Claire doesn't even bother to change into something more comfortable before bed. Smiling, she closes her bedroom door behind her and climbs into the comfort of her bed, cloaking her body beneath the softness of her red blanket. Her black flip flops lay on the floor beside her bed where she had left them after slipping her feet out of them for the evening. Her head hits the pillow and her eyes close as she releases a small yawn. She is ready for a good night's rest.

Still seated at the picnic table, the group's eyes are adjusting to the darkness they have been left in. A small amount of moonlight pierces its way into the attic through the many windows. It's not much, but it's enough so that everyone can move around without bumping into things, including one another.

“I wish she'd left us with some damned cups” says Jim as he takes a few sips from one of the two liter bottles of soda. Everyone turns to look at him, watching as he drinks. “What? No offense to any of you, I'm not saying I don't want to drink after you guys, I just wish she gave us some cups, that's all.”

The group's attention shifts as small lights can be seen coming towards them from the distance. “What's that?” asks Alexia.

“Looks like headlights” says Michael. “Must be Jennifer.”

Jennifer parks her car in the row with the others to the left of Michael's boat. She exits her vehicle and closes the door with a slam.

The men and women at the table watch her as she approaches, they want to greet her but they don't know what to say. “Uhmm... hey Jenn...” begins Brandi. “Why don't you come sit with us and have something to eat? You've gotta be hungry.”

Jennifer continues walking angrily, almost stomping as she goes, passing the picnic table and ignoring everyone seated at it on her way by. The group watches as she hastily snatches up a shrunken pillow and blanket from the pile and marches into the darkness of the sideways turned shoebox. Scott quickly rises from the table and hurries off to follow his upset girlfriend into the box.

Jim looks at Brandi and smiles after he finishes chewing a mouthful of chips. “Nice one, babe. 'You've gotta be hungry.' She might not ever be hungry again after having her mouth on a giant toe.” Jim's remark is met with distraught faces. “Oh, come on. Looks like we might be stuck like this for a while, might as well joke around when we can unless you guys actually like being gloomy all the time.”

Jennifer lays down beneath the blanket she had grabbed from the pile and faces the back of the box. Scott sits beside her and holds her hand, doing what he can to try and comfort her. “Come on, hun, we need to talk about this.”

“No. No we do not” replies Jennifer, still facing the back of box, refusing to look at her boyfriend.

“Yes we do. You know I don't like seeing you like this, I want to help you feel better.”

“I don't want to talk about this. Ever. I need to just put this whole fucking thing behind me and forget any of it ever happened, okay? Now let me go to sleep.”

Scott sighs and reluctantly stands up. He grabs a pillow of his own and returns to Jennifer, laying down beside her and joining her for the night.

“Those two have the right idea” says Keith. “I'm exhausted. I don't think we're going to be making any more sense of this shit tonight, might as well get some rest.”

“Yeah, might as well” says Michael. “Tomorrow's a fresh day. Get as much of a good night's sleep as you all can manage. We'll put our heads together in the morning and see what we can come up with to get us out of all this.”

The group takes the rest of the pillows and blankets into their arms and retires into the shoebox for the evening.

With her room full of warm sunlight, Claire stretches in her bed and yawns as she awakens to the faint sounds of the chirping of birds. Comfortably laying there, her mind wanders, thinking of various things as she continues to wake herself up until one thought strikes her hard. “Was it all a dream?” she whispers to herself, brushing her long black hair out of her face with her fingers. “Wait!” She leans over and reaches out to the nightstand beside her, pulling open the drawer and peering inside. “Yes!” Her eyes open wide and she smiles at the sight of the little black machine at the bottom of the drawer, confirmation that yesterday's events had actually taken place and were not simply a dream from which she was now awakening.

Claire sits up in her bed before grabbing a corner of the red blanket and dropping it onto the other side of her body, uncovering herself. Swinging her legs off the edge of the bed, she drops her feet onto the floor below and remains seated on her mattress as she raises her arms into the air, stretching and yawning once more. She slowly scrunches her toes and gently rubs her soles into the softness of the plum colored carpet, enjoying the feeling of the fibers passing along the wrinkles in her pale skin.

Although still fairly tired, Claire is far too excited to allow to herself to drift back to sleep for a few more hours. She feels like a young child on their birthday or Christmas morning. The little black machine in her drawer means that she still has guests staying in her attic and she can't wait to see them again. Rising from her bed, she walks across the room and stops at her dresser where she extracts the articles of clothing she will be wearing today. With everything she needs in her hands, Claire leaves her bedroom. Her bare feet carry her into the bathroom where she will start her day with a shower.

Michael rubs his eyes. Radiance fills the attic as the youthful sun of a new day shines through the windows. Turning on his side, he faces his wife as she also begins to stir from her slumber. “Good morning, honey” says Amy as she opens her eyes to see the face of her husband looking back at her.

“Good morning to you too.”

“How did you sleep? Did you get enough rest?”

“Yeah, for sleeping in a cardboard box stuffed with dish towels, I slept quite well.”

Amy laughs. “Seriously though, Michael, did you get enough sleep?”

“Yeah, I mean it, this was actually a pretty comfortable bed. That being said, I am hoping we'll have to spend as few more nights on it as possible before we can come up with a way out of here.” Michael leans in and kisses his wife. “Time to wake up I suppose.”

Jim walks along the row of shrunken vehicles on his way to Michael whom is standing in front of his boat. He stops and stands beside his friend, joining him in admiring the vessel. “I could sure use a coffee.”

Michael laughs. “I'm with you on that one.”

“Thinking about going sailing?”

Michael smiles softly and scratches his head. “I can't believe she actually used the device on my boat. And worse than that, I can't believe she hasn't changed us back to our full sizes. Amy and I have seen her a few times since we moved here, Claire always seemed like a sweet, innocent girl. Not the type that would keep hostages in her attic.”

“Yeah, well, she's hot. And you know what they say. The hot ones are always crazy.” Michael rolls his eyes and laughs.

Michael and Jim walk over to the picnic table where Keith and Isaac are already sitting. The four men exchange good mornings. Over the course of the next fifteen minutes the rest of the group vacates the comfort of the shoebox, even Jennifer, and they take their seats at the table with the others.

“Alright.” begins Michael. “I hope everyone slept well. I just want to begin by saying that I am aware most of you are upset with me, and I can understand why. I built the machine, my machine malfunctioned and now we're like this. That's on me, I take full responsibility for it. But is it my fault that we're trapped up here in this attic? No, that's where I draw the line.”

Jennifer makes a snorting sound on the other side of the table. “Ha! He STILL won't admit that he's to blame for this entire fucking mess!”

Isaac interjects before another argument can break out. “Okay, okay, let's not go through this again. We had every reason to trust Claire to help us and so we did. For whatever reason she refused, and now we're here. The young woman downstairs is responsible for that. If you need to be upset with anyone, it should be with her. But playing the game all day isn't going to get us anywhere. We have to start getting along with each other one hundred percent and brainstorm if we're going to pull through this.”

“Thank you, Isaac.” says Michael. “Would anyone like to start? Does anyone have any thoughts to share?

“I have a question.” says Brandi. “Are we really stuck like this? I mean, it doesn't just wear off after a certain amount of time? Forty eight hours, a week? We won't just grow back to normal on our own over time?” Some of the men and women ponder the idea in their heads. They hadn't thought of this before, perhaps the effects of the shrink ray that left them like this could simply wear off with the passage of time.

Michael sighs and faces Brandi. “Good question, Brandi, but unfortunately the answer is no.” Michael watches as Brandi frowns. “Our condition is not temporary. It's reversible, but anything hit with the machine is permanently stuck at its new size, until it's hit again with the reversal. The only way to restore ourselves is with one of my machines. I'm afraid it won't be as easy as just waiting for the effects to wear off, or getting ourselves wet and growing afterward.”

“So we definitely need a machine then.” says Alexia. Claire has your original one stashed away somewhere downstairs. And she seems to be keeping the smaller one with her at all times. Realistically, there's no way we'll be getting our hands on that. But... could you build a new machine? You could take apart some of our cars and even your boat for parts, and there's gotta be some useful stuff in some of the boxes stacked up here, right?”

Michael shakes his head. “Nope. We just don't have the raw materials up here. Or the tools necessary to assemble anything. The key components aren't found in your everyday items, or even in vehicles. If it weren't for my job, I probably never would have been able to acquire the right stuff to make the technology powering the machine and device possible.”

“So, wait. Does that mean anyone from the lab where you work knows about the machine?” asks Isaac. “Is there anyone there that knows about what you were working on, and might be able to piece together what happened when you don't show up for work?”

“No. Nobody knows what I was working on. Just us.”

“And how lucky for us. Thank you so much for sharing your project with us, Michael.” Everyone ignores Jennifer's interruption and continues listening to Michael.

“And before yesterday, only Amy knew about it. And even she didn't know the full extent of what I was working on. I was doing my best to keep things under wraps until the right time. I didn't want anyone swooping in and trying to take credit for my work.”

“Okay Michael,” begins Keith, “we're small and we're stuck like this for now. But I've been thinking, have we ever been in any real danger this whole time?” The entire group looks at Keith with perplexed looks on their faces. “No, no, listen, hear me out on this. We shrunk, yeah. But how do we know we're fragile? What if like... when we shrunk, our bodies got all packed together and dense and we're really tough now? Like... what if, and I'm sorry to bring this up again, Amy, but I've got to. What if yesterday back in your yard, Amy actually DID step on one of us, but it was like stepping on a rock. What if she would have taken another step and whoever had been under her would have just been able to stand back up and brush themselves off?” Amy can't help but blush again as she thinks back to yesterday's events on her lawn.

“No, Keith. We didn't gain superhuman abilities when we got shrunk.” Jim and a couple others laugh.

“I didn't mean it like superheroes or sci fi. I just meant what if our bodies got much tougher. But how do you KNOW that we didn't? How can you say it for sure?” asks Keith.

“Think back to yesterday, Keith. Remember the apple on the table downstairs? Remember what happened when Claire shrunk it?”

“Oh yeah...” says Keith, defeated.

“Claire barely touched it with one finger and it was demolished. Completely demolished. It didn't offer her any more resistance than a full sized apple. It offered far less. I'm sorry, but the truth is we're incredibly fragile, so you better not go and do anything stupid thinking you're a tiny man of steel. I hate to use this analogy but it's really the only one that fits our situation. We're like bugs. Tiny and fragile, helpless against normal sized people, animals, vehicles, the damned weather, pretty much anything you can think of. And actually, most bugs have it better than we do. We're not even as durable as them. I'm pretty jealous of any of the ones with an exoskeleton right now.”

“So as far as coming up with a plan, what do you think it is that we should be planning for?” Asks Isaac. “You can't build a new machine, getting one of the existing two out of Claire's clutches is highly unlikely, nobody knows you were working on shrinking technology so anyone close to you coming to our rescue is out of the question... what else? Oh yeah, when people do notice we're missing, if the authorities come here looking for us, we can't rely on them because Claire's got a good enough story prepared to tell them that will send them off in a completely different direction. So what other options are there left to plan for? Escape? That's the only other thing I can think of, and I can't even begin to fathom any way that we could possibly pull that off.”

“Yeah, I hate to say it, but your assessment is accurate” says Michael. “Alright, so it looks as though-” A loud noise interrupts the meeting of the men and women at the picnic table. The stairs have been dropped down to the floor below and footsteps can be heard ascending them.