“Ohps! Meh, I destroyed the stairway to the beach!” Mimi commented more concerned with the fresh varnish on her nails.
“Should we retreat more into the sea?”
“Ehr, well, I don’t think so. We are at safety distance from the city. The beach is already a mess because of us. I think it is better to wait here until someone shows up.”
“What? Who should show up?”
She looked at me with a look full of doubt. “I don’t know, actually. I mean, someone! Authorities, the police? An ambulance maybe.”
“Why should an ambulance show up?” “Well … to help, no? I mean, something clearly happened.”
“Indeed!”
“And whatever it is we need medical attention. Nobody grows to this size normally”
“Nobody does that”
“Stop being sarcastic.”
“You’re right. Sorry. It’s just that I am confused and scared. What the heck happened? I was sleeping, you were sleeping, everything was normal. Then I was thirsty, and the box, and … pfff, I don’t know.”
“Hey there, we sure need a doctor, now”
“What? What do you mean?” She could not hold laughter
“You admitted worldwide that you don’t know something. That is a first time! I’m impressed, moved, really” She mocked me while cleaning her foot from the debris of the stairway and the sand. She played a little with her toes. Then, she looked at me.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be alright. Someone will finally come to us and they will figure it out. I mean, smart people will be interested in the case for sure.”
“Look at the beach, look at the city. We destroyed everything. That’s scary!”
“It was an accident, we were sleeping, everybody saw that. When they’ll come, we will explain it was an enormous accident and that we mean no harm to anybody.”
“Oh my God! Do you think somebody got harmed?”
“What? No!” She refused the idea like something stupid. Until she thought about it more seriously.
“I think we have done no harm … intentionally” The clear spelling of the last word was absolutely terrifying.
“... isn’t it strange?” Asked her, after a while pondering and gazing at the city.
“What? I mean, what isn’t at this point, but ...”
“There is nobody on the shoreline, or at least I see nobody.”
“Well, I would not blame them. It must look sorta … scary from that perspective.”
“Yes, OK. But, it’s been a while now. Where is everybody?”
“I think, which is comprehensible, running for their effing lives? When they will see us being tranquil and far away, they will come back.”
“Mmm, I am impatient. And also, I was wondering ... well ... how big do you think we are we?” She said while looking distractly at her nails.
“I wonder it too. But how could we possibly find out?”
After some moment thinking about building enormous meters, using laser measurements and calculating the atmospheres up our heads, Mimi exclaimed enthusiastically: “By comparison. We measure something in our body and something we may know the size out there!”
“Ok, that sounds pretty intelligent ... for once!" She frowned while curling her hair.
"What do we know about our bodies?”
“Well, what about feet? My size is a 9/9.5?”
“9 what?”
“Well, inches. Not exactly, but something like that, maybe a little more.”
“Okay, so, to make it simple your foot is ten inches?”
“Indeed, Watson!”
“And it is now ten ... mega-inches!”
“Ha-ha, how funny you are! We will find out how much that is. I am 5’ 5’’ tall! A foot is 12 inches.” She paused counting in her mind and looking up in the air, for precision or inspiration. She scratched her head a little and then adjusted her hair. Finally she exclaimed: “Sixty-five! I am something near 65 inches: my foot for six and a half!”
“Ok, but you were all these measures also before growing.”
“Yes, and you are 6’, which is, twelve six times, like seventy fooo …?”
“Seventy-two.”
“Seventy-two, exactly. Seven feet-of-mine and a … thumb, eheh!”
“I am convinced we are still not addressing the problem.”
“What problem?”
“What do we compare all these measure with?”
“Well, we need something we know how big it is.”
“And it must be on the coast because at this size we can’t go into the city looking for something we know the size.”
For me, it was a hopeless effort to try and find something useful for that purpose. That was my first week ever in that city, which on the contrary was the city my girlfriend was born in and grown before her family moved to my town. They still owned an apartment there and used to come back for vacations. This was my first vacation with her family. An extremely stressing situation already if you don’t add the possibility of growing beyond skyscrapers height. And while I was thinking about this an intuition struck me like a stab in the back. The family! My girlfriend’s family. Two parents and a younger sister for the records. They were not with us, they decided that morning to leave us sleep until late and go on a family trip to a city north on the coast. But even that far, there may have been more than a way to take a look at our show earlier. I started feeling wet and cold on my far back and it was not the sea hitting me from behind. I don’t think any explanation about the strange feelings I felt would have sufficed once they ware going to ask me about our "interactions". If they were ever to speak with me again.
“I got it!” Mimi interrupted me. “I know something on the coast, nearby, that we can use to compare measures!” I resurfaced from the pit of thought, unfortunately not deep enough to hide me from the world forever (but, at that point, what pit would have been enough?).
“What? What thing?”
“The park!”
“What park?”
“The amusement park that opens every summer, right there at the end of the shoreline behind the church.”
“Yeah, I see. What are you thinking of?”
“The wheel! When I was younger I loved the park and all the rides and carousels and cotton candy. But I always wanted to end our visit with the wheel. My parents hated that because of the lines, the heat and all. But it was my real only request. It was my Santa Claus. I behaved good for weeks in order to have enough the angel face to never be denied a ride. They set turns to accompany me and were absolutely delighted when at twelve I was big enough to ride alone. I loved it so much. All the light, the music, the air so fresh up there, even in the hottest nights of august. Oh my God!”
“It is very nice” It truly was. My girlfriend was extremely serious most of the time and kind of cynic sometimes, but recounting about the wheel she had that sparkle in the eyes like she had become a kid again. “And how can the amusement park help us?”
“Let me finish. I was so happy up there, and when I was nine I asked my father if that is what flying was like. He said he didn’t know but I decided that was like flying. And I wanted to fly above the city. So I wondered if the top of the wheel was taller than the tallest building in the city. Which is that apartment building in the far back. The brown one over there.” Even without the chromatic clarification the aforementioned building stood clearly out of the modest skyline of the town.
“The building was built in the eighties and it is said to be 115 ft tall, which for me was like ... a lot. I was extremely worried the wheel could never top that. But I recollected all my courage and asked the guy maneuvering it if he knew how tall the wheel was. Now, if you are a nine years old girl dreaming of flying on that wheel you’d expect the guy working with it to know the position of every single bolt on it. But he confessed to ignore it. I insisted and so he looked on a big dusty book he found in a closet. After some time turning pages he finally answered my question. I was exploding. He announced a lot less enthusiastically than I expected: “at its peak 131 feet!” It was awesome! A triumph. The wheel, my wheel was the tallest thing out there. Best day ever!”
“I can’t imagine you so attached to a bunch of steel and plastic carts.”
“Well, for a nine years old that was the sh*t!”
“So, we have a wheel 131 feet tall.”
“Yes, and it is exactly on the shoreline, right behind the beach. We can compare my foot to it without exiting the sea. That’s great … or at least, it’s our best shot.”
She stood up. I followed her. We looked at the city by our standing point of view. It was like a map or a model set. From that perspective it seemed far tidier and cleaner. We could also see other street apart from the seafront. There we recognized the first moving figures.
“Hey look, there they are. I see cars and people moving.”
“Yeah! Wow! It’s unreal. How small is everything!? The cars, the people, the buildings!”
“Yeah … pretty scary … isn’t it?” I wanted to dissimulate my metaphysical terror for all of that, but I really couldn’t.
“Look at the trees in park – she ignored me – and the driveways, with tiny cars. How cute? I would like to play with them all!”
“That sounds like the worst idea!” I commented, completely unheard.
“Let’s go, let’s look for my wheel. I was planning to bring you there anyway. Just not exactly like ... this.”
She took my hand and dragged me. Our steps in the water sent waves in the direction of the beach. Luckily they were not tsunamis, but still they managed to reach the debris of the bars and restaurants we had crushed and to drag them into the water. The water hit also the parts of the beach that were not beneath us, washing away seat beds and umbrellas like they were rubble on the shore. It took an extremely short walk until the amusement park. There it lay like a toy set. The roller coaster like a tiny toy train, the horror house not bigger than a pack of chewing gum, all the minuscule counters to win prizes of any kind or buy any sort of hydrogenated fats. It was colorful but a little pale, maybe for the daylight, maybe for the aging. And on the side, there stood the magnificent wheel in white and scarlet steel. Magnificent with all the lights on in the summer night sky. A little disappointing, turned off, in the light of the afternoon, from up there.
I tried to comment: “It is sssm...”
“Splendid! As always.” Completed her. “Now, let’s get down to business” She continued with a laugh of satisfaction for the pun.
She sat in the see, just far enough to be able to fully stretch her leg toward the wheel. I knelt to see better. She stretched her leg and put the foot as close as she could to the wheel. “Careful! - I said – I don’t know how much it would stand your touch.”
“Hey!” She exclaimed offended.
“You know what I mean.” She got closer and closer until the foot was standing on the sand in front of the wheel.
“Wait!”
“What?”
“The beach is below the street level. Let me compensate. I put my finger under her heel to level it with the street.
“You are teasing me. Be careful!”
“Here we are. It seems ...”
“What, I can’t see nothing from here!” And that was true. From her point of view the wheel was probably completely hidden behind the foot.
“It is less than the half! It arrives here.” And there I made a mistake. I wanted to make Mimi understand the height of the wheel in comparison to her foot. Therefore, I thought it would have worked if I touched the sole in the exact point the wheel ended. On a physiological level, I can’t find a better definition of teasing one’s sole. She laughed and shook her foot to stave my finger off. That little movement was enough to hit the wheel right on top causing it to collapse choreographically to the ground on a good portion of the amusement park. A little cloud of dust rose but the breeze dispersed it quickly.
“Oh ...” Was the only thing I could say.
“What? What happened?!”
“Ehr ...”
“Let me see!" She crouched on my side to have a better look. “Oh my … oh my … The wheel! It collapsed. I … I didn’t mean to … She had a very upset expression.“That’s because you tickled me!” She accused while hitting me with a slap on the shoulder.
“Have you at least seen how tall it was in comparison with the foot?”
I recovered from the surprise. “Ahh … yes. It was this tall.” I pointed the spot on her sole. She proceeded to look at it, then she tried to measure it with the hand and made a little calculation. My foot is two wheels and ... something, like … a third … 300 feet! 300 feet! What?!”
“That means you are ...” She was already counting.
“Two … two thousand feet!” She gulped hard.
“And you are two thousand and one hundred feet!” I gulped hard.
There is no definite measurement, in theory, but in practice I understood that every geographer could have declared us both officially “mountains”. An architect at the top of its career would have been payed millions to design a skyscraper tall enough for us to hang out with. Those numbers were indeed destabilizing.
“A normal person is two hundreds and a half smaller than us!” I exclaimed
“Yeeeah. It’s like less than ¼ of an inch! Like ants or gnats.” She completed.
“How the heck did we get so big?” I asked still baffled by the revelation about our probable size."How does one grows more than two thousand feet tall?"