In the beginning, dust motes drift gently in the light. Later, they seem to feel their own way, scattering to the four winds. Word by word, sentence by sentence, the words that form the worlds settle into their forms, turning into sounds which are in turn heard as stories.

There is darkness, and there is light. “Okay, let’s just start the story here,” a voice booms out of the darkness.  “In this world, there is a limited amount of food, and it’s unequally distributed among the population. The more people eat, the taller they grow, with no upper limit. On the other hand, the hungrier they get, the smaller they shrink, becoming slower and weaker but not to the point of starving to death—they only get smaller and smaller. Some will shrink so much that they are virtually invisible, neither of much use nor causing much trouble, while others will be as tall as a mountain range, able to change the world simply by taking a single step.” The rich man leaned over his son, who was tucked in bed ready to hear his bedtime story. Today’s story will be extra special.

“But I’ve never seen anyone bigger than you or smaller than me,” said the little boy.

“That’s because you’ve been living on our estate; the servants and I are maintained at this size to be optimized for you, and your toys are designed to fit you. You will understand it better, as you get older, and as you see more and more other people who are different sizes.” The rich man took the eight-tone music box in his son’s hand and twisted the spring to make it play a crisp little tune.

The little boy touched his father’s beard as if he was tending a forest. “Will you grow to be very big?”

The rich man smiled slyly. “Daddy must go into the world of the big people, in order to do big things.”

The little boy bristled. “Will I also grow bigger and bigger?” he asked again.

“Yes, you’ll grow up fast and catch up with Daddy.”

The little boy looked up into his father’s face, reluctant to grow up himself, and also unwilling to let go of his father.

“So, do you want to hear stories of the big people or stories of the little people?” The rich man patted a thick new storybook.

“I want to hear… the stories of the little people.”

“There are not many little people’s stories… or maybe most of their stories don’t make it to us. The stories of the big people are somewhat monotonous. I think I can find a few—”

“I’ve changed my mind! I want to hear stories that are about both big and little people at the same time.” The little boy yelled as he flopped on the bed.

The rich man creased his brow, one side of his mouth hiding a smile as he flipped through the table of contents of the storybook deliberately. “I’m going to have to do an extra special search to find what you want,” he said.

In this world that expands without end,

some are like pillars that hold up the sky,

while others disappear like dust at the turn of a heel.

-Yin Song, the wandering bard that drifts like a cloud,

from The Distance between the Worlds (three inch edition)

The reporter was what people call a typical, average man—average size, average income, and he ate average food, like a nail hammered firmly into the middle of his class. His skin was tanned from years of work in the field as an investigative reporter, making him look like an explorer. But he had nothing to do with things like adventure. In fact, he wouldn’t touch adventure with a ten-foot pole, just as he would never set one foot out of the realm of the average. He thought of this as the “wisdom of the average worldview,” considering it the ace up his sleeve in doing well among the average. Currently, he looked at the man in front of him who seemed to be trying to lure him off his comfortable track in life. He had to figure out how to get rid of him.

The interlocutor sat down across from the reporter at the restaurant, a frequent haunt of average people, and ordered the largest portion of beef and potatoes allowed for average people. The visitor was an average-sized man, just like the reporter, though slightly older. He was in good spirits, with shiny white hair and a slightly hunched back, wearing a custom-made suit. In the greasy, run-down restaurant, he looked out of place. The man claimed to be a supervisor working for a famous billionaire tycoon.

“A lot of Mr. Forbes’s business involves average men, so he asked me to stop at this size,” said the supervisor, by way of explanation, politely taking off his hat and placing it on the corner of the table. After offering this explanation, he spoke again. “Actually, I kind of want to look at the other scales as well.”

Even if the supervisor had not told him how he came to be this size, the reporter would not have pegged him as a liar. In the reporter’s professional estimation, this visitor had the temperament and bearing of someone who was not just an average man, but which qualified him to go to larger scales, though not the smaller ones.

The reporter listened patiently to the supervisor. He had to admit that the assignment would be an interesting one, but his interest was like someone who stood in a corner and listened, waiting for a moment to cut off the conversation cleanly, but only after his curiosity was satisfied.

The supervisor was just about to explain the commission when the reporter interrupted him.

“If you know me, Your Excellency,” said the reporter, pushing his empty plate away, as though rejecting the commission and their conversation in the same gesture—”no, no, if you know average men,” he said, sweeping his gaze over the diners who came and went like pilgrims, “you’d know no one would agree to shrink down to become any smaller. It’s not about the money.”

“I understand. Mr. Forbes would not have asked me to come to you if he hadn’t been desperate. He feels that your talent is his very last hope.”

What could the reporter say? He should be gratified, flattered. But no matter what the supervisor said, the reporter could not risk so much for the sake of giving the big man hope. Who would have thought that something that could make one of the world’s most enormous Titans fret would fall to someone like him, someone as tiny as a mote of dust that could be killed with the flick of a hand? The reporter stood up, half-turned away from his visitor and picked up his leather notebook.

The supervisor’s eyelids lowered, his eyes full of sadness. “I implore you to reconsider, for the sake of a father who has lost his child, for the sake of the young master…” His voice cracked. “Mr. Forbes certainly understands the value of this assignment, so he is willing to spare you from the fear of becoming smaller, forever.”

As if his muscles had minds of their own, the reporter turned back around. “What?”

“After the deed is done, Mr. Forbes will guarantee you enough food to stay in the average man’s world for the duration of the Forbes Group’s existence.”

The deal was not essentially different from being offered cash, but the way the conditions were put was irresistible. To the reporter, it was like a dream come true.

In a trance, he agreed. And so, the supervisor happily sauntered out of the restaurant and went back to report to his boss, leaving a good half of his enormous plate of food on the table uneaten. Within moments, the reporter had consumed the whole lot.

The mysterious thing is that when the fear that dwells in the heart is dispelled, often compassion can be found in its place. The reporter was curious to know what was happening in the mind of the rich young master who, on the day he came of age, had decided to go on a hunger strike to become smaller.

He guessed that it was not a spontaneous decision made by the young man, but something that had been building up for a while. So he asked to examine the young man’s rooms, for the rooms of one’s childhood and youth are often where the most clues to a psychological mystery are hidden.

The tycoon immediately agreed and asked the supervisor to take the reporter on a tour of the young master’s room.

The room was located in a large estate on the outskirts of the city. It was said that in order to ensure the absolute safety of the young master’s birth, the tycoon’s family at the time, along with their servants, had all shrunk down to average size.

The reporter walked around the room, which was spacious for an average person, and looked down. He could sense how well-loved and protected the young master had been, by the world he saw around him. In the room, he saw boxes of building blocks, handmade custom figurines, posters lining the bedroom walls, photos on his desk, storybooks in his bookcase, drawing books filled with his sketches of big people and little people, and an exquisite violin.

After going through these one by one, the reporter pulled open the middle desk drawer and picked up a shiny music box that had been obviously handled so often that much of the paint had flaked off. It seemed to exude an exquisite luster from use. He gave the key a twist and the music box emitted a bright, crisp sound, as though waking up everything in the room.

“The young master’s favorite toy as a child,” said the supervisor.

The reporter closed his notebook and walked over to the door. A line which had tracked the boy’s ever-increasing height was drawn on the side of the door. The highest mark was already almost as tall as the reporter. It conjured in the reporter’s mind a thriving, rebellious, sensitive teenager who harbored a secret.

“The highest mark is still far from the greatest height the young master attained. The young master could have grown to be as tall as his old man.”

The supervisor sighed.

To grow is a slow, cumulative process. However, to shrink is something that can happen in a flash. To catch up with the young master, the reporter had to work against time. So he started dieting. When hunger strikes, the body shrinks to reduce energy consumption, and it was almost as though he could hear his body sucking into itself.

The reporter went to a watch store and handed the watchmaker an old brass pocket watch.

“Is it not keeping time well?” The watchmaker put on a magnifying glass and took a look at the watch. “It’s a family heirloom, right?”

“No, it’s working just fine, both in the old days when time was slow and now when it’s as fast as a dog’s paw. It has always done its job,” the reporter replied. He propped his elbows on the counter and said, “I’d like to ask you to take it apart and put it back together without screws. I want to take it with me.”

“Why do you… ah…” the watchmaker seemed to bite back his opinion.

He buried his head in the delicate tools to dismantle the pocket watch, in deep concentration. The parts, so small as to be almost invisible, were all placed precisely, shining and waiting to be restored. After a while, he handed the pocket watch back to the reporter.

“You have to be very careful,” the watchmaker said as he handled the pocket watch gingerly.

The reporter pulled out a handkerchief, caught the pocket watch, and wrapped it with care. Now the pocket watch was no longer moving.

The watchmaker lifted his eyes to the reporter. They were filled with sadness. “I hope I will get to see it again.”

The reporter nodded.

The sun went down, and came up again, casting streams of light onto the bedroom window.

Every day the reporter woke up, the bed got a size bigger, which seemed to be a good thing, but on the other hand, the clothes and shoes got too big for him to wear. Fortunately, the tycoon had paid him a large sum of money in advance so that he would not look like a between-sizes vagabond wearing a pair of straw shoes and rags. The reporter had also hired a housekeeper to take care of the house, as well as to look after the house in his absence. The various clothes and shoes he’d shed were neatly arranged inside the cupboard, from big to small, so that he could one day put them back on from small to big again.

He had never shrunk before, so he faced the task with great apprehension. Even during the great famine four years ago he had organized his stock of food with precision, and had successfully avoided shrinking throughout the whole Depression. Some of the people he’d known had gotten smaller and smaller, and had never come back. He often tried to imagine how those people lived in an even smaller world. Now, finally, he would have the chance to walk in their shoes himself.

In addition to the daily inconveniences caused by shrinking, the thing that bothered him most was that he had become so weak that even the housekeeper was now twice as tall as he and could easily lift him up. The world grew stranger and stranger. He started to feel paranoid and found it difficult to trust this world, as even his own home began to feel foreign to him. He felt as though he were still exactly the same, only that the world around him was being secretly replaced night after night.

When he was a child, his family had a tent made of oilcloth which his father had acquired from a yard sale, and it had become like a little castle that he and his cat had loved to hide in. One day, his mom and dad had decided to take the tent and sell it, telling him that it had once been used to shroud a witch who was shaped like a piece of driftwood, and that this made it cursed. A part of him had known his parents were lying, but another part simply could not get this story out of his head, so he’d no longer dared to look directly into the darkness of the curtain of that tent. He’d watched that safe haven become unfamiliar and had wondered what had robbed him of his familiarity with the world.

In the same way, the cabinets in his home soared to the ceiling, the top of which became a foreign place in his home that was beyond his own reach. He stared at it longingly when he got up. He was startled by the puppy that suddenly pounced on him. The puppy licked his face with such glee that his tongue almost wrapped around his face. Heavens, he thought, when did Iggy get so big? Animals don’t change size as much as people do, and yet now he could no longer hold Iggy’s armpits to lift him up to his face. He took Iggy with him and went out.

In the streets of the city, Iggy became his guide and brought him a sense of security. He was like a lion, always walking beside him, rubbing his fur against the rough city. Their friendship grew into something even more wonderful.

A rich young man who has never been out and about in the city before always leaves some traces when he tries to escape, and finding such traces was the reporter’s specialty. In the evening, the reporter and Iggy arrived at an abandoned port in the city. The evening sun was spread far out to sea, and the rusty crane tower stood as silent as a mute witness by the dike. There were always people coming to this old relic in search of a new world, a second chance.

The sea breeze was chilly. A few grayish people clustered together, waiting for an iron-hulled boat. One could hear the fantastic descriptions of their dream destination, their imaginary new world, issuing from their mouths. On a normal day, the reporter would have been objective enough to see these as delusions. But now, he was drawn to the group, huddling in the warmth of these imaginings. They were waiting for night to fall.

Most of the time, these grayish people are called “those people,” and sometimes, even “sub-average people.” The size of the sub-average man is half to one-third the size of the average man. Those who could not maintain a balance of food and income chose to temporarily reduce their size and use their savings to survive, while others had already gone bankrupt and had to find another way to live. Either way, they were pariahs from their original workplaces and social circles.

The owner of the boat, who was a good head taller than everyone in the crowd, came over with a large metal pole, and yelled for everyone to get on board. People walked onto the boat like penguins.

“Dogs have to buy tickets too,” said the boat owner, stopping the reporter.

The reporter nodded.

The crowd was herded into the galley under the boat’s deck. Fifty or sixty sub-average people were somehow packed into the modest-looking fishing boat, like some kind of perverse magic trick. The reporter exhaled as he was pushed into a corner by the rank crowd. Sneaking uptown like this was never a good idea, but this had never stopped the constant stream of the desperate who tried anyway. It’s just like the rumors, passed from mouth to mouth, of the legendary gods of heaven, whose riches are so great even the scraps they leave behind were enough to create a paradise.

The motor started and the boat left in the night.

The reporter had purchased a ticket that allowed him to stay above deck. It took being on deck with the sea breeze to clear his head and remember what the purpose of his trip was.

“You’re not like the others. What’s the likes of you doing over here?” the boat owner was quick to ask the reporter in a rough, raspy voice.

“I’m looking for a man who was rumored to have taken your boat.”

“A manhunt, eh?” The boat owner laughed. “Must be an important chap, huh?”

“Important to my employer.”

“You’re a private detective? How much they payin’ you to do this?”

Instead of replying, the reporter flicked him a copper coin. “A rich young man, thin, brown hair, probably carrying a big bag—”

“I remember him,” the boat owner interrupted. “He took my boat two months ago. Oh yes, going in this very direction.” The boat owner narrowed one eye to look into the distance.

“Did he say specifically where he was going?”

“Ah yes, we exchanged some words, but this old man would have to rack me brains to remember any more...”

The reporter tossed him another copper coin.

“He went to a smaller world,” the boat owner continued. “Well, he didn’t say so in so many words, but he did ask some questions, and I’m pretty sure he was going to an original reservation set apart for little people.”

“Did he give any reasons?”

“I don’t understand it either. I’ve heard that uptown, the native little people are hostile to newcomers. They see newcomers as pests coming to take up their resources. He must be crazy to want to go to a place like that.”

“Yeah, I’m crazy too.”

Just that second, a pillar of light swept over from across the sea.

“Get down!” the boat owner shouted. He covered the reporter and his dog under the oilcloth. It reminded the reporter of the flimsy tent from his childhood, and he held his breath in fear.

After the patrol boat had motored past, the boat owner lifted the oilcloth. “You won’t find him. Once a man shrinks down small, he’s like salt sprinkled into the sea.”

“Who knows?” The reporter looked out at the ink-dark sea, so continuous with the city in the distance that he couldn’t tell where the coast was.

They had been drifting for some time. Finally, they approached the uptown region.

The difference in the buildings was immediately apparent. In the middle of the city, super skyscrapers rose straight through to the clouds, with wide lifting platforms and special lanes, like legendary Towers of Babel. They were the palaces of the gods of heaven. However, here, regular skyscrapers were like old trees in the forest arching over the temple, passed down from generation to generation. Filling in the gaps were numerous ordinary tall buildings, like shrubs and grasses in the forest, the dwellings of average men who provided services to the city. And even lower, beneath these, was the subterranean world of lichen mosses, unseen and unheeded by anyone.

“You know what?” said the boat owner, looking over the uptown cityscape twinkling in the night, “For so many years, I’ve been nailed to this boat like a peg. I’m tired of seeing the same transients, tired of walking this route, I thought anyone who came my way, who took this route, was trash. They had only fear; they had no courage. But that young master was different, and you are different.”

The reporter felt a little ashamed. “The job of a vagabond smuggler is unusual, too,” he said.

“It was just the living I inherited from my father, if that makes sense. I wanted to go over and find another livelihood, but…” He shrugged.

“Night looks beautiful from a distance. Perhaps, from a distance, this looks good, too,” said the reporter.

The boat owner took one of the copper coins given him by the reporter, and flung it hard into the sea. It made a tiny splash in the water.

“Why?” the reporter asked.

“For a split second, I imagined myself as someone who had the guts to jump outside myself.”

The boat docked, and the boat owner raised the dividing bar. The remaining coin the reporter had given him was clenched between his teeth. “Because you gave me this, I will leave you with one last warning: if you can, stop now. Don’t think there is a way back to where you were before. Just look at this city: most of the world’s resources and food are possessed by the giants and the big men, whereas the average men can buy a portion of it in order to fight over who gets to produce the world’s wealth. Anyone below average, anyone who’s any smaller, simply doesn’t exist.”

“Thank you for your warning.” The reporter gathered up his coat, tugging his dog along by his leash.

“For the sake of the other coin, I hope you will find the young master and come back to tell me your story. If you do that, I’ll return the coin to you.”

The reporter bowed slightly in reply.

The boat owner gestured to his workers to lift the beams of the deck. The black shadows of the stowaways poured out, their cheers on seeing the city raised in hushed voices. Walking down a narrow plank, they came ashore beside an enormous ditch. The crowd quickly subsumed the reporter as it flowed towards the city.

Through the gaps in the crowd, the boat owner’s last lament reached his ears. “Alas, people come, but they never return. Look, I’ve become the ferryman of the River Styx.”

By this point, the worm’s head of the procession of stowaways had reached the shadowy back-end of the city.

The reporter checked in for a short term stay at an underground hotel for sub-average people, in order to prepare to go down one more scale. The hotel was called the Drifter’s House. It could be reached through the back entrance of a dingy restaurant, which led to several warehouses which were divided into tiny, hive-like rooms stacked in three layers and filled with all kinds of people. Although it was not easy, these sub-average people could still sometimes find work, some jobs which did not require the operation of large equipment, and some families who were willing to hire sub-average people as servants. The lucky ones could even use their skills to find a decent office job.

The reporter became increasingly reluctant to go out, feeling the constraints his size put on him, as everyday goods and public facilities were becoming less and less amenable to his diminishing self. He felt frustrated and abandoned, and these feelings which haunted him sapped his motivation and mobility. Every day the back kitchen of the hotel would smuggle out some leftovers and sell them to the tenants at a fairly cheap price. The reporter could only ask for a spoon as big as a spatula to eat with, but the plate and its contents were not proportionate to the spoon, and the first time he ate he was overwhelmed by how strange the cutlery was.

There was a jobless man who lived in the room opposite the reporter’s. His face was always red, the kind of bloodshot color that comes from over-exertion and being exhausted all the time. Every day, the only time the man’s room door opened a crack was when the hawker’s food cart rolled through the hallway. He only had enough money to buy a little food. His fingernails were black and so were his fingers. Sometimes he just looked and didn’t buy any food.

The reporter tried to look into his bloodshot eyes, but the man’s gaze would shrink back in panic as soon as he made eye contact with anyone. Usually, the focus of his gaze burned only a few inches away from the reporter, like a spontaneous ball of flame consuming itself. The reporter stretched his head up a few times to look into the man’s cubicle, and saw that it was cold and bare, empty apart from an old book and a few outdated newspapers. In addition, it seemed that all this man did every day was lie on that bed, staring at the ceiling and doing nothing, living on an ever-diminishing supply of fantasy, gradually fading and shrinking like air-dried foam. The reporter tried to walk as casually as possible a little further into the room, but the man had already returned and shut the door.

And so once again the door closed with a sigh. To the reporter, the man was the sort of layabout who was so far beyond help that even his sighs had to be made by his door rather than his lazy self. It was as though he were sitting in a car rolling off a cliff, but too lazy to grab hold of the steering wheel to prevent disaster. At this point, the reporter thought he himself had gone all the way to the edge of the cliff, and that he should retreat before falling off.

One night, the man finally reached rock bottom. When he had shrunk down to the height of an ordinary bench, the reporter spotted him dragging his few belongings out of the hotel, like a flame about to sputter out and disappear into the night.

The reporter snapped his curtains shut, and slapped himself hard in the face.

He took stock of his belongings. Even his leather-covered notebooks were now too large for him to use, and there were many other small items which he needed but which no factory would produce for someone of his size. And so the reporter had to make homemade versions, or exchange precious gold or silver on the black market for them. The reporter got a small leather bag from a tanner, and turned it into saddlebags for Iggy. Riding Iggy like a horse, he continued his investigations, making his observations on a piece of tinfoil using a tiny engraving knife, just in case he needed them for later.

One day, after returning from his investigations, the reporter took the pocket watch apart and carefully removed the pocket watch mechanism. It was as if the heart, with its bare gears, were still beating, cutting time into identical, equal parts. He cut the handkerchief into two and wrapped half around the mechanism, and the other half he used to wrap the rest of the pocket watch, which he tucked under the bed.

He had uncovered a few leads from his inquiries. The dangerous zone originally set aside for little people was almost forbidden to outsiders, but from studying city maps and hiring people to do research at City Hall, he’d found out about certain liminal places—such as the garbage disposal site in a certain urban area. This was the hotspot for gathering second-hand resources in the city. He circled them in red on his map. There were two such places next to the uptown area, each far from the center of the city, so that one had to go on a significant walk out of one’s way in order to get to either place.

In the morning, when the reporter woke up and climbed on the back of a chair to wash his face, he accidentally fell into the sink and found himself taking a bath. He tried to peer at himself in the mirror and could barely see his head. He had shrunk down so much that he was now only the size his palm had been when he’d first started out. Now he was technically a little person. There were two height lines at the entrance of the hotel, strictly demarcating the height requirements for entry and for patrons, and he was already below the shortest line. Even if he tipped the hotel manager heavily, he wouldn’t be able to stay much longer.

The hotel manager told him that in the world of little people, there was no such thing as a hotel where you pay to stay, because relationships built by trust were more important than markets for goods or services. It was a far more fragile and precarious world than he’d imagined.

The reporter managed to make a phone call, in order to summon his housekeeper and get her to take back the luggage he couldn’t carry. The housekeeper was surprised at the size her employer had shrunk to, and it was with great difficulty that she forced herself to speak respectfully to the little man.

The reporter also had to say goodbye to Iggy. He was about to go to an even smaller world, and it would be difficult to maintain the relationship between himself and Iggy any longer. Iggy would be taken care of at home by his housekeeper.

Clutching a quill, the reporter signed a big check to his housekeeper, signing over a large advance which would last for years to pay her salary. He ended up hugging Iggy, now a big furry beast, tearfully. Iggy licked him up and down with his broad tongue as if he had never noticed his change in size at all.

The housekeeper carried Iggy to a cab, and the reporter dried his wet hair and went back to the hotel to pack the rest of his luggage.

Walking across to his former neighbor’s room, the reporter saw that the cleaner had just left. The door was shut, and the room had yet to be rented out to someone else. The reporter pushed the door open to look into the dimly lit room when no one was around, and for a moment he couldn’t believe his eyes.

The walls were covered with poetry.

It was as though the whole room were illuminated. The reporter couldn’t find the words to describe it. The poetry was rich and deep, burning, flowing silently, trembling, refracting, dissipating, slender, enormous, lilting and haunting.

The reporter’s hand trembled with shock. He felt ashamed that he had judged his neighbor rashly, because he had not seen enough. The beautiful verses, left behind with no comment, stung his pride like a piercing light. He slapped himself hard.

He stood in that room for a long time. It was already dark when he left the hotel. When he looked back, all the occupants were buried in darkness in this unassuming hotel. He reminded himself his task was to observe even more. In the darkness of nights like these, countless times from now, he would often remember the man who had sung his swansong in a car rolling off a cliff.

At midnight, the reporter slept under a bench in a public park, moving a pile of leaves to use as a blanket. The place didn’t look safe, with the frightening sound of cars whooshing by on the street and the rustling of rats in the flower beds. He missed Iggy’s fluffy, warm tummy. He could see no homeless people in the park. But perhaps they were there, thought the reporter, tucked into unseen corners like his own, so invisible as to seem non-existent.

Had the young master been through days and nights like this too? From a giant that no one could ignore, he had shrunk himself down, starved himself paper-thin and disappeared from the world. What exactly had he done it for? These huge, haunting questions hung over the reporter as he contemplated the foreign sky on this moonless night.

In the morning, the sunlight woke the reporter through the gaps in the bench. He stretched lazily under the leaves to wake himself up, and opened his eyes to see a huge butt sitting above his head. Around him, several little people were climbing up the same bench along the black iron frame. Sitting on the bench was a woman. A little person climbed onto the bench, tiptoed over to the woman’s satchel, pulled out a small shiny object from it and handed it to another little person.

The reporter picked up a stone on the side of the road and smashed it against the bench. “Pop!” went the stone, and the woman looked down in shock. The little people dropped their things and fled, and the woman screamed and cursed at them, slapping them with her satchel, although they were already far away from it. A little man ran out of the bushes, hit the reporter with a decisive blow, and dragged him away.

A basin of cold water was flung over his unconscious body. When he opened his eyes again, a group of little people were glaring down at him viciously.

In the underworld of the little people, there is no rule of law, since those who enforce the law want nothing to do with them.

These little people were only the size of an average man’s thumb, and the reporter was a head taller than them, but it was no use. He was tied to a stake by his hands in the middle of a spacious yard, and whether he chose one direction or another to run, either would take too much time. It looked like an abandoned construction site, as there were tall walls in the distance and no sign of human habitation, everything covered with the thick growth of weeds. The yard itself was covered by the tall grasses growing around it, so it would be difficult to find him without deliberately parting the wild grasses and searching. It was built around a circle of basic shacks, surrounded by a variety of rusty items, including an old barbecue grill and a platform that was being used to dry clothes and food. The reporter also saw a simple basketball court, a huge old open-air movie projector, a medical room, handmade wheelchairs, and carefully-constructed walkways in this little world.

Another group of little people were coming back with their trophies, clanking and dumping things in the yard: coins, earrings, pens, keychains.

Someone said, “The boss is here.”

The crowd moved out of the way. A woman dressed in leather came out of one of the innermost rooms. She was as short as everyone else, but had a pair of sunglasses on her face, a red bandana tied around her forehead, and a gait like that of a majestic leopard.

The chief was facing the direction of the reporter, but not looking at him. “I heard that you broke into our territory and spoiled our good work.” Her voice had a frightening, powerful quality.

“I didn’t know stealing was a good thing. It’s a little different where I come from,” the reporter said.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the leopard, the animal that eats people… but it seems to me to be a very beautiful animal,” the chief tilted her head slightly, her sunglasses reflecting a streak of gray.

“I’ve seen one. Unfortunately, it was in a rich man’s cage.”

The chief smiled faintly. “Precisely. We are the ones who rescue valuables from the rich.”

“Then I’m not your enemy. Untie me, and I’d love to hear about your heroics,” said the reporter, tugging at his restraints.

“You don’t look poor, but at least you have to work for the rich,” said the chief, her voice turning cold.

The reporter remembered that they had taken his luggage. “Yes, I was hired by someone,” he admitted.

“In our territory, it doesn’t pay to make rich people even richer and fatter.”

“I’m not helping to make anyone richer… all I’m doing is helping a rich man find his lost young son.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” said the chief, and approached the reporter. “I don’t like convincing people, myself.”

She took two steps closer, while drawing a delicate silver dagger that glittered before her. The flash of silver nailed the stake in a split-second, and the chief pirouetted away again. The reporter broke the rope himself and picked up the dagger. The chief’s gang stared intently at the dagger in the reporter’s hand.

“We are a tribe of thieves, a big family of sorts, who make a living doing things you’d be ashamed to do,” said the chief. She turned back around. “Who is the most important person to you?”

“The person who used to matter most is gone, and now the person who matters most to me is a dog.”

“What’s its name?”

“Iggy.”

“Good. I want you to understand that each and every one of the members of my tribe is as important to you as Iggy. You must swear on Iggy’s life that you will not betray a single scrap of information about us.”

One of the gangsters yelled at this, “What’s an oath on a dog? You can’t trust him.”

The chief turned to the man and put her hand on her sunglasses. The man fell silent immediately.

The chief dropped her hand again and said to the reporter, “I believe you. If you lie I will cut your throat immediately.”

The reporter thought for a moment, shook his head and said, “I can’t swear on Iggy’s life.”

The chief pulled out a cane from out of nowhere, pointed it at the reporter blindingly fast, and then knocked the dagger he had in hand into the sky. The dagger spun and plunged back down to the ground. “Lock him up,” she said to her companions.

The reporter was put in a room. At night, he saw members of the tribe dancing around a fire in the courtyard. The chief called for food and a cup of wine to be brought to him. “A day to celebrate the reduced harvest,” said the one who brought the food.

I’m going to die here, the reporter thought to himself, and no one will even know. Average-sized people have their possessions stolen and reported to the police, but I, a human being, have gone missing, and no one will even bother. The reporter didn’t eat the food, only drinking every last drop of his wine. Even though he might die here, he had to follow the plan he had laid down for his work. Surprisingly, the stolen wine was actually pretty good! Who would have thought?  If they locked him up for two months, he could disappear right under their noses by deciding not to eat.

The next day, the reporter woke up to a cacophony of panicked screaming. Everyone was gathered in the courtyard. The ground quaked and vibrated wildly, as if something enormous was pounding on it.

“An average-sized child is tearing up our road!” someone shouted his report. After a while, another report came: “He took one of our men and put him in a glass jar!”

The chief stood before them and ordered everyone to take up arms. Those carrying spears were in front, while archers lined up with their quivers on their backs behind them, and the catapults made up the rear, edging forward.

“Don’t do that!” the reporter shouted to the chief. “I’ve met children like that, they compete with each other to keep the best little people in glass bottles, and make little people fight each other to the death. They are both playful and sadistic. You will be tortured and killed!”

“We won’t leave anyone behind,” the chief said with ice in her voice. She picked up an iron bar, cracked the lock on the reporter’s door, and walked out with her warriors.

Sounds of vicious hand-to-hand combat drifted toward the reporter from outside. Seizing the moment while the little people were distracted, the reporter jumped the fence, then crept away through the tall grass to freedom, hunching over like a cat. But he took a few steps, and, thinking better of running away, stood up straight again and found himself returning to the tribe.

On the battlefield outside, the invading child was like a giant of immense proportions, blocking out the sun and trampling little people left and right into slabs of meat with the casual kick of its legs. The warriors’ catapults hurled lime bombs at the child. When this caused the child to shield its face with its hand, the warriors seized the moment to launch the next wave of attacks.

The child fought back angrily, thrashing the ground with a branch and picking up rocks to smash the little people. The reporter saw the child had a number of contraptions for capturing insects strapped to his outfit. When the child stretched out a butterfly net to capture a little person, the archers fired their arrows in unison to defend him. Meanwhile, the chief reminded everyone to duck, and reload their ammunition after each round of arrows shot.

The child grew frantic and began to scream.

“No!” yelled the reporter.

The child kicked the stones on the ground in anger, sending them flying indiscriminately. The rocks hit like arrows of water in a rainstorm.

A stone flew at the chief. She was in its way but failed to dodge in time. The reporter lunged at her, rolling out of the way just in time with the chief in his arms. The stone hit the ground and bounced away.

“Wow, you really didn’t see that coming,” the reporter remarked.

The chief brushed herself off, and resumed her command. “Pick up a stone and attack!”

The warriors carried the stones to the catapults. One group managed to gain command of a lookout point, and erected a mirror. A patch of sunlight was reflected straight into the child’s face, causing the child to freeze. Stones flew at the giant child, like rain.

What sounded like a giant incisor chipping resounded over the battlefield. The child threw down the glass jar and the butterfly net and ran away crying.

In the courtyard, the warriors dragged back the corpses of their two comrades. They were cheering at the same time.

The reporter climbed up to the watchtower in the yard, propped his elbows on the railing, and buried his head in his palms.

The chief came up behind him. “Thank you,” she said.

“I don’t know if this is a victory, or…” the reporter said, looking down at the bloody yard.

“We rescued our comrade and beat the little bastard to tears.” The chief was talking as though she had returned from a great victory.

“Was it worth it, to lose two men?”

“Yes, we lost two men, but we didn’t cry. The two men who died in battle were true warriors,” said the chief. She gave him a serious look. “There is always something valuable that has to be sacrificed to make things even.”

The chief picked up the bow and arrows she had with her and faced the sun on the horizon. She drew the bow steadily to full strength, and let an arrow fly. The arrow flew out of the light and arced towards a certain direction in the city. She looked in that direction, and though she could not see it, she knew it was there. The reporter looked yonder at the Forbes Industries building, which stood gleaming in the center of the city.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” the reporter said.

The chief interrupted him. “We don’t need your pity. The tribe’s location has been revealed, it is no longer safe here, and we will be evacuating soon. You can leave now.”

“It seems there is little point in talking about this now, but I will keep your secret.”

The chief took off her sunglasses, and there seemed to be a glow in her misty-white eyes. “I had a dog once, Karsha. She was a guide dog.” She raised her head toward the sun and looked into the past, past what any sighted person could see.

The reporter felt something glowing in his chest a growing sense of admiration for this person, whose blindness only gave her courage, a courage that enabled her to look directly at both the sun, as well as the darkness without fear.

The chief continued, “Karsha took care of me more than I took care of her. When I had shrunk down so small that we could no longer care for each other, I left her and my home. Life out here would change everything. Some of the people who tried to kill me later became my allies. At first we just salvaged broken or second-hand things, then we started to take the initiative and take things for ourselves. Whenever we were hunted, we would flee to an even smaller world. Those were the most wretched of days.”

The chief laughed. “We were chased and beaten by fly swatters until our arms and legs fell off, flushed down the drain with hoses, dragged away in our sleep by rats. As little people, public utilities or facilities don’t cover us at all. Our society is outside the economy of the normal world. The police and the courts don’t care, and a blind person like myself should never have survived as long as I have. Instead, I chose to become even more vicious. Later, we decided to make our home here and defend it. I used the resources I scavenged to build a road suitable for blind people for myself and a real village for the tribe, where everyone’s needs could be met as a matter of course. Now we’ll have to give it all up.”

“I hope you can rebuild your home,” said the reporter.

“We will. We swore we wouldn’t run away to an even smaller world again. You, on the other hand, seem to have reasons I can’t understand for moving on to just such a world.”

“I don’t fully understand it either, but today, for the first time in some time, I seem to have gained some clarity. Maybe one day I’ll find the answer. Perhaps you and I were once quite alike.”

The tribesmen were busy packing up their things. The chief told the reporter to wait. She left for a moment and returned, bringing the reporter’s luggage.

“I heard a rumor that the little people’s pawnshop on Fallingleaf Street has gained possession of a precious gem that even we couldn’t get our hands on. I thought this information may interest you.” The chief handed the tin foil notes back to the reporter. “What a pity I can’t read the story you wrote on these.”

The reporter thanked her and took the neatly folded tin foil, suddenly a little sad that the warmth of her body heat, which he could still feel on the neat stacks of tin, would dissipate soon. He said goodbye to the chief and left the tribe before they could change their mind.

At the pawnshop, the reporter saw how the gem took up the little pawnshop owner’s entire storage room. It had been taken from a necklace. The pawnshop owner was cutting the gem, in order to sell it off in smaller pieces. Even in the world of the little people, there are still some who want to have something shiny and constant. After all, it is hard to find something that lasts in the world of the small. The reporter paid the price of two gems for a small piece and put it in a wooden case. He made a call to his supervisor on a phone borrowed from his employer’s collection and said he wanted to hand in a report to the rich man.

This was the first time he’d met the rich man who employed him. The rich man lived in a valley far from the city. He lived there in an enormous dome, built between the canyons. It was a palace, and the wind from the valley whined in a haunting, hollow tone as it passed through it, as though it had been blowing for a hundred years. The reporter wondered whether he, too, could be forgotten, like a speck of dust, in this palace.

The supervisor took the reporter to a special meeting podium, which appeared like nothing more than a pencil-sized decoration on the meeting room table. Despite the reporter’s miniscule size, the rich man still emptied the entire parlor of servants out of courtesy.

The giant was too large for the reporter to see what he looked like. All he could see was what looked like the shadow of a mountain, crowding in. Every tiny movement of the rich man’s body, the sound of the fabric of his clothes rubbing together, the creaking of the sofa, the sound of his toes rubbing together, could fill the whole space.

This was one of the world’s largest Titans. How much do you have to eat to become so huge? What a long and ambitious project, the reporter thought to himself.

The sound of mechanical gears and bearings came from beneath his feet. A complex set of optical lenses rose up from the ground. There was a larger set on the rich man’s side, and another set in the middle of the two sets, which must be used when the rich man needed to connect with an average-sized man. The optical paths of the three sets of lenses were locked in sync. There was a display lens in front of each, as well as a microphone. Through the display lens, the reporter finally caught the barest glimpse of the rich man’s face. Unlike the spirited face which he was used to seeing in newspapers and on TV, the face he saw was haggard and lined with worry.

The rich man took the gem, peered through the microscope and identified it. “Yes, it is definitely the gem from his necklace,” he said. Although he had lowered his voice, the sounds he emitted still shook every item around them like they were being jostled by a low quake.

“Then you can rest assured for now,” the reporter said. “The pawnshop owner said the young master who sold it to him looked fine.”

“Well, do you still have enough money?”

“Yes, I have enough. The smaller the world I go to, the less money I need to spend—you don’t have to worry about the young master not having enough money to get around. If we shrink any smaller, whatever problems we meet won’t be problems that money can solve.”

“Don’t delay any longer. Go and find him, and I’ll thank you again when you return,” said the rich man. The reporter saw a huge blimp floating across the sky behind the rich man’s head.

“Yes, I’d better get a move on right away.” The reporter bowed. He wanted to leave this depressing place as soon as he could.

“By the way,” the rich man called after him, “don’t pay the housekeeper back home too much. You have to strike a balance: so that they are not too small, so small as to be useless, and not too big, so large as to start harboring ambitions. Not everyone is as loyal and dutiful as you are.”

The pawnshop owner had given the reporter the next clue: to look up a garbage disposal site on the northern outskirts of the city. This time of year, city taxis were reluctant to carry a little person, even if they were willing to pay. It was rare for a taxi driver to even have eyes sharp enough to spot a little person on the side of the road, or have good enough hearing to carry a conversation with one, so it was a very good thing his supervisor had helped the reporter book a taxi.

The reporter sat in the back seat of the taxi. It was difficult to maintain a dignified sitting position for him back there, with everything rolling around; it was like being tossed around in a moving basketball court. So he simply lay down on the leather surface of the chair and rolled with the shaking of the car.

The driver spoke frankly and in measured tones, but soon became tired of straining to hear the tiny squeaks coming from the reporter. Soon his speech turned into a monologue. Passing under the huge buildings, the reporter felt that the car had become a leaf at the foot of a tree, and he was but an aphid on the leaf. He looked desperately, but could not see the city as a whole.

Arriving at his destination, the driver glanced into the back seat and said, “It’s great that you’re still there. I was afraid you’d disappear.”

The world of the little people disappears rapidly to those of average size. Jumping out of the taxi, the reporter realized that he was truly alone, that there would be no one to find him, no one to support him, and that he would continue to disappear to those he met.

The garbage dump was called the Mountain of Dreams by the little people. The smell of urban decay clung to it, and to the north of it was the forest, where a different, miraculous smell mingled with the stench, giving the area the unmistakable scent of a strange, liminal space. It was said that those who walk up the Mountain of Dreams would be given a second life. Here was experience that was more vast than anything that most people have in a whole lifetime. The so-called civilized people of the city would probably find it unbelievable that this place of decay and discarded waste had become an oasis for survivors—for humanity’s flourishing.

Walking down a path hidden in the overgrown jungle, one encountered a village built out of garbage. Many villages, towns and settlements of little people had formed around the Mountain of Dreams. Some were closed and savage, hostile to outsiders. Some had just undergone a vicious siege and were now occupied by new owners.

The settlements were organized around the different scales, since different sized resources could be used by different sized little people and the division of labor worked around that principle. The residents there ranged anywhere from thumb to fingernail-sized little people, who would dismantle and utilize different portions of the city’s garbage.

Armed with metal, one tribe was made of those who were good at metalwork, and their dwellings were fashioned out of cans and iron boxes. A tribe of farmers used rotting organic matter to grow crops, and were good at diverting water and digging ditches, and building scaffolding to pick their crops at harvest time. As hunters of small animals, one tribe drove their prey away from the large-animal-hunter tribe. The small-animal hunters would hang a string of insects on their bodies as bait, and were also responsible for guarding their settlement. As a result, these hunters lived well compared with other tribes in the area. Their society was strong, and they were welcomed to any of the other tribes’ tables. Those who were short and stout specialized in machinery, and repaired the electronic waste from the dump, building a village of machines, one of the few settlements with electricity thanks to battery power.

With their creativity and skillful hands, the tribe of weavers and dyers were the only ones capable of tailoring custom-made little clothes for the little people. Their village was stocked with vegetable and mineral materials for dyeing fabrics, and little people who enjoyed painting would come here for raw materials to make paints, and create works of art on salvaged scrap, or paintings on the surface of roadside rocks. A wandering doctor rummaged through the garbage to find discarded pills, and traveled from village to village practicing medicine. At the edge of the forest, there were nomadic tribes that domesticated aphids and beer-making tribes that collected fruits to brew unique beers and milks. The reporter saw that, thanks to the division of labor, the little people had formed their own economy. With no history, no news and no record-keeping, it was the stories of these very people that made up the Mountain of Dreams.

As night fell, the reporter put down his bag and watched the fog rise over the Mountain of Dreams. He sat down to build a fire and took out the map he had drawn. The next stop was his last stop on the mountain. He had spent months walking and talking to the various tribes, losing track of time. It seemed that as he changed scales, the flow of time changed too. It was only when he traced his finger over the pocket watch’s mechanical heart that he felt as though there was something material, something constant that had not abandoned him.

He had long since sold his coins for their metal content and replaced them with smaller bits of more valuable metals which he could still carry; the tin foil notebook was now too heavy to be portable, so now he kept all his notes in his head; he had even stripped the pocket watch movement of everything but the timekeeping governor and buried the rest in the Mountain of Dreams.

He had heard various clues about the young master’s whereabouts from the whispers and rumors spread among the tribes. The good thing was that it appeared the young master was still alive and well, and he was still ahead of him in the journey. No matter who he talked to, the reporter always got the same answer: “He went to a smaller world.”

When the reporter became the size of a fingernail, he arrived in Transit Town. Transit Town was a wild, liberal place where anything went, located at the junction of the Mountain of Dreams and the forest. He heard from the old man on the road that one hundred and eighty years ago, a mafia family that had lost their factory in the city had moved north to this place, driven away the rats and wild dogs that had been worrying Transit Town, and had established this settlement of little people. The mafia family had used coercive means to maintain the free trade on the town’s black market and even trained assassins who eliminated those the family disliked. It had become a place where all kinds of sketchy, grayish people gathered.

Later, the governorship of the town became like a revolving door, with none of the new governors ruling with an iron fist, and all of them maintaining a stance of neutrality. About fifty years previously, the town had evolved into the ideal place to transition between scales, which gave rise to the name Transit Town. Now it was a place for little people to transition into tiny and micro people.

At the entrance of the town, the reporter saw a huge wall of posters for missing people. The smaller worlds were full of countless stories of the missing, stories of displacement and separation. Usually, missing people of the tiny scale were given up for lost, with only the most determined loved ones still looking for tiny people, because this was the size limit at which people could have any control over their destiny. On the other hand, tiny people put up notices on an even smaller missing people wall, hoping that people on the other side, in the micro world, might see and respond. Occasionally, there were micro people who came here to post a missing poster, hoping that their loved ones and friends in the tiny world could help them out. Layer after layer of white posters covered the wall, and when the wind blew they fluttered and clattered.

The reporter went up to see. On the wall were notices looking for a lover. Someone was looking for a lost father with dementia, and someone had come all the way to find a brother who was broke. There were many people gathered below the wall, looking at passersby with bewildered eyes. One man grabbed the reporter by the shoulders, carefully looked him up and down, and then walked away disappointed.

The reporter thought about it, but decided against putting up a missing poster for the young man.

There was a large casino in town. The closer people were to the edge, the more likely they were to gamble their entire fate on a single hand. Here, there was only one valid currency: food. It was easy to stand at the entrance of the casino and inquire about anyone. Any information could be had for the right price—you just needed to bribe the right gambler with a few grains of rice. Those desperate gamblers would sell the color of their own front teeth for as little as that. Unfortunately for the reporter, they had nothing useful to say.

The casino was noisy, and he found himself pressed in on all sides by a huge sea of people, and the stale smoke made even the light appear to be frozen in the air. The gambling tables were all very short, in order to pander to the micro customers.

The reporter saw a tiny gambler who would gamble every time he got even a little food, but he rarely won, almost always losing even more. His desperation for a change in his luck overshadowed even his sense of hunger, which showed on his face. The gambler was getting smaller and smaller, and after a week he even had to climb on top of the gambling table to play on.

The reporter passed a cigarette to the casino janitor, and asked him how much food cost here.

The janitor was a tiny man, thin and dry. He looked at the outsider and said, “Most of the grain here is not for sale, you have to get it on the black market, and the price of grain on the black market is even higher than the price of brass.” He lowered his voice. “You are wise not to go to the gambling table.”

“Why?”

The janitor exhaled a puff of smoke. “Hey, I’m not judging… there will always be tiny people trying to get food, trying to wrench back their fortunes, eat their way back to their previous size, and become legends among their peers for having fought tooth and nail to get back to the normal world. People like that come here every day, people who do those things back there…” he laughed bitterly, trailing off.

“You are saying that the casino’s odds are rigged against them.”

“I didn’t say that!” The janitor protested, “Don’t make me lose my job. Look, everybody knows the same thing: once you become a micro person, there’s no chance for you to go back to the previous scale. But then, who knows? How can you know unless you take your chances and gamble a little? Anyway, the most that people here can hope for is to maintain their current size, no more and no less… and in the end, they will all end up like me, and take the road that my old bones are about to take. The older I get, the smaller I get, and one day, poof.” He exhaled a puff of gentle smoke. The light smoke scattered noiselessly into the denser smoke that shrouded the casino.

The reporter did not say anything else. Who was he to say he could thwart fate and take hold of his own destiny? There were many terrible rumors circulating on the Mountain of Dreams, and one of the most terrible was that the government wanted to better manage the waste the city produced, and was planning to recycle the food scraps in the garbage.

Transit Town enveloped people with an air of defeat, so whenever an underdog won a significant hand at the gambling table, the whole crowd cheered. That cheer in turn burned like coals in the eyes of the down-and-out, driving their fervor to slam even more of their fate down on the gambling table.

Finally, the gambler who had shrunk into a micro person couldn’t get any decent food. No matter how he squeezed in the crowd, nobody could even see him. He couldn’t even climb up onto a gambling table. Despondent, he turned his back on Transit Town, and like so many others, he walked the path many smaller ones had taken before him.

The reporter watched the gambler disappear at the end of the road, and then looked down at his own shadow. His shadow was almost as short as that doomed gambler’s. He, too, had knowingly turned himself into a micro person. He thought of turning back and was taken aback by a new thought. Could it be that the search for the young master was also a gamble? From the beginning he, too, had been tempted by that impossible happiness, constantly bidding more chips on this job. From the time he’d entered Transit Town he had lost all clues about the young master. Maybe the young master was also a gambler and had disappeared under the gambling table.

He came to a decision: come tomorrow, he would leave this place.

He returned to the house he was renting and took stock of the remaining food and his supply of precious metals, which were still enough to fund his return to the previous scale. He packed his bags, leaned them against his door, and went to sleep in the bed fully clothed. Tomorrow morning at dawn, he would simply grab his luggage and leave.

In the middle of the night, there was a knock on the door.

The reporter ignored it. The knocking became more and more frenzied.

Finally, the reporter got out of bed and listened at the door. There were two people outside. They were a brother and sister, asking for help. The reporter hesitated for a moment, and was just about to put his hand on the latch when he heard what sounded like a gang pursuing them. The reporter heard the gang drawing their knives.

The reporter yanked the door open, pulled the siblings into the room, and slammed the latch down.

The siblings leaned against the wall, and then started laughing uncontrollably, gasping for air.

“That was close,” the brother, who was older, said.

“The danger is still out there,” the sister said.

The moment the door had swung open, the reporter had caught a glimpse of their pursuers. They were two little people much bigger than the reporter, each as tall as the house the reporter was living in, looking like two giants. Now they blocked the front door.

A louder and more violent knock followed. “Hand over those two little bugs!” came a shout through the door.

“What’s going on?” the reporter asked the siblings.

“We just exchanged fates with them,” the brother said.

“But we didn’t ask them for permission first.” The sister couldn’t help giggling as though it were funny.

“So we secretly ate the feast they had prepared for themselves.”

“But we left our bags and belongings behind.” The siblings did a complicated secret handshake that made their hands look like snakes.

Wildlings. The reporter had heard of such people—those who had braved the dangers of the wilderness, who had been baptized in the fire of living in the absolute worst neighborhoods, the survivors who were so battle-hardened they didn’t care if they died tomorrow because they had already come so close to dying so many times. It was usually a good idea for ordinary people to give them a wide berth.

The door shuddered as the pursuers began to kick at it from outside, so hard that the nails on the flimsy gypsum started to fly out.

“Are you guys crazy?” The reporter said to the siblings, “We’re all going to be killed!” the oil lamp in the room fluttered, and he saw the familiar gambler’s frenzy on the faces of the siblings. Hell, these were two maniacs grasping at the whirlwind of fate. Life was their gambling table.

“I’m sorry,” the older brother said, wiping the smile off his face. “I didn’t expect anyone to open the door, and we never planned for you to get involved. If they break in, you can turn us in.”

The reporter rubbed his forehead. He looked around his room for something that could be used as a weapon, and the only thing he could find was the dial that he’d used to turn the knob of the pocket watch. This large brass ring reflected golden light on the four walls of the house. Perhaps it could knock out these micro people, but what about the giant little people? He didn’t dare to think about it.

The men outside began to bang on the walls and the house shook. The lights almost went out several times. The floor quaked.

“Turn us in now,” the older brother added. “It was more than enough that someone was willing to open the door for us.”

The sister took her brother’s hand, and a tear slipped down from the corner of her eye.

The reporter put his hand on the latch and looked at the siblings.

The older brother nodded. “Thank you, it’s been a good day.”

The house shook violently. The reporter jerked the door open, threw the pendulum wheel upright and closed the door. In that moment, he felt like he, too, had become a reckless gambler. The pendulum wheel rolled down the slope, throwing yellow light everywhere. The man outside the door froze for a moment, then chased desperately after it. The big brass ring bounced down the slope, ringing out with the sound of money, like a sweet bell chiming and inviting the desperados of Transit Town to give chase.

The reporter turned back around. “It’s okay.” He breathed a sigh of relief.

“Aren’t they coming back?” the sister asked.

The reporter said, “No. Not in Transit Town.”

“I wish them luck. I don’t know how to thank you,” the brother said to the reporter.

“Go live your life,” said the reporter.

The siblings looked at each other and both shook their heads.

“Do you know what never gets smaller?” the brother asked. “Gambling your whole fate, putting your whole life on the line. Our lives will never get any smaller.”

“Our joy will never get any smaller,” the sister continued.

“Our death will never get any smaller.”

“Our sorrow will never get any smaller.”

They grabbed each other’s arms and spun around again. “We’re about to get on the last hot-air balloon!”

“What balloon?” the reporter asked.

“There’s a big poplar tree with seeds that can carry people away. When life comes to a dead end, we always find this tree, get on the ‘balloon’ of a poplar seed and go to another place, wherever fate takes us.” The brother’s eyes glowed, his excitement growing.

Perhaps the poet who’d sung his swansong in the car plummeting over the cliff’s edge had had the same look in his eyes, as had the blind chief who’d shot her arrow into the sun. They’d striven to create something, something that size could not measure, in a world that just kept shrinking and taking them down with it.

The reporter lifted a large backpack by the door, opened it and asked, “Is this enough food to exchange for you to find your fortune?”

The brother checked the backpack and said in surprise, “That is enough food to exchange for anything you’d want. But why…”

“Maybe I need an opportunity to strike out on my own, too.”

The siblings looked at each other, looking back and forth, their brains working overtime to find a way out of their dilemma.

The reporter said, “Now I believe it. There must indeed be a big, beautiful tree.”

The brother said, “I’m afraid I won’t be worthy of this food you’re giving me.”

“You do not have to live up to anything; I’m giving you blessings, and nothing else.”

The siblings spun around happily, round and round, until they collapsed from exhaustion on the table.

The brother said dizzily, “That tree is in the forest, and I will draw you a map. It’s the last poplar of the season, so you’ll have to grasp this chance.”

“But don’t be in such a hurry that you miss the wind!” called the sister after him, also in a dizzy haze from twirling.

The reporter looked over what was left of the pocket watch’s governor, and drew out the tourniquet. It used to be thinner than a strand of his own hair, but now it was as thick as his belt. It is just such a fraction of this scale that divided time into equal frequencies. He coiled the hairspring into a roll and stuffed it in his backpack, giving the rest to the siblings.

The reporter watched the two siblings until the morning light dispersed the darkness.

He picked up the rest of the backpack and walked down the same path—that path whose arrow was the smaller point of the “<” sign.

In his old life, he might have laughed if someone had told a joke about a person who was knocked unconscious by an ant. But now, in this micro world, such a joke was no laughing matter. An ant whizzing by was like a car, walking through the forest and accidentally being hit by a falling drop of water could break your neck, and the loose dirt turned over by earthworms was a deadly trap.

The path behind the town led into the forest and quickly disappeared without a trace. Any path could lead to either a safe place or to certain death. Unlike what the reporter had seen before, there were no villages, towns, markets, or tribes to be seen in the micro world. Sometimes, you could see micro people camping by the roadside in twos or threes. They were like refugees, their faces bloodless, their eyes spiritless, looking at passersby with hopeful eyes, but making no move to ask for help. No one here had seen anything resembling the young master.

The reporter, seeing this, knew that he could hesitate no longer. He set his sights on finding the poplar tree as soon as he could.

The deeper he went into the forest, the thicker it grew. The reporter lost his way, and there was no one in sight. He wondered if the map would be of any use. When living on such a small scale, the distances between landmarks were too far apart to be helpful, whereas distances between small things changed all the time, making them unhelpful to use as markers. Weeds obscured the sky, and the grass stalks formed a dark maze. Each towering tree cast a shadow as large as a kingdom, a kingdom that belonged to something other, something inhuman. Sometimes, the sound of insects moving on the ground was so thunderous it eclipsed the sound of birdsong.

A colorful hornet plunging to its death startled the reporter. He watched warily for a while before confirming that the hornet was dead. Then, he pulled off the hornet’s sting with the help of a pocket knife. It would serve him as a weapon and tool. He found that in this microscopic world, natural objects worked much better than crude man-made ones. Using the hornet’s sting as a tool, he climbed up to the top of a blade of grass and finally saw the tall poplar tree that was marked on the map.

It took a day to walk to the base of the tree, and another day to climb it. In those two days, the reporter didn’t see another soul.

White seeds flew in every direction while he climbed the poplar tree.

By evening of the second day, the reporter reached a branch at the top of the tree. There, he saw thousands of branches hanging in the air, each with poplar wisps growing on them. The canopy was like a huge central traffic hub, with poplar seeds twirling and whirling from each station in vast streams. By this time, the white poplar wisps had turned bright gold in the sunlight, flying gently in graceful arcs, as if about to embark on wonderful, golden journeys.

The reporter resisted the urge to take the first seed he could reach. He knew that at his current weight, he had to wait for the moment the wind picked up. He left the winding wire of his pocket watch on the top of the tree, the final part of the pocket watch he still had with him. Now, he had nothing left. But no, he still had a tuft of Iggy’s fur, about the same thickness but lighter and shorter, rolled up in the filament, and this he still took with him.

He found a crook in the tree to sleep in, and curled up there for the night. The crook was just warm enough for him to spend the night without feeling too cold.

The next day, at noon, there arose what seemed to him to be an auspicious wind. The leaves were rustling and waving like flags on a race track. The reporter collected a few clumps of poplar fleece, just like the siblings had taught him, and combined them into a large ball with the wind at his back. He wrapped himself into the fleece and walked onto the windward branch. A gust of wind blew and his feet left the branch effortlessly. With gratitude in his heart, he bid the great poplar goodbye.

The canopy of the forest grew smaller under his feet. From his vantage point, he viewed this tiny, enormous world. The Mountain of Dreams could be seen in the distance, while the forest surged in complex layers beneath his feet. A flock of birds flew by, their fine, fluffy down clearly visible. When he’d ascended to the height where the hot air from the ground reached an equilibrium, the poplar fleece stopped rising.

Suddenly the sky clouded over, making the reporter afraid that it was about to rain. However, no rain fell and the wind came to a stop, followed by a stray breeze that picked up again. He found that the shadow was not a cloud, but a “wall” several hundred meters high. On the “wall” was a thick piece of cloth, and the birds were flying upward along the cliff of the fabric. At the top of the cliff that blocked the sun, a giant’s head appeared. It was a traveling giant who had just risen from the ground. A flock of birds flew willy-nilly into the holes in the fabric of the giant’s clothes and, after a few moments, burst out from under the giant’s armpits into the open again.

The reporter waved hello to the giant, but he was so small that even the birds could not see him. He shouted at the giant, but the sound was drowned out by the wind. The giant’s arm swung through the air, and the reporter was pushed away like dust that had been stirred up and lost in a torrent of rain. In an instant the sky was clear again. The giant was completely unaware of the existence of this speck of dust he had disturbed and walked away with enormous strides.

The reporter drifted alone until he slowly landed on the ground. He burst out of the poplar fleece and stepped back onto the mud of the forest. The wet, cold mud reminded him that he was once again in the clutches of a dire fate. It was like he had finally done the thing he had once assigned himself. He knew that there was no magical land on the other side of the wind, but it was still inevitable to feel a little lost when the fantasy faded. This place was a dense forested area, with no traces of human activity and no path to follow. He would have to begin his journey anew, not knowing where to start.

Night had fallen. At his current size, it was impossible to make a fire in the forest. If he made one, it would be so tiny that even the faintest breeze would blow it out. The reporter sat under a leaf, hugging his legs to himself, cold and hungry, lonely and restless.

The smaller one’s volume, the faster one dissipates heat, which means a smaller person will become smaller faster. This cruel law was also true in the wilderness of the forest, and it was as if he could hear the crackle of his own body shrinking down, shrinking ever smaller. In this place far from civilization, he could even feel himself degenerating, gradually devolving into beast, then insect, then moss, then stone. Was he finally paying the price himself? The rumbling of night insects came from the darkness, and he knew that the predators who preyed on them were also lying in wait in the shadows, just like the gods of the casino who held the gamblers’ fates in their hands.

The reporter fell asleep using his backpack as a pillow. The ringing of the casino’s roulette wheels kept resounding in his dreams, sometimes turning into the clatter of mechanical gears turning, sometimes into the rumble of wheels running over, sometimes into the sound of giant children hitting the ground.

The ground shook. The reporter waited for the dream to pass. But it didn’t—the ground was still shaking. He woke with a start. The ground rose suddenly, shaking the leafy roof of his makeshift tent so it fell apart. The morning sun burst through, turning everything to light.

The reporter fell off the mound of earth. A mole cricket emerged from the ground in front of him, baring its teeth and claws. One of its shovel-like front digging feet was as big as his entire body. The mole cricket lunged toward the tiny human that had got in its way, with its sharp-edged digging foot raised high in the air. The reporter hurriedly pulled out his wasp-sting sword to parry the mole cricket.

The wasp-sting sword was like a toy needle in the face of the mole cricket, and could not penetrate the hard armor of its forefoot. The sword was easily knocked aside with a mere light shrug from the mole cricket. The reporter picked up the wasp-sting sword and rolled it to the side, trying to attack the mole cricket from its flank. But the insect, despite being much larger than he was, was also far more agile. The mole cricket twisted around and knocked the reporter to the ground with the sword, and then the mole cricket ran over him like a chariot. The reporter covered his head.

Then, a gust of wind blew toward him. A gray shadow disappeared into the forest, and the mole cricket was gone. Plonk! Something had fallen to the ground before him. He looked, and it was one of the mole cricket’s legs.

The reporter swooped down and wrapped his arms around the mole cricket’s leg like he had found a treasure of great price. The leg was very large; he could not just carry away a part of it. He had to drag it with him slowly. The leg had terrible spikes on the tip of the foot, but this would not affect how delicious a meal it would make.

The mole cricket’s leg was getting heavier and heavier, and the reporter had to put the strength of his whole body into every step he took. After dragging for a while, he finally sat down on the ground in exhaustion. He turned around and saw a man lying on the mole cricket’s leg.

The reporter jumped up. “Who are you? What are you doing?” he asked. The excitement of seeing one of his own kind was mixed with his anger and surprise, and his mixed emotions showed in his voice.

The man on the mole cricket’s leg propped his head up with one hand and said calmly, “I am a monk.”

“What are you doing sitting on that?”

“Hitching a ride on your car,” the monk said.

“That’s not a car for you to ride on, it’s my last chance to live! That is my next meal!” said the reporter, indignant. “Don’t you feel guilty at all?”

“I feel heartbroken that you’re hauling something so heavy.”

The reporter could do nothing except say, bluntly, “Please get down.”

The monk floated down from the mole cricket’s leg like a cloud. He was draped in a crumpled blade of grass that had been dragged to the ground.

The reporter continued to drag the mole cricket’s leg forward. The monk followed him leisurely like a long, thin worm, without a care in the world.

Can’t you mind your own business? The reporter wanted to say, but he was afraid of jinxing this auspicious encounter with another human, so what he asked out loud was: “Don’t you have some other business to attend to?”

“Me? No, no. Just breathing in and out with the forest is my whole business.”

“You’re not worried about getting smaller? And you don’t want to get bigger?”

The monk’s eyes, hidden under his long hair, shone with a tiny glint. “There was a time when I was worried, and the more I worried, the smaller I got. Now I am one with the forest. When you become as big as the forest, there is no more fear.” He opened his arms in a wide embrace and cocked his head to one side to listen as birds chirped from deep within the forest. “Cheep cheep!” he said in reply.

“So, then, given the circumstances, it’s not quite appropriate for me to ask for your help?” The reporter glanced at the mole cricket leg, which was still weighing him down.

“I can help you eat a part of it, but I won’t carry such a heavy thing.”

“Don’t bother.” The reporter threw the mole cricket leg on the ground, pulled out his pocket knife and cut it up. He cut off a piece and stuffed it into his backpack, and continued on his way.

“I just lost a piece of food that was even bigger than me,” lamented the reporter.

“That’s probably more than you could have handled anyway. I saw a traveling giant drop a crumb yesterday, and several groups of people came from different directions to fight over that crumb. The battle was vicious,” the monk remarked. Then, he began to whistle.

“I met that giant,” said the reporter.

“You, sir, are a wise man. Yesterday, I saw you float down from the sky,” said the monk.

The reporter was silent for a while, then decided to tell the monk his story. “I’m looking for someone,” he began.

As he told his tale, the two of them continued to walk through the forest, aimlessly.

The monk did not say a word until the reporter had finished. “What a marvelous story,” he said. “The Answer already lies behind your eyes. You don’t need to learn anything more from me. How utterly amazing! You worry more about those around you shrinking, than about shrinking down yourself. You were meant to become one with the forest.”

The journalist looked around. His eyes lingered on the long carpet of moss in front of him, swaying gently with tall grasses, at the shadows of the trees, which ranged in tone from bright to ink-dark green, and listened to the sound of the shadows which made up the subtle heartbeat of the forest. He took a deep breath, let it out again, and felt his body lighten.

The monk looked over at him and grinned. “If you also have no idea which direction to go, I can properly introduce you to this forest.”

The monk’s intuition was completely in tune with everything in the forest, and the reporter had an excellent knack for planning. Between them, the duo just barely maintained their current size at first, and then, as the weather cooled, their body masses dissipated along with the summer heat, so they shrunk down further. Soon, even Iggy’s fur was getting too thick and heavy to carry. The reporter went to the edge of a cliff, and pushed the fur into the wind, watching as it floated away. His nose prickled as sadness washed over him.

The forest was a storehouse for all kinds of memories, a loom for weaving one’s fate, and a brewery for life’s hundreds of flavors, from bitter to sweet. The reporter felt a vague, growing fear that he was on the verge of forgetting the purpose of his journey.

“If you can’t carry it on your back, leave it, says the forest,” the monk said gently as he walked by, patting the reporter’s shoulder.

Autumn was coming to an end, and the fallen leaves spread over the ground like a giant red carpet. In the forest clearing, sunlight fell through the gaps in the leaves, scattering a huge column of light into dappled patterns.

“Found it! Come on, come on, come over here,” said the monk like a small child in a happy voice.

“What?”

“It’s a warm leaf! It’s been thoroughly warmed by the sun. It’s like a sun throne!”

The reporter looked up. The red leaf was emitting a warm, delicate fragrance from being illuminated by the sun. The monk had climbed onto it and was lying down, humming comfortably and glowing in the sunlight, his song blending seamlessly with the song of the forest. The reporter had a hard time climbing up onto the leaf’s surface, to spread his body on it and lie down. The flesh of the leaf was soft and warm, and the veins were like little mountain ranges.

He was finally as small as a speck of dust.

He vaguely remembered a time when he was immense, living in a brick and mortar house built by humans who counted thousands of years of civilization. That self could not possibly see him as he was now—he would have found it impossible to find himself on that fallen leaf, and would never have looked down to see him; just as now, he was unable to look up at anyone as large as his former self.

Plink! Plonk! came sounds from the forest.

“A rainstorm! Run!” The monk slipped down the leaves, pulling the reporter down with him. As soon as the words left his mouth, the plonking sounds became more intense.

Rainstorms were rare at this time of year, often catching people unawares. The two of them ran toward a tree, panting as they went.

The rain was sudden, so it must have come down without warning from a high elevation. Then, in a flash, a stream of water swept toward them from the same direction as the rain.

The two of them were swept into the current by this tide of water. The sky spun. The reporter nearly drowned a few times. He couldn’t swim in such a strong current, so all he could do was desperately fight to breathe whenever his face surfaced above the water. The monk had warned him about this situation, and soon the bubbles that surrounded them would be knocked away and they would sink into the water.

“Breathe! Breathe!” came the monk’s voice over the water. “Grab anything that floats by!”

But nothing floated by. The water came harder and faster.

After a while, the reporter managed to grab the edge of a grass seed and struggled to climb into it like a makeshift boat.

“Take my hand!” he reached out to the monk.

The monk stretched out his hand, but he had already taken in too much water. His hand flailed uselessly in the water, unable to reach the grass seed boat. Wave after wave separated them, and soon the monk was further and further away.

As the last wave hit, the monk waved goodbye, a smile on his face. “Let it go! I’ll be waiting for you in the forest.”

Then, the monk disappeared. The reporter, struck dumb with shock, lay on his grass seed, staring.

The grass seed wove its way through the forest. At some point, other grass seeds gathered, with more refugees from the storm riding them. The storm calmed down, and the water slowed. As they passed a peninsula, a blade of dead grass reached out and caught their grass seeds, stopping them from drifting further. A few people on the peninsula reached out to pull the drifters to shore. The reporter’s bags had long been washed away. None of them had anything to their name. When they stepped on the peninsula, they realized it seemed to be made of something metallic, and they discovered that the peninsula was actually formed by a tooth from some kind of metal gear.

After the rain, the rainwater formed a lake. Around the lake, weeds pierced the sky, which had grown dull and foggy. The survivors pitched a dozen tents to form a small, makeshift village. Seeing the tents was slightly reassuring. The refugees looked around the perimeter of their campsite for food, and lucked out: they found half a walnut which still had a little walnut kernel in it. Everyone filled their bellies with walnut, which, even though it smelled slightly rotten, was good for replenishing the calories they had lost.

On the peninsula, the crowd gathered in the clearing. There was no fire to gather around; instead, a crystal-clear drop of water was in the middle of the circle. It was so large that even ten of them could not surround it with their hands outstretched.

The reporter was racked with thirst. It was ironic to feel thirst after just having escaped a flood, but only those who have experienced a flood know the horror of the power of water. The droplet of water before him, on the other hand, had caused him to relax, and he wanted to go up and take a sip.

“Hold on,” said an old man, shouting at him as he made his move toward the droplet. The old man threw him a rattan rope made of fiber and said, “Tie this to yourself before you do that, or you will be sucked in by the surface tension of the water droplet and drown!”

The reporter froze.

“It seems that the one who took care of you is no longer here,” said the old man. “You still have a lot to learn about how to survive, or a single mite could kill you.”

People took turns going up to the water droplet and drinking the water. When they were done, the droplet didn’t look like it had shrunk at all.

“Once, a single tear from my eye was as big as that droplet,” said one of them. Those listening sighed.

Several young people stood up. They appeared to be a band made up of some young men and women. “Let’s play for everyone,” they said. “We’re one man short, but we can still perform decently well in a pinch. Our instruments were washed away, but if we can find a dead insect, we can make all the instruments we need.”

Someone said they had seen a dead ladybird nearby, but all that was left was its empty shell. The band said that was not a problem, and went to the carcass and took the materials they needed back, breaking the ladybird’s shell into pieces to make drums, cutting off its filigree wings to make wind instruments, and sawing off its feelers and cilia to use as bows.

Like magic, music flowed out of these humble improvised instruments. The dead ladybird was given new life through the music. The band played and sang, and people gathered around the water droplet to listen. The light on the droplet reflected onto the refugees’ faces, making them shine, and the reporter saw that among the crowd were travelers with tear stains, wanderers who had been worn down to skin and bones, a one-eyed carpenter dragging a stump for a leg, and babies held in swaddling clothes.

Although the music was softer because the players were small, the melody was not, and neither were the emotions that were brought to the surface. The sun reflected on the water droplet after the rain, and it was as though these people were at a warm campfire. One could almost imagine that their village lay behind them, that they had a permanent home in that village. For a moment, while the music played, they forgot to sigh, forgot their worries. Some were even able to chortle happily for a few blessed moments.

A smile gradually spread over the reporter’s face, melting its stiffness. “Looks like we’ll meet again one day, Mr. Forest,” he said to himself.

The reporter stared. The band front-man’s face seemed blurred to him at first, but slowly, it resolved, like a miracle, into one he knew well. He recognized him! It was the young master. He was seized with a sense of absolute certainty.

After the performance, the reporter went up to the front-man, who was sitting on a grain of sand, and said, “I can’t be wrong—you’re the young master of the Forbes family, aren’t you? Your father entrusted me with the task of coming to find you.”

The front man looked at the weathered reporter in surprise. Then his eyes grew wet with tears.

The two men looked at each other in silence, as if they were looking at their other selves.

“I… I can’t go back yet.” The young master said, “There are people in these worlds that I need to see, and it’s my mission to see them.”

The reporter had found the answer he sought, and it had come from the mouth of a man the size of a speck of dust. He finally understood the answer that the monk had implied but not said aloud: in your search for him, you have become him.

The reporter tried to find the right words to dissuade the young master from continuing on his quest, but found he wasn’t so much trying to dissuade him as justifying himself. “If we keep walking down this road, one day, we will reach our limit. Perhaps we already have. As it is, we have no control over anything,” he said. Like a prophet, he held out his palm and gestured toward the water droplet. “Consider this water droplet. How long can it last? How much longer can this lake exist? It’s already drying up so we can see its curvature, and maybe if the sun rises a little more it will disappear.”

The young master gazed at the water droplet in fascination. “Consider this: we can see each other in the water droplet, and it is beautiful in the moment, while it exists.”

“Your father. He’s been pining for you. He’s wasted away a lot, longing for your return.”

The young master bowed his head, and after a long time he said, “While we are still able, we can find yet another boundary that can be surpassed. Please go back and tell my father to find a way to see the most microscopic corner of the world. That great man can do anything, and when the day arrives when he can see me, I will come home.”

“I don’t know if he will believe what I say,” the reporter said.

“He made me the person I am now, and I know him.” The young master looked sincerely into the reporter’s eyes.

The reporter understood that it was time for him to turn back.

The young master said, “I buried some food in storage points along the way, as I became smaller. I can show you the location of a few of my storage points, which will help you return to your former size.”

The reporter bowed. He saw another, smaller version of himself on the water droplet.

It took two years for the reporter to change back to the size of an average man. It felt like surfacing after a very long dive. The civilized world now seemed strange and unfamiliar to him.

He returned to report to the rich man.

The rich man seemed to have grown a little bigger, like a lonely mountain.

The rich man gave the reporter permission to use half his assets, and instructed him to grow bigger, so he could find a way for the rich man to meet the young son’s requirements for them to meet again.

And so, the reporter took a third commission from the rich man’s family. He would try to find a way for the Titan to see the most microscopic world that his son could get to.

Through the rich man’s contacts, food was purchased in a steady stream. The reporter grew bigger and bigger. The world grew smaller and smaller in his eyes. Skyscrapers, which he had once looked up at, he now looked down on. Then, he came to look down on the valley where the city he once lived in was situated, and from this far away, Forbes Industries’ flagship building looked like it was the size of a small, sharp, silver needle. To his surprise, becoming a giant involved learning a lot of manners, including how to move without disturbing the smaller humans, and how to strike a balance with the environment. He wasn’t sure how effective his manners were, but it made him feel like he still had the rules of civilization at his fingertips.

Within ten years, he had seen significant upheavals, like the seismic change of mountains or the shifting rains and clouds move before his very eyes, and, in that vast time, he saw many people of different walks of life come and go.

In order to fulfill his commission, the reporter founded a company to develop various technologies to allow big people to see little people and little people to talk to big people, and his formidable team of inventors kept pushing the limits and overcoming difficulties, enabling and encouraging communication between the worlds. Giant lenses were erected in the city instead of billboards, and size-varying machines that looked like snakes, and with their snake-like eyes, cruised through alleys and mountains.

He spent several years building an enormous clock tower in the middle of the city that loomed over every other skyscraper. He insisted on starting with a filament thinner than a hair, and had his engineers use an ingenious mechanical transmission to create a miniature mechanism that would cause a vibration to create a signal, which would pass through multiple stages of amplification, until it caused the movement of a hammer that drove the clockwork of an enormous clock, finally powering the enormous dial that would tower over the city’s smog. Every hour, the great clock struck, and half the city would hear the chime transmitted by that one thin filament.

At first, he thought the company would fail because his ideas were too idiosyncratic, but no, there was always someone who could find a good use for his technology.

“When you get this big, it’s hard to fail,” said the rich man.

The reporter did not marry, so all his energy was focused on his company. He sometimes thought back fondly on the blind chief who shot arrows into the sun. With the technology he invented, he recovered his dog Iggy, who had been missing for many years. This brought him a lot of comfort and encouragement.

Pleased with himself, he went to report back to the rich man once again.

The rich man was playing chess with another Titan in his back garden. The huge chess pieces split the wind between the valleys, making the sound of the wind change its pitch as the layout of the pieces changed during the game. The chess pieces looked like skyscrapers, with exquisite windows and balconies. The reporter realized that the chess pieces and board were built by smaller workers, rather than carved by larger hands.

He stood and waited for the game to end. The other Titan left.

He went up to the rich man and asked him a question he had been puzzled by for a long time. “What kind of people do you Titans usually spend time with, and what do you do together?”

The rich man, his head slightly bowed, replied, “We have a Titan Club. There are so few interesting things to do that sometimes we play chess with a city as the chess board.”

Surprised, the reporter asked, “Are there little humans on that chess board?”

The rich man shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I mean, if even you can’t see them, how can I?” Behind his eyes, the reporter could sense his despondency.

In the end, the reporter decided against reporting on anything he had done. He realized that the things he had invented were as insignificant as a bunch of toys. He’d never gotten to the root of the problem. Even if one could see a little man, could one understand his life? Could one see the surface tension on a drop of water? Even the distance between adjacent scales was so great as to be unbridgeable. People were always powerless against distant, intangible things.

Iggy grew old, and once he fell ill for several days, and the reporter didn’t even know. The reporter created a garden for him in one of his own teeth. He knew Iggy was there, right next to him, and yet he had to use special equipment to see him. When Iggy died, he didn’t even notice. He could no longer reach out and touch the dog like he’d used to. He buried the tooth along with the sleeping Iggy in a garden at the foot of a beautiful mountain.

Now that there were a few more Titans in the world, with the rest of the world’s humans reduced to almost invisible dust, the plains were desolate and empty, so that only the wind that blew from the enormous mountains was willing to open its mouth to speak. The reporter didn’t know what to tell the young master. He could hardly bring himself to accept that all those humans existed, scattered into corners that no longer belonged to the rest of the world. He himself had become one of those to whom a single fallen leaf at the base of a tree was unheeded and invisible, whereas the self that could scale such a fallen leaf had been left behind as a reflection on that long-lost drop of water.

The rich man built a giant organ at the entrance to the valley. It shone in the sun, and the wind would blow the organ to bring the sound of music to the rich man’s back garden. The reporter walked over and felt a rain cloud descending on his skin, wetting it with the slight coolness of rain. The rich man was looking at the sunset over the mountains. The reporter thought to himself that the rich man must still miss the simple eight-tone wind-up music box which his son had loved.

The reporter said to the rich man, “I have failed. No matter how hard I try, I have not found a way to stand at this remove from the smaller world, and still manage to see it. You can take back everything you’ve given me.”

The rich man sighed and said, “But you deserve it all.”

The reporter, too, had grown old. The company he had founded was no smaller than the one the rich man ran, but despite all his good fortune, he was not able to see the young master again.

In his last days, he found he had little appetite. But still, he desperately shoveled food down his throat. One day he dragged his faltering body to the edge of a forest. As a  gigantic old man, he crouched down to take a closer look at a particular patch of forest, looking through the beautiful, rich canopy, made up of every shade of light to dark green, rising and falling like the waves to the rhythm of his breath. He felt as if he had once looked down on this forest and its denizens, but from a very different perspective, when he was in a much smaller world. Many memories of his past had grown blurry with time, and he was unable to retrieve them clearly, but he wanted to do one last thing for them. He lay gently on top of the forest, as if on a soft leafy surface. It was as though he had had a prior appointment with fate, a fate that gently came for him now. The last breath he let out spread as gently as a mist among the trees.

This strange giant had made a will that no one was to bury him. His body would not be entombed in the same way as the other rich people. Instead, this giant, after his death, became like a giant whale, nourishing every plant and creature that came to it after his death, and upon him the forest thrived. He himself became a world; a world filled with mushrooms, fruits, insects, beasts, villages, and a multitude of all manner of living things. Some speculated that this giant whale-landing could continue to nourish multitudes for centuries, for millennia.

There were legends that some explorers found a leaf with words written on its surface on a gigantic tree. Apparently it was made by micro people, who had written on the leaf with their shovels to record their stories. No one had ever realized before that micro people had the energy and ingenuity to carry out such a vast and ambitious project. Explorers were sent to these giant trees to find them, but they could not find the micro people.

A hotel called A Mountain of Dust was built in the forest. A mysterious benefactor commissioned a famous architect to build it, and there were rooms for everyone from micro people to big people, and the smallest rooms could be booked for no charge. No one knew who the mysterious person that financed it had been, or even how old he was. From the rooftop of the hotel, you could look out over the mountain range formed by the remains of the fallen giant. The bone-white rocks were covered with lush, verdant vegetation, and the view grew famous for its beauty. This scenic spot was especially beautiful when lit up by the sun. The range was named Fallen Whale Mountain in honor of the gentle giant.

In the beginning, dust motes drift gently in the evening light. Later, they seem to feel their own way, scattering to the four winds. The words that form the worlds settle into their forms, turning into sounds. At last, we have arrived at this point. Ah, in this world, how meaningless are the fates our lives accrue! The rich man never expected to reach such an old age on this earth. He feels there must still be some unknown destiny lying in wait for him. 

When he’d walked into the hotel a week ago, he could barely fit into an average man’s room. Now, in his dotage, he has long since resigned from his corporate position, and had been eating less and less these last ten years. He had also had most of his body mass surgically removed. He needed to shrink down to an even smaller world, and, thanks to this hotel, he has a glimmer of hope. He doesn’t know if he has shrunk down small enough to meet his goal before he passes away.

The hotel is a hotel of miracles, like a central nexus where different worlds can meet. At the hotel, the rich man meets people who had grown to their current size from a fungi world where they were but tiny motes, as well as people who had once been enormous, but who had now fallen on hard times and shrunk down.

Right at that moment, the rich man’s huge footsteps resound as he enters a room where a joyful gathering is taking place.

The evening sun shines through the high windows. The hotel smells like wood, and within, the room appears like a golden forest clearing. All sorts of people from many different worlds are gathered here. As the music rises, the people start to clap along to the beat. People in the audience tell the rich man that this is an average-sized person band, and that they are so popular that many people stay at an average size just so they can attend their concerts and enjoy their music. The hotel has even recently added a number of average sized rooms because of them.

Once again the crowd roars with laughter. Looking through the gap in the crowd, the rich man sees the young master, now sporting graying hair, in the middle of the crowd. Time stops. The rich man’s hands, which are propped up by crutches, tremble slightly.

The young master sings lyrics adapted from the verses of the wandering bard Yin Song. He still has long eyelashes and eyes as clear and deep as a lake.

The rich man had not known there was music as beautiful as this in the world. His heart is filled with apprehension, wondering if the young master would be willing to meet him. But in any case, he has no regrets left in this life. The song takes the weight of a lifetime off his body, and he feels as light as a falling leaf.

The singing stops, and the young master raises his eyes.

In a world that expands without end,

Some are like pillars that hold up the sky,

While others disappear like dust at the turn of a heel.

In days like these, I always hesitate before turning back.

Ah, will our eyes ever meet again?

–The Wandering Bard, Yin Song, from The Distance between the Worlds (Acceptable Size Edition)