Technology was the lifeblood of Lilliput. Technology helped the
inch-tall Lilliputians build their dense, but somehow still sprawling cities.
Technology kept them safe in a world they shared with their 400-foot-tall neighbors
known as Gulliverians. And technology, specifically portal technology, had
allowed the miniscule people of Lilliput to colonize not only the seemingly
vast reaches of their world, but now other worlds as well.
A specialized team of Lilliputian multiverse explorers first
encountered the world of Brobdingnag over 20 years ago. At first no one
believed the team’s tales of a god-like 5-mile-tall race of people who looked
just like them. A race of people who dwarfed even the massive Gulliverians boggled
the mind. And exploration of this daunting world had its challenges – one recon
team, finding themselves stranded on a Brobdingnagian park bench, were
summarily and unceremoniously wiped out when a passing runner sat down to tie her
shoe. But eventually Lilliputian perseverance and ingenuity won out, communication
was established, and now a brisk trade between the two worlds enriched both. In
particular, Lilliputian knowledge workers, advanced in education and cheap to house,
served as the backbone for many a Brob corporation. Thousands of Lilliputians
made the commute each day by portal to Brobdingnag, safe in the knowledge that,
as ever, their advanced technology would protect them.
John was one of those many multiversal commuters. Living in
the bustling, 20 million strong metropolis of Concordia City, he waited his
turn to walk through one of the Central Ave portals to a cushy accounting gig on
the other side. Yet despite having worked there for nearly 5 years now, he had
never actually seen a Brobdingnagian in person. For obvious safety reasons,
Lillies were not allowed to interact directly with their Brobby co-workers, and
were instead housed in a hermetically sealed office space where they interacted
solely via video chat. And from the neck up, Brobbies looked like anyone else.
None of this, however, was on John’s
mind as he waited his turn through the portal. Instead he was looking forward
to the weekend, where a third date with a beautiful girl he’d met via dating
app awaited. Yes, it was early, but this could really be the one! he thought excitedly.
The line was moving slowly as always,
and just as his daily frustration with the crawl was beginning to mount, a blinding
flash, seemingly emanating from the portal, blinded John and his fellow
commuters, causing many to cry out in surprise. Then, just as suddenly as it
appeared, the flash was gone, leaving John and others to blink away the lingering
after-images. As their vision cleared, confusion took over. Nothing outward had
changed, but the portals, once glowing with their otherworldly green energy
were dark.
Before panic could set in, a calming,
official-sounding female voice on the PA system reassured the crowds that this
was merely a technical glitch – one that would be resolved shortly. It was as
the message began to repeat that the earthquakes started.
At a convenience store on the edge
of Concordia City, Luke pondered not for the first time how much he hated his
job. For sure, it was cheaper living out here in the boonies, and the job was a
steady paycheck, but it was so boring!
Concordia City’s borders were
defined by what everyone referred to as “The Boundary.” A thousand-foot-tall energy
barrier whose spindly generator towers and hazy blue energy bisected the
landscape as you looked towards the desert coast and away from the ocean on the
other side of the city. The Boundary was an eyesore, but a necessary one.
Unclimbable, supposedly impenetrable and capable of fully enclosing the city in
a dome of powerful energy, it kept out anything (primarily the ever-dangerous
Gulliverians) that might wish to harm the tiny occupants of Concordia City. And
as the city grew, The Boundary shifted outward into the desert surroundings,
the movement itself a marker of Lilliputian progress.
Yet as one might expect, not many
wished to live directly in the shadow of the Boundary. The low hum of its
energy was incessant, and the dim blue glow was known to disturb inhabitants’
sleep. So it was left to the poorest of Concordia City -- those like Luke himself
-- to populate these outer reaches.
With no customers in sight, Luke jostled
himself from his daily stupor to retrieve a mop from the closet and finally clean
up that spilled Slurpee over on aisle three. It was then that through the
windows, overpowering even the ever-present glow of the Boundary he saw the
flash.
It was startlingly bright, green
energy filling the small space of the store and seeming to come from everywhere
all at once. And then just as quickly as it happened, it disappeared.
Luke abandoned his mop, and quick-stepped
to the front door to see what possibly could’ve caused this unsettling anomaly.
Stepping outside into the warm, summer
morning air, he saw others from the shops along his patch of ring road doing
the same. They looked westward towards the Boundary, shading their eyes to try
to see the root of all the disturbance through a cloud of dust that had kicked
up in the desert scrub brush outside the city.
As the dust cleared, a shocking sight
was revealed. Miles outside the city, the clear shape of what appeared to be a pair
of immense women’s sandals dominated the landscape. Rough brown leather formed
a wall nearly two thousand feet wide sitting atop a chunky rubber-looking tread
of dark black and towering more than five hundred feet in the air. Wide leather
straps stretched even further up, arcing over the monstrous footwear and ending
in metal buckles the size of houses. But it was what was encased in this
colossal footwear that truly set the curious onlookers at wit’s end. Five cheerfully
wiggling, white-painted toes sat atop the leather wall, each the height of a large
hill. These were in turn attached to a foot that could swallow a small town,
and as they craned their necks to look up and up, they saw a bare ankle adorned
with a beaded anklet that could overtop
their highest skyscrapers and a vast plain of smooth, fair skin and lightly
muscled leg leading up into a cute pair of tight jean shorts. Looking even
further into the air, they could just make out a small patch of toned torso revealed
by a tight white sleeveless top straining to contain a pair of breasts the size
of mountains. And finally peering over the shelf of those impressive endowments,
blued and distorted by the distance, a face. Youthful, undeniably beautiful, with
curious green eyes, and framed by a mess of long auburn hair, it gazed down
upon their fair city.
For a long moment, silence reigned
over the ring road onlookers and seemingly the city itself. No one knew how to
react to such a presence. Even for a people used to seeing giant Gulliverans the
size of skyscrapers, this was something else. A Gulliverian, for all their size,
couldn’t even reach the lip of this girl’s sandal!
“What just happened?” the crack of her
powerful voice split the heavens, raining down on the city at a borderline painful
volume, only moderated by distance. Her words rumbled like thunder, but somehow
retained their feminine lilt under the avalanche of sound.
She stirred, biting her lower lip
anxiously, and twisting at the torso to look behind her, seemingly searching for
the way she had come, and finding only open desert air.
As she did so a colossal sandaled
foot shifted, lifting at the heel, the unconscious movements of a girl lost in thought.
To Luke and his compatriots,
though, it was as if the landscape itself was shifting. Despite being miles
from the city, they felt as much as saw her casual movements. The mighty heel uprooting
itself caused tremors in the unsteady ground, and as her weight shifted to her
toes, the thick tread of her sandal sunk heavily into the soft earth, shaking
things further, rending the ground around it, and causing a deafening roar of compacted
dirt as she ground the desert clay underfoot.
“What. The. Actual. Fuck,” she muttered in
what for her was likely an undertone, but was heard clearly across the entire
region. She sounded annoyed. Concordia’s anxiety doubled.
Then she began to move.
She covered the four-plus-mile distance
to Concordia City in two apocalyptic strides.
Luke and the other onlookers
watched shell-shocked as she prepared to take her first step towards them, the defined
muscles in her long legs standing out as she tensed, her colossal toes lifting
and that mile-long sandal raising impossibly high in the air, which for her
just a normal stride. They could hear the air rushing as it was cut apart by
something so large moving so fast, and they could hear the creak of massive
leather straps straining against the incalculable forces of her simple step. The
wait for her footfall seemed interminable, her colossal ped hanging like a
human Sword of Damocles, but in reality it was likely only a fraction of second.
Her heel hit first, the impact throwing Luke and everyone in the vicinity to
the ground as a quake ripped through the border area. It was nothing, though, compared
to the impact of the rest of her sole as she completed her step. The sound of
her footfall was deafening, the booming thud rattling windows across the city.
Near the Boundary, the massive quake of her step shook the earth violently,
pinning everyone to the ground as the resulting shockwave hammered against the
Boundary forcefield and dust flew up in huge plumes, driven by the displaced
air. The glass in the windows behind Luke cracked with the force of it and as
he huddled on the ground he could see spidery fractures forming in the concrete
walls of his store.
She seemed to pause after that
first step. Perhaps she was savoring the violence of it? Luke and others
struggled to their feet, brushing dust from faces and clothes, wondering why
the Boundary shields hadn’t been fully raised, and preparing to make a break
for it, as if they could outpace her miles-long stride. But before anyone could
move a muscle she began to step forward again.
Luke dove behind the store walls, hoping
their meager strength would save him. Peering around the corner, he watched her
massive foot easily clear the Boundary field less than a mile down the road. Its
previously impenetrable height a mere couple inches on her scale, it offered no
impediment to her casual stride. He noticed for the first time the clods of
desert dirt and other detritus raining from her sandal’s tread like bombs. Boulders
the size of cars dislodged and fell from the sky as she passed. He saw her shadow
spread over the vast area of her footfall throwing trees and road into darkness.
And then the inevitable impact. Without the Boundary to buffer, the devastation
was catastrophic. The ground heaved, throwing Luke five feet into the air and
dropping him painfully to the ground. The shockwave of her footfall tore
through the area and he saw cars, road signs, and people flung like discarded toys
down the road by the force of it. He heard every window in the area shatter and
watched the weaker structures in the strip malls nearby simply collapse from
the violence of it all. Saved only by the thin layer of concrete between him
and the titaness he cowered, covering his head with his hands and groaning from
ribs bruised on his rough landing.
And still she wasn’t done. Finally, the
city-wide alarm sounded as she brought her massive right foot to join its
partner with equal devastation, Luke now crying out in fear and pain as rubble
and debris was flung through the air around
him. The ground heaved yet again, and the store roof behind him collapsed with a
loud crash. The Boundary shields began to raise, but it was too late as this
second step crushed a generator tower beneath her colossal heel, the titanium
and steel compacting like tinfoil, offering no resistance at all as she stepped
down. The Boundary, that technological marvel and safeguard against all threats
to Lilliput, flickered once, twice and went out.
She paused again, though from her
impassive expression it was unclear whether she even noticed the impact she was
having on the area, or if she did, whether she cared at all. Luke lay panting
on his back, his head bleeding from flying debris his ankle and arm likely
broken from the repeated thrashing against the ground. From his prone position
he stared up at her, and in the fog of pain and shock he admired absently the
youthful beauty in that distant face, the sensuousness of her lithe, athletic form
and the overwhelming awesomeness of those well-placed curves.
He saw her smirk faintly, and then
she was dropping like a mountain coming to rest -- miles long legs bending,
knees extending. Though she was almost a mile away, one knee easily overtopped
the entire border area as it fell, her smooth shin getting closer and closer
until Luke felt like he could reach out and touch it. In a daze, he started to
reach one bloodied hand up…and then blackness.
Ava knelt carefully at the outskirts
of what she knew to be a Lilliputian city, but to her looked like a variegated,
uneven grid bordering the ocean, maybe 50 feet across.
Putting on her most serious
expression, she gazed down on the tiny masses she knew to be beneath her, sighed
audibly, and said, “OK, tiny peeps, we need to talk.”