Gordi
was a 13 year old student of Miss Corlani’s time travel class. He went to the
shops one Saturday, looking at comic books, and then went to the Food Mall
Centre for lunch. One of his teachers Miss Woodfield was staring at him from
another table, where she was also eating. She wore a red cardigan and a black
dress. Then she brought her lunch over to his table.
She
asked him to her house for lunch the next day, as she had something she wanted
to show him. He went around on the day, and she served their lunch. They ate,
and then she showed him a device, which reduced him to tiny size.
"Don't
worry, it can be reversed," she said, "I wanted to play a special
game with you. I hadn't finished designing this technology until last year. I
was hoping to shrink you, let you hide, until I found and caught you, and then
eat you, by swallowing you whole, but not all the way down. Then I’d cough you
up again, restore your size and we could play the game again another day. You
could be my little Dollipop.”
"It's
incredible," he said, "An amazing way to use your mouth."
"Would
you mind doing that?"
"Not
at all, if it would make you happy. Are you asking me if we can play such a
game today?"
"Would
you like to?"
"I'd
be happy to. It sounds exciting, especially since I don't have to be eaten
permanently."
He
agreed to this exciting chance to be with the beautiful teacher in any
capacity. She explained that the house had once belonged to Miss Balfour, who
had moved away now. He remembered Miss Balfour and thought that both teachers
were beautiful.
Each
weekend he enjoyed coming over and playing the game.
One
rainy day, they were playing it as usual. Miss Woodfield found him hiding in
her bedroom, picked him up and put him into her mouth. She gulped him down her
throat, and then coughed him up again.
The
next day, he decided to experiment with his time machine, just for a short
trip. He waited until the end of the Sunday, around bedtime, and then set the
machine to travel to Miss Woodfield’s house at the beginning of the day. He
would let her think that it was his morning self coming around to play the game
as usual.
Just
as the time machine reached her garden, lightning struck struck it, and
something happened. The machine surged, and shrank with him shrinking inside
it.
The
storm had suddenly vanished. It was not raining, not even overcast.
He
did not know it yet, but he was now much further in the past than he had
intended to go. He slipped under Miss Woodfield’s door and into the house.
Gordi
wondered what had happened, and then noticed that a woman came in, wearing a
dark blue dress. She wasn’t Miss Woodfield, but Miss Balfour.
When
the machine had received the lightning surge, it had moved further back in
time, crossing the period which had been affected by the Ring of Reversal. Both
Gordi and the machine were reduced to tiny size, not by the lightning, as Gordi
believed, but by the dispersed shrinking energy from the Ring of Reversal’s
side effects. At this point in time, Colleen had not even invented her
shrinking device yet.