Chapter Nine: Doctor Von Darius Gets A Subpoena!
"I just don't know," said Mrs. Calypso, "this Doctor Von Darius might be guilty, but we need more proof to subpoena him."
I was standing on the dining room table, and Jerrica and her mom were sitting, discussing the situation over coffee. Jerrica had placed my thimble upside down, and I had a stairs glued together with toothpicks to make my way up to sit on the thimble.
Later that day, Susan Calypso had a construction crew knock out a hole in a wall in Jerrica’s bedroom and had a fishtank put in. This was my new home, carefully concealed behind a curtain. From the top of the fishtank to the bottom of the wall above it there was enough space for Jerrica to fit her arm to reach in and pick me up.
I thought I'd be safe there while Jerrica was away for the day, and I was, until the arrival of the twins. Brittany and Rayna were Jerrica’s cousins, and they came to stay for the weekend. They were 12, almost 13, and they had an insatiable curiosity.
I hadn't been introduced to them, because I was supposed to be a secret. I was in my aquarium in the wall that Saturday when Jerrica and her mom were gone until early afternoon.
The curtain was brushed aside, and I found myself looking into the faces of Brittany and Rayna. I was alarmed, because I knew two unsupervised kids could get into a lot of mischief.
"Brittany, look!” Rayna said, "It's a little man!"
Rayna reached her hand in and grabbed me. It was futile to resist, so I didn't even try to run from her.
"Wow," Rayna said to me, "how did you get shrunk?"
I began my tale. It took about fifteen minutes to tell her everything, from the day the lab was robbed until I met up with Jerrica.
Just then, Jerrica and her mom arrived home. Rayna popped me into her mouth, and said, "I'm keeping him. Tell Jerrica that I swallowed him!"
Rayna was still standing there inside the bedroom when Jerrica showed up.
"We found Deuce," Brittany said, "and Rayna swallowed him!"
Rayna stuck out her tongue to prove this, with me safely tucked in her cheek.
"I don't believe you!" Jerrica said, and stuck her finger in Rayna’s mouth to retrieve me. She pulled me out, wet from Rayna’s saliva.
"Don't ever do that again!" Jerrica said, "you're forbidden to come in here any more!"
"Deuce, are you okay?" she asked.
"Yeah," I said, "a little wet, but none the worse for wear!"
The next morning I was sitting on the dining room table while Jerrica, the twins, and her mother were eating breakfast. The subject of getting a pool built came up. Mrs. Calypso was under the impression that she was getting a good deal, because she had wanted a pool of certain dimensions, but decided on a pool with exactly half the dimensions of the original. The contractors were charging her one quarter of the original cost, and she thought she was making out like a bandit! How could I explain to her that she was getting ripped off?
When I tried to explain it to Jerrica, she threw a cloth napkin over me to shut me up. She thought I was crazy!
"But I'm telling you, Jerrica,” I explained, "it will only cost them one eighth of the original cost, so they're charging your mother double!"
"How do you explain this idea of yours?" Jerrica asked.
"It's called the square-cube law, or in some circles, the cube-square law!" I told her. "Pull a sugar cube out of that sugar bowl, and I'll show you!"
Jerrica pulled out a sugar cube, and placed it on the dining room table. "Now how many sugar cubes," I explained, would it take to double the length, width, and height of that one sugar cube?"
"That's easy!" Jerrica replied. "Two sugar cubes!" And as if in response, she lifted out another sugar cube and stacked it on top of the other one.
"Now get out six more sugar cubes!" I commanded the titanic teen.
Jerrica got out six more, and I told her to arrange the eight cubes into a larger cube. "That giant cube," I went on, "is twice the length, twice the width, and twice the height of the first cube. Now do you understand the square-cube law? It is only taking the pool contractor one eighth of the work to build the smaller pool, but they're charging you one quarter of the price! They're charging you twice as much as they should!"
It was like a light went on in their heads. I had studied engineering in college, and the square-cube law (or the cube-square law, depending on who you were talking to), was something that was basic to any engineer, but it was uncommon knowledge to the average person.
Mrs. Calypso got out of her seat and began looking up numbers in the phone book. She got the number of the pool contractor, called them up, and found out who their boss was. When she got off the phone, she had amazing news.
"Their employer," Mrs. Calypso informed us, "is none other than Doctor Von Darius, that scientist you were after, Deuce!"
"Can you bring him up on charges?" I asked.
"No problem!" she replied. "It'll be done before the end of the business day! I have the paperwork with the estimates that prove he tried to swindle me!"
Jerrica was puzzled. "Deuce," she said, "I understand that he's being brought up on charges for trying to swindle my mother, but how will that help you prove he was behind the robbery at the professor’s lab?"
It was a good question, and I didn't have a quick, easy answer. But as long as we could get Dr. Von Darius in a courtroom, it improved my chances of proving he was behind the robbery at the lab!
I spent most of my time in my chamber, with a heat lamp to provide warmth, because even though Nixie the Pixie had made me immortal, I still enjoyed the warmth of the artificial heating. Had I not been immortal, my body temperature may have been an issue, making me vulnerable to low temperatures.
As the weekend ended, the twins left and returned home, and several weeks later it came time for Dr. Von Darius to appear in court. During that time, something fortunate happened. Someone came forward and claimed to know that Von Darius was behind the robbery at the lab. He worked for the pool company Von Darius owned, and he got caught with a large amount of methamphetamine. In order to get a lighter sentence, he agreed to cooperate with Calypso and the police in prosecuting Doctor Von Darius.
The arraignment came and went, there was another court date set, and that came and went. Eventually, it came time to get down to the nitty gritty, and Dr. Von Darius began to testify on his behalf. Jerrica’s mother came back from work every day and kept me informed of the events. Eventually, I received a subpoena to appear in court.
Professor Stiles built an elaborate glass containment system with a built in heat lamp, and a voice amplifier, so normal sized people could hear me more easily inside the court room. When my day in court came, there were reporters first from the local news, then from other areas of the state, and eventually, the whole country! I quickly became famous over night as the world's first six millimeter man.
Jerrica was considered my guardian, and she was approached with offers from people who assumed I was a possession, and wanted to purchase me. Jerrica just brushed them off. In court, Doctor Von Darius sat there with his teenage daughter Alyndria. She was a punk rocker, dressed in shredded fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, Doc Marten boots, and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. She had part of her head shaved, and the other part kind of long. She was really pretty, and she had nice legs, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was just as evil as her father.
In court I described how I was approached by Dr. Von Darius to give him the schematics for the technique Professor Stiles developed of converting hydrogen to tritium, and how the gunmen opened fire on the reactor. I also explained that I found out that Von Darius was a major stockholder in a power company that would make money if they could acquire the patent to a new energy source.
All of this looked bad for Von Darius, but things turned around for him several weeks into the trial when the key witness against him was found admitted to the inpatient unit of the general hospital on a 5150 hold with no memory of who he was, or how Dr. Von Darius was involved in anything. Dr. Von Darius had obviously had the man injected by one of his henchmen with some type of caustic drugs or chemicals that erased his memories, to protect himself from the allegations.
In the end, the jury found Doctor Von Darius not guilty, and the trial was over. As Doctor Von Darius and his daughter prepared to leave the courtroom, his daughter Alyndria, the punk rocker chick, stopped by my glass cube and spoke with me.
"Better luck next time, little man!" she said, with a smirk on her face.
I didn't know how to respond. She continued: "I wish I could keep you as a pet! That Jerrica chick sure is lucky!"
When I got home with Jerrica, a man was waiting for us. He was from a publishing company, and he wanted me to write about my ordeal and my experience as a six millimeter man.
"I'll pay you a seven figure sum, plus a percentage of the profits!" he said. He even had a check printed up, as an advance on the deal. It sounded good, so I agreed to it. Jerrica helped me sign the contract, and she gave it to the man from the publishing company. We got to work writing my biography.
After a trip to the bank, we had to wait 24 hours for the check to clear. Jerrica would withdraw the cash for me whenever I needed any of it. I dictated to her the events of my life, and she typed it in on her laptop.
That Monday, Jerrica got the mail and found a letter for me. It was from the court, and I had a summons to appear regarding conservatorship. It turned out, my own mother had found out about me, and was suing to gain custody of me! So even though the trial of Doctor Von Darius was over, I still had to go to court again to fight for my freedom!
To Be Continued!
Giantess World
