I thought I'd try a mini-man story, very loosely inspired by the magnificent art of NKS Volkov from whom (with permission) the illustrations come.
Mini-men? Oh dear, are you from one of those awful countries where popping hasn’t yet been legalised? There's really nothing wrong with it, nothing to worry about. Not for us women, anyway. Just settle back, my dear, while I explain. If you want a drink or anything else to make you comfortable just announce your wishes loudly - there are plenty of little helpers around who will be only to pleased to scurry off to satisfy your every whim.
So...where to begin?
First of all, obviously, no actual ‘shrinking’ is involved. That would contravene the laws of physics. When a guy goes into the chamber and a mini-man pops out, the remaining matter can’t just disappear (or be converted into energy – no matter how useful that would be). No: if a six foot tall man goes in and a four-inch mini-man comes out, then there’s a lot of matter left. How much? Well, the mini-man is only a third of a foot, so he’s 1/18th of the height of the original guy. But that’s not the right answer. The volume (and the mass – that is, the weight) of a man – or any other object – is proportional to the cube of its length. So, the mini-man is 1/18th the height of the original man, he has 1/324 of the area of the original and he has 1/5832 of the volume and also 1/5832 of the mass. Of course, the actual ratios will vary – anything between about 5500 and 6500 is possible, but 6000 is usually the working assumption. That’s a lot of little people.
So: your newly-popped mini-man is not unique. You can pop about 6000 mini-men out of one original. Not all at once, thank goodness – imagine them all swarming all over the floor, squeaking away! – but once a man has been processed, you can keep popping up to that limit. The rest of his body will be held in a sort of stasis. There’s no going back. You might think you could just pull him back out having lost only 1/6000th of his body mass but it just doesn’t work like that. Something to do with quantum entanglement states, the scientists say. Whatever. For the rest of us it’s just one of the mysteries of the process – like why it only works for men, not for women. There was a lot of scientific interest in that, at first, but they never really worked it out and no one cares much any more. It’s just one of those things.
No going back. In fact, one of the advertising slogans for the first commercially-available devices was “Once you pop, you just can’t stop!”. Which was intended partly to warn users about the irreversibility of the process, of course, but nowadays just reminds us how much easier, wealthier and just plain fun the whole mini-man process has made all our lives. Who could imagine going back?
Easier? Of course. I’m sitting here dictating this article to the very latest MM-autowriter. Like an old-fashioned computer keyboard but with extra-large keys, with a mini-man straddling each group of five. Ankles, wrists and nose each attached to a key, by a tiny metal chain I could snap with a near-effortless tug, each has to push down with all his might – and in precise harmony with the others - when I say a word containing one of his five letters. Every sentence produces a frantic ripple of activity. I have the keyboard laid out so that D, W, E, A, R and N are worked with their heads. So when I say “Andrew” they all have to bash down hard with their little faces. ‘Andrew’ of course, being the name of my dear sweet husband, from whom all these little treasures popped. Andrew. Andrewandrewandrewandrewandrew.
And down by my feet, a little line of mini-men – more Andrews, so many Andrews (oh yes, that’s right my dears, faces smacking down on those keys!) – are wearily scrubbing the floor. So much more precise and effective than a big silly mop – and so what if it takes a bit longer? If I really wanted it done quickly I suppose I could pop a few more out, but why bother when it can be polished to perfection in just a few hours by these little toilers? Twelve’s plenty and in fact, now I think about it, I suspect that if the number were quickly reduced to eleven, those remaining eleven would work so extra hard, they could do it just as well. Even having to clean up the mess that used to be number twelve – isn’t that right, my dears? I wonder which of you will be number twelve? We’ll see – keep scrubbing.
And on the rug, there, four of them with baskets on their backs, wearily picking up every item of fluff. Of course a vacuum cleaner could do it better but where would be the fun in that?
Shoe-cleaning is a particular pleasure to watch, of course. It can’t be so much fun for them. I live in a green, leafy suburb where many of the paths are quite muddy, I’m afraid. And when I do walk on the pavement, there’s all manner of grime and filth my shoes can pick up. I even trod in some chewing gum, a few days ago! Quite disgusting – some people have no consideration for others! Thank goodness for mini-men – I gave four of them little nails to use as scrapers and after just a couple of hours the sole was spotless again! I also love to put them into the shoes and have them sponge the damp inner soles for an hour or two, when I come in after a long day. I don’t know if it does much good, but the sponges and the mini-men certainly give off quite a pong when I shake them out again, so it must be better having that out of my shoes rather than in! A foot-fetishist’s dream, I suppose – what a pity for Andrew he’s not at all that way inclined. In fact, one evening soon after we were married he complained about how he could smell my shoes just after I’d taken them off and put my feet up for the first time, after a long day! So inconsiderate! I like to remind of of that, as I pick him up and attach sponges to his tiny wrists and ankles, before dangling him over the gaping black hole that is the top of one of my well-worn boots. Perhaps if he hadn’t been so tactless, I wouldn’t make him do this. I wonder if he thinks about that, down there.
So…life is easy. And I think I mentioned ‘wealthy’ too? Why? Oh, simple enough. Lots of people think that a mini-man must produce less than his full-size equivalent. But so little of our modern economy depends on physical strength these days! That’s why women were increasingly economically dominant even before the mini-man technology came along but now… Why train 100 software developers, when you can train one and pop out six thousand? Or engineers, machinery operators, remote vehicle drivers… it’s been estimated that 60% of all jobs can be done by mini-men. And of the remaining 40%, at least half are highly-skilled positions best carried out by women, so really only 20% or so of all jobs need to be done by the remaining full-size men. Simple, manual tasks requiring nothing more than brute strength and close supervision. Of course, the recent changes in our political arrangements have helped ensure that the right jobs go to the right people, so to speak.
The politics? Oh, that’s simple enough. Males have no rights, obviously. That was an unexpected side-effect of the minimising process, actually. Initially, there were these wild notions that mini-men would be treated as fully competent human beings – but that was obviously unworkable. I mean, can you imagine? Any male could be popped to produce 6000 extra voters! As women couldn’t follow suit, that was obviously going to lead to male domination of our political society very quickly! Fortunately, in most countries where mini-man technology was legal, the danger was recognised quickly. Women voted in a coherent bloc, while the male vote was largely split because many men were sympathetic to our feminist arguments that it wasn’t fair for women to be outvoted – the sweet, trusting little dears – and mini-men lost the right to vote. There was a brief suggestion that they should each get 1/6000th of a vote but as the leader of the Female First party so rightly said “Oh come on - why bother?”. And then with such a large proportion of the male population being converted as business clamoured for mini-workers… well, it was straightforward enough to complete the great work started by our suffragette sisters at the start of the last century and remove all civil rights from males. About time too.
Not all countries managed to see the danger in time to take such bold political steps, of course. Some left it too late – and had to suffer a period of domination by the swarming numbers of mini-men. Fortunately, it was precisely the more patriarchal males who had themselves converted – if even mini-men can vote, then any ambitious politician is quickly going to pop out 6000 of himself, just before election day. They hadn’t really thought through the consequences of how to actually enforce their democratically-achieved mandate on the numerically tiny but physically massive remaining female population. Most such mini-men governments fell rather quickly to domestic rebellions… those that didn’t were helped along by invasion from more enlightened regimes. Most military equipment, after all, is rather more suited to being wielded by full-sized soldiers than by squeaky little imps. Although, as General Sally Curtis remarked, after the ‘Two day war’ that put an end to the last of these nasty little nests of male privilege: “The most effective weapon a soldier can deploy against an army of mini-men is her pair of tough leather boots.”
Ah – I suppose that brings me on to the topic of ‘smooshing’ doesn’t it? Yes… smooshing. ‘Squishing’ some people call it. I suppose it is a bit cruel, really, but it does help keep the remaining little dears focused on their work. And it is such fun!
I suppose we’ve all become accustomed to it now. It was a little shocking at first, I suppose, when women began to realise that with all those silly civil rights taken away from mini-men, there was no longer anything to stop them. The first mini-man I smooshed was a complete stranger, oddly enough! I remember it well – I was at a party at a friend’s house. I can’t have popped more than fifteen or twenty Andrews at that point and I was still treating them almost as if they were people – I had a couple with me, in my pockets you know. Anyway, my friend had her mini-husband running around pulling carts with drinks on and that sort of thing – I remember feeling quite excited about how powerful it made us all seem, ironically enough. I say ‘ironically’ because my idea of exerting power over a mini-man at the time was to put him up on a shelf for some quiet time and similar (Andrew squeaked huis little head off the first time I did it, too, but I left him up there all night). And then, my friend Yvonne, who’d been getting more and more cross with them all, just got up from her chair, strode across the room and – STOMP! Well, the room just fell absolutely silent… then one of the girls giggled. I couldn’t laugh I was… not horrified, exactly, but I was quite shocked. And excited – but it wasn’t obviously excitement in a good way, you know? My heart just started thudding. And I remember noticing what a mess it made – she’d stamped hard, so he’d burst and there was blood all around, you know. Not like a slow crush, when you steadily break the bones from the feet up. And all these little mini-men scurrying to clean it all up… as if their lives depended on it. For good reason.
Well, later that night I was walking home. I’d decided to walk rather than take a taxi, because my mind was still buzzing about what I’d seen. And we were still just getting used to the almost total absence of crime, so like a lot of women I loved walking alone after dark, feeling totally safe as I did. I was walking up a quiet side-street, no one around, and this mini-man just ran out in front of me, coming out from behind some bins. I don’t know whose he was and what he was doing there but I just reacted instinctively. I shrieked “Ohh – horrid thing!” (such a feminine stereotype, rather like a 1950s TV housewife seeing a mouse, I’m afraid!) and I just stamped on it, almost without thinking. I remember afterwards puzzling over whether I’d realised it was a mini-man, or whether I’d thought it was a cockroach. I thought it odd that I couldn’t remember, until I had the revelation: it didn’t matter.
One of the Andrews had been watching out of the edge of my pocket. I picked him up and stared at him… he was white and shaking with terror. I blew him a kiss and put him back and we all went home. I smooshed my first Andrew the very next day.
It’s funny how you get used to things. Smooshing used to be something you did secretly, for the most part – that’s why seeing Yvonne squishing her husband so brazenly was a shock. But we women like to gossip and we pretty soon realised everyone was doing it. And nowadays… have you ever watched Rapist Release? They’ve got all the males who were convicted of sexual offences stored up, and they have these special enclosed courtyards where they’re all popped at once. I often go and watch and I’ve been lucky enough to win a ticket to take part three times! You all assemble in the courtyard – about eighty women, typically? Mostly quite young, but I’ve seen old aged pensioners there, all booted and waiting for the release. Then you get a short film about the prisoner and what he did – they don’t usually dwell on the awful details, it’s supposed to be a fun evening out after all, but they tell you enough to get everyone fired up and ready for the action. At this point, the prisoner himself doesn’t know what’s going to happen – he’ll have been in stasis since the days before the female take-over, after all. I’ve heard they even tell them they’re going to be ‘released’ which is true, of course, but not in the way they think it is. And then they pop all six thousand, all at the same time, and they come scurrying out of these little passageways. There are passageways over the other side of the court signed ‘Exit’, so once they’ve got their bearings, they usually go pelting off towards those. It’s not quite the ‘exit’ that they might hope for either, as the few that make it discover, but I suppose it’s nice for them to have something to try for, in the last moments of their miserable lives.
It must be quite a shock for them, especially those who were put into storage before the whole mini-men thing happened, suddenly to run out with a bunch of other men who look just like you, into a gigantic cavernous space full of these huge, towering women…. And then when you realise what those towering women are doing – when you see first one, then another of your doppelgangers converted into a patch of red mush on the bottom of a boot, and then when you look up to see that same boot – with perhaps some of the mush just starting to peel away and drop off it – raised above you, and beyond it an excited, grinning young pretty face!
It’s a lot of fun to take part – and it’s quite a lot of fun to watch, too! I was at a special the other night, when they did three men in succession. Oh – when the third was popped, it was crazy! The floor was so slippery from the twelve thousand smooshed predecessors, so the girls were slipping and sliding around, and clinging onto each other while they shrieked with laughter, trying to get the third batch. Quite a lot of the participants ended up on the messy wet floor, often in each others’ arms – and some of them quite lost interest in smooshing the mini-men at that point, if you get my drift! As did some of us in the audience: I found myself in a tight embrace with this complete stranger, and we ended up going home together. There was something about the shrieks of horror from the third batch, even higher-pitched than usual, if you can imagine such a thing.
I suppose that brings us on to the topic of sex. To be honest, despite a few wild lesbian episodes like that one, I do still enjoy a full-sized penis from time to time. But there are plenty of full-sized male sex workers for hire and they’re not expensive – it’s one of the few jobs they can do, after all. But the sexual possibilities that mini-men provide… well, there’s a lot more to them than the microscopic penis that remains to them, after all. I’ve got one of those dildo holders – you know? Like an old-style vibrator, only with a open-ended hollow base. You put a mini-man into a tight rubber tube – you just roll it down – to keep him fairly rigid, then up he goes, head-first. OK, four inches isn’t much but that’s why there’s the base of the dildo behind him. Most of the best toys on the market have a vibrate function and an electric shock option to make him squirm around by himself. They’re quite safe – the electrodes go up inside the rubber tube so you can’t shock yourself. Of course, he can’t breathe up there but be a stroke of luck, they don’t need to very often. Something to do with surface area to body mass ratios – I don’t really understand the science to be honest, but I know that a mini-man can last ten to twelve minutes without taking a breath. Which is usually long enough for me, especially as he is squirming around frantically for the last two or three as he suffocates. Anyway, if I’m not quite there I can usually get off on what’s left of him – or I have another ready, if I’m feeling like I’m likely to be slow. Half the time, though, I come so quickly that he’s still alive when I’m done! I’ve got one who’s managed it six times! I call him my ‘champion stud’ and keep him in the dildo draw. I swear he gets better every time, so who knows how long he’ll last?
I suppose we have all become more callous about, well… killing them, I suppose, although most of us don’t like using that word. But it just sneaks up on you. Take my friend Amy, for instance. Such a sweet little thing. She married a guy called Leo, quite a few years before everything changed. She must have been very young at the time she married – nineteen at most? And I think Leo was a few years older and the only bread-winner, so I think he was very much in charge in their marriage, you know? He was a young lawyer and doing quite well, but then mini-men came along and all of a sudden there were hordes of fully-qualified mini-lawyers chasing the work that one used to do. So although they didn’t want to, they agreed to have him processed and pop out ten or twenty Leos, however many were needed to bring in as much money as before.
That went OK for a few years, I think: she treated her Leos as if they were still proper people – seems quite creepy now, but a lot of that went on in the early years. She even bought one of those devices that brings the pitch of their voices down so you can understand what they have to say. But of course, she’s surrounded by images of mini-men being smooshed, and punished and enslaved and all that… it must have been hard to come home and try to treat these squeaky little things with respect. I’m proud to say that I had a part in her eventual conversion, though. We were shopping together and we saw a pair of Asphyxiknicks – you know? Pairs of rubber panties with a thick but stretchy gusset, lined with a very strong rubber hem around the tops of the legs. They were all the rage a few years ago. I have a pair somewhere but I generally prefer the dildo – I like to feel something inside me. But I use them from time to time. Anyway, Amy saw them and she couldn’t tear her gaze away - she seemed fascinated – so I explained how they’re used.
She looked so confused – the dear, innocent thing! I remember her asking me “But how does he breathe?” and then looking horrified when I explained that not only can’t he breathe, the frantic writhing when he realises that he can't breathe is the whole point of them.
It took a bit of persuading, but we walked out with a pair of Asphyxiknicks in Amy’s shopping bag. She told me later how she’d dithered for days… she’d take them out of the drawer where they were hidden, feel the rubber, think about what it might feel like to have a little body pressed against her, writhing inside it, then quickly shove them back in the drawer with a guilty flush. Apparently, it was Leo himself who helped her overt the hurdle, silly little thing. He made his way into her panty drawer – and I wonder why he did that, the little pervert – and found them and asked her about them. Of course she didn’t give all the details – and she certainly didn’t tell him they were called 'Asphyxiknicks' which might have been a bit alarming for him – so he agreed to have a go. She pulled him out after just a few minutes, as she’d promised, his chest heaving. I understand that when he’d breathed heavily for at least five minutes solid, he told her he was OK with it. She, on the other hand, had stopped just at the point when it was getting interesting, so she went to bed feeling frustrated, her nerves jangling. Typical selfish male.
I won’t give you all the details, but let’s just say that Amy has learnt to use the Asphyxiknicks in the manner for which they were designed and Leo’s wishes on the subject don’t get much of a look in. It turns out that she can only really reach sexual fulfillment when the wriggling stops – when little Leo, down there, departs this mortal coil. The first time she got there was by accident – she’d forgotten to set the timer on her phone – but after that, she was hooked. She was conflicted, poor thing, because she did still have tender feelings for Leo, but she had her own happiness to think of too. She kept the little secret hidden from her existing Leos at first, the dear sweet angel that she is.
Of course, every mini-man that’s popped out remembers nothing later than when his original body was processed. So Leo – the latest mini-Leo – pops out feeling as if he is the only Leo in existence, having last seen his loving wife bravely smiling at him through the tears as the lid closes on him in the processing unit. Expecting to emerge – small but still respected by his wife and society – into a world in which he will work as a lawyer, enjoy high-quality but microscopic quantities of the finest food and drink and generally live as before, if rather smaller. Instead of which, this Amy plucks his naked body out the delivery tray and plonks him down into a high-sided glass container by her bed, then goes around the room lighting scented candles. Soft music plays and there is a glass of full-bodied red wine standing next to the glass container, which must look odd to the newly-diminished Leo, as it is almost exactly his height. While lying on the bed… a pair of black rubber knickers.
Does Leo feel an ominous sense of trouble when he sees those? Does he think about what that rounded gusset might be built to contain and does he work out the meaning of the thicker hems that hold the leg-holes tight – airtight in fact – when the legs are worn? If he does, I expect he starts squeaking in concern, then panic. He probably scrabbles at the high glass of the container, perhaps bangs on it as hard as his little fists can bang. It will do him no good. Soon Amy removes her clothes, climbs up onto the bed and pulls the rubber knickers halfway up. She reaches over to the bedside table and Leo shrieks in hysterical fear – then subsides when he sees her fingers close around the stem of her wineglass. Then has hardly time to scream again when 20 seconds later, the hand that replaces the wine glass on the table reaches in, grabs him and lifts his desperately struggling body into the air. He has just time for a quick glimpse of her giant face, lips pursed in anticipation, before he is shoved firmly into the welcoming rubber and finds himself swiftly jerked up as she lifts her buttocks and pulls up from the waist – affording Leo a last glimpse of light before the hem seals the boundary between rubber and flesh and with it seals Leo’s fate.
Ours is the luckiest generation, I often think. Not only do we have the mini-men to enjoy; they are first generation of mini-men and they are often comically – blissfully – unaware of their positions. Later generations will only have mini-men who know full well what awaits them and will perhaps be resigned to lives that are unpleasant, painful and – like them – short. The ladies of that far-off day will still have fun and live lives of ease, of course, but they will never know the joy of watching a little face screw up in terror or disbelief at what is in front of him. Successful men, confident in their citizenship and their positions when they went into the processor emerge to find themselves… what? In a plastic box, equipped only with miniaturised computer terminal, exercise wheel, feeding tray and a sawdust-strewn floor: one of 50,000 workers in a purpose-built facility powering the service-based economy? Gasping in exhaustion on a miniaturised bicycle, to power a fan blowing cool air over their lady, on a hot day? Chained together, as a novelty bra, limb joints stretching and cracking under the weight of the flesh it’s their job to support? Or just alone inside an otherwise empty cardboard box, jolting as they’re carried along to the sound of excited girlish laughter, to whatever might await.
They do say it’s the little things that make life worth living. They’re right.
Illustrations, once again, courtesy of NKS Volkov.
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