Hours flowed like water through a great river. If nothing else, life had certainly become much more interesting in the past few hours, and not just for Hannah. But if the hours were brief for the comparatively tiny specimens on the ground, it was a flash of light for Hannah. Making tiny twitches and turns, grunt and groans, her eyes forced themselves open, showing an image of an overcast sky, blurred from her frazzled state of mind. It took her a few seconds to recall what she had so hoped was a dream… something where she was a giant, and she crushed half the city.
Suddenly, a sharp, loudened voice rung in her ear. “Subject is waking! Subject is waking!” Her half closed eyes flung open at the screeching voice, it was like something was slapping her round the face with sound. “I repeat, subject is waking!” on top of this, an ear piercing, moaning siren was sounding, as though there were a bombing raid. Hannah slowly turned her head, and noticed the second impossible thing before breakfast. Dotted around her head were lots of tiny, makeshift buildings, probably not even a tenth of her little toenail, constructed out of metal crates and scaffolding, with little people in little white coats rushing inside. On top of this, several platoons of dust-sized armed men, pointing their weapons directly at her. It startled her, and she inhaled sharply. Despite her new found size, it (which she did not yet have the ability to consider the repercussions of) it was the first time she had ever been pointed at with a loaded weapon, let alone hundreds of them. To make matters even worse, her eyes panned to the side slightly more, to reveal, of all things, tanks. She had no reason to doubt that they were ready to fire on command. Just then, she remembered in perfect detail her “dream”.
A crushing sense of dread flowed through her; she recalled the screaming, the rubble, and her nudity…
“Subject has woken! Stay inside until the all clear! This is not a drill!” repeated the distorted voice, in a harsh, barking tone. Hannah was a deer in headlights; a blank, scared expression matched her darting eyes that weren’t focusing on anything. She mustered up the courage needed to talk, but despite her assembling of nerves, her voice came out positively mousey, and she did not decide fully on a question to ask. “What… happened?”
“Do not move from your current position!” the intercom howled. Hannah was unsure if it was referring to her or everyone else but, not wanting to risk being reduced to ash and led, she pinned herself static on the ground, as much as she wanted to cover up.
Shaking her head oh so slightly, “I just want some answers!” she requested, in a saddened voice, much louder than her last statement.
Silence.
“A representative will… tell you everything we know… shortly… Miss Ingen.”
Everything we know… those words brought Hannah very, very little reassurance, but in a way they told her everything she needed to know about the situation: no one knew what was going on, and that terrified her more than anything she could imagine.
She lay like a giant carpet for half an hour with her arms and legs spread out slightly, left to her own thoughts while scientists deliberated and the troops stood ready to fire at the drop of a hat. All that time, Hannah tried to muster up the courage to speak once more, but the dead silence felt oppressive and crushing, like it was forcing her voice down. Eventually, the intercom echoed through the air and flowed into her ears once more.
“We are ready to tell you everything we know” A blank, cautious, female tone stated. “Now, Miss Ingen, I want you to follow my instructions exactly” it continued, sternly. Hannah forced out a conforming “okay…” along with a feeble nod.
“Very slowly, I want you to sit up.” The distorted tone demanded. Hannah complied. Looking left and right at the area around her hands, she applied a colossal deal of pressure, far, far more than she knew she was, to the point that her handprints were embedded in the ground. Though she had sat up hundreds of times before, this time felt like much more effort, like an entirely new experience, for several reasons. For one, she heard the cocking of guns again, ready to fire if needed. Second, though it hadn’t entirely sunken in yet, she knew that if she slipped, she would crush someone flat. As she rose up, her head felt light, and she heard the anonymous voice generically reassure her; “You’re doing well” “Keep going” “Well done…”
After what felt like an age, her upper half was vertical, allowing her to observe all points south; by her feet, she noticed several reinforced makeshift research facilities, obviously because of the risk of it being kicked. Then, she was made to face her nudity again. In a heartbeat, she guided her right arm across her breasts, and her left to cover up her nether regions, looking mortified all the while.
Still, silence.
Hannah took a deep breath in, asking “Can I… please have an… explanation?” once again in an insignificant, scared tone of voice, but before she could even finish her sentence, it was spoken over with more demands. “Look to your left. You will notice a platform” Doing as the female voice commanded, she spotted the platform, and saw that on it was one of the people in a white coat. The microphone on the platform told Hannah that she was the voice on the intercom. Hannah was astounded to find that she could make out her shape and features with relative ease.
Hannah could tell that she was an older woman. Her grey-brunette hair and wrinkling face told her that much. She almost spoke once more, before she was interrupted by the Canadian tone. Sounding like she had memorised her words, the scientist stated quite bluntly “Hannah Elizabeth Ingen, shortly after 11 o’clock last night, a biological process we do not yet understand occurred in your body.” Hannah’s face was blank, as was the scientists.
“As a result of this process, you grew thousands of feet tall within the space of approximately 8 hours. As far as we are able to tell, you have now stopped growing.” Already, questions were rampant in Hanna’s mind, and she was sure that she wasn’t the only one utterly baffled.
“We have to run many more tests on you, but from the minuscule amount of research we have done, we do not think this process is reversible.” She said regretfully with a tinge of fear, for she didn’t know how the titanic woman would react.
Another gap of silence.
“How tall am I? I mean, specifically…” Hannah asked, just wanting to take her mind off that bombshell. From the sound of her, a frog had snuck into her throat without her knowledge, as her tone of voice quivered with a saddened confusion.
Clearing her throat, “Using our most advanced measuring equipment; we have calculated you to be between ten thousand, five hundred feet and ten thousand, seven hundred feet. Just over two miles…” she explained, sternly and bluntly
Two miles… obviously, there must have been some miscalculation, Hannah thought. If I was that big, my bones would have been turned to dust under their own weight… The world around Hannah went completely silent; the scientist speaking became white noise. Her face reflected her inability to process thought, with a gaping, open mouth, and shocked, baffled, empty eyes. She couldn’t even begin to contemplate how her life was going to work from now on. Her eyes wandered over the landscape, and she once again looked upon the half flattened city she had unintentionally terrorised. The streets were now empty and baron. Cars were dotted around the roads, lying abandoned. Would she forever be known as the woman who single handily caused LA to be evacuated? All the while, Hannah was subconsciously curling up into a foetal position, dragging her legs up to her chest, gripping the roots of her hair in a fist, resting her head on it.
Despite warnings on the ground to move her legs carefully, they dragged along the ground, leaving a path of soil in their wake. It was starting to dawn on her just how impossible she was, and it horrified her.
Yet more silence…