Shortly before two o’clock, Pandora’s mobile phone rang. It was Bob, calling to update her on his resolution of their United States financial affairs.”

“I have to speak to this man. He’s handling the conversion of my finances into gold to pay for my transition to the colony, and Reba’s and Mick’s too,” said Pandora, briskly getting up and walking away from the table, so that Lennox would not realise that she was talking to a boyfriend of nineteen years and counting.

Reba had guessed who the caller was and the reason for her mother’s desire to take the call wihout Lennox overhearing it. She didn’t want to tell him about her mother’s boyfriend, but having met him, she knew she had to tell him something. Here was a man one year older than her, at the outset of his life. He had told her mother the day before, that meeting her was the closest thing to a romantic relationship that he’d ever had. He seemed like such a nice guy, and to be set up to first have his heart broken and then soonafter be eaten alive by her mother just didn’t seem fair. She loved her mother with the family loyalty of any young woman, but in this case she saw something else at stake that had to take precedence.

“I have to tell you something,” said Reba, “You can’t go to meet Mom in the other dimension. She’s planned something for you that she hasn’t told you about.”

“I don’t mind surprises, and she’s already been the best surprise I’ve ever had this week,” said Lennox.

“I know. I can see how much you like her. She’s lovely, but she’s going to be different in that world. Part of the process of moving to the colony means turning into someone as big as one of the native giants of that world. You’ll be no bigger than her second smallest finger by comparison when you get there. She’s planning for Mick and me and herself and Bob to become giants, but not you.”

“Who’s Bob?” asked Lennox, now aware that there was somebody in their dimension hopping entourage that he had not met yet.

“He’s been her boyfriend for the last 19 years,” said Reba, “Both Bob’s house and hers will be enlarged, or Upsized as it’s technically called, once they’ve been teleported into the giant land by technology managed from giant offices in the giant land. The portal comes out in the garden outside the giant office building.”

“If she was just looking for an affair with a younger man, while her long term boyfriend’s still back in the states, then why not just have it here in Sydney? She must have a very good reason for wanting to uproot me from my home town and meet up with me in a land of earth made giants,” said Lennox.

“She has a very powerfully motivating reason, and I can no longer see fit to honour her desire for me to keep it secret from you,” said Reba.