The 6 Millimeter Man

Author’s Note: I’m in the process of bumping up Amber’s age to 18, and making her a senior in high school.

Chapter One: The Lab Accident!

Deuce Orion was six millimeters tall, and he was trapped in a drawer of the desk belonging to a normal-sized girl he did not know. She was sitting at the desk, doing her homework. He had no choice but to get her attention; if he didn't, he could end up trapped in the desk drawer indefinitely. He grabbed some paper clips, and threw them around, and shouted up at the girl. Eventually, the commotion caught her attention, and she opened the drawer and looked inside and spotted Deuce.

"Hey, what's going on here?" The girl demanded. "Who are you, and how did you get so small?" The girl plunged her right hand down into the drawer, and set it down palm-side up. "Here, climb onto my hand!"

Deuce obliged, and soon he was lifted into the air, and held halfway between the girl's shoulders and waist. The girl had medium length brown hair slightly past her shoulders, and hazel eyes. Her complexion was tan, and she was a Latina. She appeared to be at the age where she would be attending her final year of high school.

"I'm Deuce Orion, I was shrunk in a lab accident at Bullet Bay University," said Deuce.

With her free hand, the girl grabbed a wooden ruler from the desk drawer where Deuce had been trapped, and set it vertically so she could measure Deuce's height.

"I need to use the millimeter side of the ruler to measure you, because you’re so tiny! You're exactly six millimeters tall," said the strange girl.

"I was pretty sure I was around six millimeters tall," said Deuce. I was six feet tall at normal size.”

"You're so small, I should swallow you!" The strange girl licked her lips menacingly. "Ever since I was eleven I've had a peculiar fantasy about swallowing a miniaturized man."

"Can I at least be introduced to the girl who intends to make me a meal?" Deuce asked.

"I'm Amber," said the girl, "Amber Ortega. I'm eighteen, and about to start my senior year of high school. So who are you, and how did you get this way?"

"It all started at the beginning of the semester, I was on my way to Bullet Bay University for the first day of classes. It was a crisp August morning in Bullet Bay, a small city on California's central coast. I had stopped at a coffee shop before going to my first class.”

*****

Deuce joined Skyler, Deuce's room mate, at the coffee shop.

"Hey Skyler, you beat me here this morning! I can't let you get away with that a second time!"

"Deuce," said Skyler, "I don't know why you even come here when you don't even drink coffee!"

"The hot chocolate here is good!"

"You know," said Skyler, "if you keep coming here every morning, you're just asking for trouble!

"How so?" Deuce asked.

"If a hit-man ever wanted to find you, it would be pretty easy to figure out your M-O."

"Then it's a good thing the crime rate here in Bullet Bay is close to zero."

Deuce ordered his drink. "I'll have a large hot chocolate, no marshmallows. Hey Skyler, don't we have our first class together?

"Yeah, an English class. Uh-oh, Jerrica alert! She tracked you down!"

"She already knows I hang out here," said Deuce. "She figured it out during the summer."

"You'd better explain to her that you can't get involved with her!" said Skyler. “Her mother is the district attorney of this county!"

"It's not that easy, Skyler. She's been in love with me since ever since I had to tutor her to qualify for that weird grant sponsored by that non-profit group. She’s eighteen now and on the prowl! How do you shake a chick like that off your trail?"

"I don't know," said Skyler. “I’ve never had that problem!”

Jerrica Calypso entered the coffee shop. "Hi, Deuce! I was hoping you could give me a ride to school. It's the last week of summer school at my high school."

"Jerrica, you live in Avalon Cove! Do you mean to tell me you rode the bus seven miles to get here just so you could get a ride from me?"

"Yeah!" said Jerrica. "I've got tickets to that concert at your university for this Friday night, and I was hoping we could go together!"

"I'll have to think about it," Deuce replied.

*****

"Is Jerrica in love with you?" Amber asked, holding Deuce closer to her face.

"Yes!" Deuce responded. "I need to find a way to get back to her!"

"Do you love her?" Amber asked.

"Of course," Deuce responded. "She's the only normal-sized person I trust."

"Go on with your story," said Amber.

*****

Deuce and Skyler marched into their first class together. A portly brunette was the professor, and this was an English class. Once the students were in their seats, she said she would not tolerate any cell phones in class. Just then, a beep went off, and the teacher grabbed a cell phone from one of the students. She set it on a table, then pulled out a steel mallet and crushed the cell phone.

"Don't let this happen to you! I expect all cell phones to be on silent at all times!" said the teacher.

*****

"What does that have to do with how you got shrunk?" Amber asked. She pulled out some thread, and wound it around Deuce's body, then lifted him over her mouth and licked her lips. "Are you trying to to stall to prevent the inevitable? You will end up in my belly one way or another, it's just a matter of time, so whether it takes you an hour to tell this story or five, you're still my prisoner, understand?"

"It was important to mention," Deuce replied, "because that's why I stopped carrying my cell phone on me to my classes."

"Then get on with the story!" Amber demanded.

*****

That Friday night, at a party, Deuce and Skyler ran into two hot chicks.

"Hi, I'm Stephanie, and this is my room-mate Alyndria." Stephanie was a brunette with a tan complexion, and Alyndria was Caucasian and had hair like a punk rocker or goth girl.

"Nice to meet you," said Deuce, shaking the hands of both young women.

"So it's my understanding you're taking part in a cold fusion experiment?" Alyndria asked Deuce.

"Yeah," Deuce replied, "So you've been reading the newspapers?"

"My father is very interested in studying the new theory professor Stiles came up with for converting hydrogen to tritium." said Alyndria. "According to my father, professor Stiles has achieved something no other scientist ever has. That new cheaper method for converting hydrogen to tritium is valuable beyond measure!"

"Who's your father?" Deuce asked.

"Doctor Lario Von Darius," Alyndria replied. "He's a really brilliant scientist. So how does the cold fusion theory work?"

"Professor Stiles found a way to use quantum mechanics to strip quark, gluon particles and electrons of matter in the form of neutrino particles. He thinks it will cause a chain reaction that should initiate a cold fusion reaction. As far as his method for converting hydrogen to tritium, he won't fill me in on the details."

"Sounds pretty interesting," said Alyndria.

"I'm heading over there soon," said Deuce. "Professor Stiles is conducting the experiment here on campus. The reason I'm not drinking alcohol right now is because I need to stay sober so I can help with the experiment. The professor thinks tonight is the night we achieve victory!" Deuce looked at his watch. "It looks like it's about time for me to head over there now." Deuce said goodbye to Skyler and the two young women, and departed.

As Deuce approached the front of the laboratory a few minutes later, a limousine pulled up. A door opened, and a man got out and ushered Deuce inside the vehicle.

"I'm Doctor Von Darius," the man said. "You met my daughter Alyndria earlier tonight, I instructed her to tell you of my needs. I want to make you an offer."

"Like what?" Deuce asked.

"I want you to make copies of the schematics detailing the professor's method for converting hydrogen to tritium on a flash drive, and sell them to me. I can make you very rich!" Doctor Von Darius held out a check for five thousand dollars.

"Forget it!" said Deuce, ignoring the check and exiting the vehicle. "Professor Stiles worked his entire lifetime on that experiment, and I'm not going to sell him out!"

"You'll regret this!" shouted Doctor Von Darius. The door to the limousine closed with Doctor Von Darius inside, and sped away.

*****

"How much was he willing to pay you?" Amber asked.

"I don't know, and I don't care!" said Deuce. "My friendship with Professor Stiles doesn't come with a price tag!"

"I'm proud of you!" said Amber. "This story is starting to get good! Continue!"

*****

Deuce entered the front door of the laboratory. Professor Stiles was working feverishly, the reactor was in the center of the lab, and gauges and digital read-out monitors were lit up and beeping.

"I started the experiment without you, Deuce! I tried calling you, but you didn't answer!"

"I left my phone at home, professor." Deuce replied. "I've never seen the equipment react this way, what's going on?"

"We've reached the break-even point!" said the professor. "The cold fusion reactor is generating an amount of power equal to what it takes to sustain the cold fusion reaction!"

"Has it ever done this before?" Deuce asked.

"Never!" said the professor. "And if that gauge moves up past fifty percent," the professor pointed at a digital gauge connected to the reactor, "then we'll be the first people in history to witness a cold fusion reaction that generates more power than it takes to initiate the reaction!"

Professor Stiles grabbed a bottle of champagne, and looked at the gauge. Just as it rose above fifty percent, he popped the cork off and shouted in victory. Before he could pour the champagne, the front door of the lab was kicked in by armed gunmen in ski masks carrying semi-automatic weapons.

"Give me all your cell phones, now!" said one of them, and the professor threw his cell phone to the men. One of them had an axe, and severed the phone line to the land-line connected to a desk. One of the men forced Deuce closer to the reactor as he pointed his machine gun at him.

"Give me all flash drives pertaining to your method for converting hydrogen to tritium, do it now!" said one of the men, pointing his weapon at the professor.

The professor grabbed a key and unlocked a safe in a drawer of his desk, and handed the man several small flash drives.

One of the men opened up on the reactor with his M-16, and the tritium/deuterium solution spilled out onto Deuce, getting him drenched from head to toe. Within less than a minute, the gunmen were gone.

"They must be working for Doctor Von Darius!" Deuce shouted. "He tried to bribe me just before I got here!"

"I'd better go find a payphone and call the police," said professor Stiles, as he left Deuce behind to survey the damage.

*****

"Is that when you got turned into girl food?" Amber asked.

"What?" Deuce asked.

"Is that when you started to shrink?" Amber asked.

"Yes," said Deuce, "it was kind of instantaneous. One second I was six feet tall, then less than a second later, I was looking up at a world of giants. Good thing I was alone in the lab when it happened."

"Then what happened?" Amber asked.

"The front door was ajar, the gunmen had broken it when they kicked it in. I realized the only person I could trust was Jerrica, so I knew I had to make my way to her. I set out on my own, like a valiant venturer."

"How did you avoid encountering normal-sized people?" Amber asked.

"I did encounter one woman, she was a time traveler from the future. Her name was Nixie."

"When did you encounter her?" Amber asked.

"On the walkway in front of the lab. She towered over me like the colossus of Rhodes. I thought I was done for!"

***********************

"My name is Nixie, I'm a time traveler from ten thousand years in the future. I'm here to help you!"

"Can you restore me to normal size?" Deuce asked.

"No, I can't interfere with history," Nixie replied. "But I can make you immortal so you never age, you'll never need food or water, you won’t be vulnerable to temperature extremes, and I can make you invisible to predators. They won't be able to see you easily, or smell you. Your voice will be loud enough for normal sized people to hear you, without you having to yell to be heard. Now that you’re miniaturized, you won’t be able to detect the smells of normal sized things, and normal sized people or animals won’t be able to smell you.”

Nixie shrank down to Deuce's size. "Now you can call me Nixie the Pixie! Professor Stiles stumbled onto technology that won’t be invented for another 150 years!”

“I know Professor Stiles is a genius,” said Deuce, “but that’s on a whole other level!”

“Professor Stiles didn’t invent miniaturization on his own, he tried to reverse engineer the remains of a weapon from a time vessel from the future. Humans from the future traveled to five thousand years before your time to fight aliens who were trying to colonize the Earth. One of our ships got blown up, and a neutrino dissimilator weapon was still intact and orbiting the solar system all these millennia until it crashed on the central coast recently.”

She waved a device over Deuce's head, and said, "Now you're immortal. You'll never need food or water again! I can't reverse your situation, but from time to time, I can help you out. Maybe you’ll still be alive in 150 years when miniaturization technology is invented, and someone can restore you to normal size!”

Nixie activated a jet pack and flew off into the sky.

************************

"So what happened next?" Amber asked.

"There was a concert on campus that Friday night," Deuce replied, "so I went in that direction. I knew Jerrica had tickets, so I was hoping to run into her there, but a feral kitten changed my plans, and chased me out into the open, and that's how I ran into you."

"But how did you end up with me?" Amber asked.

"You were trying to sell your extra concert ticket, and your purse was on the grass at your feet. The kitten chased me, and I hid in your purse. I stayed hidden all through the concert, and when you got home, I climbed onto your dresser while you were in the dining room eating dinner, and I slipped and ended up in your desk drawer."

"I just found a purpose for you," said Amber. "You're a science major, and you're good at math, right?

"Yes, I got straight A's in math all through high school and college. I even aced calculus!" Deuce replied.

"From now on, I want you to tutor me," said Amber as she pulled out a paper from her desk. It showed an algebra test, and her grade was a D+. "If you can help me get good grades in algebra, I won't swallow you!"

"You've got a deal!" said Deuce.

To Be Continued!

Chapter Two: 30 Miles Off Course!

Amber Ortega listened as Deuce Orion, the six millimeter man, continued his story of arriving in Amber’s bedroom in his shrunken state.

After the concert was over, Amber took her purse and met her mother in the parking lot of Matheson university. The car started and they headed onto the freeway and headed north.

The entire trip lasted over half an hour, and just as I'd feared, we went up and over the Cuesta grade, which meant the vehicle I'd hitched a ride on was going a minimum of thirty miles in the opposite direction I needed to go to reach Jerrica’s house. The car finally pulled into a driveway and parked, and two doors popped open.

I heard a pair of voices, the woman who had driven the car, and a younger female voice, obviously the woman's daughter. When they had gone inside, Amber set her purse down and I jumped out and leaped down onto the floor of the living room, and his beneath the couch. My reduced mass allowed me to jump from heights that would’ve killed a normal sized man from an equivalent height.

I just hoped these people didn't have any pets, especially the hungry kind!

I was standing on the wooden floor of the living room of this strange house. The giant girl, about thirteen years old, was paying attention to the television, so she hadn't noticed me. She had brown hair, and hazel eyes. Her mother was in the dining area at the other end of the room, setting the table. She spoke to her daughter:

"Amber, it's time for dinner. Could you shut the window, please?"

From my hiding place beneath the living room couch, I watched in horror as Amber walked over and slid the living room window closed. That was my only means of escape, so now I was trapped in the home of these giant strangers!

The girl that had been addressed as Amber by her mother walked over to the giant dinner table, and I watched the giant duo load down their plates with pot roast and mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and chocolate pudding.

My dilemma was solved when the girl when the girl asked her mother if she could finish her dinner in her room, because she had a lot of homework to do. Her mother granted her permission, and Amber picked up her plate and disappeared into the hallway to the left of the dining area. I heard her bedroom door close.

It wasn't difficult at all to make my way under and behind furniture as I made my way toward the hallway, and soon, I was at the corner that separated the dining area and the hallway. The only problem was, the giant woman was facing in my direction as she ate, and I would have to cross her field of vision momentarily in order to get across into the hallway.

I saw the woman turn her head as she heard something interesting on the television, and I took a chance. I ran around the door jamb seperating the dining area and the hallway, and I made it before the woman could spot me. Now all I had to do was climb under the girl's door.

Luckily for me, the door to the girl's room didn't have weather stripping, and there was at least half an inch of clearance between the bottom of her bedroom door and the wood floor. I didn't even need to duck down as I walked under the door and into Amber's room. I guess that's one of the advantages of being six millimeters tall!

Once inside, I could see Amber facing away from me, typing away on a computer. To her left was a massive desk, and that is where I assumed her dinner was located. There was a digital clock radio located in one corner high atop the desk, and the electrical cord supplying power to the clock radio extended from the wall outlet down to the ground before it ascended to the top of the desk and connected to the rear of the clock radio. It would be easy to climb!

I began to make my way up, and soon I reached the top of Amber's desk. She was unaware of my presence, still typing on her computer. I hid behind the digital clock radio, and I could see the plate of delicious pot roast and the pile of mashed potatoes dripping with butter. Every few minutes, the girl would pause from her work, and reach over and grab her fork and scoop up a portion of either mashed potatoes or pot roast, and take a bite before resuming her work on the computer.

The plate of food was enormous, and I'll never forget the experience of seeing a plate of food for the first time from my new perspective of standing six millimeters tall. The plate seemed to me to be nearly the size of a coliseum. The large pieces of pot roast were of Olympian proportions compared to me, and I felt that I was standing on a plate of food meant for a gargantuan goddess, rather than an ordinary thirteen-year-old girl.

My goal was to get the girl’s attention by climbing onto the plate. She left the fork leaning from the plate into the desk while her attention was diverted to what she was typing on the computer.

I waited for the girl to take another bite, so I could get her attention, then the giantess broke from her pattern, and reached over to scoop up some more food with her fork.

In my haste, I had failed to realize there was only one more piece of pot roast remaining on the girl's plate, and this was the piece I was holding onto as I tried to hide from the giantess. Sure enough, this was the exact piece she scooped up with her fork, and I was scooped up along with it!

Amber wasn't really paying attention to what was on her fork, her eyes were focused on the report for school that she was typing up on her computer. I knew I had only one chance to avoid being plunged into the depths of her colossal mouth, and my only option was to jump!

From the time her fork left her plate until the exact moment she plunged the bite of food into the cavernous depths of her mouth, less than a second went by. During that brief period of time, I let go of the piece of meat I'd been holding onto, and fell downwards, towards the edge of Amber's colossal desk! I avoided slamming into the side of the desk and plunged downwards still further...

The top drawer of Amber's desk was open just slightly, but since I was only six millimeters tall, there was plenty of clearance for my tiny body, and I fell into the drawer and landed on the firm yet soft surface of a large eraser.

From the light shining through the opening in the desk, I could see that I was in a desk drawer full of paper-clips, pencils, pens, erasers and a large pencil sharpener. The scale of ordinary objects is quite impressive when your stature has been reduced as significantly as mine. At six millimeters tall, the weight of an ordinary pencil was so immense, that it was impossible for me to even lift it. Using the pencils for a ramp to climb up and out of the drawer was definitely out of the question!

And so there I found myself, trapped in a girl's desk drawer, unable to escape. The only option seemed to be to give myself up, and get the girl's attention. Of course, this would mean being captured, and I knew that the girl would never allow me to regain my freedom once I was under her power, but what other choice did I have?

To Be Continued!

Chapter Three: Amber’s Prisoner!

The sides of the desk drawer that I was trapped in were only about six inches high, but at my miniscule stature, they stretched upwards to an unattainable height far above my head. Escape was impossible.

I tried everything, but the pens and pencils were too heavy for me to move, and I couldn't bend the paper clips to make a grapnel hook that I could throw to the top of the desk drawer, because I just didn't have the strength to bend the aluminum. I was trapped!

I realized my only choice was to make contact with the giantess that owned the desk I was inside of, despite the fact that I would surely end up as her prisoner. I decided the only way to make my presence known to her was to make as much noise as possible, until I attracted her attention.

I began piling the paper clips on top of each other, which wasn't an easy task, because to me they were very heavy. Eventually, I had enough piled up that I threw a staple at the pile to make some noise, but Amber didn't hear it, because the endless clacking on her computer keyboard drowned out the sound. I tried again.

After about the third or fourth time, I must've gotten her attention, because I heard her stop typing, and she said:

"What was that?"

At this point, I climbed to the top of the pile of paper clips and began kicking them one by one into a second pile of paper clips, making enough noise that the giantess decided to investigate the soure of the disturbance.

My entire universe seemed to shake all around me as Amber opened the top drawer of her desk, the drawer I was now imprisoned in. Her immense face filled the space above the drawer, and I got my first close look at this pre-teen colossus.

Her long hair was dark blonde with strands of lighter colored locks intermingled, and she had beautiful blue eyes. Her eyebrows were darker than her hair, yet they were detectably dark-blonde in color. She had a good complexion, with a scattering of cute freckles across her nose, but nowhere else. All in all, she was a cute kid.

At first, the titanic pre-teen failed to see me, and I was worried that she would close the desk drawer before I could make her aware of my presence. I jumped up and down and yelled at her, calling her name over and over again. Her gaze soon shifted, and my heart was momentarily paralyzed with fear as the blue eyes of this giantess locked onto me, and I became aware that she was observing me for the first time. The titanic pre-teen addressed me for the first time:

"What on Earth? Who are you? How did you get so tiny, little man?"

Amber opened the desk wider, and reached inside to pick me up. She placed her index finger in front of me, and said:

"Don't be afraid of me, tiny one. You an trust me. Climb onto my finger!"

It wasn't exactly easy, because to me the girth of her index finger was the same height as a one story house. I climbed up onto some of the paper clips, and onto Amber's immense index finger. The giantess lifted me upwards, and I felt slightly dizzy and a little terrified, but she stopped just above the top of her desk, and dumped me out into the palm of her other hand.

She began to lift me still further, until I was just below Amber's chin, so she could examine me more closely. She said:

"Wow! What happened to you, little guy?"

I didn’t need to yell at the top of my lungs to be heard by the daunting damsel, thanks to Nixie. I began explaining in great detail my entire story, how I was shrunk, and how I had arrived here up to this point.

"I guess you're too tiny to escape from the top of my desk! I'll just leave you there until I get back. Don't go anywhere!"

When she returned, she went on to explain that from now on, I had no choice but to remain with her as her prisoner, and that it was for the best, because I would not be safe out in the perilous world by myself at my tiny helpless size. I was too terrified of her superior size and strength to argue with the mighty maiden, so I kept my mouth shut!

At this point, she took out a ruler from the same desk drawer I had been trapped in earlier, and measured my staturer. She said:

"Be sure to stand up straight, Deuce, so I can get an accurate measurement!"

She knew my name was Deuce, because I had told about my adventure. When she placed the plastic ruler vertically next to me, the first thing she said was:

"Half a centimeter! No, wait--"

It took a second glance through the magnifying glass for her to confirm what I already knew:

"Exactly six millimeters tall, Deuce!" she said.

She returned the ruler to her desk drawer, and said:

"Oh, Deuce! We're going to have so much fun together! Just wait and see! But I don't want my mom to find out about you, so I'm going to have to keep you hidden! I'll have to take you with me wherever I go!"

Once that was established, it first dawned on me that I might spend the rest of my days as Amber's prisoner, with no hope of ever knowing freedom again! Not that there was anything to complain about, as the days went by, she treated me quite well.

As far as Amber was concerned, I wass no different to her than a pet mouse or a hamster. It was true that I led a virtually idyllic existance, but I just couldn't get over the fact that I had never met Amber before I'd been shrunk, and if I could've had my choice, it would've been nice to have been captured by a girl that I had known before the lab accident, someone like Jerrica Calypso.

The days turned into weeks, and I soon realized that my chances of escape were slim, if there was any chance at all. The only time there was any possiblity of a chance was when Amber would take me out into her front yard with her when she wanted to read a novel, and she kept me on a checkerboard, so she could moniter my every move, to prevent my escape. In addition to this, Amber took the additional precaution of tying a string around my waist, which she then tied to her wrist, to ensure that any escape attempt would be impossible without her immediate knowledge.

My captivity was a game to her, and she went to great lengths to make sure I could never have even the slightest chance of executing a successful escape attempt. When she went to sleep at night, Amber kept me contained within an inescapable jar that had tiny air-holes punched into the lid. Even had it been possible for me to scale the slick sides of my glass prison, it would've been quite impossible to unscrew the heavy lid, and the air-holes were too small for even me to climb through.

I remember the look on Amber's face the night she captured me, when she had first placed me in the jar. I'll never forget the look of satisfaction on her face as she held the tiny jar firmly in the grip of her left hand, with me contained inside, and she gazed at my helplessness with child-like glee. She had said:

"And that is that! You won't escape from me now, tiny one!"

I knew my only opportunity to escape would be on one of the trips out to the front yard, when she read her novels. I had at first hoped that she would let down her guard and eventually she would allow me to roam around on the checkerboard without being tethered to her wrist, but this was not the case.

In fact, the better she got to know me, the more elaborately she began to tie the knots of the string that I was tied up in. If I tried to untie even one single knot and my mistress became aware of it, she would put down her book and tie no less than half a dozen additional knots to replace the knot I had untied. As I said before, keeping me under her power was a game to her, a game I could never seem to win! Eventually, I began to accept that I would probably remain as Amber's captive for a very long time!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Four: The Car Accident!

When Amber had started the eighth grade, she had taken an algebra class, instead of taking pre-algebra first. Because of this, she was unprepared for it, because she had been doing basic arithmetic in the seventh grade. She was doing well in most of her other classes, but she got an F on her first algebra quiz.

Her mother was a high school drop-out who was unfamiliar with anything above and beyond basic arithmetic, so she was unable to help her own daughter with her math homework. As a bartender barely getting by, Amber’s mother couldn’t afford a tutor. Now that I was there, that all changed.

It wasn’t difficult to communicate with Amber, because my voice was loud enough for a normally sized person to hear me, because Nixie had used her technology on me to make that possible. I used a chunk of pencil lead to explain algebra to Amber, which was tedious. It wasn't long before I had explained the fundamentals of pre-algebra to Amber so that she could understand, and I was also able to help her comprehend the concepts of whatever homework her algebra teacher had assigned on a particular day.

After tutoring her the night before a surprise pop-quiz, Amber got an A minus on a quiz that had 10 problems. She only missed one out of ten, and that was because of a clerical error, not because she didn't understand how to do the problems.

After a few weeks of this, Amber informed me that her teacher had started asking her how she had improved her math skills so drastically. He never would have guessed that Amber had a full time tutor living at home; or that her tutor was a sophomore at Bullet Bay University majoring in nuclear physics, and minoring in electrical engineering. He also never would have guessed that I had been reduced to six millimeters tall in a lab accident during a cold fusion experiment, and that I lived in a glass jar on a shelf in Amber's bedroom.

Amber's mother also noticed her improvement, and no explanation or alibi could quench her mother's curiosity. After being questioned unrelentingly by her mother about her improved grades, Amber finally decided to tell her mother the truth.

I was in the glass jar that Amber kept me in, relaxing in the small clay dwelling that Amber had sculpted for me out of clay. Amber picked up the jar, and informed me of her desicion to show me to her mother. Before I could protest, Amber carried the glass jar, with me inside, into the living room.

After being dumped out onto the coffee table and being introduced, Amber's mother was at first astonished, but after Amber explained my story, her mother remembered the newspaper articles and the television news broadcasts about Deuce Orion, the missing college student; at that point it all made sense to her.

One thing I did discern about Amber's mother was that she was concerned, and wanted to make sure that no harm would come to me. After explaining the fact that I was not extremely vulnerable to cold weather because of Nixie’s immortality device, but that I preferred warmth, the mother decided to immediately purchase a heat lamp that Amber could place above my jar at night, to keep me warm.

I was returned to my jar, and Amber and her mother piled into the car, to drive thirty miles into the main town to go to a well supplied pet store, to purchase a heat lamp. Once in the car, Amber kept my jar in her hand, but soon placed it in the cup holder above the ashtray below the dash board, so her hands would be free to look through her many C.D.'s, to figure out what she wanted to listen to.

The car got on the freeway, and we were on our way to the same college town where Bullet Bay University was located. We went back down over the Cuesta grade, in the opposite direction that we had come when I had accidentally hitched a ride in their car, when I had mistakenly thought that that they were heading South, instead of North.

Amber put the C.D. that she wanted to listen to into the C.D. player, but still resumed looking through her collection when the accident happened. From my vantage point, I could not see what caused it, but I assume that someone tried to change lanes in front of our car, and Amber's mother was cut off. Luckily, both Amber and her mother had seatbelts on, but the window on the passenger side where Amber was sitting was rolled down, so when the car went off of the side of the road and flipped, My jar was thrown from the car.

Amazingly, the car flipped over completely, but Amber and her mother were unhurt. The car was totalled, and my jar was thrown violently from the vehicle, and rolled down the hill and hit a boulder that was wedged half-submerged in the ground, shattering the glass jar I was in.

I was a little shook up, but when I stood up, I knew that this might be my only chance to escape from Amber and her mother. There was a possibility that Amber's mother would have decided to return me to my relatives, but I couldn't count on that. So, after looking back to make sure that the two of them were safe and unhurt, I started off on my own.

We were almost all of the way into town when the accident happened, so it wouldn't have been too far for a normally sized man to reach town, but I was six millimeters tall, so the distance for me was significantly magnified. It was early afternoon, and it was less than one more mile into town, so I expected to get there some time not long after nightfall.

During the first hour of my journey, Amber tried to locate me, and I was worried that she would capture me, so I walked West instead of directly South, to throw her off of my trail, and I was successful. At times I could see her in the distance, calling out my name, but I was so small that from that distance I was undetectable to the human eye, so I wasn't spotted.

As early afternoon became late afternoon, Amber's voice could be heard farther and farther away in the distance, until finally I couldn't hear her at all. I lost a lot of time on my detour, but if I had gone South, as Amber had assumed that I would, there would have been no way to elude her, and I would've surely been captured again.

After nightfall, I reached the top of a hill, and I could see the outskirts of town below. It was soon going to be the beginning of September. I had to make a camp to protect myself from predators.

That night, before I fell asleep in my hidden campsite, I pondered the events of the past month. The lab accident, getting captured by Amber, and my serendipitous escape. I wondered if I should continue on my quest to contact Jerrica, or if I should try to get in touch with the professor.

I had studied enough about nuclear physics in college to know that not enough was known about the elusive neutrino particle; that is why the professor's theory was so revolutionary. He had actually found a way to manipulate these particles, and remove them from the quarks and gluon particles that made up the protons and neutrons that are the components of the nuclei of all atoms.

I also knew that because so little was known about neutrinos, there was little if any hope at all of replacing the neutrinos that had been subtracted from my body. This is the reason I had first decided to contact Jerrica, because I didn't believe that the professor could do anything to help me, and I figured that if I had no choice but to accept my current situation, it would be better to establish contact with Jerrica, a girl who was in love with me, than the professor.

I knew I could trust the professor, and that if he was to find me, he would return me to my mother or any relative of my choice, but was that what I really wanted? sure, I would be safe, but my mother was so over-protective of me, she would probably make sure that I would remain single until I was 80 years old.

After seeing the way Amber and her mother had decided that my freedom was an option, not a right that was carved into granite, I now realized that even Jerrica could probably not be trusted, either. When human beings have unlimited power over other human beings, there is an instinctive human weakness to abuse that power, and I wasn't sure there were any normal-sized human beings on Earth that I could trust any more, even my own relatives.

Now that I was free, I wondered if my best option was to stay away from normal-sized people for the rest of my life. It would be a difficult existence, but it was probably the best plan. I decided to wait until morning to make my decision, so I went to sleep under the stars on that clear late August night, free for the first time in over a month. Time would only tell what fate had in store for me, Deuce Orion, the six millimeter man!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Five: Freedom!

When I woke up the next morning, I felt better than I'd felt in a long time. For the first time in over a month, I was free.

I found houses on the outskirts of town as I made my way toward the town, and after a couple of hours, when I was not far from the nearest house, I saw an ant.

To me, it was as large as an average dog, because I was only six millimeters tall. Then, I saw another one. Just as I was walking down a slight incline, I saw a whole colony.

I can't remember ever being so terrified in my entire life. There were hundreds of them that I could see, and probably thousands more in the foliage and in other places where I could not see them. My fear subsided when I realized they had no interest in me.

There were more than just ants from one colony, as I had at first thought. There were several different varieties of ants, all from different colonies. One group were large black ants, and another group were the same size as the black ones, but were yellowish in color. Still another group were a combination of black and yellow, and there were two groups of smaller ants, each a different type.

What I marveled at as I stood there observing them, was the fact that they all seemed to interact peacefully with each other. There would be a group of ants from one colony, marching along in an ant trail, and when their trail intersected with the trail of ants of a different variety, for instance, black intersecting with yellow ants, they did not attack each other. Like cars at a stoplight, each ant took his turn, then an ant from the other colony would move forward.

Then I saw a different kind of insect that I could not identify, other than saying it was not an ant. Remember, I studied nuclear physics in college, not entomology. When it intersected an ant trail, a group of ants from that trail would team up and attack the intruder. When the beetle or whatever it was left the ant trail, the ants left it alone, and resumed their daily business.

Then, not long after that, the same insect again accidentally intruded on another ant trail, this time in a location where two trails from two different species of ants intersected one other. Both species attacked the intruder as a team, and after the insect fled, the ants returned to their trail, each variety of ant rejoining the trail of their individual species.

I found it amazing that several different colonies of ants could all interact peacefully, and I wondered if the human race would ever evolve to a similar level of understanding. Could people of different creeds and religions ever accept each other and live peacefully as equals, just as these ants were able to do? The human race could learn a lot from the wisdom of the ant.

As I sat there watching the ants, I thought about my life. I had always been interested in science, and from a young age I had wanted to be an inventor, like Thomas Edison. I made a decision to be a nuclear phycisist as a youngster, after being inspired by a character in the comic books I had read. I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a nuclear phycisist because I wanted to emulate the fictional comic book character, or if my love of science and technology were the main inspiration.

I eventually put that goal on hold, when I reached junior high school, because I discovered body building, and I decided that lifting weights was a more efficient way of increasing my muscle mass than studying about nuclear science. I continued body building on through my high school years, but I had never considered going into competition.

I did have friends who were interested in going into competition, and they were all interested in experimenting with steroids, to give them that extra "edge." In my junior year, I decided that supplying them and other body builders was a quick and easy way to make money, so I started making trips down to Mexico on the weekends, where steroids could be purchased legally.

This went on for a couple of years, and it was an easy way to pay the rent and any other bills that I had. I didn't feel that I was really doing anything wrong, because after all, it wasn't like I was pushing addictive street drugs on people or anything.

I finally decided to get an accomplice, so more steroids could be brought over to fill the demand brought on by an increased number of customers. A friend of mine agreed to do it, but he just didn't have what it took to be a smuggler, and I never should have trusted him to begin with.

The last time I ever tried to smuggle steroids across the Mexican border, we got caught. I had the 'roids stashed in a hidden pocket of my jacket, and I had sewn it up, so everything was concealed. An American border patrol guard asked a simple question, and my friend cracked up under the pressure. If he had kept his mouth shut, we would've never gotten caught.

My friend and I were taken to a jail in San Diego, and we were split up. I was only 19, and it was my first time in jail. I ended up with a sentence of six months, but ended up doing about four months, with time subtracted for good behavior. It was pretty simple; you don't fight or get into any trouble, and you only do two thirds of your time. You screw up, and time is added. You screw up too much, and you end up doing your full term.

While I was in there, I was in a cell with a guy that was an electrician. There was no television, so we talked about his job. I'd have to say, he was the main inspiration in my adult life that was a major factor in my decision to go to college. He taught me about Ohm's law, voltage drop formulas, and equations concerning transformer coils. He really rekindled my childhood desire to learn about science. When I told him that I had wanted to be a nuclear phycisist, he didn't laugh at me, he actually encouraged me. He told me to go for it.

There was a nuclear power plant in Devil's canyon less than ten miles from Bullet Bay University, and if I had a degree in nuclear physics, there was a good chance I could get hired there. I could probably make pretty decent wages. The electrician told me that I'd better minor in electrical engineering, also, just in case they weren't hiring physicists. I'll never forget what he told me. He said that as long as they had power flowing through powerlines, they would always need electricians to work on those powerlines. He said computer programmers could be laid off when a company downsized, and college graduates with degrees in business marketing or cinematography could be flipping burgers because the jobs they were qualified for just weren't in demand, and they couldn't find anything else. An electrician, however, would always find work; and any contractor would rather hire someone with a degree in electrical engineering than someone who had less impressive credentials.

So when I was released from jail, I took a Greyhound back home, and enrolled at my local junior college. It took three years to get my general education courses out of the way before I could transfer to the University, because I had a lot of prerequisites to take.

During my years at junior college, my mother moved to Oxnard, and I was left alone in the town I had lived in since my first year of high school. I chose to remain, because I'd had enough moving around when I was growing up, and I decided that I was never going to move away again; at least not to another part of the state. That was also when I first met professor Stiles.

I started doing work for him, because he taught classes during the day at Bullet Bay University, and worked on perfecting his cold fusion experiment until two or three in the morning, and he needed someone to run errands. Sometimes he remained working in his laboratory until the predawn hours, despite the fact that he had classes to teach the following day. I went to electronics supply stores to purchase materials he needed to conduct his experiment, and I swept and mopped his lab. He paid me pretty good money, so that I had enough money to pay my rent and bills.

When I was done with junior college, I was able to obtain a grant, and I enrolled at Bullet Bay University. It's hard to believe that now, all these years later, professor Stiles finally succeeded in his cold fusion experiment, only to have his ideas stolen from him by those masked gunmen. At that point I made up my mind; I wanted revenge.

Revenge against the thieves that robbed professor Stiles of a lifetime of work. Revenge against the men who had afflicted me with a curse that made me a potential victim to normal-sized human-beings. Humans are by nature social animals, and if a human-being was cut off from others for too long, he could lose his mind. The bandits who robbed the lab that day took away my ability to interact normally with other human-beings, and my condition was terminal. There was no way to reverse the shrinking process that subtracted over ninety-nine point nine percent of the mass from my body, reducing me to six millimeters tall. For that I wanted to track them down, and make sure they were convicted for their crime.

Professor Stiles was probably the person I could trust the most in my unusual condition, but I knew he would be working night and day to duplicate his cold fusion experiment. He just wouldn't have the time to help me track down the bandits. Jerrica was the only other person I could trust, besides my family; I couldn't trust them, because I knew my overprotective mother would never allow me to leave the house if I was under her care, so that wasn't an option.

As I continued to observe the activity of the ants that were not much smaller than me, I remembered back to the time I'd first met Jerrica. It was my last year at junior college, and I was at the top of my class in every math class I took there. I ended up with a 3 point zero GPA, however, because I wasn't as fortunate in some of my other required classes.

My grades were good enough to qualify for a grant, and one grant that I had applied for required me to tutor math for students K through 12th grade, and one of my students was Jerrica Calypso. Ironically, Jerrica’s mother was the District Attorney of Matheson county. Fortunately, nobody knew of my criminal record, because I had done time in San Diego.

I wanted to make sure that she did good in math, so that if anyone ever found out about my criminal record, Jerrica’s improved grades would vouch for my integrity. Fate dealt me an unkind hand yet again, because Jerrica was, without a doubt, my most difficult student. She was fourteen, yet she still had not learned her multiplication tables. This wasn't her fault, though. From K through the second grade, Jerrica and her family lived in Southern California. In that school district, multiplication wasn't taught until the third grade, but Jerrica’s family moved to the central coast of California during the Summer between second and third grade. In the Matheson county school district, multiplication was taught in the second grade, and they moved on to division in the third grade.

By not knowing her multiplication tables, division was too far beyond her grasp, and her grades plummeted. She became discouraged, and her problems in math haunted her until her mother finally decided to hire a tutor, because as a District Attorney, she just didn't have the time she needed to tutor her daughter herself. That's when I came along.

It wasn't easy to teach her, but eventually I figured out games I'd created that helped her memorize her multiplication tables, as well as various pre-algebra formulas. By the time her grades went from F's to C's, and from C's to B's, she fell in love with me. I tried to discourage her, but if I had dropped any of the students I was tutoring, I was afraid I would be denied the grant that would allow me to transfer to Bullet Bay University. I couldn't qualify for a loan, because I didn't have collateral. A grant was the only way I would be able to attend the University.

She was really the first female in recent memory who had claimed to be in love with me; two other girls had been in love with me during two seperate occasions in my childhood, but my mother chose to relocate to a different city, ending any possibility for pursuing those relationships. That is why, when I arrived in Matheson county during my teen years, I vowed never to leave the area. I planned on raising my children and grandchildren here on the central coast of California.

The last time I had seen Jerrica had been almost one week before the lab accident. As always, she proclaimed her never-ending love for me, and reminded me that her eighteenth birthday was in January, and that she expected a ring from me. An engagement ring.

I knew what I had to do. It was ten miles to Jerrica’s house, and I had to find her. She was the only one I could trust to help me track down the criminals that were responsible for my diminished stature. I stood up, and said goodbye to my ant friends, and started walking South...

If I could walk one mile a day, I knew I could reach the coast in about a week and a half. As I mentioned before, one mile to me is equivalent to between thirty and thirty-one miles. So I set out, as I had done the day I had first been miniaturized, before my unfortunate detour. With revenge on my mind, I had a new goal: to seek out Jerrica Calypso, and enlist her help to formulate my plan of retribution on those responsible for transforming me into Deuce Orion, the six millimeter man!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Six: Deuce the Sleuth!

I continued on my journey for several hours. I was hoping to find a house to seek shelter underneath it, but I had even better luck than that.

As I came to the top of a hill, I looked down to see a strawberry field, seeming to stretch out in all directions. At six millimeters tall, to me, it seemed much bigger than it really was. To a normal-sized person, it was probably about one acre. Not very big for a strawberry farm, but much larger than an average garden.

I couldn’t actually smell the strawberries, Nixie the Pixie had explained the science behind miniaturization and she had told me that shrunken people couldn’t smell normal sized scents. Despite that, I could imagine in my mind what the strawberries smelled like.

I ran down the incline at top speed, racing toward the nearest plant. Once I got there, I had to climb up one of the mounds of dirt that had been formed in rows, where the strawberries had been planted. To me, it was like climbing up a small hill. To a normal-sized person, it would've been small enough to step over in a single stride.

A ripe strawberry was leaning against the mound of dirt that the strawberry plant was rooted in. I could imagine greedily digging into the juicy outer layer of the succulent fruit, and savoring mouthful after delicious mouthful, but Nixie had made me immortal with no need for food.

I sat down to relax. I had covered a lot of ground since I'd left the place where I saw the ants, and I needed a break. As I sat there, it occurred to me that I was better off staying here for a few days, because I had a long journey ahead of me, and I didn't know how out in the open I would be further south. I stood up to survey my surroundings.

There were strawberry plants as far as I could see, but in the distance, I could see a house. It was old, probably built in the 1940's or 1950's. It wasn't in really bad shape, but that old house had definitely seen better days. I walked a little bit farther down the length of the elevated row I was standing on, to find a place to set up camp.

After arriving at a point not quite halfway between one end of the strawberry field and the other, I decided to set up camp in a spot where a large number of ripe strawberries clung to the dirt, where they would camouflage me. I dug a cave into the side of the dirt mound, and concealed the entrance with bits of leaves from strawberry plants, and various weeds growing in the gully between the two raised lanes where the strawberry plants grew.

I knew that I could only stay a couple of days at best, because these strawberries looked very ripe, and harvest time was probably drawing near. I fell asleep easily that night.

I woke up some time in the middle of the night, because I heard a car engine. At my diminished stature, I had very acute hearing, and ordinary sounds seemed to be greatly amplified.

I emerged from my shelter and stood up, to see where the sounds of the car engine were coming from. The car was definitely parked on the dirt road that I had crossed on the other side of the slight incline at the back end of the strawberry farm. When the sounds stopped, a group of shadowy figures emerged on the horizon, and I could see them climbing over the fence that I had simply walked under.

Each of them had bags with them, and they started picking strawberries. At first I was worried that they would find me, but they were concentrating on an area at the other end of the strawberry field, so I didn't have anything to worry about. They continued picking, and this went on for close to an hour. When their bags were full, they left the same way they had come, and disappeared over the fence. I heard the car engine start up again, and they were gone, so I went back to my hollowed out shelter and went back to sleep.

The next morning, after I woke up, I decided to explore the property. I walked down the length of the elevated row where my shelter was located, and made my way toward the house. It took longer than you might think.

Once I was in the front yard, it occurred to me that the owner might be a pet lover, and I worried about encountering a vicious dog or a hungry cat. I didn't see any dog bowls or plates of dry cat food, or any other evidence of a pet, but I remained alert just in case.

The front door of the house opened, and I saw a very old woman step out. She slowly made her way to the side of the house, and gradually worked her way to the back. She spent a good deal of time examining the strawberry field, obviously aware of the events of the previous night. After spending close to a half an hour walking around the perimeter of her farm, she returned to her house and went back inside.

While exploring the front yard, at what I assumed to be about just before noon, a postal delivery truck pulled up in the driveway. A postal worker got out, and walked toward the front door with some letters and junk mail. The old woman opened the front door, and the mailman handed the mail to her.

The old woman addressed the postal worker, "They're back at it again, Pete! Those hooligans stole more of my strawberries last night!"

The postal worker had a look of concern on his face, and replied, "It's probably a bunch of teenagers, Mrs. Chaney!"

The old woman replied, "But if they keep it up, come harvest time, there won't even be enough strawberries left to pay the workers and break even! I use that money to buy Christmas presents for the grandchildren!"

"Have you tried reporting it to the police?" asked the postal worker.

"Oh, yes, that's the first thing I did when it started becoming a problem, but they only have just so many patrol cars on duty at that hour, and whoever it is that's been doing this, cleans me out and leaves before the police even know what's going on!" replied the old woman.

The postal worker said, "It's too bad you can't hire someone to watch your property one of these nights, so you can catch those bastards red-handed!"

"Not on Social Security! I'm barely getting by as it is!" replied the old woman.

"Well, I have to get back to my rounds, good luck on catching those thieves, Mrs. Chaney!"

"You have yourself a nice day too, Pete!" said the old woman, and she went back inside, and the postal worker left in his mail truck.

What they didn't know was that Mrs. Chaney did have someone to watch her property, and I figured that I owed her at least that much, after making camp on her land. I already had a plan in mind!

After nightfall, I made my way to the back of the property, and up the incline, and down the other side to the dirt road on the other side. I sat there and waited for the car to return. I waited for several hours, and then one or two hours more, but nobody arrived. If I could've had some coffee to keep me awake, that would've helped, but I didn't, so I started getting really sleepy. Eventually, I finally fell asleep.

I woke up to the sound of a car engine, just like the night before, but this time it was much louder, because I was near the dirt road where it parked. An alarmingly large portion of the stars were blocked from my field of vision by the immense vehicle that seemed to be as large as a building. The two doors opened, and a group of teenagers emerged from the car and slammed the doors shut. The sound was so loud to me, that I thought I was going to have permanent hearing loss.

When they had ascended the slight incline and had hopped over the fence, I emerged from my hiding place, and walked around to the back of the car. There was just what I was looking for, big as day. The license plate!

I didn't have anything to write with, so I had to memorize it. The numbers and letters didn't spell out anything in my mind right away, so if I had less time, I wouldn't have been able to remember the seven digit combination of letters and numbers.

Eventually, as I studied the license plate, I began to work out a pattern in my mind. Two of the digits, for instance, were the same last two numbers of the year a relative of mine was born. The remaining number was a 7, which was easy to remember, because I had always thought of it as an unlucky number. The remaining letters had no particular significance at first, but then I worked out an acronym in my mind, so that each letter stood for a word in a sentence that was ridiculous enough that I knew I would never forget it. Once I had the license plate memorized, I high-tailed it back to the edge of the dirt road, where the grass was tall enough to camouflage me from the juvenile delinquents until they left.

Close to an hour later, they returned to their car, with plastic grocery bags stuffed full of Mrs. Chaney's strawberries. They had no idea that this would be the last time they would be able to steal strawberries from this farm for a long time!

After they drove away, I began to make my way toward the front of Mrs. Chaney's house. Up and over the incline, down the length of the rows of strawberry plants, and on to the front door. At six millimeters tall, I doubt if I could've traversed that distance in an hour if I'd been running as fast as I possibly could, so even traveling at a moderate pace took the better part of three hours, and by then it was almost daybreak.

This worked to my advantage, however, because I needed the light of the sun to see what I was doing anyway. First, I dug trenches many times wider than my body, and I dug them many times longer than they were wide. Eventually, I had the letters and numbers of the license plate spelled out in the dirt in front of Mrs. Chaney's porch. It's a good thing she didn't take care of her yard, because the fact that she had no grass growing in front of her porch really helped. If I had been forced to write the message in a planter on the side of her porch, it might have gone unnoticed.

After the trenches were dug, I began gathering pebbles to fill in the trenches. Of course, to me the pebbles were like huge boulders, and progress was slow. The sun had been up for over an hour, and I was barely getting started. I had to scout and search far and wide to gather the amount of pebbles I needed. I had to cover an area about 20 yards long and 20 yards wide to get enough of them, and at six millimeters tall, that is quite a wide area to cover!

I decided to take a break after the numbers and letters of the license plate were spelled out before I continued. I still wasn't done yet, I still needed to come up with some kind of a message, so if Mrs. Chaney read it, she would know that these were the numbers and letters of the license plate of the kids who had been stealing her strawberries.

Before I had a chance, though, a paperboy rode by on his bicycle and threw Mrs. Chaney's morning paper towards her porch and missed; it landed right on top of the trenches that I had dug and filled with pebbles! It was much too large and heavy for me to even think about moving it. I was just lucky it hadn't landed on top of me, or I would've been crushed beneath the tremendous weight, and all of my problems would've been over.

Mrs. Chaney must've been an early riser, because I barely had time to get out of the way before she opened the door to retrieve her morning newspaper. When she picked up the paper, she saw the numbers and letters I had spelled out, but other than making an inquisitive remark about it, she completely ignored it. It wasn't until the postal worker returned that something was done.

When he arrived shortly before noon, as he apparently does every day, he saw the numbers and letters of the license plate I had spelled out in the dirt, and asked Mrs. Chaney about it.

She replied, "I don't know who wrote that. What do you think it means?"

The postal worker responded, "Mrs. Chaney, I think someone is trying to help you out here! Maybe someone knows who's doing this, and they're just trying to let you know without letting their friends realize they're being ratted out! I suggest you call the police immediately!"

After the postal worker left, Mrs. Chaney did as he had instructed her, and not long after that, a patrol car arrived on the scene. Mrs. Chaney invited them in, and a while after that, she took them on a tour of her farm, to show them the areas where strawberries had been pilfered.

The police left, and that seemed to be the end of it, until some reporters arrived from the local newspaper. They went inside, and came out with the old lady, and they took some pictures of her standing next to her strawberry field. I figured that I had done my part in all of this, and that it was time to move on, but I decided to stick around for one more day, to see the newspaper the next morning. Besides, I loved those strawberries, and I would've made any excuse to remain there another day.

Sure enough, the next day, when the paper boy threw the morning newspaper onto Mrs. Chaney's front yard, there it was on the front page. I could see a photograph of Mrs. Chaney, and the title of the article had to do with the arrest of a group of nineteen year old delinquents, for stealing strawberries. They probably didn't get very much jail time, but I knew that whenever they do finally get released, their probation officer will be a thorn in their side for a very long time.

Knowing that I had made a difference in someone's life gave me a feeling of accomplishment. It had never occurred to me before that a six millimeter man could make a difference in someone's life, but I proved myself wrong. So I set out before I lost too much daylight, to continue my journey toward the coast, to find Jerrica. I made my way south, as my quest continued!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Seven: My Journey Continues!

I walked by night and hid during the day, to avoid being captured. I was making my way south, trying to avoid the center of town. Eventually I arrived at a creek at the north end of town, but it would do no good to try to float down the creek on a twig, because the creek cuts through the center of Matheson City, which would make me a sitting duck.

I made a shelter from twigs and leaves, and hid in some tall grass growing on the high bank of the creek. A noise woke me up in the afternoon, and I looked out from between the leaves of my shelter and saw a woman with a bicycle. A normal-sized woman, who to me at six millimeters tall, was a towering colossus.

She was putting a patch repair kit back in the tool pouch beneath her bicycle seat. I noticed that when she zipped it back up, she had left it open enough so there was enough clearance for me to climb in and hitch a ride. That is, if I could manage to get there and climb in before she took off. She was standing there, taking a drink from her water bottle, so I made a run for it.

Her mountain bike was lying horizontally on the ground, so it was in the best position for me to climb up to the tool pouch. I ran beneath her well-muscled legs, but I knew I didn't have enough time to admire her statuesque beauty or her perfect tan if I wanted to make it to the tool pouch before she resumed her journey. I grabbed onto the zipper of the pouch just before she put her water bottle back and got on her bike. As I climbed up and into the tool pouch, we were already moving.

I fell to the bottom of the polyester tool pouch and banged my knee on a wrench, but the pain didn't even have time to register in my mind before I realized I wasn’t sure exactly where this woman was riding to.

I started getting sleepy, so I curled up and fell asleep. I had gotten accustomed to sleeping during the day while I was out hiking, so to me, this was my normal sleeping period. I slept like a log, and I awoke to a jarring motion that sent me tumbling against the side of the tool pouch. Everything was tilted sideways, so I climbed to the opening of the pouch to take a look around.

I was amazed. During the time I'd been asleep, the bicyclist had pedalled over 7 miles, from the city of Matheson all the way to a small town on the coast adjacent to the tourist town where Jerrica Calypso lived. I recognized some of the hillside and terrain. The bike was leaning on its side against a log, so I climbed out and jumped down onto the log. The woman was tying her shoelaces, so I climbed down on the other side of the log so I'd be out of her view when she stood up again.

After she got on her bike and pedalled up the hill into the distance, I walked around the log to the edge of the road, still hidden in the grass at the side of the road that leads toward Jerrica’s house, which was about a mile and a half away. As I watched the giantess pedal away on her bike, I wondered what the deal was with her. Over the years, I'd seen people like her many times before. These people who wear spandex painted-on shorts and ride bikes across the highways of America. Do these people have jobs? Does their whole life revolve around riding bicycles across the country? And if so, where exactly do they go? Do they just ride for the hell of it? How do they support their bicycling habit?

As I pondered my George Carlin style musings, I thought of the campground on the other side of the road. It was a place called Avalon hot springs. My mother and I had stayed there a year before we moved to this area, when I was still a teenager.

It would take me at the very least an entire day, maybe a day and a half to reach Jerrica’s house, so I figured that it would be best to try to hide among the unsuspecting campers on the other side of the road before I continued on to the last leg of my journey.

I walked to the corner where Highway One and Avalon Creek road intersected. I probably waited about a half an hour before I decided that it was safe to cross. I ran as fast as I could, and it still took me nearly thirty seconds to get to the other side. I was lucky, too; just as I reached the other side, a long stream of traffic went by, and a few bicyclists.

The curb on my side of the road towered over my head, but it was so weather-beaten that the individual pebbles making up the side of the asphalt curb were exposed enough that I could use them to climb up on, like rungs on a ladder. I made my way up, and stood on the top of the curb. I still had a little higher to climb to reach the summit of this micro-mountain I was climbing. I made my way to the top, and stood at the summit. Strands of gold colored grass swayed in the breeze, blowing back and forth so high above me that they seemed like trees.

As I looked down to survey the campsite, I could see that the campground was filled to capacity. It was the middle of September, so that was surprising. There were tents galore, and a lot of motorhomes. No less than half a dozen people were barbecuing, and there was a volleyball game going on. The only bad news was that I saw a couple of dogs down there, so I knew hiding in the camp was out of the question.

Before I left, I stayed and watched the volleyball game. It was kind of nice to be able to watch a sporting event, even if they were just amateurs. When I was staying with Amber, I rarely had the opportunity to watch any kind of sports on TV, because she always watched those kid shows and those stupid soap operas. Any time I asked her if I could watch a ballgame, she was usually on some kind of a power trip, and denied my request, for no other reason than because she enjoyed telling me 'no' whenever I asked her for a special privilege.

I had to cross the street again, and it took even longer to get across this time than it did before. I wasn't worried, though. There was no need to be in a hurry, because it had taken me over a month to get this far, and I was almost to Jerrica’s house, so minor setbacks like this weren't bothering me. After I had crossed Avalon Creek road, I made my way up the hill and onwards down the road that intersected it, southwest towards Jerrica’s house. I had made it a habit of sleeping during the day and walking at night to avoid capture, but I wouldn't need to hide during the day for most of the rest of my journey, because there weren't any houses for another three quarters of a mile. All I needed to do was to watch out for people in cars and an occasional bicyclist who might see me, and I'd be all right.

By nightfall, I was not quite halfway there. The entire town was built parallel to the 101 freeway, and that worked to my advantage. I was in the middle of town, but I didn't have to worry about being seen, because I had crossed the road after it had gotten dark, and I was walking on the other side of a chain link fence that was next to the freeway, on the opposite side of the street as the main street of the town I had to pass through. I continued on through the night, because I didn't think it would've made sense to stop and camp out this close to my destination.

By early dawn the next day, I had arrived in the beach town where Jerrica lived. It was still early morning, so there wasn't much traffic on the street yet. That helped me cross several streets and the main road that cuts through the center of town. By the time the early morning rush was on and people were driving to work, I had made it to the front of the gated community where Jerrica’s upper-middle class well-to-do home was located. Jerrica’s mother was the District Attorney of Matheson county, so it shouldn't have been any surprise that they were this affluent, but it never ceased to amaze me that I knew people who were so upper-class.

And there it was. The familiar driveway with two cars parked there. A pink Volkswagen that had been Jessica's 16th birthday present, and the Mercedes owned by Jessica's mother. The two-story home was just as I remembered it. I walked up to the front door, wondering how I was going to get inside.

There was only one concrete step that I had to ascend to reach the front door, but to me it might as well have been a mile high. Fortunately, there was an agave plant in the planter next to Jessica's front door, and it was high enough to bring me up above the elevation of the 8 inch high concrete step. I began my climb, and after about 15 minutes, I was a couple of feet in the air. As I looked down, I realized that the lowest leaf was too high above the step for me to jump down safely, but if I kept climbing, I could reach the living room window.

Just as I reached the living-room window, I saw a sight that made my skin crawl. It was a cat. It was a black cat that roamed freely through the neighborhood, but I knew if it spotted me, I was through. Felines, at least in my opinion, are nature's most thorough and deadly predators.

I knew I had two choices: either stay and wait for it to leave, or pound on the window and hope someone inside was awake, and hope yet again that if they were awake, that they would open the window in time before the cat pounced on me. I chose to stay and wait.

To Be Continued!

Chapter Eight: Arrival At My Destination!

I stood on the window ledge and tried to remain absolutely still. The cat hadn't seen me, and despite knowing that Nixie the Pixie had told me that normal sized people and animals can’t smell shrunken people and vice versa, I wasn’t completely convinced. It just wandered around the front yard, smelling the grass. The cat seemed interested in a gopher hole in the center of the yard, and was circling the hole as it made its way around. The cat was obviously aware that a gopher made its home there.

The silence was shattered by the arrival of the paper boy on his bicycle. When he threw the morning newspaper, it smacked the concrete not far from the cat, and scared it away. After the cat disappeared around the side of the house and the paper boy was far enough down the street, I began pounding my fists on the window as hard as I could. One hundred men my size couldn't have knocked a hole in that window, because it was almost twice as thick as I was tall. It was obvious that the sounds of my pounding weren't very loud to normal sized ears, but I had to try to make contact with Jerrica or her mother before the cat returned.

I detected movement through the thick glass. A familiar figure went about her daily routine as she prepared to leave for work. It was Jerrica’s mother, known to the law-abiding citizens of Matheson county and feared by its criminals as District Attorney Susan Calypso.

As she tried to hold both her briefcase and her morning cup of coffee a figure stirred on the couch. Covered in a blanket, Jerrica had apparently fallen asleep on the living room couch watching television, which was a consistent habit for her on weekends and holidays. Mrs. Calypso had more than enough money to buy a TV and VCR for Jerrica to keep in her bedroom, but Susan Calypso wouldn't allow it. Susan Calypso firmly believed that the bedroom was a place for studying.

When Mrs. Calypso opened the front door, it became apparent why my futile efforts at making contact by pounding on the window had zero effect. My tiny ear-drums were assaulted by the music of a heavy-metal band transmitted through the now open front door. The volume probably wasn't loud to the ears of a normal-sized person, but my six millimeter stature had endowed me with very acute hearing; the sound penetrated my ears at the deep end of the bass spectrum, minus about half of the higher-pitched sounds, but with the decibels amplified to a level equal to that of a jet engine starting up less than a foot from my ears. It had been years since I had seen a heavy metal video on TV, and I found myself wondering if they were having one of those top-one-hundred-videos-of-all-time countdowns on one of the music video channels.

The front door opened. Jerrica’s mother walked over to the driveway, and started up her Mercedes. The front door was still open, so I took a running start and leaped from the window sill to the leaf of the agave plant just below me. I made my way down the plant, sliding down and letting gravity do most of the work. Mrs. Calypso let her car idle as she returned to the house, and shut off the television. She probably wasn't as concerned about the wasted electricity used by a television that wasn't being watched so much as she was by the fact that the lyrics of the song were encouraging listeners to commit crimes, and those lyrics were being amplified to the ears of neighbors who knew Susan as the District Attorney of Matheson county.

I jumped from the bottom leaf to the door jamb, and ran in just as Mrs. Calypso turned from the TV and started walking back to the door. I ran behind a house plant just as she closed the door behind her and left. She hadn't seen me. I had made it. After all of this time, I'd finally reached Jerrica’s house. Now, my only problem was finding a way to get her attention without getting accidentally stepped on.

Jerrica was still asleep up on the couch, far above me. I knew it was best to avoid the areas of the carpet that were walked on the most, by sticking close to furniture and the edges of the walls, because there was no way of knowing if Jerrica would suddenly wake up and lumber across the center of the carpet without seeing me, and I didn't want to be in her path if that happened. The world can be a dangerous place when you're six millimeters tall.

I saw the basket that contained Susan's yarn and sewing supplies near the living room closet. It had always been there, but I had never paid attention to it when I was normal-sized, but now I saw that it was the key to making contact with Jerrica.

I began to climb the wicker basket. It was about eighteen inches high, which to me seemed like the size of a building. By the time I was halfway up, the height would've made me dizzy had I been at the same proportionate height at normal size, but I knew my decreased mass protected me from falling from altitudes that would kill a normal size person if they fell from an equivalent altitude.

There was a spindle of purple yarn, and I realized it would contrast with the off-white carpet. All I had to do was unwind enough yarn and spell out Jerrica’s name in cursive, and she would see it. Climbing the yarn was easier than climbing up the wicker basket, and soon I found the end of the strand of yarn.

I pulled it and unwound the strand of yarn, working my way around and around the top of the spindle of yarn. I lowered what I unwound to the carpet below, and after a few minutes I had what I needed, so I climbed back down.

I stretched out the length of yarn on the carpet, and began manipulating it until I spelled out the name "Jerrica” in large enough cursive letters so large that a normal sized person would be able to easily see it. I sat down by the yarn, and waited for Jerrica to wake up. It had taken me a half hour to climb the wicker basket and retrieve the yarn, so another hour or two wouldn't matter.

She finally woke up about an hour later, and walked over to the bathroom. She was still sleepy, so she didn't notice the yarn. When she came out of the bathroom, she walked straight toward the kitchen, then stopped when she spotted her name spelled out in yarn.

"Deuce?" She asked.

"Deuce!" she shouted, when she realized that it was really me.

She hopped down on her knees and kneeled down to get a better look at me, and I thought she was going to collide with me and smash me into oblivion, but she stopped just in front of me. She was titanic, noticeably larger than Amber had been. Her blonde hair was longer than the last time I had seen her, but she was as cute as ever. Her first reaction was to place the palm of her hand in front of me. I jumped up into her hand.

Jerrica lifted me up, and I felt the same momentary fear I had felt when I had first been captured by Amber, but my fears subsided as I realized that I was safe with Jerrica, because I knew she was still in love with me. I could tell by the look in her eyes. She started to cry.

"Deuce," she asked, "what happened to you? Everyone thinks you're dead!"

"Take me to professor Stiles, he might be able to reverse the shrinking process!”

"I'll take you to the professor right after we eat breakfast, Deuce! He's just as worried about you as everyone else! Are you hungry?"

I explained how the time traveler named Nixie had made me immortal and no longer in need of food or water.

As I watched her eat, it occurred to me that I was finally in the company of someone I completely trusted. I had at long last reached my goal, and I felt relieved. The world is a terrifying place when you're six millimeters tall, with cats, giant insects, and girls like Amber who thought of me as a convenient toy that could be kept in a jar, completely oblivious to the fact that I was a human being with the same rights and freedoms as her.

After breakfast, Jerrica got ready, and carried me to her car and dropped me in the cup holder next to the driver's seat. She started up her Volkswagen, and drove to the university. She knew where the professor's lab was located, and though it was late September and classes had started, he was busy with his experiments, as usual.

Jerrica kept me clenched in her fist, gently, to surprise the professor, as she walked up the path behind the physics building where his lab was located.

"Hi, Professor Stiles!"

After a brief pause, I heard the unmistakable voice of the professor. "Jerrica! How have you been?"

"You're never going to believe this, professor!" said Jerrica, dropping me on the table. "Look who showed up at my house today!"

I was on one of the tables in the profesor's familiar laboratory. He walked up, amazed.

"Unbelievable," said the professor, "but it verifies my theory!"

Before Professor Stiles could go on, Jerrica interrupted, "Deuce needs you to find a way to reverse the shrinking process.” Jerrica couldn't care less about the professor's theories, and would tell him to his face, if he ever asked.

"Amazing..." said the professor, "young man, I would appreciate it if you would explain where you've been for the past month and a half! I'm sure it must be extraordinary!"

"Yeah Deuce," said Jerrica, "I think you at least owe me an explanation... I've been worried sick about you!"

And so I began to tell them of my adventures. How I started to shrink right after the professor left to go call the police the night the lab was robbed, how I ended up in Santa Margarita and got captured by Amber, the car accident that enabled me to escape... about halfway through my story the professor went and brewed a cup of coffee. I continued my story, telling about the strawberry thieves I helped capture, and my trip along the El Camino Real to Jerrica’s house in the tool pouch under a bicyclist's seat. When my story was finished, every detail of it, both the professor and Jerrica were astonished.

"It's amazing that you survived, Deuce!" said the professor, "You should've stayed with that girl, you probably would've been safer! But everything turned out all right in the end!"

"And Deuce," said Jerrica, "I remember when those strawberry thieves got busted! The newspaper tried to make it look like something supernatural happened... but it was you all along!"

"Professor," I asked, "Do you think you'll be able to duplicate the cold fusion experiment that those thieves destroyed?"

The professor began to chuckle to himself and said, "They got what they deserved, Deuce... the cold fusion experiment turned out to be a dud!"

"What do you mean, professor?" I asked.

The professor replied, "There was no nuclear fusion taking place at any time during the reaction, however, I did stumble on the theory for miniaturization, as your reduced stature demonstrates!"

The professor went on to explain, "The power gauge displayed an increase in kilowatts, but it was just the atoms in the air in the vicinity of the reactor being stripped of electrons as the tritium-deuterium solution gave off neutrino particles. What I thought was an increase in wattage was actually just a side effect of the miniaturization reaction that shrunk you, Deuce!"

“Nixie told me you used a piece of meteorite that was part of a time vessel from the future, is that true, professor?”

“Yes, another professor acquired the wreckage of the space weapon that crashed at Pirate’s cove near Avila beach. He allowed me to borrow it to try to reverse engineer it. I figured out how to activate some of the technology, but not completely. I wanted to unlock the secrets of fusion, but stumbled onto neutrino dissimilation instead.”

"So what does that mean?" Jerrica asked professor Stiles. "Can you make Deuce big again?"

"It means," replied the professor, "that I failed to solve the mystery of cold fusion, but in the process, I inadvertantly discovered how to miniaturize atoms! However, I regret to inform the two of you that Deuce can never be restored to his normal stature, at least not with existing technology. My guess is that it'll be at least a century before science can perfect a neutrino transfer technique that can restore miniaturized atoms to normal size! Deuce my friend, I'm afraid you'll have to get accustomed to being the world's one and only six millimeter man!"

"Professor," I asked, "I just want one thing. Promise me that you'll testify in court when we bring those bozos who robbed the lab up on charges! I want revenge against the bandits, and the jerk who hired them!"

"Without hesitation, Deuce my friend! It's the least I could do for you after all you've been through!"

After the professor promised to testify, Jerrica took the amplifier equipment and put me back in my jar, and took me home. She was determined to help me track down whoever was responsible for robbing the lab. On her home computer, Jerrica tried to figure out who might be the most likely suspect responsible for hiring the crooks who robbed Professor Stiles's lab. I had spent the past month pondering this, so I immediately asked her to look up the shareholders of stock in the local electrical companies. After checking PG&E, SMUD, and Southern California Edison, one of the local companies had the name of a stockholder listed, and it was a name I recognized.

"That's him!" I yelled up to Jerrica pointing at the computer screen, and she recognized the name, too. "He lives around here," said Jerrica, "that's Doctor Von Darius, the former Bullet Bay University professor who got kicked out of Cal Poly for running a gambling operation! Do you think he's involved, Deuce?"

"He was asking me for the schematics to the technology that turns hydrogen into tritium just minutes before the robbery, and one of his associates was at the lab a few weeks before it was robbed asking questions," I replied, "I think it's a safe bet that he's a suspect!"

And so now it was coming full circle. With Jerrica’s mom as district attorney for Matheson county, it wouldn't be too difficult for her to secure a subpoena for Doctor Von Darius to have his day in court. After all my trials and tribulations, it looked like I might finally have my chance for revenge against the man responsible for turning me into Deuce Orion, the world's first six millimeter man!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Nine: Doctor Von Darius Gets A Subpoena!

"I just don't know," said Mrs. Calypso, "this Doctor Von Darius might be guilty, but we need more proof to subpoena him."

I was standing on the dining room table, and Jerrica and her mom were sitting, discussing the situation over coffee. Jerrica had placed my thimble upside down, and I had a stairs glued together with toothpicks to make my way up to sit on the thimble.

Later that day, Susan Calypso had a construction crew knock out a hole in a wall in Jerrica’s bedroom and had a fishtank put in. This was my new home, carefully concealed behind a curtain. From the top of the fishtank to the bottom of the wall above it there was enough space for Jerrica to fit her arm to reach in and pick me up.

I thought I'd be safe there while Jerrica was away for the day, and I was, until the arrival of the twins. Brittany and Rayna were Jerrica’s cousins, and they came to stay for the weekend. They were 12, almost 13, and they had an insatiable curiosity.

I hadn't been introduced to them, because I was supposed to be a secret. I was in my aquarium in the wall that Saturday when Jerrica and her mom were gone until early afternoon.

The curtain was brushed aside, and I found myself looking into the faces of Brittany and Rayna. I was alarmed, because I knew two unsupervised kids could get into a lot of mischief.

"Brittany, look!” Rayna said, "It's a little man!"

Rayna reached her hand in and grabbed me. It was futile to resist, so I didn't even try to run from her.

"Wow," Rayna said to me, "how did you get shrunk?"

I began my tale. It took about fifteen minutes to tell her everything, from the day the lab was robbed until I met up with Jerrica.

Just then, Jerrica and her mom arrived home. Rayna popped me into her mouth, and said, "I'm keeping him. Tell Jerrica that I swallowed him!"

Rayna was still standing there inside the bedroom when Jerrica showed up.

"We found Deuce," Brittany said, "and Rayna swallowed him!"

Rayna stuck out her tongue to prove this, with me safely tucked in her cheek.

"I don't believe you!" Jerrica said, and stuck her finger in Rayna’s mouth to retrieve me. She pulled me out, wet from Rayna’s saliva.

"Don't ever do that again!" Jerrica said, "you're forbidden to come in here any more!"

"Deuce, are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, "a little wet, but none the worse for wear!"

The next morning I was sitting on the dining room table while Jerrica, the twins, and her mother were eating breakfast. The subject of getting a pool built came up. Mrs. Calypso was under the impression that she was getting a good deal, because she had wanted a pool of certain dimensions, but decided on a pool with exactly half the dimensions of the original. The contractors were charging her one quarter of the original cost, and she thought she was making out like a bandit! How could I explain to her that she was getting ripped off?

When I tried to explain it to Jerrica, she threw a cloth napkin over me to shut me up. She thought I was crazy!

"But I'm telling you, Jerrica,” I explained, "it will only cost them one eighth of the original cost, so they're charging your mother double!"

"How do you explain this idea of yours?" Jerrica asked.

"It's called the square-cube law, or in some circles, the cube-square law!" I told her. "Pull a sugar cube out of that sugar bowl, and I'll show you!"

Jerrica pulled out a sugar cube, and placed it on the dining room table. "Now how many sugar cubes," I explained, would it take to double the length, width, and height of that one sugar cube?"

"That's easy!" Jerrica replied. "Two sugar cubes!" And as if in response, she lifted out another sugar cube and stacked it on top of the other one.

"Now get out six more sugar cubes!" I commanded the titanic teen.

Jerrica got out six more, and I told her to arrange the eight cubes into a larger cube. "That giant cube," I went on, "is twice the length, twice the width, and twice the height of the first cube. Now do you understand the square-cube law? It is only taking the pool contractor one eighth of the work to build the smaller pool, but they're charging you one quarter of the price! They're charging you twice as much as they should!"

It was like a light went on in their heads. I had studied engineering in college, and the square-cube law (or the cube-square law, depending on who you were talking to), was something that was basic to any engineer, but it was uncommon knowledge to the average person.

Mrs. Calypso got out of her seat and began looking up numbers in the phone book. She got the number of the pool contractor, called them up, and found out who their boss was. When she got off the phone, she had amazing news.

"Their employer," Mrs. Calypso informed us, "is none other than Doctor Von Darius, that scientist you were after, Deuce!"

"Can you bring him up on charges?" I asked.

"No problem!" she replied. "It'll be done before the end of the business day! I have the paperwork with the estimates that prove he tried to swindle me!"

Jerrica was puzzled. "Deuce," she said, "I understand that he's being brought up on charges for trying to swindle my mother, but how will that help you prove he was behind the robbery at the professor’s lab?"

It was a good question, and I didn't have a quick, easy answer. But as long as we could get Dr. Von Darius in a courtroom, it improved my chances of proving he was behind the robbery at the lab!

I spent most of my time in my chamber, with a heat lamp to provide warmth, because even though Nixie the Pixie had made me immortal, I still enjoyed the warmth of the artificial heating. Had I not been immortal, my body temperature may have been an issue, making me vulnerable to low temperatures.

As the weekend ended, the twins left and returned home, and several weeks later it came time for Dr. Von Darius to appear in court. During that time, something fortunate happened. Someone came forward and claimed to know that Von Darius was behind the robbery at the lab. He worked for the pool company Von Darius owned, and he got caught with a large amount of methamphetamine. In order to get a lighter sentence, he agreed to cooperate with Calypso and the police in prosecuting Doctor Von Darius.

The arraignment came and went, there was another court date set, and that came and went. Eventually, it came time to get down to the nitty gritty, and Dr. Von Darius began to testify on his behalf. Jerrica’s mother came back from work every day and kept me informed of the events. Eventually, I received a subpoena to appear in court.

Professor Stiles built an elaborate glass containment system with a built in heat lamp, and a voice amplifier, so normal sized people could hear me more easily inside the court room. When my day in court came, there were reporters first from the local news, then from other areas of the state, and eventually, the whole country! I quickly became famous over night as the world's first six millimeter man.

Jerrica was considered my guardian, and she was approached with offers from people who assumed I was a possession, and wanted to purchase me. Jerrica just brushed them off. In court, Doctor Von Darius sat there with his teenage daughter Alyndria. She was a punk rocker, dressed in shredded fishnet stockings, a black leather miniskirt, Doc Marten boots, and a Sex Pistols T-shirt. She had part of her head shaved, and the other part kind of long. She was really pretty, and she had nice legs, but I could tell by the look on her face that she was just as evil as her father.

In court I described how I was approached by Dr. Von Darius to give him the schematics for the technique Professor Stiles developed of converting hydrogen to tritium, and how the gunmen opened fire on the reactor. I also explained that I found out that Von Darius was a major stockholder in a power company that would make money if they could acquire the patent to a new energy source.

All of this looked bad for Von Darius, but things turned around for him several weeks into the trial when the key witness against him was found admitted to the inpatient unit of the general hospital on a 5150 hold with no memory of who he was, or how Dr. Von Darius was involved in anything. Dr. Von Darius had obviously had the man injected by one of his henchmen with some type of caustic drugs or chemicals that erased his memories, to protect himself from the allegations.

In the end, the jury found Doctor Von Darius not guilty, and the trial was over. As Doctor Von Darius and his daughter prepared to leave the courtroom, his daughter Alyndria, the punk rocker chick, stopped by my glass cube and spoke with me.

"Better luck next time, little man!" she said, with a smirk on her face.

I didn't know how to respond. She continued: "I wish I could keep you as a pet! That Jerrica chick sure is lucky!"

When I got home with Jerrica, a man was waiting for us. He was from a publishing company, and he wanted me to write about my ordeal and my experience as a six millimeter man.

"I'll pay you a seven figure sum, plus a percentage of the profits!" he said. He even had a check printed up, as an advance on the deal. It sounded good, so I agreed to it. Jerrica helped me sign the contract, and she gave it to the man from the publishing company. We got to work writing my biography.

After a trip to the bank, we had to wait 24 hours for the check to clear. Jerrica would withdraw the cash for me whenever I needed any of it. I dictated to her the events of my life, and she typed it in on her laptop.

That Monday, Jerrica got the mail and found a letter for me. It was from the court, and I had a summons to appear regarding conservatorship. It turned out, my own mother had found out about me, and was suing to gain custody of me! So even though the trial of Doctor Von Darius was over, I still had to go to court again to fight for my freedom!

To Be Continued!

Chapter Ten: My Mom Tries To Get Custody!

If my mother successfully gained custody of me by becoming my conservator, my sex life would be non-existent. I haven't mentioned what sex is like with Jerrica, because minors reading my memoirs might be offended by the material. But it is sufficient to say, that both Jerrica and I are consenting adults, and we do like to have a good time together.

If my mother gained custody of me, she would never allow that to happen. I just had to win this case! I had Jerrica’s mother, Susan Calypso, on my side. She would be fighting the case on my behalf.

Once again, my glass cube came into play. It was portable, with a power source for my heat lamp, and all the comforts of home. Jerrica carried it to the car with me inside, and we went to the arraignment.

My mother was there, and all that happened was basically another court date was set. Several weeks later, at the preliminary hearing, I asked for a trial, stating I didn't want to be placed on conservatorship. Basically, conservatorship is for people who are mentally or physically incapable of taking care of themselves. Because I am only six millimeters tall, I fall under this category.

Some unknown lawyer was with my mother the first couple of times we were in court, but once the trial was underway, she strolled in with Violet Hayes, the best lawyer in the county! Hayes has a reputation for never losing a case, and even though she probably lost a case or two in her time, she's better known for her many victories.

Susan Calypso tried to reassure me. "Violet may be the best lawyer in the county," she said, "but I'm the best prosecutor in the county, so we're evenly matched!"

Violet spoke for my mother. "Your honor, Deuce Orion is unable to care for himself due to his miniaturized stature, so it is in the best interest of this court that he be placed on conservatorship, and that his mother be made his conservator."

Susan took her turn to defend me. "Your honor," Susan began, "Deuce Orion is a person, with certain inalienable rights. It would be an affront to his dignity if he were forced to live under the conservatorship of his mother. Mr. Orion has revealed to me that he has no interest in living under his mother's care, and wishes to remain with my daughter Jerrica.”

The argument went back and forth. I wasn't sure where I stood. Since this was a trial, it wasn't up to the judge. A jury of twelve people would decide my fate. Trials take a long time, and I won't bore you with the day to day trivial events leading up to the jury's decision; I'll just get right to the point.

When the jury foreman stood up and read the decision, I was dumbfounded. "We, the jury find for the plaintive, and have decided that Deuce Orion is unfit to care for himself and must be placed under conservatorship..."

It made me angry. I was doing just fine living with Jerrica and her mom. But there was more! The jury foreman continued: "But we also decree that Deuce is free to choose his own conservator, and does not need to be under the specific care of his mother, but he does need to choose someone."

At this point, Jerrica stood up. "I'll volunteer to be his conservator! I'm eighteen, and I'm registered to vote!"

The judge asked me, "Mr. Orion, how do you feel about accepting Jerrica Calypso as your conservator?"

My voice amplifier was loud enough for the judge to hear me. "Yes, your honor!" I said. "I agree to accept Jerrica Calypso as my conservator!"

My mother stood up and shouted, "He's been brainwashed by that evil girl and her mother! Your honor, you need to do what's right and turn him over to my custody!"

"This is a trial, Mrs. Orion,” the judge said, "and the jury has reached it's decision! I'm afraid there's nothing more that I can do!"

I shouted in triumph, and Jerrica and her mother high-fived each other. When we went home that day, we were in a mood to celebrate. There was a van parked in the driveway, and it turned out to be a reporter from a major news network was there to interview us. They had been following the trial to its conclusion, and were interested in the results. But even though it was the best day in my life, events would soon turn it into one of the strangest days of my life...

To Be Continued!

Chapter Eleven: A Strange Turn Of Events

When we got home, after the TV interview was over, Jerrica decided to go to a movie. The movie she wanted to see was an Indie film playing in Atascadero, a town not far from where Amber lives. Since that theater was the only location in the county where the movie was playing, she left me at home and went out for the night.

I stayed home in my chamber, under my heat lamp and dozed off. Several hours later, Jerrica returned. She got the glass cube out of her closet, and put me in it. I couldn't figure out what was going on. She loaded the glass cube in the car, with me in it, and started driving.

When we arrived at our destination, Jerrica opened the passenger front door of the car and picked up my cube. Then I saw something that amazed me. It was the front of Amber Ortega’s house! Jerrica carried the cube to the front door and rang the doorbell, and Amber's mother answered. Amber quickly joined her, and eagerly took the cube in her hands.

From my perspective, my cube was huge, but I could see how small it really was as Amber carried it with me inside. One of her hands were big enough to conceal half of one side of the cube. To her, it was like a small toy!

Jerrica then told me the whole story in the Ortega living room. She had ran into Amber at the movie theater, and since Jerrica was a national celebrity because the world knew she was my guardian, Amber recognized her immediately. Amber told Jerrica her side of the story at the theater, and Jerrica decided then and there to turn me over to Amber!

It seems that since the interviews and the courtroom dramas, Jerrica had been getting death threats from people who wanted to own me. Millionaires were even offering her money for me! Jerrica decided that I was better off with Amber Ortega, since she had taken care of me before, and missed me. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, Jerrica wanted them to think I had been kidnapped. My true location would be unknown to the rest of the world. The autobiography I wrote never mentioned Amber by name, her appearance and age were left vague. This made it easier for Amber to adopt me; Jerrica warned Amber that if she revealed to the world that she possessed me, she could also receive death threats, just as Jerrica had. Amber assured both Jerrica and me that she would remain anonymous.

I decided it was for the best, because I wanted what was best for Jerrica. She promised to come visit me from time to time, and she was as good as her word. Over the next several weeks, I got used to living as Amber's toy. Sometimes, when Amber was playing with me, she would tie me to a string and lower me into her mouth, pretending that she had decided to swallow me whole. Of course, as real as it seemed to me, and I fell for it every time, Amber never hurt me.

Alone in my cube as I write this at my toy desk, it has been almost a year since my ordeal began. Amber is at school, she just started the ninth grade. Knowing there is no cure for my diminished stature, I have resigned myself to my fate; I shall spend the rest of my life as Amber's toy. But really, what could a six millimeter man ever expect to be?

THE END