Rick looked over his collection of small animals hidden away in the basement and his eyes fell upon his various unwitting test subjects. He had a few snakes, some mice, rats, rabbits, insects, and even a few birds.
For this particular experiment, he pulled out the cage containing the mice and carried it over to the work station. There, he removed a few of the scurrying animals and placed them into their own separate enclosures made from small transparent storage containers. He labelled each with a number, winding up with 1, 2, and 3.
Carefully, Rick extracted the pink chemical from its vial and loaded it into an eye dropper. He then prepared another batch of chemicals, brewing up three distinct solutions and placing them in small cups. With a steady hand and a nervous expression, he added a drop of the pink solution to each cup. Each fizzed wildly for a moment before falling still.
“Now...” Rick whispered, carefully slipping on gloves and taking a deep breath. “Let’s see what happens.”
He carefully fed each mouse a measured amount from their respective cup, until all three had received a dose.
The results were nearly immediate. The first mouse staggered and let out a squeak, trembling. The second showed the same response. The third, to Rick’s keen delight, remained stable and nearly indifferent.
The chemist watched with baited breath. The first mouse began to shrink in size, shaking and writhing as it grew smaller and smaller before his eyes, from six inches in length to nearly half of that in moments. Rick was sweating profusely, terrified, as he eyed the second mouse going through the opposite effect of the first. It was growing rapidly, in much the same tense discomfort as the first.
The first mouse was barely the size of a penny now and still shrinking. However, Rick, gaped... it was still alive. Still breathing. Nothing had survived the process for this long before. Could it be? Could he have finally reached a stable shrinking serum? He glanced at the second mouse, now twice it’s normal size, nearly ten inches long and still growing. While clearly in discomfort at the process, it too was still clearly surviving the changes well.
Finally, at barely a centimetre long, the first mouse stopped shrinking. Rick’s heart raced as he watched the shrunken mouse begin wandering around as if nothing had happened. He glanced over at the enlarged mouse, who had stopped growing bigger, and while it was cramped at it’s new size of thirteen inches long in the plastic bin, it was equally fine.
The third mouse, having received the control substance, was completely unchanged.
“My God...” Rick gasped.
The next few minutes were spent examining the two size changed mice in detail. Quick heart rate scans and heat mapping showed steady vitals, no outward distress, and normal bodily functions. The addition of the metabolic stabilizer to his formula had ensured both creatures had adjusted their metabolic rates to match their sizes. The small mouse demonstrated this perfectly, eagerly munching down lettuce to fuel its smaller form, famished, while the larger mouse had very little interest in more than a few nibbles.
“It worked...” Rick kept repeating, eyes wide, taking feverish notes, measurements, and careful examinations of his test subjects.
An hour or two passed before Rick had no choice but to conclude his new formulation was successful. Both the shrunken and grown mouse were stable, comfortable, and the long term success of their size change was certain.
But, there was still one test remaining. Rick took drops of the third solution and applied it to the first two mice. To his astonishment, the neutralizing agent began to work quickly, and in no time both mice were restored to their normal sizes.
Somewhere, distantly, Rick heard the door open upstairs and Brendan enter with a few of his buddies. As he carefully placed the mice back in his lock up and closed the doors, strange ideas began to play through his head.
He had done it! He had created a shrinking serum, a growth serum, and an antidote. All three had been complete success. Be began to wonder, how small could something shrink? How big could something grow? What would be the long term effects on the mice? There were still so many unknown variables.
The scientist took a deep breath, trembling with the implications of his success. Imagine shrinking livestock down for transport. Growing one animal to a size that could provide meat for an entire community. Or making novelty pets. Or shrinking people.
Shrinking people. Rick’s eyes widened. He was the only person in the world who now possessed the ability to change the size of living creatures.
He began to pace the lab as Brendan and his gang banged around and laughed upstairs. Suddenly, he stopped, and took a deep breath, feeling himself freaking out. He sat down on the couch in the corner, took a few deep breaths, and tried to think of what he would do next.