Upstairs, the kitchen seemed to be about the same size as yours back home, except with a ceiling about twice as high. However, it was stocked with all sorts of different appliances, some that looked completely unfamiliar to you, and was without the window that you remembered being over the sink.
You sat down at the kitchen table across from Claire, while Arthur went over to a panel on the wall and pressed his hand to it. The panel then lit up, revealing some icons for various food items. "Would you like anything to drink?" he asked, looking to you. "Some water or milk perhaps?"
Before you could say anything, Claire shot him a harsh look. "Arthur, you can't give him anything to eat or drink until we've run metabolic and digestive tests! For all we know, it could kill him!"
Arthur looked at his wife questioningly, shrugged and closed the refrigerator again. "Fine," he said, "just trying to be polite. Though I don't see how a glass of water would do any harm." He rolled his eyes as he sat down in between you and his wife.
"Look," Claire said, sighing, "we just need to be careful. I'm sorry, child," she turned her attention to you. "I don't mean to frighten you."
"I'm not frightened," you protested, "and I'm not really a child! My name's Eric, and I keep telling you, I'm thirteen years old!"
Claire tilted her head to the side a little and looked at you with a slight hesitation in her eyes. "Okay, Eric, I believe you. Maybe you were thirteen, in the dimension you came from. Are other thirteen-year-old boys there around the same height as you?"
Sighing, you put your arm up on the table and leaned against it. "No," you said, "almost everyone my age is bigger than me, even the girls."
Arthur leaned closer to you. "And are other thirteen year olds as, um, underdeveloped as you are?"
You shake your head again. "Not usually. But then again, I'm not usually quite like this either! Something happened to me during the transport process that changed my body, I swear!"
Claire thought about this for a second, then jotted something down on a notepad in front of her. "That might make sense," she finally said. "The dimensional transport process involves disassembling and reassembling matter at the sub-atomic level. It's possible that you were reassembled in a slightly different manner than you're typically accustomed to, maybe having to play by the elemental laws of our dimension, or maybe just having some sort of data loss."
Arthur spun around to face her. "Why would the machine do that? It doesn't make any sense!"
Claire shrugged. "Who knows? Maybe we should have run a few more calibration checks first before we turned it on, like I wanted." She shot a dirty look at Arthur. "After all, it is a completely unproven technology."
You slouched down in your seat, frustrated. You could sorta grasp what she was saying, but it all sounded way beyond the capabilities of any technology you knew about. Still, you remembered that, back in your own world, your parent's research was considered very experimental and cutting edge, which is why they were able to receive all those government grants that kept them from having to foreclose the house. Maybe there were things they had been doing in their lab that you hadn't even dreamed about.
Claire busily worked out some figures on her notepad, so Arthur turned back to you and said, "Regardless of your age now versus your age then, I think there's something more important, at least as far as we're concerned. You said you thought four feet tall was normal, at least for an eight-year-old, right?"
You sit up a little again, not quite understanding where he was going. "Yeah, I did." You looked up at the high ceilings again as you did, a thought starting to cross your mind. "Why? Are people bigger here? You guys look about the same size as the adults back home."
"You're partially right," Arthur nodded. "We're what's considered 'normal height' here. However, there has been some… developments, shall we say, in the last twenty years that have changed our perception of what 'normal' really means."
"Developments? What the hell does that mean?"
"Arthur, if you'll let me?" Claire put her hand on her husband's arm.
"Be my guest," Arthur said, motioning for her to take over.
Claire stood up and started pacing back and forth on the tile kitchen floor. "A little over twenty years ago," she started in, "an asteroid crossed into Earth's orbit and was pulled in by our gravity, disintegrating on contact with the atmosphere. As it did, some sort of element from the asteroid dissolved in the air, spreading throughout the globe. We were in grad school then, and all the scientific community studied the phenomenon: physicists, meteorologists, biologists; no one could make heads or tails of it, and as it didn't seem to have any measurable effect on anything, the public quickly forgot about it. That is, until about nine months later."
"Nine months?" you asked as wheels began to turn in your head. "So... I'm guessing it had some sort of effect on pregnancies?"
"You're pretty smart, Eric," Claire remarked, obviously impressed, "whether we're talking for an eight-year-old or for a thirteen-year-old. Yes, something in the elements had an unknown effect on the DNA of every human on Earth. Any babies that were conceived after the incident, up to this very day, seem to experience substantial growth throughout their lives. While newborns that are delivered weigh in only slightly bigger than average, as soon as they begin to breath the air, they start to grow at a substantial rate. A one-month old could weigh fifteen pounds, and by the time of their second birthday, the average child is almost six feet tall."
Amazed, you whistled, leaning back in your chair. "Wow! A six-foot-two year old! That would be a sight to see!"
"And that's just the average!" Arthur chimed in. "Some are not that big, only being a foot or so taller than 'normal', but some are even bigger, up to eight or even nine feet tall!"
You leaned forward, intrigued, excited, and amazed at the story they were telling you. "So, does this mean that they've grown into adults by the time they're two?"
Claire shook her head. "No, it isn't that simple. They still look like two-year-olds, still have the same intelligence and attitudes children that age should have. They are simply bigger. And the growth doesn't stop at two. They all continue to grow, bigger than the adults that have given birth to them before they even start kindergarten. School buildings, public places, even homes like ours have had to be modified to fit their incredible heights."
"How big do they grow?" you asked.
"It varies depending on the person," Arthur answered. "Some stop at around twelve or thirteen feet tall, while others tower high above them, getting almost twenty feet tall. Recently, a few boys have broken even that barrier, and seem to still be growing!"
"Wow," you said, stunned. This was certainly an amazing story, one that you probably weren't going to truly believe until you saw definitive proof with your own eyes. "So, they keep growing into adulthood?"
At this point, Claire stopped her pacing, and looked at you, unsure of what to say. Her and Arthur kept looking back and forth at each other. "Uhhh…" Arthur stammered.
"What?" you asked. "What's the matter?"
Finally, Claire sat back down at the chair on the opposite side of the table and looked at you straight in the eye. "No, Eric," she said, "it doesn't continue into adulthood. And the reason why is…"
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