'What's this?' said Scott. 'I have no idea, according to the organizer, it takes up almost all of the memory.' 'Huh? Almost all?' Scott whistled out loud, he knew roughly how many terabytes these computers were generally sold with. A small brass plaque winked into existence beside the archway, it read: 'Construct On-Line.' 'What the hell?' exclaimed David. 'Whatever it is, it's publicly accessable.' 'Let's go inside, I want to see exactly what grandpa was hiding from me, and sharing with the rest of the known world.' David and Scott stepped through the archway.

David and Scott stood in a gigantic room, the walls seemed a few miles away, the ceiling was too far above them to be seen. Gigantic pieces of furniture sat here and there around this immense space. Each chair was about fifty foot in height. A few car sized playing cards littered the floor. In one corner sat an antique two dimensional television. Before they could do much except look around once they heard a distant crash far above them in the air. The sound of glass breaking. Movement caught Scott's eye from above them, he looked up to see a silver, glittery form freefall into the cushion of a huge couch near them. The form bounced off the cushion and landed about twenty feet distant. It was a very large dull metallic looking creature, a wild white mane of hair topped it off, and David could see two silvery pointed ears peeking from the unkempt mass. It was dressed as a pirate and held a rapier in one hand and a rose clenched in it's sharp looking teeth. It looked at them in wide eyed terror and tried to mutter something around the rose. It spit the rose out of it's mouth and cleared it's throat. 'David! Scott! What are you doing here?' It cried in a panicked tone. David stared at the wild eyed grinning thing and took a step back away from it. 'You know our names? You know who we are?' The tall metal creature rolled it's unnerving red eyes. 'Duh!' David and Scott looked at one another and burst out laughing at the almost fifty year old exclamation. It narrowed it's eyes and looked suspiciously at David. 'Where is your grandfather?' it asked slowly, as if David had problems with his hearing. 'He has passed away.' said David. 'He what?' 'He passed away,' offered Scott. The thing stood there for a moment, it's comical face contorted in what looked almost like pain. Wisps of smoke drifted up from it's temples. David figured out what was supposed to be happening and tried to stifle a laugh. 'He passed a what?' it finally said. David could see his grandfather in it, in it's facial structure. The faces it made were undeniably his grandfather's, the silly looks used to make David laugh when he was a little boy. 'Who are you?' David asked it as it calmly was tearing the swashbuckler clothing off of itself. 'Me?' it looked around for a moment as if anyone were within earshot, and then it adopted a comical gallant look on it's odd face. It leaned close to David and whispered to him, 'Me? I'm the Elf!' It winked and nodded to him. The elf stood to it's full height and folded it's arms smugly over it's chest, as if it was waiting for applause from nowhere, or for them to suddenly fall to their knees. Scott opened a private audio transfer to David. 'What the hell is it?' he asked. David paused a moment before answering as the brunt of the realization hit him. 'It's my grandfather.' 'It's what!!?'

It took quite a while to explain to his grandfather's alter-ego what had happened to it's creator. When the realization of the matter finally did sink in to the metallic creature it sighed and looked very sad for a moment. The elf gathered David up into a strong hug and then walked off, staring up into the sky, it's back to them and it's hands on it's hips. David and Scott were amazed at how well David's grandpa had crafted the thing's personality, it almost seemed sentient. It was a good caricature of his deceased grandfather's mannerisms and spunk, blown all out of proportion. David and Scott walked through the huge antiquated room and looked in awe at all they found. In one corner they found a closet, full of women's shoes on racks, the shoes themselves were each the size of a car. A short time later they decided to approach the elf and ask it a few questions about this program. The elf was crouched behind a chairleg and seemed to be stalking something with a great deal of concentration. As the two young men approached, they saw what was the source of the thing's attention. A firefly the size of David's forearm was perched on the top of a huge white pump. 'David?' 'Yeah.' 'Have you noticed that there are no masculine objects here?' What do you mean?' 'The shoes, the bottles of nail polish on the table, the magazines.' 'Not all those magazines are for women.' 'What? Title's like Woman's World and Vogue?' 'Yeah, we don't know they are all women's magazines.' They were almost to the strange creature when they felt something through the soles of their feet. 'What was that?' asked David. 'You feel it too?' 'Yeah,' said David. He looked around them, trying to discern the cause of the shaking. When he looked back he saw that his grandpa's alter-ego had noticed it too. The elf had stood up and it's attention was now focused on the doorway across the room. A huge grin spread across it's face, and it started to trot towards the couch. 'Come on, Scott! I want to find out what's going on!' 'Freaking you out too, huh?' David looked at his best friend and grinned, he wondered if you could get guns in this strange place.

They finally caught up to the elf in the darkness under the couch. It crouched and watched the distant doorway, a vast smile lighting up it's eyes. 'Elf, whats going on?' asked David. 'Nothing much. Kind of a boring day so far. But thats about to change.' 'Huh?' 'Day. Boring. Don't they have boredom where you come from?' 'Okay. Yes, we still have plenty of that. Ummm. What's causing all the shaking?' The creature regarded him with mirth filled eyes for a moment before replying. 'Someone approaches. I wonder if it's one I know already or a real one?' Scott looked at David, 'A proximity alarm?' 'I guess so, thats kind of a strange way to tell occupants that somebody is about to pop in, but this is an odd place.' The elf laughed and grinned at them both. 'Oh, a very odd place. My creator was an odd man. He had a rare and wonderful fascination with women.' David looked the computer-ghost of his grandfather square in the eyes. 'What kind of fascination?' The elfs' answer was almost drown out from the creaking of the huge doorway being opened across the room. 'Oh, him? He adored gigantic women.'

Tiffany was tired of seeing the same sights all the time, tired of 'shooting the tubes' to the same droll places, the same inane teenage kids, and terrible corporate site designs. Soon her slumber party would start, she needed to change for it first, so she was on her way home, taking the 'tubes' to browse for anything new along the way. Suddenly the 'tube' she was flying through on her way home developed another branch. She grabbed the icon as she slid past and opened it up. It read in large red glowing letters the following;

'#!!Giantess, A Monument. This is a V-World dedicated to a 'channel' in a long dead place we knew as Dal.Net. All tall women and giantess admirers welcomed, tremble in awe at our on-line fantasy giantess constructs. Read the epitaphs of some true net pioneers. Complete variety of free Holo-Videos and 2D pictures available upon request. A gathering place, all are welcome. No virtual weapons allowed.'

Tiffany thought about it for a moment. She was fairly tall, coming in at 6' 2' in height. It would be nice to talk to other tall women. Tiffany doubled back and shot down the new tube towards a waiting archway.

'What!!?' David and Scott both cried as the door flew open. There on the threshold was a one hundred foot tall blonde girl. She was dressed in a shimmering azure skin tight suit and knee high boots. She looked around curiously and stepped inside. Suddenly the room was alive with activity. David and Scott jumped from the shock of the room suddenly being populated in the blink of an eye. Scott felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to face a short, bearded gentleman wearing a body clinging suit of bright red, a yellow cape fluttered in a breeze that Scott did not feel, and a large blue 'G' was emblazoned on his chest. The elf turned and it's face lit up. It immediately tried to pounce on the caped man. 'Grildrig!' the Elf cried. The man was toppled over by a tall muscular man wearing his brown hair shoulder length, he was dressed in a chartreuse tuxedo. The large fellow sat on top of Grildrig for a moment and snickered evilly. 'Riph-Raph, don't you dare get anything on my nice super-dolt outfit!' said the tackled man with a playful worried look. Scott and David watched the three odd constructs danced away from them, rapidly changing into ridiculous forms and trying to outdo one another with puns and bizarre humor.

There was more activity in the room. The couch above them creaked ominously as the huge woman seated upon it shifted position. Scott and David backed away from the huge feet that hung down, encased in a pair of sandles. 'Le's get out of here.' said Scott. 'No, hang on, I never knew anything about this at all, no wonder my grandfather was so eccentric! Come on, it will be fun!' David and Scott crept out from under the couch, making sure to avoid the huge sandled feet of the giantess which sat upon it. Scott looked up at the huge pretty woman on the couch as he crept away from her. A tingle ran down his spine as her eyes locked onto him. ChantiliLace (which she wore in pink letters across a bracelet) drew back and fired a rubberband at him. The huge rubberband smacked down a few feet distant from Scott. Scott stumbled and fell onto his back as it hit, suddenly forgetting for a moment that this was not at all real. ChantiliLace smiled above him and brought a huge foot up over Scott as he lay there. The shadow of her sandle engulfed him. David turned to see what was keeping his best friend and let out a laugh. A man clad in black ran up to ChantiliLace's huge raised foot, he had the name 'Nihilist' in a dark grey across his shirt front. Nihilist lay down next to Scott and smiled at him, 'G.T.S. -ain't it wonderul?' he exclaimed. Nihilist turned away and beamed up at 'Lace's raised sandle bottom. Scott rolled out from the descending sandle and the wind from it's impact buffeted against his face. As he scrambled up, he watched in horror as Nihilist was crushed to a bloody pulp which shot out from the giantesses huge foot. He yelled in half fear, half thrill as he spun and ran away from ChantiliLace's questing foot. Three figures shot past David sprinting towards ChantiliLace's feet, the Elf (drooling), Riph-Raph (who was clapping up at the giantess) and an ecstatic Grildrig, who was screaming, 'Me next! Me! Me! Me!'

As David and Scott looked for a good hiding place, Scott glanced up at a giantess who sat off to one side, she was talking on a phone. She was a very pretty blonde woman, dressed in a white nurse's uniform. She looked down at them and smiled, winking coyly. Scott stopped in his tracks. Only when David yelled 'Come on!' in his ear did he realize that he was standing there like a fool, gawking. Off they went across the floor of the huge, noisy room. The doorway opened again and two more gigantic women walked in and looked about, unsure of this odd new site. David and Scott walked under another couch, this time thankfully unoccupied. Back behind it there was a mousehole, and a bright light shone from within. David dragged Scott away, who was staring up at another beautiful blonde giantess who seemed busy with scraping the remains of a tiny victim from her shoe. Floating above one of her feet were ice-blue letters that read 'Lorilei'.

David and Scott entered the mousehole, and it opened up into a small room. A large printing press squatted in one corner. David looked over the shoulder of a man with the name 'Ken' which floated spectrally above his head, he was working on a picture of a giantess toppling a bridge. A man next to Ken was leaning over and also looking into his screen, this man had on slacks and a comfortable shirt. A judge's gavel sat in a glass display case upon his desk. They both looked up at Scott and Dave expectantly as they took a peek at the work in progress. 'Hello,' said the man with the gavel on his desk, 'Welcome to the Giantess Channel Monument. Your new here, aren't you?' 'Yes,' said David. 'I am CJA, if you need any help or have any questions, please feel free to ask.' CJA paused and looked rather irritably in the direction of the doorway as several people yelling strange insults at each other ran by. 'You do pictures?' 'Not just pictures, collages. It is a difficult and time consuming art.' Ken looked up at the two young men in the monitor's reflection, 'Yes, it is, I can't seem to get this to blend the way it should,' he said. Something huge thundered by outside. 'Wow. I didn't realize that you guys had places like this back when the Net was born,' said Scott. 'More or less, this was the way it was, although you must realize that the designer of this construct has taken liberties. It's difficult to accurately portray something that was a text based program from then and breathe life into it.' said CJA quietly. An explosion rocked the room from outside, it was followed by gales of gigantic feminine laughter. CJA rolled his eyes at the cacophony and sighed. Scott spoke up, 'Were some of the people that came here really as...umm..chaotic as they appear?' CJA peered over his glasses tiredly at Scott. 'No...sometimes worse.' David whistled. CJA managed a grin and turned around in his seat to help Ken with suggestions again. A thoughtful man came out of a darkroom off in the back of the studio, trailing unwound film in his hands, he peered up through it, into the light. The racily dressed man muttered something about 'wrong angle' and walked outside, oblivious to everything around him except the checkered acetate in his hands. CJA and Ken exchanged smiles. A young man walked in wearing a flight suit and the two artists turned to greet him. Venomm grinned and sat down at his computer. 'Someone blew a hole in the floor again.' Venomm laughed and batted at a mobile of airplanes which hung over his monitor. CJA let out a chuckle and spoke to Ken. 'Ten dollars it was Riph-Raph.' 'No, the elf.' 'Your on.' Venomm laughed again, 'Both wrong, it was Lorilei, somebody threw a rock at her.' The three men chuckled. David and Scott spent some time going through the artwork that was matted and framed. The two men finally crept back out of the studio as several refugees from a giantess game of Twister ran inside seeking solace.

David and Scott were getting a bit tired. 'Let's get back now. I'm kind of hungry' said Scott. David agreed. David tried to summon the exit icon, to no avail. He opened the control icon. 'Grandpa had it set on physical triggering, we will have to leave the same way we came. We have to walk.' Scott groaned, 'I hate it when designers do that, it bogs everything down.' 'Yeah, but I think that's the way grandpa prefered it. He probably liked to 'run the gauntlet' to get to the exit.' Scott and David laughed. They began their slow journey back to the doorway, trying to avoid all the crushing feet of beautiful giantesses and their terrible attentions. 'You know what?' said Scott. 'What?' 'I hate to say this, but this place has a strange kind of attraction. In a weird way, I kind of like it here.' David looked up at him and smiled a bit ashamed. 'I kind of do too. Letting go, letting them for once be completely in charge.' He gestured up at a seated giantess. The woman saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced down. Scott and David watched as Tiffany smiled down at them evilly. 'Well, what have we here?' she said out loud in a confident voice. A huge manicured hand swung down and grabbed up the two struggling men. Scott and David were engulfed by her warm hand and squeezed unmercifully, they grew light headed as they were swept upwards to her vast grey eyes. 'Hmmmmm, let's see, this one is Scott, and this is David.' she examined them and rolled them around on her opened palm. 'Get us out of here!' hissed Scott to David. David summoned the preference icon and exploded it, he searched for a scaling control, hoping to end their plight by adding size to themselves, or shrinking the V-World around them. His grandfather had wrote those controls out of the program. Tiffany laughed and plucked the tiny control polyhedron away from David, she pressed her fingertips together and ground it into prismatic dust. David twisted in Scott's direction, 'Scott, summon yours!' Scott did the proper hand motion to summon his control polyhedron, only to have it plucked away from him as it appeared in front of his face by a huge thumb and forefinger. Tiffany's vast beautiful face laughed above them. 'No no no, I can't have you trying to tamper with OUR world, now can I?' Several of the other giantesses were now smiling down at them as they lay there in the girl's palm. David caught a silvery shape streak across the floor at some distance. He sent a private audio to the elf, he could get them out of this jam. 'Elf, give me control override!' 'Control override? No such thing!' 'What?' 'My creator explicitly forbid that kind of access to any male while within the confines of this V-World.' 'Crap! Hey! Elf, change our identities to female!' 'The gender is determined by neural differences received from the suit interface, that request is an impossibility. Have a day.' David turned to the giantess. 'Put us down! Now!' Tiffany laughed above them, her hot breath sweeping over them in humid gales. 'Now?' she thundered with mocking sweetness. Tiffany closed her hand around the two squirming bodies. She pulled up her communication icon and sent out messages to all of her female friends and classmates on-line to meet her here. She keyed into her own house's computer and left a message at the automated door to greet the girls coming over for the slumber party with;

'Hi! This is Tiffany! I found a really awesome new V-World today! You won't believe what this one's about! Come on downstairs and grab a suit. Wait until you see what we can do in this place!'

'Scott, can't we just shut down manually?' 'Yeah, we would risk a backlash, but we could, why? You really want to go that badly?' 'Ummmm, no. Let's ride this one out for a while, alright?' Both the young men grinned at each other within the darkness of Tiffany's closed fist.

Tiffany stood up and walked to a door which read 'PRIVATE' above it. She walked in and picked one of the spacious empty chambers, leaving a trail of tiny clothes behind her like glittering breadcrumbs.

FINI

I hope you enjoyed this short story. :P

-S.S.-