It was June 19th, 1964, and Mike Sloan, aged 39, was ready to leave the present. The culmination of his life’s scientific work stood before him: the machine that would transport him away from this world that did not appreciate him or value his contributions to it and into the far future. Five hundred years would pass before he planned on emerging from its confines, but for him it would feel no different than going to sleep and waking up again in the morning. His body would be frozen in time and sealed shut inside the coffin-like chamber he’d constructed, which would then be lowered into a subterranean shaft he'd dug into the floor underneath his cellar. That would be the last time he’d see the world as it existed in this century.

“Good riddance, too!” he thought to himself as he tinkered with the machine’s controls, making doubly sure all of its specifications agreed with his wishes. “This century doesn’t deserve a man of such genius as myself! Haven’t I tried, over and over again, to make them see the brilliance of my ideas? Haven’t I sacrificed days, months, years of my life, slaving away at the research institute – only to see my inventions, the fruits of my own mind, perverted and debased for their cheap, narrow-minded marketing schemes? My inventions could’ve changed the world – but all they can think to use them for are televised game shows and carnival rides! No more of that! When I awake again in the 25th century, I shall be hailed as the visionary I am, a true pioneer of science – for surely by then the world will be a much more rational and enlightened place.”

His flights of fancy were interrupted by an insistent knocking on the cellar door, followed by the yells of a feminine voice just outside.

“Mike? Mike, are you still in there? Don’t tell me you’re still working on that ridiculous contraption of yours!”

“Oh, dear God, not now!” Mike exclaimed, as he listened to his wife Teri begging him to unlock the door and threatening him with all sorts of unpleasant chastisements if he failed to do so at once. Though she’d been a sweet and docile girl when he’d married her ten years ago, the fact that he rarely showed her any affection or gave her much attention caused her to gradually disrespect him more and more, until it was all he could do not to strike her whenever he had to endure her nagging and bossing him around.

“No matter, just a few more moments, and I’m leaving this century for good!” he thought. “Boy, would I like to see the look on that trollop’s face when she bursts in here and finds the place empty! She’ll be begging me to return to her, oh yes, she will, but oh no, I won’t! Her and her ‘women’s lib’ nonsense she keeps yammering on about – but we won’t be seeing any of that five hundred years from now, I’m sure of it.”

He finished the last bit of tinkering, then wasted no time in climbing into the cylindrical capsule and sealing it shut. Then, pressing some buttons within easy reach of his right hand, he set in motion the events of his scheme. First the capsule was lowered into the subterranean cavity he’d so painstakingly excavated over the last few months. Then the heavy steel panels slammed shut above him, blocking him off completely from the outside world. Nothing less than a decent-sized truckload of dynamite would make even a dent in the steel fortress that now surrounded him. Next came the final step. With a trembling hand, Mike pressed down on the button that would put him into a state of suspended animation. He wouldn’t need any food, water or extra air inside this tube; all of his bodily processes will be put on hold, suspended until the time when the machine would automatically reawaken him from his sleep. He wondered what the future he would awaken into would be like and if it would live up to his wildest expectations. Such were the thoughts that swirled around in his mind as he drifted off into unconsciousness, his body succumbing to the effects of the chamber.

****

Mike opened his eyes again only with great difficulty. To his conscious mind, only mere moments had passed since he’d pushed the hibernation button, and yet he felt as tired and confused as if he’d just woken up from a days-long sleep. No, not days – centuries must have passed while he was asleep – unless the machine had malfunctioned for some unknown reason. But a glance at the illuminated figures of the Chronometer mounted above his head confirmed that his plan had worked: it showed that the year was indeed 2464, five hundred years to the day since his departure from his own time.

He opened the door, blinking at the incredibly bright light that surrounded the outside of the capsule. This wasn’t at all what he’d been expecting. Had his capsule somehow been discovered and brought to the surface? Who would have the ability to do such a thing, and why? As he opened the door in front of him and stumbled dazedly out, he took in his new surroundings – and nearly fainted from the shock of what he saw.

Instead of being at the bottom of a deep pit underneath his basement, he was standing in the middle of a brightly-lit expanse of metal, which stretched to a distance of thirty feet in every direction. Surrounding this area were a circle of gigantic human figures – women, to be exact. At first Mike thought they were colossal statues, but when they began to move and talk loudly, he realized they were actually living, breathing, flesh-and-blood women. But they were no ordinary human females. Each one of them must have stood at least seventy feet tall!

“This…this can’t be!” Mike stammered, looking up at the immense circle of faces that gazed down at him. “What on earth is happening? Where am I?”

He got no answer in return. Instead, one of the women (all of whom were wearing white, form-fitting outfits that covered their whole bodies from the neck down) reached down with her giant-sized arm and effortlessly scooped him up in her hand. Mike fought back feebly, still disoriented from his long time in hibernation, as well as from his unfamiliar and frightening surroundings. But he soon gave up, and found himself placed down squarely in the middle of the giantess’s open palm. The women, who all seemed to be in their thirties to fifties, crowded round him, interest and curiosity etched on their truck-sized faces.

“Looks like the moment has finally come, ladies,” the blonde woman who held him announced. “Our mysterious traveller from the past has finally awakened. I suppose the question now is, what do we do with him?”

“We should dip him in the sterilisation tank, just be sure,” another female voice said. “He could be carrying all sorts of germs that we no longer have any resistance to.”

“Hmm, not likely,” the first woman replied. “We’ve had years and years by now to analyse his capsule inside and out. If there were any microbes that could pose a threat to us, they’d have been found and exterminated by now. No, I think what he needs right now is some fresh food and water, and a change of clothes. Talia, would you be so kind as to help him with that?”

“Certainly, Melda. Just hand him over to me and I’ll take good care of him. We’ll have to find him a home too, you know?”

“Oh, there’s plenty of time for that later. Right now, let’s see if we can find out who he is and where – or, perhaps more importantly, when – he comes from.”

A flabbergasted Mike was handed over to the young brunette giantess who went by the name of Talia. He continued to struggle in vain against the oversized feminine fingers that enveloped him. This wasn’t what he’d expected, not at all – had something gone wrong with his experiment? He needed to find some answers and quick, and then a way to escape from this nightmare world where he was nothing but an insect compared to these women.

“Just relax, little fella, and I’ll make sure you’re settled in nice and comfortable before long,” Talia said to him, looking rather annoyed by his ineffective struggles against her fingers. “I suppose you don’t even understand me, do you? What are the odds someone from before the Great War speaks the same kind of language as we do?”

“Great War?” Mike blurted out, which nearly caused the giantess to drop him in surprise. “What war? What are you talking about? Where am I? I’ve got to get back, do you hear? I can’t stay here, understand? And my name isn’t ‘little fella’, it’s Michael Sloane, Dr Michael Sloane.”

“Hey, you can understand me! That’s wonderful! Wow, I suppose you do have lots of questions, and I’ll try and answer them, but first I’ve got to help you fit in here, in your new home. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up, you smell awful! Who knows how long it’s been since your last bath, hmm?”

“No, I don’t want to be cleaned, I want to go home! What have you women done to me? This isn’t how the future is supposed to be!”

Rather than indulging him with an explanation, Talia just stuffed him in a small pocket of her outfit, only taking him out later when she’d returned to her apartment. Mike thus had no opportunity to see any of the wonders that were all around them in the futuristic city he now found himself. Instead, he could only gape in wonder at the gigantic rooms of Talia’s home – which was only a little studio apartment from her perspective.

There, in a small basin in her bathroom, she removed all the clothes from off her wildly protesting captive and gave him a vigorous bath in some soapy water. He splashed around, flailing his arms and legs vigorously, while her deft hands worked him over with a soft sponge. After drying him off, she then presented him with a brand-new set of clothing, similar to her own form-fitting attire, but which seemed to fit him almost perfectly.

He was then put down on her dining table and given some food resembling salad and vegetables, as well as water, all of which was served in or on appropriately-sized eating and drinking utensils. While Mike was indeed hungry and thirsty, he was still having some difficulty getting over the rather cavalier way his hostess had treated him when bathing him – almost as though he’d been a helpless infant, in fact. Therefore, he didn’t exactly accept the food and drink with great gratitude, but eventually his hunger overcame his outrage and he tucked in. Talia, sitting on a nearby chair, just looked at him with interest, as though he were a new toy that she’d bought at a shop today.

“You’re not the first, you know…Mike,” she said as he ate his food begrudgingly. “There have been many others who’d put themselves in a state of hibernation over the years, hoping for whatever reason to awaken one day in the future. But you are one of the earliest, judging from the primitive appearance of your capsule. That’s why I figured you had to come from before the Great War.”

“What Great War? Surely not another world war?” Mike forgot his indignation at his current circumstances: his scientific desire for answers gained the upper hand in his mind for now.

“That’s right, a third and final world war. That was the last time the nations of mankind ever felt the urge to destroy one another. Mankind…huh, sounds funny, using that old word to describe it. But it is appropriate, don’t you think?”

Mike didn’t have any idea what she was talking about, so he just waited for her to continue, already trying his best to come up with plans for escaping this bizarre world he now found himself in.

“You see, about 300 years ago – I reckon that’d still be several centuries in the future for you, little man – an unthinkable event happened here on this planet. We’re not sure now who started it, but one of the world’s most powerful nations – superpowers, as they were called back then – decided to use nuclear weapons in combat against another superpower, which had done nothing to provoke such an attack. Naturally, this led to a full-scale nuclear war, which nearly wiped out all of humanity…”

“Th…Then it’s finally happened,” Mike said sombrely. “I had hoped that the leaders of Earth’s mightiest nations would know better than to behave like such animals – but then, I suppose they’ve always been animals.”

Talia looked at him oddly, then continued her tale.

“The devastating radiation unleashed by the atomic weapons used in the conflict had an unexpected effect on one half of humanity – the female half, to be precise. At first the unusually high growth levels were subtle, but after several generations of larger and larger female children being born, it was finally realized that the trend was unstoppable. You see, we haven’t done anything to you, little man – you are still the same size you were when you entered your little time capsule, whenever that was. It’s we – meaning all women on Earth, that is – who have grown in size. We are now the dominant gender on the planet, not you.”

Mike began to feel a little queasy, listening to her describe the new order of how the world worked. She told him that men were now just kept as pets and companions by women like herself. They still had all of the same rights that women had, but little of the privileges. Very few men anywhere had what might be called a proper ‘job’, or the income that comes with it. Few as well were the men who lived on their own, mostly in specifically constructed cities in special locations, where the buildings, conveyances and all other everyday objects were built to their scale. Instead, most men found themselves being kept in special little compartments located in the homes of women. She herself kept two young men of about her own age, and she planned to add him as a third. At this suggestion Mike began to protest loudly again.

“No, never! Never, do you hear? I refuse to be kept in a cage like a hamster or a mouse! I didn’t spend ten years working day and night on a means to travel to the future, just to end up as a pet to a stupid girl! Let me go now, you hear me? I want to go back to my machine! I want to leave this damned world, this damned century!”

“How is your voice not sore from screaming yet?” Talia asked, looking bored by his antics. “Are all men from your time such loudmouthed jerks? It wouldn’t surprise me if they were. No wonder your world leaders – the ‘animals’, as you rightly called them – were constantly fighting wars with each other. You should be glad that we women are now in charge for a change. We’ve had worldwide peace for generations now, we’ve explored the other worlds of our Solar System, and we’ve created a home for hundreds of millions out of the ashes of the world your kind destroyed all those years ago.”

Mike stopped haranguing her for a moment, though he still glared up at her with animosity. She picked him up and carried him across the room.

“You don’t have to stay with me, you know,” she said while carrying him. “My two little friends, Doran and Jace, are all the male companionship I need right now. I don’t treat them as pets either. Boyfriends would be more accurate; lovers even more so. I care for them and love them both, and they love me in return, as though we were bonded in marriage – though that archaic practice of pre-War times no longer exists, of course. Come on, I’ll introduce you. I have to warn you, though, if you don’t start behaving in a more pleasant manner, I’ll hand you over to my colleague Melda, and she doesn’t tolerate any impudence from any of her men, believe me!”

In a corner of her spacious living room stood what looked like a miniature mansion, almost resembling a dollhouse, though Mike knew that it was actually a full-sized building, only appearing small because of its oversized surroundings. Talia lifted up one corner of the building’s roof and lowered Mike inside, dropping him casually upon a large bed. She didn’t stick around but left him on his own, so he got up from the bed and looked around him. Within seconds, the door to his new bedroom opened and two young men, appearing somewhere between twenty and twenty-five years of age, entered. They introduced themselves to Mike, who was still having difficulty coping with what was happening.

“There’s no need to be afraid, Mike,” the man who had given his name as Doran said, as he put his hand on Mike’s shoulder and tried to lead him downstairs. “Talia had called and told us about you earlier, so we’ve been expecting you for some time. Jace and I have been living with her for three years now, and she’s been nothing but kind and generous to us.”

“B-but she’s keeping you, like animals!” Mike burst out angrily. “How can you live like this, in this – this cage? We are supposed to be the ones in charge, not them!”

“Well, what would you prefer instead?” the other man, Jace, asked. “The men who were our ancestors were responsible for the event that caused this to happen. Yes, we know it must be hard for you to accept a world now ruled by women, but that’s not going to change anytime soon, so you’d best get used to it.”

“That’s right,” Doran added. “Just relax and enjoy your new life, free from all of the cares and worries of the outside world. Besides, this isn’t really a cage, as you called it, you know? We can leave any time we wanted; we just choose not to.”

“Leave?” Mike said, suddenly freezing. “But how? How do you leave this place?”

“Well, we each have our own airmobile, just like Talia has – only made to our much smaller size, of course. We keep them in the garage downstairs…”

He hadn’t finished explaining, but Mike was already running downstairs, through luxuriously furnished corridors, living rooms and a kitchen, before finding the door that led to the garage. Doran was right; there in front of him stood two brightly coloured, sleek-looking vehicles, more streamlined than the cars of his own time. They also lacked wheels, but that didn’t throw Mike off at all. He himself had once tried to develop a flying automobile in his spare time, before repeated take-off failures convinced him to shelve the experiment. Now he could finally get his chance to fly one – and hopefully make his way back to where his capsule was being held. Then he’d re-enter his machine and make another jump five centuries into the future, and pray that he’d re-emerge in a world that more closely matched his expectations of what the future of mankind should be like.

Before either of the men could stop him, he’d managed to figure out how to take off in the futuristic vehicle and, with both the garage door and the window of Talia’s apartment beyond standing open before him, nothing stood in his way of escape.

Once he was outside the window, he saw with a shock that he was thousands of feet above the ground. The sudden sensation of vertigo nearly caused him to lose control of the flying car, but he managed to avoid rolling over and losing his seat. However, he soon realized he was in big trouble: the car’s fuel supply was dangerously low. If he didn’t land at once, he’d risk falling out of the sky and plummeting to the ground far below. Cursing himself for not noticing this earlier, Mike did his best to point the car on a downward angle and try for a landing.

He soon discovered a large green park surrounded by many colossal apartment buildings. It didn’t look all that different from the city parks of his own time, except for the fact that the trees were all over 200 feet high, with many of them surpassing 500 feet. He had no idea that the trees were actually artificial, exact replicas of the real thing, made so that they were appropriately-sized when compared to the city’s female inhabitants. All Mike cared about was finding somewhere to land where he would be able to continue his escape unseen. But this proved to be impossible. His bright red little air-car was spotted by at least a dozen female park-goers, and as his sputtering, failing car bumped down roughly on the long grass, he barely had time to open the door before a group of giantesses had crowded around him.

Closest to him was a young girl, looking about ten or eleven years old and almost sixty feet tall, who knelt down and snatched up the car he was in with both hands. Mike wanted to jump down and run away, but immediately reconsidered when he saw how high above the ground the car was being held. Instead, he glared up at his new captor, seething at the thought that he was once again at the mercy of a giant woman – or, in this case, a child, which was even worse. The little girl grinned happily, as though she’d just discovered a new toy to play with.

“What have you got there, Sasha?” asked a tall woman who stood by the girl’s side.

“A little car, Mommy, with a little man inside. I think he’s lost or something. Are you lost, little guy?”

Mike didn’t answer, but simply kept on glaring up at her, trying to control his anger and frustration.

“Give the little man to me, Sasha dear,” her mother continued. “I’ll keep him with me until we can find out who he belongs to. You can play with the car if you want, but once I’ve found the man’s owner, I’m afraid you’ll have to give it back to her as well.”

“Oh, that’s okay, I’ve got plenty of toy cars already! Here you go, Mommy.”

Her clutching fingers easily overpowered Mike, who soon found himself trapped inside a pocket of the mother’s coat. It was hot and dark inside the pocket, as well as being too deep for him to escape from. He now knew he’d never be able to escape, no matter what. He was utterly impotent in this world of giant women and girls, nothing more than a doll that could talk. He pounded his fists against the fabric that surrounded him, wishing he’d never dreamt up this whole crazy scheme at all.

“It’s just not fair!” he cried out, his words blending together with his sobs. “Why did I ever choose to do this? I could’ve been great in my own time – I should have been great! Why? What did I do to deserve this?”

****

He was still sobbing to himself two hours later, safely returned to Talia, who had taken him back to the institute where she worked. He now lay curled up on the same table where he’d first set foot in this alien world, surrounded by the same gigantic female scientists, all of whom looked down at him with concern and bewilderment.

Repeated attempts to get him to accept his new set of circumstances had failed. It seemed that his mind was too established in its thought patterns and would never accept the idea of a world in which women were the dominant gender and men the inferior. The beliefs and the world view of the 20th century were just not capable of accepting the world of the 25th century.

Mike felt degraded, emasculated, reduced to nothing. High above him, those infernal women were discussing his case and what to do with him. Well, he thought, he’d never give them the satisfaction of deciding his fate. He’d end this ill-fated journey his own way, as he wished it to end. Gathering his strength, he made a sudden dash for the edge of the table. He leapt off, feeling certain that the forty-foot drop to the floor beneath would kill him, ending this nightmare once and for all. But less than a second later and he was back on the table. He had been easily caught by one of the giantesses and prevented from falling to his death

“No! No, not like this!” he cried out as he saw a giant hand descend down on him, holding an equally imposing syringe. “I don’t want to die like this! Just let me jump! No!”

He felt the tip of the syringe’s needle make contact with his skin, but before he could feel any pain, his vision went dark and he lost all sensation. Nevertheless, he kept on screaming, until he was suddenly interrupted by an unexpected voice.

“Mike! Mike, stop it!” he heard the voice screaming in his ears, sounding awfully close. He was also aware of being shaken by the shoulders, not by any giant fingers but by a pair of ordinary-sized hands.

“W-what is it?” he mumbled dazedly, his eyes only opening with a struggle. “What’s happening? Where am I?”

“You’re in your bed, Mike, where else would you be? Gosh, you must’ve been having some nightmare or something! You scared me to death with all that yelling!”

Once he was more-or-less fully awake, he stared around him in utter confusion. He was lying in bed – his own bed in his own room, it seemed to be. Sitting above him was none other than his petite wife Teri, wearing a pyjama robe and grasping his shoulders. She stared at him with a look of alarm. Around him were the once-familiar walls of his old bedroom, with all his furniture, his bookcases, his wardrobe…he was back home in his own time. Outside the windows the sun was shining, and the sound of early morning traffic could be heard.

“Nightmare? You mean that was just a…a bad dream?” Mike blurted out. “All of that…the giant women…the flying car…the needle…”

“Giant women? Flying car?” Teri said incredulously. “I knew it! I knew we shouldn’t have gone to see that silly movie at the drive-in last week! But no, you just had to see what a ‘fifty-foot woman’ stomping around some cheap miniature sets looked like…and I let you drag me along! Honestly, Mike, why can’t we go and see a nice old-fashioned romance movie every now and then, like any other couple…”

But Mike wasn’t listening. He was slowly sitting upright, still struggling to come to grips with what had happened – or had it happened at all?

“What year is it?” he yelled, interrupting Teri in the middle of her tirade. “Tell me what year it is, now!”

“Well, I never!” she snapped back. “Just bite my head off, why don’t you? You know, my darling husband, I love you and all, but it’s 1964 now, for Christ’s sake, and us women have had quite enough of our menfolk treating us like naughty children! I’ve got a good mind to…”

“All right, all right, I’m sorry! It was just a…just a really bad nightmare, that’s all. No more bad science fiction movies, I got it. Now, would you please be a good wife for once in your life and make me some breakfast, okay? I’ve got a busy day ahead – God, what day is it anyway?”

He staggered out of bed and into the adjoining bathroom, where he decided on taking a long, relaxing shower. As he stripped off his nightclothes, he could hear his wife leave the bedroom and stomp down the stairs. She’d complain, but she wouldn’t refuse to make him breakfast, he knew that.

“Just another morning in good old 1964,” he said to himself. “Huh, I must’ve really worked myself to death on that contraption in the cellar. Did I fall asleep while working? I can’t remember…it’s all so fuzzy…but one thing is clear, and that’s that I have to destroy that machine. Traveling into the future – no sir, not for me. If it’s anything like my dream from last night, then the future can stay far away. I’ll just have to make the most of what I have here and now, in the present.”

As he soaked up the warm water, he made a mental note to fix his relationship with Teri as soon as possible. This constant squabbling was what had motivated him in part to decide to leave. Thankfully, it had only been a dream… But Teri was no dream, and he wanted her back in his life, just the way she’d been when they first met. He decided to quit his job at the research institute and find some other avenue of work. Even a simple teaching job would do, as long as it meant he could spend more time with her. If he showed her that he still loved her, he felt sure that she’d come back to him…

****

“Are you enjoying the view?”

Talia quickly turned off the monitor in front of her, on which the image of Mike Sloane in the shower had been visible. She turned around and faced her senior colleague Melda.

“I’m just making sure he’s adjusting to his new life, that’s all. So far, it looks like my proposal will be a success.”

“A success, huh? And how long do you think this idea of yours will prove successful for? How long until he discovers the truth, that is?”

“The truth?”

“Yes, the truth that his interactions with us hadn’t been a dream. That his beautiful wife, and all the other people he’ll meet from now on, are just sophisticated robots that we’ve built for him. And that his whole environment, the 20th-century world that he knows so well, is just a simulation recreated from his memory. You know, sooner or later, he’ll want to visit somewhere he hasn’t been before, and what then? We have no idea what his world was really like, apart from what we have gleaned by scanning his memory cells.”

“Then we’ll just have to be creative,” Talia replied confidently. “He’s already showing signs of wanting to be less ambitious in his life choices. With luck, I could get him to settle into a nice uneventful life of quiet domesticity. I can make his wife a more loving and caring person as well. Eventually, the simulation should be able to run all on its own, without someone like me having to monitor it all the time. Speaking of which, I’d best get back to it.”

She turned her back to Melda and switched on the screen of the monitor again. Melda just gave a knowing smirk, before turning around and exiting the room, leaving Talia alone again with her ‘experiment’. She watched intently as Mike left the shower and began to dress himself, wondering how long she’d be this interested in his day-to-day life. She knew Melda was right: Mike wouldn’t be fooled forever. One day, he’ll eventually discover that his ‘world’ is a fake, and there would be nothing she’d be able to do for him then. But until that happened, she planned on making sure he gets to live the life he always wanted.