Lisa screamed at the top of her lungs, but it was of no use. Julie, her proportionately ginormous friend, stood what was, in reality, only a few feet away. To the one inch student, it was a vast expanse, unaffected by her tiny pleas.
"Lisa?" Julie shouted into the other room, "Are you not here? I thought you were here! Where are you?!"
Maybe Julie would notice the device and come over and help her. Or maybe she would just leave! Or worse, Julie's sandals might quickly make Lisa nothing more than a tiny, bloody stain.
But there was another way. A way that made Lisa feel guilty just in the idea. If she was right about the way the device worked, there was no hope of turning the dials that she presumed controlled the beam's intensity and range. She could, however, activate the same setting that shrank her. She could bring Julie down to her size and explain the situation. Then, the tiny pair could work together to get back to normal.
If she was right about the way the device worked.
What if the effects were permanent? She would be subjecting her friend to the same fate to which she would then be destined. To spend the rest of their lives smaller than a thimble.
But Julie was now directly in the path of the beam and Lisa could only try to tell herself that it was all going to be okay as she hurled her entire body onto the only button she was certain actually functioned.
A beam shot from the massive cannon beneath Lisa, but things didn't exactly go as planned. Not at first. Julie happened to set back at exactly the wrong moment, leaving the couch in the path of the beam. In an instant, the couch was reduced to the size of a LEGO brick. Poor Julie, who only had time to register that the couch had somehow vanished before her eyes, let out a scream. In doing so, she wound up stepping back into the device's focus and Lisa, with another full body slam, again hit reduce.
Julie's scream intensified -- but lost just about all its decibels -- when the ordinary dorm room suddenly became impossibly huge. It only stopped when Julie began to hear something else in the distance. There, two football fields away, was Lisa, running towards her.