Time-Out: The Maggie of All Problems (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

Scott Stevens couldn’t stop looking back and forth between his newly re-sized body and the sterile clinic room around him, just to ensure he had truly returned to his normal height after those uncertain years trapped in shrunken house arrest. Granted, the same women who’d made his life a living hell during that time were also in the room to witness the official end of his sentence, but even that couldn’t dent his happiness. Naturally, he was already planning to pack his bags and move across the country right after arriving home, but for now he just smiled and ignored the false pride his mother Judy showed for her reformed son. Maggie at least didn’t insult him with a similar smirk, but had a familiar mischievous twinkle in her eye, while Kyle was docile as ever in the interest of not attracting the ire of ladies with itchy shrink-ray trigger fingers.

“Congratulations, sweetie,” Judy said, before conspicuously nodding to the technician who’d operated the size-changing device. The man bobbed his head and made a swift exit. “How does it feel?”

“It feels-” Scott began.

“Probably feels sorta wrong,” Maggie murmured in teasing. She looked him up and down, raising an eyebrow with some clear disdain for her brother’s ordinary height. “Like making a little puppy walk on two legs all the time.”

Clearing his throat, and reminding himself he’d be rid of his bullyish little sibling soon enough forever, Scott meekly corrected: “It feels good.”

“Wonderful. Enjoy it,” Judy said. She ruffled Scott’s hair, then shared an almost-conspiratorial glance with Maggie, whose eyes lit up like Christmas. “We do have one pit-stop to make here before we head home.”

A delay wasn’t ideal, but at this point Scott was prepared to put up with anything just to get away from his mom, so he shrugged in agreement. From there the quartet made their way back down the white-washed facility hallway. Just a little longer, he told himself, as he and Kyle obediently trailed behind a predictably strutting Judy and Maggie, who was all but skipping like a schoolgirl, which Scott found strange, considering she’d just lost her favorite living toy.

His confusion only increased when Judy led the family into a much more expansive arena, empty except for the machinery lining one wall and manned by lab-coated techs. A small crowd holding cameras and recording devices were cordoned off to one side near the bay doors. Scott didn’t have to wonder after the hangar-sized space’s purpose for long before a tech stepped near to the Stevens family, whispering something in Judy’s ear. The senator accepted a microphone and addressed the cameras.

“Good morning, folks! I expect you’ve already heard some rumors flying around about a major change coming to this city. It’s possible you’ve already made judgments before even seeing for yourselves the good to come of certain growth and development that’s about to take place in this very room. Well, just as you once showed faith in me as a representative for your voices, I hope you’ll trust my judgment when I tell you that this will only bring us closer as a city, and perhaps in the future, a state and eventually a nation. This is our next step.”

Scott couldn’t have been more perplexed, sharing a look of bewilderment with his brother, though when he tried to make eye contact with Maggie to see if she had any guesses, he realized her gaze was locked to Judy, an irrepressible grin on her lips. In her typical off-season sporty attire of a tighter-than-necessary top and thigh-hugging shorts, and finally her favorite strappy sandals, the girl was fidgeting with abject excitement. What did she know?

“Of course you’ll learn more in the coming days about the changes to come for everyone else, but for now, I think I’ll just let you stop holding your breath, and get on with our main event,” Judy continued. Indicating to the ceiling as a silver barrel like a rail gun descended, pointing over a central platform, she beamed to the audience and the bustling techs. “For years, I’ve worked to legally integrate the miracle of size-changing and its many advancements into daily life for everyone, but up to now, I’ve focused my efforts on the particular benefits of size reduction. Well, today, we’ll be going in the opposite direction, or should I say someone will be. And from here on, that someone will be a permanent overseer of this city and beyond, a figure of strength and guidance in her authority as well as her height.”

With the anxiety rising like bile in his throat, Scott comprehended at once where his mom was headed. He didn’t want it to be true, but it seemed too late for anyone to stop it. She was actually going to grow herself into ruler of the land. A literal towering giant politician. Forever.

“Maggie, would you like to step up to the stage?” Judy invited, giving Scott yet another heart attack. Oozing smugness, the middle Stevens child nodded, then marched to the platform beneath the size-changer’s business end. “I suppose some explanation is in order, because many here at Techilogic, as well as in Washington, insisted that I be the one to undergo receiving this gift of size and the responsibility of leadership that comes with it. However, my daughter has been my protégé for years in every sense of the word, learning my methods and developing her own wisdom, and now… well, it’s her turn to rise up. She, after all, is the future, and I think it only makes sense that while she “grows” into this new role, she will enjoy a long tenure above the faithful people of this city that our family loves so dearly. A bold decision like this, with just a little trust that a plethora of good ideas can outweigh experience, is the only path forward to new beginnings. In this way, we’ll have consistency as well as passion in a leader, not to mention a youthful perspective, something I believe will be necessary to one day completely reshape the system for the better. It looks like she’s ready, and so is our brilliant Techilogic team who made this possible. Ladies and gentleman, say hello to your first and only Sky-Class citizen, and please join me in welcoming her up to her new position.”

Scott’s world’s felt like it had been turned inside out, leaving him paralyzed in a moment of surreal agony, but the insanity kept rolling onward without him as the machine was powered up, spitting out aquamarine light. In a prolonged second of profound and dumbfounded shock, Scott watched helplessly as his “little” sister, whom he’d spent the better part of three years beneath acting as an unwilling servant and plaything, ended this brief fifteen-minute rebalancing of sizes by taking the lead again, shooting upward from her meager five-foot-four stature. She blossomed then in immaculate proportion to a giantess of no less than one hundred and fifty feet tall, a cute golden-crowned monument of a girl with a soccer player’s imposing physique and a demigoddess’s pompousness, which apparently too had inflated in equal measure to her stature. Maggie’s mouth widened in a triumphant simper as she examined her impressive new mega-height body, ironically displaying much of the same relief and happiness as Scott had a short time ago at returning to full size.

There was a great deal of applause from the Techilogic staff, and some hesitant muttering from the reporters who were projecting this news to thousands of TVs and social media feeds across the nation. Immediately the attitude of the room changed, with all eyes on Maggie, and she was soaking it up. Her gaze circled the room as she waved hello to the people who stood at no taller than two-and-a-half inches from her enlarged perspective, then halted her attention over her elder brother, eyes narrowed with promise and her tongue coyly pressing on her inner cheek.

“Well?” Judy questioned, looking up at her humongous daughter.

“I love it, Mom,” Maggie boomed in a timbre that was familiar to Scott, but more unsettling when it filled such a cavernous space. “Thanks, everybody! I can’t wait to get out there and let everybody see the new me, and also start showing them how things are gonna be from now on! Different, but better.”

“Shall we adjourn to the outdoors?” Judy asked the large group. “It’s all well and good to let the world see her through a camera, but I don’t believe this revolutionary advancement will be done justice until everyone has seen and appreciated Maggie with their own eyes, and as my daughter is, I’m eager for her reign of public service to begin. You see, we’re so much alike in that way too.”

Feeling he was stuck in a waking nightmare, Scott trundled along last behind the mass of reporters and techs, with Maggie leading the pack. Her colossal sandaled feet thumped authoritatively on the concrete, setting off tremors more potent than even what a shrunken Scott was used to while cowering on her bedroom floor, and once she ducked under the bay doors and emerged into the full blooming sunlight rather than the laboratory setting, it somehow became real for her haunted brother. It wasn’t a horrible illusion; their mother had, in fact, with the cooperation of the government, just handed dominion over to the kind of brat whose control over just a single tiny person had turned her into a power-drunk teenage despot with a thing for feeling shrunken boys wriggle under her sweaty toes. What the hell was she going to do with a whole city of such victims?

“As you know, I do enjoy my time in conversation with the public…” Judy said to the reporters, given that most of the silently terrified cameramen were still watching her, rather than the fifteen-story blonde whose foot rested beside the senator in a car-sized open-air shoe like a slumbering beast. “…but in the interest of showing my full confidence in the capabilities of my daughter to enact all that I’ve taught her over the years, and so much more, I’d like to invite everyone to give your attention to her instead of me. After all, it’s her word now that will lead us into a bright future.”

Solemnly, the recorders were tilted toward the sky to capture the utter glowering egotism of the lovely giantess looking down on all the people with the same regard as action figures. Hands planted with stately confidence on her hips, while a twenty-one-foot-long sandal giddily tapped the grass flat, Maggie mugged for the cameras, winking and smiling up a storm like she was in the middle of an Instagram photo session, though once she’d gotten over the initial bout of fun, her lips thoughtfully pursed, and she spoke with total seriousness:

“Does anyone have any questions for me?”

There was an awkward silence from the reporters, born of abject nervousness that Scott wholly understood. Maggie’s expectant countenance made it clear no one was leaving until they indulged her, however. So one man raised a hand.

“W-What will you do… first?”

“Well, like my mom said…” Maggie said. She squatted over her tiny audience now, causing a collective flinch in everyone except Judy. “I’ve got a lot of good ideas.”