Jessica had been out of school for a few hours while she was interning in the labs at Ashburges local manufacturing plant. She had since taken out some food from her lunch and placed it in her purse for Drake. Drake, on the other hand, was sleeping very soundly. It was the first bit of really good sleep he had managed to grab since this whole ordeal. Jessica looked at her clock and saw that it was 3:30 in the afternoon. She was going to leave in another 30 minutes, so she decided to take the time to patrol the lab and take a glance at everything that was going on. She saw a number of things that she was already familiar with, such as their innovative levitator. It was only designed as a new version of a cart, wheelbarrow, or fork lift just to start out small. Once they felt secure with the technology, they would incorporate it in vehicles, and maybe even in air planes. Another of the handy hardware they were working on included ways for crops to yield approximately 30% more than what they normally yield. The device inserts a small amount of fluid into already growing crops so that they can produce 30% more seeds. They could also insert the fluid inside the individual seeds themselves so that they can produce bigger crops. The idea is that the fluid slows down the metabolic rate of the plants, allowing them to remain fertile for longer, and produce more seeds. With the seeds, it also slows down the metabolic rate of the growing plant, allowing for it to have a longer lifespan, and reaching a larger size. Jessica really wasn’t kidding when she said they were working on ending world hunger.

Once she was satisfied with her own self-tour of the labs, she decided to head out and head home for the day. Once she got in her car, she opened her purse to see Drake still sleeping soundly. She decided not to turn her radio on so he wouldn’t be startled awake. At some point, he started snoring and she could hear it plain as day. She let out slight giggles at how adorable, and hilarious it was.  Upon arriving home, she had gone up stairs to her room and placed the purse on the bed while she changed into regular clothes. Once she was done, she opened her purse and gently prodded Drake awake.

“Drake. Hey bud, you gotta wake up. We are home now.”

“Huhhh… What??? Oh yeah. Yeah, I’m getting up. Man I haven’t slept that good since I was a baby.”

“Yeah, you did look pretty out of it. You didn’t even touch your food I placed in there for you.”

“Oh wow, thank you. I guess after you put me in your purse I just passed out. What time is it anyways?”

“It is four in the afternoon. I’d say you’re going to be up all night.”

“Oh wow, I do not regret ever getting this much sleep though.”

“I couldn’t blame you, as busy as I’ve been? I would kill for sleep like that.”

“Oh gosh, we are turning into old people now.”

Jessica let out a small giggle at his remark and responded, “Speak for yourself bud, I still feel my age here. But to get to matters at hand, can you tell me what the hell happened to you?”

“Well Friday, Ricky comes up to me with this weird as ‘rock’ that he found. He claimed that it would end world hunger, but you know how Ricky is so I was pretty skeptical. So anyways, he tells me how he doubled the size of his burrito or something with it. He ends up dropping it when he runs to class, I pick it up, I couldn’t get it back to him so I took it home with me, and then I find out it is made by the company you work for. Oh, and when I was playing around with it, I thought I was going to increase the size of my shoe by a factor of a half inch, when in reality, I apparently accidentally switched it to ‘shrink mode’ and it ends up making me half an inch tall. So here I am.”

“Holy shit. You actually stumbled upon one of our failed experiments. None of our lab techs could ever get it working right. During one of the expansion tests, they accidentally expanded a sock so large that it took up the entire room. One guy suffocated to death from it. Oh, and during one of the shrinking tests, we had gotten further along and decided to try it on a living person. Unfortunately, the volunteer happened to also be the owner of the company, Mr. Ashburge. We set the device on the same setting you had it on, but for some reason, after the shrinking he vanished. There was not a single trace of him. Oddly enough, the second version of our device ended up going missing. I’d say you and Ricky got very lucky. He could have been eaten by a giant burrito, and you could have never been found.”

“Holy shit that is intense. Wait!! You said that there are two versions right? Ricky must have found the second version near the creek behind the school! So do you still have the first one?”

“Well, no. We decommissioned it after its failure and nobody has tried picking the project back up. Why don’t we just find the one Ricky had?”

“Well, Jennifer’s mom smashed it.”

“What? On accident, on purpose?”

“On purpose. She found Ricky along with my mom, then I was found by Jennifer, who I escaped from, and then went to her mom which was a mistake. However, the whole reason I am even here is because Jennifer ran into you.”

“Wait, hold up. You mean to tell me that you have encountered two different people that just refused to help you? They know you’re like this?”

“Well, four people. I was discovered by my sister Kaylee at first, and she let me sleep in her dresser drawer. It happened to be her panty drawer but I wasn’t the one that picked it out. Well then Kaitlyn, my oldest sister, came in to grab the dildo Kaylee had hidden in her drawer and ends up spotting me. She assumed I was being perverted and didn’t even act slightly surprised that I was tiny. She decided to trap me in one of Kaylee’s thongs for the night. Fortunately, Kaylee managed to hear me before slipping the thong I was in on the next morning. She actually tried to help me. She just ended up losing me to Jennifer, and now here I am.”

“Ok for sanity’s sake, I am going to just not question all of the shit I just heard, and simply ask if your mom knows about you?”

“No, she does not sadly.”

“Wow. You should be glad I found you when I did. Holy shit you must have been through a lot. I don’t really want to know now that I think of it. Okay, first off, is there anything you can tell me about the device that you’ve noticed. I may be able to offer explanations and also it would help me know what the device is compiled of. The second version was based off of a design that Mr. Ashburge made himself.”

“Ok, well for starters, I can communicate with you as if I am normal as long as I first gather your attention, and you also know that I am there. I somehow cannot feel pain, at one point I was squeezed at a dangerous point, and all I felt was short of breath. I haven’t been hungry or thirsty since I’ve shrunk, I simply have cravings, yet my body isn’t slowed down because of the lack of food. I think I’ve covered everything so far.”

“Ok, it seems that the reason you can communicate with me on this level is due to a small neural imprint. It’s like a small mental bond that gets developed once both beings because aware of each other. It’s on the horizon of telepathy and other forms of mental communication, however with this type, it allows our brains to tune into our vocal frequencies so that we both can hear each other efficiently. If I were to forget that you were there, our bond would be lost. It’s a very fragile form of communication but I see how it works. We have devices currently trying to communicate with animals. We use that same technology and try and incorporate a translator into it. With you not feeling pain, that is a bit odd. I know that we have been working on a compound that can boost human skin, and bone density. But that was so we could help people survive car collisions and things of that nature. It naturally boosts your adrenaline levels to greater than normal heights, and then allows the molecular structure of your body to become denser. We were able to deflect a sharpened arrow off of the human skin with this stuff, but we have not yet tried a gunshot wound. As far as you not being hungry or thirsty, that’s easy. Your body is mimicking what our plants do back at the lab. Your entire metabolic rate has slowed down so exponentially that your body is feeding on itself at a much slower pace. Whereas the normal human can go only three days without water, you should be able to go on for two weeks without water. Food is even more so flexible. The majesty of it all, is that you may not even feel starved until five days of having no bodily intake. I am sure there is a side effect to that though. Because your body is processing food at a much slower pace, your digestive tract, and everything else is slowed too. You won’t digest food in 20 minutes anymore. You may digest it in two to three days, and then not feel hungry until 5 days after. This is really amazing, I knew Ashburge was a genius, but he made this device almost as if to live as a shrunken person.”

“Whoa, well. That does explain a lot. I guess Mr. Ashburge wanted to live small for a while.”

“Or try stealing corporate secrets from his rival. That explains why there is also a growth feature on the device. He may still be alive, and also out there somewhere.”

“Well, we found his device by the school, why the hell would he go to a school to steal corporate secrets?”

“Uh.. Good question Drake. I don’t want to think of Mr. Ashburge as a perverted man. But, given the evidence, I don’t see why he would feel the need to shrink himself at a high school.”

“Well that will just work itself out, meantime, since you know so much about this device, do you think you can make one?”

“I am already way ahead of you. The trick is trying to figure out how he got so many different devices to work so coherently together without tearing your body apart.”

“You’re the smartest girl in school Jess, I am pretty sure you can figure this out.”

“Well thank you Drake, I may not some people in the lab that may help me. It can be very hard knowing who to trust, but we will work it out.”

“Thanks Jess, we need to try and get Ricky as well. I have no idea where he is though.”

“We will find him. Right now, my mom is about to be home and she always makes dinner on Tuesday nights. Do you want me to contact your sister Kaylee and let her know you’re alright?”

“Yes please. She hasn’t known where I have been since she lost me at school yesterday.”