The View From Below (Chapter 3)

Confused again, the exchange student leaned in closer to her phone, squinting at the shape. At the moment of this minor bodily adjustment then, she saw the rounded silhouette onscreen lurch forth as well. Immediately Charlie zoomed his camera back as far as it could go, and situated somewhere behind the already-towering Alphas, Olive saw her astronomically large toes coming into view beneath the dark sky-like veil of her uniform skirt. Even from this far off, as her bulbous digits wiggled in surprise, she could spy the gridded rings of her toeprints through Charlie’s insect’s-eye view, spiraling lines which the Beta probably could have squeezed his whole body in between.

            “Oh my… gosh,” Olive practically choked. Her shock only swelled as Charlie craned his camera straight up, and the Omega’s astronomic body bloomed into view, imposing and strangely majestic from her boulder-toes up to the strawberry-blonde cataracts of her hair, despite the fact that she was just seated pretzel-style with her green-eyed gaze transfixed by the imagery. “That’s, um… really, really interesting. T-Thank you for showing me your side of the world, Charlie, it’s… all definitely something I’ll… have to keep in mind.”

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            Nearing sunset, after spending a fun evening with her friends, Olive had finally broken away for some private time, or at least as private as was possible for a girl who was visible to every eye below for literal miles around. Taking refuge in the open fields just outside campus, the Omega made herself comfortable lying on her stomach. Though as usual she had enjoyed the company of her much-shorter peers, that size difference feeling more strangely apparent today than it had in months, it was impossible for her to stay in the moment after that video call with Charlie, the record of which was stored on her phone. Those images just kept on replaying in her mind throughout the rest of the reading discussion and later more social chatter, not only of the forest of grass, titanic buildings, and the statuesque leviathans of the Alphas seen in the feed, but her own seated figure which made even those giants look like pipsqueaks who could be bowled over if she breathed on them too hard. “Monument” didn’t even begin to cover it after all.

            The instant she was alone again, Olive rebooted the video and watched with intense focus. This time, the effect of the size difference between Charlie and everything around him hit her even harder, as she no longer had to guess what she was looking at. It was simply incredible to witness a world of such grandeur from below, and the Omega couldn’t help but feel jaw-dropping astonishment on behalf of the Betas when viewing even those wild grass blades and towering Alphas, but especially her own sky-scraping visage.

            She made this realization somewhat guiltily, since Olive had lived her life in relative modesty, never seeing herself as “above” anyone else, even when she first moved here for college and had to adjust to the fact that she was walking among beings so small that she probably could’ve crammed most of the campus population into her open palms. Yet her esteem couldn’t be helped after such vivid evidence; what reasonable person, Olive wondered, could look through the almost-literal eye of a Beta, up at an island-sized girl upon whose body could be built the largest Beta metropolises on Earth, and NOT be impacted?

            Though Olive winced at the idea on first consideration, after reluctantly watching the video a third time, then less-reluctantly four more times, a novel idea occurred to her. Perhaps she’d been hasty trying to categorize herself directly alongside her schoolmates, when there were such obvious divergences. By no means did this mean anyone was inferior to her; the Omega was quick to make that silent distinction to herself. Still, there were differences that made their classes “unique,” chief among them being that Betas truly were, objectively, beings of such miniscule height that even the most harmless aspects of nature were a threat to them. Bugs, birds, wind, rain… and that was even before considering the more conscientious dangers.

            For perhaps the first time, the readings from the inter-size class began to sink into Olive’s psyche. She felt renewed sorrow for the struggles of the Betas, but also found new appreciation for the grave risks they faced, indeed, just by walking out their front doors in the morning, a thought she’d once dismissed. Watching Charlie’s chat for the tenth time, even viewing Kiki’s gigantic figure come into view made the Omega feel apprehension for the Beta’s sake. This particular Alpha girl was a sweetheart, yes, but their course textbooks had made it clear that there were still many individuals Kiki’s size who meant mortal harm to their three-inch compatriots, simply because they were weak and often meek enough to be overpowered: considered worthy of destruction by virtue of their vulnerability. This was an absurdly unjust concept and made Olive angry, but at the same time, she had to acknowledge the fact that Betas really were at the bottom of the food chain. The Omega meant this dark conclusion without judgment, nor did she consider it fair, but there was no denying the brutal history, height-related math, and most of all, the staggering footage from Charlie’s phone that meant Betas were, by a large margin, the most harm-prone humans alive.

            When Olive watched the video for the eleventh time today, the hyper-close details of the environment and surrounding Alpha “giants” seemed to fade; all she saw this time was herself. At first glance, she’d had difficulty mentally connecting her own humble self with the goddess-statured being in the video, whose seventy-story-long foot could probably seismically uproot the whole university like weeds if she stomped hard enough. The Omega had learned to softly tiptoe while walking the campus since her arrival, passively aware that her regular footfalls might disturb the populace, vibrating windows and spilling coffee mugs.

            That knowledge remained, but now with greater respect than ever for her own abilities. Of course the very notion of accidentally slamming her foot to the bedrock and causing an earthquake that sent her thousands of micro-peers flying like pebbles horrified Olive, yet for the first time in her life, the fact that she could at all occurred to her. And though her heartbeat quickened with anxiety to picture such a catastrophe, it soon relaxed back to normal, especially after she got another look at herself in the video. ALL of herself, for that mythically humongous being in the video was her, no matter how hard it was to believe at first.

            “That is…” Olive murmured to herself, enraptured. “…really, really something.”

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THE END (for now)