My test subject woke up about ten minutes after I had strapped her to the gurney - right on time. Good, good. Her data was already loaded from earlier, and I'd just finished the final diagnostics; I tapped away a sequence into the machine, putting it in standby, then got up and stretched as she came around. This was going to really be something.
I'd always thought my father was a crackpot and none of the theories he'd talked about in his last ten years were real; it was too bad, he'd been only days away from completing the machine that would prove him right when he died. Now, everything he had was mine, which wasn't much - except for his machine that can alter reality and change people's minds and bodies, which I guess is something.
I'd been one of the few who still talked to him - if only because I found him funny, the idea of a modern-day mad scientist is hilarious to me - and the old bastard had willed everything to me. Including this thing, the 'machine', which he'd never named; it was, at present, pointed at the sexy young lawyer's body on the gurney. She groaned, and her eyes blinked a few times under the light of the cheap flourescents in the ceiling of my father's old garage.
"Wha... Where..." She sounded groggy and confused. I nodded to myself, and came around the folding table where the old man had put the computer which controlled the whole apparatus. It was quiet and musty in the garage, with the distant smell of the mildew which had long since invaded the house. The walls were mostly pegboard, with some unpainted drywall in places.
There was a splintering workbench off to one side with a variety of tools and inscrutable bits of technology scattered on it. A rack of car batteries were stacked up near a dirty window; their cables all fed to the emitter. A few had fallen off, but I'd gingerly re-attached them. There was a folding table toward the car door, with a cheap office chair set up and Dad's old PC - complete with the same dusty old keyboard and two-button mouse he'd always used - booted up and hooked into the emitter itself. The PC was how it was controlled, except Dad's software to do it was terrible.
He'd converted this place into his workshop of sorts, all centered on constructing the machine. To change the world, he'd said, eyes wide and delirious - to right all wrongs. I don't know about that last part, but I knew it was certainly about to change this lawyer girl's world, if some of the tests I'd run beforehand were any indication.
I ran my small hand along the steel housing of the machine's emitter. It looked surprisingly like a weapon - one right out of science fiction, a prototype laser cannon or something. Its tungsten focusing rod, which jutted out the front and was pointed at the lawyer chick, was ringed by solid-looking steel toroid shapes - part of the heat exchange apparatus.
Copper pipes, for the water that cooled it, ran through and between the toroids - critical to keep the thing from melting down in operation. We don't want that. All of it was surrounded by a complex array of tangled multi-colored cables and re-purposed exposed circuit boards, especially toward the back where it met the strut that kept it upright.
The main body of the device was boxy, with various protrusions and glowing whatsadoozits on the outer housing - including a maddening collection of power cables coming up from the bottom and wrapping around the strut it was mounted on. The metal strut itself was mounted on a rolling platform. It looked like it had been rolled right off the set of a low-budget sci-fi movie.
At least fifteen cables ran from the base of the machine to the computer, none of which I'd dared to even unplug for now. I couldn't pretend to fully understand the thing, and definitely not the theory underlying its operation - my own field was programming, with only a little smattering of physics and science thrown in. Just enough to be dangerous when I got my hands on the machine, basically. I pulled my hand away and looked at the lawyer woman. Forgot her name.
She was about five years older than me, I'd guess, probably close to thirty - and, by traditional accounting, far better-looking than I was. I'd always been a runt, a scrawny and gawky girl with what barely qualified as breasts and stringy brown hair. My eyes were just another shade of brown, acne scars dotted my face, and I didn't look much better naked than in clothes. I had on a basic grey tee, fitted snugly over my skinny body and pump-up bra, and ripped blue jeans. I'd never lacked for sex - with... less-than-ideal men, and a few women who always moved on - but I'd never liked how I looked.
This lawyer girl, though, she was something. I'd had trouble focusing on what she said every time she came here and harassed me about Dad's estate. A smooth, tanned body, athletic curves, black hair just past her shoulders, clear blue eyes on a lovely face with thin lips, gorgeous - if little - breasts... she had on a cute little navy business jacket and a cream-colored skirt, with a subdued pink blouse underneath. I'd tugged her shoes off while she was out, and she wasn't wearing any hose today... unlike last time.
God, I couldn't wait - I wanted to just do it right now, to press the button that would make her shrink. To watch her diminish right before my eyes... she'd be so hot when she was tiny... my nipples were already stiff just thinking about it. Of course, the machine could do much more than make people shrink; it could do almost anything... sort of.
It could only do a certain amount at a time without overheating - and the more you tried to do, the hotter it got. I had to be careful, since I doubted I could fix it if the thing broke... or worse, melted. In addition, one thing I'd learned early into putting it together - for some reason, the machine only worked on people. I'd already tried to use it to turn a piece of wood into gold, to turn a towel into stacks of hundred-dollar bills, to turn an abandoned car engine block into a copy of the machine itself, a few more ideas... but the only valid targets were living things.
Still, the moment I found the command codes that supposedly made it possible to reduce someone's size - dramatically if I wished - I already knew what I'd use it for. Don't ask me why, but having a lover small enough to fit in my hand had been a fantasy for years - especially if I could have a cute female one.
Fortunately, from what it looked like in the other command codes I found, the machine could also help Lawyer Girl along toward realizing that shrinking that small was the best thing that would ever happen to her. I'd take very good care of her, I already knew it.
I belatedly remembered that she'd asked a question.
"You're in my lab. Dad's lab. Whatever." I shrugged, rolling my eyes at the last word. I waved a hand side to side. "Such as it is."
