John McNally - The Forbidden City

“At least you lot get to go to work …” Finn complained.

There was a military research project that Finn wasn’t really supposed to know about called the ‘nCraft’. One great problem of being a centimetre tall was the time it took to cover even a modest distance and a new vehicle was being developed to take full advantage of the massively improved power-to-mass ratios at nano-scale. Al disapproved of any military application of his technology but Finn knew, that out of sheer boredom, Stubbs and the others had been working on it.

They felt for him.

“Don’t sulk, you’ll get over this! You can get over anything,” said Kelly. “You know how many cars I’d stolen by the time I was thirteen? I spent half my teens in youth custody – and look at me now!” he boasted, opening his massive, battle-scarred arms as if he was a model citizen.

“This is what I tell Carla,” said Delta. “Between thirteen and seventeen you do a lot of suffering, then life gets much, much better.”

“Oh great,” said Finn, sarcastically.

“People always say things like that to teenagers,” said Stubbs, “but as I recall you never really get over the trauma of your teens. The bullying … the heartache … the loneliness …”

“The being nine millimetres tall …” added Finn.

“Hey! If I got over a childhood in a Philadelphia children’s home, you can get over this. You just need a little help and support – am I right?” said Delta, glaring at Kelly and Stubbs.

“She’s right,” said Kelly, then added generously, “and if you need things livening up, just say the word! One of us can always tie you to the train tracks, or shoot at you …”

“I could drop you out of a plane?” offered Delta.

“Or ostracise him. Mental cruelty,” added Stubbs.

“You’d really do that for me? Thanks, guys,” said Finn, smiling at last.

A pulse came from Finn’s nPhone fn2.

He opened the pack and checked the screen.

U there? Skype?

“What’s wrong? You look like death.”

The girl who on a daily basis filled his Skype screen with dark hair, bright eyes and wisecracks, peered into the lens at him, suspicious.

“Wrong? Nothing’s wrong,” said Finn, wondering how Carla’s emotional radar could possibly work at this distance.

The background usually showed her bedroom in the States, but right now he was looking at a hotel room in Kunming, China, where Carla was on tour with the Pennsylvania Youth Orchestra. Her luggage and a cello case lay on the bed behind her.

What she saw from China was a mock barrack room that had been built especially within the nano-compound. Carla thought Delta was stuck at an airbase in England working on a secret project and that Finn was just a kid who lived on the base with his uncle. They had hit it off as soon as Delta had introduced them, not so much soul mates as complementary opposites. Carla knew everything Finn didn’t know – and much he didn’t want to know – about art and life, and Finn knew everything she didn’t know about the natural world.

What Carla also didn’t know was that everyone she saw on camera was about a centimetre tall.

“Something is definitely wrong.”

“I lost a pet,” said Finn for cover.

“A pet? They let you have pets on an airbase?” she said, sceptical.

“Only a mouse.”

“A mouse ? What was its name?”

“Fluffy. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. I had a hamster die on me; it nearly broke my heart. Does Delta know?”

“Sure. She told me ‘life is much better than you think’.”

“How patronising! They think we’re just kids! They have no idea what ‘life’ is like for us,” bemoaned Carla, who enjoyed being disgusted with her sister and with grown-ups in general.

“What happened? Was it old age?” she asked, gently.

“No, my uncle killed it,” said Finn. “It was late, they’d been drinking, a fight broke out …”

She laughed despite herself.

“Oh HA HA – you’re avoiding your emotions.”

There was a call off-screen. “Carla, we have to go!”

“OK!” she shouted back, and turned to Finn.

“That’s it. We’re going to the airport. You should have seen this place we passed – there’s this actual dwarf world here! A theme park full of little people to gawp at. Can you imagine anything so cruel?”

“Honestly, I can’t,” Finn said without a hint of irony.

Finn wished he was going with her, wished he was going anywhere, with anybody.

Carla grabbed her things and went to shut down the screen, then paused and confessed, “You know, I often wonder if you two are locked-up in some theme park – isn’t that the weirdest thing?”

“Ha! Why?” Finn stalled.

“I don’t know, the crazy stories and everything. Plus I’ve never even seen outside this barrack room …”

“Well it is a secret base,” said Finn.

“Exactly. Always the big mystery with you two!”

“Carla!” called the voice off-screen again, and she waved goodbye.

Phew , thought Finn.

As Finn walked out of the fake barrack room back into the nano-compound, Delta, Kelly and Stubbs suddenly stopped talking. He hated when grown-ups did that.

“What?” said Finn. “What were you talking about?”

“Nothing,” said Delta.

“Liar,” said Finn.

“We said the main thing is we’ve got to stick together as a team. Everything takes time,” said Kelly.

“I know,” said Finn. At least he could be sure of that.

“Your uncle will eventually find the answer,” said Stubbs, almost reluctantly.

“You better believe it!” came a familiar booming voice, as a shadow, like a huge cloud, fell across them.

The four tiny figures looked up at the giant, praying for good news.

“I just don’t know what the answer is yet,” Al finished, to a chorus of sighs. “Now, who’s up for Sunday lunch?”

For want of anything better to do, Finn agreed to spend Sunday at Grandma’s with Al and they razzed along the country lanes between Hook Hall and the village of Langmere in Al’s incomparable De Tomaso Mangusta sports car fn3, happily outrunning the Mercedes of the security detail and scattering autumn leaves.

Finn sat in a nano-den (or ‘nDen’ as Al liked to call them) that was clipped to Al’s top pocket.

A way had to be found for the nano-crew to be housed, heard and taken out of the lab complex from time to time and nDens were the answer. This particular nDen was a typically eccentric choice of Al’s: a vintage Sony Walkman cassette player. About the size of a book, it had been adapted to hold nano-humans: there was a sofa, tinted glass for them to see out of, a line to Al through the earphones, and a built-in loudspeaker for when they needed to make themselves more widely heard.

“Tell me what went wrong with Fluffy. Maybe I can help,” said Finn.

“About three grams,” said Al.

“Three grams?” said Finn.

“That’s right,” said Al. “We reduced Fluffy, then we rescaled Fluffy – in perfect form, every atom, every molecule in the right place – and yet … somehow Fluffy ends up stone cold dead and three grams lighter. It’s as if the electrical relationships and reactions that run a body – the stuff of life – somehow disappeared. We just have to isolate why, what, where and when, and then we’ll be able to do something about it. But at the moment we haven’t got a clue – just three missing grams.”

The conversation continued as they walked through the woods with Grandma later that afternoon – another headache for the Security Service. Al was thought to be a prime target for kidnap, but Grandma refused any extra security. For her there was no appeasing villainy – and no mystery in Al’s missing three grams, either.