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."