The way up to the tabletop was obvious, but it would be no easy climb. Bambi stared at the gigantic power cable doubtfully. It looked like it was a foot and a half thick, and snaked up into the distance far above. She had never been mountain climbing, but that's what she thought of when she contemplated this task.
Still, her only alternative was to stay down here on the floor for the rest of the night, until Nathan came in the next morning and found her, one way or the other. The thought of spending half a day on the dusty floor, with at least one cockroach running around (that she knew of), was much less pleasant than the prospect of a hundred-foot climb up a power cord.
And what if he didn't find her? What if he never saw her down on the floor, and the place remained locked up? She'd never get out on her own, that much was certain. There was no way she could possibly open the door, and since they kept insects here, it had a protective cover over the crack underneath to make sure nothing her size could get out into the rest of the facility. What a horrible fate, she thought--trapped in this room, two and a half inches high, with nothing to eat or drink? She'd starve to death in her own lab!
To calm her nerves, she spoke into the camera's microphone. "I have no choice but to start climbing," she said shakily, wrapping her arms around the black plastic. "Fortunately, like everything else in this giant world, it's not as smooth as you'd think. Clinging to it is easy, actually. I just apologize for the lousy view."
She climbed steadily, muttering to herself as she went, as though the camera itself was a close friend helping her get through this ordeal. The plastic cord was like rough skin, scarred and pitted and affording plenty of grip against her leather jumpsuit. She kept her eyes above her at the distant table as she shimmied slowly upwards, afraid that if she looked down she'd suffer from vertigo.
After what seemed like forever, she finally got to the table itself. Getting the rest of the way up proved trickier than expected, because she had to work her way around opposite the wooden surface and could no longer wrap her arms and legs completely around the cable. However, with some experimentation, she figured out how to do it, and with a final surge she pulled herself onto the flat plain. The surface was rough and striated, with thin grooves following the wood grain in long curving lines as far as her tiny eyes could see.
"I did it," she said between heavy breaths. "I made it! I'm standing on top of one of my laboratory tables. As you can see, it's just as big as the rest of the world." So saying, she panned around, looking at the colossal equipment surrounding her. The machine on which she'd worked so hard towered over her like some kind of massive behemoth. In the distance she could see the empty metal cage, which looked now like something yanked out of a wrestling arena and deposited here. Beyond that, just on the edge of her vision, sat the monitor and keyboard for the computer that controlled the enlarger. The computer resembled a small office building, and even from this distance, looking at the brightly lit screen made her eyes hurt.
"Fortunately, the equipment is still hooked up," she said as she moved forward, walking underneath the vacuum cleaner hose she'd scavenged to make the activation probe. "It's so big, though! I remember when I put this thing together. I wished some of the parts were larger so I could work with them better. Well, I got my wish, didn't I?"
She meandered amongst the weird collection of parts. The device, her labor of love, now looked like something out of a science fiction movie, as though somewhere nearby a tremendous starship had been torn apart and laid bare all around her. She could see every nut and bolt, every poorly executed weld, reminding her just what a hack job the thing had been. She'd actually been surprised it had functioned properly. What if it were to fail now? She could be stuck like this!
Thinking about that horrifying prospect, she quickened her pace, hurrying over to the massive keyboard. The commands she needed to enter to start the machine working were simple, especially since she'd just run a sequence identical to the one she needed now. She probably had to enter only a dozen or so keystrokes. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. With her standing only two and a half inches high, the keys came up to her knees, and her little body was so light it couldn't press them hard enough.
Bambi found, after some experimentation, that if she jumped on one with all her might, and landed right in the center, it was just enough to overcome the built-in spring's resistance and produce a satisfying click. Now she just had to go through the motions of pushing each of them in the right order. The screen, glowing brightly, was almost impossible to look at directly, forcing her to watch it out of the corner of her eye as she meandered across the field of gigantic keys.
She had pressed three of them when a loud noise startled her. At once an unbelievably loud booming sound thundered over her in almost physical waves. It took a moment to understand that this was a voice, that the mighty blows upon her eardrums were words.
"Hello? Bambi? Are you still here?" came the echo in her mind, and she realized it was Nathan. He hadn't gone home for the day after all, apparently. He'd obviously unlocked the door with his key and come inside to see if she was still around. Of course she was, but he had no way of knowing that from where he stood.
Bambi jumped off the keyboard and ran towards the edge of the desk. In the distance, like a ghost, the immense shape of her assistant loomed like a cloud on the horizon. "Here I am, Nate!" she shouted desperately. "Look! Down here! I'm on the desk!"
She waved frantically, but to no avail. He didn't seem to notice her miniature form pleading for his attention. After all, who would notice a two and a half inch high woman dressed in black, moving about on the other side of a room populated by boxes and containers full of insects?
"I guess she left," Nathan suggested to himself, causing Bambi to cover her ears to block out the incredibly harsh sound. "Oh well, I'll see her tomorrow, I guess."
"No! Wait! Come back!" screamed tiny Bambi from the desk's edge, but it was no use. The towering form on the hazy horizon turned and left, slamming the door shut as he went. The crashing sound washed over her like a sonic boom, and though it lacked the power to actually knock her backwards, it certainly felt like it had.
Her ears were ringing. "I've got to catch him," she mumbled, half to herself and half to the still-functioning camera. "If I can get this thing working before he's gone, maybe he can help me!"
She ran back to the computer and began frantically punching the keys with the weight of her body. When she reached the enter key, she hesitated. Activating it would begin the enlarging sequence, but would she have enough time to reach the cage before it fired? If only there was some way to toggle the key remotely--but she could think of nothing. The only objects on the vast expanse of desktop heavy enough to push the key were too massive for her to lift.
"All right," she said to herself and the camera, "here we go. I'm going to activate the device. If I can run and climb fast enough, I should be able to get back to normal size. If not--well, I'll have to find another way."
With that, she jumped on the enter key with all her weight. It emitted a sharp click underneath her, and she ran, leaping off the keyboard and charging towards the cage with every ounce of speed she possessed. In moments that seemed all too long, she bridged the gap and began climbing, her gloves and boots having no trouble finding handholds in the mesh that at one time seemed almost too fine to see through, but now resembled nothing less than a heavy chain link fence.
At the top she threw herself over, starting down the other side with as much speed as she could, but then she heard the machine pop. The air around her seemed to sizzle, and she smelled an ever-so-faint aroma of ozone, something she'd never noticed at normal size. She panted from the effort of her mad dash and looked around expectantly, hoping and praying for some sign that she was growing.
An instant later she could see the difference. The cage she was in began to shrink around her. "It's working!" she exclaimed, talking to the camera as much as to herself. "I'm being enlarged, just like the insects were!"
In a few moments she was large enough to step out of the cage, and did so quickly, before her rapidly expanding body could damage it. She stepped over to the edge of the table and sat down, letting her long legs dangle over the side, and when she was tall enough to drop off safely, she let herself slip easily to the ground. Then she stood for a moment, watching the tabletops gradually shrink back down to their normal levels. She caught her breath, looking around and smiling at her success.
"As you can see, I've returned to normal size," she said to the camera as she headed for the door. "Words can't describe how wonderful it feels to be walking around in my lab again like a real person! I just don't know if I'll stay this way, so now, I'm going to try to catch Nathan before he gets out of the building. I'm switching off for now."
She took off the helmet and set it on a desk as she walked by, pausing for only a moment to turn off the camera. Then she resumed her hurried pace. As soon as she was out the door, she ran full speed down the hall towards the nearest exit. If Nate was indeed leaving for the day, she thought, he'd be on his way to the parking lot, if he hadn't gotten there already.
She fairly flew down the stairwell, then out the side doors towards the tarmac, where only a few cars remained, the normal work day having long since concluded. Nathan was there, climbing into his decrepit old Pacer as she approached.
"Nate!" she yelled out desperately. "Don't leave, I have to talk to you!"
"What?" he asked, getting back out of the front seat and dropping his keys into his pocket, as though irritated that she'd interrupted him as he was leaving. Then he did a double take as he saw what Bambi was wearing. "Holy shit!" he muttered under his breath, taking in the spectacle of her running towards him in the tight, body-hugging black outfit, like some kind of spy straight out of a Bond movie. He couldn't have been more surprised if she'd been charging at him buck naked, though that was indeed a pleasant thought.
She came to a halt in front of him, breathing heavily from the long run and a little bit of desperation. "I have to tell you something," she panted. "There's been an accident. I was enlarging a roach and--oh, stop staring at me for just a minute, will you? This is serious!"
He snapped his eyes off her svelte figure, which the leather jumpsuit did nothing to conceal. "Sorry," he muttered under his breath, turning slightly red from embarrassment. To get his mind off having been caught leering at her, he changed the subject quickly. "What happened? Did you let a giant mutant bug loose on the populace?"
"No, not that!" she told him hurriedly. "One of the insects grabbed hold of me, and when it shrunk back to normal, it took me with it!"
"So?" he said, shrugging. "You look fine to me. What's the problem?"
"Oh, you don't understand!" she insisted. "To get out here I had to use the enlarger on myself! I don't know if it's permanently reversed the effects or if I'm going to--"
"Oh, my God!" said Nathan, staring at her goggle-eyed, his mouth hanging open in complete shock.
She felt her heart sink towards the ground, along with the rest of her. "Or I'm going to start shrinking again," she concluded miserably.