“Ah, damn it, he killed me again! That's like, the third time this match! He's got to be cheating somehow!” yelled my friend Kyle, dropping his controller onto the couch in frustration and causing me to laugh a bit.

“Are you sure it's the same guy?”

“Yeah, I'm sure, John. He's the only guy in the game running around with obnoxiously colorful armor.”

“I think it's just time you admit that you suck at this game and try a new one.”

“You know I want to unlock everything in this one before I... no... no...nonono, gah, come on!” I couldn't help but laugh as I looked straight ahead at the television screen in front of us where a digital version of my friend was gunned down yet again.

“The orange guy got you again, didn't he?”

“I don't want to talk about it” Kyle replied as he dropped his controller once more and turned off his gaming console.

“Well then, what do you want to do now?”

“Why don't we go upstairs for a bit? There's something new I want to show you.” Without waiting for me to reply, Kyle practically leapt off the couch and started heading through the hall and towards the stairs.

“Hold your horses, man!” I yelled as I got off the couch and began following him up the steps.

We reached the second floor of the house and he led me into a spare bedroom. The room didn't really serve any one specific purpose. His family just sort of used it for storage and the presence of a table and a computer made it something of a home office as well.

“Damn, it's hot up here. I'm gonna let in some air.”

I looked around the room and quickly noticed what was “new” that my friend wanted to show me. On the far right side of the room stood something very large with a plain white sheet draped over it. “What the hell's that, man?” I asked, pointing to the mysterious object in question.

“Go on, have a look for yourself” replied Kyle with his back to me as he opened a window and caused the brightness of a late-June afternoon to pour into the room.

A gentle breeze blew into the room and made the sheet flutter slightly as I approached the object. I reached out and grabbed the fabric in my hand before pulling it away, revealing something that made my jaw drop.

Standing directly in front of me in my best friend's attic was a shrink ray. It was big, it was bulky, and the thing was downright foreboding to be honest. Even though it was one of the older models, the technology was still considerably new and highly sophisticated, and therefore quite expensive.

I couldn't help but stare in amazement, and so I did for an unknown amount of time before realizing that my mouth was hanging open. “No way, man... how did you guys get one?!”

I turned around to face Kyle who stood behind me with his arms crossed at his chest. “Awesome, right?” Wide eyed, I simply nodded and waited for him to speak again. “This thing's been at my dad's company for years. It still works and everything, but the technology has come a long way since back when this came out so I guess he's replacing it with a newer model. He took this one home until he can decide what to do with it. You know, sell it, donate it, whatever. I think he might have a soft spot for this old hunk of junk and doesn't really want to see it go, but my mom doesn't like having it in the house so who knows where it will end up.”

“This is amazing, thanks so much for showing me. I've never been this close to one of these things, I've really only seen them on TV and in the movies, you know?” I said as I began kneeling down to pick the sheet up from the floor to cover the machine back up.

“What are you doing, man? Don't you want a demonstration?”

“Demonstration? What do you... you don't mean... you're not suggesting...”

“Yeah, man!” replied Kyle, laughing. “Let's shrink something! We've got the house to ourselves, nobody's gonna know if we fire her up and have a little fun!”

Part of me knew better than to risk getting into trouble and using Kyle's dad's machine, but as I took another look at it, I realized this was my first and possibly my only chance to get hands-on with this technology. There was no way I could pass it up. “Alright, let's do it!”

I could hear the wind rattling leaves on the trees outside the open window as I watched Kyle plug the power cable to the machine into the nearest wall socket. “You sure you know how to use this thing?” I asked.

“Honestly, there's not really much to it, John.”

“So you've used it before? What did you shrink?”

“Well... no. I haven't used it before, but these things are pretty simple to operate, you know? All the buttons are pretty basic, we've all seen the tutorial videos on the internet.”

“Yeah, I guess so” I replied.

“Wait a minute...” my friend began, crossing his arms and turning to look at me. “Don't tell me you're-”

“No, no, no” I said, fully aware of what my friend was going to say and cutting him off before the words could leave his mouth. “I'm not chickening out, I'm just making conversation. I've never had the chance to be up close and personal with one of these things, let alone operate it for myself, I'm sure as hell not passing this up.”

“That's what I like to hear, man!”

The excitement within me grew as I examined the machine in front of me, knowing that in mere moments it would be powered on and ready to use. In a way, it sort of resembled a giant gun. Its laser-firing barrel was aimed straight ahead and sat on a swivel. I knew from the countless instructional videos and product demonstrations I had watched on TV and online that this design decision was put in place to allow the operator to aim at and shrink multiple targets in a given area without having to move the entire impressively weighty machine.

Kyle stepped behind the machine, positioning himself in front of its many buttons and switches. I watched curiously as his fingers flicked at them, and when he hit a certain one, a red light switched on at the top of the device.

For such a large and somewhat outdated piece of technology, the shrink ray ran surprisingly silently. I could barely hear the faint whirring of cooling fans spinning up, nor the noises of any other internal mechanical processes that were undoubtedly taking place under the hood.

“Come on, man” said my friend, snapping my attention away from the red light on the machine.

“What?” I asked, facing him with a look of confusion on my face. He rolled his eyes as he looked back at me.

“Well don't just stand right in front of it, man. You didn't want the demonstration to be on you, did you?”

“Whoops” I replied, laughing. “No, I don't want that.” I stepped off to the side, out of range of the ray's barrel. “So, is she all ready to fire?”

“Almost” replied Kyle, stepping out from behind the machine and standing beside me. “See that red light?” he asked, pointing to the light I had noticed turn on just a moment earlier. “When that changes from red to green, we're good to go.”

“Alright, so what do you want to shrink first?”

“Uh... I don't know.” The two of us looked around the room in search of ideas. “What about that?” he asked, pointing to a wooden table tucked into one of the room's corners.

“Yeah, I guess that will work for a first target.”

We walked over to the table and began removing the items from its somewhat cluttered surface. When it was sufficiently cleared off, we each lifted a side and carried it across the room, setting it down gently directly in front of the machine.

By the time we had it in position, the red light on the machine had changed to green. “I think she's ready” I said, pointing to it.

“Yep, follow me.” Kyle led me to the back of the machine.

“Do you need to adjust any settings or anything?” I asked, looking over the array of buttons before me, thinking about what each one's purpose could be.

“Nope, it's ready to fire. But I think you should do the honors.” Kyle's hand guided my attention to a red button on my left. It was larger than all the others. “Just press that one when you're ready.”

I couldn't hold myself back any longer, my excitement was in full control of my body. My hand reached forward and my index finger pushed at the button. I pulled my arm back and stood perfectly still with my eyes glued to the table ahead, waiting for its size to change.

A few seconds went by and still nothing had happened. Disappointed, I turned to my friend. “Well... looks like your dad's machine is broken.”

Kyle laughed. “Have a little patience, guy. It's not broken. There's a fifteen or twenty second countdown before the thing fires. It's like a... safety feature, you know?”

Before I could respond, a bright light flashed in front of me and the table was gone. If I hadn't known any better, I might have thought it simply disappeared into thin air or that perhaps it was teleported elsewhere. But I knew the reality of the situation.

I scrambled to the front of the machine and lowered myself down to the floor. My eyes were soon met with the sight of a ridiculously small table. It was smaller even than if it had been specially constructed to furnish a dollhouse.

I delicately picked the minuscule piece of furniture up and examined it as I held it between my fingertips. It looked so fragile, especially the legs.

“Careful, don't break it” said Kyle, still standing behind the machine, clearly not as excited by the shrunken table as I was.

“I know, I know.” I gently placed the table back down onto the floor.

“Here, check it out with this” said Kyle before tossing me a magnifying glass. I caught it and brought it over the little table. I examined the tiny markings in the wood, every small detail came to life under magnification.

“Come on, let's try it out on something else” said Kyle after I had spent a moment or so scrutinizing the table. I set the magnifying glass down on the ground nearby and rejoined my friend at the controls.

“Alright, what's our next target?”

We had been on what I guess you could call a shrinking spree for a decent chunk of the afternoon. There was a variety of tiny objects scattered about on the floor in front of the machine. The table, an office chair, a couple of filing cabinets, stacks of boxes. Our supply of suitable targets inside the room had begun to dwindle, which is why I was now dropping the kickstand and parking an old bicycle Kyle and I had grabbed from his shed and carried upstairs.

“Ready?” my friend asked me from behind the machine.

“Yep.” Now used to the timer function on the machine, after he pressed the firing button the two of us stood in front of it, but out of range of the barrel, as we had done the last few times we reduced an object's size.

The two of us stood with out arms crossed, anxiously waiting for the device to fire. “This is gonna be cool” said Kyle. “It's gonna be like a bike... for bugs.” I laughed.

A strong breeze whipped at the trees outside and blew through the open window, entering the room. Kyle and I froze in panic as we watched the power of the wind force the barrel of the machine to swivel, stopping right as it was aimed straight for us.

“Oh... shit...” we said in unison. A violent flash of light escaped the barrel and the world around us changed drastically in the blink of an eye.