The View From Below (Chapter 1)

Olive strode across the university campus, literally, on her way to her inter-size social sciences class. She’d left quite a bit earlier than was necessary, considering the lecture didn’t start for a whole five minutes and the building was only a mile and a half away, but she’d come to enjoy having the time to stroll leisurely above the Alpha-dominated school, and plus, it would be nice to chat with all her friends first. The campus geography of course wasn’t initially designed to accommodate students of such scale as the kindhearted strawberry-blonde Omega, but the administration had compromised by converting much of the greenspace into demarcated stepping-stone “zones” for Olive to place her feet for easy navigating, and without even the slightest risk of an Alpha or even Beta student entering the areas the length of two football fields apiece when she was preparing to set down a bare sole more expansive on its own than any single building at the well-funded and prestigious college.

            Early in her days as an exchange student at an institution built for people roughly seven hundred times shorter than her, Olive had been much more anxious about her gait, considering how difficult it was for her to see if there were any living souls, let alone crowds of them, using her stepping stones as shortcuts before putting her foot down atop them. Her constant shoelessness was decided as a way to combat this, since in theory Olive figured she’d have a much better chance of noticing a speck-sized body pressed into the wrinkled flesh of her bare arch versus while wearing slip-ons, a choice the school had agreed with, though it was largely for psychological comfort than providing actual security, considering any Alpha that Olive accidentally stepped on would be reduced to two dimensions long before she noticed the tickle on her skin. And a Beta, of course, at three inches tall compared to the Omega’s one-mile stature, wouldn’t even be noticed, no matter how slowly and delicately she pressed down.

            The real prevention method had come in the form of red floodlights that flared if anything lighter than several million tons, a fraction compared to Olive’s own weight, stepped onto the footprint-shaped grounds, which discouraged late commuters from cutting across a place intended for colossal feet to pound, or pranksters from playing chicken with friends. Once that system was put in place, the Omega had learned to traverse the campus with far more confidence, and now a short while into her second semester here, hardly noticed the fact that her body was comparatively massive enough that she could’ve laid across the campus and touched from one end to the other just by reaching overhead. The Alpha and Beta friends Olive made all treated her very sweetly, if a bit too reverently at first, but the Omega’s generous nature had soon won them over and she was certain now that they too were just as blind to whatever extreme differences of size happened to separate them.

            Olive arrived at the building, stepping around to the fields behind it and gradually lowering herself down to a seated position. Only after smoothing down her school uniform skirt to discourage uncouth views did she open her notebook and wait for the retractable roof to fold up. She’d been hesitant to enroll in this course at first, since she already appreciated all size-classes and thus saw little reason to learn about the interpersonal politics, but her socially conscious Alpha friends had insisted, and the Omega had to admit she enjoyed the experience so far, even if it was difficult to relate upon hearing the stories of Betas who felt terrified just to walk out their dollhouse-sized front doors in the morning, which to the exchange student seemed an outlier situation.

            Still, considering she was the only mile-tall being currently in the province, she supposed it would be good to engage with the culture, though after living a whole adolescence around other Omegas, many of whom were much taller than Olive, it was often difficult to shake the feeling that she was anything other than an average student who just so happened to be more than five thousand feet tall: a mindset Olive decided meant she had already achieved the social harmony the professor intended to sow. Many Alphas had gotten used to standing in her hand, and when held up to her face close enough that Olive could see the peachy texture lines in her palm, she could even see their faces well enough to pick out distinct expressions. Naturally she’d also viewed up-close video calls with Beta classmates on her phone (as this was the only conceivable way of “meeting” them) and seen that they looked much like her, despite their three-inch average height, which made the idea of all inter-size conflicts seem even sillier to Olive.

            It was time. Although it was a little embarrassing at first to feel every eye upon her, Olive had gotten accustomed to the friendly smiles from the miniscule faces in the lecture hall as the space within was revealed. Today, however, the roof hadn’t budged. Confused, and nervous of missing conversation with her peers (and the lecture somewhat as well), the Omega whipped out her phone, only to discover an email from the professor cancelling class but requesting the students meet in small groups to discuss the reading. There was also a text from her Alpha friend Harley inviting her to meet them in the only greenspace large enough for the Omega to sit down.

            “On my way :)” Olive texted back, and ascended back toward the sky.