The Incredible Shrinking Man Page #4

I found a deep abyss.

It was only a box and the space between.

Yet to me it was the Grand Canyon

and the Mammoth Caves combined.

Deep, dark, mysterious and dangerous.

There was no possible way to cross,

no matter how inventive,

how resourceful I thought myself.

This time, in sight of my goal,

it seemed as if I must meet defeat.

Suddenly I saw an opportunity,

if I could move the stick

to the other side.

I cursed myself. If only I were

a little bigger. A little stronger.

I realised there was

just this one chance,

and I had no choice, I had to take it.

If I could leap from the paint stick

and reach the other side...

But there was no time to think.

Only to act.

My prison.

Almost as far as I could see, a grave,

friendless area of space and time.

And I resolved that as Man had

dominated the worid of the sun,

so I would dominate my worid.

In my hunt for food,

I had become the hunted.

This time I survived.

But I was no longer alone

in my universe. I had an enemy.

The most terrifying

ever beheld by human eyes.

Charlie, there's a trunk I'd like to

take with me if you don't mind.

- It's in the basement. I'll show you.

- I'll put these in the car first.

Oh, all right.

Oh no, it's flooded!

The water heater.

I better have a look.

- Oh, this is terrible.

- I'll turn the water off.

Louise! Look for me! Louise! Charlie!

Charlie, I'm here! Charlie! Louise!

The water! Here in the water!

Charlie!

I smell gas. Is that pilot off?

I'll turn it off.

Listen to me! Louise!

Louise! Hear me! Please! Please!

- Can you fix it?

- There.

I'll get a plumber down here tomorrow.

Charlie!

- Where's your drain?

- It's there. It must be clogged.

Charlie! Look for me!

- Is that the trunk, Louise?

- Oh, yes, but don't bother about it.

- It's so wet. I'll pick it up later.

- It's OK.

I want you packed

and out of this house tonight.

- Is that everything, Louise?

- Yes, that's everything.

I still had my weapons. With these

bits of metal I was a man again.

If I was to die,

it would not be as a helpless insect

in thejaws of the spider monster.

A strange calm possessed me.

I thought more clearly

than I had ever thought before,

as if my mind were

bathed in a brilliant light.

I recognised that

part of my illness was rooted in hunger,

and I remembered the food on the shelf.

The cake threaded with spider web.

I no longer felt hatred for the spider.

Like myself, it struggled blindly

for the means to live.

If I was to fight it,

if I was to win the food,

then it must be now

while strength remained,

while I was still of sufficient size

to scale the wall.

It was not decision that

drove me to the crate, but reflex,

as instinctive as the spider's.

My legs trembled.

Not with fear, but weakness.

Yet somehow I felt within myself

a new source of power.

A giant strength,

urging me to the death struggle.

My enemy seemed immortal.

More than a spider, it was

every unknown terror in the worid,

every fear fused into

one hideous night-black horror.

Still, whatever else had happened,

my brain was a man's brain.

My intelligence

still a man's intelligence.

An idea came to me. The scissors.

Too heavy for me to employ as a weapon,

they might have another use.

If I could impale the monster

with my hook,

fastened by a line to the scissors,

then push the scissors off the ledge.

Whatever the risk, it was worth a try.

I knew, sooner or later,

it would come charging down that web,

skimming out blackly toward me.

One of us had to die.

Come on down!

Come on, you devil, I'm waiting for you!

Come on!

This was the prize I had won.

I approached it

in an ecstasy of elation.

I had conquered. I lived.

But even as I touched the dry,

flaking crumbs of nourishment

it was as if my body

had ceased to exist.

There was no hunger. No longer

the terrible fear of shrinking.

Again I had the sensation of instinct.

Of each movement, each thought

tuned to some great directing force.

I was continuing to shrink, to become...

What? The infinitesimal?

What was I?

Still a human being?

Or was I the man of the future?

If there were other bursts of radiation,

other clouds drifting

across seas and continents,

would other beings follow me

into this vast new worid?

So close,

the infinitesimal and the infinite.

But suddenly I knew they were really

the two ends of the same concept.

The unbelievably small and the

unbelievably vast eventually meet,

like the closing of a gigantic circle.

I looked up,

as if somehow I would

grasp the heavens, the universe,

worids beyond number. God's silver

tapestry spread across the night.

And in that moment I knew the

answer to the riddle of the infinite.

I had thought in terms of

Man's own limited dimension.

I had presumed upon Nature.

That existence begins and ends

is Man's conception, not Nature's.

And I felt my body dwindling,

melting, becoming nothing.

My fears melted away

and in their place came acceptance.

All this vast majesty of creation,

it had to mean something.

And then I meant something too.

Yes, smaller than the smallest,

I meant something too.

To God, there is no zero.

I still exist.

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