Smoke belched from the ninth story windows of the Downtown Regal Hotel, its black cloud casting an ill omen over the city. While firefighters evacuated the bottom floors, a sea of flames separated 300 people from the ground. Men and women screamed for help, throwing furniture through windows in desperation for fresh air. Nothing, save a miracle, could bring those trapped souls to liberty. Suddenly, tremors rattled throughout the streets, their deep pulses setting off every car alarm for several blocks near their rapidly moving epicenter. A miracle was coming.

People had seen him before, on the news, on the internet, on International Exports’ commercials featuring their new company mascot, but nobody had seen him in person, at full size, outside of the docks - outside of containment. It was like seeing an escaped lion prowl through city streets, looking for dinner. Justin had arrived, a full 30 stories tall. The biggest man on Earth had just gotten much bigger. An entire city of specks cowered in his shadow, but no one dared complain to a man who could atomize a city bus just by wiggling his toe, and no one would protest the arrival of their monolithic savior. Hundreds of little people on the streets stared upwards in spellbound awe. Any fears were quickly allayed by a flash of Justin’s affable, confident smile at the crowds. In a characteristic display of audacity and showmanship, he wore only jeans, putting his ridiculous athleticism on full display.

“Step aside,” he bellowed in a voice so deep and powerful listeners miles away mistook it for the voice of God, and they were only barely wrong. Firefighters scrambled like ants about his bare feet. An upturned palm the size of an Olympic swimming pool glided along the hotel’s exterior, stopping just below a series of broken windows. Tiny beings leapt from windows to the safety of his hand, before he moved onward to add to his collection. Speck-sized women cheered in his gentle grasp, shouting inaudible praise while the men came to terms with their own profound inadequacies.

“You’re okay,” he rumbled, his mighty baritone voice causing a woman in his palm to faint. He smiled and winked, another woman was sure it was meant for her, and all but melted into a puddle on his hand. Justin drank in the attention. Women had always gushed over him, but at his current size he shattered their tiny brains with emotional overload. The praise of each adoring speck was food for his already monstrous ego; he’d have to be a million feet tall just to match it. He wanted to pocket all those women, keeping them for his collection. Maybe he’d pull them out and play with them some day, or maybe he’d just forget they were there. It didn’t matter to him. There were always more women to be had.

And then there were the men. Pathetic little creatures, barely worth saving, but Justin thought himself merciful. They should all be so small. That’s the rightful order of things: all men made the shrunken servants of women, who in turn would be Justin’s slaves, and he, with his head high above the clouds, would be king for eternity. For a flicker of a moment, he winced disdain at the miserable beings he held. One of the little men caught it, and rightly trembled.

Delicately, Justin lowered his captives to the ground, shifting his palm, and sliding them gently to safety. Cheering and applause erupted from the streets. Justin waved, took a bow, and with the utmost false humility, returned to the docks to finish out his shift.

“That was very brave, what you did yesterday,” a woman said.

“Thanks!” Justin said, with boyish cheer in his eyes. “Just happy to help. Couldn’t have done it without your blessing, of course.” He ran his fingers through his hair with feigned humility, smiling with a well-practiced bashfulness.

“Of course.” The woman gave a tight-lipped smile in return, her expression carefully crafted to grant neither approval nor disapproval. She leaned back in her chair, crossing her long, athletic legs. Justin didn’t even try to hide his gaze as he followed those legs from her tight black skirt down to her pretty feet, long toes with red nail polish poking out from under her strappy high heels. She was tall, slender, yet with impressive breasts beneath her white blouse. Those details also didn’t escape Justin’s notice. The woman was in her late thirties, perhaps early forties, aging quite gracefully, perhaps not yet even peaking in attractiveness, Justin surmised.

“I always enjoy our sessions, Justin,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s important to the company that we continually monitor your state of mind, given the great responsibility that’s been granted to you. After yesterday, that matters now more than ever.”

“I feel just fine, doc,” he replied.

“Glad to hear it, though today it’s not your mental condition I’m here to discuss, but rather your physical condition.”

He leaned back in his chair, finally returning eye contact with the staff psychologist. “Not sure what you mean.”

“You were very large yesterday, far in excess of the growth capabilities of the machine.” She remained expressionless, merely stating alarming facts with casual indifference. “I’m not a physicist, but I’m told that shouldn’t be possible.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Justin said, his eyes moving about like he was struggling to remember. “Maybe I’m getting... Adapted to the growth? I’ve been doing it every day for a year now. Maybe the molecules in my body are just really...”

“Adapted. Yes, I think the same, and the company agrees with me. Though that’s not the condition that concerns me, not precisely,” she continued, tapping her pen on a clipboard. “I began my own investigation of the matter this morning. According to my findings, you seem to have grown yesterday without the use of the machine at all.”

A chill silence descended on the room. Justin mirrored the doctor’s impassiveness, as if what was alleged was trivial.

“Weird,” Justin finally said. That word hung in the air while the two stared at each other, daring one another to break the silence. The woman was a stone. Justin relented. “Maybe I’m... Very adapted to growth,” he offered.

“That would seem to be the case,” she replied without hesitation, flipping her pen between two lean fingers. “Though not completely. I’ve been monitoring the logs on the machine’s usage. It seems you are able to go for longer and longer stretches without its use, but eventually you become dependent on it once more. I’m curious, Justin, is this like lifting a weight for you? Are you just building your body’s tolerance to growth, or do you hope eventually your condition will become permanent and you’ll be able to grow as much as you like, whenever you like?”

“I think a lot of people hope that, Doc,” Justin said, not missing a beat. He oozed his usual confidence, smiling, running his fingers through the hair on the back of his neck with aw-shucks good ol’ boy charm. “A lot of people really like me, y’know, especially after yesterday. I can’t even go to a bar without being swamped by fans. Hell, you should see some of the stuff about me on the internet. I mean, wow, I am really, really loved out there.”

“Yes, I’ve seen... Some of the materials you’re referred to,” she muttered.

“Yeah yeah, there’s some pretty wild stuff out there, makes even me blush. But still, people love me, Doctor Ramirez. And a lot of people are really unhappy with the state of the world, but I give them real hope. I make people feel safe, like there’s a huge guardian out there that’ll protect them from their troubles.”

“Is that what you aspire to be then?” Doctor Ramirez said, with a twitch of judgement in her eyebrow.

“Maybe that’s what people need. And I can give it to them,” he said with genuine delight at the prospect.

They were silent again. Justin waited patiently for the doctor to process her thoughts.

“To be honest with you Justin, when the company decided to grow a human being, I was unconvinced that it would be safe - safe for us, and safe for the subject. And that was under tightly-controlled circumstances. If you continue using this machine, if I’m totally blunt about it, we will lose that control. We keep going down this road and we all may find ourselves, frankly, at your mercy. For many people that would be a rightly alarming scenario.”

Justin nodded, unable to deny the obvious.

“So this is a very awkward discovery for me,” she continued. “I’d rather wish I hadn’t made it. Because I’ve grown to like you quite a lot, Justin. And what you say is true, you do give people hope. You’ve become, in many ways, an icon, truly outgrowing the duties of a mere dockworker. You’re far greater than that. And you may be right - maybe the world needs you. And if I report this finding to the company, all that goes away.”

“You haven’t reported this to the company?” he said, eyeing her like she was a steak.

“No,” she whispered.

“Why not?”

She released a sigh that lasted for several seconds, as if summoning the courage to make an admission. “We’ve conducted these personal interview sessions every week now for a year, and in that time I have come to truly enjoy your company. I like you. I didn’t want to ambush you, or hurt you. I felt compelled to extend this courtesy to you.”

“So you’re going to report this to the company?”

“Yes,” she said, with a heavy tone of regret in her voice.

Justin realized his interlocutor had been scrunching her toes against her shoes, the way a cat kneads its claws against a comfy blanket. He saw that subtle gesture as a crack in her otherwise indomitable armor, as if her body was venting pent-up nervous energy through a release valve in her foot. She was lying. This wasn’t a courtesy at all, nor was it a trap. She was giving him an opportunity. After a full year of bombarding her with his weapons-grade charisma, she’d surrendered to him. Maybe even loved him. Justin wanted to lick those toes, then gobble them up along with the rest of her tiny body. He smiled, imagining how she might taste. He reached across the room, taking one of her hands into his with almost a lover’s gentleness.

“Tell me something,” Justin began, speaking in his utmost comforting tone, “When you watched the news, and saw all those little women in my hand, did any part of you wish you were one of them?”

“Yes,” she said. More cracks emerged in the armor. She looked more relieved than surprised by his question; finally she was able to admit a deeply-buried truth. “Yes I wished that very much.”

“I can give that to you. Right now if you like. Would you like that?”

Her eyes darted from left to right, mustering an answer, but Justin had already decided for her. He began to grow, his body towering over the comparatively small woman, eight feet, then nine, ten, fifteen. In another second he was twenty feet tall, just sitting down. A mix of conflicting emotions flashed across her face, finally unifying into terror, as she was certain he would burst through the roof, but the roof was never reached. Then a second wave of dread hit her, this one a tsunami of emotion compared to its prelude. She’d been looking at it all wrong. Justin wasn’t growing at all. She was shrinking. He was shrinking her, just by willing it. So fully had the matter manipulator imbued Justin with its power that reality itself had become his plaything.

She squeaked like some puny rodent as Justin’s hand closed around her doll-sized body. He plucked her tiny shoes off and threw them to the ground, then lifted the woman over his mouth. Her legs kicked as they disappeared between his massive lips. The woman made involuntary convulsions as she felt his tongue slither its way across her calves, snaking between her hips and - ooh! She moaned as his mighty tongue forced its way fully up her skirt. His hand released her, no longer needed now that she was fully suspended between his lips. He began to suck, continuing to taste the woman while she screamed in ecstasy. He continued for several minutes; she was almost afraid he’d lick the skin straight off her body. Two fingers clamped gently about her waist, and pulled her free from his sucking lips, her legs red from the heat and pressure.

With her back in hand, Justin walked across the room and locked the door, making sure no one would interrupt their session. “Since the first time I met you I wanted this, I wanted it so fucking bad,” he said to the little woman in his grip. “I wanted to suck those little legs of yours, I wanted to feel your whole body writhe in my mouth while I lick it clean.” She let loose an exultant cheer, echoing his desires since their first meeting.

His mouth returned, this time baring teeth. Gently, he nibbled his way up her legs again, giving her the occasional suck along the way, never relenting with a tongue that infiltrated the woman’s every nook. She screamed in euphoria, as one meaty finger landed atop her head, pushing her body further into his jaws, as she felt his lips and teeth against her abdomen, then her chest, and then finally, she disappeared fully into Justin’s maw. She was sure she was still shrinking, as she slid across the pitch black cavern for longer and longer distances in any given direction. She was all but certain she would drown, certain that Justin would lose her in this ocean of saliva. The slick surface beneath her shifted, causing her to slide uncontrollably, tumbling over the hard ridges of one of Justin’s molars. She found herself nestled between his jaw and cheek, where she would remain safely for the next several minutes.

Distant rumbles of footsteps quaked from the floor, through Justin’s body, and finally reaching his shrunken captive. He was walking, though the doctor wasn’t sure where. Occasionally the muscles in his cheek would tense and twitch. She suspected that Justin was flashing his usual charming smile at coworkers as he walked by, the others completely unaware that they were being greeted by an all-powerful apex predator who could turn them all into microbes if he so desired. The muffled sounds of doors opening and closing carried through his cheek, punctuated by one, final metallic slam. Daylight broke into the cavern, almost blinding the little woman who’d seen only blackness for the past fifteen minutes. One of Justin’s gigantic fingers lurched toward the woman, collecting its desired specimen and retrieving her from damp captivity.

She was dangling again in front of his face, half an inch tall, and shrinking. Now Justin, sitting in his car with a diminutive psychologist, wore the same stony, noncommittal expression that she once donned to him. He placed her on his palm, and watched her dwindle into a millimeter and beyond. As the crevices of his hand expanded into an alien landscape of pink ridges and valleys, the woman became disoriented, and her heart beat like an infinitesimally small jackhammer. She dropped to her knees and gawked in stupefaction as Justin’s face filled the entire sky. This was what those women felt, only a thousand times greater, because he was a thousand times greater. This was the future, what the whole world would see if Justin was allowed continued and unfettered access to the matter manipulator. He would ascend to become a limitless being, an all-seeing and all-knowing sentinel, one who would unify the entire world under the tyranny of his will. He had an entire year’s head start, conditioning his body to enter its final, perfect form. By the time he would become fully independent of the matter manipulator, it would be too late for anyone to catch him, and he would rule absolutely everything. Forever.

This would be the future. If, and only if, Doctor Marcia Ramirez forgot what she discovered, ignored his plans, perhaps even helped him along the way. The burden of that decision was too great for anyone, perhaps too great for everyone. She became dizzy, her mind swimming with the surreal distortions of her foreign environment and the crushing weight of a decision that she alone had the power to make, and one that would upend all humanity irrevocably. Dark tunnels encapsulated her vision as Justin’s face hovered in the firmament above, turning to blackness. She fainted, and dreamed of a future where Justin might share his power with her, where she and Justin could rule this world together, as miles-high lovers. If only he were so generous.