Entanglements 4

“What do you mean there were four of you?” asked Phil, staring at his girlfriend in confusion.  “We only duplicated you.  There shouldn’t have been echoes.”  He looked away from Aggie, the gears already turning.

Aggie grabbed Phil’s attention with a kiss, then leaned back to declare, “I’ve been duplicated enough times to know how many of me there were.  Two were stuck in the dark, and the other two... well, you know what we did.”  Aggie leered down at Phil’s crotch.  “I just want to do it again, frankly.”

Phil snorted.  “You’re insatiable.  And you’ve worn me to rags already.”

“Hmf.  I guess I need to go buy a box of vibrators so I can be sure you’ll end up as one of ‘em.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Phil.  “That’s clever, so that’s how you ensured you’d be entangled with a condom.”

“I’d waited long enough while you worked.  I didn’t want to get stuck staring at those damn green lights on the capacitor bank again.”

Phil looked away.  “Sorry.  You know how I get.”

“I do.  It can be a little frustrating, but the results have been well worth it,” Aggie said with a huge grin.  “So what have you got for me this time?”

“I... don’t know.”

Aggie stared at Phil.  “How can you not know?  You’re the one who controls the nature of reality with your very thoughts!”

Phil laughed and slumped back onto the bed.  “I wish it was that easy.  It’s what I believe that matters, not what I think or what I desire.  I have an understanding of how the world works that’s... not entirely compatible with the other Observers.  But I’m still constrained by that understanding.”

“OK.  Fine.  So duplicate me again so we can see if it happens again.  Empiricism, isn’t that your thing?”

Phil rolled out of the cot, pulled on some shorts, and made his way over to the entangling machine.  “Fine.  Let’s do some mad science.”

Aggie clapped her hands excitedly, and hopped into one of the pods.  Then spent the next minute picking up all the condoms littering the bottom.  “Save these,” she said as she handed them to Phil.  “We’ll need ‘em later.  Maybe I’ll entangle you with one, and then we can...”

Phil grinned.  “First things first.  Duplication time.  Are you wearing your ring?”

Aggie shook her head.  “Don’t want to lose it, it’s over there with my clothes.”

Phil nodded, and the pods hissed closed.  They opened on emptiness, and he sighed.  “Well, hopefully the next shot goes better.”  It didn’t.  By the time he’d managed to duplicate Aggie, the capacitor banks were down to a single  glowing lamp.

“There.  See?  Only two of you.”

Aggie-prime frowned at the bank of darkened lights while the other Aggie waited in the pod.  “Bah.  I need to unentangle to check their viewpoints and we might not be able to set it up again.”

“What did you feel last time?”

Both Aggies shrugged.  “Not much.  It was dark, and we were stuck in a confined space.  A confined, egg-shaped...”

Aggie and Phil turned as one to look at the mouse-scale pods.  Phil very carefully opened the pod door on one, and a tiny Aggie stepped out.  “About time!” piped her tiny voice.

“Oh my God she’s so cute!”

Phil quickly turned to the other little pod and freed its occupant as well.  He stared down at this Aggie, who was staring back up at him in wonder.  “You’re so biiiiig,” she called in her tiny voice.  “This is awesome!  Pick me up!”

Phil crouched lower to put his face near the little Aggie’s.  “Can I measure you?  I’d like to do some tests.”

Aggie nodded, and pointed to his hand imperiously.  Phil chuckled, and set it on the benchtop beside her.  “Hop on,” he murmured softly.

Aggie wiggled and squirmed in his hand, giggling at Phil’s gape-jawed reaction to her tiny naked body against him.  She was soon wide-eyed herself when she saw how she measured up against a standard ruler.  “I’m less than three inches tall?”

“Yep.  The new pods were made exactly 24 times larger, so you’ve shrunk by the same factor, making you just a hair under three inches tall.”

Weighing Aggie produced another eye opening number.  “Six grams?  Man, I could probably float away on a helium balloon like that.  Can we try?”

Phil laughed.  “I don’t have any helium, sadly.  I’m sure we can get a few balloons later, and see how many it takes to make you fly.”  He stared down at the tiny clone of his girlfriend.  “I have to say, you’re taking this really well.”

The tiny Aggie pointed to the two full-size Aggies playing with the other tiny Aggie.  “I know I have a backup.  Even if I get hurt, we know you can erase this version and I’ll be unharmed again.”

“True.  That takes some of the adventure away, I guess.”

Tiny Aggie’s eyes went bright.  “Oooh.  Erase them.”

“What?” exclaimed Phil.  That brought the other Aggies over to join them.  “You want me to erase them and leave only one tiny Aggie?  The risk...”

“Okay, fine.  Two tiny Aggies.  That’s my final offer.”

“But... I...  This is crazy.  What if you get stuck this size?”

“Oh come on, what are the chances of that?  All you have to do is erase me and unentangle the lot, and I’ll be normal again.  Right?”

“I didn’t even know you could...”  Lost in thought, Phil didn’t noticed the hiss of the pods, but the loud clunk of the capacitor bank firing got his attention.  He whirled around and stared at the pods.  They were just starting to open again.  Empty.  No Aggies.  Except for the tiny one on the control panel, that was sitting on the ‘Engage’ button.

“What have you done?” whispered Phil.

The other tiny Aggie waved at him, and he carried her twin to her.  They hugged each other, then grinned up at him.  “Now we get to explore you in a whole new way.  Back to the bed!”

“What’s done is done, I guess.”  Phil picked up the two lovely naked girls.  “But be careful.  If you start feeling weird, you need to tell me.  How are you even breathing?”

The Aggies shrugged in unison.  “Beats me.  But we are.”  They put on a fetching display of deep breathing, thrusting their tiny breasts out.  

Phil laughed, and lay back on the cot.  He set the two girls on his chest and grinned down at them.  “Fine.  Go exploring.  Have fun!”

The tiny Aggies shared a look, then one made her way toward Phil's head, and the other explored the opposite direction.  The conquest of Mt. Nipple was a brief detour on the way upward.  “Hm.  Not as impressive as you climbing my mountains would be,” said Aggie, dismissively.  Even at her tiny scale, Phil's left nipple didn't even come up to her knee, and she stepped over it in a single stride.

“Fine.  Once you're safely back to normal, I'll give it a try.”  Phil tried to sound casual about the idea of scaling Aggie, and failed.

Aggie clapped and bounded up to his chin to give it a hug.  “I knew you'd get into it.”

“I'm not the only one trying to get into it,” Phil commented with a grin, nodding at the other Aggie.  She was struggling with the waistband of his shorts, and losing.  Badly.

Phil reached down and pulled the elastic up.  The sudden appearance of a hand the size of a small house made the other Aggie squeak cutely in alarm.  She turned and shot Phil a grateful look when she saw what he was doing.  She quickly scrambled under the immense band of elastic and squeaked even more loudly when it snapped shut behind her.

“I bet I'll have fun in there,” said the Aggie near Phil's chin.  “Wrestling the mighty trouser snake.  A much more fearsome foe than your foothills.”

“I'm sure I can find something for you to wrestle,” said Phil, sticking his tongue out at Aggie and giving it a waggle.  Before Aggie could reach the slimy beast, the tongue withdrew.

“Aww.”

Phil was staring towards his shorts.  “She's not moving.”

Aggie turned and sprinted towards Phil’s shorts.  His hands beat her there, lifting up the band once more to reveal an Aggie curled up in a fetal ball.

“Hey, hey,” crooned the standing Aggie.  “What’s wrong?”

The fetal one sighed, and uncurled a little.  “Tore something trying to lift the elastic.”  She took a tiny gasp of a breath.  “Hurt it worse when the snap surprised me.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” asked the uninjured one.

“Sounded like you were... ooh, crap... having fun.”  Aggie curled back up into a ball.  “Don’ wanna spoil your fun over somethin’ stupid.”

“Phil, we can’t just leave her like this.  She’s in way more pain than she’s letting on.”

“Dammit,” mumbled the other Aggie.  “Have your fun, or...”

Phil looked over at the capacitor lamps, the first one was flickering dimly.  “Almost ready for a shot.  C’mon, let’s get rid of that pain.”  He scooped up the weakly protesting Aggie, and deposited her in a full-size pod.  “Shh, it’ll all be over soon.”

A hiss, the clunk of the capacitors firing, and a scream erupted from the cot.  Phil dashed over to gather up the remaining Aggie in his hands.  “What’s wrong?”

“Little minx hurt herself worse than she said.  Sorry about the scream, it hit me all at once.  I’ll be okay.  Just memories, now.”

“Are you sure?” asked Phil, eyeing the trembling figure in his hands.

“N... no,” she admitted.  “I’m terrified.  She hurt herself so easily!  I’m tiny and weak and fragile and that was fine when I had backups but I don’t any more.  Change me back.  Please?”

Phil petted her softly with a fingertip.  “Sure.  Do you want me to erase you first, or just unentangle?”

“If you erase me, there’s a chance I’ll come back like her, right?”

“Uh... possibly.  One in four.  Maybe lower, if minis get picked at a lower rate.”

“I...”  She looked up at him with wet eyes.  “I can’t risk it.  Unentangle me.”

Phil set her on the ground in front of the console, then stepped back before hitting the big red button.  Nothing happened.

“Come on,” pleaded Aggie.  “Do it already.  Stop fooling around.”

Phil hit the button twice more.  Aggie's pleas got more frantic.  He ignored them, and went to the entangler matrix, deliberately touching the diamond in the core.  When he turned back, Aggie was staring up at him in horror.

“I’m stuck?” she whimpered.

“I don’t understand.  The entanglement is definitely broken.  But the tiny you was the only one here, so...  Yeah.  You’re tiny now.”

Aggie pulled herself up to her full three inch height.  “Fine.  I can manage.  It’s only another seven minutes until there’s enough charge to erase me, right?”

“Right.”

“Then let’s have some fun while we wait.”

“Seriously?”

“Some very very very careful fun.”

Phil very carefully lowered his hand to Aggie.  “Hop on.”  He marveled anew at the delicate features of his tiny fiancée, watching as she clambered onto his hand.  With careful strokes, he brushed her impossibly fine hair with the tip of his pinky finger.

“It’s so hard to believe,” murmured Aggie.  “Your smallest finger is almost as big as I am.”

Phil offered his index finger to her.  “C'mon, give me a hug.”

Aggie giggled at that, and snuggled up against his finger.  “Not as fun as hugging you, but still pretty nice.”

Phil was staring again in wonder.  “I want to take a picture of you like that.”

Aggie clapped and nodded, and soon they were doing a miniature photoshoot of her posing with Phil's hand.  Aggie hugging a finger.  Aggie lounging fetchingly in the palm of his hand.  Aggie held in his gently closed fist.  Aggie using his finger for a pole dance.  And on, and on...

Aggie looked over at the capacitor bank, and laughed.  “Thanks for the distraction.  We've got three lights.  Time for me to get big!”

Phil smiled down at her wistfully.  “I'm going to miss this.”

“No you're not.  Once I have a big Aggie for backup, we're going to do all that and more.”

Phil carefully deposited Aggie in the rightmost large pod, blew her a kiss, and returned to the control panel.  Erase mode on, engage...  Hiss, clunk, hiss.  The pods were empty.  He checked carefully, Aggie was small enough to miss.  He even checked the mini pods, just to be sure.  Definitely erased.

But when he hit the unentangle button, Aggie didn't appear.  At least, big Aggie didn't.  Crying in the base of the left-hand pod he found a tiny Aggie, still three inches tall.

“Are you hurt?” asked Phil worriedly.

“No.  But... I'm screwed, aren't I?  No backups.  Just tiny me for... for how long, Phil?  Can you fix this?”

“I really don't know.  But we can make a backup or four.  That would help, right?  I can modify one of the extra mouse cages to make a safe space for at least one of you to live.”

“You want me to live in a mouse cage?” asked Aggie, incensed.

“It'd keep you safe from Sir Pounces at Shadows.”

Aggie's eyes went wide as saucers at the mention of Phil's half-feral cat.  “You know what?  A nice sturdy cage sounds really good about now.  How about you duplicate me and get right to work on that?”

Phil nodded and went back to the control panel.  Instead of duplicating Aggie, the entanglement erased her.  Phil double-checked all the pods, then figured she was probably safer like that anyway, and went to work on converting a mouse cage into something where a three inch tall human could live comfortably.  When he was done the cage had crude curtains for privacy, and even running water.  A silk tie folded over multiple times made a passable bed.  Or so Phil hoped.  He'd also found other bits of fabric that Aggie could use to redecorate as she saw fit.

By the time Phil had finished with Aggie's new home, there was plenty of charge to get her duplicated.  As soon as the Aggies emerged from the big pods, they looked over at the mini-pods.  “Did you disconnect them?” one asked softly.

“Uh...  Oh bother.”  Phil carried the two little Aggies to the mini-pods, and opened them.  The little Aggies squealed, and picked up tiny things that Phil could barely even see.  “Are they okay?” called Phil softly.

One Aggie nodded.  “But they're freezing.  Better erase them.”  They put the extra-tiny Aggies back in the little pods, and soon they were gone once more.

The Aggies stared up at Phil in wonder. “They were soooo small,” they sighed, together.  “Once we fix that, we are so doing that again.  With warm weather gear.”

Phil chuckled.  “Seriously?”

“Gotta make Mt. Nipple a challenge.  And imagine these,” her gesture cupping her breasts was made comical given that they were smaller than Phil's smallest fingertip, “bigger than houses.”

Phil laughed.  “I'd rather imagine you wearing fishnet stockings that look like a ship's rigging.”

“Done.  Get me big, and I'll buy a pair.  I'll buy a dozen pairs, and wear one of you as them while you're climbing.”

Phil's expression at that was everything Aggie could have hoped for.  “But first, let's see that house you made to keep us safe until then.”

Both Aggies explored their new 'Safehouse' curiously.  It was the biggest of the cages, a foot and a half wide, and about a foot deep and high.  To the Aggies it was the size of a good-sized cottage, though it was mostly open space with a few simple wooden walls to create private spaces.  They smiled at Phil's attempts to decorate, and a little more at the 'bed'.  Lying down in it, they both pronounced it comfortable.  One stayed curled up in the bed, while the other Aggie made her way to the 'door' of the cage.  She attempted to open it, but didn't have nearly enough strength.  “I'll need some way to alert you,” she called up to Phil.

“Already on it,” replied Phil.  A small contact switch got pushed through the bars of the cage, wired up to a buzzer.

Aggie tested pressing it with her foot, then covered her ears at the noise.  “Can't you tone it down a bit?  Or move it further away from the cage?”

Phil nodded, and soldered in some extensions to the wires leading to the button.  He also put a small block of wood between the cage and the speaker.  “Try it now.”

Aggie covered her ears then stepped on the switch again.  “Much better.  Now let me out!  One of me is safe, that's good enough.  This place is huge, but it's still a cage.”

Phil sighed as he scooped her up.  “I know.  If there's anything I can do...”

“You can get me big again!  Make with the mad science.  If a little bitty pair of hands can help with anything, anywhere...  I'll do my best to keep up.”

Phil nodded.  Then he picked up his lab notebooks for the project, and set them beside the cage.  “Here.  See if you can find anything I've overlooked.  I'm going to try running the entangler backward, copying from the mini-pods.”

Aggie perked up.  “Can I be the test subject?”

Phil sighed.  “I'm pretty sure that the signal from the mini pods is going to be swamped by the big ones.  Mostly I want to test to see just how badly that's the case.  It's going to be at least a factor of 24, but I suspect there's an exponential term.”

Aggie sighed, and laboriously opened the cover of the first book.  Phil watched her for a time, until she looked up and blew him a kiss.  “Go mad science.  I'll be fine.  If Sir Pounces shows up, I'll hit the buzzer.”

Phil leaned down to give her a hair-mussing kiss, and got a giggle for his efforts.  That sent him off to the discriminator with a grin.  Soon he had it open and a debug terminal set up.  Four test shots later, he started digging through the results.  None of the grapes had made it through to the big pods, which was hardly surprising.  The diagnostic traces looked exactly like running the big pods by themselves.  He sighed, spent an hour working on code to pick out ripples in the traces, and tried again.

“Ha!  I can see it.  Sort of.”

Aggie looked up from her perch in the middle of his lab book and waved.  Phil stepped over to her.  “Got anything?”

Aggie nodded.  “I've got a couple questions.  Your third series of tests with these mini-pods, you sent some stuffed toys through.  The 'transported' ones arrived whole?  Not limp and empty, or as piles of filling?”

“Yeah.  Didn't think much of it at the time, but in the context of only one object...  Wait, where are you going with this?”

“We need a bag with a drawstring, or a zipper.  I have an idea.  But before you go looking, what did you figure out?”

Phil sighed.  “That the mini-pod signal strength is between ten and twenty thousand times weaker than the big pods, which suggests the scaling is cubic, as I'd suspected.  It's also somewhat higher frequency, so I think I can mod the discriminator to zoom in on the lows.  I don't think that'll buy us nearly enough to get a lock, though.  Maybe one order of magnitude, and it'll take weeks of testing to be sure that it reliably gets the triplet.  I'd hate to end up with a mindless full-sized Aggie.”

Aggie winced.  “Damn.  I... look, I don't have those weeks.  Classes start in two weeks, and I really don't think I can attend at this size.”

“Right.  So... we need some other way to boost the signal strength.”  Phil looked over at where Aggie's clothes were still piled.

“My ring?  But if it doesn't work when will I get it back?”

“We can unentangle with both of you in the cage.  You'll be safe.  Or I could use the pendant to clone you two, and the ring to do the experiments.  I can use the third diamond to test the gain, my new diagnostics will let me figure out just how much boost the diamond gives.”

Aggie nodded.  “OK.  First, get me that bag.  If I'm right we may get to test how much gain you get by adding more diamonds, too.”

Once Phil had found a drawstring bag Aggie declared acceptable, she hopped inside with the extra diamond.  At her request, he tucked the laces inside, so Aggie could close it.  Then he put the lot in one of the large pods, and engaged duplicate mode.  A quick peek at his diagnostic console on the discriminator showed that the diamond had indeed produced a much bigger peak, and a much cheaper entangle.

Two bags were in the pods, and when opened, two Aggies and two diamonds as well.  “It worked!” cried Aggie, jumping up and down with her new triplet.  “Now put both diamonds in the bag, and do it again.”

Twelve shots later, they had over a thousand diamonds, enough to fill one of the bags to the brim.  They also had nine extra Aggies, as it turned out someone had to be inside the bag to hold it closed.  “That's probably enough,” pronounced Phil.  One of the Aggies asked him to pour them out in a pile, and she jumped into it like it was a pile of leaves, then tossed handfuls of diamonds into the air.  She emerged from the experience hobbling and wincing, bleeding from dozens of tiny cuts.

“Happy?” asked Phil.

“Deliriously.  Totally worth it.  Erase me now, please?”

Phil carefully carried her to the pod, and moments later she was gone.  The other Aggies shuddered at the memories.  Phil eyed the one sitting on the console.  “Still sure it was worth it?”

“To play in a pile of diamonds bigger than I was?  Hell yeah.  The memory of the diamonds will last way longer than the memory of the pain.  It's not so bad dealing with pain when it can be erased so easily.  So.  Do we have enough diamonds to make me big?”

Phil sighed, and shook his head.  “The first diamond gave about an eight-fold gain, but it started to taper off pretty quickly.  I didn't see any noticeable improvement past sixteen, and that was only a small bump over eight.  Maybe if we placed them in a regular pattern...”

“I need to sit in a circle of diamonds?  That's doable.”

“I was thinking more like a cube.  I'll cut some straws to length, then you can assemble it in the mini-pod.”

“That doesn't sound too hard.”

“You have to build it inside a bag, though.”

“Ah.  Still, that means I get to be part of a grow shot?” asked Aggie, eagerly.

“There's enough extras,” said Phil, gesturing at the Aggies lounging by the cage.  Three were studying his logs, the rest had redecorated the cage and were working on making clothes in their scale.  “We can afford to erase a few.”

Aggie agreed readily, and soon had her supplies handed to her inside the tiny pod.  Phil watched as she built a cube out of putty and straws, then stuck eight diamonds carefully into the vertices.  She looked up at him and gave him a thumbs' uup.  Phil waved, and closed the mini-pod.

He wasn't surprised to find that the main pods opened empty.  After quickly checking that nothing odd had appeared, Phil turned back to the diagnostics.  “Better,” he mused.  “Not enough, but better.  I wonder if a dodecahedron would...”

Frantic buzzing plus tiny screams got his attention.  Phil turned to the table holding Aggie's cage, and stared in horror.  His cat, a wiry old black and white tom, had jumped up onto the table and was pouncing after these strange new pink things he'd never seen before.

Phil yelled at him, and stormed toward the table.  Sir Pounces at Shadows gave Phil a 'who me?' look, then dove off the table as it became clear Phil was not playing games.  The cat gave a disapproving hiss.

“Bad cat!” yelled Phil.  “Leave Aggie alone.”

Another disappointed hiss was followed by a brief purr, then Sir Pounces at Shadows darted from the room.

Phil sighed with relief.  “Is anyone hurt?”

A chorus of nos and one “just shaken up” was his answer.  Phil was just starting to relax when one the Aggies asked, “Weren't there supposed to be twelve of us?”

“No, eleven,” replied Phil.  “I just erased one.”

“There's only ten now.”

Phil counted.  Twice.  Then swore more colourfully than Aggie had ever heard.  “Is she on the floor?”

“I think I saw one of us fall off,” offered one Aggie.  She pointed over the far side of the table.

Phil examined the floor, finding a small spot of blood.  “Looks like it.  But she's not...  Damn.  Sir Pounces did seem way too happy to leave.”

“He has one of us?  Should we disentangle?”

“No!” cried Phil.  “That's a one in eleven chance of...”

The chorus of moans that came up from the Aggies made Phil wince once more.  “I'll go find her.  The rest of you... you might be better off in the cage.”

One Aggie stayed out, marching up to the edge of the table.  “I'm coming with you.  You'll need someone her scale to help find her.  And to help her, if she's still...”

Phil nodded, and scooped her up.  “Let's go.”

“Where?” asked the Aggie, barely audible over Phil's footsteps on the stairs.

“I just hope she thought to play dead.  If so... he's probably dropping off a present at his usual spot.”

Phil raced through the house and out the kitchen door, just in time to see his mother scream and point at the tiny naked woman bleeding on the back doorstep.

Phil darted past her, scooped up the tiny form, and had the presence of mind to note that it was still warm.  He cupped the healthy Aggie and the wounded one in his palms, staring down at both worriedly.  After a bit, the brave Aggie gave him a thumbs' up.  “She's alive.  Hurt pretty bad, mostly from the punctures where he carried her.  We have to get her to the pod.”

“What in tarnation is going on here?” stormed Phil's mother.

“Not now!”  Phil was already running toward the stairs, keeping his cupped hands as level as he could.  Aggie crouched over the wounded one, gripping two fingers to keep them from falling.  She didn't let go of the other even when Phil set his hand in the pod.  “Both of us.  It'll soften the blow.  Go!”

Phil darted to the panel, and the capacitors clunked just as his mother made it to the bottom of the stairs.  He ignored her recriminations, and searched the pods to make sure no accidental clones had appeared.  Once he was sure, he sighed with relief and turned to face the music.

Judy was staring at the cage.  At least half a dozen Aggies were staring back.  Two were waving.  “Why?” asked Phil's mother in a tone of voice that brooked no dissent whatever, “Why are there a bunch of little women... little Aggies... in that cage?”

“To keep them safe from the cat.  Well, at least one of them.  But after today... I'm going to have to bell that cat, or we'll never get anything done.”

“That is not what I meant and you know it, young man.”

Phil sighed, and stared in on a long-winded explanation of how Aggie had discovered that the entangler could make miniature duplicates as well.  He glossed over whose fault it was that Aggie's large self was no longer available.

“And you're working on how to get her back to normal?”

“Yes, Mom.”

She looked down at the tiny girls.  “And you lot, you trust him?  Despite the whole naked in a cage thing?”

One Aggie stepped forward . “Yes, Judy.  It's not his fault, it's mine.  I wanted to try being small, just small, not both at once.  In retrospect, not a great idea, and he tried to warn me.”

Judy sighed, and shook her head.  “I knew this craziness of his would cause trouble, but I had no idea...  Dinner's in half an hour.  I expect my son and at least one of you to be there.  Dressed.”  She shot her son a glare.  “You can shrink her some clothes, yes?  Those rags they're trying to put on are not suitable.”

Phil nodded.  “Of course.  I'll take care of it right away.  Um... do we have any large laundry bags with drawstrings?”

Judy pointed to the washing machine, then headed back up the stairs.  Phil dug through the cabinet over the laundry machines, and discovered that, in fact, they had four such bags.  “Handy.  Ready to have something to wear?”

The Aggies nodded.  The one in front added, “Don't erase the originals, though.  I'll want those later.”

There were some minor complications in getting the drawstring closed from the inside.  Aggie was too small to do it.  Instead, she suggested that Phil tie a slip knot then grab it through the fabric of the bag and pull it tight.  That worked well enough, but was a pain to undo afterward.  Phil just cut the little ones open, giving the Aggies two dresses.  He combined two dresses in the one bag he'd untied the hard way, and fired twice more, producing eight more tiny dresses, then erased all the cut-open laundry bags, leaving just the original.

“You know,” said Aggie as Phil carried her up the stairs. “We're not going to be happy all wearing the same thing.  It's terribly gauche to show up at a party wearing the same dress as someone else.”

Phil laughed.  “What about the same body?”

“Well that can hardly be helped.  Hi Judy!” Aggie called with a wave.

“Hello my dear.  Are you feeling better after your ordeal?”

“Much, yes.  Erasing the wounded one got rid of the pain.”

Judy shook her head.  “So that explains the duplicates.  Spares?”

“Yes.  Plus... well, it is kind of fun to suddenly have a bunch of sisters after growing up as an only child.”

“Ah.  So you're not suffering?”

“No.  It started as an adventure, and has become... rather more of one than I'd hoped.  I really want to be big again.”

Judy served up two large plates of food, and one teacup saucer.  Aggie was several times smaller than her plate, but ate the mashed potatoes with gusto.  She had a little more trouble with the sausage, until Phil cut it into very tiny pieces for her.  She was able to dig out handfuls from the exposed innards once it had cooled some, and pronounced it the best and biggest sausage she'd ever eaten.

Dessert was peach cobbler, and Aggie dove into that as well.  Literally, in this case, as she'd slipped on the rim of the saucer and tumbled into it.  Aggie and Phil both giggled like mad.  Judy fussed over Aggie's dress until Phil reassured her they could just duplicate another.

“That must be handy,” mused Judy.  “So is that your plan?  Use this new contraption of yours to supply the world with all its needs?”

“That... wouldn't work.  Thanks to Sir Pounces we now know that the diamond boosted entangles have a longer range than before, but it's likely only a few tens of meters.  I really doubt it’s enough to have some Aggies here, and some at her house.”

“What has Lucy said about all this?”

Phil and Aggie shared a look.  “We haven't told her yet.”

“I suppose you'll want me to come up with some story about her sleeping over?”

“Please,” begged Phil.  “We have to work on fixing this.”

“Fine,” said Judy resignedly.  “How long is it going to take?”

Phil seemed to deflate.  “I don't really know.  We've made some amazing progress, using the diamonds to boost the entangle... but I'm still at least an order of magnitude away.  A factor of twenty-four jump in scale is just so hard to manage due to the cubic scaling.”

“Who says you have to do it all in one jump?” asked Phil's mother.

His eyes lit up, and he turned to Aggie.  “If you made a mid-sized pod,” she started.

“Two,” Phil continued.  “Has to be a pair.  Two steps, each about the same ratio, we've got lots of gain for that.  Which means...”

“I get to be big again!”

Judy smiled at the two of them.  “You two really were meant to be together.”

Aggie giggled.  “You have no idea.”

“So.  How long will it take?” asked Judy.  Aggie turned to Phil, also eager to know the answer.

“Um... if I can have an advance on the research budget, I can get some one-sixth scale pods made in a couple of days.  Just a matter of changing some numbers and sending the file, the shop knows what to do.”

“I think for poor Aggie's sake I can advance you the funds, yes,” said Judy.  “How long once you have the pods?”

Phil rubbed his temples. “I don't know.  Calibration takes a long time.  The little pods were hardest, hard to reach into to polish out variations.  The big pods just took work.  I've gotten better at it, but...  At least a week.”

“I'll help all I can,” said Aggie.  “All of us will.”

* * *

It took almost the full two weeks.  Phil and the Aggies swarmed over the pods as soon as they arrived, and spent nearly every waking minute polishing the interiors to perfect symmetry.  Test after test was conducted, each revealing successively smaller imperfections.  Judy helped in her own way.  She brought food down to them, and kept Sir Pounces at bay, partly through mining the lab floor with dozens of catnip mice.

The Friday before classes started, the pods finally passed the test.  Phil grinned at Aggie.  “Ready to be bigger?  They're ganged with the little pods.  Hop in.”

This time there was no bothering with geometric arrangements of diamonds, Phil just dumped a dozen into the bag before Aggie climbed in.  He secured the mini-pods, double checked that all seals were good, and with a half dozen Aggies lined up on the control console for good luck, engaged the entangler.  The mid-sized pods had servos, and the doors opened with tiny hisses.  Two bagged Aggies were inside, and Phil helped each out in turn.  The foot-tall Aggies danced a jig on the table, then hugged each other tight.  “We're big!  Oh, at last, we're big!”

Phil cleared his throat.  The Aggies grinned up at him.  “Yeah, yeah.  Not as big as you.  But after two weeks of being smaller than your hands, we're...  Uh, still not knee high.  But we're big!”  They bounced around again.

Phil grinned, and started gathering up all the little Aggies.  “This is going to be an interesting trip.  Ready to put everything back in one head?”

They nodded, and he loaded them into the mid-size pod.  One erase cycle later, and the two remaining Aggies fell on their rumps, then collapsed completely.  Phil watched them worriedly, they were lying there for an awfully long time.

“Aggie?  You still with me?”

The two foot-long Aggies slowly sat up.  “Yeah.  Never had to integrate months of relative time like that before.  So much information.  Luckily, much of it was the same.”

“Ready to disentangle?”

The Aggies hugged, then turned to him and nodded.  One vanished, leaving the last Aggie standing alone.  Still a foot tall.  She smiled up at Phil.  “It worked!”

“It did.  Now it's going to take me a couple hours to get the big pods back into the loop.  Want to be erased, or duplicated and one of you stuck in a rather too small cage?”

“Duplicated, please,” said Aggie.  She hopped into a laundry bag fully dressed.  Phil handed her a diamond, and Aggie giggled.  “They look smaller now.  Pity.”

“Don't worry, I can make some big ones later.  Big enough to use as a footstool.”

Aggie grinned, and closed the bag.

With the help of one of his foot-tall fiancées to manage the fiddly bits, Phil had the conduits re-routed in record time.  Three test fires later, Aggie was practically vibrating with excitement.  “Is it really, really finally ready?  For real?”

Phil grinned.  “Yes.  Time to get you back to normal.”

Aggie leaped from his shoulder to the table, and was inside the bag before Phil could even blink.  He waved to her, and moments later she was struggling out of the bag once more.  Aggies stepped out of the big pods as well as the medium sized ones.  “Yes!” came the cheer from four throats, though two of them overwhelmed the others.

Phil scooped both tall Aggies up in a crushing hug.  “Finally.  I am so, so sorry.”

Both Aggies kissed him soundly.  “No apologies.  It was the most amazing experience of my life.  I'm just not going back to being tiny again any time soon.  Well, not today, anyway.”  With a sly grin she added, “It's your turn.”

Phil's cheeks pinked slightly.  “Ah... yeah.  First shouldn't we erase the others, and unentangle?”

Aggie nodded.  She hugged the little ones, and soon they were gone.  A moment later, only one Aggie stood where so many had not long before.  “Done?”

“Done.  Time to go see if there's any summer left.”

There was, but not much.  Judy was so excited to see Aggie full sized she gave her a huge hug and kiss.  Then she invited Aggie's mother Lucy over for a celebratory dinner.

Lucy took one look at her daughter, and broke down into tears.  Aggie hugged her awkwardly, and made insincere promises about never doing that again.  Phil made rather more sincere ones about keeping better backups.

After dinner was over, and many expurgated tales told of Aggie's time seeing the world from a mouse-eye's view, Lucy asked, “So what about your classes?”

“I'm going to change them around.  If I drop one of my classes and take two others, I can finish my original triple major by the end of the term.  I've already checked online and there are seats available.  The schedule's going to be a bit hectic, but I can do it.”

“And this insane dalliance?  How are you going to manage it and a full class-load?”

Aggie gave Phil a look, and they both headed to the basement.  Not long after, four Aggies emerged, one wearing a silver locket and holding Phil's hand.  “Three of me will study.  And once they've gathered all the knowledge I need,” she opened the locket, and touched the gem inside with a flourish.  The locket fell toward the floor as she vanished, and was caught by Phil.  The remaining Aggie got her bearings and smiled at her mother sweetly.  “And then we combine, remembering everything.  Including all the fun I had, have, and will continue to have with Phil.  We're engaged.  We're going to get married.  Whether or not you approve.”

“Ah.  I figured it would come to this.  Good.”

Aggie stared at her mother in confusion.  “Good?  You've plagued me about Phil for months now!”

“I wanted to be sure you were certain.  It's very hard to see someone clearly when you've grown up beside them.”

“But...  I...  Damn it, I love him!  You dismissed that out of hand.”

“Pfah.  Young kids in love.  Never know what it really means.  How can you?”

“I bled for him.  One of me nearly died because of him.  Parts of the last few weeks have been hellish beyond measure, and I spent most of it terrified I'd never be normal again.”

Phil started to look more than a little nervous, but then Aggie spun to him and kissed him ferociously, her body long and lithe against his.  When she broke for air, she didn't let go, clinging to him as to a life preserver.  She held her cheek against Phil's as she fervently said, “And I would do it all again if he asked.  I love him, and I trust him.”

“After all that?” asked Phil, still a little shocked.

“Especially after all that.  You were just as terrified as I was.”

“More.  You haven't seen Pounces playing with his prey before.”

“My brave mad scientist.”  Aggie kissed him again, a brief one, but full of promise.  “Time for us to go shopping.”

“Shopping?” asked the others.

Aggie grinned wickedly.  “For fishnet stockings.”

Phil grinned hugely, and they were out the door like a shot.

“What just happened?” asked Lucy plaintively.

“They're young and in love.  And can shrink duplicates of themselves.  You figure it out,” replied Judy, hiding a smile.

* * *

Phil looked up at the love of his life.  Waaaaay up.  Two cycles from the big pods to the mid-sized ones had reduced him to less than two inches in height.  His full-sized body was upstairs in bed, sleeping beside a copy of Aggie.

“Ready for the climb of your life, little man?  I'm not going to make it easy on you.  But you will find victory rewarding.”

Phil grinned up at the biggest, most beautiful leg he’d ever seen.  Climbing it would be reward enough, whatever else Aggie had planned.  He grabbed onto the stocking, tested his grip, and started to climb.