Shrink Wrapped

Does your professor intend to follow?

Kellie nodded, and then answered in the affirmative. Ahead, still miles distant but spreading out along the horizon in a breathing vista was a city. It sparkled like glass and like a human city, the center was dominated by towering, twisting spires. The air above the city seemed to dance with iridescence; this must be the light-scanning the globe had mentioned. It extended miles beyond the visible edges of the city and then curved right down to the ground. She wondered at the enormous expense her arrival had caused the globes.

"I don't think you have anything to worry about," Kellie assured the gloge. "I shrank into one tiny little spot on a cube of aluminum. The chances Professor Grove would select the exact same spot and drop into your neck of the woods-your part of the universe," she amended. "I imagine they are astronomical." Again she got the mental equivalent of a nod. "How come I can hear you, but you can't hear me?" she asked.

We are not sure. Do not be offended, but it may be that your brain is insufficiently developed to allow direct communication. I can access your memories, and sense your underlying thought processes, but with no equivalent of push technology, your brainwaves have no means to broadcast. Perhaps when you have attained adulthood?

"Maybe," Kellie muttered, feeling like a chimpanzee might, observed by its keepers.

The buildings were, Kellie realized, immensely tall. She guessed the spires in the 'downtown' area were three to four miles high. She would be dwarfed, even at her present size. And she wondered what use towering structures would be to a race of house-sized globes, anyway. The procession slowed at the city's edge, and Kellie was returned to the ground. She was half a mile tall.

You are invited to remain amongst us for the remainder of your duration here, Kellie. We request that you refrain from making contact with any of the infrastructure or artwork of the city, until you diminish in size to a more manageable mass. An escort will be provided for your enjoyment and edification, of course.

"Thank you," she said gratefully.

The globe mentally nodded. You mentioned the word 'aluminum' earlier, in relation to the object into which you diminished. If you can provide the atomic number of this element, an appropriate platform will be made available for your exit.

Kellie relayed the request to Grove, who reminded her the atomic number was 13. The globe passed this information along to the appropriate party and the other, multicolored globes, with the exception of her benefactor's red companion and a smaller green globe, all departed in various directions, returning, Kellie assumed, to whatever business they were engaged in before her arrival.

"Do you have a name?" Kellie asked.

The red globes appeared to converse a moment, and then her benefactor answered: Not in the familial manner of your own naming. Our designations are based upon a threefold hierarchy of age, formation coordinates, and energy requirements. A corresponding name in your own language might be "Elder 67, South 32, West 41, Caloric 80. Not a satisfactory translation, I imagine.

Kellie laughed. "How about I call you Red Left, and Red Right?"

* * *

The city was vast sweeping curves and twisting patterns of glass and mirror-polished metal; the effect was strikingly elegant, Kellie thought. Not incongruously, she found no streets or highways, nor connecting spans between buildings; air was the natural habitat of this race and none were needed. Not once did a globe touch the ground or any other surface that she saw. As she toured, the city's inhabitants paused, congregated, spun in place, pulsated slowly and changed colors. Kellie never observed another globe the size and colors of Red Left and Red Right. Curiosity appeased, the globes continued on with their doings after a moment or two and none tried to communicate directly with her; Kellie simply smiled and nodded and waved amenably. Her escort waited patiently whenever Kellie wanted to stop and examine a building or artwork more carefully, and she described everything in detail to Grove, who in turn noted everything into a laptop computer. She felt like Dorothy in the Land of Oz.

At just the point where Kellie reached what she felt was her normal size, the escort globe speared her with a beam of green light, lifted her effortlessly a foot from the ground, and retraced their exact route back to the edge of the city. Kellie grinned, remembering how the squadron of globes had returned to her initial touchdown point, rather than approach her diagonally. Red Left, and Red Right awaited her and on the ground beneath them was a 2" wide cube of highly polished metal. Looking down upon it, Kellie had to shield her eyes with her hand.

Aluminum, as we discussed, Red Left observed. Polished and sterilized. You should have no repeat of your original difficulties with micro flora. The cube is surrounded by vacuum, and flat to half an angstrom.

"Thank you," Kellie said humbly. "I enjoyed my stay here very much-" Considering how it could have gone, she thought somberly. "-and I apologize for the millions of years of worry I caused you. Please extend my apologies to everyone else on your planet, and I can pretty much assure you that it will never happen again. Right, Professor?"

Grove acknowledged, telling her: "I'll make my descent from the opposite side of the cube. I'll be clear across the universe from them." She sensed his grin as he added: "If they have a powerful enough telescope, I invite them to look for me in a couple of billion years." He laughed out loud and Kellie passed along his witticism.

When it was time, Red Left lifted Kellie and placed her lightly upon the cube's surface.

I advise you sit still and not try to stand, Kellie. The surface is extremely slick. The globe waited as Kellie drew up her legs beneath her in lotus position and then lowered her to the surface. Even sitting, Kellie felt herself slide a bit. There seemed to be no friction at all. She laughed, when reaching out and running her hand lightly across the surface caused her to slide sideways in reaction. She obediently clasped her hands in her lap and waited.

You know, I should have eaten something, she thought. For a moment, she considered removing her backpack and rummaging through her rations, still unseen, but decided this was ill advised. She'd hate to send herself skimming sideways over the edge of the cube. She was less than an inch tall now, and half its height.

"Goodbye," she called out, stopping herself from waving only at the last moment. The twin globes pulsated and swirled colorfully in answer. Kellie wondered if they were boy and girl, husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend. She wondered if their species had sex. She wondered what they planned for this aluminum cube when she was gone. She wondered if it mattered.

Finally, scratches and striations appeared in the polished surface, allowing her traction, and Kellie stood and waved goodbye. The world around her was an indistinct blur, her size so small now that she could no longer see the edges of the cube. It seemed to go on forever. She imagined a microscope would be needed to make her out, maybe an electron microscope.

As the striations and scratches grew into ditches and gullies, Kellie picked one and sat on the edge, and then slid off to lean against the wall, and then watched the wall climb past her head. She had no doubt of the cube's sterility, and spent little time worrying the point. Eventually, as it had before, the landscape swallowed her up.

THREE

Kellie was ravenous. Returning to a lotus position-it was so weird, no up or down or left and right; she might have been upside down for all she knew-Kellie removed the backpack and set it in her lap. Very carefully, observing the rules of weightlessness, she rummaged through the interior's contents. One item in particular caught her eye and she pulled out a small blue and white box. Well, she thought wryly, you hit that nail right on the head. She wondered how the professor knew. She wasn't about to ask.

"Professor? Still with me?"

"Still here, Kellie."

"These things all have military labels." She was inspecting the foil-packed, freeze-dried meals. There were 9 of them in all, presumably 3 days worth. She also had six bottles of spring water, her favorite kind. He'd known that also. The meals ranged in calories from 1140 to 1380 each. She only ate twice a day normally (had to maintain her cute little figure, right?), so this would last her most of 4 days. The water she could probably stretch to 3 days, if she wasn't wasteful.

Grove said: "Military surplus. I bought them yesterday afternoon, along with the bottles of water. The expiration dates were fine."

"Spaghetti and meatballs?" she inquired. "Roast beef and potatoes?" She held a packet in either hand. Two more packets floated just off to her left, one containing powdered eggs and pancakes, the other meat loaf and string beans. She retrieved and stuffed them into the backpack. "These don't need water to work, do they?"

"Everything's included. All you do is push the button on the pack; the contents reconstitute themselves in just a few minutes. They may leave a bit to be desired in the taste department, but they're edible, and supply all the nutrients you need. My only request is that you wait to make landfall. I'd hate to consider what bread crumbs the size of a super galaxy-cluster could mean for that universe. Any signs of life yet?"

"Nothing," she said dispiritedly, gazing around. Carefully, she repacked the contents and zipped the backpack closed. Had she already contaminated space with random bits of dust and lint, stuff off her clothing and boots? She re-shouldered the backpack, uncrossed her legs and waited.

"I'm starting to see lights, Professor." As before at this size, she could most easily spot the nebulae peripherally.

"Things should progress exactly as they did before," the professor advised. "I have no doubt the purity of the aluminum was superior to my own, so I see no issue there. How are you holding up, Kellie."

"I'm tired," she admitted. "I haven't slept in...how long?"

"Would you believe a scant eight hours?"

Kellie blinked in surprise.

"And that's from the point where I injected you in bed. It's only a little after 10 A.M. here."

Kellie could not accept that. It felt like a week to her, 48 hours at the minimum. But she had no reason to disbelieve the professor, so she shrugged and commented: "You might want to slow down your own shrinking process then. Six hours per universe is pretty ridiculous. But then again..." She remembered her desire, walking northward along the coast, to get the hell shrunk down and out of sight even quicker. Maybe it wasn't a bad thing after all.

Grove replied: "It's not an option. Shrinx's effect is a direct result of quantum manipulation. It's not something that's tweakable. Quantum effects are non-linear, and non-intuitive and scientists argue and counter-argue everything currently known about them, or even guessed at. The important thing is that you shrink much faster coming in, than you do going out. One influences the other."

"OK," was all Kellie could say to that. "Have I told you how much I love you recently?"

Grove chuckled and Kellie mentally gave him the finger, and then realized her peripheral vision was picking up a lot more light than just a minute ago. She began to resolve individual clusters, and super-clusters of galaxies. She informed Grove.

"Let Shrinx move you toward an individual galaxy only once you've reduced to a scale small enough not to disturb things on the super-scale. I know it was unavoidable, but your entry caused unimaginable disruption in your first universe. I can't begin to envision the loss of life and destruction of ecosystems you caused. We have to become smarter, Kellie. We must learn from our mistakes."

What Grove said was true and Kellie had already decided to let Shrinx to move her when the time was right.

"Sure thing," she replied.

When it was time, Shrinx activated her propulsion system and moved Kellie toward another beautiful, spiral-arm galaxy. She approached slowly, rotating along with it, an immense, extra-galactic satellite. She understood on a subconscious level the energy required to move her along at rotational speed.

Gradually, Shrinx moved her closer to the trailing edge of the closest spiral arm. It planned to insert her, she realized, approaching from behind. She also sensed this would be the least disruptive to the affected star systems, and had to give Shrinx credit; it understood what was going on a lot better than she did. Twenty minutes later, she caught up to, and entered the arm.

"I'm inside the galaxy professor. You'll be happy to know I caused a minimum of disruption this time." Ahead, near the leading edge of the arm, a super nova popped like a flashbulb. God, she thought, I need to go pee.

"I'm approaching a star system." It was slightly more yellow than her last selection and surrounded by eight tiny satellites. Kellie counted them off, describing their characteristics as well as possible from her distance. As before, the outer planets were gas giants, the smaller, inner planets rocky. Unlike last time, Shrinx chose a polar approach, rather than along the ecliptic. This allowed Kellie to pick out the earthlike planet on her first try. Again, it was 3rd out from the sun, in the bio-zone.

"You know, this could almost be home," Kellie marveled. She counted seven large, and four smaller continents. A huge north-south pair, joined by a narrow isthmus at the equator divided the planet in two. From what Kellie could see, ice-shrouded terrain extended into, and covered both the north and south poles. This one super-continent comprised more than half the visible landmass. Kellie detected no sign of life anywhere. Of course, that meant nothing.

She relaxed as Shrinx matched speed with the planet. Again, it brought her in feet first, landing her just at the edge of the north-south continent's west coast. She grinned, imagining herself a West Coast girl. Boy did she have to go pee.

"Professor, I'm down."

Grove acknowledged, asking for details. Kellie looked about, saw nothing but unbroken forest for hundreds of miles inland. The place looked primordial. Cautiously, she stepped away from the shore, leaving footprints hundreds of feet deep in the sand. She estimated her height at a mile. She detected nothing underwater, or lurking in the forest's depths, or rushing at her from the far horizon. Of course, that meant nothing either. She needed to go pee.

"Not yet," Grove warned.

"Why not?" she whined, squirming like a 7-year-old.

"At your present size, you'd pollute the landscape irreversibly. You forget how big your bladder is, how much liquid it holds. We're talking thousands of gallons, Kellie."

Kellie felt like she held thousands of gallons. She popped the button holding closed her jeans and unzipped her fly in protest. Her lower belly bulged. Wouldn't her pee shrink along with her and unpolluted the ground as it shrank?

Grove told her no. "Once outside your body and away from the enveloping energy field, the effect of Shrinx is lost. You'd create a flood of urine that would poison everything around for hundreds of miles."

"Can I step outside the damned field myself?" she grumbled.

Looking around to distract herself, she spotted a high plateau, maybe half her own height, mrring the otherwise unbroken sea of greenery. A wide yellow river wound sluggishly across the surface, disappearing at the foot of another smaller, narrower plateau. Curious, seeing nothing else of interest in the immediate area, Kellie headed north along the shoreline, leaving behind a series of slowly shallowing footprints. She wondered how long nature would take to erase them. Probably not long, this close to the ocean, she guessed.

Glancing to her left, she saw nothing but slowly rolling waves clear out to the horizon. No sign whatsoever of marine life, and this unsettled her, more than she could have imagined. Was this world totally uninhabited then? What a terrible waste.

Kellie stopped. "Professor? You ever have that feeling of being watched?" She scanned the craggy, broken face of the plateau. It was breast-high to her now, maybe 20 Kellie-feet distant. She squinted and cocked her head, listening.

"Be careful, Kellie," Grove cautioned.

"Careful is my middle name," she muttered. Her eyes discerned a series of unevenly spaced openings, caves, she realized, many partially obscured by undergrowth jutting from the rock-face. She blinked in surprise as a tiny figure appeared in the mouth of one cave, swathed in rough-cut skins, moving in a crouch, brandishing a crudely made bow and arrow in one hand, cautiously moving forward with the other hand against the rock wall. The creature looked aboriginal: hairy, stoop shouldered, filthy. It appeared both terrified and enraged at her presence. Kellie judged her distance to be within range of the bow and arrow and took a judicious step back, and then another.

"You'll never believe what I just found," she told Grove, describing the hairy cave dweller.

"It's humanoid?" Grove asked excitedly.

Kellie shrugged. "It has arms and legs and a head. It walks upright...sort of," she hedged. "It's smart enough to make a bow and arrow, which thankfully it's not pointing at me right now." She had the presence of mind to look down and inspect the surrounding area for further threats. When she looked up again, she discovered a female had joined the bearded cave man at the cave entrance. She knew the second figure was female because it had breasts.

"Mr. and Mrs. Lump," she muttered edgily. She raised her hands in what she hoped was a universal gesture of non-aggression. The male raised the bow at her movement, but then slowly lowered it again as the female shook her head and gesticulated with her hands. Kellie tried to put a name to their familiar appearance and finally came up with the term Neanderthal. Grove grudging gave his assent.

"Based upon your description, it's certainly what they must be. I find it interesting that the female advocated restraint," he mused. "I don't care to be presumptuous, but I wonder if that could be a universal constant?"

"Don't read too much into it," Kellie cautioned. In both the bordering caves, heavy-breasted females had appeared, one carrying a club fashioned from a large knobby bone, the other with a bow and arrow, held at the ready, a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. Kellie backed away an additional step and noted the top of the plateau was now up to her chin. This was not a good place for her to be, she decided, as more of the creatures appeared roc-face.

"Time for me to go," she muttered.

"Make sure you don't trample any of their kinfolk accidentally, Kellie. There could very well be hunting parties about, or gatherers."

Kellie lifted her right foot in alarm, inspecting the trampled vegetation and her footprint for any local inhabitants. Seeing none she carefully replaced her boot and raised the other, looking at the cave people on the cliff face warily. She discovered the original male on his hands and knees, gesticulating and jabbering at the cave mouth. Her gaze followed the direction of his pointed finger. It was tough making out anything in the dense vegetation, especially with lazily drifting fog further obscuring her view. She caught movement off to her right though, some hundred yards from the cliff face. She cocked her head to listen: were those tiny shouting voices she heard? Suddenly the cliff dwellers were all jabbering wildly and pointing at the ground. Kellie resisted the urge to run away.