“And you’re sure this’ll work? It won't blow me up or anything?” Max stood nervously on the small metallic pad her brother and laid on the floor. She gripped the ends of her skirt with her fisted hands, fidgeting.
“Nah, the worst it’d do if it doesn’t work is maybe melt the bottoms off your shoes….probably….” Max’s brother, David, paused for a moment to recheck the scribblings on his notepad before pulling out a normal looking TV remote.
“David! I’m serious! I know I said I wanted to be taller but not at the expense of my life! Geeze!” Max stamped her feet. A less than intimidating show from a girl who weighed less than 80lbs and stood under four and a half feet tall.
“Just trust me! I’ve tested it thoroughly! I wouldn’t do this if I wasn’t sure it was safe!” Throwing his notepad to the side David strapped on a pair of goggles and pointed the remote at the little disk. “Read? Let’s go!”
“Wait why do you need gogg-” Max’s voice was cut off but a sudden whirring sound and a flash of blue-green light. There was a snap. A crackle. And a pop. Max felt like the floor gave way beneath her as all the lights in the room flickered and went out. Finally, there was a gush of acrid smoke and the lights slowly came back on. Max stumbled forward out of the smoke cloud emanating from the disk, waving her arms to clear the air. “What the hell? I said wait!” She stopped, noticing that her feet seemed to be sticking to the floor. “Oh great! It did melt my shoes! David what the hell?” Her brother didn’t respond right away. He was busy looking over Max’s body, sizing it up. He whipped a tape measure from….somewhere and began taking measurements.
“How tall again were you? Exactly?” He asked as he was finishing up.
“Ugh, I am 4 feet 4 inches. 4 and ¼ if you’re generous.” Upon hearing this David let out a cry.
“NO YOU’RE NOT! You are exactly 4 feet 6 and a half inches! It worked! I can’t believe it worked! I mean, I knew it would, but wow!” David ran over to his desk and began furiously scribbling in his notebook. Max just stood in the center of his room. Dumbfounded. It worked? She was….taller? Only by two and half inches but still, taller? She could hardly believe it. In fact she didn’t.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust David, but this whole thing was just too unbelievable to take without seeing the proof herself. Even as she ran to the bathroom to measure herself against the door she could tell, things were different. She was different. Standing against the doorway she held her hand over her head and then stepped away. Sure enough, her hand rested on 55 inches, Davide must’ve been too excited to get an accurate measurement. Gasping slightly she turned to the bathroom mirror and looked herself in the eyes. She looked the same as always. Slight of frame with shoulder-length black hair and a soft childlike face. Except she was taller. And there was something else. She stepped back and placed her hands over her chest. She had boobs! Barely A cup but boobs nonetheless! As a girl of 18 to finally have some curves was an odd but welcome experience. She had to thank David.
As she left the bathroom and was just about to enter her brother’s room a voice called from downstairs.
“David! Max! Dinner’s ready! Don’t keep us waiting!”
“Coming Mom!” David and Max replied in unison. Max smiled, she could thank David later. Right now she wanted to see what her mother and sister would think of her new body!
Ten minutes later The family of four was sitting at the dinner table eating quietly. Max couldn’t hold it in anymore.
“So….do you guys notice anything different about me?” She queried, scooting back in her chair a little to show more of her upper body. Her mother, Diane, looked up from her plate.
“Hmmmmnnnope. Did you change your makeup?”
David and Max shared a quick glance.
“Noooo, guess again,” Max said, a little more dejected this time. Her mother squinted, chewing her food slowly.
“I really don’t know hun’. Is anything different? You’re not pregnant are you?”
“What? Mom, no! I’m taller! I'm 4 foot 7 now!” Max blurted out, how could her mother not notice her own daughter had grown 3 inches in the past hour?
“Huh? Haven’t you always been 4’7? For a few years at least?” Her mother sounded genuinely confused.
“She’s always been touchy about her height. Maybe she just hoped you hadn’t noticed.” Clair, Max’s older sister and the oldest of the three, was barely looking up from her plate.
“NO! I’ve always been 4 foot 4, since I was like 10 years old!”
“Oh honey you have always been a little on the small side, but 4 foot 4? That would put you over a foot shorter than me!”
Max paused. That didn’t sound right. Her mother was 5 foot 2 which would’ve made her 10 inches taller than her but not over a foot.
“Wait. How tall are you mom?”
“Hmmm, about 5’5 last I checked? Still shorter than average for a woman but I never had a problem with that.”
“And you Clair?” Both Max and David had stopped eating and were each sizing up the two girls across the table. By their memory, Clair should be 5’3.
“5’6. Why? What’s wrong with the two of you?”
Hearing this. Both Max and David let out a slurry of excuses and rapidly emptied their plates, put them in the sink, and ran upstairs.
“David, what the hell was that about? I thought only I grew?” Max was pacing around her brother’s room, running her hands through her hair.
“Hang on! Hang on! I’m thinking, I’ll figure….AH-HA!” David exclaimed, staring at his computer screen. “See here, it says the average height for women is 5 feet 7 inches! When I used the pad to increase your height, somehow it increased the height of every woman on the planet!” Max stopped pacing to stare at her brother, dumbfounded.
“That’s what you figured out? How? Why? Can we fix it, What do we-” She was cut off as she felt the sensation of the floor falling out from beneath her, again. The lights dimmed and then came back on just as suddenly. She and David looked at each other, both knowing what this meant. David looked back at the screen.
“I, uh, was wrong. The average height for women is 5 feet 11 inches….”
“David. What the hell is going on?” Max stood up straight to her full height of 4’10.
“Ummm, I’ll get back to you on that….” David clearly didn’t have the answers.
“What’s up nerds?” A voice came from the doorway. “Why’d you run off like that?” Clair was standing in the hall, leaning on Davids’s door frame.
“Nothing,” David said too quickly as he stood to block the computer monitor. Clair frowned slightly, and walked into the room and over to David. From Max’s perspective, she looked exactly the same but to David, who at 5 foot 8 had always had a good 5 inches on his sister, her new 5’10 frame was more than a little intimidating. She stood just in front of him, arms folded, and peered over his head at the computer screen.
“Damn. I was hoping I caught you losers watching porn or something. Whatever weirdos. I’m going to bed.” As she left the room Max suddenly felt the sensation again, and the lights fluctuated. When the lights came back Clair was gone. And Max and David both looked at the screen. The average height was now up to 6’4.
“Okay….okay….that’s….new…..” David spoke slowly, unsure of himself. Max was busy looking over her body. She definitely felt taller, 5 foot 4 though she didn’t know this. And she was….thicker too. Both her thighs and her chest had ballooned significantly. She had to be nearly a C cup now. “It’s accelerating...3 inches the first time, 4 the second and now 5.” David was muttering to himself. “The question is, why is it affecting everyone and not just Max? And why are we the only two people who notice?”
David’s musings and Max’s exploration were cut short but a soft knock on the door.
“Are you two okay? You ran off in such a rush I was worried.” Their mother stood in the doorway, taking up much more of it than she should. Both Max and David looked over to see their mother standing 6 feet 2 inches tall, and not only that, her breasts and hips swelled well beyond their memory. David, still standing, could only let out the sound a fish out of water makes as his face turned bright red. “Oh Davey, honey, do you have a fever?” Their mother crossed the distance in two enormous strides and placed her hand on David’s forehead. “Here, let mama check, oooh you’re burning up!” Almost as if on cue, the floor fell away and the lights flickered. When they came back, David found himself face to cleavage with his mother as she pressed herself into him.
Max looked down at her own body. She was 5 foot 10 now. 2 inches taller than her older brother and her breasts had grown too large DD cups. She held them in her hands, feeling their heft. She looked over at her brother. He had always seemed so tall. Now, he looked….short. Well he was, she figured, looking at the computer. The average height for women was now 6’10. All men were short, averaging more than a foot below women. She realized that while she was still small for a girl she was an inch taller than the average man. This brought a light smile to her face. She wasn’t so small anymore!
“David, you're staying in bed tomorrow. Max, you’re sister and I have some errands to run so you’ll be in charge. Take care of your little brother okay?” Their mom had finally stopped fussing over David and was walking towards the door.
“Sure thing Mom!” Max chirped, giving a faux salute. David leaned back on his desk, seemingly exhausted. Max turned to face him. “Well, little brother, unless you find a way to fix this it seems things around her are gonna change.”
“Yeah, I know….I think that…..” David wasn’t given time to think. Once again. Floor, lights, growth. David had closed his eyes. Slowly he opened them to look way, way up to his sister’s face. Glazing down at her now enormous chest he noted how much closer it was to his face.
“Whoa, that was a big one, bigger than the others.” Max pointed out, “How tall am I now?”
David sat down and did some calculations.
“You should be 6 foot 10. Mom is 7 foot 8 and Clair is 7 foot 9. The average height for women should be 7 feet 10 inches.”
“Holy shit.” Max whispered. “Why is it getting so much faster?”
“Dunno.” Was all David said.
“Dunno? Dunno?! You built that thing and you ‘Dunno’?” Max sounded angry, though she really wasn’t. In fact, she was enjoying the whole thing. David shrugged.
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what’s going on. I think I figured out the rate of growth and roughly when the next one should occur but that’s it.”
“Oh yeah? When?”
“About,” David looked at his phone, “10 seconds, this time you’ll grow by 15 inches.
Sure enough, 10 seconds later Max shot up to 8 foot 1.
“Well is it going to stop?” She asked. Again David shrugged.
“According to my calculations, this should keep accelerating until women are consistently growing at an exponential rate. This time next week, you should be able to hold the entire universe on your pinky finger. Give it another few minutes after that and you won’t even be able to see it.” David walked over to his bed and flopped face down. He then held 3 of his fingers up and did a countdown. “18 inches this time.”
Max took one step, one was all she needed at 9 feet 7 inches tall, towards David’s bed and picked him up by the shoulders. Holding him to her level she spoke sternly.
“You have to do something. If that’s really what’s gonna happen either we’re all going to die in the vacuum of space or collapse under our own mass or….something, you have to stop this.” Another wave of growth hit her. Bumping her up an even 2 feet.
“Don’t know how! I don’t even know how it’s happening!” David’s voice sounded small now, almost distant.
“Well, do something!” Max shouted, her voice far louder than it should have been as she grew another 30 inches. David’s brow furrowed. Then an odd look came over his face. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out the remote he’d used to control the device.
“What are you doing?” Max whispered, trying to keep her booming voice down as she grew yet again, it was almost constant now.
“Pausing it.” David said simply as he pressed the pause button.
“Really? ‘Pausing it’ are you an idiot?”
David just shrugged sheepishly as he looked up at his towering younger sister. Despite technically being “short” for a woman she was nearly 3 times as tall as her elder brother at 14’3. David’s head was level with her thighs and her knees were right at his chest.
“Uhhhh….yeah so...clearly I’ve made a teensy miscalculation….”