Marv frowned as he played the scene back yet again.  'That won't work.  I need you to do it again, Sher.  When you land, keep your arms out in front of you this time.  And flex your knees more, if you can.  You need to exaggerate the landing so it'll show up.'

The slim, pretty girl shook her head as she turned back to the low platform she had just jumped from.  'I'm getting pretty tired, you know.  I need a rest break.'

'Oh, all right.  Take 15 and then we'll have get this shot right, I guess.'  Marv was as at least as tired as his model.  It had been a long day and it wasn't over yet.  They had been behind schedule even before the cooling fan on the editor burned out yesterday and he'd pulled an all-nighter getting files transferred and rewriting code.  Even at that, he'd lost some work and now here they were re-shooting the jump segments.

Sheryl joined him behind his console.  'What's wrong with the jumps anyway?  I thought we finished them yesterday.'

'Watch this.'  He set the slide icon at the start of her last jump.  'It looked fine to me watching you do it.'  He nodded at the set she had just left.  'But now watch it on screen.'  The action started and the figure on the screen jumped from a low platform.  'The landing need to be more exaggerated to really show up on a monitor.'

'Can't you show the edited figure while I'm doing the action?  Then you'd know right away if it's right.'

'I've never done it that way but we might as well give it a try.  Let me see if I can set it up.'  He scowled in concentration as his hands flew across his keyboard and controls.  After a few minutes he looked over to where she was sitting.  'Go ahead and get on the set and let's try it.'  Sheryl stepped to the middle of the set and waited for his next direction.  Marv peered at her image on the screen and clicked on a series of commands.  The posture of  the figure on the screen remained the same but the color of its costume changed from dull grey to black with silver highlights, while the image's complexion and hair changed from those of a real person to the waxen skin and hair of a computer game character.

'So far, so good.' he called out.  'Take a couple of steps ahead.'  Sheryl obediently
walked forward.  As she did, the figure on the screen mimicked her.  Marv nodded.  'Okay, do a turn.'  As she spun to face out, she faltered and stopped in mid twirl.

'Whoa, that's weird.'

'What's the matter?'

'Something happened to my clothes.'  Marv looked up from the monitor to the stage and was surprised to see that Sheryl was now clothed in the same black and silver costume as her computer game character.  More than that - her features had changed subtly, eyes now larger and brighter, lips fuller.  It seemed to him that her skin and hair had a waxy sheen.  It was if she had become more than the action model for the computer game character he was developing and had taken on some of its physical characteristics.  A glance at the monitor showed him that the game character now wore grey clothes.  On closer examination, the character's features had also changed, becoming more realistic, more lifelike.

'I wonder if I can keep that?' he muttered to himself.  More loudly, 'The character appearance must bleeding back to you.  I'm pretty sure I can fix that,'  he told her.   He began clicking his way through command prompts, scowling occasionally when he had to use the keyboard to make further changes.  Finally, he looked up at Sheryl, who was shuffling nervously on the set.  'That should reverse it.  Stay there just a second more while I activate the changes.'  She obediently stood still while he triumphantly hit his Enter key.  The light on the set and the display monitor both slowly faded, remaining dark grey for what was perhaps thirty seconds but seemed much longer to Marv.  Finally the set and monitor brightened, revealing similar shapes in the middle of each.

Marv groaned as he saw that the changes he'd applied hadn't achieved his purpose.  The small figure on the monitor still wore a plain grey leotard and sweater while the girl on the set was clad in the flamboyant black and silver costume of the game character.  The two forms examined themselves in tandem and nodded in satisfaction.  'That's better,'  Sheryl said as she held her arm out in front of her.  'It's all back to normal.  Only,' her voice trailed off as she looked out from the set.  'What's going on?  Marv, where are you?'

'Right here,' he stammered, but his voice showed his confusion as he looked first at the modeling set, then at the display monitor, at the two similar but not identical forms they contained, his attention flickering back and forth from one to the other.  For while the mouth of the full-sized figure on the set was moving, no sound came from it.  Sheryl's voice was coming from the direction of the display monitor in front of him.  It was as though she were actually in the monitor while the set displayed an altered image.  'Sheryl, what do you see from there?'

'Things don't look right,' she called, her voice rising in fear.  'Everything looks big, the studio, you, your equipment.'  She gave a sudden shriek.  'What's happened to me, Marv?  Did I get sucked into the computer somehow?  Get me out of here.'  She took a determined step forward but Marv couldn't answer her question.  Both figures, the large and the small, moved in unison forward towards him but he couldn't tell which was real and which was the computer generated image.

'Stop.  Don't move, Sheryl,' he said rapidly.  'I don't know what's going on but we'd better be careful.'  Both moving forms halted and looked around fearfully.  Other than their size, Marv realized that the two differed only in costume, the full-sized on on the set wearing the gaudy black costume of the computer game, the small small figure in the monitor the plain grey model's outfit.  'What are you wearing?  What color is your outfit?' he demanded.

'Gr, grey,' she said cautiously.  'Why?  What does that have to do with anything?'

He slumped in his chair, eyes closed.  Something was wrong, very wrong here.  But what?  And what to do about it?

'Marv, talk to me,' Sheryl pleaded.  'What's happened to me?  Am I really inside a computer?'

He shook himself out of his funk.  'Something's wrong and I'm not sure I understand what it is,' he told her.  He knew he had to keep his voice calm, to try to reassure her that things were, if not under control, at least controllable, that everything would turn out fine.  'You're not inside a computer, that's not possible.  It looks like the program fixes I used swapped some of the wrong attributes, is all.  We'll just have to swap them back.'  That sounded reasonable enough, he thought.  He could almost believe it himself.

Sheryl wasn't buying it though.  'You mean you want to experiment some more on me.  Well, you're not going to.  If I'm not inside the computer, then I'm getting out of here before you try something else you don't understand.'  She started marching ahead, the full-sized version toward the edge of the set, the small version straight out of the monitor.

'No! Don't...,'  but it was already too late.  As Marv watched in fascinated horror, both figures moved several steps forward.  At the edge of the set, the full-sized, black-clad image blurred and then winked out as if deleted from an ordinary screen.   At the same instant, the small figure reached the front of the the monitor, where, instead of halting, it   shimmered, vibrating for a brief instant before winking out and immediately reappearing on the outside of the monitor glass.  Sheryl cried out and stumbled to the desk top.

Marv sat frozen and speechless, shocked at what he dimly realized must now be lying before him.  The transformed woman crawled to her feet, a living woman shrunk how small?, six inches?, eight inches?  A few inches tall,  still a living, adult woman but now miniaturized.

She stood in place a second while she looked wildly around her, at familiar surroundings grown to mammoth proportions.  Half gasping, half crying, she spun around, back to the computer screen she had emerged from, and reached out to touch the cold glass wall she now faced.  She pushed against the glass with both hands and strained her whole body, trying to lunge back through it, blindly trying to reverse her fate.  She shoved against the glass, kicked it, beat on it with her fists, fiercely sobbing in rage and despair.  Finally, her shoulders sagged, her arms fell to her sides and she slowly turned to face away from the screen.  Tears streamed down her face.

Marv let out a long, slow breath as he leaned forward to inspect her more closely.  He reached toward her tentatively, as if to touch her to confirm her existence.  She flinched as the enormous hand swooped toward her.  'Stay away!' she screamed hysterically and fled a brief couple of steps to the side.  As Marv quickly withdrew his hand, she closed her eyes while her body crumpled to the desk until she was half-sitting, leaning back against the base of the monitor, sobbing.

He watched helplessly, trying to comprehend the situation as she cried to herself.  Eventually, she calmed slightly and raised her head, looking up at him.  'What have you done to me?' she asked in a surprisingly calm voice.  'Turned me into a game figure, is that it?'  Her tone turned pleading,  ì 'Please don't do this.  Please turn me back.'

'I didn't do this to you,'  Marv answered, slightly bewildered by the accusation.  'I don't even know how it happened.  And I don't know how to turn you back.  I would if I could.'  He would have had to admit, though, that he found her unexpected change fascinating and her new form appealing.  In fact, her fear and his obvious physical dominance over her was unconsciously turning him on.  He leaned forward until his face loomed over her.  'I'll change you back if I can.  I'll try anything we can think of.'

She squirmed as his face came nearer and she felt the gusts of his breath.  'How did this happen, then?  Is there anybody who can help?'

He leaned back and considered her and the problem.  'I don't think there is.  This is such a cobbled up setup,' he waved at the maze of equipment and cords around him, 'that I don't understand it myself and nobody I can think of would know any more.'  His tone grew steadier as he continued speaking, not so much now to the shrunken woman in front of him as to himself.  'When I implemented the first changes, I linked the set view to the monitor view, so I could see the character movements in real time.  But the link between the views must have gone both ways.  That's when your clothes changed.'

She nodded, as she huddled on the desk.  'I wish you'd left well enough alone, then.  Better to have my clothes changed than this.'  She looked sadly down at  her tiny body and back up at him.

'But then I tried to contain the link, to keep the physical changes separate.  I guess I bundled things wrong.  You got your appearance right but on the wrong side of the program.'

'And I wound up tiny,' she finished his analysis for him.   'But you can do the changes right so that I get my appearance and my size back,' she said hopefully.  'It shouldn't be that difficult for you.'

'Well, maybe,' he pondered.  'Let me set what I can do.'  He stepped, somewhat apprehensively, onto the modeling set she had once occupied and looked around.  'We can use the small set over here that I use to shoot miniatures to get you back in, I think.'  He pushed the regular light and camera stands to the rear of the set and arranged a lower group of stands that had been stored to the side.  'That should work.'

He returned to where she waited on his desk and lowered his hands to her, fingers linked together.  'Jump aboard,' he invited.  She looked apprehensively at him and then at her destination, to her a long way across the room, even if she could climb down from her current perch.  She hesitated, then shrugged and squeamishly climbed into his hands.  A thrill surged through him as he gently lifted his hands and carried her toward the set.  He moved slowly to the set and reluctantly set her down.  She clambered out of his hands and glared up at him.

'What's wrong with you?' she demanded.  'I hope you're not getting off on this.  I'm  scared and humiliated enough as it is.  Don't get weird on me now.'  Her words were assertive but her tone was frightened.  'What do I do here?'  She looked at the new collection of lights and cameras she stood beneath.

Marv smiled reassuringly at her.  'Do the same as before.  Stand there and model.  I'll do the rest.'  As he strolled back to his console and settled behind it, Sheryl wished desperately that she could trust him but she realized she had no other options if she wanted to regain her old life.

Marv engaged the cameras on the set and was rewarded with a double view of Sheryl, both where she stood on the set and in the monitor before him.  The monitor view was still tied to the large set however and so the image it displayed was tiny, detail almost impossible for him to make out.  A few routine commands later, the screen was filled with the image of a worried young woman in a grey leotard and sweater.  He hummed to himself as he tried the first set of commands.  The image in the monitor altered obediently, its clothing turning black with silver highlights while its facial features became sharper and more regular, with an unnatural waxy gloss.  So far so good.

'I've got your image on the monitor now,' he informed his unhappy subject, 'and I'm going to try the link.'  Before she could protest, he hit his Enter key and both views of the girl disappeared, the lights on the set dimming to black and the monitor going blank.  A half minute later, they both brightened, revealing almost identical figures with no seeming change, the figure on the set still in grey, the figure on the screen dressed in black.  'You OK, Sher?' Marv asked anxiously.

'I guess so,' she answered slowly, 'but I'm in the character costume again.'  She inspected the black sleeve on her outstretched arm, the other image duplicating her action.  'And there's something funny with my hand.  It feels fine but my skin looks odd.'  She looked away from her hand and peered about her.  'Where am I now?  This isn't the set, is it, Marv?'

For answer, he reached over and flicked the monitor glass with his finger.  She jumped at the tap.  'Yeah, you're in the monitor again,' he told her.  'Only this time,'  he tapped and clicked a few commands, 'you're not getting out right away.'  He looked over to the set where the lights were dimming again, leaving a black emptiness.

Sheryl rushed forward to try to get out of the monitor again but she collided with its glass front and fell back.  'Get me out of here,' she half demanded, half begged.  'What are you doing?'

'I think I've stumbled on more than an image editing system here,' he told her.  'I can manipulate what you wear, how you look, maybe even more than that.'  He leered at her possessively.  'We'll have to experiment.'

'But you can't keep me like this.  You've got to get me out of here.  You've got to make me big again.'

'I'll get you out again when I want to, maybe after I've finished developing your game character.  Put you back on the set.  As to making you big again....weíll have to see about that.  That'll depends on the size of the monitor I use, you know.  I don't think a quality monitor big enough to restore you exists, even if we could afford one right now.  Maybe, if game sales are real good, I can get one built.'  He peered down at her and grinned.  'If I decide I want one.'

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