You awoke groggily, expecting the familiar comfort of your bedroom after a long day at school. But as your eyes adjusted, panic set in. Everything around you had grown—no, you had shrunk. The bedspread beneath you seemed like a vast ocean of fabric, stretching endlessly, and your once modest room now loomed around you like a colossal arena.
You scramble to your feet, heart racing, and realize you’ve shrunk to the size of a bug—tiny, vulnerable, and alone. It’s the year 2108, a time of incredible technological advancements, but none of that could have prepared you for this. The room, unchanged except for your new perspective, is now a treacherous, towering environment, with every familiar object transformed into an insurmountable challenge.
As you navigate the massive, intimidating expanse, a faint noise catches your attention. The TV, still on from when you dozed off, flickers in the distance. You strain to listen, your tiny size making it hard to make out the words clearly. The news anchor speaks rapidly in Russian, and you catch a few familiar words.
Suddenly, bold headlines appear across the screen in large Cyrillic letters: **“SHRINKING VIRUS AFFECTING MALES WHO HAD A COLD.”**
Your heart skips a beat. A virus? Could that explain why you’ve shrunk to the size of an insect? You remember having a mild cold last week, but nothing that seemed out of the ordinary at the time. Now, it all connects—a virus targeting males, shrinking them down to this terrifyingly small size.
The world is still going on as usual around you, but you’re trapped in this nightmare, and now you know you’re not alone in it. But the question remains: How long will you stay this way, and is there a cure? You feel a surge of determination to find answers, to escape this giant world, and hopefully, to return to your normal life.