Now unemployed, Merritt had plenty of time to ponder how he might use the Chronivac if he was still, secretly working for the NSA. Though, at the moment, it was a secret from him, too. He was resting all his hopes on the note left in his shirt pocket suggesting that maybe he really hadn't been fired.
But, as of a couple days after being let go from the NSA , he hadn't been contacted by anyone. Nevertheless he couldn't stop thinking about all the things he could do with the Chronivac and how they might be useful if secretly working for the NSA.
He wondered about making himself smaller, miniaturizing himself. Of course, it would suck to be weak, but if he was only a foot tall or 6 inches tall, he could sneak in so many places and maybe get away with a lot of secret information.
Merritt figured he should try it and get used to being doll sized now rather have it be his first time when he had to miniaturize himself as part of some mission.
He made elaborate preparations. He filled the tub with warm water and tied a towel to the tap draping the other end over the side of the tub so that his foot tall self could easily climb it and go swimming in the tub. He set out quarter inch on a side cubes of cheese and bottle caps full of iced tea. He positioned several stacks of books to make a set of stairs leading up to the kitchen counter and another leading to the arm of the chair from which he usually watched TV. He set the tv and cable controls there. Another set of books on the bathroom floor was a set of stairs leading to the toilet.
Merritt tied a two foot long piece of string with many knots and then superglued one end to the mattess cover by the pillow on his bed so that he could climb up and down. He set the laptop with the emitter on the floor so it would be easily accessible to his soon to be foot tall self and he leaned a ruler against the side of it to confirm his new height.
Merritt stripped naked and crouched in front of the laptop laboriously going through the menus again. It was actually a little boring to him after having done it a few times and he watched some of the MLB channel on the TV at the other side of the room. Because he wasn't paying attention, he almost lost his balance for a moment sitting naked on his haunches right above the laptop. His epic penis actually flopped down and pressed against the touch pad. But Merritt returned his attention to the menus. He finally got to the start command and didn't even read the display of subject destination identity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was going to be him only a foot tall.
He pressed the START button. The "ARE YOU SURE?" prompt displayed and he pressed START again standing up straight as he did so.
The expected electromagnetic wave passed through him and Merritt immediately felt his slender track star body shrinking as expected. His eye level had been above a nearby standing lamp.
Then, in just a few seconds it was a the height of a light switch on the wall.
Then his eyes were at the same height as the top of the nearby couch. Then they were at the level of the arm of the couch. He kept shrinking and shrinking though he kept the exact same slender runner's proportions all the while.
Finally, his eyes were at the same level as the top of the foot long ruler he'd leaned beside the laptop screen. Merritt expected his naked little self to stop shrinking but, to his horror, he kept getting smaller.
"What?! What's going on?!" he shouted though a person at the door to the apartment might not have noticed any sound.
He got smaller and smaller the continuing process only accentuated by the fact of his standing in front of a ruler.
“No!”
Merritt shrank to six inches tall.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
"Oh come on!" he shouted.
At last, under a half inch tall, and just over 3/8 of an inch tall the process stopped.
Merritt spewed a stream of expletives and jogged around to the front of the laptop. The screen was like a drive in movie screen to him in his present condition. He reached up to the laptop face and pulled himself up.
“I didn't ask for this!” he shouted to the computer as though there was someone there to listen to miniaturized boys' complaints.
The screen showed a slowly rotating line drawing of naked Merritt with his new dimensions listed to one side. It said his height was one centimeter.
“No!” he protested once more. “I'm supposed to be one foot tall! I never switched to metric units! I . . . “
His eyes went wide. He remembered where in the sequence of menus the program asked you to confirm which units you wanted to use, english or metric. He looked down between his legs.
That was when I . . .
He looked on the touch pad and there was the faint outline of big circle from where his once hundreds of times larger foreskin had pressed down on it, right as he was being offered a choice of units.
“Oh jeez, I dick clicked myself into being like 30 times smaller than I'd intended.”
He sighed. Well, on the positive side, the Chronivac worked like it should. On the negative side, I'm one centimeter tall and I was not prepared for this.
He looked to the side at stacks of books 5 and then 10 then 15 then 20 inches high next to the couch. Perfectly reasonable help for him to get up on the couch if he had been 12 inches tall. He wasn't even a half inch tall. He ran over to the nearest stack of books. At five inches tall, it was like the face of a 7 story building in front of him. The carpet that he'd run through to get there was like a series of weeds up to his eyeballs.
So much for TV. I'd better like the show it's playing because miniaturized this far I can't change the channel. He decided to go for a swim. This he could do. He ran to the bathroom. It took him a minute as terrific a runner as he was. He pulled himself up to the top of the tub. That took several minutes. It was like using rope loops to climb up a skyscraper but Merritt did it. Once on top, he paused a minute to catch his breath then enjoyed a leisurely skinny dipping swim in his own bathtub. To him it was bigger than an Olympic sized pool and 50 feet deep.
After a while he climbed back down. He tried to think of a way to get up on the kitchen counter where he'd left himself food but he was just to damn small.
He made his way back to the computer wondering if there was some way he could work up enough force to press the keys which were now squares approximately the same distance across as he was tall.
Just as he was pondering this, a bell sounded like he was standing in front of a firehouse as an alarm went off. But it was only his phone a short ways away. He ran to it where it lay on the floor not far from the laptop. To him it now seemed 10 feet wide and 15 feet long. He recognized the number. That was Etta! Etta whom he'd meet at the club.
He took a couple sprinting steps then leaped and came down on a button. His tiny ass skidded part way across the glass. He got to his feet and ran to the microphone.
“Hey, Etta! Merritt!” he half shouted with his tiny lips pressed nearly against the mic.
“Hey, Merritt. I was trying to reach you yesterday. There was a party. Missed you. Even my friend from the club, Megan, missed you. She kept asking where's the boy with the big buns,” she said before dissolving into laughter.
Merritt rolled his eyes and patted his own miniaturized rear. Not right now, he smiled to himself.
“So, are you available tonight?”
Merritt sighed and glanced over his shoulder at the display on the laptop. The countdown showed that he still had 12 hours and change left in this tiny condition and no way to work the Chronivac to change himself back.
“How 'bout tomorrow night?” he suggested.
“You're sure tonight doesn't work.”
“I'm sure.”
“It would be great.”
“I'm sorry.”
“Will you at least tell me what you're up to? Or is it some kind of super secret plan?”
“Etta, I can say in complete honesty that I'm up to almost nothing. Let's talk tomorrow.”
“Alright. If that's the best I can do, then bye!”
“Bye.”
He had to run over and throw himself on the red button to end the call.
Okay, it least it was still going to be possible to get together with her. Etta was smart and beautiful and had a sense of humor. What amazing luck to run into a girl like her in a club!
And now Merritt came up with an idea for something to do. He would go into his neighbors apartments to test his ability to use his extremely diminished condition to infiltrate a target's property.
But, where he might have thought it would be difficult or filled with danger, it was easy. Merritt could crawl on his belly and get under his and his neighbors' doors. He set himself a goal of making it to the far side of the apartments on either side of him and back to their doors and the hallway and made it easily.
Back in his own apartment, he just climbed up the string-rope he'd left for himself and lay down to sleep by the pillow. He woke the next morning momentarily perplexed at why the everything around him was white but remembered that he'd shrunk himself even more than he'd intended and that these were just the sheets on his bed.
Twenty minutes later, still sleeping in, he felt the sheets moving against his skin and realized that it was him growing. In a minute's time he was back to his six foot one self. He joyously flexed in front of the mirror and now his thoughts turned to Etta.