As Nicole drove home from school, she was flipping from radio station to radio station trying to find something good to listen to, but after going through almost every single station, she gave the button one final push before she decided to give up. The last thing she landed on was the news, and they were of course talking about the same thing they had been talking about for the last year. Men all around the world were starting to shrink, but no one knew why. It clearly wasn’t warfare, because almost every single country had been hit by it. Scientists were baffled by not only what could cause such an event, but the fact that it only effected the male population. Many argued that it had to do with the Y chromosome because it was in the DNA, which could affect the entire size of the body, but none could actually explain how it happened, which is why many still believe that shrinking is caused in other ways.
Even though the first recorded person shrinking happened a year ago, it hadn’t really affected Nicole’s life. After all, it’s not like the entire male population had shrunk… yet. There are 7 billion people on planet Earth, and even though less than half of them are male, that’s still a lot of people for the disease to get to. So, Nicole didn’t actually have anyone close to her that it had affected. That’s not to say she didn’t know anyone who had shrunken though. There were a handful of Nicole’s female friends who had been affected because their brothers, or their fathers, or even their boyfriends had decreased in size. Some families seem to cope with the change, while it destroyed others. Some girlfriends could handle having a pint-sized boyfriend, while others felt a breakup was necessary.
Overall, it seems like most people still don’t know how to handle the situation. Nicole thought this made sense though because many of the men were still normal sized. No one was sure how many men had shrunk, but her school did average it out to about one out of twenty of the boys at her school had fallen victim to the disease. That meant in a class with twenty students total and ten of them being young men, all of them might still be perfectly normal size, which meant that people generally didn’t think about what they would do if one of their loved one’s had become pint-sized until the day it happened.
As for the people who did seem to care about the subject, it seemed to be very political, mostly because, it was. It was the number one issue in politics and seemed pretty divided into two extremes. One side was highly unrealistic about the situation by putting too much emphasis on taking care of every single shrunken male and changing the world to make it shrunken accessible. The other side on the other hand seemed almost cold hearted as they talked about not wasting any money on those who can almost in no way be helped at their new sizes. Both sides had their good points, but she knew only one side could win. Either people would adapt and make buildings and shops more shrunken male friendly, or the shrunken men of the world would have to face the fact that too many shrunken men equaled too many problems for normal people to handle.
As Nicole thought about all of this, the news caught her interest when she heard one of them talk about a new law being passed. She then settled her mind a little and turned up the radio to hear what they were talking about. It was a man and a woman arguing, but they seemed to have a playful demeanor and weren't getting too heated. There was a familiarity between the two speakers, and while the woman was being challenged, she seemed confident in her answers and happy to explain them.
“So, you’re saying you’re perfectly okay with this new law?”
“Yes.”
“And it doesn’t bother you that if a man shrinks, the police no longer have to look for him because he’s a man?”
“It makes absolutely no sense for the tax payers to waste their money to have cops get out a magnifying glass and look for every lost shrunken male in the United States.”
“You think it doesn’t make sense to find a loved one that’s lost?”
“Not by the police. If a tiny man is lost, his loved ones should be looking for him, not the police. Besides, ninety-nine percent of the time the man is never found, and if he is, it’s because someone in his family finally found him at home after he had fallen into a drawer or underneath the bed.”
“But this law doesn’t limit it to just shrunken men, but all men. I’m still normal sized and enjoying my normal sized life, but according to you, it doesn’t matter if I go missing either.”
“No, it doesn’t, because in that case, the reason you might have went missing is because you shrunk, which happens all the time. If they shrink at home, usually they can let someone know, but if they happen to be out at the movies, or be taking a walk through the park when they suddenly shrink, we don’t need an entire police force doing an investigation, looking all over the town for someone who is one inch tall.”
“So you’re saying we should put no effort into finding these tiny men?”
“I know it sounds cruel, but you have to look at the facts.”
“Ok, so you’re claiming it’s perfectly fine to stop trying since we weren’t doing a good job to begin with.”
“Yes, plus the fact that cops are predominately male, which means we’ve lost a chunk of our police force due to this disease. In some counties, the police force has dropped over twenty percent due to men no longer being able to protect and serve our people, and the number is only going to increase as more and more men continue to shrink. That’s why the issue we need to focus on isn’t looking for tiny men, but finding women to take their places so we’ll still have a police force!”
“Ha! If we have a predominately female police force, we might as well just not have one at all.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because a female cop is not intimidating.”
“You don’t think women are intimidating?”
“Typically not.”
“So you don’t find me intimidating?”
“No.”
“Well you should.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because you’re a man, and I’m a woman, and that means one thing. If they don’t find a way to stop men from shrinking, then all men will likely become one inch tall, which means eventually you will become one inch tall. But I’ll stay the size I am, which means that eventually you’ll be no bigger than my pinky toe. Heck, by the end of this interview you could end up shrinking, and if I wasn’t watching when it happened, then the only way you could get my attention is if you walked under this table to reach my foot. Now, lucky for you, I’m wearing a pair of open toe high heels, and they’re loose enough at the end where you could actually climb my shoe and crawl in between my toes, which is obviously what you would have to do because I couldn’t feel you just tapping on one of my toes at one inch tall. You’d have to get between my toes and wiggle around to let me know you’re down there. I just hope for your sake I don’t end up scrunching my toes out of reflex and drag you underneath them. That fact doesn’t intimidate you? You're not scared at the very real possibility of being trapped beneath my pretty little toes?”
(Laughing) “Well not when you throw the word ‘pretty’ in there.”
“Oh, I just threw that word in there to cushion the thought of your tiny body being trapped between my toes. Trust me, when I’ve been walking around in high heels all day, there’s nothing pretty about my feet.”
“Well, that’s okay, because it looks like it’s time to wrap this interview up anyways, which means it looks like I won’t have to deal with gigantic toes!”
(Laughing) “At least not today.”
“But hey, maybe this next guy I’m about to interview will shrink while we’re talking to him. If I find out he has foot-fetish, I’ll send him your way!”
“I appreciate that.”
“And I appreciate you coming on to do my show. We may not always see eye to eye, but that’s why I love bringing you on. Anywho, our next guest….”
The interview starts to come to a close and Nicole turns down her speakers as she thinks about what she just heard. It almost seemed unbelievable that men could no longer be declared as a “missing” person. This seemed to be a big win for the political side that tended to be more cold hearted, but Nicole had to admit that the girl on the radio made a lot of good points for her side. It didn’t seem like the morally right thing, but it sounded pretty ethical. Nicole pulled in her driveway and couldn’t wait to talk to her parents about this new law. After all, it hadn’t been the biggest news all day… at least… that’s what she thought until she went inside.