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Wednesday, October 21

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     “Daddddyyyyyyy, wake up wake up wake up!” an exuberant Jessie yelled, thundering her palms against his bed and vibrating him back to life. After his nightmare last night, he ended up lying in bed and reflecting on it, but hadn’t even realized he’d fallen back asleep until his daughter’s excitement had woken him up. “Your car’s in the driveway!” she exclaimed, darting out of his room to go get her slippers.

     It took a moment after his sudden burst of consciousness to realize what she was saying, until he remembered how many weeks it had been since he’d had to send his car to the mechanic for a refitting. As soon as his shrinking slowed down and his doctor could confidently say Marcus’ shrinking would stop between 6 and 12 inches, he’d had a mechanic come by to pick up his car so that special modifications for shrunken people could be added to the driver’s seat. He’d taken a loan (in addition to using up some of his savings) just to afford the cost.

     Unfortunately, car manufacturers weren’t allowed to make cars built exclusively for shrinkees, since all automobiles that drove on main roads were legally required to be drivable by normal people in addition to shrunken ones. So even though it was possible to buy cars straight from the dealership that were already ready for people his size to drive, they never looked or cost any different than cars that got shrinkee-designed parts installed at a mechanic. Basically, he couldn’t have saved money by selling his car and buying a new one just for himself.

     And if he didn’t have a car, his only options for getting around would be busses and bikes—the first of which would be tricky (and anxiety inducing) if he ever went anywhere on his own, and the latter of the two had proven itself to be more than a bit uncomfortable. So he was hoping that being able to use his car again might give him a bit more independence; maybe he’d go joyriding while his daughter was at school today.

     Except the thought of cruising around the city for fun made him feel a tad guilty. Here I am lying around all day, but striving for a bit of freedom from our house and wanting to have fun, while Jessie has to be responsible and go to school and do most of the chores. Basically, I’m the one acting like a kid and by comparison she seems like the parent. Marcus didn’t want that to be the case though. She’s 13, she should be the one having fun. I mean I know she does, but she probably deserves even more. I just don’t know what I can do to help out around the house though. But then he remembered cleaning the floors the other day. Maybe I can do that again today, and wipe off the counters… Well, mop up more likely.

     He was still internally debating about what he should spend his day doing when Jessie came speeding back into his room. “You literally just got your car back, and you’re still sitting in bed?!” she exclaimed, swiping him up to carry with her outside. I can’t imagine being comfortable with anyone else doing that to me, he thought, as she scurried back through the hallway with her grip on him both gentle but firm. In just the few weeks since he’d reached his final 9 inch height, she’d already grown accustomed to picking him up in such a way that his arms wouldn’t get pinned to his side whenever her fingers wrapped around his torso. As juvenile as she acted sometimes, it was minor details like that which made it clear that his humanity and feelings were never lost on her, despite being more resemblant of a toy doll than other normal people.

     She dashed out the front door, a grin on both their faces as they took in the familiar sight of his modest hybrid sedan. He’d never seen in-person what a car for shrunken people was like, “Oh wait, we need the keys,” he thought out loud, until he heard the car beep to life and the doors unlock. Jessie raised up her other hand, showing that she’d already thought to grab them before getting him.

     “But you’re supposed to get a new pair that’s your own size, right?” she asked; it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to retrofit a car for shrinkees if they couldn’t even unlock it. “Oh wait! I think I see them on the dashboard.” She lowered him to the ground; “You go over to the driver’s side, and I’ll get them for you,” Jessie instructed, heading to open the passenger side door and grab the key fob for her dad.

     Marcus strolled over to his side of the car and looked up at the door. Driving was already a dangerous enough thing to do at a regular size, but operating the behemoth that stood before him? He was surprised he was still legally allowed.

     He heard the door slam shut on the other side and Jessie practically skipped around to his side, squatting down and opening up a tiny ziplock bag to empty out something even tinier into her palm. It was a minuscule remote, barely more than a quarter inch long. Her dad reached out to take it, smiling at yet another one of the many innovations devised for people like him. It felt just the same as a normal remote car key, except with a couple extra buttons.

     There were lock and unlock buttons of course, but there was also a third one with a symbol of a door on it. When he pressed it, he heard the car make a couple short noises, and then the bottom right corner of his door opened upwards and outwards like an automated flap. He and his daughter both stared in amazement as a narrow strip of hardened plastic extended outwards from the floor of the car, and then the end slowly lowered itself until it reached the driveway, forming a perfectly sized ramp for the 9 inch man to walk up.

     “That’s so cool!” Jessie whined, as if she was jealous that she couldn’t use something like that herself. Marcus scoffed at how incredible it seemed, walking up the ramp and looking around as if he couldn’t believe what he was standing on. He jumped up a few times to test its durability; even Jessie tried pushing against it, but it was clearly fit to carry far more weight than Marcus could ever load onto it.

     The top of the ramp led to the floor in front of the driver’s seat, and Marcus was pleased to see there was plenty of headroom for him to walk under it. After getting inside, he turned to look back out, and then pressed the button again. Sure enough, he heard the hydraulics kick back in, and the ramp raised itself up before sliding back into the car. He jokingly waved goodbye to his daughter, who giggled and waved right back as the door flap closed itself, sealing him off from the outside.

     He heard Jessie scamper back around to the passenger side door and get in the car as he looked at his surroundings. He was standing on the floor of the car, in the area where normal people keep their feet. All the old elements of his car were still intact, but there were a couple new additions. For one, since the front floors of most cars are cast in shadow, there was a light above him that was synced up with the rest of the car lights, so it turned on and off whenever the others did. A ladder was built into the left side of the seat, so he’d be able to climb up to where people generally sat down. The brake and pedal were still in the same spot, but now there was a small bump leading right down the middle of the floor, from below the pedals to the seat. His eyes traced their path, seeing that they led up to a smaller, secondary seat that had been installed on the front of the regular seat. The secondary seat looked like an arcade racing setup but without the screen; it had its own brake and pedal, its own steering wheel, its own gear shift. It even had its own cupholder, just as a bonus. His new seat looked to be just wide enough to fit him comfortably, but slim enough that if a normal sized person wanted to use the car, they’d still be able to fit their legs on either side of it.

     Jessie was leaning over the center console to get a good look at it too, while Marcus climbed up the ladder so he could take a seat. “I wonder why they didn’t just build it into the middle,” Jessie wondered aloud. Her dad didn’t answer her though, walking around on top of his old seat while he checked out his new one. He climbed into it and stored his key fob in a small slot below the steering wheel, put his foot on the brake, and then pressed a button in the center of the steering wheel to turn the car on. He nearly jumped as it roared to life, but then sat back and watched his new setup continue to present itself.

     The main wheel above him rotated upwards, and out from underneath it came a giant screen that stretched across the entire width of the driver’s side. To him, it looked like it was 20 feet wide. “I think that’s why the seats aren’t built into the middle,” he said, nodding to how wide the screen was. “Wouldn’t be room for that.” As soon as it was all the way out, it turned on, showing Marcus a view from right above his windshield. Naturally, because of where the camera was, it looked a bit off, but it wasn’t anything he wouldn’t be able to get used to.

     Jessie rapidly stomped her feet against the ground with a huge smile on her face. It looked like she was nervously excited, but in reality she was just enraptured with how smoothly everything seemed to work. Not to mention how cute her dad looked, sitting all cozy in his little chair with what might as well have been a brand new car for him. “I can’t wait to see you drive around,” she said. “You’re taking me to school today, right?”

     “You can’t wait?” he asked incredulously. “I’m the one who can’t wait! Obviously I’m taking you to school today silly goose, how else am I gonna test drive this thing?”

     She laughed at how enthusiastic he seemed to be. “Can I take some videos of you driving later to put on my story?”

     “Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, whatever else you use, you can share it with whoever you want,” he chuckled. “But you’re not ready for school yet, are you?”

     Jessie groaned, slouching back in her seat. “No, I still have to brush my teeth and wash my face. And get dressed. And do my makeup and brush my hair.”

     Marcus laughed at how far along she still had to go; apparently she’d only eaten her breakfast before she saw the car and came to get him. “Well you better hurry up then, if you take too long I might just leave without you,” he teased.

     Her eyes widened and she clenched her jaw, trying not to smile since she knew he was just messing with her. But the fact that he’d even suggest something so ridiculous…

     She bolted out the passenger door, slamming it shut so hard it shook the whole car. He chuckled and sat back in his seat for another few moments so he could take it all in, and then shut the car off with a sigh, grabbing his keys again and pressing the button for his special door. He had to head back inside to get dressed and have breakfast too, but with the thought of getting to drive his daughter to school again, he knew the time would fly by.

*       *       *       *       *

     Half an hour later, the father and daughter duo found themselves back in Marcus’ new car, this time ready to take it for a spin. Jessie was sitting in the passenger seat, holding up her phone with the camera pointed at her dad in his little seat. The car was turned on, the two of them were buckled up, and they were set to drive. “Ready?” he asked, and she nodded up and down with a smile. He threw it into reverse, and the screen in front of him changed to the rear view camera. Taking his foot off the brake, he gently applied some pressure to the gas, and the car slowly started backing out of the driveway.

     Jessie alternated her camera between showing her dad focused on driving, and the giant screen in front of him that allowed him to view his surroundings as he turned himself onto the street. She zoomed in to catch him shifting to drive, before he spun the wheel back to its neutral position as he put on the gas a little bit. The pedals had a bit more resistance than he was used to, but it was fascinating to watch the large pedals on the car floor move on their own to mimic whatever his foot did with his tiny ones.

     Marcus slowly worked his way up to 15mph, and he felt like he was learning to drive all over again. He was antsy and anxious all over again. “I think I’m just gonna stick to neighborhood roads for most of the drive,” he chuckled nervously, which Jessie understood completely. She wondered how it looked from the outside, since her dad wouldn’t be visible to observers, so the car probably looked like it was driving itself.

     “By the way, thanks for taking me to school,” she made sure to say as she stopped her camera, finally settling into her seat so she could review the footage before sharing it online.

     “Not a problem at all, obviously,” he replied. “Honestly I’m gonna have to start driving you every day for a little while.”

     This was definitely the best start to his day that he’d had since first receiving his diagnosis. It was just too much fun.