Shrink Wrapped

"This guy was her teacher?" one of the SWAT members asked on his way out.

The agent nodded curtly.

"Nothing is sacred anymore. Absolutely nothing. I'd like to find him and burned him down in this very house."

The agent had to agree with the sentiment, if not the idea. "We'll find the guy. Don't you worry about it." He bent to look at the keys sitting in a pewter bowl on the foyer table. He recognized a key bearing the same logo as the car in the driveway. Another key, obviously worn from many years of use, bore a rubber boot around the edge, identifying it as a probable door key. Donning PVC gloves, he lifted the ring gingerly between his right thumb and forefinger and tested the key in the front door. "Son of a bitch," he muttered, when it turned. "I want every single inch of this place searched for hidden rooms and secret doors. He's in this house somewhere."

He was correct, but neither he, nor anyone else in the house knew that.

* * *

Grove peeked from behind the aluminum cube. He was 4" tall and plainly visible if anyone bother to look. The cube sat in the middle of his workbench in the basement; he'd secreted himself behind a large cardboard box when the doors crashed in, and no one had looked behind the box. Why would they? He'd been 16" tall at the time, calmly swinging his legs over the table edge, waiting to depart. He would still depart, eventually, but wanted to atop the cube. That was imperative. He needed to follow Kellie into her universe.

There were no delusions. The odds he'd quoted Kellie of descending into even the general neighborhood of the star clusters she'd seen were astronomical. In fact, they were mathematically incalculable. Were he to somehow discover and shrivel away within the same shallow cave Kellie had chosen, the wrong choice of foot placement would drop him into a location light years-millions of light years-distant. He couldn't hope to locate the globe-creature's galaxy super-cluster, much less its cluster, galaxy, spiral arm, local grouping of stars, star or planet. Not even with the assistance of Shrinx. It would be 20 hours or more before Shrinx bound with him on the quantum level anyway. By that time, he'd be on his third planet-fall, as Kellie had been. If he'd only had more time. But time had run out.

The CSI technician glanced at the table and then glanced away. Then he dropped to his knees and examined some particles on the floor that might hold some significance. Grove could tell him, but Grove was busy climbing atop the cube and making himself inconspicuous. Five minutes later, he'd diminished to 1" tall and the technician was busy dusting the stair rails and various pieces of furniture for finger prints. They'd find only his, of course, and those of his no longer in residence family. Kellie's fingerprints would appear nowhere in the house.

Eventually, the technician approached the table and eyed each of the contents in turn. The aluminum cube almost certainly offered the best chance of useable fingerprints, but when he inspected it closely, there was no telltale sign of loops and whorls on the five visible surfaces. So it had been wiped. A quick glance at the bottom confirmed this. He frowned, and sat the cube carefully back into place, correct side up. Of course he didn't note any miniscule human beings clinging to the surface. In fact, Grove had located the shallow cave and braced his feet against one wall and his backpack against the other, anchoring himself.

Amazingly, he'd discovered a blood trail at the juncture of two high walled canyons. The droplets stopped within a dozen feet of the junction, but he'd continued on and found a low, wide-mouthed cave that, upon close inspection, yielded green fibers the color pf Kellie's backpack on the jagged lower edge. Excited beyond all expectation, Grove scrambled into the cave and looked for more signs of Kellie's presence. He found them against the rear wall, where Kellie's backpack had scraped the porous, cheese-grater-like surface, leaving addition fibers. This was no coincidence, he knew. Somehow, Shrinx had lead him to this spot.

He felt a sudden, now-familiar stab of irritation. That damned Marie. The temerity of the bitch, cutting him off like that. He'd developed an unexpectedly strong and close attachment to Kellie; though he certainly deserved no reciprocation, he knew that circumstances had forced her into a similar situation. He understood how a kidnap victim became dependant upon her kidnappers, but also how it worked the other way. He missed her more intensely than he missed his own daughter. But now, with this stunningly unexpected turn of events, it began to seem insanely possible that he could follow her down the rabbit hole after all.

The injection of Shrinx now circulating in his system was the remaining half of the amount not given to Kellie, the last in existence. Once he was gone, the secret went with him. No data remained. Last night he'd shot his son in the back of the head to ensure his silence, to guarantee no data survived in any form. Stephen had sworn that all data on his end was erased, shredded or burned. He felt horrible about Stephen's death, of course, but collateral damage was not restricted to war, and sometimes to be expected. Scientific endeavor was a war-like business, after all. Besides (and he thought this was shivery glee), in a manner of speaking, he'd soon replace one offspring with another.

His own Shrinx, the twin of Kellie's, would lead him right to her. His backpack contained an injection kit with a second formulation, one not even Marie knew about. It glowed an eerie, shimmering, florescent red. Once injected into the bloodstream, and combined with Shrinx, the combined formulation made it possible to explore alternate universes, or so he hoped. Exploration potential was doubled, ad infinitum. He called this formulation Skipz. As in skip sideways, Ha-ha. As always, the pun brought a grin to his lips.

A shadow fell across the cave mouth. Startled, Grove snapped alert and frowned at the unexpected interruption. Could this be one of the mites Kellie had described; he heard no chittering. Concerned, Grove watched the shadow grow deeper until almost no light penetrated the gloom. Was someone poised over the cube, inspecting it and blocking the light? That didn't explain the gradual darkening, or the almost total absence of light. Nor would someone extinguishing the lights of the basement.

Curious, not yet alarmed, Grove inched toward the cave mouth, now twice the diameter as when he'd entered. He could nearly stand erect in it, should he choose. Either the darkness had eased, or his pupils had adjusted, dilating outwards to their rims. What could cast a shadow this large, this complete, he wondered? He would never find out.

He sensed, rather than saw the gelatinous membrane flow down over the cave mouth and swell inward. He gasped and jumped back, banging his head against a jagged outcropping, tearing open his scalp and making him cry out in pain. Whether it was the blood, an awareness of his presence in the cave, or just hydrostatic pressure forcing the gelatinous material inward, the substance swelled in after Grove and pinned him against the rear wall. He had only time to open wide to scream, before material filled his mouth and cut the scream off. A chemical reaction in the membrane caused it to liquefy momentarily and then Grove was inside, thrashing madly and desperately against the warm, wet gel. It pressed inward down his throat into his lungs and stomach and past his eardrums into his brain. And here the description ends. There is no need to be gross.

Grove became part of the microbe, as did his clothing and backpack and anything not indigestible to the gelatinous substance. Some items were impervious to the gel, such as the foil packs containing food, the plastic water bottles, the titanium injection kit case, which did leak eventually, and the glass bottle inside containing the shimmering red liquid. Both the nanobots and Shrinx, being part of Grove, became part of the microbe. Though mindless and unaware, the microscopic organism began to shrink, and after a time became not much bigger than the cave opening. Shrinx, following instinct, eased it through the cave mouth and inside, where the microbe settled into the back corner, not to wait, but to sit patiently for what came next.

THE END

Note: The Girl Who Came Shrink Wrapped is adapted from the short story, "He Who Shrank" by Henry Hasse. It was originally published in the August, 1936 issue of Amazing Stories.