John McNally - The Forbidden City

September 28 23:58 (GMT+1). Hook Hall, Surrey, UK.

Midnight in the heart of England. The witching hour. In the woods an owl screeched, then ripped through a mouse, beak blood-wet in the moonlight.

The great old house of Hook Hall stood empty. It had not been used as a home since the day it had been requisitioned by Her Majesty’s Government to become the top secret headquarters of the Global Non-governmental Threat Response Committee fn1. It lay now at the heart of a complex of modern laboratories and military installations that spread around it in the darkness like the still, silent courtiers of a grand old lady.

The silence did not last. A low hum penetrated the dark and along the great drive the largest of the buildings began to glow.

Inside the cathedral-like space, the massive Central Field Analysis Chamber (CFAC), power surged and a great stone circle of particle accelerators, each the size of a shipping container, came to life.

“My Henge,” as Dr Al Allenby, the dishevelled genius behind the machine, called it. “Everyone should have a Henge.”

From the windows of a laboratory overlooking the henge a very small boy sent up a mad private prayer.

Finn (full name Infinity Drake) was about to turn thirteen. He had sand-coloured hair that grew in several directions at once (like his father’s) and deep blue eyes (like his mother’s). He had been orphaned two years before. He was into gaming, mad science and most lethal pastimes, like any other boy. But unlike any other boy, thanks to getting caught up in Operation Scarlatti fn2the previous spring, Finn was now only 9. 8mm tall.

With a deafening electrostatic crack and hum, white lightning began to spin like candyfloss around the core, the hoop of accelerators whipping up a cyclone of pure energy. With one last push they would form a perfect subatomic magnetic field.

Perched above the Henge, crammed into his cockpit command pod, Dr Allenby (known to all as Al), recited the snatch of poetry he used to remember the crucial sequencing equations he kept secret from the world –

“But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity …”

(… adding in his head: where B is acceleration and E opens and closes brackets and where all other vowels are disregarded ).

Several calculations ran at once inside his brain and in an instant he typed a series of numbers into his control terminal … WHOOOOOOOMMMM!

The spun lighting became a continuous arc, then, with a flash, the Hot Area was created – a throbbing orb of white light within which the distance between the nucleus of any atom and its electrons would be reduced, thus shrinking all matter to a fraction of its original size. Called the Boldklub fn3process, it was a remarkable feat of physics that only Al really understood.

“OH YEAH, BABY!” he cried, incongruous given the surroundings and the presence of so many distinguished scientists, soldiers and political functionaries.

His boss, Commander James Clayton-King, Chairman of the Global Non-governmental Threat Committee, sighed and briefly lowered his eyelids.

It had taken months longer than Al had anticipated to reach this point and there had been many mistakes along the way, but finally he thought they’d got it right. In a few moments he would be able to prove that he could shrink a living mammal, then reverse the process and successfully return it to its normal size. Alive. Countless tests had been run with countless objects – up to and including living plants.

All that remained was a live mammal test.

A white mouse had been selected, sedated and encased in monitoring devices.

It had been named ‘Fluffy’.

It was for his nephew Finn, and his three Operation Scarlatti team mates, that Al had worked so hard day and night in the hope of being able to return them to their normal size.

A technician up in the Control Gallery, on a command from Al, started the conveyor that fed items into the Hot Area. Fluffy moved along the belt and slipped into the perfect light.

Finn watched, transfixed, as the Hot Area rippled and the white mouse was reduced to ‘nano’ scale, just a 150th of its original size, just like Finn. Next, the process would be reversed, bringing Fluffy back to normal ‘macro’ scale. If it worked, the four nano-humans, including Finn, would be resized next.

They watched the show together, hopes looping the loop.

“Come on, Fluffy,” whispered Captain Kelly of the SAS from where he stood beside Finn – six foot six of muscle and scar-tissue, currently reduced to 13mm, and so convinced the experiment would work he’d booked a flight to Scotland where he planned to spend the next few weeks sailing around the Western Isles accompanied by a crate of whisky.

“Kick it, Fluff!” agreed 11mm-high Delta Salazar from behind her Aviator shades – the best and coolest pilot in the US Air Force. She’d grown as close to her nano-colleagues as she had to anybody in her life, but she couldn’t wait to fly back home to see her younger sister, Carla.

Even 10mm-high Engineer Stubbs, ancient and given to doom and gloom, had boiled an egg in case things went well (party food would just upset his stomach).

“Reverse the polarity!” cried Al.

Finn’s heart beat like a drum. He could not wait to be big again, to open a door, to hug his stupid dog, Yo-yo, to kick a ball around with his best friend Hudson. To—

Suddenly everything went purple as his view of the action was eclipsed by a gigantic, well-preserved lady of sixty-four in matching top and slacks.

“Now, does anybody want more Welshcakes?”

“GRANDMA! GET OUT OF THE WAY!” Finn screamed.

Nobody in the universe had a more uncanny ability to interrupt than Finn’s grandma – and Al’s mother – Violet Allenby. She was drawn like a magnet to hoover in front of any given TV and always asked too loudly who was on the phone.

“Oh, am I in the way?” she said, towering over them like a colossus.

“YEEEEES!” Finn wailed until she moved along to offer yet more cake to the technical staff, her way of taking her mind off everything that could possibly go wrong.

The Henge reappeared just as Al cut the power to the Hot Area, everyone watching as the spinning cyclone evaporated into a million specks of light.

As the sparkles faded Fluffy’s test rig was revealed at centre of the Henge … at full size.

There were whoops from technicians. A smattering of applause.

“Yes!” shouted Finn.

Delta got him in a headlock-come-hug.

Kelly began to dance a jig, then got Stubbs in a headlock too.

Out in the CFAC Al popped the perspex lid on his command pod and hurried down the ladder.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep … went an alarm.

Al ran into the middle of the Henge.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Fluffy was very still.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Al examined her.

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep …

Seeing the angle of his uncle’s shoulders, Finn knew at once.

B­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­e­p …

Fluffy was dead.