--Prologue--

USA, 2019
In an unprecedented phenomenon inexplicable to scientists, a long dormant genetic defect has activated in all American-born men of Indian descent, causing them to shrink down to a fraction of an inch tall. All across the country young men are cruelly stripped away from their lives as students, entrepreneurs, scientists, artists, etc and thrust into a world filled with incomprehensibly large people. Giantesses who used to be their friends, colleagues, and coworkers must find a place for these tiny men to survive in a world not suited for them.

Fortunately, nature finds a way. American women have also undergone a change in response to this event. They are now able to hear and handle the shrunken men with ease despite their small size. Thus, a means for coexistence was found. Perhaps this was not a tragedy, but a chance for a new perspective? The shrinkers wouldn't agree, as they are quite distraught over the humiliation and unfairness of their new fate.

--

“Okay, I think I understand how to solve that. But what about this one?”

The giant girl’s voice boomed overhead. She used her pencil to point at the faintly glowing screen of her laptop, which sat adjacent to the notebook where she had been recording her work and solutions thus far. The homework problem she pointed at was the last one left in the set, and therefore also the most difficult. This problem set was for a weed out class which was designed in such a way that the harder questions were basically impossible to solve without consulting a TA. Unless you were a genius. Chelsea, sadly, was no genius. Far from it, in fact. She had taken this class the previous semester but failed, and so was retaking it again now.

Prateek, a TA, had been helping her for the better part of an hour. They had made decent progress, and were nearing the home stretch. He hopped onto her laptop and looked over the problem briefly before turning back to Chelsea. Prateek tried to explain the concepts involved as patiently and confidently as he could, hitting all the major points. Although, it was hard to sound confident when standing at only 0.5 inches tall and addressing a girl 120x his size. He gave it a reasonable effort nonetheless. Chelsea had no talent for the material, but she wasn’t an idiot either. After spending about twenty minutes puzzling through the various hints Prateek had given her, she at last made a breakthrough and from that point it wasn’t long before she reached the correct answer. She gave a small cheer of elation and looked back down at her tiny tutor.

“Thank you so much! All my friends thought the professor was a psycho for giving us this problem set. I’d totally be failing again if you weren’t helping me.”

The caramel complexion of Prateek’s cheeks took on a redder hue as he stood naked atop her open notebook, his body no larger than even the individual letters scrawled around him. Chelsea had a sweet face bordered by curls of light brown hair. She was smiling at him with enough intensity to melt gems. And, of course, she was so incomprehensibly massive. If Prateek had been normal sized, she would be the equivalent of 715 feet tall. Nothing in his old life had prepared him to speak to someone so large and beautiful. It was all he could do not to fall to his knees and pray.

Perhaps in the first few weeks after shrinking, that is what he would have done. He just woke up one day the size of a bug, with no idea what was going on or what to do. For a while he was like a newborn, constantly afraid and overwhelmed by everything. Terrified of being so small and surrounded by giants. Luckily, in the many months which had passed since what had been dubbed “The Reduction,” he slowly grew accustomed to the scale of his new world.

“No problem Chelsea! D-don’t forget to study for the prelim next week.”

Prateek mentioned. Despite his best effort to put weight behind his voice he still stammered a bit. Even as he got used to the size difference, talking to girls now came with the added complication that he was always nude. The pitiful scraps of “Reduced Persons Apparel” he had been assigned for the semester had fallen apart weeks ago, and there weren’t any other options as far as tiny clothing. No matter how much time passed Prateek would never get used to being unclothed all the time. He loathed the indignity of it, but it was one of many awful things he had to accept as part of this new shrunken life. He tried to interact with normies as little as possible to avoid the embarrassment of trotting about as a little naked man.

He tried to push his exposed state to the back of his mind, but Chelsea’s gaze was inescapable and there was no way to hide or cover himself. Not that she would have any reason to care about his nudity one way or the other. He was, after all, so small that most women had ceased thinking of him as a sexual being. Over time Prateek no longer bothered to cover his genitals when speaking to girls as he discovered that it usually made no difference to them. Chelsea found his nervousness cute, though.

“Haha yeah, I almost forgot. Well, I gotta go now, but thanks again!”

Her right hand suddenly began moving toward Prateek with astounding speed. Before he could react he was pinched gently yet firmly between her fingers and lifted into the air. He found himself held before her mouth. At his size he could see every detail of her lips, covered by a thin layer of red lipstick. He mouth parted slightly as she moved him closer, and he smelled a hint of bubblegum on her breath. Chelsea gently pressed his tiny body into her soft pink lips. Each lip was larger than him, so he found his entire body being sucked into this earth-shattering kiss. Everywhere, from his face to his now almost imperceptibly small penis, all he could feel and smell was the skin of her lips. He was held there for what felt like an eternity before she pulled back, still beaming, and placed him onto the table.

Prateek gasped for breath and instinctively tried to cover his throbbing erection. She had to have felt it, but again, she had no real reason to care. Chelsea got up and gave him one last wave before heading out.

It wasn’t her fault. She had no way of knowing. How could she? How could she know that to Prateek, that quick peck was a sexual avalanche more intimate than anything he had felt in his old life? How could she know that being pressed against her lips was an unignorable reminder of how small and helpless he was now? She couldn’t. As far as Chelsea was aware, she was just thanking her little buddy. Even his boner was par for the course, as he was very often erect when giant women held him.

No, what happened was simply another part of what being the size of an ant entailed.

Prateek had initially signed up to be a TA before shrinking. He knew that the responsibilities included grading assignments as well as holding office hours to help students. That had been no issue at the time, but after shrinking he naturally hoped to get out of that obligation. He dreaded the idea of helping an entire room filled with giants…

Unfortunately, this course was in very high demand and thus proved difficult to staff. The school had insisted that Prateek retain his position, but with a few caveats to make things easier. The bulk of his responsibilities would be grading, but he would also be assigned to personally tutor one of the students who had failed the class before: Chelsea. Prateek would also receive a slight salary boost, but after shrinking money was very low on his list of concerns.

Still, the terms seemed fair enough (and it’s not like he could turn down the university, he was depending on them at this point), so he accepted. He assumed that his tutoring sessions with Chelsea would be carried out via skype or something similar, so he could at least maintain the illusion that he was an equal to the colossal sophomore. Chelsea was dead set on meeting in person, though, as she found it much easier to learn that way and was determined not to take the course a third time. Evidently, this predilection held firm even when her TA was smaller than her fingernail.

That was how Prateek found himself standing atop a table in a study room in the depths of Elin Library. He made his way to the corner where a miniature elevator had been installed for use by shrinkers. Much of the building, in fact, had been modified with ramps and tunnels for shrinkers to get around. The university had made it a goal to reach 100% accessibility for reduced persons by the end of the year, and strictly speaking they were getting close to that goal. In many of the less frequently traversed buildings, though, the accommodations amounted to nothing more than a cheap 3D printed ladder tacked to the side of a chair or a green piece of tape running down the hall for shrinkers to walk on without getting crushed underfoot. So, the numbers may have been a little misleading.

Despite all of the modifications, it still took Prateek fifteen minutes to navigate the web of tiny paths and reach the exit. It was always astounding to him how much of a challenge getting around had become. Chelsea probably left the building less than a minute after she waved him goodbye, but for him it was like walking a mile. She had, in fact, offered to bring Prateek out of the library with her after their first few meetings, sympathizing with his situation. But Prateek was adamant that he walk back on his own. He wasn’t sure if he could endure the humiliation of being carried around like a pet mouse. Being naked already took a major mental toll.

Once Prateek found his way out he headed straight for the Reduced Person Transit Station near the entrance. It was essentially a train station for shrinkers and was primarily how the little young men made their way around campus, especially in the cold of winter. If the school had handled any part of the Reduction situation well, it was this. Getting anywhere would be impossible without the tiny train, and the school was serious about disciplining those who interfered with its operation.

Prateek’s destination was Braker Hall, a dorm nestled in the heart of west campus. After shrinking, he spent the first few weeks in temporary housing along with all the other shrinkers in one of the more remote Phys Ed buildings. It was a scary and confusing time, made no easier from having to sleep on a napkin surrounded by countess other terrified students. Once the school finally set up Reduced Persons Units (RPUs) in some of the unused rooms, Prateek was transferred to his new home in Braker where he had been living ever since.

It took twenty minutes by train to reach his dorm, and then another twenty minutes to get from the door (which conveniently had a tiny entrance at its side) to his room. At normal size, this was a trip which would have taken maybe ten minutes in total after saying goodbye. In all, Prateek spent about as much time getting home as he had spent helping Chelsea. Another reason he rarely left home, as if he needed any more.

The tunnel he took travelled along the walls at stomach height with windows placed periodically so that the reduced persons could look out into the world they used to be a part of. Just as often though the larger students peered inside hoping to catch a glimpse of a shrinker. Like Prateek, at this point most were still uncomfortable leaving their rooms and so very few of those who were normal sized had actually gotten to see a tiny man up close. There were probably about a few hundred shrinkers in total at a school of about 15,000 anyhow.  

He followed the tunnel through the halls until he eventually reached his room. A door built slightly too small for the opening it occupied led from the tunnel into the RPU. There was no lock as the school had yet to figure out how to effectively build a tiny locking mechanism which could be mass produced. And at this point the shrinkers didn’t have many possessions to worry about in any case. Everything they used to own was still being held in temporary storage within off-campus warehouses. Prateek opened the lockless door and went inside. 

His room consisted of a bed, a desk, a chair, and a lamp, all of which were still normal sized. As with every RPU, shrinker accommodations were built around the existing furnishings. Small elevators to get onto the bed and desk, a ramp to the windowsill, etc. The mere presence of the chair was a bit insulting, though. Whoever designed this room knew full well that a shrinker would have no use for a giant chair. Likely they just didn’t want to go through the trouble of clearing them all out.

There was an initial elevator bringing him down from the tunnel entrance to the floor. From there Prateek walked to the base of desk where he used another mini elevator to get onto its surface. These elevators were nothing fancy, just a little electric motor pulling a box attached to some wire. But they got the job done. Once Prateek was atop the desk he navigated to the Reduced Persons Computer Terminal at its center. Another thing the school got right, these terminals granted the shrinkers precious internet access.

For Prateek, it was a brief escape from the reality of being half an inch tall. Online, everyone was the same size. He could have a conversation and be heard as an equal rather than being held naked between two giant fingers. He booted up the interface and entered his credentials.  Normally he would begin by browsing reddit or perhaps watching some Netflix, but he noticed that he had a new notification. He had received an email.

Ever since shrinking the reduced persons received frequent emails from the administration with updates regarding their situation and what was being done to address it. In that first month many days were spent anxiously sitting inside and desperately waiting for some, for any news. He opened the email to see that it had come from the Mixed Size Office.

“Congratulations Prateek!

You have been selected at random by the MSO to participate in the inter-size dialogue series to be held among select sororities within the pan-hellenic council. On Friday at noon a representative from your assigned sorority will stop by your dorm to briefly discuss the plan for the day in person before bringing you back. For the remainder of the weekend you will take part in a presentation and a series of activities designed to help the sisters learn more about reduced persons and their plight.

It is the consideration of this administration that the recent seclusion of the reduced persons, while understandable, has served only to widen the gap between themselves and the remainder of the student population. The MSO hopes to foster future dialogue and promote the understanding of marginalized groups, and the best way to approach such a challenge is through direct exposure and education.

Your sorority assignment will be emailed to you shortly. A representative from the assigned sorority will be contacting you within the next 24 hours to discuss the details of your pickup. We hope that this program will be enlightening for all involved.

Thanks,

Kristy Delsman

Mixed Size Office”

Prateek closed the email and sat down against the cold wood of the table in disbelief. Friday was tomorrow. They were going to parade him around in room full of giant girls and they didn’t even bother to give him more than a days’ notice.  He wanted to complain, to send an angry email back to the MSO refusing to participate. He knew it would do no good, though. At his size, those kinds of decisions were no longer up to him.