by

NaOH_r
 
 
 

It was a beautiful day, calm and unseasonably warm, like a day in early summer rather than the midwinter's day it was, the very shortest day of the year.  Rae hesitated as the entrance to the building and turned to her friend.  "Couldn't we wait until later?  I hate to spend a perfect afternoon like this indoors."

"No," Ari told her. "It's getting late as it is.  He's moving, he's going on a long trip.  They're going to pack up his things for storage first thing tomorrow and we won't be able to do it at all.  And if we wait any longer today, we'll miss the chance.  We have to be finished before the sun goes down."

The two girls pushed through the door and climbed the stairs to the empty studio.  The room was uncomfortably warm, despite the open windows.  "Hello," Ari called softly, "Is anyone here?"  Silence was the response.

"You said he'd be here all afternoon,"  Rae said accusingly.  "Now it's too late after all."

"He must have finished early,"  Ari replied.  "He might come back though.  It won't hurt us to wait for him."

"But it's so nice outside," Rae pouted.  We could be having fun."

"Well, let's go then.  I don't need anything else from him.  You're the one who insisted I bring you here.  If you think your looks are good enough after all..."  Ari left the thought unfinished while the other girl glared.

 While Rae was attractive enough, her friend was beautiful.  Newly beautiful.  A day earlier she would not have been considered especially good looking: a little overweight, hair a little stringy, eyes a little small, face showing some minor blemishes.  Now though, she was lovely: slim but with a perfect body, flawless features, flawless everything.  She was recognizable as the same girl but Ari had been improved.  Perfected.  And Rae was jealous.

"I want to be as pretty as you, you know that.   He has to help me like he did you."

"Well then, we wait."

"I said I'd bring you here; I said you could ask," Ari snapped back.  "I didn't promise you anything."

"But where is he?  It's been more than an hour."

"Maybe he won't be back.  If he's packed up, he might have started early."

"But his equipment is still here."  Rae pointed to a collection of mirrors and wires surrounding a low platform next to the studio window.  "Is that what he used on you?"

"Yeah, that's it, it's all still there.  But we can't use it without even asking"

"Why not?  He's a nice person, that's what you said, and we won't hurt anything.  Only,"  she continued, "we don't know how to operate it."

"Oh, sure I do, there's nothing to it.  He showed me everything."  The words popped from Ari before she could think.  By the time she realized what she had said, the look on Rae's face was informing her of her mistake.  But it was too late to take her words back.

"You know how,"  Rae accused her.  "You can help me without him."  As her friend stood silent, she continued, " But you don't want to.  You don't want me to look better than you."

"You know that's not true.  But I've never used this, he just showed me how it works."

"Then go ahead and try."  As Ari hesitated, Rae suggested, "Just get it ready to use.  That way, if he does come back, it'll be ready to go."

"All right," Ari conceded.  "There really isn't much to it."  She stepped to the side of the mirror array and flipped a handle out.  "First you swing the top mirror, he called it a collector, until it points at the sun."  She cranked the handle and the large topmost mirror rotated, pointing to a lower part of the sky, to the southwest point where the sinking sun stood.  "Then you open the blinds."  At her touch, two shutters opened and light poured into the room, reflected from the collector through a series of other, oddly curved mirrors, to finally form a bright circle on the platform before them.

"See, it's ready now," Ari said.  "If he was here, we'd be all set."

"But how does it work?" Rae asked.

"The details?  How should I know?" Ari retorted.  "I know it uses the sunlight to purify things.  He said originally it was intended to cure sicknesses, to make people well."  She stepped back to consider the device.  "But it had the wrong effect, it purified the diseases, the sicknesses too.  It made people sicker not better.  So it only benefits healthy people and they don't need it, he said."

"But he used it on you," Rae noted.

"Yes, and I'm not sure why.  We're just friends, no more than that."  Ari paused for thought.  "I wonder though, if maybe he.."  She paused again and began to blush.

Rae laughed and finished the thought.  "Maybe he had something else in mind, more than being just friends."  She laughed again.  "But that's his problem, and yours too, I guess.  "But how do you make it work, what do you do now?"  Her tone had turned eager again.

Ari regarded her friend.  "You really want this.  Well, you step into the beam of sunlight."

"And?"

"And the device activates by itself and does the rest.  You understand, I've never watched it, not from the outside."  As her friend stood silent, demanding, she hurried on.  "Well, what happens is, the circle contracts, the beam gets smaller and anything alive inside gets smaller too.  Only when it does, it's imperfections get smoothed out, it gets purified."

"So this thing shrinks you!"  Rae was aghast.

"That's how it works.  After it was done, I looked like I do now, my body was perfected but I was tiny.  I was only a few inches tall."

"But you came back. I mean, now," Rae gestured at her clearly full-sized friend.

"That's right.  He had me step out of the light and wait a few minutes  while the device reconfigured.  Then I stepped back in, the light expanded again and so did I."  She looked toward the beam still waiting on the platform.  Rae thought she looked wistful.

"But weren't you scared?  It must have been terrible, to be so small and helpless."

"I was scared while it was shrinking me and for a little while after.  But I got over it."  Ari's voice grew low.  "Actually I liked it," she admitted.  "It was like being in a whole new world,"  she said, voice now rising in tone, becoming more animated.  "Everything around me was so big, including him, it was scary but I knew I was safe.  It was a thrill to be like that, to be this little helpless creature.  I almost didn't want to step back into the circle," she finished sadly.

Rae was awestruck, horrified.  You liked it?" she gasped.  "You liked it?" she repeated, shaking her head, amazed. She backed away from the platform and device and looked at it fearfully.  "Well, I'm not going to do it.  You're not going to shrink me down with that thing."

"Honest, it's not bad, it's nothing to be afraid of, really.  Look," Ari continued eagerly.  "Let me show you."  She started to remove her earrings and unbutton her shirt.

"What are you doing?" Rae asked uncertainly as she watched her friend strip.

Ari removed her shoes, followed by her pants and underclothes.  She stood before Rae nude for a second before she clambered onto the platform, as if to prove to her how flawless she had become.  Once there though, she paused to reconsider.  She turned to look at her friend, standing silently horrified.  "It doesn't work on dead things, on clothes and jewelry.  It's better to be like this for it."  She was clearly having second thoughts now, clearly stalling.

"You can't be serious," Rae told her.  "You can't want to do that to yourself," but Ari made no reply.  Finally she gulped, turned back to the waiting circle of light, took a deep breath and stepped forward.

As soon as she crossed the edge of the circle, Rae could see the light change.  The beam began to shimmer, to writhe around Ari like heat waves on a desert highway.  The shimmering grew more pronounced and the white light began to refract when she reached the center of the circle and stood there, so that the nude girl was surrounded by swirling, shimmering rainbow fragments.  Their colors grew deeper, brighter and Rae thought she could see why.  Despite her fear, she edged closer to the platform, anxious not to miss the sight as the beam started to contract, concentrating the swirling colors.  And the sight of the girl in the beam, shrinking.

Ari's heart was pounding as she had finally mustered her courage and entered the beam.  She had experienced it before with no ill effects - quite the contrary- but it was still an unnatural process, to be changed this way, to have your body mostly taken away.  Still she felt the same thrill, felt her excitement gather as she stopped in the center of the circle and felt more than saw the change begin.  She remembered the warm electric tingling on her skin, she felt the soundless vibration in her bones, she knew that process was underway.  For just a second her nerve failed and she thought about leaping out of the circle of light, rejecting the second taste of this experience, but she held herself still while the beam contracted.  She could see the room beyond slowly, smoothly grow around her but almost ignored the sight as she surrendered to a surge of anticipation tinged with fear.  She would be shrunk again; she would re-enter the world made new as it expanded around her.  Her heart was pounding and her breath was coming in gasps and she was doing her best to savor it all.
 

Continue to Part 2
 

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