It was true; her dad really had retrofitted the space into a makeshift laboratory. Although it wasn’t like a cartoon laboratory with beakers and test tubes. It was like an engineer’s laboratory. There were some computer monitors and robot arms set up, which was absolutely cool. There were machine parts taken apart and spread over a desk, and a couple of cameras set up, like he did video call demonstrations. There was also what looked like a small shower cubicle, but futuristic.

Alex saw me staring at it.

“That’s called the re-fab,” she said matter-of-factly. “It does something really cool.”

“What?” I said. She paused for drama.

“Something you won’t even believe. I have to show you.” She went over to a big monitor and looked at something on the screen. She seemed very comfortable around the tech, so I decided to trust her.

“Check this out!”

She typed something on the screen and the cubicle door slid open. I started at her.

She said:

“You have to get in, dumb nuts.”

“Oh.”

I stepped inside, and as soon as I did, panels inside the cubicle lit up. The door slid closed behind me. Inside, the glass walls tinted everything murky and frosted, like I was in an isolation chamber.

“I’m gonna start it!” came Alex’s voice. “Get ready!”

“Okay!” I said. “I’m ready!”

The cubicle filled with warmth and the air vibrated, right into my bones. My head was filled with buzzing. Then a crazy thing happened; the cubicle walls started expanding, spreading up and away, like a weird movie effect. Whatever the re-fab was doing clearly was messing with my head. What a crazy mirage. It felt like I just got shot into space, but without windows so I couldn’t see anything.

“Hey!” I yelled out, “Wait! – !”

As I yelled out, my voice got higher and softer, and higher, until it broke off in a squeak. I really hoped Alex didn’t hear that.

Then it all stopped, the cubicle powered down and it was quiet. The vibrating warmth slowly seeped out through vents in the floor.

I heard Alex calmly come up to the cubicle, and her form shadowed the front window. My body went slack with shock, unable to believe it. Her silhouette was expanded like everything else. I waited for the mirage to clear, but it didn’t.

The door slid back and she stood in the doorway. She was a dazzling and tall, adult height compared to me. I was now the size of a two year old.

She looked down at me and smiled:

“Goodbye, big Tad. Hel-lo, little Tad!”

“How?!” I said. My voice was definitely higher, and it caused Alex to giggle. “This is just a really weird effect, right? When does it wear off?”

“It’s real,” she said with pride, “My dad shrinks things.”

She stepped over to me, examining my height. Without warning, she slipped her arms under mine, squeezed me to her chest and lifted me clean off the ground, giggling as I squirmed.

“Hey!”

She placed me onto a little shelf in the corner of the cubicle, which was surrounded by some smaller glass panels. It looked like a second cubicle, in miniature, and since I was now a person in miniature, it seemed obvious Alex wanted me to go in there.

“What is that?” I said.

“Don’t move, okay?” she said, sliding the panels around me to form a second closed glass cubicle.

“Why?” I said, marvelling at the fact she just picked me up. She was strong now, and I was light, weak. She placed her larger hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“You gotta go again, that’s why!”

“What?!” I stared up at her.

“It gets even cooler. Just wait ‘til you see this—!”

She closed the cubicle and dashed back over to the monitor.

It was always me trying to impress Alex. Now she wanted to impress me. I was secretly flattered. And I rarely saw Alex this excited over anything. She must have been waiting a long time to show someone this stuff. And now since her dad was out, it got to be me. Once he came back, the lab would be off limits again. It was all irresistibly secret, exciting, forbidden and I decided to go along with it, while I could. Anyway, Alex was already launching the program a second time, giving me no time to think what would happen.

The inside cubicle sealed; there was a palpable pressured feeling this time, through two layers of glass walling now, the cubicle and the container. The air stopped and tightened. Then the buzzing came back, and pulsating warmth. The glass panels of the smaller cubicle were locked tightly and I couldn’t have gotten out if I wanted to. I was about to be launched into space again, the air pressed close trapping me between, and there it was…

…Each wall of the cubicle began to stretch away, and the floor gradually expanded. When the squeezing feeling stopped, I stared around, shocked all over again.

When Alex had lifted me into the second cubicle, I had fit. Now the container was twice as tall, filled with empty space that had materialized out of nothing.

I was about the size of a newborn baby; literally everyone would be bigger than me, even the littlest of kids. This was starting to get too insane for my brain to make sense of. Yeah, it was fun and all, but I had to ask Alex to reverse it; being this small could get really weird.

The cubicle door slid back, and my best friend once again entered, this time with slight caution as if she wasn’t sure whether it worked a second time…or what the result was. She was even bigger; oversizing me threefold, not just in height but width ,volume. She was turning into a formidable mass of girl. I felt positively miniature, small and thin, less substantial, toy-like. She could have my tiny body surrounded twice over in a hug. If she had laid on me she would have completely covered me from view.

When she spied me in the second container, sized me up, smile broke out on her face. She came right up to the glass, slid the panel back and reached in for me. I was quickly outmatched by her large hands, which slid under my arms – much more comfortably now – and lifted me out of the container.

She held me up and checked me out all over, weighing me in her hands.

“Hey, this is weird!” I said. My voice had even less bass than before. Alex smiled and managed not to laugh.

“Goodbye little Tad,” she announced, “Helloooooo tiny Tad!”

“You made me tiny!” I accused, but my insides were soaring at the feeling of being held up in the air. Alex was having a lot of fun, and I was being caught up in it. But she decided she could stand to impress me a little more.

“You’re so tiny you could fit in my mom’s handbag!” she sang out.

“You jerk!” I said, not knowing whether to laugh or be angry.

Alex got suddenly got all demure:

“Um, Tad…” she said, “…would you be really annoyed at me if we…like…did it again?”

“Wait, what?”

“Well, it’s not done. The program can just run again.”

 “Wow,” I said, humbled by the thought of getting smaller. Alex mistook my tone for interest, and surged on:

“Yeah, pretty amazing actually – my dad shrinks things sooooo little, that you can hold them in your fingertips.”

I felt a small shiver of something like excitement, struggling to even imagine being that small.

“That’s insane!” I said.

“But so cool,” she corrected me. This whole time she had been holding me up level with her chest, and I was ultra conscious of the warmth of her hands, big and firm against my ribcage. My legs dangled in mid air and the lack of ground beneath them was starting to become disconcerting, but I was too embarrassed to ask her to put me down.

“I really want to see it again,” Alex said. “Let’s see how small the next one goes!”

She did it. She stoked my curiosity. She was getting a kick at my astonishment every time I found myself even smaller, and I sort of liked it.

“I guess so!” I said, keen for her to put me down. I wasn’t sure if I could take another one, but I wanted to try, as long as we did it quick and then reversed it. Once Toby came back, I might not get this opportunity again in a long time. It was definitely something to brag about at school to kids; a special secret Alex and me could share, and no one else would be in on. I imagined on Monday, how Bruna would ask us what we did over the weekend, and we’d just say we played with Toby’s robot cubicle, and coolly pretend it was no big deal, and Bruna would get annoyed and demand we tell her what happened. But we wouldn’t, it would be our forever secret. And Bruna would get increasingly annoyed and say she wasn’t going to be our friend anymore, but she’d be lying. It was funny to imagine.

“This is a lot of shrinking though,” I said.

Alex placed me back inside the container and shut the panels.

“Yeah, but I want to see what comes after tiny Tad,” she insisted. “Like, maybe puppy-size Tad, and then baby bird-sized Tad, and then marble-size Tad, and then—”

“Wait! You can’t make me too small, it’s weird!”

“Don’t be a lame-o!” Alex rolled her eyes. “I'll make you big again, I promise. One more!”

I waited in the container while Alex rushed back over to the terminal. My nerves jangled with anticipation.

The buzzing vibration rattled me this time, and the warmth plunged through my body like a feverous river. I felt a wave of wooziness and willed myself not to pass out.  Once again, the cubicle walls pulled away in every direction. The floor descended and the ceiling climbed up. Everything expanded in size, all together. Except me.

It looked like everything was growing, but I knew it was me who was shrinking, it. It finally stopped, and the cubicle powered down. I examined my surroundings, swallowing hard, feeling out my new tininess.

The door slid back and Alex stepped inside the cubicle. Her size was totally outstanding, and almost knocked me over in shock. She really was like a fairytale giantess now, taller than any adult, actually impossibly big.

And I was impossibly small. Smaller than the length of her forearm, roughly the same height as the length of her foot. And given she was twelve, she had small feet. No human was as small as me; I was the size of a toy. She shrunk me even more than I expected, actually beyond what I imagined was possible.

It had worked though, and she looked elated.

“Hello teeny weeny Tad!”

She bounded up to me and swooped me up. This time when she took me under the armpits, my entire ribcage fitted neatly in her palms like I was a drink bottle and had me completely in her control. My little body was at her mercy like I was an object, not a person.

“I’d love to keep you for a day,” Alex said, “but I guess you probably want to grow back now.” She playfully ruffled my hair. “Goodbye, teeny weeny Tad.”

“Goodbye, ginormous Alex,” I said.

She left the cubicle and went back to the monitor. A minute passed, and the door hadn’t slid shut.

“Oh…that’s weird,” she murmured.

“You ever shrunk stuff before?” I said. My voice was so soft I had to call out again, at the top of my lungs, and then it came out in an embarrassing squeak. Alex laughed:

“Oh, Tad…you sound totally adorable." She mockingly threatened me: "Don’t make me wanna squeeze you again.” Then sighed, thinking. “Anyway, yeah, I shrunk a basketball, and then made it normal size again. That was different...It’s a tiny bit harder to shrink a person. And kinda very hard to grow a person back.”

“What does that mean?” I said, innocently.

“Um…” Alex began, and then footsteps came down the basement stairs.

“Oh shit!” Alex yelped, rapidly typing into the terminal.

“Excuse me?” came Alex’s mom’s voice, across the room, “’Oh shit’ what?” The tremor of bass in her voice fluttered in my head. I held my breath, feeling trapped, tiny, helpless, and probably grounded forever.

Alex was silent.

“Alex,” mom emphasized in clear ‘mom voice’, “’oh shit’ what…?”

Alex’s mom stopped mid-room, staring at Alex trying in vain to shield the monitor from view, and then saw me standing in the small re-fab container inside the cubicle. She put her hands on her hips.

“ALLEEEEXXXXX!!!!”

*

It wasn’t Alex’s fault. She was just twelve. She had seen her dad re-fab things and then scale them back up, but no one ever told her re-scaling up didn’t work on living beings.

I went to hospital but the doctors didn’t know what had happened to me. After receiving a very strange phone call from Mrs Kijek, my parents showed up at the hospital, although they were just relieved I was okay. Mr Kijek was called back from his conference, and consulted with the doctors, but he explained, he couldn’t grow me back. He then spoke to my parents privately.

Now, I sat at the head of my truck-sized hospital bed, even the pillow outsized me. Doctors came in and out, checking me out intemrittently, while my parents and Mrs Kijek stood around my bed, trying to figure out what they could do. Alex sat demurely to one side of my bed, trying to look bored enough to be credibly guiltless.

Finally Mr Kijek came back in from consulting the doctors. They all agreed my diagnosis: tiny for life.

“Well, Alexandra,” he said dryly. claming surveying his daughter, “I think this caps it.”

“I’m sorry, daddy!” she said loudly. 

“Don’t be sorry. But try to be careful. Tad is going to need to recover now, just be mindful of his small stature from now on. You’re very big compared to him, and he needs you to be very gentle.”

“Whaaaat?” she exclaimed. “I’m the most gentlest person ever!”

“You’re also the most groundedest person ever, young lady. Starting now.”

"No, dad, come on!" she whined. "All my friends go out."

"All your friends also know not to get into their dad's secret work business."

"I'll do a billion chores, anything!"

Mr Kijek tossed a look at my parents, and then stroked his jaw.

"Well, your mother and the Flynns and I think we know one way you could shorten your punishment. You can start helping Tad get to school."

"How do I do that?" she said. "I can't drive."

"You're going to visit the Flynns house every morning before school, and take Tad to the bus stop with you, and he'll ride the bus with you. You can slip him into your school bag, so he's safe."

Alex looked relieved the 'punishment' wasn't more onerous. 

"Okay, dad."

On the way home, the backseat seatbelt was too big and I kept sliding around on the seat with each turn. Mom observed this and said:

“My little man needs a new seat,” she said. I prickled at ‘little man’, although she used to call me this before I got shrunk. Of everyone, my mom got used to my size the fastest, maybe because she always saw me as her ‘little man’, and probably always would.

Once the car pulled into the driveway, mom plucked me off the seat and carried me inside. It was like I was a baby again except that I was smaller than a baby. I was like a little doll in my mom’s hands. She was even bigger than Alex, queen fairytale giantess, and handled my little body like I barely weighed anything.

It was late, she put me on my bed in case I needed to rest from all the time I was at the hospital, being questioned by the medical team. I couldn’t rest; so I

One perk of being small was that my phone had a big screen now, like a computer, which was kind of cool.

My dog jumped up on my bed and cautiously approached me to figure out who or what I was. When she got my scent, her tail whipped happily. She was confused over my size though, like she wondered if I was a toy that her owner had accidentally gotten his scent all over.

She yipped at me, and tried to poke me with her nose. Then she got playful, trying to goad me into chasing her. Finally she lay against me and started trying to lick me all over, and her tongue was so big now it practically smothered me. She was very powerful now, and hard to resist.

This new size thing was obviously going to take some getting used to.