ADVENTURES IN MINIATURIZATION
By Minimizer
Chapter 68
"That was your plan?" Tania asked derisively. "You wanted us to mail ourselves to SciTek?"
Don laughed. "No, she's right," he told them. "It would have worked beautifully, if you could have pulled it off. All you would have needed is a box like this one and three-fifty in stamps. Oh, and the address, but we have phone books all over the place in there."
"But how would we have gotten all that stuff?" asked Randi with curiosity.
Realizing she had not had time to see the front entrance of the building, Caitlin explained. "There were plenty of supplies in the store out front. All kinds of prepackaged stamps and mailing boxes. If we found the address, and a pen, we could have packaged ourselves up nicely enough."
"Yeah, you're right, I guess we might have tried it," Randi agreed after a moment. "But it doesn't matter now, unless Don here wants to pack us up." She patted a hand on the priority mail box she was sitting on, smiling.
"Don't laugh," suggested Don seriously. "If SciTek is a big secret lab, they won't let me in, will they? They're not just going to let me walk up and say, 'Hey, I'm here to see the shrinking machine, where is it?' But they will let in the mail."
"Wait a minute, I wasn't serious!" Tania interjected. "I don't want you people sending me through those machines of yours! I've seen how some pieces of mail get mangled up. You're not doing that to me!"
"Don't worry, sending live cargo through the mail is illegal, anyway," Don said, laughing at his own joke. "Sorry, postal humor," he apologized hastily. "Anyway, the basic idea is still good. I'll put you in the box, and hand carry you to this SciTek place and tell them it was a piece that got lost."
"But what if someone opens it right away?" Tania argued. It was plain she was not a big fan of this idea.
"They probably have a mail room," Don told her. "It's a felony to open someone else's mail, even in a big company. If it has someone's name on it, it goes into the mail room and gets carted to their office. The secretaries only open up junk mail and sales catalogs. Do you know the name of someone in that place I can put on the address label?"
"Yeah," Randi answered. "I think we read it somewhere, on a computer file. What was it, Caitlin?"
"John something," she answered, trying to remember. "John was the director."
"I think it started with R," Randi suggested. "Was it Radford or something like that?"
"Radcliffe," Caitlin remembered. "John Radcliffe. But we never saw it spelled out. And he was at our building, anyway. I don't know if he had an office at SciTek."
"It doesn't matter," Don said. "If he's at all associated with the company, he'll be on a mailing list. If not, your box gets tossed in a pile to be returned. Either way, you sit in the mail room for at least a little while."
"So we'd have plenty of time to get out," Caitlin said.
"Yeah, and it's already afternoon," Don explained. "If we go now, by the time I find the place most of the mail room people will be gone for the day. If you just wait until after hours, you'll have the run of the building."
"I'm liking this idea more and more," Caitlin replied, nodding. "It gets us in safely and doesn't put Don at any kind of risk."
"But wait a minute," said Randi. "If you leave now, what will you tell your boss? I don't want you losing your job because you're helping us!"
"Don't worry," Don shrugged that aside. "I already told him I was having a family emergency. Besides, I hate that place anyway. Getting fired would probably be a blessing. Anyhow," he went on, with the briefest of hesitations, "it would be worth it."
Randi flushed slightly at his words and glanced away, smiling demurely. Caitlin caught the reaction out of the corner of her eye. "Oh, geez," she muttered under her breath, rubbing her forehead and shaking her head sadly. "You have got to be kidding me!"
No one heard her, however, and she sat there thinking for a minute. Suddenly she looked at Don in a whole new light. Now she knew why he was so intent on helping them. He liked Randi! In fact, he seemed completely fascinated by her. Was it just because she was small? No, he was not paying that close of attention to herself or Tania, only Randi. Sure, he glanced their way when they spoke, but most of the time he kept his eyes focused on the tiny redhead in front of him.
Caitlin wondered if Randi knew what was going on and was purposely taking advantage of it. No, probably not, she thought. She was not the type to use someone's interest like that. She was too damn innocent.
What was it about being small that made people act so emotionally? Caitlin shook her head, trying to figure it out. First Ron had used them, but more specifically Caitlin, to act out his disgusting fantasies. She could almost chalk that up to the nature of the male beast. But then Tania had met Kevin and the two had hit it off, literally within minutes. By the time a few hours had passed, they were obviously passionately in love, so much so that Tania was looking forward to getting back to normal size only so that she could return and rescue him.
And now this! Randi gets captured by Don, but he doesn't carry her off, reveal her to the public, or take her to the authorities. Instead, she somehow charms him into helping them, even risking his job to do so. And all the while, both he and Randi seemed unaware that anything untoward was happening.
Caitlin suddenly realized that she had two thoughts on this. The first was that maybe being shrunk really had something to do with it. Maybe it affected their hormones, or something weird like that. Or maybe seeing a tiny woman had some bizarre side effect on the male psyche. In some people it drew out a need for protectiveness, in others a raging passion. And, unfortunately, in some it brought out the worst in their nature.
The second thought was simple. Why did she have to get the worst of them?