The guests have all arrived within 15-20 minutes after Jim, Brandi, and Michael sat down at the picnic table and began talking. Amy has still not returned home from her trip into town to acquire the last minute supplies.
Including the three of them, there are now 9 people sitting at the table. New to the group are Isaac, a friend of Michael and Jim’s from back in high school, Isaac’s wife Cynthia, and 2 of Amy’s close friends, Alexia, Jennifer, and their respective boyfriends, Keith and Scott.
The 10 friends have begun to exhaust their supply of topics to discuss. They’ve already burned through the obligatory “How is everything with you?”s', and of course Michael was bombarded with the “WOW this house is so beautiful,“ “Can’t believe how nice it is here, must have cost a fortune” comments. The group has discussed movies they have recently seen, season finales of the shows they enjoy watching… they are beginning to grow bored waiting for Amy to arrive and for the food to start cooking, but Michael has already made it clear to them that he is under orders from his wife not to let them see much of the inside of the home as she wants to be the one to give the tour. Luckily, Jim is able to conjure up another topic to breathe a little more life into their current state of slight boredom.
“Hey Mike, you been working on any… interesting… invention thingies lately?”
“Yeah man, whatcha been spending your spare time on since the move?” asks Isaac.
All eyes shift to Michael, and he begins to grin. Just as his wife likes to brag to her friends about her new possessions, Michael enjoys showing off his creations whenever an opportunity presents itself. “Well actually, I have been working on something you might find quite interesting. Amy said I should save showing it off for another time, but she’s running late and you guys could use some entertainment, plus, who knows when I’d be able to get all of you together again to show it off? Now is perfect!”
Michael grows quite excited upon realizing he now nas the perfect opportunity to show off the machine he’d been working heavily on in his spare time the last few months. He knows it's was guaranteed to impress the group. “ Uh… Jim, Isaac, can I get you to give me a hand with this thing? It’s small, but it’s heavy.”
“Sure” the two men reply in unison as they rise from the table and follow Michael into the house.
“Everyone else, stay here. We’ll bring the machine out and set it on the porch” says Michael as he leads the other 2 men into his home to retrieve the machine.
The group at the table talks amongst themselves speculating as to what sort of device it could be that they are about to see. They all know Michael is as unpredictable as he is talented, it could be anything. 5 minutes pass before Michael returns, swinging the door open and holding it in position while Isaac and Jim carry the machine out to the porch in front of the eagerly awaiting crowd.
“Set her down right here, guys” Michael says, pointing to the middle of the porch.
The 2 men comply and the heavy machine touches down. “Damn, you weren’t joking, that thing weighs a ton” says Jim.
Everyone’s eyes are locked onto the machine. To everyone but Michael it appears as simply a round black hunk of metal with a diameter of about 2 and a half feet nestled atop a surprisingly sturdy tripod.
“You’d be amazed… it’s actually quite light if you factor in…”
“Yeah yeah yeah, let’s skip the science lesson, I don’t need to know how it works, I just want to know what this thing does” says Jim, cutting his friend off before he could begin his techno-babble lecture.
“In the most simple terms I can conjure, this machine was designed to take big things, and make them smaller.”
“Uh… what… how?” Asked Isaac.
“Care for an example, anyone?”
By now everyone has risen from the table and formed a half circle in front of the machine standing slightly higher than their heads from its perch on the porch. Each head nods yes, confirming they would like to witness a demonstration.
“Okay then, guys. I’m gonna need something big to target... any suggestions?”
An amusing grin creeps across Keith’s face at that moment. “Something big, huh? I volunteer” he says as he flexes his arms. A few members of the group roll their eyes and laugh, including his own girlfriend Alexia, before she wraps her arms around him and kisses him on his left cheek.
Michael chuckles. “No offense, Keith, but for this demonstration I’d like to use something even larger. Anyone have an idea?”
An idea pops into Brandi’s mind. “HEY! I know! What about your truck, Jimmy?"
“I don’t know, babe, I’d hate to ruin Mike’s lawn driving my big blue beauty up to the porch. And then it would be awfully embarrassing for him when his fancy doohickey here fails to bring her down to size.”
Complete confidence in his machine fuels the smile that conquers the rest of his face. “Go get your truck, don’t worry about the lawn.”
“Well, if you insist.” Jim heads to his truck and the rest of the group awaits his quick return. He drives it slowly onto the lawn as the group spreads out around it and allows Jim enough room to position his massive vehicle directly in front of the machine, coming to a stop about 4 feet away from the first of two steps that lead onto the porch. Jim exits his vehicle and places his keys into his pocket. “Okay, let’s see what this thing’s got.”
“Sure thing, Jim. Everyone, please take a couple steps back and I’ll fire up the machine.”
The group complies and Michael steps behind the machine to man the controls. He checks the settings and makes sure everything is set properly, then makes the final adjustments and turns the machine ever so slightly so that it’s aimed directly at the truck. “Firing in 3...2...1...”
A red laser bursts forth from the black steel and illuminates the vehicle, encasing it in a crimson glow for no more than a single second and in the blink of an eye, the truck is gone.
The group members look at each other with wide eyes. “Uh… so… it’s a teleporter? Where the hell did you send my truck, man?” asks a worried Jim.
“Stay calm” responds Michael, “It’s still here, it hasn’t gone anywhere.” Michael pushes the machine about a foot to the right so everyone will have room to easily scale the 2 small stairs leading up the porch and be able to enter the house without immediately having to bring the machine back inside when his demonstration draws to a close. He then walks off the porch and rejoins the group.
Brandi is the first to spot it. From where she’s standing she can see a hint of sunlight reflecting off of something very small and blue a few feet in front of her in the middle of the circle. The others watch as she moves forward, eyes focused on the ground. She comes to a stop after placing each of her feet parallel to the right and left sides of the once massive truck and continues to stare down at it, speechless, as is the rest of the group having now noticed the minuscule vehicle between their friend’s feet, perched atop her red flip flops. Brandi repositions each foot closer to the truck, leaving only an inch between its sides and her feet. She playfully lifts her big toes and slowly drops them back down to the top of her sandals, then repeats the same small movement a few more times. She begins to giggle, finding herself amused by the sight of her boyfriend’s truck that stood nearly twice her height just moments ago, now around one and a half times the length of her big toes, and being cloaked in the shadows which they cast as she continues to raise them and lower them. The others in the group continue to stare down, captivated by the sight of the tiny vehicle and Brandi’s feet surrounding it, the sunlight reflecting off her toenails coated in a bright red polish.
“SOOOOO…. Are we impressed?” asks Michael.“
“This… this is amazing” says Cynthia.
“No, man, this is BEYOND amazing” chimes in Scott.
“How is this even possible? Has science come this far in the last few years and I’ve been living under a rock?” Keith asks. The entire group is still mystified by the transformation they’ve witnessed.
“So, Jim, how do you prefer your truck? Full size, or in Hotwheels form?” Everyone laughs but Jim, his disposition has changed over the past few minutes from calm and cool to nervous.
“Please tell me you can change it back… Please just tell me this isn’t permanent.”
“Relax, I can definitely restore it to its original size, we just need to wait… I’d say 20 minutes at the least. I’ve never reduced something so large to such a smaller state, I don’t want to risk firing the machine again and frying something internal because it didn’t have enough time to properly wind down. This is actually the prototype, it can be a little buggy at times but it’s been reliable for the most part. I have a newer version inside that I just completed assembling recently, it’s got a few extra features and runs much more smoothly despite the fact that it’s the size and shape of your average television remote control. Although the technology is so advanced, operating the device is a breeze, it's no more complicated than learning to use something like a modern cellphone. I wanted to bring this version out to show off though because it’s bigger, bulkier, more crude and menacing, it’s got that WOW factor on its side, whereas the handheld version has convenience.
“Okay Michael… okay” says Jim as he starts to calm down.
Brandi crouches down and lifts the truck from the ground gripping it from behind with her index finger on the right side and her thumb on the left. She knows how important this truck is to her boyfriend, and displays this knowledge as she gently places it into the palm of her left hand, raising it to her face before peering into the windshield. “It’s so cute!” she exclaims to Jim. “You know what’d be even cuter? If you were in there as a teeny tiny passenger!”
Jim actually cringes at the thought, everyone else laughs.
“Anyone else wanna hold it?!” she yells, extending her hand out to group, offering up the tiny tribute. “If… Jim’s okay with the idea” she adds.
Almost everyone in the group shoots forward, everyone wants to experience what it’s like to hold an actual truck in the palm of their hand.
“Uh… babe, I’d really prefer it if we could just set it somewhere safe until the machine is ready to be fired again.”
“Okay Jimmy, I understand” she says, and begins walking to the picnic table. Just as she’s about to set it on the top of the table, Michael stops her.
“You might not want to place it there, it could roll off the table and smash to pieces, I’ve already turned his beloved truck into a Matchbox car, I don’t want to be responsible for turning it into a mini jigsaw puzzle in the same day.”
“Damn, you’re right” Jim says. He grabs his truck from his girlfriend. “How about right here…” he says, crouching down and gently placing the vehicle underneath the picnic table, about 6 inches away from the nearest table leg. “Everyone see where it is… remember it’s there, please don’t touch it and I’ll retrieve it when Michael says the machine is good to go, okay?” Everyone nods their heads in a agreement and Jim stand back up to his full height and gives Brandi a kiss.
The group slowly walks away from the picnic table and to the porch when Jim notices smoke emanating from within the machine.
“Shit! Mike, what’s happening to your… black metal death ray? Is it gonna be able to restore my truck after this?!”
“I’m sure everything’s fine, it’s probably just starting to overheat. I’ll get behind it and power it down. And hey… it’s not a death ray!”
Everyone stands around the bottom of the porch, briefly startled by the appearance of smoke but now comforted by Michael saying that it was nothing to worry about.
Michael gets behind the machine and looks down at the control panel. The entire screen is flashing red and the image displayed between flashes indicates to Michael that the machine is currently set to fire at…
“Human targets? Auto-fire commencing in 15 seconds… But… how? What could have gone wrong that would cause a glitch like this?” he whispers to himself, still in disbelief of what he is reading. The machine startles him from his thoughts as it begins to produce a high pitched beeping sound, the sound’s speed increasing with every passing second. “SPREAD OUT, RUN!” he yells to his friends in front of the porch as he dives off and onto the lawn.
The group hears Michael warn them to run, and they begin to, but they barely have time to disperse more than a foot away from each other when a red light spews out from the machine, encompassing nearly the entirety of the front yard as it seeks out its designated targets. Suddenly, the machine goes silent. The light vanishes, and so too have the 9 attendees of the Parker housewarming party.