MicroMove 2

On Sunday morning, Marty was surprised to find the doll-sized Nancy sitting on the pillow beside his head, staring at him.

“Oh.  Wow.  Last night wasn’t a dream?”  He reached out to touch her gently.

Nancy pulled herself into Marty’s hand, and wrapped his fingers around her waist.  “Does this feel like a dream to you?”

“No.  Uh, would you like some breakfast?”

“Sure!”

Nancy refused to be restored, and ate breakfast much as she had dinner – sitting beside Marty’s bowl and being offered nibbles from each spoonful of cereal.  Afterward, Marty gave her a bath in the kitchen sink.  Once she was sitting in the drying rack, Nancy looked around.  “You know, this place could use a little tidying up.”

Marty sighed.  “I know.  Going to cheerlead, or help out?”  He indicated the cargo converter.

Nancy looked torn.  “If I stay like this, I can be lazy... but you’re a guy, and I can see how you clean.  And if you think it looks bad from your perspective you should see it from down here!”

Nancy wrapped herself up in a paper towel to dry off, put her dress back on, then jumped off the counter.  At Marty’s girlish squeal of terror, she sighed.  “Indestructible like this, remember?”

“Wow.  That’s... actually kind of cool.  Do you think you could skydive without a parachute?”

Nancy shook her head.  “I’d rather not find out the hard way that it’s ‘almost indestructible’.”  She jogged into the living room and posed between the poles much as she had the night before.  “Hit me.”

They spent the day cleaning Marty’s place side by side, never far from each other.  Marty adapted to Nancy’s standards quickly enough, and by the end of the day the place was spotless.  At Nancy’s insistence they’d packed up and cubed most of Marty’s kitchenware, as she had better stuff.  After they were done with that chore, Marty made two calls.  One to work, to arrange the next week off.  The other was to order a pizza, as both were too tired to cook.  They were setting Nancy’s glasses away in the cupboard when the pizza arrived.

Nancy grinned as Marty offered her the first slice on a napkin.  “What, no plates?”

“Mine are currently a small, white cube.  And yours are somewhere in your box of cubes.”

Nancy danced back a few steps to stand between the poles of the cargo converter.  “You could just make one.”

“Bah.  It’s pizza.  Eating it off a plate with a fork and knife is entirely too civilized.”

By the time Marty was finished his first slice, Nancy had eaten only half of hers.  As he tugged on his next slice, part of the cheese fell off.

“Oh dear,” said Nancy lightly.  “Looks like you could use a pizza cutter.”

“First it was a plate, now it’s a cutter.  You really want me to change you, don’t you?”

“How did you guess?”  She grinned at him, and skipped over to the converter.  “C’mon.  Just for a little bit.”

“If I do, I won’t change you until tomorrow.  You’ll be a conscious pizza cutter while I enjoy what’s left of this delicious pizza.”

Nancy quickly snarfed down the last of her pizza slice.  “OK.”

“Is that a yes?”

She posed saucily in between the poles.  “What do you think?”

He touched the gem and the new love of his life was reduced to a stainless steel pizza cutter.

After a tasty dinner, he washed off the pizza cutter.  Leaving her as a cutter was one thing, but all mucked up?  That hardly seemed kind.  After a little too long caressing the handle in the warm sudsy water he sighed, shook his head, and returned to the converter.

Nancy stretched mightily now that she could move once more and grinned at him.  “You said you were going to change me for the whole night.”

“I missed you.  Should have made the handle more shapely, I guess.”

She thought about protesting, but decided she could spend her time tonight as a person and probably talk him into changing for her.  As they were getting ready for bed she flashed him a winsome smile.  “You know, I could use a warm nightgown to sleep in.  It’s been pretty cold the last few days.”

Marty shook his head, hiding a grin.  “You’re insatiable.  Maybe I want to sleep as a human.”

“OK.  You’ll be human.  A cute actor from TV is human, right?”

“I suppose...”  Marty let Nancy pull him to the converter, and stood between the poles uncertainly as she set the image in mind.

Unfortunately, Nancy discovered that making Marty a full sized version of her heartthrob actor wasn’t possible.  She changed him back and forth twice more, growing increasingly frustrated.  On her third attempt, he ended up as a bobblehead doll instead.  She sighed, then picked him up and carried him to the bedside table.  She gave him a kiss on the head that set him bobbing and her giggling, then went to sleep.

Marty could only watch her sleep, unable to move of his own volition, or communicate.  His only choice was to wait and hope she didn’t think the bobblehead was too cute.

In the morning, Nancy looked over at him and giggled.  She gave him a little bop on the head that set him bobbing dizzily.  “You’re just so cute like this.  Can I keep you a little longer?  You did promise I could change you for the week.”  She bopped the bobblehead backward, setting it to nodding.  “I can?  Aw sweetie, you’re the best.”

She carried the bobblehead to the bathroom and took a shower while it watched her, then dried herself off and got dressed to meet her friends.  She kissed the bobblehead goodby as she headed out, leaving it to wait until she returned from her planned day with her friends.

After school that afternoon, Patty dropped by for her usual Monday night dinner and math tutoring session with her father.  She let herself in with her key, and looked around the place.  “Daddy?  Are you here?  Foo, usually he leaves a note.”  In her explorations she found the bobblehead doll, declared it the cutest thing ever, and carried it with her to the kitchen.

Undaunted by her father’s apparent absence, Patty ate some of the leftover pizza and proceeded to do her math homework.  Marty watched with approval as she got every single question right.

When it was time to go back to her mother’s place, Patty scooped up the doll and tucked it into her backpack.  Marty hoped against hope that somehow Nancy would find him, otherwise he would be stuck as a thing, not a person, and would be treated as such.

For the next week, that was how things stood.  Nancy was miserable and confused at the loss of her lover, and he grew to accept that he was simply a toy for his daughter.  Time only seemed to pass when he was nudged and bouncing, usually while Patty was was working on her homework.  Both Patty and her father were impressed by how well she was doing under the bobblehead’s “lucky gaze”.

That weekend, Patty returned to her Dad’s apartment, unlocked the door, and ran into an unfamiliar woman.  “Who are you and where is my Dad?”

“I don’t know!” Nancy wailed.  “You haven’t seen a bobblehead doll around here anywhere, have you?”

Patty clutched her backpack defensively, wondering what the big deal was with her favourite homework assistant.  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“It’s your Dad!  I know it seems crazy, I guess I’ll have to show you...”

Nancy took a pizza box from the counter and set it between the poles, then touched the green gem.  It was reduced to a bobblehead doll that looked exactly like Patty.

Patty walked up to the doll, picking it up with a wondering expression on her face.  Then she turned to Nancy with a light gleaming behind those intelligent eyes.  “This thing can do that to people, too?”

“Yup.”

“So why is Dad a bobblehead doll, again?”

Nancy shrugged.  “He looked cute that way.  And I’d spent the previous day as his doll, so I figured fair was fair.”

Patty was still skeptical, but she decided to play along and put her special bobblehead doll between the poles, not knowing enough to step outside the enclosed area.  “Will this turn him back into Dad?”

Nancy quickly tapped the crystal, and the silvery cube sprung up enclosing Patty.  She looked a little wild-eyed but otherwise none the worse for wear when the effect went away.  Standing beside her was...  “Daddy!”  She gave him a big hug.

Marty hugged back, his recriminations forgotten in the moment.

“Aww, you’re so cute like that,” Nancy said with a wistful smile.  Her hand brushed against the crystal accidentally, and a moment later there was a simple white cube where daughter and father used to be.  “Oops.”

She picked up the white box and smiled, writing “Patty and her dad” on it before putting it with the rest of her cubed possessions.  She was having some friends over, and wanted the house for herself.

Nancy carefully put the cargo converter away before her friends arrived.  It was the last cautious thing she did that night.  By morning, the place was a disaster area.  Many friends of friends of friends had arrived, and two were still crashed out on in the living room, one on the couch and the other on the loveseat.  Marty’s living room furniture was splashed with spilled beer, stained with nacho dip and worse.  All sorts of trash was liberally scattered about the room.

Nancy shoved all the trash into the half of the living room that had been cleared for the cargo converter, and set it up once more.  A little later there was a small cube marked “Trash” resting in the palm of her hand.  She stared down at it, thoughtfully.

Nancy put it aside, and went to the master bedroom, where she found her lover and his daughter’s cube safely hidden in her box of cubes, then headed back to the living room.  
She stared at the still sleeping forms of her unwelcome guests.  It wouldn’t take much to move the poles around them and the ruined furniture...

She moved the poles, whining slightly at the effort it took to get them all aligned just so.  One touch of the crystal shrunk everybody and everything left from the party, including the ruined furniture, into a small white cube.  “About time I refurbished this place.”  She wrote “party” on the cube and put it aside, satisfied.

Nancy proceeded to dig through the box of her belongings from her own apartment, and brought out one marked “couch”, another marked “comfy chair” and a third marked “coffee table”.  She arranged them about where she figured the pieces of furniture should go, and touched the gem.  A moment later, the living room was redecorated to her taste.

“Ah.  A woman could get used to this,” she said as she sat on the couch with a glass of wine in one hand, and the “party” cube in the other.  She glanced over at the poles, which still had the green lamps of an active configuration.  If anyone were here to touch the gem...  She shivered a bit, and smiled.  Nobody was left to do it.

Then there was a knock at the door.

Nancy decided the cube could wait for a while and headed to the door, opening it to see who was there.

“Nancy, sweetie,” gushed her friend.  “I think I left my purse here.  have you seen it?”

Nancy sighed.  “Right.  Of course, Carrie.  Do you remember where you left it?”

“It might have been in the kitchen.”  The other woman bustled into the apartment, and looked around.  “Nice work tidying up the place.  How’d you get the furniture in here?”

“I had some help,” said Nancy.  “These poles help compact things for moving.”

“How does it work?”

Nancy shrugged as she went back to pick up her wine glass.  “You just touch the green gem, and poof.”

“Like this?”

“No, wait!”  Poof.

“Nancy?”

Nancy was shoved aside as the “party” cube was unpacked in the middle of her furniture, releasing both Marty’s messed up furniture and the passed-out ladies lying on it.

In the suddenly very crowded living room, Nancy sighed at all the mess.  She tried to pick her way over the furniture to exit the cargo converter before her friend did something truly unfortunate.  “Please don’t touch that again.”

“Hey!  There’s my purse, could you get it?”

Nancy had finally scrambled free, and the look she shot her friend was anything but friendly.  “Go get it yourself.”

Carrie sighed, and crawled over the ratty old loveseat to get at her purse where it was half-hidden under one of the drunks.  “There.  Hey wait, what are you doing?”

Nancy touched the gem, and the apartment was silent once more.  “God, I need something for this hangover.  And your screechy voice sure as hell isn’t it.”

Nancy picked up the cube and wrote “dullest party ever” on it, then put it aside outside the converter before picking up her cubed lover and his daughter, wondering what to make each of them become individually.

Nancy poured herself a new glass of wine, the first having disappeared with her couch.  She sat at the kitchen table where she could study the cube marked “Patty and her dad” as well as the standing poles in the living room.  “I could use a clean dress, that’s for sure.  That wouldn’t be fair to Patty, though.  I wonder...”

She set the “Patty and her dad” cube in the middle of the poles, making sure the “dullest party ever” cube was nowhere to be seen.  Then she touched the gem.

Patty looked around curiously.  “Did something happen?”

“I hope you didn’t have any plans for yesterday.  Could you be a dear and step out from between the poles?”

Patty looked at her dad for confirmation, and at his nod she stood aside.

“I’m afraid I’ve only got one day left on your promise, so I’ll have to make it good.”

“I’ll make it up to you.  Getting a week with my daughter was worth it, even if it was as a doll.”

Nancy stared at Marty in surprise.  “You’re... not even mad?  You’ve been a doll or a box for a whole week, and I was about to turn you into a dress.”

“Cool.  One that can feel?  That sounded like fun.”

“You’re...  I could leave you like that.”

“You wouldn’t!” exclaimed PAtty, fiercely.  “He’s my Daddy and I need him.  Y’know, when I’m not stuck at Mom’s and all.”

“Exactly.  I trust you.  More than that, I love you.”

Nancy’s eyes went very wide as Marty went down on one knee.  “Nancy Silverton, will you marry me?”  He pulled his old wedding band off of his hand, and offered it out to her.

Nancy dashed up and hugged him tight.  “Yes!  Oh yes!”  Still kneeling with him, she put the ring on.  It was comically large on her, and the huge grin on her face made it clear she didn’t care.

“Aww,” said Patty, watching the two.  “That’s so sweet. You’d make an amazing sculpture.  Oh, I have to capture this moment.”  She touched the gem, and the converter’s silvery sides flickered once more.

A moment later a lovely porcelain statue of the tableau between the poles appeared.  Patty ran over to it and scooped it up in her hands.  It wasn’t quite eight inches tall.  “Ohmigod you’re just so cute like this!  I’ve gotta take a picture.  No, lots of them!”

Patty posed the sculpture in the living room, in the kitchen, even in the bathroom.  But when she’d tucked it into the bed and snapped a picture of it with the covers over everything but their faces she sighed happily.  “Oh, you’re perfect like this.  Sweet dreams.”

Then she turned and left.

Marty was stunned.  He’d felt the whole thing, seen the whole thing, and couldn’t quite grasp it.  Was Patty really going to leave them like this?  And yet... he might be made of something solid and shiny, but he could feel where his figure was touching Nancy’s.  In her silent embrace he accepted what fate might bring, and if he had to spend the rest of his existence as a statue, he could think of no better place to do so than in Nancy’s arms.