#sizeblog

Zaniyah continued to press on through the alien terrain, the bush-like fibres brushing past her, and the ground littered with dust. It had been several hours since she and the continent of Europe was brought to this world, and the mission entrusted to her by the EU never left her mind for a second.

Or, rather, it felt like hours. It was, in fact, several minutes. Adjusting to one's body clock when one is half an inch tall can do that.

For some strange reason, ever since the Large Hadron Collider had malfunctioned on one version of Earth, areas of all shapes and sizes - from hamlets to super-continents, from all times and places, and from every possible angle of infinity - had been miniaturized to microscopic size and appeared randomly within the household of one Sally Bollywood (whose own world shrank around her house and appeared in front of her desk months ago). Not even entire Earths were safe. Sally was all right: every time an area appeared, its supply of food materialized within the cupboards and fridge of her kitchen and grew one item at a time to normal size whenever she needed it, and the water supply was still fresh and constant. Except for one thing:

Sally never knew of what was really going on below her field of vision, or underneath her feet.

And it was one of these feet that Zaniyah was heading for. Some of the areas materialized on Sally's arms, face, or feet, though they often didn't appear for very long. Every single populace was wiped out through a single motion of the god-like detective. It was Zaniyah's job to make contact with any civilization she came across and establish communications - however primitive or futuristic they may be.

Suddenly, mere miles away from her destination, she began to feel fatigued, weak, and dizzy. Her body became covered with goosebumps. The signs that she was about to shrink even smaller in height! Her Europe was still undergoing the process of being shrunk to the same size as every other surviving area. Little by little, they would shrink until they would stop - at the right heights the mysterious phenomena wanted them to be: from the size of crumbs to near subatomic size!

The bush-like carpet fibers seemed to sway in the clouded vision as Zaniyah tried to get a grip and stop herself from shrinking. Rays of light seemed to shine onto the outline of her body and then expand all over. Zaniyah closed her eyes and felt the shrinking process begin.

The fibers slowly shot up as if they were tree shoots fully growing into trees in minutes rather than months or years. Their brushing against Zaniyah’s body became less and less distinct as she grew smaller and smaller. All around her, the dust seemed to grow in size, becoming less like insects underneath her feet and more like rocks that dotted the landscape.

The shrinking stopped. Zaniyah opened her eyes to find herself in an equally alien landscape. The fibers were now the size of trees! Shade now replaced the burst of light that covered her body. She coughed out phlegm and spent the next five minutes getting herself back into shape. This had happened irregularly over the days of her journey, and she never knew when the next shrinking period began.

***

Eventually, Zaniyah came across the familiar metropolis of New York City - albeit a shiny, chrome-like version of the 23rd Century. The faint warping of light dissipating from the tallest buildings was a sign that it had been freshly shrunk - one or two days' ago - and not a lot of people were on the streets.

"You must be the delegate from the 21st Century Europe."

Zaniyah's gaze turned to the right as the Mayor of the city approached her.

"Yes." she replied. "It's been years since I've seen anything still alive and not been attacked by the Titaness. Many times have I seen cities fall under her gargantuan feet."

(Some civilizations, who had never heard of Sally before, began to worship her as a goddess in an attempt to get her attention, but to no avail. 'Titaness' was just one of the names they gave her.)

Night seemed to fall quickly as the last traces of eerie light faded and the 'shield' covering the city as it materialized and shrank disappeared. But Zaniyah wasn't fooled. Not one bit.

"Don't panic, but..." she began, looking up.

But the screams from within the buildings quickly rose up as every single citizen had seen what had caused the darkness to appear. Up above the sky, looming over even the unfathomably-sized carpet fibers, was Sally. She seemed to be bigger than even a god. She was standing mindlessly in her office, blowing bubblegum bubbles (filled with various continents, Earths, and the like) and deciding what to tackle next: the Mystery of the Disappearing Continents From Her World or the Case of the Infinity-Stocked Cupboards in Her Kitchen. As she was doing so, she had lifted up one of her bare feet and was playing with it, unaware (of course) of the city below. That simple movement was what caused night to fall so suddenly.

Zaniyah sighed. She had spent most of her twenties and the first third of her thirties seeing the same reactions from various people from various periods in history. This was nothing new to her.

She looked on as everyone in the city began yelling up at Sally at the tops of their voices. Sally didn't hear them. How could she? To everyone else, the sounds of her bubblegum popping was just as loud as the loudest possible sound anything could make, and her own voice speaking at normal volume was thousands of times louder than that. There were those civilizations from alternate universes who knew Sally's phone number or e-mail address, of course, and while they were the smartest ones, none of them were able to convince Sally to look down and hear them. The Indian would dismiss all the e-mails as spam and the texts coming from some practical joker. A simple phone call was also out of the question. Their voices would be completely inaudible, and Sally's voice would make them permanently deaf. Plus there was all the destruction caused by the motion of her answering her phone. Hundreds of Earths and thousands of air fleets completely taken down in one hit!

Zaniyah turned to the Mayor.

"Get someone to go to the research institute and instruct the scientists there to send messages to every civilization not wiped out by the Titaness that have Wi-Fi signals. Tell them that the Europe near the Couch of the Titaness wishes to form an alliance. We got to get that Titaness to see sense - no matter what!" "And what will you do?" the Mayor asked. "I'm going to try something." Zaniyah replied, taking out a grappling gun from the backpack she was carrying.

The ultra-sized foot was dirty and sweaty, even if the shadow it was casting masked out all the dirt and sweat. To the citizens' collective horror, the foot began to wiggle, creating godly booming sounds and dropping epically-sized drops of sweat onto the city. Each drop contained almost the same measurement of moisture as all of the oceans on Earth combined. It flooded several parts of the carpet 'terrain', and was about to do the same to the city!

Zaniyah raced to the tallest building in the city, climbed all of its floors until she reached the very top, then scaled the mast. The scent from Sally's foot was unbearably strong, but so was the grappling gun made especially for the mission. Zaniyah carefully aimed at Sally's big toe, then fired the gun. A grappling hook with a sufficiently long cable shot out and landed squarely on a patch of skin. Zaniyah felt herself being pulled towards the toe as the line began to be towed back into the gun's casing.

Seconds later, she found herself on a new 'planet'. Below her was the brown skin that made up the desert-like ground, and around her was patches of dirt the size of hills and micro-droplets of sweat the size of ponds. The smell reeked even more here. Zaniyah choked and reached for a handkerchief in her pocket to protect her nostrils from the stench.

And that's when she began to feel dizzy and faint again. More goosebumps.

“No.... Not here. Not now.” she pleaded to herself.

She clung to the ground again to steady herself, but slipped on a newly formed patch of sweat and fell. As the sweat stuck to her body and absorbed into her clothes, she tried to see into the distance. The ground began to spread itself out as she shrank, meters becoming centimeters becoming millimeters. It then grew upwards as the smooth, yet hard, skin was turned into an arid region separated by canyons whose valleys led into inescapable places filled with sweat and even smaller dirt. The specks of dirt on Sally’s feet in turn became mountains that a single brush from her finger could easily dislodge.

It was minutes (a mere ten seconds to Sally) later that Zaniyah came to. She was now a few micrometres tall, and thus too small to even smell the sweat and dirt lingering in the air. While New York City had managed to transmit the message across a good portion of Sally's room, it had succumbed to both a droplet of sweat and being crushed under Sally's foot as Zaniyah was passed out.

The grappling hook was still lodged in part of the 'ground' that was now Zaniyah's new home. Zaniyah pulled it out, but not a scratch was left in the process. She knew from experience that no matter what weapons the civilizations used to bring Sally down - swords, cannons, nuclear missiles, ray guns - they didn't harm her in anyway. Sally was completely invincible!

Zaniyah's phone began ringing. She answered it.

"Mission complete, at last." she sighed. "Though considering how powerful the Titaness is compared to us, I don't know how long you'll get a reply. In the meantime, I'll focus my attention on seeing if there's any civilizations still standing on her foot. It may take decades, but we can't give up now. Over and out."

Zaniyah began to make her way to the area between Sally's big toe and second toe, where there would no doubt be toe jam to save continents from. Just like the heroes in the stories passed down to her from the medieval populations she encountered. At least she'd be able to extract sugar crystals from the micro-droplets of sweat (now the size of galaxies to her) to keep her active.

All of this happened during five minutes of Sally's time. The detective had only made a single step and countless bubblegum chews, bubble-blows, and pops during Zaniyah's adventure. She'd never realize the carnage she had caused during that period of time, nor the passenger on her toe that she had acquired.