“This is just... so... cool”, Eric whispers—somewhat lamely in your opinion. In fact, there are few words that come close to describing how you are feeling at the moment. It’s like some kind of incredible dream—the kind where you have superpowers and can do anything you please—but you don’t need to pinch yourself to realise this is actually happening.
Eric continues: “It’s like we’re gods here.”
Again, he’s stating the obvious, but on the other hand, just hearing it spoken out loud makes you feel even more proud and superior.
“We could do literally anything to these people. We could just CRUSH them!”
“Yeah, except that they ARE people, or at least look just like them. They’re exactly like the folks we know back home, only much, much tinier. Maybe we should just leave them in peace.”
Jake’s interjection hangs in the air for a moment, giving you pause for thought. Maybe he has a point. It would be one thing to stamp out a nest of mindless bugs, but these really do look exactly like humans, even though they are no bigger than ants—plus they are clearly intelligent, with a fully-developed civilization that looks remarkably like your own. It occurs to you that there could well be tiny versions of you, Jake and Eric down there on the ground: small-time bullies who are now looking up terror, realising precisely what thoughts must be running through your gigantic heads and wetting themselves at the prospect. Maybe you should prove that you’re better than that...
...But then you look back at Jake and see that he and Eric are now smiling broadly. This was Jake’s idea of a joke: all three of you know full well that you’ll never get an opportunity like this again and you have no intention of passing up on it. Picking on smaller kids, dorks, and other hapless victims at school—as you were wont to do only this morning—doesn’t seem as satisfying now compared to having a whole world of ant-sized beings to grind underfoot. What makes it even better is that there are no conceivable consequences for picking on this race of little humans. Nobody—at least nobody who matters—will ever find out or punish you for it. This place is all yours! You give each other high-fives and get to work!
The first thing you do is take a closer look at the scene below. While you and your friends have been standing there like pensive titans, the commotion on the ground has become more frantic. The once-orderly flow of traffic along the highways has become a tangled snarl as cars and trucks have attempted to reverse direction and flee your immediate vicinity. Many accidents have already occurred in the confusion; plenty of drivers and passengers have elected to leave their vehicles and take their chances on foot. You can’t help but chuckle at the terror you’ve caused just by standing here, but now it’s time to have some real fun!
On a whim, you decide to take off your sneakers. It’s fascinating to compare how gigantic even these objects are compared with the world below; you inspect the bottoms and note with amusement just how many of the little bugs and their vehicles have been ground into the treads already. You also chuckle at the thought of how potent these things—not to mention your feet themselves—must smell to everybody on the ground. At your present scale everything is magnified.
You pick a spot at random along the winding length of the tiny highway and then carelessly drop one of the sneakers onto it. It lands with the force of a meteor, obliterating a number of unfortunate cars beneath it. A slight puff of dust rises slowly around it, which you realise is actually a huge cloud of smoke and debris to the tiny people; the shattered highway is now completely blocked.
Almost immediately the oncoming traffic tries to brake or swerve to avoid the massive obstacle in its path. There’s little chance. The first car slams against the side of your sneaker and crumples; others quickly follow. The deafening noise gradually reaches your ears as a slight tinkle; your sneaker is barely scuffed. Meanwhile, since your footwear easily covers the entire width of the highway the same is happening on the other side.
You take a couple of steps along the road and drop the second sneaker in a similar fashion. Now the highway is blocked in two places, with a stretch of maybe a mile lying between them. Apart from the crashed cars, there are some larger vehicles and a sprinkling of tiny specks that are fleeing people.
As you continue to watch you see a large haulage truck slam on the brakes in a futile attempt to avoid crashing into the growing pile-up: the driver only succeeds in jack-knifing the vehicle. An instant before it impacts the tangle of cars you lower your hand and allow the truck to slide sideways into it. You fold your fingers around it and lift it into the air, delighted at how light and fragile it feels in your grasp. You bring it up to your face and look inside the cab. You can see a minuscule driver, screaming and moving around, almost hysterical and evidently trying to hide from your gaze. You bare your teeth at him playfully, then pull your arm back and throw the little truck as far as you can. It arcs over the landscape, breaking apart as it goes, and finally disappears on the ground somewhere way over in the distance, too far away for even the faintest sound of the impact to reach you. Your ego swells even further at the thought that you’ve just sent a fully-laden haulage truck soaring for miles!
Grinning with pride, you return your attention to what is happening back on the ground by your feet. Nearby you can see what appear to be a couple of motorcycle cops, weaving in and out of the stranded traffic, doing their best to keep control and maintain calm. They are so focussed on their task that they don’t even notice you reaching down to grab them, one with each hand, until they are effortlessly pinched between your colossal fingers and lifted into the air. At that point they start to struggle frantically, trying to wriggle free, careless of their height above the ground, but in vain. Deceptively gently—almost tenderly—you hold them pinned to their vehicles. You don’t want them to get hurt before you’ve had your fun! You have two cops; you have two sneakers, so in they go: one in each shoe. You watch with fascination as both cops turn on their headlights to see in the gloom inside your footwear; the pretty little lights start to move around as they explore and search for a means of escape. As you pick up the sneakers the bikes struggle to keep upright and you amuse yourself by slowly tipping each sneaker, first one way, then the other, just to see if you can make them tumble. They do their best to stay remain stable and even have some success at first, but there isn’t much they can do when you start shaking the sneakers more and more violently. You hold them up to your ears and listen to the faint rattling sound from inside as the little cops and their bikes are tossed around. At last you tire of your game, so you put the sneakers back on the ground and slide your feet inside them. You pause to enjoy the slight tickling sensation as your prisoners brush against your sensitive toes—but then you slam your feet all the way inside, feeling two faint crunches as the bikes and their owners are crushed. You flex your toes playfully, just to make sure they are both good and smeared across the inside of your sneakers.
At this point you look around to see what your friends are up to. Eric is on his hands and knees nearby, flicking at stuff with his fingers. Jake, on the other hand, catches your eye and comes over.
“You know, I was thinking: tormenting these worthless little shits is great…”
You sense a “but” coming, and sure enough, you’re not disappointed.
“…but imagine what else we could do. Think about it for a moment: how many people do you suppose there are in this world?”
You consider the question. You have no idea just how expansive this “pocket” world might be, but it stretches to an apparent horizon in every direction, and possibly much further. Given that the people and infrastructure seem to be pretty much identical to what you know back home you guess the population must run to several millions in nearby cities alone; possibly even billions if it turns out you’ve somehow been transported to a full-scale planet with discrete countries and continents.
“Yeah, that’s right: a whole lot of them”, Jake continues. “We could come here every day and crush their little ant cities one after the other, but we’d probably get bored long before we could wipe them all out. On the other hand, we could easily fit a hundred of the little creeps in each of our pockets and take them home; maybe even some of those itty-bitty cars, trains, and stuff—perhaps even a building or two. We’d effectively have a limitless supply.”
“So? And then what?” By now, Eric has wandered over to join you.
“Well, we could keep them as slaves or something, to clean our feet, get us off, or anything we want.
You and Eric nod: the idea certainly appeals, but he hasn’t finished yet. Instead you are treated to that familiar self-satisfied smirk that invariably means that Jake, always the schemer, has had one of his famous ideas.
“But how about this?: we could sell some of them at school. Just to our friends at first, and if that goes well, maybe on the street too; eventually we could move on to eBay, provided we’re really discreet about it. Just think what we could charge for real, living tiny human slaves—or snacks. We could be rich!”
You nod slowly: even though Jake can be an ass at times there’s no doubt that he comes up with some great schemes.
Eric contributes his opinion: “Wow, that’s a really neat plan. But we can still do other stuff first, right? Like crushing and things?”
You exchange a quick glance with Jake: Eric never changes!
“I mean, before we found this place we were just going to hang out, play some soccer, throw some frisbee and stuff, right? We could still do that, but HERE, and then collect all the stuff we want after we’ve finished. So let’s go fetch ourselves some food and stuff, bring it here, and we’ll make a day of it. Whaddya think?”
Damn! Seems like you underestimated Eric. You imagine a gigantic frisbee, football, or something similar, soaring over a miniature city like a UFO, ready to crash down on a defenceless skyline. Not to mention the potential of bringing food and drink here…
Jake turns to you: “Okay, that’d work. So is there anything else we could try?”
You think for a second; Eric has given you an idea… “Well, there’s one other thing we might do. Just think what a great place this would be to have a party! Imagine it: a few friends; some drinks; some music; limitless tiny people to use for games or snacks… this place would rock—literally!”
Jake rolls his eyes at your cheesy pun, but Eric frowns. “That sounds real neat, but we found this world. It should be ours. We don’t want anybody else taking it over or spreading the word.”
You nod again. “That’s why we’ll restrict it to just a few buddies we know we can trust. Maybe we’ll even blindfold them or something so they don’t know exactly how they got here. But once they’re here… well, let’s just say we won’t have to worry about the usual complaints about the noise and the mess we make with our parties. We can go wild and nobody else will even know or care about it. Our little pets here can worry about cleaning up afterwards.”
Eric and Jake smile appreciatively. Maximum fun with minimum effort sure is fine by them.
“Okay then, so which do we do?” asks Jake.
“And how do we get back home?” adds Eric.
You point to a very faint glowing outline about twenty feet away. You noticed it earlier while you were throwing the truck and guessed that it marks the point where you originally entered this world. With luck, it should take you back home as well. Now all you need to do is decide on a course of action…
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