The Big Date

So this is how my date with Max went.

We texted each other and chatted online a few times during the rest of the week after my near accident. She pointed out a couple of times that she had more or less saved my life, and had one up on me, so I better be impressive on Saturday. She was being light hearted, though. The important part is that we figured out a good multi-size accessible restaurant for dinner, Pellegio’s out toward the outer edge of the city where the bigger giants lived.

What with my car being totaled, I was stuck taking public transportation and cabs until my paperwork went through, and I was compensated for the lost vehicle. It was an inconvenience, but I wouldn’t let it stop me. I put on my best shirt and slacks, dabbed a little cologne on (Her nose might be a little too far away to notice, but it’s the effort that counts.), and caught a cab out to the bigger part of town. The further and further we travelled from my neighborhood the bigger the buildings and pedestrians were. Luckily smaller roads are brightly lit on either side alert any nighttime traveler and prevent inopportune accidents, for the most part. Eventually we arrived at the restaurant.

It was dozens of miles tall, and took up a truly vast lot of land.      The cab took me around to an entrance for smaller folks, and I paid the cabbie as I got out.

I found myself standing outside a door set in a long tunnel like structure that was eventually subsumed into the gigantic structure that must have been the main dining area. Going inside I found myself in a comfortably warm foyer. There were a few potted plants, a few couches for waiting parties, and a small counter where stood a greeter and host with a reservation book. Everything was illuminated in dim cozy amber light. I walked up to the counter.

“I’m Anik Dumas, have a reservation with Ms. Max Taylor.” I said.

The host looked his reservation list up and down, then gave a little nod. “I see, right there. Ms. Taylor is already seated at one of our mixed size tables. Just proceed down the hallway, Mr. Dumas, and one of our attendants will help you to your seat.”

“Thank you,” I said, and went on down the hallway.

After a few dozen yards, I came to the end. I heard chatter, the murmur of many different voices of many different sizes. At the end was a small arch. I walked through it, and was met with a breath taking sight. The interior itself spread out for miles and miles. Imagine one of you bigger national parks, but set up entirely for gigantic professional food service. A young woman wearing a helmet, and a pilots uniform caught my attention.

“Excuse me, Mr. Dumas?” She asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Hi, I’m Meghan and I’m going to be you pilot this evening.”

“Pilot?”

“Yes. For parties with more extreme size differences we fly you up to your table in one of our fleet of helicopters.”

“I see.” I followed Meghan, looking around as we walked. Hundreds of tables for people my size were spread all through the immense building. I could see carts and busses picking people up, and driving them off to far away tables, much as Meghan was about to fly me to my table. Interspersed between the smaller tables were the legs of the larger tables and chairs plunging into the floor like gigantic indoor trees. Between many of these legs, were the literal legs of giant patrons. Seeing so many gigantic feet made my head spin a bit. Meghan caught my attention.

“We’re here at the fleet.” She said.

Set into the floor, was a large area cemented over with concrete, and painted to create around a dozen landing pads. Over half of them had choppers sitting on them, and we walked over to one of those. Meghan hopped in first, then helped me get in and secure. Soon the blades were spinning, and we were taking off. The view from above was just as spectacular as the view from below. I could see dozens of table sized for customers of different heights. Many of them were filled with customers.

I could see a few of the mixed sized tables. They tended to have one truly huge table that could seat all but the very largest of giants, and the numerous smaller tables raised high above the main table, all at different sizes. The heights of these smaller tables were all carefully arranged so that an entire multi-size party would just about be at eye level to each other, easing communication and conversation between everybody.

“Aren’t such high tables a little bit dangerous!?” I asked over the noise of the chopper.

“You might notice that there are guardrails, and fairly spacious catwalks around our elevated tables. Even then we get a few people falling every month; luckily there are always enough larger giants in here that their auras prevent any fatal injuries. By the way, there’s a menu tucked under your seat if you want to get started making your selections.”

I found the menu and started perusing. I noticed it was labeled as a “Tiny” menu.

“Bigger folks get a different menu, I suppose?”

“Yeah,” Meghan said. “It’s more or less the same options, but there are also giant specific dishes. Most of them incorporate people our size as ingredients.”

“I see.”

“Well, were just about there.

Meghan piloted the helicopter, angling it down and bringing us down in a smooth arc. As we swung around, my date’s image finally slid into view.

She sat at one of the larger tables in the restaurant, though not the biggest. We evidently caught her eye, because she gave us a big smile and a little wave, little relative to her size, anyway.

     What can I say? She was gorgeous; completely utterly gorgeous. Her lustrous brown hair hung just down to her shoulders with artfully shaggy bangs draped across her forehead. She wore a royal blue turtleneck sweater, with a thin silver chain necklace that had a little locket hanging just above her breasts. Her nails were immaculately manicured, painted a rich orange red that popped against the sweater.

Meghan brought the chopper down on a pad and let me out of the vehicle.

“Have you decided on a drink, sir?”

“I’ll try this cucumber Gin Rickey thing I saw on the menu.”

“Very well, when you get to your table there will be a small intercom device. Your waiter will contact you through it to take the rest of your order. There is also a headset provided to facilitate conversation with your dining partner.”

“Thank you,” I slipped her a few bucks as a tip.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, “when you’re ready to leave, just press the button on the intercom, and one of our pilots will be called to take you back down. Assuming, of course, your date doesn’t take you herself.”

     She shooed me off to a safe distance and lifted back off. I walked along until I came to a small table set for one. I looked across and saw Max’s face filling up nearly my entire field of vision. Not that I minded, she was as pretty at eye level as she had been from however many miles below. Her grey blue eyes shone brilliantly. I sat down and put on my head set, and Max put on hers as well.

“They make quite a production of things here.” I said. “They could have just portaled me up here, not that I’m complaining, the view was amazing.”

     “I think that’s why they do it,” Max said. Out in the world, of course, her voice would have been far too distorted for me to understand what she was saying, but with the help of technology, our voices were modified and distorted and piped straight into each other’s ears at a level that each of us could understand. So even though Max’s voice would normally be nothing, but a loud low pitched rumble to me, what I heard instead was a woman’s voice a little bit higher than my own. Max’s headset would do the same of the inaudibly squeaky tones of my own voice, from her perspective. “All the reviews mentioned that they use as little portal technology as possible. They want to replicate a pre-entanglement dining experience as closely as they can.”

     “It was certainly fun. I’ve been to a few multi-size bars of course, but this is really going the extra mile. Thanks for suggesting it. And, you know, thanks for saving my life.”

     An awkward silence passed.

     “Well, you know,” she said, I thought I detected a note of modesty in her voice, “it’s all in a day’s job, you know. It’s my duty to keep all you little folks as safe as I can.”

     “Sorry if that was too heavy, but I felt like maybe it would hang over us if I didn’t say something.”

     “No, you’re right. I guess I did save your life, but I don’t always like to think of my work in such grand terms, to be honest. And I like to leave work at work.”

     “Oh,” I said, “I totally get that. My work is a little boring. Pays the bills well enough, but not exactly thrilling.”

     “I see, what exactly do you…” Max’s question was interrupted as the table intercom buzzed to get my attention.

     I pressed the button. A voice asked to take my order. I looked the menu up and down, and ended up ordering steak and asparagus in a house gravy as my main, and a pesto dressed shrimp salad as an appetizer. I turned my attention back to Max’s cute, but gargantuan face.

     “Oh, I do routing for some of the major portal networks. Making sure people reach the correct destinations, monitor inter-dimensional friction, and leakage nodes. It sounds complicated, but it’s mostly watching screens and pressing buttons if the numbers get, you know, unhappy.”

     “Wow, so you sort of keep people safe too, then?”

     “Sort of,” I said, “I don’t always think about it that way. Portal travel is so safe these days, supposedly a new wave of automation is supposed to come in a few years, but… you know that’s really getting into the weeds, and I’m sure it’s not too interesting.”

“No, I like hearing about other people’s jobs, especially smaller folks’. It might sound ridiculous, but it can feel a little confining being so big. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy my size, I wouldn’t give up that feeling of entire neighborhoods crumbling beneath my feet for anything, but everyone expects you to go into public safety, or demolitions, or macro-construction. If you want to go into something like accounting, or like, any kind of office job, they look at you like you’ve got a screw loose. I like my job of course, I get to squish cute little people like you after all, but sometimes I wonder what I would have gone for if I was smaller, like even just a few thousand feet tall instead of miles.”

     “I see,” I said. A server Max’s size moved in and set an enormous plate and bowl in front of Max. Looking down from my perch, I could see that it contained a vast sea of brown shimmery liquid with chunks of various vegetables sitting in it under the surface, which cast off enormous masses of steam. Floating in the soup, alongside the veggies, was something else. I could just make out the forms of hundreds o tiny little people just about my size, bobbing, floating, and swimming in the broth. They seemed to be having a nice time.

     “Sorry,” Max said, “I ordered before you got here. I hope you don’t mind.”

     “Of course not, what are you having?”

     “It’s just consommé with vegetables, but I read really good things about it in the online reviews. Plus you can get it with hundreds of tinies sprinkled in it. I hope you don’t mind.”

     “Of course not,” I said, “I know some little folks have hang-ups about it, but it would be unfair for me to expect you not to enjoy other little folks just, because we’re on a date.”

     “I’m so glad,” her glossy pink lips smiled wide, “because I really do love devouring tinies. Hoards and hoards of hem, er, you, if I can.”

     “No it’s cool. This is only a first date anyway.”

     Max picked up her spoon and dipped it into the soup. I watched it lift back out, carrying hundreds of gallons of soup, and dozens of tiny people with it. She brought it up to her pretty little, but enormous mouth, and slurped it all up. After closing her eyes to savor her mouthful, she gave a slow, but decisive swallow. I watched her neck muscles contact and squeeze as she enjoyed her first sip. At my small size it was like watching a mountainside throb. I found it very attractive, and thinking about all those little folks on the inside was attractive as well.

     “Any good?” I asked.

     “Mmm-hm,” Max replied. She took a long breath through her nose, paused, and said, “so good. The soup is perfect, and the little ‘garnishes’ only enhance the flavor.”

     “I hope my food is as good.”

     “So what do you like to do when you’re not working or getting into traffic accidents?” She asked, as she dipped the spoon back into the soup.

     “Oh, I work out a little, go to movies, go on dates; regular single guy stuff.”

     She slurped the new spoonful of soup and tinies. “Any hobbies?” She asked.

     “I like watching old horror movies. Mostly pre-merger stuff. Sometimes I’ll watch the same movie a few times, but versions from different parallels. There are whole communities online that spend their time cataloguing and comparing all the little, and sometimes big differences.”

     “Oh,” Max said, her eyes lighting up, “I have friends who do that sort of thing, but with music. It’s the same deal. It’s funny how just having one person in a studio band instead of some other person can change the whole sound of a song or even a whole album.”

     “Neat, I’ve never been that into music to be honest, but I can totally see the similarity.”

     Max dipped her spoon back into the soup. She held it there this time. The soup level was getting so low, that it was harder for her to scoop up people with the broth, instead she held it there long enough for people to climb aboard themselves.

     A male waiter Max’s size came up on one side of my table. He held out a covered dish to the side of my table platform. Pulling off the cover, he revealed a server my own size who walked off onto my platform, and placed my shrimp salad and my cocktail down on my table.

     “Thank you,” I said.

     “Of course,” he said, “at Pellegio’s guests of all sizes are welcome.” Then he walked back onto the giant plate, was recovered, and whisked away by the giant sever.

     I sipped the Rickey through the metal straw; it was cold, bitter, fizzy, hint of cucumber, perfect.

     I looked down at my salad. A half dozen perfectly done shrimp sat on a bed of chopped greens, mostly arugula, covered in a thin pesto dressing with lots of pine nuts, and nearly transparently thin curls of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a few small  halved tomatoes amongst the greens.

     “Wow,” Max said, “that looks really good.”

     “If it were bigger, I’d invite you to try a bite.”

     “Plate sharing is something I’m willing to sacrifice for a good date.” Max smiled enough to show her enormous teeth. To me they were like slabs of highly polished rock. I could see a few little stragglers from Max’s soup, relaxing between her teeth.

     I dug into my salad, and it was as good as it looked. The shrimp, the greens, the herbal dressing, all made for a delicious, perfectly balanced bite. Max finished off the last of her soup in a few big spoonfuls. At the end she put her spoon back down into the bowl allowing all the remaining tinies to get on, and end up in her mouth and tummy.

     “Mmm,” she said, “so good. Sometimes I feel a little sorry for you folks. You might never know how good it feels to have hundreds, sometimes thousands of tiny little bodies moving and crawling around in your mouth, on your lips, on your tongues, it’s just such an exquisite feeling.”

     “I’m sure it’s nice,” I said. “But getting eaten and swallowed is very too, being completely surrounded and dominated by someone’s body is a pretty thrilling experience in its own right.”

     “Hmm,” Max said, “at the rate re-sizing tech is going we might actually be able to try both.”

     “Maybe,” I said. “The last articles I read about it said there were still limitations to be worked out. I heard a rumor, online rumor for what that’s worth, that the exploration service have tapped into dimensions where there are people who can actually change their own heights or other people’s, just with a thought, like magic or something.”

     “Wow, that would be something.”

     I ate the rest of my salad as we chatted about some of the books we both had read.

     As luck would have it. Our main courses arrived at the same time. The towering waiter, he was even taller than Max, returned with a pasta dish for Max, and a smaller server with my steak and asparagus. It also included some grilled yellow squash and zucchini with a few roasted fingerling potatoes. At looked very appetizing and smelled even better.

     I looked down at Max’s food. She had a late piled high with fettuccine pasta covered in a creamy sauce with lots of herbs and little bits of bacon and a meatball here and there. Again, amongst all these ingredients were hundreds of tiny naked people of my own size, and a even a few who were a little bigger, more in the 20 to 30 foot range, but still easily bite sized compared to Max’s enormous mouth.

“Looks good,” I said.

“It’s just a fancied up Alfredo, not too adventurous, I suppose, but I like to see if a restaurant can at least get the basics right.”

     “I like that attitude,” I said. “I just had a real steak craving.”

     Max plunged her fork between what, to me, were noodles hundreds of feet long and dozens of feet thick. As she twisted her fork, the steaming pasta became entwined around it, dragging along any tines for the ride. She put it in her mouth and chewed. I took my own flatware, and carved into my steak.

     The steak was excellent, perfectly done, and the potatoes had a delicious sweetness to them. From the yummy noises she was making over the headset, Max was enjoying her pasta.

     “Really good,” I said between bites.

     “This pasta is perfect, and the sauce is great.” She said. “Hey, watch this.”

     I watched. Max took a single long strand of pasta and carefully worked it and it alone out of the tangle. She gestured down at her plate, and the people responded, hopping onto the strand until it was swarming with thousands of people. When it was thoroughly coated, Max slurped up the noodle and all its passengers into her pursed lips in one long swift, steady slurp. I’ll admit I was immediately turned on by it. She chewed slowly, and thoroughly, and made a big exaggerated swallow.

     “Mmmm,” she said over the headset. “What did you think of that Anik; seeing me casually slurp up thousands of your fellow tinies?”

     “It was hot.” I said.

     “I thought you’d like it. I’ve never dated tinies before, but I read that people your size, love to see people my size devour big masses of little folks all at once.”

     “It’s true for me,” I said. “It gets me thinking what you might do with me when you’ve got me alone.”

     “Oh yeah,” she said. “You want to be alone with a big old giant girl like me?”

     “Sure,” I said.

     “Well, maybe we can work that out.”

     “Maybe after dinner, you’d want to come back to my place for some dessert, maybe coffee?”

     “Do you even have a mug for someone my size?” I asked.

     “I have an eyedropper and a creative mind. I’m sure we could figure out something.”

     “I wouldn’t mind going back to your place. It sounds like it could be nice.”

     “Yes!” Max clenched her free hand in triumph.

     We finished our meals and settled the bill. I stood up from my table.

     “Just stand at the edge and I’ll grab you.”

     We each removed our headsets. I moved around my little table along the elevated walkway until I stood on the edge nearest Max. She reached out to me and plucked me up with fingers that were as long as my apartment. She gently, but firmly held me between thumb and forefinger, and carried me over to the locket on her necklace. With her other hand she opened the locket. I could see inside. It had a plush interior like a little palanquin dangling from her neck. She moved me right over to it, pushed me inside with gigantic forefinger, and shut the locket behind me. I sat down in a plush very comfy armchair that sat at its center. It had a set of seatbelts, which I fastened, so I wouldn’t get tossed around too much as Max moved. I saw there was a headset, headphones and a mike, attached to the chair by twisting telephone cord. I put it on and tested it.

     “It seems like taking me to your place was the plane all along.”

     Her voice came through with a bit of crackle. This was obviously not as fancy a setup as they had at the restaurant. “Well, I wanted to be prepared, and you looked so cute the other day, and I’ve been enjoying our chats online. I figured there was a pretty good chance we’d go home together if you were into it.”

     “I am. Was eating all those tinies a part of the plan?”

     “A little,” She admitted, “I read an article that had advice on intersize dating. It said you folks go nuts watching one of my size devour you by the thousands, so I thought I’d give it a try, since it would taste good, and only cost a little extra.”

     “It was right, watching you swallow those masses of people made me wish I was one of them; completely dominated by your mouth and throat, squeezed and soaked in your stomach until your body was ready to release me.”

     “Cool ,” she said. “I’m about to get up and leave, so hold onto something in there. It’s going to be a big ride, and then when I get you home, it’s going o be an even bigger ride.”

     The chair held me securely as the chamber around me rose and swayed as Max stood up. I liked her very much, and I couldn’t wait to see what she had in store, but that story’s for another time.

Sorry I went a little long there folks. It was just a really good date, and I wanted to share it with you. If you all like it, who knows, maybe the program will encourage us all to write longer pieces to you about our world, in the meantime, keep reading and keep dreaming.