“Your nails look amazing today, Julia,” Martyna said, unprompted.

Ewa quickened her chewing and swallowed in hurry to make a comment herself:

“They’re incredible, aren’t they? I noticed them too when Julia was doing the exercise on the chalkboard. Is that a world map?”

“Aww, thank you, girls.” Julia was happy to become the center of attention, having waited the whole day for someone to ask her about her nails. “Yes, it is. There’s a different continent on each, see? I have Asia on my thumb; here’s Europe; and this is Africa; and the Americas on my ring and pinkie - with the same set on my other hand.”

Julia splayed her fingers and put her on display on the cafeteria table. Her friends all leaned forward to take a good and very close look, with Zosia taking off her glasses and Martyna scrambling to open her smartphone’s camera and get it to focus.

“Holy crap, these are so intricate. I feel like I could see my own house if I squint hard enough.”

“Look, the land parts are sticking out a bit, like on a tiny raised-relief map.”

“Is it like a hybrid manicure? Where did you have it done?” Ewa finally asked.

"It's kind of a special thing. My mom bought this box online; this device. Very state of the art, very high-tech stuff, got my dad quite upset when he learned how expensive it was, but who cares, right? It’s her own money, from the inheritance. Anyway, you put your hand in there and it uses these tiny robots to paint your nails; and they’re insanely fast, I mean these,” she held her hands up, palms facing inwards, “these took them like five seconds or so. Some physics stuff, apparently; they move really, really quick - it sort of tickles - and you can change the resolution of the art they print on you if you want by having them go even faster, but it eats up the battery charge and--”

Julia was really excited to share the news with her friends and turned into quite the chatterbox. She realized that she might have fed them too much information all at once and skipped to the conclusion:

“It’s really cool. You should give it a try if you ever have the chance.”

“Oh, c’mon,” Martyna complained.

“What?”

“You’re really not going to let us have a go?”

“Absolutely not. It’s my mom’s; you know how hard it is for me to invite someone over, let alone give them access to my parents’ stuff.”

“Maybe you could bring it to the school? Just for a day?"

“No. What if we break it? Or lose it? If my mom notices that it’s gone, she’s going to freak out. No way I’m risking my ass like that!”

As it turned out, there was a way; it involved some old debts and girly favors, but in the end, Julia agreed to wait until her parents were out of town and bring the device in secret to the school, where its services could be enjoyed by the whole squad.

The task was very easy - all Julia had to do was seize the opportunity when it presented itself. With her mom and dad safely away on some work trip and her brother still asleep, she figured she wasn’t risking much; as long as she brought the device back without any signs of wear and tear, that is, and left it in the same place she had found it. Even if her mom smelled something fishy afterwards or noticed any changes in the settings, Julia could always admit to using it herself. She would probably get scolded for that, but it wasn’t really a thing worth worrying about. In fact, Julia resolved that none of this stuff was worth worrying about… or at least that was what she kept trying to tell herself. Yes, it was an expensive piece of technology and yes, it wasn’t hers to touch and move about, but it’s not like she was a kid that couldn’t be trusted with the simple task of not breaking a commercial device meant to be used by regular members of the public. As she walked to school, all these thoughts raced tirelessly through her mind in a vicious cycle, each of them trying to get an edge over the others but quickly meeting a riposte; like a song that gets stuck in one's head and manifests itself as short melodies that play over and over again; or like recurring flashbacks that have to be reasoned with each time they appear. In an attempt to fight fire with fire, she put on her headphones and selected a playlist with some particularly catchy tunes.

To make space for the device, most of Julia's books had to be taken out of her backpack. She wrapped the machine in a layer of soft blankets to protect it during transit, and as a result could only bring the bare minimum of the things she usually makes use of during the day. She also chose to go by foot instead of taking the bus, complicating her life for the sake of caution, perhaps needlessly. “The girls better be grateful,” she thought, “and not forget to keep their own promises,” whatever those ended up being. She sent her friends a message to let them know what was up.

“You got it?” Martyna asked, having run up to her friend the moment she saw her enter the building.

“Yeah I got it.”

“Can I see?”

“Not right now. On the lunch break.”

“Bummer!”

As the first few classes drew to a close, the ever-tired and every-hungry students began to trickle into the cafeteria; not the fantastic four, though - they headed for the locker room instead, armed with sandwiches and granola bars of their own meant to keep them nourished while the device does its wonders on their nails. Being the hiding spot of choice for teens with acute and very dire privacy needs, it was bound to be occupied by at least one horny pair. Thankfully, no awkward clashes occurred that time as the only duo present in the room, already fully immersed in a session of passionate kissing by the time of the girls’ arrival, got embarrassed by the sudden appearance of an audience and promptly left in search of a less crowded area.

Julia set the package down on a bench and began unwrapping it while the rest of the gang stood around her and observed, waiting for everything to be ready.

“I’m calling dibs, by the way,” Ewa declared, hurriedly.

“What? We were supposed to draw lots,” Zosia complained in response.

“Stop bickering and let me set it up first,” the reluctant mastermind behind this whole beautification venture ordered as she was stuffing the blanket back into her rucksack.

Julia examined the device, checking each of its sides for any signs of damage - dents, scratches, or worse - that could have occurred either during her morning walk or later, at school. Having found nothing of concern, she ran her hand - as if trying to get rid of dust - over the matte, silver surface covering the top of the section that housed the electronics and was equipped with a user interface made up of several knobs and switches, as well as a simple display. It couldn’t have possibly been dirty, though; her gesture was rather a sign of appreciation for the device’s hard work and a humble request that it not bring about any unexpected trouble.

The apparatus in question resembled a modern vinyl record player - one with a transparent lid made of rigid plastic. Most of its volume was taken up by an empty see-through chamber with rubber-sealed openings meant for the hands or feet of the person using its services; they clung tightly to the skin while the machine was in operation, creating an inner environment isolated from the outside world that the robot force required in order to work properly. The floor inside was lined with soft, black plastic, patterned geometrically to improve grip; it had a particular, artificial smell that new things of this kind often have, one that had yet to wither away. The chamber wasn’t very spacious, but it offered enough room to allow for two sets of five nails to be painted at the same time. Directly opposite the opening was the console section; this design necessitated the assistance of an additional person other than the user as it was rather troublesome to operate the device while being confined inside its working station. Besides the interface, it included on its side a square socket, about as deep as an adult’s middle finger is long, and wide enough to allow one to fit inside a few times over. The warnings, as well as the flexible covering which required a bit of force to be moved out of the way, made it clear, however, that the hole wasn’t a good place for fingers or, in fact, anything other than the appropriately shaped, easily insertable robotic modules. Julia wasn’t exactly sure how it all functioned, but she managed to learn to operate it anyway. Located on the side opposite the module holder was a set of sockets of the traditional kind, used mainly for charging the device’s battery; since Julia had already taken care of that at home, there was no need for her to bring along any cables. The machine stood on four sturdy, rubber feet, which - combined with its noticeable weight - ensured that it couldn’t realistically be knocked down by accident.

Julia reached inside a pocket in her backpack and took out the module she chose back at home for this occasion. The elongated silver box was largely featureless, except for its two square sides; the one that faced away from the user while inserted included a window which revealed the contents of the module - a meticulously engineered, though not quite miniscule, robot resembling a model spaceship - while the one that remained visible during operation featured some stickers specifying the technical details. Julia inserted the module into the device like one would load a new magazine into a firearm, and powered the machine up; it began emitting a low hum, oddly similar to those heard when starting up turn-of-the-century PCs, the ones housed in beige-colored cases. While she busied herself with checking the settings, Martyna closely observed her actions, finding the set-up process quite interesting.

“It’s ready, I think,” Julia announced. “Ewa, you can go first.”

“Awesome! So I just put my hands in here, right?” she asked, acting out the gesture in front of her friend.

“Yes, but choose the pattern first,” Julia pointed at the display and started scrolling through the gallery by turning one of the knobs. “I’ve read that you can upload your own designs, but to be honest, I don’t really know how to do that.”

Ewa attentively watched the various patterns go by one by one until a certain image caught her eye.

“Go back, please-- yes, this one. I think it looks great. What do you say?”

“No need to ask me, the only thing that matters is whether you like it or not; but I do think it’s nice. Vintage, fits your style,” Julia assessed. “Should I confirm it? Or do you want to keep browsing?”

“Yes, please! I really like it. I’m worried it would take ages for me to make a decision if I came across another cool pattern, you know?”

“Alrighty!” The girls knew each other long enough for Julia to know exactly what Ewa was talking about. “Feel free to put your hands inside now. Yeah, force it a little. It's meant to be tight like that.”

Everything was ready and the whole gang gathered around to see the magic in person. Julia pressed the button labeled “START” and the device let out a quick, low buzz, giving Ewa - who entrusted its semiconductors and transistors with her hands under the unconscious assumption that no unexpected malfunctions could ever happen - a bit of a freight. There was nothing to worry about, though; as a faint smell of static started to fill the air, the procedure itself began in its usual way. Ewa felt a very soft gust of wind on her fingers and looked at her hands through the transparent walls of the chamber. She saw the pattern she chose appear in succession and row-by-row on each of her fingernails, as if it was printed using some kind of laser. Squinting her eyes, she tried to locate the robots that Julia mentioned but could only spot a vague cloud of blur left behind by something moving extraordinarily fast.

It took the device no more than ten seconds to finish the job - with stellar results. This time, the buzz that sounded to announce the change of active state - the exact same one as before - did not startle Ewa. She asked Julia if it was okay to remove her hands from the chamber; seeing her nod, she did so, gently and cautiously, not wanting to damage in any way her new nail polish.

“Oh my God, it’s so detailed - and there’s so much depth to it,” Ewa said, looking at her fingernails at an angle to better see the spatial complexity of the paint: the peaks, ridges, and valleys meticulously shaped by whatever it was that labored at the speed of light inside the chamber. Zosia and Martyna approached her to see the results and were likewise enamored.

Before the girls had a chance to decide who would be next, however, the doors of the locker room swung open and in rushed a winded boy with a phone in his hand. He took a look around the room and visibly brightened when he spotted Julia, who was observing him with a mix of confusion and frustration.

“Finally! I've been looking for you everywhere. I forgot my charger, can I… borrow…” his speech slowed down as he caught a glimpse of the nail machine. The issue of low battery no longer seemed important.

Unfortunately for Julia, it wasn’t just some random classmate who happened to share the smartphone brand; the boy was her older brother, and he knew nothing - naturally - of his sister’s appropriation of the device.

“Not now…!” she muttered.

“You gotta be joking,” he said with a gesture of resignation. “You brought it to school? Mom is going to be absolutely furious.”

“No, come on! Don’t tell her!”

“That’s messed up, Julia. This shit is not yours.” He started walking towards the girls. “I’m literally going to take it back home right now before you break it.”

“No!” Julia complained and turned towards the device to power it off. She was worried that her brother would pick it up while it was still running and actually damage it. After all, the only thing that he knew about it was that it was expensive; Julia might have borrowed it temporarily without permission, but at least she had some idea how to handle it correctly.

She pressed the power button, and just as she slid out the robotic module, a hand appeared on top of the silver console, as if in an attempt to claim ownership. 

"Oh my God, Wiktor, I'm packing it up. Stop overreacting," Julia said, putting her own hand firmly on the device as well. She crouched without taking it off and deposited the module safely on top of the blanket inside her backpack.

"Absolutely not. I'm not leaving without it," Wiktor was adamant on not letting his sister have her way, lest she would try messing with the machine again later in the day. He grabbed it with both hands and so did Julia.

"Are you seriously going to rip it out of my hands? You're the one who's gonna break it!" she resisted.

"Then just let it go, maybe?" he said and corrected his grip, with one hand now on each of the two sides of the device, both close to Julia's.

"You moron! Don't put your fingers in there!"

With that, a tug of war ensued. The module socket offered some great leverage for those who were bold enough to disregard the safety warnings; it became clear that Julia wouldn't be able to hold on for long. The rest of the girls stood back, not knowing what to do.

And so, amid all that chaos, someone happened to press the power button.

The device began emitting a low hum again. Julia and Wiktor momentarily stopped struggling and looked into each other’s eyes with confusion and disappointment, silently accusing one another of childish irresponsibility.

“Amazing. You’re even dumber th--” Wiktor would have finished his sentence if not for the fact that he suddenly disappeared into thin air, leaving Julia flabbergasted and almost causing her to drop the thing after making her briefly lose her balance.

“What the fuck just happened?” she asked herself out loud. The other girls finally moved a bit, trying to get a better view of the place Wiktor was standing at just a few seconds ago and still expecting to find him hiding somewhere. Julia unconsciously hugged the device, afraid of losing control over it again; she remembered it was running and looked at the display, now lit-up.

“Module inserted,” it read.

“What module?” Julia asked and checked the socket. “There is no module.” She felt blood rush to her head, making her dizzy. “Do not fucking tell me.” Julia turned towards her friends for a moment, her mouth open in bewilderment, and then looked back at the interface; she started pressing its buttons frantically.

“Julia, are you alright?” Zosia asked, followed by Ewa: “Where’s Wiktor?”

“He got-- he’s inside the fucking device! He put his fingers in the socket. That’s why I told him not to do that! Wiktor, you absolute moron. Everything was going fine until he decided to come in. What do I even do now?” Julia felt like she had just started a fire and was desperately searching for a way to put it out before it got out of hand.

“What do you mean he’s inside?” Martyna asked.

“It must have mistaken him for a module when he pressed the power button. The modules, they store the robots that are actually used during the process. I thought it was like data, but no, it actually miniaturizes the thing and puts it back in the removable case when you’re finished. So how do I get him out if there’s no case?!”

“So he… got shrunk?” Martyna smirked as she glanced at the device.

“Yeah he got shrunk -- what’s with that smile? You think it’s funny?” Julia was having none of it, not until her brother got back safe and sound.

“I mean…” Martyna replied, alluding to the fact that the two definitely did not like each other, not since the time he reported her for smoking in the bathroom.

"Oh, shut up," Julia cut the conversation short, regretting that she even bothered explaining the situation to Martyna.

“Hey, c’mon, let's think this through,” Zosia attempted to defuse the situation. "Do you have an instruction manual? Maybe there’s a way to contact support?”

“I do, but I left it at home. So there goes that.” Julia sight and fixed her eyes at some undefined point in the distance. She spoke again after what felt like a minute but was probably just a few seconds. “I’m gonna have to call my mom.”

The gang did not speak up, knowing full well that their friend was about to get in some serious trouble; there was no point in trying to cheer her up and she didn’t need anyone’s sympathy right now. Julia took her phone out of her pocket and began to walk slowly towards a more private place behind a row of lockers, wanting to deal with this matter alone. Before disappearing, she told her friends to watch over the device.

As Ewa and Zosia creeped up behind her to eavesdrop on the conversation while still remaining outside her view, Julia dialed her mom. Martyna crossed her arms and stood back, not knowing what to do, but feeling like it would be very inappropriate for her to just leave.

“Yes, honey, what is it? I’m a bit busy,” Julia heard her mom's voice through her phone's speaker, just as she started to worry she wouldn’t pick up.

"Hey mom, uhh, can I ask you something? It's about your nail device."

"Well… sure; but why?" Julia's mother replied after a brief pause. "Aren't you supposed to be at school?"

"I am at school, mom. Please don't be angry, but I kinda borrowed it."

Martyna heard her friend talk, but she wasn't listening to her words; she instead decided to use google and try a bit of troubleshooting, hoping that someone had already had to deal with this kind of issue. She quickly managed to find a forum dedicated to the device, but the only complaints related to modules mentioned them breaking down sooner than expected. Martyna read the replies; in one of them, someone explained why the accelerated wear and tear shouldn't be a surprise and described the engineering principles behind the device.

Armed with newfound knowledge, she approached the machine-turned-prison, temporarily discarded and abandoned but still running. She brushed it gently and reservedly with her fingers, as if to break the touch barrier and ease herself into going further. The small screen was still displaying the details requested by Julia; it showed a scanned 3D model of Wiktor, frozen in time and stuck in the same pose he was last seen in, next to a message saying “module unknown.” Martyna turned around and looked at Ewa and Zosia; they were busy trying to listen to the phone conversation. She sat on the bench, next to the machine which she then carefully picked up - just to set it down on the floor in front of her, with the chamber facing her directly.

"I DO NOT remember giving you permission - in fact, I s p e c i f i c a l l y requested that you not use it while I'm away! Let alone take it out of the house behind my back! What were you thinking?!" Julia's mother was understandably upset, but that wasn't the end of bad news for her - she had yet to hear about what happened to Wiktor. "Why are you calling me anyway? You'd better not have broken it!"

Martyna untied her converse sneakers and discarded them in a hurry, gleaming with mischievous excitement. Nobody was paying any heed to her, the phone call proving to be an unrivaled attention-grabber; she saw a window of opportunity for a payback, and she was determined to make sure it didn't go to waste. Martyna took off her pink-colored socks in two quick swoops, then stuffed them into one of her shoes. To avoid unnecessary contact with the cold floor without making it difficult for her to keep balance, she only rested one of her heels, the other foot remaining suspended in air. Only for a brief moment, though, since she quickly proceeded to curl her toes and insert her legs into the chamber through its rubber-sealed openings. Martyna’s long feet barely fit inside - after all she was a quite tall young woman who tended to make the boys at school feel a bit awkward just by standing near them - but she was perfectly comfortable and the plastic lining felt nice and refreshing on her bare soles.

“You did WHAT?!” The voice of Julia’s mother boomed through the speaker of her phone as the girl prepared herself for another round of scolding.

It wasn’t easy to use the device without the assistance of another person, but Martyna had to make do. She leaned heavily forward and looked at the interface and the display upside down. The device must have recognized that its chamber was no longer empty as it now displayed a message about its readiness to commence a new painting session, still asking, however, for one final parameter to be specified.

“Tem-po-ral-mul-ti-pli-er…” Martyna whispered to herself while slowly reading the flipped text. It took a second or two for the words to start making sense, but she recalled seeing them before in the forum posts she was just browsing, with one of the users clarifying their meaning. Having noticed that the appropriate knob was set to seconds, she decided to check what the maximum value would be.

“Six nines…” she found out. “A million seconds - that would be… about… oh, eleven days or so,” the calculator in Martyna’s phone gave her the answer instantly. She bit her lips, feeling a rush of excitement at the thought of getting back at the entirely powerless Wiktor in such a personal and humiliating way. She was pretty sure Julia wouldn’t mind her brother being taught a valuable lesson on why it’s not a good idea to meddle in the affairs of other people, not after the trouble he just got her into. All things considered, the only thing that was about to get hurt was his ego - she understood that nothing bad would really happen to him; if the device was dangerous to humans, it wouldn't invite them to stick their hands or feet inside.

Martyna confirmed the settings and pressed the start button, still almost folded in half while trying to reach the console on the other side. She didn't want to waste any more time. The familiar low buzz could be heard again as she straightened up and raised the toes of one of her feet slightly. She could swear she saw something appear inside before it turned into a blur.

"--an I thought," Wiktor was still finishing his sentence when he found himself thrown suddenly into an unfamiliar, outright alien environment. Startled by the change, he gasped, nigh inaudibly, and held his breath for a moment as he succumbed to the involuntary behavior of freezing in shock. “...what the fuck?” he muttered, unable to tell what the vast area that stretched before him was and why he was looking at it through an enormous window of some kind. Except for a low humming noise reminiscent of a server room or a laboratory, it was eerily quiet.

Wiktor looked to the sides, then down; he noticed that the black floor he was standing on was full of holes that had to be maneuvered around. They weren’t deep and wide enough to be a deadly threat, but it could hurt to get accidentally caught in one. He carefully turned around.

He felt light-headed and weak at the knees and in the groin as an unfathomably massive foot of a human he would soon understand to be Martyna appeared in his field of view, towering over the otherwise barren landscape like an ancient, desert monument of an omnipotent deity.

“Now that was quick,” Martyna thought when she heard the device let out a short signal again. She didn’t feel much during the process, apart from a bit of tingling and tickling, similar to the sensation one gets when their legs fall asleep, but certainly not as irksome. “Did it work?” She leaned down towards the chamber, but nothing appeared particularly different. Martyna took her feet out and touched one of them with her hand to make sure that everything important remained as it had been half a minute ago.

Her foot was smooth as silk. There were no blemishes to be spotted, nor could she find any rough or dry skin, and her toenails appeared perfectly pedicured. Everything up to - and including - her ankles felt clean and pristine, as if she had just come out of the shower. For Martyna, who had never really cared much for the appearance of her feet, embracing a tall tomboy's lifestyle that didn’t exactly make her a prime player in the dating game, it all seemed very unusual - but not in a bad way. Despite being a rather small change, it immediately spoke to her feminine side and made her feel a little bit more beautiful. It also almost made her forget the reason why she had decided to meddle with the device - while everyone else was busy - in the first place.

As Martyna then began to wonder whether Wiktor’s presence inside the chamber had anything to do with what she had just experienced, she recalled that - according to the people on the forum she visited - the dozen or so seconds which elapsed while the device was actively performing its duty must have felt to him like almost two weeks. The peculiarity of the entire situation somewhat overwhelmed her. She had no time, however, to think it through - the sounds of footsteps and rising commotion coming from behind the lockers prompted her to hurry up. She had just managed to put her socks and shoes back on and place the machine on the bench when Julia appeared, still on the phone.

"Advanced settings - and then? Force remove module, got it," she repeated her mother’s instructions to her while approaching the device.

Martyna's gamble paid off - she made Wiktor spend eleven days by her feet without anyone noticing and trying to stop her. She knew that it was probably not going to be a secret for long since he was about to be set free, but she decided not to say anything yet, on the off chance that he got successfully scared into submission and wouldn't want to risk making her upset again. She would tell the girls after this whole drama died down. Comedy equals tragedy plus time, after all, especially if you have more than just your own misfortune to laugh at. Schadenfreude could help Julia stay in good spirits and cope better with whatever punishment her mother thought up; she would know that Martyna avenged her and got back at her annoying brother, the guy who caused all this to go awry.

"Huh?" Julia grunted in confusion. "Why does it say 'battery low'?"

The view was unbearable for Wiktor's mind. He felt a great need to get away; to hide. He turned his back to the landscape-like feet and legs of the young woman and proceeded to walk away towards the transparent barrier, the boundary of his world, taking thoughtlessly careful steps on top of the labyrinthian ground. Too distressed to be mentally present alongside his body, he got caught in the loop of thinking about the very act of thinking - until he reached the vast, plastic window. He put his forearms on its surface and leaned against it; it smelled of static.

Wiktor looked outside. He had no fear of heights, yet it made him feel dizzy, as if he was standing by the window of a high-rise on an exceptionally clear day. He saw it vividly now; a great open field of cheap, synthetic wood extended for what looked like kilometers, only to abruptly end upon meeting the vertical mountain that was the wall; an immense, featureless slab of dirty beige. Raising his head towards the sky, he could see it open up and give way to a setback, a gorge that let the sunlight flood in through great panes of glass. He was in a land of extraordinary spaciousness indeed but one nevertheless finite in size; packed rows of metal-plated skyscrapers on each side enclosed him tightly, and so did the solid vault of artificial heaven high above. There was more to see behind him, but he dared not look. Having some of his view obstructed by a massive silver wall immediately to his right, seemingly the source of all the hum and of the vibrations reaching him through the floor and the transparent plastic, and fearing what he might see on his left, Wiktor simply kept looking forward - knowing very well where he was and what had happened to him, but refusing to accept it.

As reality began to sink in, the boy’s legs gave way beneath him. He sat down, feeling the weight of his initial shock, and slid his fingers into his hair before letting his heavy head rest between his hands. He managed to stay afloat; he wasn’t sinking anymore. It was about time he tried to pull himself together and started looking for a way out.

Having regained to some extent his composure, and with the panicky, distracting thoughts inside his head quieting down, Wiktor noticed that so far he was the only one around to have broken the pervasive silence. But why? He understood what had happened to him, or at least that he ended up inside the chamber of the very nail polish device that he had just been fighting over; so shouldn't there be some commotion? Shouldn't he be hearing the girls talk, seeing them move about, if not in alarm, then perhaps just to get a better view of him out of sheer curiosity? And where did those giant bare legs come from? Haunted by all these unanswered questions, Wiktor turned around again.

Same as before. Nothing had changed while he wasn’t looking. A sea of black stepping stones with a monumental foot raising above them; and behind it - another. It staggered his mind how small he was; he could barely fit the freighter-sized and -shaped mass of brute human bodiness - sculpted into the flexible form of the lower limb's sedulous foundation and covered in a curving expanse of pink-beige skin - within his field of view. It seemed too vast to only be a part of some greater whole, yet it rose high upwards, piercing the transparent enclosure and topping off with a startlingly personal visage, in which he recognized the face of Martyna. It seemed like she was looking right at him.

Wiktor felt offended. "Martyna?" he asked himself silently. "Now what's her problem, why is she butting into this? Where's Julia?" It was just the two of them. He tried waving with both arms to get the girl's attention, but she wasn't moving one bit, her face stuck in an empty grimace; her hair dangling motionlessly by the sides of her head.

"Hey!" he shouted, scaring himself slightly with the sound of his own voice filling the silent air. "Get me out of here! Can you hear me? Hey!" She did not respond. "Ah, you dumb twat," he remarked, though not as loud as before in case she could hear him after all; him being upset didn't change the fact that he wasn't in a favorable position to argue with her. With his voice and gestures having proven inadequate for the task, he figured he would have a better chance of grabbing Martyna's attention if he tried touching her instead. However, he underestimated just how much ground he had to cover to get to her - ground that was quite tricky to traverse, too.

As Wiktor hopped from one plastic block and ridge to another, his destination kept growing in relative size until Martyna's little toe began to appear to the boy as big as a suburban house. Approaching its immediate vicinity, he started having second thoughts and doubts about his capabilities and was feeling more and more uneasy. He got worried that he could be easily swept away or crushed if she moved her foot even a tiny bit. Her body gave him the impression of a massive, mecha-like structure, controlled - admittedly - by the girl, but only from some far away location, making it to some degree independent and personified; It was understandably difficult for him not to give all the distinctive parts of her biological soma their own agency if the source of Martyna’s personhood - her face - remained well outside the reach of his eyes whenever his sight was focused on anything below her neck.

The boy anxiously stretched out his arm and touched the angled side of Martyna's toe, finding a spot between two furrows on her skin. It wasn't particularly warm, but it wasn't cold, either; its soft and smooth texture caressed his hand, giving the colossal toe a delicate quality that subverted his initial expectations. Still, standing right by it made him feel like a nuisance; worse - like an invisible beggar, or maybe like a kid that couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to him. He pushed her toe with both arms, slightly bending the pillow-like, elastic skin in the process. No reaction on her part. Wiktor raised his head; Martyna was still looking down right at him, as if he was a lone ant visiting her on a beach rather than a fellow person that she could communicate with. Irritated by the lack of progress, he began punching and kicking her toe, but the only thing he succeeded in was getting himself winded.

He couldn’t stand the girl’s unresponsiveness. Being given nothing to go on made him confused and indecisive again. He desperately wished she would reply, make fun of him if that’s what it took; did anything but just stare. In fact, he didn’t even notice her blink once. Was she waiting for him to do something specific? Would he have to beg her to get him out? He realized she could be taking advantage of this entire situation just to humiliate him for all the times he asked her not to be such a brat. If that was the case, then he was inclined to agree that it was working. The boy was getting frantic, with anxiety filling his chest as he began to feel forgotten by the world that refused to reply.

"Look, I'm sorry!" he shouted, cracking his voice. "I won't bother you again, I promise! Can you hear me? I'm sorry!" He paused for a few seconds to study her face. "Do you want me to kiss your feet? Is that what it's all about, Martyna? Hey!" All the yelling was straining his throat and making him light-headed, but the only thing he cared about now was getting the girl to react to him. "Is that what you want me to do? Martyna, my queen, is that it? Tell me, I'm right here, right at your feet!"

Martyna remained silent and so did not decline the boy's offer. Fed up with half-measures, he dashed towards her toe and with great force buried his face in her skin. He started kissing it as intensely as he could and kept going, painfully flattening his own nose and putting considerable pressure on his neck and chest, until he could no longer postpone taking a breath. Pulling his head away, he went on to try to quickly fix his now very messy hair and found that it had become annoyingly sticky; soon he realized it wasn’t just the hair - his entire face had gained a somewhat waxy and viscous coating, as if he had just been toiling under the summer sun for an extended period of time. As Wiktor licked his lips, the taste of salt and earthly chalk settled onto his palate and became seemingly suspended in the air he breathed in and out. He was fully aware it was the taste of Martyna’s skin - the skin on her foot, to be exact - which made even weirder the fact that it didn’t seem to him particularly offensive to the senses; and so, instead of spitting or wiping his mouth, he expunged the thoughts about this odd experience from his mind and once again turned upwards towards the girl’s face.

There was something he was missing - that he was sure about. Maybe he was too small to be seen, to be felt? Maybe the device got him fooled and in reality he was looking at some freeze-frame or some snapshot while life outside went as usual? Then: an epiphany; his phone was still in his pocket-- alas, it was dead. Wasn’t that exactly why he entered the cursed locker room in the first place? With that, he was out of options. There was nothing left to do but wait and hope that things somehow change for the better on their own.

Wiktor crouched down in resignation - and dropped his bottom limply onto the rubbery floor. It was all proving to be so tiresome; he needed a break from this frenzy. As he then proceeded to lay down in the least awkward position he could come up with, it occurred to him that he could try simply sleeping his troubles out. Perhaps something would eventually happen.

It only takes a short while for a person lying motionless in a rather sparsely populated room to start feeling uncomfortably chilly, and although Wiktor did bring a hoodie to school that day, he left it in the classroom - he did not expect his search for Julia to end in such a way. He had already embarrassed himself in multiple ways, so what difference would it make to keep doing it for a little longer? Instead of dwelling on the inappropriateness of his conduct, Wiktor found some warmth and refuge under Martyna’s toes.

Snuggling up to the wrinkled skin in a stuffy crevice somewhere beneath her little toe, the ever-tired boy was certain he would have no trouble falling asleep. Yet he did not; neither that time, nor later, nor on any other occasion during his long stay inside the device.

Martyna walked up to her ill-fated friend, who was using her free hand to tinker with the device while listening to her mother's impatient heavy breathing through the phone. She was curious and eager to learn the apparently simple solution to their woes and see for herself whether it really worked. While looking at the console, her attention was caught by one of the knobs; the one used for setting the units of time for the dilation effect. It was set to… years? "That's weird," Martyna thought. "Did Julia just change it for some reason? I don't remember it looking like this." Her friend managed to find the "force remove module" button and swiftly proceeded to tap it. As Martyna tried to recall what exactly the knob looked like back when she was looking at it while her feet were inside the chamber - looking upside down, that is - Wiktor materialized on the floor of the locker room.

It wouldn’t exactly be appropriate to say that the girls recognized him; the identity of the person that appeared before them was more of an assumption - a reasonable one, given the circumstances, but hardly the result of any visual observation. The boy was naked and resembled a marble statue, both in the pigmentation of his skin and in the stiffness of his body. His pose had changed since the last time they saw him: he was no longer standing up. On the contrary, he was curled up and kneeling, with his arms resting on the ground and his face hidden between his legs, as if in deep prostration. His hair, once black, now resembled the unkempt fur of some Arctic creature or perhaps a pile of bonfire ashes. His skin, however, did not undergo any changes at all; it still seemed elastic and strong, and lacked any unsightly wrinkles - at least on the parts that were visible to the girls.

"Wiktor…?" Julia called out to him, timidly and cautiously at first, then with increasing agitation. "Wiktor! Are you alright?" She approached him, crouched down, and put her hand on his shoulder. "Why aren't you saying anything? Wiktor!"

After a few long seconds, his body twitched slightly in a delayed response to the touch. He  began to move, slowly and apparently with great difficulty, as if he was waking up from deep sleep and barely remembered how to control his muscles. As the girls gathered around and observed him with equal parts curiosity and anxiety, he raised his head, eyes wide open - though fixed on some unspecified point far in the distance - and revealed the withered face of a man who stayed awake far longer than any human was meant to.

His lips had lost all color and now blended into the paleness of his face. Shades of dark blue, red, and black surrounded his eyes, and covered the saggy, wrinkled skin below his lower eyelids. His eyebrows were as gray as what remained of the hair on his head. There was no emotion that could be read from his face, nor did he seem engaged in careful thought; he simply existed right then and there within a tired, tormented form, as if he got caught up in the cogs of a cosmically incomprehensible and inhumane machine that processed, absorbed, and integrated his psyche into a mathematical construct; as if he was a cosmonaut drifting powerlessly through the void of outer space; as if he had been awake during his own surgery.

It took a minute for Wiktor to familiarize himself with his surroundings. The locker room appeared to him small and cramped. There was movement all around; people. They were looking at him, talking to him; they seemed familiar. One - in particular.

As his eyes met Martyna's gaze, he screamed.

"Hello, Wiktor. May I come in?" the psychologist probed after gently knocking on the door a few times. There was no need for her to ask for permission - the question was only a matter of courtesy - but it would be counterproductive to agitate the patient.

She heard no words, or sounds, of protest, and so she opened the one-way door to Wiktor’s chamber. It hadn’t changed much since the last time she saw him; it was as dusky as ever and it still reminded her of a mountain cabin, or maybe an old-fashioned bedroom of a retired film director, complete with an artificial fireplace and a movie projector setup. The windows overlooking the woods outside were heavily dimmed and, of course, human impact-resistant, as was required by the institution he was housed in. Shade-loving plants populated the room to keep its occupant company, while a water fountain tried its best to convey the impression of a dynamic, busy atmosphere.

Having been woken up from one of his weeks-long, dreamless rests, Wiktor wasn’t sleeping. He was lying propped up on the bed, connected to some life-support machine hidden from view in an adjacent room. Some video captured from the point of view of a cyclist passing through a metropolis at dusk - apparently a way to show him the richness of the world while alluding to the finity of man’s life, a state of mind antithetical to what he had experienced during his long, long years inside the device - was being displayed on a wall in front of him, but he didn’t seem to pay any attention to it. His mind was someplace else.

“Good to see you, Wiktor,” the psychologist said. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting down here for a moment.”

The visits used to give Wiktor bouts of severe anxiety, but his caretakers managed to ease him into them through music, which would play each time after the psychologist left, until he fell asleep again. He really enjoyed music; he'd missed it very, very much.

"You mentioned that you would like to pet a cat the last time I was here, do you remember?" the psychologist asked, having sat down sideways at the foot of Wiktor's bed, just like she did during her previous visits. She was looking down at the floor, at her carefully picked, bland moccasin slippers that she put on before knocking on the door; she did not want to trigger in him any flashback-induced panic attacks by drawing his attention to her gaze or her feet. "I talked to the guys and they agreed to arrange everything for you, but first they would need to be sure that you're ready; that you won't lose your cool. Do you understand?” she paused to imply that she was waiting for a response.

“...yes,” Wiktor replied, his voice coarse and nigh inaudible.

“Would you be willing to revisit your memories, then? It would help you remain composed during your flashbacks; and I could get you exactly the help you need - but I need to know the details first. I need to know what happened,” she pressed on.

“I know,” he looked towards the wall in front of him, at the footage of some East Asian, neon-lit city. “Okay.”

“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” the psychologist requested. There was no need for her to take notes, everything was being recorded anyway. “Tell me what you remember. Tell me what's inside your mind.”

A desolate greenhouse in a sun-scorched field of sand grass. Can't find the dusty road that led you to this place; it was one of those temporary things that don't make sense in the long run. The place was meant to disappear right after waking up, but you got there even though everybody else had already left. Getting caught in a technicality, as if you were a lucky coin that someone used in a vending machine. That's just how it is, that's how it really is; the deep foundations don't answer to your code of ethics. They simply act the way they are supposed to - and so must you. Except that you're going to do it by hand like the person that you claim to be. You have all the time in the world, after all.

No, before that.

It got to my head. The water is in my lungs now and there's nothing I can do to keep myself from coughing uncontrollably. Can you at least let me drown, please? It's unbearable; breathing water hurts like hell. I wasn't meant to be here, to survive for such a long time, permanently strangled. Why can't I die? Where am I, really? Is this inner or outer space? Had I entered a number, a point, a line? Is this where fever dreams begin? The ones in which you're stuck in the void of space; falling, perhaps, inescapably into a dense sphere of red-brown clouds? Or the ones that have you meet that primordial, overwhelming geometry, those inhuman platonic solids of immense size; terrifyingly simple, impossibly heavy, maddeningly slow? They are all that remains. There is no path that doesn't lead back inside.

No. Before that.

What would I do without you?

That’s more like it.

I was seriously obsessed. Don’t say that. Why not? It’s understandable, under the circumstances. Anyone would get obsessed. You would get obsessed. I wouldn’t. You would. Okay, maybe. So there’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You’re delusional. Oh, shut it, will you.

A world reduced to her-- To her. A world reduced to her feet. But you don’t know what I know. You have a different idea. No, we have the same idea. Yes, but it’s easy to exaggerate; the context is important, don’t you realize? Alright. So what’s the context?

It can’t be just words. Nobody could ever understand. Unless they have spent centuries following each ridge, furrow, and wrinkle. Unless they have learned to tell the difference between her heel and her toe by taste alone. Unless they have stayed beneath the soft and warm and good and right - you’re drifting away - eternal - subjugating - but divine - everyone says that - but nobody means it - beneath the lowest point of her (of Her); of her body (nothing but Her); of her being (you don’t exist without Her; the lint between Her toes is more real than you).

Cut it out, will you. Now is hardly the time.

Don't act like you'll ever be able to leave it behind. Did you enjoy the life of a mite? That’s seriously inappropriate. That’s not an answer; did you enjoy the life of a mite?

Did you enjoy the life of a mite?

Why not go back? Please stop.

You're not meant to live outside. p l e a s e s t o p

They'll put you back. they won't

Martyna

you belong under her

you're her favorite foot mite

look

this isn't real, see?

you never left

you're still there

you'll always be there

under her foot

forever

"What happened to the girl?"

"Well, what law did she break?"

"Surely s o m e law."

"I believe she got sued for a… negligently inflicted psychiatric injury."

"Is that something serious?"

"No, not really. Just some pocket change."

"Oh, that's reassuring."

"A million years, though. Sassy!"

"And here I thought giving our boys a thousand each time was a bit mean."