"I just don't know," said Mrs. Calypso, "this Doctor Nebulous might be guilty, but we need more proof to subpoena him."

I was standing on the dining room table, and Jessica and her mom were sitting, discussing the situation over coffee. Jessica had placed my thimble full of coffee, and I had a stairs glued together with toothpicks to make my way up to drink from the thimble.

Later that day, Susan Calypso had a construction crew knock out a hole in a wall in Jessica's bedroom and had a fishtank put in. This was my new home, carefully concealed behind a curtain. From the top of the fishtank to the bottom of the wall there was enough space for Jessica to fit her arm to reach in and pick me up.

I thought I'd be safe there while Jessica was away for the day, and I was, until the arrival of the twins. Bethany and Brianna were Jessica's cousins, and they came to stay at the end of Summer vacation. They were 12, almost 13, and they had an insatiable curiosity.

I hadn't been introduced to them, because I was supposed to be a secret. I was in my aquarium in the wall one day when Jessica and her mom were gone for the day.

The curtain was brushed aside, and I found myself looking into the faces of Bethany and Brianna. I was alarmed, because I knew two unsupervised kids could get into a lot of mischief.

"Bethany," Brianna said, "look! It's a little man!"

Brianna reached her hand in and grabbed me. It was futile to resist, so I didn't even try to run from her.

"Wow," Brianna said to me, "how did you get shrunk?"

My voice was too miniscule for her to hear me, so I pointed to the voice amplifier in my aquarium. She understood, and reached in and grabbed it. She turned it on, and I began my tale. It took about fifteen minutes to tell her everything, from the day the lab was robbed until I met up with Jessica.

Just then, Jessica and her mom arrived home. Brianna popped me into her mouth, and said, "I'm keeping him. Tell Jessica I swallowed him!"

Brianna still had the voice amplifier in her hand when Jessica showed up.

"We found Deuce," Bethany said, "and Brianna swallowed him!"

Brianna stuck out her tongue to prove this, with me safely tucked in her cheek.

"I don't believe you!" Jessica said, and stuck her finger in Brianna's mouth to retrieve me. She pulled me out, wet from Brianna's saliva.

"Don't ever do that again!" Jessica said, "you're forbidden to come in here any more!" Jessica turned the amplifier on and put the speaker up to my face.

"Deuce, are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "a little wet, but none the worse for wear!"

The next morning I was sitting on the dining room table eating breakfast with Jessica, the twins, and her mother when the subject of getting a pool built came up. Mrs. Calypso was under the impression that she was getting a good deal, because she had wanted a pool of certain dimensions, but decided on a pool with exactly half the dimensions of the original. The contractors were charging her one quarter of the original cost, and she thought she was making out like a bandit! How could I explain to her that she was getting ripped off?

When I tried to explain it to Jessica, she threw a cloth napkin over me to shut me up. She thought I was crazy!

"But I'm telling you, Jessica," I explained, "it will only cost them one eighth of the original cost, so they're charging your mother double!"

"How do you explain this idea of yours?" Jessica asked.

"It's called the square-cube law, or in some circles, the cube-square law!" I told her. "Pull a sugar cube out of that sugar bowl, and I'll show you!"

Jessica pulled out a sugar cube, and placed it on the dining room table. "Now how many sugar cubes," I explained, would it take to double the length, width, and height of that one sugar cube?"

"That's easy!" Jessica replied. "Two sugar cubes!" And as if in response, she lifted out another sugar cube and stacked it on top of the other one.

"Now get out six more sugar cubes!" I commanded the titanic teen.

Jessica got out six more, and I told her to arrange the eight cubes into a larger cube. "That giant cube," I went on, "is twice the length, twice the width, and twice the height of the first cube. Now do you understand the square-cube law? It is only taking the pool contractor one eighth of the work to build the smaller pool, but they're charging you one quarter of the price! They're charging you twice as much as they should!"

It was like a light went on in their heads. I had studied engineering in college, and the square-cube law (or the cube-square law, depending on who you were talking to), was something that was basic to any engineer, but it was uncommon knowledge to the average person.

Mrs. Calypso got out of her seat and began looking up numbers in the phone book. She got the number of the pool contractor, called them up, and found out who their boss was. When she got off the phone, she had amazing news.

"Their employer," Mrs. Calypso informed us, "is none other than Doctor Nebulous, that scientist you were after, Deuce!"

"Can you bring him up on charges?" I asked.

"No problem!" she replied. "It'll be done before the end of the business day! I have the paperwork with the estimates that prove he tried to swindle me!"

Jessica was puzzled. "Deuce," she said, "I understand that he's being brought up on charges for trying to swindle my mother, but how will that help you prove he was behind the robbery at professor Stiles's lab?"

It was a good question, and I didn't have a quick, easy answer. But as long as we could get Nebulous in a courtroom, it improved my chances of proving he was behind the robbery at the lab!

I spent most of my time in my chamber, with a heat lamp to provide warmth, because even at 70 degrees, I could freeze to death without artificial heating. I had talked to Professor Stiles about it, and he promised to design a suit for me that would keep me heated to 98.7 degrees fahrenheit. He's pretty busy these days, so I'm not counting on it any time soon.

As the days went on, the twins returned home, and it came time for Nebulous to appear in court. During that time, something fortunate happened. Someone came forward and claimed to know that Nebulous was behind the robbery at the lab. He worked for the pool company Nebulous owned, and he got caught with a large amount of methamphetamine. In order to get a lighter sentence, he agreed to cooperate with Calypso and the police in prosecuting Doctor Nebulous.

The arraignment came and went, there was another court date set, and that came and went. Eventually, it came time to get down to the nitty gritty, and Nebulous began to testify on his behalf. Jessica's mother came back from work every day and kept me informed of the events. Eventually, I received a subpoena to appear in court.

Professor Stiles built an elaborate glass containment system with a built in heat lamp, and a voice amplifier. When my day in court came, there were reporters first from the local news, then from other areas of the state, and eventually, the whole country! I quickly became famous over night as the world's first six millimeter man.

Jessica was considered my guardian, and she was approached with offers from people who assumed I was a possession, and wanted to purchase me. Jessica just brushed them off. In court, Doctor Nebulous sat there with his teenage daughter Alyndria. She was a punk rocker, dressed in shredded fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, Doc Marten boots, and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. She had part of her head shaved, and the other part kind of long. She was really pretty, and she had nice legs, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was just as evil as her father.

In court I described how the gunmen opened fire on the reactor, and explained that I found out that Nebulous was a major stockholder in a power company that would make money if they could acquire the patent to a new energy source.

All this looked bad for Nebulous, but things turned around for him several weeks into the trial when the key witness against him was found dead washed up on a local beach. No witnesses saw him enter the water, and it could not be proved that foul play was a possibility. Of course, I knew better. Nebulous had obviously arranged for this guy to be killed, to protect himself from the allegations.

In the end, the jury found him not guilty, and the trial was over. As Doctor Nebulous and his daughter prepared to leave the courtroom, his daughter Alyndria, the punk rocker chick, stopped by my glass cube and spoke with me.

"Better luck next time, little man!" she said.

I didn't know how to respond. She continued: "I wish I could keep you as a pet! That Jessica chick sure is lucky!"

When I got home with Jessica, a man was waiting for us. He was from a publishing company, and he wanted me to write about my ordeal and my experience as a six millimeter man.

"I'll pay you a seven figure sum, plus a percentage of the profits!" he said. The deal sounded good, so I agreed to it. Jessica helped me sign the contract, and I got to work writing my biography.

After he left, Jessica got the mail and found a letter for me. It was from the court, and I had a summons to appear regarding conservatorship. It turned out, my own mother had found out about me, and was suing to gain custody of me! So even though the trial of Doctor Nebulous was over, I still had to go to court again to fight for my freedom!