Chapter 18 - Foreshadowing

It was dark in the car as it went into badly lit to pitch-black tunnels. The vehicle started to shake violently as the rocky road surface got more uneven, the driver took many turns without barely slowing down. Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel and with each traveled meter road became smoother and ride more comfortable again. The yearning of the passengers in the back to get out of that dreary dark elaborate cave system was palpable. When they finally were out of the tunnel a town started to slowly emerge in front of them.

“Welcome to Ismaning, ladies”, Dr. West said as he sat in the front seat, without looking behind him.

“Would you look at that, finally, they actually have some civilization here”, Roberta said as the group now entered the village of Ismaning.

“This place looks really great, cool architecture and some nice shops”, Lisa said more impressed than her sarcastic friend as she was enjoyably checking the town out from the moving car.

Riding through the town they could see all kinds of shops and people happily doing their daily business on the streets. Not any sign of poverty, dinosaurs, or giants in sight. They passed a church with markings that seemed familiar to Roberta and Lisa. Then they remembered that it was this new religion that was popping up more and more lately around their home country and in some other countries around the world.

They didn’t think long about it, because some other prominent thing came into view. It was a huge police car that was passing them by in the other direction at the moment of passing the car blocked the artificial sunlight and the women could see how much that car dwarfed their own.

“That is the biggest police car I have ever seen”, Lisa said.

“Enjoying the view, that must be Sam Parker from Twin Peaks making her rounds, not in her usual area, but her presence in Ismaning is not an uncommon occurrence”, Dr. West said. Roberta and Lisa were only half listening to what Dr. West said, is they were focused on their view outside.

The car was nearing a chique expensive-lookig apartment block as the driver slowed the car down and parked near the corner.

“We arrived at our destination, the Löwe residence is where you will stay for the coming weeks”, Dr. West said.

“Here is where we part ways for now. Here are the keys of apartment 12b”, Dr. West said.

Roberta and Lisa stepped out of the car with their belongings and looked around to check out the neighborhood. They also got a good look at the enormous height of the ceiling of the dome, with its artificial light blue sky that covered the place almost like a dome, a technical wonder which took most of their attention.

“Get some rest, you will be contacted tomorrow by one of our agents”, Dr. West said.

“How exciting”, Roberta said sarcastically.

“O come on, look at that building, these condos must look great on the inside”, Lisa said excitedly at first glance.

“Well glad you like it”, Dr. West said as he closed the door and gave the driver the order to take him to another destination.

Lisa waved goodbye to the car driving off in the distance until it wasn’t visible anymore whereas Roberta was already walking to the entrance of the building. She followed her friend quickly through the main entrance, they were very curious about their new apartment.

The building had a modern look compared to most buildings they had seen on their ride to this German-style city deep beneath the surface. When they entered inside, they notice a strong art deco style theme that gave a seventies feel to it.

“See you negative Nancy, this is going to be great", Lisa said.

“well, it is better than what we had before, even better than that so-called hotel Summer hotel.", Roberta said.

The two American women walked to the elevator hall and pressed the round elevator buttons.

“Thing, Thing”, the bell rang and the number panels above doors showed activity as the three elevators raced to the ground floor.

“All three at once, you don’t get that service from buildings in Chicago.”, Roberta said.

“Glad you are more positive now, hun”, Lisa said.

The center lift won the race and opened its doors first which made it possible for the two women to step inside. The button panel went up to 7 and the apartment numbers were written next to it. Roberta saw there’s next to button six and with her right index finger pressed on button 6.

The elevator quickly went up to floor six, when arriving the doors slit open and the pair stepped out.

They arrived in a large hallway where the walls were light yellow colored and was lit up with nice looking small lamps hanging evenly spaced a crossed the hall. The hallway had a pleasant vanilla smell and they noticed that the apartment doors were very far apart of each other. “Here it is apartment number 12b”, Roberta said.

Lisa used their key to unlock the door. The door opened and what they saw was an enormous spacious apartment with luxurious furniture. It made both women smile.

“This seems a little better than what we had at the resort near the beach.”, Roberta said. The two friends checked the rooms of the apartment out and were very pleased.

“The favors we have to do for them must be something huge. I wonder what the catch is”, Roberta said.

“You can never see the positive… but in this case, I also wonder what we have to do to deserve all this”, Lisa said as she noticed 2 tablets near the dining table.

She walked closer to them and Roberta followed and they saw the screens were turned on and both showed the login screen with the Yggdrassyl infinity logo on the background.

They both logged in and saw some folders on the desktop screen and looked inside of them. There were different kinds of data about research, schematics of the huge Hive facility. Data about the different scientists was also there, but they were not detailed describing only the most basic information, names, occupation, size.

Lisa and Roberta swiped through the picture profiles. Many employees from GenTech were on them and also some that felt under the category of test subjects. Most of them were women and something about some dormant genes. One of the scientist pictures rang a bell with Lisa.

“Roberta, check this out, this must be the woman who took Paul and Stacy with her.”, Lisa said.

Roberta looked at Lisa’s pad saw the picture.

“Her full name is Dr. Sarah Ming according to the info on this pad, the size and weight numbers of this woman are just ridiculously high.”, Lisa said.

“That big bitch, … I hope they are all right”. Roberta said somewhat worried.

“Me too, I cannot imagine what they must be going through.”, Lisa said.

“I hope our simple assignments don’t involve meeting her or any other of these Behemoths?”. Roberta said with a tone of worry.

Elsewhere in Twink Peaks Acting Sherriff Steiner was further on his way after he had an interesting talk with the biggest family of Twin Peaks. At the end of the discussion, he found out that it was the house Sam and her children would possibly go live in after their so-called Brobdingnag treatment.

Mark passed by the local school there and saw children playing on the playground. They were also bigger than Scarlet and Judy Parker, between 12 to 20 feet he estimated as there were all sizes and different ages. A funny sight was a girl goalkeeper that was clearly too big for the dimensions of the goal and all the boys and girls on the field were violently shooting footballs at her with enormous speeds.

His shift was almost over when he went back in the center then he spotted a free parking place and drove his car in that spot. Then suddenly from behind came a bigger car slowly passing beside him as he watched doors sliding along not seeing the glass windows as they were too high up. The insignias and colors on the doors were a dead giveaway to the police officer and as the bigger vehicle was now parked in front of him the license plate his conclusion was confirmed.

He got out of his car and walked over to the other and opened the door.

“Welcome home, Milady”, Steiner said as he bowed his head.

“O, knock it off, Mark”, Samantha said in a happy tone as she stepped out of the car and rose up to her 10 feet height.

“You won’t believe what a busy day Roy and I had with that town of yours, it made me very hungry I could eat a horse”, Sam joked.

“Well, you said to meet here at 15:00 and knew a good place to have lunch or dinner.”, Mark said.

“Yes, I know a fine diner cafe here that also caters to smaller people like us.”, Sam said.

“Looking forward to it.”, Mark said as he followed his love interest.

He was surprised as they walked past the smaller diners and were now passing the larger built diners.

As they walked further the tables outside these diners, café, restaurants were also getting larger to a point until they came at the biggest of all near the end of the corner.

“Sally’s beers and Steak,” the sign said. “Are you serious Sam?”, Mark laughed a little.

Sam turned her head and looked at him with the most neutral facial expression possible.

“Of course. This is a fine place where a friend of mine works, they have the best steaks and bear just like the sign says.”, Samantha said.

“That is not what I meant….”, Mark said.

“I know what you meant and if these tables are intimidating, we can climb the ladders that are attached to each table, up there we will find that the accommodations are more suitable for us.”, Sam said.

The Ex-New York finest cop’s eyes now focused on the ladders that his partner pointed out. When they arrived under the huge table, he could make an educated guess that ladders reaching up to the round-shaped table plateau were the equivalent height of a 2-story building. This meant that it even dwarfed the matriarch of the Parker family, albeit it was half of what Mark was experiencing.

With some effort, they both climbed to the top of the table and when arrived at the top of the tabletop, they saw a smaller table with chairs more suited for Sam’s size.

Mark who had to put a lot more effort into climbing the ladders than his colleague now had to walk faster to keep up with Sam’s walking speed. He didn’t want to lose face and pretended he easily could keep up with the 10 feet woman.

Sam took notice, smiled a little, and slowed down so Mark could reach the tiny chairs first and gave him time to sit and let him elevate it to his comfort levels before she would sit down on a chair made for her size.

Now that they were both seeded and relaxed a shadow came in front of them. “Hi there Sam, I see you have some interesting company, what can I get you two”, A voice said from above.

It was one of the waitresses, one of the larger citizens of Twin Peaks around 25 to 30 feet tall in Mark’s estimates. It was hard to tell because only her upper half was visible. The giant waitress was wearing those typical light red outfit and a dress with the "Sally’s Beers and Steaks"-logo on the right of her chest. She appeared to be in her late teens, early twenties. Blue eyes, blond short hair with a nice smile.

“Hi Jamie, for me a medium-medium Sprite and 1500-gram Argentinian tenderloin steak”, Sam said.

Jamie repeated that sentence and wrote the order down on her pad. Then her head turned towards the smallest she had seen for a while.

“And what will it be for you sir?”, Jamie asked politely. Mark Steiner was still looking at his menu card, as the choices were divided into small, medium, large, extra-large category and behind them in brackets stood the sizes in measurements he could understand. They were bizarre to him as the size difference scales of items on the menu were extreme. He didn’t want to lag behind in what Sam was eating and drinking as he felt emasculated enough this day.

“Give me a small-large cola and 2000-gram porter stake.”, Mark said. He wanted to order a larger or at least the same size drink as Sam, but that size was near to a gallon and would make him look sillier. The bigger steak size would compensate that and back home gained the experience eating huge amounts of meat meant for ten men.

“A fine choice sir, 2-kilogram porter stake and a cute little small-large coke”, The waitress said. Sam softly laughed at the subtle reaction of Mark when Jamie uttered words cute and small which caused him to turn his head towards his partner as the young gigantic waitress walked back inside.

“Well, how was your shift today in Twin Peaks? I know our town is modest compared to Ismaning, but I hope your rounds weren’t too boring.”, Sam said. Mark looked at her if she was making a joke, but couldn’t get a read on her face. “Yes, it is the most modest town on Earth, nothing special to see here”, Mark laughed. Sam laughed as well. “Yes, I know what you mean”. Most parts of this town were overwhelming for me too. I’m little on the small side here”. Sam winked. Suddenly Mark brought up the subject of the huge he visited the afternoon. By the way, I was driving around a house of the Hill family and was invited in. They told me that they were moving and that you had talked to them about the possibility of taking the mortgage and house over.

Sam looked at him and spoke. “Yes, that is correct, I had a talk with Terence and his wife seems to be growing closer to the allowed threshold to live in Twin Peaks and allowed to take up residence where the biggest among the Island inhabitants live. Also, there are only a few days left before me and my 2 daughters plus Jason will undergo the improved version of the Brobdingnag procedure. How much each of us will grow I don’t know, but our current house will certainly be too cramped for my daughters to live in so I immediately started looking for a more suitable place in Twin Peaks.”

“Suitable? I hope I’m able to navigate through sports arena-size residence”, Mark said.

“Don’t worry she said as she reached with her hand towards his 2 hands that were resting on the table. You will move with us and we can still have fun. I’ll make sure you will feel at home.”, Sam said. “Can’t wait to see this whole growth procedure seeing your good-looking figure being enhanced.”, Mark said.

They stared each other lovingly in the eye in silence. It has been over two months and they grew closer as time went by. They didn’t notice other taller guests had gathered in the other seats around them and were watching the small couple.

“Mom, what are these little people doing”, an 8-year-old girl around 16 feet tall said to her 21-foot mother. “Sush honey, those are the sheriff and her deputy. Don’t call them little people and leave them be”, the mother said with a low decibel startled voice after recognizing the GenTech double helix logo on Mark’s uniform.

Mark and Sam didn’t even notice the stares and whispers around them from people sitting at the other tables until the huge shadow of the waitress loomed over them and their beverages were being served.

“Here a medium-medium sprite for our wonderful sheriff and a small-big cola for our special guest from Ismaning, enjoy. Your ordered steaks are almost done.”, Jamie said in a cheerful smile as she walked back inside of the restaurant.

“What were we talking about again?”, Mark said.

“About moving to new homes and the day of great change”, Sam said.

“This growth means much to you”, Mark said.

“Not for me per se although I certainly needed the first treatment. It is more for my daughters, especially Scarlet. I just have to be large enough so to manage and supervise my children”, Sam said as her phone was ringing.

She saw it was the number of Raspberry primary school Scarlet went to and decided to answer it.

“Hi this is Sherriff Parker, speaking”, Sam said. “Hi Sam, I have some bad news, ….. your daughter Scarlet collapsed on the field 5 minutes ago and was taken by an ambulance to the Arthur Clarke medical center.”, the voice said.

End of chapter 18