"Broken?" Asked Scott, looking at the crowd of giants surrounding him. "What do you mean? What happened?"
"It got a little crushed when we sort of rolled on it." Offered Dave.
"The emitter is toast, the control boards are crushed and several key crystals have been smashed." Said Brian. "I need to rebuild about 90% of it."
"So I'm stuck like this?" He said. "Again? For how long?"
"I need to order the crystals, they'll take a week to get here if we're lucky. I'm hoping I can fix everything else before then."
"And if we're unlucky?"
"Two weeks. Maybe more."
"Fuck."
"Sorry." said Brian.
"Sorry?" Scott exploded. "Sorry? I'm stuck being smaller than a finger for two weeks because you lot can't watch where you're lying down, and you're sorry?"
"Hey man," said Dave, "it's not his fault."
"Not his fault? Who's fault is it?" demanded the diminutive cyclist.
"Mine," Dave admitted, "I persuaded him to grow. I couldn't keep my hands to myself... I didn't check where we were... And now I've trapped you and Adel small."
Dave turned away, clearly upset. Brian turned after him.
Scott looked up at Adel. She looked angry. Now he looked harder, she did seem smaller than Mary. What had Mary said about her? Shorter than her knee? Maybe she was quarter sized, then.
"You're not blameless in this." She said. "You could have grown back yesterday, but you asked Brian to make you smaller. You can't tell me that you never thought that there was a chance something could happen to the ray."
Scott sighed, she was right, of course.
"No."
"I'm stuck too," she continued, "and it wasn't your boyfriend making out with someone else that caused the accident."
"Shit." said Mary, "Are you OK?"
"It's complicated."
"Sounds like." Said Scott.
"The point is," she said, "that we're all stuck with this one way or the other. We need to accept that it's happened and work together. Sure, you're tiny, but I'm also stuck at one quarter my normal size too. It's not like I'm going to be living a normal life for the next few weeks either."
"True," Scott said, "sorry."
"It's OK. And Dave is going to get enough of a grilling from me about Brian, so leave it alone."
Scott nodded.
Mary watched the small woman and her tiny boyfriend argue. She knew she should probably be angry, but mostly she was feeling a little thrill that she had him shrunk for not just a day, but at least for a week, maybe even two. He needed to train for the nationals, but she could help him do that... Some weights, somewhere to ride... Yes, this could be a lot of fun.
* * * *
It was four days later that Mary went back to her office at the University to work. She had spent a couple of days consolidating her research materials at home, and then there had been the weekend. Now she really needed to get back into samples to gather more data.
Scott hadn't been keen on coming along. His plan had involved working out and resting, and she had pointed out he could do that just as well with her in the lab as he could at home. If he was at her house by himself who knew what could happen to a 3.8cm tall person.
He had protested, saying that he didn't need a babysitter. Then she'd pointed out the spider just outside the window. Given that, including legs, it was at least twice as wide as he was tall, he started to see her point.
She looked at the fresh sample under the microscope while Scott did dead lifts further up the bench. She'd found some 15 gram weights and a short section that had probably been from an old wire coat hanger and taped them all together into a barbell shape. It seemed to work for him, which was something.
Scott had spent the day moping after he'd learned he was spending a week or two shrunk. He moaned about missing the nationals, about being stuck forever and she'd reminded him that it was really only for a week or two. Eventually she'd drawn some chalk ovals on the concrete out the back of her house and taken him out with his bike to his own scale velodrome. Initially he'd complained about not having a track bike, but he'd eventually picked a gearing on the road bike that he liked and just got on with it.
Apart from that initial moping and the episode this morning, Scott had really taken the situation in his stride. He'd refocused himself on his race preparations, and on his "super-giant girlfriend", as he had taken to calling her. He was taking his experiences if being shrunk a little more carefully as though he was savouring them more than he had when he'd chosen to be shrunk.
They'd spent some time with Adel and Dave. It seemed funny to her, given she'd never met him before, that Dave was meant to be 10cm shorter than her. At his enlarged height he qualified as "very tall", which he seemed to delight in. He was one of those people who was at home in their own body. Admittedly he did have a pretty nice one in the grand scheme of things. Scott and Dave found that they had a lot in common, at least when it came to sport. Adel was proving to be a delight, and like Scott was taking her shrinking with good grace.
Brian was the odd one out, taking the whole situation to heart. He blamed himself, despite what the others now insisted. He also seemed to feel like he was coming between Dave and Adel. She wasn't totally clear what had gone on between the three, but she had the distinct impression that it had been consensual on all their parts. Brian very clearly had a thing for Dave, and while the feeling was mutual, Dave was committed to Adel. What he really needed was someone else to get him laid.
All things considered, she thought, given the bizarre and possibly unprecedented situation they found themselves in, everyone was coping well.
She knew it couldn't last. For one thing her housemate Kate was due home tomorrow, and that would mean that her boyfriend would be around as well. For another, Matt had emailed Scott this morning, saying he wanted to bring some photos around for them to look at. Matt, who had actually inadvertently started this whole thing, and seemed totally oblivious to it.
Something, she thought to herself, was bound to happen.
Chapter 2
Adel sat on the floor, the laptop in front of her. She had Brian's user interface package on the screen in front of her. Brian had told her yesterday that this wasn't his strong suit and Adel offered to look over the code for him, see what she could do.
"You bring coffee and can code?" He had asked, "The two finest qualities a person could possess."
She laughed at the joke and told him that the waitressing was paying her way through honours in Computer Science. He was happy for her to look over his code. He was an electronics guy, not a software engineer, after all.
So she sat there, reviewing code and tapping away at the very large keyboard in front of her. She couldn't work in the cafe like this, so she might as well be useful. Her biggest problem was that if the crystals took too long to arrive, then she'd run out of money. Hopefully Matt's income would cover them for a while.
* * * *
Scott knelt, then brought his right leg out in front of him. He leaned forward into the stretch, working on his Hip Flexors. He looked over at Mary some 100 metres away, looking into her microscope. He thought of the microscope as some strange building, imagining offices inside, people working away.
He swapped legs. While his skinsuit was great for stretching, he was really wishing he had something else to wear. Mary and Adel had both tried making something for him to wear, but there was no way for Mary to make something small enough for him, and while Adel could have had a chance of getting the material the right size, the scissors, needle and thread were all to awkward for her to use. Besides, even the smoothest fabrics seemed very rough to him.
If he ever shrank again, he'd do it with a change of clothes. He'd been washing his one item carefully each evening. He had been spending time alone with Mary naked, often in her warm cleavage, but if other people were about the part of him that knew about acceptable societal behaviours insisted he be clothed.
He swapped legs again. So far this morning they'd had the lab to themselves. This was the least equipped lab in the animal science area. It was totally fine if you just wanted to do quiet microscope work, Mary said, but it was less likely anyone else would be here. Scott knew that the fact he'd been shrunk was public, or as public as such things are when you throw them into the mass of information on the Internet, but there was only so many times he was going to deal with the questions he knew he was going to be asked as he encountered more people. He was trying to save those up at the moment.
* * * *
Brian sighed with relief. The machine's mainboard passed all the tests, so at least he didn't have to rebuild that. He was having some trouble adjusting to the world being about four-fifths the size he was used to. He'd measured himself and Dave. He was now 217cm tall, Dave was 204.6cm tall, so they were both 1.24 times their regular size.
He looked at the mess before him. He actually only had to rebuild two boards, the other three were intact, plus the mainboard. He'd got the first one etched, and the second was on its way. Some cabling needed replacing. It was all pretty trivial. The case was just an old full sized PC case, and there were plenty of those about. He could get the whole main unit rebuilt in a couple of hours.
The emitter as more delicate, and he'd already decided he was dedicating himself to that tomorrow, it would take all day. The last part was the crystal. Scott had covered the payment on that, using money he had been saving for a new set of ultralight wheels. He was, he said, still a few months away from affording them, so he took the money to cover the cost of the crystals, which weren't cheap. Everyone was going to share the cost in the end, but with Adel not being able to work and Brian having spent his savings on the first set, Scott insisted that they made sure everyone was fed, clothed and housed before he was paid back.
Brian reflected that Scott did have a reasonable head on his shoulders. He had a Bachelor of Economics under his belt. His parents had passed away a few years back, and being an only child he'd ended up with a sizable amount of money from their estate. He'd invested well enough to be living off the interest while being able to concentrate on cycling. It wasn't a glamour us life for him, but he was smart enough to leave the principal alone, no matter what he might want to buy.
After his initial anger at being stuck one fiftieth of his normal size, he'd accepted it and moved on. He'd even had a long talk with Brian, trying to make him feel better about what had happened. It had worked to some extent, he wasn't feeling so guilty about accidentally destroying his machine, but he was still upset about fooling around with Dave while Adel was asleep.
* * * *
Dave had always wanted to be taller, and now he was. It wasn't quite as good as he hoped. The biggest problem was that his body was proportioned as someone more than a foot shorter than he now was, so getting clothes to fit was problematic. He did manage to find an odd collection of oversized clothes.
The fact that he'd completely got Adel off side by fooling around with Brian was another cause of grief. They had invited him into their escapades, true, but as she had yelled at him, he was involved with her, not able to mess about with whomever he chose. Her insistence was that they were both returning to their normal sizes once the machine was fixed. Back to his less than average size it would be, if that's what was needed to earn forgiveness.
* * * *
It was coming up to 6 o'clock, Scott and Mary were back at her house when Matt knocked on the door.
Mary answered and led him to the small dining table where Scott sat on a bottle top.
"Wow, man." said Dave, "Brian told me that he'd shrunk you more, but wow... You're tiny."
"I had noticed." Responded Scott.
"Of course." He drew his tablet from the satchel bag he had over his shoulder. "On a different topic: the photos from the other day."
He unlocked the tablet and entered a gallery. He brought up the first image: a photo of Scott as a giant.
"I think the ones of you big while I was normal sized make you look most impressive." He said, flicking through some shots where Dave had been quite close and aiming almost straight up. Even Scott had to admit he looked impressive like that, muscles in his legs standing out, even the impression of his abs through his skinsuit high above.
"But I think my favourites, in terms of the whole photo composition, are you on the wheels," Matt continued Matt, showing a tiny Scott sitting on the inside of the rim, thick spoke next to him. More where he was standing, and some where he was on the ground, wheel rim over his head.
"Some very nice photos," said Mary.
"So I know a photographer who works with some of the local branches of bike companies." said Matt, "He said he'd pass some of this around for us, assuming you're OK with that, Scott?"
"Yeah," said Scott, "sure, that was the point, wasn't it?"
"Yep," said Matt, "I just wanted to be sure you were still OK with it, given everything else that's happened. You're stuck like that for a while."
"It's all fine," said Scott, "Go ahead and show the photos around."
Scott lent back, feeling the warmth of her skin on his. Most of the time, when they sat on the couch like this, he let himself enjoy the warmth and comfort and drifted off to sleep. Mary enjoyed her nightly sit-com's, which he really didn't care for, but that didn't mean he couldn't spend time with her. Tonight he'd set himself a different goal. He was feeling restless, and wasn't going to sleep.
He let Mary settle into the couch and lay against her as he usually did. About 10 minutes had passed, he turned around and looked up the fleshy slope above him. She was leaning back, which meant the climb wouldn't be vertical, but it also steep.
He estimated the full climb to be about 15 metres, with the first stage being 10 metres. He pushed himself back on his arms, and brought his legs forward into a position more suited to climbing.
"What are you doing?" Mary asked.
"Exercise." he replied. "Just lie still."
"OK."
He looked to the mounds to his left and right. Soon that landscape would fall away to something more open. He looked over his shoulder looking at his ultimate safety net. If he fell all the way down, he'd be caught in her bra, some 5 metres below his current position.
He took a deep breath and started forward. The going was fairly easy at first. He moved slowly, able to put enough pressure on his hands and feet to hold his position. In the first thirty seconds of his ascent he moved out from between her breasts onto her upper chest. So far so good.
Mary was leaning back, her upper torso and neck propped up so she could see the television. The next stage was going to be harder.
Mary grinned to herself, feeling Scott's tiny hands and feet moving up her cleavage. He paused towards the top of her cleavage. She guessed the going got steeper there. She had one of those moments, when she realised how small and helpless he really was. How total her power over him really was. She could make a small movement and send him tumbling back down. She wouldn't, she wanted to see what the little man was planning.
Scott continued making his way up Mary's chest. He was starting to sweat a little. He wondered if he was getting hot from exertion, or if he was turning Mary on a little. Maybe it was both. He loved that he still had that power over someone fifty times his size. He was sure that once Brian fixed the Boson Ray that he'd be visiting this size and others from time to time. He felt the blood rushing to his nether’s and grinned to himself.
He pushed onwards, moving to his left now. He could see Mary's collar bone some three metres up. This was going to be the hardest part of the climb, it was near vertical. He planted his feet in hard against her flesh, confident that there was simply no way for him to hurt her. He lunged forward, bringing his weight to his hands, and started moving himself upwards. It was hard going.
It took him a good five minutes to get his hands onto the top of the bone, which was an easy hand hold. He swung his legs up and over and lay in the hollow behind it for a moment. He looked at the skin around him. It was a bit pink. He was turning her on. It wasn't an objective of the exercise, but he welcomed it none the less.
He looked up at her head, the size of a large two story house to him, and grinned. She was staring fixedly at the TV, clearly doing her best to ignore him at this point. He made her way up her shoulder to her neck, he gave it a hug.
"What are you doing?" asked Mary.
"I climbed up here to tell you how much I love you."
"Are you also trying to turn me on?" She asked.
"Not particularly."
"Well you are." With that she reached around with her left hand and carefully picked the tiny man off her shoulder. She brought him around to face her, looked his naked body up and down, and said "I think we should go to bed."
* * * *
Scott was covered once again in Mary's juices. The air was hot and stale, the constant 'thump THUMP' came from all around him. He gave a little jump and ran his hands and forearms along her vaginal wall. She moaned loudly.
He couldn't get over being inside his girlfriend like this. Her fingers came towards him, forcing more air in while she pleasures herself. The fingers kept coming towards him, knocking him over and pushing him further up the passage.
"Deeper, my love." Came from all around him. Deeper? Surely he was pretty sure he'd almost reached her cervix.
He moved through the dark passage, sliding with the wetness. He thrashed about as he moved in further. Mary's pulse quickened and he felt his whole world lurch as she let out another moan of pleasure.
"Stay there. Do that again." Cane the voice from all around him.
The fingers that had been pushing him receded, but she was obviously conscious of his need to breathe, as air was still making it in.
He couldn't see anything, the lights were off in the room anyway. He remained on the, for want of a better word, ground and slid his whole body back and forth. Mary's pulse increased again and she continued her song of pleasure. He could only keep going. The world rocked, he turned over several times, but kept moving.
The walls closed in around him and held him tight as waves of wetness washed over him. Mary's pulse and her moans reached a peak, the subsided and we're gone.
Scott picked himself up slowly, trying not to slide over. He made his way down the tunnel. He hadn't travelled more than two metres when he walked into a spongy, fleshy wall blocking his path. He panicked for a moment, unsure of where he was. He felt around before Mary's voice carried down.
"I think you're a bit lost." She chuckled. "Turn around and go the other way."
Scott did an about face and made his way to the fresh air where Mary's fingers awaited him.
* * * *
Mary pulled the panties over her tiny boyfriend who was asleep in the jewellery box on her bedside table. She'd moved the box closer to her once they realised this wasn't just a one night thing. He'd all but passed out when she brought him back to her chest. She'd given him a quick bath in the bathroom sink and helped him into the bed.
Kate was due back tomorrow, and with her in the house they couldn't be as loud, or as overt with their sex. And who knew how she'd react to the strange situation. They were hoping to hear from the manufacturer in China that they'd shipped the crystals tomorrow. Then it was just up to the freight systems to get them here intact and fast. Things were moving along, who could tell if the outcome would be good.