Dan Ransmith was sitting at the table eating the lunch he prepared for himself, taking a break from the notes he had scrawled across several sheets of paper to watch television. It was certianly a busy season—the time of the show—and Betty barely allowed them any sleep while they worked on the project.

Normally Ransmith would be working on the latest improvements to the shrinking system—all simulated of course because Betty would never trust any of them with a real shrinking machine—but today his notes were concerning the ordering of film clips for the television broadcast of the second season of The Shrinking Show. Betty demanded that over twice as much footage be used since the network distributing the show had asked Betty for twice the episodes as the first season.

“Did Betty give you the word on whether we can use the clips with Tom?” Ransworth’s colleauge, Bill Diller, said as he entered the room.

“What? Oh yes, they’re fine.” Ransworth said as he continued to watch the soccer game on the television.

“Something on your mind?” Diller asked, noticing Ransworth’s preocupation. Ransworth sighed.

“It’s just this time of year, you know,” Ransworth said. “The contestants come, they compete, and they go home. We don’t go home.”

Diller nodded solomnly. It was true—they had been Betty’s slaves for two and a half years now. It was as if they were prisoners in jail, yet they had committed no crime, except for simply being in the way of an ambitious woman who will let nothing stop her.

Betty was always telling them how good they had it—the mini complex she had constructed for them was much “nicer” than a jail cell, given that they each had their own bedroom, they had a large TV with an extensive cable package, and access to some of the best computers that could fit in a room. Betty always fed them healthy, decent-sized meals, and when the competition was on she brought them out into the compound and into the yard one at a time for a change of scenery. Snickering, she would add that she always satisfied their sexual needs too, though Ransworth felt that most of the time he was just being used to satisfy hers.

However, it was not truly better. The men had no control over their environment—Betty controlled every aspect of it right down to what they wore. There was no privacy either: there were cameras in every room of their little complex that Betty could watch—and often did—and those cameras were on a different network than the main cameras in the house and the compound so they couldn’t even see what they were filming. Also, they had no connection to the internet and absolutely no communication to anyone other than Betty. In that way it was worse than a prison, because at least in prison you got to write to your family members.

“I’m just glad the excitement’s over,” Diller said. The contestants had just gone home today and Betty was allowing for a bit of breathing time before the extensive editing process was to begin.

”Now for a month of editing, plus a year of experementing with our hands tied behind our back.” Ransmith said.

“If only we had access to all our old equiptment, plus having access to all our old reaserch material, we could fulfill her demands in half the time she gives us.” Diller said. The memories of the last faliure were still painful—Betty had wanted truly portable shrinking machines by the start of the season and when she didn’t get them she made sure all four of them paid.

“Any idea whose story we should play up in the first act?” Ransmith said.

“No idea,” Diller said. “Ask her when she talks to us again.”

Betty communicating with them was always a very frightening experience, since Betty would literally remove an entire wall from the complex and essentially replace it with her face. It was never known in advance whether she would be in a good mood or bad, feeling businesslike or frisky. The four scientests lived on the edge of her seat.

“I wish she’d just shrink us a good film editor,” Diller joked darkly. “I wasn’t trained to do this crap.”

“Don’t say that!” Ransmith said sharply. Apart from the fact that Betty could hear what they were saying if she so chose to listen, jokes about bringing anyone else into this prison were not at all welcome by him.

“Well, at least we’ll almost certianly have portable machines by the next season.” Diller said. “We might even get rid of the excess light problem.”

“That might be pushing it,” Said Ransmith.

“It could be a pleasant surpise for Betty,” Diller grinned.

“Shut up, Dill.” Ransmith said. Tensions were high in the place durring any time when you were shut away with the same people for two years, let alone under their circumstances. As Ransmith ate his sandwitch he felt a subtle vibration and heard dull thuds in the distance, the telltale sign that a full-sized person was approaching.

“Here she comes,” Ransmith said, flicking off the TV and turning to the blank white wall.

“Odd,” Diller said. “She already talked to us once today, I didn’t think she’d be back.”

“Maybe she’s lonely since the contestants left and wants to put you in headfirst,” Ransmith smirked.

“That’s the last place I’m worried about going if Betty’s lonely,” Said Diller, dryly. The thuds continued, then stopped, then started up again.

“She’s sure taking a while coming over here.” Ransmith said. “I wonder what she’s doing, she doesn’t keep anything else in this room?”

“Who are we to question the ways of the giantess?” Diller said dryly.

The thuds continued sporadically for a minute before the sound of something landing on the top of the little complex causing both men to jump. They heard the sound of something scraping—presumably fingers—on the top of the room they were in.

A second later there was a jolt which caused Diller to grab onto the wall for support. It was almost as if the complex was being yanked, as if Betty was trying to take it off the wall. Sections of the complex creeked and rocked as the force was applied to different parts of the building.

“What the hell she getting at?” Diller commented. Ransmith was confused as well—if Betty wanted to intimidate them there were much more effective ways—this was just strange.

The creaking and groaning stopped and there was silence for a moment. Then a couple of thuds and the loud scraping again, as if Betty was trying to peel away individual parts of the structure.

“This is fucking weird.” Ransworth commented bluntly, not knowing Betty to do anything like this in the past.

At long last the scraping sound came to the metal door, which shook on its hinges as giant fingers fiddled with it. Ransworth and Diller expected it to fling open any moment now but the scraping sound continued, almost as if Betty had forgotten how to open the door.

But at last, the door swung open.

“What was that abou—” Diller started, but stopped dead as his mouth hung open in astonishment, for what he and Ransworth saw was the most shocking and startelling thing they had seen their entire time in this long confinement.

The face was not Betty’s. The face looked in upon them with an expression of utter shock and disbelife as the eyes travled over the men, their surroundings, their food and their work, and back to the men. The mouth lay open and the tounge within the mouth lay limp. It was not hard to read a giant face and this one was telling them that the owner of this face had come across something she had never expected to see and was now looking at something that shocked her to the core.

“Oh my God,” Said Sherri.