Jennifer finally snapped into action. She was going with her plan and hoping that all the assumptions she was balancing it on held up. She walked determinedly to the wall of her house and followed it parallel to the gate in her privacy fence. It was here that she hit her first snag. She was 2 feet tall and the latch was 3 1/2 feet off of the ground. She needed to stand or climb on something to get it... Alternatively, she could wait until she had been shrunken small enough to fit through the gap, but by that point she would never make it to the front door. She jogged back to the pool, thinking perhaps she could drag over a pool chair or something similar. She avoided the one that she had been sitting on minutes ago--it had caused her most recent shrinkage, after all--and grabbed the leg of another one. She grunted and strained, but was unable to move the relatively heavy chair more than a few inches. She needed something lighter that would still be tall enough to stand on. Ideally, it would also fail to have anything metal she could brush up against...
After searching around the pool area a bit longer, she discovered that the door to the utility shed was open. Inside, she found her answer--a large plastic bucket. She could move it, and it seemed to be tall enough. Just to be sure, she tried to climb atop it and found she could manage to get onto the slippery bucket. It smelled strongly of chemicals--probably used in cleaning the pool--and she had to stay as far ahead of it as possible so as not to suffocate in the fumes. Finally, she positioned it under the latch. It took considerable effort, but she made it up onto the bucket and reached for the latch. She stretched her little arm as far as it would go and raised up on her tiptoes...but couldn't quite reach the latch. Dismayed, she dropped herself off of the bucket.
Then she spotted it--the tree. There was a small tree that she had been meaning to have removed. It had some sort of plant illness and sagged pathetically against her fence. It looked bad and was mostly dead, but she hadn't yet gotten a gardener to come out and get rid of it. She was glad for it now, because she could climb the low tree and get up onto the top rail of her privacy fence. Then it was only a matter of walking (carefully) along the rail to above the latch. She could then drop down onto it and open the gate.
Craig was confused. The image of Jennifer on his screen was still, apparently, 2 feet tall. He had typed in the next reduction and hit "Apply," but nothing had happened. He had tried it a second time and gotten an error message. He had tried it a few more times and always gotten the same error message, and Jennifer still hadn't shrunk. He wondered if maybe it was still processing his first attempt, but that had been a few minutes before. It should have processed by now... He frowned and got up from the computer, deciding to go have a soda. Maybe after a few minutes it would be more cooperative. Maybe he SHOULD go get the vise-grip pliers...
Jennifer had made it up to the railing. She had been worried that it might be too narrow for even her reduced form to balance on, but she discovered the next-door neighbors had a top rail on their side as well, so she could walk with one foot on each rail. She slowly advanced toward the corner and the nearby gate. She thought she saw another flash of light from somewhere, but, just like last time, there was no tingling feeling and she didn't shrink. Other than that, she didn't see any signs of activity. It was going well, until...
*Woof! Woof!*
The neighbor's terrier, which was in their backyard, had spotted movement atop the fence. Coming over to investigate, it had discerned that there was, in fact, a small living creature up there. According to dog logic, it therefore had to be terrorized until something more interesting came along. It ran at the fence and slammed into it, not even seeming to feel the impact as it bounced off and continued barking and trying to run into the fence.
The dog was not a large dog, but at Jennifer's present size it would probably have the relative power of a small horse. It would be a bad idea to fall off the fence at all, but to land on that side...she shuddered. The dog was fortunately not larger or it might have been able to rattle the fence enough to knock her off. As it was, the tremors caused by the collisions were making her wobble unsteadily. The dog continued to bark mindlessly. She almost wished one of those annoying ever-present squirrels would come by...but of course, none were around.
*Woof! Woof!* *SLAM!!*
She moved along a bit faster. She was grateful to reach the corner and move onto the next part of the fence. She was also glad that the towel had stayed up by itself through all the climbing--she didn't like the idea of being out here nude, especially not up on a fence where people could see her. She was finally above the latch...and fortunately, the dog had lost interest in her since she was no longer in view. She had seen it enter the house through the rear doggie-door. She braced herself and dropped down onto the latch. Two things happened...her weight falling onto the latch flipped it up and forced the gate to move, and the metal of the latch delivered a jolt to her. "AAAAAA! Not again!" she screamed. She cried out again as she lost her balance and fell off, barely managing to grab the handle on her way down. Of course, now that she was only 1'9'', the towel had gotten loose again and, being tied like a tube dress, it slid off of her and fell to the ground. She had had her share of bad days before, but being less than 2 feet tall, trapped outside, and hanging naked from a handle that at any minute could cause her to shrink further had to make for the worst one yet. Realizing that the handle could shrink her again at any moment, she finally let go and braced herself for the fall. It wasn't as bad as it would have been if she were less than a foot tall, but it was, relative to her, almost a ten-foot drop. It hurt, and knocked the wind out of her for a moment.
Craig came back from his soda break and found that the computer seemed to have unlocked. The onscreen image of Jennifer now looked to be about 1'9''. "Excellent," he said in his best evil megalomaniac voice. "Now, Mr. Bond, you will die..." He cut himself off with "Wait, wrong situation." With that, he put down the sledgehammer and got back to work, realizing that soon he'd be finished shrinking his celebrity crush and could move on to OTHER celebrity babes...the possibilities were endless. Maybe he could even sell his software--he was sure that Wizard, Talon, Elric, and a few others he'd run across in the online community would probably be interested in something like this... He snapped out of it. First he wanted to be sure the video-making tool worked. Maybe he could even put in new morph features and sell in the other communities...but that would come later. "Quit daydreaming and finish shrinking the girl, I say..."
Jennifer finished tying the towel around her again. It was even larger now--it ran from under her arms all the way down to her ankles. A breeze had started up and it didn't do much in keeping the wind out, either. It wasn't really chilly, but it was somewhat disconcerting to have wind whipping around inside her "dress." She wondered how she was going to press the doorbell once she got around to the front... Fortunately, there weren't too many plants, lawn implements, or other obstacles between the two houses, so she would have a straight shot to the street side. However, she'd hate for many people to see her like this.
She waited a few minutes to see if any cars came by on the road. She didn't know exactly what time it was but she figured it had to be getting late. She hadn't even gotten home from the gym--where this mess started--until well after 8. It was probably around 11, maybe a little later. Everyone who wasn't already falling asleep in front of late-night TV was out at a nightclub somewhere. She stood little chance of being seen. She groaned inwardly at her choice of words before moving on toward the front of the house. She rounded the corner with little trouble and started toward her front porch, trying to work out in her head how she was going to press the doorbell.
Suddenly, she heard a noise behind her. It sounded like something moving in a bush somewhere. She spun around, immediately on edge. She searched the yard frantically for any sign of motion, but saw nothing. She looked around. Nothing on the street seemed to move. Nothing in her yard. She turned around once more and finally saw something on her neighbor's porch. She tried to make out what it was...Finally, it hit her. The doggie-door at the bottom of the front door was swinging gently back and forth. Her neighbor must have forgotten to latch it for the night. That meant...
