Chip was crashed out on the couch until late in the afternoon. While he slept, Pearl, Hannah, Taz, and G-girl were playing poker at the dining room table, using transparent titanium cartridges of captives instead of money or chips. Hannah had won more captives than anyone, and while sitting there playing poker she had worked up a hearty appetite. Under normal circumstances, before the arrival of Raleigh, the hunger of a young woman in her mid-twenties would not have been cause for alarm. But in this world, where the majority of the human race had been reduced to the size of insects, Hannah's hunger spelled certain doom for the ant-sized captives trapped within the transparent cartridges stacked near her forearm.

"Let's take a break," said Hannah. Pearl, Taz, and G-girl agreed, and went to the fridge to get sodas. While everyone relaxed, Hannah opened three of her transparent cartridges, one at a time. When they were all open, she used her left hand to dump the captives onto her right forearm. Nobody had swallowed a captive in several hours, so when Hayley, Susan, Ashley, and Crystal Mae saw what Hannah was about to do, they left the living room and went over to the dining room table to watch the spectacle.

There had been ten captives in each cartridge, so there were now thirty captives astride Hannah's forearm. Pearl, Taz, Polly, and G-girl joined the group to watch Hannah conquer the captives. Hannah addressed them, but since they were all Asian, none of them spoke English.

"I'll give you two choices!" said Hannah. "You can either surrender to my belly, or journey down my gullet! Now, what's it going to be?"

Some of the other girls laughed at this no-win scenario. Another reason they laughed was because whenever Hannah addressed miniaturized captives, she used an authoritative tone of voice that she would never use when she spoke to someone who was normal size. Some of the other girls could relate to this, because they were all guilty of doing it to some degree. If you felt like a god, you had a tendency to try to act like one. Hannah spit on the captives, and they struggled to swim to the surface. Hannah dragged her tongue across a portion of her forearm, but only enough to lick up about a dozen captives.

Chip woke up when he heard the laughter of his sister Pearl and her friends. He got up and went upstairs. After showering, he came downstairs and fixed a sandwich. By that time, Hannah's captives were long since vanquished. Hannah, G-girl, Pearl, and Taz were once again playing poker.

"Are you guys just playing for fun?" said Chip.

"We're playing for captives!" said G-girl.

Chip sat down and decided to play. After winning a few hands, Chip decided to up the stakes. "How about we play for real money?"

They all agreed to play for five dollars a hand, with poker chips used to represent money. When it came time to collect after each hand, the chips would be exchanged for money. Chip did pretty good, winning most of the hands. Since he was feeling bold, he made a suggestion. "How about we up the ante? Let's play for a thousand dollars a hand!"

G-girl and Taz put their cards down. Hannah said, "You guys can play, too! I'll donate a thousand dollars to each of you if you lose!"

G-girl and Taz each took a chip and started to play. It seemed as though Chip's luck had ran out when he upped the ante; he lost to G-girl, then played another hand, and lost to Taz. Chip, Pearl, and Hannah were already wealthy, but G-girl and Taz were middle-class. Hand after hand was played, and everyone won at least three times except Chip, who threw his cards down after the twelfth hand.

"Damn it! That's three grand I've lost to each of you!"

"How about we play for double or nothing?" said G-girl. "It'll give you a chance to win some of your money back."

"You only have three thousand!" said Chip. "If I win, you won't be able to pay me six grand!"

"No," said G-girl, "let's play like this! If you win, you don't have to pay us! But if we win, you double our money!"

"You're on!" said Chip, and they resumed playing. Pearl lost on the first hand, but G-girl won the first and second hands. Taz doubled her money on the third hand. Pearl won the next game. During the next hand Hannah finally lost to Chip, his first victory since upping the ante. An hour later, three of the girls were at twelve thousand, while Hannah was at six thousand. Every time G-girl or Taz had lost, Pearl and Hannah had taken turns providing them with credit, and they both had won big.

Now was a crucial hand: If G-girl, Taz, or Pearl won, one of them would take twenty four thousand dollars from Chip. Looking at his cards, Chip saw that he had a straight. Knowing the odds, he figured that now was the time to make up for all of the money he had lost. He put double the amount of chips in front of him, and said, "Let's double the stakes!"

If Hannah or Pearl lost, he would get either twelve thousand from Hannah, or from Pearl. Chip still owed Pearl and Taz six thousand, but they folded. Now it was just Chip, G-girl, and Hannah in the game. If G-girl lost, she wouldn't have to pay Chip, that was the deal. If G-girl won, she would collect forty eight thousand dollars from Chip. Hannah and Chip put their cards down at the same time. Hannah held a straight, but Chip's straight beat hers. As Chip reached for Hannah's chips, G-girl put her cards down, revealing a royal flush. She quickly tried to collect Chip's chips, but he grabbed her hand, preventing her from grabbing them.

"Hold on!" said Chip. "You have a royal flush?"

"Yeah!" said G-girl, as she ripped her hand loose from Chip's grip and collected the chips. "You owe me forty eight thousand dollars!"

"I don't owe you shit!" said Chip. "We were just playing with chips, and this isn't Vegas!"

"That's bullshit, Chip!" said Pearl. "We were playing for real money, and you know it! If you'd won, I'm sure you wouldn't have had any problem collecting from G-girl!"

"G-girl didn't have any money to begin with!" said Chip. "You and Hannah gave her credit, and that's the only reason she was able to play!"

Taz stopped the argument. "You guys," she said, "I know how we can handle this! I saw that brick thing in the backyard, and it gave me an idea from an old Twilight Zone episode I saw once. Chip can buy some blocks of marble, and those of us he owes money to can have a statue built of them by the captives!"

"What do you think, Chip?" Pearl asked. "That might be cheaper! Do you agree with those terms?"

"Okay, I'll order blocks of marble for you, G-girl, and Taz, but only if it's cheaper!" Chip shook hands with Pearl, closing the deal.

When Chip went into the living room, Pearl told G-girl: "That was probably the only way to get him to pay! It's a good thing Taz thought of that!"

Chip grabbed a soda from the fridge and sat down reading a sports magazine on the couch. Ever since the arrival of Raleigh, her interviews had been playing non-stop on every channel, and normal television viewing ceased to exist. For that reason, if someone wanted to catch up on sports, they either listened to a radio, or read a magazine.

Pearl knew that she would have to take the initiative and find out who had the best deal on marble. She went to her computer, and after half an hour she had narrowed it down to three suppliers. There were two places in Italy, and one in the state of Georgia, in the United States. As far as time was concerned, the place in Georgia could deliver blocks of marble a little faster than the Italian companies, although the quality of the marble wasn't quite as good as the Italian variety.

"Chip, come here!" said Pearl. "I need you to use your credit card."

Chip came over and asked, "How much is it?"

"Well," said Pearl, "to have the blocks of marble cut into a rough female shape, it'll cost ten thousand for each statue."

"How much is it if they're not cut into shape?" said Chip. "If they're just rectangular?"

"It's cheaper," said Pearl, "but it would take the captives too long to make statues of us! This way, they have a head start."

"Ten thousand for each one?" said Chip. "Three statues, huh?"

"Look at it this way," said Pearl, "if you paid cash, you would owe G-girl forty eight thousand, and you'd owe me and Taz six thousand each. That's twice as much as you'd be paying for the marble!"

"Okay, you've convinced me!" said Chip, and Pearl got up from the chair as Chip got out his credit card and took her place. "How long do they take to ship?"

"It depends on how much you pay them." said Pearl.

"I'll get two-day service if you go halves with me!" said Chip. Paying for half of two-day delivery would be slightly cheaper than paying for the full amount of regular delivery.

"Okay," said Pearl, "you've got a deal!"

It was just before 5:00 p.m. Eastern time in Georgia when Chip placed his order, and the business was open until 7:00. The workers got to work cutting the marble, to get it ready for shipping. Chip called them by telephone to confirm the order, and he was told the statues would be ready for delivery Monday morning, and that the blocks of marble should arrive at Chip's home around 2:00 p.m. Wednesday.

It was still Sunday afternoon, three days before the statues were delivered, when Pearl asked Chip a question. "When can we put the captives in the brick chamber?"

"First I have to build the zapper grid that will keep them trapped inside the chamber. I have enough electrical knowledge to do it." Chip pulled out his cell phone and called an electrical supply warehouse. "I'd like to pick up some supplies today, and money is no option!"

Pearl looked at Susan and said, "My brother likes to throw money at a problem. Things get done quicker that way!"

Chip looked over the schematics Sparky had given to him. After looking it over, he went to the electrical supply store and bought what he needed to build the zapper grid. Chip got to work, and finished around 9:00 that night. The zapper grid was designed so that metal plating was connected vertically around the interior of the perimeter of the brick structure. Metal plating was installed horizontally around the bricks. Insulating caulk separated the metal from the bricks, so that captives inside the brick chamber wouldn't be able to escape without getting electrocuted.

When it was done, Pearl and all of her friends were extremely impressed, and it was Pearl who attributed the structure to Sparky's genius. "Without Sparky, we never would've had this! He's brilliant!"

"Just for that, I'll never swallow Sparky," said Crystal Mae.

"That's saying a lot!" said Susan. "Crystal Mae, you're the last person I would've ever thought to say you wouldn't swallow a shrunken captive!"

"He's earned the right to live as our slave-toy for serving us!" said Crystal Mae. "He should consider that an honor!"

"Speaking of Sparky," said Susan, "he told me earlier this afternoon that Misty is in bad shape, after watching G-girl kill all of her homeboys! He says we should move his cartridge and the voice amplifier to one of the coffee tables in the living room, so she won't be reminded of what happened."

"I don't have a problem with that," said Pearl.

G-girl heard this, and approached Susan. "You mean there's an Ashwood City bitch in that cartridge with Sparky?"

Susan looked at Pearl, then back at G-girl. "Yeah," said Susan, "but me and Pearl haven't told you about her because we didn't want you to kill her. It's not that I care about Mexicans, but Misty's a girl, and I thought us girls should stick together!"

"I'm going in there to slaughter that bitch right now!" said G-girl, as she spun around on her left heel to walk back toward the house. Pearl grabbed her shoulder before she got one step farther.