I think I must have been deathly pale by this point. I did NOT want to be shrunk! Everything in my mind was screaming at me to turn around and leave, preferably as fast as my booted feet would carry me.
I can't recall having ever been as scared of anything as I was before this moment. For someone who's been in at least a dozen gun battles and seen two fellow officers blown away before her eyes, that statement should mean a lot.
I'm not exactly sure how, but I managed to force myself to step into the machine. Looking back, I think I must have been halfway delirious or something, because I don't remember actually walking inside. One minute I was walking towards it, thinking delightful thoughts about running away, and the next, I was under those flashing lights, feeling a strange prickling sensation all over my body.
When the lights went out and the humming stopped, I hurried out of the chamber and leaned up against the wall next to Beth, almost gasping for breath. My hands were shaking so much I thought they would fly off my wrists. "Are you all right?" my supervisor asked worriedly. "You look like you're going to faint!"
"I-I'm okay," I insisted, trying to take control of myself. There was nothing I could do now, anyway. The machine had already zapped me. In a minute or so, I would be less than two feet tall!
"You might want to sit down," said Beth with no small amount of concern in her voice. "After the tingly feeling goes away, you won't feel anything, but you'll probably be disoriented. I know I was the first time."
"All right," I replied shakily, leaning up against the wall. The funny, prickly sensation was already fading, and in a moment it was gone.
I looked up at Beth, and then suddenly realized that I was looking UP at Beth! Before getting in the machine, I'd looked down at her slightly, for she was about five-six, three inches or so shorter than me. Now her eyes were above mine, and as I watched, they were climbing higher! She was grinning at me, oblivious to the look of horror I must have been wearing on my face. Maybe she liked watching people get small, or maybe it amused her to see the reaction in a rookie's eyes, but whatever it was, it terrified me.
I was shrinking! It was incredible, but it was really happening to me. I was really getting smaller! I wanted to scream in terror, but I controlled myself somehow.
I realize that by now you're probably thinking I'm a complete wimp. Come on, you're thinking, how bad could it be? Until you've experienced it yourself, though, you just can't understand.
Think about it for a minute. Imagine yourself standing in a room that's steadily growing larger and larger around you, and realizing that in less than a minute you'll be one-third your normal size. Now tell me if you could handle that any better than I could!
Yeah, rationally I had tried to prepare myself for this, but nothing compares to actually shrinking for real. In a few seconds, I watched Beth grow until she was a head taller than me, and after a few more seconds, she had to kneel down to look me in the eye. "Like I said, it's disorienting, isn't it?" she said, still wearing a wide grin on her face.
"Y-yeah," I think I muttered. She was right, of course. I felt like I was hallucinating, or in some kind of waking dream. Beth continued to get larger and larger as I watched, and as my head tilted further and further back to look up at her, I finally fell backwards onto my ass.
"Better stay there for a minute," said Beth, not at all surprised by my clumsiness. "Don't try to move. I'll be back in a moment." So saying, she walked into the miniaturizing machine and waited for it to cycle through the process.
By the time she came back, I had finished shrinking. I looked around myself at a world now three times its normal size. There's something else I'm sure you'll have trouble imagining. Pick up a pencil and look at it for a moment, now close your eyes and think of it and everything else being three times larger. It's not easy, is it? Well, that's exactly what had just happened to me.
With some effort I got to my feet and took a few wobbly steps. Again I felt like I was on a bad trip or something. You just don't realize how much of the world is scaled for someone between five and six feet tall. At less than two feet, nothing was at eye level any more. Everything was now UP!
A chair sat nearby and I walked over to it, looking up at it in wonder. Next to the chair rose a table with a computer console on it, and it was so high I didn't think I could even jump up and grab the edge of the surface.
"Go ahead," said Beth next to me. "Go ahead and climb up there. It'll be good practice."
I looked up at her like she was crazy. She was shrinking now, just like I had been a few moments ago. I watched in amazement as she gradually got smaller and smaller in front of me, until finally I was looking slightly down into her eyes, as I had before we'd both been miniaturized. We'd obviously both been subjected to the same scale of reduction. Somehow, having her the same size as myself seemed more comforting.
Without a word, I looked back at the table. While I couldn't possibly jump up to it, I could use the chair to reach it. With ease I pulled myself onto the padded seat, and from there had no trouble sliding onto the desktop, where I looked down in triumph at Beth several feet below.
"Congratulations!" she yelled up at me. "That's the first test we give a rookie. You didn't even need prompting. It's a good sign."
I climbed back down easily. "That wasn't as tough as I thought it'd be," I said, once back on the floor. "I felt light as a feather."
"It's part of the reducing process," Beth explained. "You're not just one-third your original weight, you're one-ninth of it, but your muscles are still just as strong as they were. You can run faster and jump higher at this size than you'd expect, and you should see what happens when you're scaled down to ten, or even five."
"Ten percent?" I asked nervously. The climb onto the desk had almost made me feel better about this shrinking business, but now I was afraid again. 10% would be less than six inches high, and five percent--three inches? They actually shrunk the girls that small? Dear God! What could a three-inch-high girl do for the casino, except look tiny and cute?
"I'm sure you saw some of the tables already," Beth said, seeing the unvoiced question in my expression. "Ten means the craps table, and five is for poker. Other scales you'll probably experience are 20 for blackjack and baccarat, and 15 for roulette. Of course, if you really like being shrunk, there's a special slot machine where you go to one percent and ride around on the middle wheel, but that can be really intimidating. We usually use it only for special occasions, birthdays and such, and most girls can only stand it for a few minutes."
I shuddered. One percent of my height would be just under seven-tenths of an inch high! I couldn't imagine such a thing, and certainly didn't want to ever experience it for myself. "You can be sure I'll never want to get that small," I told Beth honestly. "I don't even like this very much."
"You'll get used to it," Beth told me. "I can tell already. Most of the washouts are already gone by now."
"Thanks, I appreciate the sentiment," I said sincerely. "You're probably right, I probably will get used to it, but right now, I'm completely weirded out."
"Good," she answered. "If you weren't, I'd be worried about you. Now come on, it's time to get to work."
With that, she led me across the room to the two-foot-high door, which we passed through without comment. I felt a little bit like Alice going through the tiny door in Lewis Carroll's story, trying to imagine what wonders lay beyond.