On Monday morning my mom took me with her to work again. I was stashed away inside her purse, safely hidden from the outside world, though I did feel a little uneasy being cooped up in such a dark space. It didn’t last too long, though, and I was soon released once my mom had reached her place of work. She put me down on her office desk, on top of a stack of large papers next to her computer. I lay down on my back and enjoyed being able to breathe fresh air again. Mom sat down at her desk and began to work on her computer, while also occasionally glancing at some of the papers next to her or rearranging them. I didn’t even try to follow along with what she was working on, since I knew it would consist of a lot of in-depth scientific and biological terms whose meanings I couldn’t begin to guess. Instead, I hopped down from the stack of papers and began to wander around on top of the desk, stopping at each everyday object I encountered and gawking at how much larger everything now was. Even a simple eraser was now bigger than I was, while an ordinary pencil was now the size of a small tree trunk and it required a lot of effort from me just to lift one of its ends. Paperclips were now the size of shopping trolleys and thumbtacks were large enough for me to use as dinner plates, if they hadn’t had spikes sticking out of them.
While Mom was busy writing in a notebook, I noticed that her computer wasn’t in use, so I decided to play around a bit. I climbed onto the gigantic keyboard and onto the ‘Escape’ key, which was big enough for me to stand on with both feet. It began to sink down underneath my weight, but extremely slowly, not instantaneously as if it were pressed by a finger. I then hopped to the ‘F1’ key, and from there I began playing a bizarre version of hopscotch with the keys on the keyboard. Each time I jumped to a new key it gave way a little beneath me. Mom noticed me and apparently decided I’d had enough fun, as she pinched my waist with her thumb and index finger and stopped me from continuing.
“Now, Ben, don’t go using up all of your energy now!” she said, putting me back on top of the paper stack. “You’ll need it for the physical tests later today. Oh yes, there are some more of those coming your way, although once again it’ll be one of my colleagues who’s in charge of all that stuff.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’m ready for anything,” I said confidently. “I actually can’t wait to get some exercise, since I’ve been pretty inactive these last few days, being carried around everywhere. I mean, I’d love to go walking around the house for exercise or something, but I’m too afraid you or Emily will accidentally step on me.”
Right at that moment came a knock on the door.
“Yeah, we definitely don’t want that, huh?” Mom replied, while getting up to open the door. It turned out to be my guardian for the day, Dr Zira Ajani, who immediately inquired as to how I was doing. Mom led her over to her desk and showed her how much I had been shrunk down since last week. The charming Asian lady stooped forward until her face loomed over me, a friendly smile on her lips.
“Hello there, Ben,” she said. “Goodness, you are so small now! Tell me, how are you feeling?”
“I’m fine thanks,” I replied, feeling a bit self-conscious under her scrutiny. “I assume you’re here to take me to the tests?”
“Yes I am. I hope you’re ready for today, since we’re going to be working very hard with you. Because your size has been reduced so much, we really have no way of predicting what your physical capabilities are going to be. I may even have to put you in one or two uncomfortable situations, but we’ll see how it goes first.”
I was a bit alarmed when I heard that and looked up at my mom, but she didn’t seem to be upset at all.
“Well, I suppose you two had better head off, then, if you want to get as much as possible done today,” she said. “Have fun today, sweetie! Don’t let Zira intimidate you, okay? She’s really a wonderful person – or at least, she has been the whole time I’ve known her.”
The two giantesses both laughed. I was picked up by Zira’s enormous hand and set down in the centre of her palm. She held me right underneath her face, almost against her body.
“Don’t look so nervous, Ben!” she reassured me. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, or anything you feel is too much for you to handle. Remember, I’m also a mother myself, and believe me when I say I’ll look after you as if you were one of my own children.”
“Thanks, uh, Zira,” I said. “I think I’m ready to go now.”
“That’s good. I’ll see you later then, Lauren.”
She slipped me into one of her suit jacket’s side pockets and I could feel her body swaying as she walked off to her own laboratory. Once we were there, I was placed on a large, flat, mostly empty table. Zira took a seat next to me and I went over and sat down at the edge of the table, facing her. I trembled a little bit, feeling very vulnerable like this, all by myself in the presence of this giant lady. She began explaining the day’s activities to me.
“We’ll begin with the usual physical tests, just like last week. You’ll be walking and running along measured distances, so we can determine your walking and running speeds relative to your size. Then there’ll be weightlifting, weight throwing, high jumping – in fact, you might even think of it as a ‘mini-athletics competition’, except that you’ll be the only competitor. Do you take part in any athletic sports at school, Ben?”
“Yeah, I have…I mean, a little bit. I prefer team sports more, though. Like football, you know? I’ve been playing football for years now. Sometimes I like to play basketball with my friends, too.”
“Ah, okay, I see. Well, maybe someday soon we’ll be able to test our shrinking formulae on even more people, then we might organize a little football or basketball game for you to play right here on this table? That sounds like it could be fun, doesn’t it? In any case, you do appear to be in excellent shape physically, which is all that matters. We will need to repeat each activity several times to get accurate data, which means you’ll probably get tired before long, but we can take a break whenever you feel you need to. By the time we’re finished here we can go and get lunch, then we’ll come back and do some different tests afterwards.”
“Will there be swimming this time as well?” I asked.
“Oh yes, certainly…but not today. We still have to set up a controlled environment for that, I’m afraid. Our existing swimming pool is much too big for you now, and possibly too dangerous as well. But we’ll definitely return to that later this week. This afternoon, however, we’ll be doing some quite different physical tests. Specifically, we want to see how much your miniature body can handle. Climbing, falling, pressure, wind, g-forces – in essence, we want to find out how tough you are, now that you’re no bigger than my little finger.”
“That sounds…really intense,” I said, chuckling nervously.
“Oh, it will be, believe me! But, as I’ve already said, we’ll be taking every precaution to make sure you are not injured or placed in any unsafe, uncontrolled situations. Also, your mother and I will both be monitoring you during those tests, so you’ll be in very safe hands the whole time. We do want you to come back later this week for some more tests, remember? It wouldn’t do for you to break your legs today or anything like that: if nothing else, it’ll mean delays for our research, and we simply can’t have that!”
She giggled a little and gave me a little pat on my head with her fingertip. I was happy to hear that I wouldn’t be placed in any danger, though I was getting a little bit annoyed with Zira’s patronising tone of voice whenever she spoke to me. I decided to prove myself to her and do my absolute best during the physical tests – then we’ll see if she still thinks I’m not tough enough.
The morning went by fairly quickly and uneventfully. The table I was on was big enough for Zira to lay out a circular track 36 feet in circumference for me to run on. She chose this number because it equalled a standard 400-m track, like in international competitions, which made it easy for her to compare my results to those of actual athletes. I was also given a tiny high-jumping bar to measure my jumping ability (complete with little cushion for me to land on), miniature barbells and dumbbells, and even a tiny metallic ball, less than 200 milligrams in weight, so I could show off my skill in shot put.
Despite how silly the whole thing would have looked to anyone who happened to be passing by, it was actually very enjoyable. There were some things I didn’t enjoy, of course – first among them being the fact that I had no shoes to wear and therefore had to run barefoot, which made my feet hurt after a while. And of course, I did grow tired after some time, which meant that my breaks became more-and-more frequent as the morning wore on. All in all, though, it was lots of fun, as well as great exercise – something I felt I really needed, now that I was being carried everywhere and did very little walking around on my own.
Just as I’d hoped, Zira was very impressed by my results. She told me that, in proportion to my size, I was now fast enough, strong enough and agile enough to compete in the Olympics. Of course, if actual Olympic athletes were shrunk down to my size, they’d still be able to outcompete me, but for what it was worth, I was very pleased with myself. So was Zira, and when it was time for our lunch, she treated me to some dessert, which consisted of a tiny crumb of caramel fudge and a drop of strawberry ice-cream. She brought this, along with my lunch, back to her office, since she didn’t want to risk anyone seeing me at the cafeteria. While sitting on her desk and eating, I decided to get to know her a little better.
“So, uh, Mom said you were from Pakistan, right?” I asked her. She was busy typing on her computer and looked down at me to answer my question.
“That’s right, Ben,” she said. “I’m only staying in your country temporarily, while we’re busy working on these matter reduction experiments. My husband is a professor at a university in Karachi, where he’s still staying along with my son, who’s about your age now. They’ll be coming over to visit me soon, though, in a couple of weeks.”
“Wow, that’s great. You must really miss them right now.”
“Yes, I do, but it’s a sacrifice I’m happy to make, for the sake of this project. Once we go public with our research, I expect, your mother, myself, Dr Spencer and our other colleagues at other research institutes will find ourselves becoming quite famous.”
“Yeah…and rich too, I imagine. I mean, you are planning on selling the shrinking formulas, right?”
“I don’t know, Ben. I’m actually very uncertain about what we should do with these formulas we’ve created. In the wrong hands, they could end up causing a lot of harm. Which is why we won’t go public before we’re absolutely sure what our course of action will be. But we’ve still got time. We’re also constantly working to improve the formulas we have – making them work faster, for instance.”
We chatted on for some time, until she told me she needed to start focusing on her work again. At that moment, my mom came walking into the office, ready to collect me for the afternoon’s testing. She was happy to hear that the morning’s events went well and asked me if I was ready for some more strenuous physical activity.
“Of course, I am!” I replied enthusiastically. “What do you need me to do first?”
“That’s the spirit!’ Mom said, laughing. “Well, how about some climbing exercises first, hmm? Like the rope-climbing exercises you do in the gym at school – only a bit more challenging.”
“Sounds great!”
My enthusiasm turned out to be short-lived. Mom wasn’t kidding when she said it was gonna be challenging. She simply dangled a thread with a weight attached to the tip from her fingers next to me and told me to start climbing. Each time I had reached the top, Mom put me down on the desk again and extended the length of the thread I had to climb. We started with six inches (eighteen feet from my perspective), and Mom added another six inches every time I had succeeded in reaching the top. Zira watched and noted down my times, as well as asking me questions regarding how tired I was every time I had finished climbing. Eventually, on the sixth climb – where I had had to climb up over a hundred feet – I felt my arms beginning to ache and my grip faltering. I was almost at the top when, to my sudden shock, my strength gave way and I let go. I fell and screamed – but I landed safely in Mom’s open hand. She had caught me. As I lay in her palm and panted, she decided I had had enough for today.
“I think I’d best take him home, Zira,” she spoke to her colleague. “Maybe we’ve been pushing him too hard for one day. We can always continue with the tests at a later date, perhaps on Wednesday or Thursday. What do you say, little man? Had enough for today yet?”
“Yeah…yeah, definitely,” I said, still struggling to catch my breath. With all of the stuff in the morning and now this, I felt as if I’d just run a marathon in record time. This day has more than made up for my lack of exercise during the previous few days. I was handed over to Zira, who gave me a little kiss on top of my head and said goodbye.
“Thank you for being such a good test subject!” she said, smiling. “You’ve done very well today, Ben. Go and get some rest, and we’ll carry on later this week.”
Mom put me back into her purse, where I could lie down and recover for a bit, while she carried on working back in her office for a bit. It wasn’t long, though, before we headed home. In her car, Mom took me out of her purse again and put me down in her lap. I lay down on the taut fabric of her skirt and looked up at her imposing figure.
“Oh, I’d completely forgotten to tell you,” she said suddenly while driving. “Kara called your cell phone earlier, while you were busy with Dr Ajani doing the tests. She said she’d love to see you again, especially when I told her how small you were now.”
“Oh yeah? What did you tell her?” I asked anxiously.
“Well, she wanted to know when you’d be free to hang out, so I told her tomorrow might be a good day. Unfortunately, it seems she’s writing an exam tomorrow morning and has to study for another one afterwards. But, when I told her you were just two inches tall now, she came up with a crazy suggestion. Apparently, she wants to take you to school with her tomorrow.”
“Really? Mom, that’s…that’s actually an awesome idea! Then I won’t have to be stuck at home all day long again. Maybe afterwards she can take me home to her place, then I can finally see what her home is like.”
“An ‘awesome idea’…Ben, are you serious? Doesn’t it sound a bit irresponsible to you? I mean, what if something happens to you…or what if someone else at her school finds out about you?”
“I’ll just ask her to hide me in her pocket or something like that. She knows that I’m supposed to be kept a secret. Anyway, I just want to spend some more time with her like this, while I’ve got the chance.”
“Well…okay, I guess there’s no reason to be worried. If you’ll both promise me to be careful and responsible at all times, then I don’t see any reason why she can’t take you with her to school tomorrow. I’ll call her back once we get home and let her know, then I’ll report back to you.”
“Thanks, Mom! I’m sure I’ll be fine with her, don’t worry!”
Once we were back home, I asked my mom to put me on my bed in my room, so I could get a little time to myself. She did as I asked and dropped me onto my 240-foot-long bed, then closed the door to my bedroom and left me in peace. I was glad to get some private time, so I walked around on my gargantuan blankets and pillow for a while before lying down and getting a quick nap. At dinner time, Mom told me that Kara had been delighted to hear that she could take me with her tomorrow. She would come and pick me up just before 8 a.m., then bring me back later in the afternoon. I was thrilled as well, and couldn’t wait to see what my gorgeous girlfriend would look like as an even-bigger giantess than last week.