Immediately, Yonim sets down his duffel bag and goes to the devices and panels made of frightening-appearing blinking lights, color-coded buttons, unlabeled switches, a massive glass-protected button, and random doo-da's. Sweat beads down his forehead as he fidgets around these devices, with each click and press inducing shakes and rumbles all around. A brief mistake could be a disaster. Perhaps his stomach could be enlarged to cause severe malabsorption and diarrhea for life, his heart too small to pump blood all around, and lastly, he's heard this urban myth (which all myths must come from some nugget of truth right?) that a man's most prized organ was shrunk to a size of half a pinkie. Much words to say that a lot is at stake.
Every calculations and measurements must be completely correct. He has to take into consideration of the volume of the enlargements, mass, various densities, and other physical components of every object that hopes to cross the vacuum tube. A clattering of noises from the machines tornadoes into a cacophony a delirious mayhem that almost drowns out the strange noises. Almost. An almost- almost imperceptible giggle rings through the room. It brought an attentive ear to future strange noises. And it happened again. Maybe just a random occurrence. Then again. However, at risk of a bad thing happening, we can start to ignore worse things. And Yonim did not want to deal with the risk of a bad growth. So, he ignored the noise for now. Probably nothing.
He completes the finishing touches, grabs his duffle bag, and heads to the vacuum tube. Although not a believer of any mysticism nor God nor gods and can only at most mildly entertain an indifferent dictator of the universe, he speaks a sigh of a prayer, hoping this maybe person can at least spare some mystical power. With a level of confidence equal to his belief of God or gods, he slowly opens the glass door and treads through.
In the growth tube, the senses are warped and stretched to the farthest limits as the nostrils, heart, brain, and everything grow in sizes at different rates. Dark spots form when the retina briefly detaches from the eye, numbness of the toes when the sensory neurons is still catching up to the flesh, and warm, pulsing sensation throughout the body when the blood expands faster than the vessels. Even the surroundings look warped. The clouds looking like they're in front of the trees, the sofa couch shrunk to the size of an ant, the sun looking like a glowing cardboard box. Even atoms start to emerge abruptly, encircling around like a hazy, brown cloud. A musky-looking ant towers over Yonim, making Yonim tiptoe around his skyscraper appendages. Again, he hears a strange sound. An almost muffled squeal but just as we said before, we rather ignore a worse outcome when another bad thing could happen.
Tripping across this trippy tunnel of trippy sensations and trippy sights, he finally grasps the handle on the other side of the tube. His fingers each of a different size as he grips and exits the glass door to the other side. He collapses in the chair that once seemed impossibly large from the room on the other side of the tube. Catching his breath, he strips to his undies and places sticker electrodes with wires running to a monitor all over his body. He puts on a helmet with wires hooked up to the same monitor and presses a few buttons on the keyboard. It beeps out:
Scan normal
Yonim lets out a sigh of relief. However, something still didn't sit right. Hopping onto the monitor once again, he types out a few more commands.
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An over-weight processed.
Shit, Yonim thought. A miscalculation. Small, but a miscalculation nonetheless. He thinks for a bit and gasps, then stretches out the waistband of his undies to investigate. He then breathes out a sigh. Nothing serious. He sees the large monitor with a timer marking down from 1:00:00, and lays down on the couch with a sleeping mask on. Nothing to do until then, he thinks. Soon, snoozing away and completely unaware of the enlarged duffel bag, rumbling and bursting at the seams.
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"WAAAAA!"
The cry startles Yonim awake. He flings the sleeping mask off his face and sees a green blob towers over him, screeching. On the side of the blob, he sees a ripped up duffle bag with patches of it still on the blob. Flagella ricochets, bouncing off the walls and ceiling like a spring, almost like a real life Bim-Bamo. Which if you aren't cultured about the Universe, it's an intergalactic legend of a shape-shifting being with stretching abilities beyond your wildest imagination. (To put into perspective of its fame, so far there has been 7 spin-off movies, 3 different reboots of a TV series, and an upcoming immersive theme park simulation). Despite Yonim's hopeless flee, Bim-Bamo's flagella lurches and stretches to cover the distance and snatches the man.
"Whoaaaa!" Along with some other high-pitched screams Yonim would be quite embarrassed for me to share (however, would sound somewhat like "EEEEEEEEE!").
"Buuamsaaaaanee." The being roars.
"Oh shit! Oh shit!" Yonim cries.
"SasRRRRaaaaddduuuuup!"
"Okay, okay, please." Yonim pleads, pointing to a rolling cart. He recognizes the blob as one of the Colony Bacillus' citizens. "I don't understand you just yet. Just let me get my translator. Please!!"
After much more pointing, Yonim finally calmed the being to letting him to get his earpiece from the rolling cart. With a click of the earbud, the gargled sounds phase to a very understandable Earth language, magically converting even the intonation, tone, and emotional flavoring in accordance to the original speaker's cultural perspective.
"Where am I?" The converted voice asks.
"You're on my ship." Yonim responds as calmly as he can. "You just got… a little bigger with the growth chamber."
"Where is my family? How do I go back?" The bacteria asks.
"We would have to load up the growth chamber another time." Yonim looks at the clock. "But already, 200 years has passed if we convert the time difference between our size and your world."
"200 years! What about my mommy and daddy! Did I miss my baby brother's birthday?!" She wails. "We were supposed to celebrate it tomorrow."
"Okay, okay don't worry I'll boot it up again right now and get you right back." Yonim begins working on the monitor. Poor girl, must be only be 10 years old and to get stuck with this predicament? Also why can't Escherin catch on as quickly about the time dilation as this girl?
"Will mommy and daddy be there?" She bubbles out.
"Uhhh," Yonim stammers. "We'll bring you home safely. Everyone will miss you by now."
"What about mommy and daddy?!"
Yonim types out a few more commands and soon the whole room starts shaking once again.
"Uhh," Calculating the best string of words to not upset a gigantic bacteria with the emotional maturity of a child.
"Probably dead." That was the best Yonim could come up with.
A roaring cry blasts through the room, prompting Yonim to work with extreme speed. Tears creates giant puddles on the ground as the girl thrashed around.
"Please calm down." Yonim states. "I'm almost done. You'll be sent back soon."
Completely incapable of listening at this point, she flings furniture, scientific doo-da's, and even herself around the room.
"Wait, wait!" Yonim yells. "Don't press that!"
But it was too late. One of her flagella Bim-Bamo's onto the switch by the growth chamber, immediately opening it up. The suction from the door whirls everything with the might of a tornado. In a split second, Yonim presses a button on his keyboard to eject a giant, red emergency bag from a panel on the flooring, which immediately is also sucked out the door. And soon, both the girl and Yonim whirls through the door, joining the emergency bag on a goody adventure of a lifetime.
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