Phil woke up in a hot sweat, his body flashing with heat and so were his sheets. Moist and hot, matted down from the sickly dampness that his fever dream had caused. He had dreamed the shrinking virus had hit him. He had terrible premonitions of his future should he be one of the unlucky ones unfortunate to catch the terrible, life-changing disease. Thankfully, like many other nights, it was just a dream, spurred on by his anxiety and overly-worrying imagination. Until one dreadful night..it wasn't.

Phil was sitting in a chair that was the size of his classroom. Beside him, way up above, and a thousand times his size, was his mother. Rose could easily be described as pixar bodied. She was everything he wasn't. Voluptuous, imposing, and an incredible size compared to him. He watched her as she rubbed her temples as she sat at their kitchen table, looking over his medical bills and related documents, and other tasks at hand, including college applications.  The curvy, 6 and a half foot tall mother worried for her son's future as she stayed up late nursing a hot cup of recently brewed coffee trying to navigate this new world that was needing to restructure itself for a subset of the male population that had shrunk to the size of a BIC lighter. Phil's nightmare had happened. He was now a virus modified organism, or a tiny , as they were colloquially referred to in a growing number of settings. He wasn't the only one, and scientists couldn't pinpoint who or why the virus seemed to take to, but one commonality was that they were exclusively male, exclusively pale or fair skinned from northern hemispheres, ancestrally, and they all seemed to have been, before being shrunk, physically skinny, and poorly endowed, with poor status among women. These men had the entire scientific community in disbelief. Many were being tested on in both clinical and unfortunately, non-clinical settings. Even though they made up roughly 25 percent of the male population, this sudden change in the dynamic of the male population was world-changing. This had a devastating effect on the global economy, with women stepping up to take more dominant roles in every echelon of society. Society had become more female dominated seemingly overnight. Tiny Advocacy groups, and anti-advocacy groups, if  one were being generous, had suitably followed in springing up in society, with many anti advocacy groups, mostly female led pushing back on all the funding being spent on making institutions more tiny accessible. Recently, he , like many other's in their region, had been hit by the shrinking virus. His mother was devastated. Science and medicine could not help him or her, and at this point, she was up to her eyeballs in stress having to care for him and his new requirements. Even sending him off to college where they had special accessibilities for tinies seemed like a monumental task for her. The world couldn't suddenly adapt overnight, and it had been over a year since the first case had been recorded, and who knows how long before then. Thankfully, scientists were able to pinpoint that it was not contagious, unless you can count sheer bad luck as being a contagion. Phil tried to crack a joke to lighten up his mom's spirits, even though it should have been him who was being anxious. "Look at the bright side mom, I don't need as much food anymore". She must have already heard that one, she totally ignored him as she continued to peruse the documents. 

"Hey sweety..looks like will have to delay sending you off to college for this season" she'd explain. Phil had already suspected that was the case. His prospects for leaving his mother's side , ever, were growing increasingly grim, but things would change for the better, they had to, didn't they? Or so he thought. Her hand came in and swooped him up before he knew what was happening. He wish she'd give him some warning before she did that, but she always did that. Whenever she got up to go somewhere, she'd grab him without any sort of warning to bring him with her, like she would her phone or purse. Phil was a bit uneasy as he flew through the air, but he knew he was safe in her hands as his mother cupped him in her palm and walked away from the expensive and bureaucratic mess that was dealing with her son's future, and instead decided to relax by him in front of the television. Turning on the news to bring a tiny-related incident to the forefront of her and Phil's attention..