Bryan Smith spent the better part of the morning attending to the final details of his impulsive scheme. When he was satisfied he had taken care of every single detail, he carried the packing box to his kitchen table, placing the carton a few inches from the napkin holder and the paired salt and pepper shakers.
Inside the cardboard carton, he had placed insulation to cushion his journey and also stashed the antidote that, eventually, he would need to grow back to normal size. He looked down at the tabletop, feeling the excited fluttering of butterflies in his stomach.
He left the room to take a quick shower. Afterward, he didn't bother getting dressed.
"What would be the point?" Bryan asked himself. "After all, once I shrink, they definitely won't fit."
Besides, he had also placed some tiny pre-shrunk garments inside the shipping carton. He could use wear those once he arrived in Zack's hands.
The research scientist walked barefoot into his kitchen. Bryan's eyes focused on the gleaming glass tube he had left on the countertop near his microwave. He took the vial of shrinking formula in his hand. He watched, almost hypnotized, as he sloshed the pale blue liquid within the glass tube.
"Here goes nothing," he joked aloud and upended the vial.
He swallowed the liquid in a single gulp. The formula remained rather bland except for a faint metallic aftertaste.
Bryan felt the surge of inner heat that seemed to radiate out in waves. He had felt the sensation on previous occasions, and he knew he had to move fast. By the time he walked a few steps toward the kitchen table, he had already lost a couple of feet of height and was shedding inches rapidly. The swiftly working shrinking agent fooled even his intellectual brain into thinking that the room was expanding in all directions.
He stepped on the seat of a kitchen chair as he lost approximately half of his size. He had to use the chair as a step onto the surface of his kitchen table. Although he had undergone the astounding transformation on several other occasions, he still marveled as his surroundings appeared to grow.
He walked across the tabletop, toward the shipping carton. Even as he got closer to the box, it grew larger... and larger still!
In the space of mere moments, the brilliant research scientist shrunk from six feet tall to a mere quarter of an inch. As on past occasions, his body felt somewhat numb for a few seconds after the shrinkage ceased. He looked around his kitchen, almost breathless at comprehending his familiar world from the lowly status of a bug.
After he re-asserted control over his body, Bryan took in his surroundings with the same sense of wonder he had experienced the first time he used the formula to reduce himself.
Bryan stared across the vast expanse of the kitchen table. The shipping package now resembled some large building far away on the horizon. He continued his trek across the level tabletop.
Suddenly, an awful sound split the silence. Taken completely by surprise, the loud ringing noise panicked him into flight, and the tiny man took shelter near the colossal napkin holder as the almost deafening sound repeated at regular intervals.
On the third blast of sound, the little man recognized both the sound and the pattern.
"It's my phone," Bryan said, laughing at how something as mundane as a ringing phone had caused him to seek shelter in a blind panic.
The phone rang a few more times before the ringing stopped. "Sorry," Bryan quipped out loud. "I can't reach the phone. Leave a message."
He was about ready to leave the shelter of the napkin holder when another sound, even louder, assaulted his ears. He heard pounding at the front door, and almost at the same time, someone began beating on the back door in the kitchen.
He cowered and covered his ears with his hands. "What the hell?" Bryan wondered. "It's too early for Tommy..."
"BREAK IT DOWN!" A man's loud voice roared.
There followed a horrible crash as the back door flew open, admitting three men in black uniforms and heavy black boots stormed into his home.
The tiny man, watching from hiding, recognized one of the black-clad giants as the head of security for EDL Labs. Bryan knew him as a no-nonsense by-the-book type of man. He remembered that his name was Andre Franklin, a strong, muscular black man who looked huge even when Bryan wasn't shrunken to the size of a bug and gazing up at him.
"What are they doing here?" Bryan wondered.
Andre barked out orders for the other two guards. "I WANT HIS COMPUTER AND ANY DATA STORAGE DEVICES."
The two men stomped out of their room, their big black boots stomping on the floor boards with enough force to send vibrations through the floor and into the table, shaking the tiny research man's footing.
Bryan's main work for the past decade had been on developing anti-cholesterol drugs, but he had used the lab's resources to work on his own secret project. Terrified of the huge security guards, he cowered in his hiding spot.
Bryan was helpless to intervene as Andre walked to the edge of the table and reached down, taking the shipping package into his hand. The tiny, unseen man prayed that he would simply put the package back on the table.
No such luck! Andre slipped the package into a wide pocket in his uniform jacket.
"No!" Bryan wanted to scream. The package held his only available supply of shrinking antidote.
About that time, the two men re-appeared, carrying Bryan's computer and a box with DVDs and memory drives.
"NO SIGN OF DR. SMITH, SIR," one of them informed Andre.
"NO PROBLEM," Andre said grimly. "WE CAN DEAL WITH DR. SMITH LATER. THE BOARD WANTS ALL COPIES OF THE PERSONAL RESEARCH THE EINSTEIN WAS DEVELOPING ON THE SIDE."
Somehow, tiny Bryan realized the reference to "Einstein" wasn't being spoken in any manner complimentary to him.
"YOU GUYS TAKE THAT STUFF BACK TO THE LAB," Andre ordered. "I AM GOING TO WAIT FOR DR. SMITH TO GET HOME."
"WHAT DID HE DO, ANYWAY?" One of the men asked.
"THAT'S ON NEED-TO-KNOW," Andre said. "LET'S JUST SAY THAT THE GOOD PROFESSOR IS IN FOR A WORLD OF HURT IF I GET MY HANDS ON HIM!"
The bug-sized professor followed the conversation with an increasing sense of dread.
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