After finishing his lunch and folding some clothes. Barry still needed to shower and put a shirt on, but it was almost 90 degrees outside, so he decided to wait. He was excited to study his new city.
Barry marched downstairs into the basement, picked up his city, and brought it to a worktable. He raised one eyebrow: things inside seemed to be chaotic. He took a magnifying glass to the side and saw masses of barely perceptible specks in the streets. Hundreds of tiny people crowded at the very edge of the glass wall waving their arms for his attention. Barry leaned in, tilted his ear to them, and heard a faint chorus of high-pitched squeaks. They must have been going through an adjustment period, he thought to himself as he watched them. In their arrogance, they likely had believed themselves to be the only intelligent lifeforms in the universe; Barry’s presence was probably an upheaval to their understanding of the natural order, he thought. He outsized all of them to the point where he could hardly even see them, much less discern them individually. Yet at the same time, he matched them in intelligence.
Unable to understand their distant little squeaks through the glass, Barry shrugged. He would have better luck communicating with microbes, he thought. Barry was a hulking titan to them: distant and unreachable, while they existed in a world far below him. For him to spend his time trying to even hear them was much to ask. Nevertheless, Barry was amused by their energy. Unlike the other populations he had collected, these little guys seemed feisty, and he was grateful for a change in pace. Thinking these guys needed some more “alone time,” he walked away from their container. He had intended to build a couple more shelves, but first he had to clear away some old boxes.
After a couple hours of going up and down stairs with boxes, with several water breaks in between, Barry was hot, out of breath, and eager to finish up and shower. He picked up the last box with two hands as he neared the stairs, heard a quick *bzzt* sound zip by his ear, then felt a slight sting. He jerked his head to the side, hoping to shake off what he assumed was a fly. He continued with the box and then heard another *bzzt* zip by the same ear and felt it sting again. “Get the hell away, damn it.” Barry quickly lowered his box to the floor and then felt his other ear sting. “Ow!” He swatted the air near his ear but missed whatever had stung him. Barry stood still and held his hands apart, ready to angrily squash the first thing that moved between them. However, he heard and felt nothing. After waiting a few seconds, he relaxed his hands. “Good decision if you want to live,” he thought to himself.
Next, Barry felt something pinch the side of his ankle. “Ow! Damn it!” Reflexively, he lifted his foot and slapped his hand against his bare skin. However, when he lifted his hand off, he saw nothing except a tiny red spot where he was stung, though the skin was not broken. Then, he saw a gnat-sized insect flying just an inch above the floor. Like a man possessed, Barry quickly brought his foot down on it and was rewarded by a tiny crunch beneath his sneaker. “Hah!” he shouted, pushing his weight down on his tiny victim.
Having eliminated the pest, Barry stroked the slightly reddened area on his ankle with his finger and a tiny smudge of black powder rubbed off onto his fingertip. It almost looked like lead from a pencil. Barry’s eyes widened: “Wait a minute…” he muttered quietly. Having a realization, Barry quickly darted his eyes over to the bottled city he had transported earlier. Focusing his eyes, he saw two orange flickers of light escaping into the top of the glass bottle. “Are these guys serious?” Barry asked himself aloud as he looked back down at his fingertip. “What the hell is their problem?” They had sent gnat-sized attack aircraft at him, completely unprovoked. He wondered: how could they even think that was a good idea? From what Barry saw of their city, they were quite advanced, technologically. Certainly, they knew even before the attack that such tiny weapons would not pose a threat to such a gigantic being as he was.
Barry’s eyebrows rose when he suddenly appreciated that he stepped on one of the low flying aircraft. He looked down at the ground where he stepped, but there was just a tiny black burnt spot. He went to sit down at his desk and crossed one leg over the other to where he could easily look at the bottom of his running shoe. Sure enough, amid the crumbling dried dirt and other lawn detritus pressed into his maze-like sneaker treads, Barry could see the remains of the tiny mangled jet, no bigger than a small housefly, compacted deeply between the walls of a single narrow crevice. Barry could not help but fascinate at the size comparison: that a product of advanced engineering such as a military fighter jet was stuck to the sole of his worn running shoe as if it were nothing more than a smashed bug. The burnt steel parts were pushing against the rubber walls, deforming them and preventing Barry from using his fingernail to extract the craft for further study. Finally, he grabbed a pair of tweezers, pinned the wreck together, and removed it from its rubber prison in a single piece, then set his foot back down on the floor. With a magnifying glass in his other hand, Barry examined the craft for its occupant. Unable to find anyone amid the tangled metal wreck, Barry set it down on his desk in disappointment. He had hoped to see his flea-sized assailant up close.
“Well… sucks to be you, little guy, wherever you are,” Barry muttered. Either the tiny man was already a casualty, or he ejected somewhere onto the floor, where locating him would be next to impossible. To a being so small, Barry was an absolute titan, and it was all too likely that the little guy would be crushed under his deadly feet without Barry ever knowing. Fortunately, there were plenty more tiny people where he came from, and Barry fully intended to confront them for their little stunt, feeble though it was.
Barry was used to the inhabitants of the other cities who were grateful for his benevolent nature; they practically worshipped him as a god, without him ever one asking. One city had even erected a tall, skyscraper-sized statue in Barry’s own image, much to his delight. The figure was bare naked, like Michelangelo’s David, and the tiny folk were satisfyingly generous in estimating Barry’s proportions. By contrast these new guys were hostile little punks. In Barry’s eyes, their little stunt was an act of open war. There was no way he could allow them to think that he would easily tolerate or forgive such acts. The laziest (and sleaziest) way to get his point across, he thought, was to simply respond with a much greater show of force. With his creative mind, Barry could invent all sorts of disasters with which to terrorize the tiny beings, most of them requiring little effort. However, Barry wanted to expand his collection, not destroy it. At the end of the day, he wanted his collection to be successful. If he was not going to smite them, he thought, perhaps he could allow an aircraft containing their tiny leaders to fly into his ear, where they could disembark and agree to a truce. In less than a second, Barry rolled his eyes at the thought: even for a reasonable, good-natured guy like himself, that was just too much. Negotiating with these vicious little guys was ridiculous and he had no interest in getting sucked into a back and forth dialogue with beings who were smaller than ants.
The best way to get his point across, he concluded, was to find a middle ground. A way that was less boorish than just mindlessly smiting them, but more effective than asking politely. The best idea, Barry thought, was to simply threaten them into submission: tell them that if they refrained from any further attacks, then no harm would come to them. All would be excused, and the past would be the past. He would let them know that he was a good guy in that way. But he would also remind them if they ever did attack him again, he would flatten their city and enjoy every second of it. He had to be uncompromising in his terms. From where Barry stood, that seemed like a reasonable deal when he considered that they were the aggressors. If anything, they should have been kissing his feet for not retaliating in force. And in the back of his mind, he knew that if he wished to, he could force any terms on them that he wanted and there was nothing they could do about it.
Intending to emphasize his forceful machismo, Barry lumbered slowly toward the city, bringing his feet down on the floor with exaggerated force and purposeful heaviness. He needed to make these little runts know that they chose the wrong giant to pick a fight with. He knew from observation that each time his massive running shoes landed on the floor, they created distant, crushing *THOOMs* that could be heard and felt within the fragile cities. Barry put on a cold smile and approached them like a mighty deity with his chin held up and his chest pushed forward, until he finally towered over the waist-high city. He adopted a suitably intimidating stance with his sneakered feet spread apart in order to impress his dominance and masculine authority upon all those below.
For many seconds, Barry watched them from above like a looming god, knowing his mountainous approach would be enough to terrify all within the fragile structure. Then he put his arms on his knees and crouched down, bringing his face eye level with the city. Behind the glass, he could see tiny streets filled with panicked masses of barely discernable specks, their movement becoming more fluid-like as the crowds swelled. When they saw Barry's two building-sized, icy blue eyes right next to the glass scrutinizing them with cold judgment, many fled in the opposite direction. Satisfied, Barry stood up to his full height and then leaned forward, bringing one eye directly over the quarter-sized opening on top of the jug.
Adopting a deep tone of authority, he boomed down at them, "Congratulations on getting my attention." Hearing his voice reverberating through the glass, Barry could tell that his voice was as loud as thunder to them. He watched with satisfaction as the thousands of specks in the streets ceased their panicked movement. They all fixated upon his enormous eyeball, which squinted at them sternly from the circular opening in the clouds. Barry continued: "Listen up, punks. We have not known each other long, so I am going to explain things to you in terms that maybe you understand. I am Barry, and I am a giant who collects, maintains, and studies tiny cities such as yours; I brought you here and have kept you protected by the glass barrier that you see around you. All the cities in my collection, I protect from harm." Barry paused for about 10 seconds, letting his words sink in, then continued. "But what I protect, I can as easily destroy..." With that, Barry brought forth his right hand and held the tip of his index finger against his thumb, then let forth a powerful flick against the glass.
*Tink!*
To Barry the sound was nothing, but the impact and sound being magnified in scale sent the microbe-like beings into a desperate panic: running into buildings or scrambling in all directions. Barry could hear their panicked screams faintly below, and he resisted to urge to snicker at their reaction, instead maintaining his authoritative composure. "Stop." The tiny beings obeyed Barry's command unquestioningly, the crowds suddenly freezing in place. Barry could sense his own ego swell: these little guys were terrified of him! With sheer force, he could command absolute obedience from thousands. They would not dare strike at him again, knowing what he could do to them. Eager to toy with them a little, he continued his overly dramatic persona as a temperamental deity: "You have seen what I can do: I can hold your entire city in my hands, or I can drop you to your doom and crush your civilization into dust beneath my feet. Yet, even knowing this, you *attacked* me."
Barry paused and peered around at the different crowds, satisfied to see them cowering in fear at his stern eyeball high above them. Barry felt like a god about to cast judgment upon his unruly creations, and the idea appealed to him greatly. Deciding to make a show of force, Barry squinted angrily at his trembling subjects. "It would be so easy for me to destroy you all right now." he stated ominously. "If a single one of your people ever attacks, threatens, defies, or annoys me… if a single one of your people displeases me in any way whatsoever….” Barry leaned away from the bottled city and lifted one gargantuan foot into the air for a moment, paused, then continued, “…then you will be treated like the insects you are – and I *squash* insects that annoy me,” Barry violently slammed his running shoe down upon the floor, causing the bottle to rumble visibly on the shelf while the horrified thousands within let out a cacophony of faint, high-pitched squeaks. Barry leaned in again and placed his eye over the opening, and he was rewarded with the sight of sheer desperate panic as men, women, and children ran through the streets. He felt satisfied that this show of force was all that was needed.
Just as Barry finished delighting in the small bit of chaos he had caused, he saw an orange flicker down in the city below. Then, a tiny grey dot launched upward. Reflexively, Barry flinched sideways to protect himself, but he was not fast enough. The projectile impacted against his skin right at the very edge of his eye, and he was struck by a flash of red light and searing pain. Barry cried out. “God… DAMN IT.” He cupped his hand to the side of his face. Warmth radiated from the skin at the outer edge of his eye, where the firecracker-like explosion went off. Still shielding it with his hand, Barry opened his eye and blinked, then cried out again. “mother… FUCK.” It had felt like sandpaper was abrading his eye. Holding his hand to his eye, Barry looked down at the city and roared.
Fuming, and without thinking, Barry placed his hands around the sides of the bottle and gripped it tightly, causing the frightened yet defiant crowds to freeze in terror. Then, Barry used his hands to rapidly jerk the bottled city once to the left, then once to the right, along the surface of his desk. He sneered contemptuously as countless specks were violently yanked into the air and collided with various objects within, screaming for their lives. The faint screaming intensified as one of their tallest skyscrapers – an ornate spear-like structure of approximately 9 inches in height – slowly tilted sideways, unable to withstand the sudden shift of the earth caused by Barry’s unthinking destructive act. “Oh shit…” Barry clenched his teeth as the structure broke off its foundation, then toppled over and crashed against the glass wall. Upon impact, the top portion of the tower snapped off and fell to the ground, demolishing several smaller suburban buildings and sending up a (to them) huge plume of dust and smoke. The bottom half of the tower remained leaning against the glass. Barry cursed quietly; that had not been the plan. However, it was a done deal. At least maybe these guys finally learned the error of their ways, he thought. Refusing to show any weakness, Barry crouched down and scowled through the glass at the hellish scene. “Looks like you guys have some work to do,” he said coldly, then thundered away.
Barry doubted these guys would be launching any other attacks again him any time soon. He was disappointed about how things went down, but most of the city was intact. His concern with the destruction he caused was overshadowed by the glaring fact that they attacked him first. If anyone should feel guilty, they should. Maybe threatening to squash them like bugs was not the best idea, Barry thought, but he was just being dramatic. Their response was to try to blind him. Keeping his eye shut to avoid the painful act of blinking, Barry went upstairs to find a mirror. This city was becoming more trouble than it was worth, he thought, as he climbed up the steps.
*****
Cole’s sister and parents sat in the living room, staring intensely at the television, while he leaned against the doorway watching from the back. The last couple hours were consumed with breaking news headlines from local stations about the abnormal events that had transpired. They had been cut off from all national news outlets. The local news anchors had no official name for the monstrous being that had somehow plucked their city out of the earth and held them inside a massive, impenetrable, glass container. They simply referred to him as “the giant.”
Questions were endless: what his intentions were, where he was from, and speculation about his appearance. He looked like a tall (in proportion to his size anyway) lean, athletic male human in his early-to-mid 20’s. He was also handsome – or so his sister kept saying. Cole’s idiotic twin sister Claire would not shut up about how handsome and sexy she thought the giant looked, which was insane to him.
“You know he could crush us in a second, right?” he responded to her. “Did you see what he did to whatever that…thing was when he stood right next to us? He liquefied it! That could be us next!”
“I don’t think he’s that type of a guy. Hey, what if God is real and that’s him? Hey, maybe he’s God! Speaking of that, you’ve missed a lot of church, haven’t you Cole? You may want to watch what you say: he could be listening to every word!”
Cole momentarily entertained her levity: “Why would God be wearing a pair of muddy grass-stained running shoes and elastic gym shorts?”
“I don’t know, but he’s hot.”
Cole ignored her. In truth, he was terrified; they all should have been. Cole knew that this guy, as titanic as he was, was not a god. If it were just God, he would have felt less scared. This guy seemed like just some random asshole who had too much power; and that was scarier to Cole. He could not shake the look on the giant’s face when he studied them behind their glass wall. The giant smiled, but it was not a friendly smile. It was the satisfied smile of greed being fulfilled, as though the giant had just come into possession of something he had long wished for: maybe power or control… or an entire city of tiny people who looked up to him like a god.
Cole watched the television then gasped. The city’s police force and a lightly manned military air base were its only line of defense, the reporter stated. In an unorthodox decision, the few military forces on base, having no communication or instruction on a national level, had decided to collaborate with the city’s police force. They had established emergency channels of communication in order to decide on a plan of action to combat the new threat. Scouting expeditions, consisting of high-speed surveillance drones, had been sent out through the opening high above their artificial enclosure. They had taken photographs of at least five different cities just like theirs, contained within artificial enclosures identical to their own, “My god…” Cole said. “He’s… collected us.” The reporter continued to explain that the environment outside of the glass enclosure appeared to be part of an even greater enclosure, which intelligence officials had said, “looked like a giant room.”
To Cole’s horror, the news reporter then stated that an aerial strike team had been deployed in order to stage an attack on the giant, using only three fighter planes from the airfield. The giant’s blow against the glass wall during their first encounter was being treated as an attack. Although there were no fatalities, countless were injured. Many buildings had sustained structural damage, water pipes had burst underground, and power was lost in many parts of the city. “Here is the police chief to tell us more,” the reporter stated.
A aged male police officer in uniform appeared on the other side of the screen, introduced himself, then spoke about the air strike that was taking place: “I believe even your viewers will agree that if we do not respond to this unprovoked attack in some way that will get this giant’s attention and force him to take us seriously, then he will remain an existential threat to the survival of this city and the safety of all who live in it.” Cole shook his head. This was stupid, he thought. If the giant wished to demolish the city outright, he could have. Why provoke him?
Next, a spokesperson from the military base was invited on. Cole stifled a laugh as some fat, old, bald guy in camouflage appeared on screen and began to speak with a stupid-sounding hick accent. “Thank you for having me. It is imperative that we demonstrate to this so-called ‘giant’ as your fake news media refer to him, as well as to the people of this city, that we will not be bullied.” The reporter then asked the hapless, uncultured military spokesperson if the goal was to injure or disable the giant, to which he replied with the obvious assistance of a teleprompter that he could barely read: “The police chief and our base leader recognize that our weaponry is unlikely to harm a target of such tremendous size, which is why they have sent only three aircraft. But we have the best planes in the world. We have the best pilots in the world. The mission’s success is not based on whether we injure or disable the enemy, but on how effectively we make a statement that our city will stand up for itself.” Cole lifted his palm to his forehead. The spokesman continued: “The police force agrees with us that a tremendous show of force will convince this so-called ‘giant’ that if he wants anything, then he will need to address us on an equal playing field, because we will not bow down to his demands. We have nothing to fear, and after we have weathered this storm, we will make this city great again.” With his palm still to his face, Cole shook his head.
Continued the reporter: “But do you have any evidence that the giant will respect our- “
The fat old guy cut in: “You are fake news. Goodbye.” Then he stormed off to the side, almost tripping several times on the mild ramp that led down from the podium. Thankful that the embarrassing event was over and paying no heed to what that morbidly obese idiot had said, Cole brought his hand down from his face and continued to watch the television.
Pretending as though nothing had happened, the reporter said: “And now, we have live video of the attack, seen from one of our aircraft’s external camera.” Next to the reporter appeared a square display showing a grainy video without sound. Cole saw that the plane was flying over a vast grey desert. On the blurry horizon were brown box-shaped objects, big as skyscrapers, that cast dark shadows behind them. It *was* a room, Cole realized. The plane was flying over a floor of concrete! The plane pulled its nose up, shifting the camera up from the concrete floor to reveal the side of a gigantic running shoe, closing in fast. The white, silver, and blue object composed of dirtied rubber and spongy mesh fabric was just as huge as he remembered. Cole tensed up; scared that if the giant did not move his big foot that the plane would crash into the patterned mesh siding. However, instead the pilot pulled up sharply and flew up along the side of the oblivious giant’s leg, past his shorts and bare chest, until it was behind his head. Then at the bottom of the camera, a large projectile shot forward and flew toward the giant’s ear, leaving a trail of engine smoke behind. Just as it impacted with a flash, the plane zoomed forward past the ear to safety. Next, it looped around, making a second pass on the other side of the giant’s head as it deployed another projectile. The plane again quickly pulled away to the side as it impacted. But just as it looked like the pilot was in the clear, a huge fleshy palm with five long fingers emerged from underneath the camera, clearly intending to annihilate its attacker. Cole clenched his teeth as the huge hand approached but just as the bare-chested giant was about to swat down the plane like a fly, the camera turned sideways, and the pilot successfully slipped his plane in between two of the massive fingers. This guy was an awesome pilot, Cole thought.
The plane then nosedived. Cole watched as the craft flew nearly straight down in front of the giant’s chest and waist then expertly pulled up before hitting the concrete floor. The fighter flew at low altitude above the vast concrete floor for a few seconds, then suddenly, did a 180 and headed toward a giant sneakered foot. Several missiles shot out from the plane then it veered off to the side.
“NO!! Don’t hurt him!!” Claire shouted at the screen.
“Shut up, will you?” Cole said, eager to see the aftermath. Unfortunately, there was none. The fighter continued to fly along the grey concrete expanse for a few seconds, until suddenly a vast shadow fell upon the landscape. The screen then went black right after the edge of something vast and dark descended from above.
The reporter began once again: “We’re hearing that the mission was successful, but we are awaiting confirmation on the status of our brave pilots. Officials state that we have only to wait until the giant decides to open a line of communication with us, so that diplomacy can begin.”
Cole was not so confident that they would get the result they wished for. He walked to the kitchen and nervously drank from a glass of water. He looked out the window at his neighborhood for many minutes. Then, the ground shook once, *thoom*, then a second time, *thoom* and so on with increasingly greater sound and force. *THOOM* *THOOM* *THOOM* until the entire house was shaking. Then, silence. Cole trembled in suspense.