Scott Stevens stretched toward the sky, or at least, toward waist-height of an average human being. To him, after several years of life at the size of a thumb, growth in the direction of even sub-normal was monumental by comparison. A flood of euphoria spread goose bumps liberally across his frame as he ascended in the warm glow of a PMRD’s emerald light within the Techilogic facility complex.
In a break from the norm, the young man’s size change was not a private affair, as he stood amongst the new-age metal cathedral of this corporate kingdom. With a cluster of litigators present, some reporters, plus a couple Techilogic higher-ups for ceremonial purposes, and his family including Judy, Maggie, and Kyle Stevens, Scott was the center of attention. And for once, it wasn’t humiliating. He stared out at the people, restored to his full height of over six-foot, and couldn’t help but feel a welling up behind his eyes.
“Feeling all right, Scott?” one of the techs asked on approach, clipboard in hand. “Any numbness, tingling?”
“Nope,” he said. “All good.”
“Excellent. Our scans read you in good health as well. If you experience any problems, of course, considering your reduction time was so long, you can just let your mother or anyone here know, and we’ll be happy to take care of you.”
Scott nodded. He shared a passing glance with his encouraging siblings, and then his mother: the woman who’d spent the past ten years, and especially the last three, making his life a living, gum-smacking, toe-squishing, dignity-depriving hell.
“Now, if everyone would like to follow us this way…” one of the Techilogic royals said, clapping her hands. “…we’ve got the main event of today’s little public reduction and rehabilitation prepared in the other chamber.”
Raising an eyebrow, Scott dusted himself off and followed after the shuffling throng of people. It took at least a few steps to recalibrate his legs to taking normal-sized strides, which left the young man with sea legs. However, curiosity spurred him forward.
His mother Judy, dressed to impress, complete with imposing executive top and skirt, granted him a wink and a proud smile. Then, without comment, she took up the lead of the small crowd amongst the Techilogic powerful. The rest of the techs, reporters, and lawyers filed after, leaving Scott and his two siblings to bring up the pack.
“What are they talking about?” Scott whispered to his younger brother Kyle as they walked. The lack of understanding wasn’t a surprise, of course; he was used to being left out of the loop at his former three-inch height. “What’s the “main event?” Is somebody else re-growing too?”
“No idea. She doesn’t tell me anything either,” Kyle muttered. He looked his brother up and down. “So how’s it feel?”
“Like fucking drugs,” Scott joked, earning a snicker from his sibling. Not that this was much of a stretch.
“I thought you were better off being little,” Maggie whispered. She walked a pair of fingertips up her brother’s shoulder, simulating his previously miniature limbs.
Heart fluttering momentarily, Scott turned and looked down at his little blonde sister, with her smug smirk and expressive baby-blues. Just when he thought they’d come to have a peaceful rapport.
“Only kidding, big bro,” she snorted. “Now I don’t have to carry you everywhere. God, that was annoying.”
“No kidding,” Scott agreed with relief.
The next chamber was considerably more cavernous than the high-tech physics lab where Scott was re-proportioned. Here, the group found themselves in what essentially amounted to an empty airline hangar, with walls stretching more than a dozen stories up. At the center of the ceiling was a beam device, which to Scott looked like something belonging to the base of a lunar rocket.
“Yeah, that looks safe,” Kyle scoffed quietly.
“What’s Mom doing?” Maggie whispered to her older brother, as if he’d know.
Sure enough, Judy was marching out toward the epicenter of the room, alone. The clack of her high heels stabbing the steel earth echoed roundly about the hall. Hers was a confident, unflinching march. Wherever she was headed and whatever she was doing, she knew precisely what it was well ahead of everyone else.
“Absolutely no idea,” Scott said back to her. “Why do they make this place so big?”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the Techilogic executives boomed. “We’re pleased that you’re here to witness the first official, permanent, legal alteration of personal size outside the R&R program. Be so kind as to stay back, behind the yellow line. The process is about to begin.”
Process? Scott squinted, watching his mother half a football field away come to a stop at the center of the room and lie flat on the demarcated ground. The ceiling ray hummed and ebbed with a green ember. Then, when all the techs and reporters were clear of the line, the mounted device chugged and fired a quick pulse of its trademark emerald down to the floor, directly into Judy.
In a stunted flash that passed in a matter of seconds even as Scott felt time had slowed to the lurch of crashing waves, Judy grew. Considerably. Her ample, bulging legs stretched to the furthest corners of the room; her gleaming crown of hair became a tangled cataract of gold; those hands reached for the stars. She had to be close to one hundred and fifty feet tall.
The sight warranted a flurry of gasps and applause from the crowd of professionals. At back of the pack, however, Scott felt himself go brittle in the knees.
This couldn’t be happening. There was no way, that on the day he finally grew back to his former size, that his mother, in all her calculated wisdom and political clout, had orchestrated herself to be grown to the size of an actual, breathing goddess. The universe simply couldn’t be so serendipitously vile. At her new size, by relative scale, Scott was right back to being three inches tall as far as his mother was concerned.
“We have a successful run, ma’am!” one of the techs at the controls declared. More applause rang out, even a couple of hoots and hollers. A deep, sonorous murmur arose from the giant woman.
Judy Stevens, ever the consummate face of aggressive societal change, pulled herself up with regal poise. The room rumbled under her delicately placed hands, fingernails scraping the floor for yards at a time. She pushed to her haunches and turned her gorgeous, billboard-ready face out to the public. Those razor-white pearly whites gleamed back at everyone with a hungry zeal.
“Thank you very much, all of you, for being here for my little growth spurt,” Judy boomed. “I know this may come as a bit of a shock, to see me anew like this. Techilogic’s choice to reintroduce its growth science, beyond merely returning shrunken individuals to their former size, will be a controversial one. However, I believe there’s much to be gained in a controlled allowance of elite professionals and leaders gaining this height. I say that not because I see myself as above all of you, but because there’s much to be learned, and what’s more, much to be accomplished with these advancements into the future.”
The crowd ate up Judy’s braying. Just like they always did when she formed herself a pulpit and molded her doctrine into that sugar-coated nonsense. Scott thought he might be ill after all.
Journalists’ cameras were in a flashing frenzy. Questions from lawyers and reporters started piled with chattery abandon. Hands rose. But Scott, Kyle, and even Maggie retreated a few steps away from their gigantic parent. The giantess’ sky-blue gaze drifted over them in that maternal, omniscient way only she could manage. Her lip curled in a grave smile.