When Theo
thought about it, really, It was his own fault.
He hadn’t
even applied to Olympia Interplanetary University. Hell, he had
barely heard of the planet Alcmene, somewhere near the rim.
They offered
Theo a full ride for engineering, two years into his schooling. All
this despite his notably inconsistent grades. Certainly it seemed too
good to be true, but apparently the school was for real. They were
producing heavy duty work there, planes, ships, even space stations.
It was perfect. He just needed housing.
His financial
aid paperwork came back late and it put him in a terrible position.
All the dorms were snapped up. With six weeks until fall semester,
everything was taken except the ridiculously expensive luxury dorms.
He was
wondering how long he could sleep in the library, cleaning with
handi-wipes, when they called him about the wait list.
Two spaces had
come available. One bed opened up in a six person dorm on the edge of
campus. He'd have to share a ten by fourteen bedroom.
The other one
was just past the other edge of campus, even further out than the
other. It was set off in his own area, like a miniature campus of its
own.
When he saw
the size of the private room, for almost the same price as the other,
he though it was a misprint: Thirty by forty feet. How was that
possible?
“I had to
double check this slot, it's not usually open to a male,” the young
woman from the housing desk told Theo. “And it's in the Atlasian
Village, all slots are first come first serve for citizens of
Atlasia. Their female student backed out.”
“So my
roommates would be female?”
“Yes. Two
Atlasian female roommates. They opened up the room for all genders.
Are you okay with that? Do you know anything about Atlasians?”
Theo didn't
know anything. He believed Atlasia was a manufacturing base out past
the rim. That was it.
“Sure, just
never met one in person.”
She laughed,
and said, “Yeah. They're just... on the statuesque side.”
“Yeah,”
Theo replied, chuckling dumbly.
In hindsight,
she was probably trying to be funny.
He arrived on
a Wednesday. He first noticed them at the at Burgess Station, a small
spaceport on the surface of Alcmene.
He saw what he
assumed were basketball players, these two very tall young guys going
through customs. Way past seven feet, both of them. He passed by then
at baggage claim closer up. They didn't even look related, one a
blond white guy, the other looked middle eastern.
Shit, he
thought. He was eye level with their stomachs.
It wasn't
until he saw another group of the giants, at least five of them, a
couple topping eight feet, that he became suspicious.
Theo boarded
the crowded campus shuttle. It was two hours to campus. When no one
was paying attention he asked the driver, “Have you seen these
super tall guys around the spaceport?”
The driver
looked like an upper class student to Theo. “You mean the
Atlasians?”
“Oh.
That's... wow.”
“Oh, you
never seen Atlasians before?”
“No. I mean
sure, of course,” Theo said. Which was true, and he had heard they
were somewhat tall. “Just not close up. I'm actually, I'm moving
into the Atlasian Village though.”
The
driver-student just whistled long. “Couldn’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Just... I
don't need to be a tough guy or anything but I hate to walk into a
room where everyone could toss me around like a volleyball.”
Theo got it.
He's seen only a few, and his gut reaction was to be intimidated. At
the same time, people were just people, right?Theo said,”I actually
have two female roommates though, so I'm not too worried about that.”
Theo saw the
driver tilt his head slightly then looked at him quizzically. Looked
at him just long enough Theo was about to point him back out to the
road he was driving on.
The driver
chuckled, and chuckled louder, shaking his head at some private joke.
“Oh, man. Wish I could be there to watch this.”
Theo reached
campus at ten at night. It was pretty vacant still, with five days
until the start of the fall semester. He was impressed at the size
and grandeur of it up close.
The library
was six stories and the size of a shopping mall. The computer lab was
the size of his high school. The athletics complex was a suburb of
its own.
The Atlasian
village was like that. An isolated suburb in a valley. It was quiet
when he reached it, near midnight. Theo had his backpack over his
shoulder, and his motorized luggage cart following behind. It was
hugely overloaded, at least two hundred fifty pounds on a hundred
fifty weight capacity. One of the wheels was starting to hang up, and
he'd have to stop, push it to get it unstuck.
He could hear
a concert or something like it happening in the distance, with music
he didn't recognize.
When he
reached the dorms, he was impressed with the design. They were newly
built, and each took up the space of a full city block. They were
strong-looking, with conspicuous steel and reinforcements. At the
same time, they managed to be simple and clean.
There was a
huge park toward the middle. Theo saw a couple of boys, tall as the
others, tossing a frisbee u see the street lamps.
He had reached
his dorm, which was even taller than most others he saw, across from
the park. A flash of long hair caught his eye, and he responded to
the deeply male instinct of being drawn to a hair flip. Curly,
blonde, long. A girl was sitting with a book, her back against a
tree. She had noticed him. She was looking at him across a distance
Theo wasn't sure of.
He froze for
just a moment. It struck him as strange, a woman looking at him and
continuing to look at him. Was it interest? They were far enough away
he couldn't tell what she looked like. But she seemed close, at the
same time.
He turned away
and walked to front door of the dorm. The doors were over ten feet
high, inset In a glass structure over twenty feet high. Theo realized
after a moment that the glass structure was actually an even bigger
set of doors, with a release bar just above the top of the main set.
The bar for
the main doors was chin high, but Theo found it locked. The buzzer
was just above his head on the right. He pressed it, and waited.
He looked back
at the girl across the way, who had gone back to her book. She looked
back up and he reflexively looked away.
Why?
He heard
movement and saw the towering shadow approaching the door. It opened
slowly, and a huge figure loomed over him.
“Hey,”
came the voice two feet above him. It was bright, friendly,
guileless. “Can I help you?”
Theo looked up
at the man. Blonde haired, white, looked like a surfer type. Theo
gestured to the backpack and the motorized cart behind him. “I’m
actually moving in?”
He looked
puzzled, but moved out of the way to let Theo pass.
“I don't
wanna give the impression we’re discriminatory or racist or
anything,” he said, laughing. “The facilities are specialized for
Atlasians, because, you know... low ceilings everywhere. These rooms
are at a premium for us.”
"Cool," Theo said. "Thought you might have a thing against Afro Latinos."
"Uh huh," the guy said. He didn't seem to get the joke.
The ceilings
were sky high. He'd though it to be two stories, even as high as a
ceiling for eight foot residents needed to be, but it was just one
floor, over two stories high.
They entered
the lobby. The man arrived at a reception window. He went through a
door into the office, leaving Theo on the other side. The bottom edge
of the window was just below his chin, but the window went all the
way up, from his vantage point.
“Oh,” the
man said, looking at a computer screen. “Theodore Ramirez?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I’m
Luc.” He had a strange look in his face, like he didn't quite
believe it. He turned, opened a cabinet behind him and came out with
a small package. “You're with Camille and Roxanne this year?”
“You know
them?”
The towering
student chuckled. “Camille knows everybody. And Roxanne,” his
eyes widened dramatically for a moment. “is hard not to notice.”
Theo opened
the package. There was a keycard, some forms, and a small fob.
“What's this for?”
“The side
door is heavy, this activates the automatic door.”
Theo figured
the other residents had no issues with the doors being heavy. He
looked up at the huge windows and said, “Luc, can I ask you
something?”
“Certainly.”
Theo asked in
matter of fact manner, now acutely aware the men around him would see
him as small and weak, “How big do you guys get?”
It didn't
phase the giant surfer. He knew some variation of the question was
coming. “I’ve met a couple of guys about two point eight meters.”
Luc shrugged.
Theo did the
math. Two point eight meters was past nine feet. There was some
Atlasian guy running around over nine feet tall. And Theo’s last
couple years of college was going to be spent around guys like that.
That was gonna mess with his ego.
Theo didn't
put much stock in being macho... but say a nine foot tall guy gets
fresh with your girl right in front of you... Seriously, what’s the
move?
Okay. This
didn't have to be a death sentence. He was in the Atlasian Village.
It was a small amount of land for a campus this size. There were four
hundred thousand students here. And until Theo had arrived in the
Village, he hadn't seen many eight foot students.
Only one
Atlasian female at all, so far. He found that strange. He'd seen a
dozen or so males, one female. But it was still nearly a week before
the start of classes.
Theo had not
talked to his roommates by phone or chat. He had, however, looked
through the student directory to find photos. He found the student
photo of Camille. She looked Asian, perhaps a Pacific Islander. She
had straight Blonde Hair, and even in the one, simple photo she
radiated confidence. There was no photo on file for Roxanne.
He wasn't sure
how he felt about that. Two female roommates, at least one of them
hot. Especially as now, he pictured them over seven feet in height.
It did explain why two knockouts were okay letting some strange guy
move on with them. He probably wasn't much of a threat, physically.
He had been
thinking attractive roommates would have really hot friends. Now, he
was thinking as a little dude he’d have to fight like hell to avoid
friend zones. But there was a strategy for that, he was sure. If they
tended to overlook him, they might not see him coming. And Theo felt
his game was quite deadly at close range.
It whatever
was here because he needed a room. He had a huge room, two tall
beautiful roommates. Anything beyond that, just a happy accident.
He made his
way down the hall, seeing the towering doors all around him. He
turned the corner toward his apartment and heard the motorized cart
miss the turn, push itself into the wall. The bad wheel had given
out, come loose from its mooring. When he tried to pull it, a second
wheel broke loose.
“Shit,” He
said in the empty hall. He wasn't going to drag this down the hall.
He was all the way at the end, and the cart outweighed him by a great
deal. He was already aching from the journey.
And the
journey in a place like this was not like a normal hall. This hallway
was about two football fields, American football fields, long. He
grabbed his backpack and started walking.
The door to
his dorm apartment was different. The other doors were all crazy,
obscenely tall and solid. His door had a smaller door, only seven and
a half feet high, set on the larger standard door on the hinge side.
The inside was
vast. It felt like walking into a warehouse, with the wide space and
ceilings well over 20 feet high. There was one closed bedroom door to
the left, another on the back wall to the right. Then a small open
lanai.
The furniture
was much too big for him. The arm of the couch was even with the top
of his head. The seat cushions reached his mid chest.
Then there was
a smaller couch, his size, sitting on a three foot riser.
“A booster
seat,” he said to himself, and laughed. Then he shuddered. Man, he
did not want to be seen sitting in that.
Theo wandered
over to the kitchen, wondering how he was supposed to cook on a eight
foot stove?
For that
matter, he was wondering, how would an eight foot tall person use it?
It didn't make sense.
He turned to
go to find his room, at the back of the apartment, when he heard a
click from the door on the left.
He turned
back, looked up and readied himself to meet a seven foot or even
taller, female roommate. He willed himself not to be dumbstruck.
This would be
awkward. Luc had bordered on threatening, just from his size alone.
And he had been nothing but accommodating. Totally nice guy. What if
she was as tall as he was, and less friendly?
No matter how
pretty this girl was, this was where Theo was going to live. And he
didn't want to come off like a creep.
But with his
eye trained at about seven feet, he waited to see a face... the
beautiful and exotic Camille, or the unseen Roxanne. But he didn't
see a face.
He saw a rib
cage. A narrow, slender rib cage disappearing into a pink half tee.
At seven feet.
The figure
shifted, and the outrageously long legs, in gray sweatpants, carried
the girl... the Girl? forward. Closer. He looked up, and up.
Holy fuck.
And up a
little more…