Entanglements 5

“I want to get married.”

Phil looked up at Aggie.  “Now?  One day after you returned to normal?”

“Yes,” said Aggie.  “Right now.  Today, or at the very least this weekend.  Classes start on Monday, and I won’t see as much of you.”

“Okay.”

Aggie blinked, then grinned hugely.  “Really?”

“Do you think we can get it all set up today?  There’s paperwork and such, and the offices will likely be closed over the weekend.”

“Good thing it’s Friday, then.”

“It is?”

Aggie laughed, and shook her head.  “If it wasn’t for me dragging you out of here you’d live in this lab, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably, yeah.  I want to wring everything I can out of diamond-boosted entangles.”

“Does this mean we get more shots before running the capacitors dry?”

Phil nodded and started into an explanation.  Aggie held her hand up.  “No!  You’re dragging me into this craziness again, and I’d go more than willingly... but I have completely different craziness to deal with.  If we’re going to get married before Monday, we need to get going right now.”

Phil apologized, but Aggie stopped him with a kiss.  “Less talking, more getting showered and dressed in clean clothes.”

“Yes’m.”  Phil darted upstairs.

Aggie followed behind him at a more reasonable pace.  She waved to Phil’s mom in the kitchen, then darted over to give her a hug.  “He agreed!”

Judy hugged her back.  “He’s not entirely oblivious.  Do you really think you can pull it off?”

Aggie’s grin then was ferocious.  “Watch me.”

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of frantic activity.  The most important part was begging the county clerk to waive the three day waiting period so they could get married on Sunday.  In the end they had to drag both mothers in with them to reassure the clerk that Phil and Aggie had their parents’ blessing.

Lucy hesitated when asked, and the poisonous look she got from Aggie made it clear what would happen if she said no.  She sighed then, and nodded.  “They’ve known each other for years.  And loved each other for most of that time, though my son-in-law to be took long enough figuring it out.”

“So why such a rush today, if they’ve known each other for years?” asked the clerk.

“Because I’m going back to university on Monday, and I want to do so as a married woman.  Please?” begged Aggie.

The clerk studied her for a heart-rending moment, then finally smiled.  “It doesn’t look like you two will be back here in a week asking for divorce forms.  So yes.  Pay the extra fee, and you’re good to go.”

Aggie had the money on the counter before the clerk had even finished speaking, then thanked him excitedly when he handed her the form.  Once they’d finished filling it out, the clerk asked if they’d found an officiant yet.

Phil and Aggie looked at each other and winced.  “Do you have a list of ones that might be available this Sunday?” asked Phil.  “We’ll take any time at all.”

The clerk grinned at the two of them.  “Summers are busy times... but I do know one person who definitely can make an hour free for a cute couple like yourselves.”

The cute couple in question sagged with relief.  “Who?”

The clerk bowed slightly.  “County clerks are empowered to marry, and if you’re willing...”

“Yes yes yes!” shouted Aggie.  “Thank you so, so much.  We have the venue, and I’m not worried about the dress, it doesn’t have to be fancy.”

They spent a few more minutes confirming details with the county clerk, then Lucy and Judy rushed Aggie off for dress shopping, leaving Phil to his own devices.  So he spent the rest of the day in the lab.

“Ugh,” moaned Aggie as she collapsed on a stool beside Phil.  “If I never see the inside of a bridal store again it will be too soon.”

Phil blinked at her, taking a moment to digest the comment.  “Oh.  You weren’t gone that long, were...”

Aggie just sighed.  “It’s Friday night.  Let me duplicate you so at least part of you gets some sleep.  Or do you have the entangler torn up to the point we can’t even do that?”

“Oh!  Yes, of course.  Give me a minute to revert the firmware in the discriminator...”  Phil tapped out a few commands, waited through a progress count-up, and nodded.  “OK.  Last known good version loaded.  Not quite as efficient as... oh!  Of course.”

“And I’ve lost you again,” sighed Aggie as Phil started scribbling notes.  While she waited for him to come down from his latest burst of inspiration, she stripped down, then tucked her bra and panties into a laundry bag with one of the duplicated diamonds.

Phil looked up abruptly at the sound of the capacitors firing.  “Oh!  Good, you’re still here.”

Aggie laughed.  “No, I didn’t erase myself.  Tempting, though.”  She looked into the big pods and pouted.  “Aw, foo.  It erased.  I thought the diamonds guaranteed their pod would be selected.”

“Were you using the smaller pods?  You need to put at least two diamonds in, otherwise it fails about 30% of the time.  Factor of eight vs factor of six, to the third power.”

“But... I need to unentangle to get my clothes back, that’ll mean only one diamond.  We need to duplicate more.”

Phil shrugged.  “We know how to do that.”

Aggie hit the unentangle button, then tossed a laundry bag at Phil.  “Your turn.”

Four duplications and a couple of erases later, there were sixteen diamonds, one full-sized Phil, and two foot-tall versions.  Aggie cuddled the latter to her chest.  “Can I take them home with me?  Please?”

“Halfway,” replied Phil.

Aggie looked confused until Phil told her that he’d tested the range of such diamond-boosted entangles.  Under the current design, they could go a little over a hundred yards from the entangle if they had one of the diamonds with them.

“That’s a huge improvement!” enthused Aggie.  “But... my house is further away than that.”

Phil nodded.  “Yeah.  Pity we weren’t right next door to each other.  Then you could...”

Aggie shrugged.  “I’ll just sleep here, then.  I won’t be too distracting, will I?”

Phil actually looked at her, laughing when he realized she was quite naked.  “How the hell did I miss that?”

“Because you were in mad science mode, of course.”  Aggie posed saucily for him, giggling when he growled and prowled toward her.

After a toe-curling kiss, Aggie dragged Phil toward the cot.  Then she hesitated beside it, a playful grin on her face.  “Or should I save myself for our wedding night?”

Phil looked confused.  “But we already...”

“Kidding, dear.”  Aggie lay down on the cot, setting one mini-Phil atop each breast.  They eagerly started teasing at them.  “C’mere and make me the happiest girl in the world.”

* * *

Judy and Lucy stole Aggie away from Phil for all of Saturday to ‘get her ready’.  He shrugged, and went back to the lab.  Judy dragged him out later that afternoon to go buy a nice suit.  Getting it tailored to fit overnight cost extra, but Judy didn’t flinch at the quote.  “It’ll be worth it to see you looking sharp for once,” she mused.  “Speaking of which.  You need that mop you call hair trimmed.”

Phil started to complain, but his mother wouldn’t have it.  “Aggie went through far more to get ready for tomorrow.  Suck it up, buster.”

“But she likes my hair like... doesn’t she?”

Judy arched an eyebrow at her son, then relented.  “She loves you no matter what, silly boy.  Even scruffy.  Possibly especially scruffy, I don’t know.  But she’s getting married tomorrow.”

“So am I,” pointed out Phil, who got shushed for it.

“Every girl, even Aggie, wants her wedding day to be special.  So not only will you have a nice haircut, but we might actually try to style it in the morning.  Would it really kill you to comb it once in a while?”

Phil sighed, then chuckled ruefully.  “No.  Remembering to, however...”

Judy shook her head in resignation.  “Ah well.  Aggie’s problem as of tomorrow.  So where are you two going to live, hm?”

Phil swore, then apologized to his mother.  “I haven’t even thought about that.  I suppose the lab is out of the question.”

“Very much so.”

“I don’t even know where to start,” fretted Phil.

Judy sat him down in the barber shop.  “Wait here, ask them to make you look good.  Don’t ask for anything specific.”

Phil snorted.  “I wouldn’t even know what to ask for.”

“Exactly.  While you’re here, I’m going to check on something regarding the housing situation.”

Half an hour and a cape full of clippings later, Phil looked less like a mad scientist and more like a young gentleman facing his swiftly-approaching wedding.  He was pacing just as nervously as one might expect when his mother returned.

She smiled at her son, and got him to turn this way and that before nodding approvingly.  “Very good.  Did you tip them?”

“Yes, Ma.  For putting up with this mop, he deserved it.”

“Good.  Then we’re off to see Mr. Lambert at the bank.”

“I thought the bank was closed on weekends,” protested Phil.

Judy smiled.  “Mostly, yes.  The manager is usually there catching up on paperwork and such, and when you have as much on deposit as we do, they tend to open the door for you.”

Phil frowned as he followed his mother.  “Wait, since when do we have so much money that it would influence a banker?  I thought Dad’s life insurance was being paid out in installments.”

“It is, but we don’t spend all of so it has built up significantly.  More significantly, his wrongful death settlement was paid out in a lump sum.”

Phil stopped abruptly, staring at his mother.  “I never heard anything about that.”

She kept walking, forcing Phil to scurry to catch up.  “You were a mess.  I was, too, for that matter.  I signed what they put in front of me, only afterward realizing that it was both a non-disclosure agreement and a substantial payment.”

“Non-disclosure... what the heck happened, Ma?”

“Honestly, I don’t know.  But they wanted it kept quiet, and I’ve kept my end of the deal.  Don’t pry, just accept it.”

“Accept what?”

“That we have more than enough money to buy the old Winslow place from the bank, for one.”

Phil stopped in surprise once again.  “We... what?”  His mother just kept on walking, and as he hurried after her he cast his mind back to his and Aggie’s favourite playground.  The old Winslow house was about halfway between their two houses, and even when they first met it has been abandoned long enough that the yard was a jungle of long grass and weeds.  Nowadays even the house itself was hidden in the overgrowth.

Phil signed the paperwork where indicated and before he knew it he owned a house.  A very run-down but still structurally sound house.  He stared down at the title papers in his hands, then shook the keys to jingle them.  “I... this is one hell of a wedding gift.”

“You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you.  The roof is still sound, so it’s just a matter of elbow grease and paint.  You’re not afraid of a little work, are you?”

Phil snorted.  “I guess not.  But that’s not a little work.”

“It is if you divide it twelve ways,” said Judy with a subtle smile.

“Twelve...  The entangler?  Wow.  I could have that place tidied up in days with enough of me...  This is going to be awesome!”

“There’s my boy.  But first, the wedding.  That house has waited a long time.  It can wait a little longer.”

Phil shook his head.  “If that’s where Aggie and I are going to live, I should at least get it started so I can carry her over the threshold once we’re married.  The rest of you seem to have everything all planned out anyway.  I’ll be there – and clean – in time for the wedding.  Not like it’s far away, or anything.”

His mother sighed.  “I should have known.  I suppose you’ll want to go to your ‘lab’ first?”

“If you’d be so kind.  I could use a hand getting the first copy made, too.”

Judy’s eyes lit up.  “I get to see this thing of yours in operation, finally?”

Once they got home, Phil led her into the basement and showed her the controls of the entangler.  To avoid complications, he pulled the levers that took the middle-sized pods out of the conduit network.  Then to his mother’s astonishment, he climbed into a laundry bag clutching a small diamond, then ducked into a pod.  “Ready when you are, Ma.”

Judy shrugged, and pressed the button.  To hisses and a clunk later, she had two sons, and hugged them both at the same time.  “I always wanted a bigger family,” she whispered.  “Thank you.”

“And tomorrow it gets bigger yet,” said Phil.

“I know!  I’m so excited.  You two have no idea...”

Both Phils gave their mother another hug.  “It’ll be great.  Let me duplicate myself a few more times, and then we can go see the house.”

Five Phils and one Judy made quick work of the weeds choking the path up to the front door of the old Winslow place.  The paint on the trim was peeling, but the stucco walls had held up quite well.  They did need a severe power-washing, however.

A little oil in the lock made the key work smoothly, and soon the front door was creaking open.  The dust inside was thick, and there was a faint smell of mildew.  June pronounced it more than serviceable, and the Phils agreed.  They’d brought over duplicated cleaning supplies, and started sweeping and scrubbing.

By dinnertime, they’d rendered three of the rooms serviceable, swept out the rest, and repainted the living room.  Phils wanted to work the night through, but the power service had been cut for lack of payment many years ago, and getting it re-established wouldn’t be possible until the next week.

* * *

The next morning, Phil was a nervous wreck.  Judy picked his suit up, and helped him with the tie.  He was tugging at it and pacing like a caged tiger until it was time to go.

The walk to Aggie and Lucy’s house let him expend some of his nervous energy.  They met the clerk there, and proceeded around to the back yard.  Lucy was an avid gardener and what had once been a mostly grassy yard had been transformed over the years into a riot of flowers and vegetables.  There was still grass enough for the small wedding party to gather.  Lucy and Aggie were waiting in the garden, Aggie in a knee-length dress of pale green satin and wearing a diaphanous veil that did nothing to hide her grin at seeing Phil.

Phil rushed undecorously to her side and took her hand, and Aggie’s smile brightened further.  “Ready?” she asked in a whisper.  Phil couldn’t trust his voice at that moment, and simply nodded.

The clerk smiled fondly at the two of them.  “Ah, young love.  Well, let’s get this started.”  He had little to say, sticking to the formalities of his role.  Once they’d said brief vows he instructed them to kiss, and they did so with passion.

Then there was the matter of signing and witnessing the paperwork, and just as the clerk was about to take his leave, Lucy brought out a basket full of wonderful-smelling food.  The five of them ate a picnic lunch in the garden, laughing and chatting together like old friends.  Lucy and the clerk appeared to be hitting it off well.

Once the food was done and the wasps started making a nuisance of themselves, the party broke up.  Phil led Aggie for a walk down the street, and to the old Winslow house.  She looked at the front yard in surprise.  “It looks like someone’s finally cleaning this place up.  It’s almost a pity.  Remember our fort in the jungle out back?”

Phil grinned.  “I do.  And I have every intention of leaving the jungle just as it is.”

Aggie turned and stared at her... husband.  The word distracted her from her question for a bit, and left a goofy smile on her face.

“What?”

“Just... we’re married.  I really hadn’t thought past this point.”

“Luckily for us, my mother had.”  Phil took Aggie by the hand and led her up to the door of the old house.  A moment’s work with the keys, and the door swung open on newly-oiled hinges.  “Welcome home.”

Aggie yelped as Phil swept her off her feet and staggered her into the house.  The smell of paint still lingered in the front hallway.  Phil set Aggie down as carefully as he could, and gave her a tour.  The living room was the cleanest, and the smell of paint was strongest there.  The master bedroom had been sanded but not painted and Aggie surveyed it with an eye to what colours they could use, making Phil glad he’d left it undone.

The kitchen needed more than just cleaning, sadly, though the living room and den were passable.  The stairs leading down from the kitchen revealed a disaster of a crawlspace, navigable only at a crouch.  Aggie shook her head.  “We can’t put the lab down here.  What were you thinking?”

Phil just grinned, and led her back to the entryway.  Opposite the front door was another leading to a set of stairs that paralleled the main hallway.  At the top was an open-plan attic with a full height ceiling, and storage coves under the eaves.  Windows at either end let in copious amounts of light.

“The pods aren’t so heavy that they’ll be a problem structurally.  The worst part will be getting them up here, but the big ones can be disassembled into two halves.  I’ll get the power company to run a heavier circuit when they reconnect the power, so the capacitor bank can charge faster.”

Aggie hugged him crushingly tight.  “It’s perfect.  Now we need to go get one critical piece of lab gear for tonight, then worry about the rest later.”

“Which piece?” asked Phil.

“The cot, of course.  We are sleeping here tonight, even if it means camping out with flashlights and a cold breakfast.  Besides, I want to go back to the lab and get entangled with what I’m wearing under this dress...”

Phil managed to mostly keep up with Aggie’s jog as they headed back to the lab.  He panted for breath leaning against the controls while she was getting into a laundry bag, then there were two Aggies being flirty and the whole “entangle with my outfit” thing went by the wayside until after dinner.

The four of them, Phil, Aggie and their mothers, all ate dinner together at Lucy’s.  To Phil’s surprise, Lucy was even pleasant to him.  When he asked her about it as they were leaving she shrugged and said it was the difference between son-in-law and weird boyfriend.

“I’m not weird any more?” Phil asked.

Lucy snorted.  “Hell, yes.  But it appears Aggie likes your flavour of weird, so as long as you keep her happy, we’ll be fine.”

Aggie giggled at that, and continued to do so as they walked back to their new house.  “If only she knew...”

“That you’re wearing a copy of yourself under those clothes?”

“No, that you’re entangled with a pack of condoms.  Going to be a fun night.”

It was.  When Aggie finally let the dress fall, the outfit under it was all Phil could have asked for.  And his huge smile made the extra effort and discomfort of the garters well worthwhile.

* * *

The next morning, Aggie had to rush off to university.  They had a quick and cold breakfast before she ran home to shower and get her car.  Phil kept the locket, so he could maintain copies of himself away from the lab, and started to work on the house.  With six of himself, the work went swiftly, and by Friday night even Lucy agreed that the house was fit to live in.  Better, the lab had been rebuilt in the attic, and the pods were once again ready for use.  The snaking masses of cables had been tidied away, and the pods were arranged in neat pairs – the big ones on the floor by the top of the stairs, the other four on a table next to them.

They had their mothers over for dinner that night, and while Lucy did find a few faults with Phil’s work, she agreed that the house was more than habitable.  Aggie let out a long-held breath at that pronouncement, and hugged her mother tight.  “See?  Phil is...”

Phil raised an eyebrow.  “Yes?”

“Everything I’ve ever wanted,” finished Aggie.  “Plus, he’s pretty handy around the house.  Especially when there are four of him.”

Lucy shook her head.  “Four men?  Ugh.  I’d be happier with zero around the house.”

Phil grinned.  “The pods can erase, too.  If Aggie wants peace...”

Aggie grinned back, “I’ll get you to erase me, not yourself.  It’s so incredibly peaceful.  Meditating while erased is... transcendent.”

Judy tilted her head at that, curiously.  “May I try?”

Phil and Aggie exchanged a look.  “Yes, of course.”

Lucy followed the others up to the lab, but ignored the hardware and instead checked out the views from the windows.  The clunk and hiss of the entangler cycling startled her and she turned to face a grinning Phil and Aggie.  “What did you do?”

Aggie glanced at Phil, then took the lead.  “Erased Judy, as she asked.  It’s like being in a sensory deprivation chamber, except you can’t even feel your own body.  We shouldn’t leave her too long for a first go, though.  It’s easy to panic when you can’t feel yourself breathing, but with all the yoga and such she does, I’m sure she’ll be fine.”

“Fine?  She doesn’t exist and you think that’s fine?”

Aggie shrugged.  “I’ve done it a bunch of times.  It’s not unpleasant in any way, Mom.  Heck, you’d probably enjoy the peace and quiet.”

Lucy snorted, and turned back to the window.  “What are you going to do with the yard?  The front still needs work but this...”  She gestured toward the view.  “I can’t even see the ground.  It’s a jungle.”

Aggie stood beside her mother and looked out.  “And we’re going to go explore it tomorrow, like we did when we were kids.  Think we’d be safe out there at a foot tall, Phil?”

“Oh, sure.  I’ve been doing some work on unentanglement odds, and as long as you’ve got good copies near the diamond, it shouldn’t matter how much trouble the littles get into.”

They descended into shop-talk about probability distributions then, and Lucy sighed, returning to the view out the window.  She hid a smile at the idea of exploring her own garden at fairy-size.

Once Phil and Aggie had come up with an experiment design to test the unentangle probabilities by size and proximity by balancing the two against each other, Lucy finally intervened.  “Before you start more experiments, shouldn’t you restore Judy?”

Phil and Aggie blushed.  “Whoops.”  Phil hit the unentangle button and a moment later, Judy was stepping out of the pod.

“How long was I gone for?” asked Judy serenely.

Phil checked the log.  “Uh, about half an hour.  Sorry, I only meant to leave you for a few minutes, but Aggie came up with this idea for testing the probability of...”  He stopped.  “Never mind that.  Are you OK?”

Judy smiled.  “Never better.  Thank you.  I’d like to try that again one day, but for now you two are practically vibrating to start some new test.  We’ll leave you to it.”

Once they’d seen Judy and Lucy to the door, Phil and Aggie returned eagerly to the lab.  Aggie was excited about the chance to do some “mad science” for the first time in over a week.

“So, the plan is trying different distances from the entangle diamond for the small copy, enough times to establish a probability distribution.  So are we going to use a...”  Phil chuckled as he watched Aggie shimmy out of her clothes.

“I’m going to be the guinea pig,” declared Aggie.

“You’re going to end up ‘stuck’ at a foot tall at least a dozen times over the next few hours,” cautioned Phil.

Aggie shrugged.  “We know how to get me back, and after spending two weeks itty-bitty, being a foot tall is nothing.  I wouldn’t even mind short stints at two inches, too.  I liked being held in your hands.”

“Fine.  We’ll do that afterward... but keep a full sized Aggie around just in case.”

“Do we have to?”

Phil nodded.  “I’d rather not have to go to the ER and explain why your ribs got crushed.  We’re awfully fragile that small.  But we could make tiny copies of both of us, and play on our full size bodies...”

Aggie grinned.  “It’s a date.  Now start testing already!  I’m glad you’ve got the heat turned up in here so being naked isn’t a problem, but I don’t want to wait around forever...”

Phil saluted Aggie, and moved to the control panel.  “Disentangle probability test number one starting... now.”  

Phil helped one of the foot-tall Aggies out of their pods, then erased one large and one small Aggie.  At his direction, the large one stood by the window, peeking out through the drawn shades while Phil set up the test.  He measured the distance between the little Aggie and the crystal carefully.  “If my theory is right, this should be the balance point.  Ready?”

“Ready!” called both copies.  And a moment later, the small one was the only one left.

Aggie stared up at Phil.  “Woah.  So... I’m stuck this size?”

“I did say...”

“Cool!  Try and catch me!”

The little Aggie led Phil on a chase around the lab, eventually ‘hiding’ in one of the pods with a giggle.  Phil handed her the diamond, and cycled the system.  Two large Aggies and two small Aggies appeared.  “Ready for round two?” panted Phil.  “Perhaps with less danger to life and limb?”

Several Aggies giggled.  “Aw c’mon.  It was fun.  You never came close to me, I was in no danger,” said one of the tall ones.

“All it would have taken was a careless move on my part to cripple you!  Of course I never came close.  Please, Aggie.  Stay safe.  We’re doing this so we can explore the jungle without risking ourselves, but if you’re going to do it while we’re testing... what’s the point?”

Aggie sighed.  “I know.  I just...  It was fun, wasn’t it?”

Phil hugged both of the big Aggies.  “It was.  But back in the pods with you, so we can test again.”

Aggie behaved herself for the next two hours, as the sun slowly set and the lab darkened.  She was thankful for the diamond and Phil’s new firmware, it meant they could test every minute or two, depending on whether or not she ended up small.  Little Aggie would always grin up at Phil and get him to pick her up, which usually led to more lost time than the recharge strictly needed.

In the end Phil set down his pen and sighed.  “Not enough.”

“Not enough?” asked the Aggie by his hand.

“If you’re this size in the yard, and a full size Aggie is by the machine... we’re only getting about a factor of twenty cubed on the distance.  Center of mass is what matters, not skin proximity.”

“So?”

Phil slumped in his chair.  “Six for scale, twenty for distance, all cubed...  There’s about a one in two million chance you’d end up disentangling to the one in the yard.”

“That’s pretty good, isn’t it?”

“People play the lottery on longer odds.  And somebody wins, most weeks.”

Aggie sat down with a thump beside Phil’s log book.  “Oh.  So we can’t go exploring?  There must be some way to push the odds into the billions or higher.  Can’t you do anything with the discriminator?”

“To use that, you’d have to be in the... pods...”  Phil’s eyes went distant.

Aggie laughed.  “I know that look.  C’mon, make me big before I lose you completely.”

As if to prove the point, the first attempt to return Aggie to full size failed, leaving the pods empty.  Fortunately, enough charge had built up while Phil was calculating to unentangle and try again, this time with only one diamond to boost her.  Two tries later, Aggie was finally large.  She slunk up to Phil and the two of her dragged him off to their new bed in the master bedroom, the little ones hopping down the stairs behind them.

* * *

Phil spent half of Saturday reworking the discriminator yet again, while three Aggies studied and the fourth made sure that he had enough to eat.  By the time lunch was done, Aggie had finished all her reading, and had in fact read well into the next week’s material.  She asked to be unentangled back to normal, and Phil obliged.

“Want to stick around for the tests?” he asked once Aggie had recovered from integrating four sets of data-dense memories.

“Tests?”

Phil nodded.  “Shouldn’t take many.  I’ll reduce you, then put a big Aggie right next to the crystal, and a little one in the pod.”

Aggie grinned at the offer of more little time, and hopped back into the pod.  They repeated the experiment a dozen times, and every time the big Aggie vanished.  Aggie even pushed the button to erase herself a few times, and once did it mid-kiss with Phil.

“Satisfied?” she asked, after Phil had yet again restored her.  “Not a single miss.”

“One last test, this time with apples.”

“Awww...” pouted Aggie.  She was less distressed when she saw the apple get reduced three times.  The result was the size of a poppy seed.  And yet, when the power-disentangle cycle was run, there were two speck-sized apples in the pods.  Disentangling them resulted in an apple so small they needed tweezers to pick it up.

“Success,” said Phil with satisfaction. “If it works on that tiny a scale, it’ll work on anything.  We can go exploring tomorrow.”

Aggie’s eyes were still on the barely visible dot in the petri dish.  “You wouldn’t make me that tiny, would you?”

“Not without keeping one of you at full size, anyway.  I don’t think you’d survive very well as a dust mote.  You’d freeze.  Or suffocate.  Or just get blown away by a random breeze...”

“I get it, I get it,” huffed Aggie.  

Phil knew that look.  “Still.  You’re curious.  We have the technology to ensure you won’t be endangered.  If you want to be one thousand two hundred and ninety-sixth your normal size, we can do it.  I’ll keep one of the thirty-sixth scale ones around so she can see you.”

Aggie shook her head.  “There’d be nothing fun to see.  I’d be like a flea crawling on your skin.  Frankly, I’d rather be your shirt, or something more fun.  C’mon, let’s go fetch the duvet and entangle both of us with it.”

“I love how you think,” said Phil with a grin.

* * *

The newlyweds returned to the lab briefly on Sunday, to make foot-tall versions of themselves.  The originals returned to bed after helping the intrepid explorers out the back door.

Aggie led the expedition, into a yard full of weeds rendered into giants.  They passed ladybugs the size of their fists, and were twice menaced by ants bigger than their feet.  They ran from the first, laughing, and Aggie scooped the second up, grabbing it behind the neck then flinging off to the side.

They quartered the yard, exploring the nooks and crannies.  Eventually they found the ruin of their old fort, little left to show for it but a few rotting planks.  There was still shelter to be had, so they sat there and ate their picnic lunch.

“Now what?” asked Phil when they were done.  “We’ve seen most of the yard.  It’s not so big we can get lost here for days at this size.”

Aggie threw him a challenging look.  “Shall we try it at two inches, then?”

Phil thought about that, and shook his head.  “I’d rather not have a rematch with the ants at that size.  What I’d like to explore is you.”

“Oooh.  Think we can make it up to the lab without the others noticing?  I bet if we worked at it, we could make mini-clones of ourselves and sneak them into bed.”

Phil stared at her. “You’re crazy.  We could get ourselves killed.  Or at the very least, badly hurt.  I know we can restore safely but we’ll still remember getting crushed.”

“We won’t get crushed.  We’ll be careful.  Come on!”

The hardest obstacle was simply getting back into the house.  The door had been closed behind them as on a pair of unruly children.  The only open window was on the second storey, where it served to cool the lab from the heat of the late afternoon sun.  Aggie pulled a long spool of twine out of her pack, and started to climb.

“You planned this?” asked Phil as he watched her worriedly.

“I’d planned to climb.  Hadn’t figured out what, but this should do.”

Shimmying up the downspout was tricky business, but Aggie made it seem easy.  Phil gave it a try, making it up only half his height before sliding back down again.  Aggie laughed at him. “Wait for the rope.  I just have to jump to the window first.”  

Perched atop the elbow of the downspout, Aggie tied the twine about her waist, then looped it over the pipe and down to Phil.  “Hang on to this.  If I miss, I’d rather not go splat.”

“Aggie, you can’t be... HOLY!”  Phil watched in horror as Aggie sprung from her perch, belatedly grabbing for the twine that would be her lifeline if she missed.  Her aim was true, but her grip was somewhat less so – Aggie slid off the window and ended up dangling midair, suspended by where her twine had caught the window’s handle.

Phil held his breath until Aggie had managed to scramble her way onto the windowsill.  She waved down to him, and at her gesture he started to climb the twine.  With her strength pulling him up, he made it to the top of the drainpipe without incident.  Getting to the window involved a terrifying swing on the twine, and more hauling, but soon he was inside.

“That was insane!” hissed Phil once they were both on the floor.

“It was awesome!”

After Phil’s hyperventilation calmed down, he grudgingly agreed.  By then Aggie was already climbing up onto the control panel for the entangler.  Phil sighed, dragged a laundry bag out of the storage cabinet, and managed to reach the bin of duplicated diamonds.  Soon there were three more Phils, two of which were only two inches tall.

Aggie helped one Phil up to the control panel, and soon she’d been cloned and reduced as well.  “Shall we send all four littles down to play in bed?  Or keep two for our own amusement?”

“Or erase the lot of us, save the two we’re sending exploring?” asked Phil.

Aggie shook her head.  “No erasing.  They’d learn what we’re up to.  The whole point is sneaking up on them unawares.”

“This is crazy...” muttered Phil weakly.

“And it will be fun.  As long as you two are careful.”  The taller Aggies waved to the little one that was tugging an equally tiny Phil toward the stairs.  “Now.  Let’s see how to amuse ourselves with two of everyone, and a couple of little ones besides.  To the cot!”

Phil laughed, and helped Aggie carry their tiny selves over to the same cot that Aggie had dragged into the lab for one of their earlier trysts.  It had seen more than a little use since then, and got well used once more.


Tiny Phil was still fretting as he dropped down from the lip of yet another stair.  “This is madness.  Everything’s so huge!  We’ll never get back upstairs.”

Aggie shushed him.  “We’re not going to go back upstairs.  We’re going to see if we’re still asleep, and see if we can’t go exploring on each other’s body until they wake up... one way or another.”

Phil shook his head, but dropped down another step in a vain effort to keep up.  “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this.”

“Because you want to explore a giant naked version of me.”

“Hello!  Already did that, with the fishnets.  It was incredible.”

Aggie sighed happily.  “Yeah.  Gotta do that again.  But this time, she won’t be watching out for you.”

“How is that a good thing?  I could get crushed.”  Phil dropped down the last step, beside Aggie who was waiting impatiently at the door.  Fortunately this one was ajar.

“You won’t get crushed.  And even if you did, you’d be fine once you’re erased.”

“Yeah, that makes me feel so much better about this...” said Phil, sarcastically.

Aggie darted across the hallway and into the master bedroom to end the argument.  The devet had fallen partway off the bed, and offered an easy ramp up to the top.  Even Phil managed the scramble without Aggie’s help.  Phil stared out at the enormous rumpled plain of the bed, and the giants lying atop it.

“Woah.”

Aggie shushed him, and they made their way forward.  The giants’ lower halves were still covered by the duvet, which made climbing up onto Aggie’s leg easier than it might otherwise have been.  She twitched a little at the new weight, causing Aggie and Phil to grab each other tight for balance.  They waited, panting, but the ground beneath them held steady.  Slowly they started forward again, over Aggie’s hip and up onto her toned stomach.  Phil took the lead toward the valley ahead, and that is when he heard the giggling.

It was coming from everywhere.  Phil looked around in confusion as the hills to either side of him started to press inward.  A moment later, he was gone, buried under an avalanche of boobs.  Aggie peered down at her tiny twin.  “You two are trouble.”

The tiny Aggie giggled back up at her.  “But oh so much fun.  C’mon, let us play.”

Phil scooped her up, and deposited her into the larger Aggie’s cleavage.  “You two have fun in there...”  He kissed Aggie on the breasts, then worked his way over her collarbone and her throat to her lips.  Soon they were distracted, and paying scant attention to their guests.  Scant, but not none, their lovemaking was extra-cautious so as to leave space for the other two, who were using Aggie’s chest as a bed and doing much the same thing.

* * *

On Monday morning, Aggie stole a lingering kiss from Phil before heading out to her car.  Phil accompanied her to it, then blanched as she got in.

“What is it?”

“I was worried about one in two million odds of not being able to restore you if you got into trouble in the back yard.  But... the odds of a car accident are way higher than that.  You don’t have a backup!”

Aggie shrugged.  “It’s not that far.  Not even ten miles.”

“But some of it’s on the highway.”

“I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Phil nodded.  “Do that.  I’ll figure out a way for you to be entangled while on campus.”

Aggie’s eyes lit up.  “I could be here and there at the same time?”

“I... maybe.  I think so.”  Phil’s gaze was already going distant.

“I’m not going to see much of you this next month, am I?”  Aggie asked with a chuckle, but got no answer.