Darren Dale entered his motel room and left the door open as he flipped on the television. He had a cardboard box of cheeseburgers from a nearby mini-mart and a quart of chocolate milk. Darren would've preferred a beer, but he was a space shuttle astronaut flying a mission in the morning, and he was forbidden to drink alcohol before a flight. As he tore open the wrapper of one of his cheeseburgers, he was astonished at what he saw on the television. He only caught the tail end of it. A huge starship flew in over the Washington monument, and miniaturized it down to a tiny size. A close-up revealed that it was about six inches high, then the transmission repeated itself.

A woman in her mid-twenties with blonde hair was facing the camera. A sophisticated control console could be seen on either side of her, with blinking green and red lights. The woman introduced herself.

"People of Earth, I am Raleigh. I am a time traveler from a parallel universe where the Nazis emerged victorious from World War Two. I live in the 221st century, and imagine my dismay when I learned that some worlds such as yours had a different outcome during the second world war. I am here to correct that mistake. This Friday, on April twentieth at 7:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, my satellites will miniaturize every man and woman who possess less than fifty percent Caucasian ancestry. Within ten generations, all of the inhabitants of this world shall be Aryan! To prove this is not a hoax, I will now shrink the Washington monument down to six inches in height. I will also set up collection centers, where you can acquire transparent titanium containers to keep your captives in!"

At this point, the television showed the Washington monument being shrunk again, then the transmission repeated itself. Darren flipped the channels, but the message from Raleigh was on every station. As Darren resumed eating his cheeseburgers, his cell phone rang.

"Hello?" said Darren.

The phone call was brief. The director of NASA wanted Darren at Kennedy Space Center immediately. Darren was going to pilot a space shuttle the next morning, and wasn't due to arrive until five in the morning. He got in his car and drove to Kennedy, then met with the director.

"What's up, Ken?" Darren asked.

"The President wants us to retrieve one of those satellites that Raleigh put in orbit. You and Randy are going up tomorrow, and we scrubbed the rest of the crew."

"I thought six of us were going up together tomorrow!" said Darren.

"We're in a unique situation," said the director. "Washington wants us to bring down one of those satellites. We might not be able to reverse-engineer it, but if we don't at least try, three quarters of the world's population will be miniaturized on Friday. We might be able to plant a computer virus that can infect all of the satellites, rendering them inoperable."

"How are we going to retrieve one of the satellites? You know I've never done an EVA, I'm just a pilot!"

"That's why Randy is going up with you. He'll be the commander, and he'll do the EVA and bring the satellite into the cargo bay while you pilot the orbiter. Spy satellites have picked up millions of Raleigh's satellites in low-earth orbit. They're at just the right altitude for an orbiter to reach one of them."

"Why just me and Randy, though? Why aren't Pete and Roger going with us?"

"You speak fluent German and Dutch," said Ken, "and Washington thinks that may offer us an advantage in case the satellite tries to communicate to you in German. You are vital to this mission!"

"When do you plan for us to do this?" Darren asked.

"In about an hour. Randy is already here. We want to take Raleigh by surprise."

The director turned and walked away. Moments later, Darren ran into Randy Jimenez, the commander of the mission.

"Hey Randy, what's up?" said Darren.

"I think it's a suicide mission. The only reason I'm going up to retrieve one of those satellites is because if we don't find a way to reverse-engineer it and upload a virus that will disable all of the satellites, I'll be shrunk on Friday!"

Twenty minutes later, Darren and Randy were dressed up in their flight suits, and sitting in their chairs in the orbiter. The countdown commenced, and soon they were blasting off. The early launch had been reported to the different news broadcasters, and loads of people were gathered to watch the shuttle blast off. It was a text-book perfect launch. Everything went as planned. Two minutes after the launch, the solid rocket boosters detached and parachuted to the ocean below. Soon, the orbiter was free of Earth's gravity.

Darren deftly maneuvered the orbiter through space once they reached the low-earth orbit they had been aiming for. Looking through the forward window, Darren could see some of the satellites that had been placed in orbit by Raleigh, the invader from a parallel universe. He maneuvered the orbiter toward the satellite that was closest, and he could soon see a swastika emblazoned on the side of the satellite.

"It looks like we're in luck!" said Darren to Randy. "That satellite is small enough to fit inside the cargo bay!"

Randy got suited up to do the EVA as Darren got close enough to Raleigh's satellite so Randy would be able to grasp it with the robotic arm. Darren helped him inside the suit, and went to the cockpit to monitor Randy's progress. Within fifteen minutes, the cargo bay doors were open and Randy was floating outside the orbiter, trying to connect the robot arm to Raleigh's satellite. As he got close to the satellite, a white flash of light appeared, and Randy was gone. A holographic image of Raleigh's face appeared in the cockpit, above the main control console.

"I have sent your friend to the world of Asgard! It is a world where the Dutch are the master race and everything is thirty-six times bigger than normal, because the sub-atomic matrix of the atoms on that world are different. That is the penalty for tampering with one of my satellites! My mind-scan reveals that you happen to speak Dutch, so I'm sending you there as well!"

"How can there be people thirty-six times bigger than normal?" Darren asked. He really didn't know what he was saying; he was just trying to keep Raleigh occupied so he could talk her out of this madness.

"Higher dimensions interact with the sub-atomic particles of that universe, allowing anti-graviton particles to stay locked into the sub-atomic matrix. This allows the people of Asgard to have increased mass, while reducing their body weight. That is where I'm now sending you!"

"And the Dutch are the master race?" Darren asked.

Raleigh replied, "I traveled back to the eighteenth century of that world, and reduced all non-Aryans to our size. The Dutch at that time were already the rulers of the seas. As a race of giants, they subdued and enslaved the rest of humanity. For some reason, even now, their technology is at the level of the eighteenth century. That is where I'm sending you now!"

The image disappeared, and a flash of light like the one that engulfed Randy appeared all around the orbiter. When the light was gone, Darren saw that he had entered the atmosphere. He quickly closed the cargo bay doors, and guided the orbiter for a landing. He saw that he was above Northern Europe, heading directly for a region somewhere in the Netherlands. It was impossible to try to reach a higher altitude, all Darren could try to do was make a landing.

Darren could see settlements below, so he tried to avoid them so he wouldn't injure anyone. He saw sunlight reflecting on the water of a massive lake near a town, so he aimed for it. The surface came rushing up at him, and the orbiter splashed down in the lake. Darren unfastened his seatbelt and made his way to the door hatch before the orbiter sank, and jumped in. The cold water of this northern latitude shocked him at first, but he stayed under water until he was clear of the heat of the orbiter. Normally, the exterior of the orbiter was too hot right after landing, so Darren had to be careful. He swam under water until he was pretty far away from the orbiter before he came up for air.

Upon surfacing, Darren saw that Raleigh had been correct when she informed him that the planet Asgard was a world of giants. Darren could see the trees and bushes on the shore of the huge lake, and they were huge. Pine trees the size of sequoias were everywhere, and the bushes were the size of average-sized trees. Darren found himself wondering what the people of this massive world must look like. He walked up onto the shore, shivering from the cold.

As Darren explored the dense wilderness of this massive world, he saw insects and birds that were on a larger scale than birds and insects back on Earth. He saw a trail of ants, and noted that each ant was nearly four centimeters long. This was proportionate to the scale mentioned by Raleigh when she said everything on the planet Asgard was thirty-six times bigger than normal. As Darren cradled his arms in front of him to shake off the cold, he became concerned about the birds of this strange world. Darren was exactly six feet tall, so a quick calculation informed him that his proportionate size here on Asgard was exactly two inches tall.

As Darren followed a trail through the forest, it boggled his mind that a world this massive could possibly exist. Darren knew of the square-cube law, the geometric rule that stated that every time size is doubled, mass increases eight-fold. This would mean that a person who was two-hundred feet tall would be so massive that they would be crushed by their increased mass. Raleigh had mentioned that the sub-atomic matrix of the atoms of this universe were somehow different. Maybe this allowed for a difference in scale.

The smaller path led to a trail that was bigger, at least two-hundred yards wide. Darren followed it. There were shoe-prints that were close to thirty feet long. They were human shoe-prints. As Darren got closer to 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 of cobblestones. Each cobblestone was about fifteen feet in diameter. Darren pondered how massive the giants of this world must be in order to have forged such a mighty road.

When Darren looked to a dirt path that branched off from the main road, he saw a massive house and smoke from a chimney. He scurried from the road and took cover in the brush between two trees, to spy out these people, so he could see what he was up against. As he peered between two colossal blades of grass, he could see the house. Architecturally, it was identical to German or Dutch houses prior to the twentieth century, 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 a roof, and a bucket attached to a shaft with a handle for drawing water.

A cobblestone walkway led from the dirt driveway to the front porch, and Darren spotted a bench with a huge butter churn in front of it. A blonde-haired teenage girl exited the house and sat down at the bench, and began churning the butter churn. She was about fifteen or sixteen years old, and with the exception of her short skirt, her clothing was the type worn by Dutch girls during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. She had a dark bodice strapped over a short-sleeved white blouse. Her two flaxen braids fell halfway down her back, and Darren could tell when she had been standing that she was about a hundred and eighty feet tall.

Darren was still in shock from the cold water that had drenched him, so he backed away into a bush for concealment. He needed to get warm before nightfall, or he would freeze to death. While Darren pondered whether or not to turn himself over to the mighty maiden, he took his eyes off her. When he turned to look at her again, she wasn't there; only the bench and the butter churn were there. Darren couldn't imagine how such a human colossus could move so swiftly without making enough noise to alert him.

Darren turned and ran, afraid that she might somehow know he was there. He ran deeper into the woods, away from the main road. After turning to avoid a tree, Darren was startled when he encountered a squirrel. It moved toward him, and Darren turned and ran back the way he had came. When Darren rounded a tree, the giantess was standing there with a jar in her hand.

Darren faked to the left and ran to the right, but the girl was much faster than him. Her left foot came crashing down a few feet in front of him. He tried to run underneath her, but her right foot rose into the air and came crashing down, blocking his path momentarily. In the split second Darren hesitated, the blonde titaness knelt down and slammed the jar down over him, upside-down. The glass jar was nearly twenty feet high, and the glass walls were nearly eighteen inches thick.

The girl tilted the jar slightly, and forced her hand under the mouth of the jar, until her entire palm covered the lid of the jar. Darren was standing on her palm for a second, but then she carefully and gently tilted the jar until it was right-side up, and Darren slid to the bottom of the jar. Darren looked through his glass prison and saw the blue eyes of his captor. She was smiling, obviously happy to have captured a new pet. At that moment it occurred to Darren that Asgard was an apt name for this world of titans; they were in every way as powerful as the gods and goddesses of Norse mythology that Darren had learned about in high school.

As the young giantess made her way to the front door of her house, Darren suddenly felt very disposable. From his proportionate size of two inches tall, it wouldn't be difficult for the maiden to simply put him in her mouth and swallow him. Darren could only hope that the girl wasn't evil.

Darren was taken immediately into the home of the giantess, to the dining room. The home was typical of Dutch homes in the 18th century. A large fireplace dominated the room, with a mantel made of a wooden beam that was at least fifty feet thick. The giantess set Darren's jar on the dining room table, and her mother rushed over to look.

"He probably escaped from someone," the mother said. "We'll have to take him into town immediately to get him registered in your name."

These giants spoke a variation of Dutch that Darren was able to understand.

"What if his former owner challenges my registration?" the girl said.

"As long as nobody claims him thirty days after you register him, then he's yours! That's why we need to get him registered as soon as possible!"

The mother went to a high shelf and pulled down a black cast-iron cage. When she set it on the table, Darren could see that there was a huge keyhole built into the door hatch. The mother went to a jewelry box on the same shelf the cage had been on, and retrieved the key to the cage. She unlocked it and turned it on its side, so the door was facing the ceiling. She took Darren's jar and tilted it gently upside-down, and Darren fell into the cage. Once Darren was safely inside, the mother closed the door hatch and locked it, then turned the cage right-side up.

"My name is Aleena," the young giantess said. "My mother's name is Greta. From this day forward, I shall be your mistress!"

Aleena stuck the index finger of her right hand through two of the bars, and Darren touched the tip of her finger. The bars were so close together that she could only touch the area between two of the bars without her finger protruding. From the perspective of the giants, Darren was slightly smaller than one of those green plastic toy army men that are popular with boys. From Darren's point of view, the distance between the bars was about five or six inches. From Aleena's perspective, the distance was less than a fifth of an inch.

Aleena's mother went to hook the horses up to their carriage as Aleena continued to talk to Darren.

"Do you have a name?" Aleena asked.

"I'm Darren! I'm from a world in another universe. A woman named Raleigh sent my space shuttle to your world. I'm from Earth!"

"Space shuttle?" Aleena asked. "What's that?"

"It's a vehicle for traveling into space. It crashed into that lake not far from this house!"

Aleena looked perplexed. "Aleena!" came the voice of her mother from outside, and Aleena picked up the cage and carried Darren to the carriage and got in. Greta held the reins as Aleena sat in the passenger seat. As the horses drew the carriage from the dirt driveway onto the cobblestone street, the cobblestones rattled the carriage, sending vibrations through Darren's body. As they drove past houses on their way into town, Darren got a sense of the scale of this massive world. From the cage on Aleena's lap he could see Dutch houses and trees that were thirty-six times bigger than they would've been on Earth. Two story houses that were about thirty feet high to the Asgardians were in the vicinity of a thousand feet tall to Darren.

Darren was able to see the townspeople of the town Aleena lived in, and saw that the average height of these people was between one-hundred-eighty and two-hundred feet tall. Even the children who were running around stood about a hundred and fifty feet tall, and these were the younger ones. There was a stable the townspeople used to park their carriages, and Greta pulled in and parked the carriage, and tied the horses. Aleena took the cage and followed her mother out of the stable, toward a two story building. A sign hanging from a wrought-iron frame had the word "Magistrate" printed on it, and Aleena followed Greta into the building.

The magistrate was about sixty with gray hair and a goatee and moustache. He was busy with another customer, but he was soon finished and the other customer left. He ushered Greta and Aleena over to his desk, and Aleena set Darren's cage down in an area free of clutter. To Darren, the office looked like a movie set for a film about the eighteenth or nineteenth century. He could picture Ebeneezer Scrooge chastening Bob Cratchet for putting too many coals on the fire. The inkwell on the desk was as tall as Darren, and the crow-quill pen was at least three times as long as Darren was tall.

"My daughter Aleena found him," said Greta, "we want to register him in my daughter's name. Hopefully, nobody will come to claim him."

"Her name?" the magistrate asked, as he pulled a roll of parchment from a shelf and unfurled it.

"Aleena Vandenberg!" said Greta.

"Her age?" the magistrate asked.

"She's fourteen."

"I'm going to need you and Aleena to sign this document."

Greta signed the document, followed by Aleena.

"As long as nobody claims him within thirty days of today's date, then he will belong to Aleena!"

The magistrate wished them a nice day, and Aleena took the cage and followed her mother out the front door onto the cobblestone street.

"Now we have to buy some clothes and a bed for him!" said Greta.

Aleena carried the cage as the two of them entered a shop that carried supplies for captives. Greta and Aleena split up. Greta found a bed, a toilet, and a bathtub, while Aleena shopped for clothes for Darren. Aleena picked out six changes of pants, shirts, underwear, and socks, as well as a jacket. When Greta paid for the clothes and the other things, she got out the key to the cage and opened it after Aleena set the cage down on the counter. Aleena set the bed, toilet, and bathtub inside the cage, then she put the clothes inside.

"You forgot to get him towels," Greta said, and Aleena went and got some towels for Darren, and Greta paid for them.

"Now we need to go to the jewelry store," said Greta.

"What for, momma?" Aleena asked.

"You'll see!" Greta replied with a smile on her face.

As Aleena carried Darren's cage and followed her mother to the nearby jewelry store, Darren quickly got out of his wet flight suit and stripped naked without Aleena or her mother taking notice. He put on a pair of the underwear Aleena had gotten for him, and slipped on a pair of the pants and a shirt. After being soaking wet in this northern latitude, it felt luxurious to put on warm, dry clothes. Darren tried on the jacket, and it fit comfortably. The pants, however, were one size fits all, and they were kind of loose. Luckily, Darren had been wearing a belt when he had gone up into orbit, and these pants Aleena had bought for him had belt loops that were the right size for his belt to fit through. By the time Darren was dressed, Aleena and her mother were at the jewelry store.

"We're getting you a gold necklace!" Greta proclaimed.

"Momma, I don't need a necklace! You and father must pay the bills! I don't need something that extravagant!"

"I disagree, and I'm in charge of making the decisions around here. You need a chain to keep your key on! I wouldn't want you to lose it! Now pick one out!"

Aleena went to the glass cases and looked at the necklaces. Some were gold and some were silver. Aleena found a thin silver necklace, and pointed it out to her mother.

"We'll take this one!" Greta said to the man behind the counter. He got the necklace out and handed it to Aleena. Greta gave the key to Aleena, then paid for the necklace. Aleena unhooked the back of the necklace and slid the necklace chain through the hole in the handle of the key. After getting her change, Greta helped Aleena put the necklace on.

After exiting the jewelry store, Aleena spotted her best friend across the street.

"Mom, there's Inga! I want to go over to her house and show her my captive! I'll walk home from here!"

"Okay, but don't come home too late!" Greta said, and the two parted. Greta returned to the stable, and Aleena walked across the street to talk to her friend. When Darren saw the other girl, he noted that she was about the same height as Aleena. Darren found himself still trying to mentally calculate the height of any giants he encountered.

"Inga, I've got my own captive now! It looks like Wes and Vashti are going to have some company whenever I come over to your house to visit you!"

Aleena held the cage up so her friend could see it. Inga took the cage, and looked at Darren. He could see that she had blonde hair and blue eyes, just like Aleena. Inga was extremely pretty, just like Aleena.

"He's cute!" said Inga, handing the cage back to Aleena. "Where did you get him?"

"I was churning butter when I spotted him, but he didn't know I saw him. I ran inside the house through the back door so he wouldn't hear me, then I grabbed a jar and hunted him down. Catching him was child's play!"

"You'd better get him registered, he probably belongs to somebody."

"I already did, that's where I'm coming from now. Can I take him to your house to meet your captives?"

"Yeah, that's where I'm going right now!"

Aleena held the cage from a handle on the top of it, so Darren was about at mid-thigh elevation as the two giantesses walked. Darren became accustomed to the sway of the motion as the cage swung gently back and forth as Aleena swung her arms as she walked.

"Do you know Heidi?" Inga asked Aleena.

"The rich girl? Of course!" said Aleena.

"She celebrated her birthday the other day. I wasn't there, but I heard from someone that she got ten captives for her birthday. Do you know what she did with them?"

"What?" Aleena asked.

"She swallowed seven of them. A couple of hours after her birthday party was over, her mother went into her room and found only three of them, plus the five other captives she already had."

"Did she get in trouble with her parents?" Aleena asked.

"No! Heidi's a spoiled brat. I'm lucky to have just two captives, and she gets fifteen and swallows seven of them!"

"I've never had a captive before," said Aleena, "so I couldn't imagine swallowing one. They're two inches tall, isn't that a little too big too swallow?"

"Not really," said Inga. "A lot of people have swallowed captives. It's practically an epidemic! In Amsterdam rich people have parties where they swallow captives. When I become an adult, I want to go to one of those parties!"

"How would you get in?" Aleena asked.

"I'll just marry a rich man! Of course, he'll have to be cute, too!"

The two girls laughed as they stepped up onto Inga's front porch. Once inside, Aleena showed Darren to Inga's parents, then they went to Inga's bedroom. There was a table in the center of the room with two chairs on either side. Aleena set Darren's cage down on the table, while Inga got another cage that was slightly bigger than Darren's and set it next to it.

Inga wore a gold necklace that she took off over her head. A key was looped onto the gold chain, which Inga used to unlock the cage. Aleena did the same with Darren's cage. Inga reached in and grasped her two captives, and dropped them onto the table. Aleena did the same with Darren. When Aleena unclenched her fist, Darren dropped to the table and saw two other people his size, a man and a woman. The man was a tan 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 like they were happy to receive visitors. Their happiness was short-lived, however, because Inga's fist slammed down onto the table.

"Toys," Inga said in a loud, authoritative tone of voice, "I have allowed you to have a companion for the day. He is owned by my friend Aleena. What do you have to say for yourselves?"

The man and woman got down on their knees and bowed low to their owner, and the man spoke: "You honor us with this great privilege, great goddess. 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 captive get away with having bad manners, Aleena. They get spoiled and forget their place. It just isn't proper!"

Inga turned and looked at Darren. "Tiny one, what is your name?"

"I'm Darren, Darren Dale!"

"Captives take the surname of their captor!" Inga replied. "If Darren is your first name, then your last name is Vandenberg, Aleena's last name! Tell, me, where did you come from when Aleena captured you?"

"My space shuttle splashed down in the lake near Aleena's house. I'm from a parallel universe!"

Aleena looked at Inga, and said, "That's the story he first told me. He claims he traveled here in a vessel that travels through the sky."

"I find that hard to believe," said Inga, "but if his story is true, then you won't have to worry about anyone claiming him! I'm going to get some strudel my mother just made. I'll be right back."

While Inga was in the kitchen, the male captive introduced himself to Darren. "I'm Wes, and this is my companion Vashti."

Darren shook hands with Wes, and was astounded by Vashti's beauty.

"Vashti and I were purchased as a pair. We're expected by our mistress to have offspring. We're protesting our captivity by refusing to have sex."

Darren wanted to ask Wes about the chances of a successful escape attempt, but with Aleena observing them and listening to their every word, it wouldn't have been wise. Inga returned with the strudel. As the girls ripped into the strudel, Darren approached them.

"Can I have some?" Darren asked.

"Captives aren't supposed to speak unless spoken to!" said Inga. "Aleena, you really must train this slave better!" Inga turned to look at Darren again. "Strudel is the food of the gods! Captives are forbidden! But if you were my captive, I'd make you eat strudel that had been chewed up in my mouth!" Inga stuck her tongue out at Darren, revealing a mouthful of chewed-up strudel.

Aleena laughed at this, and took a bite of strudel and chewed on it for a few moments. When it was ground into a thick saliva-strewn paste, Aleena stuck her right index finger into her mouth and scooped out a chunk of strudel and offered it to Darren.

"Do you want some, Darren?" Aleena asked.

Darren stood there and said nothing.

"In that case," said Aleena, "I command you to eat some of this, or you'll be punished!"

Darren took some of the chewed up strudel and ate some of it. Darren had been in the Marine Corps, so he was trained to handle anything. In spite of how disgusting it was, Darren managed to consume the chewed up strudel without gagging, and even took a second helping. Inga slammed her fist down onto the table.

"This is an outrage! He's not even sickened by it! This was supposed to be a punishment! Aleena, give him to me!"

Inga grabbed Darren, and held him so only his head protruded from her fist. "I can swallow you, and I will, even if it takes me six months of hard labor to pay Aleena back for you, so don't tempt me! Regardless of what Aleena says about the matter, if I am angered, I will swallow you! Here's a small sample of what I'm capable of!"

Inga stuffed Darren into her mouth, and sealed her lips. Her warm breath washed over Darren. As she exhaled carbon dioxide, Darren slowly lost oxygen. Aleena was amused as she observed Inga with a determined look on her face as Darren was helplessly contained within her mouth.

"Inga, you'd better not swallow my captive!" Aleena said.