Craig found that the 3-inch shrink he had tried this time worked much better than the first time he had increased the rate. This time, the resulting video wasn't choppy. He had somehow fixed the bug. Either that, or the detail level was decreasing as his subject's image got smaller. He shrugged, figuring it didn't really matter either way-he could shrink her 3 inches now, regardless of the reason. He quickly set up the next reduction, ready to hit the "Apply" button, not even knowing what he was causing across town.
Jennifer had decided to roll up the robe's sleeves so her hands would be free. The heavier feel of the robe was an unaccustomed sensation to her, and the roll-up took longer than she had thought it would. Finally, she got her hands free. "There! All fixed up," she said to no one in particular. She shook her arms to move the sleeves a bit. Deciding the robe was in order now, she realized how surprisingly hungry she was. She remembered the soup and took a step toward the door. Since her feet were weighed down under the pile of loose robe and unstable in the oversized slippers she had found (her feet had been cold), she pitched forward slightly. In doing so, she reached out and grabbed the handle of her dresser drawer. She was again jolted by an electrical shock and let go of the handle.
She pitched forward gracelessly. The oversized robe's collar fell over her, coming halfway up the back of her head. She felt the now-familiar tingle running through her nerves and knew she was getting smaller again. This suspicion was confirmed by her head dragging itself slowly downward until it was almost completely under the collar. Her hands moved into her sleeves again, erasing the work she had just done on the cuffs as her fingertips again barely passed the end of the sleeve. She wailed-if she was in a new pattern, she was now 3 feet, 6 inches tall.
She stood up (trying not to worry about the even-heavier robe) and adjusted her panties. She finally pulled the slack out and tied it into bundles to hold the falling undergarments on her smaller hips. She did more rolling up on her sleeves and finally abandoned her slippers as too ungainly. She still had no idea who or how could be doing this, but a gnawing sensation in her belly convinced her she wasn't going to find out on an empty stomach. She headed for the door-careful to let the hem drag behind her this time. When she got to the door she was surprised to find how high the knob was. It was practically staring her in the face.
It took a lot of effort, but she got the knob turned. She dragged the tray in (it was the size of a dining table to her) and grabbed the soup spoon (the size of a trowel). She ate until she felt fairly full. This, too, demonstrated her diminished size-she ate less than half of the bowl, when it used to take the whole bowl and half of a sandwich to make her feel so full. The mug of tea was amazingly heavy and she couldn't even drink half.
The whole meal had been getting cold, which only added to the slight chill she had been feeling since she got out of the shower. She shivered a bit and pulled the robe closer around her diminutive shoulders. She was still in mild shock over what was happening to her, but she forced herself to start thinking about it. "Whoever is doing this to me," she thought aloud, "must have something monitoring me somewhere that can do this...this..." she trailed off before resuming, "something that can shrink me." With that, she decided to look for it.
Craig was having a great time with the editor. He had this continual paranoid feeling that it was going to give him an ominous "Illegal Operation" message and shut down. So, every time he generated a new image, he would save. He saved again and set up for the next reduction. He was still in disbelief that it was this detailed and yet ran so smoothly. "Still," he said to himself, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth, eh?" He entered the next 3-inch reduction, realizing that she was now under three and a half feet and finding that very impressive.
Jennifer hadn't thought about the health club or her car. She believed some weird surveillance/shrinking devide had to be in her room somewhere. She searched everywhere (everywhere, that is, that someone her stature could reach.) She figured it had to be lower to the ground, though, in order to reach her once she got small enough. She shuddered at that line of thinking-how small did her mysterious antagonist intend to make her, anyway? "Ow!" Recoiling from another shock from her bedframe, she realized that she didn't have the answer to that question yet-the tingling was back again.
She almost thought she could FEEL herself shrink...or at least, she could feel the rubbing of the coarse robe as it slid on her back, and the odd sensation of her underwear again gradually shifting to become too loose. She untied the loops of her panties and retied them, again cinching them up so they would stay on. The tingle ended, and she realized that she was now only 3'3'' if the pattern was continuing. She measured herself again (the tape measure was becoming increasingly unwieldy) and found that the pattern was, in fact, continuing. Since the shrinks weren't occurring at set intervals of time, she had no idea how much longer she would have until she was at the point of hitting zero...and she didn't want to think about how close or far away that might be.
She resumed her desperate search, now finding herself unable to look into the top-level drawers, though she could open them. She also realized that her head was barely above the top of her bed. Being this small certainly altered perspective-the room now seemed gigantic to her, as though she were in the home of someone twice her size (which was rapidly getting closer to the truth). It finally occurred to her that a device could be placed higher up if it was set at the right angle. She didn't want to acknowledge it, but the possibility had appeared in her mind that she might not find whoever or whatever was doing this to her. Ignoring this thought, she continued her search.
