Doubting Delilah (Chapter 1) (Patreon)

“Look, I'm just saying, it’s a little hard to believe, that’s all,” Delilah explained to her audience of one, smiling and basking in her own perfectly-reasonable logic. “Do you still believe in Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny? Cuz… I’ve got some unfortunate news for you about them…”

“Those are totally not the same issue,” Carrie insisted into her headset. Despite becoming fast friends with Delilah, the Alpha also hadn’t known the young world-ranger for long, but upon learning about this fundamental difference in their ideology, couldn’t simply let it drop as an agree-to-disagree situation. And as a rising advocate for Beta rights, naturally Carrie’s response was to instigate a diplomatic conversation with her misled friend.

Granted, it was hard to feel like the debate was equal between an Alpha and an Omega, since from the start, one of the participants happened to be roughly five miles taller than her friend, and was currently holding Delilah in the fleshy, hill-stippled landscape of her peachy open hand.

“Let me put it this way, then,” Delilah said with a shrug. She raised the platform of her palm closer to her face for a better chance at seeing Carrie with her naked eye, even tipping the wide brim of her ranger uniform hat lower over her forehead to block the sunlight. “It only makes sense that sentient beings can exist at a certain scale, right? Take away too much size, and eventually, there’s just not enough physical matter there to give them all the things they need to move and think and feel like regular humans. Like, no offense, you might feel you’re the standard-size for humanity, but when you put yourself up next to someone like me, well… It’s not like you can compare microbes with humans, right? To me, you Alphas are really amazing little marvels, like computer chips, but way smaller and more impressive! But I don’t think a person could get any smaller than you and still be a… well, a person.”

Carrie tried not to get too frustrated, as that wouldn’t get them anywhere constructive. Plus, it was tough to get combative when the Omega was being complimentary, in her own roundabout way. Sadly, Carrie supposed she could understand the doubts of someone like Delilah, a being who could travel the globe in an afternoon stroll, trying to imagine a race of beings who stood, optimally, two inches tall: the size of one Carrie’s fingers, when already Carrie herself was by comparison to Delilah about the size of a dust speck, one one-hundredth of an inch. Frankly, it was astonishing that Omegas could see Alphas at all, let alone something even tinier: something an Alpha could swallow whole, and occasionally did, necessitating Carrie’s social justice work even more. Thus, the shorter friend tried to steel herself for a tough conversation.

“Sorry, I’m just having a lot of trouble with the fact that you don’t believe in… I can’t even believe I’m saying this like they’re some myth or legend… Betas. Like, an actual population with their own homes and jobs and cities just like ours, except-”

“Except they’re… even more ultra-teeny-tiny-microscopic than you already are?” Delilah finished for her with a pitiful grin, clearly now still only humoring her friend for the sake of chit-chat, with her atheism toward humanoids smaller than Alphas so firmly entrenched. “It’s a really cool idea, honestly. Sort of funny to think about, you know, like how there’s billions of bacteria living on our skin, even though we can’t see them?”

Far down below, nestled between the mountains of a grid-zone on her patrol map that Delilah infrequently entered, and in fact probably wouldn’t have entered if she wasn’t so distracted and curiously amused at this conversation with her conspiracy theory-loving Alpha friend, was the third-largest Beta city located in this hemisphere. By the standards of the smallest human class on Earth, it was a grand technical achievement of architecture and urban planning, split into many individual districts dotted over the canyons, protected with overhead domes and separated by bullet trains, each sparkling spot of mini-skyscrapers and bustling doll-sized commerce measuring little more than one-twentieth of a mile, a veritable metropolis for a Beta. At this time of day, the city was usually humming with busy life, but as of several minutes ago, most citizens outdoors had stopped dead in their tracks, and now many were emerging from their homes to listen and gawk overhead.

So incredibly high above, taking up much of the skyscape and actually having little to distinguish herself from it aside from the color of her ranger uniform, was a lovely young doe-eyed dishwater-blonde Omega, speaking to some unknown and unheard party perched in her hand, in a thunderously booming voice that cloaked the whole mountain range, about the fact that Betas didn’t exist. That they didn’t exist. Citizens exchanged bewildered glances, trying to form words, but were too taken aback to get much out.

“The size of the person does not determine how much right to life they have,” Carrie affirmed.

“Oh, I know! S-Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise!” Delilah gasped, eyes bulging wide as UFO saucers. “That’s not what I meant at ALL! You know I know that everybody is equal, no matter how big or small. Everybody has something to contribute. Omegas and Alphas deserve exactly the same recognition, and so would what you call “Betas,” if they existed!”

The Omega said all this with such genuine kindness and good intention that it reminded Carrie why she’d become friends with the much-larger girl in the first place, which only deepened the agony of Delilah’s denial. While the ranger could be quite a spitfire at times, being loud, energetic, and occasionally getting a bit too tipsy around her miniscule coworkers after hours, deep down she meant well and did care about everyone she met.

Carrie sighed deeply, trying to center herself. She had a lot on her mind recently, namely Beta-related atrocities committed by malicious Alphas who didn’t have much to fear when, although Omegas were five miles tall and fully capable of curbing the injustices, these superiors in size had hardly a clue of what went on below. Like Delilah, many were the assigned guardians of the planet, but their concerns were appropriately “macro” scale, such as dealing with natural disasters and preventing wars. It was just an inevitable but depressing byproduct, Carrie decided, that Omegas might exist so far above tinier life that they actually weren’t even aware two-inch creatures existed if they couldn’t see them.

“You have no idea how hard it is to get advocacy groups up and running when so few people listen,” Carrie said. Getting a wonderful idea, she perked up, knowing it was a long shot: “If… if we had an Omega on our side, I think it would do so much good for those who can barely speak up for themselves without being squished or eaten or just turned into pets while they’re trying to go about their day. Wouldn’t you like to help do some extra good, Del? It wouldn’t take much of your time. All you’d have to do is help out at a couple protests. Seriously, just one appearance from you, and people would think twice about mistreating those who can’t fight back.”

“Sure I’d like to help out, but… I don’t know if I could take myself seriously. Chanting and holding signs, talking about people that aren’t really there? It’s like if I went to a protest to argue for the fair treatment of fairies or elves. I mean, I don’t mind having some fun and goofing off about pretend-things, but I’m a world-ranger, after all,” Delilah explained. “There’s certain expectations of me about decorum, from my bosses, plus the people down there that I’m supposed to be looking out for. What would they all think, if I started yelling at them over make-believe stuff? I’m sorry, Carrie, this seems really important to you, and I want to help, but… I’m not sure I’m the girl for the job.”