“You probably have level five clearance? I don’t get told anything, I don’t even know the details of the master plan, only that the experiments we are conducting here play some part in it”
Doug was disappointed to hear this as he hoped they would learn much more.
“Well of course I’m not allowed to discuss such things that are above your clearance Professor, but you could tell me about what goes on here as I wasn’t briefed for this new posting at all”

The professor sat back down and began to brief Melina who tried to contain any emotional chord the conversation struck.
“We keep a large number of male subjects here, you could call them our lab rats. I have separated them into age groups so we can better categorise the results. Fortunately Mrs Cohaagan has seen to it that I have enough numbers, and so far the results are encouraging but not conclusive.”
“Results of? What exactly do you do with these men you have down here?”
Melina prompted the professor and watched her stand up moving towards the main lab entrance.
“It’ll be easier to show you Melissa, and please call me Emma”

Following the thin blonde into the research lab, Melina couldn’t help but notice how un-professor like her attire was. Rather than the drab full length white lab coat she would have expected, Emma was wearing a figure flattering formal black dress that was cut just above the knee. Her footwear was equally baffling as she wore a pair of high heeled sandals that made her equal in stature to Melina. In fact her outfit was so surprising that Melina couldn’t help but question it as they entered the lab.
“Emma, forgive my question but the dress code here seems very unconventional for a research facility?”
“You mean what I am wearing right now?”
Emma stopped walking and stood by a centre console in the middle of the large room. Checking her dress she glanced back at Melina with a smug grin as she explained.
“I take pride in my work, you see the men we have here are part of some research we are conducting into male fertility. We have been asked to look into any side effects that the reduction of height could have on the male sperm count and the quality of that sperm. Then we have another study area to work out how a much smaller man could possibly produce sperm that could make a woman many times their size pregnant. This dress helps me to conduct my experiments, I’ll show if you like”
“Please do, and forgive my ignorance, but surely men are not that small yet to us women that we can’t become pregnant, are they?”
Politely as possible Melina questioned trying to gather as much intelligence as she could, meantime Doug held on tight hoping she would keep her head movements to a minimum as they walked to the corner of the lab and towards a room leading from this main area.

“The average man on Mars currently stands somewhere between three foot six inches tall to the tallest of them at four foot six inches tall, the average woman ranges wildly depending on their exposure from the shortest at twelve to thirteen feet tall, with some of us now closing on twenty feet and then there is the community in the new city which I’m told some of the women are way more than that”
With Emma painting a picture of the current population on the planet this made Doug realise just how confused things had become and he was very interested to find out more.
“Away from the old buildings which couldn’t be modified like this one and back in areas like Venus ville, men are lucky if they can look down and see our knees, now imagine the size of their sperm, a sperm that nature already challenged with our eggs being giants to them in the first place.”
“I see what you mean, and you are right there have been less and less pregnancies here I have noticed that”
Melina added from her own observations.
“That’s right. Women are only becoming pregnant if they reduce themselves to better accommodate our smaller partners when they mate, but technology like in your handheld BMU is not openly available to the average woman here as you know. The size difference is only going to increase, this atmosphere will make women taller and taller and men will continue to reduce in size, it’s not my field of expertise but predictions and the simulations I have seen show that the tallest of men will feel lucky if they end up being able to kiss our ankles, and that’s on their tip toes.”
Emma laughed and stopped walking as they reached another inner door, poised to open it in a flamboyant fashion, she then said
“Welcome to the future”

The door slid back on command and there was a bizarre sight to befall their eyes. There was what only could be described as three pens in front of them, each square pen had four walls made of a thick plastic and inside each of the pens was what looked like small clusters of doll houses.

Melina was about to walk closer for a better look when she bumped into a force field.
“Oh, sorry, I meant to warn you that at this distance we are stood in the observation area. The force barrier is designed to prevent their escape and it’s also visually and acoustically controlled so they can’t see or hear us whilst we observe until I drop the barrier.”
“Thanks”
Came the rather grumpy response from Melina who had bumped her nose, little did she realise that this impact was a nightmare for Doug as he barely managed to keep steady having almost been forced to push through the front of his girlfriends thick hair. Luckily as he laid flat on his front he had managed to hold tight and not expose his presence.

“The containment unit here on the left is populated with late teens to twenty five year old subjects, the middle represents the ages of twenty six to thirty five year olds and the far unit is for those up to forty five.”
“Wait you are saying that there are men in those houses, those little doll houses?”
“Yes, of course. You must have seen plenty of men reduced in size in your time as a guard surely? I mean you girls are always disciplining men in the streets and if you are anything like Kim who you replaced, well she wouldn’t stand for any nonsense from a man”
Fearful that her impersonation of a typical security woman was starting to show cracks, Melina stepped up her act to cover her question.
“Well of course I’ve shrunk many men in my time just to teach them some respect, I just didn’t imagine I would see three small scale villages with lots of them living at a reduced size, like this.”
As they spoke the two women could see right into the middle aged section where a group of men emerged from one of the larger buildings. Each man was exactly six inches tall and naked from head to toe, the men walked across to a small padded section of the floor talking amongst themselves. There was a large wheel fixed to the side wall of the environment resembling a scaled up exercise wheel that a rodent would use, and the men took turns to use it.
“We have one hundred subjects in total about forty in the younger section, thirty directly in front of you here and so on. They did arrive with clothes but, I kind of figured that they were just a hindrance, I mean I like to look at them this way don’t you?”
“Of course”
Melina agreed.
“Who wouldn’t. Emma, where have they all come from?”
“Oh, here and there. Cohaagan has taken most of them from the main atmospheric processing plant, they used to be labourers there. Some are naughty boys that you guards wanted in detention and a few smuggled off the streets to complete the numbers.”
A flash back went through Melina’s mind as she recalled how many men had gone missing with no explanation, there was a rumour that since men had become smaller than women that some of them decided to flee the main cities and camp in the mountains but this was the real truth now revealed.
“We shrunk them early on to half a foot tall. This is the level we predict men will soon end up at given the current state of the atmosphere and it’s the ideal size for me and my colleague to handle them with no bother. I must say when I step in there amongst them it does give me a certain buzz to tower over them like a giant, especially with those little houses....ah the fun we’ve had on this project”
Emma almost drifted off into a day dream before Melina pulled her back on track with a question.
“So how do you disable the barrier?”
“What? Oh. Over here it’s a pressure pad on the floor activated from both sides, but even if they managed to scale those slick walls they wouldn’t have the combined strength to disable it. Men are just so puny when they are this small”

At this stage Melina was feeling very sorry for the men below, some probably had been detained for over a year and by the looks on their faces they had resigned themselves that there was no escape from the impossibly tall plastic walls the prison surrounded them with. How frustrated they must have been and with no hope of rescue until today.

“Part of your job, will be to check on these little guys when you conduct your rounds. It’s unlikely they could escape but there have been occasions when they have tried”
Emma continued her briefing to Melina and walked along behind the invisible barrier until they were opposite the oldest group of men.
“Now, this is the fun part of the job, let me show you why I choose to wear a dress to work. I can use this holo interface here to isolate this particular containment unit so the others can’t see or hear them over the wall. Next I will introduce a burst of our modified real arousal, I assume you are familiar with the regular kind?”
“Of course”
Melina answered and went on to explain what she knew.
“It’s very useful for getting the truth out of subjects for us gaurds and it makes them very sexually open at the same time”
“Yes, that’s the normal effect but we are working on some modified versions here, when I activate this system, all of the thirty men down there will instantly breathe in the vapours, and even those inside the little houses will be uncontrollably attracted outside, just by the powerful smell of the pheromone we laced into the mix. Now watch, as it takes only seconds for the vapours to evaporate and produce the desired result”

Doug and Melina looked on as the men seemed to gather outside their dwellings just as Emma had predicted, soon there was a small crowd present and all of them in a trance like state.
“You see, there they all are, all my little men, just waiting. The floor of each containment unit is highly sensitive, it’s actually a large scan grid. I can analyse any bodily fluids that touch it. I need to have a sample from each of those men, and all of them right now are highly susceptible to any stimulus it’s rather wonderful. Look at them, their tiny little hormones levels are building and building. Now what do you think would happen if they saw a long pair of giant female legs stepping over that wall and into their little world, how would they react to seeing a pretty giantess towering over them in her short black dress and sexy high heels? Pardon me whilst I indulge myself”