Shrink Wrapped

She checked over her shoulder. Grove was so big as to be almost unrecognizable as a man. Everything in the room leaned away from her; the ceiling looked miles distant. She removed the cassette player from her arm, shrugged free of the gown and quickly slipped on the white shirt and fastened the buttons. She tucked it in, then zipped herself up and secured the brass button at the top. The backpack, locked between her knees to ensure it remained safely within the field, still held her boots, She dropped to the hard metal surface of the cube-it had noticeably grown larger around her-snatched out the boots and put them on. Then she jumped to her feet and attached the cassette player to one of her belt loops, put on the backpack and turned to face Grove.

"You all right down there?" Grove whispered. His voice in the headphones was overwhelmed by the booming thunder in the room. Kellie winced, reminded of avalanches. She made a cutting motion with her hand to signify silent mode. Grove nodded. Walking to the edge of the block, she looked down. The distance to the seat below was twice her height now She was a staggering 1" tall. Crossing to the opposite edge she looked down again.

What would Grove do if she jumped? Probably she'd break an ankle, or her leg, she thought, wondering if Shrinx could fix that. She was not keen on finding out. Returning to the center of the cube, she sat down and tried not to think. She refused to think. Thinking would result in immediate, unstoppable panic. Instead, she stood up and paced the cube.

The surface of was noticeably rougher now, striations developing and fanning out in all directions. Soon she'd need to be careful where she stepped, would have to remember her vulnerable ankles. She crossed the widening distance to the edge of the cube and looked down again. It was a vertiginous 20' drop and she stepped back, suddenly frightened. No matter how soft the surface below, the fall would probably kill her. She returned to the cube's center and started to sit down again...then reconsidered. The surface was no longer flat enough to sit comfortably upon, crisscrossed by deepening, jagged-edged grooves. A minute later she planted a foot in each of two ruts, 18" apart. They slowly deepened and widened as she waited, eventually making her chose one over the other. With her hands atop the slowly rising surface either side, it was not long before she was chest deep in the fissure.

Grove was no longer distinguishable as a human being. Nothing in the room was distinguishable. Kellie tried to concentrate on remaining upright in the trench as the surface altered continually under her boots. The walls drew away until Kellie stood with her arms outstretched, fingers touching air. She dropped them uselessly to her sides and looking up, was terrified to discover something miles across and monstrous in shape bearing down on her-a human eye. Screaming, she dropped to a crouch and covered her head with her arms, sensing the huge shape withdraw, holding steady a mile or two above her head. It was Grove, she realized, gazing down at her through the thick lens of a magnifying glass.

She shook her fist at him, and then gave him the finger. "You asshole!" she screamed. Shakily, she retook her feet and gripped the shoulder straps of the pack. The walls of the ravine-a canyon now--grew honeycombed with ragged-edged holes. Something moved above her.

"Will you stop that!" she hissed. And then she cringed, realizing the movement was not in the sky, but only thirty feet above her head. Panic gripped and locked her in place. A creature--a monster--with cratered skin, whiskery feelers and huge segmented eyes protruded from a cave directly overhead. As Kellie watched in horror, the creature lumbered forward, swished its feelers and tossed back and forth its head. Kellie was unaware of moving until she backed into the opposite wall.

"Professor?"

"Yes, Kellie?" boomed out from above her and shook the very air.

Kellie gulped. "I'm not alone."

Above her, though Kellie was pretty sure Grove could no longer see her at this size, the gargantuan eye blinked.

"What do you mean, not alone?"

The obvious alarm in his voice frightened Kellie even more. Feeling she'd pee her pants, Kellie described the part of the monster visible outside the cave.

"It sounds like a mite or something similar," Grove decided. "Probably transferred to the cube from the inside of the lab coat."

"A mite? It looks like a dinosaur," she hissed. A very hungry dinosaur. "Why is it moving its head around like that?"

"It senses your presence I would imagine."

"That's what I was afraid of," Kellie moaned. She fought to remain erect, but panic was forcing her into a crouch, and from there, into a fetal position she was pretty sure she'd never come out of. "I don't want to be lunch!" she keened.

"Relax. Anything that small eats microscopic pieces of dead flesh. You have nothing to worry about."

Kellie began inching along the canyon wall anyway, not interested in what the creature was supposed to eat. Its huge head with the segmented eyes tracked her movements, and the farther she moved away, the farther out the cave it extended itself to watch. She heard-or though she heard-a chittering sound.

"You should probably stay put," Grove advised.

"Fuck that!" Kellie muttered, covering her ears. The reverberations from Grove's voice vibrated the cube like a minor earthquake.

Ten feet away was a smaller, intersecting canyon. She only wanted to make the intersection and creep around the edge, out of sight.

"Oh, fuck!" she yelled. With horrifying speed the mite had abandoned the cavern and was skittering down the canyon wall after her. Kellie took off at a run.

"Kellie! Kellie what's wrong?"

"It's chasing me!" she screamed. "It's as fast as a racehorse! Faster!" Her image of it was fleeting but the creature was blue-gray in color and nearly transparent throughout its midsection. Thousands of ugly spikes rimmed the body on the lower and upper sides, and through the skin Kellie had made out things she didn't want to think about. She reached the corner and skidded around it, loosing her feet. Jagged metal lacerated her knees and palms as she struggled to catch herself, leaving behind ghastly blood trails. Tumbling sideways, she somehow remade her feet and dashed headlong toward a small opening 20' down the wall. Waist-level high, she prayed it was deep enough to crawl into and hide.

She had injured herself badly and looking down, she gaped at the myriad deep cuts crossing her palms, blood gushing wildly from each. More lacerations crisscrossed her knees. Bright red blood showed through her shredded jeans.

Oh, no, she told herself in panic. I'm gonna bleed to death.

Panting, gasping for breath, Kellie reached the hole and was dumbfounded to find herself alone. She scanned the canyon walls above her on both sides, afraid of an ambush from on high. But was no sign of the mite, which made no sense. Not as fast as the thing had come down that wall. Kellie should never have made the hole at all.

She removed the backpack, used the tough canvas to protect her from the ragged edge, and gingerly worked herself inside the cave. It was bubble shaped, tall enough inside to let her duck-walk to the back and hide there in a crouch. She re-shouldered the backpack.

"Where are you, Kellie?"

"In a bubble in the wall."

"The mite?"

"Don't know," she panted. "Professor...?"

"Yes, Kellie?"

"I'm cut up pretty bad. I fell and the metal did a number on my hands and knees. Also my right forearm." Oddly, maybe alarmingly, the pain had subsided and Kellie could flex her hands without wanting to scream. Squinting in the dim light, she brought her palms up close, and though blood still oozed from the cuts, they appeared only half as deep as they had before. To her astonishment, one by one, in order of the severity of the wound, the cuts stopped bleeding.

"Professor...?"

"It's the nanobots, Kellie. They're repairing the damage to your skin."

The only thing Kellies could think to say was "Wow." Tearing her eyes away, she checked the entrance: no mite.

"I don't get it. I couldn't out run the thing in a car. It was going like 50 or 60 miles an hour. Not that I'm complaining," she said, cocking her head and listening. There it was again, that chittering sound. It reminded her of monster movies she had seen, many, many monster movies. She also heard-and felt-a crunching, rending noise that was patent monster-movie noise also.

"I think something...I think something got the mite, Professor." Kellie stopped breathing and shrank further against the rear wall. Something had cast a shadow against the far wall, something big, like airliner big. "I think it's above me, on the cliff-side. Can you see anything?"

"No, I'm afraid not." The voice was not so overwhelmingly load here in the cave.

A thick ridge of metal was coming up between her legs and Kellie moved cautiously over the edge into the deeper gully. The cave was twice the size now as it had been only moments before. She stood, and placed her hands on either side of the gully; except for a slight sensation of numbness, they felt okay. Her forearm was magically healed as well; pink scars where the lacerations had been. She wiped the blood from her forearm on her right pants leg, and her hands against her thighs. She jumped when something gray and spiked along one edge tumbled past the cave opening and hit the ground outside with a thud. It seemed to fall in slow motion. She watched the opening until it was lost from sight behind the trench wall and battled attacks of intense shivering. She shrank until darkness swallowed her up.

TWO

"Professor, are you there?"

"I'm here, Kellie." The voice came only through her earphones now and sounded out of breath.

"What's going on?" she wanted to know.

"I'm making my escape."

Kellie blinked at the news. "Where am I?"

"In my coat pocket."

"Is that safe?"

"As long as you stay where you are inside that cave."

"Uh, that's what I wanted to talk to you about." Kellie was floating, no longer heavy enough, she guessed, to be affected by gravity.

"Actually, that's not the case," Grove advised her. "You are being pulled equally from every direction now. That's why you float."

"Am I...?" She wasn't sure of the terminology.

"Adrift in molecular space? Not yet. Can you see anything?"

"I'm blind as a bat," she said. "No light anywhere." She paused. "Actually, that's not true. I seem to be shining myself." She could just make out a shimmering greenish radiance encircling her arms and hands. "Is that the field?"

"I imagine it is, yes." His voice got suddenly louder and Kellie heard someone else in the background, a couple of someone's. "Thank, you. Thank you very much."

"They're looking for me, aren't they?" she said. "That's why you left."

Grove grunted.

"Hope you don't get caught then," she murmured, surprised that she meant it. The only thing keeping her from hysteria was the sound of Grove's voice--and knowing it would be there in the future, whatever the future held. Sudden homesickness and dread, powerful as a thrust sword, skewered her heart. She would never again see her mom and dad, her brother and sister, her friends...she broke out in scalding tears.

"I hate you," she blubbered. "Why did you do this to me?" There was the sound of a car door opening and slamming closed.

"Something I didn't tell you before," Grove huffed. He was too fat for all this exertion, she thought, another worry. "It's part of you now-Shrinx. It understands your feelings, and experiences them with you, Kellie. It's ultra intelligent and has the ability to halt your shrinkage at any time."

"What?" Kellie shouted with aching hope. "Are you kidding me? It can reverse this?"

An engine started and for a moment Kellie heard the faint drone of classical music in the background.

"No. It can't do that," Grove said.

Kellie felt crushed again.

"But it can halt your shrinkage. And will, if and when you discover a suitable planet with human-like inhabitants and breathable air. It has no desire to see you shrink for the rest of eternity."

Kellie felt immense relief. Not that she was joyous at the prospect of spending life among imitation humans, but she certainly didn't want to shrink into eternity.

"How...how long might this take?" Anxiety grabbed her around the throat again.

"Based on my calculations, it should occur within 27 landfalls."

"27 landfalls? I have to visit 27 planets before I can stop?"

"That's only a calculation," he said. "Based upon best estimates." He paused a moment, out of breath. "There are no certainties here. It could happen on your 1st planet, or never at all. I'm sorry."

"Professor...!" Kellie again burst into tears.

"I'm sorry," Grove repeated.

"Fuck you being sorry!" Kellie screamed and tore the headphones from her ears.

* * *

Sometime later, once she'd calmed and become lonely for Grove's voice, Kellie repositioned the earphones. She knew they still worked because she'd heard Grove yelling at her. He'd sounded quite frantic.

"Something's going on," she said simply. Grove sighed deeply into her earphones.

"I thought I'd lost you, kid."

"You almost did," Kellie muttered bitterly. She had almost hurled the headphones away into space. "Something's out here with me." She squinted at iridescent patches of light, appearing to be great distances away, surrounding her in all directions. She described what she saw and Grove became excited.

"My God! You're there! Intergalactic space. How big do they appear to be?"

Kellie found she had better luck observing them peripherally.

"I don't know. As big as my hand, maybe?"

"How many are there?"

Kellie couldn't guess.

"On the order of thousands?" Grove asked excitedly.

"Maybe millions," Kellie supposed. The sight was truly breathtaking.

"Individual stars?" Grove asked.

Kellie shook her head. "No, wait." In a cluster off to her left, a single point of light blazed intensely for a moment, and then vanished. Un-focusing, she observed the same phenomenon in other clusters, in all directions. Some clusters exhibited multiple flashes, occurring in different parts of the cluster. Jubilant, Grove informed Kellie what she was seeing were supernovae.

"It happens that fast?" she asked doubtfully.

"For you, yes. Relative to the rest of the universe, you are aging immensely slow, experiencing thousands of years of expansion per minute. Remember, Kellie, right now you are far and away the largest, most massive object in this universe. Your presence there affects everything. You are something totally unexplainable to any intelligent species observing you. Impossible."

His tone suggested awe, but Kellie was beyond awe. She discerned that her iridescent patches were globular clusters, spiral galaxies, oblong shapes that twisted like glowing worms. One particularly odd shape was two galaxies in collision, she realized.

"My, God!" Grove enthused. "I can't wait to get there. Are they growing larger?"

"Quickly," Kellie realized. A spiral galaxy similar to illustrations she had seen of her own galaxy caught her eye. She, or it, was closing the distance between them rapidly. It was the width of an old LP record, and as she watched, individual stars resolved along the spiral arms. Supernovae no longer went off like flashbulbs, but appeared and grew in strength and then faded away to nothingness in perhaps five seconds. The approaching galaxy expanded and resolved into thousand of stars, and then millions. Before she knew it, the galaxy was bigger than she was.

"Professor...this is happening really fast."

"Tell me about the stars, Kellie."

Kellie described the different colors, the different apparent sizes, how many of them-most--seemed to be two or even three-star systems.

"Can you see any planets?" Grove asked.

Kellie hesitated. "I'm inside one of the spiral arms, Professor."

"No! No, Kellie, you shouldn't be that close!"

"Well, I am," she said defensively. Stars, hundreds and thousands of them swept past her, many thrown wildly behind her into swirling, smoke like patterns. She remembered his admonitions about disruptions and blurted: "It's not my fault, Professor. The galaxy just sorta reached out and grabbed me."

Grove sounded both aggravated and resigned. "Gravitational attraction. I guess there's no getting around it. Just try to be as non-disruptive as possible, Kellie."

Kellie held motionless, let the stars flow around her as they pleased. Suddenly she was out of the arm and into interstellar space again, between two arms. The oncoming rush of stars gave her quite a crunch of anxiety. "Professor...?"

Grove heard the alarm in her voice. "What's wrong?"

Kellie shuddered and closed her eyes. "Nothing. I'm just freaking out." She described being between the arms; how oddly, the onrushing stars seemed to have put on the brakes.

"You're constantly reducing in scale. The stars are much bigger now, right? I'd be surprised if you didn't experience some warming from their output upon entering. Be careful not to let any penetrate your field."

Kellie wondered why none had so far. "There's so many of them. They were flowing around me like fireflies, or sparks. But none came closer than maybe a foot from my skin. How come?"

"Because you are so immense-or were so immense-your field acted as a buffer zone. Your atmosphere is trillions of times denser than the interstellar void around you. Even the vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust created by supernovae are nothing compared to your field. It's virtually impenetrable at your present scale. That won't last much longer though. You'll have to be very attentive. Don't let anything penetrate the field."

With trepidation, Kellie watched the stars approach. They were bigger now, as Grove had predicted, and ranging everywhere in color from brilliant, almost unobservable white, to the deepest, darkest red. The red stars, she noted, were also among the largest, and she questioned Grove on this.

"Supergiants: stars that have burned up the hydrogen in their cores and are verging on supernovae stage. Keep away from them, Kellie. They are very dangerous. Also very large blue stars. They're not as common, but they are also supernova candidates." While he spoke, the stars arrived and Kellie was engulfed again. She almost panicked as dozens, and then hundreds of stars came within inches of her skin.

"Professor...!" she cried in alarm.

"How close?"

"Like, close enough that I can feel their heat." Indeed, each passing star lit a swath across her bare skin or clothing that made her want to jump back. Some passed so close as to feel like a too-close match-head on her skin. She was on the verge of panic. Could these things light her on fire, she wondered, ignite her clothing? Burn a hole right through her? Some of these stars were the size of marbles now.

"Just relax, Kellie. You should very soon be small enough to-"

"Don't tell me that!" she cried, barely restraining the urge to swat away a small yellow-white sun brushing past her nose. What saved the errant star and its coterie of tiny planets was her noticing the planets in time. There were four of them, no bigger than the size of pinheads. "Oh, my God..."

"What? What is it, Kellie?"

Kellie watched open-mouthed as the star glided past. The planets, too small yet to distinguished any colors, whirled rapidly around the star's middle. The closest was a hands-distance out from the star, the three outer spheres, one and half times that distance each. Her impression was that the closest planet was second largest in size; the two outer orbs half the size of the second.