Chapter #7Big Campus, Tiny People by: Unknown "So what's this thing supposed to do exactly?" Lola asked, minimally intrigued by the strange device Quinn was toiling over. Even thought it was spring break, many of the students chose to remain on campus since they already basically lived on a beach. But watching Quinn tinker away with another one of her inventions was hardly what Lola had in mind when she thought of spring break.
"It's a shrink ray." Quinn explained. "The idea is that if we can successfully shrink matter and grow it back when we need to, we can create a world with infinite storage space and cargo that is virtually weightless. Not to mention the fact that if we could ever safely shrink people, we could end world hunger since normal sized food would seem giant in comparison."
"Why not just grow the food?" Zoey asked, biting into an apple and imagining having dozens of tiny people crawling all over it scavenging for food.
"That would certainly be ideal, but infeasible. Giant food would take up far too much space, and there would always be a desire to make it even bigger so that more people could be fed and more profit could be made. Adding that much biomass to the could also be dangerous to the environment. And besides, that wouldn't solve the cargo transportation problem." Quinn continued, fine tuning the strange looking device with a screw driver. "If this thing works, I am a shoo-in for the Nobel Prize. You guys ready to see a test run."
"I don't know... Is it safe?" Nicole asked, backing away a little bit, not liking the look of Quinn's device or Quinn's track record with past inventions.
"Of course it's safe. However, as a safety precaution, we spray this." Quinn said, procuring a bottle of what looked like sunscreen. Before the girls could object, Quinn had sprayed them with the aerosol, covering them in the mysterious spray.
"What the hell was that Quinn?" Lola asked, clearly annoyed.
"This spray makes you immune to the effects of the shrink ray. If for some reason it were to misfire and strike you, which it almost certainly won't, it will not have any effect on you whatsoever. The entire room is already coated in the stuff." Quinn explained.
"If everything in here is shrink proof, then what the heck are you going to test it on?" Zoey asked.
Wordlessly, Quinn snatched the half eaten apple out of Zoey's hand and placed it on a chair.
"Quinn! I was eating that!" Zoey protested weakly.
"Shhhhh... I'm working here." Quinn replied. "Now let's see... Going to have to set the shrink ray to 'organic matter' since it's an apple... and done! All ready to go."
"I have a bad feeling about this..." Nicole muttered, though Quinn was too intent on her work to listen.
"Get ready girls! Today, we make history!" Quinn exclaimed, pressing a key on the laptop she had hooked up to the shrink ray. Instantly, the device roared to life as LED's flashed and motors hummed throughout the incredibly complex machine. All four girls stared intently at the apple, ready for something to happen. Unfortunately, the device didn't work quite as expected.
The three girls were suddenly blinded by a bright light and a loud boom as the machine spontaneously exploded, some inner mechanism having failed. When the light faded, all that was left was a smoking pile of debris which Quinn quickly took to with the fire extinguisher. In the commotion, none of the girls noticed that Zoey's apple was nowhere to be seen.
"Darn it... I really thought I had it that time..." Quinn muttered, trying to figure out what went wrong.
"Well it looks like you thought wrong." Lola retorted, angry that she had wasted her valuable time watching Quinn's disaster, not to mention the fact that their shared room was covered in mechanical debris. "Now I don't know about you, but I'm gonna go down to the lounge and enjoy my break."
"I'll come with." Nicole chimed in, eager to get away from any other potential experiments.
"I'll meet you guys down there in a little bit. I'm gonna head over to the guys's room and see what they're up to." Zoey said, stepping out of their dorm with her two friends close behind. As she did so, she failed to notice the tiny girl on the hallway floor, waving her arms and screaming for the enormous Zoey's attention. Her yelling came to an abrupt halt as Zoey's flip flop clad foot came down on the tiny teen, unintentionally crushing her like an insect.
"Ugh. I hate when bugs get in here." Zoey groaned, feeling the unexpected crunch under her foot before continuing her journey towards the boys.
So all of PCA is shrunken, and the girls are unaware. Who should the story follow? Zoey heading over to meet the tiny Chase, Michael, and Logan, or Lola and Nicole in the lounge, or Quinn as she discovers her device actually worked?   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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