Chapter 3: Built a mansion in a day.

May 10th, 2023, Creston, California - Earth

Benjamin felt a bit silly sitting in the bed of the Silverado, but unlike most little vehicles, he could be transported by it. He had never seen a truck like this on his world, most bigs drove sensible small vehicles or mini-vans, if they drove at all. A pickup truck is not a good vehicle for moving a family. He had to be careful hopping into the eight-foot-long bed, and he had to grip the sides of the truck as it moved. At six hundred pounds, Benjamin was on the thinner side, but the truck felt like it wanted to flip over when he pushed himself into it.

Oliver drove the vehicle slowly. He explained he would be taking some back roads to minimize attention. It gave Benjamin a view of the surroundings. Along one dirt road was a farm, sunflowers lined the edge of the fence, and there were a handful of cattle that watched him. No humans or other cars were seen.

About two miles down that dirt road, there was a streetlamp to mark the turn, and the truck turned into an unpaved road. It slowly moved over pits and rocks. Despite his efforts to shield himself, some mud made its way to Benjamin's clothing. The truck found its way to a drive and parked without any attempt to find the correct spot. Oliver undid his seatbelt and hopped down, the speed he fell to the ground caused a bounce, and he ran to the back of the truck. He opened the door and grabbed the hand of the giant to guide him out.

Daddy's legs are sore, yes please help me up kiddo. Benjamin controlled himself enough to not say it out loud, but the words were tugging at him like the small hand tugging at his fingers.

“Up, up! OK, let's get you inside, and then we'll just go over our expectations and what we have planned.” Oliver commanded the giant.

Oliver unlocked the front door and held it open for Benjamin. The house was small, but it was at least comfortable for a man of his height unlike the facility he had come from. He did not have to duck his head anymore, and the lighting and fans were better placed to accommodate a tall person. Benjamin crouched down and untied his shoes, taking a moment to watch Oliver as he started slipping the left shoe off with his right shoe, not even bothering to untie them.

“Oliver! Take your shoes off properly.” Benjamin roared at him. Oliver had not been yelled at a man like that since he was in boot camp.

He turned to the giant confused, staring at the man who was on his knees and was now eye to eye. Benjamin explained in a voice with patience, “You believe I have a condition that makes it difficult to see you as an adult. It's not your word choices, it's all in the movements and actions you take. Please, take your shoes off correctly. It is important for me.”

Oliver knelt down, a mirror of Benjamin, and untied both laces. He used his hands to carefully remove the loafers. He picked up both shoes while coming back up and came over to Benjamin's large shoes. He bent over and came up with an armful, “Let me get these put away somewhere we won't be tripping over them. Please take a seat.” Oliver noticed something as he opened a side closet.

He waved a pair at Benjamin, “Look. Our shoes have the same number. Both size nine. That's interesting.”

“What do the numbers mean?” Benjamin had begun working himself into a living room adjacent to the vestibule.

“I never bothered to learn, just what size my foot was. What do they mean on your world?”

“You know, I don't know either.” They both gave a small chuckle; Oliver continued the conversation.

“My dad would always steal my shoes before I moved out. We had the same size foot and he just never paid attention.”

Benjamin smiled, “Well, I don't think we're going to be having that problem.”

Oliver put the shoes into a nearby closet and turned and saw Benjamin sinking into a long coach. He looked a bit ridiculous sitting that way with his knees so far up, but the couch was long enough to hold him if he wanted to fall over and stretch. Oliver made his way over to the living room and found a recliner. He did not sit down directly, instead bracing himself against the chair.

The tall man had his eyes closed, his hands around his face, and he mumbled, “Something you said bothered me.”

“I'm sorry. Look, I wish we had better methods available. I can only try to make it right afterwards, that's the best I can do when we do something wrong,” Oliver apologized.

“No, not that, the part about history. That's the thing that is wrong.”

“What? Studying history as if it were a science?” Oliver incredulously challenged.

“Sort of, I mean there is a 'Geschichtswissenschaft', that's just a fancy term for the art of studying history, but it's not like a chemical equation. You don't get one part World War Two- and one-part Firefly and get your world.” Benjamin began his explanation.

“You're basing this on your years of studying different worlds?” Oliver retorted. If you cannot learn your own language without learning another, how can you learn your world's history without studying other worlds?

Benjamin looked up, directly to Oliver, 'No, I'm basing this on being a man who teaches history. It's an arrangement of a collection of facts, and you tell a story from it, and when you add more facts - if the story doesn't work anymore you need to find a different story.”

He quickly protected himself, “Don't let my colleagues find out I described our profession that way. Every single one hates describing history as a 'collection of facts', because that's how we teach history to children. The children learn the wrong lessons and when they get to college, we have to make them first unlearn it.”

He explained how it was supposed to work, “If you have a story and I have a fact, and my fact doesn't fit with your story, one of us is wrong, and we better work to figure it out. History as a study is about using certain tools to build better narratives and determine how important we should weigh individual facts. It's not always the person with the fact who is right. But if you take away the collection of facts, it's just making up stories and there's no reason to believe one story over another. If you're just stating or analyzing what people wrote, well that's a different school and I'm sure they're all nice people there, but I got my degree in history.”

The answer did not actually contradict anything Oliver had said, but it seemed a perfectly fine explanation of what a smart child might conclude a historian did. History as no more than “what we did on our summer vacation,” but across the entire society.

Oliver wondered how many of the adult... Amazon, jobs were fake, and how many Amazons were aware their jobs were fake. Was it possible to run a society where most jobs were bullshit? Like an entire planet turned into the H channel, a serious topic but redone as entertainment with little actual value.

Oliver shifted focus onto something else, “It's got to bother you, you've noticed the gaps.”

Benjamin nodded along, “That's why we were so interested in translating the little's writing. It was the one unbroken chain from before unification. Every time we work on some new stack of documents, we find out something new about the world. It's weird, thinking that real history for us is only a few generations old, when history should have been with us from the dawn of our civilization. I've come to grips with it.”

Oliver sympathized, “It's like you're coming out of a dark age. Knowing there were greater minds in the past that can't be seen and trying to recreate what they knew from fragments.”

“Thank you by the way. Letting me talk about this, it's getting my mind back in a way that I haven't felt since coming here.”

Oliver played with his stubble for a second, and then went for a sales pitch, “I know this is presumptive, but if you don't want to go back, you can stay here. We can work on those desires you have. It would be useful for us to show Amazons are capable of changing.”

Benjamin was unsure and looked to the side, “This is too much. I don't want to be a martyr for my people. I don't want to be some weird experiment.”

Oliver agreed, “Fair, but if you want to do something else, it doesn't have to be teaching history, I mentioned basketball, but I wouldn't recommend that, you have an amazing reading voice, even if all you did was read audio books professionally you could live a comfortable life here.”

“Why do you care? Why don't you just send me back?”

Oliver sighed hard, his shoulders collapsing. He began taking off his tie. “Everyone thinks my department is a joke, and they're more or less right. I know I said we do great work, but the best I have been able to spin this is that we're gathering intelligence on a possible threat. This is why I'm letting you have so much rope, if I don't succeed the project is doomed anyways. I need... I want you to want to be better. I'm sorry that we started by hurting you and I'm sorry I pulled some tricks on you that dredged up some deep emotions.”

Without the tie and overcoat Oliver was like a child again. Benjamin saw him as a student who had gotten lost on what to write for a paper, just digging further and further into research and not willing to commit words to the page. Apologizing for being late again. Benjamin said nothing.

Oliver's mood picks up. “You know what, fuck it. Let's be friends. Benjamin, you may not have wanted to go on this vacation, but interdimensional travel is extremely rare even for a people like mine. You have an opportunity here to see an entire new world, and I'm happy to show you everything great we have to offer. I bet cow is pretty rare on your world. Your Earth is smaller right? You need more food per person, can't dedicate that much to grazing. We have plenty of cow, I'd be happy to give you that. Just, take a break, relax a few days, have fun.”

Benjamin laughed, “Of course we have cow. I don't know if you saw this when you visited us, but half of our population consumes a great deal of dairy. It is a huge ecological crisis, but no, hamburger, steak, all things I've had.”

“Hmm, I bet you haven't had watermelon. I have a big one I haven't cut open. Here meet me in the kitchen I want to show you this.”

A minute later Benjamin was standing near the sink. It was a large single basin with plenty of room for large hands to wash dishes in. The whole room had a modern farm aesthetic that snuggled oversized appliances between bright white painted wooden cabinetry and counters. Oliver struggled a bit with the large fruit before placing it on the counter. He rolled out some paper towels, placed the melon on them, and grabbed a large knife. Benjamin's heart stopped.

“The outer part is just a shell, and you don't eat that. The inside is red and is the best.” He carefully examines the melon trying to determine where to cut it when it started moving. Oliver reached out to stop the fruit, but noticed the watermelon was being lifted up. It was heading to Benjamin's mouth.

“You gotta' - you have to cut it.” Oliver waggled the knife.

“Watch this” The melon came down hard in the sink, there was a splash of red and the watermelon cracked. Benjamin picked up half, bringing it entirely to his mouth. He scooped it on his bottom teeth and returned the shell to the sink.

“Hmm, it tastes like.” He pauses looking for the word, “a watermelon.”

Oliver was disappointed it was not a novel experience. He picked up one of the paper towels and started wiping himself, red had gotten everywhere. He carefully cleaned the unused knife and put it to dry. “You've had it before?”

“Not one that tiny, no. I just always wanted to crack a watermelon like that.”

Oliver laughed and grabbed some more towels before taking the whole roll and giving it to Benjamin. The giant patted his own face and his shirt, before taking the time to clean some watermelon shards that got elsewhere in the kitchen. There was a small bit of red on the ceiling he dabbed down. He then looked down at Oliver who had gone back to the fridge to consider what else he could get his new friend to eat.

“Oliver, I'm sorry, this is a bit weird, but I actually want to try cooking. I want to see your world's recipes.”

Oliver’s whole body halted, and he closed the fridge quickly, like he had just been caught with his pants down. He lived like a bachelor. He did not have much of anything, and he almost never cooked for himself these days. Work was just too important, either he was skipping meals, or eating take out. “I haven't gone shopping in a few days, and I live by myself when I do stay here. You are welcome to look in the cabinet and see what we need. We can order some ingredients or kits and have it delivered for tomorrow.”

The ten-foot man went into the pantry and knelt down to look at what was there. There was old bread, old tortillas, boxes of crackers, lard, stale olive oil, a spice rack with three shakers. Halfway up the sparse pantry he spotted it. The blue boxes, still wrapped as a quad from when they had been sold together.

“Oh, we have this too. I want to try this. The picture is different though, we only have the yellow kind.”

Oliver rushed over, excited “Great! That's the deluxe kind. Only buy the ones with real cheese, it's important to never cheap out. Also! Don't pay more for the ones with a restaurant name, those are made in the same factory and just given a different box. They taste the same but cost a dollar more.” Oliver was unsure why he told him this, it was not like it would be useful information in the diaper dimension. Benjamin did not have any of this planet's money and he was not going shopping.

“You know a lot about your pasta. Please, let me make this. Cooking will make me feel better. Here, three for you and one for me.” He casually tossed three boxes at Oliver. The pass startled the smaller man, and Oliver made an awkward jig as he tried not to drop them.

Oliver's face was beaming, “I think the pots are on the bottom left of the oven. Here let me get those so you don't have to bend over.”

Before Benjamin could say anything, Oliver ducked around and pulled out a couple large pots from the cabinets. He put them on the counter next to the boxes. He saw Benjamin struggle a bit with the tiny text of the box.

“I'll get the box open as it's made for tinier hands. Just fill the pots up with four quarts each. I guess that's a gallon of water.” Benjamin had a preternatural ability to get the water level right just by looking. He returned the water to the countertop and set the knobs too high. A small flame emerged. Gas. He always wanted a gas stove at home, but the other parents had chosen some weird rules to protect their little ones, and every house in the neighborhood was induction.

Other parents.

He should be back home, cooking Mac and Cheese for Collins. Had Collins been a vegan? Could he eat the cheese, or would they both have to have normal pasta? Would a little's prior dietary restrictions even matter to the new parent? Benjamin was starting to feel sad again. He should not want to know the answer to these questions.

“We'll wait for it to boil, I'll add the pasta, you can drain it, and then I'll add the cheese and you can mix. Just one step for each of us, we can say we made it together.” Oliver offered happily.

“Oliver, can you do me a favor?” He could still feel it, from when Oliver had asked to be his friend.

“Anything”

“When a little, when a normal sized person says a bad word in front of a tall person, there's a part of the brain,” and he tapped his head in a spot-on top, and tilted his head so Oliver could see. It was back a bit, between the ears and slightly to the right. “Right here. It hurts. I know it's a way to show you're comfortable, but I would like you to do me this favor and try to not say naughty words. Or even imply it, or in any way make me hear the word in my head.”

Words with biological feedback? Like actual pain? Setup some speakers on helicopters like Apocalypse Now! and blast the 'Seven words you can't say on TV'. You would conquer the planet in three days.

“That's incredibly honest of you and I thank you for sharing that. I promise to the best of my ability to not use a word that is beneath me.” Oliver made his way back to the table and changed the topic. “What... what is your favorite food on Amazonia?”

“Giraffe.”

Oliver turned his body fast to the giant, “You're joking.”

“No, I had it at my uncle's third wedding. It's extremely expensive, but I got to try a tiny bit of tongue.” Benjamin recalled.

“Oh... hmm. I guess your relationship with megafauna is different. You don't” he was unsure if he wanted to know, “you don't eat whales, do you?”

“What's a whale?” Benjamin was serious in his reply.

“They're mammals in the ocean. Like dolphins, orcas, blue whales, you know cetaceans.”

“Mammals don't swim in the ocean; fish live in the ocean. How would they breathe?”

Oliver was putting it together. There is no way their world did not have ocean mammals; it is an obvious niche. Something terrible in the past must have happened but the Amazons just did not write it down. Star Trek warned this could happen. Oliver could feel a bit of rage growing, another log for the fire that was their dimension. It was not his world, but it could have been. It was not Benjamin's fault, and it probably happened long before he was born.

“I'll have to show you a documentary on them some time. They're the most wonderful creatures in nature. As smart as people, maybe smarter, they have their own culture and language. We've never been able to understand what they're saying, all we know is that they have shown humanity far more respect than we deserve, given how we treated them. It took us a long time to learn we need to give them space and that their needs are important too. We're trying to be better.”

The water in one pot started boiling, Oliver moved to add the noodles, and then waited for the second pot to boil before adding pasta there as well. He set an alarm for twelve minutes. He took out some bowls and silverware and placed it on the table. He looked at the small fork he had set aside for Benjamin and grabbed a salad fork and large mixing spoon instead. He took out another role of paper towels and gave himself one towel and left the roll for Benjamin. Oliver looked at the table with its human sized chairs, and then to Benjamin, and then moved Benjamin's utensils and bowl to a counter so he could stand and eat, rather than try to sit at the kiddie table.

The giant drained the pasta and added the noodles to a large mixing bowl. Oliver added the cheese sauce and started to mix. Benjamin disappeared back into the pantry and returned. He opened his hand and a cylindrical container fell into Oliver's arms. Oliver rolled the container over and read out loud, a bit confused why Ben brought it to him. “Barbecue Rub, best for Beef, Pork, and Poultry. I'm not sure why I bought this.”

“Yes, please mix some with the cheese, and then add some to the top for decoration.” Benjamin instructed.

“Why?”

“Because I'm the one cooking.” Oliver popped the lid, added the meat rub as instructed, he stirred, and poured himself a small bowl, leaving the mixing bowl for the taller man. A simple dish for a child, make one small addition, and it was now something an adult would eat without embarrassment.

They ate silently, Oliver finished first and brought the dish to the sink. He took the time to start cleaning, filling pots with water and soap, and hand washing the dirty dishes. Midway through, Oliver stopped and let the sounds in the kitchen go to silence.

“Ben,” a pause long enough to make sure Benjamin was paying attention, “I have to know. You resisted the urge your whole life, what changed? Did Collins do something? Was it just a bad day? What changed in you that you wanted to take away his agency? I thought he was your best friend.”

“I was his advisor, I wouldn't say,” it was a defensive response, but not an honest one. “I, yes sure, OK we were close. It wasn't me. I wasn't me.”

“Is it like an addiction, or a chemical imbalance? Why not use hypnosis? You could make yourself better that way.”

“I told him no.” Benjamin answered. It was quiet and heavy.

“What does that mean?” Oliver questioned.

“It means, he asked me, and I told him no.” Benjamin returned.

“Why would you send out that e-mail?” Oliver was incredulous towards Ben's waffling.

“I thought someone else would say yes.”

Oliver was unsure why he was angry. Collins wanted to be taken in, he asked Benjamin to be his dad, and Benjamin said no. What the hell is this? “Collins needed you, he just wanted to be like you. Why didn't you want him in your life?”

“I was scared to be a father. I had spent my whole life fighting that, and suddenly Collins just asked me. He wanted,” Benjamin remembered the tears coming down the tiny man's face, “Collins was sick, he had some illness none of our doctors could diagnose. They kept saying it was early onset maturosis, but it wasn't. We knew it wasn't.”

Oliver filled in the gaps, “Because the littles never described the condition you were seeing. Because no one on the planet had seen it before.”

“I think so. And we tried looking, but Collins hoped we'd find more evidence in the documents, something buried, something that could help our scientists. He wanted to believe regression might be like putting him in a freezer, and maybe I would find a cure and he could be back. And if it didn't work, at least he wouldn't be aware of what was happening.”

“Would that have been so bad? Just take him in.”

Benjamin grew defensive, “I, OK, this is, I'm not sure why I'm saying this. I didn't want a disabled child. I didn't want to know he'd just have a short time, watching him get worse and worse, all the while being unable to explain or talk about what had happened, just a confused damaged child. Does that make me a bad person? If you had a choice in the matter?”

Oliver was not sure how to answer that. He was already uncertain how he had gotten to the place he was defending turning a human into a baby, believing that somehow it would be wrong to not do that.

“Collins believed that the reason his condition wasn't in the writing of the other littles was because it wasn't natural. Some new stressor, or allergen or virus in the Amazon environment, and if we could raise him naturally like the littles did, it would go away. I think he was just getting lost in the research we were doing, but maybe he was right. Maybe there is an entire trove of lost documents dealing with medicine and health. Maybe we were just looking in the wrong part of the island.”

Oliver was not sure pressing him this next part would help, he was not sure Benjamin wanted to know, “Benjamin, it's OK, you were right. In the stories about the littles, the ones in the history books, you always said that before Unification the littles lived miserable lives. What do your stories say they did to the adults who came down with maturosis? The littles were often a people that was constantly bumping up against their island's population limits. If maturosis is a real condition, what do you think the littles did to the others with real disabilities, given they just left the adult babies to starve?”

“They would not have done that to Collins. He was still useful for his mind, and maybe they could cure him. They were an advanced people. Dimensional travel, architecture, philosophy, surely, they would not do that.”

Oliver had gotten him to admit it, the littles had the tech first and were the source. Just one more push.

“So, the myth of maturosis in the wild, leaving regressed adults to die, all that is just made up?”

Ben now knew. That is it! You just want to gloat you have proof that we have been gaslighting. Prove we are the bad guys here? You still do not believe maturosis was real?

Benjamin lost control. The culmination of everything he had experienced today. Electrical punishment, growing big, growing small, being friendly, being mean, saying they are worse than slavers and then complaining he did not enslave his best friend. He unloaded on the tiny man.

“Yes, it's a fucking myth. Propaganda. You happy? I am constantly angry with that, there's so much bad history in the water and that one actively hurts. And every damn little, all two billion of you tiny people, you just would love for maturosis to be fake. That it's entirely a condition of the bigs, that we need to be cured. Of course, being among Amazons makes it more common, but you still had it! You wrote about it! It was rare, but when you got it, your people treated it like it was a blessing.”

Two bad words, it hurt Benjamin to say those, but it was worth it.

“I'm not...” Oliver was concerned.

Benjamin continued, ignoring Oliver, “YES! We should not treat maturosis the way we do! It makes the condition worse! Amazon society was completely unprepared for this. And Collins wanted me to try treating him the right way and see if it would work, and I told him no. I told him I didn't think it would work, but I think I was just ...” Benjamin was breathing heavier, his nostrils coming in, he shook a few times and said, “I think I just wanted him to be my baby boy forever.”

It was a mix of anger and frustration. It was disappointment with himself. It was the belief he was the worst person in the world. It was? …

Everything would be OK. It was the warmth of the sun after a rain shower. It was a hearty meal on a chilly day. It was a hug from a child. He looked down and saw the small man hugging him. Tiny arms around his waist, a small face in his stomach. Benjamin reached down and pulled him in. It was the happiest he had felt in weeks.

Why had he been angry? Why had he been sad?

“I didn't mean to bring that up in that way, I'm sorry. I just wanted us to be friends again.”

“Oliver.”

The boy looked up into the eyes of the giant. His face was a bit more red in the cheeks.

“Remember what I said about doing childish things.”

Oliver nodded, happy, then started pushing away, Benjamin let go and felt a small pang in his heart. The toddler patted himself down and said, “Here, let me make myself big again.” Oliver sighed; he did not want to have to say this.

“Benjamin, you shared something deeply personal to me, let me share something with you. I served in a war. I was severely injured, had physical therapy. The pain's mostly gone, I don't need a cane anymore, but there's still some damage. Bad scars.”

Benjamin blinked and he was looking at a much older man. His hair had small graying along the edges, and his face was starting to show wrinkles of age. He looked a tad bit older than Benjamin saw himself. Oliver was not a crying child; he was now just a short old guy.

“The plumbing down below no longer works right. I need to wear extra protection at night. I hope that won't be a problem.”

Benjamin was not sure how to answer that, “Are we supposed to be sleeping together?”

“No.” Oliver laughed a little, realizing he had not shown him around. How impolite! “Here let me show you your bedroom.”